Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Monday 27th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking that training, which is very important. She is right that more employers should act. We are now providing a range of support to help employers to recruit and retain people with mental health conditions, including the Disability Confident campaign and the mental health support service in the Access to Work scheme, which many firms and those who suffer from mental health conditions find useful.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State should beware of being so enthusiastic that he ignores the real needs of people who cannot go to work. I had an email this morning from one of my constituents saying that her husband had taken his life on Friday. He first came to us in 2016 when his award of employment and support allowance was under review. Despite his doctor’s protest, he was made to have a face-to-face assessment. We sought an extension of the six-month award; that was refused. At that point, he was so stressed that he attempted suicide. The PIP award was reviewed again in January. Will the Secretary of State please ensure that when doctors say that people with mental health conditions should not have face-to-face assessments, they do not have face-to-face assessments?

[Damian Green]

The case that the hon. Lady raises is clearly dreadful. I am sure that the whole House will want to send condolences to the family and friends of her constituent, particularly his widow. We are, of course, not just investing more in mental health than ever before—£11 billion this year—but succeeding specifically in improving clinical assessments. More clinical expertise is now available to the assessors who look at individual cases. As she will know, we have now ended reassessment for those who have conditions that can only stay the same or get worse. We are taking steps to try to minimise those effects.

Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability Green Paper

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Yes, that is exactly at the heart of what we are trying to do, because there have been too many gaps in the system. Health Ministers and I agree that we must get the systems working together much better so that individuals find the journey much more seamless than they ever have.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Could the Secretary of State consider more carefully the role of GPs? With the work capability assessment, untrained people are sometimes overriding the advice of GPs. We do not want to see that with ESA regarding fit notes.

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point. GPs will play a significant role in the system, and we want the role they play to be as constructive as possible. We have looked at ways of changing the system so that GPs can be involved earlier. The reason for the consultation on the changes to the fit note is precisely to find a way of making the fit note help the person concerned back into work without adding to the burden on GPs. We want everyone involved in the system to feel they are playing a part in helping someone to get back into work.

BT Broadband Provision: Local Businesses

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Thursday 10th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I will detail my next case and then come on to the general issues that she raises, because I agree with her entirely.

In Whorlton, the Danshell Group has a care home for vulnerable people with learning disabilities. It paid an even higher fee, £100,000, for its links, because it is trying to help people to maintain contact with their families through Skype and it is using sophisticated technology in other ways to provide therapies for those people. It still does not have its connection.

When people are paying these very large sums of money and they get in touch with BT months before they want the connection, they should expect a decent level of service. One thing that struck me in the William Smith case was that every time we rang BT, there was a new problem: it had to go under the road; the fibre had to be blown; there needed to be a new duct here; there needed to be a new duct there. It became absolutely clear that at no point had the people in BT sat down and made a plan. They had not looked at what was needed and said, “Okay, if we’re going to achieve this by then, we need to do this on date A, this on date B and this on date C.” There was no plan. It was as if they were complete amateurs and had never done it before.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

To illustrate the hon. Lady’s point, which is about not so much the inability as the unwillingness of BT to acknowledge that it is a joined-up operation, I want to read out an email sent to a constituent of mine in the last couple of weeks by someone in the executive level complaints team at BT. My constituent had complained, not unreasonably, that he could get only 1 megabit. The email reads:

“Our suppliers (Openreach) are in charge of this network and they would not consider any request from the public to move lines or modify serving exchanges, with the view to simply improving broadband speeds.”

I cannot but take that apart. Openreach is not a supplier to BT; Openreach is part of BT. It is dishonest of BT to pretend that somehow Openreach is a separate operation. Also, that allows it to say, “I’m sorry. Just because the public ask for higher broadband speeds, you can’t expect us to provide them.” That is completely unsatisfactory.

[Helen Goodman]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and his constituency of Ashford is not even particularly rural; it is not as if the company has to travel dozens or hundreds of miles to make the connections in his constituency. It seems to me that it has a particular problem with the small business sector and it has a problem the minute someone is outside one of the large urban areas. Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), it is obvious that the benefits of good internet access are greater in rural areas than in big urban areas, because, as anyone with a rural or semi-rural constituency knows, vast amounts of resource go into transport and moving stuff and people around.

Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The Irish system has not been in place for very long and it is impossible to claim all the virtues for it that the Opposition wish to claim. It is sensible for discussions to continue on the points on which there has been widespread consensus in the House this evening, and jumping immediately into another system would be the wrong way to go about this.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Seventy years!

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady, from a sedentary position, talks about 70 years but the Leveson report was published last Thursday. We are debating it today, a Monday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is meeting the editors tomorrow and we will produce proposals in the coming months.

We will consider carefully the other recommendations in Lord Justice Leveson’s report and respond in due course. The Government will ensure that the central principles of Lord Justice Leveson’s report will be taken forward in cross-party talks as quickly and comprehensively as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the Leveson report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I look forward to receiving the Select Committee report on this matter, which we are expecting shortly. I am happy to assure my hon. Friend that we are working not only with other Departments, including the Department for Communities and Local Government, but with the Youth Justice Board to ensure that young people have access to suitable accommodation on release from custody. The YJB is also working to improve resettlement on release from custody by encouraging local services to work more collaboratively to ensure that young people have suitable accommodation, which is an essential step in stopping them reoffending.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Under Labour, the number of first-time offenders fell by a third. Does the Minister believe it is realistic to think that that trend can continue when the cuts to local authorities are as deep as they are? He says he has a co-ordinated approach, but what is happening in practice?

[Damian Green]

I am happy to tell the hon. Lady that I do not need to project that things are carrying on in the right direction—they are carrying on in the right direction. In the past year, the number of first-time entrants to the youth justice system has fallen by 20%, from 45,900 to 36,700. I am grateful to her for giving me the chance to give those figures to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

I agree with my hon. Friend, not least because although they are police and crime commissioners, people may have focused too much on the policing aspect. The crime reduction aspect is at the heart of what these new elected bodies will do, and crime prevention and some of the things that we have been discussing earlier this morning, such as restorative justice, will play a very important part in each locality in improving the criminal justice system and improving public confidence in the criminal justice system. The PCCs will play a significant part in that.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Harassment, threatening behaviour and bullying on social media are all increasing. What training has the Department put in place to enable probation officers, magistrates, judges and the court services to deal with that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Helen Goodman

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman illustrates the problem of writing his question before hearing the previous answer, in which I made the point that we are deploying UK Border Agency staff more efficiently by integrating them, as his Government started off doing. On top of that, the border police command will be within the national crime agency. That will mean not only that we better use the resources that we have, but that we will have more resources with the new border police command. Our borders will be much safer than they were under what I am afraid was the lamentable performance by the previous Government.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

4. What progress she has made on implementing the recommendations of the review of sexualisation of young people undertaken by Linda Papadopoulos.