(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberThe right hon. Member is absolutely right about the importance of protecting the original work of the creative industries. I have held a number of roundtables to ensure that we protect that originality. The Intellectual Property Office is working on that very issue, and I have been liaising with it and with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.
It is absolutely right that a deal should be done. The Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), and I have been encouraging all the authorities to come to an arrangement. We have been clear that if no arrangement is reached, there will obviously be a backstop in the legislation for the football regulator that we will bring forward to the House shortly.
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberI am happy to speak to my colleagues in Government to understand how we can further support journalists. We have led a great deal of action recently and over a number of years to support journalists both here and abroad, and we have set up a number of funds and taskforces to support them.
The Government remain committed to putting fans at the heart of football and to ensuring that the game has a sustainable financial future. The football governance Bill was included in the King’s Speech, and we intend to work closely with the Football Association, the leagues and fan associations to build the best independent regulator possible.
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. My understanding is that while negotiations are taking place between the Premier League and the English Football League, there has not yet been agreement on redistribution of money. Is there anything she can do to bring the two sides together so that progress can be made on that very important issue?
I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns. It is really important that football comes to a deal in relation to distributions. I support him in encouraging the football associations to do so, and I continue to urge them to reach an agreement in that area. Although our preference is a football-led solution, given the importance of distributions to financial sustainability, the independent football regulator will have targeted statutory powers to intervene on financial distributions as a last resort, if necessary. If football fails to deliver a solution, the regulator will deliver one.
(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Member is right to draw attention to the importance of prison officers, because they are critical to the whole system. I am very pleased that we have beaten our recruitment and retention targets with a net increase of over 4,300 officers, but, as the hon. Member says, we need to keep them safe. We are rolling out a number of measures including the use of PAVA—the pepper spray—and 6,000 body-worn cameras, improving and increasing training, and building on the key workers scheme which enables officers to build a relationship with the prisoners under their control and which we know is helping to reduce violence in our prisons.
Every death in custody is a tragedy. Every death in custody is investigated. What we need to do is to improve people’s mental health, stop women and men self-harming in prison and give them the skills and tools to turn around their lives through employment. I recently visited HMP Send, a fantastic women’s prison, and its therapeutic community, which offers a long programme that helps women to come to terms with their offending and to get their lives back on track. Those are the sorts of programmes that do a great deal of work for women and men in prison.
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI referred earlier to the steps we are taking in the MOJ in relation to medical members to reduce social security PIP and ESA appeals, but we are also introducing 250 more judges across tribunals. I welcome the very recent appointment of Grant Harvey Bird in September as a salaried judge for the first-tier tribunal in Gloucestershire.