Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

When I was reading the briefings related to this group of amendments, I was struck by how often the term “pro-contact culture” was used. I am, generally speaking, pro contact culture, because I want to be in a situation—which has been well laid out in the other amendments—where the presumption is that the best interest of the child is to have contact with both parents. I do not necessarily think this is gendered, although I appreciate that obviously, more women—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

It is.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Yes, I said the other day in speaking to my amendments, I hope everyone accepts, that more women are the victims of domestic violence, but it is also the case that it can work both ways. I would like each allegation to be carefully examined by the courts; that is all. It needs to be that way, because we should have the aspiration that both parents should work to restructure the family in a healthy manner after separation, even after the massive disruption of domestic abuse. In the spirit of saying that I want people who commit certain crimes to become rehabilitated and to become responsible citizens, I do not want something that is so blanket as Amendment 82.

Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend, who has been involved in the trade union movement all of his working life, as he said. He has had significant achievements within that career. I first knew of him when he was working on the merger, which he talked about, of very different public sector unions: NUPE, COHSE and NALGO. He subsequently became the general secretary of the merged union, UNISON. I know how difficult weaving together those different cultures, traditions and interests was and still is. To have maintained the confidence of those members for 20 years, as general secretary, is no mean feat. He championed the cause of those working across the public sector, but he never forgot the particular challenge facing low-paid women, ensuring training and support for career progression for very many of them. As general secretary, he oversaw several successful equal pay claims, which have been transformative for all women, whatever workforce they are in. So I am delighted that he has joined these Benches.

My noble friend could not have arrived at a more propitious moment. The future of public services absolutely is dependent on their workforce, and no one is better placed than he to understand the elements of a well-functioning, motivated and, yes, productive workforce. We would all do well to listen to what he has to say and to work with him to deliver those public services from their current crisis into what the public have the right to expect. His outstanding speech today gives us some idea of what we can expect and what we should be working on.

I come to the subject of this debate. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Blencathra, for two outstanding reports, which were published at a particularly challenging time for democracy. They and other members are right that much of this will often be described as boring, technical and so on. However, these reports show just how wrong we are when that is what we think about these committees. They go to the heart of the rationale for much of Parliament’s work, and they are searing in their critique of the creeping imbalance between Parliament and the Executives, and the dangers of that.

I am not a member of either committee, so I hope I am allowed to stretch a bit further. The problem is exacerbated because the reports were published at a time when it seemed almost fashionable to question the institutions that traditionally hold up democracy. These institutions are part of the proper balance of power, holding the Executive to account. Of course, prime among those is Parliament, but we in this House lost good Ministers, who had responsibility for how the rule of law was exercised through the criminal justice system, because of their concerns around all of this. Parliament was prorogued because the Executive felt that they could not get their own way, and civil society—another important institution for holding the Executive to account—has too often been criticised for speaking truth to power.

We have seen in other countries how democratically elected leaders have questioned opposition and the very process of elections. That means that we have to recognise the fragility of democracy. We have a responsibility not just to defend parliamentary democracy but to strengthen it in this country.

Having listened to the previous speeches, I am reluctant to blame civil servants, parliamentary counsel, clerks and whoever else works with us when we are in government for all this, because at the end of the day it is politicians’ responsibility. We are responsible and we must be accountable. I remember that, when I first became Chief Whip, the principal private secretary said to me, “I work for you 51% of the time, and I work for the other parties 49% of the time”, reminding me that, in a parliamentary democracy, opposition and different views are important, and we must reflect them.

I wanted to make two other points, but my time has come to an end. We must find ways to strengthen pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny, and this House is particularly well placed to do that. I hope we can think about changing how we do things here with the Government to improve post-legislative, pre-legislative and legislative scrutiny. We owe that to the public we seek to serve. Unless we take that very seriously, parliamentary democracy will continue to be under threat.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As the noble Earl rightly says, we have created the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund, of which £500 million in grants has already been awarded to more than 3,000 museums, music venues, independent cinemas, circuses, heritage sites and theatres in England. I know that there is ongoing dialogue between the Secretary of State and the sector to which he refers, and I am sure that all is being done to try to see what else can be done.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as we now know that, in facing this virus, no one is safe unless everyone is safe, are the Government going to repeat and expand the successful Everybody In programme from the first lockdown, to ensure that every rough sleeper is in safe accommodation, with adequate washing and toilet facilities, so that they are safe and the community is safe?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness refers to an extremely important issue. Through this dreadful time, we can all agree that the programme to help get rough sleepers into accommodation has been one of the positive things that has come out of it. I can assure her that our £15 million Protect programme, which is running alongside the Everyone In campaign, is providing targeted funding for councils in areas with high numbers of rough sleepers, prioritising the clinically vulnerable and those with a history of rough sleeping. That is on top of the £10 million cold winter fund, which is helping all councils support rough sleepers into self-contained accommodation. By September 2020 we had housed 29,000 vulnerable people as part of the successful Everyone In programme.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As we have made clear, the furlough scheme is a UK-wide scheme, and, as the Prime Minister said, we will always be there for all parts of the UK.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that local authorities now get sufficient information and data to know where their centres of infection are? Will the Government commit today to working with them to ensure that they have the resources to bear down on those places, whatever they may be, so that they can confidently be prepared to come out of lockdown and to keep on top of that? That means that they will need to be on top of test, track and trace in that more dangerous time after lockdown in particular. Local authorities have shown that they can do track and trace effectively. Why do the Government not work with them in a more trustworthy way and give us all hope that we can get out of lock- down and begin to deal with this virus more effectively?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness. We are working very closely with local authorities, and they do indeed have significant resources and powers to do local contact tracing. In fact, there are more than 128 local authority contact tracing teams in place around the country, with more to come. I am sure she will be aware of the Liverpool pilot scheme, which we are hoping will be successful and roll out. Everyone living and working in Liverpool will now be offered a Covid test, whether they have symptoms or not. Whole-city testing aims to protect those at highest risk and find asymptomatic cases in order to prevent and reduce transmission in the community, exactly as the noble Baroness said. If this approach works—and we are looking to roll it out—we are hopeful that it will play a significant role in doing exactly what the noble Baroness says in helping to make sure that local authorities and local areas can bear down quickly and effectively on outbreaks within their area.

Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank my noble friend for his more optimistic outlook. He is absolutely right: our proposal is that before the end of the transition period, then for every four years after that, the UK will provide an opportunity for democratic consent in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive for the regulatory alignment arrangements, within the framework set out in the Good Friday agreement.

My noble friend is also absolutely right that the reason we have brought forward these new proposals and will be working incredibly hard over the coming weeks is that we need to get agreement in the other place to support them, which we have not managed to do with the backstop in its current state. That is an absolute priority for us. We very much hope that through further discussions and negotiations across all parties and all Benches, both in this House and the other place, we can get to a point where we can get a deal and move on to start talking about the positive relationship we want with the EU. That is what we all want to be talking about, and it feels as if it is time we really tried to get on to that, so that we can move on.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, do the Government recognise that consent is a tricky issue because the DUP does not represent the whole of the unionist community? Many unionists voted to remain and would certainly want to be in the single market and customs union in any future agreement. I remain very concerned that the Government seem to see one side of the story in Northern Ireland as represented by only the DUP. It is simply not true.

Regarding the regulation of goods—as opposed to customs—the Government’s explanatory note says that these arrangements must receive the endorsement of the Northern Ireland Assembly. We have already had questions about what happens if that is not there, and I realise that the Minister is not able to respond. If they are meant to receive the endorsement of the Assembly and Executive, Paragraph 13 of the paper states that that should happen before the end of transition period and every four years thereafter.

What happens if they do not give consent? What will then be the position? Do we revert to what we have now—common regulations—or is the reversion to the hard border, which differs absolutely from what most people in Northern Ireland voted for?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I once again reiterate: we have made very clear that there will be no return to a hard border in Northern Ireland and that we believe that it is only right that the people of Northern Ireland have a say through the Executive on whether they wish to consent to the proposed arrangements. I believe that that is right. I will not second-guess their decision, but we fundamentally believe that it is their democratic right to decide that.

European Council

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

It is because this is an international agreement. It has always been the case that agreements at an international level take precedence.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that many people outside will be amazed that the Prime Minister paid no attention to the events in London on Saturday, or to the unprecedented numbers signing a petition to Parliament about revocation. The Prime Minister acknowledges in the Statement that she needs to compromise. She has a compromise on the table: enough people will back her deal if she agrees to a confirmatory vote following a vote in Parliament. This would get all of us through the impasse, embarrassment and humiliation we are now in. Will the noble Baroness the Leader please put this position to the Prime Minister in Cabinet?

Privileges and Conduct Committee

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. I find debates on the conduct of Members of this House and of Members of the House of Commons rather sad and distasteful affairs because we are being asked to sit in judgment on our friends and colleagues. That really cannot be right. History shows that there have been many more cases in the Commons than in this House, the most famous of which was the Marconi scandal, when three Liberal members of the Cabinet bought shares in the company knowing that it would be given a contract. Today they would be put in jail. Eventually a Select Committee of the House of Commons exempted them all; they were totally guiltless. In fact, one was made the Lord Chief Justice.

I agree strongly with the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his speech. I do not object to the report of the committee, which has done a proper and correct job. But I also think we need an entirely new procedure and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that there should be a genuinely independent body operating under the conventions and practices of the legal system. Such a body should be drawn up and we should accept it, but let us know what we are accepting.

When it is recommended that a Member of this House be expelled, that should not come back to this House for approval. We then cease to be a court of justice and we become a parliamentary assembly. A parliamentary assembly has other feelings, emotions and loyalties, built on friendship and respect over the years. The public cannot possibly believe that we could act independently. By having an independent body, Members of this House must recognise that we would be restricting our powers in that position, which is absolutely necessary.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly, particularly to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, about cross-examination. I refer noble Lords to my relevant interests as set out in the register. I have spent a lot of time working with women who have suffered sexual exploitation and are vulnerable, but I am not saying that there are direct parallels. I am saying that there is no system that anyone believes is fully fair and objective in these cases. The most recent evidence shows that even when a judge has been aware of the advice and recommendations about how to conduct trials involving the cross-examination of women who have suffered sexual exploitation, the women’s experience leads them into mental health problems and other real difficulties.

I draw the attention of the House in particular to the recent safeguarding report from the Newcastle case called Operation Sanctuary. The person who conducted the inquiry was a barrister named David Spicer. Some lawyers in this House may know him; I am not in the legal profession so I know very few of them. He looked at the criminal court experience and court processes for supporting the victims and survivors of sexual exploitation. He said that a dedicated trial judge was appointed to preside over all the trials in Newcastle. She took care to ensure that proper processes were followed and that there was no cross-examination that went beyond what is permitted. All the complainants had access to social care and mental health professionals. However, David Spicer also reported that all the victims who gave evidence and contributed to his review complained about how they were treated in cross-examination—about the pressure, the aggressive questions about their backgrounds and motives, along with their personal details, the records of which they were previously unaware of. They told him that their long-term mental health had been badly affected, and I can testify to that, because the organisation I chaired, Changing Lives, worked with them before the trial, to get them there, and continues to work with them.

There is no perfect process. In his recommendations, David Spicer asks the Government to re-examine this issue, so that we are better able to talk about a fair process in cases of sexual exploitation. The courts do not get it right, so is it any wonder that people continue to try to find ways for this House to do it better? We should not kid ourselves that we will get a perfect process. Many women have experienced different types of sexual exploitation from what we are talking about in this case. They will suffer for years to come, and we have not yet found a fair process.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I came into the other place when he was a Minister in the Government and I was able to listen to him with great interest and great learning then.

I am now privileged to be a member of the EU Select Committee and I am learning a lot there too. I do not intend in this short speech to dwell on the knotty issues that the committee is dealing with. I want to talk much more about the context within which our deliberations in Committee and here in the Chamber are taking place. I leave every meeting of the committee and the sub-committee thinking, “This is much more complex than any of us ever thought it would be”. There is no issue where you do not realise, as you listen to the different views and witnesses, that this is very difficult.

And therein lies the problem. We are living in a world where complexity scares people. We do not need experts, we were famously told. That suggests we do not need knowledge—let us keep things simple, in short sentences that can become slogans. Populism is becoming the driver of politics around the world, but some of us know—from our history books if nothing else, but also from the experiences of members of our families—that populism thrives on driving divisions and on the polarisation of people and countries.

Populism does not like diversity; it rejects it. This concern or fear, which has arisen because of globalisation and what it brings and from seeing that the world is so complex, has driven fear of migration. I was born in Sunderland and I am proud of that, but it is monocultural. We do not have that many migrants in the north-east, but people believe what they read about migrants and they are frightened. Yet for me one of the great strengths of our country is its diversity. We are not all the same. Diversity is one of the things that makes, for example, our soft power—the modern, indispensable tool of foreign policy—so effective.

The truth is that this country has been divided by the referendum. The Prime Minister has decided that migration is the most important aspect to address. I wish she had put forward her ideas about migration at the beginning. Had she put forward proposals about, for example, work permits for people from the European Union and about having to contribute when you come to this country in order to be entitled to benefits, then she would not have had to announce that we have to leave the European single market and so on. She would have been able to negotiate very good deals. Many other European countries are looking at that sort of way to tackle migration.

However, as people keep saying, we are where we are. The painful divisions mean that, quiet honestly, the debate has become unacceptable. If we talk about the essence of politics, which involves compromise, we are derided. Judges who do their job interpreting the law are derided as enemies of the people. Those who disagree with the decisions and direction taken by the Government are cast aside as “bemoaners”, not concerned with implementing the will of the people. When we point out that the degree of sovereignty will not be absolute, and that even no agreement and going to WTO rules will involve some loss of sovereignty, we are seen as not prepared to accept the will of the people. I believe we have to change the tone of the political debate. That will be good, not only for us as a country and a society, but for the future negotiations with the EU.

The point of Parliament is to solve disagreements through debate, and that will include dissent. Parliament does not give in, and should not give in, to intimidation. This Bill, which was grudgingly brought forward by the Government, is essentially about the right of Parliament to be involved and, hopefully, to have some control over the process of leaving the European Union. It would be very odd if we were to be bullied out of that right. We know that bullying has to be confronted. Certainly we women know that. Threats will not intimidate me or this place.

Today and next week, Parliament can take back control of leaving the EU. I hope we will do it in a way that demonstrates that we recognise and celebrate the diversity of views and of people in this country and that, rather than seek more division and polarisation, we do what we can to bring people and the country together.

EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Can my noble friend confirm—

Alcohol Consumption

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

I know that as part of the responsibility deal there has been a big move by Public Health Ministers at the Department of Health to drive down the number of alcohol units being sold. As I have said, that number has been significantly reduced—by 1.3 million units.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

Is the Minister satisfied that supermarkets have done enough—it is voluntary, as she said—to reduce the amount of high-value alcohol products being sold cheaply as loss leaders?

[Baroness Jolly]

There is always more to be done in this area.