Bambos Charalambous MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Oct 2024 · Driving Test Waiting Times · Hansard source

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  6. What steps she is taking to reduce driving test waiting times.

• 30 Jul 2024 · Gaza: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

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  Despite the designation of Al-Mawasi as a humanitarian safe zone, there have been multiple Israeli air strikes which have killed dozens of civilians and wounded many more, and have resulted in the bombing of a compound belonging to the charities Medical Aid for Palestinians and the International Rescue Committee. What discussions has the Minister had with her Israeli counterpart about stopping any further attacks on Al-Mawasi, where displaced Gazans were ordered to go by the Israel Defence Forces for their own safety?

• 30 Jul 2024 · Gaza: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

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  15. What steps he is taking to help improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Criminal Law · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your election and welcome you to your place as Deputy Speaker. I welcome this motion from my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, who is taking the only realistic action open to her to deal with the critical issue of prison capacity, with our prisons projected to be overflowing by September. This is another failure by the former Conservative Government, the result of their continuously kicking the can down the road, rather than dealing with the issues at hand. The current situation cannot come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the developments in criminal justice over the past 14 years. Prior to the election being called, I had the pleasure of serving for a second time on the Justice Committee, and on 22 May this year, in one of his last statements as Chair of the Committee, Sir Bob Neill KC said that “Prisons are simply running out of space. My committee has long since warned of the dangers of successive Governments ignoring the rise in jail numbers, set against a workforce recruitment and retention crisis and a crumbling Victorian prison estate. Ministers and society must be prepared to invest in prison capacity and proper rehabilitation programmes as the current situation is unsustainable”. That is the Conservative former Chair of the Justice Committee speaking. The warning signs were there a long time ago, but the failure to invest has meant that we are now reaping this bitter harvest. I welcome the prison building programme and the renewal programme mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, but in addition to the measures proposed in this motion, I would like to suggest some further measures that may reduce the prison population over a longer term. The first measure is addressing court delays. In its report “Reducing the backlog in the Crown Court”, published in May this year, the National Audit Office found that at the end of December 2023, the outstanding Crown court caseload was 65,573, and 18,000 of those cases had been outstanding for a year or more. It also found that it took an average of 683 days from offence to completion of a case in the Crown court, and that a staggering 16,005 people were on remand as of the end of December 2023. One third were awaiting sentencing, and the remaining two thirds were awaiting trial. The remand population is the highest it has been in over 50 years. Those figures are truly shocking, and the issue of remand prisoners needs to be addressed urgently. The maxim that justice delayed is justice denied is certainly apt, and we should remember that delays in cases going to trial also have adverse impacts on the victims and witnesses. One of the causes of the delay is a shortage of criminal barristers and duty solicitors, whose numbers have been in decline since 2018. In part, that has been due to a serious under-investment in our criminal justice system over the past two decades. I hope that we will soon see the investment we need in the criminal justice system from this Government. On court dates and the listing of trials, I very much hope that His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service gets smarter in how it uses time and space for court hearings. The second point I wish to make is about reoffending, an issue that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has touched on. According the Ministry of Justice’s own figures from the last quarter for which stats are available, 33.4% of adults released from custody will go on to reoffend. That figure is way too high. As reoffending is so high, it should come as no surprise that a large number of people are being remanded for non-violent offences due to their repeat offending. Many of those repeat offenders will have underlying vulnerabilities, such as drug abuse, homelessness and mental health issues, which will not have been properly addressed. Unless there is a co-ordinated approach to tackling the causes of reoffending, we will see this endless revolving-door cycle in our criminal justice system that gives courts no option but to remand repeat offenders into custody. I know that my right hon. Friend is serious about taking action to address those issues, and I ask her to co-ordinate work with other Departments to help stop reoffending. The final point I wish to focus on is imprisonment for public protection prisoners, who account for approximately 3,000 of the prisoners in our prisons. In its report on IPP prisoners, the Justice Committee said that “Our primary recommendation is that the Government brings forward legislation to enable a resentencing exercise in relation to all IPP sentenced individuals…This is the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence and its subsequent administration, and to restore proportionality to the original sentences that were given.” On previous occasions, I have made the point that dealing with IPP prisoners who have spent more time in prison than they should have would not only help reduce the prison population, but would right a wrong. In conclusion, I very much welcome this motion as a short-term measure to deal with the overcrowding in our prisons. I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to an annual prison capacity statement, which will allow us to see what effect this measure and other measures have on the prison population. In addition to building more prisons, we need an investment in our criminal justice system, and greater recruitment and retention of barristers, solicitors, prison officers and probation officers. I was delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend has committed to recruiting 1,000 more probation officers. That will certainly help to address issues that arise among people who are on licence after serving half of their sentence. We need to clear the backlog of cases in the Crown court to allow remand prisoners to be dealt with sooner, and we also need to address the root causes of both offending and reoffending. Finally, we need to deal with IPP prisoners, and see what can be done to release those who are over tariff. I hope that the motion will pass today; it is a very good start to tackling the Gordian knot that we face. Still more work needs to be done, but I have every confidence that the Lord Chancellor and her team will deliver.

• 19 Jul 2024 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  In her report, Baroness Hallett said: “The UK government’s…pandemic strategy, from 2011, was outdated and lacked adaptability. It was virtually abandoned on its first encounter with the pandemic.” Can my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that any future strategy will be robust and will be updated regularly?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) in her rightful place as Deputy Prime Minister. It is also a pleasure to speak in this first King’s Speech under a focused and mission-led Labour Government. I wish to record my thanks to the constituents of Southgate and Wood Green for putting their faith in me to represent them as the first Member of Parliament for this newly configured constituency. The legislative programme in the King’s Speech shows that the Government are determined to get cracking with the legislation needed for a long-term national renewal, and nowhere more so than in housing. The shortage of both private and social housing is a huge problem across the country. Families and children often wait for years in temporary accommodation that may no longer be suitable, and many young people are unable to afford a deposit on a new home whose price has far outstripped earnings in recent years. They are forced either to stay at home with their parents, or to live in precarious shared accommodation. Another scandal is the high level of no-fault evictions, which is adding to the pressures on local authorities to house homeless people. It is for those reasons that I welcome the proposed renters reform Bill, which will abolish section 21 no-fault evictions and strengthen tenants’ protections and rights to challenge rent increases, among other things. I also welcome the proposed planning and infrastructure Bill, as we need to get on with house building so that people do not have their lives put on hold because of unaffordability. We need to build more houses in the right places, and ensure that there is no adverse impact on local services and that the design and specification are to a high standard. The types of houses built should conform with the needs of the local community, with more family-sized houses needed urgently. We also need more council houses. I applaud the efforts of Enfield and Haringey councils in building more council houses in my constituency, but more needs to be done. I encourage the Government to support councils in any way they can so that more council houses are built. To build more houses, we need a highly skilled local workforce, which is why I welcome the measures in the proposed Skills England Bill, which will identify national and local skills needs and ensure that they are being met. I turn now to other elements of the King’s Speech. We all need to ensure that our communities are safe, which is why I welcome the measures in the proposed crime and policing Bill, which will give the police and law enforcement new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour and retail crime, focusing on attacks on shop workers and low-level shoplifting. Small and medium-sized local businesses, which are the lifeblood of our local high streets, are now seriously impacted by even low-level crime, so we need to make sure that they are supported and that law enforcement takes seriously all reported retail crime. Knife crime has a terrible, devastating effect on the lives of victims’ families and friends, and I find it shocking and sad that the perpetrators are often the same age as the victims. That is why I am pleased to see that tougher sanctions will be introduced to ban ninja swords and other lethal blades, while tackling the gangs who exploit children for criminal purposes. It is also good to see that there will be support for teenagers at risk of being drawn into crime. On a personal level, I am delighted to see that the tobacco and vapes Bill will be reintroduced in this Parliament. I had the privilege of serving on the Bill Committee earlier this year, and there is cross-party support and unity on progressively banning the sale of tobacco products forever. It was a joy to see the UK become a world leader in this area of public health, and I put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) and Dame Andrea Leadsom for the excellent bipartisan work that they did to progress the Bill before it fell as a result of the general election being called. I sincerely hope that it progresses to Royal Assent this time. The final Bill I wish to comment on is the draft equality (race and disability) Bill, which will enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people, and introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger companies. I sincerely hope that where there is any disparity, employers take the appropriate action to address their failings and close the gap. The King’s Speech is an exciting beginning for the Labour Government, who are keen to make a real difference to people’s lives, including those of my constituents in Southgate and Wood Green. The starting gun for national renewal has been fired, and we have got off to a flying start. I hope that the pace of change continues and that we see positive, long-lasting benefits in housing, community safety, health and equality for all.

• 18 Jul 2024 · Prison Capacity · Hansard source

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  I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place on the Government Front Bench. The imprisonment for public protection prison population is more than 2,700; 99% of those people are over tariff, and more than 700 prisoners are now 10 years over their original tariff. Can she accelerate the Ministry of Justice’s refreshed IPP action plan to help to reduce the prison population and right that wrong?