Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

In the time between the King’s Speech last Tuesday and today’s debate, we have had not only a former Prime Minister parachuted into a new Cabinet job, but yet another Housing Minister. That is 15 Housing Ministers in the last 10 years, four more than the number of Chelsea managers over the same period. It is simply not possible to build the houses we need with that level of chop and change, and when the average life expectancy of a Housing Minister is less than nine months. What can our new Housing Minister look forward to in the next parliamentary Session? We have finally had sight of the Renters (Reform) Bill, but whether it means we will see an end to section 21 no-fault evictions is anybody’s guess, as that depends on reforming the courts.

After 13 years of Tory governance, we heard a King’s Speech that ignored the real problems that many of my constituents face every day. The problem I hear about more than any other in my weekly advice surgery is the chronic lack of social housing. I see numbers of constituents evicted and placed in temporary accommodation outside London, hundreds of miles from their home. Merton may have the lowest number of families in temporary accommodation, standing at between 400 and 500 families, but that is 400% more than the norm. It is small in comparison with the neighbouring boroughs of Croydon, which has 4,000 families in temporary accommodation, and Wandsworth, which has more than 3,500. Councils across the country are threatened with bankruptcy because they simply cannot afford the temporary accommodation bill.

The quality of temporary accommodation is almost universally poor and, shockingly, there is not even a requirement that families with children under two should have access to a cot. That is important because, after reading the data from the national child mortality database, we know that 34 homeless children died between 2019 and 2021 as a result of the temporary accommodation they were housed in—most of them were under one. The most likely cause of death is sudden infant death syndrome because of a lack of safe sleeping provision, such as cots. In the fifth largest economy in the world, children are dying due to a lack of access to a cot. Surely there was room in the King’s Speech for a commitment to ending that shameful statistic. The all-party group on households in temporary accommodation will be leading a campaign in the coming Session to provide a cot to every family with a child under two living in temporary accommodation.

Whether or not the Government provide desperate families with a cot, we will still need the plans and the policies to build more houses. That is why I was delighted to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition raise in his conference speech the issue that I and many others have worked on in the past few years with Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics: building on the grey belt. Within London’s green belt alone there are enough non-green sites surrounding train stations for more than 1 million new homes. My frustration here is not about parks, hills or areas of environmental protection, but the scrappy plots of land in towns and cities, surrounding railway stations, that no one in their right mind would see as attractive. I am talking about the car wash in Tottenham Hale, the scrubland in Ealing, the waste plant in Hillingdon and the concrete airfield in Wisley—sites that no one in their right mind would recognise as green belt if it were not for their designation. I issue a plea to the Government: build on the grey belt to give my constituents the homes they deserve and give children a cot, because they desperately need one.

Ministry of Justice: Legal Aid Spending

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I, too, thank the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), for securing the debate. It feels to me like a really important opening to be talking about legal aid. Perhaps for the first time in about a decade, there is a real opportunity to shift the terrain.

When I was preparing for the debate, I returned to my earliest days in practice in order to remind myself what the atmosphere around legal aid was in 2007. We were swimming in such different waters. I read Lord Carter’s review of legal aid procurement, which had been commissioned by Lord Falconer. He was dealing with a system that he described as bloated and inefficient, and he talked about wasteful legal practices and the budget, which had swelled by about 35% to £2 billion. It kept on going from there, because by 2010 Jack Straw said on record that we were

“in grave danger of becoming over-lawyered and underrepresented.”

When we got to 2010, it was therefore inevitable that a Government of any stripe would have to make some tough choices about legal aid. Then we got to LASPO. It is fair to say that those choices were deep and dramatic, and they affected the criminal side and the civil side, particularly by removing from scope housing and welfare and by circumscribing a lot of education law —apart from special educational needs—and a lot of private family law, as has been observed.

When the post-implementation review was published last year, some people said it was overdue, but it was a really important moment to take stock. I want to focus my remarks on a few conclusions that emerge from that. I will start with aspects of civil law, then I will talk about criminal law. On the civil law side, one of the things that really came through from the review concerned representation. Access to justice has a number of component parts, and being able to access affordable representation is one of them. Any significant cut to legal aid runs the risk of denying the people who most need recourse to the courts the ability to get legal advice and representation. It does not matter whether we limit the scope of claims that qualify or reduce the eligibility thresholds. The reality is that it leads to two outcomes: either the person abandons their claim, in which case there is a rank denial of justice, or they proceed with their claim on their own. A lot of judges have either written or spoken about what that means in court: pressure on court staff and judges having to act as quasi-lawyers and perform the representative function. It leads to delay, inefficiency and extra costs, and, in my own experience, it sometimes does not lead to the right result.

There has been investment—I think it is £3 million—in the legal support grant for litigants in person, and there was more previously, since 2015, but I hope that when the civil legal aid review is undertaken, this sphere will be kept under close review and investment considered.

The second thing I want to talk about is the quality of support available for early resolution. When Baroness Hale retired and did her circuit of valedictory speeches, I was struck by the fact that in almost every single one she talked about legal aid. When she addressed the Legal Action Group last April, she did an exercise where she imagined herself as a hypothetical mum in her hometown of Richmond—I think there is a military barracks in Catterick—and she created an example of a serviceman who had come back from war. He was drinking, the relationship with his wife had become violent, and social services said that they would take the kids into care unless she resolved it. So she needed to separate from him and get herself housing and a non-molestation order. She needed to make arrangements.

Baroness Hale took herself to the library in Richmond. Approaching it as the young mum, how could she find out what she had to do and who would help her? It is not all bad; it is not a story with a terrible ending. She found quite a lot of information, but she said that the picture was patchy in terms of the level of the service offered and the extent of the information available. She said that developments in online information and filing may help to iron out the differences, but they do not make up for the lack of properly informed advice from a skilled person who is not necessarily a lawyer, who can not only give advice and information but set about doing something concrete to help, whether that is making calls, writing letters or filling in the court forms. She said that she believed the Secretary of State understood the problem and was trying to think creatively, but that where securing the right result depends more and more on the early resolution of claims, the focus must remain on the accessibility of adequate legal advice.

I think I am right in saying that law centres have got all the money that they asked for during the crisis, but also that they have a backlog and there are delays, so the funding of not only law centres but equivalent services is something that the MOJ should keep a particular focus on.

On criminal legal aid—I need to use the right expressions—the August announcement was part of the accelerated asks scheme. I know that it is welcome and viewers will know that the criminal Bar or criminal lawyers have said that it is not enough. It is fair to say that—I do not want to say too much—it has been a really long road for criminal practitioners and criminal legal aid. I will confine my remarks to the point about retention and diversity, which is so important. The nuts and bolts of how each piece of work gets remunerated will be a question for the next stage of the review, but it should be informed by a sense of who we want to recruit and retain to do this difficult and important work. This question has to be asked: what is the pathway for a young person who does not have any public funding and is considering a career at the criminal Bar? They can use the Inns of Court scholarships to get them to the door, but then they have to try to earn a living.

I spoke to a practitioner yesterday, who gave me a really neat case study. She said that if someone was a young junior in her chambers and they covered a sentencing hearing, they would have three to four hours of prep and maybe two hours on their feet, so six hours’ work for a case where the stakes are high. It concerned the deprivation of liberty and the person might be looking at 10 years behind bars. For that they get a standalone fixed fee of £126. That has a chilling effect on not only recruiting talent, but retaining it.

One of the most eye-catching features of the Government’s published response in August was at the end. I am sure that others noticed it, too. It was the equality impact assessment where they said that the focus of the funding was about proportionately increasing fees at the junior end of the criminal Bar, and that is where we find the majority of ethnic minority practitioners and the majority of female barristers. We know that this kind of diversity at the junior end of the Bar is not just desirable, but essential. It is from there that you get the pipeline into silk and the pipeline into the judiciary. If we do not act, in 20 years, we will have a judiciary that does not look as we would wish it to look.

The August announcement was interim, and a comprehensive review remains ongoing. It is an independent review, but the choices that follow it will be political. Of course I know that it is important that public funds for legal services are used efficiently and economically, but when it comes to early and effective legal advice, less is definitely not more. Also, remuneration for those engaged in the system has to be commensurate with the level of skill and expertise. It should be possible to say what a junior legal aid criminal practitioner should earn, and ask how we set about putting the mechanisms in place to achieve that.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, I would just like to point out the time. We have until 4.30 pm, so if we are to give 10 minutes each to both Front Benchers, I am sorry, but I am putting a squeeze on the contribution of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous).

Private Probation Services

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Chapman]

I agree: now is the moment. It would have been better to run a pilot, but the Government were determined to embark on a mission that was so fundamentally flawed it was never going to work. Had they been so minded, they could have piloted the approach and gathered evidence of the problems. That would have caused far less damage than selling off half the service in 35 different trust areas in one go and thinking that everything would go smoothly. They removed any opportunity for learning in the process, and that was reckless. It is something that the Government, even if they will not say so publicly, really ought to reflect on and probably should regret.

Selling off all the areas at once was incredibly high risk. The then Secretary of State, the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), was asked at the time why he was so determined to do it. I remember this clearly and was quite shocked. He was asked for any evidence from anywhere to justify such a reckless move, and he simply said that he had inner belief that it would work. He was determined to prove it, and then he went off to run the trains. What the Government did was a mistake. It was stupid and is not something that this Minister would want to repeat. I am sure he is somebody who will look at evidence and take into account the track record of CRCs. He needs to make decisions that will change the current structures.

The whole thing has been based on the flawed premise that offenders fall neatly into two separate groups, but they do not. Risk fluctuates constantly. It takes experienced probation officers to assess that—to notice it, to know what they are supposed to look for and then to know what to do when they suspect the risk might be about to change.

We are talking about an incredibly difficult group of people. Probably everybody here has heard this, but I want to get some characteristics of offenders on the record—27% having been taken into care, compared with 2% of the general population; 49% having been excluded from school, compared with 2%; numeracy and literary levels of an 11-year-old or below at 65% and 48% respectively; 72% of men and 70% of women with two or more mental disorders; 83% of men with a history of hazardous drinking; drug misuse at 66%. We are not talking about people who have just got themselves on the earliest steps to a life of criminality. These are chaotic, confused people, with very little control over what they do. In the sector, they would probably say they are bang at it and are only getting lifted for a proportion of what they are up to. Probation work is incredibly difficult and it relies on the good will, professionalism and experience of an outstanding workforce. To be successful, we need to harness the very best practice in the profession and make that available to all offenders.

The trusts could have delivered that. They were doing a good job and met all the targets they were set by successive Governments. They were independently assessed at the time as excellent. Had the Government wanted them to behave in a different way, such as to work more collaboratively with voluntary and community sector organisations, they should have made that clear to trusts and made that a target. I am confident that the trusts would have been able to deliver on the objectives set them by the Government, even the ambition of wanting to supervise those being released from a prison sentence of less than 12 months. That was one of the objectives the Government set at the time. I do not deny that it was a good objective, but there was no attempt at all to try to achieve it within the existing arrangements. That was negligent and arrogant. It was a bullish approach from Ministers at the time, and it was a real mistake.

This is a complex issue, but it is incredibly high stakes. Splitting the service has been an error. I urge Ministers to listen now in a way that they did not at that time, and to take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the decision and keep the public safe.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

There being no other Back-Bench Members wishing to speak, I call the shadow Minister.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I begin by joining other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing this debate. Hon. Members are absolutely right that this issue does not get the airtime that it deserves. It needs discussion. My hon. Friend made a powerful speech, comprehensively setting out the factual background to the formation of the community rehabilitation companies and setting out the failures with great clarity, as did many other hon. Members. I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this important debate.

It is clear from listening to the contributions that—let us be clear and frank—the state of probation is dire. Although there were problems back in 2015, probation never used to look like this. The Government’s ill-fated reform agenda, “Transforming Rehabilitation”, has been nothing short of a failure. It has failed offender rehabilitation, with many left ill-equipped for life on the outside. It has failed prison officers and governors, who are seeing their prisons pushed to breaking point by overcrowding, and it has failed the public, who are bearing the financial and safety brunt of the failures. The only group that it has not failed, as has quite rightly been pointed out, are the private companies that are lining their pockets.

When reforming probation, the Government had the opportunity to make things better, transform rehabilitation, improve the prospects of offenders and slash reoffending, which is costing the country £15 billion a year. What they delivered was not so much transforming rehabilitation as privatising rehabilitation, weakening rehabilitation and ultimately destroying rehabilitation. By almost every metric and every means by which to measure its effectiveness and its success, it has failed, and some aspects have failed spectacularly.

Hon. Members have quite rightly mentioned the failures of the Through the Gate services, which have been a complete disaster. In 2015, the then Prisons Minister stated that those services would provide

“support to offenders for accommodation needs, employment brokerage and retention, finance and debt advice”.

I have seen very little evidence that that support is being provided and no sign of real, joined-up services to support offender rehabilitation.

The HMIP report and its conclusions on Through the Gate services have been referred to. What it found was startling, particularly in the areas of support the Ministry of Justice identified. Of its sample of short-term prisoners, just 31% had sufficient work done with them to meet their accommodation needs, just 33% their education and training needs, and just 12% their finance, benefit and debt advice needs. Some 10% of the sample found themselves homeless on release. Another report by HMIP found, quite worryingly, that not one offender had been helped by Through the Gate services to enter education, training or employment after release.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. For the benefit of the Chair and for Hansard, it might be better if the shadow Minister swivelled round a little and spoke into the microphone.

[Imran Hussain]

My apologies, Ms McDonagh. End-to-end offender management is vital to stop reoffending, and HMIP has set out a minimum level of requirements for resettlement. However, it is clear that Through the Gate services, when provided by private probation companies, cannot deliver. They cannot support offender rehabilitation and they cannot prepare them for life on the outside after release. It is that inability to support offenders that ensures that a privatised probation system can do nothing to stop reoffending.

Currently, around two in three prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months reoffend. One in three prisoners on longer sentences reoffend. Stopping reoffending is the very core of a probation company’s goal. It is its purpose, yet 19 out of 21 private probation companies have seen an increase in reoffending because they are treating probation not as an important service but as a box-ticking exercise. There is little to no meaningful engagement, with supervision of offenders taking place over the phone, as has been pointed out. If they do meet face-to-face, it is sometimes in a very public space with no privacy, such as in a library.

The MOJ stated that the “Transforming Rehabilitation” programme would allow providers to focus relentlessly on driving down reoffending, but that has clearly not happened, as if they are not properly supported, offenders cannot be helped in not reoffending. That does not just impact on offender rehabilitation. It has knock-on effects for prisons, as those reoffending are sent back to an overcrowded prison system, which in 2015-16 saw, on average, almost 21,000 prisoners held in overcrowded accommodation. That in turn affects prison safety, as fewer prison officers are dealing with more prisoners. The rampant and increasing violence we are seeing in prisons is just one by-product of overcrowding, putting prison officers and prisoner safety at risk.

Probation failures are not just failing those criminal justice professionals by putting their safety at risk; they are failing the judicial system, which finds itself with fewer options for sentencing. An independent judiciary that can use its discretion to a degree is an important pillar of justice, but as there is increasing distrust of CRCs to deliver community sentences, it finds itself with fewer options.

However far removed all this might be perceived to be from many people’s lives, with many of them never having an interaction with prison and probation services, the Government’s changes to probation have also failed the public. People expect safety and security in the knowledge that we have a criminal justice system that works; they expect judges to have a range of options open to them; they expect offenders to be punished when they go to prison; to be rehabilitated while there; and to be released back into the community as changed persons ready to contribute to society. But prison is not working, with increasing violence and persistent overcrowding, and neither is probation. Offenders are released back into communities without proper reform, as we see from the failure of Through the Gate services, and without proper supervision, as we see with private probation companies supervising them by phone.

The decision to privatise night-waking watch staff and replace them with minimum-wage staff at probation hostels, which house the most dangerous ex-offenders, further threatens safety and shows that the Government have not learned the lessons from privatising justice. Two people have been killed at probation hostels in the past year. The cost of reoffending totals about £15 billion a year, according to the Work and Pensions Committee. The public are footing the bill for overcrowding and reoffending, and their safety is being compromised.

The Government’s probation privatisation is failing offender rehabilitation, criminal justice professionals and the public, but not private companies, which, in fact, have quite a comfortable life. They have taken on contracts over which the MOJ has little oversight. They have failed in their goal of reducing reoffending, and there have been numerous critical reports from the probation inspector, yet no sanctions have been applied to them. If any other organisation failed in its objectives, its contracts would be wound up, so why not probation companies? They have not received the financial benefits they expected, but all they have to do is cry about falling profits and the Government bail them out. Some £22 million was handed over before any changes were made. No questions were asked, and there was no scrutiny of the private probation companies to prevent future failings. Instead, the Government changed the contracts afterwards to make things easier. The private probation companies are getting away with failure and are frankly being rewarded for it.

The creation of private probation companies has been a disaster, and the reform of probation has been an extraordinary failure. The companies have let down everyone they have come across and are not fit for purpose. I have a number of questions for the Minister. He and I have worked together on other policy areas, and I know that he is quite an amiable, reasonable chap. He has the opportunity today to really listen, to address this issue and to start afresh. Nobody will accept that the privatisation of probation has not been a failure.

My asks of the Minister are these. Will he accept that Through the Gate services have failed, and will he put in place changes in conjunction with other Departments to deliver joined-up services so that offenders are given every opportunity to be rehabilitated on release? What is the contingency plan in the event of the collapse of Interserve, which, as I am sure he will agree, is increasingly likely? Has his Department learned lessons from this disaster, and will it keep people safe by abandoning its plans to privatise the night-waking watch in probation hostels? Finally, will he accept that transforming rehabilitation has been a failure, and will he commit to take probation back in-house to deliver a probation service that works for offender rehabilitation, the criminal justice system and the public, not for private, profit-making companies?

Joint Enterprise

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate on this difficult issue, which is not a small matter. Does she agree that 4,500 people are currently in prison having been caught by the wrongful application of joint enterprise law? Men, women and children are serving long sentences for crimes that they did not commit.

[Lucy Powell]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. We know it is at least that sort of figure—we do not have accurate figures.

Local Authority Funeral Charges

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered local authority funeral charges.

In particular, I hope that the House will consider the exploitative fees faced by non-residents of a borough at their time of grief.

I will start by setting the scene faced by thousands upon thousands of families across the UK, before moving on to consider the specific cost of burials and then the disparity in charges between local authorities. Around one in seven families across the nation simply cannot afford to pay astronomical funeral costs, with the staggering cost of funeral poverty now at a record high of £160 million. The average cost of a funeral in Britain now stands at a remarkable £3,897, a figure that is up 5.5% in the last year alone. Funeral costs are rising faster than inflation, wages or pensions. In fact, the cost of even a basic funeral doubled between 2004 and 2014, and it has risen even faster, year on year, since 2014.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case about funeral poverty and I congratulate her on securing this debate on the subject. Does she agree that the UK Government should do all they can to help local authorities to remove these fees and follow the lead set by my own local authority of Torfaen, which has abolished child burial fees all together?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I am sure that, like me, he would like to congratulate our hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for all her work in that regard; I will refer to her again later.

The rising cost of funerals has left a huge number of families trapped in a state of funeral poverty, which manifests itself both financially and emotionally, with University of Bath research identifying depression, anxiety and insomnia as funeral poverty’s common associates. It is no wonder, therefore, that funeral services were the most common item for credit card usage in the UK in 2013, with one in 10 people having to sell belongings to cover funeral costs. Grief leads to exploitation, exploitation leads to debt, and I personally cannot think of many worse debts to hang over a person than that arising from a family member’s funeral. I even hear that the Select Committee on Work and Pensions was told of a sobering case of a mother who was reportedly unable to afford a funeral for her son. Consequently, she was forced to freeze his body for months on end while she saved the necessary money to pay the funeral fees. That is just one of the terribly tragic human stories behind the facts and figures of widespread funeral poverty.

Such extortionate costs are not only faced by individuals but by local authorities. I am particularly disturbed to hear that several councils, including Monmouthshire County Council in Wales, carried out multiple public health funerals using shared graves last year, identifying a shortage of land as the reason for such an inhumane practice.

Despite the wide-ranging issues in relation to funeral poverty, it is the specific problem of burial costs and their widespread disparity across local authorities that led me to call this debate. A constituent of mine, Rachel, experienced the problem at first hand. When Rachel’s grandfather died in 1976, her family bought a plot for six graves in Honor Oak cemetery, which is in the London Borough of Southwark. In 1988, her grandmother passed away and was subsequently buried in the family plot. Rachel’s family now live in my constituency of Mitcham and Morden, in the London Borough of Merton, which is just a few miles south of Southwark.

Sadly, Rachel’s mother died in July this year. When Rachel and her family applied to open the plot in Southwark so that Rachel’s mother could be buried alongside her own mother and father, Rachel was advised that the charge to do so would be trebled, just because her mother was not a resident of Southwark at the time of her death and despite the fact that her family owned the grave space. The cost for Rachel’s family was a staggering £3,977.

I believe that was unfair; Rachel knew it was completely unfair; and, fortunately, after a little hesitation the head of the cemetery also agreed that it was unfair. Five days before the funeral, he accepted that Rachel’s family could bury their mother in the plot for a resident’s fee, which, at £1,326, is already expensive.

Rachel’s story of that anomaly is a story about the widespread national exploitation of grief. I, for one, do not think that Rachel or her family should ever have been put in that position in the first place. Rachel believes that the varying costs that families face from borough to borough is both unjust and unfair, calling it an

“extortionate death payment that is decided by the borough”.

Rachel has also said:

“Although we eventually managed to avoid paying the non-resident charge, there are others who are less able to fight the injustice, especially at a time when they are at their most vulnerable and grieving the loss of a loved one.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and for bringing this very important issue to Westminster Hall for consideration. In Northern Ireland, the average cost of a funeral is £3,000 and the funeral grant scheme should be available to more people than it is currently. Does she share my concern that the age and number of dependents is not a condition, when it should be, and the reality is that someone with five children just would not have a spare £3,000 to pay for a funeral?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

The position of families should certainly be considered at that desperate time.

The compassion shown by the head of Honor Oak cemetery was an isolated incident in what is a national problem—a rule for one that has not been the rule for all. For example, my constituents, Ann and her brother William, came to see me at my weekly advice surgery. Ann and her husband are joining us today to hear the Minister’s response to the story of the turmoil that their family have been through.

Just like Rachel’s family, Ann’s family have owned a grave space for decades—in their case, since 1965 in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It holds both Ann’s grandmother and her father, who died in 1992. Before Ann’s mother passed away, she owned the grave space, which resulted in a £95.50 charge for Ann to transfer the ownership of the grave to her and her brother.

Does the Minister agree that that fee is both extortionate and unjustifiable? How can a resident in Hammersmith and Fulham be expected to pay £95.50 when a resident in Barking and Dagenham only pays £39 for the same process? And spare a thought for people in Hounslow, who would be charged £168 if they wanted to transfer the ownership of a grave.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. The average cost of a funeral in my constituency of Maidstone and The Weald is £4,900, including local authority costs, which is about 5% above the national average that the hon. Lady mentioned earlier. Does she agree that if local authorities can be persuaded to harmonise their funeral costs, they should also consider the very high additional costs?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I certainly agree with the hon. Member, but later in my speech she will hear that even that high cost is not the highest in the country.

For Ann’s family, the cost of the funeral was just the beginning, at a time when they were already grieving for Ann’s mother. As Ann’s mother was not a resident of Hammersmith and Fulham at the time of her death, Ann was faced with a cost of £682 to lay her mother’s ashes. If the burial plot had been in Kingston, Ann would have been charged just £160, which—importantly—is precisely and fairly the same cost as that faced by the local residents. However, if the burial plot had been in Bromley, the cost would have been 14 times higher than in Kingston, at a shocking £2,212. That is an example of unjustifiable extortion, which was possible just because Ann’s mother did not live in that particular borough at the time of her death.

How can such a discrepancy between charges be acceptable? These figures could not be clearer in showing that the costs associated with burial are a lottery being run by local authorities, which unfairly prey on families at their time of grief. For Ann’s family, an extra charge of £170 was thrown in for good measure when she asked to add an inscription to the headstone, even though that change involved Hammersmith and Fulham Council doing nothing at all. Logic suggests that it is the inscriber of the gravestone who should charge for an inscription. Sadly, Ann’s case does not yet have an end, and I hope that the Minister will be able to help us to establish how she can best proceed, so that she can lay her mother’s ashes and finally be at peace. Ann clearly summarises her case:

“We are certainly not equal in life, but to allow us to be equal in death is surely the fairest and only decent decision to make.”

I have contacted dozens of local authorities to compare the costs associated with burial, and I am afraid that the Government clearly do not seem to consider us to be equal in death.

I am bringing this issue to the attention of Parliament because Ann, Rachel and others have asked me for help. I have also faced this scenario myself. When my dad, Cumin McDonagh, passed away 11 years ago, my family found ourselves in exactly the same position as Ann and Rachel. In our time of grief, my sister Margaret and I wanted nothing more than to ensure that he was as close to our mum as possible. The obvious choice for our family was to lay our dad to rest in Lambeth cemetery, just a few 100 yards from our family home. The cemetery is on the border between boroughs, but it sits narrowly in Wandsworth and, as residents of Merton, our family had to pay double the cost, despite the cemetery’s proximity to our home and, most importantly, to my mum. We did not fight the cost; we were mourning the loss of our dad and all we wanted was to see him at peace.

Across the country, local authorities double, triple and even quadruple their burial fees for non-residents, regardless of how long they previously lived in the borough—nearly every council charges extra for non-residents. That multiplier applies to any burial or interment fee, plus any grave lease cost. The justification offered by local authorities is that even if someone lived in the area for the majority of their life and owned a grave space there, the authority was not receiving their council tax at the time of their death.

For a non-resident of Bromley, the already extortionate burial fee of £2,069 faced by residents is quadrupled to an enormous £8,274 for non-residents. That means that there are former Bromley-based families, just like Rachel’s and just like Ann’s, who are simply not financially able to bury a family member in their family grave. And Bromley is not alone. Local authorities right across the country are capitalising on grieving families who have no choice but to pay the staggering costs with which they are burdened. A family might move a relatively short distance across a city and find themselves a non-resident for the cemetery they want to be buried in.

What is more, the costs are rising. Local authorities have increased cremation and burial fees by up to 49% over the past year. As a headline in The Times so aptly put it, “RIP affordable funerals”. I am sure that the Minister will agree that the bereaved should not be faced with the burden of having to shop around for the best deal on burial costs. It is unsurprising that human behaviour at a time of grief is not reflective of the behaviour of a typical so-called consumer. Those of us who have faced the loss of an immediate family member know only too well that we are desperate for the process to be as easy and efficient as possible and, above all, we want to be able to honour our loved ones as best we can. The last thing we want is to appear stingy to their memory. Those setting the burial costs know that, and they are in a position to capitalise on it immorally. What is more, privately-owned cemeteries are raising costs faster than ever, and I fear that recent history suggests that local authorities will follow suit, which indicates that there will be a worsening problem in years to come.

Although rates of cremation are rising, many people do not see it as an option, including many faith groups who consider burial to be a religious and deeply symbolic requirement. Choosing a burial, rather than a cremation, can add up to £5,000 in certain areas of the country, bringing some commentators to call a burial a luxury that is simply out of the reach of many families. Take Highgate cemetery in north London, where a burial can cost a simply staggering £18,325, or Hammersmith and Fulham’s council-led cemeteries in Fulham Palace Road and Margravine, which come with burial costs of a mind-blowing £12,464.

[Mrs Helen Grant]

I accept that the hon. Lady may well say more about this, but I wanted to mention that losing a child can be traumatic and can often lead to extreme financial hardship for the family, especially given the staggering costs to which she refers. I hope she agrees that the Chancellor should consider, in the coming Budget, setting up a child funeral fund to assist with those very high expenses in the case of children.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I absolutely agree. We have already made reference to the wonderful campaign run by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. She has been successful in getting child burial fees wiped out in Wales, as a result of that moving campaign and the story of the death of her son.

In Wandsworth, the cheapest council-led cemetery has burial costs of £4,697. The fees have risen by more than inflation in eight out of 10 council areas, with Watford Borough Council raising them by a remarkable 49.1% in the past year alone. That could be considered an isolated extremity, but not when burial fees are rising by more than double the rate of inflation across the country. They have risen faster than overall inflation, year on year, since 1980—they rose, on average, from £1,571 to £1,755 last year alone. Perhaps there is no starker example than that of the residents of Dunbartonshire in Scotland, where a letter change in a postcode makes the difference between being able to afford a burial and not. People in East Dunbartonshire should expect a fee of £2,088, which is almost double the fee in neighbouring West Dunbartonshire. As James Dunn, founder of Funeralbooker, so succinctly puts it:

“These price hikes are the ultimate stealth tax and a hidden side of austerity, going completely unnoticed by families until their moment of need. But with such significant price differences now appearing across the UK, many will be questioning whether these fees genuinely reflect the service they are getting or are simply down to opportunistic greed.”

I could not have put it better myself. There is a stark and immoral postcode lottery for the cost of dying, from an average burial fee of £419 in Northern Ireland to one of £3,806 in London. It is absolutely abhorrent that councils capitalise on life’s two certainties—tax and death—to plug the gaps in their funding and make up for widespread Government cuts.

So, what can be done? Although it does not excuse its extortionate pricing structure, I commend Lewisham Borough Council’s decision to ensure that all costs for non-residents are the same as for residents, provided they lived in the borough for more than 10 years. Hounslow Borough Council runs a similar scheme, whereby the fees are scaled to reflect the time spent in the borough. Does the Minister agree that such schemes could be replicated across all local authorities to ensure that the situation faced by Ann’s family, Rachel’s family and thousands of other families across the country is stopped once and for all?

Debate in these Chambers has led to tangible change and action on burial fees, with the commendable campaign on burial fees for children led by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East leading to such change across Wales. If we should take away one thought from today’s debate it should be Ann’s own words:

“I ask that the exploitation of grief stops, that there is one fair charge across all boroughs”.

I understand that there is a shortage of space for burials, with 680,000 of them projected for between 2015 and 2020 and full cemeteries providing councils with little income. I understand that residents’ taxes pay for the upkeep of council-led cemeteries. I even understand that there has to be a significant cost associated with a burial. But I do not understand the exploitation of the grief faced by families who are simply not in a position to negotiate or to shop around for the best deal. I do not understand the justification for astronomical burial costs, which is that they are needed to plug the gap that local authorities face due to Government cuts, and I certainly do not understand how those same local authorities can justify doubling, trebling or even quadrupling fees for their deceased former residents whose family members just want to see them laid to rest. It is high time that this tax on grief is put to rest.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.

May I extend my condolences to the hon. Lady’s constituents on the sad loss of their loved one? I was very sorry to hear of their distressing experience, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising these concerns today. This constituency case raises an important matter that many of us will have to face when we lose a loved one. Understandably, however, it is an issue that we may focus on only when sadly we find ourselves faced with a perhaps unexpected financial pressure at an already difficult and distressing time.

The hon. Lady has questioned the sometimes wide variation in the burial and cremation fees charged across local authorities. I appreciate that those differences may sometimes be unexpected or difficult to understand—after all, public burial and cremation authorities are likely to be providing very similar services and facilities—but local authorities’ independence from central Government means that they are responsible for managing their budgets in line with local priorities. That is entirely appropriate; central Government cannot predict exactly what the cost of a local service will be. The fact that local authorities’ money is not ring-fenced allows them to use their resources flexibly, rather than going through burdensome reporting and accounting processes.

Local spending decisions are better made by people who understand their communities and who are therefore best placed to make the right call. For that reason, local authority spending priorities are ultimately a matter for local discretion. Councils in England will receive more than £200 billion for local services, including burial and cremation services, over the spending period 2015-16 to 2019-20. We do not shy away from saying that difficult decisions are required to finish the job of eliminating the deficit and dealing with our debts, but what we have seen since 2010 is that efficiencies can be made while broadly maintaining satisfaction with local government.

In line with the principle of local discretion, public burial and cremation authorities have the power to set their charges at levels they consider appropriate. It has been argued that one of the factors affecting the level of local burial fees is the availability of burial space, which is running out in parts of towns, cities and countryside. It is not a concern in some areas, however, so it is not yet clear that pressure on burial space is a national issue requiring central Government intervention. Successive Administrations have kept the situation under review, and we are considering whether the current position should continue.

In view of London’s particular needs in this area, the London Local Authorities Act 2007 makes special provision for eligible public burial authorities to terminate burial rights and reuse graves, subject to certain conditions. The decision on whether to make use of those provisions is a matter for individual burial authorities, taking into account all the local relevant factors. To date, however, take-up has been very low.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

If the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Government can find it in their hearts to look at fees for child burial, why can guidance not come from the Department for Communities and Local Government about what the Government would wish to see from English local authorities? As the major funder of local authorities, that would seem a reasonable thing to do.

[Dr Lee]

Cross-Government work is going on in response to the campaign by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I will come to that point later, but the decision on that work is yet to be made. The complexity is that the policy area sits across a number of Departments. If the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden will bear with me, we are coming to a resolution.

In exercising their local discretion, many public burial and cremation authorities have chosen to waive or reduce fees for children’s funerals. I am grateful to those that have done that, and I take this opportunity to encourage many more authorities to consider it. I recognise the Welsh Government’s commitment in that context, and I would also like to thank providers of wider bereavement services, such as Co-op Funeralcare, that have made the decision to waive fees relating to children’s funerals.

The loss of a child is an incredibly difficult and distressing experience for any family, and the costs connected with it can therefore be of particular concern. As has been said many times in this debate, the issue has been championed over the past year by the hon. Member for Swansea East. I pay tribute to her tireless campaigning and her courage in sharing her own tragic experience in order to highlight this important matter. As promised in our manifesto commitment, we continue to work across Government to identify what more can be done to support families in the very difficult circumstances following the loss of a child.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden also raised the variation in funeral costs more generally. The Government would not want to interfere with an individual’s choices for their funeral arrangements. In any event, the cost of funerals is not just an issue for Government—providers of funeral services including faith communities, funeral directors, local authorities and owners of crematoriums all have a role to play. We believe that where a family can take responsibility for the cost of funeral arrangements, they should do so, but there are times when state support is appropriate.

We are committed to supporting vulnerable people going through bereavement. The period following a death will have an emotional, social and economic impact for the bereaved, and people may need to draw on a wide range of support at that difficult time. That includes the provision of funeral expenses payments to help people on qualifying benefits with the costs of arranging a funeral. Such payments make a significant contribution towards the costs of a simple, respectful funeral, covering the necessary costs involved with burial or cremation and up to £700 of other funeral expenses. Funding from the funeral expenses payments scheme and social fund budgeting loans offers an adequate level of support, while crucially maintaining a fiscally viable fund.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

We are drawing near the end of this debate. Will the Minister consider taking on the issue of the discrepancies between resident and non-resident burial costs and encourage local authorities to look at understanding the length of time someone may have lived in a borough prior to their death?

[Dr Lee]

I will of course consider taking that on. As I said, the bereaved may need to draw on a range of support.

A question was raised about burial fees increasing because of austerity. We do not shy away from telling people that further difficult decisions are required to eliminate the Government’s deficit, but it has already been demonstrated that we made difficult decisions with local government finance and the public have broadly been supportive.

A number of issues were raised. A question was asked about the increase in public health funerals, which are the responsibility of local authorities. Funeral costs beyond burial and cremation fees are a commercial matter. I am grateful to those providers that already reduce or waive fees, particularly in relation to children. Transfer fees are at the discretion of local authorities. A child funeral fund was suggested, and that is a matter directly for the Treasury. I ask the hon. Lady to write to officials with details of the constituency case she raised. We will fully consider it.

I thank those Members who have contributed by way of intervention: the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden. This debate has been a valuable opportunity to discuss matters that, if not considered openly, can only add to distress at the most difficult times in our lives. In participating in today’s debate, I believe we have gone some way towards positively addressing this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Jane Harrison

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Friday 3rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate. Before I begin, I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) for championing Helen’s law in this House last year, following the tireless campaigning of Marie McCourt after her daughter Helen McCourt was murdered in 1988.

This is not a speech that I would ever have wished to make. On 15 June 1995, Ms Jane Harrison disappeared following a trip to Wood Green shopping centre. She has never been seen again and her body has never been found. She was just 32 years old. Jane was murdered by her jealous and controlling partner, Kevin Doherty. Jane left behind a grieving family, devastated parents and sisters, and two young sons, then aged 14 and just 18 months old. I would like this House to acknowledge the presence of Jane’s family in the Public Gallery today. I know that the Harrisons would be very grateful for the opportunity to meet the Minister in person to discuss their case.

The path to justice for the Harrison family has been long, and at times it has felt impossible. In January 2013, after 18 years of heartache and agony for the Harrison family, Kevin Doherty was finally sentenced to 12 years in jail for manslaughter. At the time of Jane’s murder, Doherty was leading a double life. He was married to someone else with whom he had other children, but he was also in a relationship with Jane. Together they had a baby, and Jane also had a teenage son from a previous relationship. Doherty was a controlling partner, and had been abusive to Jane previously.

On the day of Jane’s disappearance, the couple were seen arguing near her flat on Poet’s Road, Islington. The last trace of Jane was at 5 pm in Wood Green shopping centre, buying items for the family’s holiday to Florida. However, Doherty had already cancelled plans for the holiday without Jane knowing—because he knew that they would not be going.

Doherty claimed that he had later dropped Jane off at her mother’s house and that she had never returned home to him. Jane was reported missing by Doherty the following day. It was not until 2012 that technological advances allowed for cell site analysis to be undertaken, which proved that Doherty had lied to police in 1995 when he had originally been arrested. Doherty had claimed that Jane had called the landline at the family flat twice after she had disappeared. On both occasions the calls happened in the presence of witnesses. Call analysis in 2012 showed that the calls had actually been made from Doherty’s mobile phone. Furthermore, Doherty’s movements in the days after Jane’s disappearance did not tie in with cell site data. So what happened on 16 June 1995 remains largely unknown.

We do know that Doherty killed Jane. No one else has ever been investigated as being connected to the case. Doherty’s manslaughter conviction in 2012 should have provided the Harrison family with closure, but 12 years is not enough for a man who took away a loving mother, sister and daughter from her family.

At the same time, Doherty has never expressed any remorse for Jane’s murder, nor has he ever revealed the location of her body. Doherty’s final act of remorseless cruelty has meant that the Harrison family have never been able to give Jane the dignity of a funeral and a resting place. The Harrisons have never had somewhere to visit together on anniversaries—somewhere to place a bunch of flowers.

Jane’s parents, Phyllis and John, devoted their lives to searching for justice for their daughter and raising the two beloved sons she left behind, but they died before they were able to see Doherty finally being brought to justice. Jane’s sister, Claire, told me that it was her mother’s dying wish that Jane was found and laid to rest with her parents, but calculated murderer Doherty has denied the family that source of closure.

I hope that the Minister can empathise with the horror that the Harrisons felt when they discovered that Doherty, the same man that not only murdered Jane, but had concealed for 22 years where her body is, could be eligible for parole next year, six years into his 12-year sentence.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

While we are waiting on Helen’s law, there is nothing to stop the Parole Board from changing its deadlines. I would like to hear from the Minister about how he is going to act on the letter that I received in May 2016, saying that this whole matter would be reviewed by the Parole Board. When will those guidelines be updated to prevent people such as the murderer of Jane Harrison from being released on parole?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

The English legal system does not require a convicted murderer to admit guilt or to reveal the location of a victim’s remains before they are released on parole, after their determined tariff. It should be common sense that Kevin Doherty, like Ian Simms, the murderer of Helen McCourt, should under no circumstances be eligible to apply for parole. The law must be changed to acknowledge the suffering that Doherty has caused to the Harrison family.

Today, I wish to reaffirm my support for the campaign led in parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North. First, murderers like Doherty must be denied parole for as long as they refuse to disclose the whereabouts of their victim’s remains. Secondly, Doherty, and those like him, must serve a full-life tariff, without the option of parole or release, until the murderer discloses the location, and enables the recovery, of their victim’s remains. This must pertain regardless of their behaviour in prison.

Thirdly, as stipulated in Helen’s law, the following rarely used common law offences must automatically be applied in murder and manslaughter trials without a body:

“preventing the burial of a body and conspiracy to prevent the burial of a body, disposing of a body, obstructing a coroner”,

as applied in the case of Regina v. Hunter in 1974. Those pieces of legislation would serve to properly enforce laws that are already in place but rarely used.

Currently, decisions are made by the Parole Board on a case-by-case basis, but the law needs to change so that it is, by default, on the side of victims and their families, not on that of the murderers. Even putting aside the families’ pain and grief, these murderers are dangerous. By refusing to admit their guilt, and by denying families this small act of closure, they demonstrate their culpability and their very real threat to society.

Sadly, hon. Members will know that Jane Harrison’s is one of so many devastating cases in which a body has never been found. I wish to take the opportunity to remind the House of the many other murder cases in which the body has never been recovered, including that of Helen McCourt in 1988, who was just 22; Keith Bennett in 1964, who was just 12 years old; Paul Morson in 2011, who was 32 years old; Danielle Jones from Essex, who was 15; Suzanne Pilley from Scotland, in 2010; and little April Jones in 2012, who was just five years old.

The families of each of those victims have suffered untold grief, without the humanity of a funeral and a peaceful resting place. Indeed, since 2007, there have been 30 murder cases throughout England and Wales in which no body has been recovered. In every single one of those cases, a murderer who continues to torment the families of their victims in such a cold-blooded way should under no circumstances be eligible for freedom. Jane’s killer should not have the option of freedom until Jane’s family are granted the dignity of a final resting place for her.

Without robust laws in place, our justice system can go horribly wrong. Take the example of the notorious Sidney Cooke, convicted child molester and serial killer. In 1989, Cooke was sentenced to 19 years for the manslaughter of 14-year-old Jason Swift, and he was guilty of the murder of seven-year-old Mark Tildesley. But in 1989, his sentence was reduced to 16 years, and he was paroled nine years later, in April 1998, having refused rehabilitation in prison and having never revealed where Mark Tildesley’s body was to his bereaved parents.

Mercifully, Cooke was rearrested in 1999 and received two life sentences. Nevertheless, that demonstrates that our justice system has made terrible mistakes in the past. We must act now to stop that happening again in future. The policy of “no body, no parole” is already in force in South Australia, and it is being considered in Australia at federal level. Under the law, convicted murderers in prison are given an opportunity to co-operate with the police in exchange for more lenient sentencing or parole options. All states in Australia have considered something like this, with South Australia and Victoria taking the lead in its actual implementation.

The law will only apply to people who have the opportunity for parole anyway, so someone could not get a lesser charge for information on the whereabouts of a body if they had no chance of parole from the outset. At the same time, just describing the location of a victim’s body would not guarantee a murderer early release. The Parole Board would still have the final say and could deny it if the perpetrator still posed a threat to society. As of now, Australia is the only country that has implemented something like this, even at the local level.

Along with my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North and many others, I firmly believe that the UK could lead the way and be the second country to enshrine this law. This would not only give grieving families the chance for some closure but serve as a future example to others. I hope that the Minister will today outline the Ministry of Justice’s plans to amend the law to reflect this groundbreaking and fair mechanism, to deliver justice to the families who deserve it and to the memories of so many people. Jane Harrison’s family must not be let down by our justice system, and I hope that the Minister will agree that we all have a duty to preserve Jane’s memory. Jane should be remembered in life, more than in death, as a loving mum, sister and daughter.

This was not an easy speech to write and this is a very difficult subject for any of us to talk about, so I would like to end with a few words from Jane’s sister, Claire, who I know has fought for years for justice for her sister:

“We were so close, and we spoke every day. She was a wonderful sister, and a devoted mother. And I know that the last thing that my sister thought of the day she died was of her two boys.

This grief that we have carried for twenty-two years, it doesn’t get easier—it gets harder each day. And not to have some closure, somewhere for us to gather, to lay flowers —it is absolute agony.

I want to ask the Minister, what if this was a member of your family? Can you put yourself in our shoes? Could you stand to see a man who has caused such devastation walk free?

Please help us, for the sake of our whole family, for the memory of our wonderful Jane—and for all those who have had to suffer the same agony before and since.”

Please listen.

Women and the Vote

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, it is incumbent on all of us to make this place look a lot more like the people we represent out there in society. The new artwork, “New Dawn”, will be seen not only by MPs and peers, but by many members of the public. I spoke last night to one of the gentlemen who was involved in the creation of it and he told me that it will last for up to 300 years, so long after we have all shuffled off, many people will appreciate the work and be as inspired by it as I am.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the cause of women is international, and that it is truly wonderful that, today, a woman is the presumptive Democratic party nominee for President of the United States? That will mean so much to our daughters and our granddaughters right across the globe.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, absolutely. Hillary Clinton has talked about a massive glass ceiling being broken. Previously, she has spoken about women’s issues being the pet rock in the backpack of some of our politicians. No longer will women’s issues be that pet rock; they will be front and centre of all political parties’ intentions in the future.

One hundred and fifty years on, the world is a radically different place. I am sure that those early campaigners would be pleased to see that we now have not only the vote, but women in Parliament as well. I am sure that, like me, they would feel that 191 female MPs at the moment is still not enough.

International Women’s Day 2016

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is gender parity, and I want to focus on the plight of low-paid women. We like to think that we live in an enlightened age of women’s rights, but, shockingly, the World Economic Forum has calculated that the gender gap in health, education, politics and the economy will not close until 2133. It will therefore take another five generations before women are on an equal footing with men.

Turning to women’s economic parity with men in the UK, a quarter of women now earn below the real living wage, which is £9.40 an hour in London. Our so-called economic recovery and increasing employment are being achieved off the backs of low-paid women. A staggering 60% of new jobs for women created since 2010 have been in the lowest-paid industries. Women make up three quarters of those in part-time work, earning on average 25% less an hour than their full-time colleagues. They dominate the lowest-paid sectors, where 62% of workers paid below the living wage are women. Some 90% of nurses are women and 84% of carers are women. Over 70% of hospitality waiting staff are women. In all those professions, women perform important work, but they are hugely undervalued.

Even in higher-paid jobs, women earn significantly less. The figure for median gross earnings for men is almost £30,000, but it is just over £24,000 for women—a 25% gap. While women make up half of all apprentices, they are being short-changed because of implicit gendered occupational segregation. Women dominate the lowest-paid apprenticeships, making up 83% of health and social care apprentices and 91% of childcare apprentices. Meanwhile, men dominate the highest-paid apprenticeships, where only 3% of engineering apprentices, 2% of construction apprentices and 10% of IT apprentices are women. The outcome is a gender pay gap in apprenticeships that is now at 21%. That means that a woman apprentice will earn just £4.82 an hour on average, which compares with £5.85 an hour for her male colleague. There are, however, a few promising developments for future generations, and I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s sponsorship of TechFuture Girls, which I welcomed to Parliament last week. This is a remarkable network of clubs inspiring young girls into tech, where they are currently hugely under-represented, and it is available free to all schools in the UK.

We also know that the Government’s gendered policies have seen benefits cuts that have hit women disproportionately, in favour of tax cuts for high earners, disproportionately benefiting men. Since 2010, £26 billion-worth of cuts have been made in benefits, tax credits, pay and pensions, and a staggering 85% of that total has been taken solely from women. At the same time, the Government have watered down the Treasury’s gender impact assessments, meaning that the true extent of these changes and their real impact on women is being disguised.

We might think that the introduction of the so-called “national living wage” would make the situation a lot better for women. I ask every woman in the House, when she listens to the Budget next week, just to consider that many women will take home less next month because of the national living wage, as a result of the stripping out of benefits, London weighting and double time on a Sunday. Let us then, as women, all stand together and say that those women deserve more, not less.

Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Safer Neighbourhood policing in London.

Thank you very much, Mr Evans, for giving me the opportunity to make a contribution on the issue of neighbourhood policing. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Those of us who have been in Parliament for some time will remember that we used to have an opportunity every year to discuss policing in London, which is a matter of huge concern to us. We no longer do that, but I am pleased that we have the chance to discuss the issue for the next hour.

When the London safer neighbourhood policing scheme was formally launched in two wards in Brent and north Paddington in my constituency in 2004, it marked a new era in the policing of modern London. It was widely accepted that fundamental changes were needed.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I just want to slightly amend what my hon. Friend said. St Helier in Mitcham and Morden was also part of that pilot.

[Ms Buck]

I hope that does not establish a pattern by which all my hon. Friends seize the opportunity to claim the credit for launching safer neighbourhood policing. In a sense, it does not matter. It was launched in 2004 by the then Labour Mayor of London, and I hope it prefigures important changes in policing by our future Labour Mayor of London, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who is sitting to my right.

Safer neighbourhood policing was an important response to a flaw in the way that London was policed over a number of years. It was always about more than just resources. Of course, it was partly about policing numbers, which had been falling for many years and were of great concern to Londoners, but it was also about having a different approach and attitude. The most unimportant aspect of it, although it was not wholly insignificant, was the fact that the area-based policing—the closest thing to the neighbourhood model that existed before 2004—was an unwieldly and clunky model of relating to communities. It did not work effectively, in terms of community participation and setting local priorities, and did not give local police continuity so they could establish the relationships they needed.

The safer neighbourhood policing model, which was introduced in 2004, reflected a commitment to return to communities, in all of their geographical, social and ethnic diversity. That commitment was, in part, informed by the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s. It encompassed, at the extremes, the important lessons we learned from the Scarman report on the terrible riots at the beginning of the 1980s and the Macpherson report. The Met learned important lessons from those terrible events, too.

Safer neighbourhood policing teams quickly changed the face of London policing. Indeed, they even helped to change the face of the police themselves. The police community support officer role was an important route for recruiting Londoners. One of the concerns that some of my colleagues will always have is that many of London’s police are drawn from outside London for different economic reasons. We want London’s police to reflect the face of modern London. The safer neighbourhood team route and the PCSOs, which were a part of that model, were a means of doing that. As Lord Stevens recognised at the time, they helped us to change the face of policing. It was obvious; when we, as local politicians, began to develop relationships with our police, we saw that changes were taking place.

The other critical issue about safer neighbourhood police teams in the early years was the commitment to a core team. At that point, they used the 1-2-3 model, comprising the sergeant, the constables and the three PCSOs. There was a commitment not to remove members of safer neighbourhood police teams to provide aid and assistance to other activities, but to provide the continuity that is crucial in keeping them connected to their local communities and give them time and space to develop important relationships with residents’ and tenants’ organisations, local schools, mosques, churches and youth clubs. In addition to a dedicated sergeant in each ward, they had someone with the skills and experience necessary to make those relationships work. The mere fact of being a sergeant does not give a person the ability to do that, but reflecting a degree of seniority within those police teams is important and it says something significant about the way in which relationships are built and sustained in communities.

I can think of several individuals—I am sure my colleagues and other hon. Members have faces that they can call to mind—who demonstrated a real change in policing style at the neighbourhood level. Stuart Marshall was the Queen’s Park sergeant for many years. He ultimately transferred to use the skills and knowledge he built up in the Queen’s Park ward—a deprived ward that includes the Mozart estate, which is a very challenging community—to continue to tackle antisocial behaviour with City West Homes. Ken Taylor built up a superb track record in the middle of the last decade in countering crack houses, which had become a plague in parts of London and required a new model of relationship building so the police could act quickly and close them down.

Ian Rowing was a long-term sergeant in Church Street. Only a few months ago—he had been in post since 2004—residents fought to keep him in Church Street because of the excellent relationships and local knowledge that he had built up. The residents said to me, “There is nothing he doesn’t know. There are no people he doesn’t know. He knows every corner of his ward. He knows what is going on, and he has built up a trusting relationship with people.” He was taken off, against all our wishes and advice, to fill some of the yawning gaps in the custody service, which are a huge challenge for London police at the moment.

Lawrence Knight is still serving Maida Vale and Little Venice brilliantly. Paul Reading, a member of his team, runs a boxing club in Little Venice. Anybody who wants to see the face of top-quality community policing should see the work he does. Over time, he has worked with hundreds of sometimes very challenging young men in that corner of London, and he has built up an enormous number of relationships based on trust and knowledge. Some of the newer people working now—I am not able to mention them all—include Sean Marshall, Ian Armstrong, Jason Emmett, John Marshall and Mohammed Nouri. They are relatively new, but their work has been absolutely superb.

But the model has changed, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about that. The continuity of the relationships that were built up and of the police teams themselves has largely evaporated. Under this mayoralty, since 2008 the Met has lost 23% of dedicated neighbourhood uniformed officers in London boroughs and more than 2,400 PCSOs since 2010 alone, and it has closed 63 police stations—we were told that their closure would lead to a huge reinvestment in community policing—due to the £600 million of budget cuts over the past four years.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

As with clothes and interior design, there are fashions in policing, and we are seeing a backlash against the current fashion. What is happening is not just about money, although money may be the principal cause, but about the fact that some in policing circles simply did not believe in the community policing model—the one sergeant, two PCs and three PCSOs model—as set out by Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor and by a number of Labour Home Secretaries, because it “de-policed” the police. However, it actually enhanced what the police could do, particularly in areas that are more financially challenged and that have more people who are excluded. We began to witness more people willing to talk to the police than ever before.

With those increasing police numbers came more police bases. There is a huge issue about the enormous waste of money that has resulted from closing local offices that were opened in order to place safer neighbourhood teams at the heart of their community. In my constituency, Mitcham and Morden, we have seen the closure of the Lavender Fields and Graveney team office in Wilson Avenue, which must have taken thousands of pounds to open to standards that the Metropolitan police accept.

Pollards Hill is a ward right on the outskirts of Mitcham and Morden, bordering Croydon and Lambeth. People there feel out on a limb and excluded from their local area, and the police office there showed a real investment in their community. People felt that the police were close to them and dealing with the problems they face. I am sad to say that some of those problems relate to gangs and stabbings. We do not have the same level of such problems as other hon. Members will in their constituencies, but the fact that that office is no longer there for people to turn to when issues arise is a real problem for that community. Again, there is the issue of the costs involved in opening these offices and then closing them, leaving memorials to a police system that worked a great deal better than it does currently. That is really sad.

There is an idea that we can point to crime figures and say, “Crime is down, so it’s okay.” However, if we consider confidence in policing, and we look at the figures for the fear of crime in my borough of Merton, we see that about two thirds of people now fear crime, when the figure was once the lowest in London. Mitcham has 41% of the crimes that take place in the borough, but 68% of people fear crime—the fact that people can no longer see their police officers has tripled the numbers.

When there was a stabbing in Pollards Hill, where would people go? They would go first to the police officer or the PCSO at the local high school. We can be pretty sure that within hours those officers would have had a very good idea of how the incident came about and who was involved. That would then allow the police response teams—Trident or whoever—to go into action and to deal with the issue.

When we have our police meetings, some in the police—I suppose this is out of frustration at their situation—tell residents, “You don’t have a crime problem here. Crime is not high. You live in one of the safest boroughs in London.” That really does not wash if someone has seen a young man stabbed outside their kitchen window. Although people can absolutely rationalise that that would never happen to them as a middle-aged woman, an older dad or a young child, they have seen it happening in their neighbourhood and they want it dealt with. Their fear is for themselves, their children and their neighbourhood. When they know that the police office that used to be open behind their homes is no longer there, there is a real and severe feeling that, given the level of policing in their area, the possibility of dealing with these issues becomes less.

When we combine that with local authority cuts in youth services, we get a maelstrom. In Pollards Hill, in Merton, we do not have a huge youth service. The Pollards Hill youth centre was due to close in April this year. Luckily, we brought people together to build an alliance to keep it open. However, I suspect that, in areas more challenged than mine, a combination of police cuts, youth service cuts and the inability of services to take young people away from crime will create a legacy that will be with us for a long time. That will not save any more money, and it will cause far more challenges for many more vulnerable people.

Women and the Economy

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

No, I do not accept that at all. The CBI did not ask about the careers advice offered under the Labour Government, who had a proper careers system in schools. The CBI asked about the careers advice that is on offer now, at a time when the Government have scrapped a decent careers service and are leaving it to the discretion of schools and asking people to go online to get it.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I am sure my hon. Friend is aware of the Education Committee report that pointed to the complete collapse of the careers service because of short-term cuts made by the coalition Government.

[Kate Green]

Exactly. I hope the Minister will take a little more time in her speech to explain which part of the present Government’s apprenticeship strategy addresses gender inequality.

In 2013, the Government also said that they wanted to encourage more women to become business owners or entrepreneurs. There has been a significant increase in the number of self-employed women—between 2008 and 2011, more than 80% of the newly self-employed were women—but that may not always be by choice. Increased conditionality and lack of suitable employment mean that self-employment is an economic necessity for some, and yet the average income of a self-employed woman is just £9,800 per annum, according to the Women’s Budget Group, compared with £17,000 for a self-employed man. Self-employment is not a route out of poverty for those women.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago, the Chancellor claimed to be putting security first in his spending review, but it is obvious that he was not talking about women’s security. At the heart of this debate is the fact that the Government simply do not see women as a priority. It is assumed that women’s interests, health and security will naturally rise along with a flourishing economy, but the truth is that the Government’s economic decisions are gendered. Time and again, they benefit men more than women, and that is the result of the Government’s fundamental disregard of the importance of addressing the needs and problems of half the population.

By contrast, the Labour Government placed equality at the heart of all they did. That is why the gender pay gap reduced by a third under our watch, while maternity leave was extended and paternity leave introduced. However, since entering government in 2010, the Conservatives have undone our work. They have downgraded the importance of the Treasury’s gender impact assessment, which had been used to evaluate the impact of tax and benefit changes on both men and women. Their aim was clear—to play down the importance of women, and the importance of equality as an aim in itself in society.

The Government risk an unstable economic future if they continue to ignore us. They market apprenticeships as a way of building a high-skilled economy, but women are being short-changed. Striking gender occupational segregation means that women are under-represented in some of the better-paid sectors of technology and construction, and over-represented in the typical “female” roles of health and social care. The outcome is a gender pay gap in apprenticeships that is actually higher than the national average.

The Government have also celebrated their apparent success in getting more women into work. In truth, however, this employment does not offer many women routes out of poverty and towards financial security. For instance, women make up three quarters of those in part-time work and dominate some of the lowest-paid sectors: 62% of workers paid below the living wage are women.

Take nursing, for example. Women make up more than 90% of those studying for nursing degrees, but they will earn a relatively low wage. Cuts to student nurses’ grants will sharply reduce the incentive to study nursing, particularly as Unison has reported that 90% of nurses, including my constituent, Gemma Morris—I promised her that I would bring this up—have said that they would not have studied nursing without the grant. The Government have issued yet another blow to low-paid women in undervalued and underpaid employment.

The very worst consequences of the Government’s gendered economic choices are fatal. It is distressing to have to report in this day and age that two women each week die at the hands of domestic violence in this country. Yet instead of protecting funding for women’s refuges and domestic violence charities, the Government have allowed those services to wither away via cuts to local government. Cuts to local councils from central Government have already resulted in the closure of 30 refuges across the country, and a staggering 42% of rape crisis services do not have funding beyond March 2016. What does that all amount to? More women turned away; more women returning to their dangerous homes; more women facing a death sentence at the hands of a violent partner.

Using the revenue of the tampon tax to fund the upkeep of women’s voluntary services is not good enough. The policy is totally inadequate. It will do little to redress the terrible cuts those services have faced, and it is patronising to suggest that women’s taxes should fund women’s services. Central Government should be ensuring that the safety of women who are victims of domestic, physical and emotional violence is non-negotiable.

I suggest that the Government take a lead from this Opposition day debate and present an alternative plan of large-scale investment in social infrastructure, secure employment for women and generous provision for crucial services. Women should not be trapped in cycles of poverty and low-paid work on account of their gender. Our so-called economic recovery cannot and should not determine the success of only half our country. It must provide opportunities for all, equally.

On behalf of all those women who are cared for and cared by women, I say that next year’s cuts to local authority care services will be devastating. As the carer of a 92-year-old woman who came here in 1947 to train as a nurse, I think that is disgraceful, and we need to do something about it.