The Climate Emergency

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to take part in this debate today. There is no more important issue facing us than protecting the planet for future generations. We must test the measures in the Queen’s Speech against their ability to effectively tackle climate change and ensure that they go beyond warm words. In the short time that I have, I want to raise a number of issues that emerge from the Queen’s Speech.

It is good to see social care mentioned again in the Queen’s Speech, but little precise information is available about how the Government intend to fund it adequately and to standards that uphold dignity in old age and are befitting of the 21st century. Given the huge delays to the social care Green Paper, the Government must set out in detail how they intend to fix the crisis in social care that is affecting many of our constituents. Labour has committed to ending zero-hours contracts, ensuring that carers are paid a real living wage, giving access to training and ending 15-minute care visits. As a start, the Government must commit to this also.

It is good that additional money is available for education, but it is not clear how it will be distributed. We need a new policy from the Government that will rebuild and refurbish schools that desperately need it, whether or not they are in areas of high growth.

It is interesting that the Government have somewhat belatedly turned their attention to the problems in the justice system. I have three prisons and a youth offending institution in my constituency, and perhaps know more than most the devastating impact that cuts to prisons over the past decade have had on staff and prisoner safety. Years of cuts to prison services have left our staff and prisons in an increasingly pressured and violent state. Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and rates of self-harm among inmates are at record highs, and this must be addressed.

It is interesting that there is no mention in the Queen’s Speech of specific issues facing women prisoners. We know that many women in prison should not be there, particularly those who have children or who are pregnant. Offender management policy needs to be reviewed, with much more emphasis placed on women’s centres and less on sending women to prison, especially as the Government seem so reluctant to invest in the women’s prison estate.

The Government have announced that they will publish a national infrastructure strategy to set out their plans in all areas of economic infrastructure. So far, so good, but how will this be delivered? Changes to building regulations are long overdue to take on board the Hackitt review proposals for improving safety. The response to date from the Government has been too slow. I hope the changes to the regulatory framework can be made as quickly as possible. It is also amazing that the Queen’s Speech contains no new measures to deliver the genuinely affordable housing that the country needs to address the housing crisis.

It is also interesting that there is a pensions Bill but nothing on WASPI—the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. That is surely a disgrace. It is good to see that the Department for International Development will champion action on climate change and girls’ education, but it will be able to do this only if its budget is not constantly raided or reduced. Finally, I would have liked to see more about how universities will benefit from more money going into science and technology, and what the Government intend to do about the Augar review of post-18 education and its impact on the future of university funding.