International Women’s Day 2016

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is gender parity, and I want to focus on the plight of low-paid women. We like to think that we live in an enlightened age of women’s rights, but, shockingly, the World Economic Forum has calculated that the gender gap in health, education, politics and the economy will not close until 2133. It will therefore take another five generations before women are on an equal footing with men.

Turning to women’s economic parity with men in the UK, a quarter of women now earn below the real living wage, which is £9.40 an hour in London. Our so-called economic recovery and increasing employment are being achieved off the backs of low-paid women. A staggering 60% of new jobs for women created since 2010 have been in the lowest-paid industries. Women make up three quarters of those in part-time work, earning on average 25% less an hour than their full-time colleagues. They dominate the lowest-paid sectors, where 62% of workers paid below the living wage are women. Some 90% of nurses are women and 84% of carers are women. Over 70% of hospitality waiting staff are women. In all those professions, women perform important work, but they are hugely undervalued.

Even in higher-paid jobs, women earn significantly less. The figure for median gross earnings for men is almost £30,000, but it is just over £24,000 for women—a 25% gap. While women make up half of all apprentices, they are being short-changed because of implicit gendered occupational segregation. Women dominate the lowest-paid apprenticeships, making up 83% of health and social care apprentices and 91% of childcare apprentices. Meanwhile, men dominate the highest-paid apprenticeships, where only 3% of engineering apprentices, 2% of construction apprentices and 10% of IT apprentices are women. The outcome is a gender pay gap in apprenticeships that is now at 21%. That means that a woman apprentice will earn just £4.82 an hour on average, which compares with £5.85 an hour for her male colleague. There are, however, a few promising developments for future generations, and I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s sponsorship of TechFuture Girls, which I welcomed to Parliament last week. This is a remarkable network of clubs inspiring young girls into tech, where they are currently hugely under-represented, and it is available free to all schools in the UK.

We also know that the Government’s gendered policies have seen benefits cuts that have hit women disproportionately, in favour of tax cuts for high earners, disproportionately benefiting men. Since 2010, £26 billion-worth of cuts have been made in benefits, tax credits, pay and pensions, and a staggering 85% of that total has been taken solely from women. At the same time, the Government have watered down the Treasury’s gender impact assessments, meaning that the true extent of these changes and their real impact on women is being disguised.

We might think that the introduction of the so-called “national living wage” would make the situation a lot better for women. I ask every woman in the House, when she listens to the Budget next week, just to consider that many women will take home less next month because of the national living wage, as a result of the stripping out of benefits, London weighting and double time on a Sunday. Let us then, as women, all stand together and say that those women deserve more, not less.

Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Safer Neighbourhood policing in London.

Thank you very much, Mr Evans, for giving me the opportunity to make a contribution on the issue of neighbourhood policing. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Those of us who have been in Parliament for some time will remember that we used to have an opportunity every year to discuss policing in London, which is a matter of huge concern to us. We no longer do that, but I am pleased that we have the chance to discuss the issue for the next hour.

When the London safer neighbourhood policing scheme was formally launched in two wards in Brent and north Paddington in my constituency in 2004, it marked a new era in the policing of modern London. It was widely accepted that fundamental changes were needed.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I just want to slightly amend what my hon. Friend said. St Helier in Mitcham and Morden was also part of that pilot.

[Ms Buck]

I hope that does not establish a pattern by which all my hon. Friends seize the opportunity to claim the credit for launching safer neighbourhood policing. In a sense, it does not matter. It was launched in 2004 by the then Labour Mayor of London, and I hope it prefigures important changes in policing by our future Labour Mayor of London, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who is sitting to my right.

Safer neighbourhood policing was an important response to a flaw in the way that London was policed over a number of years. It was always about more than just resources. Of course, it was partly about policing numbers, which had been falling for many years and were of great concern to Londoners, but it was also about having a different approach and attitude. The most unimportant aspect of it, although it was not wholly insignificant, was the fact that the area-based policing—the closest thing to the neighbourhood model that existed before 2004—was an unwieldly and clunky model of relating to communities. It did not work effectively, in terms of community participation and setting local priorities, and did not give local police continuity so they could establish the relationships they needed.

The safer neighbourhood policing model, which was introduced in 2004, reflected a commitment to return to communities, in all of their geographical, social and ethnic diversity. That commitment was, in part, informed by the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s. It encompassed, at the extremes, the important lessons we learned from the Scarman report on the terrible riots at the beginning of the 1980s and the Macpherson report. The Met learned important lessons from those terrible events, too.

Safer neighbourhood policing teams quickly changed the face of London policing. Indeed, they even helped to change the face of the police themselves. The police community support officer role was an important route for recruiting Londoners. One of the concerns that some of my colleagues will always have is that many of London’s police are drawn from outside London for different economic reasons. We want London’s police to reflect the face of modern London. The safer neighbourhood team route and the PCSOs, which were a part of that model, were a means of doing that. As Lord Stevens recognised at the time, they helped us to change the face of policing. It was obvious; when we, as local politicians, began to develop relationships with our police, we saw that changes were taking place.

The other critical issue about safer neighbourhood police teams in the early years was the commitment to a core team. At that point, they used the 1-2-3 model, comprising the sergeant, the constables and the three PCSOs. There was a commitment not to remove members of safer neighbourhood police teams to provide aid and assistance to other activities, but to provide the continuity that is crucial in keeping them connected to their local communities and give them time and space to develop important relationships with residents’ and tenants’ organisations, local schools, mosques, churches and youth clubs. In addition to a dedicated sergeant in each ward, they had someone with the skills and experience necessary to make those relationships work. The mere fact of being a sergeant does not give a person the ability to do that, but reflecting a degree of seniority within those police teams is important and it says something significant about the way in which relationships are built and sustained in communities.

I can think of several individuals—I am sure my colleagues and other hon. Members have faces that they can call to mind—who demonstrated a real change in policing style at the neighbourhood level. Stuart Marshall was the Queen’s Park sergeant for many years. He ultimately transferred to use the skills and knowledge he built up in the Queen’s Park ward—a deprived ward that includes the Mozart estate, which is a very challenging community—to continue to tackle antisocial behaviour with City West Homes. Ken Taylor built up a superb track record in the middle of the last decade in countering crack houses, which had become a plague in parts of London and required a new model of relationship building so the police could act quickly and close them down.

Ian Rowing was a long-term sergeant in Church Street. Only a few months ago—he had been in post since 2004—residents fought to keep him in Church Street because of the excellent relationships and local knowledge that he had built up. The residents said to me, “There is nothing he doesn’t know. There are no people he doesn’t know. He knows every corner of his ward. He knows what is going on, and he has built up a trusting relationship with people.” He was taken off, against all our wishes and advice, to fill some of the yawning gaps in the custody service, which are a huge challenge for London police at the moment.

Lawrence Knight is still serving Maida Vale and Little Venice brilliantly. Paul Reading, a member of his team, runs a boxing club in Little Venice. Anybody who wants to see the face of top-quality community policing should see the work he does. Over time, he has worked with hundreds of sometimes very challenging young men in that corner of London, and he has built up an enormous number of relationships based on trust and knowledge. Some of the newer people working now—I am not able to mention them all—include Sean Marshall, Ian Armstrong, Jason Emmett, John Marshall and Mohammed Nouri. They are relatively new, but their work has been absolutely superb.

But the model has changed, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about that. The continuity of the relationships that were built up and of the police teams themselves has largely evaporated. Under this mayoralty, since 2008 the Met has lost 23% of dedicated neighbourhood uniformed officers in London boroughs and more than 2,400 PCSOs since 2010 alone, and it has closed 63 police stations—we were told that their closure would lead to a huge reinvestment in community policing—due to the £600 million of budget cuts over the past four years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

As with clothes and interior design, there are fashions in policing, and we are seeing a backlash against the current fashion. What is happening is not just about money, although money may be the principal cause, but about the fact that some in policing circles simply did not believe in the community policing model—the one sergeant, two PCs and three PCSOs model—as set out by Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor and by a number of Labour Home Secretaries, because it “de-policed” the police. However, it actually enhanced what the police could do, particularly in areas that are more financially challenged and that have more people who are excluded. We began to witness more people willing to talk to the police than ever before.

With those increasing police numbers came more police bases. There is a huge issue about the enormous waste of money that has resulted from closing local offices that were opened in order to place safer neighbourhood teams at the heart of their community. In my constituency, Mitcham and Morden, we have seen the closure of the Lavender Fields and Graveney team office in Wilson Avenue, which must have taken thousands of pounds to open to standards that the Metropolitan police accept.

Pollards Hill is a ward right on the outskirts of Mitcham and Morden, bordering Croydon and Lambeth. People there feel out on a limb and excluded from their local area, and the police office there showed a real investment in their community. People felt that the police were close to them and dealing with the problems they face. I am sad to say that some of those problems relate to gangs and stabbings. We do not have the same level of such problems as other hon. Members will in their constituencies, but the fact that that office is no longer there for people to turn to when issues arise is a real problem for that community. Again, there is the issue of the costs involved in opening these offices and then closing them, leaving memorials to a police system that worked a great deal better than it does currently. That is really sad.

There is an idea that we can point to crime figures and say, “Crime is down, so it’s okay.” However, if we consider confidence in policing, and we look at the figures for the fear of crime in my borough of Merton, we see that about two thirds of people now fear crime, when the figure was once the lowest in London. Mitcham has 41% of the crimes that take place in the borough, but 68% of people fear crime—the fact that people can no longer see their police officers has tripled the numbers.

When there was a stabbing in Pollards Hill, where would people go? They would go first to the police officer or the PCSO at the local high school. We can be pretty sure that within hours those officers would have had a very good idea of how the incident came about and who was involved. That would then allow the police response teams—Trident or whoever—to go into action and to deal with the issue.

When we have our police meetings, some in the police—I suppose this is out of frustration at their situation—tell residents, “You don’t have a crime problem here. Crime is not high. You live in one of the safest boroughs in London.” That really does not wash if someone has seen a young man stabbed outside their kitchen window. Although people can absolutely rationalise that that would never happen to them as a middle-aged woman, an older dad or a young child, they have seen it happening in their neighbourhood and they want it dealt with. Their fear is for themselves, their children and their neighbourhood. When they know that the police office that used to be open behind their homes is no longer there, there is a real and severe feeling that, given the level of policing in their area, the possibility of dealing with these issues becomes less.

When we combine that with local authority cuts in youth services, we get a maelstrom. In Pollards Hill, in Merton, we do not have a huge youth service. The Pollards Hill youth centre was due to close in April this year. Luckily, we brought people together to build an alliance to keep it open. However, I suspect that, in areas more challenged than mine, a combination of police cuts, youth service cuts and the inability of services to take young people away from crime will create a legacy that will be with us for a long time. That will not save any more money, and it will cause far more challenges for many more vulnerable people.

Women and the Economy

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

No, I do not accept that at all. The CBI did not ask about the careers advice offered under the Labour Government, who had a proper careers system in schools. The CBI asked about the careers advice that is on offer now, at a time when the Government have scrapped a decent careers service and are leaving it to the discretion of schools and asking people to go online to get it.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I am sure my hon. Friend is aware of the Education Committee report that pointed to the complete collapse of the careers service because of short-term cuts made by the coalition Government.

[Kate Green]

Exactly. I hope the Minister will take a little more time in her speech to explain which part of the present Government’s apprenticeship strategy addresses gender inequality.

In 2013, the Government also said that they wanted to encourage more women to become business owners or entrepreneurs. There has been a significant increase in the number of self-employed women—between 2008 and 2011, more than 80% of the newly self-employed were women—but that may not always be by choice. Increased conditionality and lack of suitable employment mean that self-employment is an economic necessity for some, and yet the average income of a self-employed woman is just £9,800 per annum, according to the Women’s Budget Group, compared with £17,000 for a self-employed man. Self-employment is not a route out of poverty for those women.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago, the Chancellor claimed to be putting security first in his spending review, but it is obvious that he was not talking about women’s security. At the heart of this debate is the fact that the Government simply do not see women as a priority. It is assumed that women’s interests, health and security will naturally rise along with a flourishing economy, but the truth is that the Government’s economic decisions are gendered. Time and again, they benefit men more than women, and that is the result of the Government’s fundamental disregard of the importance of addressing the needs and problems of half the population.

By contrast, the Labour Government placed equality at the heart of all they did. That is why the gender pay gap reduced by a third under our watch, while maternity leave was extended and paternity leave introduced. However, since entering government in 2010, the Conservatives have undone our work. They have downgraded the importance of the Treasury’s gender impact assessment, which had been used to evaluate the impact of tax and benefit changes on both men and women. Their aim was clear—to play down the importance of women, and the importance of equality as an aim in itself in society.

The Government risk an unstable economic future if they continue to ignore us. They market apprenticeships as a way of building a high-skilled economy, but women are being short-changed. Striking gender occupational segregation means that women are under-represented in some of the better-paid sectors of technology and construction, and over-represented in the typical “female” roles of health and social care. The outcome is a gender pay gap in apprenticeships that is actually higher than the national average.

The Government have also celebrated their apparent success in getting more women into work. In truth, however, this employment does not offer many women routes out of poverty and towards financial security. For instance, women make up three quarters of those in part-time work and dominate some of the lowest-paid sectors: 62% of workers paid below the living wage are women.

Take nursing, for example. Women make up more than 90% of those studying for nursing degrees, but they will earn a relatively low wage. Cuts to student nurses’ grants will sharply reduce the incentive to study nursing, particularly as Unison has reported that 90% of nurses, including my constituent, Gemma Morris—I promised her that I would bring this up—have said that they would not have studied nursing without the grant. The Government have issued yet another blow to low-paid women in undervalued and underpaid employment.

The very worst consequences of the Government’s gendered economic choices are fatal. It is distressing to have to report in this day and age that two women each week die at the hands of domestic violence in this country. Yet instead of protecting funding for women’s refuges and domestic violence charities, the Government have allowed those services to wither away via cuts to local government. Cuts to local councils from central Government have already resulted in the closure of 30 refuges across the country, and a staggering 42% of rape crisis services do not have funding beyond March 2016. What does that all amount to? More women turned away; more women returning to their dangerous homes; more women facing a death sentence at the hands of a violent partner.

Using the revenue of the tampon tax to fund the upkeep of women’s voluntary services is not good enough. The policy is totally inadequate. It will do little to redress the terrible cuts those services have faced, and it is patronising to suggest that women’s taxes should fund women’s services. Central Government should be ensuring that the safety of women who are victims of domestic, physical and emotional violence is non-negotiable.

I suggest that the Government take a lead from this Opposition day debate and present an alternative plan of large-scale investment in social infrastructure, secure employment for women and generous provision for crucial services. Women should not be trapped in cycles of poverty and low-paid work on account of their gender. Our so-called economic recovery cannot and should not determine the success of only half our country. It must provide opportunities for all, equally.

On behalf of all those women who are cared for and cared by women, I say that next year’s cuts to local authority care services will be devastating. As the carer of a 92-year-old woman who came here in 1947 to train as a nurse, I think that is disgraceful, and we need to do something about it.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

The Bill is not about euthanasia; it is about the self-administration of lethal medication at the end of life. [Interruption.] I hear an hon. Gentleman chuntering about Dignity in Dying. If he recalls, I said I have never been a member of that organisation. It may have other agendas. This Bill is not about euthanasia.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept, however, that there are people who will be voting with him today for whom this is the start of the process? I went into the Lady Members room on Monday night to see a Minister and one of my own Back Benchers, who is here today, talking about how this is a start. They are coming here to vote today because they want something much more permissive in the future.

[Rob Marris]

My hon. Friend knows the constitution of our country. If someone wants to change the law in another way, they will have to have the guts to introduce another Bill to this House.

Metropolitan Police Service

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

In my constituency, one of the most popular public policy initiatives of the past 20 years was safer neighbourhoods teams. Mitcham and Morden campaigned hard for them. Ten years ago, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) was the Policing Minister, she came to meet dozens of local people in Steers Mead who wanted to introduce safer neighbourhoods teams to tackle the low-level crime and antisocial behaviour that affected their part of Mitcham. Thanks to her, we were lucky enough to get one of the country’s first teams, and the model of one sergeant, two police constables and three PCSOs walking local beats has been a great success.

The police had drifted away from community policing for decades, but the safer neighbourhoods initiative meant that we had six people whom we knew, walking local beats, who could not be moved away from us. It also meant investment in communities that had been neglected. Police offices such as those in Lavender Fields, St Helier, Pollards Hill and Mitcham town centre have benefited the community in many ways. More obviously, they enabled our safer neighbourhoods teams to spend more time in the community, rather than travelling to and from distant police stations; but they also represented investment in local neighbourhoods. Previously, those offices were derelict—empty shops that attracted antisocial behaviour. Most of all, the new offices were an outward projection of the fact that the police cared about those communities, as they were part of them.

Now, all that is under threat. I feel sorry for my borough commander, Chief Superintendent Darren Williams, who has been in his post only a year. I have enormous respect for him and the energy that he brings to his job. I praise him particularly for his fundraising for Fight for Change—a scheme to encourage young men to turn away from gang violence—but he has a thankless task. Others have decided that cuts must be made, that the 1-2-3 model of safer neighbourhoods policing is no longer sacrosanct and that police offices and police stations are no longer a priority.

A campaign has been launched by the Guardian group of local papers in south-west London after, in their words,

“it emerged an area measuring about 75 miles squared—larger than any individual London borough—would be left without a 24 hour station”.

As the Guardian group explains:

“The exposed area includes Mitcham, Tooting, Earlsfield, Balham, Streatham, Thornton Heath, Norbury, Norwood, Dulwich, Forest Hill, Sydenham, Beckenham, and Catford”.

Tooting police station, which is just inside my constituency, will close; Mitcham police station will be closed at night; and the safer neighbourhoods offices that we fought so hard to get are also under threat. I want to take the opportunity to praise the Guardian group for its campaign.

When Boris Johnson’s office published plans to end the 24-hour service at Mitcham police station, to close local police offices and to scrap the 1-2-3 system, we were appalled. I am sure he will find out just how appalled we are when Stephen Greenhalgh comes to our constituency at the end of the month. The Labour leader of Merton council, Councillor Stephen Alambritis, will be there, and I congratulate him and Councillor Edith Macauley on saying that the council oppose any moves to close local police stations or cut the number of police and PCSOs in our community.

People in Mitcham and Morden are beginning to feel the difference: they are beginning to feel more unsafe. They are concerned that the police are surrendering their territory. I hope that I have, in this short contribution, been able to express their views about their No. 1 priority.

Oral Answers to Questions

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I recognise the important and very enjoyable responsibility I had for the Crown dependencies when I was Home Secretary, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government give a high priority to ensuring that the relationship with the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man is completely satisfactory. I am surprised that responsibility has found its way to the Justice Department—perhaps it was not considered carefully enough by the previous Government. I only raise the possibility that we will have a look at the allocation of responsibilities between Departments to find which allocation best suits both Her Majesty’s Government and the Governments of the Crown dependencies.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

T2. Ministers have referred to the recommendation in the Stern report on false allegations of rape. What are their plans to address the other 22 recommendations in the report?

[Mr Clarke]

The recommendations were only made recently, but I agree that there is no point looking at one aspect of the subject without looking at the others. I think the whole House agrees that we should do everything possible to protect the victims of rape, to enable proper allegations to be brought and to enable justice to be done, so that those responsible for this serious crime are brought to justice. I only mentioned one aspect of Baroness Stern’s report, but the whole report is indeed important.