Summer Adjournment — House of Commons, 2018-07-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) what an amazing privilege it is to follow a speech of that quality—not only that, but what shone through was her absolute dignity. She will be an absolutely amazing addition to our Parliament and to the government of this country. Through what she said, it is clear that she will be an advocate for her local people on poverty, inequality and tackling health issues; but above all, she will be a national advocate for the things that we in the Labour party stand for—we stand up against prejudice and discrimination and show what determination can achieve. It is an amazing privilege and honour to follow my hon. Friend, and I wish her all the luck in the future I was moved to speak on two issues in respect of the amazing constituency of Gedling in Nottinghamshire that I represent. I am sick and tired of people coming to see me at my surgeries who have mental health problems but are being refused personal independence payments. I say to the Minister, who will answer a plethora of different things that people raise, that the Government need to get a grip. This is not a party political issue. I talk to Government Members, who have the same problems, and even Ministers say, "This is astonishing. We have to get it sorted out." Well, the Minister should tell the Department for Work and Pensions to sort it out, because numerous people who have serious difficulties cannot access a benefit on which they depend. It is not good enough, and the Government need to take issue with it. I told numerous people that I would raise that, and I have done so I want to use this debate to highlight something that was said by a senior Conservative councillor in Nottinghamshire, and I think that it will shock all Members across the House. Councillor Phillip Owen, chair of the children and young people’s committee of Nottinghamshire County Council, said that the police priorities of modern slavery, domestic violence and hate crime were only priorities because they are "politically correct" and "fashionable". We think battles have been won—on sexism, discrimination, prejudice and intolerance —and then we hear such statements from a senior councillor about things that have a massive impact We heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). The police recorded 1.1 million crimes in 2016 that related to domestic abuse, and 1.9 million people aged between 19 and 65 were the victims of domestic abuse. If that should not be a police priority, I do not know what should be. The fact is that large numbers of people are still not reporting these crimes. The majority of victims are women, and large numbers of people are still not prosecuted for these crimes, because the victims will not give evidence to ensure that the perpetrator is prosecuted. That should be our priority, not some prejudiced statement about these matters that deserves to come from the ark. Of course it should be a police priority; of course it should be looked into. This country has suffered down the centuries because such crimes have been dismissed and kept behind closed doors What of modern slavery? This House, this country and, to be fair, this Prime Minister—I have said it to her—led the way with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It needs to be better implemented, but we led the way, and the Prime Minister was key to it, yet we are told by this senior Conservative councillor that it should not be a police priority. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority has pointed to a 47% increase between 2016 and 2017 in the number of potential victims of forced labour, while the Global Slavery Index announced just a couple of days ago that 136,000 people in this country were potentially victims of modern slavery on any one day, yet we are told it is not a police priority. I say to Councillor Owen and anybody else who has doubts that tackling modern slavery and forced labour must be a priority for the police of our country, and I am proud that it is. We thought these two issues had ended—we thought we had won these battles—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East said in her brilliant maiden speech, prejudice and discrimination are still there to be tackled. Likewise, the police still need to tackle the scourges of modern slavery and domestic violence, and I am proud that they do.