Public Services
Debate between Carol Monaghan and Alison Thewliss(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Alison Thewliss
I have a long speech to get through; I will see if I can get the hon. Lady in later.
I recently joined the police in my constituency for the Give a Day to Policing initiative. It was incredibly interesting to see how things work on the frontline, including officers booking people into custody. When doing so, they have access to important EU databases that guarantee safety, because if somebody has been booked into custody and the police officer at the desk does not know whether they have outstanding warrants for violence in other countries, they will not be able to make an appropriate judgment about how that prisoner is treated in custody. It is very important that we have continued access to those databases.
The Guardian reported in July that the National Crime Agency was harvesting EU databases, just in case it did not have access to them in the event of Brexit. There is a fundamental issue about how we treat crime agencies in the UK. I noted recently a case in Govanhill in my constituency in which it took five years to bring to justice those involved in people trafficking from Slovakia to Glasgow only because of the co-operation of Police Scotland, UK forces, Europol, Eurojust and the Slovakian police force. I contend that, in the event of Brexit, and certainly a no-deal Brexit, that case would have been far more difficult to resolve. There will be cases going through the criminal process now that might not be concluded. We will be a lot less safe as a result of Brexit if those databases cannot be accessed.
Brexit also puts further pressure on our police services. It has been widely reported that police leave at the end of this month has been cancelled in many cases. That will have a huge impact on staff morale and the ability of forces to respond to everyday issues of crime on our doorsteps. The police need to be able to provide that service and to go about their job. They should not have to defend people who may end up trying to raid their local shop for bread because food supplies cannot get through. The Government have put people in a ludicrous position. In 2019 we should not be discussing the possibility of civil contingencies such as the Army coming to support the police on our streets, but that is the situation that this Government have driven us to.
I welcome the UK Government’s approach to the serious violence Bill. In Scotland and in Glasgow, we have significant experience of the impact of knife crime and what can be done to tackle it. It is welcome that the UK is following Scotland’s lead, but we await further details as to the effectiveness of that policy. The violence reduction unit in Scotland worked because it was organic; it came from grassroots experts who knew what they were doing, such as Medics Against Violence and the police; it was sustained; and it was a long-term plan. The UK Government need to think about the long term and to work across agencies in a truly co-operative fashion to make sure that the policy is successful.
For example, we have people in hospitals who can sit down with victims of knife crime when they come into A&E and make an intervention at that vulnerable time. We do not want people to walk out the door and go on to commit an act of revenge or further violence. Those mentors are very important in violence prevention. The UK Government would do well to look at that model. As a result, the murder rate in Glasgow has dropped by 60%, but we cannot be complacent about knife crime. We need to make sure that that is sustained.
I also ask the UK Government to look to Scotland with regard to the Sentencing (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Bill. In Scotland, we have a presumption—not a ban—against short sentences. They are ineffective, because they put people into a cycle of prison. We need to make sure that people do not enter that cycle, because it is incredibly difficult for them to get out once they are in that system. I ask the UK Government to move away from the populism of, “Let’s lock everybody up.” Instead, they should consider the purpose of prison and the criminal justice system and look at models that move towards rehabilitation.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making an important speech. The former Justice Minister, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), was looking to Scotland and the good work being done there on short sentencing. We are seeing that our reoffending rates have dropped. Does she agree that it is so important for the new Cabinet to continue their predecessor’s work?
Alison Thewliss
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a lot to be learned from that. We should be in the business of closing prisons down, not building more. We should look at the reasons people are driven into the criminal justice system—at the causes of poverty and inequality, which drive so many people into it.
I look with interest and some despair at the immigration and social security Bill. We see immigration as positive. It is a good thing for our country and it is very good for public services in our country. Brexit will have a huge and damaging effect on our public services, because often the people who provide them have done us the huge honour of coming to our country.
The NHS in particular will suffer as a result of Brexit. Recently, The Independent quoted research by Medbelle that said that EU doctors and nurses have been worth more than £3 billion to the UK economy over the past five years. There has already been a 91% fall in EU registrations to the Nursing & Midwifery Council since 2016, and more than 7,000 nurses have left that register. What impact do the Government think that will have on the most vulnerable? How do they expect our NHS to cope with the shock of that sudden drop? According to Medbelle’s analysis, educating more than 30,000 British nurses to replace EU nationals would cost £1.2 billion. If and when we finally see a Budget, how will the Chancellor provide for that?
Age UK has raised concerns about the adult social care Bill. From the announcements so far, it thinks that the Bill is too restricted in being just for the elderly and that it should be extended right across the board. I urge the Minister to look at Scotland, where there is already free personal care and where we are moving towards making non-residential social care free as well, because it is desperately important to people. EU nationals are at the forefront of providing that service.
Social Media and Health
Debate between Carol Monaghan and Alison Thewliss(5 years ago)
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European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Debate between Carol Monaghan and Alison Thewliss(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Carol Monaghan
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the contributions from SNP Members over the past couple of years, he will see that when we have talked about salary thresholds, the message we have sent has been strong, clear and consistent. Salary thresholds do not work, and they specifically do not work in Scotland, where people earn less than in parts of the south-east of England. It would be good if the hon. Gentleman joined us in calling for the scrapping of these salary thresholds.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the salary thresholds. My experience of dealing with many constituents, who are treated very shabbily by the Home Office, is that they work all the hours God sends and still cannot reach the thresholds to get their families to come over from other countries. I have a constituent who missed out by a matter of pounds and was not able to bring over their family.
Carol Monaghan
My hon. Friend confirms the point that I was making.
I want to move on to Euratom. Since the vote in 2016, I have regularly raised issues about Euratom. When I have asked about the arrangements for importing radioactive sources for medical scans and cancer treatments, I have been accused of scaremongering. Let us be clear: Euratom regulates nuclear facilities and materials. Outside Euratom it is still possible to carry out such regulation, but Euratom also guarantees a supply of medical radioisotopes. There are only a few reactors worldwide that actually produce them. They have short half-lives and have to get from production to use point very quickly, and Euratom guarantees that. What arrangements is the UK putting in place to make sure that we can get them here very quickly? If we do not have them, the 500,000 diagnostic scans and 10,000 cancer treatments that take place every year will not be able to happen. That is fundamental, and we have not had answers. Articles 79 to 85 of the draft agreement talk about Euratom, but there is nothing in it about future supplies and no answers about future arrangements.
I will not be voting for this deal because of the impact on our universities and our research collaborations, because we have not had any answers about the medical radioisotopes that are currently supplied by Euratom and because of the economic dangers to Scotland in being removed from the single market and the customs union but, ultimately and fundamentally, because of the removal of freedom of movement, which we on the SNP Benches hold so dear.
Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit
Debate between Carol Monaghan and Alison Thewliss(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Alison Thewliss
Absolutely. I will return to the issue of the policy’s objectives and how unmeetable they are, given the child poverty that will result from the policy.
It is absolutely clear that nothing in the policy fits with the Government’s objective of giving people a more stable family life. In fact, it plunges families further into uncertainty and crisis, and puts them under tremendous strain.
It is also clear that it will be children who lose out as a result of this policy. It is estimated that this policy will affect—in time, when transitional protections run out—around 3 million children. The Church of England estimates that in my constituency alone 1,600 families and 5,500 children will be affected, which amounts to 36% of the children there. I cannot begin to say what impact this policy will have on the health, education and life chances of those young people.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Once again, my hon. Friend is making a passionate speech on this issue. Does she share my concerns that there is another issue here, namely that families expecting a third child might be forced to have an abortion as a result of this policy? Often, those are people in faith communities, who are likely to have larger families.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and there is clear evidence on this issue, which I will touch on later in my speech. The ends that this Government are forcing families into, and the decisions that those families are being forced to make, are really disturbing.
The cut in this benefit is £2,780 per child, per year, which is a sum that families will struggle to make up through taking on extra work. The Church of England calculates that a single parent with three children who is working 16 hours at the minimum wage—I should say the Chancellor’s pretendy “living wage”, because it is not an actual living wage that one could live on—would need to work 45 hours to compensate for the loss of income and for this Government’s cut. That is assuming that work is available to them in their community and that their children can be looked after by somebody when they are not home. If not, who will do the homework with those children? Who will tuck them into bed at night? Who will make sure that the family is looked after? And what is the mental health impact on that family and the impact on the physical health of the parent, who will be absolutely exhausted after working 45 hours a week and looking after three children, which is a job in itself? The impact on family life must be taken into consideration by the Minister.
There are also real disincentives within this policy, because it will be much harder for families to move into work. The policy will take away the incentive to try to get around the benefit cap, as families will end up losing more if they try to work more.
There is also a disproportionate hit on particular minority groups. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that families of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin are particularly badly hit by this policy, losing thousands of pounds. For years now, I have been flagging up concerns that 60% of Muslim families and 52% of Jewish families have more than two children. There are also concerns, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) mentioned, among religious faiths that will not use contraception for moral reasons and clearly cannot access abortion services. Therefore, they have very little choice in the decisions that face them.
Of course, this is a particular issue for women in Northern Ireland, where family size is traditionally larger than in the rest of the UK and where, as we in this House well know, women cannot access abortion services on the same basis as we can here. I wonder what the Minister expects women to do in such circumstances.
I want to mention a further point about abortion, because it is becoming the reality for many women. I would like to read directly from the testimonies of women who have spoken to the benefits helpline, Turn2us, because they are absolutely stark and I want the Minister to pay particular attention to them. One woman said she had
“to have an abortion as”
she “can’t afford” another child. Another said:
“It makes me want to give up my child for adoption.”
Another woman said she was:
“already due another baby when the new tax credit cap came into play. Now I worry I can’t afford to budget for a baby as I won’t get any extra help.”
Another said:
“I found out I was 5 months pregnant and now in a complete panic. I’m too far on for an abortion but I have no way of supporting this child. I was taking precautions and definitely did not plan or expect to have any more children. The marina coil is meant to be more effective than being sterilised.”
One woman said she was
“worried that I will not be able to afford the child. I am pregnant at the moment but I am worried it may be twins.”
Another woman said:
“I was already pregnant so I could not reconsider.”
Another said:
“I didn’t plan this child but it’s beaten all the odds to get here and I believe in things happening for a reason and also do not believe in abortion, so here we are expecting our 3rd child any day and no help financially. I have worked since I was 15 years old and I can’t get help when I need it.”
Another woman said:
“This was a surprise and an unplanned pregnancy and I only found out at 20 weeks that I was pregnant due to an NHS mistake and I don’t have the money to raise a child. But due to religious reasons I cannot terminate the pregnancy, especially this far along.”
How can the Minister possibly justify that? Could he look each woman in these circumstances in the eye and tell them that this policy is about fairness?
Furthermore, Refuge has outlined the risk of this policy to women who are at risk of domestic violence, because the two-child limit exacerbates the control that perpetrators of abuse have over a woman and puts more pressure and risk on the woman. [Interruption.] I would like to share that experience, too, with the Minister, if he wants to stop shuffling his papers and pay attention. Refuge has said:
“Women have felt more trapped and unable to stay as there was no available money to help them move and leave. The 2 child cap means that some women will be pressured into having more children and becoming financially reliant on the partners for support.”
One resident said that
“whilst pregnant with a 3rd child her ex demanded she have an abortion because he said they could not get any more money for it and when she said she didn’t”
want one
“he tried being violent to enforce a miscarriage.”
Refuge also said:
“Women struggling to manage after fleeing if they have three children feel like they have no support and no money to support the family. It means they feel like they should stay or return to the perpetrator.”
I remind Members that the rape clause form itself states that women are not eligible for support if they are living with the father of the child, which forces women to leave their home before they can do so safely, and we all know that the evidence suggests that that is the most dangerous time—the time that women are most likely to be murdered—if they leave without any kind of safety planning.
Before I finish, I want to tackle the suggestion that the Scottish Government should set about mitigating the two-child limit. First of all, we do not have full control over the welfare benefits system. Why not? Because Labour, through the Smith Commission, would not trust us to have it. We therefore end up being lumbered with a system that Scotland did not design, with policies that Scotland did not vote for, and with the ability only to tinker round the edges, thanks to the work of the Labour party.
For those on child tax credits, which is still the majority of people within the system, we have no way of mitigating these things, because that is a function of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. For universal credit, at the moment we have “administrative flexibilities”. The Scottish Government have changed payment schedules and allowed for direct payment to landlords and separate payments to tackle financial abuse. However, the use of those flexibilities incurs a payment to the Department for Work and Pensions for the administration of them—money I am sure all of us agree could be spent directly on the frontline.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I want this policy to go everywhere and not just throughout Scotland. I have campaigned on a cross-party basis to that end, particularly for women in Northern Ireland, who have often been unrepresented in this place and who have to fill out a separate rape clause form, because they were at risk of prosecution just for filling out the original form. That is why I want to make sure that no woman in the UK gets left behind by this policy. We should be campaigning against this Tory Government and focusing all our fire on the Conservative party, which wants to make women go through this trauma.
However, let us not forget that the Labour party’s official position back in 2015 was to support the two-child limit. Perhaps if Labour Members had voted with us back then on the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, we would not be here—three years, four months and 20 days later—discussing this issue today.
PACE Trial: People with ME
Debate between Carol Monaghan and Alison Thewliss(6 years, 2 months ago)
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Carol Monaghan
Many parents who try to home school their children also face local authority intervention, trying to get the children back to school. We must listen to patients.
This disease is very easy to ignore. All too often, those living with ME are housebound, and suffer from what they refer to as “brain fog”, which makes it difficult to mount an organised campaign. That means that much about ME remains unknown. There is some evidence that it could be grouped with auto-immune conditions such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Some people have reported that certain anti-viral drugs improve their condition, but without properly conducted scientific research, we do not have the answers. Ultimately, the impact of the PACE trial on those with ME has been devastating.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend makes a good case. My constituent Carol Ann McGregor has had ME since 1996 and has been bedbound for seven years. She says that she has
“lost my life, health, husband, my career and my home”.
Does my hon. Friend agree with my long-term family friend Maureen Bivard that the cover-up, and the way in which the PACE trial was carried out, amounts to a miscarriage of justice for patients?
Carol Monaghan
I think that when the full details of the trial become known, it will be considered one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century.