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Tag: Stephanie Peacock

  • Stephanie Peacock – 2021 Speech on UK Shellfish Exports

    Stephanie Peacock – 2021 Speech on UK Shellfish Exports

    The speech made by Stephanie Peacock, the Shadow Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in the House of Commons on 8 February 2021.

    Whoever is to blame, the fact is that shellfish farmers and fishermen are not able to export their most valuable product to their most important market. The rule banning imports from third-party countries of untreated shellfish from class B waters has been in place for decades. The Secretary of State claimed in front of the House of Lords EU Environment Sub-Committee last week that the EU had changed its position on how the rules would affect the UK. He had originally told the industry that the ban would be lifted in April, but we now hear it will not. On that basis, will he publish and put in the Library all the correspondence between his Department and the EU that demonstrates why he believed a change would occur? Can he explain to the House today what mechanism he expected the EU to use to make that change?

    The letter that the Secretary of State has published today is welcome, but it does not answer those questions. It refers to contact in September 2019, when the UK’s future trading agreement still was not clear. Many fleets are unable to sell their catches and exporters unable to ship and trade. What assessment has his Department made of how many businesses and employees are affected by the situation? What provision has his Department made to use some of the £23 million compensation fund that the Government recently announced to support the businesses who are unable to trade and how long will that support last? A multimillion pound industry has ground to a halt overnight. Jobs and communities are at risk. Unless this situation is resolved, the UK shellfish industry will not survive.

  • Stephanie Peacock – 2020 Speech on the Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

    Stephanie Peacock – 2020 Speech on the Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

    Below is the text of the speech made by Stephanie Peacock, the Labour MP for Barnsley East, in the House of Commons on 24 June 2020.

    It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, who spoke incredibly powerfully.

    I would like to begin by placing on the record my thanks to the doctors, nurses and staff at Barnsley Hospital, who have been working tirelessly to keep our community safe. These have been very difficult times, and my thoughts are with families who have lost loved ones, with NHS and care staff who risk their lives every day to look after patients, and with key workers who are making huge sacrifices to keep our country running.

    As a community, we have come together in the face of huge adversity. Like my neighbours in Barnsley, I have clapped for our carers. As a community and a country, we have expressed our gratitude to our NHS heroes and all our key workers, and I hope that the Government have been listening. Our applause must be translated into action.

    When I met representatives of Barnsley Hospital and Public Health England, they told me that coronavirus has changed how people see care. Fewer people are going to A&E and attending regular check-ups for existing illnesses. At the same time, millions of routine operations, screening tests and treatments have been cancelled or suspended. We need a strategy to deal with the backlog in non-coronavirus care. The motion calls for a fully functioning test and trace system for NHS staff. Without it, the NHS cannot return to offering non-urgent and routine care appointments for everyone, and existing health inequalities in the UK will only get worse.

    In Barnsley, winter death rates from flu and respiratory diseases are higher than the national average. I represent a former mining community with a large ageing population of ex-miners. Underlying health conditions brought on by their time down the pits have made them more vulnerable to this deadly disease. A recent survey by the British Lung Foundation, which has already been highlighted, showed that one in four people suffering from COPD has had a regular GP or hospital appointment cancelled.​

    Last month, 20 coalfield Labour MPs wrote to the Secretary of State, voicing the concerns of former miners who fear that if they die during this outbreak, their death certificates will make no mention of the industrial diseases that have caused them decades of ill health. We are still waiting for the Government to reply. I have heard of former miners who tested negative for covid-19 but had it recorded on their death certificate, purely because that is policy for anyone who dies in a hospital. If a death certificate does not mention a miner’s underlying health condition, their grieving family will be denied the compensation they are entitled to.

    Industrial diseases have cut short the lives of far too many miners over the years, so I ask one very simple thing of the Government: please change the advice to medical practitioners so that poor health prior to this outbreak is recorded on death certificates. Covid-19 is not some great leveller. It feeds off existing inequalities and it hits communities with vulnerable people hardest. That needs to change.

  • Stephanie Peacock – 2020 Speech on the Domestic Abuse Bill

    Stephanie Peacock – 2020 Speech on the Domestic Abuse Bill

    Below is the text of the speech made by Stephanie Peacock, the Labour MP for Barnsley East, in the House of Commons on 28 April 2020.

    Nearly one in three women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, and that number is sadly on the rise, because during this public health crisis we are not all safe at home. As has been mentioned in the debate today, calls to domestic abuse helplines have surged during lockdown. Frontline domestic abuse services such as IDAS in Barnsley are doing their best to support victims and to provide refuge accommodation and community-based support, but they need even more funding to maintain the crucial support services they are providing during this crisis.

    The Domestic Abuse Bill is welcome, but it can and must do more. It has the potential to stop abusers exerting control over their victims long after they are supposedly free. I would like to praise the former Member for Ashfield, who stood up for the rights of domestic abuse survivors in this country. Her campaign to ban attempted murderers from recovering joint assets in probate and family court hearings is something that I believe should be reflected in the Bill. Right now, our legal system enables abusers to continue to inflict damage ​even when they are in prison for the attempted murder of their partner. This is an issue that I would like to focus some of my remarks on today.

    I spoke to a domestic abuse survivor who faced the possibility of having to sell her home to pay her attempted murderer’s £100,000 divorce settlement. She survived 30 stab wounds to then be served with a huge bill by her abuser’s lawyers—effectively paying her abuser to finally be free of him. We have an opportunity with this Bill to remove the automatic entitlement to joint assets in domestic abuse cases, to stop the re-victimisation of survivors in our legal system and to get them the justice that they deserve.

    At every level, our justice system lets down domestic abuse survivors while handing abusers the tools and means of exerting control over partners long after they have left, from divorce proceedings that force survivors to disclose their bank details, where they shop and what they spend money on, to compelling victims to live in the homes that their abuse happened in until their abuser gives them permission to let or sell the property. Family court proceedings allow perpetrators to cross-examine their victims, making them relive their original trauma again and again. I welcome the provision to prohibit that kind of direct cross-examination in cases where there is evidence of domestic abuse, but the issues surrounding domestic abuse in family courts go much wider and deeper than that alone.

    Family courts have come under repeated scrutiny because of their failure to protect victims of domestic abuse and the children of abusive relationships. One of the gravest abuses in the family courts is the presumption that contact with both parents is preferable, which is frequently put ahead of children’s welfare. There is little understanding of domestic abuse, and particularly coercive control, among judges, who frequently award contact to abusive fathers. Research by the “Victoria Derbyshire” show shows that four children in the last five years have been murdered by fathers following forced contact in the family courts.

    This campaign, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), led to the Ministry of Justice setting up a review of the family courts and domestic abuse. Its report was meant to be published in the spring, and its findings will clearly be extremely relevant to the Bill, so it makes no sense that it is not being published alongside the Bill and its recommendations incorporated. The Secretary of State referred to its publication in his opening statement. I hope he will now ensure that it happens imminently, so that the Bill can be amended at a later stage to reflect the report’s findings.

    Our justice system needs to be reoriented to protect domestic abuse survivors, instead of being a means through which abusers can continue their abuse.