Prisons
Debate between Natascha Engel and Toby Perkins(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Like many Members today, I wish to pay tribute to the people who work in the Prison Service. They take on an incredibly difficult task and we are very grateful to them. What they do was brought home to me when I took up what my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said, in advance of it being made a challenge, about visiting a prison. I visited Nottingham prison, and I encourage others to do the same. Any MP who is voting in this debate but who has not been around a prison are doing so from a position of ignorance.
There was much in the Secretary of State’s rhetoric that I support. We all agree with much of what she said about the issues and challenges facing the Prison Service, but her vision of what is going on and the policies of this Government bear little relationship to prison officers’ actual experience.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) criticised the motion. Although we recognise that, of course, there are many more aspects to prison than those contained in the motion, it seems to me that there is little to disagree with in it.
Four of my friends were recently employed at Moorland prison in Doncaster. Two have been recently retired on medical grounds and one is off sick at the moment. This debate rightly refers to the overall reduction in prison officers, but what is not so much focused on is the deliberate strategy of replacing experienced prison officers with cheap replacements and people right at the start of their career. That is an extremely dangerous policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) spoke about private prisons, but such practice is also happening in the Government estate.
One of my friends who worked at Moorland recently left the service. He was assaulted three times in a six-month period—once very seriously indeed. On the first occasion, he was encouraged to phone the staff welfare hotline. The third time he phoned it, he was told that he had used the hotline too many times and, although he had been seriously assaulted, he was not allowed to take time to get any support.
Another friend in the service needs knee surgery, but he has had to cancel the operation because he believes that if he takes time off to get his knee repaired he will be sacked on capability grounds. He specifically asked me why experienced prison officers should feel too intimidated to get the medical treatment they need.
Another friend who worked in the service for 25 years left last year. He said that when he started at Moorland there were 12 prison officers to a landing containing 90 prisoners; now, just three prison officers are there. He said that three prison officers are adequate when things are quiet and everything is going okay, but it leaves them with little capacity to engage with prisoners and carry out rehabilitation work, as they want. When a prisoner takes a phone call at 7.55 am, telling him that his wife has left him or that his children have been taken away by social services, he needs support. Prison officers have to step in and do an incredibly important job. When those resources are not there—whether it be for a moment of crisis in a prisoner’s life, to prevent fights, or simply to support prisoners and advise them on what courses to take on their path to rehabilitation—a vital chance is lost to help a prisoner back on to the right path.
Prison officers no longer feel that their role, which is incredibly important in our society, is as fulfilling as it once was, and that should concern us all. When prisoners start to think that no one is interested in them, we see the violent episodes that have taken place recently. Not enough is being done to prevent reoffending.
Experienced prison officers are crucial to the development of new staff. Managers in prisons now are much less experienced than once they were. What chance do the new £19,000 prison apprentices have if they are put into overcrowded prisons with disillusioned and inexperienced prison officers and if the mentoring that would once have been available for new staff is no longer there? Are we just setting them up to fail?
I support the motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but I go further and say that, unless the Government recognise why the riots are happening, stop their deliberate attempt to chuck experienced officers out of the system to save money, and implement their strategy to retain experienced staff and see them as central to the success of the recruitment of the new generation of prison officers, not only will the problems continue to escalate but our prisons and our society will pay a very heavy price for that failure in years to come.
Enterprise Bill [Lords]
Debate between Natascha Engel and Toby Perkins(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Members are starting to make points of order again on this one issue—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We have had points of order on Sunday trading and if the hon. Gentleman wants to make a point of order at the end of the debate, I am perfectly happy for him to do so, but for now we must move on with the debate. We are getting bogged down in this one issue. The hon. Gentleman has his name down to speak, and I will happily call him, and he can also make an intervention, if the Secretary of State wants to take it, but these are not points of order.
Fire Services (Derbyshire)
Debate between Natascha Engel and Toby Perkins(10 years, 12 months ago)
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Derbyshire fire and rescue service provides the people of Derbyshire with stellar service and protection, and we depend on it in fire, accident and flood. It works in a county that has huge variances, from the busy city of Derby and the largest town of Chesterfield—considered by many the jewel in Derbyshire’s crown—to other smaller urban bases and large swathes of rural, hilly and remote parts of the Peak district.
Firefighters enjoy the respect and admiration of us all, not just for their untold bravery that sees them run towards burning buildings while the rest of us urgently back away, but because of their amazing life-saving work and the horrors we know they witness during fire, flood and road traffic accidents. Firefighters everywhere are admired, but in Derbyshire, alongside the geographical challenges that face our force, there are many causes for pride. Firefighters in Derbyshire have won awards for the standard of care they provide to citizens, and they have worked to identify individuals at greatest risk and provided additional measures to protect them. Numbers of fires have reduced in recent years due to their tremendously proactive approach to fire prevention, made possible by their outreach work fitting smoke detectors and educating citizens.
However, Derbyshire faces an unusually high level of fire deaths compared with other counties. In 2012-13, 10 people were killed in fires in Derbyshire—one of the highest levels in the country. In Derbyshire there have been five fires in the past three and a half years in which children have died.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way in this important debate. The latest of those fire deaths occurred last week in North Wingfield in North East Derbyshire, and four people tragically lost their lives—Claire James, Josie Leighton, and two young boys, Tyler and Jordan Green. I hope my hon. Friend will not mind me taking the opportunity to express the condolences of the whole House, and sympathy towards the families and the surviving little girl.
Toby Perkins
Of course, and that entirely reinforces the statistic to which I was alluding.
We know that Derbyshire fire authority—indeed, all services in Derbyshire—are operating in the most extreme and difficult financial circumstances imaginable. The Minister represents a Department that we could argue—in fact, I would argue—has been the most cowardly in the whole Government. Of all the big spending Departments, it is the one that devolves most of its funding, and meanwhile it has taken the largest share of cuts. At a time when other departmental budgets have been squeezed, Department for Communities and Local Government budgets have been crushed, passing tough choices of austerity to council leaders and fire authorities around the country. It has been left to council leaders to decide whether to cut libraries or social care, whether to leave potholes in the road or cut community safety budgets, and for fire chiefs to decide whether to cut back on firefighters or reduce fire prevention work.
I find it nauseating to hear the Secretary of State praised by the Chancellor for agreeing to take on the largest cuts when he faces so few of the tough decisions and leaves others to face the petitions and campaigns against closures and service reductions.
Let us look at what that means for Derbyshire fire authority, which has delivered £3 million in efficiency measures from a programme started in 2010. The authority faced a 40% reduction in funding between 2011 and 2015-16 to a 24/7 service that will have 60 full-time firefighters on duty at any one time. We must scrutinise the changes proposed to the fire service by Derbyshire’s “Fit to respond” document in that appalling context.
The true architects of those cuts are the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, who has chosen that cuts to the fire authority should outstrip the cuts faced by almost any other public service budget. They could have made different choices, but they chose to reduce the tax bill of £1 million earners and to waste billions with their botched Royal Mail privatisation. Their £3 billion NHS reorganisation has resulted in service levels falling while budgets remain constant. I could go on.
Work Capability Assessments
Debate between Natascha Engel and Toby Perkins(14 years ago)
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Natascha Engel
It does, unless one knows the demographic of the group. A big problem for those who have been out of work for a long time is that it has a really awful impact on their self-esteem and even on their ability to get out of bed, as they can get very depressed. One problem for those who are moved en masse from incapacity benefit to jobseeker’s allowance is that they do not have the confidence to appeal the decision. It takes groups such as welfare rights organisations to help them. Of those who are helped, the number who are successful on appeal is an absolute disgrace.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I wish to expand briefly on a couple of those points. In Chesterfield and Derbyshire, unemployed workers have had success in 75% of cases. I turn specifically to Atos Healthcare and its motivation. It did an assessment on behalf of Royal Mail for one of my constituents and found that he was not fit to work. Royal Mail retired him on the grounds of ill health, saying that he would never work again. However, when that person went for a work capability assessment, Atos said that he scored no points. The same company assessed him twice; on behalf of Royal Mail, it said that he was not fit to work and should be laid off, but on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, it said that he was fit to work and gave him no points. That puts the company’s performance in context.
Natascha Engel
I might have used that example, but I thank my constituency neighbour for his contribution. It is a serious matter, and errors are a fundamental problem. The system must be right if we are to move huge numbers from incapacity benefit.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Natascha Engel and Toby Perkins(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Natascha Engel
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Since 2002, and the glorious days of the Labour Government, all secondary schools have given citizenship education. All young people who will be 16 by the time of the referendum will have had some citizenship education, and they will have some knowledge and understanding of participation in the voting process. We talk about engagement, but if we are really serious about engaging young people in democracy we need to allow them to participate.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
To expand on that point, a lot of young people’s first contact with politics on a serious level comes when they start their A-levels and do politics A-level. There is a huge amount of interest among the A-level politics groups in my constituency. When an election comes, and they are not allowed to vote, it does seem that we are excluding a group of people who have become engaged with the subject for the first time. For reasons that have been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), the age of 16 is established as the point at which many of us move into adulthood in a whole raft of ways. A 16-year-old can get married, have sex legally, start paying tax and join the armed forces.
Natascha Engel
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for that intervention; he is absolutely right. By a happy coincidence of timing, on Friday week—on 29 October—the UK Youth Parliament will, for the second time, have its annual sitting on these Benches. Last year, when the UK Youth Parliament so controversially sat on these Benches, it debated four subjects and had a vote at the end to decide which subject was the most important to it. The subject that came out on top by a long way was lowering the voting age to 16. Those are 11 to 18-year-olds who are democratically elected through their youth services, and who have a lot to say on the issue. A lot of us who were here and who heard them speak were very impressed, but the issue has not gone anywhere.
The Youth Parliament is about to return, and it would speak volumes if we said to them, “We heard what you said last time round. We know that this matters to you, and we have today voted to ensure that 16-year-olds can take part in this unique referendum. We will give people the vote at 16, at least partially, on this one-off occasion.” The 16-year-olds can then demonstrate themselves that the move strengthens democracy, rather than undermines it.
To end on a positive note, I really hope that we all vote for the amendment, especially those parties which had votes at 16 written into their manifesto and campaigned on the issue at the general election. I hope that those people, at least, will find their way into the Aye Lobby. I hope that they understand how important the issue is to those who are 16 on the day of the referendum, and who really care about the issue and about having their voices heard on that day, so that when they take part in the general election at the age of 18, they will have voted for the system in which they are taking part.
Ms Primarolo, I hope that you understand how important the issue is. We are in a new Parliament, and we have lots of Members who are much closer to the age of 16 than Members were in the previous Parliament. It would be great to test the mood of the Committee, just to see where people stand on the issue, because it really matters. This is the last act of discrimination that we really need to get rid of. We need to widen the franchise, and this is a fantastic opportunity to do so.