Funeral Expenses (Prisoners)

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not intend to detain the House for long, but I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise an important and sensitive issue of which I have become aware due to a case in my constituency. In dealing with that case, it appears that I have stumbled on a gap, at the very least, in how prisoners who are transferred from England to Scotland are treated with regard to funeral expenses. The process of trying to secure answers from the Scottish and English authorities has been less than satisfactory. I understand that the Minister’s responsibilities cover the English authorities, not the Scottish authorities, so I do not expect him to respond on behalf of the Scottish authorities, but I hope that he can clarify some issues that are relevant to the English authorities, which was why I ensured that his private office was given a précis of the case before the debate.

Before I outline the case, it is important that I point out that my concern is for my constituent, who is a cousin of the deceased prisoner. I make no judgment or comment about the prisoner’s offence or sentence because they are immaterial to the points that I shall raise.

My constituent, Mrs Margaret Coyle, had a cousin, James Campbell, who was convicted and given a custodial sentence for an offence committed in England. He began his sentence in an English prison. Part of the way through his sentence, his elderly mother was close to death, and following contact by my constituent, a restricted transfer was arranged whereby the remainder of his sentence could be served in a Scottish prison—first in Kilmarnock prison and later in Greenock prison. The process was instigated by my constituent out of compassion for her cousin’s elderly mother and a desire that they should be in contact before the end of her life. Because my constituent was dealing with the process, she became her cousin’s next of kin.

Later, towards the end of his sentence, my constituent’s cousin developed cancer and became seriously ill. At the point my constituent contacted the Scottish Prison Service to seek guidance on whether her cousin could secure compassionate release. She was informed that although he was serving his sentence in Scotland, because he was on a restricted transfer he was effectively an English prisoner and the matter should therefore be taken up with the English authorities. She understood that and accepted it.

My constituent’s cousin died while still serving his sentence. He had been provided with a handbook by the English Prison Service. Its section on funeral arrangements makes it clear that:

“Prisons must offer to pay a contribution towards reasonable funeral expenses of up to £3,000. The only exceptions where the family has a pre-paid funeral plan or is entitled to claim a grant from other government departments”.

My constituent had discussed the matter with her cousin prior to his death. It meant, they thought, she would be entitled to call upon that support because he was an English prisoner. She was well aware that she would be unable to afford the funeral expense and knew that her cousin was sadly likely to die before the end of his sentence. She was also advised by a social worker she had been engaging with that she would not have to bear the funeral costs. That is the basis on which she proceeded.

After my constituent’s cousin died and she had arranged the funeral, she contacted the Scottish Prison Service and was told that it was a matter for the English Prison Service. She contacted the English Prison Service but was told that it was a matter for the Scottish Prison Service. At that point, just before the end of last year, I became involved. As I am sure the Minister can appreciate, those are sad circumstances, but there is also a degree of confusion in the case. I sought, on behalf of my constituent, to get some clarity on the matter. It was for that reason that I eventually sought this debate.

When I contacted the Scottish Ministers responsible for the Scottish Prison Service in early December, I was told that they would pass the matter on to the Scottish Prison Service and provide me with a response, for which I was still waiting. However, they told my office by phone that it was indeed a matter for the English Prison Service because of the prisoner transfer. At that point I raised the matter in the House during business questions. I also corresponded with the Ministry of Justice, but my correspondence was automatically passed on to the Scottish authorities without my having received a response. My sense is that this is being passed backwards and forwards between authorities, which means I am unable to get a clear answer on where responsibility for the situation properly lies. It is for that reason that I sought this debate. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some clarity.

I would like to make two further points. First, the way in which my constituent and I have been advised and passed between authorities in these circumstances is unacceptable. I realise that the matter is not completely the responsibility of the Minister and his Department—it also involves the Scottish authorities—but something should be done to ensure that in future similar cases are dealt with more appropriately and sensitively.

Secondly, because my constituent was provided with advice and worked on that basis, she has now been left responsible for a bill for funeral expenses of about £2,000, which she cannot afford. The Government should therefore show sensitivity and deal with this matter by using their discretion to ensure that she is not left in her current situation. She is unable to pay a bill because of the conflicting advice that she was given in good faith, after she sought to support a dying relative and showed her personal compassion by getting involved after the prisoner’s mother became seriously ill.

My first concern is that the appropriate authorities have not dealt with the case well, and my second is for my constituent who, in relation to her income and resources, faces a severe financial problem in dealing with the costs. Different conditions appear to apply in English as opposed to Scottish prisons, but with the transfer of my constituent’s relative between them, it almost feels as though he was an English prisoner while he lived but became a Scottish one when he died. Passing such cases backwards and forwards between authorities is not acceptable or appropriate. I hope that the Minister will clarify the situation and provide some comfort to my constituent, who faces not only the trauma that comes with the loss of a relative, whatever the circumstances and background, but a severe financial penalty as a result.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

The Victims Commissioner is a very able woman who is able to multitask, like many of us. We have had a number of meetings with her and she, like me, wants to put victims and vulnerable witnesses at the heart of the criminal justice system, where they belong. We are prioritising victims of serious crimes, victims who are persistently targeted and the most vulnerable victims so that they get the support and care they need.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of appeals related to the work capability assessment.

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

Some 103,000 appeals against decisions related to the work capability assessment were disposed of between April and September 2012. The estimated total associated cost was £23.5 million. In the previous financial year, 189,000 appeals were made, at an estimated total cost of £45 million.

[Tom Greatrex]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. As he knows from his previous responsibilities, many of those appeals were a result of incorrect initial decisions in a work capability assessment. Given that Department for Work and Pensions figures that I have obtained show that more than 35,000 people in the support group have to repeat the WCA, including people with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and other progressive conditions, does the Secretary of State not accept that there would be less cost to his Department and therefore to the public if we stopped reassessing people who are not going to get better?

[Chris Grayling]

Of course, that is really a matter for the DWP. It is my job to provide an appeal route for those who wish to appeal, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that before I left my previous job I asked officials to change how we reassessed people who had been through an appeal so that there was a more sensible length of time between appeal and reassessment.

Atos Healthcare

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Ministerial Corrections

[Tom Greatrex]

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with reference to the answer of 1 May 2012, to the hon. Member for Cardiff West, Official Report, column 1407W, on Atos, what the monetary value was of each contract between his Department and Atos in (a) 2008-09, (b) 2009-10 and (c) 2010-11.

[Official Report, 22 May 2012, Vol. 545, c. 643W.]



Letter of correction from Chris Grayling

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on 22 May 2012.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Chris Grayling]

The spend values for the five DWP contracts with Atos are as follows:

Policing

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, whom I welcome to his new position, finished his speech by saying that Labour’s policies did not work in government. I remind him that we were the only Government in the modern era—going back to the first world war—who presided over a reduction in crime. That is to say that the amount of crime was less when we left office than when we assumed office. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was an excellent Policing Minister, understated the case. The Home Office statistics published in July 2010, from this Government, showed that overall crime fell by 50%, violent crime by 55% and domestic violence by 64%. The chances of being a victim of crime fell from a peak of 40% under the Tory Government to 21.5% under us. The murder rate in London was the lowest since I was wearing a tank-top and flares in the early 1970s.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week?

[Alan Johnson]

Indeed; It was a retro week.

We can now all celebrate that success. The Conservative party—I do not include the Liberal Democrats in this criticism—argued year after year that the statistics were wrong. I remember the Prime Minister standing at the Dispatch Box in opposition saying that crime was not falling but rising, and that when they came into power they would change how the statistics were correlated, but they have done absolutely nothing. They have changed the name of the British crime survey to the England and Wales crime survey, but the statistics are collected in exactly the same way.

That is why the Prime Minister was able to celebrate a 6% fall in crime this year in his tribute speech to that great woman, “Laura Norder”, on Monday. That figure was based on exactly the same formulation of statistics that he once criticised. We should recognise that the momentum of falling crime seems to have continued into this Government, whereas crime doubled under the previous Tory Government between 1979 and 1997, with violent crime increasing by 168% and burglary by 405%. The downward trend has been maintained. It is crucial that all our constituents understand why that has happened and how we can ensure that crime and disorder continue to fall.

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he held a meeting with civil servants in the Home Office. They told him that if the economy was successful, crime would increase, and that if the economy was unsuccessful, crime would increase. No matter which way the economy went, people believed that it would inevitably rise. That counsel of despair convinced successive Home Secretaries until Michael Howard’s appointment that rising crime was an inevitability. The economy is weak now but crime has continued to fall, just as it did in the 2008-09 recession when it went down by 9%. We can compare that with the recession in the ’90s, when it went up by 16%. There is no doubt that advances in technology have helped. Car thefts have reduced dramatically thanks to computerised security systems and CCTV has been an effective tool—it is of course not the whole answer—as has the DNA database.

Police reforms have made the biggest contribution to the dramatic reduction in crime. People trot out the tired old phrase, “The police are the last unreformed public service,” but anyone who has been a Member of this House over the past 20 years will have seen a huge change in policing. The principal change has been the move away from a reactive force, whose main preoccupation was to respond to crimes that had already been committed, to a force with a role more in keeping with Robert Peel’s original concept of a police force, whose primary objective was the prevention of crime and the maintenance of what he described as “public tranquillity”. It was the “Life on Mars” culture of the 1970s that took police away from communities and off the streets and challenged the Peel ethos, whereas the introduction of the dreadfully named crime and disorder reduction partnerships and neighbourhood policing—a huge change in how the police operated—did the most to restore it.

Over 15 years, we have moved from a police philosophy that stated that antisocial behaviour and low-level crime were nothing to do with them to a recognition that the police have an important role to play in working with other agencies to tackle such behaviour, which has a far greater impact on people’s perception of crime than some more high-profile offences. We have moved from an era in which domestic violence was considered to be nothing to do with the police and to be a matter for the adversaries to sort out to its being a major focus of attention for police forces across the country. Plenty of evidence suggests that that concentration on domestic violence has had a far wider impact on the reduction in other crimes.

In that context, I believe the Government have made a mistake in cutting the number of warranted officers. The work the police do on crime prevention in schools, in homes, as part of family intervention projects and in youth clubs and hostels will suffer as a result of those cuts and the partnerships that require the police to work together with local authorities, the NHS and the voluntary sector to tackle the underlying causes of crime will be placed in jeopardy. I predict that such cuts will eventually feed through to the crime statistics, to the detriment of our constituents across the country.

The Minister mentioned privatisation, and in the context of what is happening in Lincolnshire, the west midlands and Surrey I am bemused and amazed that the Home Office has not stated categorically that the tasks of patrolling our streets, the investigation of offences, and arrest—together with the use of firearms and the control of public disorder—must remain with police officers. Of course there can be co-operation with the private sector in other spheres, but that is what the police want to see and the reassurance has not been given.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) is here to man the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—perhaps he has drawn the short straw—but he and I are, to a certain extent, tourists in this debate as we both represent constituencies in Scotland. It is interesting to listen to people’s concerns about police reform in England and Wales. In Scotland, we are moving towards a single police force from the early part of next year. At the last Scottish Parliament elections, the hon. Gentleman’s party was against that and my party was in favour. It is often argued that the scale of the efficiencies that can be achieved will help to make it a sensible thing to do. However, I note that today the chief constable-designate of the new Scottish police force, the current chief constable of Strathclyde, highlighted the fact that there will be a £140 million gap in his budget over the next two years as a result of establishing the new Scottish police force.

I want to make three brief points. First, in the past few weeks I have spent some time in a couple of places in England—Manchester and Corby, for obvious reasons—and I have knocked on quite a few people’s doors and spoken to them about quite a lot of things. Other Members have spoken about people’s awareness of the PCC elections, and it struck me that there is in fact a stunning lack of awareness. I am very concerned—not from my own perspective and that of my constituency but on behalf of others in this House—that there will be a big problem in getting a decent turnout in the elections. The fact that very few people seem to have heard that they are happening underlines the serious problems that exist and what is likely to transpire.

Secondly, I am in the middle of taking the police service parliamentary scheme, which I am sure other hon. Members present have either taken or will wish to take in the future. I have found it a tremendously useful experience in understanding and appreciating the variety of things that rank and file police officers do and the circumstances they deal with. That has been valuable, because the things that we in this House and policy makers talk about and how they get translated into on-the-ground reality are not always one and the same.

As well as having the delightful experience of being in the centre of Glasgow on a Friday and Saturday night and seeing what the police have to deal with, it struck me that the morale of many of the police officers was quite low. Some of the issues under discussion may not be directly related to them—policing is a devolved matter in Scotland—but I was struck by their feelings on the wider issues of how they thought the Government feel about policing and on the Government’s attitude to the police. These people have been doing the job for a number of years and are very proud of what they do, but they sensed that the Government were not always batting in their favour.

The third issue that I want to address is not a devolved matter—police pensions and police pension commutation. The Minister of State might not be able to respond in detail—the issue probably comes under the brief of his colleague, the Policing Minister—but I would be grateful if he or his colleague responded to me in writing. One of my constituents paid into the police pension scheme for 30 years, but as the result of a misunderstanding by the Government Actuary’s Department he has lost out on thousands of pounds. I am sure that the Minister will be aware that, under the Police Pensions Regulations 1987, GAD had an implied duty to undertake reviews of the commutation factors used in the police pension scheme but, because of what the previous Policing Minister described in a written answer as a mistaken understanding of this duty between the early 1990s and late 2006, those reviews did not take place. As the mistaken understanding has been described as one of a historic nature, my constituent is not entitled to a pension under the re-evaluated commutation factors introduced in 2008. Understandably, he is aggrieved by that.

I appreciate that a number of cases have been raised with the pensions ombudsman and legal avenues, but I hope that the Minister will consider the issue again, because a number of people have been disadvantaged through no fault of their own. This is important to those former police officers. If the Government are behind policing and want to demonstrate that, they would send a powerful message by considering those important issues on behalf of former, as well as current, police officers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind remarks about my visit to Shepton Mallet prison, and I would agree about the quality of the performance of all the staff in that prison. I have to say, however, that medals are probably above my pay grade.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State will know that his Department will face tribunal costs of almost £50 million, largely arising from appeals to the work capability assessment. Given that 40% of those appeals are successful, is it not now time that his Department and the Tribunal Service discussed with Atos Healthcare how to get some of the money back—otherwise, the public are paying twice for wrong decisions?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

We remain committed to supporting local justice being administered in magistrates courts, but my hon. Friend would be wrong to confuse community justice, access to justice, efficient justice, speedy summary justice or timely administration with bricks and mortar.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What recent representations he has received on his Department’s responsibilities in relation to the Crown dependencies.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I am unsure quite what kind of representations the hon. Gentleman has in mind. As he would expect, however, the Ministry of Justice constantly receives a wide range of communications in relation to its responsibilities for the Crown dependencies.

[Tom Greatrex]

The representations that I had in mind were from Crown dependencies such as the Isle of Man. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman assure me that he and his ministerial colleagues in the other place, who I gather have responsibility for Crown dependencies in his Department, will consult with the Crown dependencies if there is any suggestion that responsibility for them be moved to another Department, so that the important distinction between Crown dependencies and overseas territories is recognised throughout the civil service?

[Mr Clarke]

As the hon. Gentleman says, it is my right hon. Friend Lord McNally who takes a lead in our Department on the Crown dependencies. I will certainly take note of what the hon. Gentleman says about any question of changing ministerial responsibility, but I should point out that this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary. However, I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s views and will ensure that they are disseminated among those responsible.