HMP Birmingham

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely right. A lot of people who are offending and ending up in prison come from very difficult backgrounds. We have a situation at the moment in our prisons where nearly half our prisoners have been excluded from school at some time compared with only 2% of the general population. We have a situation where almost 40% of the people in prison currently have a reading age of under 11 and a very significant number have a reading age of under six. Addressing those problems in early years is vital if we are to reduce offending.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Birmingham is one of the four most violent prisons in England and Wales, and all those prisons are privately operated. Does the Minister agree that, logically, this level of violence is a consequence of running prisons for profit where costs are cut to the bone to maximise returns for shareholders?

[Rory Stewart]

I say very respectfully that the chief inspector of prisons argues that the steepest increase in violence has taken place at Exeter Prison, which, sadly, is a public sector prison. Yes, it is true that we have very significant problems in Birmingham, which is a private prison, but we also have significant problems in Exeter, which is a public prison. The driver of this issue is not public against private; it is drugs, violence and, ultimately, the management leadership culture and the support for the staff on the ground. These problems can happen whatever the particular model.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The decision about the magistrates court in Cambridge will be for me to make. I want to look at all the evidence and the representations that have been made, and I will make a decision in due course.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

According to the Public and Commercial Services Union, there are almost 1,200 staff at the Ministry of Justice on poverty pay. Will the Minister support the union’s 5% pay claim for all public sector workers?

[Lucy Frazer]

I have already set out the figures in relation to pay, and I think the hon. Lady will find that they are not at 5%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend and other MPs from the area. There are two consultations taking place: one in relation to eight specific court closures, and a wider consultation on the future of our courts. I encourage my hon. Friend to participate in that, and to highlight any concerns he has about his local area or nationally.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T7. Can the Minister tell the House why Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is paying more than £30 million to PwC consultants for a digital court system that has not been subject to democratic processes, and is not backed by evidence that it will improve access to justice?

[Lucy Frazer]

As I have outlined, there is a £1 billion modernisation programme, which is very complex and which we need to get right. It involves a number of aspects that need scrutiny. PwC is replacing a number of smaller providers and fulfilling an important service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

No, we are absolutely resolute about replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, and we are working on those proposals. The hon. Lady will not have to wait long to be able to engage on the substance rather than some of the scare stories flying around in the media.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of planned changes to personal injury law and whiplash claims on access to justice.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

The Government remain concerned about the number and cost of whiplash claims, particularly their impact on insurance premiums, and have announced robust new measures to tackle the problem. We will consult on the detail in due course, and the consultation will be accompanied by a thorough impact assessment.

[Mary Glindon]

How does the Minister respond to my constituents who have genuine concerns about the evidence base for the proposed reforms, and believe that they are unjust and will not deliver the right and proper compensation for people who were injured through negligence?

[Mr Vara]

The Government’s proposed reforms will ensure that the current cost of £2 billion annually for whiplash claims should be reduced to £1 billion for the insurance industry. They will also ensure that the average person’s insurance premium should go down by up to £50.

Police Grant Report (England and Wales)

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

I have given way about nine times. Let me make a little more progress, then I will gladly give way.

I celebrate the fact that, as the police bravery awards show, we are policed by ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things, often in the most difficult circumstances. They deserve better than what happened in the run-up to the comprehensive spending review. Yesterday I was privileged to speak, together with Conservative Ministers, at the 20th anniversary of the docklands bomb. Afterwards I talked to police officers, brave men and women, with an outstanding sense of duty and a powerful sense of obligation to their community. They talked to me about the mounting pressures they face—the challenges of counter-terrorism and the impact of the past five years—and they were dismayed that their Government had contemplated cutting the police service in half. As I will come on to say, that is precisely what had been contemplated.

In my constituency, Erdington, I saw one PCSO in tears—loyal, long-serving, much loved—describing how awful the uncertainty had been in the build-up to the comprehensive spending review. It should never have happened. After cutting 25% in the last Parliament, right up until the night before the comprehensive spending review the Government were contemplating a further 22% cut in this Parliament. The Home Secretary failed to stand up for the police service. We were on the brink of catastrophe, as a police officer said to me but yesterday, which would have had very serious consequences, demonstrating a disregard for the first duty of any Government, maintaining the safety and security of its citizens.

Under pressure from the public, the police and the Labour party, the Chancellor U-turned and a promise was made. I shall read it out, as the Policing Minister has clearly forgotten it. The Chancellor said:

“I am today announcing that there will be no cuts in the police budget at all. There will be real-terms protection for police funding. The police protect us, and we are going to protect the police.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1373.]

In parallel, there were big cuts elsewhere—for example, to Border Force—but let us examine that statement to the House. That promise to the public, to the police and to Parliament has been broken. The Chancellor said he would protect the police, but now we know that police budgets are still being cut.

The force covering my constituency, West Midlands police, is excellent. In the next financial year it will suffer a £10.2 million cut in real terms, contrary to what the Policing Minister said earlier. Yes, the £5 mechanism is being used, but it will raise only £3.3 million, so there will be a £7 million overall cut in real terms.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

On the precept, is my hon. Friend aware that a force such as Northumbria, which, under our excellent police and crime commissioner, Vera Baird, has made every saving possible, has cut into its reserves and has had the lowest precept hitherto, has had to accept that £5 maximum with great regret, just to try to maintain services?

[Jack Dromey]

Indeed. I pay tribute to somebody who was a great parliamentarian and who has been a great police and crime commissioner. The work that Vera Baird has done on domestic violence and, more generally, on violence against women and girls is admirable and first class. My hon. Friend is right. As I shall say later, Northumbria, like the West Midlands force, has been hit twice as hard as leafy Tory shire police forces down south.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

We must make sure that these drugs do not get into our prisons. Psychoactive substances and drugs have been in our prisons for some time. Following a request not only from the prisons Minister, but from prison officers as well as prisoners around the country, we made sure that possession was a criminal offence. We need measures such as new sniffer dogs, which can sniff out such products, and they are in training. We must eradicate these drugs from our prisons.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

The National Offender Management Service has revealed that the amount of alcohol found in prisons in England and Wales has almost trebled since the Government took office. Will the Minister explain what urgent steps he is taking to address this serious problem?

[Mike Penning]

One of the ways we can deal with that is by making sure that individual governors have full control within their prisons so that they can work with their staff to make sure that not only drugs, but alcohol, which is not supposed to be in our prisons, is not there. Much of that alcohol is brewed within the prisons and we need to work hard to make sure that we eradicate that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

2. What progress he has made on his plans for changes to the probation service.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

12. What progress he has made on his plans for changes to the probation service.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

15. What progress he has made on his plans for changes to the probation service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

The Opposition continue to refer to the planning document at the start of the project, and they cannot explain what they would do instead. Their policy is to leave 50,000 people walking the streets and likely to commit serious offences again with no support post-prison. Until the Opposition tell us what they would do to address the problem, which they identified when in government and did nothing about, they will have no credibility.

[Mrs Glindon]

In some large areas, there have been only a small number of bidders for the service, and the award-winning Northumbria probation trust is down to three bidders. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly how many bidders have dropped out since the process started?

[Chris Grayling]

We have a strong slate of potential bidders in every part of the country, with a good mix of private and voluntary sector expertise and some attractive partnerships that can deliver real results for us. We will see later in the summer who emerges successfully from the bidding process, but I am completely confident that we have a strong candidate in every part of the country.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that intervention. I know he has had first-hand experience in his constituency of exactly this issue.

Paragraph 18 of schedule 9 to the Equality Act 2010 allows employers and pension providers to ignore the service and contributions of gay employees made before 5 December 2005 when it comes to assessing survivor benefits for their civil partners and occupational pension schemes. Paragraph 15 of schedule 4 to the Bill would extend that discriminatory provision to same-sex spouses.

As we saw in yesterday’s debate on opening civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, the Government are comfortable arguing that unforeseen costs to pension schemes are a legitimate justification for sanctioning discrimination, yet their warning that the equalisation of treatment in the provision of occupational pension benefits will cost too much simply cannot be substantiated. No pension provider can accurately predict how many individuals in a pension scheme will be gay, never mind how many of them will marry or form a civil partnership with an individual who outlives them by a significant period of time.

Dealing with uncertainties around length of life, the possibility of illness, the decision to marry and many other issues is second nature to pension providers. Gay married people pose no more uncertainty than their straight counterparts. What is more, according to the Government’s figures, two thirds of pension providers already do the right thing, so any additional liability to pension schemes will surely be minimal. The financial implications of perpetuating discrimination could be very grave indeed, though, for those individuals who have paid into their pension schemes in the same way as other employees, yet will be denied the survivor benefits available to married mixed-sex couples.

One recent employment tribunal found that an occupational pension scheme was directly discriminatory because it provided a civil partner with only the benefit from pension rights accrued since 2004—in other words, when civil partnerships became available in the UK. John Walker and his civil partner have been together for 20 years and registered their civil partnership at the first possible opportunity, yet the pension scheme sought to restrict the survivor benefits available to John’s partner to just £500 a year. If John dissolved his civil partnership and married a woman today, she would be entitled to £41,000 per annum in the event of his death.

With the help of Liberty, John challenged that discrimination and recently won his legal battle to secure equal pension benefits for his civil partner. The employment tribunal relied on European Court of Justice rulings, which concluded that treating married and same-sex couples differently over the pensions payable to a survivor when national law recognises the relationships as equivalent in other respects breached the framework directive on equal treatment in employment. My amendment 49 would ensure full compliance with that directive and, crucially, ensure that the equality rulings made by the courts are applicable to all marriage relationships.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that if people are to have parity before the law, they must have not just emotional parity, but financial parity? Anything less would not be equality in any shape or form.

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. We are talking about genuine equality. That means legal equality, as well as symbolic or any other kind of equality.

That tribunal was a landmark case. Interestingly, the Government lost the case, so one could argue that agreeing to my amendment 49 might save them money, as they would not need to pay out in future legal cases that might go against them. If the law remains as it is for civil partners and that inequality is extended to those in same-sex marriages, it could be several decades before gay couples achieve real equality in pension provision. I see no justification for continuing to permit discrimination in this area. I hope very much that colleagues will support amendment 49 and join me in overturning an anomalous and discriminatory provision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying there are practical difficulties in implementing this. We are looking at a range of measures. He will be aware that our consultation on the victims’ code closed only a few days ago, and the Minister for victims, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), will be publishing a response this summer. Obviously, that must align with the witness charter as well. I hope all these things will come to fruition shortly.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

7. What the Government’s plans are for the future of legal aid.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

We are consulting on proposed reforms of the legal aid system, as set out in our consultation document, “Transforming Legal Aid”, which was published on 9 April. We are seeking views on proposals to ensure that the criminal legal aid system in this country operates more efficiently, that we live within our means, and that we have a system in which the public can have confidence.

[Mrs Glindon]

What steps is the Minister taking to make publicly available details of the amounts paid by the legal aid authorities to counsel and solicitors and the costs for the preparation of cases prosecuted each year?

[Chris Grayling]

That information is already available to a degree. It is available to hon. Members and has been published under the Freedom of Information Act. It is very important that at the same time as ensuring we have a proper legal aid system that provides access to justice to all, we ensure that the payments we make are payments we can afford.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)]

Our whiplash consultation closed on 8 March. We looked into the use of independent medical review panels and increasing the small claims compensation threshold. A response to the Government’s consultation will be published in autumn this year after the Transport Committee’s inquiry into whiplash.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T2. What plans does the Minister have to monitor the banning of referral fees in personal injury matters and to review the payment of referral fees in conveyancing?

[Chris Grayling]

We have already introduced changes that ban referral fees, and we are looking at other reforms that will tighten up the whole culture that exists around personal injury and similar claims. There is good work in parts of the legal profession in doing genuine work on behalf of genuine claims. However, there are too many question marks in the system. Now that we have made those changes, the challenge is for the insurance industry to bring down policy prices. If it does not do that, we will not hesitate to take action in the other direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

The straight answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that a public sector probation officer will make the judgment on whether a breach should be subject to action. Those providing interventions will be obliged to supply information about what has happened, but the judgment will be made by the probation officer.

The hon. Gentleman ought to recognise that, in a great many cases, a large number of the interventions provided for those who have been sentenced under community orders are made by the voluntary sector. It is not true that probation officers currently do everything themselves, and the flow of information between them and those who do is generally very good.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

3. What progress he has made on his plans for the probation service; and if he will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

The Ministry of Justice recently published the consultation paper “Transforming Rehabilitation—a revolution in the way we manage offenders”, which sets out our plans for reforming the way in which offenders are rehabilitated in the community. The consultation closes on 22 February 2013, and we will announce further details of our proposals once we have considered the responses.

[Mrs Glindon]

Under the Secretary of State’s proposals, services will be fragmented across a wide range of providers and will be rewarded through payment by results, which will prevent public sector probation trusts from competing for those services. So how will he ensure that the high levels of performance now provided by probation trusts in protecting the public and reducing reoffending will be maintained?