Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, may I start by thanking you and all the staff of the House for the very warm welcome that I have received—and for all their help when I have so obviously become lost while moving around the building?

I am glad that I chose a quiet political day on which to give my maiden speech. It is a pleasure to speak in this King’s Speech debate, and in a debate focused on improving our justice system. There is much that we can do not just to talk about being tough on crime, but to understand its root causes and tackle the underlying issues, not least the poverty of opportunity that leads so many into criminal activity.

Before I qualified as a teacher, I spent several years working with young people involved in gangs and offending. They were not bad people; they were not born bad. They were people often without hope that their lives could be anything more than what they currently experienced. When you lose hope, when your aspirations are limited by your experience, when you are unemployed or excluded from school, is it any wonder that a gang starts to seem like a reasonable option?

I am glad that the police in England are learning from wonderful projects in Scotland, as mentioned by my friend the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), such as the violence reduction unit, which I did a lot of work with. The key to such preventative projects is to continue investing, not to cut and run when crime stats go down. Prevention absolutely works, but in order for it to work we have to keep on preventing.

It is an absolute honour to stand here as the Member of Parliament for Rutherglen and Hamilton West. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather), who gave his maiden speech a few weeks ago, that he set the bar very high and somehow also managed to make me feel very old for having been born before the 1997 general election. I should say that I am not too old, as I was still aged in single digits when Tony Blair became Prime Minister—something I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), who gave an outstanding maiden speech yesterday. I also welcome to the Labour Benches my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards), who is similarly new to this place. It is getting to the point where we will have a maiden speech every week—perhaps a general election will not be necessary after all for Labour to form the next Government.

It is customary in a maiden speech to praise one’s predecessor, and I hope that the House will permit me to praise my predecessors. The cause of the by-election will not have escaped many hon. Members, but I met countless people across my constituency who praised Margaret Ferrier’s attention on matters of casework and local issues. Credit is due to her for that. Towards the end of her time in this place, she also started to give the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—he is not in his place, for a change—a run for his money on participation in debates. I hope that I can match at least some of her parliamentary energy. I also pay tribute to my predecessors Ged Killen, Tom Greatrex and Lord McAvoy for their dedication to the constituency over many years.

Rutherglen and Hamilton West is steeped in industrial and political history. Rutherglen itself is one of the oldest royal burghs in the land, granted its royal charter by King David in 1126. That means that in 2026 Rutherglen will celebrate its 900th anniversary, which the community is looking forward to marking. Blantyre was the home of David Livingstone, and the museum that stands where he grew up is not just a thriving monument to his life, but a reflection on his complex past as both an abolitionist and a fervent supporter of colonialism. Across the constituency there is a legacy of coalmining, iron and steelmaking, such as the Clydebridge steelworks in Cambuslang, which stands as a sad reminder of the industrial decline of communities such as mine across the west of Scotland.

As a Labour MP, the roots of our founder Keir Hardie are in Lanarkshire. It was in Rutherglen, then called Mid Lanarkshire, in 1888—just a short century before I was born—that he first stood for election. For SNP Members, the area also saw one of their most famous by-elections in 1967: the election of Winnie Ewing, whom we sadly lost just a few months ago. The seat also holds electoral history for another reason, which I thank the House of Commons Library for double checking: until my by-election result, the only time that Labour took a seat in a Scottish by-election was in 1964, in Rutherglen. Then, the seat was taken from the Tories. This time around, it was the deposit that was taken from the Tories, and not returned. [Laughter.] I thank everyone who supported the by-election and our volunteers. I am proud to say that, unlike some other parties in this place, our campaign did not rely on zero-hour-contract leafleteers to deliver our election material.

Enough of history. Rutherglen and Hamilton West’s past is not all that it should be proud of. It is a patchwork of vibrant communities, from Burnhill and Rutherglen in the west on the border with Glasgow, to Fernhill and Whitlawburn in the south, stretching through Burnside, Cambuslang, Newton, Halfway, Blantyre and the western edges of Hamilton, which sadly will leave the constituency following the boundary changes. Some Members may know of my somewhat irrational running challenge during lockdown, when I set out to run every single street in Glasgow, achieving it some two years and 2,300 km later. I have set myself the challenge now of running every street in my constituency—something I encourage all hon. Members to do in their own path, though that suggestion was dismissed in horror by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) when I suggested we take it on together.

On my way around the streets in a by-election that took six months, I met so many incredible people doing so much in their community. It is a constituency with a fantastic sense of pride, from the various gardening groups that brighten up the streets to the charities and organisations such as Leap, Healthy n Happy, the Fernhill bingo, the bowling clubs or even Mo’s famous shop in Blantyre, which operates more as a community centre than a shop. They do so much to bring the community together and reduce the social isolation that so many people feel, especially after the pandemic.

It is a community full of hard-working, decent people who are not shy of telling anyone what they think, as any journalist who camped out on the main streets of my constituency will remember during the recall petition and the by-election. They want the absolute best for their community and their family. But they are rightly angry, politically scunnered at being let down time and again by Governments distracted and divided at the very moment they need them most. Devolution promised us the chance to make decisions unique to Scotland in Scotland, but so often of late it has become a place not of high ideals of public policy but of manufactured grievance and division. Donald Dewar spoke of the Scottish Parliament as a means to revitalise

“our place in this our United Kingdom”.

It feels to most Scots today that neither the SNP nor the Conservatives are revitalising anything. Our much too slow march towards social justice continues to elude far too many.

My first contribution in this House was to ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make work capability reflect the complexity of people with neurological conditions. It is a cause close to my heart, as is disability more generally. Far too many people’s potential is still limited by factors outwith their control. Systems that we put in place so often hold people back. Complexity in the benefits system forces people into poverty and destitution. A fundamental lack of compassion and understanding stalls people’s ambitions right at the moment it should be unlocking them. Another Lanarkshire Labour MP and a political hero of mine, John Smith, put it well in 1993:

“a choice between Labour’s opportunity society which invests, which educates and which cares, and the sad reality of neglect, division, and rising crime that is Tory Britain today; a choice between Labour’s commitment to democratic renewal, rights, and citizenship, and John Major’s centralised, secretive and shabby Government”.

Fast forward 30 years and he could be talking about where we are today: a Government who are incapable of delivering the change my constituents need.

It has become fashionable of late—perhaps it always was fashionable—to denigrate politics. It is not hard to see why people see our deliberations here as foreign to their daily lives. But I have also seen, in the few short weeks I have been here, MPs from across this House championing causes that may only affect a few people, but affect them greatly. As I used to tell my pupils when I was encouraging them to vote, politics changes our lives for better or ill and it is our responsibility to engage with it meaningfully. Having been elected, I was amazed to discover my former pupils took to TikTok to speak positively about me, which I have to say, working with teenagers, is not necessarily guaranteed. But I would also say on reflection, Mr Speaker, that since I arrived in this place I am discovering that the behaviour I sometimes used to complain about in the classroom might have been more impressive than I thought. [Laughter.]

I have no doubt that over the coming weeks and months I will wrestle with complicated issues and seek to further my understanding of topics I will openly admit I need to know a lot more about. None of us has all the answers—although I suspect that may come as a surprise to some hon. Members—but complexity should not be something we shy away from. Nuance, which seems so lacking in our political discourse today, no doubt in part because of the role of social media, is an essential part of coming up with the common-sense solutions that work for people. Being able to disagree without being disagreeable should not only be possible, but something we strive for.

With a general election on the horizon, who knows how long I might be sitting on these Benches—at least on this side of the House. The “opportunity to serve,” as John Smith put it, is about putting our values into practice. I do not want to be here just opposing the Tories, but on the other side replacing them.

For every day I am here, I hope I can serve the people of my constituency well. I hope I have the confidence to stand up for those who are too often voiceless in our society, and at least try to change some of what holds back so many people in my community. This place is full of people with a wonderful calling, and I hope I can do the people who sent me here proud in the time that I have.