Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Maria Miller
The hon. Lady is right to raise the issue of the role of the Church of England and the Church in Wales. Our stance throughout has been to protect those organisations to enable them to make their own decisions. We are talking to them on an ongoing basis about the best way to do that. As to her question about whether they would be able to undertake these duties in the future if they decide to do so, the answer is absolutely yes.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
2. What assessment she has made of the implications for her policies on women of recent tax and benefit changes.
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Maria Miller)
Departments always take full account of the impact on women of their policies, and the Government are supporting women and their families, for example by extending child care through universal credit and by lifting 2 million of the lowest paid workers—of whom six out of 10 are women—out of income tax altogether.
Mrs Glindon
Research from the House of Commons Library shows that women will be hit four times harder by incoming direct tax, tax credit and benefit changes. Will the Minister tell us why she allowed the Chancellor to get away with treating women so unfairly in his autumn statement?
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady needs to look at the total package of measures brought forward in the autumn statement. We are absolutely mindful of the need to make sure that we support those who find it most difficult in today’s society. That is why 1 million women have been taken out of tax altogether and why we are putting £200 million more into child care for people who are working the shortest hours. Those things have never happened before, and I hope the hon. Lady will applaud and welcome those measures.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Jeremy Wright
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It is right, and it is what the public expect, that prisoners do something productive while they are in custody, rather than simply sitting around in their cells. That could involve a range of things such as work, education or drug treatment, but he is right that his constituents and mine would expect them to be doing something.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
15. When he expects to announce the Government’s response to the consultation on the future of the probation service.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
As I indicated a moment ago, following my meetings tomorrow with a series of stakeholders, I will finalise a paper setting out my proposals for delivering a rehabilitation revolution. The paper will include a response to the previous consultation on probation reform and set out how my proposals have developed. It will be published early in the new year.
Mrs Glindon
The Secretary of State will be aware that Northumbria probation trust has received the best inspection results so far from Her Majesty’s inspectorate. How will he ensure that probation trusts continue to be effective in protecting the public and reducing reoffending after the review, given that it is proposed that offender management will be fragmented across a wide range of providers?
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
6. What progress he has made on reform of probation services.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
18. What progress he has made on reform of probation services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
On 27 March the Government published a consultation entitled “Punishment and Reform: Effective Probation Services”, which is looking at a wide range of options for service improvements. Alongside it is a consultation on the overhaul of community sentences, aimed at delivering effective and credible punishments. We will publish our response to both consultations in the autumn.
Mrs Glindon
Northumbria Probation Trust has received the best inspection result of any trust from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation. How will the Secretary of State ensure that probation trusts continue to be effective in protecting the public and reducing reoffending following the probation review, which proposes that offender management be fragmented across a wider range of providers?
Mr Blunt
Improvement of offender management for all our offenders is absolutely at the heart of the probation review. With the proposed reorganisation of probation we will be getting much greater offender management, with a focus by the probation service on reducing reoffending among those receiving community sentences. The outcome of our proposals will therefore be a very much improved offender management picture right across the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Djanogly
There is still a significant number of appeals, but the number is now being stabilised and the delays are being reduced.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Given that probation trusts are experiencing major cuts in their budgets, can the Minister explain how he expects them to do more for less?
Mr Blunt
Probation trusts have been relatively well protected given the current environment. The additional cuts are at least 13% less than the overall cut in the Ministry of Justice budget, which shows that we are making the protection of the front line a priority in order to ensure that services are delivered effectively. However, like everyone else, probation trusts will have to make their contribution to rescuing our nation’s economy from the wretched mess in which it was left by the last Administration.
Legal Aid Reform
Mary Glindon Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing the debate. Unlike her, I do not have any experience of giving legal advice or doing legal aid work, but I did benefit from the legal aid system many years ago when I successfully pursued maintenance payments for my daughter.
My reason for speaking in the debate is that I was alerted to the Government’s proposed reforms by a constituent of mine who practises as a solicitor in a well-respected law firm in Newcastle upon Tyne. She spelled out to me just how devastating the cuts would be for many of my most vulnerable constituents who need legal aid now or might need it in future. The Government claim that they want to be fair, but removing the right to help with legal costs from those who need it to obtain appropriate representation when they are making a legal challenge is overtly denying those very people a right to justice. Indeed, the chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Nicholas Green, QC, has described the cuts as a “shrinkage of justice”.
Like many MPs, I have been contacted by a number of organisations on this matter, each making a case for retaining the £350 million in the legal aid budget. They were all concerned about the range of areas being taken out of scope because of the huge cut in funds being made towards 2014. The Law Society has stated that
“the civil legal aid scope cuts, in social welfare law, appear to be targeted against areas of law, which are most relevant to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society”.
That is borne out by the information I have received from the director of the citizens advice bureaux that operate across the borough of North Tyneside, serving the constituencies of both North Tyneside and Tynemouth. He advised me that the cuts to legal aid are a double whammy, as the Government have just announced the end of North Tyneside CAB’s financial inclusion fund from April this year. So, with cuts to legal aid, North Tyneside’s CAB will lose two and a half debt specialist posts and one and a half benefit specialist posts, and the end of the financial inclusion fund means that a further four and a half posts will go.
Last year, our CAB handled more than 72,000 cases. Staff dealt with cases involving £25 million-worth of debt, not including mortgages, and managed to write off £4.5 million-worth of that debt for local people. Furthermore, with work carried out on benefits this year, the CAB in North Tyneside is projecting benefit gains of nearly £900,000. In the light of those figures, it is easy to imagine the hardship that will be caused by the loss of funding that to date has made such a difference to constituents, whose only avenue of help is the legal aid route.
Rehman Chishti
On page 5.5 of the 2010 Labour manifesto, on which the hon. Lady stood for election, her party committed to
“find greater savings in legal aid”.
How does she intend to satisfy that commitment if she does not support the changes that the Government are bringing in?
Mrs Glindon
Our Front-Bench team do not deny that certain efficiencies had to be made. In fact, as was said previously, they committed money to help during the recession.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The problem with the proposed cuts in legal aid is that they are wholly counter-productive. The Government may save money in the legal aid budget, but they will incur expenditure in other budgets. There are ways to save money in the Ministry of Justice budget, and I will touch on them in my speech.
Mrs Glindon
Mark Almond made it plain to me that the work carried out by the citizens advice bureau with the help of legal aid funding definitely helps the most vulnerable—those whose lives are the most chaotic, or who have literacy and other language problems. Self-representation, as proposed in the Bill, is a non-starter for that group of constituents.
In debt advice, private debt advisers are not the answer. The Government’s own study on private debt advice found that more than 80% of those businesses provide incorrect and inappropriate advice, often at a cost to the client, and that they refer clients to advisers who are, in fact, debt collectors. Do the Government really want to impoverish the poorest more by directing them down that path?
The most vulnerable would, again, not benefit from the proposed telephone helpline. In North Tyneside, it is estimated that fewer than 10% of citizens advice bureau legal aid clients would be able to access the system, because of literacy or language problems. Such a system could be considered only as an adjunct to the present system.
Through the work of Lord Carter’s review, the Labour Government made efforts to find savings, always with the aim of striving to protect social welfare law. Labour Members believe that savings could be found in other areas to continue that protection. As the director of North Tyneside CAB told me, although losing jobs and expertise is a massive problem, his biggest regret is that the changes to legal aid will fail clients. The coalition Government need to take heed of this debate and of the views expressed by the many experts who are making the case for the 500,000 people who will lose out as a result of the cuts. The cuts are not fair and definitely not just.
Police Grant Report
Mary Glindon Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hanson
I cannot be any clearer than to tell the hon. Gentleman that we would have implemented our deficit reduction plan and that police funding was ring-fenced.
Before I leave the subject of the Liberal Democrats, may I tell the House what the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) said on ID cards? In March 2009, he said
“West Yorkshire Police Force could get an extra 362 officers if the government scrapped its plans for ID cards and use the money to recruit new front-line officers.”
I look forward to him walking through the Lobby to remove money from West Yorkshire police today.
Chief Constable Peter Fahy of Greater Manchester police was quoted saying recently:
“We’ve got the lowest crime in Manchester for ten years, the lowest gun crime for eight years. We are really determined as a force to make sure we maintain that record”.
However, he added:
“Eighty-six per cent of my budget is spent on people and if we want to make significant savings in policing there is only one way of doing it—which is to reduce the size of the workforce…. It is having a big impact on the morale in the force and the way it is affecting people.”
The chair of Durham police authority has said:
“If you are looking at cuts of this nature so quickly, clearly it will affect jobs”.
Devon and Cornwall police authority has said that these in-year cuts will result in the loss of at least 180 officers.
The cuts undermine the relationship between the Government and the 43 police forces that have already set their precepts. In my constituency in north Wales, we are set to lose £1.1 million this year, putting a real strain on the services provided. I met with the chief constable last week and I know that not only is his force worried about the £1.1 million cut, but it is bracing itself for far worse to come.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who is no longer in his place, mentioned the cut to the capital grant of £10 million. The cut of £10 million from the counter-terrorism budget is also of concern.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that North Tyneside was fortunate to have its new police headquarters completed under the Labour Government? It is due to open in September. Does he agree that the 27% crime reduction that the people of North Tyneside enjoyed last year will not be improved on if these cuts are implemented?
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend makes an important point, because there is a link between the investment by the Labour Government and the fall in crime. Whatever assessment we make, that investment in police officers on the streets and in other areas, including capital build on new police stations, has had a direct impact in reducing levels of crime—[Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position to the effect that police buildings do not contribute to crime reduction. A brand new police centre in Newcastle will help to put together some essential savings and help the police to organise effectively to fight crime—[Interruption.] We could go on all day, but my contention is that the resources that the Labour Government put in—and had agreed to put in this year—made a real difference.