Vera Baird DBE KC

Chair Criminal Cases Review Commission. Member Women’s Justice Bd.
Ex Victims’ Commissioner, Solicitor Gen & PCC. Fellow St Hilda’s Oxford. Writer. Labour Party

Tag: yvette cooper

  • The unacceptable situation at Yarl’s Wood calls for an independent inquiry.

     

    It is right that Labour has committed to hold an inquiry.

     

     

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    Photo: Getty:  A security guard at the gates of Yarl\’s Wood.

    Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is right to have pledged the next Labour government to hold an inquiry into allegations about events at Yarl\’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. The allegations of sexual assault by male staff against the all-female detainees are very serious and there are strong inconsistencies between the responses of the private security firm Serco who run the facility and the Home Office regarding what has actually happened there.

    What is certain is that the Home Office has recently reappointed Serco to operate, maintain and manage the centre for eight more years – a contract worth more than £70m. It is unacceptable that the continued holding of pregnant women, trafficking victims and people who may have been tortured continues indefinitely. An inquiry should have been held by the government into the situation before any contract was awarded. This is why the shadow home secretary has made a clear statement on how Labour will address these issues.

    In the spring of this year, Rashida Manjoo the UN Special Rapporteur, was on a fact-finding mission into violence against women and girls. She was turned away at the gates of Yarl’s Wood. As she rightly said at the time: “If there was nothing to hide, I should have been given access.”

    What goes on within the facility should be transparent and the scraps of information about reported incidents there are a cause for great concern.

    These include:

    •          Claims that a detainee who died last March had initially been denied medical assistance. There were further allegations that staff at the centre refused NHS offers to help other women distressed by the death.
       
    •          The upholding in January 2011 by the High Court of claims by two families that they had been unlawfully detained.  The Judge at the time noted that “no one can seriously dispute that detention is capable of causing significant and in some instances long lasting harm to children.”
       
    •          A hunger strike in 2010 when more than 50 women at the centre refused food in protest at their indefinite detention. Some of these women also claimed they had experienced racial and sexual abuse.
       
    •          Allegations in 2013 that a photo suite within the facility’s Avocet accommodation wing had become a clandestine venue for sexual relations between officials and women residents. One detainee also claimed that many younger new female arrivals were targeted by male staff almost as soon as they arrived.
       
    •          Staff were reportedly sacked for engaging in sexual activity with a detainee, while another staff member was allegedly sacked for not reporting the matter after they were informed about what had occurred.
       

    The government had a responsibility to address and investigate these issues before awarding Serco a contract worth £70m.

    Furthermore, we need to know why Serco and the Home Office differ so markedly on reports of the number of abuse cases which have occurred. Figures from Serco show that sexual contact complaints are almost eight times higher than the Home Office admitted in a freedom of information response dated 21 November. Serco also said it has received 31 complaints while the Home Office has indicated it is only aware of four.

    The Home Office says that only one case has been substantiated, yet Serco says it has sacked 10 staff members over alleged inappropriate behaviour.

    These are serious discrepancies and this presses the case for an open and transparent investigation to clarify the extent of alleged sexual misconduct inside Yarl\’s Wood.

    I\’m pleased the shadow home secretary has committed to finding out the truth. She has also pledged to use some of the additional 1,000 staff that she recently announced Labour would introduce to speed up the backlog of asylum claims which has risen by 70 per cent in the last year.

    It is not acceptable that applicants are spending years in detention, wasting money and their own lives.

    It is very difficult to understand why the Home Secretary has rewarded this contract to Serco. Theresa May had the opportunity to give Yarl’s Wood the fresh start that it needs, but failed to take it. It is ironic that a firm that overcharged the Justice Secretary by nearly £70m has been awarded a similar sized contract by his colleague.

    The women who arrive at Yarl’s Wood deserve to be treated with the respect and courtesy that would be afforded to anybody else, not to be fearful of possible intimidation or sexual abuse. 

    Action is needed at Yarl’s Wood. I’m sorry that the women currently there will have to wait for a Labour government in May for this to happen. The coalition has let them down, but Labour has now pledged that it won’t.

  • Leading Labour’s commitment to women at the next General Election – Northumbria’s Police & Crime Commissioner

    Vera Baird QC, Police & Crime Commissioner for Northumbria, will today release the findings of a report which will influence the next Labour Government’s agenda on delivering for women across the north east and United Kingdom.

    In 2011 the Labour Party asked Vera Baird to lead ‘Everywoman Safe Everywhere’ Commission and come up with recommendations for the next Labour Government. An interim report was produced in 2012 with the final report being published today (Wednesday, 10 December, 2014).

    The research covered many areas affecting women – from legal aid to services for victims of domestic violence.

    The report asks the next Labour Government to do more than just reverse the last five years of decline by putting tackling violence against women and girls at the heart of our modern welfare state.

    It proposes a statutory obligation on Government and local authorities to develop integrated domestic and sexual violence strategies and the establishment of a new Commissioner to tackle violence against women and girls, to drive their implementation and bring national standards of service to all.

    The report encourages reforming how services are commissioned, refocusing on the practical need for specialist women-centred services with a track record of success.

    Vera Baird said: “I was delighted to be asked by Yvette Cooper to lead this Commission, as it’s allowed me to put the changes we’ve implemented here in Northumbria on a national platform.

    “The work happening in our region can be used as a model of good practice by the next Labour Government. The main job for Ed Miliband and his team is to develop an integrated domestic and sexual violence strategy. If we get it right from day one of the next Labour Government we will change lives for a generation.”

    Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has already accepted one of the report’s recommendations for a new national refuge fund, to provide the safe places that women and children need and national Rape Support Funding on a three-year cycle, to give rape crisis centres real security.

    Vera Baird added: “The Shadow Home Secretary’s actions show how Labour take women’s issues seriously and we are committed to providing safe places for women and girls when they need it most.

    “The Commission’s recommendations are about fixing this issue, in all its myriad forms, including forced marriage, trafficking, slavery, harassment, honour crimes, FGM and prostitution; putting them at the heart of the modern public services that Ed Miliband’s Premiership will deliver. Next we should work on a strategy with the Department of Education, to prevent violence against women and girls in coming generations so we can also drive a lasting legacy of culture change.”

  • Labour Women\’s Safety Conference

    National plans making domestic and sexual violence a priority

    Labour plans which would revolutionise the way sexual crimes are handled have been welcomed by Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird.

    The Commissioner, who has made domestic and sexual violence a priority in her Police and Crime Plan, was at Labour’s Women’s Safety Conference.

    Delegates were discussing ways of improving justice for domestic and sex crimes, some of which have become more prevalent through the growth of the worldwide web, and improving women’s safety.

    Key note speaker Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the insults levelled at teenage girls on a daily basis in schools could be easy to dismiss but were getting worse.

    And it isn’t just abuse and harassment of girls and young women which is growing but violence in young relationships.

    The British Crime Survey has shown 16-19-year-old girls being most at risk of domestic violence, with more than 10% experiencing violence or abuse in a relationship.

    ‘Revenge porn’, where an ex posts a half-naked photo or stalks the person online, and ‘sexting’, where young girls send ‘sexy and pouting’ pictures of themselves on their mobile phones, is also growing.

    Yet delegates heard that while the number of reported domestic violence and rape crimes has gone up, the number of prosecutions have fallen since 2010.

    Additionally legal aid reforms have made it difficult for women to afford the legal costs.

    Vera Baird said: “It’s vital that changes are made not only in attitudes but our culture and that any woman or young girl suffering from any kind of abuse or violence comes forward to seek help.

    “We all have a duty to stand up against these perpetrators and bring an end to their control and I fully support this call for action to prevent violence and change attitudes.

    “I whole-heartedly agree that we cannot ignore online access to extreme and violent porn, which is changing young people’s perceptions of sex, and that education of young people to have a zero tolerance of violence in relationships is a key factor.”

    The Commissioner said changes had already been made by Northumbria Police to make it easier for victims to come forward and that officers did all they can to make the reporting of these crimes as straightforward as possible, listening to all victims and taking action to help them.

    Northumbria, together with neighbouring forces Durham and Cleveland, has introduced a new power – Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPOs) -allowing police to take immediate action to ban a suspected perpetrator from the victim’s address for 48 hours.

    “This gives any victim much needed breathing space providing them with the reassurance that they are safe and allowing them time to consider their options and get access to support services without pressure from the perpetrator,” Vera Baird said.

    At the conference delegates called for a new law to tackle violence against women and Labour will be gathering information ready for the election.

    This will reform the criminal justice system, bring in new national standards for policing and victim support and provide stronger prevention too.

    “Violence in any relationship should never be tolerated and ending violence against women and girls is a personal priority for me.

    “Any and every measure which can be made available to the police and other organisations which will help victims of what is sometimes a very hidden crime must be welcomed.”

  • In response: Yvette Cooper’s speech to the Fabian Conference (28th June 2014)

    Yvette Cooper once again showed us why she will be an effective Home Secretary in 45 weeks time.

    Speaking at the Fabians Society Conference she delivered a speech which was compassionate, caring and reinforced why we need a Labour Government with Ed Miliband and Yvette leading from the front for a fairer country that speaks for all.

    As a party we are right to oppose the bedroom tax, it hurts too many people – it is not right that people have to make the choice of whether to feed themselves or not because they can\’t afford the ever increasing heating bills and bedroom tax. It is only our party that is standing up and saying the bedroom tax is wrong.

    As Yvette states, Ed Miliband has kept Labour united, focused on what we should be tackling and building a vision for Britain. Ed has ensured that MPs, Councillors, MEPs, and latterly, PCCs are working in communities in every neighbourhood delivering for local people – we are united together in doing all we can to win the General Election. We have the determination, we have the policies and we all know what is at stake if the Conservatives win another term in 2015.

    During the Shadow Home Secretary’s speech she mentioned that prosecutions for domestic and sexual violence have dropped even though reported crimes are going up, 999 waits across the country are going up and fewer crimes are being solved. Here in Northumbria we have seen our budget cut by £67 million since 2010, we have had to look at every option available to protect neighbourhood policing – had the Tories had their way we would have seen frontline policing cut to the skeleton – as Labour Police & Crime Commissioner for Northumbria there was no way I was going to allow this to happen, so we are relocating police stations in to the heart of communities, looking at sharing premises with organisations such as the fire and health service to save money, this making our police bases more accessible to the public and keeping officers on the beat, we are then disposing of old properties, cutting tiers of management and have looked for savings at every level to protect neighbourhood policing. With the election of a Labour government we know that neighbourhood policing will be a priority on Yvette’s agenda.

    Theresa May really does believe that policing is only fighting crime – we need to put preventing crime back on the agenda as the last Labour government did. The Home Secretary declined my invitation to stop off and see excellent policing in action when she was coming through the force area to go to the Scottish Tory Party Conference earlier this year – she has still to accept my invitation to see first class police officers trying to deliver for communities despite massive budget cuts.

    I’m pleased that Yvette recognised that Labour PCCs have worked hard to collaborate with each other and with local councils and partners, this is what we were elected to do and we continue to urge Commissioners of other political persuasion to do the same.

    When delivering public services, it frightens me that the market is dominated by Capita, G4S, Serco, Sodexho and Atos – I don’t have have confidence in these companies, yet the governments commissioning process is pushing them at us and as Yvette rightly states they are crowding out smaller organisations, local voluntary groups and failing to deliver value for money too.

    Northumbria’s Probation service is recognised as one of the best in the country, now their future is uncertain as the government has cut up and privatised the service to the point were morale is rock bottom and the staff are working in a system with no direction from government apart from to cut costs at any measures. The services that are being dismantled are crucial to an effective rehabilitation process and getting it wrong now will have consequences for many years.

    Everyone is in favour of introducing aftercare to prevent re-offending by people sentenced to one year or less. But the coalition’s Crime Minister made clear, in answer to a question from me, in May, that this will “not happen soon” but after “we have waited for the cohort to build up” whereas if it had been given to local probation trusts, the best team to deliver it, no doubt it would have been in place by now, preventing more crimes and protecting more victims. It was a showpiece reason for making these changes but the best current estimate is that it won’t even start until 2016. This is worrying

    A Labour government knows that resources will be tight during the next Parliament, but public services will be more important than ever and it is Labour’s different set of values to the current government that will deliver a difference. As Yvette states “for the many, not the few; for social justice, not social fragmentation. Labour progressive values, not Tory prejudice”

    Labour PCCs will both inform and support the next Labour reforms in criminal justice. We say yes to services that are personalised, giving power to individuals, families and communities; Yes to creating partnerships and collaboration. Labour PCCs believe in this rather than fragmentation and enforced competition.

    Long term prevention is a Yes from us and we fully support raising professional standards.

    Labour values will make a difference to our country and as Ed Miliband said nearly a year ago “Britain can do better” I’m up for the fight, I have implemented many Labour policies since my election as PCC in November 2012 – one of the proudest being a Living Wage for all who work for Northumbria police. We brought the cleaning team back in house so we could pay them a living wage.

    Let’s make the next 45 weeks count and come May 2015 we will have a brighter future for our communities – with Ed Miliband as Prime Minister and Yvette Cooper as Home Secretary.