Summer Adjournment

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), who has definitely made his mark with the excellent things he is already doing in the House. I congratulate the two new Members who have made their maiden speeches; I am sure that they will be excellent advocates for their constituents.

As a member of the associate and retired members branch of the Public and Commercial Services Union, and as vice-chair of the PCS parliamentary group, I congratulate the PCS on yesterday’s national pay ballot, in which 85.6% of people voted for action, on a 41.6% return. However, I would like to express my concern that because of the Government’s anti-democratic Trade Union Act 2016, the ballot did not quite reach the 50% threshold, and the members were not allowed to do any kind of e-voting. Those civil servants will now be subject to another 1% to 1.5% unfunded pay rise. I hope the Minister agrees that this is particularly worrying because a recent survey by the Department for Work and Pensions showed that more than 70% of its staff had experienced financial difficulty during the past year. We can only imagine the depths of the low morale that civil servants are now experiencing.

As co-chair of the drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party group, I am aware that Public Health England is reviewing the impact of the introduction of minimum unit pricing in Scotland. I am not sure how long that will take, but have the Government considered the health impact of delaying the introduction of minimum unit pricing in England? The 2012 alcohol strategy gave a commitment for its introduction, and it was delayed only because of the drinks industry’s legal challenge to Scotland’s evidence-based policy. The rationale for further reviews is not clear. Surely more delay merely signals that England is less concerned than Scotland and Wales about alcohol-related illness, deaths and crime, and its vulnerable young people.

At last week’s Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister gave a disappointing reply to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) when she restated the Government’s refusal to allow a drug consumption room to open in Glasgow, despite a wealth of evidence showing that drug consumption rooms are effective in reducing transmissions of blood-borne viruses and drug-related deaths. The issue has become vital as there are now well over 100 cases of HIV among this population group, and the outbreak shows no signs of abating. This is a glaring example of what happens when harm reduction, as an approach to drugs policy, is ignored. The drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party group is writing to the Home Secretary to call for permission to be granted for a drug consumption room to open in Glasgow. I urge the Government to show more compassion and less complacency in drugs and alcohol policy at a time when drug deaths are already at record levels and there are more than 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions each year.

Finally, I invite the Minister to watch the BBC documentary “M.E. and me”—produced by Cat Donohoe and presented by her sister Emma, who has ME—which looks at how young people cope with this debilitating illness. I ask him to urge the Government to provide funding for adequate and appropriate research on ME in support of the 250,000 sufferers in the UK.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish you a restful recess. I hope that everyone in the Chamber and across the House has a wonderful recess and comes back refreshed in September.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words. On behalf of everybody behind the scenes in the House, I thank everyone who has spoken so eloquently this afternoon and wished a good recess to everybody who supports us here in the House of Commons. No, I have not forgotten the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—far from it. It has become a sort of convention—almost a tradition—that the last speech from the Back Benches should be made by the hon. Gentleman. Right now is no exception when I call, to make his 44th speech of the Session so far, Mr Jim Shannon.