Offender Management: Checkpoint Programme

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bates, who was a Member of Parliament in the same region as me, although he did not come from Durham—just near Durham. I want to intervene in this debate largely to recognise what Durham did, but I do that from the perspective of someone who, for a long time, has worked particularly with women to keep them outside the criminal justice system, and with schemes that really will reduce reoffending. We, as a society, do not deal with those who have offended very effectively. Even if we think they should be punished, it needs to be in a way that means they are less likely to cause harm to themselves and others when they come out of prison. We do not do that, and we are very bad at doing that. Reoffending is a real problem: we have a higher rate than many other western countries and we really need to do something about it.

I think I am the only person down to intervene in this debate who is from Durham, so I wanted to say a little bit about the Durham-specific position. Its police force is the only one in the country that has just had its third outstanding rating from the police inspectorate. One of the reasons it was able to be a driver in this programme was because it had the confidence that it was doing the basics well in the county. When I was at the other end, a lot of my constituents would come in to complain about crime, but the county had less crime than virtually anywhere else in the country. Ironically, I lived in Crook, but we had less crime than the rest of the county, so we were not doing badly as an ex coal- mining community.

The other reason was because of the inspirational leadership at the top of the force. We had Mike Barton, who was an exceptional chief constable. I got to know him when he was deputy chief constable. He rescued a village in my constituency that had become subject to one particular family terrorising everybody. He became chief constable and Ron Hogg became PCC. Ron had previously been a policeman, which gave me a few anxieties in terms of his new role, but he was superb. Tragically, he died last year, very quickly after having motor neurone disease diagnosed. The chief constable said at his funeral that it was his leadership, bravery and commitment to innovation that allowed this scheme to go forward. That is what we need in the rest of the country.

Northern Ireland Update

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords, I understand the passion that the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, brings to this issue. I understand very well the challenges he must have experienced as a schoolmaster, seeing his pupils lost in such a tragic cause. The Secretary of State has sought to reach out to Members of your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions and will continue to do so. It is important that the experience which rests in these hallowed Chambers is not dismissed lightly; there is a wealth of knowledge that can be brought into the discussions. I will strongly encourage my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to draw on the wealth of knowledge that noble Lords represent.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister appreciate just how much ordinary civil society is suffering because there is no Executive in Northern Ireland? An example of that is the charity that Lyra McKee was involved with, which I think is called Headliners. It works in troubled areas, particularly in this country, and in Northern Ireland, with young people across the divide. It works with them on journalism skills in every sense—not necessarily to make them journalists but to build their confidence through telling stories about their communities, their lives and so on. Lyra McKee was involved with it from the age of 13 onwards and became a trustee. That charity faces closure in Northern Ireland because of funding and because there is no Executive to take decisions. The decision is outside the competence of officials. That is one civil society organisation, and because the Executive have not worked for so long, lots of other organisations face real challenges. It is that sort of vacuum, as well as the political vacuum, that is really bringing trouble to folk who just want to get on with a decent, ordinary life. That is the real challenge for the Government.

Good Friday Agreement: Impact of Brexit

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has a lifetime of commitment and work around peacebuilding and civil rights in Northern Ireland. He is good counsel for people like me who are on the EU Committee and have been working on this issue quite a lot in the last year.

The Good Friday agreement was the result of careful negotiations, and involved of course the building of trust among people who really were not very fond of each other. No peace process is ever delivered just by signing a document. I learned in government that, day in and day out, attention had to be paid to developing that trust, building relationships, building clarity and a level of trust that enabled people to move to the next stage.

When government changed in 2010, too many people took the Good Friday agreement for granted. Actually, bits of the Good Friday agreement had not yet been delivered, and there were certainly aspects that needed a lot of work. Now, partly because of that lack of attention in a day-by-day way which I know went on throughout the Government that I was a member of, there are too many siren voices who seem to suggest that the Good Friday agreement is now out of date and that we do not need to worry about it in relation to Brexit. I wish I had their confidence. As I say, the Good Friday agreement was a very precious and difficult negotiation and is still not totally there.

We need to remember that the DUP did not support the Good Friday agreement, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, took a bit of flak from the people to one side of him—I will not say whether from the left or right—who supported the DUP. Unfortunately, it looks as if now they still do not think and work on the detail in the way they need to in order to support that agreement.

Any peace agreement is hard-won, and this one followed 50 years of troubles, which were all part of centuries of difference and struggle on the island of Ireland. As one of those who were centrally involved in the peace process said to me, “Ireland had led to three UK Governments falling, and we never forgot that when we were negotiating”. I hope that this Government do not forget that and that they recognise the dangerous waters they are swimming in.

During the EU Select Committee’s last visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland, the committee met companies and public services operating across the border. The damage that Brexit inflicts on the Good Friday agreement goes beyond any border, and I do not want to talk in detail about those issues today. However, as my noble friend said, it strikes at the heart of people’s identity. We can see across the world that, in many cases, how people identify themselves has become the main driver of politics. In recent years, this has led to increased conflict and violence around the world for many countries.

However, for 20 years in the north of Ireland, identity politics was again, as a friend of mine who was involved in the negotiations said, sort of fudged. The agreement recognises the right of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and to be accepted as Irish, as British or as both, whatever they may choose. Some people therefore do identify as Irish. Others identify only as British. Many who want to move forward identify as both, and that has also led to a huge increase in applications for Irish citizenship because they also want to be seen as European. Each person’s identity is not under threat because their neighbour sees their identity as different, and that was a very important psychological outcome of the Good Friday agreement.

In a sense, identity was relaxed in the Good Friday agreement, and that created a relaxation in how the economy worked. When we were there with the EU Committee, it was difficult to see how breaking any of that ease and relaxation would have anything other than a detrimental effect on the economy. Now that identity has become interlinked with the possible re-establishment of the border—if a border of any sort comes back—by choosing your identity you could become a threat to your neighbour. Nobody is saying that that will happen overnight, but we are saying that there are straws in the wind that simply push people to make choices where the Good Friday agreement allowed them not to make choices. We must understand the seriousness of that.

Brexit has polarised opinion not only in Northern Ireland but in the Republic, and in the relations between the two Governments, at a time when the changing demographics are spooking unionists and reviving the siege mentality. The two Governments in the short term have to act quickly to visibly demonstrate that, whatever tensions there are over Brexit, there is a recognition of the shared interests, history and economics of the people of the north and south.

In the medium term, people have to think long and hard about how unionism can accommodate and show its respect for nationalism and vice versa, no matter what happens on the border. At the moment, that thinking may be well-intentioned, but it is vague and ill-defined. How would unionists reconcile a majority nationalist community to stay in the union? How would nationalists reconcile unionists to a united Ireland? In fact, we have to start and talk openly about such measures and issues, long before any point of decision comes. That thinking needs to be done in the north, in the south, in Dublin and in this House.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I kindly remind the House that when the clock strikes seven minutes, time is up.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, the last time I spoke in the House in a debate about Brexit and trade, I said that as a member of the EU Committee of this House, it seemed to me that every meeting raised new and unforeseen complexities. It was all much more complex and difficult than anybody anticipated before the referendum. That speech was made before the general election. Having worked in constituencies in the north, which largely voted to leave, and in the south, where a large majority of the electorate voted to remain, it is clear to me that the country is very divided—I believe dangerously so.

The PM tries to cling on to a mandate for her version of Brexit, but she lost that mandate in the general election. While more of the electorate than she was expecting voted for her exit, not everyone voted for her Brexit—and we are now in a bit of trouble. There is a sense that the Government are flailing around, trying to find solutions and unity that are just not there.

As the Chancellor said recently, no one voted to make themselves poorer. My neighbours who voted to leave—the people in my community in the north-east—did so because they had suffered from cuts to in-work benefits while their wages had stagnated. They believed that migration was a big reason for why they felt worse off—even though you can count the number of migrants in our small town on one hand.

Our region derives the highest proportion of its per capita income from manufacturing. In many senses, we are the manufacturing heart of the country and most of that manufacturing is exported to Europe. Per head of population we have the highest export ratio to Europe, so we absolutely depend on manufacturing and manufacturing exports to Europe. But we have a declining population and, overall, young people are still leaving the region, so our population is becoming more elderly. We also still have real problems in getting new business start-ups. I suspect that there is some connection. Access to skilled labour and the single market is therefore crucial to the north-east. Think about Nissan, Hitachi, Siemens or the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which are the core drivers of our exports: all of them want to remain in the single market and the customs union.

The Government remain, to me, very unclear in their vision. They gave us no signal in the Queen’s Speech as to how they will address more effectively the skills gap, which we know will be a huge challenge in the north-east over the next 15 years. I support the proposal to remain in the single market and customs union as I believe it is the only way that we can secure the level of exports being sustained, let alone expanded and developed. For example, Hitachi has located in Newton Aycliffe to build trains. One of its reasons for locating there was that Teesport is nearby, and it wants its main market to be in Germany. There are two arms to the site, both of which it had plans to develop; those developments are on hold. I want them to go ahead but there is no way that they will go ahead unless we are in the single market and the customs union. I really want the Government to think about that.

We have to be much more honest about what will be in the best interests of the country. My party leader is right to call for a deal that prioritises jobs and the economy. I wish only that he and others in the leadership had campaigned during the referendum with the enthusiasm and effectiveness that they showed in the general election. I believe we would then be in a very different place because many of those young people who are now distraught about the outcome, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, would have understood more why they needed to be there.

We have to be much more honest and engaged not just with businesses but with the British people, so that they know what the choices are. It is not just the rhetoric but the reality, and the reality is that whatever choices we make will involve compromises. It is about time that the Government stopped trying to pretend that it will all be motherhood and apple pie, and that they were honest and engaged with us and with the public about what those choices and compromises are.