Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment (r), at the end of the Question to add:
“and submit to Your Majesty that this House wishes to see an end to the violence in Israel and Palestine; unequivocally condemn the horrific terrorist attack and murder of civilians by Hamas, call for the immediate release of all hostages and reaffirm Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorism; believe all human life is equal and that there has been too much suffering, including far too many deaths of innocent civilians and children, over the past month in Gaza; reaffirm the UK’s commitment to the rules-based international order, international humanitarian law and the jurisdiction of the ICC to address the conduct of all parties in Gaza and Hamas’s attacks in Israel; call on Israel to protect hospitals and lift the siege conditions allowing food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel into Gaza; request the Government continue to work with the international community to prevent a wider escalation of the conflict in the region, guarantee that people in Gaza who are forced to flee during this conflict can return to their homes and seek an end to the expansion of illegal settlements and settler violence in the West Bank; and, while acknowledging the daily humanitarian pauses to allow in aid and the movement of civilians, believe they must be longer to deliver humanitarian assistance on a scale that begins to meet the desperate needs of the people of Gaza, which is a necessary step to an enduring cessation of fighting as soon as possible and a credible, diplomatic and political process to deliver the lasting peace of a two-state solution.”
When the Prime Minister opened the King’s Speech debate just eight days ago, we had all this briefing about how it was a “Rishi reset” moment. So much of a flop was it, that having made promises just eight days ago about the changes his Government would deliver, now he is talking about the changes to his Government instead. We have another reshuffle and another Rishi reset—not change, just more of the same chaos. We remember his conference claim that he was rejecting decades of failure, including the last 13 years of Tory Government. Just a month later, he has brought back one of the main Tory architects in the former Prime Minister, who cut 20,000 police officers, brought in the bedroom tax and austerity, and pushed working families and children into poverty. It is a sign of the state of the Tory party that the Prime Minister who did all that is now suddenly seen as a moderate.
Instead of a Government focused on the problems facing the country, whether the cost of living crisis, record NHS waiting lists or rising town centre crime and serious violence, what we have got is just more of the same Tory psychodrama and chaos. In the past seven and a half years, we have had five Prime Ministers, six Chancellors, seven Health Secretaries, seven Foreign Secretaries, eight Home Secretaries and 11—I think I counted right—Justice Secretaries.
Yvette Cooper
Eight Justice Secretaries—it has been a struggle to keep count of their changing. We have had eight Home Secretaries in less than eight years and, even worse, two of them were the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman). She was so unsuited for the job of Home Secretary that she was sacked twice: once for breaching security rules in government, and the second time for undermining security on our streets, attacking the police, undermining respect for the decisions they took in the run-up to a difficult weekend, ramping up division around remembrance and making it harder for the police to do their job. No other Home Secretary would ever have done those things. It shows how little this Prime Minister cares about our security that he was prepared to reappoint her, to defend her and to follow her wherever she led, and now we know why.
The dodgy deal that the Prime Minister denied last year is now laid bare in the former Home Secretary’s letter. She says:
“Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members…and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister”.
Fair point there. She goes on:
“This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you.”
Obviously that is another sign of her poor judgment. The deal made him Prime Minister and made him make her the most unsuitable Home Secretary this country has had.
The Conservatives published their latest Criminal Justice Bill yesterday. It has measures that Labour called for to tackle antisocial behaviour, and I was going to make the point that the Government have no ideas of their own and are just following Labour’s lead, but I have to concede that they and the Tory party in general are definitely the experts on antisocial behaviour. The former Home Secretary is throwing rocks and stones. The New Conservative group is making dark threats, going round the parliamentary Tory party nuisance-begging for no-confidence letters in the Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is so desperate to find out how many letters have gone in to the chair of the 1922 committee, the right hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) that he is now camped outside his office, but I guess they told us it was a lifestyle choice.
While the Tories fight culture wars with each other, the rest of us are worried about security on our streets. The new Home Secretary has briefed that he did not want to take over the job, but he has agreed to take one for the team. Let me just say to him and to all Government Front Benchers: if they do not want to run the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice and cannot see how to do the job, they should get out the way for those of us who can. Our country is crying out for a Government who care about tackling crime, restoring security to our streets and restoring confidence in the police, rather than a Tory Government chasing headlines and fighting among themselves.
The Government want to tell us that all is fine on the number of police and the level of crime, but they are badly out of touch, because that is not what it feels like across the country, and nothing in the King’s Speech will touch the sides. We have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police on our streets. Half the country say they never see a bobby on the beat. Knife crime is up by 70%, devastating young lives. We have persistent violence against women and girls across our country. That is the Conservatives’ abysmal legacy on law and order.
Labour has set out a mission on crime to halve serious violence including knife crime and violence against women and girls, to reverse the catastrophic collapse in the proportion of crimes solved, and to rebuild confidence in the police and criminal justice system by getting 13,000 more neighbourhood police on the streets and tackling town centre crime. However, what do we have in the King’s Speech? The Criminal Justice Bill includes measures that Labour called for long ago, but it does not tackle enough of the serious problems that our country faces or make up for the damage that has been done. We support making sure that the most serious and dangerous criminals properly serve their time, but, frankly, too few criminals are actually caught or charged in the first place. Under this Government, more than 90% of crimes go unsolved. For those who commit a crime, the chances of being caught and punished are less than half what they were under the last Labour Government. That is the scale of collapse in law and order under the Tories.
On knife crime, the measures go nowhere near far enough. On violence against women and girls, I am really concerned because there is nothing on spiking, nothing serious on stalking and nothing to turn around the woeful fact that 98% of rapists avoid charge. The Government’s sentencing proposals may mean that thousands of domestic abusers whose violence is escalating will be let off jail.
There is nothing at all on town centre crime. Shoplifting is up a shocking 25% in a year. Assaults on shop workers tripled during the pandemic and have not gone down again. This is Freedom From Fear Week, and I thank the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the British Retail Consortium for the work they are doing to stand up for staff safety and shine a light on the disgraceful way in which people are being treated just for doing their jobs. But why are the Government not listening to them? Labour is, and we will change the law. We will table amendments to the crime and justice Bill to ditch the ridiculous £200 rule that stops action from being taken against repeat shoplifting gangs and to bring in a proper new offence of assaulting shop workers, because everyone has the right to feel safe at work.
On national security and some of the core issues that affect the safety of our nation, in the past we had broad cross-party consensus and worked together in that spirit. Labour will always stand ready to do so. Security Ministers and shadow Security Ministers have done so before, and that is the spirit in which we will work on the national security Bill. That is also the spirit in which we would always have expected to approach the operational independence and impartiality of British policing. The last Home Secretary undermined that; I hope that the new Home Secretary will be able to restore it, because this is too important for us to disagree on.
It is likewise for the safety and cohesion of our communities. We have seen tensions increase as a result of the truly awful events in the middle east. There has been an appalling rise in antisemitism, including some disgraceful incidents this weekend, with Jewish communities feeling enormous anguish and distress. We have also seen an awful increase in Islamophobia and the rise of organised far-right thuggery about which the police raised concerns this weekend. Every one of us in this House must be clear that violence and hate crime have no place on Britain’s streets and must face the full force of the law. We must all back the police in taking the action that is needed.
I thank the police for the reassurance work they are doing with synagogues, Jewish schools and mosques as well as their action against the hate crimes that devastate lives and corrode communities. I say to the Justice Secretary and the new Home Secretary that Labour has called for stronger action to tackle both antisemitism and Islamophobia and hateful extremism. Again, we stand ready to work with the Government and see what we can do to come together to address these serious issues, because there is a responsibility on all of us to bring our communities together.
The shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), will speak later about Labour's amendment in more detail, but every one of us will have been deeply disturbed by the terrible events in the middle east. We want an end to the devastating violence and suffering. We have seen 11,000 Palestinians killed; two thirds of them women and children. Thousands of innocent children are dead. Families are bereaved and parents grieving. It is intolerable. Hundreds of hostages are still being held following the gravest attack on Jewish people on any day since the holocaust. Israeli families are still experiencing the horror and the trauma as the remains of their loved ones are still being identified. Families and communities are still reeling from the events.
We all condemn the truly barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on 7 October. Under international law, we respect countries’ right to defend their citizens from terrorist attacks and also countries’ obligations to abide by international law. The conduct of war matters. As Antony Blinken said at the very start of the conflict,
“how Israel does this matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard, even when it is difficult…Our humanity—the value that we place on human life and human dignity—that’s what makes us who we are.”
The rules-based order must not be abandoned.
That is why we must commit to recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to address the conduct of all parties in the conflict. But it is also why we need an urgent suspension of hostilities: not just a short pause, but, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary has set out, the time and space to get in fuel, food and water, to rebuild vital humanitarian infrastructure, to protect aid workers, who are losing their lives on a scale we have never seen before in conflict, to put in place protection for civilians and negotiate hostage releases, and to work towards a full cessation of violence and enduring peace so that lives can be saved and the intolerable suffering can end.
We know that that requires immense and complex diplomatic work. It is not easy. We have words on a page that we will talk about voting on today, but we all know that it is not through words on a page that this will be achieved; it will be achieved through step-by-step intense diplomacy and pressure that recognises how difficult it is when Hamas refuse to agree to stop rocket attacks and pledge again to repeat the attacks of 7 October. We recognise, too, that hostages are still being held, but we still have to make urgent diplomatic progress. We still have to do what we can right now to save lives and make progress in getting hostilities suspended, especially so that humanitarian action can be taken.
We recognise, too, that the only way forward is a two-state solution with a secure and safe Israel alongside a secure and sovereign Palestine. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary was right to say yesterday that
“neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets.”—[Official Report, 14 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 510.]
That is why there is a responsibility on all of us to urge the UK Government to do what they can—to strain every sinew—in the pursuit of peace.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to be called early in the debate. I usually wait a lot longer—
Chris Stephens
“Get on with it,” says the Labour Front Bencher.
On justice, I hope that the Minister heard my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) speak about the violence reduction unit work being done in Scotland. I was a member of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. There is a lot of work being done on this issue in Scotland. It is a public health issue and, yes, education and lifelong learning have a role in tackling it, as I hope the Minister will take on board.
On the King’s Speech itself, this has been an extraordinary five days. It started off with a lot of the hard right-wing rhetoric, and now we see that the Government have moved, or are trying to move, to a centrist position—it is quite extraordinary. I listened to the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis), and I have heard others. I hope that he will condemn the far-right thuggery we saw at the weekend in London and elsewhere. Those were not counter-protesters—the phrase I have seen being used—but far-right thugs. Every single Member of this House should condemn those individuals, who wore a poppy on their jackets while showing a swastika tattoo at the same time. It was an absolute outrage. Those were despicable sights at the weekend.
Other measures were mentioned in the King’s Speech. After today’s Supreme Court judgment, it is obvious that there will be yet another immigration Bill—that has been an annual event in this place since I came here in 2015—to try to fix the broken asylum system in this country. I am concerned; at my surgery in Govan on Friday, I met a Palestinian constituent who has been denied asylum by the Home Office. He has not heard from his family in Gaza for 10 days, and has been denied refugee status in the United Kingdom. That tells me how broken the asylum system is, and I hope that Home Office representatives will meet me to discuss that particular case.
What was most surprising about the King’s Speech was that it contained very few measures to tackle the cost of living crisis—or, as I call it, the cost of greed crisis—that is taking place across these islands. It is interesting that in America, President Joe Biden has launched a food poverty strategy to eliminate food poverty by the year 2030, but this Government will not match that ambition here. I certainly intend to table a Bill on that issue, because we need a strategy to eliminate food poverty. Far too many of our citizens across these islands are going hungry; it is a disgrace that that is happening in an economy like ours. It is being left to the rest of us to develop a community shop network, selling food at affordable rates or at cost, to help people move away from food banks—from emergency need.
We need that sort of system, and we need the Government to take food poverty in this country extremely seriously because, as I have said, far too many people are in food poverty, including far too many children. It makes me weep when I hear some of the stories reported to my office of people who do not have the basic essentials. We need essentials guarantees in the universal credit system. It is incredible that we have this ridiculous situation in which the universal credit system, which is there as a so-called safety net, is no longer a safety net for many reasons. Universal credit and the social security system are also broken; there were opportunities in the King’s Speech for the Government to fix them, but sadly they did not.
I associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, about the lack of action on infected blood in the King’s Speech. It is no longer good enough for the Government to sneak out statements just before recesses or prorogations, talking about the lack of action that is taking place for far too many people who have been caught up in that scandal. We will continue to call that out; there need to be debates and regular statements in this Chamber, so that Members from all sides of the House can call the Government to account for the snail’s pace of action. Lastly, I will be voting in the name of humanity and supporting a ceasefire in the Lobby tonight.
Welfare Cap
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Vara
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have given him plenty of opportunity to apologise, and he is not doing what the nation wants. If he is not going to do that, he needs to sit quietly and contemplate what policies his party is going to produce. On policies, it is worth noting that he, along with the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), actually supported the measure that introduced this cap, as did several other welfare Cabinet Ministers when Labour was in government, so it is ironic that they now seek to make cheap political points. As I say, by 2019-20 we will have achieved our £12 billion welfare savings. That is what we pledged at the election, that is what the public gave us a mandate for and that is exactly what we will deliver. We can do this because of the permanent savings that we have already made and the long-term reforms that we are making.
The simple fact is that Labour completely overspent on welfare during its 13 years in power. Under Labour, welfare spending went up by almost 60% and the benefits system cost every household an extra £3,000 a year. Spending on tax credits increased by 330%. That is £24 billion—
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
You are still spending more than us.
Arrests of Chinese Protesters
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I can understand the concern. I am a constituency MP and if I were on the Back Benches I would have the concerns that the hon. Gentleman expressed. However, I would also wait for the police investigation. There are a lot of assumptions about who, why and where. Let us wait. I have faith in the police in this country, as we all have. Let us wait and see as the investigation progresses.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Dr Shao Jiang is a constituent of mine. The world saw him arrested for waving two A4 placards calling for human rights in China. His home was searched when no one was there, and his and his wife Johanna’s computers have been confiscated. I spoke to Johanna this afternoon. It was a very traumatic experience for both of them, but particularly for Dr Jiang, given that he has already been held for 18 months in a Chinese jail for organising the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Will the Minister advise me how I as Dr Jiang’s Member of Parliament can hold to account those who made the disgraceful decisions to arrest someone who was, on the face of it, behaving in a way that was entirely peaceful, who should not have been arrested and whose house should not have been searched?
Mike Penning
Although I fully understand the hon. Lady’s feeling that she needs to support her constituents—I fully understand that—we must wait, because that is the sort of democracy we are in. It is an ongoing investigation. The gentleman she refers to is on bail. Let us wait and see what happens. After it is all over I will be more than happy to meet colleagues to discuss this, but we must wait.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Ninth sitting)
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Chair
I call a poorly Emily Thornberry to move the amendment.
Clause 16
Loans for mortgage interest
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 16, page 15, line 25, at end insert—
‘(7A) The waiting period before a person can apply for a loan under this section shall be 13 weeks.”
To require that the waiting period before an application for a loan for mortgage interest can be made is 13 weeks.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, ill or not.
Housing costs are never far away from our discussions in this Committee, and the clause brings the subject back into focus in a new and unexpected way. It is not at all clear to me what the Government are trying to achieve with this strange proposal. Support for mortgage interest—SMI—is a benefit that has been in existence in some form or another since 1948. It is the same age as the welfare state and the national health service and is paid exclusively to those on the lowest incomes. It is an important part of the social safety net, the entire principle of which is undermined when we start talking about replacing benefits with loans, which is what the proposal would do.
We have tabled mostly probing amendments to clauses 16 to 18. We do not believe that interest-bearing loans have a place in the social security system at all, but we have sought to highlight some of the most serious flaws in the proposal in the hope that the Government might reassure us that the consequences of the changes have been adequately thought through because, at first blush, it seems to us that they have not.
Towards the end of Tuesday’s sitting, we began to air some of the arguments about waiting periods. The Government made clear their intention to fix the waiting period for SMI loans at 39 weeks, which is three times its current level. That is without a doubt a substantial change. The waiting period was set at 13 weeks in 2008 when the global financial crisis prompted the then Labour Government to shorten the waiting period as part of a range of measures intended to prevent homeowners from going into arrears and facing repossession of their homes.
A research report published by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2011—I recommend the Minister reads it because it is very interesting and enlightening—says that the measures were successful. It stated that the changes
“resulted in more people being assisted, more fully and sooner. Borrowers accrued lower levels of arrears or none at all”
and
“lenders have been more willing to forbear and not seek possession.”
The report was published in 2011 and can be found on the Government’s DWP website.
Reversing the process by reverting to a 39-week waiting period is counterintuitive and likely to be counterproductive. It seems likely to increase the probability of homeowners facing repossession and homelessness when they fall on hard times. If the measure is about saving money, making things more difficult for people who find themselves falling on hard times when trying to buy their home and more likely that repossession will happen earlier is counterintuitive because of the costs to us all to look after the people whose homes have been repossessed. As we discussed on Tuesday, I was disappointed that there was no mention of that in the latest Government impact assessment.
The Government have not been able to provide any reassurance that there is a robust evidence base or, indeed, any evidence base at all for the contention that the charge will not risk an increase in homelessness. The best that the Minister could do on Tuesday was to tell us:
“The Council of Mortgage Lenders has not said that the 39-week wait will drive repossessions. That is an eminently respected organisation, and it would have said if it felt that was the case.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform and Work Public Bill Committee, 12 October 2015; c. 360.]
I was interested and frankly surprised to hear that, and thought perhaps I had misheard it. I gave the Minister the benefit of the doubt at the time, but I am afraid I do not now. I wondered if the Council of Mortgage Lenders had looked into this in a bit more depth than the Government, so I went back and looked over its submission to the Committee. Imagine my surprise when I found that the view it had expressed on the waiting period was the exact opposite of what the Minister told us! For the sake of clarity, I will quote the submission at length, because it is a very helpful document:
“If the waiting time is extended, as planned, we believe that it will result in more cases of repossession as lenders will not be able to allow their customers to continue to accrue mortgage arrears over this period especially where the customer is unable to make any payment. Lenders already have to carefully balance allowing a person to remain in their home while not allowing their financial position to worsen. Extending the waiting time will only cause additional consumer detriment.”
There we are. The council is against it. The one piece of evidence that the Minister was able to cite in support of extending the waiting period turns out to be nothing of the kind.
The Government have to do better than that. In order to persuade Members on the Opposition Benches, the Government ought to make an effort to produce some evidence or opinion from someone apart from Government Ministers that shows that the proposal is a good idea, and that extending the waiting period for mortgage lenders to get repayment will not mean an increase in homelessness. That, I appreciate, is an uphill task, but it is one they have set themselves.
I appreciate that I am a cracked record on this, but we must go beyond the rhetoric and look at evidence. Social policy should be based on evidence, and I will be interested to hear whether there is any evidence to show that extending the period from 13 weeks to 39 weeks, as the Government want, will actually help anybody.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Owen. The Scottish National party supports the intentions behind Labour’s amendment 19, because access to support must be available within 13 weeks and not the proposed 39 weeks.
According to Shelter, around £300 million per annum in SMI is “small” in terms of welfare spending, but it is very important:
“It covers the interest payments for around 200,000 home owners on their mortgages, meaning that they are less likely to be forced into having their home repossessed and, ultimately, to end up homeless.”
Shelter also says that SMI has
“tight eligibility criteria and is restricted to very low income households who are out of work, pensioners or sick or disabled. In fact, the overwhelming majority of recipients of SMI either qualify through pension credit or employment and support allowance.”
They are already some of the most vulnerable benefit claimants, so adding a further burden by turning the benefit into a loan is essentially giving with one hand and taking away with the other. We do not support the Government’s attack on the weakest by forcing more and more vulnerable people to take on the added burden of debt just to get out of hard times. How can we define that as welfare?
Amendment 19 would ensure a waiting period for applications by eligible claimants for support with mortgage interest of 13 weeks. That would offer protection against the Government increasing the waiting period, as they have done with statutory instrument No. 1647, which will increase the waiting period to 39 weeks from 1 April 2016. The explanatory memorandum to the instrument states:
“The provisions in this instrument introduce a 39 week waiting period for all working age claimants who are required to serve a waiting period before housing costs, including payment of eligible mortgage interest, can be paid.”
We do not want yet more financial pressure on benefit claimants due to having to wait more than half a year to receive financial help with their mortgage interest payments, let alone the added pressure of that financial help pushing them into further long-term debt when that benefit is turned into a loan. Has the Minister had discussions with the Scottish Government on the implications of that change from support to loan, which will impact the people of Scotland by pushing them into further debt? I would be grateful for information on that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Shailesh Vara)
It is a pleasure, Mr Owen, to serve under your chairmanship. First, may I clarify one point concerning the Council of Mortgage Lenders? The other day, I spoke in good faith and on the basis of the many regular meetings that we have with the CML during which the issue has not been raised at all. Indeed, Paul Smee, its director general, did not raise the issue when he was in a meeting with my ministerial colleague, the noble Lord Freud, when they met in early September. Although the CML has definitely said that it believes that the 39-week waiting period will drive repossessions, they are unable to quantify numbers of repossessions. We will continue to work with the CML to assess any such impact in terms of repossessions but we do not believe that these will be significant.
Mr Vara
I have said all I am going to say on that. I would like to make progress as there is a lot to be said this morning. I would rather not get bogged down on issues on which I have made proper statement.
Claimants receiving income-related benefits may claim help towards the cost of their mortgage interest payments. Other than those receiving state pension credit, claimants have to serve a waiting period before the entitlement to help with mortgage interest begins. During the period of 1997 to 2009—the announcement was made in 2008 but the actual impact was in 2009—the waiting period for the majority of working age claimants was 39 weeks. In January 2009, the then Government introduced temporary arrangements reducing the period to 13 weeks, specifically to deal with the economic circumstances and to give additional protection to those who lost their jobs during the recession. At the same time, the maximum value of the mortgage for which support was available—the capital limit—was doubled to £200,000.
It was announced in the summer Budget that, from April 2016, the waiting period will return to the pre-recession length of 39 weeks, but it is important to remember and to note that the higher capital limit of £200,000 will be maintained. Given that the 39-week period was perfectly satisfactory from 1997 to 2009, and that the reduction was introduced purely on a temporary basis to deal with the then economic circumstances, it is right and proper that we should now revert to the former system.
We are all aware that the economy is on the rise and of the huge benefit that the employment market has had. We have record employment levels. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment for her contribution to ensuring the record level of employment that we have at the moment.
The amendment would remove the current broad powers in the Bill that allow the waiting period for SMI to be set out in regulations, replacing them with a narrowly defined 13-week waiting period.
Emily Thornberry
The Minister asserts extraordinary things. I am sorry, but “We do not believe that this will increase repossessions; there is no evidence that it will” is not an answer to “Please provide the evidence that it won’t.” It is not an answer simply to assert that that will not happen, when common sense dictates that people who do not pay their mortgage for three times as long as before are likely to get into trouble with the lenders. It seems perfectly straightforward.
I will move on to that in a moment, but again, many of the points made by the Minister do not accord with what we know to be the case. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth said, only 15% of those who rely on the payment are on jobseeker’s allowance. Half of them are pensioners, and 40% of them are disabled, so they are unlikely to be able to get back into work. Social policy should be made on the basis of evidence rather than what one would like the situation to be. I will withdraw the amendment at this stage, but the Government should go back to the drawing board and think again. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 116, in clause 16, page 15, line 25, at end insert—
‘( ) The regulations may define “owner-occupier payment”.’
This amendment provides for regulations under clause 16 to define the term “owner-occupier payment”. The definition will make provision about mortgage interest payments and payments under alternative finance arrangements.
117, in clause 16, page 15, line 26, leave out subsection (8).—(Guy Opperman.)
This amendment removes definitions that are no longer needed for clause 16.
Emily Thornberry
I beg to move amendment 134, in clause 16, page 15, line 34, leave out subsection (11) and insert—
‘(11) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by resolution of, each House of Parliament.’
To require that regulations under this section must be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.
The proposed extension of the waiting period is, in my view, just the tip of the iceberg of what we do not know about how the switch from benefit to loan will work in practice. As is often the case with this Government, the Bill contains little detail. The operation of the proposed scheme will instead be set out in regulations, which the Government intend to slip through on the nod, hoping that no one will be paying any attention. Amendment 134 would require that the regulations on the details of the proposed loan scheme under the clause be subject to the affirmative procedure. It is all about democracy.
As drafted, the Bill will allow the Government to implement significant changes to the scheme, including such important details as the loan provider, the rate of interest payable on the loan itself, the terms of repayment and any additional charges and fees, without the need to seek parliamentary approval. That is pretty extraordinary. Amendment 134 would require the regulations to be subject to a debate and a vote in both Houses, so that we may scrutinise the proposals properly and understand what we are being asked to agree to.
I have touched on some of the important details that have been left out of the Bill, some of which I wish to explore further to give a sense of the scale of the issue. The first and most immediately obvious question is, who will provide the loans? In 2011 the Department for Work and Pensions, when it called for evidence, indicated that it would be responsible for administering the scheme, but things seem to have changed. The Bill lists a number of potential providers, including deposit-taking institutions, insurers and local authorities, of which the DWP is not one. So we are left to guess.
The Bill also indicates that administrative fees and interest charges will be payable on loans, but it does not say what will be chargeable or how the rates of interest might be set. It seems ironic, and not at all fair, that when the Government are proposing that loans for mortgage interest should be subject to repayment with interest we do not have the detail in the Bill, so we are not in a position to make an informed judgment.
Another unanswered question is to do with the interaction between the proposed scheme and universal credit. If people continue to receive support for housing costs as part of their monthly universal credit payment, the Government are creating a recipe for confusion by telling claimants that part of their benefit has become an interest-bearing loan that they must at some point repay. We seem to be going in all sorts of different directions at once, and that would seem to undermine one of the core arguments that Ministers put forward in favour of universal credit, which is—I do not know if you remember this, Mr Owen, but we hear it all the time—that it is supposed to be simple. Well, that is not simple.
The Bill is silent on a number of other issues, many of them more complex, that will inevitably arise from the transition period. There are, for example, many features of support for mortgage interest that might make sense for a means-tested benefit, but which seem less appropriate when imposed as a condition for receipt of a loan. Time-limiting claims for those on jobseeker’s allowance is an obvious example. Putting a ceiling on the amount of eligible capital for which SMI is payable is another. The Government do not make it clear whether either of those features will be carried over to the loans that will replace SMI, nor have they made it clear what additional costs the loans may be able to cover.
The Minister recently tabled a number of amendments—we have just heard one—that will change the wording of the Bill to specify that loans will be able to cover “owner-occupier payments” and not only mortgage interest. It is as if a light has just gone on above the Minister’s head and he realises that more ought to be covered. It seems to reflect the Government’s realisation that the scheme has the scope to cover additional costs, such as essential repairs and service charges. For example, some of my pensioners in Bunhill might find themselves in difficulty and needing to go for SMI, but they also have huge service charges for the lifts and cleaning—many of them complain that the service charge is one of the biggest costs that they have—so the Government, at the last minute, have realised that they have to do something about that as well.
If that is the case, the recognition came late in the day, and it indicates that the full implications of the proposal are still not fully thought through. Here we are, in Committee, discussing such an important change—a change of principle, whereby we are asking people to take out a loan in order to pay off the interest on a loan—and the Government have simply not thought it through. We are talking about some of the most vulnerable people, and frankly, leaving aside the fact that the principle is wrong and the measure will not save a great deal of money, to add insult to injury, the Government have not even thought it out.
Finally, the Bill leaves out the crucial issue of the rate at which the loans will be payable. If the payments are too low to cover the full amount of interest owed—for example, if the Government, as they have suggested, use the Bank of England’s standard interest rate as a benchmark—the system will not serve its purpose, and it will increase the incentive for people to abandon their mortgages altogether. I do not know whether the Government have thought of that.
Whatever rate the Government settle on, that important detail deserves more in-depth discussion than the Committee has time for. It simply is not good governance for Ministers to pass legislation that allows them to make changes of such consequence with so little accountability. I hope, therefore, that Government Members will agree that Ministers need to be more forthcoming about their intentions on these issues before the Bill moves forward.
Mr Vara
The amendment would require the regulations made under clause 16 to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure and to be approved by each House of Parliament. That is not necessary, since the fundamental principles we wish to achieve will have been clearly laid out during the Bill’s passage and debated in Parliament.
We had a call for evidence between December 2011 and February 2012. That is a number of years ago, and there has been debate since then. We have had oral evidence. It was between December 2011 and February 2012 that the idea of providing support for mortgage interest payments through a loan was first introduced, and the majority of responses were positive.
Emily Thornberry
I appreciate that the Minister is saying that he will be able to push the principle through using his majority, but the point I am trying to make is that the details make no sense, and the Government have not thought them through. Given that we have no indication of how the system will work, we need an opportunity to scrutinise it further in a Delegated Legislation Committee so that, frankly, we can give the Government a hand, because they are making a pig’s ear of this. The Minister talked about the call for evidence in 2011 and 2012, but the can was kicked down the road for many years, until after the Conservative party won the election, at which point the Government started pushing these things through without thinking through the consequences.
Mr Vara
There is a fundamental distinction between pushing forward an ideology, while ignoring everything and anything that may be put forward, no matter how sensible it is, and deciding to consider the evidence before the Committee and recognise the reality of Government—that it is important to have flexibility and regulations. That is why Departments across Whitehall have regulations: to be able to deal with the minutiae. It is also important to have that facility so that we can deal with things quickly and take a flexible attitude, rather than go through the cumbersome and time-consuming procedure of having everything approved in Parliament. That is simply not the way the real world works; it was not the way the Labour Government operated, it certainly was not the way the coalition Government operated, and it is certainly not the case now.
Emily Thornberry
This was a probing amendment and an attempt to get more detail from the Government, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Emily Thornberry
I beg to move amendment 135, in clause 17, page 16, line 13, at end insert—
‘(4) The regulations must make provision for persons applying for a loan to have access to financial advice, which must be provided free of charge by an organisation independent of the qualifying lender.’
To require that those applying for a loan must have access to free and impartial financial advice which is independent of the lender to whom the application is made.
The amendment stands for itself; it is not complicated. It requires those applying for a loan to have access to free and impartial financial advice independent of the lender to whom the application is made. Given that the Department will not be dealing with the loans and will be asking various other organisations to be responsible for such loans, the amendment is consistent with the principle of having free and independent advice. When the coalition Government decided that people should be given access to their pension pots to buy a Lamborghini, they agreed that there should be independent advice before people made such important decisions, so we ask for poor pensioners and disabled people to be given independent advice before they are asked to take out loans.
Mr Vara
Clause 17 allows the Secretary of State to set out in regulations further details regarding the support for mortgage interest loan scheme, including the Secretary of State’s ability to contract out certain functions of the scheme to a third party, such as for the provision of financial advice. To be clear, the Department will administer and provide loans, but the advice and recovery will be provided by a third party, which will be chosen in an open and transparent way so that everyone can see that an independent arm’s length body is providing that advice.
Mr Vara
That is a matter to be decided.
The hon. Lady’s amendment seeks to set parameters for the advice: who will provide it, and what it will entail. It is the Government’s intention that the regulations should set out the details of that advice, including the type of provider that we will appoint. We also intend for the advice provided to be broad, including available options other than taking out a loan, the implications of taking out a loan and whether people need to speak to potential beneficiaries of their will who might be affected by their decision, so that they can make a fully informed decision about whether to take out a loan. The amendment is restrictive, as it would prevent the Government from providing the broad advice necessary to claimants when they are considering taking out a loan. I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw it.
Emily Thornberry
I will, but we will want to hear before Report whether the advice will be free. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Emily Thornberry
I beg to move amendment 136, in clause 17, page 16, line 13, at end insert—
‘(4) The regulations must provide for persons in receipt of Support for Mortgage interest at the time the regulations come into force to continue to receive these payments for a period of no less than 12 months before they are required to apply for a loan.’
To require that regulations setting out transitional protections for existing claimants of Support for Mortgage Interest must include provisions requiring payments to continue to be made on the basis of the current framework for at least 12 months following the date on which the regulations come into force, before they are expected to apply for a loan.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government new clause 13 and Government amendment 129.
Emily Thornberry
Amendment 136 asks for a 12-month grace period. The Government say that there will be a transitional period, and we think it right for existing claimants to be given 12 months in which to work out the implications of the new necessity of taking out a loan in order to pay off another loan. They need a certain period to get their house in order—to coin a phrase—and to get themselves proper advice. We ask for a 12-month grace period before they have to take out a loan.
Mr Vara
The hon. Lady’s amendment would allow existing claimants who are receiving help with the cost of their mortgage interest payments as a benefit to continue to receive that help for at least a year after the new loan scheme has been introduced by regulations. That would effectively allow existing claimants a grace period before they are required to decide whether to continue receiving support for their mortgage interest as a loan. Given that many such claimants have received help with their mortgage as a benefit for some time—in many cases, decades—it would simply be unfair to continue to provide them with help in the form of a benefit while new claimants are offered loans for the same purpose.
Emily Thornberry
Can the Minister point us to the evidence showing that some people have been receiving assistance for decades?
Mr Vara
I do not have that evidence to hand, but I am quite sure, given that the Department is responsible for paying the benefit, that it is there, and therefore that the measure is based on evidence. We all know people who have been on benefits for many years, in many cases for very good reasons, but it is a fact that many people out there have been on benefits for many years, so we must accept the reality of the situation.
Mr Vara
I will happily answer that question. There has been contact at official level, and the engagement will certainly continue with the Administration in Scotland.
Government amendment 129 is a straightforward technical amendment, which will ensure that new clause 13 has the same extent as clauses 16 and 17 and apply to England, Wales and Scotland. I hope the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury will withdraw the amendment and accept Government new clause 13 and Government amendment 129.
Emily Thornberry
I have nothing to add, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 122, in clause 17, page 16, line 16, leave out “pay mortgage interest” and insert “make owner-occupier payments”.
Amendment 123, in clause 17, page 16, line 19, leave out “pay mortgage interest” and insert “make owner-occupier payments”.
Amendment 124, in clause 17, page 16, line 28, leave out
“in respect of the mortgage interest”
and insert
“in relation to which the amount is paid”.
Amendment 125, in clause 17, page 16, line 39, leave out from “is” to end of line 40 and insert
“liable to make owner-occupier payments under more than one agreement to make such payments.”
Amendment 126, in clause 17, page 16, line 46, leave out subsection (7).
Amendment 127, in clause 17, page 17, leave out lines 29 to 32.—(Guy Opperman.)
This amendment removes definitions that are no longer needed for clause 17.
Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Emily Thornberry
I beg to move amendment 137, in clause 18, page 17, line 40, leave out “repealed.” and insert “amended as follows—
(a) insert at the end of subsection 1—
‘(1AA) In addition to the conditions set out in subsection 1 a “relevant beneficiary” must be an individual in receipt of pension credit (see section 1 of the State Pension Credit Act 2002).’”
To maintain Support for Mortgage Interest as a benefit for anyone in receipt of State Pension Credit and replace it with a loan only for those in receipt of income-based benefits for people of working age.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 138, in clause 18, page 17, line 41, leave out subsections (2) and (3).
This amendment is consequential to amendment 137.
Emily Thornberry
I do not know whether you were in Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, Mr Owen, but many of us were. We heard the Prime Minister say the Government were “very proud” to have kept all their promises to pensioners, but their actions in this Bill show that that is simply not right. The Opposition will make it perfectly clear to pensioners that the Government are going back on their promises to them.
Through the amendment, we want to exempt pensioners from the provisions in the clause. If there is a rationale for the policy, I have yet to work out what it is. On Tuesday, the Minister said—he has said this again today—that
“we believe it is wrong that taxpayers who are unable to afford to buy a home of their own are subsidising claimants who own their own homes.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform and Work Public Bill Committee, 13 October 2015; c. 356.]
That is a very odd statement in the light of what the Government are doing generally. It is quite startling, because obviously the Minister has forgotten about the Government’s plan to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants. That policy, which the Government say is about supporting home ownership, comes with a price tag of £11.6 billion. That is almost equivalent to the savings that the Government say that they need to make in the welfare budget. Compared with that, SMI is absolute peanuts.
The last time the Government looked at the issue, which was in 2011, as we heard, the then Welfare Reform Minister said in a press release that the existing system was “not sustainable”. That is the justification for the measure and why we are going through it—the Government say that SMI is not affordable. At the time, the Government said, spending on SMI was about £400 million. Now it is £265 million a year. In three years’ time the cost will be £250 million. So far from being unsustainable, the cost is going down. If the Government’s definition of “unsustainable” is spending going down, as projected, we need to have a new dictionary.
In fact, the cost-effectiveness of SMI is one of its most distinguishing features. To quote my new favourite organisation, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, of which the Minister is also a fan, as we have heard, it is important that the Government should
“recognise the relative cost-effectiveness of SMI in preventing repossessions.”
The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill, which was the subject of some back and forth during Tuesday’s sitting, helpfully notes that the average weekly payment to working-age SMI claimants is £38 a week. For pensioners who receive the benefit, it is only £20 a week—so it is £20 a week to keep the roof over the head of a pensioner.
To put that into context, the DWP’s most recent figures show that the average weekly housing benefit payment is £95 a week. If there is even the slightest increase in the number of repossessions as a result of the changes that the Government are proposing, and homeless families have to go into privately rented housing and therefore need to claim housing benefit, we are clearly talking about false economies, because they will be moving into somewhere more expensive. Housing benefit is an average of £95 a week, but SMI for pensioners is £20 a week. That speaks for itself and shows the benefit of making social policy on the basis of evidence rather than rhetoric.
Part of my problem in understanding the Government’s intention is that the proposal seems to fit poorly with the values that they claim to hold. We have recently been through an election campaign—as the Minister was telling us—in which the Government repeatedly claimed that welfare reform would protect the most vulnerable. It was not always clear exactly what they meant by that, but what seemed never to be in doubt was that pensioners would be included, and it was certainly hoped that disabled people would be as well.
As the Government are well aware, the overwhelming majority of those who receive SMI are the very same people whom the Government had promised to protect. Almost half of those who receive SMI are pensioners, and about 40% are disabled. Only 15% are claiming JSA, which is a clear reflection of the fact that, in the majority of cases, the people who rely on SMI support will have fallen on hard times because of increasing age or disability and are therefore unlikely to return to work. A disproportionate number of them are single women.
Again, it is important to look at the evidence, and the evidence is that a disproportionate number of the people who are getting the very small sums of money that keep the roof over their head are single women. I do not know this, but I will make a leap and say that I presume we are talking about poor widows—women who have fallen on hard times and whose partners have died. The Government are taking £20 a week away from poor widows, and that might well result in those women losing their homes. Perhaps those women took their mortgage into retirement after their husband died, or perhaps they had to leave a well-paid job after developing long-term health problems. As we have heard, 40% of them are people with disabilities.
Whoever those people are, however, they are taxpayers. They have spent their entire life working and paying income tax and national insurance. They paid stamp duty when they bought their home, and they might be subject to inheritance tax when they die, although recent announcements suggest that that is less likely to be the case in future. People who receive SMI will have paid into the system and are entitled to expect that there will be a safety net for them when they need it. The Government’s proposal sets a disturbing precedent by turning a benefit to which those people will have contributed into a loan that could be clawed back at some future point. Adding insult to injury, they will be charged for the privilege.
The Prime Minister said yesterday:
“We are very proud to have kept all our promises to pensioners”.—[Official Report, 14 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 314.]
That is not right. I cannot imagine what he means by that. The other point that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth made is important. The Government have also failed to keep their promises in relation to social care and to what Dilnot called catastrophic costs, and have refused to give assistance to people who will need long-term care. People need to have a home to be able to sell it to pay for their social care.
The Government’s rhetoric again flies in all sorts of different directions. We hear high-flown talk from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about how important it is for people to be able to pass their savings and their money on to the next generation, and to be able, when they die, to hand over to the next generation without being clobbered by inheritance tax. There really does seem to be one rule for the rich and another for the poor. Widows who need £20 a week will have that taken away from them. They will be expected to take out a loan in order to pay off the interest, and will be charged to do so. It is cruel.
Amendment 138, which is consequential to amendment 137, provides that SMI will continue to be paid to low-income pensioners as a non-refundable benefit.
Neil Coyle
My hon. Friend is making a really solid point about the Government’s rhetoric. It is typical of the Government to create a false divide between taxpayers and those in receipt of benefits, as we have discussed in Committee previously. The Government seem to assume that the two do not overlap at all. As my hon. Friend has already pointed out, those who have put into the system for many years will find that the system is not there to support them, and we will now be charging them to draw down what they have contributed over the years. It is typical of a Government who are out of touch with ordinary working people.
Emily Thornberry
I could not agree more, and I thank my hon. Friend. I would go even further: I think that the welfare state and the principles on which we built it are one of the things we should be proud of about being British, and that is being fundamentally undermined by nasty little clauses such as this one. The Government should be ashamed. The Opposition will certainly fight it.
As I have said, amendment 138 is consequential to amendment 137, which will provide for SMI to continue to be paid to low-income pensioners as a non-refundable benefit. If the Government wish to go ahead and convert the benefit into a loan for working-age people, that is an idea that we can debate separately, because that is a different matter, but for pensioners who are unable to work there should be different considerations. If someone is coming to the end of their life and is not expected to work any more—that is what being a pensioner is—or if they are disabled, circumstances ought to be different. If someone is of working age and on jobseeker’s allowance, there might be a different argument—I have yet to be persuaded, but I appreciate that they might be a different group. However, as we have heard, most of the people affected by this nasty little clause will be pensioners.
If pensioners are to consider the Government’s promises worth the paper they are written on, Ministers should go back to the drawing board and rethink this cruel and unnecessary proposal. It is unnecessary because, in the great scheme of £12 billion, how much money are the Government really saving? It is an amount of money that is going down and down, and it is a fraction of a percentage point of the money that is to be saved.
The measure is a mistake. I hope that the Minister is listening—we are trying to help and the Government are making a profound mistake. I will press amendment 137 to a vote. If Conservative Members really believe that they cannot bring themselves to find, from a £120 billion welfare budget, £20 a week to help poor widows not lose their homes, the public have a right to know where the Government stand.
Mr Vara
We have heard a lengthy and passionate speech, the bottom line of which is, “Can we make an exception for pensioners?” As I have said before, we are talking about pensioners who have an asset, probably the biggest and most valuable asset that they have—the biggest asset that most people have is their home. That asset will appreciate in value. There is an element of fairness involved in the measure, as well as ensuring that we make some savings, and it will save £250 million.
I come back to the fundamental point: we are talking about individuals who have an asset that is being subsidised by the taxpayer. Many of those taxpayers do not have such an asset of their own. It is important to recognise that the proposed system is almost the same as the existing system, save that the benefit is converted into a loan that is payable on sale of the valuable asset or, to the extent that there is nothing left in the equity, the Government will write off the balance. All the care, attention and other benefits that pensioners receive will continue.
Emily Thornberry
I hear what the Minister is saying, but his difficulty is that it flies in the face of what the Government are doing for people who are being helped to buy their housing association homes, a measure that will cost £11.6 billion. People—taxpayers—who do not own their own homes are contributing to the £11.6 billion pot that will help housing association tenants to buy. SMI is chickenfeed compared with the amount of money that the Government are using to subsidise that.
Mr Vara
If £250 million is chickenfeed, to quote what the hon. Lady said, I am afraid that people reading our proceedings in Hansard will take a deep breath and say, “This is what those people think of £0.25 billion.” The consequence of several such chickenfeed decisions is the mess that the country is in now.
Mr Vara
It has been considered. There will be a minimal overlap between the DWP loans and the Department of Health deferred payment arrangements for social care. Those people expected to avail themselves of a deferred social care payment are likely to be mortgage-free or to have income levels above the benefit threshold and so would not qualify for SMI loans. [Interruption.] We will have to agree to disagree. Simply, the bottom line is that the measure is about fairness—fairness for taxpayers. We have to recognise that pensioners have an asset that appreciates, although they are not expected to make any repayment until that asset is sold.
Emily Thornberry
The answers we have heard are profoundly disappointing, and they will be disappointing to the most vulnerable pensioners throughout the country who have paid into a system and who deserve better from the Government.
Neil Coyle
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister is making a mockery of the Government’s supposed commitment to protect the disabled and pensioners, which is what they claimed? The Government seem to be relying on a low number of people being affected by the measure to hide their false pretence.
Emily Thornberry
That is absolutely right. Of course, for people who are affected, it will not matter whether the number is a low one—their life will be profoundly affected by the changes made in the Bill. A relatively small amount of money is involved. I appreciate that huge numbers of people will not be affected, but that does not change the principle, the justice or the unfairness to the individual concerned. We will not withdraw the amendment and will press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Vara
My answers to those questions will come subsequently. There are other issues at hand and I am more than happy to address the matter raised by the hon. Member for Bradford West. That comes up in another section and I will happily deal with it then.
Amendments 147 and 148 clarify that clause 19(7), which allows an alternative relevant year, applies only to private registered providers. Unlike local authorities, whose budgeting and rent reviews are carried out on a traditional financial year cycle, starting 1 April, the housing association sector practice regarding rent review dates varies. Clause 19(7) therefore enables the use of a different relevant year, where the provider’s rent review date for the greater number of its tenancies is not 1 April. The amendments ensure that that subsection applies only to private registered providers, as local authorities do not need that flexibility.
Amendments 150 to 152 on private registered providers, and amendments 157 to 159 on local authorities, provide some important flexibility in the levels of permissible rent once an exemption has been granted by direction. They modify the provision in clause 21 for limited exemptions from the rent reduction requirement, which means that providers will have the flexibility to make a greater reduction in the rent than that set out in the direction.
Amendment l53, which is for private registered providers, and amendment 160, which is for local authorities, deal with circumstances where a registered provider may need to be able to increase rents but it is not appropriate to completely exempt the provider. They allow the regulator and the Secretary of State to issue a direction setting a maximum threshold up to which a provider can increase rents. The amendments give the regulator and the Secretary of State the tools they need to support registered providers in difficult circumstances while protecting hard-working tenants from excessive increases.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Tenth sitting)
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Vara
Let us talk about the private rented sector. In the years 2004 to 2014, the rent increase in the private rented sector was 23%, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the same period, the social housing rent increased by 63%. If that does not show that there is a difference, I do not know what does.
Emily Thornberry
I would be happy to take the Minister around Islington, where, I can assure him, the social rent levels are very much lower than private rent levels and the private rents are going up enormously. In my borough, we have great problems finding accommodation for people in the private rented sector if we cannot provide sufficient housing for them in the social rented sector, which we cannot. Our concern is that everything that the Government are currently doing is undermining the social rented sector and will, in the end, lead to a bigger benefit bill.
Mr Vara
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her contribution, but I suggest she takes up the issue with the Office for National Statistics, rather than with me, as it is a highly regarded independent body. I am minded to say that the vast majority of the public will agree with the ONS, rather than with her.
Mr Vara
I will not for the moment.
The Government remain committed to the delivery of 275,000 homes over the course of this Parliament. I remind Opposition Members that we have a track record of delivery—in the past five years we delivered more affordable homes than the Labour party did in 13 years of Government.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Before you go on, can I follow this up?
Mr Vara
Q 136 I note what you say about comparability, but you will be aware that between 2004 and 2014, average social rents rose by more than 60% compared with 23% in the private rented sector. Notwithstanding what you said, would you agree that the reduction in social rents will be able to bring some sort of parity between the private sector and the social sector?
Gary Porter: It is the complete reverse. If you force our rents down and allow private sector rents to go up—
Mr Vara
Q 137 Hang on; you say “allow”, but the private sector operates independently. The disparity at the moment is that one has been going up a lot more and the other less so. As I say, look at the figures: between 2004 and 2014, average social rents rose by more than 60% compared with 23% in the private rented sector. Given that this has gone in a certain direction in the past 10 years, if it were to go in the same direction in the next 10 years, clearly one will go up less than the other.
Gary Porter: Private sector rents will go up as a result of this, because there will be less public sector houses built. That will push up the demand in the private sector, which will allow private sector landlords to push their rents up more. That is the way the market works.
David Orr: Sadly, we don’t live in a world that is that simple and straightforward. Social rents going up by 60% is a specific and direct consequence of Government policy to reduce the amount of capital investment in new supply through housing associations, while still wishing to see the same level of delivery.
In the 2010 comprehensive spending review, when capital investment in new supply through housing associations was reduced by 63%, the coalition Government set us a challenge to deliver the same number of new homes or more, specifically by introducing a new rent regime called the affordable rent regime, with much higher rents. That was a Government proposition; it was not asked for or particularly supported by the sector. Having created affordable rents that are designed to be set at 80% of market rates and therefore responsive to what is happening in the market, rebased every time there is a new letting, the Government now want to reduce the rates on those. It is not consistent; that is the problem.
Housing and housing investment is a long-term business. We borrow money and organise finance on a 30-year basis, and that kind of cavalier approach—up one year, down the next; capital subsidy and then changing it to revenue subsidy—plays havoc with the ability of organisations to make the commitments they have entered into.
Emily Thornberry
Q 138 You have been asked a question about those on low incomes and the impact on them of rent going down, and I wanted to pick that up. I wonder perhaps if Councillor Porter particularly might be able to answer this. If rents go down by 1%, will that have an impact on the amount of money that local authorities have available to do repairs, and can you see that having a long-term impact on the service that is available to council tenants?
Gary Porter: Well, yes. Whatever money is taken out of the system will prevent us either, in some cases, from maintaining the homes in the way that we would like to maintain them, or—more importantly from a Government perspective, I would suggest—from building new homes to reduce the long-term housing benefit bill. It will in a few cases have an impact on the ability to maintain homes properly, but I hope that my members would find a way of prioritising making sure that people still live in fit, decent properties. We have a good track record over the past 10 years of improving the high quality of our housing stock, and I cannot see any council easily going back on that. They will make other decisions, other than reducing maintenance, but that will be investment in their value.
Emily Thornberry
Q 139 I wonder—again, Councillor Porter and perhaps Mr Orr could answer this—to what extent we think that the cut in social rents will have an impact on the overall growth in spending on housing benefit, compared with a similar policy applied to private sector rents. I think, Councillor Porter, you touched on this. We are looking at the differences between social rent and the private sector, and if the Government want to cut back on the housing benefit bill, and therefore cut social housing rents by 1%, that might have one impact, but if a similar policy were to be applied to the private sector, how much more housing benefit would be saved?
Gary Porter: Yes, but you might then end up with people in the private sector deciding that they do not want to be letting to the people you need to house in those properties. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the idea of not spending £20 billion-plus a year on housing benefit—it is a crazy system. We should not be wasting that money that way, but the only way of sustainably stopping that money being spent is to build more homes. We need, one way or another, to build more affordable homes for people on low incomes to live in. That is the cheapest solution for the country.
Emily Thornberry
Q 140 You are here speaking on behalf of the Local Government Association, which obviously is a cross-party organisation, and I believe that you are Conservative councillor.
Gary Porter indicated assent.
Emily Thornberry
Q 141 I will choose one more question to ask. I think, Mr Orr, you touched on the effect of the cut to social rents—or the Government enforcing a cut—of 1%. You said that housing associations have been pushed into the 80% affordable rent bracket. I wondered what the effect of the 1% cut would be on housing associations’ ability to build, versus pushing your tenants into 80% affordable rent, or 80% rent, instead.
David Orr: Our initial calculation was that in the absence of other mitigating action, the impact of the 1% cut would be a minimum of 27,000 homes lost—
Emily Thornberry
Q 142 So that is 15,000 with local authorities and 27,000 with housing associations per year.
David Orr: Yes. It could be more than that, but what is happening is that the housing associations are looking all the way through their business plans and making decisions, trying to prioritise how they deal with the cut. The truth is that some housing associations have already started the process of making members of staff redundant, and often these are people who are doing the work to support people’s tenancies, such as financial inclusion staff or neighbourhood support staff. So it is difficult at this stage to be absolutely clear, but certainly the options that people are exploring include doing more under the affordable rent regime, with more conversions to affordable rent, or more new homes for shared ownership, rather than for social rent. That will play out over the next year, while people come to terms with the impact and recalibrate their thinking about the future.
Some housing associations in high-value markets are increasingly building for market sale and market rent, partly because that is a useful product in the market and partly to generate profit so that they can create their own cross-subsidy for affordable and social rent, and for shared ownership. But that does not work in low-value markets in the north of England and elsewhere.
Emily Thornberry
Q 143 So they are building for private sale in London and building for social rent outside London.
Kate Green
Q 157 And that, of course, will be exacerbated for those families by the child tax credit measures.
May I ask one final question on this point? What might be the impact on personal household housing debts? Will we see households going into debt to meet their rent as a result of the freeze and the cap?
David Orr: We already know that there are some households who have had to do that. I was in Cornwall yesterday, which is an area that has been particularly badly hit by the bedroom tax because there are very few alternative places with smaller accommodation for people to move to. We know that some people there have really struggled to pay the rent and some of them have gone into debt to pay the rent.
Emily Thornberry
Q 158 I believe that 70% of households in social housing in some London boroughs are affected by the cap. The benefit cap has particular implications for London councils, so it would be interesting to have some additional evidence on that.
Can we also hear from housing associations about the benefit cap’s effect and what the future for housing associations in London is, given the level of the cap? Are we looking at a future where housing associations will only be able to risk renting out to young professionals without children and will not be able to build accommodation appropriate for families?
Mike Donaldson: We are already seeing the impact of the previous benefit cap in terms of the households we can house in larger accommodation, so it is obviously going to get worse as it reduces to £23,000. The other thing we are concerned about is that there is an assumption that rents drop dramatically once you leave the Greater London area, and that is not true. The area around London has equally high rents, because there is a lot of commuting and so on. So there is a real concern that the £20,000 cap also has a detrimental impact on our residents.
Although we do not know for sure, because obviously we have not got all the information from the DWP, we estimate that another 300 of our residents will be affected by the benefit cap when it is introduced. The history so far has been that we have had to engage heavily with those individuals to ensure that they do not face losing their homes. The extra costs that we incur to employ staff, to get people jobs—we employ staff to give financial advice—is money that we have had to find from elsewhere in the past four years. Going forward, of course we will not have so much money, because we will be facing reduced income from rents, so there is a bind. Most of these people have never worked or have not got an engagement with the jobs market—they are starting from scratch. You have to do an awful lot of work with them to get them into paid employment.
Emily Thornberry
Q 159 Can I talk about another situation? Let’s say a family living in Berkshire might want to move into housing association accommodation. Under the benefit cap, would the housing associations want to take the risk of building accommodation for a family in case the family fell out of work and then needed to depend on benefits, because those benefits would not pay sufficiently high rent even to pay for building the property in the first place? How many housing associations are following the example of Moat, which says that it cannot afford to build two and three-bedroom houses any more because of fear of the benefit cap?
Mike Donaldson: Well, the original benefit cap mainly affected larger families and it was four-beds that were mainly affected, so we have had difficulty letting some of those properties because the people who we would normally house cannot afford the rents. It is not a significant issue, but it has begun to be an issue, and it will just get worse because we are now talking about the smaller bed sizes—not two-bedrooms, but three-bedrooms. In London, they are going to be much more difficult to let at the rents that we are talking about. So it will just get worse, and by year four of this regime I think we will have a substantial issue.
Emily Thornberry
Q 160 I was talking not just about renting, but about housing associations not being prepared to build family accommodation in the south-east because of a fear of their tenants becoming unemployed.
Mike Donaldson: I think you will see people developing smaller homes, because people can afford them. I accept that it may lead to overcrowding down the line, but that is where the pressure is.
The Chair
Q 161 Colleagues, we are approaching the end of this witness session. Does anyone have a final, burning question that they would like to put to our very expert and concise panel? David, would you like to add something for the record?
David Orr: May I say two things? One is a very specific plea on behalf of large-scale voluntary transfer organisations that have rents way below target. Under the existing arrangements, they are allowed to re-let at the target rent, rather than at their existing rent; as currently drafted, the Bill will not allow that to happen. Please could we put that back in? It would make a substantial difference to those organisations and would cost almost nothing.
Secondly, on the previous conversation, housing associations are trying to make sense of that issue. There is a huge commitment to continue to deliver the mission. Housing associations are mission-driven organisations and want to be able to provide good-quality accommodation for people right across the income spectrum. I think we will see some two, three and four-bedroom homes being built, although I also think the incidence will diminish, but we have to think strategically and long-term about the consequences. One of my profound anxieties about the change in the Bill is that it feels short-term and that the long-term consequences have not been properly calculated.
The Chair
I am sorry. You’re nodding, you’re happy, I have to conclude this in five minutes’ time under Standing Orders and I must give Emily Thornberry the last couple of questions.
Emily Thornberry
Q 193 I only have one question. In my opinion, we cannot have the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group and others in front of us on such major changes to the welfare Bill without asking not only about measuring child poverty but about whether the Bill will increase child poverty. If it does increase child poverty, how will we know and how will we hold the Government to account if they stop measuring it?
Professor Gordon: Since two thirds of children who are poor are in working families, and a lot of those families are dependent on child tax credits, if there is a large cut to that and other tax credits, other things being equal it will inevitably increase child poverty. I do not think that there is the slightest doubt about that.
Dr Callan: If we are talking about “ambition”—someone mentioned it earlier, but I think they have walked out—if we have an ambition to do all that we can to tackle the root causes of poverty, my hope is that the Bill would lay the foundations for reducing the number of children growing up in poor circumstances, which includes low income.
Alison Garnham: The Institute for Fiscal Studies has projected what existing policies will mean for child poverty. It projected that child poverty would rise by 700,000 by 2020. That did not take into account the recent announcements, so obviously that is an underestimate, and there will be more. We do not know the extent yet, but we know that some of the proposals modelled by the IFS would increase child poverty by 300,000, for example. So we are looking at something over 1 million.
Matt Padley: As David has said, there is little doubt that much in the Bill will increase child poverty. Going back to the importance of measuring it, it is really important that we know what is happening, so that we can hold the Government to account and ensure that we do not have such a high proportion of children growing up in income poverty, which has damaging consequences on their lives.
The Chair
Thank you very much indeed. I am so sorry, we could have gone on longer; it has been a fascinating session. Thank you for your helpful expertise. Professor Gordon, Dr Callan, Alison Garnham and Matt Padley, thank you so much for coming and being with us this morning.
Examination of Witnesses
Dr Kristian Niemietz and Julia Unwin gave evidence.
Hannah Bardell
Q 204 Do you really, truly believe that if we have more people and children in poverty —let us not forget that the research suggests that we are going to have 200,000 children in poverty, versus 80,000 adults—the public are going to welcome that?
Dr Niemietz: Not if conditionality works properly. If it gives incentives—a carrot and stick approach—to getting back into work, why would it increase poverty? It has not done that in Wisconsin.
Julia Unwin: The evidence shows that conditionality can work for some people and the global evidence suggests that, for some people, it provides the spur back into work, but far more often it drives people into making the wrong work choice, accepting a job they cannot possibly fulfil and therefore falling back into benefits. In Wisconsin and other parts of the United States, there is clear evidence that people are coming off benefits completely but not going into work. We are concerned about what the implications of that will be, because you end up with people making short-term choices that keep them going in the short term but can cost the state very much more in the longer term. Conditionality applies to all public services and all people. There is a contract in place, and we need to understand how it works. But if the current method of sanctioning creates destitution by design, we have created a real, expensive problem for the long term.
Emily Thornberry
Q 205 The four-year freeze on working-age benefits, the limit of tax credits to two children and, in particular, the lowering of the benefit cap continue the disconnect between the amount of benefit that is paid to people because of their need and the simple sum they are given. It is not done on the basis of needing more; it seems to be that people will be given an absolute sum, and that is that. Clearly, that will have an impact on poverty and on particular groups—I wonder which groups. Is it right that the group affected most might be single parents, when it comes to child poverty?
Julia Unwin: Is it correct? Yes. Is it right? No. Single parents and disabled people in different categories will be particularly affected, but in terms of this Committee’s concerns, single parents will be affected most.
Emily Thornberry
Q 206 So, in your view, is the Bill likely to increase child poverty or help tackle it?
Julia Unwin: We were talking earlier today, and certainly earlier in this session, about looking at the package changes together. I agree with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, with which we work closely, as we do with the IEA. The IFS has predicted an increase in child poverty as a result of this suite of measures, not just the ones in this Bill.
Dr Niemietz: On relative poverty, probably yes. On the others, it remains to be seen how other factors, especially wage rates at the lower end of the distribution, will work out over the coming years.
Julia Unwin: That is why I describe it as a risk and a gamble. Clearly, the health of the economy and what that does to the labour market will make an enormous difference to the outcomes that we could predict.
Emily Thornberry
Q 207 But employment within the Bill is defined as 20 minutes every three weeks, as far as I can see. That is not necessarily going to help tackle child poverty.
Julia Unwin: High levels of underemployment, which is what we witness now at this end of the labour market, will do nothing to help child poverty or to reduce the benefits bill in the way that the Government intend.
Emily Thornberry
Q 208 Could you also address your comments particularly to what impact the benefit cap is likely to have on child poverty?
Julia Unwin: The benefit cap, in the way that I described earlier?
Emily Thornberry
In the way that it is being introduced.
Julia Unwin: The way that the benefit cap is being introduced has huge implications for childcare costs, and we know that reliable childcare is the only way for parents to get back into sustainable work. It also has huge implications for housing costs, which will make some parts of the country uninhabitable for people on benefits.
Dr Niemietz: This links back to what I said earlier. It seems to me that the benefit cap is really just a clumsy way of capping housing benefit. There is actually no way in which someone could substantially exceed that cap unless they are in receipt of housing benefit, and probably in receipt of fairly large sums. This is a roundabout way of capping housing benefit, whereas, as I said before, I would have started at the other end. Build enough houses, and you will not need a cap of that kind any more, because rents will fall automatically and housing benefit rates will fall with them.
Damian Hinds
Q 209 I want to ask Julia a quick question for clarification. We were talking earlier about single parents, and we have talked about the importance to tackling poverty of being in work and having access to enough hours. Obviously, a big part of that is ensuring that childcare support is there. You talked about the childcare allowance in tax credits. Can you talk us through your understanding of the full set of childcare changes to come?
Julia Unwin: As I understand it, by introducing a childcare allowance, the Government made big steps to enable people to go back into work. However, by making that part of the cap, we have reduced its value. In some parts of the country, and in London specifically, the costs of childcare have gone way above what can be covered by that allowance.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Second sitting)
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)
Q 23 Kirsty, you have touched on a broad range of themes, in particular on the Work programme and ESA. I know from discussions within the Department and, you will be aware, with Work programme providers, that this is a challenging area but one that we are ambitious about. Do you have any learnings or thoughts from the providers that your organisation represents? For ESA claimants in particular, what are those game-changing interventions? What else do you think the Government could focus on in terms of spending for support—bringing people closer to the labour market but, importantly, helping them to continue their journey of long-term sustained employment, not just getting them into work? What kind of health interventions could we look into? Do you have any insight or experience of seeing fruitful outcomes?
Kirsty McHugh: We did a piece of work for the Department bringing together a range of our members looking at ESA. We have actually done that more than once over the course of the past few years, as you can imagine. We have a lot of the big disability charities in membership—last year it was two-thirds not-for-profit—but we also have all the Work programme primes and Work Choice primes. A lot of the best practice comes from the other programmes, not just the Work programme.
The big thing is staff skills and confidence. For somebody who is presenting to them, it is them knowing about that right mix of support and challenge as a front-line adviser. They may have been out of work for 11 or 12 years so their confidence is on the floor. They have a huge gap in their CV and the mindset is not there in terms of, “I want to work and I can work.” Often, the providers say that once you switch that mindset it is almost job done.
How do you get to that attitudinal change so that people feel really positive about themselves and want to change their lives and those of their families and communities? It takes a while. It is about one-to-one relationships with front-line staff—none of this is rocket science. It is about long-term relationships and trust. Therefore, lower case load is really important for people with disability and health conditions. There has been a lot of investment in cognitive behavioural therapy-type approaches and talking support. Group therapy seems to work very well. There is never one magic bullet. A lot of this will be quite familiar to you. The good adviser will have a personalised referral to a range of different services in that area but staff skills are more important than anything else.
It is then about selling in—a horrible term—that individual to an employer. If somebody has a big gap in their work history, that can be quite an ask of an employer. Therefore, getting them work experience, or something that fills the hole in the CV that proves to them and to the employer that maybe they are a bit less of a risk, is really important. We know a lot now about the prevalence of mental health difficulties, which often co-exist with other physical conditions. It is often not just one condition. Often, the barrier to work is not health but the fact that they have got a lack of work history and a lack of skills.
I think there is a good consensus between the officials and the sector about what has worked and what has not worked and what we want to do going forward. As I said, there is quite a lot of evidence that the sustainment rates for people on ESA who get into work are high. What we definitely need to do is bring more money up front, which then means the specialist providers, charities and so on can do more up front with that individual and maybe we will have less on sustainment payments than we have currently. It is not about increasing the overall unit cost but about remodelling it.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Q 24 You gave a long, interesting and detailed answer to the question asked, which is essentially about how we get people on ESA into work. You have not said—I wonder if you overlooked this—that it might be an incentive and make it more likely for those on ESA in the support group to get into work if their benefits are cut by £36.20 a week, which is what is said in the Bill.
Kirsty McHugh: You are talking about the work-related activity group changes at this point in time. Again, to be up front, we are concerned about that. One of the issues is that if somebody has been through the work capability assessment and they have been put into WRAG, often they appeal. When they are going through the appeal, they are not actually engaging with the Work programme or Work Choice or whatever they have been put on. We have got to get to the stage where, actually, it is a really positive thing for somebody to think, “Work is an option for me.” If they are worried about their benefit levels, often that can get in the way of having that discussion. I understand that there are macro issues that the Government are facing in relation to that and we do not know quite what the impact of the measure will be at this point in time, but it is a concern.
The Chair
A number of colleagues have caught my eye and there is a clear list in my mind, but, before I come to Hannah, did you want to chip in on that question, Charlotte?
Charlotte Pickles: Yes, sure. We at Reform actually recommended the reduction in the rate for WRAG ESA down to the JSA rate just ahead of the summer Budget and obviously that is what has gone through. That is for several reasons. First, because there is evidence—the OECD has looked at this—that the generosity of a benefit does have an impact in terms of incentives, whether you are trying to get on to that benefit or not. There is also evidence around duration and the impact it has in terms of work incentives, because if it is a higher benefit rate, your work incentives are reduced.
However, what I would say is that—I entirely agree with Kirsty—the work capability assessment does not work. It is broken and I think that most people would agree with that. That is different and separate from the issue around the rate. We at Reform argued—I think the Government are trying to move towards saying this—that there has to be a series of reforms, one of which is the rate and one of which is looking at the gateway. Kirsty is absolutely right to say that, if you are conflating eligibility for a benefit—the income-replacement part—and the condition, which then links to the conditionality applied, you are going to have a perverse incentive built into that. I 100% agree with that, but I do not think that is the same point as talking about the rate reduction.
Emily Thornberry
Q 25 When did you stop being an expert adviser to Iain Duncan Smith?
Charlotte Pickles: I was an expert adviser to Iain Duncan Smith for the first two years of the coalition. If by your question you are asking am I biased, I would take offence to that. I am absolutely not. I am a policy person. I work at an independent think-tank and I analyse the evidence that is available. I am coming to give evidence in the same way that I assume everyone around the table is asking questions around the evidence and not based on a particular political perspective.
Emily Thornberry
Q 26 I appreciate that. I just wondered how much your thinking has influenced the Bill when you are here giving evidence in relation to the Bill. It is important to see it in that context.
Charlotte Pickles: Sure. We published our paper on this just after the election, so I think it would have been early June. I assume that would have been significantly after when conversations started taking place about what to do, but certainly in the conversations I have had with people, both on and off the record, most would say that there is a perverse financial incentive built into ESA as it currently exists.
Hannah Bardell
Q 27 I have a number of concerns about the kind of language and terminology that is used. First, you are saying the perception is that ESA programmes are successful and hugely ambitious. I am not sure that a 10% success rate would be deemed by me or anyone else on this side of room a success. When the number of people being sanctioned on the Work programme is twice as many as those getting employment, I would again question whether that is a success.
I put this to everyone on the panel: we are not clear about the impact that the cap has had already, although we have a lot of concerning figures, particularly about single-parent families. Before we cap people further, should we not be looking at the Work programme and having a full-scale review of it to make it more effective for people moving off ESA, before we cut their benefits?
The Chair
Some of the questions and answers are getting a little long. Octavia is very keen to come in, and then we will go along the panel because this is an important question.
Octavia Holland: I want to pick up on the reference you just made to the benefit cap and to single parents, to make sure that everybody is clear on the stats. Over 60% of people capped so far have been single parents; 70% of them have children under five and 34% have children under two. DWP’s own research shows really clearly that the younger the child is when the parent is capped, the harder it is for them to get into work.
When we are talking about the benefit cap and supporting people into work, we really also need to be looking at the contradiction between the benefit cap and the conditionality policy that exists and the one that is being proposed. If you are capping up to 20,000 single parents who have children under two, there is no childcare support available for that group at present. There is also evidence that there is a real shortage of childcare available, so there are really clear reasons why that group of single parents will not be able to go into work. DWP’s research, again, has shown that where those people who are capped do not find work, it is likely that 40,000 more children would be pushed into poverty. When we are looking at the benefit cap we need to look at the circumstances of the family and the age of the child.
Emily Thornberry
Q 30 I would like to ask you a few questions about the benefit cap. Is it not right that those who are affected most by the benefit cap have until now been those who live in private accommodation in London?
Octavia Holland: Yes.
Emily Thornberry
Q 31 Those who live in private accommodation in London are quite often homeless families where the local authority has not had sufficient social housing to be able to put them into council housing, and so has had to put them out to the private market. Is that right?
Octavia Holland: Yes.
Emily Thornberry
Q 32 What happened with the previous cap was that those who lived in private rented accommodation as homeless families in central London had to move to outer London in order to be able to have sufficient money, once the rent had been paid, to be able to feed the children.
Octavia Holland: I think there is some evidence that that has happened, but I know that the IFS has said clearly that it is very difficult to ascertain exactly what the families affected have done.
We have done some work closely with two London local authorities. Often what is happening is that local authorities are managing to use discretionary housing payments to support families, so that they can stay where they are. Families are often doing all sorts of things to ensure that they do not have to move. So there is some evidence that families are moving, but there is lots of evidence that particularly single-parent families are going to all sorts of lengths to try to ensure that they can stay put, particularly if they have kids at school and do not want to uproot their children.
What is clear is that for a lot of the people affected going into sustainable employment is not an option. There is no evidence that that is happening for families with young children. Part of the reason for that is that there is a lack of support and childcare.
Emily Thornberry
Q 33 Are you aware that in Islington, for example, 1,000 families have moved out so far because of the benefit cap?
Octavia Holland: Yes, I am aware of that. I know that it has happened to some extent in some other central London boroughs. The point I would make is that it is clear from the evidence that we have not yet seen the full impact of the benefit cap, so it is highly likely that we will see a lot more of that kind of outcome over the coming years, because there has been a bit more flexibility with discretionary housing payments so far.
Emily Thornberry
Q 34 The point I want to make is that that has been in central London. Now that the benefit cap is being applied more harshly and being brought down further, do you anticipate that not only will those who are in unstable arrangements to remain in central London continue to be affected, but it will now start affecting people in private accommodation in outer London who have families?
Octavia Holland: Yes, I think it is quite possible that that could happen. The other examples we had through one central London local authority were of single parents who were basically trying to get any possible job they could—for example, a local cleaning job—so that they could escape the benefit cap. They were leaving their children in informal childcare, perhaps with a neighbour, because they could not afford the cost of it. Then they were obviously churning back out of those jobs very quickly. In terms of the long-term job prospects for those parents, the benefit cap was not supporting that. That is what needs to be looked at—how do we support single parents into sustainable employment? What is the long-term plan? Because at the moment there really is not one.
The Chair
Emily, I am going to interrupt you, if I may. I have got a list. We will come back to you towards the end—there is plenty of time. Victoria Atkins, followed by Corri Wilson.
Emily Thornberry
Q 44 You were talking earlier about a single mother who might be offered a job at night but finds there is no childcare available. Just to spell it out, if she did not accept that job, would she get sanctioned?
Octavia Holland: We gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee last year about sanctions. Single parents are much more likely to be sanctioned than other people. In the 12 months preceding the Work and Pensions Select Committee, 60,000 single parents were wrongfully sanctioned. That was often because they were told, “Come on, can’t you take this shift job? Haven’t you tried the childminder down the road? Surely she’ll look after your son until 9 o’clock at night”—a real, fundamental lack of understanding of the kind of challenges that single parents are facing. Ultimately, the outcome can often be that they are sanctioned. That sanction is then hopefully overturned, but it can take time and causes an enormous amount of stress. In some circumstances, it means the single parent stops receiving support for that period.
Emily Thornberry
Q 45 The question I wanted to ask was about the benefit cap. Quite a lot has been said about it, but I would like comments from anybody on the panel on this. If we were to take out of any benefit cap housing costs that are not under the control of people who live in London—people who do not own houses and are in the private rented sector because there is not enough council housing for them to live in—and instead assess people on the basis of need, given the size of their family, would that result in a fairer outcome? Would it have any adverse impact on their willingness to work?
Tony Wilson: To be honest, that sounds a bit like the old housing benefit system before LHAs were introduced in the mid-2000s. The assumption when the local housing allowance was introduced was that it would enable tenants to shop around and that it might bring down prices and help make the housing market work better, and it has not done any of those things. We really should look again at that.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Q 46 We know that many people in the work-related activity group desperately want to work. Kirsty and Tony, you have both talked about the help for that group and people who are further from work—things like lower case loads, talking therapies and much more personalised attention. Clearly, all of that costs something.
The savings from aligning ESA with JSA are substantial. I have seen a figure of £640 million. Some of that can be used to fund the additional support, and the Government have made a commitment to fund additional support. Kirsty, you also said that those individuals, once in work, tend to stay in work, which is a very good outcome. I want to test this with the panel: is it not better to be helping that group of people into work, as this Bill is proposing, than to keep them in receipt of slightly higher benefits but not in work?
Kirsty McHugh: I accept what you are saying. I completely understand that, and it is a political decision at the end of the day about where the cut-off points are. The majority of people do want to work, and many can with the right support, but it might take a while to get them there. Early investment in that support is therefore probably going to make more of an impact than varying the benefit level. There was an announcement that there would be some more investment in jobseekers with ESA, which we very much welcome. We are looking forward to seeing more details about that.
Tony Wilson: The Government’s commitments to more investment support for ESA are absolutely welcome. Actually, quite a lot of money is being spent through the Work programme on supporting ESA claimants: probably in the order of £200 million.
Charlotte Pickles: I would like to make a couple of points. First, it is excellent that the Department is piloting support via Jobcentre Plus for ESA claimants in certain areas essentially as soon as they claim, rather than waiting for them to go through the WCA. My understanding is that those ESA claimants who have responded to that support have found it very helpful. So the point about early intervention is essential with this group, and as we all know, the longer someone is on a benefit, the longer they are likely to stay on it. ESA is a relatively new benefit, but we are already seeing people in the WRAG group who have been on it for two or more years at around 65% of those people. So we need to be doing stuff a lot earlier to help them.
I would also add, which I think probably links in with what Kirsty and Tony have said, that with the Work programme we are now in a 100% PBR model, and there were good reasons for that. However, I think there are equally good reasons now to look at whether the ESA cohort should have an attachment fee that would help with that cash flow, which for a lot of providers is proving very difficult. We know that per-head expenditure by provider on ESA claimants is actually lower than on JSA claimants. So there is a cash problem in the system—that is certainly true.
Kirsty McHugh: I do not accept those figures at all. My providers, whether they are subcontractors or prime contractors, are subsidising the ESA heavily from the JSA. That is the way that it was intended to be.
Charlotte Pickles: Anecdotally, if that is true, that is fine. The data that is out says that it is a lower per-head case load. Tony is nodding his head.
Tony Wilson: You are both right.
Charlotte Pickles: Either way, I think what we are saying is there is not enough money in the system as it is currently modelled, and therefore restructuring that payment model may help to tackle that.
Kate Green
Q 66 The Government had hoped that the number of people on long-term incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance would be reducing. In fact, it has been increasing, and particularly the numbers in the support group have been increasing. What is your analysis of the impact of a very sharp distinction between the level of benefit that you will receive in the support group and the level of benefit that you will receive if you are not in the support group? Is there any incentive, perhaps, to present yourself as more severely unwell or disabled, and therefore having to go into the support group?
Elliot Dunster: We have to look at the confidence in the WCA as well. The speech that the Secretary of State made a few weeks ago, which has been mentioned already, talked a little bit about that. Disabled people are concerned about the WCA and how accurate it is. In Scope’s view, this will mean that people will continue to appeal those decisions because of this slightly more binary distinction.
We agree with the Secretary of State’s assessment that it is not very helpful to think about people being fit for work or not fit for work. That is not a particularly helpful way of looking at things, but of course we have an assessment in which we have to try to draw lines, effectively, about what support people receive. We would like to see the WCA reformed along a number of principles that we have submitted to the Committee, which would make it much more about back-to-work support. However, we think that making a slightly binary distinction between jobseeker’s allowance and ESA will make people more likely to appeal decisions if they think they should have been awarded the support group rather than the work-related activity group, because there is a financial incentive for them to appeal.
Emily Thornberry
Q 67 Eighty-five per cent. Islington Law Centre has an 85% success rate for people who are appealing ESA assessments, when they take them to tribunal. That means that people who are assessed as being fit for work are then being reassessed by the tribunal as not being fit for work, or are put into an employment support group. Would it not be important for the Government to iron out clearly unfair decisions in the work assessment before changing the goalposts?
Elliot Dunster: I have probably covered most of that in my previous answer. We do think that the WCA should be reformed, and it feels like there is starting to be more of a consensus around that. It seemed as though the Secretary of State was talking along those lines as well. Yes; it needs to be reformed, more accurate and more focused on what someone can do. At the moment it is too medical, and that is where it feels like those decisions have not been made in the right way. Whether someone can pick up a pound coin is not necessarily a good indicator of whether they can do a job or not.
Laura Cockram: On the work capability assessment, we would echo the comments from Elliot and Sophie about it not being fit for purpose. The assessment is a snapshot on a particular day. You have mentioned the success rate of appeals. I believe that the figure is that 38% of all fit for work decisions have been appealed across the UK from 2008 to 2013—that is the June 2015 figure from the DWP—and 51% of decisions from January to March last year were overturned. That is a good demonstration that we are putting unwell people through unnecessary assessments and tests. If they are not well enough to work, they should not be forced or, potentially, bullied back into work, which these kinds of assessments are doing.
Gareth Parry: It is hugely difficult to generalise on so many things. We could ask ourselves, “What is work in the 21st century?” Technology has made a difference—people can work from home now, and do flexible working and different hours. There are so many different interpretations of what work constitutes that to have a relatively black-and-white regime around benefits is not flexible enough. If we have a direction of travel, the right way must be to have a direction of travel that is more of an assessment of needs-based support as opposed to labelling people with a particular benefit. The labour market is so versatile and changeable these days that there is no simple threshold at which you say somebody is fit for work or not fit for work. The world does not work like that any more.
Sophie Corlett: Could I just add a really important point? That is absolutely true, but if you are assessed as being fit for work because you could do a very particular type of work in a very particular setting, the person who works with you to find that job needs to be aware of that very particular need of yours. And there is no real link in terms of your assessment and how you are then helped to get a job; you might be expected to get just any job, when you have very specific needs.
Gareth Parry: We completely agree with that; personalised employment support needs to link in to a needs-based assessment. The problem at the moment is that everybody focuses on the benefits infrastructure rather than on the objective of attaining and sustaining employment.
Kate Green
Q 68 We have slightly lost sight now of the effect that you think cutting £30 a week will have on people’s propensity to go into work and on the disability employment gap.
Sophie Corlett: I can answer some of that. I think there is a complete misunderstanding of what keeps people with mental health problems out of work. It is not that they find it financially beneficial; it is that if they are in the ESA group—the WRAG or the support group—they have been found not fit for work. They are not well enough for work; the money is neither here nor there. Having less money will merely make you more likely to be debt-ridden, and depressed and stressed and unwell.
Elliot Dunster: I have been quite clear from Scope’s perspective that we think it will be a disincentive, for the reasons that I have already explained. Also, building on what Sophie said, we know that disabled people have less financial resilience than non-disabled people; we know, for example, that disabled people have on average over £100,000 less in savings and assets than non-disabled people. So they are less able to cope with big financial shocks and long periods of time out of work. Because of the lower financial resilience of disabled people, a long period of time on a very low income will have a very serious effect, which we are concerned about.
Peter Heaton-Jones
No.
Matt Oakley: I will answer in a different way. I am not sure that it is necessarily a question of money. I am not sure that £60 million or £100 million, in the grand scheme of things, will raise that 8% to 16%, 24%, 32% or whatever. At the moment we are treating people too much by their benefit type when they go through to the Work programme, which means that they have a set amount of money attached to them. Frankly, that is not accurate enough. What we need to do is say, “Okay, you’re in the ESA WRA group. You’ve been there for a very long time. You’ve had huge problems in the past. You’ve never been employed. Let’s get a huge amount of money to you,” versus the person who potentially has far fewer barriers to work, has just moved into the WRA group, is very keen to work and has a prognosis that is actually very good. Why are we paying the same amount in the Work programme for those two people? It just does not make any sense. Extra money is great, but we need to fundamentally rethink how we are funnelling that money to the hardest-to-help people.
Emily Thornberry
Q 78 I may have misunderstood your evidence, because you seem to be accepting that there are people in the WRA group—the employment support group—who will not be able to find work because there is something wrong with them; they really will not be able to find work and have been unemployed for a long time. You heard Sophie’s evidence about how hard it is to live on JSA for any period. As a matter of humanity, do you not think it is wrong in those circumstances for people who we know are on long-term sick leave or are long-term unemployed to be put on to jobseeker’s allowance? They simply will not be able to cope.
Matt Oakley: I would make the same argument for jobseeker’s allowance. There are people going on to jobseeker’s allowance who go into a jobcentre on day one and frankly, we should know that they are not going to be employed for the next three years. There is no more reason to give them less money than the WRA group people you are talking about. My point is that, money aside, we should be making sure that the employment support they are receiving is fit for purpose and that we are targeting support at them on day one, day two and day three to make sure they are tackling the barriers to work they face, so that people are not spending three or four years either in the ESA WRAG or on JSA.
Emily Thornberry
Q 79 But you have just accepted that there are people who will be. It is your own evidence I am picking up on. It was your evidence that said you accept there will be people who are unemployed because of their physical or mental disabilities for a number of years. Given that you recognise that, all I am asking you is: as a matter of humanity, is it not wrong to push those people on to a level of jobseeker’s allowance and expect them to live on it?
Matt Oakley: What I am saying is that there will be people in the ESA WRA group who are, under the current system, likely to be unemployed for an extremely long time. There are similarly people in the JSA group who are classed as ready for work but who will be unemployed for a very long time. I am agreeing with other people on the panel that we should stop classing people through a basic system of “ready”, “not quite ready” or “ready for work,” and start looking at tackling their barriers in a much more flexible way. That means re-targeting employment support and the very hardest to help.
Elliot Dunster: It is really important to remember that people in the work-related activity group are disabled people, and disabled people face additional barriers to get into work. There is nothing wrong with that person; they don’t need to be fixed. They just have additional barriers that they face to get back to work. That can be employers’ attitudes. That can be structural barriers where they live—perhaps the transport infrastructure is not accessible and they find it difficult.
The biggest barrier that disabled people tell us they find is a lack of flexibility in the workplace and the right jobs available. If you have an injury and have done a manual job all your life, you are probably not going to go back to that same job, and you will need a period of rehabilitation. The statistics bear that out: 10% of unemployed disabled people are unemployed after five years. That figure is only 3% for people on jobseeker’s allowance, so there is a difference and it is because of the additional barriers that disabled people face to get back to work.
To address your question about the additional funding available, we have a range of ideas that we suggested to the Committee through our written evidence. One of them, which we would like the Committee to explore, is to join up “holistically”—to use your word—across Government and to look at the Chancellor’s focus on devolution, for example, and regional growth. What can we learn from some of the youth unemployment programmes in the last Parliament? We should target some of that money at areas where there is high unemployment among disabled people, and use some of the things we already know to work—for example, small disabled people’s organisations working with disabled people intensively to find them jobs that they can stay in, progress in and build careers in. That is where we think that money should go.
Laura Cockram: Just briefly, I think it would be useful to address the issues we talked about earlier in terms of the work capability assessment and reforming it. Actually, if we are assessing people correctly to go into the right groups that is a very good use of the money that is extra there.
Hannah Bardell
Q 80 I will follow on from Emily’s points, because my question is really very similar. The numbers from the House of Commons are that we have 492,000 people on the ESA WRA group, and half of them—250,000— have very serious mental or behavioural issues. They have very different requirements and some of them will probably never work. How can we justify in any kind of humane way putting them on to a level of income that they will have no option of getting off, because they will never be able to work?
There is a bit about categorisation, and while I realise we are talking about all being in it together, and there are some very good ideas coming out, we have to look at, for example, a radical vision to provide employment support that is tailored and personal. We do not have that at the moment, as many of you have already suggested; so surely we have to look at that first, before cutting anybody’s benefits. People have to have the opportunities and the support has to be out there before we put people further into poverty.
Sophie Corlett: Absolutely we do, but I think we also have to recognise that for some of those people it does not matter how much help you provide them with, because they might not be well enough; and a cut in their benefit not only may subject them to poverty, but it may subject them to worse mental health, for which they are then punished, for not getting more of a job. So there is a responsibility not just to give people a decent amount of living, but to give people an opportunity for good health. We know that having appropriate work is good for people’s wellbeing, but actually having enough money not to be socially isolated, to be stress-free about whether you pay the rent, the heating, or put food on the table—those things are important for people’s wellbeing.
Gareth Parry: I think, if I may—it is not helpful to talk about people who will never work. That shows a culture of a lack of aspiration. Everybody should have the potential to work—
Kate Green
Q 82 How can the Government support that?
Roy O'Shaughnessy: We have been having some discussions. First, the Government could support it by being unequivocal in our joint commitment to halving the disability unemployment rate. Secondly, they must be realistic about the challenges that many of the individuals face when dealing with their life situations and circumstances while they are moving into that journey of employment. We like this model, because whether you can work three or four hours a week or whether you can only work a day a week, this allows us to structure something that is fair and equitable that would hopefully bridge the gap of the four to five hours’ decrease in the benefits in a way that would work.
This is us just putting our thinking caps on and saying, “Hey, how can we contribute to this debate?” We will have to put some significant funding into it, but we also believe that business and Government will come together to help us get a disability-confident approach. We completely agree that making Disability Confident much more centre to this whole discussion about halving the unemployment rate for disabled individuals is the way to go.
Gareth Parry: Just a brief point. Our experience is like everything that Roy said. Self-employment is a really important tool, particularly for people who have fluctuating or episodic conditions, who may be able to work more on some days, weeks or months than they are on other days, weeks and months. It gives them control over when they are able to work. Self-employment is a really important part of the overall solution.
Elliot Dunster: Self-employment can absolutely be brilliant for some disabled people, particularly those with fluctuating conditions, but it is also worth reflecting on some thoughts about the health benefits of work. We know that good jobs are good for people’s health and that poor jobs are not very good for people’s health, particularly disabled people’s health. We also know that disabled people are more likely to take up lower-paid and more insecure jobs. Let us think about how we can progress disabled people when they are in work, so that they are in good, secure, stable jobs.
I would add one other word of caution, about the danger of isolation. I do not think that we would want to self-employment to mean isolation. One of the great things about going to work, and one of the big health benefits, is the fact that you work alongside colleagues, you are out of the house and you are participating fully. There is a danger that lots of disabled people working at home in isolation would not necessarily be a good outcome for all disabled people.
Emily Thornberry
Q 83 I want to pick up on the point about isolation, but it is also important to bear in mind how completely inappropriate it is for a lot of people with mental health problems to become self-employed. My concern and experience is that I have constituents who have been pushed into self-employment whose mental health is not sufficiently robust to be able to be effectively self-employed, and they get into all sorts of debt as a result. I hate to say this, but I get the impression that the people in the jobcentre are happy that they have been signed off as employed, but it is reckless for these people to be setting up cake-making businesses, or there was another case where someone was supposed to be designing websites. Their mental conditions were such that it was really difficult for them to be able to think through what setting up a business would mean. I suspect that my experience with my constituents is not isolated. I am very concerned about pushing people into self-employment, particularly those with mental health problems. I do not know whether that is right, Sophie.
Sophie Corlett: Yes, I know many people with mental health problems who are self-employed and it is the perfect thing for them, but it depends. I suspect you are talking about people who are perhaps affected by stress or bipolar disorder and so at certain periods do not engage with bills, or who will in certain periods—
Emily Thornberry
Have periods of great energy and then absolutely none.
Sophie Corlett: Yes, exactly. In those cases, it is not for them. If social isolation is going to be a problem and the kind of self-employment you are involved in does not involve a great amount of social contact, that is not going to work for you. Or it might just be that the technical aspects of self-employment are not going to work for you. It can be a fantastic solution for people with fluctuating conditions if they also have the other aspects that would make self-employment good for any of us, but self-employment is not a one-size-fits-all for anyone with a fluctuating condition. That is why it is important that we are able to work with more employers to help them to accommodate people with fluctuating conditions.
Mental Health Homicide
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I asked for this debate because my constituent, Ms Abiodun Ilumoka, was killed by her boyfriend, who was here illegally, and her family has not received justice. Their case raises a number of important issues I want to raise and to be acted on.
Ms Ilumoka and her unborn child were killed in 2008 by Benjamin Anabah. He was charged with murder and child destruction, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter by way of diminished responsibility—medical evidence was provided to prove that he was suffering from a severe mental illness. The prosecution accepted his plea and the judge made it clear that there was evidence that he suffered from mental illness and imposed a hospital order. He would otherwise have received a life sentence.
Mr Anabah was given a restricted hospital order under sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983, with a recommendation for deportation. The restriction means that the detention is indefinite and that he is to be released only with the consent of the Ministry of Justice. The victim’s family therefore expected that he would be confined indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital and eventually removed from the United Kingdom—and, frankly, that is what the public would have expected as well.
When I first met Miss Ilumoka’s surviving siblings, Yemi, Gbenga and Tola, they were distressed that Mr Anabah had applied to the Mental Health Tribunal. When a restricted hospital order is in place, the patient can apply every year to the tribunal for release from hospital.
Emily Thornberry
Mr Anabah’s first application was made only one year after sentencing, and each year the family face the prospect of yet another hearing. They are rightly outraged by this. They were also outraged when they learned that the purpose of the tribunal was simply to decide whether the offender was better.
The latest shocking development is that although the tribunal has so far refused to discharge Mr Anabah from hospital, he has managed to get escorted leave, allowing him out on to the streets, presumably of my constituency. It appears that he has had weekly leave between May and August, but the victim’s family were not notified. This is particularly worrying, because the victim’s mother still lives in my constituency. I am sure the Minister did not mean it, but I was misled on this point. He wrote to me on 13 June:
“In March of this year a request for permission for unescorted community leave was made by the Responsible Clinician. On behalf of the Secretary of State, officials in the Mental Health Casework Section refused permission for this leave on the grounds that Mr Anabah was not sufficiently engaged in his treatment plan and lacked insight into his illness, and that he posed a risk of abscond as a result of his immigration status and liability for deportation.”
We thought, therefore, that he was going to stay where he was. Instead, we learned that although he had not been out on unescorted leave, he had been out on escorted leave. That is wrong, and it is wrong that the family did not know it was happening.
Why should leave ever be appropriate in such a case? Surely hospital leave is intended to help patients shortly to be released. Why would a patient who has killed someone fewer than five years before be eligible for release, and how could a restricted foreign national patient with a recommendation for deportation also be eligible for release, or even be considered for release? The family do not understand that, and neither do my constituents.
Although Mr Anabah’s leave was suspended following my complaint, the Ilumoka family feel that it cannot be right that a man who killed their sister only five years ago is already permitted to be out in the community. They feel that changes should be made to how the criminal justice system works to ensure that any mentally disordered offender who kills cannot be released within only a few years of their crime.
The problem might well be the interpretation of section 45A of the Mental Health Act, which allows a judge to impose a hybrid hospital order/prison sentence, the scope of which was extended in 2008 to include all those with a mental disorder. It seems to me that this option should always be considered whenever the prosecution accepts a plea of guilty to manslaughter owing to diminished responsibility. Having read the judgment in this case, I am concerned that the judge might not have turned his mind to that section. Such an order would at least give a family some certainty that the person who killed their relative will not released in the near future if they make a speedy recovery from mental illness.
I have looked at the guidance for prosecutors of diminished responsibility manslaughter cases, and it seems that it is not as clear as it could be. The Minister knows it is the responsibility of prosecutors to give advice, if asked, to the judge about their sentencing powers. One would hope, therefore, that section 45A would have a prominent place in the guidance, but it does not. The guidance does not mention the possibility of a mixed order. Indeed, it refers to an earlier case when such an order was not an option. This must be changed. I recommend that reference be made to a more recent case, such as the Court of Appeal’s decision in the Cooper case in 2010. I simply suggest that we change the guidance to prosecutors.
However, it goes further than that, because judges also rely on guidelines from the Sentencing Council. Again, there are no sentencing guidelines specifically about this issue. No such cases are included in the Sentencing Council’s case compendium, which sets out sentencing options for manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility with reference to older cases, but not the latest cases. Therefore, the option of the mixed sentence is not foremost in judges’ minds when making decisions. I accept that additional guidelines from the Ministry of Justice would be available, but they are not in the main guide that a judge would have when sentencing an individual.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I have met the hon. Lady’s constituents, Yemi and her siblings, through my all-party group on victims and witnesses of crime when I published my recent report. Their case is distressing—indeed, it is absolutely harrowing—but it is worth putting it on record that it also shows the challenge we face in supporting victims in such cases. The system needs to support them when they go through such trauma and also give them clarity and certainty about sentencing and how the judgment is reached.
Emily Thornberry
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I know that the family greatly appreciate the support she has given them and other victims through her all-party group. While we are putting matters on the record, it is only right to say that 90% of homicides are not perpetrated by people with mental illness. Indeed, the number of homicides perpetrated by people with mental illness is going down, as are all homicides. However, for the tiny minority of cases where the perpetrator is suffering from a mental illness, we need to ensure that the sentencing guidelines and the law are tight and clear, so that families such as the Ilumoka family do not face, frankly, the injustice and uncertainty that they are currently facing.
I would like to touch briefly on the broader issues raised by this case. It is clear that if Mr Anabah had not been mentally ill, he would have been given a life sentence for killing Abiodun Ilumoka and her unborn child, and when he reached the end of his sentence he would have been detained pending deportation, alongside other foreign nationals who had committed crimes. The disparity between a life sentence and deportation and escorted leave four years after sentencing is huge. I understand that other people who have killed while mentally ill have been freed in even shorter times. I can see why victims would feel that to be fundamentally unjust. The lack of information provided to victims about applications for hospital leave, coupled with the lack of opportunity for relatives to have an input into applications for release when cases come before the Mental Health Tribunal, must cause us all concern.
I appreciate that this is my personal view, but having had experience of such cases, I believe that judges should impose a minimum detention time in all cases where there is a homicide conviction. It appears that the power to impose a prison/hospital order already exists, but it needs to be more prominent, so that mentally ill offenders can have access to treatment and bereaved relatives can be provided with some certainty. Judges and prosecutors should be considering the victim when looking at sentencing. I hope that the Minister has taken on board the points I have raised today and that the family will see the changes they are campaigning for.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) on securing this debate and on the way she has presented the case on behalf of her constituents. As she says, she and I have corresponded about the case of Benjamin Anabah, whose victim was the sibling of her constituents, who I know are here to hear what she had to say on their behalf. I, too, want to record my deepest sympathies for them, for all that they have been through.
As the hon. Lady said, Benjamin Anabah is now subject to a restricted hospital order. It might help if I say a word or two about the broader issues she has raised about the sentencing regime in such cases. As she made clear, the management of mentally disordered offenders is a complex area, and it can be difficult for victims to understand why individuals convicted of very serious offences are not serving long prison sentences. However, as she also knows, it has been the policy of successive Governments that mentally disordered people who commit offences should receive treatment for their disorder in hospital. When presented with medical evidence that a convicted offender requires treatment in hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983, the courts have wide discretion to deal with the case as they consider appropriate under the circumstances.
As the hon. Lady says, one option is to impose a hospital order, which diverts the offender from the criminal justice system. Offenders sentenced to hospital orders are detained for as long as they require treatment in hospital; there is no minimum period to be served. In making a hospital order, the court is making a clear decision that the offender should be diverted into the hospital system for treatment and not be punished in the criminal justice system. When making a hospital order, the higher courts may also impose a restriction order, which requires evidence that additional controls are necessary for the protection of the public from serious harm. The restriction order gives my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice controls over the offender’s access to the community and the level of security in which the offender is held. In exercising these powers, priority is always given to the protection of the public. This, of course, was the option taken in Mr Anabah’s case.
As the hon. Lady also says, another option open to the court is the hospital direction under section 45A of the Mental Health Act 1983. This disposal was introduced in 1997, but at that time, as she said, could be imposed only on offenders with a diagnosis of psychopathic disorder. This, of course, is not the case now, because the Mental Health Act 2007 abolished the separate categories of mental disorder. Accordingly, since the 2007 Act was commenced, offenders with any form of mental disorder can be dealt with by means of the hospital direction. That option was therefore available to the court sentencing Mr Anabah—but not one that the sentencing judge decided to take.
Emily Thornberry
The advantage of an order under section 45A is that someone who is mentally ill can go into hospital and his condition can be managed there; indeed, he could come out the other side and be cured. He would then have to face the punishment that the public and victim’s family certainly expect someone to suffer.
Jeremy Wright
Yes, I agree. That is exactly the effect of a section 45A direction. I can entirely understand why that is, of course, a preferable option from a victim’s point of view. I would repeat, however, that it is for the individual sentencing judge, who must be cognisant of those options—I shall come back to the hon. Lady’s point about guidelines—to decide what the most appropriate sentencing choice should be in each circumstance. It is difficult for all of us to second-guess the decision that the sentencing judge made, so long as he or she was fully cognisant of the options before him or her. As the hon. Lady says, it is quite right that, if the offender recovers to the extent that treatment is no longer required under a section 45A direction, the individual will be returned to prison until the sentence is concluded.
Guidance issued to the courts—the hon. Lady made reference to it—that has been endorsed by the appeal courts is clear that a hospital direction will be indicated if the offender presents a risk to the public for reasons above and beyond the mental disorder. None the less, courts must look, as I say, at the full circumstances of the case and form their own view of the most appropriate sentence.
Emily Thornberry
I would like to put another point on the record. I have perhaps had the advantage over the Minister of reading the sentencing remarks. My concern, which I shared with the family, is that the judge did not seem specifically to have directed his mind to the possibility of a section 45A order. That is one reason why we are so concerned about the lack of prominence given to it in the guidance.
Jeremy Wright
I understand the hon. Lady’s point about the guidance. I hear what she says about guidance to prosecutors—and I will, of course, see whether we can improve it. On this case, however, it is difficult for either the hon. Lady or me entirely to second-guess the judgment of the sentencing judge, but I would have thought that the judgment that really needs to be made in such cases is whether the offence is a direct result of the mental illness, in which case a hospital order might be appropriate, or whether the defendant is culpable for the criminal act but also has a mental disorder that could be subject to treatment, in which case a hospital direction might be more appropriate. I understand her point about the guidance. As she says, some guidance is already in existence, but we will look at whether we can improve the guidance, particularly to prosecutors, who are there to advise the sentencing judge on his or her sentencing options.
I should say that offenders subject to hospital directions receive the same type of treatment as those detained under hospital orders. This will usually include medication and psychological therapies as well as interventions to address other risk factors such as substance use. The difference is that the offender can be sent to prison should they recover to the extent that treatment in hospital is no longer required. In 2012, courts made 290 restricted hospital orders and 14 hospital directions.
I understand that victims of all offences, and in particular those that involve the loss of life, may find it difficult to accept that an offender is not being punished for the offence committed. I also acknowledge that uncertainty about the time that will be spent in hospital for treatment can cause anxiety and concern, but when the courts have made a clear decision to divert the offender to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment, it follows that the offender may be detained only for as long as treatment is needed. It would be quite wrong to detain people in psychiatric hospital for any longer than their mental health requires.
The independent Mental Health Tribunal is, therefore, an important safeguard against arbitrary detention. In establishing the tribunal, Parliament imposed on it a statutory duty to discharge a patient if it is not satisfied that the criteria for detention in the Mental Health Act 1983 are met. I understand the point the hon. Lady makes about repeated referrals back to the victim when tribunal hearings become necessary, but I am sure she will understand that it is important that the tribunal keeps a watch on detention to make sure it does not take any longer than it should. While, tragically, risk can never be entirely eliminated, either in relation to offenders released from a prison sentence or offenders discharged from a secure hospital, the system of diversion generally works well in protecting the public, including victims, from further harm, but I again acknowledge that uncertainty about the length of time an offender will be detained can cause anxiety and distress to victims. Victims of serious sexual and violent offences who choose to opt in to the victim contact scheme have a statutory right to make representations about any conditions of discharge that should be imposed for their protection, and will be told once discharge has taken place.
In addition to the provisions of the victim contact scheme, much work has been done to improve the support that those bereaved by homicide can access. Despite current financial restraints, as part of our commitment to supporting the most vulnerable victims and witnesses of crime, the Government are spending £2.75 million on individuals bereaved by murder and manslaughter in 2013-14. The national homicide service, which was set up in 2010, provides families bereaved through homicide with tailored and intensive one-to-one support for as long as they need it. Over 4,000 people have been supported since the homicide service began operating in April 2010, with many of those still being supported.
More generally, the new victims code published on 29 October sets out the information, support and services victims of crime can expect to receive from criminal justice agencies in England and Wales at every stage of the process. Victims who opt in to the victim contact scheme for victims of serious sexual and violent offences will be told if a mentally disordered offender is being considered for discharge, and have a statutory right to make representations about any conditions that they wish to be imposed on the discharge for their protection, such as exclusion zones or “no contact” conditions.
I understand that the hon. Lady has concerns about the community leave part of those orders, and I want to say a few words about that.
Emily Thornberry
There are two points on which I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s comments. First, how can we stop there being community leave without the family knowing about that? Secondly, what is the purpose of community leave? Its purpose is to help an offender get back into the community, but the fact is that this man has a recommendation for deportation. We do not want him back in the community; we want him on the next plane out of the country as soon as he has finished his treatment.
Jeremy Wright
I will certainly try to pick up both those points in the comments I want to make about community leave. Community leave is an important part of the treatment and rehabilitation of mentally disordered offenders. For restricted patients, community leave may be taken only with the consent of the Justice Secretary, and permission will be given only after a thorough risk assessment of the evidence. Permission for escorted leave, during which the offender remains in the custody of escorting staff, may be given some considerable time before that patient is ready for discharge. However, I should make it clear, with particular relevance to Mr Anabah’s case, that the risk of absconding for those subject to a recommendation for deportation will be a relevant factor in determining whether escorted or unescorted leave is appropriate.
Emily Thornberry
On hearing that, the family will want to know the answer to this question. If that is right and the recommendation for deportation was an important factor in deciding whether this person should get escorted leave, why did he get escorted leave for so many months, until we found out about it and got it stopped?
Jeremy Wright
If the hon. Lady will be a little patient, I will come to that. First I want to deal with her point about victims having no statutory right to be told about community leave, because that is the first question she asked me and it is a fair one.
As I have said, community leave is part of treatment. The hon. Lady will recognise that there is a duty to respect the confidentiality of medical treatment. None the less, in certain cases this information can already be disclosed to victims on a discretionary basis. Considerations such as the impact on victims of a chance encounter with an offender or, in cases that attract media interest, hearing about community leave in this way, will be taken into account. However, not least as a result of what has happened in this case—and as a result of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), which has been mentioned—I have considered whether the current position goes far enough for the benefit of victims. I have asked my officials to look into making the necessary changes to ensure that there is a presumption that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, victims should be told when community leave is planned, as this is a key development in an offender’s case and sentence.
In Mr Anabah’s case, the decision to give permission for escorted leave was taken after very careful consideration of the clinical evidence provided by the responsible clinician. The decision took into account any known or possible risks to the public and victims, as well as the risk of abscond. As the hon. Lady knows, Mr Anabah’s escorted leave passed off without incident. However, due to the representations made by the Ilumoka family, the responsible clinician has suspended the leave at this time.
As we have discussed in correspondence, there appears to have been confusion about when the hon. Lady’s constituents opted in to the victim contact scheme, and therefore the disclosure to them about any information on community leave. I repeat my apology for the distress this has caused. I understand that a victim liaison officer is now in regular contact with the Ilumoka family.
It is, I am afraid, in the nature of a restricted hospital order that I cannot give any assurances about how long Benjamin Anabah will be detained in hospital, or how his treatment will progress. I can however assure the hon. Lady that the concerns expressed by the Ilumoka family will be taken into account in his future management.
The hon. Lady perfectly fairly raised the immigration aspects of this case, including foreign nationals who are mentally disordered offenders. These individuals do not fall to be automatically deported from the UK under the UK Borders Act 2007. Rather, deportation is considered under the Immigration Act 1971 and is aligned with the offender’s discharge date. All such cases are considered carefully in close liaison with the Ministry of Justice and the hospital authorities. In this case, that means there should not be a gap or hiatus between Mr Anabah’s release from hospital and his removal from this country. I spoke today to those who represent the immigration authorities and they have assured me that they will be in close contact with those administering the hospital order to make every effort to ensure that that is the case.
I hope that is at least to some extent reassuring to the hon. Lady and her constituents, and I am grateful to her for the points she has raised. We will look again at the point about guidance, as I said, and I hope that she understands the seriousness with which we take this case and recognises the changes I have outlined to the notification for victims, which I hope will prevent some of the distress that her constituents have had to endure in relation to this case.
Question put and agreed to.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Hywel Williams
I will support amendment 184, or, failing that, amendment 95.
Clause 143 in its present form marks a significant and hugely detrimental shift in the law which would make it far more difficult for individuals to gain compensation for wrongful conviction and imprisonment. Non-governmental organisations concerned with human rights, including the Committee on the Administration of Justice, as well as highly respected organisations such as Justice and Liberty, have expressed major anxieties about the clause. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) explained very eloquently, an individual who applies for compensation for a miscarriage of justice must currently demonstrate that a court could not have established beyond reasonable doubt that he or she was guilty of the offence. Clause 143, however, shifts the burden of proof to the individual, and compels that individual to prove that he or she is innocent of the offence. A miscarriage of justice would henceforth be proved to have taken place only if newly discovered facts showed beyond reasonable doubt that that person was innocent.
As Justice has pointed out, since 2006 section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 has provided the only avenue for individuals to obtain financial redress after miscarriages of justice have occurred. It is chilling to think that, had the proposed change in the law been in place at the time, none of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven or the Cardiff Three—I have some interest in that case, and indeed referred to it earlier—would have satisfied the innocence test.
Those infamous cases, of course, paved the way for the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The individuals involved won compensation because it was proved that the evidence that had been brought against them was flawed, and that a jury could not have found them guilty had the case been retried. As was made clear by the hon. Member for Foyle, the justice system of England and Wales is unlike the Scottish system in that a case cannot be found to be “not proven”, although there have been arguments about that position.
In the notorious cases that I have just listed, the rule of thumb for the awarding of compensation was always that the individuals would receive the amount that they would have earned had they been working during the time when they were wrongfully imprisoned. The purpose of that was to ensure that they would not be impoverished when they were released. It would be wicked indeed to deny individuals that compensation when the justice system has gone wrong.
Under the current law, it is already exceptionally difficult to persuade the criminal Court of Appeal to review new evidence. For cases to qualify, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is required to apply section 13(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, which provides that individuals must satisfy a “real possibility test”. Arguably, both the Criminal Cases Review Court and the Court of Appeal adopt an excessively strict interpretation of this test. They restrict reviews to new evidence that was not available at the time of the trial or appeal, which means in practice that evidence that was available at the time of the trial or appeal cannot be considered, even in cases in which it was suppressed by the police. Given how difficult it is to get cases referred to the Court of Appeal under both the “real possibility test” and the need for fresh evidence, it is harsh indeed that the Government are attempting further to restrict people’s ability to gain compensation. Innocence is far too high a test and would be virtually impossible to prove after many years, which is when such cases are usually heard.
If this matter is not pressed to a successful Division this afternoon, I sincerely hope that Members in the other place will apply the most stringent attention to the clause. My noble Friend Lord Wigley will certainly do so.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am grateful to be called, Mr Speaker. Thank you for letting me speak in the debate. I appreciate that my role as a shadow law Minister means that it is an indulgence to allow me to speak. I appreciate it.
I have been in the House for eight years and I thought that I was unshockable, but the way in which the Government are seeking to amend section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to redefine a miscarriage of justice is truly shocking. They wish to change it so that, if and only if newly discovered facts show beyond reasonable doubt that the person is innocent, there has been a miscarriage of justice. Nothing less than that will do. Only in those circumstances can someone be given compensation.
I am sure that the Minister will have noted, as anyone else watching the debate will have done, that no one has yet spoken in favour of clause 143, not even the Minister himself yet. If the matter is not dealt with this afternoon, I hope that there will be the opportunity to deal with it in another place. We need to marshal our forces, because the essence of our liberal society is threatened.
The Government’s arguments for introducing an innocence test—there are many arguments; I want to concentrate on the Government’s justification—are, first, that it is needed for the sake of clarity; and, secondly, that it will save money. Neither of those arguments is remotely convincing. Let me turn to the first, about clarity.
The law at the moment is perfectly clear. Three recent authoritative judgments have rejected the innocence test as an affront to the presumption of innocence. The Supreme Court did so in the case of Adams in 2011, in which Lady Hale said:
“a person is only guilty if the state can prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt...He does not have to prove his innocence at his trial and it seems wrong in principle that he should be required to prove his innocence now.”
That was reiterated in the High Court in the case of Ali earlier this year. There was an attempt to widen the definition, but that attempt was well and truly quashed by the High Court. This summer, moreover, the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Allen v. the UK, made it perfectly clear that any legislation that calls into question the innocence of an acquitted person would be a breach of article 6(2) of the European convention on human rights on the presumption of innocence.
Therefore, the law is clear. That law has been reiterated by our own Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has been able to assert that
“it is now clear beyond doubt”
that the proposed new test in clause 143 is incompatible with the right to be presumed innocent in article 6(2). Therefore, rather than clarifying the law, it seems that the Government are having a pitched battle with the settled, established law.
The second argument is about saving money. The Bill’s own impact assessment reveals the expected savings to be negligible. According to that MOJ assessment—the Minister looks puzzled; it is on page 4—the effect of the clause will be to reduce by two per annum the number of judicial reviews of Secretary of State decisions, which it estimates will save around £100,000 per annum. Therefore, for the sake of saving £100,000 per annum, we will be trading in the centuries-old principle of the presumption of innocence. The courts have rejected an innocence test not out of some quibbling legalistic technicality. They have rejected it because it is a cornerstone of a fair justice system. We have a fair justice system and a free society where it is for the state to prove guilt, not for the individual to prove innocence.
The reason for that is obvious. Proving a negative is very difficult and the burden of proof it would place on the individual is extremely onerous. It is for the state with all its resources to make the case of a person’s guilt. The presumption of innocence applies before an acquittal. As Lord Phillips said in the Adams case, any test that requires innocence
“will deprive some defendants who are in fact innocent and who succeed in having their convictions quashed on the grounds of fresh evidence from obtaining compensation. It will exclude from entitlement to compensation those who no longer seem likely to be guilty, but whose innocence is not established beyond reasonable doubt. This is a heavy price to pay for ensuring that no guilty person is ever the recipient of compensation”.
Damian Green
This has been a serious debate, appropriately, because these are serious issues. Having listened carefully to the views of Members on both sides of the House, I believe that there are some genuine misunderstandings about what is proposed and what its effect will be. I will seek to deal with those as briefly as I can. It is a complex issue.
As we have heard, amendment 95 seeks to maintain the current definition of a “miscarriage of justice” derived from case law, which is therefore subject to ongoing litigation. Amendment 184 goes further and would prevent us from creating a statutory definition of a “miscarriage of justice” at all, leaving the definition subject to the shifting view of the courts. Over the years, the courts have provided complicated definitions of a miscarriage of justice, which are often confusing to a lay person and are by definition subject to change over time. In this instance, it is unlikely that an applicant for compensation would know what
“properly directed as to the law”
means in a particular case. That would have disadvantages for applicants, who will find it difficult to know whether they have a valid claim, or to understand the Secretary of State’s decision on their case.
Emily Thornberry
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, although there has been a challenge in respect of the case of Adams in the Supreme Court, the position has not moved and the law on the definition of miscarriage of justice has been settled since 2011?
Damian Green
I will come to the Adams case in a moment, if the hon. Lady will be patient.
Many disappointed applicants seek judicial review of the Secretary of State’s decision, because they do not fully understand its basis or because the case law is unclear. In practice, very few such claims succeed, and they place a significant burden on the applicant involved and on the taxpayers who have to fund them. Therefore, the purpose of clause 143 is to restore the law to the pre-2011 position and to make the definition of a miscarriage of justice more consistent, clearer and easier for the public and potential applicants to understand. That is fairer than using an obscure and confusing definition, or continuing to work, as we have to now, with a definition that is subject to unpredictable change. We are firmly of the view that the provision is compatible with our international obligations and the convention rights. I am conscious that we are in discussions with the Joint Committee about that and that we hold different views on the matter.
Damian Green
I am happy to continue to engage in the discussions that the Departments have been having with the Joint Committee or anyone else, but I regret to say that I am not sure that having a meeting at which a definitive view could be arrived at would be possible, as that would be subcontracting the right of Parliament to be that Chamber—that is the purpose of this House and the other place, and I do not think it is constitutionally right to try to subcontract that to a meeting of experts.
The nub of Members’ complaints about clause 143 is that it is in some way incompatible with the presumption of innocence—I do not think I am traducing hon. Members in saying that—and that is the issue we need to address. Of course the Government recognise the fundamental constitutional importance of the presumption of innocence and we would not introduce legislation that cuts across that. We consider that article 14.6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 gives effect, provides only for compensation to be paid to those persons whose convictions have been overturned because a new fact shows that they did not commit the offence. In the Government’s view, that is the proper definition of a miscarriage of justice. Compensation should not be payable where the basis for the conviction being overturned does not demonstrate the applicant’s innocence.
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) brought up the European Court of Human Rights. We are aware of its decision on this issue and we have written in some detail to the Joint Committee on Human Rights about it. However, we continue to consider that this provision would not interfere with a person’s fundamental right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. We take firm support for this view from the Supreme Court in the Adams case, which held unanimously that the presumption of innocence is not infringed by the current arrangements for compensating a miscarriage of justice. In our view, the proposed change does not alter that analysis. As the European Court acknowledged, more than an acquittal is required to establish that there has been a miscarriage of justice. Through clause 143, we are determining where that line should be drawn.
Under clause 143, there is no requirement for a person applying for compensation for a miscarriage of justice to “prove” their innocence. What is determinative is the fact on which the conviction was overturned. So, for example, if a person’s conviction is overturned because DNA evidence comes to light showing they could not have committed the offence, it is only right that they should be compensated. Following the coming into force of clause 143, they will, as now, be eligible for compensation.
The proposed new test for determining eligibility for compensation does not require the applicant to demonstrate his or her innocence; it focuses on the new fact. When the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in the case of Allen that the presumption of innocence is engaged when deciding whether to pay compensation for a miscarriage of justice, the Court made it clear that states were entitled to conclude that more than an acquittal was required. This clause will enable us to say, for the first time in statute, what beyond an acquittal is necessary for there to have been a miscarriage of justice. It introduces for the first time some certainty in the process.
I should say in response to a point made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that the clause will have no impact at all on the very valuable work being done every day by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and nor will it change the basis on which a conviction is overturned.
Emily Thornberry
I hope the right hon. Gentleman recognises that the wording of amendment 95 reiterates the wording in the settled case law I have been telling him about.
Damian Green
Yes, indeed, and I have addressed directly the cases the hon. Lady raised.
We are returning the law to where it was in 2008 under the previous Government, where following the decision of the House of Lords in Mullen, compensation was held to be payable only where a person could be shown not to have committed, or to have been demonstrably innocent of, the offence for which he was convicted.
As has been pointed out by the Supreme Court in Adams, it is difficult to glean exactly what the framers of the ICCPR intended on this point from the papers now available, and nor is there international consensus on what the ICCPR requires in this regard. Signatories to the ICCPR have some latitude in determining the requirements of article 14.6. For example. New Zealand and Canada restrict the payment of compensation for a miscarriage of justice to cases where the applicant was innocent. Further, while the Supreme Court in Adams ultimately held that eligibility for compensation was not limited to cases of innocence, four members of the Supreme Court, including the current Lord Chief Justice, considered that compensation should be payable only in cases of innocence. We are therefore confident that what we are doing achieves the aim of creating a more readily comprehensible test which meets the Government’s policy objectives, while also complying with our international obligations.
We recognise the fundamental constitutional importance of the presumption of innocence, and there may simply be a disagreement in this Chamber as to whether we are breaching it, but I can assure the House that there is no intention of doing so, and I am firmly of the belief that clause 143 does not do that. All it does is require compensation to be paid to those persons whose convictions have been overturned because a new fact shows that they did not in fact commit the offence. This, in the Government’s view, is the proper definition to be given to a miscarriage of justice
I hope I have cleared up what I think are genuine misunderstandings about the effect of clause 143, and I urge the Members concerned not to press their amendments.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 10 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 11
Power of community support officer to issue fixed penalty notice for cycle light offence
‘(1) Part 1 of Schedule 4 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (powers of community support officers) is amended as follows.
(2) In sub-paragraph (2)(b) of paragraph 1 (power to issue fixed penalty notices)—
(a) for “in respect of an offence” there is substituted “in respect of—an offence”;
(i) an offence”;
(b) at the end there is inserted “, or an offence, under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, of contravening or failing to comply with a construction or use requirement about lighting equipment or reflectors for cycles;”.
(i) an offence, under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, of contravening or failing to comply with a construction or use requirement about lighting equipment or reflectors for cycles;”.
(3) In sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 11A (power to stop cycles)—
(a) for “has committed an offence” there is substituted “has committed—
(a) an offence”;
(b) at the end there is inserted “, or
(b) an offence, under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, of contravening or failing to comply with a construction or use requirement about lighting equipment or reflectors for cycles;”.’.—(Damian Green.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Legal Aid Reform
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I refer the House to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. My interest is as a criminal defence duty solicitor, so I have a particular interest in relation to the criminal legal aid proposals. It is important that we focus on this issue, but we should not have this debate in a vacuum. Certainly, yesterday’s statement ensures that we do not have a vacuum; there is a need to make the £11.5 billion saving, and legal aid cannot be exempt.
We also heard from the Chancellor that this is about fairness. Reference was made to the national health service as an institution that we can be proud of, that the people are proud of and that is about fairness. The legal aid system is also an institution that is about fairness. It is one that we can be proud of, but it is not one that in polls people say is a No. 1 priority. That makes it even more important that we as a Parliament and a Government make sure it has integrity, but it cannot be excluded from the Budget round.
Why can we proud of it? Members do not have to take my word for it. Just take the word of the Secretary of State, who has been maligned and caricatured in many ways, but I am convinced is open and is listening to this consultation. We need to take his word for it—
Mr Burrowes
Let us not get into the “Where is he?” business, or who he meets with. Let us take this a bit more seriously. Let us listen to what he said in the document. He said:
“Access to justice should not be determined by your ability to pay, and I am clear that legal aid is the hallmark of a fair, open justice system.”
That is what we have all been saying throughout today’s debate. He went on to say:
“Unfortunately, over the past decade, the system has lost much of its credibility with the public. “
I look at the criminal legal aid system, predominantly in police stations and magistrates courts. The Secretary of State went on to say:
“Taxpayers money is being used to pay for frivolous claims, to foot the legal bills of wealthy criminals, and to cover cases which run on and on racking up large fees for a small number lawyers.”
The proposals seek to deal with that; for very high cost cases, I welcome that.
Police stations and magistrates courts have been under cost control for a number of years, with real-terms cuts. Is there evidence that the system has lost credibility with the public and we must change the system wholesale by introducing price competitive tendering? I think not. When we look at the elements of our system and ask what is delivering quality and what is making us proud of it, we see that it is the fact that it is based on the principle of choice. Yes, we can look at procurement going forward, but we cannot undermine the principle of choice.
When we look at those that I and others have represented over the years, we can characterise them as the good, the bad and the ugly. Choice ensures that the most heinous, wretched criminal is represented and has a choice of lawyer. The most worthy of saints also gets the choice of lawyer, without judgment or conditions. That is an important principle of which we can be proud. It means that, when dealing with the regular clients that I have represented over the years, we can enter a timely guilty plea, which is efficient; we can achieve a sentence that takes account of their mental health needs or drug needs and go the extra mile to make sure that they get drug rehabilitation.
We can also represent the young innocent because their parent has asked us to go down to the police station. They want to choose someone they trust, who can understand the person’s special educational needs, problems of communication or learning difficulties. They need their own solicitor to be involved. We must have choice, yes to protect the vulnerable but also to ensure quality, to ensure that there is a client base that is protected and maintained but also to ensure mutual trust and good will in the system.
Let us look at the costs of justice so that we can deliver efficiency. But let us also listen to the Ministry of Justice over the years, which has said that choice is the key deliverer of quality. Let us listen to Lord Carter, who conducted an independent review and said that choice had to be maintained. Let us also recognise our small firms, who make up three quarters of legal aid firms and do the business end—the 90% of cases that go through to magistrates courts. They are delivering out of good will—yes, they are paid, but a fairly limited wage—because they care about the system. They need to be maintained and encouraged. We need to go along with it, with a timetable and proper consultation so that we deliver an efficient justice system for the benefit of all.