Relationships and Sex Education

Debate between John Spellar and Helen Jones

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

I do, and I will come to that later in my remarks. Those of us who are long in the tooth will remember the controversy over a book called “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin” in the 1980s. That book was available to teachers to use as necessary; it was not used routinely in schools.

It is important to say what is and is not being proposed by the Government. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 requires all maintained primary schools to teach relationships education, and all maintained secondary schools to teach relationships and sex education. Importantly, it qualifies that with the words “age-appropriate”, because teachers know that we cannot teach children concepts that their mind cannot grapple with. They simply do not take it in. Learning how children’s brains develop is part of a teacher’s training. We would be wasting our time trying to teach them things they cannot possibly understand at a young age.

Following the 2017 Act, the Government put out a call for evidence on the teaching of RSE and personal, social, health and economic education, and then issued draft guidelines last year. I have not yet seen the final guidelines—well, I have seen them, but they are under an embargo until the Secretary of State has finished his statement to the House. I will come on to that in a minute.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that under a whole load of international treaties, as our constituents rightly point out, parents have the primary responsibility for bringing up their children and they may have different views from those she is expressing? Does she think, and will the law provide, that parents still have the right to opt their children out of these classes—with the variation, I understand, that that now applies only up to three terms before they turn 16? Is that not the right compromise between these two issues?

[Helen Jones]

I will come to that later in my remarks, but of course my right hon. Friend is right that parents must play a major role in this. Most schools will want to work in co-operation with parents; we would be foolish to do anything else.

The Government issued draft guidelines for what should be taught in school, and it is important to look at how those draft guidelines work. In primary school, children should be taught about families, “people who care for me”, caring friendships and respectful relationships. They should be taught that there are different kinds of families and what to do if they feel unhappy or unsafe at home. That part is crucial because, although we hear much about stranger danger, let us remember that most children who are abused are abused within their own families. We must remember that. They need to learn about how to keep safe online and offline, and where to go for help.

I cannot honestly see a difficulty with that. Saying to young children that there are different kinds of families is only reinforcing what they know. They know from their own experience, from their own classes, that some children will have a mummy and daddy, some will only have a mummy or a daddy and some, increasingly, may have two parents of the same sex. That happens.

In secondary school, what is proposed is necessarily more complex. Children will be expected to learn about the importance of marriage and that it must be freely entered into, which is crucial given that some British young people are still experiencing forced marriage.

Dangerous Dogs Act: Staffordshire Bull Terriers

Debate between John Spellar and Helen Jones

Monday 16th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 222419 relating to including Staffordshire Bull Terriers in the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Walker. I admit that I am no expert on this subject; my only qualification to open the debate is that I have been bitten twice, both times while leafleting and both times by that breed of dog made famous by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the ones that do not bark. I therefore intend to outline the arguments briefly to allow others with more expertise than me the time to speak.

The petition was started by those opposed to suggestions in some quarters that Staffordshire bull terriers should be included on the list of prohibited dogs maintained under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Those of us who are a bit long in the tooth will remember that the Act was introduced following a lot of reports in the press about dogs—in particular pit bull types—mauling people.

The Act forbids the keeping of certain breeds, unless the dog is granted an exemption certificate, adding it to the index of exempted dogs. In that case, the owner has a certificate of exemption for the lifetime of the dog, but they must comply with any restrictions placed on him or her, such as keeping the dog muzzled in public. It is an offence to breed from, sell or exchange any dogs listed in the Act—even an individual dog that has an exemption certificate.

Those of us who, again, have been around for a while know that legislation that gets passed quickly, with agreement from both Front Benches, is usually flawed, and many people have argued from the beginning that the Dangerous Dogs Act has serious flaws. It was intended to prevent people from keeping and breeding dogs for fighting, but for a long time it has been argued that it is easy to get around the legislation—for example, by claiming that the dog is a Staffordshire bull terrier or an American bulldog, or by having a crossbreed, which is perfectly legal.

Other people have argued that such breed-specific legislation, or BSL, is the wrong way to proceed anyway. For example, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has said that whether a dog is dangerous is

“influenced by a range of factors including how dogs are bred, reared and experiences throughout their lifetime”.

The British Veterinary Association states:

“we are opposed to any proposal or legislation that singles out particular breeds of dogs”.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend leading to the key criticism of that piece of legislation, which is that the police, and particularly the courts, ought to be taking on irresponsible and vicious owners, instead of showing such reluctance, as they have done on so many occasions?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

That is often the case, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman managed to get Roger into Hansard—let us all hear it for Roger! That is the argument that organisations such as the RSCPA put:

“Breed is not an appropriate criterion to assess a dog’s risk to people.”

However, the RSPCA also argues that the existing legislation does not promote animal welfare. It had to put down 232 dogs in two years, many of which it says could have been rehomed—I have reservations about the “many” because I am not sure how many people want to take on dogs listed under the Act. The RSPCA also said that, over the time we have had the legislation, admissions to hospital for injuries inflicted by dogs have risen. In fact, they rose by 76% between 2005 and 2015. There is also no scientific evidence to tie those injuries to the prohibited breeds.

As someone who is fairly neutral in the debate, I would like more information about that, simply as a precaution. Are we admitting more people to hospital than we used to? Are non-prohibited breeds causing the injuries? Or are too many dogs being kept in less than ideal conditions? All of us have met such dogs when canvassing—big dogs kept in small houses or flats without enough space to exercise and so on. Perhaps those conditions make the dogs more likely to bite.

We have to take the matter seriously. After all, about 21,000 people a year in England suffer a dog bite, and most of them are going about their normal business—for example, postal workers or delivery drivers. We need to find a way to protect them. In fact, 37 people have died in dog attacks since the Act was introduced.

The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is chaired so ably by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), is looking at the issue. The evidence it has had so far from animal welfare organisations and dog behaviourists—I did not even know that that was a job until I started to look into this—has been overwhelmingly in favour of looking at deed not breed when considering dogs.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, however, supports a different approach. PETA has argued that Staffordshire bull terriers and American bulldogs ought to be added to the list of prohibited breeds. Its argument—if I may summarise it—is that those breeds are abused and neglected to make them fiercer, and it cites a number of incidents involving attacks. For example, last year an owner was killed in an attack by a Staffordshire bull terrier, and earlier this year, two of those dogs turned on a smaller dog and ripped it to shreds. PETA also recalled a 2012 incident when five police officers faced a pit bull-type dog. One of them ended up requiring skin grafts, two others were hospitalised, and three bullets were needed to stop the attack.

[John Spellar]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Before she moves on, I must say that I find it surprising that we give any credence to that ridiculous organisation. Its main intervention previously has been attacks on anglers in the United Kingdom, which would not find favour with the huge number of anglers in the west midlands or indeed with you, Mr Walker.

[Helen Jones]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his sterling defence of anglers.

I am simply trying to sum up the various views on this issue. Our petitioners say that these dogs make very loyal and loving pets and faithful companions—the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack) mentioned his dog. On the one hand, the RSPCA promotes a more holistic view of dealing with dangerous dogs, with more education—especially for children—a better legal framework and greater enforcement of the law, along with more research into what makes a dog bite in the first place. By contrast, PETA would say that these breeds are kept, abused and fought because of their breed, and therefore should be banned. I am fairly agnostic in all this. We need much better information on which breeds are responsible for many of the injuries. Is there a pattern?

The League Against Cruel Sports says that the number of reported dog fights has risen sharply, from 72 in 2013 to nearly 500 last year. I do not doubt the figures, but I think we need to look behind them and find out whether they are increasing or whether the public and the police are getting better at reporting and dealing with these things. After all, dog fighting was rife in the 19th century, but there were no reports of it because there was no law against it.

[John Spellar]

The fact is that an organisation wishes to blacken the name of Staffordshire bull terriers, but this is—I say this as, I think, the only Member here from the old Staffordshire county—a very popular breed. As has been said, these can be, and often are, extremely good, friendly family dogs, and they are wonderful with children. It is absurd that this organisation is trying to ban them, rather than deal with the vicious owners and those who get involved in dog fighting. That should be the priority—not damning a breed that is so appreciated by so many in the west midlands.

[Helen Jones]

My right hon. Friend is right that there are strong arguments on the other side of the issue. Although it is undoubtedly true that we have made progress since 1991—all dogs now have to be microchipped, and we have extended the legislation to cover attacks on private land—we need to do more. What the animal welfare charities are putting forward will work very well with responsible dog owners.

The problem, as my right hon. Friend points out, is that many people who have these kinds of dogs are not responsible dog owners, but criminals. They use the dogs to fight, to defend themselves and sometimes to terrorise their entire neighbourhood, as we have seen. That is why the police have said in evidence that they are not prepared to move away from breed-specific legislation at the moment, although they might be prepared to do so in future. If we are going to do that, we will need much more evidence of what has caused the increase in dog attacks. We will also need a much stronger legal system and a better system of enforcing the law. There is no doubt that, when a number of people have these kinds of dogs, they abuse them deliberately to make them fearsome. [Interruption.]

[John Spellar]

I see I am no longer the only Staffordshire MP in the debate. My hon. Friend talks about the enforcement of the law. Perhaps that should start with the enforcement of microchipping—taking people to court and dealing with them when they have animals that are not microchipped or when they have damaged the microchip to make it undetectable.

[Helen Jones]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are all sorts of things that we should do, because we say we are a nation of dog lovers, but what is happening out there actually shows that many people are not dog lovers at all—they abuse animals, whether unintentionally or through malice. Dogs are often abused through being kept in unsuitable conditions and not being given enough exercise. Others are abused deliberately to make them more likely to attack. We need to look at that.

I am unconvinced about whether we should have a list of prohibited breeds at all, and certainly about whether Staffordshire bull terriers should be on it. I look forward to the other contributions to the debate and to the Select Committee’s report, which I am sure will be of great use in deciding how we move forward, both to protect animals from abuse and to protect the public.

Myanmar: Rohingya Minority

Debate between John Spellar and Helen Jones

Monday 16th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend brings me on to my next point, which is that the UK Government continued funding even when the Burmese Government were not allowing the Rohingya to be defined as citizens of their own country.

We provided training for the Burmese military in democracy and human rights. Opinions differ on whether that was a good thing, but when I see that 67% of that funding came from the aid budget—money that should go to the poorest people in the poorest countries—it gives me pause. That training continued even as villages were being burned and looted and people were being killed in Rakhine. In fact, it did not cease until September last year. That told the Burmese military and the Burmese Government that we were not that concerned about human rights in their country and that we would do nothing to enforce those rights.

We were not the only ones at fault. In fact, while those villages were being attacked, the head of the Burmese military came to Brussels to give a speech. He toured arms factories in Europe, which again sent the wrong signal. It should have come as no surprise to anyone that, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police outposts and killed 12 soldiers in August last year, the reprisals were swift and brutal. The estimate of the number killed varies between 9,000 and more than 13,000, but there can be no true figures because there is no real humanitarian access to the area.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

It is understandable that there will be a reaction to a terrorist act—no one would condone terrorist attacks, particularly given the effect they have on civilians—but a basic principle of military law is proportionality. Has not the response of the military been grossly disproportionate? Along with the involvement of militias, does that indicate a degree of significant state planning waiting for an incident to provide an opportunity and an excuse?

[Helen Jones]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, because the Burmese Government and the Burmese military have been ratcheting up tensions in Rakhine for years, sending more and more troops there. Their response was indeed disproportionate. Some 620,000 people fled their homes, and more are coming every day. There is clear evidence of the use of landmines, rape and the burning of villages. Indeed, we could all see the burned villages on our television screens. Most of those people are now in camps in Bangladesh.

While Bangladesh was very generous in opening its borders, it does not classify the Rohingya as refugees, meaning that they are denied some of their rights under international law, including the right to request resettlement in a third country. As the International Development Committee said in its very moving report, those camps are now at risk from cyclones and the monsoons. The camps are in an area prone to cyclones, but there are no evacuation procedures or shelters. The area around the camps has been deforested for fuel, weakening the ground. The camps are built of very flimsy materials. When the monsoons come, they are likely to overwhelm the sanitation systems in the camps. Sewage will flood the area, causing a health emergency. As the Committee baldly put it, people will die. That is why it is very important that the Government redouble their effort to convince the international community to give more immediate aid to stop that health disaster.

At the same time, we must be clear with the Government of Bangladesh that these people deserve to be recognised as refugees, for that is what they are. Bangladesh is building a new camp—an island camp, which those who saw it on “Channel 4 News” will agree looks much more like a prison camp—with the help of the Chinese. The fear is that they want to make conditions so appalling that the Rohingya will have no alternative but to return home, whether it is safe or not. It is clear that the Bangladeshi Government’s aim is to ensure that the Rohingya are repatriated. That may be a laudable ambition in the long term, but the Rohingya cannot return while violence continues in Rakhine, while they are not recognised as citizens of their own country and while there is no humanitarian access to monitor their return.

The Bangladeshi Government have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Burmese Government about the return of the Rohingya, but no one knows what it contains. While the British Government have rightly said that any return must be “safe, voluntary and dignified”, we need to persuade the whole international community to stick to that, because frankly the Burmese Government’s record on dealing with returnees is appalling. The Rohingya who were displaced earlier are still in camps that are in reality prison camps, which the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said display

“a level of human suffering…that I have personally never seen before”.

The Burmese Government are now building a new camp with money diverted, it is said, from World Bank aid. It, too, will be a prison camp. Last week, the Bangladeshi Government signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees about returnees, including the right of humanitarian access, but Burma has not signed up to anything like that and there is no indication that it will change its mind.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That will entail the things I have listed: cessation of violence, recognition of citizenship and the right of humanitarian access.

The gender-based violence that has been used by the Burmese military also needs to be dealt with. They use rape as a weapon of war. There have been credible reports of girls as young as five being gang raped; of pregnant women being attacked and the babies cut from them; and of other women seeing their children thrown into a well or into a fire before they too are led away to be gang raped. That is a level of barbarity that the world cannot and must not tolerate. Such barbarity can happen only when other people are seen as less than human. It is not, as Aung San Suu Kyi’s website said, “fake rape”. It is happening. It is a war crime and must be treated as a crime against humanity.

Not only does there seem to be little effort to collect evidence to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, but the health services on offer to the women involved are inadequate. Many of the services are situated in the middle of the camps in public view and are run by men, so women are reluctant to go to them. Few people there speak the women’s language. If we think how difficult it would be to describe a rape even in our own language, it must be much harder to try to describe it to someone who does not speak the same language. The UK rightly funds 13 women’s centres, giving help to more than 10,000 women and girls, but nearly half a million are in need of help, and a greater effort from our partners is needed to meet that need.

There are reports of gender-based violence within the camps and of women and girls being trafficked. It is significant that when Cardinal Bo from Burma and Cardinal D’Rozario from Bangladesh recently came here, they met our anti-slavery commissioner, because they are fully aware of what is going on in the camps. There are also reports of child marriages, sometimes driven by families in such absolute poverty that they can no longer care for their children, and sometimes by a system that gives food aid to family groups rather than to individuals. That piles tragedy upon tragedy for the people involved, and yet we seem to be reluctant to collect evidence of what has happened.

The UK sent two civilians to Bangladesh to advise on how to collect evidence of sexual violence, but where is the rest of the world? Time after time when such things happen, Governments shake their heads and say, “Never again”, but that is not good enough. We said it after Bosnia and after Rwanda. We keep saying it. Neither is it good enough to ask the Burmese military to investigate themselves. They have cleared the army of any crimes, even those we can see on our screens. In the end, the only way to deal with such crimes is to ensure that evidence is collected and that those responsible are brought before a court, because that is the only way to deter people in future.

It seems the world wills the ends but is reluctant to will the means. That is true of crimes against women and girls and also true of the aid given to those in the camps. Only about 34% of the $434 million required has so far been collected. That means that those in the camps are in conditions much worse than what the world generally recognises as suitable for refugees. They are there in high densities with less than 15 square meters a person. By last December a third of the latrines had failed and 90% of domestic water is contaminated with E. coli. There have been campaigns to vaccinate against cholera and measles, for which I am grateful, but diphtheria is now rife in the camps. When the monsoon comes the health crisis will be made worse because people are so closely packed together.

I am proud that this country pledged £47 million at the Geneva pledging conference and then added a further £12 million. People complain about aid, but I am hugely proud of my country when it makes such donations because it recognises common humanity. We must work to ensure that other countries step up. Since the attack in Salisbury we have shown that it is possible to use diplomacy to get our friends and allies to act together. The Government must turn their attention to ensuring that the wealthier countries in the world, those who came to the world humanitarian summit and members of the UN, step up to the plate to avert a tragedy in the camps. The UN must ensure that its agencies work together to provide services.

[John Spellar]

Have not the senior UN officials already declared that the actions taken against the Rohingya amount to ethnic cleansing, which is an offence in itself? Should they not act on the decisions they themselves have already made?

[Helen Jones]

Indeed, they should; my right hon. Friend is right. One of the things this tragedy teaches us, particularly when we are today talking about Syria, is that there are consequences to acting, but also consequences to doing nothing, and we ought to remember that. We now need to put pressure on Burma to accept an independent investigation into what has gone on in Rakhine. That is urgent because there are already reports that the military are bulldozing villages and destroying the evidence. The International Development Committee has suggested that that could be led by the International Commission on Missing Persons, and that is a good idea. I do not mind who does it, but it has to be done.

How do we put the pressure on? First, I hope that the UK Government will say clearly that it is right that the UN refers Burma to the International Criminal Court. I know it is argued that such a motion would be vetoed by Russia and China, but we need to be unequivocal about our position and we need to build support for it. Secondly, although the EU has imposed an arms embargo, there is no world embargo on selling arms to Burma, which is what we need to work for as a matter of urgency. We also need to take action by imposing sanctions on the Burmese military and members of the Burmese Government. Simply freezing their assets will not cut it, I am afraid; they do not have many assets here. However, making sure that firms could not work with firms controlled by the Burmese military would help. We need to do that along with saying that there will be no return for the Rohingya until conditions are safe, and until the recommendations of the Annan advisory commission have been implemented and there is full humanitarian access for the UN and other organisations.

In the longer term, the world needs to learn the lessons of this conflict. It is very easy to say, “Never intervene—never do anything”, but, as I said, there are consequences to doing nothing. If we watch while a particular ethnic group is targeted and violence increases, and we do nothing, we become complicit in that violence.

I end by explaining why we should be concerned about people half a world away: because they are human, as we are. As Cardinal Bo said:

“They are among the most marginalised, dehumanised and persecuted people in the world. They are treated worse than animals. Stripped of their citizenship, rejected by the neighbouring countries, they are rendered stateless. No human being deserves to be treated this way”.

They do not, and if we believe in common humanity, we should continue to do our bit to ensure that those responsible are brought to account, and make every effort to persuade our allies around the world to do the same.

Public Sector Pay

Debate between John Spellar and Helen Jones

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Gratitude for public sector workers is not enough; they also deserve our respect. Respect involves paying them a decent wage for the job they do but, sadly, under this Government their wages have been continually held down.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Many of the arguments my hon. Friend has made up to now would have been recognised and endorsed by traditional Conservatives. Is it not unfortunate that, having imported the anti-state ideology from the US Republicans, they now see the state and public service as the enemy rather than a key part of the mixed economy?

[Helen Jones]

I could not have put it better myself. The result was that one of the Conservative Government’s first actions was to announce a two-year freeze on public sector pay from 2011-12. They followed that up with an announcement that public sector pay would be capped at 1% for the following four years and, in his 2015 summer Budget, the Chancellor announced a further four years of the cap, saying that he would fund public sector workforces for a pay award of 1%. That did not mean, of course, that everyone would get even 1%: a letter from the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), then a Treasury Minister, made it clear that the money was first to be used—as if—to address recruitment and retention pressures in the system: “there should not be an expectation that every worker will receive a 1% award”. What that meant, of course, was that those people in areas where there were retention pressures received less, and those in areas where there were many people on the minimum wage—46,000 in local government alone—who had rightly to receive a pay rise, received less. Even if a public sector worker got the 1% pay rise, their wages were still declining in real terms. A public sector worker on the median income who had their pay determined by the pay cap would, by 2016, have lost £3,875 in real terms. Real-terms losses of between £2,000 and £3,000 are common throughout the public sector.

A midwife on band 6 will have seen a real-terms decline in her wages of 12.1%. Midwives are leaving the profession at a previously unseen rate. They are leaving the register in serious numbers. A teacher outside London will have lost 10.4% and a band 5 nurse will have lost 11.9%. If the pay cap continues until 2020, there will be a further real-terms decline in wages. A social worker will lose £3,533. A border guard—I thought the Government wanted to secure our borders—will lose £2,520. A firefighter will lose £2,766. The reason for those falls is not hard to find: while wages have been stagnant or hardly rising at all, prices have been rising at a much faster rate.