Sentencing White Paper

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

Well, that was a question of two halves. I absolutely welcome the point that the hon. Gentleman makes on behalf of the people of Cardiff South and Penarth. I have to say to him that to make that sort of analogy with the position regarding an international negotiation and the interpretation of a treaty is to stretch the point too far.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab) [V]]

Fewer than one in 10 crimes now lead to a suspect being charged. That is the lowest charging rate for reported crimes since records began. Nearly half of all crimes close with no suspect being identified at all. What steps are the Government taking to fix that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman will know that there is cross-governmental work on this. We have a strategy on that issue, and the teachable moment and the importance of education are things that we absolutely understand.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

What assessment has the prisons Minister made of the discrepancy between the starting salaries and pay scales for prison officers employed by Parc Prison in Bridgend, which is run by G4S, and those for officers employed by the Government-run HMPs in Swansea and Cardiff?

[Lucy Frazer]

We have increased prison officers’ salaries in the public sector by over 2% across the board. The public and private systems are separate, and both produce excellent outcomes in some circumstances for prisoners.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris]

I am going to make progress.

We need to secure better outcomes for child victims of domestic abuse. The only way that we will do that is by ensuring that such initiatives are available throughout the country. The Bill also needs to legislate to improve the experiences of survivors and their children in the family courts. Contact arrangements must be based on the child’s best interests, and parental contact should not be automatic, especially where there is evidence that the child could be at risk.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine is desperately trying to prepare her child after a court order stated, against the child’s wishes and the recommendations of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, that he must spend half his school holidays with his father. In order to support her son, she has put in place resilience counselling through the school, but the father has refused his son this help to support their contact. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that parental rights are being used against children in a way that has a negative impact on their wellbeing?

[Carolyn Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend. We have worked closely on many cases where children have been put at risk by being allowed access to potentially, if not very, dangerous parents. That is something that I feel passionately about. I believe we need a complete overhaul to ensure that the courts are prioritising the victims, not the perpetrators.

Assisted Dying

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I have made just a few notes for my speech, because this is a very important debate.

I picked up a couple of emails earlier from constituents. Some wished me to speak in favour of a change in the law, while others wished me to oppose it. I wanted to stand up today and explain why I would vote in favour of assisted dying if legislation were to be introduced in the House, because I grew up as a Catholic, I was educated in a good Catholic school, and I feel very strongly that when something becomes a religious issue we must be very careful about how we use our language, particularly when the issue involves life and death.

The debate is very pertinent to me, because I have a kind of counter-argument. My father died on 22 December 2011, and this choice was taken away from him. It was not like the situation described by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), whose father, having known that he was dying, sadly and tragically took his own life.

I feel very strongly about people being in hospital and being told that they will be fine and they are keeping going, given that in this case the decision was not a decision made by the patient and the doctor. That doctor took away our family’s choice, and the opportunity —not the choice, but the opportunity—to discuss with my father how he would end his life. He would not have been in favour of assisted dying—I can tell you that with my hand on my heart—but the information was kept from him, and from the family, that his medication was to be withdrawn, and he was to die a very painful and horrible death in a hospital bed just before Christmas because it was at the convenience of the hospital.

This is a mega decision, and one that each individual has the right to make, because we should have that choice; we should be able to choose how we end our lives. The choice was taken away from my father and from the family, and I will never forgive the clinician for that.

I believe that charities should play a greater part in this discussion, because talking about dying and death is a huge taboo in our society. The need to improve knowledge and understanding of death is key to the debate. Amazing work is done by people like Kathryn Mannix, a palliative care consultant in Wales. It is very important for these options to be available to us, and for us to be able to have the necessary conversations. There are many flippant conversations with my friends and family—“If anything is going to happen to me, you know what to do; I will have my savings, and I will have my paracetamol”—but we should not be having such conversations. It is our duty as Members of Parliament to ensure that there is legislation that enables people to decide how they want to end their lives.

I pay tribute to the people who are in the Public Gallery today, because they include many families who have either been in this situation or are in this situation currently. We need to remember that their journey is real, and we need to know that we must have this discussion. I will not use any religion, or my Catholic upbringing, as a reason for the discussion not to happen, or for a change in the law not to come about.

We have talked about the law in New Zealand, and, indeed, across the world. Let me also pay tribute to a good friend of mine, Louisa Wall, a Member of Parliament from Auckland in New Zealand. She too is in the Gallery today, and she has a great interest in the debate.

I hope that we will see that legislation, and I just wanted to explain to my constituents, and to everyone, how I would intend to vote.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend may have noticed that I made some remarks recently that were very sympathetic to that point of view. He has been effective before becoming a bore; I congratulate him on that. Reoffending rates for those given a short sentence are higher than for those given a non-custodial sentence, which is why we are delivering alternatives.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

T8. One of the most upsetting cases I have dealt with over the past 12 months was where my constituent’s children were sexually abused by their father. I would like to thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), for her co-operation thus far. However, can the Minister explain why the victim’s criminal injuries compensation claim was originally turned down due to a lack of evidence, when the father is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence? How many children are facing that situation?

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

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I met Hannah Jones at a Westminster Hall debate organised by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). That is a dreadful case. I gather that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is reviewing it and that that information will be transmitted to Hannah this afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

I hope the hon. Gentleman feels that we are engaged in a constructive and positive manner and that we have very much taken on board the concerns around that site, but it is important to bear in mind that more than 1,500 prisoners with Welsh addresses are currently being held in English prisons. We need to think about how to provide accommodation for them in Wales, because that is important for reducing reoffending, resettling them in their communities and keeping the links with their families.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Given the overwhelming evidence that smaller local prisons, where family links and the Welsh language can be maintained, are far more effective at reducing reoffending, why is the Secretary of State still proposing super prisons in south Wales when they are known not to work?

[Rory Stewart]

There are of course reasons why larger modern prisons are favoured, and that is partly about how we can manage things at scale. However, if there are communities in Wales that would like to come forward with proposals for smaller local prisons, I would absolutely agree that there is a strong argument for keeping prisoners closer to their homes.

Private Probation Services

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree that there are companies with little accountability, in which good work is not carried out and offenders are not properly managed. Often contact is made by telephone and probation officers do not contact offenders for months on end. I will address those points in more detail later, but I agree that the situation is unacceptable.

Probation is turning into a tick-box exercise, but it is not a profession that should be driven by targets; it requires a well-rounded approach centred on individuals and their needs, not—as we see all too often—on offenders’ ability to provide profits to the CRC. In October 2016 and June 2017, joint inspections by Her Majesty’s inspectorates of probation and of prisons led to reports on Through the Gate resettlement services for short-term prisoners and for those serving 12 months or more. The picture was described as “bleak”, with inspectors noting that CRCs are making little difference to prisoners’ prospects on release. The latest annual report from Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons states that

“too many prisoners continued to receive a poor resettlement service”,

that resettlement services provided to prisoners before and on release were generally poor, and that they made little, if any, difference to the life chances of those who received them.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Some private companies, especially in Wales, are supervising low and medium-risk offenders with periodic phone contact, as my hon. Friend mentioned. That would never have happened before; it is obviously a cost-cutting exercise.

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree. If offenders are contacted only by telephone, if appointments are missed without any follow-up and if months pass before there is contact from the probation service, the system is not working; it is driven by profit, rather than by the need to rehabilitate and prevent reoffending. That is all too often overlooked.

The HMIP report stated that in almost every respect, the quality of probation work was noticeably better across the national probation service than in the body of CRCs. That highlights the point that outsourcing and privatising probation services is just not working. It is clear that the fragmentation of services has led to an overall decline in communication and co-operation between stakeholders. The report is clear in its criticisms of CRCs and their pitiful attempts at Through the Gate rehabilitation. The conclusion of the chief inspectors was damning:

“The gap between aspiration and reality is so great, that we wonder whether there is any prospect that these services will deliver the desired impact on rates of reoffending.”

They also noted:

“If Through the Gate services were removed tomorrow, in our view the impact on the resettlement of prisoners would be negligible.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Reeves]

That is absolutely the case. If ex-offenders are released from prison but have no contact, or only very sporadic contact, with the probation services, how can the public be assured that they are being kept safe? The chief inspector has made that point and other people made it when the reforms were going through, but still no action has been taken and these CRCs continue to operate, which puts people at risk.

“Panorama” went on to say that it has records from MTCnovo that reveal that 15,000 appointments were missed by offenders over a 16-month period, a problem that was compounded by probation officers failing to take any action over missed appointments. A whistleblower from MTCnovo said that CRCs are employing fewer staff, so individual members of staff have higher case loads. That probation officer says that he now only has 20 minutes a month with the offenders he has to deal with, which is simply not enough. He had inherited cases where 20 to 30 appointments had been missed by offenders, and in addition he said that staff were instructed by the CRC to alter records, so that missed appointments were wiped if they were more than two weeks old.

It seems that public protection is not at the heart of this programme, and the toxic climate created by this ill-judged privatisation has clearly had a detrimental impact on staff and services too. Following the creation of the National Probation Service and CRCs, existing staff were redistributed between the two organisations. From the start, CRCs had smaller case loads than predicted, which resulted in reduced levels of income, followed by restructuring with substantial job losses. Fewer staff can deal with fewer cases and the added focus on restructuring has often meant that the quality of core service delivery suffered. Low-risk offenders were often only supervised by telephone, as we have discussed, and work on safeguarding and domestic abuse was often substandard.

Three and a half years since the CRCs were created, it is clear that staff morale is low and individual case loads are too high. There are not enough staff, and many of them lack the experience and resources to do the job properly.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there are a large number of highly skilled and experienced probation officers who have been lost due to their being placed in the private side of the organisation, which is not always through their own choice?

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree with that assessment and there is now a situation where there have been substantial job losses, so that a lot of very experienced probation officers are no longer in post. The system is one where staff are overworked and do not necessarily have the skills and equipment that they need.

I will come on to some of the findings of a Unison survey. Unison has 3,500 members working across CRCs and the National Probation Service. It carried out a survey of members who work for CRCs and the 215 responses that it received make for really shocking reading. Twenty-five per cent. of staff said that they only occasionally had the equipment, resources or systems they needed to do their jobs properly; 41% said that they never experienced a manageable case load; 25% said that their CRC never or only occasionally completed community orders within the required time; and 43% said they never felt valued by their CRC.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing this important debate. I want to make some brief remarks about what people who work in probation in Plymouth have told me. We owe them a debt of thanks.

The Government’s part-privatisation of probation has been a colossal failure. The broken system is putting the public at greater risk and increasingly leaving taxpayers out of pocket. Ministers knew before the privatisation was put in place that the system would not work. Experts told them that it would conflict with best practice and put added pressure on staff, yet they went ahead. When it was obvious that the early CRCs were failing, the privatisation continued, meaning that people who relied on probation services to be professional and of high quality were being failed and, as a result, so were the public. Ministers must now know that it is unacceptable for the Government to continually bail out CRCs. It is time to draw a line in the sand. With our prisons in crisis, we need probation to perform without hindrance, organisational chaos and uncertainty.

The whole criminal justice system needs to be improved because it is not working. CRCs are not working. I fear that Ministers, not for the first time, are defending a broken system made worse by privatisation. Probation cannot wait for a Labour Government to end the shambles and bring the contracts back into the public sector, so we must put pressure on Ministers to act now. I fear that Ministers are conforming to type. When privatisation goes wrong they first defend the failure of the privatised services. Secondly, they reward the failure, as we see in the bailing out of CRCs. Finally, there is a continued failure to tackle the root causes of the problem: putting profit ahead of people, fragmentation of the services, and the way in which the system undervalues staff and misses results. Defending failure, rewarding failure and failing to tackle the root causes are the hallmarks not only of what has happened to probation services, but of the privatisation of our NHS, and we need to call it out. Probation is too important to let privatisation fail. We must make the system work, and if that cannot be done by bringing the contracts back in house, Ministers need to get a grip on the system.

Probation staff in Plymouth have told me a variety of stories about their experience of working in the system and about what it means for the people they are trying to help. It is worth remembering that people who work in probation do so because they want to make the lives of the people they work with better, reduce reoffending and protect the public. They show a genuine, caring devotion. They do not go into probation because they are looking for big pay cheques—they would be looking in the wrong place—but because they want to make a difference. That good will and the hard work of the staff is possibly the only thing that is holding the probation system together.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Following privatisation, probation officers in the national probation service have carried ridiculously high case loads of offenders who pose high or very high risk of harm. Probation officers working in the public sector do not have a balanced case load of medium and high-risk cases any more, as there was before the split. The pressure and stress of those cases together with the insufficient number of probation officers to do the job has resulted in unmanageable case loads and higher levels of sickness among staff. Has that been found in Plymouth?

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Having about 60 cases per individual maintains professionalism and a safe level of contact with offenders. It is now being reported that, in some cases, probation officers are handling 200 cases. The Minister has a famously good memory, but not everyone who works in probation has that. Remembering the details of 200 cases is asking too much of those who work in our probation system.

The staff I have spoken to in Plymouth have told me that they feel undervalued and overworked. The best practice that they spent years developing has been taken out of the system and good methods of rehabilitation have been stripped back. Staff have told me that they are worried that things are only going to get worse. One member of staff told me that she went into the profession because she cared. She told me that she loves her job, but all too frequently she is going home at night and crying because she knows that the level of care and professionalism she is able to offer is not what she would like. That damages her feeling of self-worth and of being valued by the system. These are precisely the type of people we need to retain and support in our probation system. It is a poor way to treat the people who keep our public safe.

In Plymouth, the failures of our probation system were brought home on new year’s day 2015 by the murder of Tanis Bhandari in Tamerton Foliot, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). In Plymouth, there has been a debate, led most ably by Councillor Philippa Davey, about the failures of probation to monitor Donald Pemberton at the time when he and Ryan Williams murdered the Plymouth builder, Tanis. Tanis was an incredibly popular figure within Plymouth, and the failure of the probation system to monitor the offenders probably directly led to that murder, because a better managed system would reduce reoffending. A poor probation system has real-world consequences, and Tanis’s family is one of the many families across the country that are being let down by a system that is not working and is clearly failing. How many more families need to be let down for Ministers to act?

The CRC system is not working. It needs to be brought back in house. I ask the Minister not to do the three things that we frequently hear from Ministers on broken prioritisation systems. Please do not defend the failure of the system or reward it any further. Please tackle the root cause: a broken and fragmented prioritisation system that is not working. Our public and the staff who do such an amazing job in our probation service deserve much better.

Prisoners: Parental Rights

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate, which addresses an area of concern in relation to the parental rights of prisoners.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, through a breakdown in communications, I have not been called to speak this morning. However, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). The case she discussed is my constituent’s, who I am here to support. Since first meeting my constituent and hearing her story of herself and her two children, I have wanted to ask how the law can allow the father of her children to continue to exert control over their lives from behind bars, when his offence was of a sexual nature.

[Dr Lee]

If the hon. Lady will allow me, I will develop my argument with regards to the current powers of courts in such cases. As I was saying, the hon. Member for Swansea East is fast developing a strong reputation for campaigning on sensitive, difficult and often family-related issues. I commend her for her work in lots of different areas.

I am here on behalf of the Minister of State for Justice, who is detained on legislative business. While policy responsibility for family law sits with him, I have listened carefully to the points that have been made and will ensure that they are relayed to him in full. It is clear that significant distress and emotional harm can result when a parent in prison exercises their parental responsibility with the clear intention of frustrating day-to-day care decisions made by the other parent or to inflict further harm. Such behaviour is unacceptable.

While the maintenance of family ties forms a key foundation stone to support an offender’s rehabilitation, it is clear that not all children can or should maintain contact with a parent who is in prison. Maintaining family ties must always be balanced against the risk of harm posed to the child or the parent with care. While a number of protections are in place under the current law, particular issues arise in cases where children are the victims of an offence by the convicted parent. I have listened closely to the points that have been made about the practical impacts of parental responsibility being exercised in that way and to the arguments for changing the law so that a parent prisoner convicted of a sexual or violent offence loses their parental responsibility on conviction.

In considering the arguments for change, I will set out the current law. There are various aspects to the law on parental responsibility: how parental responsibility is acquired by a parent; whether and how parental responsibility can be removed from a parent in appropriate cases to protect a child or the other parent from the risk of further abuse or harm; and the exercise of parental responsibility by a parent and the means by which a court may restrict the exercise of parental responsibility in specific ways.

Mothers automatically acquire parental responsibility. A father who is married to the mother at the time of the child’s birth also acquires that responsibility. There are no provisions in law by which parental responsibility may be removed from a mother or married father, except through adoption of the child. Unmarried fathers may acquire parental responsibility through various means: birth registration, an agreement with the mother that is registered with the court or by court order. A court may remove parental responsibility from an unmarried father if the child’s welfare so requires.

Where a parent seeks to abuse their parental responsibility, their actions may be overridden by the family court. That power applies regardless of how the parent acquired parental responsibility. The child’s welfare is always the paramount consideration, and there is no absolute right for a parent or any other person to exercise parental responsibility in a way that is detrimental to the child’s best interests. That is clearly the right position in principle.

The ability of a parent prisoner to exercise parental responsibility in many aspects of a child’s day-to-day life is limited by having no direct contact with the child or the parent with care, and powers are available to the family court to restrict the exercise of parental responsibility, which I will talk about in a moment. However, where those protections have not been sought or have not worked for whatever reason, a parent who is determined to abuse their parental responsibility may still be able to do so.

Where there is disagreement between parents who both have parental responsibility, either of them may make an application to the family court for a prohibited steps or specific issue order. A prohibited steps order has the effect of preventing a parent from exercising his or her parental responsibility for their child in a specified way without first obtaining the consent of the court—for example, changing a child’s surname or causing a child to be known by a different surname. A specific issue order allows the court to determine how a specific aspect of parental responsibility for a child should be decided—for example, whether a child should change school.

In addition, where the court is making any order and the person who has applied for it has made multiple previous applications in relation to the child that the court considers to be vexatious, it may make an order restricting that person’s ability to make any further applications of a specified kind in respect of that child without the permission of the court.

I recognise that the current protections place the onus on the parent with care to apply to the family court to restrict the other parent’s exercise of parental responsibility, which is why there are calls to legislate for an automatic removal of parental responsibility in certain circumstances. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the orders and how they can best be used to protect a child or parent with care from the abusive exercise of parental responsibility by a parent in prison.

Any change to remove parental responsibility automatically on conviction of certain criminal offences would involve some important considerations for my Department. We would need to be clear that such a change in the law would be in the best interests of all children, for whom the current law provides maximum flexibility. The family court currently balances the legal rights, responsibilities and duties of each parent with the paramount need to further the welfare of the child and to safeguard them from risk of harm or further harm.