Business of the House

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving me notice of her question. I have looked into this matter. The report she mentions involves the responsibilities of a number of Departments, and I think that she received a letter from the Minister for Women and Equalities to alert her to the fact that there would probably be a delay in making a response. However, I share my right hon. Friend’s disquiet, and I certainly do not regard it as defensible that her Committee should have had to wait so much longer than the normal period. I will draw her concern to the attention of the Ministers responsible, and I hope that we will be able to provide her Committee with the Government response to which it is entitled as rapidly as possible.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Fifty years ago, I was a newly appointed young lecturer at Swansea University, and I remember the deeply dark and wet day of Aberfan and the deaths of all those children. May I associate myself with the comments that have been made about keeping them in our thoughts? We should have a discussion in the House about how we look after the people involved—the families, the supporters and the communities—when such tragedies happen. It took a long time to respond positively to that terrible tragedy.

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair and reasonable point. As he rightly says, it is often some time after the immediate period of shock and grief that the full traumatic impact of what people have lived through and what they have lost bears down on them. An effective response has to involve not just statutory services but—this is often most effective—friends and neighbours in the neighbourhoods where the people themselves live. I suspect there are lessons that can be learned from successes and failures in responding to various tragedies that have taken place over the years. I hope that he has the opportunity, possibly through the Backbench Business Committee, to raise that matter in the future.