Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and John McDonnell

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I was unable to go on that visit because I was in hospital at the time. However, I have had the reports from Oakwood and I have met the Prison Officers Association. We have seen time and again the level of assaults there and the riots that have taken place. Only recently, a whole wing was taken over by prisoners. That is a result of privatisation. That is the agenda; that is what this is about. It is not about the rehabilitation, education and care of young people; the main thrust is reducing the overall cost of the system. That is why privatisation has come on to the agenda. As a result of this Government’s drive to reduce costs within the system, we are putting the lives of young people at risk.

I grew up on an estate where young people were sent into the prison system—that is, borstals. This proposal is bringing borstals back into the system. We thought we had got rid of them. They were like large-scale prisons where a regime of brutality could emerge because of packing so many young people in, and where costs were limited so there was not the intensive investment looking at children’s individual needs.

This is a dreadful proposal. If it is enacted, with £85 million spent on this large-scale Titan prison for young people, we will live to regret it, because it will damage young people’s lives and, rather than rehabilitate them, force them into a more brutal form of criminal practice in future.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

There is much to commend part 1 of the Bill, but, like other hon. Members, I cannot say the same for part 2.

The plans for secure colleges are a leap into the unknown that have the potential to deliver worse outcomes for the very vulnerable young people who are placed into custody across the secure youth estate. It is not just me or other hon. Members who are saying that; it is the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Prison Reform Trust, the deputy Children’s Commissioner, and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. Like them, I worry that the introduction of secure colleges could drive up the number of young people being sent into custody—something that we are seeking to avoid. I fear that they will not meet the emotional and mental health needs of children who are placed into them, that they will not meet the excellent standards of educational attainment in some of our secure children’s homes, and that they will provide for worse outcomes for some of the youngest, and therefore most vulnerable, people we need to detain.

As the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) said, we are seeing a steady period of decline in youth imprisonment and youth crime, though one will not necessarily read about it in the newspapers. Overall, youth crime is down by 63% since 2002. Since 2009, there have been 55% fewer young people coming into the youth justice system and 36% fewer young people—that is, people under 18—in custody.

The introduction of detention and training orders under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 resulted in a large spike in the number of under-18s being sent into custody, because courts saw that as a new solution. I fear that secure colleges could create a similar spike, with children being sent into custody rather than accessing the restorative and rehabilitative options that are available to meet their complex needs.

It is clear, not least from what my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) has said, that the secure youth estate already faces considerable challenges taking account of the mental health needs, learning disabilities and difficulties, addictions, childhood abuse and neglect of the children in its care. We should not underestimate the background problems faced by those children who end up in custody.

The Prison Reform Trust study of 6,000 children in custody revealed that at least three quarters of the sample had absent fathers; a third had absent mothers; half lived in a deprived household; more than a quarter had witnessed domestic violence; another quarter had experience of local authority care; and one in five was known to have harmed themselves, and a shocking one in 10 to have attempted to take their own life. It is clear that if we are to address reoffending among that cohort, we have to first address those underlying issues.

HEALTH

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and John McDonnell

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)

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I wish to draw attention to the mismanagement and—some fear—worse of contracts by Hillingdon council and to call on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to send in commissioners to take control of the council, clean up its affairs and restore confidence in local government in my area. For some time, I have raised in the House my constituents’ concerns about the administrative competence and probity of Hillingdon council, but recent events have confirmed the need for more serious and urgent action.

The recent background is as follows. Two years ago, I learned of Hillingdon council’s proposal to demolish a residential home for the elderly in my constituency called Triscott House and to rebuild it as a modern elderly care facility. The elderly residents were decanted to other establishments, and the new facility was to open in September 2011, but the unit was not ready. Many of the elderly people who had been allocated a place in the new residential home were promised that there would be only a short delay. Ten months later, in July 2012, the home was still not open, and I was contacted by the families of the elderly people who were promised a place. The situation was extremely distressing. A lady in her 90s, with all her belongings packed in packing cases, was waiting to move, in tears. She had been promised, month after month, that her move was imminent. Others in their 80s and 90s were equally upset at the delay. I made representations to the council on behalf of them and their worried families. I, too, was promised that the situation was being resolved and each month told that the move was to take place. Eventually, the new facility opened, after a 14-month delay and dreadful distress caused to my constituents.

Rumours were flying in the area about the delay, and I called for an independent investigation into the catastrophic failure of the council to deliver the new facility on time. The council refused. There was coverage in the local press, and after that I was sent anonymously information on the cause of the delay. Information is difficult to retrieve from Hillingdon council because the administration places any reports that expose failings or poor administration—or worse—in the secret element of its cabinet meetings. It argues that this is done on grounds of commercial confidentiality, but it is certain that it is to cover up incompetence and possibly worse. In this case, the information I received confirmed that the delay to the new elderly care facility was because of a dispute with the contractor for the project.

The contractor was a company undertaking another contract for the council that required additional expenditure. The contractor was told to load the cost of that additional work on to the bill for Triscott House, the residential home for the elderly, and then told to charge the amount as “design fees”. Effectively, this was laundering money from one contract to another to the builder. Other works were undertaken by the contractor on other sites, it appears without contracts, and also charged to the Triscott elderly care home account, again as design fees.

Major contracts are approved either by the leader of the council or a cabinet member, and the responsibility for overseeing the performance of council officers in relation to such projects lies with the leader of the council or cabinet members. The question I have been asked by residents is what those people were doing when all this was going on.

After the exposure of the Triscott House fiasco in the local press, the floodgates opened, with information being sent anonymously or by residents about other council contracts. The information revealed that the new swimming pool leisure centre, recently constructed in my constituency at a cost of £30 million, began construction without a contract, only by exchange of letters of intent. Now the centre has sprung leaks, and without a contract the council is exposed to the cost of repairs.

Five years ago, and again in 2010, I raised the disgracefully poor performance of the council contractor with regard to the repair and refurbishment of Avondale flats in my area, which resulted in one of my constituents, Mr Bernard Fagan, being injured and then compensated by the council. It has now been revealed that, as we suspected, there were irregularities in the award and administration of these housing maintenance contracts. They do not comply with council standing orders.

Complaints have repeatedly been made about the delays to adaptations funded by the disability facilities grants. Concerns have now been raised that there were irregularities in the process for awarding those contracts. Another Hillingdon resident has contacted me because he has challenged the council over its expenditure of £1.17 million on three consultants since April 2010, which the council legal services department has now confirmed was without tendering, with no specification for the works and with no contracts.

I have raised these issues with my local councillors in the ward I live in, but they are unable to respond to me as virtually all these issues have been forced on to the secret part of the cabinet agenda by the ruling councillors. My local councillors have been threatened with the criminal law if they discuss matters with me. However, my ward councillor has informed me that he has written to the chief executive, the borough solicitor and the leader of the council to urge that the district auditor and the police are now brought in to investigate these activities. So far he has received a truculent reply from the leader of the council, claiming that it is an attack on staff. It is not an attack on staff: it is an attempt to hold councillors and senior well-paid officers to account.

The situation has gone beyond anything that is acceptable. Up to £50 million of work and contracts are now associated with irregularities in Hillingdon. My constituents and local tax payers are suffering now and cannot wait any longer for redress. At meeting after meeting, residents are alleging backhanders, brown envelopes and various fiddles. I have no answer for them. We need action now, and that is why I am urging the Secretary of State to send in commissioners to clean up this mess. Before I came to this place, I was in local government for 20 years. I have not seen anything on this scale since the 1980s, when some activities caused so much concern in local government. There may be reasons why contracts were not awarded and why a £30 million swimming pool was done with a letter of intent. If those reasons are valid, then fair enough. However, my understanding is that they have opened up the council to real risk. The scale of mismanagement is appalling.

People know me in this House for my independence of mind. I do not care whether this council is controlled by Labour, the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats. If this was happening under any political administration, I would be saying the same thing. We need action now. We cannot rely on the existing administration to tackle these issues. That is why I think the drastic step of the Secretary of State sending in commissioners to clean this stable out, which I have never called for before anywhere, is absolutely essential if we are to retain any confidence in local government and local administration in my community.

Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)

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It is always a pleasure to speak in these end-of-term Adjournment debates. Their value has just been aptly demonstrated by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who has sent a chilling note through the Chamber, and a warning call that I hope the authorities will listen to. It is always a great pleasure to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), with his tour de force of constituency issues. Sadly, I can take no pleasure in having to raise in this House access to flood insurance and support for flood-hit local authorities yet again.

Last night, we saw torrential rain across the south-west cause considerable damage to businesses and homes, and disruption on many key travel routes. In my constituency, the villages of Par, Bugle, St Blazey, Gorran Haven and Mevagissey have been flooded again. Across Cornwall, other communities in Polbathic, Altarnun, St Keverne and Gunwalloe have all been hit too. This is not uncommon for the people of Cornwall—just four weeks ago we were hit with flooding. The House may remember that shortly after the general election in 2010 Cornwall was hit with serious flooding too, occasioning the Prime Minister to join me in some of the communities I have just mentioned.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks and give praise to the work of the emergency services overnight—the firefighters, the police, ambulance workers across Cornwall and the south-west, and the 100 Cornwall council staff—who were out all night helping people to move to safety, and trying to minimise the damage to properties and to life. However, we are not out of the woods yet. The Met Office and the Environment Agency are predicting continued severe weather in the south-west. The EA currently has 19 flood warnings and 52 flood alerts across the region—stark warnings about large swathes of the south-west being at imminent flood risk due to the saturation levels already in the ground.

It is clear that we cannot always build flood defences that will protect people against all eventualities. I am sure that if the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) was in his place—he is an assiduous campaigner on environmental issues—he would agree that with climate change we will see increasingly unpredictable weather across our country for years to come. However, we in this House should be able to ensure that everybody has access to insurance when the worst happens. That sounds very simple, but the Government, flood groups and insurers have been grappling with the problem for a long time and seem no closer to resolving it. The typical cost of flood damage to a home is approximately £30,000, and approximately 200,000 homes are at risk of flooding.

The last Government agreed a statement of principles—a five-year agreement—that meant that flood insurance had to be included in house insurance. It was a worthy goal and a good step forward, but it was not perfect. For example, it did not apply to homes built after October 2009 and, more importantly, made little attempt to help those in the severest flood-risk areas, which was bewildering, frankly. Despite that, however, that statement of principles was a worthy effort to ensure that when flooding hit a community, people were able to rebuild their lives. Unfortunately, it expires next June, and at the moment the House is yet to see any concrete proposals for how this important issue will be dealt with after that point. Communities across the country, including those that I represent, are already struggling to get affordable flood-risk insurance, even though it might technically be available. I urge my right hon. Friend to look into this issue and ensure that the proposals come forward in a timely way and can be adequately debated by the House.

I have raised before my concerns about the Bellwin scheme—the threshold at which central Government support comes in to help local authorities hit by flooding. In Cornwall council’s case, the existing Bellwin scheme has a threshold of 0.2%, which is currently £1.41 million, as the amount it must defray before any assistance is forthcoming from central Government. This scheme is outdated and does not seem to make any allowance for the new unitary authorities. If Cornwall still had a two-tier local authority system, that threshold would be just £58,000. That, coupled with tight rules limiting funding to the additional costs incurred in dealing with the immediate emergency only, basically means that the likelihood of an emergency incurring eligible expenditure greater than the threshold is now significantly less than if the two-tier were still in place. We need to modernise and update the Bellwin scheme. Cornwall is also a fire and rescue authority, but the scheme does not factor in those parts of the country where the principal local authority is on a unitary basis and also the fire and rescue authority.

I turn to the final reason why I would like my right hon. Friend to investigate whether the Bellwin scheme can be reconsidered. Why is the dedicated schools grant used in the calculation of when a threshold is reached by a local authority? It is another instance of where the Bellwin scheme has not kept pace with the change in how local government across our nation is administered. At the moment, Cornwall council estimates repair costs of £2.5 million on the highways alone. When flooding occurs, it is not only a threat to life, but it destroys homes, wrecks businesses and leaves a significant clear-up operation in its wake, and that operation often falls to the local authority to fund.

The biggest Christmas present for all those across the country facing flooding risk would be to ensure that, as we go into next year, flood insurance is available and affordable, and that, when floods hit, local authorities have the support they need from the House and the Government to ensure that the clean-up can happen in the swiftest possible way.