Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so, and I thank the hon. Lady for raising this important issue. We know that there is an issue in this area, and she will be pleased to know that her constabulary—the West Midlands—in fact does very well on this. It did not use police cells at all for such detentions last year; indeed, since 2013 it has used them on only 14 occasions. Of course, however, any such occasion is one occasion too many. She will I am sure join me in being pleased that the use of police stations as places of safety nearly halved last year, but we need to do more.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that a police cell or a police station is not a suitable place for an innocent person suffering from mental health problems, and will she support initiatives such as the mental health triage projects in the West Midlands to make sure that people with mental health problems get the medical support they need when they need it?

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that health places were used as places of safety in more than 26,000 cases last year, compared with 1,029 cases of using cells, but we are determined to try to sort this out.

Report on Recent Terrorist Attacks

Mike Wood Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman is right: in those two attacks there is evidence of the attackers moving around, and, as is highlighted in the report, we need to do better at recording and communicating that information. It is crucial that that recommendation is implemented. The recommendation also dovetails with the general recommendation of better use of data. I hope that the ability to access such information more effectively and efficiently will prove to be one of the incremental improvements that will help to keep us safe.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend’s Department will have received a letter from west midlands mayor Andy Street on our police funding, which I hope she will consider appropriately. Will she also ensure that local police forces, including mine in the west midlands, have all the resources they need to do their important counter-terrorism work?

[Amber Rudd]

Police budgets for 2018-19 will be set shortly, before Christmas. I reassure my hon. Friend that we will also always bear in mind police forces’ needs in dealing with counter-terrorism.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I hope the hon. Gentleman knows that we are extremely sensitive to that point. As I said in my remarks, we are very aware that the pressure put on the police as a result of recent terrible events, not least the one in Manchester, has required a surge of police effort and fantastic collaboration between forces, but we now have to sit down rationally with police and crime commissioners and police chiefs, to really understand and test assertions about pressure on police forces and to make sure that they have the resources they need to keep us safe.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Our west midlands police have done a fantastic job in cutting crime and doing more with less. Will the Minister ensure that the police funding formula is reformed to deliver a fair deal for the west midlands?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. I hope I can reassure him that a lot of work is being done to ensure not only that the police have the resources they need, but that they are allocated fairly across all forces. No final decision has been taken on the fair funding formula, but I am happy to sit down with my hon. Friend and colleagues from all parts of the House who have concerns about the resource allocation for their forces.

Health, Social Care and Security

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

All Members will have their own examples of mental health casework. Often, those constituents will have attended an advice surgery or sent an email for help about a different problem entirely. It could be housing; it could be employment or welfare; it could even be a problem involving the criminal justice system. But it soon becomes clear, after a few questions and a little bit of probing, that the underlying problem is one of undiagnosed—or unsupported—mental illness.

Poor mental health weakens people’s life chances, and many of the effects of deprivation further aggravate the impact of mental illness. Sadly, an increasing proportion of cases from our surgeries involve children suffering from poor mental health. I welcome the Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health, and I am pleased that the Government have committed £1.4 billion for child and adolescent mental health services by 2020. That is absolutely the right thing to do. It will transform mental health treatment for children and young people. We all need to ensure that it is properly directed and spent in those areas where it was intended to be spent, because it is a shocking fact that one in 10 children in this country have a diagnosable mental health condition.

I am pleased that the Prime Minister launched the expansion of the mental health first aid training scheme in secondary schools yesterday. It is essential that we do more to deliver early intervention to support people’s mental health, rather than relying so heavily on acute mental health services once conditions have deteriorated, sometimes to the point of psychosis. It is the difference between treating an illness and just tackling the immediate symptoms—a distinction that would be so obvious for physical health that surely nobody would argue against its existence. That means ensuring that training for GPs allows them to identify mental health conditions in patients who present with a completely different illness, and ensuring that continuing professional development allows GPs to keep up so that more senior GPs also have the necessary understanding of mental health. It means securing access to successful programmes such as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies—introduced by the previous Government and continued by this one—and other talking therapies, where alternatives to drug-based treatments are appropriate.

I am pleased that the Mental Health Act 1983 is to be reformed. It was doubtless introduced with the very best of intentions and has certainly had many beneficial effects, but in too many cases the starting point seems to be that it treats people with mental illness as threats that need to be contained, rather than as patients who need treatment and support. Of course, there are times when people need to be detained, for their own protection or that of those around them, but then the focus must be on medical treatment rather than, effectively, imprisonment.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

In terms of providing that support in the right environment, would my hon. Friend like to show some appreciation of the Government for the mental health hospital that recently opened just down the road from my constituency? It is a £40 million investment, and will go a long way to providing that kind of support in the local community.

[Mike Wood]

I absolutely agree. As part of the increased capital investment that the Prime Minister announced earlier this year, the £10 billion capital investment for the national health service will mean not only that new buildings such as the one to which my hon. Friend referred—the new hospital in Sandwell in the west midlands is an example—become more common, but infrastructure such as the new urgent care centre at my own local hospital in Russells Hall is provided so that our NHS can become more effective.

The Secretary of State should take great pride in the changes that he has introduced to guidance on section 135 and l36 powers, which mean that a safe place should usually be a place where patients can receive medical help, rather than the default position of a police cell. It is time for those changes to be given a statutory footing, and I hope that the new Bill will deliver that. There should be parity of esteem so that people with mental health conditions receive the same respect and equivalent status, and are treated with the same dignity, as people with physical health conditions. It is a positive step that that has been legislated for, and I hope that we will see more and more efforts to make sure that that commitment becomes a reality for constituents who receive treatment for mental health conditions.

If I may briefly speak of my own experience of the health service. As some hon. Friends know, I received rather more direct and personal experience of our hospitals, GPs and outpatient clinics than I had planned at the beginning of the year. I should like to place on record my thanks to the doctors, consultants, nurses and support staff who were all absolutely fantastic in keeping me alive so that I am here now. It has also given me the chance to work with the UK Sepsis Trust and the formidable Ron Daniels. I hope that during this Parliament the Secretary of State will have a chance to look at calls from the trust for simple measures that it is estimated would save perhaps a quarter of the 44,000 lives that are lost as a result of sepsis every year in the UK. They include instigating a national registry to record accurately the true burden of sepsis, raising awareness nationally, and looking at commissioning levers to deliver best practice and reinforce that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I call Dr Philippa Whitford.

Criminal Finances Bill (First sitting)

Mike Wood Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. May I point out that we have got 30 minutes left, and eight other Members of Parliament want to ask questions? I remind both witnesses and Members that it is your time, and that witnesses are here today to answer as many questions as possible.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Q This question is directed in particular to Mr Thompson. Could you tell us more about the challenges faced by the Serious Fraud Office in investigating a suspected criminal financial activity, and how the specific measures in the Bill will help you to do that more effectively? In particular, I would like to know more about how unexplained wealth orders might be expected to help in pursuing foreign officials suspected of grand corruption.

Mark Thompson: Members of the SFO and I have been involved in consulting with the Home Office as this process has developed. Unexplained wealth orders provide an avenue for us to start civil recovery investigations effectively in a way that we cannot do at a moment. Where information is held abroad, or is in jurisdictions where co-operation is unlikely, this tool provides us with a way of kicking the process off and taking action against property in the UK that we suspect to be derived from crime. As things currently stand, the thresholds for pursuing civil recovery are, in many cases, high enough to make this difficult. That is how I would see our using the legislation in the first instance.

[Nic Dakin]

Q The new corporate offence relates only to tax evasion, which makes sense. But is there a case for extending it to dissuade companies from facilitating quite aggressive tax avoidance?

Simon York: At the moment this is a criminal offence, and tax avoidance is not a crime, which is why that would be difficult. We are currently consulting on additional legislation that would penalise the enablers of tax avoidance, so we are seeking legislation in that area too.

Police Officer Safety

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

This issue has always been of personal importance to me. For nearly 30 years, my father was a West Midlands police officer, serving in the mounted branch and the firearms unit. In the 1980s, I remember kissing him goodbye as he went off to police football matches and riots, city centre riots and, yes, Orgreave. Having seen all that makes watching footage of assaults on police officers that bit more real. It is even more devastating when the person going home injured is one’s own father.

West Midlands police officers do a heroic job under consistent pressure to perform. Any assault on any police officer or PCSO is clearly totally deplorable, and those convicted of such assaults must expect a strong and lengthy prison sentence. Ever since the reforms of Robert Peel, we have policed by consent. It is right that the Minister reiterated what he said in the Adjournment debate called by the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) about the public having to

“understand that a police officer is to be respected and is there to serve the community.”—[Official Report, 11 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 283.]

Police officers are not there to stand by while they are abused and assaulted. Any use of force must be proportionate, but assessing that cannot be done with the cold rationalism of someone based in an office; it must be viewed from the standpoint of someone who genuinely feels that their personal safety and that of those around them is at risk.

During the summer recess, I did a night shift on patrol with West Midlands police around Dudley borough. The officers explained the difference that body cameras, 1,600 of which have been bought with co-funding from the Home Office, are already making as they get issued to all neighbourhood and response officers. Many Members will have seen the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology’s briefing from last year, which highlighted several benefits from the initial trial that have now been backed up by the experience in the west midlands. In fact, since the camera roll-out there has been a 10% increase in cases proceeding to charge, a 9% increase in early guilty pleas and, staggeringly, a 93% fall in complaints against police officers.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

I am afraid that I cannot.

Late last month, I attended the Dudley council for voluntary service awards, at which Chief Superintendent Richard Fisher of the Dudley local policing unit talked of a future in which new technology could not only allow officers to spend more time on policing rather than filling in their pocket notebooks, but enable body cameras to record automatically if an officer draws out their Taser or CS gas. Such technology would improve the safety of both officers and the public.

Our police officers put their safety at risk every time they go out. We owe it to them to do everything we can to keep them safe and to ensure that those who do cause them harm receive the punishment they deserve.

Orgreave

Mike Wood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Lady should have another look at what I said in response to the right hon. Gentleman’s question. Although I fully appreciate that both she and he may not agree with or like what I said, that does not mean that I did not answer the question, and it does not mean that the Home Secretary’s decision is wrong. A number of factors were taken into account in the making of that decision. It involved looking at a wide range of documents, and, indeed, meeting the Orgreave campaigners themselves, as the Home Secretary, the hon. Lady and I did in September. I suggest that the hon. Lady look again at my answers to questions, including my answers to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I wonder whether the Minister agrees with David Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary, who reportedly said that he

“would take some convincing that another agonising internal inquiry would shed more light than is already known.”

[Brandon Lewis]

I saw that quotation as well, and I think it underlines and highlights the fact that this was a difficult decision. No one has said that it was easy. As the Home Secretary herself said, in the House yesterday—and she was here yesterday, answering questions on this matter—and also during previous appearances in the House and when meeting the campaigners, a difficult decision had to be made and many factors weighed up. Ultimately, however, we had to make a decision about what was in the wider public interest, and this decision is in the wider public interest.

Scamming: Vulnerable Individuals

Mike Wood Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Dishonest individuals have always sought to deceive and to take advantage of the most vulnerable in society. Sadly, as our world has increasingly moved online, transforming the way we communicate, do business and live so much of our lives, many fraudsters have used the same technologies to increase their activity and come up with ever more elaborate ways of defrauding vulnerable people. Action Fraud estimates that about 70% of fraud is either conducted online or is cyber-enabled. For most of us, casework relating to scams probably makes up a relatively small amount of our postbag and email inboxes, but that does not mean that this is not a sizeable problem. Clearly, many of the people most at risk of fraud and scams are also among the least likely to come forward to their MPs or to the police and other agencies.

Sadly, I do not need to speculate on this matter, as shortly before I was elected a member of my family received a letter that was apparently from the Serious Fraud Office and that said—this is ironic—that it needed help to catch some serious fraudsters. There was a telephone number supplied, which, when rung, gave details. Unsurprisingly, what was needed was some money to be transferred into an account, which could then be used as some kind of “trap” for the “fraudster”. Unfortunately, my relative wanted to help the authorities and so transferred the money. Of course, there was then another call saying, “Thank you very much for that. We just need that bit more money.” This went on until, fortunately, the one time she went into a post office branch the lady behind the counter, who knew my relative and knew that this was not normal conduct, contacted another relative with her concerns. So this was finally stopped, but only after several thousand pounds had been lost—it still cannot be recovered. More importantly, this has left my relative, who has always been a proud, intelligent and independent person, seeing herself as clumsy and being embarrassed; she feels stupid to have been taken in in such a way.

We, as a must society, must play our part in protecting the most vulnerable, and that includes protecting them against fraudsters, online and otherwise; local authorities, the police and politically and technologically savvy members of our communities must be involved in this. I was heartened to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister authorise the expansion of police volunteer roles, so that individuals with digital skills are able to support police digital investigations by providing the technical expertise to cyber and digital units. That scheme has been piloted in Hampshire and Gloucestershire, and I hope to see it expanded much more widely around the country.

There is much more that can be done in partnership with financial services to trace these criminals. We are all familiar with the necessary anti-money laundering regulations. For anyone wanting to set up a current account or to change signatories on a voluntary organisation’s bank account, navigating the endless paperwork can feel like an interminable process, and yet it is apparently impossible in many of these cases to trace the bank accounts into which these transfers have been made. It is even less likely that any of those moneys will ever be recovered. Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man or of the people running these financial institutions to do much more to enable those accounts to be traced. It is simply not acceptable that victims and vulnerable people are left scared in their own homes. Online threats have changed, and the way that we respond to them must change so that we can protect vulnerable people in our communities.

Orgreave: Public Inquiry into Policing

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I made a point earlier about historical cases, which make it feel like there is a series of issues and allegations to be dealt with. I hope that he will take some comfort from the fact that this Government and the previous Home Secretary have a reputation for not shying away from addressing difficult issues. I hope to ensure that we continue to deserve that reputation.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

My father was a West Midlands policeman in the 1980s and spent some days policing at Orgreave. Clearly, where there is solid evidence of police malpractice, it must be dealt with effectively and with the full force of the law. Does the Home Secretary recognise the concerns of many serving and retired police officers about what they perceive to be a political campaign with a predetermined outcome?

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will take my time to come to what I feel will be a fair answer after looking at all the information. Nothing has been prejudged. Serious allegations have been made, but I will look at both sides.

Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes. We have been very clear that we need to see more being done within the European environment and across Europe on firearms. I am pleased to say that, following representations, the European Commission has produced a new draft directive on firearms. I am very clear that we should ban dangerous semi-automatic weapons. That discussion is taking place, but we are clearly pushing for greater ability across the EU to deal with the movement of firearms.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I worked in Brussels for seven years, and my thoughts are naturally with friends and former colleagues in Belgium, as well as with the families of those who were murdered and maimed yesterday morning. Effective security co-operation with other European Union countries is obviously vital, but will my right hon. Friend also consider how we can effectively exchange appropriate security information with allies through membership of other international organisations, such as NATO and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right. We need to ensure that we use every available opportunity, when appropriate, to exchange security information, support and intelligence, and to work together. That is why, as I said earlier, we have the “Five Eyes” co-operation, which is very important to the United Kingdom. We work within the European Union, but other organisations are involved as well. As I said to an Opposition Member earlier, in the United Nations there has also been a greater understanding of some of the measures that need to be taken.