Drug Consumption Rooms

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Thank you for your patience with the many Divisions throughout the debate, Ms Ryan. I will not repeat what other hon. Members have said, but make some specific, Bristol-related remarks.

I understand why people have an instinctive reaction that drug consumption rooms must be harmful, because they appear to facilitate the use of drugs. To hon. Friends who have doubts, however, I say that we already have a drug consumption room in Bristol: it is called Bristol. It is called the square outside my office, the doorstep into my office and the blocks of council flats at the side of my office. It is called virtually every part of the city centre.

The harms caused by that existing drug consumption room from the drug consumption that goes on there, the resulting drug litter, and the visible harm to drug addicts and to bystanders—people who have no interest in taking drugs but want their children to be able to play in the local playground—are many and varied. They hurt the most vulnerable and the very people we on this side of the House are here to represent, so I encourage all hon. Members to consider the use of drug consumption rooms.

In Bristol, we have very high rates of injecting and of poly-drug use, particularly crack cocaine mixed with heroin that is then injected. Public Health England recognises that we have high levels of complexity in the people who use such drugs and in the high levels of admission to hospital for drug-related harms.

Another harm is more widely shared among us all: the cost of the existing drug consumption room regime to the health economy. The total length of stay in the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 2015-16 for drug-related admissions was 2,758 days, with an estimated cost of £1,103,200. I thank Jody Clark for providing those figures from Bristol City Council’s “Bristol Substance Misuse Needs Assessment”. Hospital admissions specifically for injuries caused by injections accounted for 1,005 bed days—36% of all drug-related stays. That is from just 71 individuals who had an average stay in hospital of 14 days each—more than twice the average 6.6-day stay for all drug-related admissions—and an estimated cost of in excess of £400,000.

I urge all hon. Members to consider that if we want to give our health service more money, if we want to make our streets safer, and if we want to save the lives of people who have drug addictions, as I do, we need to invest in drug consumption rooms. However unpleasant it is to have to step over a very aggressive and slightly frightening—sometimes very frightening—drug addict on my office steps, I do not want them to die. I want their lives to be saved and I want the people who live in the blocks of flats near my office to be able to send their children out to play.

For all those reasons, and because nobody has ever died in a drug consumption room that was officially sanctioned and clinically run, I urge all hon. Members to consider the drug consumption rooms we have at the moment and support this alternative.

Asylum Accommodation

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I appreciate your calling me so early in the debate. It is with great pleasure that I follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). I congratulate her and her Committee on an excellent piece of work, which highlights a problem that should concern all of us, because in truth it affects all of us. We all, as taxpayers, pay for asylum accommodation, and we should all therefore, as taxpayers, be concerned about its quality.

The Home Affairs Committee has done the Government a great service in highlighting some of the problems with some of the accommodation. My right hon. Friend has been incredibly fair and patient in stating quite clearly that not all the accommodation is bad, and that some is of a different standard. The Committee has been thorough in its recommendations and I urge the Minister to revisit them, because they are very clear and some of them are worthy of again receiving proper scrutiny.

I speak as the Member for the constituency of Bristol West, where we have asylum seeker accommodation, but also as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees. Earlier this year, the APPG published a report, “Refugees Welcome?”, which is about refugee integration. I am grateful that the Minister read that report and met me to discuss some of its findings. I am grateful to him for giving that time, but I want to remind him of some of the findings relating to accommodation.

The Home Affairs Committee referred to the Government’s review of

“the 28-day grace period for people granted refugee status and the Department of Work and Pensions’ ability to manage applications for support from people transferring out of the asylum system.”

I discussed that with the Minister, and he was keen to address it, so I welcome the comment in the Government’s response to the report that the Home Office has worked with the Department for Work and Pensions to establish a new process to address that. I will be grateful if the Minister updated us on how that process is progressing, particularly in relation to the issuing of national insurance numbers. That relates to accommodation, because refugees told us during our inquiry that they had difficulties if their 28-day move-on period, when they have to move out of their accommodation, was over before their national insurance numbers had arrived. Refugees spoke to me about having to try to hang around outside the accommodation they had previously lived at in order to wait for the postman to arrive, but not being able to take the post off them because that is not allowed. Those things were problems and continue to be, and they are related to accommodation and having to move out of it.

Our recommendation was that the 28-day move-on period should be extended. I understand why the Minister does not want to do that, but our counter-recommendation is therefore that, if we are going to stick to 28 days, that 28 days has to work. It has to mean that a national insurance number and a biometric residence permit are with that person in their asylum seeker accommodation on the day that they receive refugee status, otherwise we will create further problems for refugees down the line.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that there will be significant problems owing to the roll out of universal credit, given the long waiting times involved in applying for that benefit?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I completely agree, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point for me, because universal credit is a great concern. Again, I am grateful to the Minister for having allowed me to discuss that with him. I understand that the Government are trying to push the idea that nobody should be out of pocket because they can get an advance, but an advance is a loan. Refugees, by definition, do not usually have other family members to call on who have other funds that they can draw down. They are going to struggle, particularly if they have the compounding problems of a long wait for the first proper payment to come in and a 28-day move-on period, which means they will have often left the accommodation from which they made the application before that has been sorted out. The 28-day period does not marry up with the wait for universal credit, so yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

My experience of some asylum seeker accommodation in my constituency—not all—and the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee has presented makes it hard for me to see why many refugees would feel welcome. The question in the title of our APPG’s report, “Refugees Welcome?”, would have to be answered: maybe not all the time. This is a fixable problem. I reiterate that, as taxpayers, we should be concerned when our money is paying for accommodation to protect people who have the legal right to apply for asylum in this country, but that accommodation is costing us a lot of money and is not fit for purpose. I urge the Government to revisit the Committee’s recommendations.

We have some fantastic organisations in Bristol West working with refugees, with some great volunteers and paid staff alike who are going the extra mile to help people to integrate and cope with often very difficult and unsatisfactory accommodation that sometimes just about meets the Home Office’s key performance indicators but really skirts up against the edges.

On visits that I made following the publication of the Home Affairs Committee report and during the course of the APPG on refugees inquiry, I came across accommodation where there are serious problems. I contacted Clearsprings, which is the provider in my area, to ask if I could make an announced visit. I wanted to give the provider a chance to show me its best stuff. The Clearsprings manager who took me round some of the accommodation—some of which I had seen before—did, to be fair, show me a mixture. Some of it was adequate—I would not call it great, but it was adequate—but some of it was not. I was concerned that action was taken only when an MP intervened and said to the Clearsprings manager, “This draught here, this rotten window frame, this problem here, which has clearly been a problem for the tenant for some time, needs to be fixed.” What about all the people in other accommodation—accommodation that we are paying for—that is substandard, unhealthy and unlikely to make refugees feel welcome or in any way integrated, and gives very bad value for money? An MP cannot intervene every step of the way. I am really concerned about that.

I saw some accommodation in which damp or heating were really problematic. In one home where a family was living, the mum had a very serious long-term health condition. Having a damp, underheated or difficult-to-heat home was making life miserable for her and severely impeding her chances of a safe recovery from that serious illness. Her husband was terribly upset by the fact that he felt he was failing to care for his wife at a time of serious illness. To be frank, the house was unheatable due to the fact that it had not been maintained.

I believe that home was unsuitable for long-term use, but the family had been there for a long time because their case had been deemed complex—or non-straightforward, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said. That particularly worried me because children were living in some of the accommodation that was supposed to be temporary. I applaud the Home Office’s determination to stick to the six-month turnaround time, but once we have gone beyond that because a case is complex, people are still living in accommodation that is supposed to be temporary and is anyway substandard. There are real questions as to what we are doing to people who have fled war and conflict and to whom we have a legal obligation.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I apologise that I was not here for the speech by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). I am trying to juggle my time with another debate in the main Chamber at the moment.

When the Home Affairs Committee looked into this and went to inspect some of the properties, we too noticed some obvious deficiencies. We were assured that the providers have regular inspection programmes that will reveal all those things, which clearly they do not. More needs to be done there, and I am sure the right hon. Lady mentioned that. Also, some tenants are afraid to report problems because they fear they will be penalised for doing so, so they suffer in silence.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

My right hon. Friend did refer to those points, but I would like to reiterate them. That subject particularly worries me, because the Government’s response to the Home Affairs Committee’s recommendation about property inspections was:

“The Home Office does not agree that property inspection should be handed over to local authorities as it would reduce the accountability of the Home Office and the ability to hold Providers to account.”

That would be fine if it was happening, but the evidence that the Committee found, and certainly my subjective and selective experience, was that that is not happening consistently. It may well be happening some of the time—I understand from the Committee’s report that there was sometimes evidence of good inspection, or at least good accommodation. However, given that the Committee and I were able to find accommodation that would not pass an inspection, even though I had asked to see the accommodation and therefore was expecting to see Clearsprings’ best offering, I question the Home Office’s confidence that it is able to hold providers to account. Will the Minister tell us what evidence there is that the Home Office is satisfactorily holding providers to their key performance indicators?

I also came across instances where there were clear problems with damp. When I raised that with the Clearsprings manager, he said that it was due to tenants hanging their clothes to dry on radiators. I asked where they were supposed to dry their clothes; the homes were very difficult to heat anyway, and there was no outdoor space or launderette nearby. I said, “They’re a family with children. They’ve got to dry their clothes somewhere. What’s your solution? You can’t tell them not to dry their clothes, particularly in winter.”

The complexity of the asylum process is compounding these problems, and the fact that an increasing number of cases are being deemed complex adds to the delay. I would like the Minister to address some of the problems with deeming cases complex. In my experience as an MP, the asylum seekers I am supporting through this process ask, “Why is my case deemed complex?” and it is often impossible to work out why. One wonders whether the decision-making process is taking so long that it is easier to deem a case complex than to get it sorted. I urge the Minister to look at what is going on in the nether regions of the process, because it is not good for any of us—the Government, MPs and especially asylum seekers—to have endless delays built into the process, and it is certainly not good for asylum seekers’ experience with accommodation.

As I said, the 28-day move-on period pushes asylum seekers into serious difficulties. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) mentioned potential problems with universal credit. I welcome the fact that the Minister has mentioned reviewing that, but I would like him also to commit to a few specific things. Will he, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said, review the process of asylum for pregnant women in particular? It is an indictment of all of us that we are keeping pregnant women in frankly unsanitary or unsafe conditions. That is not the country we want to be.

This is a time when we should be thinking seriously about what sort of messages we want to give out to the rest of the world about who we are and who we see ourselves as. I am proud to be British. I am proud that we have a tradition of welcoming asylum seekers and refugees, and I want to carry on being proud. At the moment, some of the evidence I see from my work as a Member of Parliament gives me cause to feel ashamed. I am proud, like my right hon. Friend, that we have the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme to draw on. I urge the Minister to address the fact that if we brought the system up to meet the standards of that scheme, we would be doing everybody a favour.

I would like the Minister also to think about the focus on quality and remember that we, as taxpayers, are paying for substandard accommodation. I know I have made that point several times, and it may seem that I am labouring it, but I do so because this should be everybody’s problem. All too often, asylum seeker accommodation or problems affecting refugees are seen as a niche, minority issue. Actually, this should be an issue for all of us, because we are taxpayers and because this says an enormous amount about who we are and who we want to be seen as in the mid-21st century.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Davey]

I do. I can give an example from my own constituency from a few years ago of a gentleman from Kosovo who, with his wife, had suffered terrible trauma in that country during the troubles. It took me three years to get him the right to work. When he got it he went off very happy. He came back the next week in tears, because he had applied to work as a bus driver and the bus company wanted him to be there for 12 months to justify the training. I had to ring up the bus company and say, “I will personally guarantee your training costs, just give him a job!” He got a job. He was one of their best bus drivers; he took all the overtime, and helped old ladies on and off with their shopping. He then set up a business and now employs other people. He pays more tax than I do. His wife, having had huge mental health problems, is now working in our NHS. If we engage with people as human beings—guess what—they want to give back and act as human beings, and be part of our society. We have to do everything to enable human beings to be human.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point, particularly about mental health. Does he agree with me that one thing that asylum accommodation needs to do better is ensure that people who have come from traumatic experiences and are possibly further traumatised by the conditions in which they find themselves have access to good quality, appropriate mental health support?

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We have been talking about mental health for all people in this country, but the people who have been traumatised and tortured, escaping violence and persecution, suffer the most.

I will end on one further point, which is not about asylum seekers, but about failed asylum seekers, specifically those failed asylum seekers whom the Home Office rightly does not want to send back to their country, because their country is benighted. It is a very odd class of people, but they exist in quite large numbers. I had a lot of cases of people from Zimbabwe in this situation in years gone past. They did not meet the Home Office tests as an asylum seeker, but we were not sending them back, because of our concerns about what Mugabe and ZANU-PF would do to them. Those people were in limbo. They had no support, no right to work, but they existed as human beings. We need to think about that group of people, because they are the most destitute and vulnerable people living in our country today. I do not know whether they can be included in a new approach to asylum accommodation, but I think they should be considered as the Government review this area. I thank the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and her Committee for this report, and I hope the Government respond positively to it.

Drugs Policy

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We need to be really clear here: we do not ban substances without an evidence base that shows that they are harmful to people’s health. The reason why we put in those protections—whether it is through the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, or the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—is that the evidence base clearly shows that these substances are harmful. There is no safe way that people can take these products. It would be terrible to confuse young people by saying that they can, somehow, safely take a legal high. I know how difficult it is to have these conversations with young people; I have three children in their 20s. I understand the world in which they live and the temptations with which they are faced, but that is why it is so important that we have very clear messages and effective education tools for teachers, which we are investing in now. We will be legislating to make personal, social, health and economic education statutory in schools so that every young person understands the risks of taking alcohol and drugs, which will make them more resilient and more able to resist the temptations. I have said to my own children, “If you can’t go into Boots or any other reputable pharmacist and buy something, then it will not be good for you.” It is really important that we have very simple and clear messages for young people.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for generously giving way so many times, but I must challenge her. She said a moment ago that there is such a thing as a safe level of consumption of alcohol, but that is not what the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines say. The NICE guidelines are clear and accurate: there is no safe level of consumption of alcohol. We allow it to be consumed legally and we provide information, treatment and recovery, but we do not criminalise people who are consuming alcohol. Why will she not consider the graph that I can show her—[Interruption.] No, I am not supposed to do that. Evidence is available that shows just how much more harmful alcohol is than any other drug.

[Sarah Newton]

This debate today is about the drugs strategy. I have been very generous in answering questions. We understand that there is a relationship between drugs and alcohol, but I will not be drawn into a wider debate about the current legal framework around alcohol, because we are here today to talk about our drugs policy. [Interruption.] May I just finish my point? Look, our policy is based on independent evidence, and is informed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The vast majority of academic and medical research backs up our position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I agree with him on doing one’s own research and reading the papers, but also on respecting professional expertise. Although I am afraid I come to slightly different conclusions on some aspects, there is a lot of agreement between us, particularly on locating the problem in the Department of Health.

I pay particular tribute to the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) and for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) all made wonderful, inspiring and rousing speeches. They set a very high bar for themselves, as well as their colleagues, over the coming years.

I thank the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for his suggestion that there should be a royal commission on drugs that looks carefully, thoroughly and objectively at the evidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) provided very moving examples of how our legal structure is currently failing people. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) also gave inspiring and helpful speeches.

Over the past six months, following the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, I have had the great privilege of being exposed to a range of different experts, specialists, academics and interventions in my own constituency and beyond as I have been part of the process of making a BBC documentary on the use of drugs. I have been involved as an MP and as a citizen of a city with above-average rates of drug use and drug misuse, and with exceptionally forward-thinking, effective drug misuse services, including, but not only, GPs. The makers of the documentary have followed me around—veritably stalked me at times. They assessed the impact of the abuse and misuse of alcohol and other drugs—I am going to keep using that phrase—on my constituents and facilitated meetings between me and people with specialist knowledge and skills. The results will be broadcast in three parts this autumn. I have not seen it. Other documentaries may well be available, but I urge hon. Members to see what they made.

As part of that process, I have met local organisations commissioning or providing services to people with drug problems. I particularly pay tribute to the Bristol Drugs Project and DHI—Developing Health and Independence—along with commissioners in Bristol City Council. They have been extremely generous and patient with their time to educate and inform me, and also in being willing to listen to questions and ideas with which they did not necessarily agree, and vice versa—that is, ideas that I did not initially agree with but have been able to see the point of.

I have met people in support groups and programmes who are in the process of desisting from alcohol and other drug misuse. I have visited Horfield prison, which is in my constituency. I have been briefed on the nature of drug use—particularly the use of Spice—and its impact on the prison, the staff and the prisoners. I have met specialists including Sir David Nutt, the leading psychologist, pharmacologist and psychiatrist, who formerly chaired the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs, and Dr Ben Sessa, consultant child and adolescent and addiction psychiatrist at Imperial College, to discuss the research and evidence base for and against our current drugs policy.

I met a specialist drug safety tester from the Loop project, which provides free and confidential drug counselling and testing of substances—without, hon. Members may be pleased to hear, returning those substances. I was puzzled to hear that, but the testers cannot return substances to the people who have asked to have them tested, because that would be classed as drug dealing. I do not think that that is helpful, but it does at least provide people with information about the quality of what they might be about to take.

I was told by the Loop project that, as a result of its work, not only are people better informed about what they might be taking—whether or not it has been cut with impurities, including concrete—but if they discover that a substance is unsafe to take, they hand in quantities of drugs voluntarily. It is a way of cleaning up the supply of very unsafe drugs, as well as giving people the information they need to make a well-informed choice about whether, when and how to consume drugs. I discussed with Loop the purpose and function of drug consumption rooms. I take on board what my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw has said, because he has far more experience in this matter than I have, but I am interested to know more about the various pilots and the research that he mentioned.

I met homelessness organisations and homeless people who have compounding problems on top of drug and alcohol problems. I discussed with my campaign volunteers, staff and local residents their concerns about drug misuse, which are many and varied. I did various drug impact walks through my own constituency, looking around me, talking to people and identifying the problems that have both a visible and an invisible impact on local people.

I have analysed my own experience, as a long-term resident of the area, of how the use and misuse of drugs has affected the local area over the years, and how and why it has changed. I have, as a consequence, made many reports to the local drugs litter cleaning services. That is one of the consequences of the current regime that we would do well to address, and we should at least consider the use of drug consumption rooms because it would reduce nuisance to other people. I have also had to respond to extremely unpleasant side effects of alcohol and drug misuse on my own doorstep, both at home and in the entrance to my constituency office.

I have done a great deal of reading of the research on the impact of our current legal system and support services on the use and misuse of alcohol and other drugs. I thank everybody who has given me their time and attention during this process, which has been hugely educational, influenced my thinking and informed my beliefs. I particularly thank the BBC team, Bart, Ae, Poppy and Hugo, for making me part of such an interesting process.

To inform my response to the drug strategy, I contacted many of the people I have mentioned, and I analysed the findings of various papers by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and other evidence against the scope and detail of the strategy. As a result of that review, although I applaud aspects of the strategy—I will mention them shortly—I have the following criticisms. The strategy does not include an explicit aim of reducing or, ideally, eliminating premature deaths caused by drug use. I would really like to see that front and centre. The strategy virtually, although not completely, ignores the most harmful drug. I say respectfully to the Minister that alcohol is a drug, and one that is entirely legal; I will come back to that shortly. The Government’s welcome acceptance of evidence-based treatments for drug misuse and mental health problems is a step forward, but it is undermined, as colleagues have said, by the lack of a funding strategy to support it. The strategy fails to take on key recommendations from the report published last year by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on preventing opiate-related deaths.

Finally, I must add my voice to those of others who have said that the strategy represents a wasted opportunity, when the Government could have reviewed the entire legislative framework surrounding alcohol and other drugs and made it consistent, evidence-based and focused on harm reduction for all drug use. I echo the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Reigate that a commission should do what I believe the Government could have done over the last two years.

The strategy opens with the ambition

“for fewer people to use drugs in the first place”,

and for those who do, to

“help them to stop and to live a life free from dependence.”

However, that ignores the fact that many people take drugs recreationally, free from dependence and free from the harm caused to other people that results from some drug use. They are at risk of causing some harm to themselves, and such harms tend to arise from the criminal justice framework that we wrap around them. We should have the ambitions to reduce harm and prevent deaths—I support the aim to reduce harm, and I want to increase recovery from dependence—but I also want to take us as a country towards a fully evidence-based, open-minded approach to both.

Most of the means of preventing death in the “Reducing Opioid-Related Deaths in the UK” report by the ACMD last year, which I mentioned earlier, have been ignored in the strategy. For instance, drug testing—I mean not testing of people to see if they have taken drugs, but of drugs to see what they have in them—as well as the provision of drug consumption rooms and a wider examination of forms of treatment have all been ignored either partially or wholly. The strategy ducks the fact that much of the use of alcohol and other drugs takes place with comparatively little or no harm identified by the user, and frequently with great pleasure, which therefore undermines some of the messages given in the strategy. If users do not themselves experience their drug taking in a way described by the strategy, they are likely to dismiss all of the good stuff in it. Harms arise from the unregulated nature of the market. The organisation Loop has shown me one of the huge life-saving benefits of being able to test drugs such as ecstasy in clubs and festivals. I want the full protection of regulation, education, testing and a licensing regime to be given to all my constituents, not just those whose drug of choice is the legally available one of alcohol.

I must say that there are some aspects of the strategy that I very much welcome, such as the emphasis on prevention and the use of compulsory personal, social and health and economic education, which is now part of the curriculum, to increase the awareness and understanding of young people. By the way, I say to the Government, “You’re welcome”. It took us a while to convince the Government that this needed to happen, but Opposition Members are always pleased when the Government realise we have got something right. I am also very pleased that the drug strategy recognises the limitations of some educational approaches, such as the format of lectures by the police or reformed addicts. Such approaches tend not to have a good evidence base, and I am glad the Government have recognised that.

I also want to say that the two drugs that have arguably caused me the greatest personal harm are two legal drugs—alcohol and tobacco. I am sure everybody in the House knows about the link between tobacco consumption and lung cancer and many may also know about the link between alcohol consumption and liver cancer, but it was not until I was diagnosed with breast cancer that I learned about the causal links between alcohol consumption and other cancers. While I was being treated, I was contacted by a publican about the new NICE guidelines on alcohol consumption. He claimed that they were biased and in favour of teetotalism, and he was very angry about what he said was an unnecessary and unwelcome bias, given that the guidelines say that there is no “safe” level of alcohol consumption. I therefore read the guidelines and all the research review papers informing the guidelines—I was on sick leave, so I had time to do so—and I came to the carefully considered conclusion that the guidelines were both accurate and helpful.

It was helpful to me to know that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, and reading the research papers helped to convince me that the abstemiousness, as far as I could possibly manage it, that I had fallen into during chemotherapy was something I wished to keep to for the sake of my own health after the treatment ended. This was all news to me: I did not know until I had breast cancer that alcohol was so closely linked to it. Since then, I have realised how many other people are not aware of the wide, many and varied risks associated with alcohol, which is a completely legal drug. Alcohol is available on these very premises, and no doubt somebody somewhere is in the process of consuming that legal drug right now. At the risk of sounding like Nana from “The Royle Family”, I have—with the exception of a very small glass of bubbly at weddings and perhaps a sweet sherry at Christmas—stuck to my non-consumption of alcohol, and I have to say that I feel all the better for it. That is a good example of how providing accurate information about a drug can inform someone’s decision making.

Alcohol is at the top end of the most harmful substances both to the user and to others—it is more harmful than heroin, in fact—but if I fall off the alcohol-free wagon by going into a shop or a pub and buying some alcohol, I at least know that it will not have been cut with something much more poisonous. I know that I am not risking my job by breaking the law and I know that I will be picked up afterwards if dropping off the wagon causes me problems. I believe that the regulatory, information and licensing systems for alcohol provide a great template for reforming the law on other drugs. I am not knocking anybody else’s right to choose to drink alcohol; I just want parity for my constituents who use other drugs.

I want to say quickly that I am not sure where the money will come from for everything, because money was conspicuously absent from the strategy. Other Members have drawn attention to that and perhaps others who are still to come will do too. That is a big omission. Whether it is in interventions purely in the health service, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw referred to, or in drug treatment programmes, specialist programmes or mental health services, the cuts by this Government in local government, the health service and elsewhere have been felt across the board. There is no good way to carry out any of the very good proposals in the strategy without adequate funding. Mental health services and drug and alcohol services all need to be properly funded. As I am sure the Government are aware, there is a 2.5 return on investment. I hope that the Minister will address that point in her closing remarks.

Something that is very personal to me is the prevention of drug-related deaths, particularly those from heroin. People in my life have lost theirs to drug addiction, including addiction to heroin and alcohol. That is why I want to be clear that when I talk about reforming our laws, I am not saying that these drugs are good to take; I am just saying that if we are clear that alcohol is not good for us and yet it is legal, well-regulated and licensed, we at least ought to look at why we are failing people with a heroin addiction, people who use drugs recreationally and do not have an addiction problem, and the people around drug users. The hearts that are broken through heroin-related deaths go much wider than the people who use the drug.

The number of opioid-related deaths has gone up year on year since 2010. I thoroughly applaud the Minister for saying that she wants an evidence-based approach, but she appears to have ignored the conclusions and findings of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that came out just last year. It reminded us that there were 2,479 drug-related deaths in 2015 alone, so keeping drugs illegal is clearly not preventing death.

Among the report’s findings was this:

“That the UK has high-quality systems for the recording of opioid-related deaths,”—

which is good—

“but that more could be done to improve national information, especially on toxicology and prescribing, as well as on the contribution of opioid use to levels of mortality from other causes.”

Data collection is partially addressed by the Minister in the strategy, but I would like further information, if possible.

The report also states that

“a probable cause of the recent increases in drug-related deaths…is the existence of a prematurely ageing cohort of people who have been using heroin since the 1980s and 1990s.”

It states that other contributory causes of those recent increases are

“multiple health risks…among an ageing cohort of heroin or opioid users, deepening of socio-economic deprivation since the financial crisis of 2008, and changes to drug treatment and commissioning practices.”

The paper goes on to make some very sensible suggestions, which I urge the Minister to remind herself of. I will remind her of some of them now. It states:

“There are a number of evidence-based approaches that can be used to reduce the risk of death among people who use opioids. The strongest evidence supports the provision of opioid substitution treatment (OST) of optimal quality, dosage and duration.”

I know that the Minister is aware of that. However, the report goes on to say:

“Other substance misuse treatment options could be further developed in order to reduce the risk of death including broader provision of naloxone,”—

for hon. Members who do not know, that is a substance that can be used to halt and then reverse the effects of overdoses, thus saving lives—

“heroin-assisted treatment for those for whom other forms of OST are not effective, medically-supervised drug consumption clinics, treatment for alcohol problems, and assertive outreach to engage heroin users who are not in treatment into OST (especially for those who are homeless and/or have mental health problems).”

We are all harmed by a failure to address those issues. We are harmed when we are troubled by the homeless person on the street who is clearly suffering; by the relative or friend of a friend who goes without the treatment that they need; or by someone who dies needlessly of an overdose when it could have been prevented by safe use in a drug consumption clinic, accompanied by counselling to try to engage that person in drug cessation. I want us to notice that we are all harmed by that, not just those who are using drugs.

The strategy recognises the record high levels of deaths and drug misuse and it makes some recommendations, such as that all local areas should have appropriate naloxone provision in place, but the Bristol Drugs Project, which has such a distribution system, tells me that it is unable to get to everyone who is at risk of heroin overdose. I would like it to have the funding it needs to reach more people and prevent more deaths. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs also recommended the drug consumption clinics that I have mentioned, and discussions with people in the sector and with other specialists lead me to believe that investing in drug consumption spaces, where drug users can have their drugs tested, receive counselling and, above all, consume drugs safely and with no associated harms to the rest of us, would be money well invested or at least worth exploring further. We would gain in the reduced cost to emergency services, local council cleaning services and the prevention of drug-related deaths.

I turn to the obvious contradictions in our laws on alcohol and other drugs. On criminalisation, the ACMD has mixed views, but the Government are unequivocal—they are opposed to reforming the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The strategy states:

“We have no intention of decriminalising drugs. Drugs are illegal because scientific and medical analysis has shown they are harmful to human health”—

I do not disagree. It continues:

“Drug misuse is also associated with much wider societal harms including family breakdown, poverty, crime and anti-social behaviour.”

Those I would qualify. As others have said, and I reiterate, that argument simply does not hold water. The research review carried out by Professor David Nutt for The Lancet shows that alcohol is by far the most dangerous drug in the UK for harms to others and harms to the user. It is far more harmful to other people than any other drug, including heroin, crack, methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis and tobacco, but it is regulated, with licensing conditions and ways to protect users if it is their drug of choice.

The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) mentioned the awful people who deal in drugs and use violence. I agree: I want to protect my constituents from falling prey to that violence and abuse. She also mentions the harms that vulnerable people suffer when they are forced to traffic drugs. I agree, and I want to avoid those harms, but I respectfully disagree with her —it is the criminal nature of the drugs trade that causes those harms. That is my interpretation of the evidence, and I urge hon. Members to consider the suggestion by the hon. Member for Reigate of a royal commission to examine that further.

If we are to take an approach of making a substance illegal because scientific and medical analysis has shown it is harmful to human health, we need to make alcohol and tobacco illegal. Are the Government proposing that? No, they are not, and I do not want them to. I would simply invite them to consider that their entire rationale for maintaining the legal status quo is undermined by that. It would be far more effective to tackle the harms done to others and to the user to review the entire criminal law associated with alcohol and other drugs, and to consider reforming it to make it truly evidence based.

Before I conclude, I want to add some comments and caveats on the wider social rationale. Some people think—and some hon. Members have implied it today—that drug harms are the responsibility of the individual and, if people choose to use drugs, they should be left to take the consequences without the taxpayer having to pick up the tab. I know that the Minister does not agree with that approach and I am glad about that. To those people, I say that we are all picking up the tab anyway—in the huge costs of policing drug use, accidental overdose and so on. We are also picking up the tab when people in our own lives are harmed by drugs. It is no use saying that it is always someone else’s child, parent or sibling. Many sober people who have never taken any drugs are affected by a relative or friend’s drug use, whether cash is stolen from them to pay for drug use or in having to deal with the impact of overdoses or the health consequences of substances added to drugs.

The social and economic cost of drug supply in England and Wales is estimated to be £10.7 billion a year, just over half of which—£6 billion—is attributed to drug-related acquisitive crime. Would that we could reform that—and I think the Minister should take this opportunity to consider that there are ways of reforming it.

I want all Members to take a moment to be quite imaginative. I want them to imagine the nature of the shops that currently exist for people to buy drugs if they wish to. Those drug shops are already all around us, but they are dangerous, they are illegal, they are unregulated, they are untaxed and they are unlicensed, unless your drug of choice is alcohol.

Why do we not decide to do something different with that £10.7 billion a year? Why do we not decide that we will treat drug misuse as a health and social problem rather than a criminal problem, and direct the funds towards treatment and recovery for those who need it? Why do we not also recognise that the harms done by legal drugs are in excess of those done by illegal drugs, and decide to reduce or even end the harms caused by the illegal nature of some of those drugs? I want Members to focus their minds on the harms done by the drugs rather than by a legal situation which could be reformed.

Why do we not acknowledge that some people are consuming both harmful illegal drugs and legal drugs right now, but at least those consuming legal drugs will be doing so in the knowledge that the strength and purity of the substance that they are consuming is regulated, so they can make informed choices? Why do we not become really brave, and decide that if we are going to treat alcohol and tobacco in a certain way—and yes, rightly provide education and information to help people to make those informed choices, and treatment for those whose consumption has started to harm them or others—we should provide parity of protection, information and education in relation to other drugs?

Let me very clear about this. There is no safe level of consumption of any drug, be it legal or otherwise. The only way to be completely safe from the harms of consumption of any drug, including alcohol, is not to consume it at all. Having access to good-quality information gives people the opportunity to make evidence-informed decisions for themselves about whether and how to consume alcohol or other drugs. Relying on the law to inform decision-making is not working, It skews the decision entirely in favour of the most dangerous drug. I am sure that many people have no idea of the links between alcohol consumption and cancer, for example.

I am not suggesting that we should jump straight to full legalisation of all drugs. I am simply raising the importance of considering whether and how to revise the legal framework for all drugs. If we are to have an evidence-based system of response to the consumption of alcohol and other drugs, it must focus on harm reduction. It must treat the harms as social and health harms when they are social and health harms, and as criminal only when it is necessary to treat them as such.

We urgently need the royal commission referred to by the hon. Member for Reigate, and we need to be able to have a well-informed, honest and open debate about the regulation of alcohol and other drugs in order to reduce avoidable harm, increase informed decision-making, and end the deaths caused by alcohol and all other drugs.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the Dublin arrangements. Until we had an accelerated process and really leant in to identify children who qualified under the Dublin arrangements into Calais, it was not really working. The numbers of children being transferred under Dublin previously were small. We managed to transfer nearly 600 under Dublin last year, and I now feel that the Home Office and associated organisations that help us to deliver on Dublin have learnt how to make sure that it operates better in the future. I am confident that those numbers will improve going forward.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

A two-tier—in fact, multi-tier—system in response to refugees and asylum seekers is emerging, with incomprehensible contradictions and many vulnerabilities, especially for children. To live up to our well-deserved reputation, which we should be proud of as a nation, among those fleeing war and persecution, who see us as a place of safe haven, and to do our best for a fair share of the thousands who are arriving in Europe—desperate, but with huge potential to offer this country—will the Home Secretary commit to appointing a Minister for refugees and integration?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Lady for her recommendation. I have a substantial ministerial team and an excellent Minister for Immigration. I do not see the need at the moment for additional Ministers, but of course I will keep that under review.

Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Give him the chance.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure the Minister will get the chance to do so.

It is worth noting that the Equality and Human Rights Commission acknowledges in its briefing that

“most of the Istanbul Convention obligations are implemented through UK legislation”,

and recent steps have been taken on many areas. For example, a prohibition on possession of rape pornography was introduced by section 37 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. This applies in England and Wales, and brings the offence of possession of extreme pornographic images more in line with that applicable in Scotland. A new offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in intimate or familial relationships was introduced by section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. An offence of forced marriage is now provided for in sections 121 and 122 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 was amended by section 73 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 to include FGM protection orders, civil measures that can be applied for through a family court which provide a means of protecting actual or potential victims of FGM.

An email I received from the Muslim Council of Britain in support of the Bill quoted the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon:

“Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies… Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves”.

I do not understand how violence against women can be an obstacle to gender equality—I sometimes think I must be speaking in Swahili—because this would mean that all violence against women is committed by men, and as I have already said, that is patently not the case. Perhaps someone can explain to me how violence by women on women can be an obstacle to gender equality? In relation to making the Istanbul convention law, the Muslim Council of Britain goes on:

“This is indeed a unique opportunity in the UK so that we can show our support to women and girls who should be living free from any form of violence, and the fear of it.”

I agree with the sentiment, but I would agree more if it talked about everyone, not just women and girls.

The Fawcett Society has said:

“This new landmark treaty of the Council of Europe opens the path for creating a legal framework at pan-European level to protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence. It also establishes a monitoring body to evaluate implementation and progress.”

There will be more meddling from afar if we ratify this convention.

The Council of Europe provides details of the monitoring mechanisms that must be put in place if we ratify the convention. It says that there would be

“an independent expert body, the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), which is initially composed of 10 members and will subsequently be enlarged to 15 members following the 25th ratification”,

and

“a political body, the Committee of the Parties, which is composed of representatives of the Parties to the Istanbul Convention. The task of GREVIO is to monitor the implementation of the Convention by the Parties.”

We will not do that in our own country; we will have an international body interfering and telling us how we are doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

That is 78 minutes that I will never get back.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Let’s get on with the speeches.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I have read the convention and I have spent 26 years working on violence against women and domestic violence, including working with male victims of domestic violence. I will start my very brief speech by answering some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).

If the hon. Gentleman refers to what he said in his own speech and to the British crime survey statistics, he will know that the overwhelming majority of victims of sexual assault, rape, chronic ongoing domestic abuse, severe domestic abuse causing injury, coercive control and domestic homicide are female, and that that is specifically connected both to their gender and to gender inequality. Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. That is why we have a gender-specific convention.

If we want to tackle gender inequality—and I do—we have to tackle the specific circumstances, belief systems, structures and behaviours behind violence against women. Hence the need for the convention. The hon. Gentleman asks for neutral legislation. I say to him: when you remain neutral in a situation of profound inequality, you are only siding with the powerful against the powerless.

The hon. Gentleman asked why there are so few purpose-built refuges for men. I can tell him exactly why there are so many refuges for women because I have been part of that movement for 26 years. Women set up refuges for women. There was never anything stopping men setting up refuges for men, but I know why they have not set up many. For 10 years, I worked for Respect, which among other things runs the men’s advice line—the national helpline for male victims of domestic violence. I was the research manager there, so I know a thing or two. I can tell him that many men called the men’s advice line each year, but refuge was very rarely what they wanted. They wanted a listening ear, practical advice and legal information, and that is what they got.

I was going to speak extensively about the work with perpetrators that I have been involved in for about 10 years, but I have crossed out much of my speech because I do not want to filibuster so that the Bill runs out of time. Instead, I will quote briefly from research that I helped set up while I was the research manager at Respect, the national organisation for work with perpetrators of domestic violence and male victims. It is called the Mirabal research and people can look it up on the Respect website.

The research was carried out by Professor Liz Kelly and Professor Nicole Westmarland, who were profoundly sceptical about the value of perpetrator programmes when they started. However, they found that most men who completed a Respect-accredited domestic violence perpetrator programme—and yes, we only examined men in this research programme, but that does not mean that there are not female perpetrators; it just means we were looking specifically at men in this research—stop using violence and reduce the instance of most other forms of abuse against their partner. At the start, almost all the women said that their partners had used some form of physical or sexual violence in the past three months. Twelve months later, the research team found that after their partner or ex-partner had completed the programme, most women said that the physical and sexual violence had stopped—most, but not all.

Programmes do not replace the criminal justice system or civil justice system—they are a complement to it—but they are part of the solution. If we are going to put men in prison, which the hon. Member for Shipley has called for, we still need to know what we are going to do with them. They will still have relationships with their children whether they are inside prison or outside. Most of them will come out one day, and when they do they will have new partners. Why not work out how we can work with these men, many of whom say they would like to change—and some of whom do not—and whose partners often say that what they really want is for their partner to change? Most of the partners and ex-partners of men on the programmes in the research said that they felt or were safer after their partner or ex-partner completed the programme.

I have scrubbed out more of my speech—Members can look up the research online if they want to know the detail. I will give a couple of examples before sitting down and allowing the Minister to make his remarks, which I hope will be helpful in concluding this stage of the Bill’s passage. As a facilitator at the Domestic Violence Intervention Programme I found many ways in which women became safer. One was when their partner changed their attitude and behaviour and stopped using violence. We knew that because we had a separate but linked women’s partner support project that told us whether the women felt or were safer.

The programme helped some women to be safe because they themselves, for the first time, were able to get help, advice and a way of moving attention away from them as responsible for the violence and allowing them to end the relationship safely. I remember one women in particular. I never met her. She had a newborn baby. I was working with her partner in the men’s programme. She was living under such extreme control that the only time she was free and safe to talk to the women’s support worker was when we, the men’s facilitators, had her partner in the room with us. Over several weeks, she was able to gain confidence and develop a safe plan for leaving; meanwhile, in the room with us, her partner—an arrogant man with a huge sense of entitlement—through talking a lot about his behaviour gradually revealed more and more about it, until we had enough information to report him to the authorities. They took action.

In some cases, the women and children were safer because we were able to find out more about the perpetrator’s risk to other people through the individual assessment and group work that contributed to the co-ordinated community response. For instance, one man had to put himself in the role of his own child while other men in the room re-enacted, with the facilitators, a violent incident he had committed; after that, he completely withdrew his application for child contact and sent a message to his ex-partner via her solicitor saying that he realised how frightened she and their child must be, and that he would wait until she decided the time was right and safe.

Above all, we, the group-work facilitators, modelled how a relationship between a man and a woman based on equality actually works. For many of the men we worked with, that was the first time they had ever seen that. We modelled disagreements in which we disagreed but dealt with it respectfully. As the only woman in the room, I was often the person whom the men in the room had to use to learn to manage how to disagree with a woman without being abusive, controlling or domineering, or trying to have the last word.

I know many people, particularly from women’s groups, who were rightly concerned about or even very suspicious of perpetrator programmes when they started. Some still are. That is why a good accreditation system is so important. I declare an interest: when I worked for Respect I helped develop that accreditation system. I am very proud of it, because it differentiates between programmes doing good work to challenge men, and women, who are perpetrators of domestic violence and those programmes that are not effective.

Ratifying the Istanbul convention would place requirements on the UK Government to take the steps that the convention contains. It would be a statement of commitment. In so many ways, we as a nation are ahead of the rest of the world. We have led the way in setting up refuges, developing perpetrator programmes in Scotland—where so many of my colleagues in the Change project and the Midlothian programme, subsequently the Caledonian system, work—and in England and Wales, with the DVIP and the rest. We have set up pioneering work to challenge men whose behaviour is violent and abusive. We have set up prevention work with young people in schools, something else I was involved in before becoming an MP. We have developed risk assessment and risk management.

We have nothing to fear from adopting the Istanbul convention, and neither does the hon. Member for Shipley. It does not preclude our helping men and boys, and nor should it. It merely does what it says: it acknowledges that we live in a situation of profound gender inequality, which is both cause and consequence of violence against women and girls. It is about time we ratified the convention. The safety of women and children is too important not to.

UN International Day: Violence against Women

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I first want to pay a massive tribute to Members who have told their own personal stories today. For so many people, the victims of domestic and sexual violence look like somebody else—they look like the “other” when in fact they are all of us, and it is incredibly powerful to show that. In fact, they are everybody. They are living on our streets. We are sitting next to them at work. We are talking to them on the school run. They are everywhere. I pay a huge tribute to those who have done that today. The memorable women in here will certainly resonate with people out there.

Last week, I dealt with a very upset mother on the phone. Her daughter had, while at school, had to deal with two boys in a dinner queue throwing insults at each other about how they had had sex with her. These children were nine years old. When the mother spoke to her daughter about the incident, the little girl said she felt ashamed. She thought she had done something wrong and that was why the boys were saying this about her. And so begins the life of another young girl who thinks she is to blame for the misogyny she faces, and will probably face for the rest of her life.

That is the example I heard last week. During the inquiry into sexual harassment in schools undertaken by the Women and Equalities Committee, we heard a huge amount of similar evidence. It felt like lifting up a huge rock on a problem that has existed for too long, and is holding back both young girls and young boys. In my time working with local schools in partnership with Women’s Aid, I heard hundreds of stories of girls who were harassed, assaulted, raped and sexually exploited—all before they were 16. I would hazard a guess—I think the debate has shown this—that every woman in this building has a tale to tell about being a teenager and having boys or men groping them, trying to lift up their skirts, talking about have sex with them and scaring them.

When I told my 11-year-old son, who has just started secondary school, about what had happened to the little girl, he shrugged and said, “I hear that stuff all the time, mom.” When I look at the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s report, I am left exasperated. As a parent, I am worried. Should I sit with my son and the little girl in question and say, “Don’t worry, there is cross-Government support for prioritising work to make significant progress in this area”? I am sure their shame will not be at all reduced.

Just after I was elected, I went to speak at a conference in Birmingham on tackling violence against women and girls—I am sure that’s a surprise to everyone! The room was filled with police officers, children’s social workers, housing managers, doctors, nurses, teachers and charities—all specialists in their field. I asked them to raise their hands if they thought that the single biggest change in the prevention of violence and abuse of young women was to make sex and relationship and consent education mandatory in our schools. Every single person raised their hand.

Year after year, this House has been given a chance to pass this much needed law. Obviously, the Government were a little ahead of their time in refusing to listen to the experts, because every time the proposal has been before the House, this House has failed to pass it. I want to know why. I want the Minister, who I know cares deeply about this, to put down the red folders, throw away her notes, throw caution to the wind—I’ve made a career out of it—and tell me honestly why this is. In the days of David Cameron, we were always led to believe, by whispers, that someone at No. 10 was stopping it. We in the preventing violence against women and girls sector were constantly assured by people in the Home Office that the then Home Secretary agreed with us. Well, she is in No. 10 now, and still some sort of conservatism with a small “c” stands in the way of what over 90% of parents want for their children and what 100% of experts know would make the difference.

I do not want to hear “We are looking into this”, “We support the calls” and “We are taking firm action.” I do not want to be pointed to another strategy document that proves nothing more than our ability to write strategy documents. I have been hearing it for years, and now I want a real answer as to why this law has not been passed. I know it has support across this House and in every party. We must act and start having open conversations with our children about gendered attitudes that lead to the harassment of girls and young women, and the demonisation of boys and young men.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech and of course I agree with every word. Like her, before becoming an MP I spent my life in the domestic and sexual violence world. Does she agree that we really need proper, high-quality and well integrated perpetrator programmes, as well as sex and relationships education? The one does prevention and the other tries to make things better when things do not work out, but they must be of a high standard. Will she join me in calling for the Istanbul convention to be ratified by this country, and for all Members to be in the House a week tomorrow to do that?

[Jess Phillips]

I thank my hon. Friend and of course I agree with every word. It is very important to stress that the Select Committee heard amazing evidence from some brilliant organisations working specifically with men and boys in this space. They showed how much could be done. If we do not focus on the attitudes of men who commit violence, and on boys who will become those men who commit violence, we will be letting the side down. I stress that I have seen bad practice in this space of work with perpetrators. Local commissioning must be done by experts in the field, and the organisation my hon. Friend worked for is exactly that.

We are here to speak about the elimination of violence, not cleaning up afterwards. Every year, I stand and read the names of women murdered at the hands of violent men. It is only through prevention and culture change that each and every year that list will grow shorter. Ministers have the power to reduce that list, and I will sing their praises if they do. Talking to our children about consent, gendered attitudes and respect is the very best place to start.

Refugee Family Reunion (Immigration Rules)

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered immigration rules for refugee family reunion.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. The world is facing the greatest refugee crisis since the end of world war two. According to statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which I checked today, an unprecedented 65.3 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide for various reasons including famine, war, poverty, climate change and internal repression. That total roughly equals this country’s entire population. Of those 65.3 million people, 21.3 million are classed by the UNHCR as refugees.

An International Rescue Committee report published in March described the rapid acceleration of the problem. In 2010, 10,000 people a day were displaced from their homes, and by 2014 that number had quadrupled. Again, that comes from UNHCR statistics. It is slightly less than that now, but still very high.

The UK has legal obligations to refugees under international law. There is a rigorous process of assessment before someone is granted refugee status, and only then are they allowed to apply for work and look for somewhere to live. The refugees I have met have all been determined to do everything they can to contribute to the UK. They have also been determined to be reunited with their families.

I am the chair of the all-party group on refugees, and I have initiated a public inquiry entitled “Refugees Welcome?”, which has just completed four oral evidence sessions. We have received hundreds of pieces of written evidence and will be visiting Bristol and Nottingham later this month to see for ourselves how refugees who have been granted status in this country are treated. The refugees we heard from in person gave powerful testimony about their difficult journeys, their painful experiences in their countries of origin, and their desire to contribute to and be part of this country, which has welcomed them. They also spoke about periods of destitution and poverty after being granted status. That subject will be dealt with in our report. Pertinent to this debate, they spoke of their natural desire to be reunited with their family as soon as possible.

This is a highly gendered issue. Women and children are far more likely to have been left behind than men. Their only hope of escape is to wait for a male family member to reach a country of sanctuary and then apply for reunion. Recent research by the Red Cross shows that 95% of applicants waiting to join family members in the UK through refugee family reunion are women and children. It also found that the process was not safe.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

I understand that, under the current rules, if the child turns 18 before the refugee status of the family member in the UK is confirmed, they are no longer eligible for family reunion. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a problem, and that the Government should look at changing the rules so the age of the child is considered when the Home Office procedure begins?

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I will come on to that issue. I completely agree that it is unjust and leaves many vulnerable young people in danger and alone.

Fifty-one per cent. of the families Red Cross helped in 2014 were at risk of violence, torture or harassment during the process of applying for family reunion, so the process is not safe. The British Red Cross also told me that, to date in 2016, it has supported the travel of 1,551 people accepted by the Home Office under refugee family reunion, 580 of whom were from Syria. As of the beginning of September, 767 children granted family reunion visas had arrived in the UK after assistance from the British Red Cross, 280 of whom were from Syria. Those are hardly huge numbers. In its 2015 research, “Not So Straightforward”, the British Red Cross found that the current UK policy for refugee family union is not simple, not affordable and not safe.

The system is failing many women and children. Women for Refugee Women, which is represented here today, told me that it knows of many women in the UK who have had to flee from danger without their children and then struggled to bring their children to join them, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said. The problems include, first, delays from the Home Office. If a woman has waited many years in the asylum process, her children back home may be older than 18 by the time she has been granted status, so they are not allowed the automatic right to join her.

Secondly, there are the costs of accessing family reunion rights. I hope the Minister will address both those issues. For instance, a woman whom Women for Refugee Women knows well, and whom I am going to meet later today—she has given me permission to describe her story—entered the UK in 2007 after being imprisoned in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a human rights activist. She left behind her children, aged 12, 15 and 17. It was three and a half years before she was called for her first asylum interview, and she was not granted status until 2013. By then, her children, still vulnerable, were 23, 21 and 18, and were therefore refused the right to join her. She is still struggling to find a legal route to be reunited with them. She has already spent £600 per child on the first application and has been told that she needs to spend still more for the appeal. As can be imagined, those sums are an incredible burden for a refugee woman who can access only very low-paid jobs due to her interrupted employment history.

This afternoon, at a City of Sanctuary event that I hosted, I met two brothers. Both were Syrian. One was granted status quickly, but the other was still in the process after being in detention. Their parents are still in Syria. They cannot come on the resettlement scheme or on family reunion, even though the first brother now has a full-time job and has said he is willing and able to support them.

I want to talk about expanding the scope of refugee family reunion rules to protect children and bring families together. The UK, unlike most European Union states, does not allow children to bring family members to join them here. Under the Dublin regulation—EU regulation 604/2013—they can be transferred to another EU member state if they have a relative living there, but that just moves children around the EU and places more burdens on the states that receive the most refugees. It does not allow children already here and granted status to bring their parents here.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

May I point out that the Dublin process is a two-way process, and that we are taking children who have family here from elsewhere in the European Union? We have resettled a number of children this year, and the process is gathering pace.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I acknowledge that it is a two-way process. That is important, but there is a lot more we can do.

Someone fleeing war, torture or conflict may have lost relatives or been separated from parents or children. They may have been cared for by an aunt or an older sibling. They may have a wider idea of family than the nuclear family of western social policy. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West said, their children may have reached 18 by the time their status is confirmed, but they may still need protection or be dependent. If refugee family reunion rules in the UK are to ensure the security of refugees’ family members and family unity, they must address relationships of dependence beyond those currently permitted.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. The reason why people run needs to be at the heart of how we do our refugee policy. Nobody decides to leave their family lightly. We need to counter the idea that one member of a family is at risk but another is not to understand how to have a dignified and humane approach to refugees.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I agree. I find it difficult to understand why a child who has come from a place that is deemed unsafe for them to go back to cannot simply bring their parents here.

In July, the Home Office published updated guidance on refugee family reunion, which set out details of types of cases where exceptional circumstances may apply—for example, in the case of dependent children over the age of 18. It is important that there are exceptional circumstances, and it is a welcome sign that the Government recognise the importance of family reunion, but it is not enough. People are usually granted leave to remain in exceptional circumstances for only 33 months, and they may be subject to other restrictions to which those granted refugee status are not subject. Those restrictions are left to the discretion of Home Office officials, which does not give them the certainty that a change in the rules would provide.

The Home Affairs Committee, in HC 151, its sixth report of this parliamentary Session, reviewed the work of the immigration directorates:

“It seems to us perverse that children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do. The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults. The Government should amend the immigration rules to allow refugee children to act as sponsors for their close family.”

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) for that work.

The same Committee, in HC 24, its seventh report of this Session, on the migration crisis, stated:

“Family reunion of migrants has been shown to have benefits in terms of integration and support networks, in addition to the human rights requirements of allowing families to be together, and there is clear scope for further measures to facilitate women and children joining husbands, fathers and other male relatives who have reached the UK…We also recommend that the UK broaden the scope of family reunion rules”.

I therefore support the Home Affairs Committee, the Refugee Council, Refugee Action, Amnesty International, the British Red Cross and many others, and call on the UK Government to end the discrimination against children, allowing those recognised as refugees the right to be joined in this country by other family members. Further, the definition of “family” should be expanded to include a wider range of family members. I recognise that that is challenging, but those people have come from war zones.

Our system needs to be properly implemented to fulfil our legal and moral obligations. The effect of cuts to legal aid is that refugees and UK citizens struggle to be reunited with their family members. Legal aid for specialist legal help for family reunion was cut by the coalition Government in 2013, on the grounds that it was considered a straightforward immigration matter that did not warrant the need for specialist legal support. The evidence, however, from the British Red Cross, the Refugee Council, Women for Refugee Women and my own caseload shows that many of the cases are far from straightforward—they are complex and require specialist legal advisers. Given what is at stake for families, there should be legal aid provision to assist refugees making family reunion applications.

Furthermore, those refugees who have been granted citizenship cannot sponsor family members in the same way as those only with refugee status. That seems particularly harsh. They are subject to the same minimum income and other requirements of the spousal visa process as other UK citizens. I understand why that has happened, but it is difficult for newly arrived people to meet such conditions—for those who have arrived here from war zones, it seems unnecessarily harsh. I therefore ask the Government, after their review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, to reinstate the provision of legal aid in family reunion cases. Will the Minister comment on that?

I also ask the Government to expand the scope of family reunion so that those who have been granted UK citizenship, or who were born UK citizens, can sponsor family members in the same way as those with refugee status. I further ask that they be granted legal aid in the same way.

Rather than simply turning down an application if there is not enough information, it would be helpful if the Home Office asked for more information. The Refugee Council reported to me that applicants are not being given the opportunity to submit further evidence for their application when their supporting documentation is deemed insufficient. They are simply told that their application has been turned down, which forces them into lengthy and costly appeals processes. During that time, refugees who want to come here continue to live in precarious conditions, often in a third country—for example, if they have fled Syria, they might be in a camp in a neighbouring country such as Lebanon.

That would save the Government money on the appeals process and, most importantly, it would end the practice of leaving families stuck in vulnerable and precarious situations for months on end, waiting for an appeal to be heard. I therefore call on the Government to revise their practice guidance to officials carrying out the process and to move to asking for more information, rather than simply rejecting a family if there is insufficient information.

Demonstrating a relationship involves further complications. In applications for a sponsor’s spouse, whether through marriage or civil partnership, as well as an unmarried partner, the applicant must demonstrate a “subsisting relationship” that preceded the sponsor’s application for asylum, as well as the intention to live together permanently. Again, I understand why that has come about, but I hope that the Minister accepts that relationships and marriages happen, and children are born, while refugees remain in third countries awaiting decisions on resettlement. The rules exclude such families from reuniting, because they are deemed to be post-flight families.

For unmarried and same-sex partners, applications must also demonstrate that the couple

“have been living together in a relationship akin to marriage or civil partnership which has subsisted for two years or more.”

Again, I ask the Government to recognise that resettled refugees are likely to form family relationships during the often lengthy period between their flight from their country of origin and their resettlement in the UK. I ask the Government to revise their rules accordingly.

The process should be safe. The British Red Cross report, “Not So Straightforward”, which I mentioned earlier, described how, although the initial application for family reunion can be made online, the following process requires family members wishing to join relatives here in the UK to travel to their closest visa application centre. The report highlighted examples of families risking their lives to travel to an embassy, crossing conflict zones, or of people being turned away from the embassy when they arrived, even when they had appointments. I therefore ask the Government to change the rules so that the process is safer, by allowing refugees in the UK to submit the family reunion documents, rather than forcing their family members to make journeys that are often costly and dangerous.

In conclusion, I ask the Government to consider eight requests, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give an answer to some, or at least an indication of the direction of travel. If he cannot grant my requests, will he agree to meet me in any case to discuss them further?

First, will the Government allow children recognised as refugees the right to be joined here in the UK by family members? Secondly, will the Government expand the definition of family to include a wider range of family members? Thirdly, will the Government reinstate the provision of legal aid in family reunion cases? Fourthly, will the Government expand the scope of refugee family reunion so that those who have been granted UK citizenship can sponsor family members in the same way as those with refugee status? Fifthly, will the Government grant legal aid to refugees with UK citizenship? Sixthly, will the Government revise the guidance so that officials ask for more information, rather than simply rejecting a family’s application because of insufficient information? Seventhly, will the Government recognise that resettled refugees are likely to form family relationships during the often lengthy period between flight and resettlement, and revise the rules accordingly? Eighthly, will the Government change the rules, so that the process is safer, by allowing refugees in the UK to submit the family reunion documents?

Those people have fled from war, persecution and torture. Many of them have gone through terrible journeys to reach sanctuary in the UK. Many are children. Surely it is not too much to ask that they are allowed to be reunited quickly, safely and easily with their families. After all, is that not what we would want if it happened to us?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing this important debate and, if I may say so, on making a powerful speech. With a big immigration and migration case load, I have seen examples of the problems she cites. It is a particular and random cruelty to meet a constituent who applied for refugee family reunion and, because it has taken so long, the children are now over 18. It is important to do something about that, among the many other things she raised.

Some Members are marvelling at why our approach to refugees is not as fair or humane as we would want. There is nothing to marvel at: we have had a debate on immigration in this country down the years that, sadly, has rendered the issue of refugees toxic. Much of the unfairness in the way that refugees are treated is to do with the fact that, in popular opinion, “immigrant” applies as much to a refugee or asylum seeker as to anybody else. I will return to that in closing my remarks.

One of my hon. Friends made the point about how desperate people are. We really must focus on desperation. I have been able to visit refugee camps, not just in Calais but in Lesbos and Lebanon. I cannot stress how desperate these people are. It is also worth reminding the House that thousands of those people have crossed the Sahara and seen their friends and comrades lose their lives; they have been at the mercy of criminal gangs in Libya; and, finally, they have crossed the Mediterranean, sometimes sat on rafts or ships and seeing family members die. Desperation is the key, and making it harder and more difficult for people to claim family reunion—the notion being that that will help to somehow choke off applications—completely understates the desperate situation those people are in.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am glad that my hon. Friend is highlighting so many things and broadening the scope of the debate a little bit, but I reiterate that if we make routes for family reunion safe and legal, we are cutting off the business model of the traffickers. That is surely something we all want to do.

[Ms Abbott]

I have to tell my hon. Friend that the weight of the public debate on immigration sometimes stops politicians doing the fair and rational thing on refugees. When we live in a political time in which a well-read tabloid newspaper can have on its front page a series of six pictures of lorry drivers and the headline, “Foreign lorry drivers reading their phones”, we are talking about a toxic debate, which, as she says, militates against what is fair, appropriate and reasonable in dealing with refugees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I would not accept that. As I will say later in my remarks, we do not want to create the pull factor that results in people drowning in the Mediterranean or the Aegean. That is one of the major reasons why we are maintaining this policy.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I urge the Minister to think about the fact that the so-called pull factor does not go away. These people are living in danger. They are fleeing for their lives. When we make safe and legal family reunion routes harder, we actually make it more likely that these people will end up in the hands of people traffickers and make these dangerous journeys.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Thank you, Sir Alan, for allowing me to sum up. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions and the Minister for answering. It will not surprise anyone, and surely not him, to know that I am incredibly disappointed by his response. I was not expecting promises on any of the eight points, but it is disappointing that the Minister emphasises exceptional circumstances rather than the reality of people’s lives. All of us, at our darkest times and our best of times, want our family with us.

There is no evidence of this pull factor. People come because they are desperate, not because they have read in a brochure that the UK is an easy touch. For the sake of the young men I met today who want to bring their old parents here from Syria, for the sake of the woman whose children were too old to come here by the time she was granted status, and for our conscience as public servants, I ask the Minister to reconsider and to make refugee family reunion work for refugees, to whom we owe a legal and moral obligation. I ask him if he will meet me to discuss that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered immigration rules for refugee family reunion.

Calais Children and Immigration Act

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

The national transfer scheme is working well. We have had 160 transfers. I do understand the pressure that Kent has been facing and I have met the leader of my hon. Friend’s county council to discuss that. In response to concerns from local government, we have increased the rates that we give for the children being looked after, in some cases by as much as 33%. Some councils have been very helpful in opening up their books. We believe now that the funding that we have made available is sufficient to cover their additional costs.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement that he wants to increase support for Syrian children in Syria. May I press him on that? What specifically does he intend to urge on his ministerial colleagues in other Departments? Will he be urging aid to be transported into the berm—the no man’s land between Syria and Jordan? Will he be urging the reopening of the border at Jarablus? What more will he be doing to make sure that aid gets to Syrians, who are so desperate?

[Mr Goodwill]

I was in Jordan last week, where I visited the Azraq refugee camp and met some of the people who had been transported from the berm. The Jordanian Government have concerns about some of the security aspects in the berm, particularly following the recent attack on their police forces. We continue to work with the Jordanians and others in the region to ensure that we can put people into a place of safety and, at the same time, maintain security. We have allocated £2.3 billion to assistance in the area, and I am proud of what we as a Government are doing as the second-biggest humanitarian donor in that region.

Police Officer Safety

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have seen an increase in the complexity of the crime that needs to be addressed at the same time as staggering cuts to the number of officers available to do that work, which does impact on the safety of officers as they go about their business.

Certainly in West Yorkshire—I know this is reflected in the forces across the country—the police have had to weather staggering cuts at a time when their case load is becoming increasingly complicated. I have seen the thin blue line stretched desperately thin, as the demands on officers continue to grow. The pressures of terrorism, safeguarding and cybercrime are all serious, but tackling these problems requires the appropriate resourcing. Increased awareness of exploitation in all its ugly forms, from child sexual exploitation to human trafficking, means that, quite rightly, priorities have changed to reflect that. Any officer will tell us that one of the biggest challenges putting additional pressure on the police is the changing nature of dealing with vulnerable young people and adults, particularly those with complex mental health challenges.

In the 24 hours leading up to my time on duty, Calderdale police had safely recovered nine vulnerable missing people and were involved in looking for an additional seven the following day. The weekly average for missing people in Calderdale is 43, with 416 a week going missing across the force. Some 114 of those are deemed to be high-risk individuals.

As MPs, as we have heard, we see it all the time—people with often complex vulnerabilities struggling to get the support they need in a climate where local authority budgets have been slashed and NHS funding has been squeezed. It is becoming a massive social problem, which is increasingly falling to the police to deal with, due to the inability of other agencies to take a lead or to take responsibility.

During my time with West Yorkshire police, I was able to see the difficulties stemming from having constantly to divert police crews into locating missing people, which undermines neighbourhood policing work and eats into the number of response officers available for 999 calls. We have a responsibility to keep the most vulnerable people away from harm and exploitation. Yet the police cannot be the catch-all for all problems. With reduced numbers, it is simply not sustainable and, let us be honest, nor are the police the most appropriate agency to be doing that work. We have to look at ways of empowering other agencies to take the lead. Not having the right answers to these questions means that the police are stretched as never before. As a result, lone officers—single crews—are regularly asked to attend emergencies and potentially dangerous incidents on their own, or with fewer officers than are required to manage such situations safely.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important issue to our attention. I must declare an interest, as I am proud to say that a member of my family is a serving police officer. I worry about his safety and the safety of his colleagues, given that they are so often required to go out on their own. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as a system of monitoring assaults on police officers, there should be a system of monitoring the number of occasions on which they are required to attend incidents on their own?

Calais Jungle

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I respectfully say to the hon. Lady that we have legislation and regulations in place to help the people we can help, and they are also there to prevent people thinking that they can come here when they cannot. We must have clear signs about who this country will willingly and enthusiastically protect and look after, because we have strong, proud British values, and about who we cannot. We should not do ourselves damage or in any way downgrade our values by saying that we should do more.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

My constituents have looked on with utter dismay this year at the glacial speed of transferring children with relatives in this country. What reassurances can the Home Secretary give my constituents that that will be sped up sufficiently, and that the medical needs that will inevitably have arisen among the nearly 1,000 children unaccompanied and alone in Calais will be dealt with?

[Amber Rudd]

I ask the hon. Lady to reassure her constituents that during the next eight to 10 days, we expect to see a great number of the children who qualify under the Dublin agreement come to the UK. Now that the French have made this very clear decision, there is accelerated co-operation between our countries. I hope that she and her constituents will see a marked difference over the next 10 to 14 days.