Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Monday 8th June 2020 General Committees

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but we need to grasp this issue fully and not apologise for the fact that we have taken the time to legislate. We firmly want to see the legislation that we have passed put into law and to be clarified for those who live in Northern Ireland.

As the Minister knows, passing that law is not enough. I have some of the same concerns as the shadow Minister about Parliament, here in Westminster, passing a law that will then be implemented by an Administration that was not part of the process of drawing up the law. We need to have some assurances from the Minister that while he, of course, will not have day-to-day responsibility for the implementation of the law, that he will make sure that it is implemented, because he has international and legal obligations to do so. It is important that he spells that out in when he sums up.

[Tim Loughton]

I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said. She was talking about uncertainty and the dilemmas that that provides for women in Northern Ireland. Would she agree that, if these regulations do not go through, the uncertainty will continue, and we will see a return of the absurd and obscene travel from Northern Ireland to try to find alternative provision in England and Great Britain, at a time when travel is not advised because of the coronavirus epidemic?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is right. The Select Committee report, just a year ago, found that there was a postcode lottery for provision and showed that lack of access to abortion in Northern Ireland drove many women to have to seek abortions in England, without the support of family and friends. There were some traumatic stories that were completely unacceptable.

Early Years Family Support

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

I am completely recharged and relieved by that. The hon. Lady is my absolute favourite Member of Parliament for Manchester Central, and many things besides. But this debate is getting far too consensual, so I shall return to the points that I was trying to make.

The phrase “1,000 days”—or, for those whose glass is half full, “1,001 days”—is almost becoming common parlance as well, and it needs to. It needs to be almost a brand. People need to understand that those 1,001-ish days of life from conception to the age of two are the period that will have the most impact on a child’s future life. If we do not invest in the right support then, the cost of picking up the pieces later will be so much greater, both financially and, as I think everyone here recognises, socially.

I should declare an interest, in that I chair PIP UK—the Parent Infant Partnership—which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. I became chairman of the trustees, and am proud still to be so. Our most recent report is “Rare Jewels”. I pay tribute to Sally Hogg, who works for PIP and who did a great deal of research on the scarcity of parent and infant mental health specialist support. That was a false economy.

I shall now be slightly unconventional, and talk about the motion. The motion is about the inter-ministerial group, and I want to talk about some of the experiences of that group. As I found during my few years as a Minister, joined-up government is a complete myth. What the group almost uniquely did, because of the vim and force of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, was bring together key Ministers from half a dozen key Departments to try to create joined-up solutions. A child’s mental health, and those early years affecting the child and his or her parents, are not just the preserve of the Department for Education and of children’s social care. They touch on the work of so many other Departments

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is still here. She will remember that some years ago, when I was the Children’s Minister and Sarah Teather was also an Education Minister, we tried to put together the early intervention fund, which was largely intended to bring together different interests with a pooled budget so that we could work together on smarter solutions. However, that did not really fit the way in which the civil service worked.

We struggled for some months to pull together a plan that would involve various other Departments, and we were being frustrated at every turn; so we formed a pizza club, well before my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire was on the scene. My then colleague Sarah Teather and I rang other colleagues—Housing Ministers, Health Ministers and others. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke was then a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions. We got together in “The Adjournment” restaurant, had a pizza, agreed what we wanted to do, and all went back to our Departments in the following days and told our civil servants what we wanted to do. The response was “Well, I’m sorry but that’s not the way we do things around here, Minister”, to which our response was “Tough, we’re now doing it.” That was the only way we could actually get through an important joined-up policy because the system just did not work. I do not think things have improved much at all.

Another innovation I set up then was the Youth Action Group. Again, there were problems and I tried to youth-proof all Government policy, which is something I still bang on about. There were many problems that transcended different Departments, and yet if there was a problem, it would go from one Department to another in a vicious triangle, as it were. So I got together six major charities led by The Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s. I co-chaired it and, at one stage, I think we had nine Ministers from nine different Departments. Invariably most of those Ministers would turn up to those meetings and the children’s charities and youth charities would bring particular problems to us. One problem was about housing benefit for looked-after children who were care leavers, which was the responsibility of the Department for Education for care, the Department for Communities and Local Government—whatever it was called in those days—for housing and the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits. We got the three Ministers together with the three lead officials and said, “Here’s the problem; can you please take it away and solve it and come back with a solution that the children and youth workers can then take away?” Alas, that group no longer exists, but we need far more of that sort of rationale and mentality in Government. The inter-ministerial group showed how it could be done, and it is so important that the work continues. I hope that the recommendations that have been made are taken up and run with.

We need a Minister for early years children and families at Cabinet level. It should not just be left to civil servants to people those committees when what we need is a co-ordinated ministerial response. This needs to be led by a high-profile Minister who has the clout, enthusiasm and drive to bring all the relevant Departments together and come up with a cross-departmental solution. I am afraid that we are still a long way from that in common practice, and that is partly what is wrong with Government and with our civil service. So that is my main plea.

On the investment equation, I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, but we know that healthy social and emotional development in the first 1,001 days means that individuals are more likely to have improved mental and physical health outcomes from cradle to grave and children will start school with the language, social and emotional skills they need to play and explore and learn. Children and young people will also be better able to understand and manage their emotions and behaviours, leading to less risky and antisocial behaviours and the costs that these bring to individuals and society, and they will have the skills they need to form trusting, healthy relationships—something we heard about in the Chamber earlier. If they had that, we would not have to spend such a lot of time teaching it to them at school because it would come naturally, and they would know what a proper quality, trusting relationship actually is. And if they know, they are much more likely to be able to hand it on and nurture their own children as they become parents in the future.

The cost of getting this wrong is huge. Some years ago—although it is still as true and important today—the Maternal Mental Health Alliance calculated the cost of getting perinatal mental health care wrong for the one in six women who will have some form of perinatal mental illness. The cost of that was £8.1 billion each and every year, and the cost of child neglect in this country is £15 billion each and every year; so £23.1 billion is the price of getting it wrong. A fraction of that spent on early intervention—well-targeted, well-timed, well-positioned by well-qualified and trained professionals—could save so much personal grief and so much financial and social grief later on.

It is not rocket science, as I constantly say; it is technically neuroscience, but it really is something we should have been doing so many years ago. The troubled families programme is the model here, and it is essential that the troubled families programme is not just retained, but expanded in the comprehensive spending review. I have always said that we need a pre-troubled families programme, because in the troubled families programme we are dealing with the symptoms of getting it wrong earlier. If we prevented those symptoms in the first place, working in those very early years, so that we have a well-balanced parent or parents with well-balanced children, they are more likely to arrive at school eager and able to learn and be contributing members of society. That is so vital. Some 28% of mothers with mental health problems report having difficulties bonding with their child. Research suggests that this initial dysfunction in the mother-baby relationship affects the child’s development by impairing the baby’s psychomotor and socio-emotional development.

Postnatal depression has also been linked with depression in fathers, and with higher rates of family breakdown. We forget the impact on fathers of not knowing how to deal with a mum—a partner—who all of a sudden has some form of postnatal mental illness. A lot of fathers are affected by this. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on fatherhood, is going to talk about this. It is essential that we look at all parents, when both parents are on the scene, and give support to the family as a whole.

[Mrs Miller]

I well remember working with my hon. Friend and I remember his huge commitment in this area. If there are now more debates and discussions about child mental health, a lot of that is down to him. I should like to highlight a report that the Select Committee is doing on men’s mental health. Does he agree that the NHS needs to think long and hard about the way in which men can access mental health services? We are receiving evidence that the way in which these services are delivered is almost highly feminised, making it difficult for men to access them.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is still this myth that it is not manly to admit to having some form of mental illness. I hope that we are getting away from the stigma of that, but we still have far to go in encouraging people. Hon. Members in this place who have come forward with their own very painful experiences have done a huge service by providing role models, as have celebrities in sport and showbusiness, and by showing that there is nothing unmanly or abnormal about coming forward when they have an illness that happens to be a mental illness, just as they would come forward if they had a physical illness. Why should there be any difference? However, we need to make it easier for men to cross that threshold in the first place. We need to ensure that they can come and talk to somebody and get checked out.

I am not going to go into the whole children’s centre argument. That is an important issue but this is not just about the bricks and mortar. However, one of my criticisms is that those places need to be much more dad-friendly, and much more imaginatively used. I have opened many children’s centres in my time, and I have seen some great ones that have football clubs on Saturday afternoons when the children’s centre is too often closed because it is a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday institution. Dads bring their kids and they play football together, then they do computers and reading with their kids afterwards. That is great bonding and co-educational time as well. Again, this is not rocket science. We need to make those places more welcoming for dads, and we need to put them in places that young fathers inhabit.

The killer statistic that I always use is that if a 15 or 16-year-old child in school has some form of depression, there is a 99% likelihood that their mother suffered from some form of mental illness during pregnancy or soon afterwards. The correlation is that close, and if we do nothing to help the mother at that early stage, we will certainly see the consequences later on. It is great that the Prime Minister has flagged up mental illness, and it is great that so much more will be happening with additional funding—not enough, but there will be additional funding—for mental health services in schools, but we need to do all this before school as well so that kids are less susceptible to mental illness problems, given all the pressures that they will face as they go through their school years. We need a much more joined-up approach.

Research by the Children’s Commissioner shows that 8,300 babies under the age of one in England currently live in a household where domestic violence, alcohol or drug dependency and severe mental illness are all present. That is a very worrying amount. That is why the Domestic Abuse Bill, which was at last introduced today, is very important, but we need to look at the impact on children as well as the impact on parents, because that trauma will be long-lasting. We tend to look at the immediate victim of domestic violence without looking at the collateral damage that it also causes. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned the horrific statistic of something like one third of domestic violence starting during pregnancy.

I will come to a conclusion shortly, Mr Deputy Speaker, although you do not look too impatient, so I might go on a bit. To join up Departments, it is crucial to have key players who are wedded and committed to the issue and who want to work to achieve solutions. Domestic violence is dealt with in the Home Office. Child sexual exploitation is now dealt with in the Home Office. There is an impact on housing, which is dealt with in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. There is an impact on justice as well. The consequences of social media—now dealt with by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—have an impact on children’s mental health. I used to deal with most of those things in one Department when I was Children’s Minister, but they have now been dispersed across Government, and we have to bring them back together.

I will finish on the role of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and public health. Health visitors are a huge resource. One of the great achievements of the Cameron Government—I was part of the discussions in the shadow Health team when we came up with the idea—was the huge expansion of the health visitor programme. Based on the research we did in the Netherlands with the Kraamzorg programme, which showed the impact that health visitors can have at an early stage when they have good, strong engagement with new mums and dads, there was a commitment in the 2010 manifesto to increase the number of health visitors to a figure of, I think, some 4,200. By 2015, that figure had just about been achieved. Alas, since then, things have gone into reverse.

I pay tribute particularly to Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, head of the Institute of Health Visiting, who has had a major input into the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire has already mentioned and the all-party parliamentary group that I chair. As the IHV recently noted, England is now at risk of sleepwalking into the loss of the health visiting service as we know it, unless urgent action is taken to address the current threats it faces. There are ongoing cuts to the public health grant, a 26% reduction in NHS- employed health visitors since 2015 and an unwarranted variation in the quality of services commissioned for families based on where they live rather than the level of need. As the IHV says, investing in the earliest years saves money in the long run and ensures that every child is supported to achieve the best start in life, yet the cuts to services in England persist at a time when inequalities are widening and infant mortality is increasing.

Health visitors are the trusted face on the doorstep. Whereas social workers are often treated with scepticism and fear when they knock on the door, the health visitor is usually welcomed over the threshold, particularly by new parents. He or she is an early warning system of some deficiency in parenting, as well as for safeguarding. It is absolutely essential that we build those numbers back up before we lose too many more of those experienced health visitors, working out of children centres or wherever—hot desking even, with social workers, with the district nurses and other welfare officers—so that they can detect and signpost families to the relevant services. They really are absolutely invaluable. Since the switch in responsibility from the NHS to local authorities—this is no detriment to local government—there has been a lack of experience in how those sorts of services are run, and therefore the issue is not treated as a priority. It is a priority and we need to get back to that.

Finally, I reiterate the recommendations made in the “Building Great Britons” report that the all-party parliamentary group produced in 2015. It was about having a joined-up Government approach to the 1,001 days; about every local authority drawing up its local plan and working with all the local agencies on how to deliver that plan for the 1,001 days, within a five-year term at least; and about having a monitoring system, which I based on the adoption scorecards that we brought in back in 2012, so that there is no place to hide and everyone has to be transparent about how they are progressing towards producing those services, compared with other parts of the country.

The solutions were in that report. We all know what needs to be done. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire led the way in bringing together the relevant parties and Departments to show how it could be done. Now we need to do it.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and to have heard not only Opposition Members’ broad support for the Bill, but the important points they have raised. There can never be too much consensus on these issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we just need to do better for vulnerable children. Challenge is part of that, as are new ideas. We cannot allow the Bill to be a missed opportunity in terms of prevention or the knowledge we give to children, because they are as much a part of the safeguarding process as any other structure or law that we put through this place.

The focus of the Bill is very much children who cannot remain in the family home, but its scope has been widened, particularly through Government amendments made in the other place, to broader issues around child welfare. I will focus on some of the broader issues, particularly the provisions regarding adopted children and ongoing support for them; the more contentious issue of the power to innovate, which some Members have talked about today, the measures on which were voted down in the other place; and, finally, what more the Bill could do to improve the welfare of children and to empower children.

The Bill proposes improvements to the long-term placement of children for adoption and the assessment of their current and future needs through care orders. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell the House how the new measure sits alongside recent Government announcements on the adoption support fund. In particular, I am thinking about the interim cap on financial support that was put in place midway through the financial year.

The adoption support fund ensures that important therapeutic support can be funded for adopted children, some of whom are coping with difficult trauma, complex and challenging behaviour, and mental health problems. That can result in a high risk of adoption breakdown. The fund already helps thousands of families—I believe it was 3,500 last year—and the Government are increasing the budget to about £23 million this year. That significant investment perhaps underlines the Minister’s deep knowledge of the subject and his understanding of the challenges that parents of adopted children face, which he has gained from his own family’s experiences. I put on record my thanks to the Minister for all that he has done to support families with adopted children. I know that my constituents are enormously grateful for his expertise in this area.

Perhaps we should be unsurprised to hear that the demand for the fund has outstripped the supply of finances. The Minister, with the inevitable fiscal duties on him, had to introduce a cap to the budget in October. Although that was understandable as a normal response to keep control of budgetary pressures, it has inevitably created uncertainties for families such as my constituents, Mr and Mrs Cross, who adopted their son in August 2013. Mr and Mrs Cross are incredible. They have adopted a young child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder which, as many will know, means their son requires significant support.

Mr and Mrs Cross have taken the necessary measures and are doing a fantastic job. The child’s therapy has been hugely beneficial, leading to real progress, but because it costs in excess of the new £5,000 cap, it is uncertain whether the funding will be available in the near future. The next phase of treatment costs about £10,000 and would require the local authority in Hampshire to match fund, in year, any costs over £5,000. Clause 8 calls for long-term plans for the care of a child to be in place, yet my constituents, who have made an incredible choice to care for a severely disabled child, are now unsure whether his care can be funded. I hope that the Minister, perhaps in his response to the debate, will reflect on how a local authority such as mine in Hampshire might respond, and reassure Mr and Mrs Cross that the support for their child will continue.

The second issue I want to speak about is the controversial power to innovate, which was contentious in the other place. Indeed, the then clauses 15 to 18 were removed from the Bill after a vote. The provisions would have allowed local authorities to apply to the Secretary of State to test new ways of raising children’s outcomes and to allow high-performing local authorities to be involved in that work. It is important that we pay heed to the strongly held concerns raised by expert voices, not just in the other place but outwith this place, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those concerns, which have been echoed again today.

None the less, the Department has put in place something that we need to look at again: the idea of giving “partners in practice”—my local authority in Hampshire is one of only eight in the country—the opportunity to look at innovative ways of working. If we are to find better ways to care for the vulnerable children about whom we all feel so deeply, we need to be open to new ideas, so I hope that we can revisit this idea, which was strongly supported by my local authority as well as experts such as Professor Eileen Munro. It is right that this tightly regulated area is as protected as it is, but I cannot believe that there would not be a benefit from our looking at new ways of working. We will all have seen examples of that in today’s briefings.

The problem might be—hon. Members might have put their finger on it today—that the proposals came somewhat out of the blue, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said. We need to take care that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I do not think that the Minister had any intention for the proposals to create competition between local authorities; rather, the intention was to drive improvement, which we would all applaud. No one is suggesting that this approach would do anything other than drive innovation in an area that has developed, inevitably, in a piecemeal way in response to the various and sometimes quite appalling situations in which local authorities have found themselves.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about the need for policy and law to work in practice. When I read the Hansard report of what the Minister in the other place said, I felt that that was exactly the purpose of the proposals. I think the intention is that local authorities are able to look at how they can make the law work in practice, rather than creating something of a postcode lottery. When there is an insight into better ways of working, authorities need to be able to pass it on to other areas to improve the way in which we care for this vulnerable group of individuals.

The final issue I want to raise, building on what the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, is what we are doing to empower children themselves, especially vulnerable children who might not have the consistent involvement of their parents in their lives and who, frankly, face really difficult situations when they have to take decisions about their own welfare without the input of other adults to guide them. This Bill is one of many pieces of legislation that have put in place laws, procedures and protocols to help to protect and improve the welfare of children through a whole host of agencies, but that does not directly address what we will do to help those children themselves. We need to ensure that they are armed with the knowledge that they need to make the right choices to safeguard themselves.

That is not a new concept, but something that we have done for many years. For example, we have tried to encourage children to understand the dangers of drugs, alcohol and, indeed, early pregnancy. It is important to take that forward in a more structured way. As parents and carers, we know that we have the prime responsibility to protect our children, but we also know that our children need the ability to make good choices. We cannot be there 24/7; social workers cannot be there 24/7. It is crucial that children have the ability to make decisions themselves in an informed way.

The Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to respond positively to the five Select Committee Chairs who have called for PSHE and, in particular, sex and relationships education, to be made compulsory for school-age children. I am one of those Select Committee Chairs. Our work taking evidence on our recent inquiry on sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was a sobering experience for all members of our Select Committee.

We need to help to empower children to make their own decisions. When we hear the evidence and some of the statistics about the challenges that young people face in respect of their own personal welfare, it becomes clear that this debate is overdue and that we need to take action now. Two thirds of girls regularly experience sexual harassment in school. Children as young as eight are seeing online pornography as a place to learn about sex, and there were 47,000 sexual offences against children in this country in the last year, a third of which were perpetrated by children against other children. Communities should be able to enjoy freedom and safety, and school communities are no different from any others.

When we look at what happens to children after their school life, we find that, according to a study by the National Union of Students, 68% of students say that they are subject to verbal or physical sexual harassment on campuses. The problem does not stop there, as some 85% of women are experiencing unwanted sexual attention in public places.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow is absolutely right when she says that this is all about prevention and making sure that we can stop these problems from happening in the first place by ensuring that children have the knowledge they need to make good decisions, to understand what consent means, and to achieve some control over their own personal space and their own bodies.

The Bill has been extensively debated in the other place, where many amendments were tabled, particularly relating to the importance for the welfare of children of joint working between agencies, including local authorities, the police and clinical commissioning groups. In the other place, the Government tabled amendment 113, which dealt with that, because they recognised that a multifaceted strategy was vital to children’s welfare.

Another set of organisations also have a crucial role to play in children’s welfare: schools. If the Bill is to do what it sets out to do and to promote welfare for children, it must make sex and relationships education compulsory. What is currently compulsory in secondary schools is the science of reproduction; the rest is based on guidance that was last updated at the turn of the millennium and makes no reference to pornography, through which, as we know, more young children are finding out about sex. We also know that 40% of schools do not teach SRE very well. Perhaps all that explains why organisations such as Barnardo’s have made clear that the development of an early understanding of and respect for each other’s bodies, and a knowledge of when to ask for help through PSHE, can help to build resilience and an understanding of what healthy relationships look like, as well as mitigating the effects of exposure to such things as pornography.

[Tim Loughton]

I am closely following what my right hon. Friend is saying and agree with much of it. As is the wont of speeches on Bills concerning children, hers is straying into a number of subjects that relate to children but are not dealt with in the Bill, but I support her on this subject. Does she agree that one way of securing the better-quality PHSE and SRE that we desperately need would be to bring in experts from outside schools, especially young experts such as youth workers? They could empathise with young people who would listen to them, take notice of them and act on their advice. Would that not be better than giving the task to Mrs Miggins the geography teacher who just happens to have a couple of free periods on a Thursday afternoon?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Expertise is necessary when it comes to teaching those subjects. However, as I have said, I have raised this issue because if we are to tackle the welfare of children, we must ensure that we do so effectively. It is no good leaving children out of the equation; we must tackle their welfare head on. While I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s point that undertrained teachers will not provide effective sex and relationships education, I think that all teachers—whether they are Mrs Miggins teaching geography or anyone else—need to understand how they can stop the sexual harassment and sexual violence that too many young people told the Committee they took for granted in their everyday school lives, and which we would never take for granted as adults. All teachers should have some sort of training in this sphere because they are responsible for the wellbeing of children while they are at school.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

I rise to speak particularly on new clauses 3, 5, 44, 46 and 47, and note the advisement of the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) that her amendments are set out as probing amendments. Those five amendments tabled by both Liberal Democrat Members and Plaid Cymru Members all have a common theme: to call for reform in connection with the internet and the digital online world.

We all need to get our Government and Governments around the world to wake up to the extent to which crime and criminal activity has now moved online. Our laws are not giving victims the protection they need and our police forces face a revolution if they are to tackle the crime that they face now effectively in the future.

There has been a significant shift in the way people experience harm in this world. New clause 44, as the hon. Lady has set out, calls for the police to have special digital units to deal particularly with child abuse images. Many police forces in this country, including my own in Hampshire, have gone a long way to building up this sort of specialist expertise, but the new clause is an interesting piece of advice on which I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response, as well as the response on police training.

There are serious questions to ask as to whether the providers of online space are doing what they need to do to keep their communities safe. They have not only a corporate social responsibility to do that, but I also think an economic imperative, because it is their brand names that are tarnished, and rightly so, when their products are used for illegal purposes.

Another aspect is not particularly brought up in the amendments today, but I will mention it: the importance of the international implications of all these things. If we are to get a solution to the sorts of crimes that are being committed online in this new digital world that does not respect country boundaries, we need to have some buy-in from international Governments, too. I myself have met companies in the US, but we need to go further than that and see whether we can actually get the sort of action that we need on an international basis by perhaps looking to the United Nations, or indeed the youth part of the UN, to explore how we can get more effective laws in the future that are not constricted by international boundaries.

Our law is struggling to cope. These amendments recognise that. The real need to recognise that online crime is different is a battle that was won when this Government put in place the revenge pornography law a year or so ago. We have already seen 1,000 reports to the police and thousands more people using the revenge pornography helpline, yet two-thirds of those cases that have been reported to the police have seen no action because of problems of the evidence that victims have been able to give or indeed because the victims have withdrawn it. Again, the new clauses are picking up those issues and calling on the Government to consider again. New clause 46 calls for anonymity of victims. That was considered at the time the law was put in place, but the advice then was to wait to see how things progressed. The statistics suggest that now is a time to think again, as new clause 41, which also deals with compensation, also seeks to do.

The myriad amendments before us today show the level of complexity involved and the level of concern among hon. Members from at least three parties represented in the Chamber tonight—I am sure Labour Front Benchers would share in this, too—but I worry that they offer a piecemeal set of solutions. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd picked up on that. Surely what is needed is a wholesale review of the law, police training and the development of international support for digital providers to take seriously the importance of keeping their communities safe online. I support the spirit of these amendments, but I am struck by the need for a more comprehensive review, perhaps in the form of the digital economy Bill, which Her Gracious Majesty announced in the Gracious Speech only last month.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is articulating a very serious problem, with which many of us have been involved for some time. Does she acknowledge that with some 70,000 cases of historical child abuse likely to be investigated by the police this year alone and with up to half of cases coming to the courts involving sexual exploitation, many of them historical, the police are overwhelmed in their capacity to be able to deal with this new wave of digital crime against some of the most vulnerable children? Her suggestion for a more holistic overview of this is therefore essential.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He of course has an impeccable record of campaigning in this area. Perhaps the very scale of this problem is an indication that our regulatory framework within which these organisations work is not quite as good as it needs to be for the future. We cannot expect our police force simply to put down the work it is doing in every other area to focus solely on online crime, but at the moment he is right to say that the scale of what is being seen is, in the words of some police chiefs, “frightening”. We do not yet seem to be seeing a response to that. I hope that the digital economy Bill will provide the Ministers sitting on the Front Bench today, and perhaps their colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with the opportunity to look carefully at this. It is no longer something that we can simply say is the by-product of a new industry that will settle down over time. Those Ministers will have heard a good deal of evidence this evening to suggest that more action needs to be taken, and I ask them to do what one of them, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), agreed to do today in departmental questions: sit down with me and other hon. Members who might be interested to set out how the digital economy Bill can be used as a vehicle to achieve the objective of making our internet safer, both at home and abroad.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

Of course, it would also not be right to be putting out spurious figures. The figure of £4 billion is not the result of an official cost impact assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions. It is an entirely hypothetical figure based on every cohabiting opposite-sex couple choosing to convert to a new civil partnership, with maximum pension liabilities. Is not that actually where the figure has come from?

[Maria Miller]

I really do thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he has made my point for me. At this point in time, there is of course no independent impact assessment because the issues have not been looked at in the kind of detail that hon. Members would expect before legislation is enacted. I hope that I will be able to change my hon. Friend’s mind about pressing his new clause to a vote. I hope that he will see that we need to get more evidence on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Miller]

Clearly, we have had a vigorous debate today. Let me wind up before we move to a vote.

It is clear that adding the whole new concept of the extension of civil partnerships threatens delaying and even potentially derailing the Bill. New clause 16 offers a considered way forward, ensuring that the questions that hon. Members on both sides of the House have rightly asked can be answered. There has been a great deal of talk about fairness, and the fairness that this Bill enables is that same-sex couples can marry for the first time. We should not be trying to rectify other issues before we rectify that.

We must make it clear, as those on both Front Benches have done already, that an immediate review is possible to assess the need for the extension of civil partnerships. I am absolutely happy to accept the manuscript amendment tabled by the Opposition and to make it clear that we will facilitate a speedy review. It is clear from today’s debate, however, that there are policy and cost implications and we should ensure that we know them before we move forward. I will not allow the extension of civil partnerships to heterosexual couples to delay the Bill, and I think that all three main parties agree on that.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) rightly said, in her considered contribution—I welcomed the tone that she took—that to date there had been “cursory” consultation in this area. I welcome her desire for further elucidation of the issues that we have talked about, and her desire for the Bill’s passage not to be delayed. New clause 16, and amendment (a) to it, will give us a considered way forward. I also welcome the fact that she will not support new clauses 10 and 11, and I hope that those proposing those new clauses will consider not pressing them as a result.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) gave an interesting and passionate display of argumentation. He will see that there is a clear undertaking around new clause 16, and that a review will take place while the Bill is in the Lords, which will provide a prompt response, in terms of a consultation; perhaps that will give him the reassurance that he is looking for.

[Tim Loughton]

We have a dilemma here, because if my right hon. Friend goes ahead with new clause 16 on the basis that the review could take until 2019, we must vote against it. She has just said that an immediate review is possible. Will she clearly tell Government Members whether she agrees with the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who has made it clear that she thinks a review can have taken place come Report in the Lords, and that its findings could be added to the Bill before it has gone through both Houses? If that is the case, I would be delighted to support my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and drop my new clauses, but she needs to make it clear whether she thinks that is practically doable.

[Maria Miller]

What I can be absolutely clear about is that I am committed to undertaking an urgent review, and that the review will come through promptly, and in the way that my hon. Friend would expect. The Bill is due in the House of Lords in two weeks. It would not be feasible—no Member of the House would expect it—for me to undertake a proper consultation in that time frame, but I undertake further to discuss the timetable for the review with my hon. Friend, and it will absolutely go forward in a prompt fashion. That is what he would expect us to say.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) made an impassioned speech. He properly talked about the importance of getting the right solutions for cohabiting couples, and the extension of civil partnerships may or may not be that right solution. We need to do the right policy work to ensure that we take these decisions for the right reasons, and in the right way.

The right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward) put his finger on it when he said that the gross unfairness is the fact that same-sex couples cannot get married. That is what the House needs to focus on today. By voting for new clause 16 and amendment (a) to it, we can get to a position in which we can deal with the issue of extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples without it getting in the way of making sure that the unfairness that he rightly identifies is dealt with swiftly. He talked eloquently about the inequities in pension provision. If that was a simple issue to rectify, presumably his Government would have addressed the issue back in 2004.

The hon. Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) talked about same-sex marriage being a step too far in 2004. I was not a Member of the House at that point, but I understand the sentiment behind his comments. I can say to the House today that this is not a step too far. It is not something that we should shy away from. We have to be clear in our commitment to focusing on extending marriage to same-sex couples, and should not be distracted by trying to incorporate into the Bill, at this point in time, issues that would create further delay and debate in the other place.

BBC

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I think that the hon. Gentleman would have to agree that the problem we face is a structural one within the BBC organisation. It is a problem that the BBC Trust is addressing through the plans and reviews it has put in place, and I hope that he will join me in welcoming that as the right way forward.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

In the past few days the main news headlines have been about structural overhaul at the BBC, heads rolling and severance payments, yet in the same few days we have heard about further arrests in connection with Savile and with child sexual exploitation in Rochdale and Leeds that have hardly troubled the headlines. The Secretary of State is right to say that the origins of all this mess are the inquiries into Savile and child abuse under the BBC’s roof. Does she agree that sensationalist celebrity scalp hunting by Opposition Members and shoddy reporting by “Newsnight” have undermined the possibility that witnesses will come back and that we need to get the inquiry back on track and focused on child abuse, which is where it started and where it should end?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend puts it extremely well. We cannot let these debates fog the central question: how do we ensure that we protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society? I welcome the fact that there will be a Back-Bench debate on that tomorrow, when I am sure he will continue to contribute and make the excellent points he has made this afternoon.

Sir Jimmy Savile (BBC Inquiry)

Debate between Maria Miller and Tim Loughton

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I know that she has looked at this matter in some detail, as I, too, have done. I can reassure her that the BBC’s own child protection policy goes beyond that which is required, and it is expected that where people work with children and young people the role will be subject to a satisfactory Criminal Records Bureau check or indeed a PVG—Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme—check. She is right always to be questioning whether we do have the right checks in place, but I say to her that the individual we are talking about today had no criminal convictions. So this is not just about looking at convictions; it is also about the culture of vigilance that I talked about when responding to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman).

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that these latest sickening revelations just reinforce the sobering message that child sexual exploitation is rife in every community, every organisation and every social class, whether it is hiding behind the culture of celebrity in the BBC and other institutions, behind the culture of fear within the Church or behind the culture of political correctness that prevents the police and social services from properly investigating when cultural sensitivities are involved? If one compensation is to come out of this all, it will be, as the right hon. and learned Lady has said, to embolden victims to come forward and, most importantly, for them to be taken seriously by the institutions that are there to protect them.

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend speaks with enormous passion on this subject, and I had the privilege of working with him on the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill when we were in opposition. I agree with him that the seriousness of the situation is something that all the organisations that have been implicated need to look at. I reassure him that the police investigating the Savile inquiry are working with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to try to ensure that people who have been affected are forthcoming with evidence and that we can get to the root of this problem.