Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

As I set out very recently in my written answer to the hon. Gentleman, the rule of law means that everyone has a right to access legal representation. Legal advice is often necessary to ensure that those who are subject to sanctions fully understand and comply with the restrictions, but as I said to him, lawyers are required to follow strict procedures when transacting with sanctioned individuals. Those individuals are required to obtain a licence from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation to make payments for legal services, and lawyers should carefully consider whether their advice is helping the client to comply with the sanctions or is participating or facilitating a breach of those sanctions. To be clear, there are severe penalties for breaches, including fines and potential imprisonment.

[Steve Reed]

Given what is happening in Ukraine, there is an urgency about going further than the Minister outlined. Will he consider imposing sanctions on law firms that continue to act for the Kremlin and Putin’s cronies, whose looted wealth is funding Russia’s murderous war machine?

[James Cartlidge]

It was only on 20 January that the Backbench Business Committee brought before this House a debate on SLAPPs lawfare. I responded to that debate, and at the end I said the Government would be responding. Less than two months later, the Deputy Prime Minister came before the House with detailed proposals. Of course, a key part of this is the behaviour of law firms. Any action we take—we have to be clear on this; we are the Ministry of Justice—must be subject to the rule of law and must take a balanced approach, recognising that while we want to take action, it is a fundamental right to be legally represented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week, the roof of Sheffield magistrates court fell in, delaying countless cases. A rape case was delayed when toilet water leaked into a courtroom at Maidstone Crown court in Kent. Survivors of rape already wait three years for their case to come to trial. How many cases have been delayed in total over the past five years because the Government have failed to fix crumbling courts?

[James Cartlidge]

I have given the hon. Gentleman a written answer detailing these points, but I am happy to write to him again. As I just said—it is crucial to stress this—not only is the backlog falling, but we want to go further. The key measures include legislation to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers; funding, with almost half a billion pounds in the spending review; and increased court capacity, with renewed Nightingale courts where appropriate. Increasingly, the biggest challenge is judicial capacity, but I am pleased to say that we are recruiting more full-time judges and allowing more part-time recorders to sit for more days. Importantly, having launched our £1 million recruitment campaign for our volunteer judiciary, the magistracy, we have had in excess of 20,000 expressions of interest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The average time between a victim reporting a rape and the case coming to trial has just hit a record high of more than 1,000 days, thanks to the Government’s courts backlog. Many rape victims live in fear of being confronted by their attacker if they have to wait so long for the case to come to trial. Can he tell victims why the delay in getting justice is still far too long?

[James Cartlidge]

The volume of convictions for rape has actually just increased, but I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about timeliness. As the Minister of State, Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) pointed out earlier, the backlog is now falling. It has fallen significantly in the Crown court, but of course we will continue to take steps to improve it. We have taken a whole range of positive steps to battle the backlog. Importantly, we have taken the Judicial Review and Courts Bill through the House: his party opposed it. We keep coming up with constructive measures to deal with the backlog, but the Opposition oppose them and fail to come up with any constructive suggestions of their own.

[Steve Reed]

I am afraid that to many victims who are waiting nearly three years for their case to come to trial that response will sound very complacent. The Bar Council has told the Government that their proposal to give magistrates more sentencing powers could make the backlog even worse because it would lead to more defendants choosing to go to Crown court, where there is already a very significant backlog. Are the Government making a bad situation worse because they do not have a clue what they are doing or because they have gone soft on crime?

[James Cartlidge]

We are not going to take any lectures on being soft on crime from a party that voted against our measures to toughen sentences for serious sexual and violent offences. Labour Members voted against that in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, so we will not take any lectures. The key thing is this: we keep taking positive measures—we have mentioned the super-courts and the Nightingale courts—and they keep opposing them. They have not yet come up with a single constructive suggestion. We are putting the investment in place, with £477 million in the spending review. At some point the hon. Gentleman will have to come up with a constructive suggestion, not just carp from the Opposition Benches.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Debate between Steve Reed and James Cartlidge

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman raises that, because when I won control of Lambeth Council for the Labour party in 2006, we took over from an administration, jointly run by the Conservatives, that had raised council tax by 33% over four years, and yet service performance was on the floor. I froze council tax, with no increase at all for two years, and despite doing so, we raised the performance of standards that were left on the floor by Conservatives and achieved an outstanding rating in every single category of children’s services. We did that because Labour Members understand value for money, while Conservative Members simply do not.

The proof of that is in what the Government are trying to do with the council tax rise this year. Families who are worried about paying their heating bills or putting food on the table simply cannot afford it. It will put them under even greater financial strain and it will hit high streets that, right now, are struggling to survive. Many local businesses are on their last legs financially after years of restrictions. These tax rises threaten to choke off spending, just as we need the economy to start opening up and motoring after the pandemic.

With the Government now in full retreat on the devolution agenda, there is still one thing they are very interested in devolving, and that is the blame for cuts and council tax hikes made in Downing Street. The Secretary of State tried to justify the tax hike by claiming he is giving councils a choice—I am sure he will repeat that at the Dispatch Box today—but the truth is he is not. The Government’s funding plans, published in December, include the expectation—an assumption, not an option—that council tax will go up.

Councils’ biggest long-term financial headache is how to pay for social care. As more people, thankfully, live longer, councils need more funding to offer frail older people the care they need to make the most of their lives, but the Government have cut funding over the past decade, forcing councils to restrict care, so it is available only to those in the most severe categories of need. On his very first day in office, standing on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister told the country he had a plan to fix the social care crisis. No one has seen a dot or comma of that plan since, so councils have been forced to keep cutting, because the Prime Minister’s plan does not seem to exist—unless the Secretary of State can tell us differently when he speaks at the Dispatch Box.

Let us not forget that because a council tax increase raises less money in poorer areas, the Government are deepening the postcode lottery for social care, instead of ensuring that every single older and disabled person anywhere in our country gets the care they need, regardless of where they live. This Government are not levelling the country up; they are pulling the country apart.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

If we do not raise this money in council tax, it still has to come from somewhere. How would the hon. Gentleman raise it?

[Steve Reed]

The Secretary of State has already given the hon. Gentleman the answer, and I am very pleased to repeat what the Secretary of State and the Chancellor said last March: they would fully compensate councils for the cost of getting the country through the crisis. A £2.5 billion funding gap is what they have left, according to James Jamieson, the Conservative leader of the Local Government Association. That is more than the amount that will be raised in council tax, and the hon. Gentleman can do the maths as well as I can. That would not be necessary if the Secretary of State kept his promises.

The costs of social care this year will rise faster than any additional income that is being made available to pay for it, so the only choice the Government are giving all our town halls is to put up council tax while families are still suffering the effects of the recession, or to cut social care during an unprecedented global health pandemic. That is no choice at all, and it is why the Government have got this so badly wrong.

Older people have suffered enough, thanks to this Government’s failures. Over a third of all covid deaths in the UK have been in care homes because the Government were too slow on distributing personal protective equipment, too slow on rolling out testing and too slow to act on hospital discharges that seeded the disease in those very care homes.

Councils need funding to pay for the care older people deserve, and not just during this pandemic. Hard-working families need support to cope with the hit that their incomes have suffered over the past year. Struggling high street businesses need the Government to encourage spending, not choke it off. Councils of all political colours will be forced to put up council tax this year, not because they want to, but because the Government have left them with no real choice. The costs of covid will have to be paid for, but not by raising taxes on people who cannot afford it at a time when their incomes are under so much strain and the pandemic is still raging.

Make no mistake: this is a Conservative tax hike made in Downing street and imposed on hard-working families after the Government’s mistakes left our country facing the deepest recession of any major economy. We will not secure our economy by choking off spending, we will not protect the NHS by denying older people the care they need and we will not rebuild our country by killing off our high streets. I urge the Government, even at this late stage, to think again and scrap their plans to force town halls to increase council tax at a time like this.