Tag: vulnerable adults

Bishop of Leeds supports motion to regret on secondary legislation regarding Manston Detention Facility

The Bishop of Leeds spoke in support of a Motion to Regret tabled by Baroness Lister of Burtersett on 18th March 2023:

“That this House regrets that the Short-term Holding Facility (Amendment) Rules 2022 (SI 2022/1345) remove important safeguards and reduce the standards for the lawful detention beyond 24 hours of migrants, including children and vulnerable adults, at the immigration detention facility in Manston, Kent; that the Home Office has not consulted on these changes nor provided an adequate policy justification for them; and that this potentially contentious legislation was brought into effect while the House was in recess.”

The Lord Bishop of Leeds: My Lords, I support the Motion to Regret in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. The Government were clearly right to openly acknowledge that the Manston short-term holding facility had been operating outside of legal requirements and that action was needed to improve conditions at the site. Therefore, the decision then to use secondary legislation not only to extend the length of detention powers at such facilities but to reduce the required safeguarding standards must be highly regrettable. It cannot be right that, when the immigration estate fails to meet legislation passed by this House, the response is simply to rewrite the rules. I am reading a lot about the Soviet Union at the moment, and there is an echo of that: if the five-year plan was not met, you simply changed reality to meet what you were going to get.

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Bishop of St Albans asks about protection for the vulnerable during cold weather

The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 23rd February 2023:

The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government what further steps they will be taking to protect vulnerable people during the cold weather.

Lord Callanan (Con): The Government has set up a number of Energy Affordability schemes to support vulnerable people with the cost of their energy bills during the cold weather. The Energy Price Guarantee will save a typical household in Great Britain £900 this Winter. The Energy Bills Support Scheme provided households with £400 non-repayable Government discount paid in instalments to UK households from October 2022 to March 2023. Households using alternative fuels will be also entitled to a £200 Alternative Fuel Payment.

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Bishop of Gloucester asks about housing provision for vulnerable groups

The Bishop of Gloucester asked a question on provision of low cost housing for vulnerable groups of people such as those released from prison on 20th February 2023, during a debate on leasehold charges and transparency for leaseholders:

The Lord Bishop of Gloucester: My Lords, some of the most vulnerable in society, including prison leavers and refugees, can be heavily penalised by the housing system. In the south-west, there is a joint project with the police and crime commissioner to manufacture low-cost eco-pods which provide not only employment and skills for prisoners on day release but a potential solution to rehousing vulnerable people. What is being done to speed up this sort of housing provision for vulnerable groups?

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Online Safety Bill: Bishop of Oxford speaks on risks to vulnerable adults

On 1st February 2023, the House of Lords debated the Online Safety Bill in its second reading. The Bishop of Oxford spoke in the debate , raising the importance of risk assessments of harm to adults, the independence of Ofcom, and the dangers of technology facilitated crime & domestic abuse:

The Lord Bishop of Oxford: My Lords, it is an honour and privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and all those who have spoken in this debate. As a member of your Lordships’ Committee on Artificial Intelligence and a founding member of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, I have followed the slow progress of this Bill since the original White Paper. We have seen increasing evidence that many social media platforms are unwilling to acknowledge, let alone prevent, harms of the kind this vital Bill addresses. We know that there is an all too porous frontier between the virtual world and the physical world. The resulting harms damage real lives, real families, and real children, as we have heard.

There is a growing list of priority harms and now there is concern, as well as excitement, over new AIs such as ChatGPT; they demonstrate yet again that technology has no inherent precautionary principles. Without systemic checks and balances, AI in every field develops faster than society can respond. We are and for ever will be catching up with the technology.

The Bill is very welcome, marking as it does a belated but important step towards rebalancing a complex but vital aspect of public life. I pay tribute to the Government and to civil servants for their patient efforts to address a complex set of ethical and practical issues in a proportionate way. But the job is not yet fully done.

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Nationality and Borders Bill: Bishop of Durham tables amendment to restrict use of accommodation centres for families and vulnerable groups of asylum seekers

The Bishop of Durham tabled an amendment to the Nationality and Borders Bill on 28th February 2022, seeking to restrict the use of accommodation centres for asylum seekers falling under certain categories, such as families and vulnerable adults. The amendment was not moved to a vote, following a response from the government with more information on proposed accommodation:

The Lord Bishop of Durham: My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 29, with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I declare my interests in relation to RAMP and Reset, as set out in the register.

I have tabled this amendment again because in Committee we did not have as satisfactory a response to our questions as we had hoped on the basic details of what these accommodation centres will look like. We do not know how many or where these will be. We do not know how many people will be accommodated in each one. I am not assured that the previously terrible, and now still wanting, conditions provided at Napier will not be repeated. We are being asked to agree to the use of accommodation centres without any information or reassurances of what they will look like, where they will be, and so on. We can only go on what we see as existing provision on MoD sites. That makes me very concerned—I remind the House that I had the privilege of visiting Napier barracks recently—and gives me strong reason to call for their use to be restricted, so that the vulnerable groups set out in this amendment cannot be accommodated in them. I continue to believe that placing people seeking asylum in housing in communities is much better for everyone.

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Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill: Bishop of Gloucester raises issue of threats to vulnerable women and girls

On 10th January 2022, the House of Lords debated amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The Bishop of Gloucester raised the issue of vulnerable women being caught in “joint enterprise” scenarios involving weapons and given prison sentences, and supported amendments which would address this:

The Lord Bishop of Gloucester: My Lords, I rise to support in particular Amendments 90H, 90J, 90K and 90L. As has been said, they are critical to ensuring that more vulnerable women are not drawn into the criminal justice system through the de facto joint enterprise element of SVROs. Probably like other noble Lords, I was shocked to read the briefing from Agenda, which states that analysis of

“109 joint enterprise cases involving women and girls”

shows that

“there was not a single case in which women and girls had handled a weapon; in 90% of cases they engaged in no violence at all; and in half of the cases they were not even present at the scene of the crime.”

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Bishop of Gloucester responds to Queen’s Speech – the needs of children and vulnerable women

On 9th January 2020 the Bishop of Gloucester, Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, spoke in the Queen’s Speech debate, about children and vulnerable women:

The Lord Bishop of Gloucester: My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, on her excellent maiden speech.

I shall focus on children and vulnerable women; I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry on the register of interests. My headlines are that we need policy that supports and enables early intervention and effective partnerships. Experiences that we have at an early age shape who we are. The Children’s Society has been measuring children’s well-being for more than a decade, and during much of that time children’s well-being has been in decline. This is not simply about children; it is about how we shape the sort of communities we want to see. Continue reading “Bishop of Gloucester responds to Queen’s Speech – the needs of children and vulnerable women”

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