ADJOURNMENT (CONFERENCE)

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am not taking a slew of points of order now. I will take the one from the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) of which I had advance notice. [Interruption.] Order. I say very gently to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), whom I am accustomed to indulging, that I think the House wishes to hear the business statement from the Leader of the House. I will take the point of order from the hon. Member for Leeds East and then we will have the business statement. [Interruption.] Patience, hon. Member. It will come in due course. If you have got a plane to catch, I am sorry but that is, with the very greatest respect, your problem.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. There has been much talk recently about holding a general election. My party wants an election called as soon as possible—[Interruption]—once an extension to avoid a no-deal Brexit has been agreed. But of course, Mr Speaker, there are rules governing the amount of time needed to arrange a general election. I have today liaised with the Library, who confirmed to me that given those rules, the soonest an election could take place is 5 November. That assumes that we dissolve Parliament early next week. Obviously any such general election would then have taken place past the 31 October Brexit deadline. Mr Speaker, to help the public understand the current debate in Parliament, could you confirm that a general election could not be held before the 31 October deadline?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his courtesy in giving me advance notice of his intention to raise it. I can confirm that my understanding of the electoral timetable under the existing statutory framework is the same as his. [Interruption.] I said: under the existing statutory framework my understanding is the same as his.

Prisons and Probation

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Notwithstanding colleagues’ appetite for interrogation, which is often insatiable, and the natural courtesy of the shadow Secretary of State in wanting to accommodate colleagues, I am cautiously optimistic that he is approaching his peroration simply because of the number of colleagues who wish to contribute to the debate. That is not binding. I am merely expressing my cautious optimism.

[Richard Burgon]

This House is a place for cautious optimism, which is very appropriate—not perhaps on all sides.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) makes an important point about environmental sustainability. When there is not sufficient accountability, when profit is being pursued, the price is often paid not only by prisoners and wider society but by the environment. I am glad that the public are increasingly mindful of those important issues.

In 2013 the then Justice Secretary announced the break-up and part-privatisation of the award-winning probation service. Can anyone guess who it was? Of course, it was the current Transport Secretary. Probation does not get the attention of the Prison Service, but it should because it manages a quarter of a million offenders in our communities—around 400 in each constituency on average.

After part-privatisation, 21 private sector community rehabilitation companies manage, or rather mismanage, 150,000 offenders. The Conservatives’ part-privatisation of probation has been a reckless and costly experiment that has failed to protect the public, fragmenting and damaging an award-winning service. Serious reoffending has soared, supervision is severely overstretched and hundreds of millions of pounds have been wasted on bailing out a broken system. It could well be the current Transport Secretary’s most damaging failure—a high bar indeed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I do not know whether the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) knows this yet, but I do know that he will shortly introduce an Adjournment debate on this matter. His views, and the views of others—which, in many cases, are different—will therefore be heard at rather greater length before very long.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister told her party conference that austerity was over, and the Chancellor said that austerity was finally coming to an end, but it seems that they did not have the Ministry of Justice in mind. The Treasury’s own figures—I have them here—show that justice budgets will be slashed by £300 million next year, and that is on top of hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts this year. Those cuts risk pushing justice from repeated crises to breaking point. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, as the Treasury says, justice budgts will indeed be cut by £300 million next year, and that these brutal cuts show that we cannot rely on the Conservatives to end austerity, injustice or anything else?

Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

There is absolutely no guarantee of that happening as a result of the Bill. That is not its real purpose. It actually undermines access to justice. As I said on Second Reading, this is yet another attack by the Government on our justice system and on the vulnerable. It is an attack that will, in practice, enrich the Conservatives’ friends in the insurance industry—[Interruption.] As we can hear, Conservative Members do not like that allegation, and they did not like it when I made it on Second Reading. Maybe it touches a nerve. The Government had a chance to disprove it by their actions, by backing amendments that would have ensured that the Bill would not simply line the pockets of the insurers, but they did not do that.

In their media briefing, the Government claim that the Bill is about cutting the number of fraudulent whiplash claims. Of course, no one would disagree with doing that, and had the Government taken measures that did that in reality and simply stopped there, they would undoubtedly have built a broad consensus and the Bill would have been uncontentious. They did not do that, however. Instead, they pressed on with measures that will penalise the many. That, alongside their dire record on access to justice, is why we still believe that these reforms are a smokescreen. I know that there are many Conservative Members who pride themselves on defending our justice system, on upholding the rule of law and on promoting access to justice. Today is the day for those Members to show that they put their commitment to those important principles above narrow party interest by rejecting the unjust proposals.

The Bill started in the Lords, where it faced substantial opposition, not only from Labour Members or Members representing other political parties, but pre-eminent legal experts, including former Lord Chief Justices, who expressed their concerns about the Bill’s impact on access to justice and the independence of the judiciary. The Government only narrowly defeated amendments—similar to those we have discussed today—that would have fundamentally altered the Bill for the better. Since then, they have not taken the opportunity to listen, not even to those pre-eminent legal experts. They have not tried to negotiate or to remove the barriers to justice that define the Bill. For those reasons and others that I will set out, Labour Members will vote against it.

Before addressing the Bill’s provisions, I wish to place on record other elements of the package of reforms that are intended to be passed through statutory instruments. Through that route, the Government want to increase the small claims limit from £1,000 to £2,000 in all cases and from £1,000 to £5,000 in road traffic accident cases. That will make it much harder for workers to get compensation for workplace injuries, and for genuinely injured people to get a fair settlement. A significantly greater number of claims will be dealt with through the small claims procedure, whereby no legal costs are usually awarded, even in successful claims.

When legal fees are not covered, tens of thousands of working people will simply be priced out of obtaining legal assistance, resulting in many pulling, dropping or not pursuing their cases. Of course, others, determined to secure justice, will fight on, but by representing themselves, at a massive disadvantage. An insurance company will be served by a legal expert fighting their case. The victim will be left to try to navigate a complicated legal procedure, placing greater pressure on our already overstrained courts. Some will choose to pay their legal fees out of their compensation, but then, in practice, they will be compensated less than a court found appropriate. As always, the wealthy will be able to afford the best legal advice and the rest will have to suffer.

Justice for the many, not the few is mere rhetoric for the Government. In reality, it is justice for the few, not the many. Is that why the Government are trying to sneak measures through the back door rather than putting them in the Bill so that they could be debated and amended? That is a cowardly attack on workers’ rights, pushed through without real debate or scrutiny. That just about sums the Government up.

I want to give some real-life examples of people affected by the reforms because far too often their voices are not heard in this place.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I gently say to the shadow Secretary of State, who has come on later than he might have expected to speak—the Minister was within his rights to speak for an unusually long time for Third Reading—that the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) indicated to me several hours ago that she wished to contribute on Third Reading. It would be most unfortunate if there were not an opportunity for Back-Bench Members to speak. I am not blaming the hon. Gentleman, but I ask him whether he might take account of the interest on both sides of the House.

[Richard Burgon]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Those people include a driver, working to take disabled people to and from a day centre, who, because he had not been properly trained, fell off the vehicle while assisting a wheelchair user and suffered a back injury. They include a cleaner in a hospital who, while mopping the floor, went to pick up some papers and pricked her finger on an unsafely discarded needle. She suffered a psychological and physical injury. Just imagine the fear she must have felt as she waited for the test results. Those are examples of cases that have been sent to my office, and of real people who would be penalised by the new system. Those are the people whose voices the Government are content to drown out with their rhetoric that labels people fraudsters and says that they are on the make when they are anything but.

When we consider the Bill, we should not forget that there was a 90% drop-off in employment tribunal claims when employments tribunal fees came into effect. Something similar could happen again with personal injury cases, with genuine victims priced out of justice and deterred from pursuing a claim for an injury that was not their fault.

It is not only Labour who oppose this Conservative attack on access to justice. The Justice Committee has explained that

“increasing the small claims limit for personal injury creates significant access to justice concerns.”

We agree with the Justice Committee and the recommendation of the Lord Justice Jackson review that the small claims limit should be increased in line with inflation, which would mean a rise to £1,500, not the £2,000 currently proposed. We have repeatedly tabled amendments to the Bill, and it is a shame that the Government have not listened. We have also made clear our position on tariffs, and it is a shame that the Government have not responded in a meaningful way to those amendments.

I am conscious that Mr Speaker has asked that I shortly draw my remarks to a conclusion, but I urge every Member of this House to look at the chart produced by the House of Commons Library at page 30 of the briefing and ask themselves whether this is just. What does the chart show? It shows that compensation for an injury lasting up to six months will fall to a fixed £470, down from the current average of £2,150—down by three quarters. Compensation for an injury lasting 10 to 12 months will be £1,250, down from the current average of £3,100—down 60%. Compensation for an injury lasting 16 to 18 months will be £2,790, down from £3,950—down by 30%. Is that what the Conservatives mean by justice?

Injured people who have done nothing wrong are losing out and being placed at a huge disadvantage. If Conservative Members do not want to take Labour’s word for it, they should at least think very carefully about what was said in the House of Lords. The point has already been made that this Bill undermines the independence of the judiciary with the tariff system. We have commented on the definition of whiplash and on the fact that the Government are making out that fraud is taking place on an industrial scale. Do something about cold calling from claims management companies; do not target injured people.

Why not exempt children? People outside this place will not believe that the Government did not concede on our common-sense amendment and have refused to budge on the discount rate.

The central purpose of the Bill is to tip the scales of justice against injured people and in favour of insurance companies’ profits. The Conservatives have shown that this is about lining the pockets of insurance companies by refusing to vote for Labour’s considered amendments, which would have protected vulnerable people and safeguarded fair treatment for victims. This attack on justice is not the first by this Government since 2010—after legal aid and employment tribunal fees—and I fear it will not be the last Tory attack on access to justice.

The wider measures that the Conservatives plan to introduce alongside the Bill will leave tens of thousands of people unable to enforce their legal rights. The Bill may well turn out to be the thin end of the wedge for yet more restrictions on justice in all personal injury cases. If it passes, it will be celebrated as a great victory by the insurance companies in whose interests it has been conceived and drafted, and it will be ordinary people, whose rights are gradually chipped away, who pay the price. That is why Labour will be voting against Third Reading tonight.

Points of Order

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

rose—

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Well! There is a considerable competition between two Opposition Front Benchers. I hope that the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) will forgive me if I take the point of order from the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) first.

[Mr Speaker]

If the Secretary of State believes that he has erred—and, of course, to err is human, so there is no shame in it—it is up to him to correct the record. Each and every Member is responsible for the veracity of what he or she says in this place, and, indeed, for correcting that which is wrong. It would be perfectly possible, if the Secretary of State accepts that he has made a mistake, for him to put the record straight via a correction in the Official Report, known to us, and to some outside this place, as Hansard. I think I can say with some confidence that the gravamen of the hon. Lady’s point of order will communicate itself to the Secretary of State ere long, and we must await developments.

[Richard Burgon]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to express my concern about the Government’s failure to provide time for a debate and vote on the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) Regulations 2018. The measure has caused widespread concern throughout the legal sector, with barristers taking unprecedented industrial action and refusing to take on legal aid work, which has left some defendants without legal representation. A motion praying against the statutory instrument was laid on 22 March on behalf of the Opposition. The shadow Leader of the House then raised the matter during Business Questions on 29 March, and again on 19 April, but no time has provided for a meaningful vote. I understand that under the procedure, the instrument can be annulled only if such a motion is agreed by the House within 40 days of the regulations being laid. That period has now expired.

May I ask you, Mr Speaker, to confirm that we have taken the necessary steps to secure a vote according to the conventions of the House, and that a prayer from the official Opposition should be accommodated with a debate on a motion for annulment, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) has also called today? Just before the recess, my hon. Friend made a point of order about a similar situation, and after your intervention the Government agreed to revoke and re-lay the regulations phasing out the NHS bursary for nursing students. Would it therefore be your advice that the Government should revoke and re-lay this regulation, Mr Speaker? Can you also advise whether there are any other steps that my hon. Friends and I could take to secure a debate and vote on this legislation? Otherwise, we seem to be in a position whereby the Government can simply make it impossible for regulations to be annulled by refusing to allocate time.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his point of order. This is a regrettable state of affairs. Very few things in this place are without precedent, and I certainly would not suggest that this situation is. Indeed, he has just referred to a recent example for which there was a corrective remedy available that the Government accepted. I am not sure that even this situation, if uncorrected, would be unprecedented, but what I can say with some confidence is that such a circumstance is unusual and, indeed, in terms of the smooth running of the House and the existence of a basic atmosphere of trust between the usual channels, it is unhealthy for such situations to occur and for people to feel the need to raise them in this way. I am not cavilling at the hon. Gentleman’s doing so, but it is a pity that this situation has arisen.

I can confirm that, as the hon. Gentleman suggested—he is not in error in this—that the praying time for these regulations has now expired. He and his colleagues will therefore need to table a motion to revoke the regulations in place of their prayer and press the Government through the usual channels for the necessary time to debate the matter. If the motion to revoke were agreed by this House, it would not have direct statutory effect in the way that a prayer would have done. It would be a matter for decision by the Government when or whether to bring forward amending regulations.

Finally, in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry whether there were any more steps available to him, I think I can say no. He has, by taking the action he has done, exhausted the avenues open to him. I say that in a neutral, or indeed positive, sense. He has pursued such options as are available to him and I think he has now to await the Government’s response. Knowing his terrier-like pertinacity, I feel sure that if he does not enjoy satisfaction this is not the last we will have heard of the matter. If there are no further points of order, and the appetite has been satisfied at least for today, we can now proceed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) will shortly reissue his textbook for colleagues on succinct questions.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

This summer I was proud to sign up to the campaign launched by Gina Martin to change the law so that the disgraceful practice of so-called upskirting is made a specific sexual offence. So will the Minister finally join with us today in backing this call for a change in the law?

Prison Officers Association: Withdrawal from Voluntary Tasks

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): The prisons Minister told the Select Committee on Justice this morning that he has the number of the chair of the Prison Officers Association on speed dial.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is getting a little ahead of himself. At this stage, all he needs to do is put the urgent question in the very simple terms in which it was put to me, by saying, “To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if she will make a statement on the Prison Officers Association instruction to withdraw from voluntary tasks.” I have just done the hon. Gentleman’s work for him. If he wants to say it again, he may, but that is the way to deal with it. He will have his opportunity to speak in a moment. He is ahead of himself, which I suppose is better than being behind the curve.

Prisons

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Government Whip, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), should not shout out. He should not shout from a sedentary position, and he should not shout out while standing up. If he will forgive my saying so, to shout out while standing right next to the Speaker’s Chair is perhaps not quite the most intelligent action that he has undertaken in the course, so far, of a most auspicious career.

[Richard Burgon]

I certainly did not take offence when the Government Whip was shouting out, “Are there any policies?” because I did not think that that question was directed at the Opposition.

The reality is that prisons are full of people with a range of problems—those with mental health problems, those addicted to drugs and those who are homeless. It is rarely mentioned that support services focused on issues of that kind have also been victims of austerity. Drugs support has been scaled back, and prisoners are leaving prison with nowhere to sleep. There are too many people in prison with serious mental health problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

The increases in the number of prisoners convicted of historical sex offences and in the number of people in prisons obviously have an effect, but does cutting the number of prison officers by a quarter mitigate that situation or make it worse? It seems to me that the answer to that is quite simple.

Before I draw my remarks to a conclusion, I want to turn—[Interruption.] The prisons Minister has an unfortunate habit of heckling at really inappropriate points. He has demonstrated that before and he has demonstrated it again now. I want to talk about the case of Dean Saunders, who tragically committed suicide in Chelmsford prison. An inquest jury found a number of errors in his treatment. Although prison staff recognised that he had mental health problems, they did not follow the procedure under which he might have been moved to hospital. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), has said that he is

“seeking the details of all those cases to see whether there is a pattern”.—[Official Report, 24 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 156.]

Deborah Coles of the charity Inquest, who supported the family, said that Mr Saunders

“should never have been in prison in the first place. His death was entirely preventable.”

The fact is that there is evidence in abundance from the various independent monitoring board reports and inquest jury findings. The Ministry must ensure that the recommendations of such bodies are acted on.

In conclusion, we need to be tough on crime, wherever it is found, and we need to protect the public. At the same time, we need to make prisons places where effective rehabilitation is a living, breathing reality. We want people to leave prison and become productive members of society, having left crime behind. At present, when it comes to the Prison Service, as in relation to so much else, this Government are failing. They are failing prison staff, they are failing prison inmates and their families, and they are failing the public. Ultimately, the mess this Government are making of our prison system means they are failing society. I commend the motion to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. To move the amendment, I call the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

Points of Order

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Has the Justice Secretary contacted you to say that she intends to make a statement to this House before recess on the crisis of violence and disorder in our understaffed prisons, in light of the disturbance at Bedford prison, and the murder at, and escapes from, Pentonville prison?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The short answer is: no, I have received no such indication. It is only fair to remind the House, and to point out to others who might not have been aware of the fact in the first place, that there was a statement by the Secretary of State last week—last Thursday, if my memory serves me correctly. It is true enough that there have been further incidences of violence since then, but there has not been a request to make a statement today. Doubtless these matters will be returned to, as appropriate, in due course.

Prison Safety and Reform

Debate between John Bercow and Richard Burgon

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

This morning the Secretary of State said that it was in July that she had realised that there was a problem in our prisons. The rest of the country was aware of that reality well before then. There is a crisis in our prisons, although the Secretary of State refuses to admit it openly. The story of our prison system since 2010 is a story of spiralling violence and drug use. The root cause of the prison crisis is the political decision to cut our prison service back to the bone, and today’s announcement feels a lot like “too little, too late”. The Secretary of State wants the headline to be “2,500 extra prison staff”, but 400 of those jobs have already been announced, and, in fact, it is 2,500 “extra” after a reduction of more than 6,000 on the front line.

It is deeply concerning that it was only after a threat of unofficial action that the Secretary of State was prepared to meet representatives of the Prison Officers Association to discuss the safety crisis in our prisons. However, she has finally met the leaders of the officers of whom she has asked so much, and they have made the scale of the crisis clear to her. Will she now admit that there is a Conservative cuts-created crisis in safety in our prisons? In his annual report, published in July, the chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, described our prisons as

“unacceptably violent and dangerous places”.

Only if it is recognised that there is a prisons crisis can a prisons crisis be solved.

The Secretary of State clearly now feels that she needs to be seen to be doing something, but the provision of 2,500 extra prison officers is not a cause for celebration, given that more than 6,000 front-line prison officer jobs have been cut since 2010. We have a prison capacity of 76,000 and a prison population of 85,000, which has remained at about the same level since 2010. We had 24,000 prison officers to deal with 85,000 prisoners; now we have 18,000 to deal with the same number. Our hard-working prison staff are overstretched and overwhelmed, and what has that meant? It has meant a record number of prison deaths, including a record number of suicides. The rate is nearing one death every day. There have been 324 deaths this year, including 107 suicides. Overall, we have seen 1,416 deaths since 2010, including 473 suicides. There are now more than 65 assaults each day, and this year there have been nearly 24,000: there has been a huge surge in both prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and assaults on our hard-working prison staff. The statistics show that there have been more than 100,000 assaults in prisons since 2010.

Why is that? It is because the austerity experiment in our prison service has failed. The presence of fewer officers, overstretched and overwhelmed, means a stricter and increasingly unsafe prison regime, and it means that prisons cannot effectively reform and rehabilitate in the way that prisoners and wider society need. Working in prisons has become less appealing and more dangerous. The Government have said that they have recruited more than 3,100 prison officers since January 2015, but there has been a net increase of only 300 in that time. It is clear that they are failing on staff retention. Prison officers are now expected to work until they are 68, in conditions that the Prison Officers Association has described as

“dangerous for everyone, staff and prisoners alike.”

I am afraid that this Conservative Government have not valued hard-working prison staff; in fact, they have driven experienced staff out of our prisons.

Former Conservative Home Secretary and party leader Michael Howard famously said “Prison works.” Under this Conservative Government, prison isn’t working. Prison isn’t working for prisoners, prison isn’t working for our prison staff, and prison isn’t working for wider society. Reoffending rates are far too high, and the Government have failed on rehabilitation. Because prison isn’t working under this Government, it is not protecting our society properly.

The Justice Secretary has undoubtedly grabbed headlines by promising an increase in the number of prison officers, but she needs to tell us how she will attract new staff. She also needs to understand that building new prisons is not a panacea in itself. There are problems over how league tables would work in practice, and there is a tension between more autonomy for prison governors and new powers for the Secretary of State—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed. I gave him an extra half minute, which I think was fair.