Graham Stringer
MP for Blackley and Middleton South · Labour · United Kingdom
“I strongly agree with the Government’s policy on devolution and better technical and scientific education, but all that will be for nought if we do not do something about the cost of energy. We cannot grow and compete as an economy when we have higher energy costs than our major industrial competitors.”
“I am fully supportive of Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester. It is the first time I can say that about a chief constable since the 1970s.”
“We cannot call ourselves a civilised society while Shabir Ahmed is walking the streets of this country. I agree with the thrust of the question by the hon.”
“Particle physics and astronomy have had a rough deal since the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council—PPARC—was abolished about 19 years ago.”
“In the ’80s and ’90s in this country, many police officers carried out their duties in a prejudicial and racist way. I am proud of having worked alongside many others to eliminate that racism as much as we could.”
“I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge and the Minister. I have received no information that such permission has been given. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
The complete record
Every one of 605 lines we hold for Graham Stringer, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 13.
“Will the Secretary of State clarify the position on North Manchester General Hospital? It is not mentioned in the written copy of his statement and I did not hear him mention it. When the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) announced the original building scheme, North Manchester General Hospital was a top six—if not the top—hospital. Its problems are not mid-20th century concrete; they are mid-19th century buildings that need replacing with modern buildings. I thank the Secretary of State for emailing me in the middle of his speech—it was very clever; I got the email when he was on his feet—to say that initial works and progress can start.”
“It is a delight to see the right hon. Lady in her new position. As a previous member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, at least she will know something about science. I would like to believe the story that is being told about this country being a life sciences superpower, but I am sure the right hon. Lady will have noted the comments in January of Kate Bingham, the chair of the vaccine taskforce. She said that the lessons from that taskforce had not been learned, and that this country was falling behind. She gave evidence of AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline investing outside this country because civil servants had not learned those lessons and had created a hostile environment for such companies.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. Before he moves on to another point, I want to follow the previous interventions by accepting that the development of protected areas has to have the support of local fisherpeople. That was the experience of the sites off Lyme Regis and elsewhere in the country. I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee. From time to time we and other Select Committees have called on the Government to be quicker in their implementation while consulting. Will the right hon. Gentleman, who is experienced in government, give us any insight as to why it has taken more than 10 years to develop the sites this far?”
“Order. Can the hon. Gentleman return to parliamentary language in this intervention? I am not participating in this debate at all. The hon. Gentleman referred to “you” in his last intervention, so I would be grateful if he could return to normal language.”
“Order. We have not been short of time this afternoon, and every hon. Member has had the opportunity to speak. Interventions should be brief and to the point.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a measure of the waste of public funds and the state of the housing crisis that in Kersal and other areas in my constituency—and, I dare say, in his constituency and others—small terraced houses are being turned into houses in multiple occupation for four families, with each individual family in these tiny properties claiming housing benefit? It is bad housing policy and bad public finance policy.”
“Q3. We now know from The Daily Telegraph ’s lockdown files that, during covid, at the very heart of Government science was not being followed and rational discourse had been abandoned. This had dire consequences for children’s education, mortality rates among the elderly, the economy and access to the health service. Lessons must be learned, but we cannot wait 10 years for the independent inquiry to tell us what we should do next time when the inevitable epidemic arrives. Will the Prime Minister agree to a short-term, focused inquiry that can give us recommendations, so that we do better next time?”
“Q9. Twenty years after defeat in the second world war, the first Japanese bullet train travelled the 300 miles from Tokyo to Osaka at 200 mph. Is it not a measure of the Government’s incompetence and lack of commitment to the regions and to infrastructure that 24 years after a Conservative Transport Secretary announced that High Speed 2 would happen, it is now expected that Birmingham, Manchester and London will not be linked by that time?”
“I have great respect for the Minister, but I feel sorry for him today, because he is having to defend the completely worthless words of previous Secretaries of State for Transport, and Ministers, over a decade. Let me explain to him what is really happening. The Government are showing, yet again, their complete disdain for the north of England: no trans-Pennine investment, after 13 years of this Government; cuts to phase 2b; and cuts to the rest of high-speed rail. This is not about the economy because, when one looks at Crossrail 1, the Oxford-Cambridge link and all the rest of the investment in the south-east, there are no cuts. We have seen the Treasury take control of transport, putting the money where it always likes to—into London, not the north of England—and we know where that will lead.”
“I ask hon. Members to stand if you want to speak, even if you have written in. If you have not written in, please stand. It will give you and me an idea of how to proportion the time during the debate.”
“Order. This is not a high-pressure debate and there is plenty of time, but the title is the high income child benefit charge. I am willing to relax and let the hon. Lady go a bit off-piste, but I think she is wandering quite a long way off the subject of the debate.”
“It gives me no pleasure at all to say that if the coroner service in Manchester was a school or a hospital trust it would be in special measures: the coroner service is statistically bottom of the list in England. The reason appears to be that the coroner’s mental capacity has been challenged and he is subject to accusations of sexual harassment. I make no judgment about the validity of those claims, only about the time it is taking to resolve them. Those issues have been outstanding for two years and bereaved families in Manchester need a better service. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate in Government time on how issues such as mental capacity and matters of internal discipline can be dealt with more efficiently and quickly?”
“Following judicial review, the Court came to the view that “the Parole Board didn’t do its job properly.” That is an understatement of what happened. The Parole Board did not look at all the evidence and it did not look at the court decision properly when deciding that Worboys was going to be released. He was a category A prisoner, which means the Secretary of State thought he was a threat to society, but the decision was taken that he could apply for parole.”
“If the Parole Board wants to know whether people are remorseful and have changed their view, that is an indication of callousness. As many of the victims and their families who have written to me say, the man is a threat to them and to their families and should remain behind bars. I hope that the reconsideration leads to that. Let me look at how the Parole Board operates and the decision taken by the Government immediately to change some of the process and carry out a full review, which was stimulated by the John Worboys case. There was a public outcry that he was going to be released. That case made many people think that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the Parole Board was working.”
“Without those stories, I would not have known that Andrew Barlow was likely to be released, and neither would the families of victims and the victims themselves. I have had a large number of harrowing emails from people describing how their families and personal lives have been destroyed by this man and the multiple rapes he carried out over a period of time. One of the issues in this case, which I obviously will not go into a great deal of detail about, is that Andrew Barlow was given his first life sentences over 30 years ago, and the progress on DNA analysis meant that the police went back on cold cases and found that he had committed two further rapes, so he was given two further life sentences. Amazingly, he said that he did not remember them. That factor should be taken into account in any Parole Board hearing.”
“Unusually, I want to start by thanking the Secretary of State for Justice. At the last Justice questions, I brought up the case of Andrew Longmire, also known as Andrew Barlow and previously, I think, as Andrew Seamark, a man who was given many life sentences, the last one in 2017, for rape. I asked the Secretary of State whether he would look into the matter, and he released a statement yesterday saying that he was asking the Parole Board for a reconsideration of that case. I am grateful to him for doing that. I am sure that the victims and the families of victims of Andrew Barlow who have contacted me are also grateful. I would like to thank Neal Keeling, the Manchester Evening News journalist, who has written a number of stories about this case in that paper.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of the Parole Board. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Murray. I come to this debate on the future of the Parole Board not as an expert in jurisprudence, or the theology of jurisprudence, but from my experience as a constituency MP and a member of the Science and Technology Committee. That Committee looks at, among other areas, how public bodies and Government Departments use evidence when coming to decisions. On 7 September 2022, the Science and Technology Committee had a really interesting session looking at the basis that the Parole Board had for making what are very difficult decisions, in many cases, about who to release on parole. I advise any interested person to read the transcript of that session.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. I know the trade union believes that recommendations should be made. I have read a lot of the arguments both ways—from the trade union and from the Government, as well as from many of the professional advisers. The case against what the right hon. Lady says is that when there is a recommendation, there is a temptation, for any human being, not to look at the evidence directly. The Parole Board should make its decision based on the evidence before it and its consideration of that evidence, rather than a recommendation. I also see the other side—what people who know the prisoner think, and considering what the probation officers think and recommend, which is important. It is a moot point, but I would not criticise the decision completely to take out recommendations.”
“When the Science and Technology Committee took evidence, virtually all the witnesses said that the Parole Board previously operated in private—in secret. Sometimes it made decisions just on the papers in front of it, sometimes it listened to the criminal, and sometimes statements from the victims were read out. We all accept in court cases that justice must not only be done but should be seen to be done, but that has not been the case with the arguments the Parole Board considers. There may be a case for keeping some privacy, because victims and their families may be mentioned, but when a decision is taken to release back into the community somebody who has done appalling things, the public are entitled to know what the basis for that was and what the arguments and evidence were.”
“When people learn that three of the murderers, and potentially a fourth, will be walking the streets of this country after that terrible murder, they will not think that justice has been done. I would like an assessment not just of how the Parole Board operates but of who is considered for parole. I do not think those murderers should have been. Although one cannot just use the general view that they should not be, I think there is a sense, when people such as that are walking the streets of this country, that justice has been undermined and has not been done. Those three cases have brought me, as a constituency MP and as somebody who has been watching what has happened to the Parole Board, to consider that the Parole Board should be reformed in many ways.”
“She attended the school that I had attended many years before. It was a horrific case. Four people were convicted of her murder; three have been released, and one is up for parole. In the 1960s, the four people found guilty would have been hanged. I am against capital punishment, but I want the public to have confidence in the justice system. They were guilty of a crime every bit as horrific as the moors murders—Brady and Hindley were never released. Even though three of them have been released since I made representations to the Parole Board on behalf of Suzanne Capper’s mother, which were effectively ignored, I believe that one of the murderers should not be released.”
“I ask the Minister to respond to that. Let me make a further point about the right hon. Lady’s intervention. The Science and Technology Committee was told in evidence—I think by Professor Shute; I hope I have that right—that when recommendations were made, it was rare to the point of being zero that the Parole Board went against the recommendation. That might or might not indicate that the Parole Board was not reading the evidence as it had been presented to the board. It is easy just to take the recommendations. Let me turn to third parole case that, as a constituency MP, I spent a lot of time on a few years ago. Thirty years ago today, Suzanne Capper had a funeral and was buried after having been tortured for a week and murdered. I was not an MP 30 years ago, but it was in my constituency.”
“The Government need to change the policy on the basis of the evidence and make sure that the public are secure by not allowing some people to get parole and by making sure that they are as certain as they can be that some other people pose no risk to the public.”
“In two of the cases that I have brought up, the Parole Board has failed to tell the victims and families, and that should be an impediment to somebody leaving. The probation service wrote to me and said that it is difficult to find families 20 years later. It might be difficult, but if it uses the local press and tells people and is transparent, it might be a great deal easier to find members of families who have moved and changed their telephone numbers. I am not saying that the Parole Board’s job is easy—it is difficult—but it has not been done as thoroughly and well as it could have been. People have been put at risk and potentially put at risk.”
“Alex DeLarge, the villain of the piece—a hooligan and rapist—goes through all sorts of psychological brainwashing processes to turn him into a model citizen. At the end of the film, when the establishment says, “This has worked; we have now turned Alex into a decent human being”, he turns round and winks at the camera. In a rather unpleasant way, that is a celebration of how the human spirit cannot be brainwashed and he, one guesses, is still the nasty person he was at the beginning of the film. The Parole Board has a difficult job in assessing cases. It is a necessary job, but it has gone away from the standards of evidence and from being able to tell us that it has been thorough with the procedures.”
“The previous process of rehabilitation programmes in prison, with people moving down the category list into open prisons, is less common, although it has not been abandoned. There are certainly many exceptions to that rule. We did not hear any reasons why those exceptions had been made. I have talked for quite a long time. These issues are important—I know our constituents consider them to be important—and very difficult ones. I refer people who think that the Parole Board can be objective to what I think is not a nice but a rather brilliant film by Stanley Kubrick, “A Clockwork Orange”. It has a different ending, incidentally, from that in Anthony Burgess’s book. Had he been alive, Burgess would have been at one time a constituent of mine; he was born and brought up in my constituency.”
“We heard very concerning evidence that a sex offender treatment programme increased rather than reduced the chance of reoffending. That programme should be looked at. There should be a clear definition of what is meant by public protection and how it is measured. In addition to that sex offender programme, there should be a proper assessment of all rehabilitation programmes and where they take place. I have already mentioned that Worboys was a category A prisoner when a decision was taken to consider him for parole. We were told that he was not on his own. We were also told that it was almost unheard of 25 years ago for category C prisoners to be considered for parole, let alone categories B and A. That seems to be one reason for the increase in prisoners being released.”
“Even with the better ways, there is no certainty around the risk of a prisoner reoffending. Even though the tools used at present are better, they are limited. The second point is that statistically, given a series of factors, prediction is more accurate. On a statistical basis, it can be said that, given those factors, 2% of prisoners will reoffend, but we do not know which 2%. It is important to know the risk, but none of that gives a guarantee that a person will not reoffend. It is worth considering that against the background of the large increase in the number of people being released back into the community. I have tried to stay with the factual basis of what the science says, what the science can and cannot do, and the practical mistakes made by the Parole Board.”
“Again, the Parole Board disputed that. If there are good records, these things can be verified factually; we should know what the answer is. When it comes to the process of deciding whether somebody should be released, the Parole Board has limited tools. Psychiatrists and psychologists give reports. I say as a scientist, as well as a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, that sciences such as astronomy and many other branches of physics are predictive: we know where Saturn or Mars will be in 10 months, 10 years or 100 years. Psychiatry and psychology are not predictive. The evidence before the Science and Technology Committee was that the psychiatric and psychological methods used for assessment were 20 years out of date, and that there were better ways to do it.”
“Many of these prisoners are in for life, and the statistics that are kept should be kept for the whole of their lives, until they die of natural causes or go back to prison, so that we really know what is happening. There was also a serious conflict of evidence between the Parole Board and some of the academic witnesses about how likely repeat offending was. According to the notes we had as Committee members, and what was said, there was a 25% reoffending rate for sexual offences against children who were non-family members. I have to say that the Parole Board did not accept that figure, but the academics were clear. The other dispute over the evidence was that, in looking at the three-year period, many of the academics said that there is a curve showing that offending for certain offences was more likely the longer the period.”
“We were told on the Committee that in recent times 12 people have been released who have committed murder, and there have been a number of other serious crimes. As percentages, those are very low, but obviously those crimes are an absolute catastrophe for every family who has lost somebody to a murderer, and for the person who was murdered, and an indication that something has gone seriously wrong. The Parole Board keeps for three years statistics on offences by people released on parole. When we questioned the chief executive of the Parole Board, we were told, “Well, after three years there is not a lot to learn, because Parole Board members may have changed and the process may be slightly different.” I do not accept that.”
“I agree with the right hon. Lady, and thank her for her intervention. We do not only want transparency; there needs to be an examination of the statistics. We were told on the Science and Technology Committee that the percentage of prisoners applying for parole and getting it had gradually increased over the last 25 years from 10% to 30%—that is a huge change. My suspicion is that, even though it will not be down in writing, there is tremendous pressure on the number of people in prison. There is tremendous pressure on the costs; it costs a lot of money to keep somebody in prison. Somewhere in the background, without it being stated explicitly, there is pressure to get more people out, and that—probably—means that some people are being released into the community who are a risk to it. The statistics on reoffending appear to be small.”
“I thank the Minister for his kind remarks. Will he respond to the two points that I made in the area that he is considering at the moment? One was that there seems to be an unexplained and dramatic increase in the 25% of prisoners who, as he just mentioned, are being released. The other was that category A, B and C prisoners are also being recommended for parole, which was not previously the case.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for applying for reconsideration, and I thank the Minister and right hon. and hon. Members who have participated in the debate, which I agree has been thoughtful. I hope it has brought to light some of the procedural failings of the past that need to be put right, and that there are worrying gaps in the information available, the statistics and the trend in those statistics, particularly the increase in the number of prisoners getting parole. There appears to be no obvious reason for that, and we need to understand it. Thank you for chairing the debate, Mrs Murray. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the future of the Parole Board.”
“Q8. Will the Prime Minister join his Conservative predecessors in guaranteeing that HS2 reaches Manchester, or does he still believe that investment should be taken from poorer areas in the north and given to the more affluent parts of Kent?”
“The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) made a fundamental point: if we reform the House of Lords, we effectively reform the House of Commons. My hon. Friend is suggesting direct democracy for the House of Lords. Does he agree that that would necessarily diminish the powers of the House of Commons? It would put another House in opposition to our House, which would be a bad thing.”
“My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. I would like to pursue the point. If a second Chamber were elected after the House of Commons had been elected, how would conflict between the two Houses be resolved if they had two contrary mandates? I agree that the current House of Lords is not justifiable, and I believe in its abolition, but I do not think we should set up an alternative democratic base to the House of Commons.”
“I agree with the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s arguments. Does he agree that there is a fallacy in the comparison with other countries that have two different systems and an upper House? They rely on a written constitution and the courts interpreting it. That fallacy is deep within the Brown report—somehow, constitutionally, we will limit one House when we do not have a written constitution. Is that not a nonsense?”
“One of the better ways of supporting rape victims is to ensure that when the rapist comes up for parole, the families of victims and the victim themselves are informed that parole is being considered. In the case of Andrew Barlow—the so-called “Coronation Street rapist”, who was convicted of many rapes—that has not happened. The Parole Board is now recommending that he be released. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that in such cases, the parole system works properly and effectively?”
“The Government’s statistics on infection rates and the R number were higher for Merseyside than they were for Greater Manchester, but the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), who is better occupied in the antipodes than he was in this House as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, decided that he liked the Mayor of Merseyside rather more than Andy Burnham, so Greater Manchester went into lockdown and Merseyside did not, even though the statistics suggested otherwise. More trivially but importantly for those who like a drink was the decision to close pubs at 10 pm. When we questioned the Government’s chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer on the Science and Technology Committee, they openly admitted that this was a ministerial decision with no science behind it whatever.”
“One of them has already been mentioned: children losing their education. It was clear from the very beginning of this disease that it was primarily a disease of the elderly and of people with other co-morbidities. It was clear early on that there was essentially no danger to children or anybody else from opening schools, but they were not opened quickly enough. Anyone who goes into schools and knows young children can still see the damage that was done to them both emotionally and educationally because the science was not followed. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) will remember that Greater Manchester, which had a two-tier system of lockdown, was put into lockdown before Merseyside.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), both on her speech—the vast majority of which, if not all, I agree with—and on bringing this matter before the House. It was not only during the time of covid that we did not debate covid enough; since the end of lockdown, we have not debated the consequences of the policy decisions taken during covid. I will just go back to what the Government said at the start of covid; it is always better to go back and examine whether those things actually happened or were honoured. The first thing the Government said at the start of the crisis was that they would follow the science. They did not follow the science. I can give a large number of examples where they did not follow the science, but I will just concentrate on two or three important examples.”
“The Government’s other slogan—apart from that they were following the science—was that they were going to protect the NHS. They did that in a very simple sense, because it was not overwhelmed by covid. However, since the start of 2020, there has been effectively no NHS for many people. During covid, hospitals were empty and GPs could not be seen. The fact that deaths are now about 10% higher than normal shows the impact of people not being able to access GPs or get cancer care and of elderly people suffering from dementia not getting any support or human contact.”
“However, that internal debate did not happen in Government, and the debate in the House of Commons, as the right hon. Member for Tatton said, also did not happen as it should have done. What did happen was that the Government decided on lockdown. My view is that once Italy, China and a number of countries in south-east Asia had locked down, the Government believed that lockdown was the politically safe thing to do. It was not scientifically the right thing to do; it was not the most effective way of dealing with the covid epidemic. There are two reasons for locking down. The first is to eliminate the disease very early on to stop it spreading at all. That position had passed a long time before the Government locked down. After that, the reason is to stop the NHS being overwhelmed by too many infections at once.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Most politicians are not scientists—there are very few; I do not think we even have an epidemiologist in the House—or scientifically trained. Dominic Cummings came to the Science and Technology Committee and made an extremely good point: members of the Government are not experts, so when scientific evidence was being given to them, it should have been challenged, and other scientists should have been brought in to challenge it—so-called red teams. That challenge would have helped the Government to see that there was a debate. Many scientists were frustrated because they had a different view of the evidence presented—sometimes they even had different evidence—and it should have been considered.”
“It is a statistical factor, but it gives an indication of the economic damage and the impact that lockdown has had on people’s lives.”
“Like other colleagues who have spoken, I have written to Baroness Hallett setting out my worry that she is disproportionately asking for evidence from people who naturally supported lockdown and not from businesses that have gone to the wall because of lockdown or from people who cannot access health services because we are still suffering the impacts of lockdown. I am worried about the way that that inquiry is structured. I will finish on a figure from Professor Thomas of Bristol University, who has pointed out one of the issues I raised in the debates that took place when I was asking for an economic as opposed to a health analysis: poverty kills—not just covid. Professor Thomas thinks that 2.5 million life years have been lost because of the loss of GDP so far.”
“The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 was the Act under which the Government mainly enacted the decisions that they had made. That Act allows less scrutiny in Parliament, and we lost many of our civil liberties for no good reason at all. I am still shocked that, when I left the House to go back to Manchester after the House had started sitting again, and I was going into Euston station, a police officer asked me where I was going. This is not Nazi Germany in the late 1930s; this is the United Kingdom of free people. I am not going to tell police officers where I am going. We need to look at that issue. Finally, there is a great deal of hope that Baroness Hallett’s inquiry will get to the bottom of many of the issues we are discussing all too briefly today.”
“That is a huge amount to waste, and that was just the budget. Money on personal protective equipment was wasted not only because it went to friends of the Government in pretty dodgy contracts, but because it went on pretty dodgy personal protective equipment that did not work. All that has had a disastrous effect on the Government’s finances, and therefore the economy, because it is preventing the Government from spending money where they should. I will finish on two points. I could go on for much longer, but other Members want to speak. There was no proper debate inside or outside the Government about the science. Just before Parliament went to sleep, it passed the Coronavirus Act 2020. One would have expected that Act to be used, but it was not.”
“That is the health side of it, and we are suffering from it now, with 6 million-plus people on the waiting lists for elective surgery. However, this debate is primarily about the economy. The Government say that the war in Ukraine is the prime reason why the economy and the Government’s finances are in difficulty. The right hon. Lady mentioned the IMF’s estimate that £407 billion was spent on covid. Some of that money was spent really well. Some of it was spent on developing the vaccines and on the vaccine taskforce, and that work was brilliant and very effective—I congratulate the vaccine taskforce—but much of it was wasted. The National Audit Office estimated that the bulk of the £37.5 billion spent on Test and Trace was wasted because there was no communication between the centre and the public health teams.”