Betty Williams

Labour Party | Conwy

Parliamentary Report For Week Ending 7 April 2009

7 April 2009

Minister for Veterans Kevan Jones MP arranged an event at the House of Commons to give Members of Parliament an opportunity to learn more about the work undertaken by the Ministry of Defence's Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA). The SPVA provides a range of professional ‘through life' support services direct to around 900,000 serving and ex-serving personnel. Additionally, it provides support for a further estimated 4.8million other veterans, widows, widowers and dependants.

Staff from the Agency provided information about the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC). This is the casualty and compassionate reporting function for the Services, including casualty repatriation and family support.

There was a display from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) Medal Office. Around 70,000 campaign medals are engraved and issued each year. Medals can still be claimed for Service dating back to World War Two.

Staff provided details of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and the War Pension Scheme. Under these schemes, payments are made to those disabled or injured by Service, and to the widows, widowers and dependants of those killed through their Service.

At the event, the Minister presented medals and the HM Armed Forces Veterans Badge to veterans from different parts of the country. Before the presentations, I had an opportunity to have a chat with the recipients. It was an honour for me to do so. They all had different stories to tell about their experiences and were most certainly worthy recipients. I learnt a great deal by attending the event.

The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd visited Parliament on Tuesday. He joined Labour MPs and Peers for a discussion about world affairs in the evening. He told me he has never been to Wales but would like to visit when time permits!

As reported earlier this year, I am a member of the Speaker's Conference. On Tuesday, I attended a session in Westminster when we took evidence from different organisations about equality in public life.

I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties. At our meeting this week, the topic for our discussion was ‘Meeting the needs of young offenders with a communication disability'. We heard from Brendan Finegan, Director of Strategy, Youth Justice Board for England and Wales; Paul OHara, Youth Offending Team Manager, Bradford and Professor Karen Bryan, University of Surrey, Speech and Language Therapist. She is internationally recognized as an expert on the impact of communication disability on offending behaviour.

We were told that over three quarters of children and young people in custody have a significant communication disability, which may be caused by disorders such as autism, learning disability, or may simply be due to social deprivation. Their disability is often so severe that they cannot benefit from prison education programmes or understand the prison regime due to their poor language skills. There are significant economic costs involved in failing children with language and communication difficulties. If problems are not addressed early, the spiral of disadvantage deepens.

Speakers talked about the current provision and of possible solutions. Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, chaired the session. He said: "I have to admit that in all the years I have been looking at prisons and the treatment of offenders, I have never found anything so capable of doing so much for so many people at so little cost as the work that speech and language therapists carry out".

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Preventing Work Related Violence and Bullying met to consider early intervention and other strategies for Conflict Transformation (CT).

One invited speaker explained the meaning of Conflict Transformation. CT attempts in the first instance to make sense of social conflict. The analysis informs the formulation of a root upward societal response, providing the opportunity to build constructive change – to weave through education and community a strategic programme for social and behavioural improvement emphasising the importance of relationships and communication on behaviour.

Other speakers talked about the political implications of CT and the importance of CT to Youth Justice.

I was invited to attend the celebration of Ramnavami on Monday. The event was organised by Abhay Lakhani (Parliamentary Advisor on Community Issues) and supported by the National Council of Hindu Temples, Hindu Council UK, Hindu Academy, Pardes Weekly and MATV.

MATV was broadcasting the event in 46 countries and full coverage in India. It was a historic event. I was told it was the largest single gathering of Hindu Organisations under one roof in the UK.

Ram Navami is one of the most important festivals in the Hindu calendar. Ram Navami Festival celebrates the birth of Lord Ram. Lord Ram was an incarnation of Vishnu and the hero of the Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic of 24,000 stanzas. A continuous recital of the book takes place for about a week prior to the celebration and on the day itself in Temples across the globe. Lord Ram is remembered for his prosperous and righteous reign, which has become synonymous with a period of peace and prosperity.

The following day, I flew to Berlin to take part in a colloquy on ‘Civil-military co-operation in crisis management'. The Assembly of Western European Union arranged the event. The meeting took place at the Reichstag. Two of the sessions were dedicated to case studies of Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Crisis-management specialists from the civil and military domains and government representatives from both countries were guest speakers as well as other military representatives and academics.

Speakers who made an impression on me were Frank Larsson, Director for Civil-Military Relations, Swedish Armed Forces International Centre who spoke about the "The Nordic Civil-Military Co-operation"; Aziz Babakarkhail, Senior Advisor and Head of Development and Provincial Reconstruction Teams Department, Independent Directorate of Local Governance, Kabul who updated us on the experiences of different organisations in Afghanistan and Alain Boinet, Managing Director and Founder of Solidarités, Paris who spoke about humanitarian aid.

The debates provided an important input for the reports of our Political and Defence Committees, which will be submitted to the Assembly during the Plenary Session in June. The reports are entitled:

"New opportunities for EU-US foreign and security policy co-operation"; "ESDP and the future of the western Balkans"; "ESDP operations" and "The war in Afghanistan: what strategy for Europe".