Prisons Strategy

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

No doubt I shall have a chance to thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) for his work in a moment, but I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee that rehabilitation is critical. Reoffending costs us some £18 billion a year, let alone the terrible human costs which often sit alongside that. This prisons policy should be seen as part of our cross-governmental work to tackle crime, support police officers and ensure that justice is delivered.

I can tell my hon. Friend how much we are spending on reducing reoffending. We are injecting £550 million over the next three years to support prison leavers’ transition back into society, and thus reduce reoffending.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I recognise that she has a considerable track record in her previous ministerial roles of prioritising the interests and concerns of women, so I know she will be aware of the research that was recently published by The Observer showing that women in prison were five times more likely to have a stillbirth than women in the general population. She will also be aware of the terrible disruption and suffering experienced by children whose mothers are separated from them by being sent to prison.

Does the Minister agree with the Joint Committee on Human Rights that women convicted of non-violent and minor offences should not be sent to prison, especially when they are pregnant and when they have young children? There are other ways for them to serve their sentences, and that is what should happen. As she said, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is still under consideration in Parliament. Will she consider accepting our new clauses so that judges do not sentence women to prison for minor offences when they are pregnant or when it would mean separating them from young children? Let us have that in the law.

[Victoria Atkins]

First, I want to put on record my sadness that the right hon. and learned Lady has decided to stand down at the next election, but I very much look forward to working with her across the Floor in the meantime.

On women in custody, as I have said, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of women being sent to prison in the past decade. Of course we want to ensure that the judiciary and magistrates maintain their independence, but we support them in understanding that other measures are available. The work that continues through the female offenders strategy to examine women’s sentencing and women’s residential centres, as well as community solutions including drug treatment, will be critical. I very much hope that, if we can give magistrates and judges the confidence to issue those sentences, the rate of imprisonment will continue to decrease.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

3rd reading
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I have one more minute.

We are trying to tackle harmful behaviour, and Opposition Members need to ask themselves just how much damage, disruption and distress is acceptable for their constituents to bear.

I will quickly deal with the extraction of information. This is an important part of the Bill, because we want to ensure that strong privacy safeguards are in place when dealing with people’s sensitive personal information. This Bill, coupled with the rape review, is an absolutely critical part of that effort.

Mindful that the House will want to vote on these matters, I will conclude. We promised our constituents that we would take measures to make our society safer and to crack down on crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) set out, that is the promise we all made to our constituents. We are delivering on promises made to the electorate and standing up for the decent members of society who do not commit the sorts of crimes that we in this Chamber have sadly had to hear about. I therefore have no hesitation in commending the Bill to the House.

[Ms Harman]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Domestic Abuse

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My right hon. Friend may be volunteering for a role. He is right to make the point that of the 2 million victims, we estimate that around 1.3 million are female and around 695,000 are male, and within that 695,000 we believe—it is very difficult to identify this, and there are problems in doing so—that the majority of perpetrators are male. Within the huge range of abusive behaviour in relationships, there are many, many manifestations, and what may be experienced by a couple in a heterosexual relationship may be very different from what is experienced in a homosexual relationship, for example. That is why we are so committed to ensuring that our response, particularly in relation to accommodation-based services, addresses those specific needs. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because part of the purpose of the Bill is to raise awareness and to make the point that men can be victims of domestic abuse as well, but the overwhelming majority of victims are female, and that starts from the very beginning, so we need to teach boys and girls what to expect from healthy relationships. That is precisely why relationship education in schools is such a vital part of our programme.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I appreciate the commitment she has shown to the Bill and to working across the House, not only with the Labour Front-Bench team but with Back Benchers from all parties. I recognise the frustration that I know she has felt as she has pushed forward on this issue. As far as I am concerned, I hope that when the inevitable reshuffle happens, the Minister will keep her position so that she can push the Bill forward, and I hope that her colleague the victims Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), will stay in his position too.

I welcome the Bill, which I see as an important step in what has been a long struggle to tackle the scourge of domestic violence. The Bill rightly brings forward a new definition, new powers, new duties, a new office and an extension to Northern Ireland. Many of us want to add further things to it when it goes through further scrutiny. The question is, though: what happens next? Neither of the two leadership candidates has been what we might call a champion of the cause of tackling domestic violence. That is simply a fact. I hope the next Prime Minister recognises that this Bill is the will of the House and that there is commitment to it on all sides. The Prime Minister will be gone next week, but this Bill—her Bill—must go forward.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for the enormous work she has done in her time in this place to advance the cause of women, and particularly to tackle the injustices that many women face. I reiterate her point that not only have the Front Benchers have been wonderful in their support and collaboration, but Back-Bench MPs have been incredibly important, too.

I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for her reference to the future Prime Minister; my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) and I are grateful for that assistance. We are both determined to see the Bill through. Although the Prime Minister may be stepping down next week, she is not leaving the House. I am sure she will be a strong advocate for the Bill from the Back Benches.

The right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right that this is not just a Government commitment, which it very firmly is, but has support across the House. We have been talking about it for long enough now that the public understand where we want to get to, and the House certainly will not let any future Government off the hook in delivering on it. That is why I am so pleased that both leadership candidates have committed to progressing with the Bill in the autumn. There will be many colleagues making sure that they keep to that pledge.

Gender Pay Gap

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for Women if she will make a statement about Government action to close the gender pay gap.

[The Minister for Women (Victoria Atkins)]

May I say that it is a pleasure to answer this urgent question from the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)? It is unacceptable that in 2018 there are still differences in how men and women are paid in business and in industries. That is why this Government introduced new regulations, which came into force in 2017, requiring all employers with 250 or more employees to report their gender pay gap. I am delighted that as of yesterday 10,055 employers, covering all sectors of the economy, have reported their gender pay gap. These new regulations have shone a light on the injustice that has existed for too long and created a new conversation on the need for a step change in gender equality. We are now working with employers to support them to take action to close the gender pay gap; we are building our research base on what works, to drive real change; and we will be supporting employers to understand what has caused their own gender pay gap and what they can do to make a real difference.

We want employers and employees to succeed in driving real change. The Government have launched a range of initiatives that will help. We introduced shared parental leave to enable working parents to share childcare in the first year of their child’s life, and we have extended the right to request flexible working. We have introduced a new £500 million fund to support women and men who have been out of the labour market for a long period to return to work, and we have doubled the early education provision, so that all three and four-year-olds from working households in England can access 30 hours’ childcare a week.

I am pleased that the majority of employers have published action plans, alongside their reporting, to set out what they will do to tackle the gender pay gap in their business or sector. I look forward to hearing more about the ongoing work in this area and the work done to address this great inequality, but there is more to this issue than just the regulations. It is about driving cultural change. From the subjects that girls choose to study at school and university to the expectations of women who are climbing their own career ladder, we want the message to women and girls to be, “We will support and encourage you to achieve your full potential.”

[Ms Harman]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for her obvious commitment to this issue. It was Labour legislation that enacted gender pay transparency, but it was her Government who implemented it. It is important that they did that, because it has laid bare what women have always known but previously did not have proof of, which is that there is systematic pay discrimination. It is now clear: eight out of 10 employers pay men more than they pay women—and that is across every sector, including the retail sector, which would not exist without women’s work. Why on earth should women in Tesco put up with £8 an hour on the checkout when men in the stores get up to £11.50 an hour?

Although it pains me to say this, the trade unions that need to be part of the negotiations to narrow the pay gap need to get their house in order. How can women members of Unite believe that that union will champion their rights to equal pay if there is a 30% pay gap in the union itself? The NASUWT, a teachers union, pays its male staff 40% more than it pays women, so it too has to take action. As for the public sector, let us look at the University of Liverpool. Its public policy is to narrow the pay gap, but the University of Liverpool pays men 90% more in bonuses than it pays women. That has to stop.

Does the Minister agree that we are no longer interested in rationalisations, explanations or justifications? The time for excuses has passed. We want stretching targets year on year to narrow the gap. Will she join me in congratulating the women in the House who have spoken up on this issue, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), among many others, including the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and Labour’s Front-Bench team, who have been pushing on this issue? Will she congratulate all the women outside the House who have been pushing on this, not least women in trade unions and the BBC women?

May I give the Minister some sisterly advice on what she should do to really focus on this issue? First, she should stay on the back of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and make sure that it uses all its powers and has the resources to take action. Secondly, she should suggest to the Prime Minister that she has a Cabinet session on the gender pay gap, with all Secretaries of State required to come to Cabinet and say what stretching targets they are going to impose in their Departments and the sectors for which they are responsible. Thirdly, she should commandeer Downing Street for a summit at which business and trade unions can tell her what they are going to do to narrow the pay gap. If she does all that, she will have a great opportunity and a great responsibility, because if she drives forward on narrowing the pay gap, that is not only fair and just but the most important thing to help low-income families and tackle child poverty.

[Victoria Atkins]

I said at the beginning of my statement that I was extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for raising this issue in an urgent question, and I meant it. I fully recognise and thank her for the work that she did in government to introduce legislation on the gender pay gap. Like her, I thank other female Members, including the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who, along with her colleagues on the Committee, does so much to drive through change. I thank female Members from all parties. There is a real sense of urgency and impatience about this issue. For what it is worth, my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister share our impatience—I hope I do not regret that word—to have this matter sorted.

I must of course pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Lady for all the work she does to try to ensure that this place is a little more understanding and accommodating of a diversity of backgrounds, for Members and our staff. I very much take on her advice, although I worry that I might be stepping a bit above my station if I commandeered Downing Street for the summit she suggested—

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harman]

It sounds as though the Minister is well under way to solving that problem, so that is encouraging.

My next point was considered by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and has been echoed throughout the House. We do not want the provisions in this legislation to contain less protection for journalistic material than the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 did. That Act relates to a very different world and refers to the journalist’s notebook, whereas we are considering communications data, but a key point is that the relevant journalist or media organisation is given notice when a warrant is being applied for so that they can make representations as to why one should not be granted in order to protect their sources. We are not talking about journalists who are up to their necks in criminal activity—that is not the issue. The issue arises from applications for material that relates not to any criminal activity but to a journalist’s work. Can we ensure that journalists are put on notice, because of the special status of journalistic material, so that the authorising authorities have the benefit of hearing from journalists or media organisations before a warrant is granted?

I appreciate that the Minister has already responded to those issues and has put in additional protections, such as taking the non-statutory code and putting it on the statute, but the issue of notice still remains, which is why we tabled our amendments and why they have gathered support. I welcome the Minister’s confirmation that he will look further at the matter, but other members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the House of Lords, and many other Members of the Lords, will want to consider it. Nobody wants an unjustified fettering of the ability of the security services and the police to keep us safe. The point in the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was absolutely spot on. We are all in favour of the same thing here, but we must ensure that, at the end of the process, we have the right balance not only for journalists but in many other respects.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I shall speak to new clause 18 and amendment 207. I note that these are probing measures tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), and I also note the assurances given by the Solicitor General. However, given the concerns raised by the SNP, I thought it may be helpful to give some examples of how the organisations in schedule 4 need these powers and how they contribute towards the criminal justice system in our country.

We are speaking about communications data, not about bulk warrants or intercept warrants; we are discussing the who, what and when of communications between suspects. The criminal justice system sees thousands of prosecutions brought each year by the organisations listed in schedule 4. The Department for Work and Pensions prosecutes benefit fraud, and I am sure we all support it on that. It conducted approximately 600,000 investigations last year, and communications data can be invaluable, particularly in dealing with conspiracies to defraud, in showing links between conspirators and the timing of their communications.

New clause 18 excludes one of the largest and most important investigating agencies: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. It investigates a huge range of offences, from tax fraud to cigarette smuggling and the criminal exploitation of HMRC’s repayment system. The seriousness of some of these offences can be summed up in the offence that I prosecuted many times on its behalf: cheating the Revenue, which attracts a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The Joint Committee heard evidence from HMRC that last year it made 10,000 requests for communications data, which supported 560 investigations, in cases involving a loss to the Treasury of £2 billion. If that is not a serious investigating organisation that deserves our help in investigating and prosecuting criminal activity, I do not know what is.

The injustice does not end with HMRC, and I will give just two more examples, as I am conscious of the time. The Financial Conduct Authority regulates the financial markets, and the banking, financial and insurance industries, among others. In a £10 million insider dealing fraud case, in which I was instructed, we were able to build an electronic reconstruction of a day in the life of an insider dealer. It went from the moment when a memory stick was inserted into a computer to download the price-sensitive information, to the handover of the stick to a co-conspirator at another bank, to the material being uploaded on to webmail and messages being sent out to the defendants to get trading on these stocks. The FCA operates in the digital world, by definition, and it made more communications data requests last year than 20 police forces that are cited in new clause 18.

The second example, mentioned by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), is the Health and Safety Executive. It prosecutes employers who kill and maim employees and members of the public in the workplace. These are highly specialised cases, which could encompass any workplace, from building sites to chemical factories and care homes. Last year, the HSE conducted 3,280 investigations, resulting in 535 prosecutions in England and Wales.

I know that these are probing measures and that my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage is raising important issues, particularly on access for child protection units and others, but we must not lose sight of the important role that many of these organisations play in the criminal justice system and their need for their power to prevent and detect crime.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Baroness Harman

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 146, which stands in my name and those of fellow members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Committee conducted legislative scrutiny of the Bill and published our report—a unanimous report—on 2 June. Like previous speakers in this debate and everyone in their right mind, we wanted to make sure that the Government and, acting on behalf of the Government, the security services have the right intercept powers to keep us safe, while at the same time respecting privacy and not invading it abusively. I thank the members of the Committee who worked on that scrutiny, the legal adviser to the Committee, Professor Murray Hunt, the Committee staff and those who gave evidence.

Because I hope to catch your eye when we debate the next group of amendments, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall speak briefly to amendment 146, echoing the points made by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who speaks on behalf of the Scottish National party. The amendment is about the role of the judicial commissioners. In essence, the commissioners are doing two things. First, they approve warrants issued by those who have the power to issue warrants—a very important role. A warrant that is not approved is a dead duck; it has to be stopped there and then. The role played by the commissioners in the approval process is set out in clause 21 and subsequent clauses. Secondly, the commissioners have an oversight and reporting function, which is set out in clause 194. They review and oversee the authorisation of warrants; they report to the Prime Minister and that report has to be published to Parliament.

It is a problem to have the same person both carrying out approval of a warrant and overseeing their approval of the warrant. The purpose of having all these measures in the Bill is to get them right. I pay tribute to the Home Secretary for her determination to understand and respond to the concerns. I hope that she will respond to the concern I am setting out now. I am not sure it is necessary to have two separate organisations, as the SNP proposes in its amendment; but I am absolutely sure that there has to be some separation of functions. Oversight of oneself is not realistic oversight.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Will the right hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

Will the right hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Ms Harman]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) and then to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry)

[Victoria Atkins]

The Joint Committee on the draft Bill debated this matter in some detail. We concluded that it is better for judicial commissioners to have experience on both sides of the fence, as it were, just as at the criminal Bar barristers tend to prosecute and defend, so that they have knowledge of both sides. Secondly, the Committee was optimistic that it would help to attract judges of the right calibre to apply to be auditors.

[Ms Harman]

It might well be useful for commissioners to have experience of both functions, but not at the same time and not using the same team of staff. I think ours is a relatively modest but important proposal. I am sure the hon. Lady can see that the arrangement could be clarified to create some sort of Chinese wall between the two functions. We are not suggesting that the functions be performed by separate organisations, but the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West may be about to persuade us all that separate organisations are needed.