Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

23. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of women’s centres in reducing reoffending; and if she will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

The data on women’s centres are quite mixed. I am a strong advocate of the benefits of women’s centres in the community. On reoffending rates, the figures are somewhat mixed across the county. We continue to look at the situation closely to find out exactly what works about those women’s centres to reduce reoffending.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

But is it not a fact that most women in prison are extremely vulnerable and have been victims themselves, including of domestic abuse, addiction and mental health problems, and that women’s centres actually deal with the whole problem? I was a Home Office Minister who helped to persuade Baroness Corston to produce her excellent report, and the reason why we did that was the number of women who were killing themselves in jail. The Government are planning new women’s jails, but more women will murder themselves—we are at a record level. How is the Minister going to stop that happening without investing in women’s centres?

[Dr Lee]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. I should have wished her the best of luck as she stands down at the election. She represents a town that I know very well, and I also know that she is a particularly popular Member of Parliament.

The building of the prisons should not be interpreted as increasing the number of places to lock women up in—that should be clear. On women’s centres, I agree that women often have very complex problems, and that is a reason why I, for one, am trying to increase the number of women’s centres in the country. As the right hon. Lady has rightly said, bringing everything under the same roof can really help those women to make the right turn in life, away from crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) can be as brief as she is illustrious, the House will be blessed.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Ministers have praised the Corston report on women in the criminal justice system and yet are currently planning, I hear, to open specialist units for women as adjuncts to men’s prisons, going in the opposite direction to the Corston report. Can they reassure me that I am wrong?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can reassure the right hon. Lady that she is wrong and we are not doing that. In fact, I will be giving a speech this afternoon on the 10th anniversary of the Corston report, and she is very welcome to come along.

Domestic Violence Victims: Cross-Examination

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I think that the importance of that issue is accepted throughout the House. Whether or not my hon. Friend’s suggestion is an appropriate way to deal with it, one thing is clear: it should be dealt with as a matter of urgency, and that is what I am committed to doing.

Perhaps I should have said earlier that there were instances in which this problem arose before LASPO. It is not a new problem, and many people were refused legal aid representation under the Labour Government.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Minister has said seven times that he is “dealing with it urgently”. When will we see the result?

[Sir Oliver Heald]

The answer that Members receive from the Dispatch Box is, of course, “shortly”, and that is what I have said, but it does mean shortly.

HMP Birmingham

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. If he looks at the way we review prisons, he will find that the performance of the private and public sectors is relatively equivalent. There is not a significant difference between performance in the private and public sector. We set the levels of staff that the private sector has to employ. We are moving towards a 1:6 ratio in both the public and private sectors. All our evidence suggests that that will be enough to make sure that we keep prisons safe and, importantly, to reform prisoners to reduce the cost of reoffending.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said in her statement that these matters had been developing over a number of years, but is it not the case that between 1997 and 2010 there were no cat A escapes and no riots like the ones we have seen? Since that time, there have been two category A and many other escapes, record numbers of suicides and record numbers of homicides in our prisons. Why should we trust the right hon. Lady’s party to run the Prison Service?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have said absolutely that we have seen significant rises in violence over recent years. That is why we launched the prison safety and reform plan. The first thing I did when I became Secretary of State was to make sure that we dealt with those issues. We have faced new challenges such as psychoactive drugs and mobile phones, which were not an issue before. I say to the right hon. Lady that since the inception of prisons we have not seriously impacted the reoffending rate, which is a challenge we face as a country. It is costing us £15 billion a year. It is important that we make our prisons safe, but also make them places of reform where we can reduce reoffending. Prisons need to follow both purposes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State. I call Fiona Mactaggart.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

2. How many deaths have occurred in (a) custody suites operated by G4S and (b) other custody suites in the last three years.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

G4S has not operated court custody suites in England and Wales since 2011.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Very vulnerable people are held in custody suites, and many have committed suicide. That translates into the presence of such people in prisons, where, as the Secretary of State has just acknowledged, there have been more deaths in custody than there have been for many years. More women are killing themselves than at any time since the Corston report. When we know what has gone wrong from the reports of coroners’ courts or the Corston report, which have given us real advice on what ought to happen, why is it not happening? Has the Minister read those coroners’ reports?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We really do need to make progress. This is very slow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I commend my hon. Friend for his work as a Minister in the Department to promote legal links with India; I am pleased to say that those are being taken forward. The Prime Minister will visit India this month to pave the way for UK lawyers to practise there, helping to improve our international business and trade. English law is a massive asset that we can leverage for wider business negotiation.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

How many of the inquest reports on self-inflicted deaths in custody has the Minister read, and what actions has he taken as a result of the recommendations of inquests that have caused real distress to families?

[Mr Gyimah]

Every death in custody is a tragic event. As the Minister with responsibility for prisons—I have been in the role for four months—I take every one of them seriously. I look at all the reports and I sign many of the responses to those reports where, for example, the independent monitoring board is involved. We have plans to make sure that we deliver on them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

The aetiology of mental health is pretty complex. The genesis of problems do not just occur over the term of a Parliament. The system in place for mental healthcare and the continuity of care for people before, during and post their stay in prison is clearly not where it should be. I would argue that that has been the case for many decades. I have been asked to look at this matter and will be doing so, but it is a huge and complex area. As a consequence, I am not about to make any commitments at the Dispatch Box.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

There is a particular risk for women in prison. Some 30% of women prisoners have had a previous admission for a psychiatric problem before they went into prison. In the past year, 11 women have killed themselves. My impression is that that is because the previous Secretary of State did not focus on the recommendations of the Corston report, which would have ensured a better level of mental health for women in prison. What is this Minister going to do on the Corston report and on women in prison?

[Dr Lee]

I have read the Corston report and it is a good report. It was published in 2007 and it is still relevant today; it has intellectual coherence with the Charlie Taylor report on youth offenders. I will be looking at it and I am personally persuaded by some of the arguments in it, but I see no evidence that the former Secretary of State was not in any way keeping a close eye on the matter.

Policing and Crime Bill

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend’s remarks will be heard by Rachel Gumbs, the daughter of Philmore Mills, who died in hospital while being restrained by the police. Another constituent has raised an issue relating to his mum. Her children were abducted by their father, and she has spent nearly two decades without being able to contact them. My constituent is in litigation against the police, and feels a similar kind of bereavement, as he has been kept away from his brothers and sisters. He hopes that the approach we are discussing could enable people like him, who are taking cases against the police, to get access to some kind of resources. Would that be possible?

[Andy Burnham]

That is exactly what lies behind the new clause. My right hon. Friend has just made my point. We will all have examples from our experience as constituency MPs. We know families who have been at inquests that have been highly unsatisfactory experiences, and where they did not get legal support. I will come to a few examples, to show how unfair it is. The public sector spends taxpayers’ money like water on hiring the best QCs to line up in the courtroom and defend its reputation. Ordinary families are scrabbling around, re-mortgaging their houses and doing whatever they can to try to put up some kind of fight against that. How wrong is that?

Public money should pay to establish the truth. That means that there should be parity between the two sides in that process. It should not be the case that the public sector packs a courtroom with highly paid QCs. That is such an important principle to establish coming out of Hillsborough—to be honest, if there is to be one lasting legacy from Hillsborough, that should be it. I was tempted by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) to make this point before. The Hillsborough families were represented by Michael Mansfield at the recent inquest. If that had been the case back in 1990, there is no chance on God’s earth that the cruel and inhumane 3.15 pm cut-off time would have been allowed to stand. Have we ever had a situation in this country before where bereaved families have been told that they cannot have information about what happened to their loved ones in their dying minutes? That was the case here. Have we ever had a situation before where only after 27 years are families finally told who gave their loved ones the kiss of life and carried them over the pitch? What an affront to natural justice that is. Yet it was allowed to stand, because those families did not have someone who could challenge it.

A few weeks ago, Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, came to Parliament to deliver a very personal reflection on what it was like all those years ago. I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who attended; I am sure they will agree that it was an intensely moving occasion. Margaret described the indescribable pain and hurt she felt when she was sent a cheque of just over £1,000, which was supposedly compensation for the life of her son James. She said she had to put it towards the legal fund that the group was asking members to contribute to. In itself that was not enough because she had the cost of travelling to the inquest in Sheffield every day. She was living on the breadline and having to borrow money from her family and her mum to make it all work. How can it be right that families in such circumstances, who have not done anything wrong, find themselves in that situation? It cannot be right that they should be scrimping, saving and doing all those things, when taxpayers’ money is being paid for the other side to do them down.

Safety in Custody and Violence in Prisons

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. and learned Friend, who is also extremely knowledgeable on these issues, is absolutely right. The Government are committed to making sure that there is universal access to a mental health assessment from the moment that anyone encounters the criminal justice system. I also point her to the co-commissioning that is going to happen between governors and NHS England on mental health and drug abuse services. That will also be very beneficial.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I have no doubt that the Minister wants to sort this problem out, and his account of a passion for reform, decency and hope was compelling, except for the fact that it has not worked. Since 2012, the number of assaults in prisons has doubled, as have the number of assaults on staff. Although he talked about recruiting more staff recently, total numbers of staff have fallen. Those staff are frightened—brave prison officers are scared to go to work. What can the Minister say to stop them feeling frightened?

[Andrew Selous]

The right hon. Lady is right to say that confidence is an extremely important commodity as far as the day-to-day work of prison officers is concerned. She has been involved with these issues for many years, and she will know that the Prison Service has been affected in a major way by waves of drugs. In the early 1990s, and before that, such things had serious implications for prisons, and led to riots and serious assaults in high numbers. We have a two-year violence reduction project. It would not be helpful now to give the House a shopping list of individual measures, but detailed, serious work is taking place across the estate, including the violence diagnostic tool and many other measures to help back up hard-working prison officers. The body-worn camera initiative is also proving valuable, and we hope to say more about that soon.

European Convention on Human Rights

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

On the position on the convention, I think the hon. Lady will find that the Home Secretary’s remarks were made not in this House, but elsewhere. The Home Secretary is, of course, entitled to her view; there is a degree of licence and latitude in the current debate on the EU. What I have explained clearly to the hon. Lady is the Government’s position on the ECHR. On the application to the devolved Administrations—I understand the hon. Lady’s particular concerns relating to Northern Ireland—obviously we will consult fully, including with the devolved Administrations. We are mindful of the interrelationship of the convention with, and its effects on, the Belfast agreement, which she mentioned.

Critically, our reform agenda is not about eroding people’s fundamental rights. The United Kingdom has a proud tradition of respect for human rights that goes back long before the Human Rights Act 1998, and long before the European convention. Our history of protecting human rights at home and fighting for them abroad stretches back over 800 years to Magna Carta, and even before that, in truth.

We will take no lectures from the Labour party on this front. It was the last Labour Government who introduced identity cards and proposed 90 days’ detention without charge.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

How is that relevant?

[Mr Raab]

In stark contrast, the last Conservative-led Government scrapped identity cards and cut pre-charge detention. The reason why it is relevant, as the right hon. Lady should know, is that actions speak louder than words.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

rose—

[Mr Raab]

I will not give way, because the time I have left is so limited. This Government also brought forward the Modern Slavery Act 2015. We have transformed the fight against sexual violence in conflict, persuading more than 150 states to agree for the first time that sexual violence should be recognised as a grave breach of the Geneva conventions. This is a record that we can be proud of, and are committed to building on. Our commitment will not falter or fail, but we need to restore some credibility to human rights, which many people in this country increasingly view as dirty words—an industry or bandwagon for lawyers, rather than a tradition to take pride in. We can do that by restoring common sense to the system. We are confident that we can deliver our common-sense reforms within the bounds and parameters of the European convention.

We have already sought and listened to views from practitioners, non-governmental organisations, academics and politicians right across the entire United Kingdom. We know there has been consistently strong public support for these measures. We will consult fully on our forthcoming proposals before introducing legislation, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will, as ever, bring to bear his considerable expertise and experience at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as we proceed with the Bill in the House.

International Women’s Day 2016

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and I congratulate everyone who is taking part in the debate. I apologise for squeezing a nine-minute speech into four minutes.

This debate takes place against the background of the recent murder of Berta Cáceres, a feminist activist who was shot in her home in western Honduras because of her defence of the rights of indigenous people. I hope that many women will continue her work. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that when he took office there were nine Parliaments in the world without women. That figure is now down to four, but that is four too many, and there has still been no female UN Secretary-General. Hon. Members are right to mention the percentage of women in this Parliament, which now stands at 29%. Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour party, has 43% female MPs, which is nearing equality.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend remarks that we have not had a female UN Secretary-General, but will she join me in congratulating the current secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Baroness Scotland?

[Valerie Vaz]

I will, and I am delighted that she was selected. However, the statistics are still damning. In law, one Supreme Court judge is a woman, and only 13% of QCs are women; in science, women make up only 14.4% of the science, technology, engineering and maths workforce in the UK; in business, only 5.5% of chief executive officers in FTSE 100 companies are women. What about the gender pay gap? In 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics, it was 14.2%, which means that in effect, women work from about 9 November to the end of the year without any pay.

I want to raise two issues about women in my constituency. Locally, there was an equal pay judgment in 2008, and the poor women who worked for Birmingham City Council are still waiting for a pay-out. The men who did the same sort of work picked up extra pay through routine overtime and other bonuses. Mary Ashby and Josephine Haynes are retired, and they have a right to their pay-out. The Government can find £375 billion for quantitative easing, so will they please find the money to make sure that all the women get their pay-out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I want to structure my speech around the motion, which starts by expressing solidarity with International Women’s Day, as I have done today by dressing in the suffragette colours—just one symbol of that solidarity. Underneath, I am wearing a Fawcett Society feminist T-shirt.

The second part of the motion

“notes with concern that, despite women making up 51 per cent of society as a whole, more progress needs to be made in electing women to Parliament”.

Like you, Mr Speaker, I was a member of the Speaker’s Conference on representation in this place. We have made progress. I am proud of the Labour party, which still provides more than half the women in this place, for taking the decision, which was not an easy one within the party, to use women-only shortlists. I was originally called a “quota woman”, but everyone has forgotten that now because they realise that I am quite an effective Member of Parliament.

We need to go further. I welcome the new Conservative women to the House. In some ways, I am glad that they were beneficiaries of the collapse of the Liberal party which, in my view, has done less than any other party on this issue. Let us remind ourselves why it is so important to have women here. At the moment, democracy fails if people cannot hear their voices in Parliament. Do women make a difference? Absolutely, they do.

I remember asking the Clerk of the Defence Committee at the turn of the century what difference having women on that Committee for the first time had made. I was not sure what the answer would be but, “Of course it has made an enormous difference, Fiona,” was what this rather stuffy Clerk said. I said, “What?” He said, “Well, we just used to talk about how big the bombs were, but now we talk about the families of the people who fight.” I just know that what would make me brave is knowing that my family is safe.

Women bring something additional to Parliament. One thing we achieved under a previous Prime Minister was the first ever stealth tax cut, when he could not bring himself to mention during his Budget that the level of VAT on sanitary protection had gone down. I am disappointed when we get patted on the head on some of these issues, in that the most recent san pro tax cut turned into a way of making this a kind of voluntary tax—“Guess what? We’ll give it to the Eve appeal.” I am glad that the Eve appeal is getting the money—I am a survivor of ovarian cancer myself—but if san pro is being taxed, the money should go into strategic support from the Government.

[Jess Phillips]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should look at some of their big strategic wins on women’s issues, such as human trafficking legislation and the Modern Slavery Act 2015? Should they not focus the money on something like that?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend anticipates where my speech is going next.

The next part of the motion refers to equal pay. We have made some progress on that, but I am glad that the Women and Equalities Committee is looking at the fact that older women are being left behind when it comes to equal pay. They are being left behind in many other ways, too, so we need to try to sort that out.

The final part of the motion

“calls for greater action against FGM and other practices that are harmful to women.”

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I commend the Government for setting up the National FGM Centre, which helps women and communities to fight against this barbaric act. It is run, as hon. Members may know, by Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association, and a funding decision on the centre is due at the end of this month. Will my right hon. Friend join me in calling on the Government to continue this funding that keeps our daughters safe?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is essential that we have a strategic response to violence against women and girls. We have all been moved by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), and we know that women—internationally and in the UK—are particularly likely to be victims of violence, which might be through so-called cultural practices such as FGM, or victims of human trafficking.

I am glad that the Government have introduced the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and are focusing on the issue. We know that, internationally, the biggest reason for trafficking in human beings is trafficking for sexual exploitation. With women who are murdered, we know that if they have been in prostitution, their perpetrator is much less likely to be caught and convicted. Our average murder conviction rate is 75%, but at the moment we convict only 23% of the murderers of prostitutes. That is a shocking figure. We fail to have an intelligent, strategic response to the existence of prostitution, recognising that it is, as it is actually practised, a mechanism for violence towards women, for the sexual exploitation of children and for turning women into commodities, thus making all women’s lives less safe.

I am glad that the Home Affairs Committee is looking at this issue, but until we follow Sweden’s lead by targeting the men who create this problem and saying that it is an offence to pay for women’s sexual services, I do not think we will end the horror that is the reality for most women and girls involved in prostitution—the horror of drug addiction; the horror of pimping; and the horror of exploitation and trafficking. That is something that we really need to focus on. When I first came to this House, we were reluctant to discuss the word “prostitution”, and I am glad that we now have a Chamber that is prepared to talk about it. However, we now have to do things to end this form of exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is no surprise that when we widen the gene pool and get more women and diversity around the table, we make better decisions.

In the time I have left, I want to talk about something close to my heart. Engineering has a turnover of more than £1 trillion, which is a quarter of all UK enterprises, yet 64% of employers say that there is a shortage of engineers. That shortfall will lead to there being 55,000 fewer engineers by 2015 than the UK economy needs. Women make up only 9% of the engineering workforce. That is a scandal, and we need to do more to address it.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I will not, if the right hon. Lady does not mind, because I have only a few seconds left.

A paper by EngineeringUK shows that UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU. The figure is 9% in the UK, but 30% in Latvia. Girls outperform boys in STEM subjects but fail to continue those studies to A-level and beyond. In the past five years, 12,000 STEM A-levels were taken by women, but in 2013-14 only 3.8% of engineering apprenticeships were taken up by women. That represents a huge missed opportunity. We need to make sure that the girls who are coming through schools now become the engineers, designers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. That is how women will take their place in the UK economy.