Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Kevan Jones and Jim Fitzpatrick

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I should not be the only one taking credit for that. The hon. Gentleman should do so as well, as should many other people in the House. To give credit to the Government, they have taken this issue seriously and both the Ministers who served on the Committee are committed to ensuring that we get the best outcomes for people in mental health crisis in the criminal justice system.

We should soon have a situation in which police cells will not be the first resort, as they have been in the past. I am not criticising the police for taking people to the cells; they were often the only places available. However, we need to monitor closely what happens to people when they are detained under sections 135 and 136 of the Act. I would not want keeping people at home to become the de facto position. That might be helpful for the statistics on keeping people out of police cells, but people’s homes might not be the best possible place for individuals in crisis. The hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis made the point that they do not necessarily have to be placed in a health facility. The hon. Member for Broxbourne has said on numerous occasions that this country needs a network of places of safety for individuals in mental health crisis. Those places could be run by health authorities, by charities or by others, but we need such a network because neither a police cell nor, in some cases, a hospital is the best place for certain people in crisis.

I am glad that the proposed changes to the Bill are being taken seriously by the Government. I pay tribute to the way in which both Ministers have addressed these matters in Committee. Even though some of the proposals are not going to be put in the Bill, I believe that the Ministers, working with colleagues in the Department of Health, will be able to achieve a situation in which people in mental health crisis do not end up in the criminal justice system. That should be our aim.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I shall not be referring to the mental health provisions in the Bill, but I commend colleagues who have already spoken about that and who have been personally responsible for taking this issue so far and for encouraging the Government to listen to the arguments that they have been putting forward for years. I also commend the Government for their response to the debates that took place in Committee and, more generally, for their attitude towards mental health. I also want to commend the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), for the way in which he spoke to his new clauses almost as part of the campaign on Hillsborough. He spoke passionately and powerfully and I hope that the Government will respond positively to his requests for the new clauses to be accepted, if only in principle. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the debate.

I want to speak briefly to new clause 48 and new schedule 1, which propose the re-creation of a national fire service inspectorate in England. My friend the Minister is, like me, a former firefighter. When I ask him to do things in our exchanges on fire brigade matters, he sometimes throws back at me the fact that I did not do them when I was Fire Minister and asks why should he do them now. I want to ask him why he is recreating the fire service inspectorate when we did away with it and put other arrangements in place. I will be interested to hear his explanation. I welcome the fact, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and others have done, that the Government recognise there is a vacuum and that something has to be created to fill the gap. Whether that is an inspectorate as set out in the new clause or whether that wording changes when the Bill goes to the House of Lords, the fact that the Government are moving in this direction is welcome.

In Westminster Hall last week, we discussed with the Minister the increasing number of calls related to flooding that the fire service now deals with, the transition towards dealing with more medical emergency calls and the arrangements with the national health service for the fire service to do more social care visits alongside fire safety visits. These changes all demonstrate the fact that the fire service is moving into different territory, and that different skills are being developed which require different resources as well as the staff to carry them out.

As I mentioned in Westminster Hall, criticisms are being levelled at the fire service, parts of which are being blamed for the reductions in the service. The fire and rescue service has been a victim of its own success in recent decades, having cut the number of calls and fires and reduced the number of deaths and serious injuries. That has resulted in the loss of fire stations, fire appliances and firefighters. The Minister will remember that I stated in that debate that there are nearly 7,000 fewer firefighters in the UK now than there were in 2010. That fact has raised a number of eyebrows, and questions are being asked about attendance times being met and resources being available. People are now asking whether the service is still equipped to do the job that it needs to do.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Kevan Jones and Jim Fitzpatrick

Friday 29th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I remember with fondness the time when my hon. Friend was the Friday Whip—he was a very good one. Would the debate not be better if the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) at least made an intervention or speech in it?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It is not for me to respond on behalf of right hon. or hon. Members. When I was a private Member’s Bill Whip, I used to advise colleagues on a Friday. I would say, “Stay in your seat and don’t be provoked by anything Opposition Members say.” The hon. Member for Stockton South is showing admirable restraint. Some of the things that have been said during the debates on these Fridays will have irritated the life out of him, but he is keen to get to the conclusion of the debate. He has made a tactical and strategic decision, but I understand Opposition Members who would rather have engaged in a fuller debate with Government Members.

In conclusion, I support the EU. We have nothing to fear from a referendum. I support the Bill in principle and will vote for it on Third Reading. I look forward to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister explaining why I should support the two amendments he has tabled, which I suspect he will do shortly.

Jobs and Business

Debate between Kevan Jones and Jim Fitzpatrick

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

Indeed. It is even worse because those who are graduating now are burdened with the debt of student loans, which the Deputy Prime Minister, when he was fighting the general election, said he would not bring in. I worry about those individuals. In the north-east of England, after the destruction of heavy industry under the previous Conservative Government, I saw how whole communities were written off. My fear is that we are writing off a whole generation of young people to long-term unemployment amid low levels of economic growth.

In the Queen’s Speech, as in much that the Government are doing, one has to look at the detail of the proposals. A lot of that is presented for the headlines, but it is worth looking at some proposals which do not have a great deal of substance to them. I shall refer first to the Mesothelioma Bill. Before I was elected to the House, I was a full-time trade union official and legal officer for the GMB. I dealt daily with people who were suffering from the effects of exposure to asbestos. It is heartbreaking to speak not only to the individuals who know there is a death sentence hanging over them, but to the families that they leave behind. Some of the victims are older, but many are young. It is a terrible disease. Some people can be exposed to quite high levels of asbestos and not have long-term health effects, but others are affected.

This country’s approach to asbestos-related issues has been a national scandal. After the second world war the Government wrote to employers organisations saying that exposure to asbestos was dangerous to health. Was anything done? No. We continued for many decades to deny that there would be any health effects. Successive Governments’ response to the issue is a shame and a scar. If the disease had affected middle-class communities in leafy Surrey, for example, it would be a front-page headline in every paper—it would be a national scandal. But because it is concentrated in the north-east and other poor communities who do not have the strong voice that other communities have, the victims have been overlooked.

The Bill builds on what the previous Government intended. We proposed setting up the employers liability bureau and a tax on insurance companies to pay for the individuals who developed asbestos-related disease and who could not trace the insurance companies of now-defunct employers. The Bill was trumpeted as a great step forward. Even a great journal such as The Shields Gazette announced:

“Asbestos victims across South Tyneside are set to share in a £355m compensation bonanza.”

Well, I just wish that local papers would write stories the old-fashioned way by having a journalist who actually understands the issue, rather than, as seems to be so common now, simply responding to press releases.

If we look at what is proposed, we see that it is nothing of the sort. First, it covers only those individuals who developed mesothelioma after 24 July 2012, so a whole group of mesothelioma victims and their families will get no compensation at all. Secondly, it does not cover other asbestos-related diseases like lung cancers, asbestosis and pleural plaques, so there is a group of individuals who, even after that date, will get no compensation at all. Even for the victims who will qualify for the scheme, there will only be a flat fee of 70% of the average compensation payout.

Also, the scheme will take no account of an individual’s circumstances. One of the youngest victims I dealt with as the union’s legal officer was 46 years old and had three young children. Under the scheme, if he could not prove who the insurance companies were, that would not be taken into consideration. That needs to be amended as the Bill goes through. It is important to remember that it is the trade unions that have fought over many years to ensure that those individuals get the compensation they are entitled to.

One wonders whether this scheme does not represent a very good deal for the insurance companies—I think that it does. The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians has worked to expose the fact that, simply by coincidence, from October 2010 to September 2012 Lord Freud, the Minister responsible for the scheme, met the Association of British Insurers, Aviva, Royal Sun Alliance and Zurich on no fewer than 14 occasions. That shows how effective their lobbying has been in limiting their exposure to the scheme, and that needs to be changed.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. As a former asbestos worker, from my time in the London fire brigade, I know a number of former colleagues who have died as a result of this disease. The medical evidence on asbestos has been known since 1928. I am very disappointed by what he is saying, because I did not realise that there has been some attempt to manipulate the story. When I read the headline about a compensation Bill, I thought that it was good news, but he is suggesting that it might not be as good as it is being presented in the media. We will have to look at that very carefully.

[Mr Jones]

Like a lot of the things the Government do, we have to take the shiny wrapping off carefully and look at the contents. In so many areas we find that there is either very little in it, or a stinking mess of incompetence, which is now becoming a trademark of the Government.