Police Employer Pension Contributions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Several chief constables have issued similar warnings about their capacity to give the public the service that they expect. This also has major implications for police morale because officers want to do a good job and to serve the public to the best of their ability.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

In Durham, since 2010, we have seen a reduction of 400 in the number of police officers. With these cuts, Durham is going to lose a further 30 police officers. It is officially an outstanding force, but crime is going up. It is fair to say that the general public are going to say, “Has austerity actually ended?” They will not be thinking about pensions and so on. They will be thinking about the lack of bobbies on the beat. It would be fair for them to assess that austerity has not ended.

[Mr McFadden]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There is simply no point in the Prime Minister promising to her conference, and to the public through her conference, that austerity has ended and then bringing in a set of changes that ends up with us seeing fewer police on the streets.

Police Pension Liabilities

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I do not want to do anything that jeopardises the recruitment of police officers and the progress that we are making in that context—I have made that very clear. I have also made it clear that it is my intention to work very closely with colleagues from all parts of the House to make sure that we have a proper understanding of what is going on force by force. My main point is that we are able to make progress because of the progress that we are making on the economy, and that is progress that would be jeopardised by the Labour party.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

The number of police officers in Durham has been cut by 400 since 2010. That is not an exaggeration; that is a fact. These changes to the pension mean that another 30 officers will have to go and that there will have to be an increase in the precept by £12 for homes in band D. Will that not be perceived as a local tax for the Treasury and as incompetence by the Treasury?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention gives me the opportunity again to place on the record the admiration of the Government for the performance of Durham police, which is an outstanding force. Against the context of reduced resources, it shows what it is possible to achieve. I understand the point he is making and I return to what I was saying, which is that we are working through the issue and I will come back to the House in early December with what I hope will be a solution.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Wilson, and to follow all the fine contributions to this debate. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on securing the debate and on reading into the record the names of those we lost. It is very important that he did so. I know so little about who those people were, but I hope that in due course we will all come to know much more about them. It was an honour to meet relatives of the deceased in Speaker’s House—I think we all felt that. I am sure that we will come to know them very well in this place.

I am the Member of Parliament for Wirral South, but from 2006 to 2010 I was the councillor in the London Borough of Southwark for the Brunswick Park ward, which contained the Sceaux Gardens estate, in the middle of which was Lakanal House. On 3 July 2009, Lakanal went up in flames. I can see that block in my mind’s eye as real as if it were that day. Six people, including a one-month-old baby, died in that disaster, and the inquest found that those were unnecessary and preventable deaths. We have heard people in this debate say that the Grenfell fire must never happen again. To me, those words are meaningless, because it has happened again—it is happening again. I saw Grenfell on the television, and to me it was alarmingly familiar. I have seen what the families have gone through since the day of the Grenfell Tower disaster. That, too, is alarmingly familiar, because unfortunately neither the disaster nor the secondary tragedy of the Government’s response to the disaster needed to happen.

Other hon. Members have talked persuasively about the recommendations following the Lakanal fire. It is a matter of great grief to all of us who were involved with Lakanal that the recommendations and the conclusions of the inquest were not progressed with more rigour. But there is something else. The Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, commissioned Bishop James Jones to report on the experience of the Hillsborough families. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) has talked about how all of this discussion and debate rings bells with us because it is all the same. Bishop James Jones’s report on the experience of the Hillsborough families was called “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”. I would ask any person to listen to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) and ask whether what she described does not amount to the patronising disposition of unaccountable power. Of course it does. Hillsborough was not about football and the Grenfell disaster was not about a tower block in isolation: it was about the relationship between citizens and the state that was supposed to protect and respect them. Of course a diverse panel for the inquiry, for all the reasons that hon. Members have gone through, was vital, but we need more, and I will spend just a couple of minutes saying what more the Government can do.

First, the Government should answer Bishop James Jones’s call for a charter for families bereaved through public tragedy. In his report, he gives all the details of what that should contain. The report came out in November, but the Government have not responded. All this could have been avoided if they had.

Secondly, the Government should bring forward their own Bill on a public advocate at inquests. That proposal was brought forward by Michael Wills, a peer, and the Government are committed to implementing it. Just bring forward the Bill. Let us reform inquests now; let us not wait another second.

The third issue is the Hillsborough law proposals, which were first put to this House by my friend, Mayor Andy Burnham. Those proposals include reform of legal aid so that we get the parity of arms to which the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), alluded. The importance of that is absolutely clear. I worry greatly that we will again get into a situation in which families are worrying about legal costs and whether their legal advice will be sustained, while the state has all before it—whatever expensive QC it needs. Let us prevent that from happening now before the problem arises.

Fourthly, and most important to me, is a duty of candour. This is not party political. The Government have already implemented a duty of candour for NHS staff, but I want to change the situation in every council and every Government Department up and down the country, where people are told, “Don’t admit you were wrong. Don’t accept responsibility. Don’t give the information out. Don’t make it publicly available. Because you will be liable.” I want the lawyers to say to them, “You know what? You’ll be liable if you don’t tell the truth. You’ll be liable if you don’t give the information out.” Trust the public.

The Government, as I have said, accept the policy for the NHS. Let us just make it real for every other representative of the state in our country, because in the end the central question that we have to ask ourselves is this: what kind of country do we want to live in? Who are we really as British people? Are we the kind of people who see grieving families and want to worry about whether we might be responsible, or are we, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said, the kind of people who want to reach out and help? I thought that our country had changed radically since 1989. I worry that I was wrong.

[Phil Wilson (in the Chair)]

Before we hear from the Front Benchers, I say to them that I would like to leave two or three minutes for Paul Scully to sum up the debate.

Health, Social Care and Security

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I primarily want to talk about the state of GP services, with particular reference to a temporarily closed surgery in Trimdon village in my constituency, to try to make a point about the crisis in GP services. While the closure is only temporary, the surgery will open again next month with limited services.

I want to start with a few words about the national picture. One in four patients now wait a week or more to see a GP or do not get an appointment at all. We are 10,000 GPs, 3,500 midwives and 40,000 nurses short of the number we need. Against a target 3,250 GP training places for 2016-17, Health Education England said that only 3,000 were filled. The number of GPs in this country dropped by nearly 100 in the year to September 2016, and in three years’ time the NHS will have 1,200 fewer family doctors than predicted because there is a struggle to fill training places. There has been a huge drop in the number of GPs in training. In 2016, 92 GP practices closed and 34 were merged with other practices. A survey of 2,000 GPs found that two in five plan to quit in the next two years. Since 2014, there has been a 150% rise in patients being forced to move practices due to record levels of closures—that is 265,000 people. Although the Government want to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020, one in three GPs are considering retirement in the next five years—about 10,000 doctors.

That is part of the background that has led to the temporary closure of the GP surgery in Trimdon village. The surgery is one of four operated by Skerne Medical Group—the other three are in Sedgefield village, Fishburn and Trimdon Colliery. The surgeries are very busy and service some of the most deprived areas not just of the county but of the country. In a letter to the registered patients who use the surgery in Trimdon village, Skerne Medical Group announced that the surgery would need to close on 21 June 2017 due to

“unprecedented circumstances with our clinical team and the continued difficulties in recruitment”.

Eighty-eight per cent. of residents in the area are registered with Skerne Medical Group, and the GP group has told me that the building housing the surgery in Trimdon village is not fit for purpose, which for me is a reason not for closing but for upgrading the premises.

I also understand that the GPs are preparing to expand their facilities in Sedgefield village, which is good news for the residents of Sedgefield, but I do not see why, if investment is due in Sedgefield, it cannot be due in surgeries such as in Trimdon village, especially when, considering the indices of health deprivation, Trimdon is one of the 10% most deprived areas of England and Wales—Sedgefield village is not. There is still a great need for Skerne Medical Group to keep the surgery open in Trimdon.

The House of Commons Library has provided me with figures on the amount and kinds of prescriptions issued to the residents of Trimdon. More prescriptions are distributed in Trimdon than in 95% of areas of England. Furthermore, prescriptions for gastrointestinal drugs—issued for ulcers, for example—are 48% above the national average. Prescriptions for drugs for cardiovascular issues are 50% above the national average. Prescriptions for drugs for breathing difficulties, including asthma, are 55% above the national average. Prescriptions for antidepressants, some of which are issued for chronic pain, are 51% above the national average, and prescriptions for painkillers themselves are double the national average. More than 40% of Trimdon’s population are over the age of 50, which is well above the average for the rest of the UK. Trimdon has an ageing population with chronic health problems.

I say this to Skerne Medical Group: “I know the issues, and I know you offer the best service you can, but I do not believe the closure of the surgery in Trimdon, be it temporary or not, will help the situation. Especially when there are expansion plans for the surgery in Sedgefield, surely the needs of Trimdon are also great.”

If the surgery in Trimdon is not fit for purpose, it must be made so. I can understand the problem with the shortage of GPs, because that is an issue not just for this practice but is happening all over the region and the nation. I know that the closure of the Trimdon surgery is temporary and that it is to reopen in July, offering only a limited service, but Skerne Medical Group came to see me about a year ago to say that it wanted to close the surgery permanently, which I said I would oppose all the way.

How can a village that is in the 10% most deprived areas of the country be left without a GP surgery physically situated in the heart of the community? Of course the medical group has other surgeries, but forcing an ageing population with high levels of chronic illness to use those other facilities will put pressure on those surgeries, extending waiting times even further. The crisis in GP provision must be looked at nationally, because it is now starting to affect people who really need that support and help.

Border Control Scheme

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

For understandable reasons I have not been following what Brodie Clark has been saying over the past hour. I think it would injudicious of me to comment on anything that was said at a Select Committee hearing this morning when I was concentrating on the urgent question.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Durham Tees Valley airport is in my constituency. How secure can the people of Teesside and Durham be if people arriving at the airport are not checked, not passed through immigration—not even waved through—and not even seen, because they have arrived on a private jet?

[Damian Green]

For the fourth time, I will tell Opposition Members—I wish their Whips could have thought of more than one question for them to read out—that every private flight is checked against the warnings index before it arrives. That is what makes it safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have to say to my hon. Friend—I am looking at you, Mr Speaker—that I am not sure that responsibility for the processing of parliamentary e-mails is a matter for the Home Office. I think that it is a matter for the House of Commons Commission and the parliamentary authorities.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

On 31 October, on the “Politics Show”, the chief constable of Durham Constabulary, Jon Stoddart, said in answer to a question about the reduction in police budgets:

“Well what we are having to do is take more risks…That does not come without costs.”

What kind of irresponsible Government would make front-line police officers take more risks in their jobs?

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

The Government’s determination is to support police forces in England and Wales in making savings in the back and middle offices, by becoming more efficient, sharing services, improving IT, procuring together and so on so that they can protect the visible and available front-line policing that the public value.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of the impact of immigration on businesses. As we consider how to introduce the immigration cap, we will take on board comments made by business and its requirements in relation to the operation of the system. However, one thing that we have found recently is that nearly one third of those who arrived via the tier 1 route—the brightest and the best highly skilled migrants—did not take on highly skilled jobs. That is something to which we should pay attention.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

T8. The Independent Safeguarding Authority in my constituency employs about 250 people. Can the Home Secretary let me know what their future is? What is the future of the authority under this Government?