This Week in Westminster - July 18th -20th

This was a highly unusual last week of term for the House of Commons with the house being recalled to sit on Wednesday. Along with high profile select committee hearings, custard pies and a raft of announcements by the Coalition Government, the three days amounted to some of the busiest and fraught of the Parliamentary year so far. Clearly, much of the focus was on select committees, but there was plenty going on elsewhere. I was fortunate to be called to speak on three occasions on Monday and also took part in the Backbench debate on Tuesday afternoon. This is a new innovation that allows backbenchers to make a speech on a topic of their choice. DEFRA announced a cull of badgers, there was an amusing slip of the tongue in Foreign Office questions and Mrs. Bone made her final appearance of the term.

• Select Committees – both the Home Affairs and Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearings were widely covered by the media. The full transcripts of the proceedings can be viewed on the Committees’ pages:

Culture, Media and Sport - http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/culture-media-and-sport-committee/

Home Affairs - http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/

• Impact of reassessments

Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): Incapacity benefit reassessments have been causing great distress, and even suicides, among those with mental health problems. Some 95% of those polled said that they did not believe that they could trust the assessment to take their mental health condition into account. What changes will be made to ensure that people with mental health problems will have them taken into account in the work capacity assessment?

Chris Grayling: As the hon. Lady will be aware, that was one of the key questions that we put to Professor Malcolm Harrington last year. As a result of his recommendations we have introduced a number of mental and cognitive champions among the providers in the assessment network. We are also considering a range of further recommendations from mental health charities, and we have instructed our decision makers to take careful account of evidence of mental health problems when reaching their decisions.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110718/debtext/110718-0001.htm#1107184000537

• Drains

Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): The stench that arises from the rotting drains underneath this Chamber seems to be an apt background to a lot of the debate that we have had today. Over the weekend, we had the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, ahead of her giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday. I appreciate that the Home Secretary says that it is not up to her to say who is arrested or when, but is it not time that we clarified the role of police investigations and investigations conducted by Select Committees for those investigations being conducted in both places?

Mrs May: I think the hon. Lady will find that Select Committees are very clear about the role and the powers that they have. What is important is that police investigations that could lead to criminal charges and prosecution are not prejudiced in any way by other investigations that take place. That is why we are being very careful in relation to the inquiry that is being led by Lord Justice Leveson. The hon. Lady also refers to needing to clear out the drains. Obviously the drains have not been cleared out for a number of years, but this Government are doing it.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110718/debtext/110718-0002.htm#1107184000676

• Reserve Forces Review – under the guise of a statement to the House about proposals to reform the role and use of reserve forces, Liam Fox used the opportunity to make lots of other defence related announcements. Apparently storing them up for a rainy day... These included a further cut of 17,000 in the army and the announcement that the technical college that had been destined for St. Athan is now going to RAF Lyneham. While St. Athan gets a new role, possibly. A large IF appears to hang over any future role.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox): We will retain St Athan at its current size for now, but intend to increase its usage to take full advantage of the excellent facilities there. RAF Marham will remain as a base for Tornado GR4. The defence technical training programme will move to Lyneham, guaranteeing its future. More details of these and other estate-related decisions are in the written statement I have laid today. The planning work, including the investment required to adapt sites, will now get under way, based on this strategic direction. It will involve consultations with local communities as appropriate and other statutory obligations that we will need to fulfil.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110718/debtext/110718-0002.htm#11071817000001

• Backbench debate

Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): In 2010 more than 234,000 people were claiming employment support allowance for a mental or behavioural disorder, which is 40% of the total and by far the biggest single group. The figures are similar for other sickness benefits. The Department for Work and Pensions is now in the process of migrating all sickness benefit claimants to employment support allowance, which includes reassessing their fitness to work through a work capacity assessment, but there are huge doubts about the fitness of this work capacity assessment for people with mental or behavioural disorders. Over 40% of people who lost their benefit won again at appeal—that is, over 20,000 in 16 months, which is far more than for any other refused benefit. After waiting for many months they had their benefits reinstated, but they should not have had to suffer that wait. This number does not include the people who had a decision was reversed at an earlier stage or who gave up their struggle to make a claim.

This is a benefit claim system that is not fit for purpose. I have heard numerous examples of people with very serious and apparent mental illness having been found to be “fit for work” because they do not happen to meet the descriptors used as part of the work capability assessment. I do not need to remind the House that many of these people are highly vulnerable. The heads of a number of leading mental health charities and the Royal College of Psychiatrists wrote to The Guardian following a poll which showed that over half of those surveyed reported suicidal thoughts as a result of the prospect of a work capability assessment, while 95% said that they did not think they would be believed at their assessment.

In recognition of this failure of the work capability assessment procedure for people with a mental illness, the Government are enacting Professor Harrington's recommendation for mental health “champions” in every assessment centre. Professor Harrington is also, at the request of the Government, working with leading mental health charities to review the mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors used in the work capability assessment. Despite this, not all assessment centres yet have an assigned mental function champion, and where they do, they have not had the time to bed in and change practice in their centres.

The mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors are recognised by the Government to be in need of review. In the meantime, tens of thousands of vulnerable people are being forced to undergo an assessment procedure that the Government acknowledge is failing them. I call on the Government to suspend all reassessments of those with a mental or behavioural illness until such time as Professor Harrington’s recommendations are fully implemented. The descriptors of mental, intellectual and cognitive impairment and the mental function champions need time to change working practices within the Department for Work and Pensions. We cannot allow hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people to undergo a process that we know to be flawed, risks suicide, causes huge distress, and is denying an unacceptably high proportion of benefits to those who are, in fact, entitled to them.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110719/debtext/110719-0004.htm#110719104000330

• Badger cull

One of the many announcements made in the last few days of Parliament that has slipped under the radar as a result of other events was the decision by DEFRA to allow a cull of badgers.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab): I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement.
The Opposition know that bovine TB is a major animal health problem. We understand the desperation of farmers affected by this devastating disease. That is why, in government, Labour set up the randomised badger culling trial. It cost £50 million and remains the most extensive scientific study over a 10-year period on the effects of culling badgers, protecting cattle and reducing bovine TB. The report concluded that

“the reductions in cattle TB incidence achieved by repeated badger culling were not sustained in the long term after culling ended and did not offset the financial costs of culling. These results…suggest that badger culling is unlikely to contribute effectively to the control of cattle TB in Britain.”

Labour’s approach in government was led by that science, and we continue to be led by it. The Secretary of State talks of a badger vaccine. However, when she became Secretary of State, she cancelled five of Labour’s six trials into a vaccine for badger TB. Why did she not give those vaccine trials a chance to work?

The Government’s announcement today is led by short-term political calculation. These pilots will not change the science. The Secretary of State’s solution of the free shooting of badgers has never been tested. It is therefore not supported by the science. There is strong evidence that localised culling, which she proposes, significantly increases the TB risk in neighbouring herds, as badgers move out of cull areas and spread the disease, particularly in the first two years. Will she tell the House what steps she is taking to ensure that farmers outside cull areas and non-participating farmers inside cull areas are protected from bovine TB? The scientists who met at DEFRA on 4 April 2011 stated that vaccination, which she proposes, is unlikely to be effective at reducing the risk of infection. Her impact assessment states:

“For farmers in cull areas, monetised costs exceed expected monetised benefits.”
So the costs to farmers will exceed the benefits. That is hardly a compelling case to sign up for a DIY cull.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110719/debtext/110719-0002.htm#11071988000004

• The final word – the Prime Minister made a statement and took questions on the floor of the House of Commons about the phone hacking scandal, his employment of Andy Coulson and the fall out from it. The debate is a long one, but Mrs. Bone managed to make one final appearance.

Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): The Prime Minister has rightly published the names of people who have stayed overnight at Chequers, which includes Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, but also other journalists. Given what the Prime Minister said about the Government getting too close to the media, Mrs Bone was wondering this morning whether those visits would stop, which would open up a number of weekends when I understand she is free.

The Prime Minister: As long as Mrs Bone does not insist on a slumber party, that is a very good idea.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110720/debtext/110720-0001.htm#110720110001251