Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

No, I do not, and I would point to the legislation that the Government brought forward last week, which is the largest and most significant public health reform that we can make to help the hon. Member’s constituents and those in other parts of the country who face inequalities. We know that smoking rates are disproportionately higher in poorer communities, which is one of the many reasons why we introduced such landmark legislation. It is just a shame that the Labour party felt that they had to whip their Members to get them to vote for it.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State support Breast Cancer Now’s campaign to improve the uptake of breast cancer screening, especially among women in minority ethnic communities, because that is a good way to tackle health inequalities?

[Victoria Atkins]

I completely agree. Further on ethnicity and inequalities, I have not only prioritised women’s health as Secretary of State, but announced £50 million of research into maternity disparities for women of colour, given the worrying statistics associated with that. I have also responded to calls from brave constituents, put forward by hon. Members on both sides of the House, for further research into lobular breast cancer, because although it is responsible for 15% of diagnoses, we do not have the research or evidence to help women who are affected by it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I was genuinely delighted to welcome the hon. Lady to the Government’s women’s health summit last week to announce the consolidation, and indeed the improvement, of the women’s health strategy that this Government have launched. We saw significant success last year with hormone replacement therapy improvements and she knows, because she attended the summit, that I have just announced a £50 million research fund looking at maternity disparities and also research into female-specific conditions. Any concern she has about operation times she should take up with the local trust and it will perhaps tell her what impact industrial action has had, sadly, on elective surgery.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to support the early diagnosis of cancer.

Knife Crime

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Victoria Atkins

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She knows from the many debates that we have had on this matter, and the many occasions on which she and I and Home Office Ministers have discussed it, that we all recognise the great fear, worries and concerns of mums and dads in certain parts of the country that have been suffering from these crimes for some time. That is precisely why we issued the serious violence strategy last year. [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady is chuntering at me. I am trying to answer her questions.

It is because of that fear that we are putting so much effort into supporting local charities, through both our anti-knife crime community fund and our early intervention youth fund, to help young people and children and their families. We are also working on the youth endowment fund, which will invest some £200 million over 10 years to support projects to intervene on young people and protect them from being ensnared by gang leaders.

The right hon. Lady was right to raise the issue of resources. Only a couple of weeks ago we voted to increase police resources by nearly £1 billion, and I am sorry that she did not feel able to vote for that. Police funds were increased last year, and will be increased again next year.

The right hon. Lady talked about summits and meetings and so on. The point of those is getting the right people into the room to tackle this issue together. As we all know, there is no single simple solution. I wish that there were, but the issue is very complex. That is why there are both short-term and longer-term measures in the strategy, which meets with the approval of the police and others with whom we engage to try to crack this problem.

I very much hope that today we will yet again hear fruitful, constructive and non-partisan comments about this topic, because it is affecting every single one of our constituencies. We need to work together to get it right, because when I meet victims and their families they want to hear what we are doing, not what our conversations across the Dispatch Box are about.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Many police in London now use body-worn video cameras. Does the Minister agree that that should help to give them the confidence to use stop-and-search in all circumstances within the law as part of a concerted effort to end the terrible tragedies that are afflicting our city?

[Victoria Atkins]

My right hon. Friend has made a very important point. The use of body-worn cameras enables officers to use their stop-and-search powers with even greater confidence than they had before. Interestingly, the chief constable of Merseyside told us yesterday that since his officers have started using body-worn cameras, the volume of complaints about stop-and-search has decreased dramatically: I think he said that there were about seven last year. This is the point of stop-and-search. If we target it correctly and officers are stopping people when they believe that a search meets the test of being proportionate and necessary, that will not just help them to catch those who are carrying knives, but will, I hope, give confidence to communities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Victoria Atkins

Thursday 15th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

As I have said, a great deal of work is going on, and I had a meeting earlier this year on exactly this point and look forward in due course to working with my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on how we can close these gaps as well.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

7. What steps she is taking to encourage more women to start their own businesses.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Victoria Atkins

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I will finish my point if I may.

That is the background against which we are operating. Having received such an assessment, we must consider it with great care. We have a duty to consider it and to protect the public. I gently correct the suggestion that such high-energy rifles have not been used in crime. As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, high-energy rifles were used in the 1990s during the troubles to kill people who were charged with securing Northern Ireland. We are listening, and, as I hope colleagues saw, I sat through the vast majority of the debate. Those and other issues will be addressed in the conversations that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and all the ministerial team will have with colleagues on both sides of the House.

I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who has devoted a great deal of time and energy not just to the Bill but to protecting our young people and tackling serious violence.

[Theresa Villiers]

Will the Minister acknowledge that, even assuming the Bill makes it to the statute book, we will not tackle this problem unless the Mayor of London and other police and crime commissioners take it very seriously and ensure that they hold their police to account, set objectives for them and ensure that they deliver on this crucial work, as they did when my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) successfully got crime levels down?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Indeed she and my hon. Friends the Members for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) all focused on the importance of local policing and local leadership in policing. We introduced police and crime commissioners to enable local people to have the power to influence policing in their local area. Of course, I very much enjoy working with the Mayor of London and, as far as we are concerned, more power to his elbow when it comes to local policing.