Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon]

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Paul Carter, Lisa Carter and Jade Mace in January 2023 in a collision caused by Aurelijus Cielevicius, and the devastating consequences for their family and friends. I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned hard on this issue, and I read his Adjournment debate earlier this month. Sentencing is entirely a matter for our independent courts, based on the facts of each case. In July 2023, after Cielevicius was sentenced, the revised Sentencing Council guidelines for causing death by dangerous driving came into force, following the increase of the maximum penalty introduced by the PCSC Act 2022. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that further, should that be helpful.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The man who was convicted of causing death by careless driving when he killed my young constituent Gregg was sentenced to only nine months in prison. However, because he was charged with causing death by careless driving, not dangerous driving, Gregg’s family had no right to appeal under the Attorney General’s unduly lenient sentence scheme. Will the Minister agree to discuss this with the Attorney General and look into revising the scheme to include causing death by careless driving?

[Gareth Bacon]

I was very sorry to hear the details of that particular case. I will, of course, be very happy to raise it with the Attorney General.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon Friend is so right. In topical questions, I do not have the time to start to unpack all the different things I would like say, so I will not. Suffice it to say that brilliant companies are providing training opportunities.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I have written to the Secretary of State about the tragic case of my young constituent Gregg McGuire. He has agreed to meet with me and I am very grateful. Does his Department have any plans to reassess the current rules which mean that victims’ families are unable to appeal sentences for those convicted of causing death by careless driving?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I know she is meeting the Secretary of State to discuss this matter and I do not want to pre-empt that meeting. If she wishes, I am very happy to join that meeting with her, or even to meet her separately to talk about this issue if she feels that would be helpful.

Knife Crime

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) on his introduction to the debate.

I will start with this and get it out of the way: there is an issue with police resources and numbers of police, and there is an issue with the cuts there have been to local authority services and youth services. We will leave that for another day, but I do not want people to forget it, because there is a debate to be had. On neighbourhood policing, I say gently to the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) that there used to be huge numbers of neighbourhood and community police officers, backed by police staff, and that that made a huge difference.

In order to try to take this forward from where we are, and as my hon. Friends and other hon. Members will have heard me say countless times over the past few months, I say to the Minister that this is a national crisis. It is a national emergency. If it were any other type of national emergency, irrespective of what else was going on, the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Justice would be in the House of Commons at the Dispatch Box day after day after day, outlining what had happened and what the Government were doing about it.

That is why I called a few weeks ago for knife crime to be treated like terrorism—not to underestimate terrorism or decry the importance of dealing with it, but to give that sense of urgency. Instead, frankly, we drift on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) alluded to, the Prime Minister promised a knife crime summit nearly three weeks ago at the Dispatch Box. We are now told that one will take place sometime next week. I say to every hon. Member present that, in the face of a national emergency, a month’s delay—as it will be by then—is simply and utterly unacceptable and will be bewildering to the people of this country.

Virtually certainly, three or four times a week, not just in London but across the country, people are killed, horrifically, and we have to do something about it. We have to speak up and speak out about it more. It is absolutely astonishing that the House of Commons Chamber does not reverberate with the roar of MPs demanding action from the Government. The Government will say, “We are doing this, we are doing that,” but—as was certainly said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool and I think by the hon. Member for Romford—where is the urgency? Where is the passion? Where is the anger? Where is the desire to get a hold of this? The public do not see that, and I do not feel it.

People say it is ridiculous, but I have said, as did former Prime Minister Tony Blair this morning, that Cobra should meet because, irrespective of resources, cross-Government co-ordination is lacking. I will say something about sentencing in a minute to illustrate what I mean. Solving this is not only about police numbers—that is ridiculous—but a long-term public health plan will not prevent somebody from being stabbed tonight. Increased police resources and an increased police presence on the ground will stop that. That is not the overall answer of course, but that is where we have to go in the short term—the increase that the Chancellor announced will help.

The Government’s evidence in the serious violence strategy and the leaked Home Office memo—I know that the Minister is a Justice Minister—show that hotspot policing reduces knife crime. That is evidentially based. It also does not displace that crime to nearby areas; it stops the crime, because it tackles the people who commit those offences. Am I saying, “Lock them up and throw the key away?” Of course not. All I am saying is that we have lost control and there is no short-term alternative. Where are the intervention and prevention measures that were there before? Where have the youth clubs gone? Where are the street workers?

The hon. Member for Romford is right: when I was the Policing Minister, the most effective people on the street, alongside police officers, were street pastors, and particularly the older ones. There are countless examples. They stop stupid incidents outside shops or in precincts, when there are issues between stupid kids and their stupid gangs. Somebody might look at somebody else, or bump into their bike—for Christ’s sake—and get stabbed. The street pastors get involved and prevent that. That sounds almost pathetic in the face of the huge rises in knife crime, but it actually works and makes a difference.

I will come to sentencing, but I would love the Minister to say that he and the Justice Department recognise that the Government have to more effectively co-ordinate what happens across Government rather than there being individual, compartmentalised elements. I hope the Minister brings the urgency I have seen in his reflecting on other things to dealing with this problem.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent series of points. I was hoping that we would cover that the break- down of the fabric of society is part of this. We cannot point to only one thing such as the 21,000 reduction in police officers. There are also schools exclusions, including unofficial exclusions. Kids are out on the streets, and there is a lack of youth provision and other preventive stuff. All that should be looked at in the round. Does he agree that austerity has had an effect, and that this issue could be a consequence of it?

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree. I am making the point that it is not only about policing. However, in the short term, that is where we have to go. That is all I am saying. It should never have got to this point, with the breakdown of all that.

The system—this is true of Justice or whatever—does not look at what works. For example, on youth crime, exclusions and kids not being in school have an impact. That is a no-brainer. We do not need a research project on that costing millions of pounds. Everybody knows it. People on the street know it, every Member knows it and everybody watching our proceedings will know that it has an effect. We have a problem in how we deal with those young people. There are brilliant examples of pupil referral units and activity with young people excluded from school, but many of those young people disappear. Everybody is responsible but nobody is.

That has to change, otherwise those young people just drift into a twilight zone where they are exploited by criminals or associate with people who parade around estates saying, “Do you want to make some money? I’ll show you how to make some money. Don’t listen to them.” We know that that goes on. We have to take that culture on, but we cannot do it without being honest. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) is absolutely right: proper provision for excluded young people is fundamental. Some of it works, and some of it does not. We have to find a way of ensuring that good practice is spread much more widely.

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree. The Minister will know, because his Department will report to him, that some of the alternatives to prison or custodial sentences are rubbish, but other alternatives are brilliant. If we know what works, why are we not replicating it instead of the Justice Department funding alternative provision outside some schools or inside others? Why do we not replicate those things that work and that prevent young people who have been excluded from school from getting involved? I know that this is not a fashionable thing to say in a time of localism. Localism is absolutely right, but sometimes the Government have to pick it up and drive it. This is one area in which they should drive it forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool and the hon. Member for Romford made the point, as I am sure will others, that the Minister has a tough job. The public will say that anybody carrying a knife—I am not talking about the use of a knife—is completely unacceptable, and that they should be jailed straight away. They will also say that people should not have a second chance when it comes to something as serious as that.

All Governments, including the last Labour Government, write into every bit of legislation that courts have discretion to look at circumstances, but that is the bit of the mandatory sentencing guidelines that nobody reads. I am appalled by repeat cautioning and the fact that the courts seem in many instances to fail to act on persistent offending. However, even I can see that, if somebody stuffs a knife in the pocket of an idiotic 12-year-old lad but he cannot prove it, we have to let the court try to find out whether he deliberately carried the knife or whether somebody had put it on him, or had threated to beat him up unless he took it. We have to be careful about saying that, in every single circumstance and in every single case, the first time a pathetic girl or boy—that is what they are—carries a knife, they should be jailed forever and the key should be thrown away. I do not accept the inability of the state or the Government to explain that to people. Everybody says, “We’re going to be tough. We’re going to have mandatory sentencing. We’re going to lock all of them up.” Of course, that does not happen, because rightly in a democracy we have the legal system and the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary, including any of us if we were magistrates, would look at the circumstances of an individual case and say that in that instance they do not want to send the person to a place like that described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), because they deserve a chance.

There are not many people in our Parliament who would not allow the courts discretion, but I say to the Minister—again, the Government should be shouting this—that he should explain that and tell people. He should not hide behind harsh rhetoric. He should do what I have just done and explain that, even in a national emergency—a knife crime epidemic—there will be circumstances in which the courts will want to exercise discretion. The Minister no doubt has that in the notes for his speech at the conclusion of the debate.

The legislation talks about mandatory sentencing except in exceptional circumstances. What does that mean? The Minister is brandishing the guidelines at us, but they are not interpreted across the judicial system in a fair and consistent way. That drives people mad—it drives me mad—and undermines the system. Alongside all the things that I have discussed, the sentencing by the courts is crucial. There has to be an expectation that people are jailed, whether they be young children, older children or adults, but there has to be more consistency. Figures were given by the hon. Member for Romford. It cannot be right that huge numbers of people are being cautioned again and again. It cannot be right that between different courts some people are going to jail and others are not. It cannot be right that nobody among the public properly understands what “exceptional circumstances” means—no Minister has properly gone out there to articulate and explain it. This Minister will have an opportunity to do that when he winds up the debate.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. When I was chair of the all-party parliamentary group on basketball, we did an inquiry into how basketball could be harnessed as a sport that appeals to certain demographics. It attracts a high number of inner-city and black, Asian and minority ethnic participants. Basketball could be used as a sentencing tool. That might seem a crazy idea, but evidence was given by police and crime commissioners in Leicester and in one of the London boroughs—I think it was Newham—which were using things such as basketball to sentence some of the young people who were at risk of being the ones to get into knife crime. They were looking for alternative provision, and basketball was one of the things that it was deemed would work, so much so that, in the London Borough of Newham there is an initiative called “Carry a Ball, not a Blade”. Does my hon. Friend think that more initiatives such as that should be looked at as a means of prevention in sentencing?

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely do think that more initiatives such as that should be introduced.

Let me finish with a personal account. I have been an MP for nearly 22 years. Before becoming an MP, I taught for 20 years, mainly in inner-city schools in Nottingham. They had the challenges that anybody here could recount. Much of the time, when I started teaching, it was possible for somebody to choose where they went. It was possible to say, “I would like to go here,” and I always said that I wanted to teach in an inner-city school. Some people stereotype me—for good reason or not—but talking in the way I do helped in Nottingham. This is a point for the Government. When we went there to raise standards—without being arrogant, in all the schools I worked at, we raised standards—we did certain things. Among the things that we put in place was certainty that, if someone broke the rules, there would be a consequence. It was not a case of locking somebody up and throwing away the key, but people knew that there would be a consequence.

There was a lot of the alternative provision to which my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West has referred. I was the harshest disciplinarian in the school. I was not going to have people coming in who were not in uniform. People may laugh about it, but the truth is that out on our streets the police need to ensure the same certainty. Alongside that we need the sort of provision that my hon. Friend has talked about and opportunities for young people to get work, to have social mobility and to prosper. That is what will stop knife crime. I say again to the Minister that this is a national crisis and a national emergency, and the Government simply have to treat it as such by co-ordinating and driving forward change, rather than just making a series of compartmentalised, well-intentioned announcements that do not have the passion, drive and enthusiasm needed to effect change in the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon under your chairmanship, Sir Graham.

We were here just a few weeks ago debating this subject, and indeed knife crime has come up regularly—we had the urgent question on Friday in the main Chamber. It is also right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said in his extraordinarily passionate and persuasive speech, that it is several weeks since we first heard about the knife crime summit, which apparently will happen some time next week. In asking a Minister a question about that on Friday, I said that I sincerely hoped that the summit would not be a talking shop and that we would see resources and action as a consequence of it.

I am glad that we are at last taking this seriously and debating it on a regular basis—I just hope that these debates lead to action—but I cannot help but observe that, since the last knife crime debate in Westminster Hall, and since the knife crime summit was announced, there have been two murders in my borough: one was of a 17-year-old boy, for which offence a 15-year-old has been charged; and the other, just a week ago, was just outside my constituency and was the murder of a 29-year-old man, who was stabbed to death needlessly and pointlessly in an ordinary street. It is often said—this is one reason we are now taking this very seriously—that for every one of these tragic murders, there are a hundred other stabbings and similar incidents. Some are not even reported to the police, and some are known only to the doctors who treat those involved. There could be thousands of instances of young people carrying weapons.

I do not want to exaggerate, because on the whole our constituencies are still safe places and walking around them at night, or at any time, is a perfectly safe and reasonable thing to do, but there is a cultural change and a change in how communities feel about knife crime. They feel that it is not just about one or two people, or gangs, or known criminals. They feel that it is now inculcating the atmosphere of where we live. That is why I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that knife crime is a national emergency or a matter for Cobra—we have to take it extremely seriously.

One of the young people who died in my borough, Ayub Hassan, was 17 years old. He was born and lived in my constituency, and he was killed in my constituency. As his mother told me, he was her best friend. She is inconsolable at his death. Although there is almost a pyramid, of which the killings are at the top, and although we worry about every offence, there is something absolutely significant about young lives being taken in this way, and the opportunity that is lost, and the way that people did not have a chance to live their lives, and about how it affects their siblings, their parents, their wider family and often the whole community where they live. We have to get to grips with knife crime. It is an incredibly complex, multi-layered issue, and will take a number of years to get right. However, it also requires urgent action.

This debate is about sentencing. That is an important aspect but, as we have heard in all the speeches so far, it is only one element. I suspect that my views on sentencing are probably closer to those of the Minister than they are to those of the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I am a former shadow Justice spokesman and have looked into this in some detail. I am not a big fan of mandatory sentencing. As has been pointed out, mandatory sentencing itself often has a degree of discretion of which the courts make due and proper use. There are sentencing guidelines, but we have to leave individual cases to the judiciary. We have a very competent judiciary —it is not a soft judiciary—in this country. As we have heard, we have one of the highest incarceration rates. Yes, there should be appropriate sentencing and, yes, people should be locked up for many offences, whether it is for carrying a knife, using a knife, or for any serious violence that results from knife crime. However, we will not solve this problem by sentencing policy.

[Geraint Davies in the Chair]

We need to start with something a number of Members have mentioned: proper community policing. The loss of that in London over the past few years has made a dramatic difference. When it started, it was an experiment —we were told it was about reassurance. Those were times of greater plenty as far as public funds go, and it was felt that, in addition to everything that was supposed to work, including response policing and detection, we could afford the luxury of putting police back on the streets—bobbies on the beat, community officers.

Then the police would have told us, “We’re not going to catch people doing crimes. We’re not going to solve crimes, but it’s an important community role.” Many senior police officers now admit that they were wrong about that, and that community policing has played a valuable role in reducing crime. A dedicated, in both senses of the word, group of police, even a small group—it was typically six per ward—got to know the community and which people were good and bad. The intelligence they collected and their knowledge of what was going on meant that it was not about just reassurance; it was about policing in the way we do best in this country, by consent and with the support of the community. It was resource intensive, and it is impossible for those who agree about that policing, whichever party they come from, not to acknowledge that the resources were just taken away.

The Mayor of London has done a very good job in putting resources back—we were down to one officer per ward at one point. It is a semantic thing to say that ward boundaries are the problem. The resources are the problem, and they need to be increased quickly. If that prevents further serious injury and death, it will go at least some way to turning this juggernaut around—all the indications are that we are going in the wrong direction.

I will make a pact with Government Members if they concede that resources have been cut back too far. Local authorities have lost 50% of their funding, meaning that things that are often discretionary, such as youth centres and youth funding, have been cut by even more than that. Most of the youth clubs in my constituency have closed over time. When they were being closed, it was fashionable for some politicians to say, “How on earth does youth work—diversionary activity—decide whether people will go out with a piece of metal and stab someone?” Such comparisons are crass. The opposite argument is that if young people are given something useful to do, are made to feel they are worth while and are shown that there is investment in them, their neighbourhoods and their communities, they have a different outlook on life. Life does not become hopeless. It does not become just a wasting of time and getting into trouble. If Members on both sides will admit that we must reverse that absolute drain on resources in our local communities, I will not make a party political issue of it. I concede that I think everyone is of goodwill whatever their views on aspects such as sentencing, penal policy or investment. I believe that there is a will across political parties to get this right in response to the horrific things we have seen. Having that intention is a good start, but it is not where we need to go.

The second thing we need to do is engage some of the expertise and knowledge that is out there. Part of that is in our policing and our judiciary, and among our medics and the experts in the field, but part is in the community. I spent half an hour at surgery this morning with the mother of a young boy in my constituency. She had not come to ask me to do anything. In fact, the surgery was almost the other way around—I learned far more from her than she did from me.

We spent half an hour talking about exactly this problem. Her son had a very late diagnosis of special needs, and all the trouble he was having at primary school was put down to bad behaviour. He ended up being excluded from secondary school at an early stage and going into alternative provision, which, his mother said, was dreadful and dire. It was not just that he was not being properly educated and his needs were not being identified and no action taken; before he was a teenager even, he had been cast out—he was now excluded, no longer part of acceptable society.

The second thing that happened, of course, was that he was put with all the other naughty boys, and when naughty boys go around together, perhaps not doing terribly bad things to begin with, after a while one or two of them will get into trouble and get convictions for this, that or the other—a bit of criminal damage perhaps. My constituent’s son now has a conviction for carrying a knife. That comes about either from neglect, bureaucracy or lack of intervention by, or resources from, statutory bodies of all different kinds.

Where does that leave the parents? My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who is no longer in the room—she tragically had a death in her constituency over the weekend—said to me, “Where is the support for parents of victims but also for parents who have tried to do their best to keep their children out of trouble and who worry every night about where their sons or daughters are?”

[Mrs Hodgson]

On my hon. Friend’s powerful point about who people come into contact with when they are first getting into trouble, if there was an automatic 10-year sentence on first arrest for carrying a knife, a young person who had not been in trouble at all could find him or herself not just in a young offenders institution but among the prison population, with some very, very bad people who had done much worse things. Turning someone who is carrying a knife because they are scared into a hardened criminal eventually could be an unintended consequence of what we hope to achieve with sentencing.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend shows a lot of compassion and understanding.

I do not advocate a soft approach; on the contrary, we need rigour in the system, but not the knee-jerk reaction that we will suddenly cure this by sentencing. How often have we heard that in relation to every possible offence? Is that not what has driven the prison population to double, and the conditions in prisons and the assistance for those leaving to be so dire in this country that this is an international embarrassment?

I do not want to say much more. I believe not just that we are well-intentioned but that we are resolved to tackle the issue. The expertise is there, and part of that is listening to our communities.

I am almost dreading the summit next week, because I fear it will be a talking shop, a couple of press releases and not much more to get the Government through another week or two. I hope the Minister will tell us that that is not the case. I also hope that we will hear from him before 7 o’clock—I apologise, Mr Davies, that I will not be here after that. If I miss the end of his speech, I will read it diligently, as I always do. I know that it will be worth reading because he shares that view.

I respect what the people who drafted, motivated and signed this petition are trying to achieve, because they are expressing the same frustration as the mother who came to see me today: that Members are standing around, looking powerless—they might think we are uninterested, but we are not—and are not solving problems that are solvable. Those problems are getting worse and worse: they are now affecting not just individuals, but whole communities. This is a national emergency, and we need to act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Davies, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) on having secured a really good cross-party debate, in which we are agreeing on a lot of issues. I wish that my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) had been my teacher; I had not realised that he was a teacher for 20 years, and I feel that I would have listened a lot more in school if he had been teaching me.

It is right for us to pay tribute to the family of Jodie Chesney, who Members have spoken about being from their area. I also want us to think about the people who have died in my constituency: Kelva Smith, Andre Aderemi and Jermaine Goupall, three people who lost their lives recently through knife crime. I am not going to talk about the need for funding, because we have established that, and I think we all agree on it. I will just say that there is a need to fund not just youth work and education, but housing. I currently have a mother and her eight-year-old daughter in my office who have been refused housing by everybody, and are completely destitute; we are desperately trying to get them somewhere to sleep tonight. Those wider issues massively impact on the life chances of our children, and we must never forget about them.

I will focus on sentencing, which is what we are debating. This issue is too important for us to not look at the facts about what impact sentencing has. We know that knife crime is at epidemic levels, with over 100 knife offences a day. Fatalities are at the highest level on record, with 285 people dead last year, and knife crime has gone up across virtually every area and police force in the country. Young people are disproportionately affected: 39 young people were killed last year, the highest level for 10 years, and according to NHS figures, there has been more than a 50% increase in stabbings of teenagers. More than 1,000 teenagers were admitted to hospital with stab wounds last year, and we know that many others do not go to A&E because they are scared of what might happen.

People are rightly concerned about this national crisis, but my view is that dramatically increasing sentences for knife offences is not the answer. We cannot enforce our way out of this problem by increasing sentences. We already have a tough regime for knife offenders, which has been getting tougher over the past decade. As I have said, we lock more people up than any EU country, and 400 children are in prison serving life sentences or sentences over 14 years. The proportion of people being sent to prison for knife offences has almost doubled: in 2010, about 40% of people caught with a knife were given a custodial sentence, but today, the proportion of knife possession offences receiving a custodial sentence is closer to 70%. Last year, more than a third of knife offenders received an immediate jail sentence, and in 2015, the Government introduced their two-strikes policy, which I mentioned earlier. That policy means that anyone over 18 who is caught twice gets a minimum six-month jail term. Despite those changes, knife offences have risen from 25,000 to over 40,000 since 2013. Contrary to what might seem to be the case, the evidence shows that tougher sentences do not deter people from committing crime.

Four main factors go into sentencing decisions: punishment, deterrence, public protection and rehabilitation. We are debating all those factors today. To begin with punishment, people who commit knife offences—particularly attacks on other people—absolutely need to receive strict punishments, but those are already available under the law. The types of punishment we are debating are not proportionate or appropriate for the vast majority of knife crime, particularly as those involved are disproportionately young people. The majority of children carrying knives are extremely vulnerable, and it is increasingly evident that many are being criminally exploited, groomed and coerced. Punishing them with punitive sentences risks turning this generation of young people into a generation in prison.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Will my hon. Friend give some details about why some of those young people are carrying knives—details that she will have picked up through all her work in this area? I know there has been lots of coverage of that point in some of our news media, and fear seems to be the main reason, but I wonder whether my hon. Friend could give some more details.

[Sarah Jones]

I could, and I could speak for far too long about that issue. It is not possible to say “all young people carry knives for this reason”: everybody has a different story to tell. In many of the tales shared by the young people who I have met, vulnerability is given as a reason, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that fear is another. We know that knife crime is contagious. It acts like a disease; it spreads. As I have seen in Croydon, if some people in a school are known to be carrying knives, others will start to carry knives. That results in situations in which people are not in gangs and are not dealing drugs, but are carrying knives because they feel that they need to, so when there is a fight, instead of using their fists, they use a knife. There is a raft of issues involved; we have already talked about involvement in drugs and gangs, as well as violence in the home and in the family during a child’s early years. All kinds of things lead to people carrying knives, but fear is definitely a big one.

Turning to deterrence, a large body of research on knife crime over the past few years shows that simply setting longer sentences does not deter crime, as the Minister knows very well; I am sure he will talk about that. Research consistently shows that, if anything, it is the certainty of being caught that acts as a deterrent, not how severe the sentence is. A recent evidence review concluded that lengthy prison sentences and mandatory minimum sentencing cannot be justified on the grounds of deterrence. For sentences to be a factor in deterring crime, people need to know what the punishment for the crime is and then make a rational choice about whether to offend. However, awareness of sentencing is very low, and many people involved in knife crime—particularly young people—do not act rationally. People who have been in and out of prison for carrying knives have attended meetings of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, and they say that prison is not a deterrent at all: it is a break from the streets, somewhere they can be safe for a while before they have to go back.

Public protection is very important; we must of course keep the public safe by making sure that dangerous people are not on our streets. Home Office research found that a 15% increase in the use of custody would be required to produce just a 1% decrease in crime, and as we have talked about, our prisons are already overflowing. Surely it would be better for the Government to build on their recent £100 million boost to police funding and set a strong new basis for police funding in the autumn statement, in order to deter people through policing on the streets, rather than funding a huge increase in custodial sentences that would lead to a very small decrease in crime.

When it comes to rehabilitation, we know that dealing with children and young people outside the formal justice system is more effective at reducing offending than punitive responses. Involving a young person in custody makes them more likely to commit crime in the future. Young people who spoke to us at meetings of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime talked about prison as a training camp, as the things that their colleagues could teach them were likely to increase crime, rather than reduce it. As the Minister also knows, conditions in prisons do not lend themselves to positive rehabilitation. Young people can be locked in their cells for 23 hours a day, and research has found that they face

“hunger, denial of fresh air, cramped and dirty cells, strip-searching, segregation, the authorised infliction of severe pain, uncivilised conditions for suicidal children”

and bullying and intimidation.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend’s excellent speech, but I would have thought that part of the problem with rehabilitation is the recidivism of repeat offenders. Does she have an opinion about the part played by our now poorly functioning privatised probation service, through which offenders are probably not being rehabilitated as well as they should be?

[Sarah Jones]

I absolutely agree. There is a cycle. Surgeons in King’s College Hospital say that they are seeing the same children coming back again and again. The prison system says that the same children are going back time and again. There is the same cycle of going into prison, coming out of prison, committing a crime and getting stabbed. That is awful, and we need to break that cycle and get children and young people away from the situation they are in.

In terms of the four factors considered in sentencing, the evidence is just not there for harsher sentencing in this area. I will not talk about the public health approach and what we should be doing on prevention, but I want to highlight some work done in my borough of Croydon that paints the picture of where we need to go with our young people. Croydon completed what I think is a landmark report investigating the cases of 60 vulnerable adolescents. Those 60 children had all been involved in serious cases of violence or exploitation. Five had lost their lives. Three had been convicted of murder. One third of the boys had been victims of knife crime and three quarters were involved with gangs. More than half the girls in the cohort had been victims of sexual exploitation.

Of the 60 people who had been deeply involved in violence, half were known to children’s social services before the age of five. We knew who these children were from the very beginning. In all the cases, there were many interventions by the state, but they did not work. The state was involved in crisis management—when something happened, there was an intervention, but the state did not do the right thing to help those children.

Half those 60 children had witnessed or experienced domestic violence. We know that violence breeds violence. It is learned behaviour. If children see it in the home, they do it later on in life. Three quarters of the children had a parental absence on the father’s side, and a quarter had an absence on the mother’s side. There were many parental issues around drug or alcohol misuse and mental health funding. A third of the children had already been excluded by the time they left primary school, and every single child who was later convicted of a crime had been excluded from school.

I will not talk more about what that says, other than to say that they are vulnerable children growing up in difficult situations. That does not excuse the crime at all, but in so many of the cases I have come across, who is the victim and who is the perpetrator is the luck of the fight. It is not right to categorise some children as the evil ones perpetrating the crimes and some as the victims, because there is often crossover. In some cases, people are being harmed when they have absolutely nothing to do with anything, but in other cases, they are all in a difficult situation because they are all vulnerable. I would argue that putting them in prison for longer is not the answer. In Scotland, they are putting far fewer young people in prison and focusing on the ones who are there. In the youth offending prison, they are giving them lots of training, teaching them to read and write and giving them education and skills, and that has to be the right approach for the long term.

This is a national crisis. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling put it correctly when he said that the Government need to come together to tackle the issue. In terms of this debate, sentencing is not the answer; many other things are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I too thank the petitioners and the Petitions Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for opening the debate and making very important points, along with the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who rightly set a measured tone across the Floor. Some broader political points need ironing out, but today may not be the day for that. I will refer to them briefly, but in the light of what the hon. Gentleman said I have altered huge parts of my speech—I thought he made a good point about that.

I join many of my hon. Friends in remembering all the tragic victims of knife crime—those who have been mentioned, and those who have not.

[Mrs Hodgson]

It would be remiss of me not to mention two young people from Sunderland who were also victims. In the north-east, we do not have an epidemic of knife crime. There is a regional element to it, but none the less 31-year-old father Gavin Moon from my constituency was a victim, as was 18-year-old Connor Brown, from the neighbouring constituency of Sunderland Central. As my hon. Friend was talking about victims, I thought I should mention those two.

This has been an excellent debate. I did not intend to stay for long, but it has been so good I have stayed for the wind-ups.

[Imran Hussain]

I join my hon. Friend in remembering the victims she refers to, and all other victims. Our thoughts and hearts go out to the grieving families. These are tragedies beyond words.

We have heard moving accounts from hon. Members from their constituencies—from communities coming together to deal with the issues to the broader impact and trauma, which is sometimes not acknowledged, on society as a whole and on communities. All those things happen in the aftermath, and are sometimes not given as much thought as they should be. I thank all hon. Members for their valuable contributions.

The rise in knife crime and the number of young people who have been killed should keep us all awake at night. This is deeply complex. Although we support robust sentencing, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), made pertinent and persuasive points. I do not wish to repeat them, but I believe that she set the tone regarding the broader impacts by giving some hard facts. In particular, she referred to the record numbers of offenders sentenced for knife crime, with more people being given an immediate custodial sentence. She rightly pointed out that we must realise that we cannot achieve lower levels of crime through sentencing alone. We need an approach that is rooted in effectiveness. Only then can we begin to stop the rise in violent crime.

In taking such an approach, we need to understand what is driving knife crime. Although, as we have seen today, there is little consensus on what has been the trigger for the marked increase in knife crime, the drivers and issues that have created the conditions in which this epidemic has been able to grow are difficult to dispute. The clearest is that, with such a dramatic rise in knife crime, young people are now more scared of becoming victims than ever. They have seen friends wounded or killed and fear that the same will happen to them. They even feel ignored by authorities when they raise that fear, particularly since those who are most likely to be victims live in high-crime neighbourhoods where police are sometimes seen as unable to protect them. That is compounded by a rise in violence and a fall in the proportion of crimes for which an offender is identified.

We cannot get away from the fact that police numbers have been slashed: there are 20,000 fewer police officers than there were in 2010, and police community support officers, who are so vital to building relations, have also been lost. At the same time, there are serious issues in our schools: as schools face significant funding pressures, interventions for vulnerable children are being cut and there has been a marked increase in exclusions and illegal off-rolling. We know that vulnerable children are more likely to be off-rolled or excluded, and the Children’s Commissioner has reported that those who are excluded are 200 times more likely to be involved in gangs, which demonstrates that we simply cannot ignore the correlation between the rise in exclusions and the rise in knife crime.

There have also been huge reductions in the services available for young people. Again, I am not making a political point out of this but just giving the hard facts. Some 3,500 youth service jobs have been lost and 600 centres have closed, with 130,000 places lost. There have been sweeping cuts to education, and teachers and vital early intervention services have been lost as councils face unprecedented funding cuts. Youth offending team budgets have been cut in half, curbing interventions and degrading services that help to prevent young people from becoming victims and offenders in the first place. All those services assist people who are already disaffected and vulnerable. It is no coincidence that victims and offenders are from areas of huge social disadvantage.

We cannot address the drivers of offending with more sentencing alone. We can address them only with an interdepartmental approach, because sentencing is a downstream solution that is applied when it is already too late. We need an upstream solution that identifies the root causes of crime, brings together organisations across central Government, local government, the police and the community sector, and is built on the well-documented public health approach that many hon. Members have referred to, which involves collecting data, identifying the factors at play, implementing solutions and rolling out the ones that work.

More broadly, solving the issue requires the stimulation of housing, employment opportunities and community facilities, as the Association of Directors of Children’s Services suggests. It also requires investment in young people, who are overwhelmingly the most affected, and a cross-departmental approach like that of Police Scotland’s violence reduction unit in Scotland, with close co-operation among partners in the NHS, education and social work. That will help to give young people the future they deserve and lift them out of the dire situations in which they find themselves, which all too often lead them to fall into a life of crime.

Such an approach is far from being soft on crime but, as the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) says, it gets results. The considerable success of the approach taken in Scotland, with homicide rates halving between 2004-05 and 2016-17, has led the Youth Violence Commission, the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the head of Scotland Yard to call for it to be implemented in England. Even the Home Secretary has said that we need to treat knife crime “like a disease”. Unfortunately, he has offered to tackle the symptoms—stabbings and possessions—but not the causes.

We need to do more. We need to shift the focus of our model away from purely specific interventions for high-risk individuals and cast the net wider, to focus on low and medium-risk offenders, from whom most of the cases arise, and avoid a prevention paradox. We need joint ownership to be taken of the problems that lead to knife crime, because responsibility does not lie just with police—we have to be clear about that. Ultimately, we need to adopt an approach that recognises violence as preventable, not inevitable. We need a meaningful public health approach that can address knife crime and its causes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Encouraging employers is very much what the New Futures Network is about. I sense a change of attitude among employers: more and more of them want to do this, because they recognise that there are benefits for them as well as for society as a whole. As I have said, more than 100 employers have signed up to the network, and I encourage those who are following our proceedings closely to do as much as possible on this front.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the disproportionate levels of often undiagnosed special educational needs and disability—especially difficulties with speech and language, dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—in the prison population. What measures has he introduced to ensure that all those prisoners are assessed and then appropriately supported in their education?

International Women’s Day 2016

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is difficult to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). I call her my hon. Friend because we are fellow members of the Women and Equalities Committee, and we have a shared passion for making sure that the voices of women are heard loud and clear in this House. What she has done has helped to make sure that the stories of those women are remembered and that their voices are heard, even if they are now departed.

International Women’s Day comes around every year, but since we last celebrated it we have had something else to celebrate, which is the establishment of the first ever Select Committee for women and equalities. Everybody in this House who was involved, and those no longer in the House, should be congratulated on the work they did to establish the Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing. Today, we have turned the tables in the Committee: young women have taken evidence from Members of Parliament. I particularly welcome my constituent, Aheng Negargar. She has been able to be with me today, and I know she has enjoyed it immeasurably.

Congratulations must go to my fellow Hampshire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), and to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). Both ladies were a formidable force in front of the Backbench Business Committee. I had no doubt that they would secure a debate on the Floor of the House, and they did so at once. I should add that we thought about adding an extra criterion for being a member of the Women and Equalities Committee—having a child born on International Women’s Day. However, looking at the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who was a member of our Committee, I hope that she does not feel that it is necessary to give birth today, although I am sure many people would be on hand to help out.

I will make two very brief points in my contribution today. As you know, Mr Speaker, there are more men in the House of Commons today than there are women who have ever been elected to Parliament. I was elected in 2005, as the 265th woman to be elected to this House, which is a shocking fact. I was not aware of that when I was elected. Since women were given the vote in this country in February 1918, 34 million women have been born, but just 450 have ever sat on the green Benches. No other position has been worse at attracting women than that of MP. How can we hope to change ingrained prejudice in our society if we fail to hold a mirror up to ourselves and realise that, as an institution, we are not making the progress that we need to make to encourage more women to take their position on the green Benches?

It is not rocket science. Working in two places, a lack of certainty, a culture of long hours and presenteeism are not conditions that will encourage more women to join us on the green Benches. I ask Members to think long and hard when they consider the way that we organise the business of the House, and I ask them to make us more representative in the future and a place of work that people want to join.

My second point is about leadership. I have no doubt about the Government’s commitment to putting equality at the heart of their policy, or their desire to see more women in leadership positions. The symbolic importance of Lord Davies’s work in getting 25% of women in non-executive positions is important, but we must go further than that. We have no shortfall in talent in this country; we have an underperformance of that talent because of ingrained prejudice.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

When we organised the photo that is now in the Admission Order Office for all visitors and Members to see, there had been only 370 women MPs. There have now been 450 female MPs over 98 years, but there are currently 459 male MPs in this House alone. The right hon. Lady and I are privileged and happy to be among those female MPs in the House today, but does she agree that those figures are not good enough?

[Mrs Miller]

I could not agree more, and we need to hear from the leaders of every political party represented in this House a complete commitment to increase the number of women MPs at the next election. That will be a challenge with the boundary changes, but it a challenge that we should take on. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to increase significantly the proportion of women on the green Benches representing the people who live in our country.

The workplace, whether in Parliament, the City, or other institutions, was designed by men for men, and it has not changed fast enough to retain women in day-to-day positions or leadership positions. We must ensure that jobs, whether in Parliament or beyond, are designed for people who are living lives today, not as they were lived 20 years ago. I know that Ministers understand that from the policies that they are implementing, and I urge them to continue that work. The Women and Equalities Committee will always hold their feet to the fire.

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Today, we again debate the need for transitional arrangements following the equalisation of the state pension age. Contrary to what the Minister said, everyone—including the women affected—accepts the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women in principle. However, in practice it is clear that these changes have had such a detrimental effect on the lives of a particular group of women born in the 1950s—many thousands of them up and down the country—that we must look at transitional arrangements. We can ignore this no longer.

Like many others in the Chamber today, I have had many women from WASPI contact me at my surgeries, or via email or social media, to raise their concerns about the impact that the lack of transitional arrangements will have on their lives. In recent weeks and months, we have had many debates on this important matter, yet time and again the Government have failed to move an inch in their position and have continued to ignore the concerns of these women.

The common theme of all the many letters I have received from constituents has been that the escalation in the equalisation of the state pension age has ruined these women’s plans, savings and, in some cases, lives. One constituent’s case stands out in particular. She was born in 1957. I will not name her, but she explained to me that she saw these changes mentioned on the news a few times but as she never received a letter, she assumed they must not affect her, as she would surely have been told if they did. She eventually received a letter in 2014. She thought it was a routine pension calculation, but it showed her state pension age as taking effect in 2023. She thought it must be an error and was horrified later to discover that it was not. What that meant for her was that instead of retiring next year, as expected and as she planned for, she has to work a further six years. She is in very bad health and could just about envisage coping until next year, when she thought her state pension age applied. However, upon the realisation of the enormity of this information and what it meant to her and her life; her health rapidly deteriorated. She became severely depressed and required medication, and I would hazard that she may never be the same again.

No one here has a magic wand, not even the Minister, and none of us can turn back time, but just for a second, can the Minister put himself in that lady’s position? Imagine being that lady and finding out that news in that way—imagine how that would feel and imagine the shock! We—this institution, this Parliament—did that. Lots of us were not MPs in 1995, but some of us were in 2011, and the laws of the land that we make here affect people out there. Was it not our duty to ensure that these women, to whom we were about to deliver this great life-altering shock, at least knew about it? Should we not have ensured that they knew when they heard it on the news that it did indeed affect them, not because they had researched the small print themselves, but because the Department for Work and Pensions wrote to them and personally told them in good time, not as late as 2014? Surely that was the least the DWP should have done and we, Parliament, should have insisted upon it.

As I have said, we cannot turn back time and we cannot wave the magic wand that a lot of people think we have, because we do not have one—it does not exist. But we can do something today: we can insist that the Government do something. The Minister must go away and draft, with haste, transitional arrangements for this group of WASPI women who have been failed by the system and failed by these changes. We cannot fail them today. Parliament is at its best when using its powers for the good of its people. Parliament is speaking very clearly today to the Government. It is saying, “Go away, sort this out and bring forward transitional arrangements so that these women are not left destitute in what should have been their well-earned retirement.”

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I, too, strongly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for leading this debate so powerfully. Although the injustice imposed on women born in the 1950s has been repeatedly debated, discussed and raised with the Prime Minister in recent weeks and months, this is my first opportunity since returning to the Back Benches to express my constituents’ concerns, and I am grateful for it.

The Minister and the Government regularly state that the changes to the state pension age imposed by the Pensions Act 2011 are vital to ensuring that our pensions system is fair, affordable and sustainable, and I am sure the Minister will repeat those words today; but not a single Member of this House would suggest that our pensions system should be anything other than fair, affordable or sustainable, and nor would any of the women who are part of the brilliant WASPI campaign. I agree that it is right to equalise the state pension age for women and men, but I thoroughly object to the Government’s implication that the women, and indeed men, who are campaigning on this issue are standing in the way of progress, or acting as a barrier to the achievement of gender equality and fairness. That is deeply insulting, patronising and wrong.

We are, thankfully, living longer, and few people would doubt that the state pension age must rise to reflect that, but the crux of the matter is that these pension changes have not been properly communicated to those affected, and women born in the 1950s have been disproportionately hit because their pension age has been increased not once but twice, with very little time for them to do anything about it. That relatively small group of women is being asked to bear the cost of making our pension system fair, sustainable and affordable for everyone else. That is patently unfair and blatantly discriminatory. Women across the country have been left in real fear, simply because they did not have the foresight to be born a few years—in some cases, a few months—earlier.

How dare the Government lecture those women about the importance of gender equality? They have worked hard, done the right thing and paid into the system. They have faced discrimination, unfairness and inequality throughout their working and often their family lives. They thought they had entered into a pensions contract with the Government, only to discover as they neared retirement that the Government were not going to keep their side of the bargain. That is the very definition of unfairness, and the notion that inequality can be fought by imposing more of it is absurd.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I am sorry, but I will not.

Women across Newcastle North face real financial hardship as a result of these changes, just when they thought they had done their bit As well as repeatedly lobbying the Minister for Pensions about the wider injustice, I have written to her about every single case in my consistency that I have been contacted about. I want her to appreciate the real impact that the changes are having on individuals’ lives. I want to share some examples today, if I have enough time.

One of my constituents, a brilliant WASPI campaigner, at the age of 54 and on the advice of her union contacted the DWP in 2008 to request a state pension forecast. She was informed that she had attained 38 qualifying years. She has received no other information from the Government about the 1995 changes. However, she was born in November 1954, so under the 2011 pension changes, at the age of 61 with 45 qualifying years, she is unable to receive her state pension for another five years. She has worked since she was 15, and is now unable to do so because she is pre-diabetic and pre-glaucomic. She claims jobseeker’s allowance, but cannot complete the job searches because her condition makes it difficult to use a computer. She is attempting to find work in a region that has the highest level of unemployment anywhere in the country by some margin.

What particularly worries me about that case is not only that my constituent has received no information from the Government about the 2011 changes—she found out about them by chance—but that she has been informed that she will not be entitled to receive a full state pension under the new system unless she makes further contributions between 2016 and 2020, despite having 45 qualifying years. Given her health conditions, it is impossible for her to do so. I gently ask the Minister, who campaigned vociferously on this issue, what is the point of becoming a Minister if you are unprepared to use the levers of power when you have the opportunity to do so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing the debate and, of course, I pay tribute to the superb campaigners who are here and who are watching today’s proceedings.

The women who are being forced to wait longer for their pension, and who have been hit twice—by the changes in 1995 and then again in 2011—have been done an injustice. In 2011, as shadow Pensions Minister, I was proud to work with Age UK, USDAW––the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—and many women, including my mother, in calling on the Government to think again. We were pleased then that we won a partial concession so that no woman would have to wait for more than an additional 18 months before they could claim their pension. However, I said then, and say again today, that that does not go far enough in righting this wrong. There are still 2.6 million women who have lost out as a result of the Government rewriting the rules, and 300,000 will have to wait an extra 18 months before they can retire.

Last week, I caught up with Barbara Bates, who lives in County Durham, with whom I campaigned in 2011. Even after the Government’s concession, Barbara still faces working an extra 78 weeks before she will see her state pension. The osteoarthritis that affected her wrists and thumbs when I first got to know her five years ago has now spread to her hands, knees, neck and right foot. She said:

“no government can change the way our bodies age, and in particular those of us who started work at 15 in the 70s, a lifetime of menial and heavy jobs that are vital but un-noticed”.

Like other Members, I have also been contacted by constituents. This morning, Margaret Cutty phoned me during her office tea break. She works mostly on her feet, doing lots of lifting as well, and she has had three operations in the past year. Her husband has just had a triple heart bypass. She wants to be able to spend more time caring for him as he grows older but, because of these changes, she will not be able to do so. The experiences of Barbara and Margaret are just two examples of what we know are hundreds of thousands of stories.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I was also recently contacted by two constituents: Lorraine Derret and Evelyn Winstanley, who have worked for 42 years and 45 years respectively. Like others, they have said that they were not told at all by any letter that this was going to happen to them. The DWP has been negligent, so there should be some transitional arrangements.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I would strongly suggest that employers in Dorset and elsewhere join the Employers Forum for Reducing Re-offending, where they will be able to talk to other businesses that have already gone down this road and found it profitable and successful for their businesses. We need many more employers to respond to this call to arms and to join Timpson and Halfords and the many other businesses that have gone down this route.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am sure that we all agree that education is the key to ex-offenders becoming employable. Given that 25% of our young people in young offenders institutions have special educational needs, will the Minister confirm that all teachers in those institutions will be qualified and able to identify and support children with special educational needs?

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady will be aware that Charlie Taylor is undertaking a review of the youth justice system, and I can assure her that he has education at the heart of that review. It will report in the spring of next year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

1. Whether he plans to make further changes in the level of funding for legal aid; and if he will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Legal aid is a fundamental part of our justice system, but resources are not limitless. When reform began, we had one of the most expensive legal aid systems in the world, at about £2 billion a year. Even after our reforms are complete, our legal aid system will still be one of the most generous, at about £1.5 billion a year. The Transforming Legal Aid programme that is currently being implemented is designed to save an extra £215 million per year. There are no current plans for further changes to funding levels beyond this programme, but the financial pressure to balance the books remains.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Research by Rights of Women has revealed that six out of 10 women who suffered domestic violence and were then refused legal aid took no further action through the courts, and many, as a result, ended up staying in violent and abusive relationships. Will the Lord Chancellor look again at the barriers to access to justice that his legislation has created?

[Chris Grayling]

There are two issues involved. Clearly, domestic violence is a criminal offence and it should be dealt with properly by the police. Although we made a number of difficult changes in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, one of the groups we protected was women who needed to go to court after an incident of domestic violence, and that is the way it should be.

Shrewsbury 24 (Release of Papers)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

What lies behind this motion is a belief by many that there has been an abuse of state power and a subversion of the legal process. Successive Governments have said repeatedly that there are just a handful of files relating to the Shrewsbury trials. I would like to focus today on just one single file—PREM 15/2011, with which I hope the Minister can acquaint himself. It is described as “Woodrow Wyatt’s TV programme, ‘Red Under the Bed’”. On 27 August 2012, the National Archives website said that this file was “retained” by the Cabinet Office under section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958. Why would such a file be kept back when it relates to a current affairs programme that was broadcast on ITV in November 1973? Following a freedom of information request by the Shrewsbury 24 campaign’s incisive researcher in August 2013, the Cabinet Office finally conceded and released some of the papers.

Why is this file relevant? It is relevant because the film was broadcast on 13 November 1973, the day on which the prosecution completed its case against the pickets. It was featured in the TV listing section of the local evening newspaper, the Shropshire Star, which would have been read by many of the jurors. The film included a highly tendentious commentary by Woodrow Wyatt, interspersed with footage that showed the following: two of the six defendants, John Carpenter and Des Warren; Shrewsbury Crown Court, surrounded by police officers, with a group of demonstrators attending a meeting nearby; images of a march through Shrewsbury in which the defendants could be made out; violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets on building sites during the national building strike of 1972; and violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets during a recent coal strike and a recent dock strike.

The next day, the defence applied to the judge for the television company to be held in contempt. The judge viewed the film and dismissed the application, even criticising the defence for raising the point. The file shows that the film, which lasted for one hour, was followed by a studio discussion of 30 minutes. Interestingly, the discussion was not broadcast in every ITV region—Granada, for example—but it was transmitted by ATV, the region covering Shrewsbury. The final words of that discussion were from the then Conservative MP Geoffrey Stewart-Smith. He was asked by the studio chairman, the late Richard Whiteley:

“Can you give me one example in 1973 of blatant communist influence?”

Stewart-Smith replies

“The violence in the building strike was called by a group, The Building Workers Charter, operating in defiance of the union leadership indulging in violence and flying pickets and this is an example of these people operating, opposing free trade unions”.

Can you imagine anything more blatantly prejudicial to a trial than that, Madam Deputy Speaker? Imagine what the reaction would be today. Just think of any current high-profile trial, and what a defence team would say, and how that would be reported in the print media now.

We have to ask ourselves why that film was made, and why it was shown on that particular date. It is my contention that the file reveals the highest level of collusion between the Government, the security services and the producers of the film. The first document in the file is a memo from Mr Thomas Barker of the Information Research Department to a Mr Norman Reddaway. For the benefit of younger Members, I should explain that the IRD was formed after the second world war as a covert anti-communist propaganda unit operating within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and was closed down in the late 1970s. Mr Barker boasts:

“We had a discreet but considerable hand in this programme....In general, this film, given national networking, can only have done good.”

He praises the studio discussion after the broadcast. The file contains more documents, including a note from the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, supporting the film after being sent a copy of the transcript by the Cabinet Secretary.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Is it possible to view the documentary now, or is it banned?

[Mr Watson]

It is not possible to view it. However, the file reveals that

“In February”

—that is, in February 1973—

“Mr Wyatt approached us direct for help. We consulted the Department of Employment and the Security Service through Mr Conrad Heron's Group, which has been meeting approximately fortnightly for the past year.”

So many meetings; so much consultation. Where are the documents relating to that? Were those people involved in the discussions that led to the decision to prosecute the pickets? If it had happened today, there would be outrage in the House.

Having seen the transcript of the film, the then Prime Minister replied to the Cabinet Secretary:

“We want as much as possible of this.”