Health, Social Care and Security

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has done a lot of work in this area. I reassure him and stakeholders who are, I hope, interested in what we are trying to do that we will be consulting widely to make sure that we get the Bill right, so that it delivers the strength of purpose he refers to. The fact that it will create a legal definition of domestic abuse to help to ensure that it is properly understood means that we will not have the same situation of isolated pieces of domestic violence not being added up into a pattern of a really grotesque form of domestic violence that some women have been subjected to.

The Bill will also create a new domestic abuse prevention and protection order regime. A new order to specifically tackle domestic abuse will lead to better protection and better prosecutions. It will ensure that if abusive behaviour involves a child, the court can hand down a sentence that reflects the devastating and lifelong impact that abuse can have. In addition, it will establish a domestic violence and abuse commissioner, who will stand up for victims and survivors, raising public awareness and holding local authorities to account.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary also include in the commissioner’s remit the ability to look at those victims of domestic violence who are subsequently subject to a new form of abuse, namely being constantly returned to court by ex-partners demanding extra access to the children? That is a way to intimidate, bully and impoverish many of those who have the children in their care.

[Amber Rudd]

Absolutely. That is exactly the sort of issue that I would expect us to look at in the domestic violence Bill, to make sure that that sort of abuse does not take place. We want to be a society where domestic abuse is not tolerated, victims feel safe and supported and perpetrators are punished, and we look out for situations such as that raised by the hon. Lady. Victims deserve the best treatment and justice, and we will make sure that they get it. I very much hope that the Opposition will support the Bill.

Turning to health, as the Government continue to strengthen the economy, we can continue to invest in the NHS, supporting that public service on which we all depend. As we set out in our manifesto, we will increase health spending by a minimum of £8 billion a year in real terms by the end of this Parliament. We know, however, that wellbeing is about being strong not just in body, but in mind. This Government recognise that mental health should be given equal priority to physical health. That is why we will consider reform of mental health legislation and ensure that mental health is prioritised in the NHS. We will look at the Mental Health Act 1983 to make sure that the law is working for those who need support, and we will also publish a Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health, to make sure that best practice is being applied and there is sufficient access to support.

In 10 years’ time there will be 2 million more people over the age of 75. It is essential that they are able to live well and get the care that they need. The Government have already invested an additional £2 billion in social care to relieve pressure, but more needs to be done. That is why the Government are committed to listening to people’s views about how to reform the system. Full plans will be consulted on in due course.

This is a Government with purpose, determined to deliver the best Brexit deal to secure a strong future as we leave the EU.

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[Dr Lewis]

I have at least benefited from a few extra seconds as a result.

There is plenty to welcome in this Queen’s Speech, from the prioritisation of mental health to the forthcoming visit of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain, which will give us all a chance to show that our friendship with that great country is as enduring and immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. I will touch, however, on two other aspects of the Queen’s Speech, and they will not come as a surprise to colleagues who know of my areas of speciality.

The first is the reiteration of the Government’s pledge to continue to meet the NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of national income on defence. I am sorry to say that it is not enough. One of the things that the Select Committee on Defence managed to establish, through a great deal of hard work and original research by its professional and dedicated staff, was a comparison over the decades of what happened to defence with a graph showing something very different for other high-spending subjects. We found that in the early 1960s we spent similar sums—about 6% of GDP—on welfare and defence. Now we spend six times as much on welfare as we do on defence. In the mid-1980s we spent similar sums—about 5% of GDP—on education, health and defence. Now we spend two and a half times as much on education and nearly four times as much on health as we do on defence. In every year from 1981 until 1987, at the height of east-west confrontation, we spent between 4.3% and 5.1% of GDP on defence, yet even after the cold war had finished, even as late as the financial year 1995-96, we were spending 3% of GDP on defence—a total that does not include things such as war pensions and Ministry of Defence civil service pensions.

[Mrs Moon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I will happily give way to my fellow former member of the Defence Committee.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the former Chairman of the Select Committee for giving way. He, like me, was at a dinner last night at which it was pointed out that at 2%, without pensions and all the other bizarre add-ons that the Government add to get this country to 2%, France will be spending €56 billion on defence; Germany, when it gets to 2%, will be at €70 billion. We are at £36 billion. How can we hold our heads up high and say that we can defend ourselves with sums like that?

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Lady is a staunch defender of everything to do with the defence of this country, and she is absolutely right. It is a measure of the management downwards of our expectations that we are supposed to ring the church bells in triumph at our not falling below the bare minimum that NATO members are supposed to achieve. We really have to rethink this. We really should be looking at 3% of GDP, and not this bare minimum of 2%.

I want to turn mainly to what is said in the Queen’s Speech about the creation of a commission for countering extremism,

“to support the government in stamping out extremist ideology in all its forms, both across society and on the internet, so it is denied a safe space to spread.”

That implies, although it is not explicit, that the new body will be some form of executive agency. I want to hear from the Front Bench that that will be the case, because we are approaching a key point: it looks likely that the territory seized by ISIL/Daesh will be retaken from it. That will rightly be hailed as a considerable achievement, but we need to remember that only a few years ago no one had heard about ISIL/Daesh, and everybody was overwhelmingly concerned with al-Qaeda. It was unusual for a terrorist organisation to seize territory, because by doing that, ISIL/Daesh gave up the advantage of invisibility, which is what most terrorist organisations make maximum use of. However, I venture to suggest that when it has been removed from its territory and its moment has passed, there will be other groups that take its place, perhaps fighting in different areas and perhaps not trying to seize territory. This will go on and on, as long as there is no effective response to the underlying ideology.

This is not the first time that there has been talk of commissions of this sort. Back in 2013, David Cameron had a taskforce on tackling radicalisation and extremism. On that occasion, too, evidence was taken, but I believe that any future successful plan needs to draw on the similar threats that we faced and overcame in the past.

As I said in an earlier intervention, huge agencies were called into existence to counter other totalitarian ideologies. This rather massive book was never really meant to be published. It is called “The Secret History of PWE”. PWE was the Political Warfare Executive, and the book is a classified history of all the work that it did to counter fascist and Nazi ideology. It was published as recently as 2002. Another organisation, the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office, worked on a grand scale to counter the poisonous ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

What we need today is an organisation that is equally wide-ranging, equally proficient, and equally capable of answering the thoughtful interjection of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on the subject of the vocabulary that we should use—whether we should use the terms “Islamic”, “un-Islamic”, or simply “violent extremism”. We need an agency to do that. Until we have such an agency, and until it operates to scale, groups will continue to crop up to implement the ideology, and we do not want that to happen.

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[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker—and my right hon. Friends the Members for Chorley (Mr Hoyle), and for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton)—on your election to a fantastic role in which you will support the Speaker. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) on a confident maiden speech. He made a good impression on the House today, and I am sure that he will do so again in the future. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and congratulate him on his maiden speech. He will bring great knowledge to this House. As his seat was a Labour gain in this election, I am particularly pleased to see him in his place.

This was the eighth election that I have fought in Delyn constituency, and the seventh that I have won, so I am certainly pleased to be back. I have never gone into an election knowing that I would win, and this one was particularly tough. It is important that, having returned to this House, I represent all the people of my constituency and ensure that the issues that are important to them are raised.

The Prime Minister called this election on Brexit. The Queen’s Speech is largely about Brexit, but the issues that my constituents brought up on the doorstep were anything but Brexit, most of the time. They were arguing about jobs, security, public spending, austerity and, particularly, security and policing. I wish to focus on the latter, not least because in the middle of this general election campaign we had the horrific events in Manchester, Borough Market and, latterly, Finsbury Park. We also remember the incident in this House earlier this year, when a brave police officer lost his life defending our liberties.

It is important that we focus on security and policing, and I will touch on four areas. I want to know how the Government intend to increase police numbers and change their policy—an issue also raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). Our focus on policing has changed following those incidents and the acceptance that austerity has been a difficult challenge for the community. I want to know what progress is being made in improving the number of armed police. I want to know what happens in relation to Eurojust, the European arrest warrant and Europol, to which the Government have not made any commitment in discussions to date. I want to know what plans they have to look at terrorism legislation as a matter of course. Policing has changed dramatically over the past seven years of this Government.

We know the figures, but they are worth repeating: we had 144,235 police officers on the streets of Britain in 2010. We have lost 21,376 officers since then. We had a reduction of over 6,000 police community support officers in that period. The number of firearms officers, which the Home Secretary seemed to trumpet in her contribution today, has reduced by over 1,337 in that period.

Those reductions are important because we need to focus on how we re-embed the police in this country. Police on the ground help reassure communities, help strengthen neighbourhood policing, and help with the big challenges of terrorism. Police embedded in the community pick up intelligence and recognise some of the challenges of vulnerable adults—challenges posed by both the fascist right and, at the other end of the spectrum, extremist Islamist terrorist potential. That policing on the ground makes a difference. Looking at the current challenges, we should never forget that police officers, in their reduced numbers, are significantly stretched.

[Mrs Moon]

My right hon. Friend, having served as a Minister with responsibility for policing, will remember the inputs of the Ministry of Defence police in providing security and stability for much of our most important national infrastructure. Is he aware that there is to be a £12.5 million cut in Ministry of Defence policing in this year, which means that fewer armed police officers will be available to support Home Office police?

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[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I am honoured to follow that amazing speech by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper). To say that addressing the corruption of Liverpool CCG should be a Government priority is an understatement. It is an example of privatisation by stealth and corruption that has no place in this country.

Throughout today’s debate there has been a lot of talk about British values, but what do we mean by British values? Do we mean the bravery of those doctors, nurses, firefighters and police officers who ran to help those being attacked by terrorists? Do we mean those who ran into Grenfell Tower to help people at a time of distress? Do we mean those we have been insulting with a 1% pay rise, year on year, driving them into poverty? Do we mean those NHS workers who between 2010 and 2016 have lost £4.3 billion in cuts from the NHS staffing budget? Is that who we mean when we talk about British values? Or do we mean the 42% of NHS workers who do unpaid overtime to keep the NHS going?

Perhaps we mean the teachers and teaching assistants who have been trying to subsist on that 1% pay rise. We rely on them to teach British values and to tell our children about the need for reflection and decision making based on the analysis of facts, not personal gratification, and to make judgments based on equality, fairness and opportunity for all. Yet today disadvantaged children in this country are, at 173 percentage points, not ready for school at age 5. The gap grows at every stage in life, from play group to university. How can that be part of the British values espoused and promoted by this House?

British values used to be espoused by our pride in our armed forces and their capacity to provide security around the globe, but they have now been hollowed out. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), my colleague on the Defence Committee, has addressed the massive underfunding of our armed forces. We fudge our 2% commitment to NATO by including in it pensions, GCHQ funding and even overseas broadcasting. The gap in our defence budget is between £10 billion and £20 billion. Our armed forces are being bled dry and our capability to defend this country is diminishing day by day. We need a rapid review and a new assessment of the capability of our armed forces and of how we intend to fund them and keep our place in NATO. Our place there used to be critical and highly respected, but now, sadly, it is viewed as offering little to our allies. Yesterday at the land warfare conference in London, we were told by American invitees that

“your military is too small. There is no question about that”.

That is to our lasting shame.