Jo Stevens
MP for Cardiff East · Labour · United Kingdom
“Q3. My Cardiff East constituents are pleased that the Government are funding extra neighbourhood policing for us, but Cardiff is the only capital city in the UK that does not have specific capital city police funding.”
“8. I welcome the Secretary of State to his new role and wish him all the best. Earlier this year, my Cardiff East constituents were thrilled to hear of the agreement between this Labour Government, the Welsh Labour Government and private investors on funding to proceed with our long-awaited Cardiff Parkway station on the cross-border main…”
“As my hon. Friend knows from his constituency experience, poverty scars children’s lives and life chances. That is why we announced the child poverty strategy, including the removal of the two-child limit, which will benefit nearly 70,000 children right across Wales.”
“I have to say that it has been rather amusing to hear the new minority Plaid Cymru Welsh Government bragging about what they have done since the election. They have started a review, they have set up a steering group, they are working on a plan for another plan, they have set a target, and they are thinking about things.”
“The strategic defence review reinforces the importance of close collaboration between all Governments on defence, particularly where key levers such as skills and planning are devolved. I can confirm to my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that regenerating our high streets and town centres is vital to creating jobs and supporting local businesses, restoring pride in our communities. That is why we are investing over £300 million in Pride in Place funding for Wales, alongside over £500 million through the new local growth fund.”
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“As well as protecting the jewels in the crown, every town and city lucky enough to have a theatre that is a precious part of the local economy must keep it. We were disappointed that yesterday there was yet again no mention of freelancers, who make up 70% of the workforce in theatre alone. These are highly specialist, creative people—musicians, performers and other professionals—who have been excluded from the Treasury schemes since the start of this crisis. I am concerned that the Department does not understand the nature of the work in this sector, which is why we have continually warned against a one-size-fits-all approach. As has been the case with the Government throughout this crisis, within hours of the announcement yesterday, the package—which was described as “world-leading”—was already starting to unravel.”
“I am grateful for the granting of this urgent question. We welcome this much-needed injection of cash for the arts and culture sector, but I have to ask: what took the Government so long? We have already seen venues going under and mounting job losses, and warnings from the Opposition and across the sector were ignored for weeks on end. Urgently getting the money to where it is needed now is critical, but according to the Department’s own briefing, funds will not arrive until the autumn. Less than half the £160 million announced in March is with the organisations that need it, and we are now four months on. It is vital that this money does not just get hoovered up by the biggest venues with the loudest voices.”
“Our valuable cultural sector is starting to collapse. It will be one of the last to reopen, and its desperate pleas for Government support have been ignored. Tens of thousands of workers excluded from the job retention scheme and the self-employed scheme have been completely ignored, but we then had a tiny glimmer of hope just over two weeks ago, when the commission for cultural recovery and renewal was announced, but since that date there has been silence. There is no information about participants in the working groups, no terms of reference, nothing on what has been or is being discussed and considered to help the sector, no timescales—nothing. This is yet another example of poor communication adding to the plummeting levels of trust and confidence in the Government.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his very kind welcome. He will know that, after 10 years of the hollowing out of public services through austerity, it is many charities that are providing frontline public services to the most vulnerable people at the greatest risk during the national response to covid. Although I welcome the support that he has announced, he also knows, because the charities sector has told him, that it is nowhere near enough, representing just 20% of their usual income during a 12-week period. They, and we, want to hear an explicit commitment from him that further funding will be announced before it is too late and charities go to the wall. Vulnerable people are relying on them for support and the Government must not let them down. Can he guarantee that?”
“T2. Since the 2007 Corston review into women in the criminal justice system, more than 100 women have died in our prisons. Inquest has recently published an update to its report, “Still Dying on the Inside”, which details both the tragic and often unavoidable circumstances surrounding deaths of women in custody. What concrete action have the Government taken to resolve this crisis?”
“Mr Speaker: “Attacks on media freedom are attacks on human rights…Too often, it is governments who are the source of threats to media freedom. Governments—which are responsible for protecting human rights—instead are the ones to violate them.” Those are not my words, but words taken directly from the global pledge on media freedom that was signed last July by the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt). The Minister clearly does not understand what media freedom means; does she understand what hypocrisy means?”
“Many constituents made it clear to me that the Government’s cuts to police funding and to our Welsh Government’s budget were having an impact on local services, and that that in itself was playing a major part in all these crimes and the increasing number of them. My constituents overwhelmingly want to see more police on our streets. Neighbourhood policing is vital to them, as I know it is to many Members from across the country. My constituents want more funding for Wales, to provide services and resources to help people who are homeless or who have a drug addiction—or face both those problems. They want to see the police in their neighbourhoods and their communities, both to prevent crime and to protect citizens and property. So my message to the Government is: 136 new officers across South Wales is not enough—we really need many more.”
“I worry that even in combination they cannot tackle the crisis that we face, and the decade of cuts is making that crisis worse. We now need to look at safe drug consumption rooms. My constituents are deeply concerned about rising crime and decreasing community safety, and many of them gave me their views in a survey I ran just before the general election last year. Overall, there were three broad themes to what they were concerned about: violent crime and knife crime; drugs, both dealing and their use in front of people, including children, and the associated antisocial behaviour; and theft and burglaries.”
“As the chief constable was telling us yesterday, in the past year the force has seen an increase of 140% in reports of sexual violence; drug offences, both dealing and possession, have rocketed; and serious violence and knife crime has doubled. Drugs are at the heart of much of the crime in my constituency, as they are across the country. The police cannot possibly deal with this challenge without much greater funding, and I now believe, having taken time to come to a firm view on this, that we need to look much more urgently at the issue of the drugs epidemic and at how it is driving the rise in crime. We need to think about options and solutions that have previously been unthinkable. This is a major public health issue, a major policing issue and a major criminal justice issue, but none of those policy areas can tackle this alone.”
“During each of those 400 events, police officers have to be drawn from around the South Wales area into Cardiff and the city centre, which has a knock-on effect on the ability of the police to do their jobs, and protect people and property across the whole of South Wales. That pressure comes on top of the daily pressure of rising crime, particularly violent crime, drug offences and domestic abuse. South Wales police have 30,000 reports of domestic abuse a year, never mind the reports of all the other crimes. In July last year, they had their highest total number of calls in a month in their history.”
“As one of our four UK capital cities, Cardiff hosts more than 400 major civic, political and royal events every year and, on top of a decade of police funding cuts, my constituents are having to find money to contribute to the extra £4 million for the annual cost of policing these events—that is the equivalent of more than 60 police officers. I have repeatedly raised the anomaly of capital city funding with successive Home Office Ministers, Policing Ministers and Wales Office Ministers over the past few years. There is no valid explanation of why Cardiff is discriminated against in this way when it comes to capital city funding, so will the Minister please confirm that he will meet me and my Cardiff constituency neighbours to discuss how this unfair and unequitable situation can be resolved?”
“I now know so much more about what it is like on the other side. South Wales police are underfunded, under-resourced and overwhelmed with work. Conservative Members will point to the recently announced money to recruit officers—136 of them for the whole of south Wales—but there is no escaping the fact that this does not get near matching the officer numbers we had in 2010 before the decade of austerity and cuts. Of course I welcome the money for recruitment this year but, in the context of Cardiff growing faster than any other major UK city outside London, it is not enough. It is not enough for the whole of south Wales, and it is certainly not enough for Cardiff.”
“I have had the privilege of spending time with officers and control staff at their headquarters in Bridgend and with officers who patrol Cardiff city centre, seeing and hearing all about policing. Schemes such as “Give a Day to Policing” are excellent, and the continuing dialogue and co-operation of police in Cardiff Central helps me and my constituents a great deal. I thank the police community support officers in my neighbourhood policing team who have provided a lot of support to me and my staff in difficult circumstances, particularly over the past couple of years, to ensure our safety. I really appreciate it. All of this has broadened my knowledge and understanding of policing, which had previously centred on trying to get my clients out of police custody as quickly as possible when I was a practising criminal defence solicitor.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), and I welcome him to the House. It was an articulate and beautiful speech, and I am sure he will be a very good advocate for his constituents. Many of us in this House support prisoner rehabilitation and the ability of most offenders to turn their lives around, so it is good to have another person join us in that cause. This is a timely debate, because yesterday evening I and other Members representing constituencies across south Wales met the chief constable of South Wales police. I pay tribute to South Wales police, who epitomise the best of public service. Since being elected in 2015, I have learned a lot about the nature of the challenges South Wales police face every day in Cardiff Central and across our city.”
“Will the Minister talk to her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about the prison officers who had to be recruited after thousands were removed from the Prison Service? There are real problems with recruitment and retention, and these are very inexperienced officers. The danger is that the same could happen with this recruitment of new police officers.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I represent a neighbouring constituency. According to a recent Birmingham University study, air quality in Cardiff is the fourth worst in the UK. It is even worse than in London. Does he agree that allowing the incinerator to be built not only risks moving our city further up the league of shame, but undermines the hard work that has gone into Cardiff Council’s wide-ranging transport and clean air green paper, which is currently out for public consultation?”
“They include business rates, planning development pressures, the need to extend creative industries tax reliefs and parity of funding for grassroots venues through bodies such as the Arts Council. Talking of arts councils, yes, we need to continue to support high arts and culture, but I also want those kids who are setting up their first band in their mum’s garage to have parity of support.”
“I am proud that our Welsh Labour Government was the first Government in the UK to introduce the agent of change principle into planning guidance and to help to protect live music venues. Along with colleagues here, I co-sponsored the Bill by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) to do the same in England, and I worked with a Labour colleague to do that in Scotland too. I will briefly mention our Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on our live music inquiry, which took detailed and comprehensive evidence from across the sector and made a series of recommendations to the Government to protect and enhance the contribution of live music to our economy and society. We know what the problems are, and we have heard about them today.”
“However, since I was elected in 2015, it feels as though colleagues and I have been continuously fighting to save live music venues across the constituency, from the Womanby Street campaign to saving Guildford Crescent and Gwdihŵ and, just this week, another live music venue, 10 Feet Tall, a small but long-standing venue under threat of closure. We have built a grassroots movement in Cardiff, with Daniel Minty from Minty’s Gig Guide, the Music Venue Trust, the Musicians Union and UK Music, to value and support venues and to try to save as many as possible. Our Labour council in Cardiff has set up a music board to champion our music scene locally, nationally and internationally, and to protect and promote music at grassroots and all levels.”
“But it is not only the teachers; it is the talented volunteers who conduct our orchestras, who transport children and their instruments to eisteddfods and who fight for venue space and practice venues every day of the week. In the centre of my constituency we have independent live music venues of all types and sizes, catering for every possible taste. I promise hon. Members that if they come to Cardiff Central, on every night of the week they will be able to listen to great live music of some type or another, from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the incredible auditorium that we have at Saint David’s Hall and the noise bowl of the Principality Stadium, where I saw the Rolling Stones, to Fuel Rock Club, Clwb Ifor Bach and the Globe.”
“To ensure that that happens, we need to ensure that our school music teachers have the resources and time to inspire pupils from the earliest age to participate in music and to understand the joy and wellbeing, which have been discussed today, and the opportunities that singing or playing an instrument can bring. We know, though, that the past 10 years of Government austerity and the savage cuts to the Welsh budget have made the provision of music much more difficult. I think that is the pattern across the UK. I pay tribute to the music teachers up and down the country who do such a great job—actually, for them it is not a job but a vocation—in such difficult circumstances.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) on securing this debate and on making such a great speech. I am very grateful for the opportunity today to speak about music, particularly live music venues, which I always take the opportunity to champion because they are very precious and, as we have heard today, constantly under threat. I represent a city centre constituency, in a city known not just across the UK but around the world for its songs, its singers and its musicians. We have a very rich cultural history in Cardiff, and I am determined that we will have a rich cultural future too.”
“We are still waiting—it was not responded to in the report—for a full post-legislative memorandum for the Live Music Act 2012. Will the Minister address that in his comments?”
“I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman, who, as Chair of the Select Committee in the previous Parliament, did such a fantastic job of leading our Committee on the inquiry. I want to see music boards in every town and every city so that every child has the opportunity to fulfil their talent. Lots of questions have been asked of the Minister, but may I add two more to his list? The Government’s response to our report was very thin. I appreciate that it was right at the end of July, but will there be a statutory consultative body to promote the protection of music venues so that they can provide advice to local authorities on the implementation of the agent of change principle and see how it works in practice?”
“The Minister has several times mentioned the review he is going to undertake, which was in the Queen’s Speech. Will he tell us when that is going to happen, as he did not answer the question from my Front-Bench colleague?”
“Q12. Yesterday, it was reported that Ross England, a former staff member of the Secretary of State for Wales, had, in the words of the trial judge, single-handedly and deliberately sabotaged a rape trial by referring to the victim’s sexual history against the judge’s instructions. The trial had to be stopped and started again from scratch, and the defendant was convicted. Unbelievably, the Conservative party then selected Mr England as a Welsh Assembly candidate with the Secretary of State’s endorsement. Is the Prime Minister going to sack Mr England?”
“T5. Despite the 2016 Colombia peace agreement, murders of trade unionists, human rights defenders and community leaders continue in very large numbers. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that there will be no free trade agreement with Colombia until it fully complies with its international human rights obligations?”
“The Minister mentioned litigation very early in her speech. Would now be a good time to put on the record that the only reason that the instrument is before us today is because the Government lost litigation that was brought by the Children’s Society?”
“My hon. Friend is making a really powerful speech. What she said about looking at history and the future is so important, and the dedicated workforce and plant have been so successful because they have encouraged innovation over the years. They have been strategic and looked forward. That is what the Government now need to help the plant do with electrical steel.”
“Thank you, Mr Hanson; I will do a quick swerve. On the point about private prisons and the influence of private companies, does the hon. Gentleman agree that privatising probation—the state’s care for people on probation—was the wrong thing to do?”
“My hon. Friend is being generous with his time. He has talked about staff morale being at rock bottom, the soaring violence and the cuts to prison officer numbers. Does he agree that the prospect of having to work as a prison officer until the age of 68 is fuelling the record number of resignations from the Prison Service? We are in a cycle that we cannot get out of unless the pension age is changed and lowered.”
“T7. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), may I point out that the Association of British Insurers has made very clear its view that the small claims limit in employer and public liability cases should remain at £1,000? We know that the Government would not listen to victims of injury and would not listen to the Justice Committee, so why are they not listening to the industry body that speaks for all insurers in the United Kingdom?”
“This morning, a Cabinet source was quoted as saying that the reason the Prime Minister is removing the level playing field protections on consumer, workers’ and environmental rights is that the Government know they would “seriously restrict our ability to deregulate and do trade with other countries.” That is the real aim of the Government’s Brexit proposals, is it not—to deregulate our economy and cut back rights?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State to her position, and I look forward to her appearing before us at the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 16 October. She knows that we undertook a large inquiry into fake news and disinformation, for which the Prime Minister’s chief adviser refused to attend the Committee, and is therefore in contempt of Parliament. Would she like to bring Mr Dominic Cummings with her on 16 October?”
“3. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the implications for Government policy of the Supreme Court judgment of 24 September 2019 on the Prorogation of Parliament.”
“Eight days ago, the Attorney General told the House, in response to a question from the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), that he would consider disclosure of his legal advice on the unlawful Prorogation of Parliament. Can he now confirm that he will do the right thing and release his advice before Parliament is prorogued next week?”
“The transitional arrangements for those in receipt of the severe disability premium who have been wrongly transferred from the employment and support allowance to universal credit have left them worse off. That includes a number of my constituents who are very severely disabled. May we have an urgent statement on Monday or Tuesday next week, before Prorogation, from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about what she is doing to resolve this terrible situation?”
“I represent a university constituency and have students, academics and researchers coming to see me every week. Does the hon. Lady agree that the international standing of our universities—a global brand that has been so successful—is at risk from this isolationist, inward-looking policy of ending free movement?”
“I seek the Minister’s help. A couple of weeks ago I met a constituent whose wife has applied for settled status and has received a letter from the Home Office confirming that her application has been successful, but it also says that the letter is not proof that she has settled status. How does somebody prove that they have settled status?”
“I am pleased to hear my hon. Friend talk about migrant women. I represent a very diverse constituency and domestic abuse is a very significant problem among that community. Will she join me in paying tribute to Welsh Women’s Aid in my constituency, who provide so much help both to migrant women and women in south Wales?”
“Will the Minister give us an example of any other medical procedure or treatment that is a human right that is criminalised by the law in England and Wales?”
“Q8. Seven -year-old Talia Belaid, who is the daughter of my constituent, Gosia Szymanowicz, was abducted by her father and taken to Libya in 2012. The father returned here without Talia, and she remains in Libya with his mother. He was jailed but released on licence in 2017, and he has now absconded and is not reporting to the Home Office. All Gosia’s legal avenues have been exhausted and she is really desperate. Will the Prime Minister please use every channel available during her final weeks in office to secure Talia’s return to her mother in the UK?”
“These people are concentrated in urban areas that represent a tiny proportion of Colombia’s landmass. The Colombian state, right-wing paramilitaries and guerrillas waged a decades-long war that none could, or would, ever win. When the peace negotiations began in 2012 and were overseen by the UN, there was a glimmer of hope. As someone who has campaigned on behalf of trade unionists, human rights defenders and social leaders for well over a decade, I felt that there might finally be a small chance of the Colombian people living in safety in the future.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Colombia peace process. It is a pleasure to see you again in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. Colombia has suffered one of the longest civil wars in history—more than 50 years of armed conflict, with thousands of people tortured, disappeared and slaughtered, and millions displaced. It remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist, and human rights defenders and social leaders have been, and still are being, murdered with impunity. The armed conflict was a result of a deep-rooted social and political conflict. Despite the country’s huge natural wealth, many Colombians live in poverty. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few people who wield enormous political power. They also own large sections of the media.”
“A bilateral ceasefire took place; then there was disarmament by FARC, which became a legitimate, legal political party. The peace agreement was put to a vote of the Colombian people. One of the most outspoken critics of the deal was former President Álvaro Uribe, who had been in power between 2002 and 2010, when some of the worst atrocities against trade unionists and human rights defenders were committed by the state and state-backed right-wing paramilitaries.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The spike and increase in the number of civilians being murdered, and the lack of any prosecutions or convictions, is one of the reasons why the peace process implementation is so fragile at the moment. No one doubts the challenging circumstances in which those negotiations took place. Through work by the non-governmental organisation Justice for Colombia, politicians from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland helped share their knowledge and experience of the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday agreement with the Colombian Government and FARC, so that they could benefit from the lessons that had been learnt. After four years of negotiation, the Colombian Government and FARC announced the final peace agreement in August 2016.”
“All sections of the peace agreement are crucial, but I want to focus a few remarks on three of them—ending the conflict, political participation and the role of the JEP. One third of the peace agreement’s 578 stipulations have not even begun to be implemented, and an estimated 1,700 former guerrillas have returned to armed struggle. The arrival of President Duque in London yesterday is very timely. I know the Minister is meeting the President later today, so I hope Opposition Members have questions for the Minister and issues that he can raise with President Duque when he sees him. I now turn to the armed conflict. Colombian human rights organisations estimate that 591 social leaders have been assassinated since the signing of the agreement, and 236 of those assassinations have happened in the 10 months since the President took office.”
“Since his election, he has systematically attempted to undermine the JEP, despite its being recognised by the international community and, most importantly, by the victims of the conflict as a way to provide truth, justice and reconciliation for victims on all sides and an end to the impunity that has operated for decades. That has resulted in a significant stalling of the process, which is threatening the very existence of the peace agreement. After the United States, we are the second-largest investor in Colombia. As a penholder to the peace agreement, we play a particular role in the process. The UN Security Council warned on 16 April that the peace process “stands at a critical juncture”.”
“The UN special political verification mission would take an oversight role, and a commission would be set up to follow up the implementation process. It would be known by its Spanish abbreviation, CSIVI, and consist of three senior Government members and three senior FARC members. At first, the peace agreement implementation seemed to be working. There was a significant drop in violence in 2017, Colombia’s safest year since 1975. However, there was a very significant change in direction in 2018 with the election of Iván Duque as the new President. He is a protégé of Uribe, and ran on a platform of dismantling parts of the agreement, particularly in relation to political participation by FARC and the work of the JEP.”
“The crop substitution programme with the Government and FARC will help farmers to stop growing coca and instead grow legal crops in order to make a living and grow their local economies. The fifth area was justice for victims of the conflict, which the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) touched on. A transitional justice system called the JEP would be established. Special tribunals would adjudicate war crimes and other atrocities committed by Government security forces, paramilitaries and guerrillas, with reduced sentences for people who came forward. The emphasis of the HEP would be on restorative justice and ensuring the rights of victims. The sixth and final area was the implementation and verification of the peace agreement, which is a really critical part.”