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Life Sciences
(13 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the strategy for UK life sciences that the Prime Minister is launching this afternoon at a leading life sciences conference. The life sciences industry is one of the most promising areas for growth in the UK economy. It has consistently shown stronger growth than the United Kingdom as a whole, and it accounts for 165,000 UK jobs and totals more than £50 billion in turnover. Pharmaceuticals alone account for more than a quarter of our total industrial research and development spend. Global pharmaceutical sales are predicted to grow by up to 6% a year in the coming years, and in emerging economies medical technology is achieving growth rates of more than 12%. A flourishing life sciences sector is essential if we want to build a more outward-looking, export-driven economy. The partnership between industry, the NHS and our outstanding universities is not just essential to economic growth; it will benefit millions of future and current NHS patients, fuelling the more rapid development of cutting-edge treatments and earlier access to those treatments for NHS patients.
Like many industries, the life sciences industry is undergoing rapid change. The old “big pharma” model of having thousands of highly-paid researchers working on a pipeline of blockbuster drugs is declining. A new model has emerged—one that is more about collaboration, the outsourcing of research and early clinical trials on patients. Excessive regulation can mean that the uptake of new treatments and technology is slow. That is a challenge felt acutely by an industry that sometimes feels that the return is not there quickly enough to satisfy investors. It is felt even more acutely by patients, who understandably expect that they should be able to access the latest and most effective treatments, and that new innovations in care should be adopted rapidly by the NHS.
We have a leading science base, four of the world’s top 10 universities and a national health service that is uniquely capable of understanding population health characteristics, but those strengths alone are not enough to keep pace with what is happening. We must radically change the way we innovate and the way we collaborate.
The life sciences strategy we launch today, alongside the NHS chief executive’s review on innovation, health and wealth, sets out how we will support closer collaboration between the NHS, industry and our universities, driving growth in the economy and improvements in the NHS. All the documents have been placed in the Library.
Among other key measures, we will set up a new programme between the Medical Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board to bring medical discoveries closer to commercialisation and use in the NHS. There are many medical products being developed to treat patients and the cost of developing them is high because they take a long time to develop and test. Investors want to see at least some evidence that the products might work in people and robust validation of the quality of the research and development work being undertaken, as well as of the capability of the company to bring the product to market, before they will finance the development of the products. That means that some of the best medical innovations are not making it through to patients. We are already providing investment to address that, but we believe that we can do more to support the development of these products across funding organisations and the successive stages of product development, which will support the development of promising innovations and help to increase the number of treatments made available to patients. We are therefore introducing a £180 million catalyst fund for the most promising medical treatments.
It can take more than 20 years from the first discovery of a drug until patients can be prescribed it by their doctor and we have already taken steps to address that. Through the National Institute for Health Research, we are investing £800 million in new research centres and two major translational research partnerships that will help cut the time between the development of new treatments and their application in the NHS—from the bench to the bedside.
Now, we are going further. As part of a major drive to improve innovation and access to medicines in the NHS, we are announcing proposals on a new early access scheme that could allow thousands of the most seriously ill patients to access new cutting-edge drugs up to a year earlier than they can now. Through the early access scheme, the medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, would provide a scientific opinion on the emerging benefits and risks of very promising new drugs to treat patients with life-threatening or debilitating conditions for whom there are no satisfactory treatment options. That will mean that seriously ill patients of any age who have no other hope of being treated or having their life extended could benefit from drugs more quickly, around a year before they are licensed.
We must also ensure that we make better use of our unique NHS data capability. It is often said that the NHS is data-rich but information-poor. As a national health service, it contains more data about health than any other comparable health system in the world, but neither the NHS nor scientists developing new drugs and treatments have always been able consistently to make good use of the data or to use them to drive further scientific breakthroughs.
We have seen how powerful the release of data can be. For example, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and the Institute of Psychiatry now have access to a database covering 250,000 patients. It includes their brain scans, medical records and notes—a wealth of information, all consented to and all anonymised, that is helping them find new answers in the fight against dementia.
We need powerful data-handling capacity and the skills to write the software to mine them. That is why we are investing in e-infrastructure, which will provide secure data services to researchers. The clinical practice research datalink is being introduced by the MHRA in partnership with the NIHR and will provide a specialised service to the research and life sciences communities. Let me reassure the House that we will take all necessary steps to ensure safeguards for patient confidentiality.
We will also make sure that more UK patients get the opportunity to take part in national and international clinical trials and play a much greater role in the development of cutting-edge treatments. We believe that patients should have the right to access new treatments and be involved in research to develop new medicines.
We have responded to calls from research charities and clinicians for Government to get patients more involved in supporting research. A recent Ipsos MORI poll in June found that 97% of people believed it is important that the NHS should support research into new treatments and, in addition, 72% would like to be offered opportunities to be involved in research trials. We will therefore consult on changing the NHS constitution so that there is an assumption, with the ability to opt out, that data collected during a patient’s care by the NHS may be used for approved research.
That would make it clear that researchers and companies with new and potentially life-saving medicines could access the data of patients and could approach patients whom they feel could benefit in order to discuss their involvement in research studies. This would encourage growth in the life sciences industry as more people and more detailed data would be available for the important trials and research needed to get breakthrough treatments used more widely.
Additionally, we have set out actions to improve incentives for investment in innovation and to reduce regulatory bureaucracy. With the creation of the Health Research Authority, we will streamline regulation and improve the cost-effectiveness of clinical trials. As the NHS chief executive’s review of innovation has shown, the NHS needs to be quicker and smarter in adopting new technologies and approaches to care that can both save more lives and cut costs.
Sometimes, it is a question of evidence. Until recently, we could not say with certainty that telehealth could keep people out of hospital and save lives, and there was understandable reluctance among parts of the NHS and councils to invest in untried technology. However, as early results from the whole system demonstrator pilots show, the potential of telehealth is nothing short of remarkable, with dramatic reductions in mortality, in hospital admissions, in emergency visits and in the number of hospital bed days. To make the most of this, we will support the NHS and work in partnership with industry and councils dramatically to spread the use of telehealth over the next five years. In doing so, we are looking to transform the lives of 3 million people in this country.
We will become a global leader in the management of chronic and long-term conditions, generating massive opportunities for UK companies developing this technology. It will be innovation in practice and we will foster other proven innovations such as fluid management technology techniques that were developed for use in high-risk surgery and critical care to help clinicians administer fluids and drugs safely. In March 2011, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published guidance recommending that this technology should be used for patients undergoing major or high-risk surgery. Currently, it is used for fewer than 5% of applicable patients despite evidence showing that it could benefit 800,000 patients and save the NHS £400 million. We will launch a national drive to make sure that fluid management technology is used in appropriate settings across the NHS. That is one example of many.
The innovation review sets out how we will address all the barriers to innovation in the NHS, whether they involve culture, leadership, training, use of information or lack of incentives and investment. We will also introduce a NICE compliance regime that will mean that medicines approved by NICE will be available on the NHS much more quickly. The plans set out in today’s strategies will help to drive the development of new technologies to diagnose and treat the most complex diseases in this country for the benefit of NHS patients. This is a strong package of measures that will support economic growth and innovation in the NHS and will drive significant improvements in patient care. I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement and start by setting out two points of common ground with the Government? First, we too have pride in Britain’s life sciences industry and its strength. We agree that the industry needs Government support and focus if its potential to contribute to the country’s industrial future is to be maximised. Secondly, we agree that there are huge potential benefits to British patients from closer collaboration between the NHS and the industry. We all want patients to have the quickest possible access to the latest life-saving and life-enhancing treatments.
It was for those two principal reasons that Labour, when in government, prioritised the life sciences sector and established the Office for Life Sciences. In Lord Drayson, we created a life sciences Minister who was a contact point for the industry—someone of huge experience and with real personal commitment to the industry. One of our criticisms of this Government is that they have allowed the momentum that Labour had established in promoting the industry to fall away. Progress has stalled because of the Government’s failure to understand that economic growth needs a proper partnership between the public and private sector and because of the combined effect of a number of their policies. Such policies include: damaging 15% real-terms cuts to the science budget; the loss of the regional developments agencies, many of which were heavily involved in this area; cuts to regional investment; and the destabilising effect of the unnecessary reorganisation of the NHS, particularly the disintegration of the strategic health authorities, which played a role in promoting research. The unexpected closure of Pfizer earlier this year exposed a Government asleep at the wheel and was a wake-up call, and now we see a Government playing catch-up.
Although we welcome their belated recognition of the importance of the sector, there are sensitive issues involved and Ministers need to tread carefully so as not to undermine public trust. What they are fond of calling red tape are, to others, essential safeguards. Some areas will always need proper regulation and the use of patient data is most certainly one of them. As we have heard from patients groups today, some have been caused real anxiety by this media-briefed statement from the Government and the lack of accompanying detail.
Ministers need to be aware that people with terminal illnesses and long-term conditions will react differently from others to a statement of this kind, so for them we seek direct assurances today from the Secretary of State that he failed to give in his statement. Will all patients have the ability to opt out of the sharing of their data, even in anonymised form? Surely that fundamental principle of consent should form the bedrock of any new system, and that control of data should be possible in today’s information age. If the Secretary of State cannot give that assurance, why not? How can he justify that?
Did patients’ representatives walk away from the Department of Health working group on these important matters and, if so, why? One representative said on the radio this morning that the whole process “stinks”. Does the Secretary of State not accept that he and his Department will need to do better than this to uphold public confidence in the process or risk undermining trust in the whole principle? What safeguards will there be to ensure that patient data are stored securely? Does he not need to articulate a more positive statement of patients’ rights in this important area, rather than the loose opt-out he proposes in the NHS constitution?
Is it the case that the anonymity of data cannot always be guaranteed? If so, what are those circumstances and, again, why not? Even within anonymised datasets, particularly dealing with small numbers of very specific conditions, it is possible to identify individual patients. What steps are being taken to guard against those risks? Will the Secretary of State give a categorical assurance that data cannot be used for purposes other than research—passed on to third parties or used by the same company to target people for other products and services?
Today’s announcement also needs to be considered in the context of the Government’s reorganisation of the NHS. Does not a more market-based health system with a greater number of private providers create much greater challenges for the control of data? I had many dealings with senior figures in the pharmaceutical industry in my time as a Minister. They were clear that it was the national structure of the NHS, and the ability to collaborate and share information across a whole health system, that was a huge attraction to the industry and a competitive strength for this country.
Does not the Secretary of State’s Health and Social Care Bill risk turning the NHS into a competitive market, where collaboration is discouraged in an any-qualified-provider free-for-all? So how can he guarantee that that competitive strength will be there in the future and will continue to be used by the pharmaceutical industry? Although he will not admit it today, were not many of the measures he has announced, particularly the expansion of telecare, made possible by the steps that we took to invest and modernise NHS IT?
More broadly, this announcement raises questions about the Government’s policy on the involvement of the private sector in the NHS. The Government need to set out what, if any, limit they see on the involvement of the private sector in the NHS. The Prime Minister has said that he wants the NHS to be a fantastic business. Let me quote from a recent leaked document on NHS commissioning, “Towards Service Excellence”. It says:
“The NHS sector . . . needs to make the transition from statutory function to freestanding enterprise.”
It is no wonder that, on the back of these worrying words, the British Medical Association has adopted a position of outright opposition to the Secretary of State’s Bill. Our worry is that, in their desperation to develop a credible industrial strategy, Ministers seem ready to put large chunks of the NHS up for sale.
Patient data are not the Secretary of State’s to give away. The NHS is not his to sell. The truth is that the Government are running huge risks with patient confidentiality and patient safety by opening up the NHS to the private sector and reorganising at a time of financial stress, but we do not yet know the full scale of those risks.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am pretty sure that the shadow Secretary of State is on his last sentence, which is almost certainly a short one.
Andy Burnham
It is.
The great irony is this: while Ministers are happy to offer up other people’s data, they continue to withhold the NHS risk register, which shows the risk they are running with our NHS. Is that not why people are increasingly asking what the Secretary of State has to hide?
Mr Lansley
I am afraid that the last sentence was not really worth it, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman, while talking about things that were completely irrelevant to my statement, asked a number of questions. Will patients be able to opt out? Yes. It is clear that they will be able to opt out, as I have said. Are there risks relating to a small number of patients being identified? No. As he should know, and as has been done in relation to the general practice research database, where there are small populations of patients in which it might be possible to indentify individuals, or where a small number of patients have very specific sub-sets of conditions and there is a risk of identification, it is perfectly possible to ensure that that information cannot be accessed through the database. We have made it clear that data would be not only anonymised—in fact, it would be double anonymised—in order to ensure that it cannot be recreated, but viewed in such a way that will make it impossible to identify from the circumstances of the data where the patient comes from.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the database must be used for approved research or could be used for other purposes. It must be used for approved research and cannot be used for other purposes. It is not a database that people, whoever they may be, whether from universities or pharmaceutical research companies, can simply access in order to go mining for information; they must do so only through the MHRA and for approved research purposes.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked—frankly, I think it is irrelevant—about the extent of the private sector’s role. Unlike his predecessor, Patricia Hewitt, who was Secretary of State when he was a Health Minister, and who said that she was aiming for 10% or 15% private sector involvement, we are not looking for a specific level of private sector involvement or creating a free market in the NHS. It will continue to be a national health service with the national characteristics that we would expect, funded through taxation and available to all based on need, not ability to pay, and in this context it will continue to be a national NHS. The simple fact that, among other measures in the life sciences strategy, we are able to show how we can bring data sets together, including the general practice database, the hospital episodes statistics, the cancer registries and so on, in order to show the power of data across the whole NHS to support research for new treatments is a complete vindication of the fact that it will be a national health service—that it will change in that respect and that patients will benefit from both the national health service and the research that comes with it.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
May I be the first warmly to welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and to make a bid for the catalyst fund for regenerative medicine, which not only offers great hope for the future but is providing life-saving treatment through umbilical cord blood? I refer him to the recommendation the UK stem cell strategic forum made last year for collaboration between universities, hospitals and farming industries to make greater use of the application of cord blood now and in future.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and heartily welcome his support for the opportunities in regenerative medicine. I was fortunate enough to meet at the UK Stroke Forum last Thursday, among those exhibiting, a company that is based in England but undertaking trials and research activity in Scotland and is looking precisely at how it can use foetal-derived stem cells for regenerative purposes. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) talked about Pfizer. In my constituency, it has been one of the companies leading the development of new regenerative medicine techniques. That is clearly one of the areas that this country has tremendous potential in developing. The technology innovation centre for regenerative medicine was announced in the “Plan for Growth” published alongside the Budget earlier this year, and I hope that it will be one of the areas in which we will see those developments.
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The Health Committee, in its report on the electronic patient record, published in September 2007, stated that the highly detailed data captured had “outstanding” prospects for new and improved research, but it also asked that the best balance be found between
“the opportunity to improve access for research purposes with the ongoing need to safeguard patient privacy”.
Do the Government believe they can get that right, so that we can go ahead and use the enormous amount of data that we have in this country to improve health care for patients not just here, but throughout the world?
Mr Lansley
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is here and able to ask that question, because he was the Chair of the Health Committee in September 2007, when it stated that the secondary use of data in the NHS was “vital” for the development of the NHS, including for research use. I hope that he is one of those who recognise that what we are setting out in the life sciences strategy—in particular, with the clinical practice research datalink—will enable precisely all those secondary uses for research to be developed.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
As the Secretary of State will know well, the Cambridge area is world leading in life sciences, both in academia and in industry. This strategy, and the investment to go with it, is very welcome indeed and will, I am sure, support a lot of activity in Cambridge and in South Cambridgeshire. There is one slightly sour note about private data, however, so I hope that the details will be published of exactly how the steps to which the Secretary of State referred will be taken to protect that, but, on clinical trials and what will happen to regulation, will he implement in full the recommendations of the Academy of Medical Sciences?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He and I share a vigorous and vibrant life sciences sector, and I hope that the strategy that we have announced today will be taken up rapidly in our constituencies. He asks about the Academy of Medical Sciences. Back in the “Plan for Growth” in the Budget, we responded precisely to that point, and on 1 December, as a consequence of the positive response to what the academy said, I brought into effect the Health Research Authority to ensure that we simplify the process of approval for clinical trials. Through the National Institute for Health Research, as we said earlier in the year, we are seeking to arrive at a point where there is a maximum of 70 days for the first recruitment of patients to clinical trials, and that will get us into an internationally competitive position.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
May I ask the Secretary of State a further question about the rights of people to opt out of the scheme? Will he extend the right of opt-out for those people who refuse to participate in the scheme to include a refusal of the advantages that come from sharing such information, which will be gained by the generosity of spirit of their fellow citizens who participate?
Mr Lansley
I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but the ethical approach is for everyone to have access to the latest and best available treatments through the NHS. That is the principle that we apply, but we should be aware that, although we offer people the right to opt out, we have seen—for example, in relation to the general practice research database, where patients have the equivalent right to opt out, and in two pilots conducted on the proposals that we have announced—that the rate of opt out is 0.1%.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, as this strategy will reduce the delay between discovery and dispensing and, undoubtedly, bring great benefits to patients and to our pharmaceutical industry, but in return will he ask the industry to go further and publish negative trial data, as well as positive trial data, as a gesture to improve the quality of research data?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. The industry has done quite a lot in recent years in publishing more data, including data that do not necessarily support the positive case that it is looking for, because all of us, and especially those working in the field, learn a great deal and, sometimes, as much from clinical trials that produce a negative result as we do from those that produce a positive result. So, I will certainly take her point away, explore it with my colleagues and write to her if we can take further steps in that direction.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Are the patient data proposals to be England-only or UK-wide? If so, what is the relationship with projects such as the SAIL—Secure Anonymised Information Linkage—database in Swansea and Biobank? I foresee some ethical problems, as Biobank operates specifically on a voluntary basis with a written, sought-for consent. Does the Secretary of State see that there might be some problems there?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful for that question. What we are setting out is hosted by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which will be able to link datasets for which it is responsible, which do, in some cases, have a UK basis rather than an England-alone basis.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I welcome the statement. The Secretary of State mentions telehealth, which is currently making greater progress in Scotland than in England. Has this anything to do with less structural reform or more strategic leadership?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend might like to know that while initial and very positive steps were taken in Scotland —for example, in Lanarkshire—we have now undertaken, through the whole system demonstrator pilots, the world’s largest randomised control trial of telehealth technology, and that gives us a strength from which we can develop telehealth systems that is unparalleled anywhere in the world. In so far as there is a capacity to provide telehealth systems and provide for their use across health care systems, I suspect that we shall shortly see England overtake Scotland in that respect. It is a form of competition that I am perfectly happy to be engaged in—and if the Scots can do better than us, then good luck to them. However, we are showing, through these pilots, how we are ready to go at developing something of great benefit to patients.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is good to see that the Secretary of State is now on the same side of the debate as me regarding NO2ID and similar issues. Nevertheless, there is an important issue about ensuring the greatest public buy-in to the issue of data sharing, and careful work is needed on that. May I specifically ask him about the catalyst fund? To what extent is this new money? Can he assure the House that money from patient care is not being transferred into the catalyst fund? Will the Technology Strategy Board be able to control its use, or will it be directed by Government?
Mr Lansley
In the first instance, the £180 million to which I referred consists of £90 million from the Medical Research Council, which is new money within its existing budget but not at the expense of any other programmes. The other £90 million is provided by the Treasury to the TSB and is new money. None of this comes out of any NHS resources. The implementation will be led by the Medical Research Council, so to that extent it will not be driven by Government.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend believe that there is a threat that parts of the UK pharmaceutical industry might relocate overseas if this package of reforms does not proceed?
Mr Lansley
There is always that risk because, as my hon. Friend entirely knows, international competition is intense, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector. Following the measures that were announced alongside the Budget in the plan for growth, not least the availability of the patent box from April 2013, it is clear from discussions that my right hon. Friends and I have had with many of the boards of leading international pharmaceutical companies that the United Kingdom is now becoming a better location for investment in pharmaceutical activity than used to be the case. Those companies look very positively at the steps we have taken on regulatory activity and clinical trials, at the steps we are taking on promoting innovation through the value-based pricing system, and in particular, understandably, at the tax measures that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced, especially on the patent box.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s statement raises a number of important ethical issues. Will he take a close look at the emerging proposals for a medipark that is close to Wythenshawe hospital and part of Greater Manchester’s airport city enterprise zone? This has tremendous potential to attract investment from global bioscience and pharmaceutical companies, which would make a massive difference in my constituency and way beyond that. Will he look to see what support can be offered?
Mr Lansley
I will gladly do so. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the designation of an academic health science centre in Manchester has supported many developments. We want to go further. In today’s life sciences strategy, we are making it clear that not only do we want to maintain the academic health science centre designation as a world-class designation for comprehensive research centres, but we want to go further and ensure that such centres are used to diffuse and spread innovation across the NHS more effectively. Next spring, we will set out how we will enable academic health science networks to be designated. That will happen during 2012-13. I will happily look at the circumstances in south Manchester and at how this matter will apply there. I hope that partnerships will be forged between the NHS, universities and the private sector of the kind that he and I know will be successful.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a world of difference between streamlining regulation, to use his phrase, and the picture of the indiscriminate abolishment of regulation that the Opposition tried to create? Such streamlining is essential to cut the time from invention to adoption.
Mr Lansley
I am clear, and I know that my hon. Friend agrees, that we must ensure that the regulatory processes are effective and that the medicines that are available in this country are of the necessary quality, safe and effective. However, we must not allow the delays that are inherent in some of these processes to prevent information from being provided on the basis of which clinicians, with the active, informed consent of patients, can access what they regard as potentially effective medicines. In the overall context of patient safety, we do patients a serious disservice if we know that there is a potentially effective medicine available and do not give them the first possible opportunity to access it.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says that his proposals reflect his commitment to the national health service. If GPs will be commissioning treatments, how will he ensure that they commission new and more effective treatments that might be more expensive?
Mr Lansley
As the hon. Lady will know, the Health and Social Care Bill that is being considered in another place will, for the first time, place a direct legal duty to support innovation on clinical commissioning groups. That will be supported by the process of commissioning from the acute sector, in which the quality increments in the tariff will directly drive innovations in best practice.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. These proposals are vital for the competitiveness of life sciences and pharmaceuticals, which are vital for the UK and for the local economy in Macclesfield. Will he tell the House how these steps will reduce the time that is taken to establish clinical trials, which has been a barrier for far too long?
Mr Lansley
The principal impact that we are having relates to the National Institute for Health Research, which, through its contracts with the NHS and other partners, is driving the time to the first recruitment of clinical trials down to 70 days. That will get us to a competitive position. We are also working in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, for example to look at how some of the new stratified medicines will be available. Today, we are entering into partnership with AstraZeneca, which is close to my hon. Friend’s constituency, to understand what specific compounds are likely to be of benefit to some subsets of the population with cancer through the use of targeted new medicines.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
As the policy rests on the trust in the regulatory body that was tardy in protecting patients against the adverse side effects of Vioxx and Seroxat, is it not time that we had a fully independent MHRA and not one that is funded entirely by the pharmaceutical industry? As big pharma pays the piper, is it not possible that it will call the tune for its own commercial interests?
Mr Lansley
I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong about that. The MHRA operates, in scientific and expert terms, in an independent fashion. In so far as it is accountable, it is accountable to me as Secretary of State and to this House. It is not accountable to the pharmaceutical industry. If he is proposing a major transfer of costs from the pharmaceutical industry to the taxpayer, I am afraid that I do not agree with him.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I warmly welcome the commitment to telehealth and the expansion of it over the next five years. Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that that represents a step change for patients? Will it be the responsibility of councils and stakeholders to demonstrate the value and benefits of telehealth to their patients, so that there is full buy-in?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The figures from the evaluation of the 6,000 or so patients who have participated in the three pilots in Cornwall, Kent and Newham suggest that if telehealth is appropriately and properly provided, there are benefits. There was a total reduction of 45% in mortality, about 21% in accident and emergency visits, about 15% in planned admissions and bed stays in hospital and about 8% in costs. Those are dramatic benefits, but the most important aspect is the empowerment that telehealth gives patients so that they can be at home and be confident about their care, rather than be prey to rapid crises leading to admission to hospital.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Is this whole idea not being driven by the pharmaceutical industry in order to make money? In the real world, when I have been in hospital in these past 10 or 15 years for all sorts of different problems, all of us have relied on the care and attention of the doctors and nurses. There was an increase of about 30,000 doctors and 80,000 nurses, because we put a lot more money in. I did not meet anybody at all who ever said to me, “I’ve just been given some drugs to look after my heart, but I don’t like them and I want something else”. The whole thing is a money-making exercise by the pharmaceutical industry, which has friends in the Tory party. We are supposed to be short of money in this country and in the health service. What we really need is to stop sacking nurses, which will make it a lot better.
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman will have to talk to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who claimed to be the friend of the pharmaceutical industry. The truth is that we should all be friends of it and support it. Why? Because it has the capacity to bring in new medicines and new treatments that are to the benefit of patients. From my point of view, it is not about the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, it is about working with those who have the greatest potential to bring investment to this country for economic benefit and, more importantly, to improve benefits for patients. The hon. Gentleman, who has no doubt been the beneficiary of many therapeutic improvements generated by investment in the pharmaceutical industry, should not decry it.
Mr Skinner
Yes, but in a free health service, not a privatised health service, which it will be—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has made his point.
May I say gently to the Secretary of State that we are enjoying the full product of his lucubrations, but I think just a snapshot will do. We can get by with that. [Interruption.] The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), can look it up in his dictionary later. That is fine.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Key to the strategy announced today is the ability to translate primary research into early adoption and commercial outcomes. Does the Secretary of State agree that Edinburgh’s BioQuarter is uniquely placed to do that, as it already shares a campus with the state-of-the-art royal infirmary of Edinburgh and is hopefully soon to be joined by the excellent sick children’s hospital, providing a base for the commercialisation of the innovative work being carried out by Edinburgh’s universities?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and far be it from me to comment further. He explained very well the benefits associated with investment and developments in Edinburgh and how the universities, the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS are working together there. That is also happening in locations in England, and across the United Kingdom we are providing real opportunities for international investment in biosciences.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
During my time working within the hospice movement, it was my privilege to meet many patients and families. They naturally wanted everything at their disposal that would extend patients’ lives or at the very least make them more comfortable. At times, they would feel frustrated that patients in other countries benefited from drugs before they could, even though they were invented here. What is the Secretary of State doing to try to rectify that problem?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes a very good point from his personal experience. It is precisely because we recognised that patients in Britain were not getting access to the latest cancer medicines as quickly as patients in other countries that we were clear at the election that we would introduce a cancer drugs fund. Since the introduction of the fund in October 2010, more than 7,500 patients have accessed new cancer medicines through it. The early access scheme that I have described will go even a step further in anticipating the successful, efficacious introduction of new medicines in a way that allows patients and clinicians sometimes to access medicines even before the point at which they are licensed.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
As a graduate in biological sciences, I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to life sciences in this country. In my opinion, there has been too much of a disconnect between vital research at universities and in the private sector and the NHS. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the biggest beneficiaries of the release of these valuable data are UK patients and universities, and UK-based companies?
Mr Lansley
I would instance two things in that respect, the first of which is the developing collaborations that were started under the academic health science centres and that will be continued through the networks that we want to extend. Those partnerships are specifically designed—£800 million was allocated in August, based on a competition—to enable the translation of discovery into new medicines in this country.
Secondly, the £180 million catalyst fund, which the MRC and Technology Strategy Board will implement, is specifically designed to take those ideas—the MRC says that it has some 360 such potential developments in medicines and treatments—through to the point at which they can be developed. Of course, that will be in this country.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Given that Northamptonshire has one of the most rapidly growing populations of patients in older age of anywhere in the country, I am sure my constituents will welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment that this country will become the global leader in the management of chronic and long-term conditions. We want to realise that praiseworthy ambition, but how far behind the curve are we at the moment?
Mr Lansley
The answer to that question varies depending on which conditions one is talking about. When one looks at the OECD “Health at a Glance” data that was published on 23 November, one sees how relatively poor are our mortality outcomes in relation to respiratory and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. By contrast, we are slightly better than average in relation to diabetes. However, I have seen for myself how well patients with COPD can manage their conditions at home. For example, they can see their blood oxygen levels day-by-day and have supplies of medicines at home, including steroids. They can therefore anticipate and deal with any exacerbations of their condition so that they do not end up in an ambulance going to hospital late at night.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
From earlier access to potentially life-saving medicines through to releasing the power of information in the NHS, there is much to welcome in this statement. Given the importance of techniques such as pseudonymisation, how satisfied is the Secretary of State with the priority afforded to developing the informatics capability of NHS staff?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point, to which I fear I do not have time to respond fully. One thing that I hope we can do as a consequence of abandoning the previous Government’s failed NHS IT structure is empower many individual hospital trusts and general practices once more to develop their own informatics expertise, which will stretch beyond IT infrastructure to the positive uses of data and information for the benefit of patients.
Point of Order
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Great progress has been made, principally as a result of your work, in ensuring that exchanges in this House at question times are briefer and pithier than previously, but there is one area of weakness. May I suggest that it might be a good idea if you organised a seminar for Ministers on the existence, purpose and use of the full stop?
Mr Speaker
I appreciate the recommendation of the hon. Gentleman. Self-knowledge would be a starter, and until such exists, I am not sure that the turnout would be quite what I might wish, but we will reflect on the matter, and I am grateful to him, as always.
Backbench Business
Ministerial Statements
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:48 - The House divided: - Ayes: 119 / Noes: 228 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Speaker
It may be for the convenience of the House to know that the Backbench Business Committee recommended that there should be a division of time between the two subjects such that the second debate will start at or around, but certainly not significantly later than, 7 o’clock, and possibly a little earlier.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting; considers that information which forms all or part of such announcements should not be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament, as recommended in the First Report from the Procedure Committee, on Ministerial Statements, HC 602; and further considers that hon. Members who believe the protocol has been breached should first report this to the Speaker for his judgment and that in the case of a minor breach the Speaker may take appropriate steps but in more serious or more complex cases he would refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for further investigation.
The motion is in my name and that of hon. Friends on both sides of the House, but primarily it is in the name of the Backbench Business Committee. Mr Speaker, the motion is in defence both of your advice to this House on many occasions and of the ministerial code.
On 20 July 2010, the Backbench Business Committee held its first debate on the Floor of the House. It chose ministerial statements as its subject because it is an issue that comes to the very heart of the effectiveness of this Chamber as part of Parliament holding the Executive of our great nation to account. We are probably all in agreement that whenever the House is sitting, Her Majesty’s Government should make announcements of policy first to this House. For those who are not familiar with every word, dot and comma of the 2010 ministerial code, as published by the Cabinet Office, let me remind them of what paragraph 9.1 says:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”
I am happy to report that Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike are unanimously agreed on the importance of those strictures.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend help me out, as a new Member? When he says “in session”, does he mean after Prayers, or is he referring to the period of Parliament when there is a 24-hour news cycle?
Mr Hollobone
That is a very good question. We will probably discuss that very point during the course of this debate. In my own humble opinion, I think that “in session” means when Parliament is sitting—by that I mean sitting days versus non-sitting days. When there is a sitting day, it is my view, and I suspect that of lots of hon. Members, that Her Majesty’s Government should be making announcements to Parliament first. That may require the Government to contain themselves so that they release that information on the Floor of the House in the afternoon rather than on the “Today” programme in the morning.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend accept from me that Governments in the past have always taken the phrase to mean when the House is not in recess?
Mr Hollobone
My right hon. Friend, whose reputation precedes him in so many ways, sums it up neatly in a pithy turn of phrase, which I was unable to do myself.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is particularly important for this Government to abide by the conventions that he has described, given that both he and I, having served in previous Parliaments, can remember countless occasions when we and our fellow Members of the parliamentary Conservative party stood to make points of order to remonstrate about the fact that Labour Ministers had continually broken these conventions?
Mr Hollobone
I do agree, although I am desperately trying to make my speech as non-partisan as possible because I believe that both major parties are to blame: when they have been in government, they have not behaved as they should.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman refers to “both major parties”, so perhaps he is not aware that some of the worst incidents in recent months have involved people such as the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whose statements have been tweeted to The Guardian.
Mr Hollobone
That is a helpful intervention—I shall refer my remarks to all three major parties, if that is better.
All Governments, whether this Government, the previous Government or the one before that, have leaked information, and that is not how our great House of Commons ought to be treated.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend name me any Government who have not leaked information to the press?
Mr Hollobone
No, I cannot. This increasingly has become standard practice, but it is fair to say that it has got worse over the past five, 10 or 15 years. I am sure, however, that it was prevalent before.
Today, we have a golden opportunity that is, in many ways, unique: for the first time, thanks to the Leader of the House and other Ministers of the Crown, we have the Backbench Business Committee, which has been able to bring this motion to the Floor of the House for resolution tonight. Although hon. Members in past decades will have been frustrated by how the Government of the day leaked information, this is the first time that the House has had the opportunity to do something about it.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
I might be slightly naive but although there may be incidents of Governments leaking information, there are probably an awful lot more incidents of information being leaked without Ministers’ knowledge. We have to distinguish between deliberate leaking and the response to a leak that could be sensitive and might require a Minister to go to the press, on the radio or in front of the television cameras before making a statement to Parliament.
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend makes a good point but at the end of the day we have something called “ministerial responsibility” and the ministerial code.
Tonight’s motion allows us to draw a line in the sand. I am not naive enough to believe that it will stop all Government leaking completely, but were we to pass the motion, it would be an effective weapon in the House’s armoury against an over-mighty Executive. I want to praise the work of the Procedure Committee, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), which, after our debate on 20 July 2010, worked extremely hard on this issue and produced an excellent report and a series of first-class recommendations. Every word in the motion comes from the recommendations in that excellent report.
I shall quote from the summary of the Committee’s report—its first of the Session—which sums up the issue extremely well:
“Parliament should be at the centre of national debate. Too often details of important government statements appear in the press before they are made to Parliament. Such leaks adversely affect the ability of Members of Parliament to scrutinise the Government on behalf of their constituents. At present, it is the Ministerial Code that sets out the requirement that important announcements be made to Parliament first. However, the Ministerial Code is enforced by the Prime Minister and not by Parliament. We do not believe that it is acceptable for the Government to regulate itself in this way. The House must be responsible for holding Ministers to account when they fail to honour their obligations to Parliament. We therefore propose that the House should have its own protocol which states that the most important government announcements must be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere.”
The Committee goes on to recommend:
“Such a protocol must be enforced if it is to be effective. We recommend that complaints by Members that the protocol has been breached should be made to the Speaker. Where a case is not clear-cut, or when the alleged leak is particularly serious, the Speaker should be able to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for an in-depth investigation.”
I agree with every word of the Procedure Committee’s recommendations, which sum up the issue extremely well.
Mr Speaker, on your first election to your high office, you said that
“when Ministers have key policy statements to make, the House must be the first to hear them, and they should not be released beforehand.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 797.]
You could not, Sir, have been clearer. I commend you on the large number of urgent questions that you have accepted, tabled by Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike, holding the Government to account when they have not properly released information to this House first. However, it was your predecessor, Betty Boothroyd—Speaker Boothroyd, as she then was—who said in her farewell address:
“This is the chief forum of the nation—today, tomorrow and, I hope, for ever.”—[Official Report, 26 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 1114.]
This is our chance to say: are we going to hold Her Majesty’s Government to account for the principle, which they uphold in their own ministerial code, that it is this Chamber, where the elected representatives of the British people are gathered together, that should be the first place to hear of major new Government policy initiatives? Should it be “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, the “Today” programme on Radio 4 in the morning or ITV’s “Daybreak”; or should it be the Chamber of the House of Commons? Would it not be wonderful to see the Public Gallery full of journalists eagerly anticipating the Government’s latest policy announcement, made here first, on the Floor of the House? Instead of which, under this coalition Government, the bad practices of the Blair Government and the Government before them are being increasingly enhanced, such that hon. Members are often the last to hear of new Government policy initiatives, not the first. When our constituents contact us to ask, “What’s the Government initiative on this?”, we are often the last to know, so we cannot respond.
However, it would also be an effective tool against the over-mighty arm of the Executive if the ordinary representatives of the people—not unelected and unaccountable journalists, hard working and well intentioned as they may be, but we the people gathered here in this tremendously prestigious place—were the first to have a go at putting questions to the Ministers of the Crown. We have the honour to represent our constituents. We can use this opportunity tonight, by passing this simple motion, to say to the Government: “Uphold your own ministerial code and let the people’s representatives know first whenever any new major Government policy announcement is made.”
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly commend the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) not only on the motion, but on the work that he has done on this issue since he was first elected. There are many others who count among the saints on these issues; there are also many who count among the non-saints. Contrary to what was said by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley), who is sitting next to him, the truth of the matter is that, in practice, many Ministers, and in particular their special advisers and those organising “the grid” at No. 10 Downing street, spend a great deal of time deciding when it is best to announce something. If it is unremittingly good news, they do it in Parliament; if it is unremittingly bad news, they try to hide it in a written ministerial statement to Parliament; and if it is a bit streaky—a bit of good, a bit of bad—they will do it outside Parliament, before the House has sat, so that the difficult bits are forgotten and they can get away with the good briefing that they have organised.
Chris Bryant
I had thought that the hon. Gentleman would say that, but I must confess that when I was a Minister, I was never in charge of anything that was interesting enough for anyone to make any announcements about it. I suspect that even if I had wanted to make an announcement, I should have been in difficulty.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
The hon. Gentleman was Minister for Europe.
Chris Bryant
That is true, and the Europe directorate of the Foreign Office is punctilious in ensuring that announcements are made to the European Scrutiny Committee first. Indeed, many matters go to the Committee with several months of warning before they become public anywhere else in Europe, and I think that is right. However, when I was Deputy Leader of the House I tried my level best, as did many others in Government, to make sure that we adopted such a process.
Chris Bryant
I hope that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) agrees with that.
Dr Lewis
I certainly do. I should have thought that most people would feel that the later any news about Europe was released, the better. However, what I want to ask the hon. Gentleman is this: what does he think that the newspapers offer Ministers as a reward for letting them have the news early?
Chris Bryant
Oh, Lord! I think that I have spoken enough about newspapers in the last year not to opine on that now, but obviously the aim is to manage the news in such a way as to ensure that there is as little scrutiny as possible. However, I can say on the basis of my limited experience as a Minister that on the few occasions when we did make statements to the House, the quality of questioning in the Chamber—which was sometimes haphazard, but was often extremely to the point—improved the quality of decisions and the way in which they were eventually transacted, and I therefore do not believe that Governments have any reason to run away from this proposal.
I think that the position has worsened in recent years with the advent of 24-hour news. There is an insatiable beast that needs to be fed all the time, and extra diligence is required on the part of Ministers and Government to ensure that they do not succumb to it.
The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) asked what was meant by the House being in session, but the truth is that nearly every decision made by Government is not time-sensitive. Most decisions can be made at any time, and it is therefore always possible for Ministers to wait until Parliament is in session. When I was Deputy Leader of the House, one of the things that I tried hard to curtail was the number of written ministerial statements made on the last day before a parliamentary recess, because a large number of such statements makes it virtually impossible for you, Mr Speaker, to intervene by allowing an urgent question, or for the House to allow any proper scrutiny before Parliament sits again.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Might not one reason for the apparent increase in the number of Ministers who breach the code in recent years be the fact that Ministers see that there is no real sanction?
Chris Bryant
On the whole, if there is impunity, people tend to continue the criminality.
Harriett Baldwin
Is not another problem the fact that our sittings start so late on Mondays and Tuesdays? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should review our sitting times?
Chris Bryant
I was so desirous of a moment when I could agree 100% with the hon. Lady, and now she has produced that moment. Yes, I do agree with her: I think that is an essential part of what we need to do. I noted that our sitting last Tuesday, the day of the autumn statement, began in the morning rather than the afternoon. I suspect that that was largely so that the media could be given more time in which to prepare material for the 6 pm and 10 pm news broadcasts.
Chris Bryant
Half the Members on the Government Benches are trying to intervene.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman clearly supports the motion. May I raise a slightly tricky issue? The Speaker has a role in what happens in the House. Are we in danger of putting him in charge of what people say outside the House unnecessarily, and does that pose the risk of his being not tempted to become, but drawn by his job into becoming, more of a player and less of a referee?
Chris Bryant
I think that the motion raises a bigger issue relating to you, Mr Speaker, but I shall deal with that later if I may.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman said that announcements were not time-sensitive, but they may be time-appropriate; in fact they may be regionally appropriate. I am thinking of local government announcements. It would be much more appropriate to make those at a certain time, and outside the House.
Chris Bryant
I think that those occasions are very rare. On very rare occasions, something is market-sensitive, for example, in which case there is an argument for Treasury Ministers to be able to exercise that judgment, but it is a rare occurrence. Labour Members are always mindful of Hugh Dalton, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, managing, before the Evening Standard came out, to leak a couple of elements of the Budget, although not deliberately—I think it was accidental. He ended up losing his job as Chancellor of the Exchequer because of that. Therefore, I do not want to create a rule for Ministers whereby, when they think that an announcement is time-appropriate, they can use whatever device they want.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I was reflecting on the hon. Gentleman’s exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) about whether, if the House sat earlier on a Monday and Tuesday, that would reduce the incidence of Ministers leaking information. Does he believe that, when the House sat earlier for the autumn statement last week, that meant that the statement was entirely unknown before the Chancellor stood up?
Chris Bryant
The only response to that is, “Touché.” By definition, the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I wholeheartedly agree, that large parts of that autumn statement were pre-leaked over the weekend. Although I have my criticisms of what went on when we were in power, may I point out to hon. Members that the last Queen’s Speech was leaked? I do not think that that has ever happened before. Although you, Mr Speaker, investigated what happened—you can investigate what happens here—the Prime Minister, as far as I am aware, made no investigation into how that happened. That is a gross discourtesy to the House. In addition, figures from last year’s Budget were leaked. There is a danger that people have learned the lessons of our Government in the wrong way and are now exercising their powers incorrectly.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
In this particular respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman is doing a disservice to the Government of whom he was a member. They decided, under a previous Prime Minister, to make it known what the Government’s main legislative intentions were much earlier than is traditional with the Queen's speech, which was a welcome change.
Chris Bryant
Indeed we had a draft legislative programme, which we brought forward six months before the Queen’s speech, but that was presented to Parliament. It was not issued in a press release to the regional media or briefed to Andrew Marr. That is the process that we should adopt.
I want to raise one concern in relation to the motion. It says that, where a Member feels that the code has been broken—the ministerial code, which is written into a motion of the House as well; it is not just the Prime Minister’s ministerial code—the Member should report that to the Speaker, who would make a judgment and could then refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That is not the process that we have for other standards and privileges issues, or matters of privilege. At the moment, we write to you, Mr Speaker, and you decide whether we can have a debate on the matter. At the end of that, either it is decided to refer the matter without a Division, or there is a Division, so it becomes the decision of the House to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges; it is not your decision, Mr Speaker. There is a double anxiety here. The proposed process would bring you into deciding whether a Minister should be referred. That process of referral would probably mean that the Minister had to lose his job at that point, such would be the clamour among the press and so on. Equally, if you were to bring the matter to the House, the almost inevitable conclusion, given that Ministers by definition always enjoy a majority in the House, is that the matter would never be referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that protocols introduced for the best possible motives can be taken over and run as political vehicles for the worst possible motives? Not only might Mr Speaker be dragged into a political argument but, heaven forfend, he might be deluged with requests to investigate breaches, which would become just another part of parliamentary graffiti.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman has reiterated my point.
I do not want impunity for Ministers, as that would enable the current situation to continue for ever and a day, and get worse. Scrutiny improves ministerial decisions and government so we must put an end to the current process of impunity. However, I do not want to bring Mr Speaker into the decision-making process. That is why I support the motion.
The motion will not in itself make the required change, however. The Government would have to introduce a motion to change standing orders to bring that change into effect. I hope that in doing so we would arrive at a policy that rendered Government accountable to Parliament and unable to exercise the impunity they have at present without bringing you, Mr Speaker, directly into play.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who made a number of excellent points. However, it is unfortunate that, in effect, only one Opposition Back Bencher is present for the debate—two if we count the hon. Gentleman, who today is a quasi-Back Bencher.
Mr Knight
I see that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is sitting in the far corner of the Chamber. On Thursday he told me he did not think he could be present for the debate. Perhaps that was why I did not notice him, but I am delighted that he is in his place for this important debate.
As has been said, the Procedure Committee was asked to undertake an inquiry by the House, which unanimously agreed to a motion inviting the Committee to develop a protocol for the release of information by Ministers. This was the first debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee last year.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has pointed out, the current position is that the ministerial code sets out the “general principle” governing the release of information by Ministers. It states:
“When Parliament is in session”—
as I said in an intervention, that is widely taken to mean when Parliament is not in recess—
“the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”
The Procedure Committee published its report earlier this year. It set out three principles underpinning its recommendations: that statements were valued by Back Benchers and that Ministers should be encouraged to make them; that important Government announcements should, indeed, be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere; and that it is a grave discourtesy to Parliament for information to be released before a statement is made.
The Procedure Committee decided without division that it was neither practical nor desirable to produce a detailed protocol, and recommended that the House agree the following resolution:
“That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting, and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament.”
The Government responded, agreeing with the Committee that a detailed protocol would not be a good idea, but rejecting the solution proposed by the Committee and instead favouring the status quo.
On enforcement, the Procedure Committee recommended that complaints should be made to the Speaker in the first instance, and that the Speaker should have the power to dismiss trivial complaints and complaints made without basis. The Speaker could rule in cases where a minor breach had occurred. One might envisage a case where the Speaker receives a complaint and deems it to be a minor breach, and decides to allow an urgent question in the light of that complaint. The Procedure Committee did not envisage the Speaker rapping knuckles in all circumstances. There may well be cases where the granting of an urgent question is deemed sufficient. We also took the view that more serious cases should be referred by the Speaker to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
In their response, the Government did not even acknowledge our recommendations relating to the role of the Speaker, but they rejected our recommendation that complaints be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee and maintained that the current range of sanctions was “adequate”. In our earlier debate, a number of Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is not in his place, discussed what sort of sanctions should be available, over and above what happens now. The Procedure Committee concluded that a recommendation from a Committee of the House that a Minister do come to this House and apologise was a sufficiently serious sanction, and that no new sanctions were required. The Government’s response to that was that our Committee’s recommendations were disproportionately severe, which I find a little odd.
I have looked at the Government’s response in detail, and in my view it is highly unsatisfactory. As I have said, the Government agree with the Procedure Committee that it would not be “practical or desirable” to have a “detailed protocol” trying to cover all eventualities, but they said that they did not support the Committee’s approach that the House should agree a motion in terms very similar to the current position as outlined in the ministerial code. The Government stated:
“It is not clear…what purpose would be served”
by such a motion, in which the current position is simply restated.
The Government had clearly failed to recognise the significance, although it was explained clearly in our report, which was that the House would be taking control of the protocol away from the Government. We are not envisaging setting up double jeopardy; we are saying that it should be the House that should decide—via the process of a complaint going to the Speaker and then, if necessary, to a Committee—whether the protocol had been breached, and not an obviously partial and forgiving Prime Minister, who is currently the arbiter. In saying that, I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because the natural instinct of any Prime Minister will be to want to defend his or her Ministers—after all, the Prime Minister of the day appoints all Ministers in the first place.
Chris Bryant
It would sometimes be somewhat hypocritical if a Prime Minister were to complain about a Minister briefing, because often it is Downing street that briefs the policy change, rather than the Minister, doing so with the full knowledge and understanding of the whole ministerial team.
Mr Knight
That is a very good intervention and the hon. Gentleman underlines my point.
The Government response went on to suggest that an increase in the number of statements made and urgent questions granted means that
“there is no case for the protocol that the Committee proposes.”
I am not clear what the logic is in that response.
On enforcing the protocol, the Government repeated the assertion made in the oral and written evidence that the Procedure Committee received that the House already has a sufficient range of options to deal with cases in which statements are made outside Parliament first. The Government’s response went on to suggest that the involvement of the Standards and Privileges Committee would risk dragging that Committee into party political disputes, which they say would undermine
“the integrity of its role.”
That response does not acknowledge your role, Mr Speaker, as envisaged by the Procedure Committee, in acting as a “gatekeeper” against frivolous complaints. Under the system that we proposed, any complaint that was a mere cover for a party political row or dispute would be dealt with by you and, in my view, would never reach the Standards and Privileges Committee, which would be asked to determine only serious or complex breaches of the rules
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
It is said that this procedure might drag the Speaker into politics, but surely there is one way the Government can ensure that that does not happen, and that is to behave in future.
Sir Paul Beresford
Of course, the opposite point is that the complainant might be being political.
Mr Knight
The complainant might indeed be being political, but if a complaint was made with no grounds, in fact I would expect Mr Speaker to block it. I do not know whether my hon. Friend was suggesting that there would be a difficulty in the process, but I do not particularly think that there would. I have every confidence that the occupant of the Chair—whoever it was—would see that justice was done.
The Government made some issue of the fact that the Procedure Committee did not receive any formal evidence from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on this proposal. I am rather baffled by that comment, because the Procedure Committee’s report does not suggest that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has any role in the process, so it is not clear why the Government think that we should have received evidence from him.
The Government said that they do not accept the Committee’s recommendation that the penalty for a breach of House protocol would be a recommendation from the Standards and Privileges Committee that the Minister concerned should apologise to the House. Instead, the Government note that there is no evidence that there is a significant problem with Ministers refusing to apologise to the House when a breach occurs. However, that rather misses the point, which is that the Standards and Privileges Committee would have no need to use its powers if there was no problem to be dealt with. If a Minister had already apologised, there would be no need to go there.
It is perhaps also worth reminding those on the Treasury Bench that the Government have repeatedly expressed support for their own protocol and that the Government are saying that they agree with the majority of Members of this House that the House should be told first when there is an announcement of Government policy. It seems to me, therefore, that the serious leaks that occurred last week should also be deplored by those on the Treasury Bench. I hope that the Leader of the House, when he comes to address us, will add his voice to those that have already placed on record a number of concerns about the leaking of large parts of the autumn statement. Many Members wonder why the Chancellor has not apologised.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
My right hon. Friend referred earlier to the discourtesy of leaking to the press, but does he agree that these leaks involve a discourtesy in that they might be given to some hon. Members before others, placing some Members at a disadvantage?
Mr Knight
I do indeed, and I believe that that happened last week. For example, the BBC television news in Humberside had the Chancellor’s announcement on the plan to reduce the tolls on the Humber bridge pretty much word for word and ran it 24 hours before the House was told. It seemed rather strange to me that a couple of hon. Members who happened to have seats near the Humber bridge were available on the bridge itself to do media interviews when the leak occurred.
If the Government do not believe what they say about Parliament being told first and want to leak or announce policies or decisions to the press first, they should come out in the open and say so and they should change their ministerial code.
I now turn to the motion before us. Although I think we are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for bringing this matter before us today, I must say that I would have preferred it had he consulted the Procedure Committee before he settled on the wording of the motion. I understand that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, to whom I have spoken about this matter and who chairs the Standards and Privileges Committee, was also not consulted on the terms of the motion before it was tabled or the timing. That is unfortunate. I do not want to tell the right hon. Gentleman, who does his own job perfectly well without any intervention from me, what he might or might not want to do, but he might have wanted to take the matter to his Committee and to have shown it the scope of the draft motion before it was brought to the House.
It is a pity that neither of the two Committees that the House has asked to consider these matters was consulted by the signatories to the motion. That is important because we have not yet debated the Procedure Committee’s report in the House, but the motion addresses only some of the issues raised by the Committee in its report on ministerial statements and ignores others. It is a cherry-picking motion and its scope has been determined without any reference to those who have responsibility for looking into this matter, having been asked to do so by the House.
The motion ignores the Procedure Committee’s recommendations on urgent questions and written statements. For example, we believe there are some occasions on which written statements should be open to oral scrutiny. The motion is therefore unsatisfactory and its timing, coming as it does without that consultation having taken place, is unfortunate. I do believe that action on this issue is necessary, as Governments of both political persuasions have been prepared regularly to flout the ministerial code when it suits them by leaking news to the press. However, I also believe that the way this matter has been brought forward today is unfortunate. Rather like the leaks themselves, it is no way to do business.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I welcome the chance to debate this issue today because it is important sometimes to debate first principles about what we are for and what we ought to get up to in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) criticised the Government for behaving in the same old, bad old ways, but of course this debate would not have occurred under the previous Government or in any of the previous 13 years I have been here. The Government have made reforms and have been rather more open-minded about how the House has proceeded than their predecessors.
My criticism of my hon. Friend is that he is harping back to a mythical golden age when all decisions were made in this House and everyone outside waited for the House to hear a statement. The reality, certainly in my time in the House, is that that has never been the case. It was not the case under Mrs Thatcher or in the 1950s when many Governments—Macmillan’s and others—had Information Ministers in their Cabinets. It certainly was not the case when Winston Churchill, one of our greatest Prime Ministers and a great parliamentarian, was running a Government in very difficult circumstances. He had a lot of mates in the press and things were leaked to them. Neither was it the case when Neville Chamberlain arrived at the airport with his piece of paper. He did not say, “I’ve got to nip back to the Commons and make a statement.” He said, “Peace in our time.” So let us be clear about this—nothing much has changed in the way that Governments have done business ever since the emergence of the popular press.
Mr Gray
I am disappointed that my hon. Friend has become some kind of apologist for Ministers who leak things. He might be right to say that it has always happened, although I think the pace has accelerated very sharply in recent years. The purpose of this debate is to discuss not whether this has happened but whether it should happen. Surely what we are saying is, “No, it should not happen. Things should be announced in this House first and Ministers should not go to the media and announce things there first.”
Mr Syms
I think we have to live in the real world—a world with 24-hour news. We know that when Governments consult on policies, some of those who do not like those policies decide deliberately to leak information, and Government Ministers are then sometimes called into studios to defend or explain their position. If we have a protocol within the House that makes it difficult for Ministers to explain what the Government’s position is, a lot of our constituents will be worried unnecessarily because, to coin a phrase, a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. That quite often happens with people maliciously trying to misrepresent Government policy.
Sir Paul Beresford
I was tempted to rise because the previous intervention was made by an hon. Friend who was a political adviser to me when I was a local government Minister. He assisted us in deciding whether it was appropriate, with regional issues, to make announcements in the areas to which they related rather than in the House of Commons.
Mr Syms
We have to look at the situation realistically. When the Prime Minister goes to the EU to negotiate with other leaders, at the end of that negotiation he stands on a platform next to the Union Jack and the EU flag and announces what has been discussed, what we have agreed with and what we have disagreed with. He sets out how he has been batting for Britain. What we are now saying is that whereas Merkel, Sarkozy or any of the other leaders can put the best face on their negotiation, the British Prime Minister will not be able to do so because he will have to come back here to make a statement, which he does anyway.
Dr Wollaston
Clearly, in that instance, Members of this House hear the statement at the same time as members of the press. If leaks are going to take place, which my hon. Friend is justifying, should they also be to Members at the same time?
Mr Syms
We all watch the news. I suspect that the vast majority of us are addicts of the 24-hour news channels. I keep being criticised by my wife for switching from channel to channel watching what is on the news, on Bloomberg, on ITV and on Sky. We all watch what goes on. Other Government leaders can stand up and announce what they have negotiated, but we are saying to our Prime Minister, “You can’t do that. You’ve got to whiz back here and give a statement.”
Let me give another example. We have a eurozone crisis. The markets are moving faster than the Governments and the political leaders. What happens when there is a eurozone crisis at the end of business on a non-sitting Friday, and the Chancellor has to make a statement before the markets open on Monday, which is a sitting day? Does he sit in the Chamber till 3.30 pm before he sets out what the Government are going to do, or does he make a statement setting out the Government’s emergency plans before the markets open in Europe and in the UK? If we think it is more important for him to speak to the House, he shuts up and people get plastered in the markets.
The reality is that we want Ministers in whom we have confidence and who speak for the majority of the people in the House. They have to command a majority. The Chancellor would have to come here eventually to answer questions about why he had conducted business in a particular way, but modern markets and modern international negotiation sometimes mean that Ministers make statements in press conferences and for the TV, rather than in the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I have some sympathy with the argument that the hon. Gentleman is making. It is right that we should be realistic about what announcements can be made and when they should be made, but does he accept that the amount of the autumn statement that was leaked was extraordinary? Does he think that is justified?
Mr Syms
Certainly, I found that shocking. I have sat in the House since 1997 and I have to say that the present Government leak a lot less than previous Governments in that time, but it does happen. We have to understand that.
Ministers should make more effort. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, said that we want the Government to make a special effort to come to the House when they can. My point is that in the modern world, with 24-hour news, it is not always possible for them to do that.
Mr Gray
I am extremely puzzled by my hon. Friend’s speech. He said a moment ago that Ministers should come here when they can. His position is a great deal more extreme than that of the Government. The Government have said that Ministers will always come here and will always make important statements here. My hon. Friend seems to be suggesting that they should sometimes decide not to do so. I am afraid he is probably on his own in the House today.
Mr Syms
My view is perfectly clear. It is not always possible for Ministers to get here. If something happened today in the markets, I would expect Treasury Ministers to make their best efforts to come here, as we are sitting, and talk to us, but that is not always possible.
Dr Julian Lewis
I am an exact contemporary of my hon. Friend and it seems to me that, comparing what happened under the previous Government and what happens under this Government, he is absolutely right about the quantity of leaking, which was enormous under the previous Government. The trouble is that the leaking under the present Government is getting more and more specific. I remember, when I complained about leaks by the previous Government, one of the Deputy Speakers saying to me, “Well, it could have been a case of intelligent anticipation by the media of what the Government and the Minister were going to say.” With the sort of leaking that is going on now, there is no question of that. It is straightforward, direct and specific. The logical conclusion of what my hon. Friend is saying is that we should tear up the ministerial code. If he thinks that is the case, he ought to advocate that.
Mr Syms
I am not advocating that at all. All I am saying is that sometimes in the real world briefings are needed to set out the context and background of Government policy, because there are many complex political problems, for example in relation to the financial markets or pensions, in relation to which journalists want to know where the Government are coming from. Sometimes journalists speculate or, as we all know, make things up. I know most of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, and I know that they do their best to keep the House informed. The House must keep on its toes to ensure that Ministers keep to the ministerial code where they can when they come here, but that is not always possible. I am against having a set protocol, which I do not think would work for the reasons I have set out.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I understand the practicalities of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but it appears to me, as a relatively new Member, that the vast majority of leaks to the press are on matters that are not desperate, will not cause problems in our markets and about which it would be quite reasonable to expect Ministers to speak to the House first.
Mr Syms
Ministers might listen to this debate and improve their conduct in front of the House, but it is easy to criticise their behaviour and bring in a protocol that will make life a lot more difficult for Ministers who are batting for Britain and doing their best in difficult circumstances. We live in a very unsafe and unsure world. Our Prime Minister and others are going to negotiate in Brussels, and our Treasury Ministers are doing their best to keep Britain out of the storm caused by the eurozone. Parliament ought to accept that they are doing their best for Britain and give them more backing.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I sit on the Procedure Committee and the Backbench Business Committee, so I have looked at this issue for some time. It is a question of the separation of the estates of the constitution. Previously, if an hon. Member’s written question was not answered, their best option was to make a freedom of information request. That was changed in the previous Parliament, and there is now a process for investigating why written questions are not answered by Ministers. We now have a system whereby, in the interests of improving governance and scrutiny and ensuring that what is done for this country is in its best interests, new Government policy on substantial issues is, as a general principle, announced first to the House.
The motion does not try to produce a detailed protocol. In the previous Parliament, a written statement would be made on, for example, the banking crisis, a regulatory news announcement would be made in the morning and an oral statement would be made during the day. That achieved a process of accountability—the Regulatory News Service was used so that all the financial market matters were dealt with and an oral statement was made, enabling Members to hold Ministers to account—and I do not think that anyone would say that there was anything wrong with it.
In deciding whether to support the motion, we must ask whether we should leave things as they stand so that, if Ministers take no notice of the ministerial code and make no effort to ensure that information is given first to Parliament and there is no investigation—a point of order can be raised but nothing further happens —or whether we should we have a process whereby we will not tolerate Ministers doing that. I accept that the Government do not like it because it is inconvenient for them, in the same way as answering questions can be, but in the long term, for the Government parties to be re-elected, we need good government, meaning we—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The hon. Gentleman appears to be crossing the Floor. I would be extremely grateful if he clarified his position.
John Hemming
I apologise for my foot fault, Mr Deputy Speaker. I must apologise for my foot faults on previous occasions, which were not raised with me. I am sorry, but I was unaware that I was breaking protocol, and without being corrected I did not know that I needed to stand a sufficient distance to be two sword lengths from the other side and to toe the line, which I am now doing. That makes my point, because the motion simply states that Ministers should toe the line, which is why hon. Members should back it.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I am not the only member of the Standards and Privileges Committee present, but I am probably the only one who is going to speak—and I note a nod from the Chairman, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), sitting on the Opposition Benches. I am not going to speak for the Committee, however, because quite simply it has not looked at the proposal at all, or responded to it, but it should, if we proceed any further with the suggestion—or with a report, because after this discussion it might be more appropriate for the Procedure Committee to take the matter back, look at it again and decide whether to change its approach or to submit the issue to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
As a former Minister, I remember the requirements of the ministerial code hanging over me like a heavy weight if I thought I was ever going to step out of line, and also—taking the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who is no longer in his place—decisions on whether it was appropriate. Many such statements are a matter of judgment, and one has to recognise that there are a vast number of statements.
Many statements relate to timing, to regions or, from my experience, to local authorities, and, if a local authority is awaiting a statement, it is appropriate to make it in that area. The thought of what would happen to the House if we were gummed up with every single statement coming out of the Department for Communities and Local Government alone is beyond the imagination.
There are leaks, but one only has to consider a Minister being stuck with a journalist, particularly one from TV or radio, who has come forward with either a leak or an educated—or an uneducated—guess and a question to which the Minister needs to respond to see how someone with a political motivation might take it as a statement that should have been made in the House, even though it might in fact be made in the House later.
It is quite inappropriate not to recognise those difficulties, but, if we follow the Procedure Committee’s suggestion, we will be hitting with a heavy sledgehammer what is generally—albeit with exceptions—a very small nut. My own experience, which is from some time back, was that there was little or no leaking. I do not remember any, but perhaps my memory is slipping.
If such a complaint were sent, through the normal procedures, to the Standards and Privileges Committee, it would first go to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is an official of the House. He would consider whether it was appropriate to investigate, but many such complaints would verge on the political, because the decision on the appropriateness of a statement made outside the House, whether substantial or not, is subjective and made by a Minister, with a measure of political judgment, be that with a small or large “p”. So, in effect, the motion asks for an officer of the House, the commissioner, to make a decision on a political issue, which I think would be absolutely inappropriate, as I believe and suspect the commissioner, from my discussions with him on other things, would, too.
Essentially, the Committee looks into complaints that Members have brought the House into disrepute. Decisions, including the Committee’s, are non-political, and the commissioner’s report is non-political. Most complaints fall by the wayside, because many sent to the commissioner—on the way to the Standards and Privileges Committee, if they ever get there—are political, are made by the public and are, quite often, from individuals who have been defeated in an election in a constituency. It is a well known technique, but fortunately it does not progress too far, because many such complaints are political, as many would be on the issue before us.
Ministers have to make a decision on a statement, but, with such rules hanging over a Minister, many statements would not be made outside the House when they should be; they would end up in the Chamber and, as I have already said, clog up the business. [Interruption.] There was an interjection, and, if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) would like to stand up and interject, I might be able to respond, because I am hard of hearing and did not catch it.
Chris Bryant
That argument takes us to the point where we might as well do away with parliamentary government and just have government.
Sir Paul Beresford
The hon. Gentleman knows that I, of all people, would not follow that tendency of the previous Government. I absolutely disagree with him, and today’s examples, whether from this Government, the previous Government or the one before, have been of substantial leakages on substantial statements. The majority are not substantial, and we will clog up the business if we bring through all the minor statements, especially the regional or local ones.
We must also remember that we are, in effect, asking the Speaker, who must be non-political, to make a judgment on what will often be a political complaint. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was correct to say that it would be inappropriate for it to be referred to the Speaker.
This debate will be helpful for the Standards and Privileges Committee if the matter is brought before it. However, the debate is being held too soon, because the matter will need to go before the Committee if the Procedure Committee decides, in the light of what is said, to go ahead with this technique. The Standards and Privileges Committee will have the opportunity to look at the whole issue again—I hope that it does—to think again, and possibly to look for another procedure to move forward with in the light of the comments that are made today.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
On reading the motion, my initial instinct was to support it, as it seemed intrinsically to be a good idea. However, it has some weaknesses and there are practical issues that we have to consider.
I do not believe that any Minister would ever dream of acting in a dishonourable way by leaking information prior to coming to this House. However, these things can occasionally happen, perhaps through a casual conversation that has been picked up by a journalist and reported at a later stage. More fundamentally, there is the greater issue of the definition of what is important. In my constituency, something that is important to someone in Halfpenny Green, for example, may not be as important to someone in Codsall, Bobbington, Kinver, Featherstone, or many other places. I could come up with a large number of places where it is not as important as it might be in Halfpenny Green. What is the definition of “importance”?
Chris Bryant
I think that the hon. Gentleman used a great deal of irony at the beginning of his speech. I have always thought it would be good if Hansard could put comments in italics if they are made ironically. I am sure that he would agree that the Queen’s Speech and the Budget are equally of interest to his constituents in each of the different villages that he mentioned, as in those in my constituency. It is not all that difficult to spot what counts as an important issue.
Gavin Williamson
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Yes, there are issues of great importance, such as the Queen’s Speech, Budget statements or the autumn statement. It would be nice if no details ever got out into the media before they got to this House, but the danger is that this motion could sweep up much more.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
A post-election Queen’s Speech is presumably based on the winning party’s manifesto, and it would be difficult for that not to be announced in public and announced only in Parliament.
Gavin Williamson
Indeed; my hon. Friend makes a valid point. The coalition agreement set out many aspects of what this Government would be bringing forward in the Queen’s Speech and enacting into law. The key is that this is not necessarily about those issues but about the smaller announcements that are often made in this House. What is important and what is not?
Mr Nuttall
The Procedure Committee report makes it clear that if a complaint is made by a Member to the Speaker, the Speaker would have the power to dismiss trivial complaints.
Gavin Williamson
It would be marvellous if this debate were purely about the Procedure Committee’s report, but it is not—it is about the motion.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend concerned that people may deliberately make frivolous or vexatious complaints, even if they have no prospect of being upheld by the Speaker, with a view to establishing negative press stories about the Minister involved?
Gavin Williamson
My hon. Friend will be incredibly shocked to hear that there are people in this House who act for political motives and who go about trying to damage right hon. and hon. Members on the Treasury Bench who are trying to deliver the business of the Government. He hits the nail on the head: there would be an awful lot of such complaints, and that is not what we want.
It may be a shock to you, Mr Deputy Speaker but I guarantee that every Member who sits on the Government Front Bench lives in fear of angering or annoying you, and of the displeasure that you might feel towards them, let alone the displeasure that Mr Speaker might feel towards them. I have seen members of the Government quake at the thought that they might be dressed down by the Chair. I cannot think of any greater sanction than that. That is a cast-iron certainty.
What is proposed in the motion does not recognise the realities of today. Often, information has to come out before a statement gets to the Floor of the House because the House does not sit in the early morning. That might be true of a financial statement, world events or wars in different parts of the world. The Government have to respond.
It is vital that Ministers are always duty bound to come to the Floor of the House to respond to such events as quickly as possible. That is why I am so proud of this Government. They have made it clear that it is a top priority for Ministers to be in this House. The relevance of this House is much greater today than it was under the previous Government. One of the first great parliamentary occasions after the Queen’s Speech was when the Prime Minister came to this House to report back on the Bloody Sunday inquiry. It was a moving moment, I think we would all agree, and a moment when the House was united. The Prime Minister summed up the feelings and emotions of this House wonderfully. This Government have made sure that this House matters. The Prime Minister has made more statements to this House than any Prime Minister since 1979, when the great lady, Baroness Thatcher, first came to power. How can we doubt that this Government are putting the right foot forward when they are following in such great footsteps as those of the great lady?
We never need to doubt that it is this Government’s intention to deliver great parliamentary scrutiny and great parliamentary involvement in the decisions of the nation. That is what the Government are doing today and it is what they shall do tomorrow. We do not need this motion. That is why I urge all colleagues to vote against it.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
This debate is the continuation of a debate that has gone on for centuries in another form. In the 18th century, the line was that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing and ought to be diminished. It is the perpetual, almost the eternal, job of this House to try to keep the Executive, Her Majesty’s Government, under check.
There is a wonderful picture in this House of the Commons trying to persuade Elizabeth I to marry. Elizabeth I said clearly, “It is not your business to talk about it.” Governments always wish to do that. They wish to maintain information for themselves, to use at their convenience. As a former Lord High Chancellor said, “Knowledge is power”. Governments preserve knowledge carefully. That is not an unreasonable thing for the Government to do from their point of view. However, the ministerial code, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), says otherwise. It is a splendid document, because its foreword shows the ambition of Her Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister to restore people’s trust in politics:
“It is our duty to restore their trust. It is not enough simply to make a difference. We must be different.”
I discovered, thanks to listening to “Yesterday in Parliament”, that the previous Government leaked the whole time. Or perhaps, to go back to “Yes Minister”, the approach was “I brief, you leak, he breaks the Official Secrets Act”. There has been a change, and this Government have got rather better at putting Parliament first, coming to the Chamber and telling us what is going on rather than gratuitously leaking every little titbit of information that is available. They have therefore done something to move towards the ministerial code.
However, the ministerial code is a most unsatisfactory document. Although it runs, I think, to some 30 pages, the truth is that Ministers abide by the code as long as they maintain the confidence of the Prime Minister and, as shown by newspapers and other media outlets, of the British people. Those 30 pages are quite a lot of waffle around that main theme, whereas a resolution of the House is something substantial, solid and dignified. It seems to me that things that go on in this House ought to be regulated by the House of Commons, not by the ministerial code.
It is worth bearing in mind that one Deputy Prime Minister could punch an elector on the nose and still not be deemed to have broken the ministerial code in any way. I know that it was secret at that point whereas it is now a public document, but it seems to me that it is flexible in its interpretation. The fundamental point, as I said, is that Ministers must maintain the confidence of the Crown and of Her Majesty, as advised by her Prime Minister. Indeed, the code states that the Prime Minister is foremost within its application and is the judge and jury of it.
That brings us back to the motion, to how we should deal with statements that are leaked and to why statements should not be leaked. That is the rather important question that we have perhaps neglected slightly. With some honourable exceptions, everyone broadly feels that statements ought to be made to the House first, but why? Why does it matter that we hear things before the News of the World, as was, or Sky News or the BBC? The reason is that control of the news agenda gives the Government an extra advantage over the Opposition, over their critics and over those who wish to hold them to account, which they would not be able to afford themselves. That advantage is paid for by public money.
The Government are indivisible but have two parts and two hats. They are party political on the one hand, yet they are the impartial Administration of the nation’s affairs on the other. The Labour party has perhaps two dozen press officers sitting in its current headquarters, but the Government can have two dozen in a single Ministry, able to brief and guide the press. The same is true when the situation is the other way around—the Conservatives have a small number, and the Government still have a massive advantage in controlling the news agenda. They use taxpayers’ money to do that, rather than money given to them through free donations, and they use that power to guide the views of the nation.
Nobody pretends that propaganda is not powerful. We all know it is, otherwise Unilever would not be, as I believe it is, the second largest spender on advertising in the country. I believe the Government are still the largest. Propaganda underlies how all of this works, and it is why the Government are so determined to maintain control of their ability to leak statements when they feel it is right to do so. They feel that if they use that power, they can ensure their electoral popularity and their re-election, at the expense of the British taxpayer. That is when the other, non-political side of the Government has to say, “This is improper. This is wrong. It is all right while we are in office, but we will not be in office for ever. The other side will come in, and they will be more ruthless than we are. They will use this propaganda advantage to ensure their continuation in power.”
The check on that is, and has been for centuries, the House of Commons nit-picking, banging away at the Government and saying, “This isn’t right. We are holding you to account on this. Our electors want to know about this”. It is not about us, or the fact that we are here representing North East Somerset or other, lesser parts of the country. Actually, I cannot say that with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) here, because I get into trouble if I am not very polite about Yorkshire on all occasions. We are representing our constituents, who wish us to hold the Government to account. Once we are elected, our constituents are not necessarily our political friends and supporters, but we represent every one of them and all their concerns.
I sympathise with the Government. I say that not because I am a loyal hack—I do not think I am the loyalest of loyal hacks—but because I absolutely understand the predicament in which they find themselves.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman referred to the non-political side of things, which I suppose in part means the civil service. One problem is that when we make an accusation—it could be an important one, such as, for instance, that the Government have issued false immigration statistics deliberately four days prior to the real statistics coming out—we write to Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and he writes a beautiful episode of “Yes, Minister” back. The Cabinet Secretary will never find against a Minister. Without the motion, there is no proper arbiter.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a model in opposition of how people ought to approach this matter. As I understand it, he was a model in government, although not as invariably successful as a model ought to be.
The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of the indivisibility of the Government, who are both political and impartial. In a sense, it is much easier to be a judge or to be the Speaker, because people in those positions are always impartial. The Government are always seeking re-election, but at the same time, they must make decisions in the interest of the nation impartially and fairly—one hears Ministers talk about being in a quasi-judicial position in certain circumstances. Parliament seeks to divide those indivisible roles and to say, “That bit is political. Therefore we are holding you to account for political reasons, not necessarily because we disagree on the benefit to the nation.”
The Procedure Committee debated with a great deal of amusement whether impeachment could be reintroduced. I would love to see the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) introduce articles of impeachment against a Minister whom he thought had misbehaved. If that did not work, perhaps he could go further and attaint a Minister, which would be the final sanction.
However, the Committee decided, cautiously and prudently —to some extent this answers the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms)—that, as the conclusion of part 1 of the report states,
“We do not believe that it is practical or desirable to produce a detailed protocol that would cover all possible situations”.
That is clearly right, because there will be circumstances in which Ministers must answer questions urgently—perhaps they would be pressed to do so or the financial markets demand it. However, there will also be occasions on which the Minister knows perfectly well that he has a jolly good, fat, juicy news story that he would like to put out to his chums and he does so. That is what we ought to be trying to stop.
I have great confidence in this Government when I think of what they have done so far to restore the standing of Parliament. We can see how much better debates are attended than they were under the previous Government.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I suspect that that is more because of the quality of the hon. Gentleman’s speeches than those of any Minister.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am deeply grateful to, and flattered by, the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution to this debate. In essence, is not our problem that the ministerial code, upon which we rely for justice in this respect, is presided over by the Prime Minister acting as a judge, when in reality he must also be an advocate for, and on the same side as, his Minister?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important that this be brought to the Commons as a matter of our procedure, and that we do not rely on the good will or benign nature of the Government to see that it is enforced.
I want to finish on the sympathy that I have for the Government. They have allowed the formation of a Backbench Business Committee, which is letting debates such as this take place. Ministers are regularly making statements and they are answering questions for over an hour on those statements. There is a more rigorous approach to the treatment of scrutiny, and the House of Commons is being treated more seriously. That is a thoroughly good and admirable thing. None the less, the House of Commons should be greedy and say, “We want more scrutiny of the Government. We want to push the Government further so that we may keep them under control and under a proper check because they wield the most gigantic power.”
The Government have all the organs of state at their control. They have as many press officers, briefers and leakers as one may wish to cast a stick at. The Opposition do not have that. Nevertheless, the day will come when the Conservatives are once again in opposition and we will want to claw our way back into government and will not want to have the dice loaded against us as they were between 1997 and 2010. For that, we must make tough decisions to hold the Government to account when it is a Government whom we support, and that scrutiny must be firmly embedded, reinforced and made solid in the culture of the House. Although the motion may not be ideal, it unquestionably moves in the right direction. If the Government do not accept it today, I hope that they will at least indicate what they will accept and how quickly they will pass this from the Government, the Crown, and back to Parliament.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
I have spent only a year and a half of my 46 years inside this place. I have observed that there is no time when the House of Commons makes itself more ridiculous than when it is suffused with self-serving piety. I accept that there is no one here with a greater claim to true piety than the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and he has made, as he always does, some brave and bold arguments. However, it was with some relief that I saw my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) breaking through that self-serving piety with a little common sense.
Chris Bryant
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is accusing me of self-serving piety. For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that I have no piety about me.
Nick Boles
I was accusing the House of being suffused with self-serving piety and giving the hon. Gentleman a bye on the basis that his past suggests that true piety is one of his qualities.
Let me start with where I am in agreement with other Members, including my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Holding Government to account is one of Parliament’s primary functions, but it is not its only function. Parliament is also there to supply and support a Government.
If Parliament’s primary function is to hold Government to account, no Government in recent times have done more to strengthen the power of Parliament to do such a job. It was this Government who introduced elections by Back Benchers of Chairmen and of members of Select Committees. Previous Governments, including the one of which the hon. Member for Rhondda was a member, appointed as Chairmen people who unfortunately needed to be eased out of their ministerial berths, where they had not been a success, and to be bought off for the rest of the term of that Government. This Government have turned their back on that naked attempt to suborn Parliament and have empowered Select Committees through the introduction of direct elections by Back Benchers.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
As a member of the parliamentary Labour party, I have to correct the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The PLP instigated a rule stating that nobody straight out of serving in government could become a Select Committee Chair. After I left government and served on the PLP, which is the equivalent of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee, no person coming straight out of ministerial office went into a Select Committee chairmanship.
Nick Boles
I am happy to be corrected on that point, but I hope the hon. Lady will confirm that it was this Government who introduced the election of Select Committee members and Chairs by Back Benchers, which significantly strengthened the independence of Select Committees and their ability to hold the Executive to account.
This Government also introduced the Backbench Business Committee, and so far have allotted it about 30 days of debate in Parliament for the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers. It was also this Government who introduced the concept of e-petitions to allow the House to debate not only the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers, but those of most interest to members of the public. It is clear, therefore, that it is this Government who have done most to strengthen Parliament’s ability to hold the Executive to account.
To be fair, we must also acknowledge that Mr Speaker has done more than any recent Speaker to ensure that Parliament can fulfil its function of holding the Executive to account. No Speaker has used urgent questions more regularly to force Ministers to come and account for their decisions and to answer questions from hon. Members.
Dr Julian Lewis
I am sure that Mr Speaker will be gratified by that vote of confidence—I say this without irony—from my hon. Friend, but does he not agree that it was at least unfortunate that, as Mr Speaker made explicit in response recently to a point of order from me, he felt it necessary to keep the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Dispatch Box as long as he did during the autumn statement precisely because he considered that the Chancellor had been saying far too much, in far too much detail, about that statement in advance to the media?
Nick Boles
No, I do not actually, and I shall explain later why I do not agree with my hon. Friend.
No Speaker has done as much as the current Speaker to place strict controls on Front-Bench waffle during questions, thus ensuring that more Members can ask their questions and get answers on behalf of their constituents. And no Speaker has presided over such long statements, including the Chancellor’s autumn statement, thus ensuring that all Members with questions to ask on behalf of our constituents can be heard. It is clear, therefore, that this Government and this Speaker of the House of Commons have done more in a very short time than any recent Government to strengthen the power of the Chamber to hold the Executive to account.
What puzzles me about the argument put forward by most Members who have spoken is the suggestion that holding the Government to account requires a monopoly on first communication of the Government’s decisions. Surely the days are gone when Parliament should think of itself as and behave like a priesthood that gathers together the only people in the country with the intelligence and education sufficient to consider matters of state. Surely what matters is that Parliament has an opportunity to discuss any announcement by Ministers on the day that it is made or, if it is made over a weekend, on the next sitting day. Is it not our duty, in this place in 2011, to adapt this ancient institution to modern democratic principles, and does that not require that we strike a balance between Parliament’s essential role of holding the Government to account and the public’s right to know what their Government are doing as soon as possible?
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
It seems to me that the best way of tackling the matter is this: when a Minister or a member of the Government needs for urgent reasons to make a statement publicly, he or she should do so and then come here as soon as possible. I am thinking, in particular, about matters in which military forces are involved. I do not see a problem with that. I think that the motion might allow for that—I hope that it does because that is how I interpret it.
Nick Boles
I thank my hon. Friend for that important and interesting intervention. I would go further, although I accept that very few people are of the same mind. We make a mistake in thinking that we can somehow reserve to decisions of military or financial sensitivity and urgency the possibility of their being made outside this place and then discussed fully inside this place.
Sir Paul Beresford
Does my hon. Friend not agree—from his vast experience in this place, and perhaps also looking from the outside—that although a considerable number of statements are of little or no interest to the House because they are regional, specific or small, perhaps involving one or two MPs, and so on, the decision on that, which the Minister takes, must be subjective, which makes the Minister vulnerable to attack, as we are seeing?
Nick Boles
I agree with my hon. Friend. This House has many opportunities to embarrass and annoy Ministers who seem to act with discourtesy towards us. I am not for a minute arguing that we should not make full use of that; I am just arguing against this motion.
I would like to move on to the example of the autumn statement—which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) raised earlier—in which, as I think we can all agree, some of the most important announcements of this Session were made. It is true, as we should admit without embarrassment, that many of the proposals in the autumn statement were discussed widely in the media—on television, in the newspapers and in the blogosphere—in the several days before the statement. I have no idea whether that was by accident or by design, but I fervently believe that this ensured that public awareness and understanding of the contents of the Government’s plans and their response to the difficult economic situation in which we find ourselves was far higher than it would have been if nothing had been revealed until the statement was made. I ask Members to ask themselves two questions. First, how many people are willing and able, in their busy working lives, either to watch the autumn statement as it is broadcast on television or to read parliamentary reports? Secondly, how many of them, given the slightly weird way in which we all speak, will understand it when they do?
Michael Ellis
Is it not also a rather unsatisfactory and unsafe assumption for those supporting the motion that it is the Minister, or a servant or agent acting for the Minister, who leaked sensitive information? Is it not also possible that the information was accidentally leaked, or in some way given by a third party, against the interests of the Government? Might not passing this motion also open up the sphere for misuse of the complaints procedure, whereby the mere fact of a complaint would bring down adverse criticism on the head of the Government and the Minister?
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the legal profession and therefore well understands the ability of people to abuse otherwise well intentioned elements of the law. However, I intend to go further than he suggests, because I argue that we should move away from this idea that it is a leak when the Government decide to announce in advance to the media some elements of their proposals. I believe that it is directly and strongly in the public interest that the public are given a chance to understand the detail of the Government’s proposals and the range of views and arguments that will be expressed, and for Parliament also to contribute to that debate, but not to have the monopoly on first communication.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point. It would be perfectly possible to write a ministerial code that said, “Her Majesty’s Government will take not a jot of notice of Parliament, but will issue statements to whomever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.” If that is what my hon. Friend wants, will he redraft the ministerial code and send it to the Prime Minister?
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend asks a cunning question, but one I think I can sidestep by saying that, as I discussed with him before the debate began, I think that the ministerial code is a load of nonsense. The truth about the ministerial code is what he said, which is that a Minister can stay in their job while they have the confidence of the Prime Minister, but as soon as they lose it, it does not matter what the ministerial code says, they should lose their job.
Thomas Docherty
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about helping the public better understand, is his argument that the Treasury leaked the entire contents of the autumn statement for the benefit of some public good, rather than because it wanted to get its excuse in first?
Nick Boles
First, I have no idea whether it was, in fact, the Treasury that leaked any of the details. Our journalists are cunning ferrets and they have remarkable ways to get information out of the leaky sieve that is a modern Government. However, more importantly—and to take the hon. Gentleman’s concern seriously—I do not know whether that was done for the public benefit, but I am absolutely certain that it was in the public interest. It was to the public’s benefit that there was wide discussion, over several days, on all the leading television programmes and in all the leading newspapers, about proposals that would have received much less attention if they had been left until Parliament heard the autumn statement.
Let us focus, then, on our true duty. Our duty is not to serve ourselves, to puff up our roles as Members of Parliament or to bolster our privileges; it is to serve the public. We do so by holding the Government to account, not by requiring them to leak all their information in this strange room, rather than out there, where people are listening. Nobody in this debate has yet explained why the public are better served by announcements being reserved to Parliament. That is why I will not support the motion.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I speak as a member of the Procedure Committee. I congratulate the Chairman, who is in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) on their sterling work on the report, alongside the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and other colleagues.
I have been fascinated by many of the contributions, which have again served as an excellent way of spotting who is on the fast track up the ministerial ladder. It is perhaps with some regret that, yet again, the hon. Member for North East Somerset has put his principles ahead of the greasy pole. However, he reminded me of a fellow old Etonian, Mr Hugh Dalton, who is probably the most obvious example of a member of a Government having to resign over this issue, because the contents of his Budget found their way into a newspaper before being read out to the House of Commons. Everyone is familiar with that story. What they are probably not familiar with is the fact that Hugh Dalton’s reasoning for giving that information—apparently as he was passing through Members’ Lobby on the way into the House of Commons—was that he believed that it would be said to the House before appearing in that day’s London newspapers. Even Mr Dalton, who is often held up as an example, as the first great leaker, said that his intention was for the House of Commons to hear the statement before the public at large. Unlike the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), I believe that it is to the public’s benefit that this House has an opportunity to scrutinise what the Government are proposing first, a point to which I shall return.
On the earlier point about why the Prime Minister is the wrong person to oversee things, the hon. Member for North East Somerset mentioned a rather good British Broadcasting Corporation programme, “Yes, Prime Minister”, and the famous and funny episode about a leak. For those who can recall it, the Prime Minister’s office was leaking against a member of his Government—something that I am sure the Leader of the House will tell us never happens in this Administration; they use tweets, apparently—if their fingerprints are not found on their iPhones. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman requires no reminder, but the outcome of the episode to which he referred was that the whole farce was brought to an end by a leak inquiry, which, as Sir Humphrey reminded the Prime Minister, would result in no evidence being found, no guilt being established and nobody losing their job. As is too often the case in this place, comedy—in this case, BBC comedy—imitates life. The problem is that, despite some incredibly serious leaks of Government statements, on not a single occasion during the 18 months for which the present Government have been in office has a single civil servant, special adviser, parliamentary private secretary or Minister been found to have breached the rule. I believe that in the last month alone no fewer than three Secretaries of State have been admonished by Mr Speaker for the fact that serious leaks have occurred, but as far as I can tell, their best excuse was, “It wasnae me. I didnae do it. A big boy did it and ran away.” Responsibility was mentioned earlier. It is the responsibility of a Secretary of State to ensure that information is not leaked from his or her Department.
Michael Ellis
Is the hon. Gentleman interested in the principles of natural justice? Does he believe that people ought to be guilty until proved innocent, or that people ought to be innocent until proved guilty unless they are in this Chamber?
Thomas Docherty
I am conscious of the danger that we will slip into the subject of our next debate, but I believe that Members of Parliament, including those who have the privilege of serving on the Treasury Bench, should be held to the highest possible standard, and I regret to say that that has not always happened in the case of a small number of Secretaries of State and their Departments.
The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) cited Neville Chamberlain. Let me first remind him that what Chamberlain said was “peace for our time”, not “peace in our time”. Given the hon. Gentleman’s close association with the Secretary of State for Education, who I understand is very keen on British history, that is the kind of thing that we should expect him to get right. What he did not mention, however—[Interruption.] I hear a mobile telephone ringing. It is probably The Guardian, asking for the latest statements.
What the hon. Member for Poole did not mention was that the then Prime Minister, having left the airport tarmac clutching his piece of paper, went straight to the Chamber of the House of Commons, where he gave a detailed account of events in Munich and responded to questions over a substantial period during which he was subjected to considerable heckling from Members on his own side.
Sir Paul Beresford
The hon. Gentleman is giving us a delightful piece of history. However, the reality is that nowadays the Prime Minister would arrive and be flooded with television cameras, microphones and so forth, there would be educated and uneducated guesses, the Prime Minister would be trapped into having to respond—and he might indeed use the words “in our time”.
Thomas Docherty
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has such a low opinion of his party’s Prime Minister that he does not consider him to be sufficiently fleet of foot to outfox a handful of Fleet street’s finest, but we are discussing something more substantive than a Prime Minister’s arrival from the tarmac to make a major policy announcement. We are discussing the habit that the Government have fallen into, after just 18 months, of considering no announcement too big or too small to be given to the media before they can be bothered to get around to giving it to the House.
We saw an example of that only a few days ago. The Department for Energy and Climate Change contacted The Guardian’s twitter feed more than half an hour before it was known that a statement was to be made, let alone what the contents of that statement were to be. It is a matter of great regret to many Members on both sides of the House that the Secretary of State and his cohorts have such a low regard for this place that they cannot even be bothered to tell Mr Speaker or the Opposition that a statement is to be made before they tell the media.
Bob Stewart
What worries me is that Ministers are supposed to govern, that “governing” sometimes means making decisions, and that there are a heck of a lot of decisions that Ministers must make. Given the flood of decisions that would end up in the House if every single matter had to be referred to it, we should never be able to do anything. Ministers should be allowed to get on with things, and then come to the House to announce particularly important decisions. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is proper for a Minister to be allowed to make a quick statement and come to the House as fast as possible in such instances.
Thomas Docherty
I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful contributions. I know that he has had some experience of the perils of leaks in recent days, and that he shares my concern about leaking. However, there are two types of statement.
The hon. Gentleman will not need to be reminded that today’s Order Paper lists no fewer than eight written ministerial statements. We are not talking about the need for every statement to be made orally on the Floor of the House; it is perfectly legitimate to place written statements in the Library of the House of Commons. Some of them are quite important. For instance, the third on today’s list is a statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the single payment scheme, a vital subject that is of great concern to many farmers throughout the country. As a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I know that the Government have repeatedly failed to meet their obligation to ensure that our farmers receive the money that they should receive, and that is a subject to which the Opposition may choose to return. The key point is, however, that such statements should be made to the House—in either oral or written form—before being punted not just to the “Today” programme, not just to “Daybreak” or the programme that follows it, and not just to “BBC Breakfast”, but to the new media. The constant leaking suggests that it is almost a case of “Anywhere but the House of Commons”.
I believe that the reason is quite straightforward. Let me return to a point made a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford. This is actually about softening bad news—about trying to get the Government’s version out there. As was rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for North East Somerset, there are hundreds of press officers, employed at taxpayers’ expense, whose job is to try to soften that bad news. Unfortunately the country will be given a great deal more bad news over the next three and a half years as the Chancellor’s economic policies continue to fail, as the economy continues to flatline, as the Government refuse to accept the need for a plan B, and as week after week the Chancellor is forced to come back and downgrade his growth forecast. That is why the Government do not wish to come to the House: they do not wish to scrutinise themselves.
Those of us who are historians, or history buffs, often enjoy taking our constituents around the Chambers of both Houses. One of our great pleasures, which I am sure you have experienced, Mr Deputy Speaker, is taking our constituents to the Chamber in the other place and showing them the table at which Winston Churchill stood during the years when the House of Commons Chamber was unavoidably out of action following the bombing in May 1941. We can see the mark on that table that was made when Winston Churchill, who I would argue had more on his plate than any other Prime Minister—not just his Sunday lunch, but all the matters with which he was dealing—banged his hand on it. He came to the House, made himself available for scrutiny and answered questions for hour after hour, because it was important for the country to feel confident that the House of Commons had exercised due diligence and scrutiny.
The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford—in one of the most creative speeches that I have heard for some time, during which he tried to justify his former flatmate’s leaking of the whole autumn statement the previous weekend—claimed that this was about the public interest.
Nick Boles
I am forced to intervene because the hon. Gentleman has accused me of two things in the last 10 minutes: of being an old Etonian, which I am not, and of having been the flatmate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I never was.
Thomas Docherty
I apologise on the second count, although I suspect that it was the Chancellor’s loss rather than the hon. Gentleman’s. As for the first, I was referring to the hon. Member for North East Somerset, who is sitting next to him, and whom I know to be the finest old Etonian currently serving in the House—bar one, obviously. I am sure that he will have an equally long career.
A fundamental point was made earlier about the public good and about debates. As the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford will know, every Budget is followed by a Finance Bill, which requires the exercise of due diligence and is debated at some length. I am sure that if he has not had the privilege and pleasure of serving on a Finance Bill Committee, the Government Whips, who are doubtless paying attention, will be more than happy to introduce him to the process, which allows outside stakeholders, representing the interests of his City friends and those of the country at large, to make their cases to Members.
Nick Boles
Would the hon. Gentleman care to enlighten us as to how many members of the public attend sittings of the Finance Bill Committee?
Thomas Docherty
I have served on only one Finance Bill Committee, as a researcher many years ago, and the public gallery was packed. Of course, there is a wider debate about how we can further open up our Bill Committees to the wider public, but it is not just about the debate itself; it is also about the process post-Budget, pre-Bill Committee, when all interested groups can make representations. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and hon. Members on both sides of the House received many representations on the Budget from constituents. That is the correct forum for having a good discussion about the merits of the Budget, not the Sunday papers and the Sunday programmes beforehand.
That is the problem with the Government: they have no regard for the House, the public at large or the many interested groups. They have got it back to front. The first thing they should do is lay their policy before Parliament; then they should allow the House to have scrutiny; and then they should welcome proper consultation on their policies—three things that they have repeatedly failed to do.
I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and the Leader of the House need to respond to the debate. This is not a light matter. It is genuinely about whether we want a Government, regardless of their political hue or whether they are a rainbow coalition, who believe that they are accountable to the people through the House, or a Government who continue to be accountable to a handful of editors of newspapers and TV programmes. It is genuinely about whether the House remains the primary point at which the Government will be held accountable.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
We have had an interesting debate, which has sought to address the continuing tension between the Government's desire to get what they see as favourable coverage in the media for their announcements, and Parliament's requirement that it, and not the media, should be told first of any important new announcements, so that it may do its job in holding the Government to account. Some of the tension between the different approaches to that particular job has been expressed in the speeches that we have heard tonight, not least those by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is a pro-House of Commons man to his very core and made that clear in his contribution, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who is not, if I could put it that way, because he seemed to spend most of his contribution questioning whether the ministerial code should exist in its current form at all, which is probably one of the more radical suggestions in the debate.
I do not think tension between those two issues—the Government's desire to get favourable news coverage and Parliament's understandable desire to be at the centre of national debate—is anything new. Many previous Governments, of all political hues, have been found wanting when it comes to ensuring that their announcements of important policy decisions happen first in Parliament. Many right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in what was an extremely wise speech, have pointed out, not only in our debate today but in previous debates, that the situation has been exacerbated by the advent of 24-hour news.
We have also seen the explosion of new platforms for the dissemination of information, which simply were not envisaged when our Parliament first formulated its now rather antiquated procedures and Standing Orders. The increasingly cut-throat competition between print and broadcasting media has not been mentioned, but it is relevant to the issues that we are struggling to resolve appropriately in the Chamber. There is a battle to obtain “breaking news” first, and the cavalier approach to rules and standards of behaviour in the media, now being highlighted in evidence to the Leveson inquiry, does not provide an easy backdrop against which to expect improvements in that state of affairs. Thus the trade in exclusive first access to important Government announcements in exchange for favourable and uncritical coverage of the good bits appears to benefit Ministers and the media outlets alike. Whenever that potential exists, there will be a difficulty that we as a Parliament have to struggle with if we are going to ensure that this Chamber gets a look-in. Unfortunately, that trade is flourishing as never before.
The lack of any real sanctions on Ministers when such leaks occur does not help Parliament to achieve its proper aim: to ensure that it is elected Members of the House, who are here to represent the views of their constituents, who are first to question Ministers on their policy announcements and thereby hold them directly to account. That is despite the clear instructions in paragraph 9.1 of the ministerial code 2010, which has been quoted in our debate:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”
The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford had a separate argument that that should be expunged from the ministerial code. It is a point of view. It is not a point of view that I feel would get a majority in the House, but at least he has been open and up-front enough to advance that argument. However, I think that the vast majority of us here want, in considering these difficult issues, to find a way of making the ministerial code work properly, so that this Chamber can be what it was always meant to be: the place where the most important debates about Government direction happen.
It is clear that that statement of intent is a good thing but is far from being achieved in reality. Indeed, I think that it is flouted regularly by senior members of the Government, from the Prime Minister down. The ministerial code itself now appears to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as I pointed out last week on a point of order. My observation followed the systematic and premeditated leaking of every piece of good news in Thursday's autumn statement to the media in advance, usually accompanied by photo calls with Ministers in high-vis jackets.
I was unaware at the time, although we have been informed of this today, of the Humber bridge coincidence, if I may put it that way. There was an announcement of the decrease in tolls on the Humber bridge and some hon. Members, just by coincidence, happened to be available on the Humber bridge. Obviously they had no idea that the media might be on the Humber bridge with their cameras waiting for an instant reaction to something that, clearly, the Members in question had no idea was about to be announced in the autumn statement. Perhaps there are people who believe that that is indeed what happened on the day, but many of us have some suspicions that there may have been something slightly improper going on with the autumn statement. The fact that the autumn statement was in essence a mini-Budget simply made the offence all the more blatant. In my view, it showed a cynical and total contempt of this House and a complete disregard of the ministerial code itself.
While I am on that subject, another important part of the ministerial code was also ignored ahead of the Chancellor delivering his autumn statement to the House last Tuesday. That was the requirement in paragraph 9.5 that the text of the oral statement should be shown to the Opposition “shortly” before it is made. Although no precise time is specified, the paragraph requires copies of the statement and associated documents to be sent to the Chief Whip and his office 45 minutes in advance. I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Leader of the House whether he had the documentation in his office 45 minutes in advance. His answer is important because, in the event, my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor got barely 10-minutes’ notice and a heavily redacted copy of the statement. This puts all opposition parties in difficulty when trying to reply to complex announcements. Like everyone else however, my right hon. Friend had been able to piece together what all the positive Government announcements were likely to be from watching the news, but that is not what is intended by the requirements for oral statements under paragraph 9.5 of the ministerial code. I would be interested to hear what the Leader of the House has to say about that.
There have been further worrying signs of escalating ministerial disregard for Parliament. Notable among them was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change’s astonishing discourtesy to the House two weeks ago. His intention to come to the House to make an energy statement—laudable in itself—was somehow tweeted to the world 30 minutes before his Opposition shadow was told by an environment journalist at The Guardian. An hour later the statement’s contents were leaked to the same journalist and were up on the website hours before the Secretary of State was due to deliver the statement in this place. As far as I can tell, absolutely no action has been taken by the Government to reassure us that this will not happen again, and the Secretary of State has offered neither an explanation nor an apology to the House for this strange coincidence.
As the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) set out in his speech moving the motion, and as was also pointed out by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chair of the Procedure Committee—which has done an extremely good job—the Procedure Committee produced its February 2011 report on ministerial statements at the request of this House, which is an unusual way of doing things. That followed the first ever debate initiated by the Backbench Business Committee, which took place last July. At that time, the Leader of the House supported the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into how Parliament’s understandable determination not to be the last to know about ministerial intentions could be translated into a workable system that would improve the current sorry state of affairs. In that first debate, the Leader of the House said:
“We devalue ourselves if the news is being made elsewhere. We therefore risk losing our position as the centre of British national debate. That is surely why the principle that we are debating today is important…We are elected here to scrutinise the Executive and to hold Ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. It is therefore crucial that Ministers explain and justify their policies in the Chamber in the first instance.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 263.]
That provides the most eloquent response to the comments of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford.
We had to wait until May for the Government’s response. When it finally arrived, it was disappointingly dismissive—as the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire hinted—and since then an uneasy stand-off between the Executive and the House of Commons has prevailed. No action on the recommendations in the report has been taken. In his speech, the right hon. Gentleman described the Government response as “highly unsatisfactory”, and I agree.
Throughout this period, there have been ongoing briefings and announcements of Government policy to the media rather than Parliament. The large number of urgent questions that Mr Speaker has seen fit to grant during this time is a good measure of the extent of the Government’s current disregard for the rules on ministerial statements. Never have the high ideals proclaimed by a new Government at the beginning of a Parliament so swiftly turned to dust. Their laudable early determination to put Parliament back at the centre of national debate has been throttled by the cynical opportunism of myriad SpAds—special advisers—and spin doctors. Their headline-chasing, public relations-fixated masters have meanwhile been busy driving a coach and horses through the ministerial code. So much for hoping that the Government would be capable of resisting the temptation to trade with the media in early announcements to the detriment of Parliament’s right to know first. So much for hoping that the Government would be content to allow the recommendations in the Procedure Committee’s report to be put into effect, or at least that some progress might be made on this issue.
What is to be done? It appears that the Backbench Business Committee has grown impatient waiting for the Government to deal with the recommendations in the report on ministerial statements, and I cannot say I blame it. It has decided to try to force the issue, and the motion before us seeks to put into effect just one of the recommendations contained in its report: the recommendation specifying a new procedure for complaining to the Speaker about a breach of the protocol that statements should be made first to Parliament. It would allow the Speaker to judge whether a minor, or more serious, breach had occurred. It would empower him to take appropriate steps in the event of minor breaches, and to refer more serious cases to the Standards and Privileges Committee for further investigation. In essence, this gives the Speaker—and therefore, by definition, this House—the power to begin to enforce the protocols that exist to guide Ministers’ conduct on announcements. Perhaps this is the only way progress can now be made, given that the Government’s enthusiasm for making improvements in this area seems to have evaporated completely.
In the Government’s response to the report, on the suggestion that the Speaker should be empowered to enforce the protocol, they consider that an adequate range of “sanctions” for such misbehaviour by Ministers is already available. In what is one of the weakest sections of their response, the Government list the granting of an urgent question, an investigation by the relevant Select Committee, or raising the breach at business questions or Prime Minister’s questions as adequate sanctions to prevent ministerial disregard for the rules. I have raised various breaches of the protocol either as points of order or in business questions during my short time as shadow Leader of the House, and I cannot say that I have seen Ministers either worried or apologetic about any breach. A complacent smirk seems to be the most usual response. The Government’s claim that adequate sanctions already exist cannot be true, or there would have been evidence that ministerial behaviour had changed and that Parliament was being bypassed in favour of announcement by media on fewer occasions. If anything, the opposite is true.
Given the Government’s obvious reluctance to embrace the recommendations in the Procedure Committee report and the evidence of ongoing and serious breaches of the protocol about Ministers making important statements to Parliament first, the Opposition will vote for this motion tonight. I also want further consideration to be given to how other recommendations in the report can be put into action in the future, and I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to ensure that we can take these important matters forward to a sensible conclusion.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, which is being held only because this coalition Government established the Backbench Business Committee, giving it the opportunity to set the debate and allow a vote. The shadow Leader of the House raised the availability of the autumn statement. We always use our best endeavours to get the documents to the Opposition Whips office within 45 minutes, and we will continue to do so.
Let me set out the Government’s position on the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). As he said, it arises from, and refers to, the Procedure Committee report on ministerial statements published in February. The Committee was asked to prepare its report as a result of the debate on the first Backbench Business Committee day on 20 July last year and the motion, also moved by my hon. Friend, that was agreed that day.
The Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), sought a debate on a motion taking note of that report, which would have covered more issues than are under discussion today, but the motion was never debated. The Backbench Business Committee has now chosen to introduce its own motion on the subject, drawing on parts of certain Procedure Committee recommendations —although, as my right hon. Friend implied, it is unclear why we are not debating the whole report. As the shadow Leader of the House said, we responded in full to the Procedure Committee’s report and our views on its recommendations have been available to hon. Members since May. We made it clear in our response that we did not support the relevant recommendations of the Procedure Committee and so it should come as no surprise to the House that we are not able to accept today’s motion.
Let me begin by setting out where the Government are at one with the Procedure Committee and, indeed, with the majority of those who have spoken in the debate, before setting out where we disagree. The ministerial code states:
“When Parliament is in session the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, to Parliament.”
My Cabinet colleagues are very mindful of that requirement, and I do not hesitate to remind them of it. But there is clearly a “tension”—that word was used by the shadow Leader of the House—between the realities of the 24-hour news cycle and the requirement of the ministerial code. As the Government said in their response to the Procedure Committee in the spring:
“Ministers’ obligations to Parliament are paramount, but the Government also has a duty to communicate its policies and programme effectively to the wider public, including through the platform of a 24-hour news media. These dual pressures have been a reality under all recent governments”.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) made that point in his effective contribution.
I looked through the evidence to the Procedure Committee and read that a former Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), said in his:
“I don’t think we should complain about Government trying to maximise the positive media for its policy. Any Government is going to do that.”
Ministers must adhere to the responsibilities of the code, but we also need to bear in mind the need to address the public’s desire for timely, accurate information, especially when fast-moving events have a capacity to distort or misrepresent the Government’s policy. The public’s appetite for that does not start and end with the day’s sitting hours—again, that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole.
Of course the House has legitimate expectations in this area, and this Government are making many more statements than their predecessor. We have so far made 163 oral statements this Session, and compared with the last two Sessions of the previous Government, this Government are making 40% more oral statements than Labour Ministers—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). We have only to look at the record of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to see how importantly the Government view the House’s role in scrutinising policy. My right hon. Friend has spent almost 30 hours at the Dispatch Box, making 24 oral statements so far this Session, which is a considerably better record than his predecessor.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House state how many of that increased number of statements were forced on the Government by the increase in urgent questions?
Sir George Young
None is the answer; urgent questions are in addition to the statements to which I have just referred.
I do not believe that the motion either sets realistic standards or proposes an appropriate path for what might follow from a departure from the standards. I say in passing that it also threatens to undermine the basis that all Ministers are equal under the ministerial code, because the motion applies only to Commons Ministers.
Chris Bryant
The Leader of the House is being slightly unfair. Often what happens—indeed, it happened today—is that a Member applies for an urgent question and the Minister, by some miracle, immediately decides that it would be a good idea to ask to make a statement. In those circumstances, would it not be a good idea if the Minister just started his statement with an apology?
Sir George Young
However one looks at the statistics, there has been a marked increase in the willingness of this Government to come to the House to make statements; the figures speak for themselves.
I turn to the question on which we disagree: whether or not the standards set out in the motion are the right ones. The Cabinet manual is clear that
“When Parliament is in session the most important announcements of government policy should, in the first instance, be made to Parliament”.
The words in the Cabinet manual were used in terms in the resolution of this House on 20 July, which again referred to “the most important announcements”. However, the motion before us today broadens the requirement massively, and in an open-ended manner, to “all important announcements”. At a stroke, the motion seeks to sweep away the intention of the Cabinet manual to draw a distinction between those matters that are properly for Parliament first and those matters that can be announced in other ways. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) said, almost all announcements made by the Government are important to someone. I commend the way in which he managed to get into his speech the names of a number of large villages in his constituency, and I am sure that the people in all those were delighted to hear of his commitment to them. If the House were to agree to this motion, it would replace a text that acknowledges the need for a sensible judgment about relative importance with a text that invites consideration of importance wholly in isolation.
The motion seeks to lay down a blanket requirement for statements to be made to the House first “on all occasions”, without any exceptions or qualifications. Let us consider a recent example. Does the House seriously imagine that the Government’s policy on the advice to be given to British nationals on travel to Iran should not have been announced before the House sat? Equally, the motion contains no recognition that certain market-sensitive announcements must be made when financial markets are closed. For example, a whole series of announcements by the previous Administration about Government support for the banks were made at 7 am. As the then official Opposition, we understood why Parliament could not be told first. If this motion is passed, any Minister making a similar announcement would face an inherent conflict between their obligations in relation to the financial markets and their obligations to this House.
Thomas Docherty
For the sake of clarity, will the Leader of the House therefore confirm that if the motion had specifically excluded financially sensitive information and matters of state security, he would have supported it? Or is this simply a smokescreen?
Sir George Young
First, the motion did not do that and the hon. Gentleman did not table such an amendment. Secondly, if he listens to the rest of what I have to say, he will understand that the Government have other difficulties with the motion.
Similarly, the motion contains no acknowledgement that announcements of policy that are the subject of international agreement must often be made simultaneously and on terms acceptable to the other parties to such agreement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister successfully negotiated an agreement among the 16 realms at Canberra about the royal succession, and being able to announce that decision together with other Heads of Government at Canberra was part and parcel of the negotiation. The motion, if agreed to, would limit the Government’s ability to reach and announce joint or multilateral agreements—my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) also made the relevant point about military intervention.
The motion also seeks to establish as a protocol the requirement that any information that forms all or part of an announcement to Parliament should not be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament. That would be very difficult to interpret where the development of a policy has gone through several stages, some of them in the public domain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham pointed out, the inevitable increase in statements, both written and oral, that would result from a blanket interpretation would risk squeezing the House’s other business, including Opposition day debates and Back-Bench debates, as well as putting at risk the effective scrutiny of Government legislation. That is one of the central tasks of the House; it is not an optional extra.
Michael Ellis
The ministerial code of conduct makes it clear that all Ministers are equal, even those in the other place, so is the Leader of the House not concerned that this motion is particularly in error because it is silent about the Ministers in the other place?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct and I believe that I touched on that a moment or two ago.
The motion would create new, enforceable rules of the House, and that is a novel step. In 1995, the House passed a resolution setting out the principles that should govern the conduct of Ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament. The resolution referred to broad principles of accountability, and the duty not to mislead Parliament and to be as open as possible. It made no mention whatsoever of a duty to make statements in the House first.
I shall now deal briefly with the process outlined in the motion, which my hon. Friends did not touch on. The first step in any case where a Member believes the standards had been breached—
Sir George Young
If I may, I will make some progress and then give way.
The first step in those circumstances would be to refer the matter to Mr Speaker. The relevant recommendation of the Procedure Committee says the following about what happens next:
“If he determined that the complaint was without basis or trivial, it would be open to him to dismiss it.”
The motion makes no mention of that. Where a minor breach has occurred, the motion, like the recommendation, refers to Mr Speaker taking steps. But Mr Speaker already has the power to summon Ministers to the House to answer urgent questions—a power used more extensively by this Speaker than by any of his predecessors. One should not underestimate the value of that tool. The former shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), told the Procedure Committee that Ministers take urgent questions very seriously indeed.
A range of other options are already available to the House to hold Ministers to account and can be used as sanctions. Ministers can be cross-examined by departmental Committees, they can be called to account through debate in the House—more so than ever before as a result of the Backbench Business Committee—and there can be a debate, in extreme circumstances, on a motion of censure. Indeed, I recall answering a debate in which it was proposed that my salary as a Minister should be reduced—a motion that, in its wisdom, the House did not carry.
In those circumstances, we oppose the suggestion that it would be a useful addition to give Mr Speaker the power to refer a more serious or complex breach to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That proposal was made by the Procedure Committee, although I note that the Committee has not published any written or oral evidence to show the views of the Standards and Privileges Committee on the proposal, a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). Given that there is no proposal to change the terms of reference of that Committee, I assume that a referral would be treated as a matter of conduct. The code of conduct, which applies to all Members, contains no reference to the conduct of Ministers. Indeed, this subject was not raised in the recent consultation on the code. Out of the blue, the motion seeks unilaterally to change the principles behind the code before the House has even had an opportunity to review them.
As a former Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I think that those proposals could conflict with the fundamental role of that Committee, which is to regulate the conduct of individual hon. Members. It is not the function of the Standards and Privileges Committee to enforce the ministerial code and there is a real risk of double jeopardy if two institutions—the Prime Minister and the Standards and Privileges Committee—police the same code.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, who chairs the Procedure Committee, said that the Government preferred the status quo. That is not quite the case. We proposed a number of reforms to his Committee. First, we suggested that there should be time limits on certain oral statements, so more could be made. That was rejected. Secondly, together with the then Shadow Leader of the House, I expressed an open mind on the proposition that oral statements could be made in Westminster Hall, but the Procedure Committee made no recommendation on that. Thirdly, I proposed that the earliest time for the release of written ministerial statements should be brought forward from 9.30 am to 7 am, which could be coupled with arrangements that the House already has to ensure the prompt availability of such statements on the parliamentary website. The Procedure Committee rejected that suggestion.
The Government are keen to pursue proposals that enable the House and its Members to be informed first of the most important announcements of Government policy in helpful and innovative ways. In the light of recent events, I will remind all Cabinet colleagues of the terms of the code and the strong views of the House in the debate this evening. However, the proposal before us does not take matters forward constructively. It seeks unrealistically to change the standards expected of Ministers and then seeks to subject them to additional policing that muddies the waters surrounding the role of the Standards and Privileges Committee. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject the motion.
Mr Hollobone
With the leave of the House, and on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I want to thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have attended and contributed to this afternoon’s debate over the past two and a half hours. In addition to the speeches made by me, the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, there were nine Back-Bench speeches and some 47 interventions. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) reminded us that we live in a world with the insatiable beast of 24-hour rolling news and that Government announcements often were not sensitive, but he was worried that Mr Speaker might be drawn into party political warfare.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) said that the Government’s response to the Procedure Committee’s report was highly unsatisfactory, but pointed out quite fairly that there were further recommendations in the report that we are not debating tonight. He also stressed that one of the problems with the ministerial code is that it is up to the judgment of the Prime Minister and that Parliament has no role in enforcing it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) accused me of harking back to a mythical golden age and quoted Neville Chamberlain on his return from Germany, saying “Peace for our time.” My hon. Friend also said that we need “to live in the real world—a world with 24-hour news”. He was worried that the protocol would not work.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who has the privilege of serving on both the Backbench Business Committee and the Procedure Committee, urged Ministers to toe the line while visibly crossing the line himself.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who is a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee, was unhappy that the Committee had not been involved in the preparation of this motion and said that the debate was too early. He was also worried that the Chamber would get clogged up with lots of minor Government statements on all sorts of different subjects.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), who, I believe, is a Government Parliamentary Private Secretary, said that it was difficult to decide what would be and would not be important as far as Government statements were concerned. He accused those who tabled the motion of not recognising the realities of the present-day news media.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who serves on the Procedure Committee, placed the debate into an historical context, going back to Queen Elizabeth I. He reminded us that the ministerial code says that the Government have a duty to restore trust in politics, but he also said that a resolution of this House is substantial, solid and dignified, in contrast to the ministerial code, which is merely a lot of waffle around the main theme that Ministers remain Ministers almost whatever they do so long as they enjoy the confidence of the Prime Minister.
In complete contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) accused me and the House of being suffused with self-serving piety. I commend him for his forthright honesty in saying that the ministerial code, in his view, was a complete load of rubbish that ought to be torn up and that the Government should be quite open in making their news announcements to the public first without coming to this Chamber. I commend my hon. Friend for his honest approach; I condemn those Members of this House who pretend that this Chamber is where important news ought to be announced while routinely leaking that information to the press.
Finally, we had a contribution from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who reminded us of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, who resigned for leaking details of his Budget statement. The hon. Gentleman also made a very good point in answer to those who are worried that the Chamber will be clogged up with large number of oral statements about policy announcements: written ministerial statements are perfectly acceptable.
This has been a very well-informed, enthusiastic and interesting debate. For my part, this is not about Conservative versus Labour or Government versus Opposition. It is about this House of Commons, as one part of the Houses of Parliament, holding Her Majesty’s Government to account for their decisions and announcements. I leave hon. Members with one thought before we divide: do we want this Chamber to be the centre of the political life of the nation, or should we surrender to the 24-hour news media?
Question put.
UK Extradition Arrangements
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House calls upon the Government to reform the UK’s extradition arrangements to strengthen the protection of British citizens by introducing as a matter of urgency a Bill to enact the safeguards recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its Fifteenth Report, HC 767, and by pursuing such amendments to the UK-US Extradition Treaty 2003 and the EU Council Framework Decision 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant as are necessary in order to give effect to such recommendations.
First, may I thank the Backbench Business Committee chaired by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) for granting this debate? Her Committee is proving to be a shot in the arm for Parliament and our democracy. I also wish to thank the cross-party sponsors of the motion, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee, and the many, many MPs on all sides of the House who signed and support the motion.
The debate was scheduled at relatively short notice, so the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee are not here. The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife is leading a parliamentary delegation in Washington. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee is also engaged but will join the debate later. Both spoke passionately in the Westminster Hall debate on 24 November. Both asked that I reiterate their firm support for the motion this evening.
The issue before us is technical and legalistic but, at its core, it is about the price we place on the liberty of our citizens, and the value we ascribe to that cornerstone of British justice, innocent until proven guilty. It is not about abolishing extradition, which is vital to international efforts in relation to law enforcement. It is about whether, in taking the fight to the terrorists and the serious criminals after 9/11, the pendulum swung too far the other way. I want to praise the Minister and the coalition for their efforts to defend our freedoms and their achievements to date, and for taking seriously the case for extradition reform. My purpose today is to encourage their best instincts and inject a dose of common sense into the blunt extradition regime that we now have in place.
What went wrong? Let us take, first, the UK-US treaty of 2003. Much has been made of the different evidential thresholds. The review by Sir Scott Baker concluded that there was “no significant difference” between the two tests, probable cause and reasonable suspicion. For my part, I do not believe there is a massive difference between the paper legal tests, but that does not mean that their operation is symmetrical. As Alun Jones QC, who represented the Spanish Government during the Pinochet case, argued and points out in The Daily Telegraph today, an American citizen who is subject to an extradition warrant in the US has the constitutional safeguard that a judge must examine the evidence. In this country, a short recitation of the allegations suffices. That is a very real and important imbalance.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that he believes the evidential test to be higher in the USA than it is in the United Kingdom. Will he acknowledge, however, that the United States has not refused a single request since the treaty was introduced?
Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will take his word on that data, but the key distinction that I am making is between the paper legal test and how it actually works. We are not going to be ivory tower academic lawyers about this. Let us understand the impact on the people affected.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Let me correct the record. The Americans may not have refused any British applications for extradition, but they have refused to provide witnesses in other countries’ cases, which has led to broken trials.
Mr Raab
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification.
In practical terms the arrangements are unbalanced too. On the latest data available—I thank the Immigration Minister for his letter correcting earlier replies to parliamentary questions—29 UK nationals or dual nationals were extradited from Britain to the US since 2004. Five Americans were extradited from the US to Britain.
Obviously, states extradite their own nationals and third parties as well, but we in the House are rightly concerned about the treatment of those removed from the home country. In front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the US ambassador disputed some of the earlier data that I spoke to in the Westminster Hall debate, complaining about untrue accusations being made by MPs and adding:
“The constant use of skewed arguments and wilful distortion of the facts by some to advance their own agendas remains of great concern to the United States”.
If there is any dispute about the facts it is not with me or any Member of this House, but with Ministers from the previous Government who failed to record consistently data on the issue between 2004 and 2007. I emphasise that all the figures cited today and in the previous debate were from Government replies to parliamentary questions. Neither the ambassador nor the US embassy, when I later followed up, were able to correct the figures with data based on their own records, so I find it regrettable that the charge of
“wilful distortion of the facts”
is being bandied around without His Excellency being in command of a few of his own.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
I am greatly enjoying what my hon. Friend is saying. I am a thorough supporter of the idea that the extradition rules should be reviewed, but I am still grappling, in the American case, with the difference between the two tests. Will he give us a sense of how they might come apart?
Mr Raab
The fundamental question is the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. As paper tests, I do not think there is an enormous amount of difference between them, but as Alun Jones QC, whose article in The Daily Telegraph I commend, has spelled out, the practical operation—the judicial scrutiny that is available in the US because of the US constitutional guarantees—is higher. That is the key difference.
For all the talk of the evidential burden and the question of reciprocity, in my view, the critical issue in the US arrangements is forum. That is the label for how one decides where, in cross-border cases, the appropriate jurisdiction lies. The Gary McKinnon case is the leading case attracting great controversy at present. At root it is about the injustice in dispatching someone with Asperger’s syndrome hundreds of miles from home on allegations of computer hacking when he was apparently searching for unidentified flying objects. Gary McKinnon should not be treated like some gangland mobster or al-Qaeda mastermind.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his efforts to secure the debate. Does he agree that whatever the outcome of the debate tonight, it would be helpful if the Government Front-Bench team gave us an update on the Gary McKinnon and Babar Ahmad cases, given that they have been so closely involved in them in the past?
Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman. It would certainly be useful to have an update on the cases that have attracted so much limelight and controversy.
More generally, we ought to have some discretion in this country to prosecute such cross-border cases here. Jurisdiction ought to be decided transparently, by independent courts, according to clear legal rules, not by prosecutors haggling behind closed doors. That is why the idea of guidelines for prosecutors does not go far enough. Of course, the legislation is already in place under the Police and Justice Act 2006. Let us bring it into force and take the political heat out of these cases, which I respectfully suggest would be in the interests of both countries. The previous Government enacted that legislation, so it is difficult to understand why Labour Front Benchers might seek to block it by opposing the motion.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Many constituents have raised with me the Babar Ahmad case, which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) mentioned. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what effect he understands his motion, if agreed to, will have on pending cases, as opposed to future cases?
Mr Raab
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. The short answer is that it is not clear. There has been talk about whether it might have some impact on the Babar Ahmad case, and indeed the Gary McKinnon case, but the truth is that it is not clear, and from this position I cannot give legal advice on individual cases.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes his case with great erudition and I have every admiration for him, but I would like to return to something he said earlier about the practical import of the matter. Does he agree that, whatever the measure’s impact, it is essential that never again must anyone spend seven years in prison awaiting extradition?
Mr Raab
My hon. Friend is of course right. That must be a point of principle, even when serious allegations have been laid.
The proposed change in the law might not even necessitate amendment of the treaty. Nevertheless, given its disproportionate value to our American friends, it is inconceivable that they would refuse if pressed to change the treaty. I also note that in the US’s extradition treaties with Brazil, Mexico and Australia, to name a few, those countries retain the right to decline extradition in those and far wider circumstances as it affects their nationals. Is it so unreasonable for Britain, a stalwart ally, to ask for that rather modest adjustment?
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
With regard to an earlier intervention, it might be helpful to the House if I explained that the legal advice I have received—I know that there is plenty of legal advice on all sides—indicates that if it can be demonstrated that there were original flaws in the Babar Ahmad case, as I believe it can, the outcome of the vote could be particularly relevant to that case.
Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for shedding light on some of the legal advice on that.
In my view, the regime in place under the European arrest warrant suffers from far more serious and widespread flaws than the UK-US arrangements, despite the important concerns that have been raised in that regard. If we consider the appalling treatment of Andrew Symeou, we will see the egregious nature of the flaws in the system. Greek police beat identical statements out of witnesses, which were later retracted, and Andrew spent practically a year in appalling prison conditions. He was left with a flea-ridden blanket in a baking-hot cell crawling with cockroaches and was abused by guards. He witnessed a prisoner being beaten to death for drug money. The trial proceeded at a crawl, with translators who spoke little English. Eventually he was cleared after a two-year ordeal.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent argument. He refers to my constituent, Andrew Symeou. Not only did Andrew go through all that before eventually being freed, but the human price his family paid was shocking. They had to put their lives on hold for up to four years, including two years in Greece.
Mr Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Andrew’s father, Frank, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I am sure that we will hear from the Chair of the Committee later. The damage done and the human suffering not only to the direct victims, but to their families, are very clear. One of the major flaws of the Baker review is that it did not talk to or take evidence from the victims or their representatives.
Jesse Norman
Further to the point about the case of Andrew Symeou, when the European arrest warrant was introduced, did the introducing authorities look at the standards of law, order and punishment across the European countries in order to assure themselves that such conditions could not occur?
Mr Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will move on to the level of scrutiny later, but the short answer is that the level in that case was not nearly high enough. The question today is whether we in this House have the will to stand up and ensure that the trauma of the Symeou case and many others is not inflicted on other innocent people. Let us be very clear that Symeou was innocent, as are many of the victims under the European arrest warrant.
The Symeou case exposes the fatal flaw in the European arrest warrant. Fast-track extradition in the EU—I think this will answer my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—is based on a leap of faith and an assumption that all European justice systems are of a decent standard. That assumption is a sham. The justice systems in many European countries are well below any acceptable minimum standard. The Baker review proposed no safeguards to prevent a repeat of such miscarriages of justice. The report expressed the aspiration that penal conditions and justice systems across Europe will get better in time. In fact, standards of justice in some of the countries concerned are getting worse. According to Transparency International’s corruption perception index—just one benchmark, but an important one—corruption is getting worse in Greece, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria. Even if standards of justice improve across Europe, as we all hope they will, our duty is to protect our citizens today, not in five or 10 years’ time. That is why it is important to take action now and not accept the “hit and hope” counsel of the Baker review.
The Baker review failed to take evidence directly from the victims and hear about the trauma that innocent people and their families have been through. In contrast, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), took evidence from a range of victims, including Frank Symeou, Deborah Dark, Michael Turner and Edmond Arapi.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
I am very much in sympathy with what my hon. Friend is saying. What is the balance between the number of Europeans who are extradited to the UK and the number of British citizens who are extradited to other European countries?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been very generous in giving way, but before he replies I gently remind him of the time limit that will apply in the debate and that his introductory remarks were supposed to take about 10 to 15 minutes.
Mr Raab
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will make progress. The short answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) is that I am moving on to that point.
Each of the victims had a story to tell about the Kafkaesque operation of the European arrest warrant. In none of those cases have any alleged crimes been upheld, and in this country I believe that we still call that innocent. In the case of Michael Turner, a business man accused of defrauding administration fees in Hungary, six years after the alleged offence took place Hungarian prosecutors have still not even charged him with any crime whatever. That warrant was a fishing expedition—no more, no less. If we do not put in place some basic check as the tide of warrants rises, there will be more of those injustices. The case for reform is overwhelming and the starting point should be the recommendations of the Joint Committee. No one is talking about tearing up the European arrest warrant altogether; we are talking about adding some safeguards enumerated in the report. If we do not put some basic checks in place, we are inviting worse to come.
To answer my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton, according the EU Council Secretariat Britain now receives a third of all European arrest warrants, four times more than France and 15 times more than Poland. The number of surrenders is rising. In 2004, 5 British citizens were surrendered in a year, but last year the figure rose to one a week. The case for reform is clear. We must put in place some basic checks so that we can ensure that the innocent are not swept along with those whom we of course want brought to justice.
It is important to stress that no one is suggesting that we should let criminals go free. We want the introduction of basic safeguards. They might add a small delay in some cases, but they will not prevent a single criminal being brought to justice. Let us be crystal clear that there is no law enforcement dividend from selling out the innocent. The motion before us calls on the Government to introduce legislation to remedy the situation. Of course Parliament cannot tie its own hands. The JCHR recommendations should be the benchmark and any legislation must go through proper scrutiny procedures.
At the international level, the motion calls on the Government to pursue renegotiation of the arrangements with our American and European partners. The legislature is not demanding the impossible of the Executive. I hope that the Opposition will support us in this. The Leader of the Opposition has strenuously made the case, with regard to civil liberties, that:
“We should always take the greatest care in protecting them… too often we seemed casual about them. I won’t let the Tories or the Liberals take ownership of the British tradition of liberty.”
Those are fine words that he will be held to this evening.
I acknowledge the work of the Baker review. Judges and lawyers can give their legal opinions, but ultimately it is Members of this House, as elected law makers, who will decide. Each of us bears the responsibility to protect the liberty of our citizens and defend British justice, and I commend the motion to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. There are time constraints on this debate, and a large number of Members—as you can see, if you would like to resume your seats—wish to take part. Therefore, there is going to be an eight-minute time limit on Back Benchers’ speeches from now, but that will have to be reviewed if we look as if we are not going to get in every contribution.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on obtaining the debate. I shall try to respond briefly in the spirit of accord that we have created over the past few days, including on the broadcast media.
I had the unenviable task of agreeing the framework agreement on the European arrest warrant and the renewed treaty with the United States. When someone has Baroness Helena Kennedy and the Daily Mail on their back, they really do need to be on the ball, so I have re-read a lot of material, including Justice Scott Baker’s review, and it is worth those who follow parliamentary debates getting on the website and taking a good look at it.
The review may have flaws, but it is an extraordinarily good examination of precisely what was agreed, what has happened and, therefore, the reality of decisions taken and how they compare, for instance, with the Extradition Act 1989 and European convention rights, which are currently being tested by Babar Ahmad, because his case has gone to Strasbourg. In the case of Gary McKinnon, a review of the medical evidence is taking place for a report back to the Home Secretary, so high-profile cases are being dealt with almost outside, and in addition to, the procedure that we are debating tonight. In other words, the process is being exhausted and carried further, as it should be in cases of controversy and in extenuating circumstances.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman raises the issue of Gary McKinnon, my constituent, and makes a new point, because I understand that he made representations for Mr McKinnon to stand trial via a TV link from this country and, if convicted, to serve his sentence here. Does that not make the case for a forum bar, which would enable such considerations to be transparent, rather than conducted perhaps privately, as the previous Home Secretary did?
Mr Blunkett
The forum bar carries forward convention rights and changes the balance, as Scott Baker’s review indicates. Although I do not disagree with a great deal of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I note that elements of it would not only prolong the process—it has been mentioned already that some people have been awaiting extradition for a very long time—but alter the balance that we are trying to achieve.
If I were negotiating the 2003 treaty and the accompanying Extradition Act 2003 again, I would want a codicil, detailing alongside the treaty the nature of the process in order to assure people that there was a clear balance between the processes adopted in the United States and here.
In 2009 and 2010, I had the opportunity, which I took up privately, to visit the US Department of Justice. I kept it private for two years, because, in reporting back to the Home and Justice Secretaries under the previous and current Governments, I felt that there was some progress to be made by stating the views of the Department of Justice, as indicated to me, on the possibility of taking decisions about any trial, the nature of any sentence and whether, if applied, it might be served in this country.
Those are difficult issues, because we should not presume that somebody would be found guilty. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) is close to Mr McKinnon’s case, so he will be familiar with Lord Justice Stanley Burnton’s commentary on it, and there is undoubtedly the major issue of medical evidence, which is under examination.
Let me deal briefly with where we should be going. We should return to the issues relating to the European arrest warrant, because, as we have just heard spelt out, extradition arrangements have been distorted in cases from eastern Europe to Greece, partly because there has not been a de minimis rule on sentences and, therefore, whether it applies; because people have been returned to—rather than dealt with originally—years after the case arose; and because EAWs have been presented to people outside the United Kingdom when no attempt has been made to serve a warrant inside. All those matters need reviewing for the sake of the sensible application of justice, because once people feel that justice is not being applied, as we have seen from campaigns and in tonight’s debate, justice is questioned.
On the American issue, however, I shall talk about not just balance, but the rule of law, because we must have sensible arrangements that do not rest on whether we think an individual’s case is a good one. The Americans quite rightly put to me, “What about Abu Hamza? Whose hands are going up for a type 1 diabetic who is a double amputee, and for his associate, who is alleged to be bipolar? Who feels they ought to run such campaigns on their behalf to stop extradition?” How do the United States see the issue when they are trying to ensure that principles are applied and a precedent not set which would then create complete havoc in the justice system? The rule of law has to apply equally and sensitively, but it has to include rules to which we can all adhere.
The NatWest three, or the Enron three as the Americans prefer to call them, were totally innocent according to their campaigns, and even I began to be convinced that they were, until of course they reached the United States and pleaded guilty.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
The Enron three told me that if they pleaded not guilty in America and were found guilty they would get 35 years, but that if they pleaded guilty they would get five years. They were concerned about being forced into pleading guilty in America.
Mr Blunkett
That is often undertaken—albeit not to the degree that has just been described—in our court system to ensure that people can enter a plea bargain, so it is not unfamiliar to any of us.
Mr Blunkett
I will not give way any more, because I will lose time.
On the American treaty, there is therefore room for negotiation on the side to take account of my central point: we live in an entirely different world with cyber- attacks. Cyber-attacks from our country on installations in our country can easily be dealt with, but cyber-attacks from a country on the installations or businesses of another country, such as the Pentagon, raise all sorts of issues about how we go forward.
There are rogue and emerging states in terms of cyber-attack and cyber-terrorism to which we would certainly not want to say, “Please would you try the individual in the state from which the attack took place,” and, as such attacks are trans-border and affect installations throughout the world, we need to sit down and work out how we deal with that entirely new eventuality, which affects people across the globe. If we do not, we will rue the day.
With an agreement between prosecuting authorities, it would be perfectly feasible to use video conferencing so that the accused could not only take part in the trial and be questioned, but view the trial and, if found guilty, serve their sentence in a friendly state, where everyone agreed that conditions were acceptable. Let us have the further review on the back of Scott Baker. We have had the review that people wanted, and they do not like it. By all means let us keep reviewing it, but let us do so with a degree of common sense and balance, in the spirit of this debate.
I am aware that there will not be a vote this evening. I know that the Government will take this seriously, but I also know that they will have to govern and they will have to do business with a friendly state where the judicial system is free, open and based on rights, and we should respect it as such.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
It is a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). He and I crossed swords many times when he was Home Secretary. I am not remotely surprised to hear his reasonable tone in this debate or to hear of his compassionate action on Gary McKinnon, as both are entirely in line with his character. What is more, I can understand only too clearly why he took the stance that he did in the early 2000s, because at that time the extradition situation around Europe and elsewhere was a mess, and it was sometimes very difficult to get people extradited from other countries. It is therefore wholly unsurprising that after 9/11 he took the action that he did. That does not mean that I agree with him about that action, but it is entirely understandable that it was taken. The House will not be surprised that I think it went too far because of, in my view, the pre-eminence of justice in this matter. There is a balance between justice and security, but security without justice is a very fragile security. It is our job to defend our lives and way of life, and in this respect I do not think that we have done so.
Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), I do not speak as a criminal lawyer. What I am about to say is no doubt obvious to all criminal lawyers, but not necessarily so to the rest of us who are laymen. Let me make a simple point. In this country, we presume innocence. That has all sorts of implications that we do not think about most of the time. For example, it means that unless there is a threat to a jury, an ongoing threat to the public, or a risk of absconding, we generally give bail—we do not imprison people who are awaiting trial if we can avoid it. If we do imprison someone, we put them on remand, where they are treated as innocent. They wear their own clothes; they are not made to work; they are called “Sir”: all sorts of things apply to prisoners on remand that do not apply to other prisoners, either in this country or, indeed, abroad. The presumption of innocence has a distinct effect on how we treat people.
Let us compare that with people who are extradited. They feel as though they have been deported. They are in a foreign prison, often with lower standards; my hon. Friend referred to that in terms of Greece. They are not only in a different culture, but often surrounded by people speaking a different language. They are, in effect, in psychological isolation; one might think of it as psychological solitary. They are often thousands of miles away from their family. They are viewed as an alien in the institution in which they are held. That, of itself, is a very serious punishment of people we are presuming innocent at this stage of the process.
In addition, such people face a different justice system; I will describe it only as lightly as that. As was alluded to in the context of the NatWest three, this is a justice system that is not above saying, “Here is a plea bargain. Either you plead guilty or you’re going to stay in this nasty Texan jail for the next two years while we think up the case against you.” That is different from what they face here—and, frankly, I do not think that it is justice. At worst, it is a justice system that is actually corrupt, as we have seen in Greece. Although I understand the ex-Home Secretary’s point of view, this was not new to us even when the EAW was created. I had a constituent who was one of the plane spotters and who was locked up, in effect, for political reasons and not given what I would judge to be anything like a fair trial—and, of course, he was tried for doing something that was not illegal in this country. That is, at this stage, how we treat people who are presumed innocent under our system.
John Hemming
I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that that supports a strong argument that, where possible, any prosecutions where there are alternative forums should be in the home forum?
Mr Davis
I entirely agree. That is very much the thrust of what I will say in the next few minutes.
Let me come back to the thought process behind this—the intent behind what the then Home Secretary was trying to achieve, with which, as I said, I sympathise. The EAW, the extradition treaty and the 2003 Act were all aimed at dealing with terrorism. What has been the consequence of that? A parliamentary answer told us that between 2003 and 2009 there were 63 extraditions to the USA, of which precisely one involved a terrorist. A number of the others involved serious crimes—although I have to wonder about the two people who were extradited for “satellite signal theft”; Rupert Murdoch’s reach is obviously longer than I thought—but there was only one terrorist extradition. When I looked at it the other way around—extraditions from the Americans to us—I was unable to find any record of terrorists being extradited here. I asked people in the Library to look at it for me. They searched through all the available records and could not find any examples. We should keep in mind that the rather draconian process that we have, which was put in place to defend us against terrorism, does not appear to have had much impact in that respect. In practice, the outcome is much more mundane. The truth of the matter is that we will have far more Gary McKinnons extradited than Osama bin Ladens.
Because of the terrorist problem, the international crime problem, and the pressure for a fast agreement, we have left out some proper protections in the agreements that we have made, particularly with America. Debating this when he was in opposition, the current Attorney-General said that
“we chose in the 2003 Act, bizarrely, to get rid of the protection that existed in article 7(1) of the 1957 convention on extradition, which allowed an extradition to be prevented if the person was being sent to an inappropriate forum for the trial…Every other country has that safeguard. The Irish, who regard themselves as close partners and friends of the United States, and who have an extradition arrangement, have a forum clause in their treaty, which enables the question of the appropriate forum to be considered.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2006; Vol. 448, c. 1419.]
He is right. Not only the Irish, but Norway, Switzerland, Holland, France and Germany all have such provision. In fact, the Germans’ law will not allow the extradition of any of their citizens outside their country. Similarly, two Commonwealth countries—Australia and New Zealand, two of America’s closest allies in the war on terror—have total discretion over who among their own nationals they allow to be extradited. The idea that we are somehow at odds with the accepted—and, indeed, acceptable—approach among the western nations in their battle with terrorism is nonsense.
Mr Blunkett
On 16 December 2004, the idea of treating one’s nationals, as opposed to overseas citizens, differently in this country was ruled out by the House of Lords. I should know, because section 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was at stake.
Mr Davis
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is right. My point is that we are dealing with the situation as it is now and what is acceptable among the anti-terrorist community, if I might put it in those terms, and I am afraid that what is acceptable is something far tougher than we have been claiming.
Let me look at the other side—American reciprocity. Much of this is about reciprocity, so how have the Americans behaved? My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), who is the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked how many cases have been refused. I have worked in the murky world of international relations in the Foreign Office, and I know that the number of requests refused is zero—but of course it does not work like that. If one wants to turn something down, one rings up one’s ally and says, “Would you mind withdrawing it?” The US subsequently withdrew 5% of its applications, whereas we withdrew 20% of ours. I wonder why. I do not think that the Americans can claim a very great moral high ground in terms of reciprocity. Indeed, the attitude taken to that by many countries, including Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Italy, has traditionally been much more robust than ours.
So what should we do? My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton has made this point in some detail, so I will be quick. We should change the forum arrangements. They should pay proper attention to not accidentally punishing the innocent or over-punishing those guilty of minor crimes. I do not know why the Americans should think it better for Gary McKinnon to spend two years in an American prison than for two American witnesses to spend two weeks in a hotel in Britain while the case is tried. We should have prima facie evidence requirements so that we do not repeat the Symeou experience of somebody spending a year in a foreign prison before eventually being proven innocent. Finally, we should introduce a filter for cases that are acceptable using dual criminality, seriousness and timeliness, so that justice does not become so heavy handed that it tips over into being injustice.
Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). It is striking that they both spoke, in essence, about what I will concentrate on this evening, which is the way in which the debate in Westminster Hall and the debate this evening have arrived at a consensus for reform on this major issue.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate, just as I congratulated him two weeks ago when he secured the debate in Westminster Hall. He is a stalwart member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and he is beginning to call me comrade. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to this debate, following the recent and successful Westminster Hall debate, which showed such impressive, unanimous support for extradition reform and for strengthening the human rights of UK citizens, as recommended in my Committee’s report earlier this year.
I remind Members that this debate is about human rights. My purpose is simple: it is to give the motion my full support as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I do so officially on behalf of the Joint Committee. I confirm that the motion embraces all the key recommendations of the Committee’s report, which was adopted unanimously. I got the sense that the two previous contributions endorsed the recommendations of my Committee. We await the Government’s response to our report and to the Baker review. Perhaps we will get a response this evening.
I respectfully suggest that there is a way forward for the Government. I believe that it will emerge in this debate, if it has not done so already. The debate will draw out the positives of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Baker review. Notwithstanding the criticisms of the Baker review, I think it is fair to say that there is a degree of consensus between the two. Without going into the details, I believe that there is consensus on legal representation, proportionality, a road map for suspects’ rights, the removal of European arrest warrant alerts, excessive pre-trial detention, time limits, people serving sentences in the UK, which many speakers have mentioned, and the Secretary of State’s discretion. The Government should see the merit of proceeding with that consensus as a starting point.
Beyond that, the Government should look carefully at the big fairness and human rights issues on which my Committee is more unequivocal and forthright, such as rebalancing the US-UK treaty, mistaken identity and the use—or, as I would say, the misuse—of the European arrest warrant as an aid to investigation, which is sometimes a travesty of justice.
I cannot recall a time in the decade since I entered the House when there has been such unanimity across the Back Benches. For that unanimity to be achieved on such a major policy area as the human rights of our citizens is gratifying to me as the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, particularly given that extradition engages so many fundamental human rights, such as the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security, the prohibition of discrimination, the right to respect for private and family life and, most fundamentally of all, the right to a fair trial. I believe that all Members are united in striving to achieve those fundamental human rights and long may that continue, throughout the length of this Parliament and beyond. I will end, Madam Deputy Speaker, by paraphrasing one of your great heroes and a fellow feminist, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a great champion of human rights. She asked: if we do not defend human rights in our own back yard, how on earth can we fight for human rights universally?
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate. He has shown his usual tenacity and principle, which are becoming his hallmark.
It is a bit of a relief, on this one-line Whip, to escape the burdens of PPS-dom and speak out on something about which I have felt passionately for some time. I have recently written a pamphlet entitled “The case against the European arrest warrant”, which will be published shortly.
I will not trespass on my time by speaking a lot about the United States, except to place on the record my support and sympathy for Gary McKinnon and his family, who in my judgment have been badly treated. The public share that view strongly.
I will concentrate on the European arrest warrant. My hon. Friend’s motion is moderate in calling on the Government
“to reform the UK’s extradition arrangements to strengthen the protection of British citizens”.
As the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis) said, there is an emerging consensus in this House that that is something the Government should do.
The political and emotional context in which the European arrest warrant emerged after the desperate events in New York on 11 September has been alluded to. In evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights at that time, the Liberal Democrat MEP Sir Graham Watson, who was chairman of the European Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee, said that
“the proposal would still be on a shelf gathering dust if it hadn’t been for the events in New York… Mr. Bin Laden helped make it a reality”.
There is a great deal of truth to that.
The workability of the European arrest warrant hinges on the principle of reciprocity between our courts and the courts of other countries. I will not dwell on this point because my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton spoke passionately about why that is not a reality.
Another element that is central to making the European arrest warrant work is proportionality in its application. On 9 January 2007, the presidency of the European Council delivered a communiqué to the body’s working party on co-operation in criminal matters, examining the application of the proportionality principle in matters relating to the European arrest warrant. Article 5 of the pre-Lisbon treaty on the functioning of the European Union stated that the proportionality principle is applied in respect of the four freedoms of the European Union, chiefly the free movement of goods, services, persons and capital. The treaty stated, however, that
“any action by the Community shall not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaty.”
It is surely clear that in its application, the European arrest warrant has gone well beyond proportional use.
Let us look at some of the examples of warrants being issued. They have been issued in respect of offences such as the possession of 0.4 grams of cannabis, 1.5 grams of marijuana or three ecstasy tablets, the theft of two car tyres and even the theft of a piglet. There was also the case of a person arrested while driving a car with a blood alcohol level of 0.81 mg, compared with a UK limit of 0.80 mg. The problem has been recognised even by the European Commissioner with responsibility for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. She stated last November that
“European arrest warrants should not be issued mechanically, or automatically, for crimes that are not very serious such as bicycle theft.”
Then there is the question of the number of European arrest warrants issued, which is also central to the application of the system. In 2009, the total number of arrest warrants issued was 14,789. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton will doubtless be aware that Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy were unable to provide figures for the number of arrest warrants issued in their countries. That backs up his point about the differences between systems. Poland issued 4,844, and France, a similar-sized country to the United Kingdom, issued 1,240. In the United Kingdom, we issued a mere 220.
We can also examine where those citizens were living when the warrants were issued. Despite the United Kingdom being in the bottom quarter of issuers of warrants, those issued against people in the UK represented 38.8% of all the warrants issued across the whole European Union.
Conor Burns
Indeed.
There is a fundamental question whether the European arrest warrant is compatible with habeas corpus as we understand it in this country. The excellent Lord Vinson of Roddam Dene challenged the Home Office Minister then responsible in the other place, saying:
“The fact remains that hundreds of UK citizens are being compelled to appear before any EU court without the merit of the often frivolous charges being first assessed. They can be locked up without pre-trial. Is she not concerned that this totally overrides the ancient liberties of the British citizen enshrined in Magna Carta and habeas corpus? Will she assure the House that this will be resolved?”
The then Minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, responded:
“My Lords, the Government are concerned…with the disproportionate use of the European arrest warrant for trivial purposes.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 January 2011; Vol. 724, c. 955-56.]
That is another example of the consensus that is emerging across Parliament.
Then there is the question of the principle of dual criminality. Under the European arrest warrant, British citizens or those living in the United Kingdom can be extradited to another European country for crimes that may not necessarily even be offences under United Kingdom law. That concern was raised by the Home Affairs Committee in its report on the application of the European arrest warrant of November 2002. The Committee stated that it had
“grave concerns about the abolition of the dual criminality safeguard. The variety of criminal justice systems and of legislative provisions within the member states of the EU makes it difficult for us to be…confident…that it will be acceptable in all circumstances for a person to be extradited from the UK to face proceedings for conduct that does not constitute”
a crime in the UK. The fact that the European arrest warrant could necessitate a British court extraditing a British citizen for something that would not be illegal in the UK represents an entirely unacceptable incursion into our British criminal justice system.
I am not a lawyer. I think my constituents regard being a politician as crime enough without being a lawyer as well, but to be a law-maker one does not have to be a lawyer. Most of my constituents are not lawyers either, but they smell that something is not right in the exercise of the European arrest warrant. They want the British Government to stand up for British citizens, and they want the freedoms and protections under the law that we have cherished for years.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I join in the congratulations given to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and other colleagues on securing the debate. I believe that our extradition procedures need to be kept under review and protection afforded against the abuses and potential abuses that others have mentioned.
Like many constituents who have contacted me, I sympathise with Gary McKinnon for his plight and agree that if he is to face trial, it would be much better if it could be in the United Kingdom, where the alleged offence occurred. I take the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made about the wider challenges that we face in the global context, and about how we all have to focus on addressing those challenges.
I also wish to add my voice to those of Members who have raised the case of Babar Ahmad. It cannot be acceptable that someone is held without trial for as long as he has been. To pick up on a point that was made earlier, it is encouraging that if there is a change to the law, it will affect pending cases, so he will no longer face the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen to him, or even when he will find out what will happen to him.
Given the limited time, I want to focus on the case of one of my constituents, Mr Benny Wenda. Benny was granted refugee status in the United Kingdom in 2003 as a result of his well-founded fears of persecution by the Indonesian Government, who disapprove of his activities advocating self-determination for the West Papuan people. He has subsequently been granted British citizenship. In granting him refugee status and then citizenship, the British Government accepted a protective duty towards Benny, but they now appear to be refusing to defend him against the same Government from whom he was granted protection in the first place.
The Indonesian Government have issued an Interpol red notice against Benny for the alleged crimes that he was accused of when he first came to the UK, which will have been considered when he was granted refugee status. Yet a letter that I have had from the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), states that the Government will not comment on the red notice; will not confirm or deny the existence of an extradition request; will not preclude the possibility of extradition; will not contact other Governments to ask whether they intend to arrest Benny as he travels to make the case for West Papuan self-determination throughout the world; and will not even contact the Indonesian Government to make a complaint about their continued pressure on him. The letter states:
“The issue of a red notice is a matter for the issuing state”,
but it does not appear to accept that the protection of a British citizen is very much a matter for the state of which he is a citizen.
I ask the Minister for Immigration, who will be responding to the debate, whether there is any situation in which he would give an undertaking not to extradite a refugee to the country from which he or she had been granted protection. I suggest that it would not interfere with the sovereignty of other nations simply to ask them whether they would arrest someone, in this instance Benny Wenda, if they stepped on their soil. For the UK Government to refuse to ask that of a country that my constituent would have legitimate reason to visit seems to me an abdication of their most basic responsibility—to protect their own citizens.
I ask the Government to reconsider what seems to me to be a hastily cobbled together stance on the matter and accept a meeting of Ministers from the Home Office and Foreign Office, Benny, his representatives and me specifically to discuss the red notice. My constituent’s example shows how other Governments, including repressive regimes, can use or abuse the red notice system to intimidate refugees and inhibit their freedom of travel and freedom of speech. As others have said, our Government should stand up for British citizens who are threatened in such a way, and I urge them to do so in this case.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I, too, begin by welcoming the debate and congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing it. Last week’s debate in Westminster Hall and the number of hon. Members present tonight show the strength of feeling on this important issue. It is absolutely right that it is debated on the Floor of the House.
Some 140,538 individuals have added their signature to the “Free Babar Ahmad” e-petition, which is rightly the catalyst for this debate, although the problem is much wider, as has been shown. I am glad that such cross-party support exists—even the Daily Mail, which I do not normally read, supports the campaign—but it was not always so. The Liberal Democrats have been vocal in our criticism of the lopsided extradition arrangements between Britain and the US for many years. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and for Southport (John Pugh) were the only Members to vote against it in a scrutiny Committee. In 2006, we proposed amendments to the Extradition Act 2003 to protect the freedom and fair judicial treatment of British citizens, but, sadly, the previous Government refused to accept them.
I am pleased that the Liberal Democrats are acting on this issue in government and that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) will lead a Liberal Democrat review of UK-US extradition arrangements. I await the findings of his report with interest.
No one is denying that extradition remains a necessary process in pursuing the ends of justice. It is rightly founded on the concepts of reciprocity and mutual respect among jurisdictions, although it recognises differences between them. However, extradition also deals with the most basic human right—that of liberty—and as such we must ensure that it is not entered into lightly or without proper process and oversight.
The affect of extradition on that basic right has been examined in detail regularly and recently by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and other Committees of both Houses. Reform is now advocated by Members on both sides of the House, which is to be welcomed. Both in the House and outside, it is recognised that extradition has changed. The process altered significantly in the wake of 9/11, as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton said. Although the aim of such change was undoubtedly positive, the reality is that arrangements continue to be open to abuse.
A few high-profile cases have demonstrated that to all. The lack of discretion to allow the UK to decline extradition when the case should be prosecuted in the UK has become synonymous with the case of Gary McKinnon; problems with the European arrest warrant and trust in suitably high standards of justice in Europe are synonymous with the case of the British student Andrew Symeou; and the lack of a prima facie safeguard, previously an integral part of UK extradition law, is synonymous with the case of Babar Ahmad. High Court rulings even today give examples of further concerns, on, first, the definition of a “judicial authority” and whether that authority is truly independent; and, secondly, on whether extradition should be allowed when no charges have been laid, or whether it should be limited to being for the purpose of trial or sentence.
Those concerns add to the feeling that there is no reciprocal arrangement in practice. For every person extradited to Britain from the EU, we surrender nine back. We have surrendered 50% more of our citizens than the US. Today’s motion would implement the JCHR recommendations, which offer basic safeguards to prevent miscarriages of justice and deal explicitly with the concerns highlighted by those cases. The Committee suggests a forum clause that would allow UK courts to refuse extradition when an individual should be tried in our country; a requirement for any requesting country to show a prima facie case; and proportionality checks to ensure that EAWs are not issued for minor offences.
As well as proportionality, the presumption that human rights are respected equally in EU member states is another significant issue with EAWs. The JCHR was minded to agree that judges are reluctant to refuse extradition on human rights grounds because of that presumption. As such, we agreed with evidence given by Liberty that highlighted the clear difference between equal protection of all rights in practice and protection in law, which means that there is a need to give defendants the ability to rebut the presumption of equality.
The Committee is clear that we need to deal with significant EAW issues, even if that means renegotiation of the framework decision. I am heartened by the Government’s willingness to act on that.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he support the principle of renegotiating things in Europe to get the right balance in our relations with the EU?
Mike Crockart
I do indeed. That is exactly what the JCHR report asks for. It supports that unequivocally, as do I—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That does not make me anti-European, however.
I am not saying that the use of EAWs has not been beneficial to the UK and Europe in the fight against serious and organised crime, or, to a certain degree, helpful in establishing a common area of freedom, security and justice, but we should not ignore the problems to support such advances.
The independent Baker review focused on five areas of extradition. Although I disagree with many of its findings, I share many of its points. On the Home Secretary’s power to extradite, I instinctively have grave reservations in giving Ministers further powers when the distinction between state and judiciary becomes blurred. I believe that human rights considerations are more appropriately examined by the judiciary rather than a Minister, with proper consideration of relevant case law.
The Baker review also calls for a strengthening of legal representation in both issuing and executing states; an improvement in the process for the removal of EAW alerts, which was highlighted by the dreadful treatment received by Deborah Dark; and the prevention of excessive pre-trial detention. As a side comment, I would say that seven years is almost certainly excessive. There is a degree of unanimity on the need to act on those points.
One fundamental consideration is lost in the detail: whether our constituents—British citizens—have sufficient protection in respect of their safety and human rights. As Liberty eloquently wrote in its 11 November letter to the Home Secretary, that is a balancing act:
“There is, of course, a balance to be struck in any system of extradition between the public interest in expeditious extradition to enable prosecution of crime and the provision of essential safeguards to ensure procedural fairness for the accused…the Extradition Act 2003 secures the former at the dangerous expense of the latter.”
I agree that the balance is wrong, and commend the Government’s willingness to re-address it and secure the fundamental rights of the nation’s citizens. However, I trust that the Minister will put a time scale on the willingness to act that is more precise than the one he articulated in last week’s debate. Such affronts to justice have waited too long. We must put them right and do so soon.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on his role in securing this important debate.
The motion calls on the Government to introduce
“as a matter of urgency”
a Bill to enact the safeguards recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its recent report. The motion calls for urgent legislation rather than simply legislation because a number of British citizens face the risk of extradition at any moment—this is an urgent issue. Babar Ahmad’s father started a grass-roots e-petition with no formal organisation and no big newspaper backing, but none the less it garnered more than 140,000 signatures.
People signed the petition because they were horrified by the plight of Babar Ahmad, a British citizen who was detained in the UK for more than seven years without charge or trial. He faces extradition to the US with the prospect of solitary confinement for life in super-max conditions, which arguably amount to torture. Babar is not alone in his ordeal. The poet, Talha Ahsan, another UK citizen, is also being held—his case is related to Babar’s—without charge or trial under our shocking extradition arrangements. He is entering his sixth year of imprisonment.
Of course, such asymmetric extradition arrangements do not apply only in terrorism cases, and I put on record my deep concern about the Gary McKinnon case, but I want to focus on the case of Babar Ahmad. I pay tribute to the courage and bravery of the families of Babar and Talha in fighting for justice for their sons, and to their MP, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who has worked to support them since their ordeal began.
I have long lobbied for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. As we approach its 10th anniversary, the cases of Talha and Babar remind us that one of the most fearful things about Guantanamo Bay—people being held without charge or trial—is happening on UK soil, right now, at the behest of the US.
In a debate in Westminster Hall last month, Members heard of the appalling circumstances of Babar Ahmad’s arrest in 2003 and the fact that he sustained at least 73 injuries for which he was awarded £60,000 compensation by the High Court in 2009. He is now in his eighth year at a top-security prison without charge. The allegations against him are serious. The US has alleged that Babar was running a website that solicited funds for terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda and Chechen rebels. That is a grave accusation and there should of course be a trial. Indeed Babar and his family desperately want the case to come to trial so that they can clear his name. They want it to take place in the UK and not in the US partly because Babar is a British citizen and is accused of committing crimes in the UK.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking up this case and on what she is saying. Does she agree that if Babar Ahmad were to face trial in this country, it is likely that the case would collapse because of the way he has been treated, the conditions under which he has been held and the nature of the accusations that have been made against him throughout?
Caroline Lucas
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was explaining that Babar wants to stand trial here partly because he is a British citizen and partly because going to the US would separate him from his family, friends, and legal representatives, which would seriously undermine his ability to mount a strong defence.
Interestingly, I have seen extracts from the European Court interim decision on the cases of Babar and Talha. In paragraph 175, it is clear that the European Court has had from the UK Government an acknowledgement that they could be tried here, which runs counter to what is generally asserted. Moreover, Babar’s lawyers also point out that other comparable prosecutions are proceeding in the UK. Nevertheless, in July 2004 and December 2006, the CPS and the Attorney-General declared that there was insufficient evident to charge Babar Ahmad with any criminal offence under UK law and that he should therefore be extradited.
If it is agreed today that there should be a Bill and a new approach, it would be even more essential for there to be new prosecutorial decisions in these very disturbing cases. In Babar Ahmad’s case, it is my understanding that his lawyers are requesting a new prosecutorial decision on the basis that there has not been a proper one to date. That should mean that the changes that we are calling for today need not be retrospective but, rather, current in relation to these new prosecutorial decisions. Those decisions are needed because of these very disturbing cases in which it is clear that things have gone wrong.
The night before the debate on extradition in Westminster Hall, there was a shocking turn of events. Babar’s lawyers received a letter from the CPS that admitted for the first time that it was never given the evidence that was sent to the US, apart from a few documents. The bulk of the evidence was shipped straight to the US by the police. Astoundingly, although we had previously been led to believe that the CPS had viewed all the evidence and judged it insufficient to bring the case to trial in the UK, we now have a confession that it had not even seen all the evidence let alone investigated it properly. Quite simply, a proper decision has not been made on whether a prosecution can go ahead in the UK. That is shocking and it raises serious questions about why evidence that should have been given to the CPS was not and why Babar was not told about it. Who directed and authorised that circumvention of the CPS, apparently in deference to and at the behest of the US? Given the seriousness of what the CPS has told Babar Ahmad’s lawyers, we need not just new prosecutorial decisions but a full public inquiry into what has gone on in this case.
The second major failure of prosecutors relates to human rights. Decisions to prosecute or not to prosecute here should not be relinquished so easily in favour of the US. There are grave human rights implications that have not been properly taken into account. In these cases over whether and where to prosecute and whether to extradite, it is incredibly important for us to understand that the police, the CPS, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Attorney-General’s office are all bound to consider the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 in relation to every one of their decisions. That means that it is extremely relevant that concern has already been expressed, both by the courts here and now by the European Court, that the human rights issues that lie at the heart of the ongoing consideration in Strasbourg clearly never even formed part of the CPS’s original decision in Babar’s case and that the evidence was almost immediately conveyed to the US.
That in itself demonstrates that there has been a failure in the fundamental duty of prosecutors, which has not been adequately addressed to date. We cannot and should not tell the CPS who to prosecute, but we can and we should tell it to do its job properly and to insist on it receiving and properly reviewing all the UK evidence.
Let me say a little more about the significance of the current role of the European Court in Babar’s case. The European Court of Human Rights has been wrestling with fundamental issues that relate not just to Babar Ahmad’s case but to many others for the past four years. The final decision is expected imminently. The European Court has been considering two key issues: whether the use of extreme isolation for prisoners in prisons in the US before trial and post-trial amounts to a violation of article 3 of the European convention on human rights—the article prohibiting torture—and whether the length of sentences in the US, in particular the imposition of life imprisonment without parole or of 80 to 100 years, also violates article 3 of the convention. Whether or not the European Court finds for the applicants, in which case the UK cannot extradite them as long as those two potential fates await them, it is shocking that things have come to this. Courts here and the court in Europe have expressed their concern that what faces UK citizens if they are extradited to the US in a number of cases might arguably constitute what the law defines as torture.
These cases raise, in the most fundamental way, a convergence of issues between whether these men should be prosecuted here and the extreme consequence of what would happen to them if they were extradited to the US. Now we have today’s debate. It is a matter of weeks before we hear the result of four years of anxious scrutiny by the European Court of Babar’s case. I ask hon. Members to support the motion that has been tabled today because it is a crucial opportunity for us to send a clear message to say that the extradition laws in this country need to be radically reformed. If we do not do that, we are failing in our most basic duty of protecting British citizens. That is why it is so significant that there has been huge Back-Bench support for this motion, and I hope that it will be demonstrated when it comes to a vote—if it does—later tonight.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate and on the fierce advocacy that he has deployed both in his speech this evening and generally in relation to this issue. There have been a number of powerful contributions from both sides of the House. The contribution on the European arrest warrant from my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) was particularly impressive. He said that he was not a lawyer and that being a politician was criminal enough in his constituency. All I can say is that I will not be taking my holiday in Bournemouth this year.
Extradition serves an extraordinarily useful function in the administration of criminal justice throughout the world. Merely fleeing a jurisdiction should not be equated with acquittal. It is very important that decent and proper extradition arrangements exist between civilised nations so that those who are accused of crimes, or at least of serious crimes, can be brought before the criminal courts of the jurisdiction in which those crimes are alleged to have been committed—provided of course that appropriate safeguards are in place, along the lines indicated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), to recognise that those accused of crimes are not guilty of those crimes until such time as a jury, or in some cases a judicial body, has said so. There was nothing more inimical to justice than the spectre, after the end of the second world war, of many war criminals who were guilty of genocide being able to travel to jurisdictions where there were no extradition arrangements with European nations, and in those circumstances being able to evade justice for a considerable period. During the debate, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are victims of crime who are as much entitled to justice as those who are accused of crimes and who are in fact innocent.
As has been recognised in the debate—we have begun to reach a consensus on both sides of the House—a balance needs to be struck between, on one hand, the protection of the fundamental right of a citizen not to be extradited abroad if there are inadequate safeguards to protect that citizen from an unfair trial and, on the other, the need to prosecute very serious crimes. A number of principles pervade this area of law but, given the events at the beginning of this century that led to the Extradition Act 2003, sufficient regard might not have been paid to them.
The first of those principles is that trivial offences should not trigger extradition at all. In circumstances such as some of those alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, it is entirely inappropriate that any citizen be removed from his own jurisdiction, taken to a foreign place, perhaps not granted bail and locked up, and prosecuted for something that, on the face of things, is minor.
The second important principle is that of speciality, of which no mention has been made during this debate but which requires that the only offences with which someone extradited to a foreign jurisdiction can be charged be those for which he has been extradited in the first place. Two of the problems in this area that perhaps have not been properly grappled with by the Extradition Act are the absence of enforceable assurances from some countries seeking extradition from this country and the fact that the Home Secretary and the courts cannot take the principle of speciality properly into account in those circumstances.
There is also the principle that there should not be double jeopardy—that nobody should be tried twice for the same offence—save perhaps in limited circumstances. Again, I do not think that any mention has been made of that in the debate. Furthermore, there are principles surrounding the protection of people’s human rights—the principle that we do not require those domiciled in this country, regardless of whether they are citizens, to be extradited if they might face capital punishment. That was alluded to by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—although I could not agree with all her remarks about torture.
Two issues have arisen out of the 2003 Act. The first concerns the disparity—or lack of reciprocity—perceived to exist between the arrangements that we have in place for extradition to the United States and the arrangements that the United States has in place for the extradition to this country of those accused of crimes here. Notwithstanding what was said by the then Attorney-General, Baroness Scotland, when the commencement provisions of the 2003 Act were debated in the other place, I agree with the Baker report that there is little difference between the tests applied on this side of the Atlantic and on the other side. Fundamentally, there is no difference between probable cause and reasonable suspicion.
What so concerns our constituents—certainly in my constituency—and many lawyers is that whereas in the United States the fourth amendment to the constitution, which requires probable cause to be shown, requires that an extradition request go before a court, there is no such requirement in this country. In those circumstances, it is perceived—I think, perhaps, correctly—that citizens or anybody domiciled in this jurisdiction whose extradition is sought to the United States are being denied a right that they might otherwise have had.
The commencement of the forum provisions contained in the Police and Justice Act 2006, in so far as they amended the 2003 Act, would go some way to meeting these difficulties. I agree with the Joint Committee on Human Rights that it is difficult to understand why those provisions have not been commenced, including by the previous Government. Liberty obtained advice from leading counsel, Edward Fitzgerald and Julian Knowles, that no amendment to the treaty between this country and the United States would be required were those provisions to be commenced. I would like to hear from the Minister, therefore, that the Government will at the very least bring forward the commencement of those provisions.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
My hon. and learned Friend is talking about the immediacy and the timing of some of these issues. That Babar Ahmad, who is the most pertinent example, has still not been brought to trial after seven years is further evidence of a scar on general jurisprudence in this country. Does that not give a sense of the importance of immediacy?
Stephen Phillips
I agree with my hon. Friend that it is a stain on justice in this country and, in my view, on justice in the United States that Babar Ahmad has been locked up for seven years. If Babar Ahmad wanted a trial, he could have one in the United States, but one of the great difficulties with forum issues is this: why on earth should he have to do so? Why should he be taken to a foreign jurisdiction, when the witnesses, the evidence and his legal representatives might be here, to defend himself against these very serious accusations? As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion pointed out, these are very serious allegations indeed. I was horrified to hear her comments about the absence of evidence before the Crown Prosecution Service. I hope that that matter will be looked into and that the Minister will assure us that the evidence will be made available.
The other area of debate has been the European arrest warrant, the problem with which is that the standards of justice that prevail in this country and other countries in Europe, such as Ireland, Germany and France, are not necessarily those that prevail all over the European Union. I regret to say that I do not share the hope of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Baker report that the system will sort itself out. That is the triumph of hope over experience.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I start by congratulating the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate and the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on how he introduced it. I also place on the record my pleasure that, after the unfortunate way in which the debate was punted into Westminster Hall, we now have it on the Floor of the House. I thank those concerned and those who campaigned to ensure that these huge petitions were responded to properly.
When I was first elected to the House, I never would have dreamed it possible that public campaigns and public concern could result in a debate in the House of Commons. We spent years trying to secure debates on the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and several other cases that turned out to be serious miscarriages of justices and which, in the current atmosphere, would undoubtedly have attracted the same number of petitioners as the cases being discussed tonight. We should welcome the fact that Parliament has manoeuvred itself into a position where it can be more responsive to public concerns and justice issues. I hope that it continues. After all, that is what we are sent here for—not only to write laws and change laws but to consider issues of miscarriages of justice.
I want to refer briefly to three cases and then make a couple of general points. I shall not talk at great length about the first one because others have done so. The case of Gary McKinnon has been well reported and documented, and his mother and family have campaigned so assiduously on it, as has his own MP and many others. It is time that we understood that the McKinnon case goes to the heart of a whole load of inadequacies, of both our system and our relationship with the United States, which, as the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) pointed out a minute ago, is not a reciprocal arrangement, but something fundamentally different.
Stephen Phillips
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so soon. Is not one of the problems with the McKinnon case that there is nothing in the 2003 Act to enable the Home Secretary to take into account either mental or physical illness? That means that Gary McKinnon’s Asperger’s cannot be taken into account when deciding whether he should be extradited.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. and learned Gentleman makes an excellent point, and I agree with him. That is the fundamental weakness in the 2003 Act, which does not allow that discretion which any sensible, right-thinking person would apply straight away on a humanitarian basis.
I was not going to mention the General Pinochet case until I got to the end, but I may as well do so now, as it fits with the hon. and learned Gentleman’s point. Like many others, I fought to get Pinochet extradited so that he could go on trial. We won the cases all the way through, but unfortunately the then Home Secretary decided that there was an overriding medical reason for allowing General Pinochet to return on the “Lazarus flight” to Chile, where he walked off the plane and seemed to be perfectly healthy.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I rather agree with my hon. Friend about General Pinochet, not least as several of my friends were killed by his police force in Chile. My hon. Friend said that any sensible person would want to change the leeway allowed to the Secretary of State, but unfortunately the report that we are discussing this evening says:
“We note the arguments for increasing the role of the Secretary of State in the surrender of persons…We are not convinced that changes should be made”.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am sorry that the authors of the report are not convinced, but it is up to us in this House to try to convince the Government to make those changes. Although I welcome the examination of the issue, as well as this debate, it is absolutely up to us to ensure that that happens.
The second case that I want to mention is that of Julian Assange and the ongoing attempt to extradite him to Sweden. I want to go on to something else in a second, but let me briefly quote Debra Sheehan, who has been campaigning for Mr Assange not to be extradited to Sweden: “I believe this ruling”—the ruling that he can be extradited—
“sets a very dangerous precedent allowing any UK citizen—and possibly any European citizen—to be extradited without charge. Mr Assange’s case shows that the European arrest warrant can be used in a totally disproportionate way without using other less draconian methods of completing police investigations, such as Mutual Legal Assistance.”
The European arrest warrant is a serious issue, because, as others have pointed out, it seems that countries with a far from rigorous, fair and open judicial system can gain arrest warrants against British subjects, who are then taken to a different jurisdiction, where they face a much lower threshold of proof before a conviction is obtained. It is not our business to protect criminals, but it is our business to ensure that people get a fair trial and that there is absolutely the presumption of innocence before any conviction is made.
The third case that I want to mention is that of Babar Ahmad, which was brought up excellently by my friend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Yesterday I received an e-mail from his father that I would like to quote from:
“I am writing to request that you attend the debate…and…vote in favour of reforming the laws so that they strengthen the protection for British citizens, such as my son Babar Ahmad, who is now in his eighth year of detention-without-trial.”
He continues:
“Babar is the longest detained-without-trial British citizen in the modern history of the UK. He is in his 8th year of detention in a maximum security institution. He has served the equivalent of a 14 year sentence and if he had been tried and convicted in the UK, he would be probably out by now.
The CPS has recently admitted that it never considered the evidence against Babar before it was sent to the US authorities”—
a point made by my friend, the hon. Lady—
“yet for over seven years, they have allowed him to languish in prison without trial, refusing to prosecute him on the alleged basis that there is ‘insufficient evidence’ to prosecute him. The crimes for which he stands accused are said to have taken place in the UK. Over 141,000 people and 100 senior lawyers have”
written in his support.
“If extradited to the US Babar faces a period of 3 years pre-trial detention in complete isolation. If convicted he would face life without parole in solitary confinement at a Supermax prison”.
Is that really what we want for British citizens under this law? That is what will happen if Babar Ahmad’s extradition goes ahead. His father continues:
“On 22 June 2011, Parliament’s JCHR explicitly raised concerns over Babar’s case recommending that the government urgently re-negotiate the UK-US”
agreement. Finally, just to make the point, he says that this debate is part of the “enormous public interest” in the case, and in particular the examination of it by the Muslim community in this country, which feels that Babar Ahmad’s case is indicative of something about the treatment of people where there is any suspicion of the kind of offences in which he is alleged to have been involved. He cannot be tried in this country because of the way he has been treated—the trial would collapse—so why on earth should we even consider allowing him to go to the United States?
Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is extremely eminent on all legal matters and somebody for whom I have enormous respect, wrote an excellent article in The Guardian today in which she raised the question of the forum. She wrote:
“To my mind, where there is clear evidence to a criminal standard of a crime being committed either in the UK or from the UK and jurisdiction is being contested, an English court should be required to determine the strength of the evidence and the ‘forum conveniens’—that is, the location of any prosecution. The court’s decision on forum should be based on clear guidance—the nationality of the defendant and the victim; location of both the prosecution and defence evidence, witnesses, and so forth. Yet as it stands there is no statutory right for a UK defendant to challenge extradition on forum grounds.”
I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that in winding up the debate.
The general point that I want to make is this. We are not here to defend criminals. We are here to ensure that those who have been charged are given a proper hearing and a fair trial. Extradition arrangements must be fair and reciprocal, and in most past cases they have been, in the sense that the Minister for the Interior, or the Home Secretary, has been able to exercise some degree of discretion as to whether or not a person should be extradited. I think that that is right, although one might disagree with the discretion used on certain occasions. What we have here, however, is a completely imbalanced system—as a result of both the European arrest warrant and our arrangements with the United States—which I consider to be contrary to all the judicial traditions of this country, and on which I think it right for the House to take a stand.
I hope that the motion will be passed, and that that will send a clear message to the Government about what we want. I understand that there may not even be a vote. That either indicates unanimity or that the dark forces of the Whips’ Offices in all parties have taken the night off, but I fear that they are forces that never sleep.
On 11 November the Home Secretary received a long letter from Shami Chakrabarti, general secretary of Liberty, which made points about forum, and many more general points. She wrote:
“The human rights bar in the 2003 Act is of the utmost importance and we continue to encourage its effective application by the British judiciary.”
I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that letter has received a reply, and will be able to inform us of the Government’s general attitude. We are here to stand up for justice and liberty, and I believe that our arrangement with the United States is the opposite of those things.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing the debate.
We usually describe debates of this sort as timely, but, although this evening’s debate is timely in the context of the Government’s current consideration of the Baker review, it would be hard for my constituent Gary McKinnon, who has been living a nightmare, and who now faces his 10th Christmas awaiting extradition, to see it in those terms, especially given that the outcome for him will be determined not retrospectively through the reform of extradition laws, which I support, but by medical evidence that is before the Home Secretary as we speak.
Parliament has given time to debate the issue of Gary McKinnon and extradition. We had a vote on forum in 2006 during the passage of the Bill that became the Police and Justice Act 2006. We have also had urgent questions, Opposition day debates, the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights and Westminster Hall debates—and here we are having this debate today. What has not been in short supply is parliamentary attention. What has been in short supply is responsibility—responsibility for the plight of constituents such as Gary McKinnon, and for the injustice that has been done to them. The motion, which is welcome, seeks the restoration, at long last, of responsibility where it should lie.
I want to tell the House about an individual who was blamed for causing the biggest computer hack to hit the United States with an electronic attack on America’s biggest port, Houston, in 2001. He was a young British man with Asperger’s syndrome. He was not Gary McKinnon, but Aaron Caffrey. He was not extradited to the United States, but was tried in this country and found not guilty.
Then there was the man who was said to be doing
“more harm than the KGB”
and to be the
“No. 1 threat to U.S. security.”
He had UFO posters on his wall. He broke into the United States defence and missile systems. He too could have been, but was not, Gary McKinnon. He was prosecuted in this country, and was fined £1,200. And there was the computer virus that inflicted an estimated $5.5 billion-worth of damage and controlled 50,000 machines, hijacking sites run by a United States Department. Again, that was not Gary McKinnon. It was Andrew Harvey and Jordan Bradley. They were prosecuted here and received six and three months’ imprisonment respectively.
Why then is Gary McKinnon being pursued remorselessly by the United States authorities? I believe that one of the motivations is instructive to the debate. The US ambassador on a number of occasions has made his position clear on behalf of the US Government. Indeed, several years ago, I asked him directly why the US authorities were doing that. When he replied, he recounted the alleged damage to US naval systems—he went through that in some detail—but then his voice and emotions rose, the severity of his tone increased and he said, referring to the comments left by Gary McKinnon on various websites, “He mocked us.” Many of us would think that Gary McKinnon should be praised for exposing flaws in US systems by typing in passwords and getting through systems, as a terrorist could have got through their systems, but that comment, “He mocked us”, shows that, whether we like it or not, politics plays a part in extradition.
Look at WikiLeaks. Just before President Obama came to speak to us, the US Attorney-General demanded that Gary McKinnon be extradited. Today, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), a former Home Secretary, talked about how he tried to arrange a TV link for Gary McKinnon’s trial. I understand that that had no legs because video conferencing is illegal under US law. It requires live cross-examination of witnesses.
What should we do to improve the situation? Plainly, it is important that we retain and uphold the importance and independence of prosecutions, even if that independence is not always reciprocated as a point of principle. The opponents of a forum bar say that such a bar would inhibit and delay prosecutions, but I say that a forum bar would help to protect the integrity of prosecutions and avoid those private deals and that pressure, political or otherwise. For example, Gary McKinnon in the early stages was threatened with a lengthy sentence and harsh conditions if he fought extradition, but judicial consideration of forum, bringing it into the open, would ensure that a proper decision was made about where to try a case that crossed jurisdiction boundaries.
The ambassador's comments also remind us that the Home Secretary has a legitimate role, despite what the Baker review says. The modern law of extradition has been developing since 1870. The Home Secretary has a vital role to play in ensuring that defendants are not wrongly extradited. International crime has developed since the 19th century. Global terrorism has emerged. Treaties have been signed, but what remains is that the Home Secretary is the long-stop safeguard against injustice for citizens facing extradition.
The motion seeks to ensure that the courts are the primary safeguard. The protracted battle to stop Gary McKinnon’s extradition has highlighted the need for a forum bar. The judicial review hearing into the Director of Public Prosecution’s decision not to prosecute was revealing. The judges said that, due to the fact that the matter of forum was not determined by way of a judicial safeguard, through the Police and Justice Act 2006 —forum amendments are absent from that Act—it needed to be decided by someone. The point is that that someone should be in the courts. Otherwise, we are left with a situation in which the Home Secretary says, “I do not have to consider forum because that is a matter for the DPP,” and the DPP says, “We have decided to cede jurisdiction to the US,” leaving Gary McKinnon and defendants like him having to challenge the DPP’s decision not to prosecute by judicial review.
What does the Baker review suggest? It suggests some DPP guidelines. Those would not be adequate. They would not be the lifeline that respected commentators such as Joshua Rozenberg have mentioned. What would happen under those guidelines? Residence and nationality would be considered, but how could one challenge the decision? We are back in the realms of judicial review. Even the Baker review says that
“we anticipate it would be very rare for the court to entertain, and rarer still for the court to grant, such an application.”
The Baker review, then, has done nothing to give that proper safeguard. Tonight we can do something important. We can make Parliament’s views abundantly clear. The reform of extradition law is needed to stop more cases like that of Gary McKinnon. The US ambassador felt mocked by Gary McKinnon’s words that were left on US systems, but what about these words and the medical evidence that is before the Home Secretary from Professor Jeremy Turk? He said that
“suicide is now a real probability and will be an almost certain inevitability should he experience extradition”.
Does not this disproportionate extradition of a suicidal and sectionable person, Gary McKinnon, make a mockery of our extradition laws? Are not the life-threatening effects of extradition avoidable by prosecuting him in this country? As I said in 2009, how ill and vulnerable does Gary McKinnon need to be in order not to be extradited to the United States? Tonight, Parliament can say that it will not be mocked, and that it continues to demand proper judicial safeguards. I support the motion.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate, and thank all the other Members of various different parties who have worked so hard to bring the debate to the Chamber. I also wish to echo the eloquent comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on the value of extradition. It is easy to be one-sided in this debate, and to forget the valuable role extradition can play both in international justice and for the families of the victims.
Understandably, the focus so far has been on the European arrest warrant and the US and UK extradition treaty, but I want to address the issue of those countries, including the US, that do not require prima facie evidence for an extradition to be requested. There are 24 of them, one of which is South Africa, and I want to highlight the case of Shrien Dewani, who has been accused of the terrible and tragic crime of murdering his wife in South Africa. This is not a question of an individual’s innocence or guilt; rather, it is a question of what kind of justice system Parliament can in good conscience approve a British citizen to go through.
My constituent Shrien Dewani was arrested more than a year ago, and he has not so far been charged in either country. Judge Howard Riddle assessed his mental health problems following the appalling and traumatic incident to be extremely severe and considered there to be a real risk of suicide. As I have said, South Africa does not require any prima facie evidence to request extradition, and extradition has been granted pending an appeal.
The case of my constituent has been the subject of extensive pre-judicial and prejudicial media coverage in South Africa, so much so that the head of the South African prosecution services is reported to have been removed from his post because he has been deemed not to be fit and proper to hold it as he has publicly prejudged the case. There have also been explicit threats by prison inmates about what would happen to my constituent were he to be put in a South African jail. It is hard to see how my constituent’s mental health can be safeguarded in such a climate.
There are also serious questions about South Africa’s record of torture in prisons. In 2010, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights found that South Africa had violated the right of a prisoner, Bradley McCallum, not to be tortured and that it had also violated its obligation to investigate and remedy the violations of that right. Those are serious matters. Can we be happy to extradite a British citizen given that severe climate?
Given the media prejudgement by officials, the public threats by prison inmates to my constituent, the very real risk of suicide and the shadow of UN investigations on torture, can it be right that we do not require any prima facie evidence from a country such as South Africa? Can it also be right that we do not further question our extradition treaties with South Africa and other such countries? I hope other Members agree that that is not right. I support the motion.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this important debate. I had the privilege of being called to speak in a similar debate in Westminster Hall recently. I was thrilled by that, as was my constituent, Michael Turner, a young man who lives in South Dorset and who has for too long been the victim of an outrageous injustice under the European arrest warrant. As I understand it, and as I believe most hon. Members understand it, the EAW was meant to deal with terrorism and serious crime. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), who is not in his place, talked about proportionality and I believe that when hon. Members have heard me finish my remarks about the case of Michael Turner, they will agree that the Hungarian authorities have shown no proportionality whatsoever.
Michael’s story begins in 2002, when he and a friend set up a marketing company operating out of Budapest. Regrettably, like so many other businesses around the world, it folded in 2004. The Hungarian authorities alleged that the two men acted fraudulently, leaving customers out of pocket to the tune of about £18,000—not a king’s ransom, as hon. Members may agree. The two men denied the charge of fraud and still do. In November 2008, after Hungary had joined the EU and Britain had signed up to the European extradition treaty, the Hungarian authorities came for Michael.
Here in the United Kingdom, Michael and his team fought against extradition until 2009, when Mr Justice Collins overruled his appeal in the High Court and ordered the two men to hand themselves over to the Hungarian authorities. Michael’s highly respected barrister, Hugh O’Donoghue, was “outraged” at the decision, believing that the European arrest warrant had been incorrectly interpreted and used.
On Monday 2 November 2009, Michael and his friend went to Gatwick airport voluntarily and were handed over to what I believe were Hungarian special forces—they were certainly police—who wanted to wear balaclavas to avoid being identified. I emphasise that the two men went voluntarily, and they were assured that as soon as they arrived in Hungary they would be allowed to call home. However, no such call was forthcoming, and they were refused bail on the ground that they would abscond—this, when they had gone to Hungary voluntarily. They were locked up, incommunicado, at a police station for three days before being moved to Veniga prison. Meanwhile, Michael’s family had to find a Hungarian lawyer to locate him. Even the Foreign Office did not know where he was, as was shown in an e-mail to me dated 4 November 2009, two days after Michael and his friend had been sent to Hungary. It stated:
“We were not initially aware of the case as the Hungarian authorities had not been in contact to notify us of Michael Turner’s detention.”
A judicial mess of scandalous proportions had begun, but far worse was to follow.
Locked up in this former KGB jail on the outskirts of Budapest, Michael was separated from his partner and friend, and placed in a small cell with three other men for 23 hours a day. Here he remained for the next four months, without charge. That in itself is surely a breach of his human rights—and how often in this country do we hear that expression? His initial request to call the consulate was refused, and the authorities had to be reminded that a call to the consulate was a right, not a privilege. He was allowed a one-hour visit per month and one shower per week—he had to basin-wash in his cell, in front of the other three men, for the other six days. Having reading material, and receiving and sending letters, was made difficult for him, and he was continually shouted at in a language that he did not understand. The appalling conditions soon began to wear on him, as I am sure we can all imagine. Soon, and inevitably, it was being suggested that if Michael pleaded guilty his stay in prison would be shortened, but he rightly and bravely stayed silent. Anyway, why should he plead guilty? In his view, he is innocent.
Behind the scenes, many people were trying to help Michael, and I must pay tribute to the Earl of Dartmouth, a UK Independence party MEP, who visited the prison, and Fair Trials International, which is doing what it can to help. It seems extraordinary to me, and I am sure to many Members in the House and to millions of people in this country, that when so many illegal immigrants cannot be extradited to their countries because of their so-called “human rights”, it appears that a British citizen can be handed over almost on a whim.
None of us is sure why Michael’s four-month incarceration in that hellhole came to an end, but on the morning of 26 February 2010, the door opened and Michael was free with no explanation, no apology and still no charge. In April 2010, he returned voluntarily and courageously to Hungary to answer more questions. He was told that police had interviewed more than 500 witnesses and it is calculated that it would take a year, at least, to cross-examine those people alone if the case came to court. Michael returned to the United Kingdom and still faces no charge. The case hangs over him and his family like the sword of Damocles, the emotional, physical and financial cost is hard to gauge and the distress has been absolutely appalling.
Unable to move on with his young life, Michael waits for Hungarian justice, so-called, to take its course, a course that has seen my constituent subjected to imprisonment, psychological torture—of that, he and I have no doubt—huge expense, unrelenting stress and, worst of all for Members of this House and certainly for him, an understandable loss of faith in this country’s ability to look after her own.
Hungary’s judicial system is not on a par with ours—far from it. It is primitive, bureaucratic and clearly unjust. In this country, someone is innocent until proven guilty, but it would seem that that is not the case in Hungary. The current extradition treaty is a complete mess. I agree with Members that some sort of treaty is needed, but reform is needed even more. I back the excellent motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton. I am deeply passionate about this subject and I am honoured to attempt to get freedom and democracy for my constituent, Michael Turner.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who is no longer in his place, on his representation of his constituent, and of course my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on his eloquent representation of his constituent. I also congratulate Her Majesty’s Government on putting in place the mechanisms by which this debate can take place, by introducing the Backbench Business Committee.
My comments will be on the United Kingdom-United States extradition arrangements. I accept that there is a problem with the European arrest warrant, particularly as regards proportionality, and I would submit that it has other serious defects in other respects, too. Not only is it inappropriate for there to be extradition in cases where there is considerable doubt about the seriousness of the alleged offence, but there are clearly differences between the judicial and incarceration systems in many of our European neighbour countries.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems posed by the use of the warrant is that it is sometimes used to aid investigation rather than prosecution, as in the example just given by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax)?
Michael Ellis
I agree. As I said, I acknowledge that there are some serious defects with the European arrest warrant, but the motion conflates the European arrest warrant with the UK-US arrangements and I want to inject an important observation about those arrangements into the debate.
The law enforcement relationship between our two countries is predicated on trust, mutual respect, protecting our peoples and removing safe havens as options for those people who seek to evade justice. It is also important to remember that the United States is, as the Baker report illuminated for those who might not otherwise agree, a rights-based democracy in which accused persons have fundamental protections provided by the constitution to ensure that they are able to participate effectively in a criminal trial process that is conducted fairly. It is important to emphasise that our Anglo-American relations are predicated on those facts and on our acceptance that the United States system of jurisprudence provides a very advanced state of rights-based democracy for accused persons.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, but let me ask him a question. If I were facing a Texas jury having been extradited from my homeland here in the United Kingdom under the extradition treaty to face trial, would I have recourse to legal aid or something analogous to it under the wonderful rights-based system in the United States?
Michael Ellis
The systems provided by the United States are accepted by the international community as being perfectly amenable to the interests of democracy and the rights of the individual within the state of Texas and other states of the American union.
Approximately a year ago, Her Majesty’s Government commissioned a report—the Baker report—to which several colleagues have referred and which I am holding. It is 500 pages long, it took one year to complete and it was conducted by three eminent jurists: Sir Scott Baker, who was called to the Bar some 50 years ago, and two eminent lawyers, both of whom have acted for Governments and for requested persons and have therefore dealt with this issue on many occasions and from both sides of the fence. They came to the conclusion that there was no significant difference or imbalance between the extradition arrangements in the United States and the United Kingdom. That is the crux of this matter. Many of the previous speakers seemed to assume that there were imbalances, which they criticised, but they did not address those alleged imbalances.
I have heard no evidence, and the Baker report came up with no evidence, pinpointing where there is imbalance. There is different terminology, with “reasonable suspicion” being used often in the UK arrangements in relation to the evidential burden that is required, whereas “probable cause” is used by the United States. Those two terms may be slightly different in phraseology but they mean very much the same thing, and those who have analysed the position in some detail, either in the Baker report or elsewhere, have come to that clear conclusion.
Mr David Davis
My hon. Friend has asked for an example. How does he see the circumstances of someone facing trial in Texas who is thousands of miles from their nearest and dearest, isolated from their community and has no financial support? Does not the plea-bargaining system in America become a predatory process that threatens them with long-term loss of liberty or the prospect of giving in and admitting guilt?
Michael Ellis
There have been extradition arrangements between our two peoples since the later part of the 18th century. As for plea-bargain arrangements, there are also pressures on defendants in the British system. We do not refer to them as plea-bargaining, but defendants know that if they plead guilty, they are likely to receive a lesser sentence, so although we have no plea-bargaining arrangement, it is not correct to assume that the two systems are completely different.
The conclusion reached by the Baker report is that there is no significant difference between the tests that either country applies. In all extradition requests that have been submitted to the United Kingdom since 1 January 2004, the United States and many other states have not had to provide prima facie evidence, instead having to provide only the information sufficient to satisfy the extradition legislation. There are many countries, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, from which we do not require prima facie evidence before extraditing to them. We should not therefore require the United States to jump over that hurdle when the other allied nations whose legal systems are based on ours do not have to do so. I understand that countries that have signed the European convention on extradition orders do not have to jump through that hoop. Those countries include Turkey and Russia. Those who call for a prima facie standard, as I understand the Joint Committee on Human Rights has done, must explain why Russia should be required to have a lesser standard than America, if America were put under the pressure of proving to a prima facie standard.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Should we not require that standard of everyone? Is that not the way forward?
Michael Ellis
Well, that is one way of looking at it. Certainly, if we were to decide to require everyone to hold to the prima facie standard, that might be fairer, although it would be extremely expensive, bureaucratic and time consuming. For the accused person and for witnesses, the interests of justice are not served by delaying matters, so that would be the problem there. However, before the 2003 Act, I believe there was a requirement to find a prima facie standard. If not, there was certainly an imbalance between the United States and the United Kingdom in that respect. The United States had to apply greater burdens to extradite people from the United Kingdom than the United Kingdom had to supply vice versa.
Mr Raab
My hon. Friend has made the point about the paper test, but the key point made by Alun Jones QC is that the quality of evidence is assessed in extraditions both ways by the US courts—that is a requirement of the US constitution—but in neither case by the UK courts. There is the imbalance. Does my hon. Friend accept that?
Michael Ellis
No, I do not accept that. I agree with the Scott Baker report that there is no fundamental imbalance. It is important to point out that the United States has not denied a single extradition request from the United Kingdom under the treaty. Although the United States makes more requests to the United Kingdom than it receives, the difference is largely because the population of the United States is five times greater than that of the United Kingdom. There is no imbalance. The Scott Baker report confirms that, and I cannot support the motion.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who made a passionate defence of the current arrangements between the United Kingdom and the United States. I regret that although I agree with him on so very much, on this rare occasion we will have to part company in our legal and political analysis of the situation.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing the debate. It is good to have the debate on the Floor of the House and to see a measure of consensus emerging as the debate has gone on. I have looked at the extradition treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, so boldly defended by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) who, sadly, is no longer in his place. As a former Home Secretary entering into that agreement, one would expect that.
I have some difficulties with the treaty. The first of those, which has vexed many, is on the issue of reasonable suspicion versus probable cause. As everyone who has read the Scott Baker report will know, probable cause is reviewed on page 239, paragraph 7.35, where it is defined as
“a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime”.
There is a difference between a reasonable suspicion, which is the arresting standard in our jurisprudence, and America, where probable cause is a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. Belief is clearly a higher test than suspicion. As I know from my time in my books, a suspicion that someone has committed a crime is a sense that that might be the case. Belief is a higher level than suspicion. Suspicion is maybe, maybe not; belief is “I’m pretty sure.” I think we should be careful about that. Indeed, the Scott Baker report discusses the difference at some length but later glosses over it.
This error, which in my opinion results from the use of different legal definitions in our two systems, has crept into the defence of the treaty. Indeed, His Excellency the American ambassador to the Court of St James, Louis Susman, has decided to take an interest in our internal affairs and wrote in The Daily Telegraph today that there is no real difference. I think that in a deep sense there is a difference. He states:
“In all extradition cases, the UK authorities always begin by considering whether an individual can and should be tried in the UK instead of being extradited. Once the UK authorities decide that the case should be tried in the US, all extradition hearings are then held in UK courts”,
and then off the person goes. My difficulty with that argument is that I see nothing in the treaty that makes that the case. There is a provision in the treaty that states clearly, in my humble opinion, that just because no action is being taken in the UK the person can be extradited. Nothing states that. Paragraph 4 of article 2 states:
“If the offense has been committed outside the territory of the Requesting State, extradition shall be granted in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty if the laws in the Requested State provide for the punishment of such conduct committed outside its territory in similar circumstances.”
It also seems clear, in the paragraph relating to no prosecution, that if charges are not made in the UK the person can be extradited, but even if charges were laid in the UK, my reading of article 5 is that there is no bar on extradition being sought from the United States in that case either.
My fundamental trouble with the support being given to the US-UK treaty in its current format is very simple: if a crime is committed or alleged to have been committed on British soil so that the act of the crime, what lawyers call the actus reus, was in the UK, meaning that the deed was done in the UK, surely the proper forum is the UK. Many of the cases that we have discussed tonight and that have caused so much ire are cases where people in the UK have allegedly committed crimes for which the foreign requesting jurisdiction, typically the US, is asking for them, and we know that if a crime has been committed it has been committed in the UK. Surely the right place for that person to be tried is the UK, for all the reasons my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has given. For example, they have their friends, family and loved ones around one, they have a house, they do not have to pay to maintain themselves and they have access to legal aid.
If people are shipped over to face a jury in Texas, as the NatWest Three or Enron Three were, they will know very well that they will have to maintain themselves, that they are far from their loved ones and best advisers and that they will have to pay all the fees if they want to see the court case through. When someone faces the massive likelihood of a conviction because there is a Texas jury and they are not from Texas, which regrettably can be the case, they will accept a plea bargain that is made to look very enticing and attractive. They can have a massively long sentence of multiple years on the one hand or a very short sentence on the other. What will they do? Of course they will accept the plea-bargain. I think that that is incredibly unfair. If people in that situation have committed a crime, it was in the UK and they should have been prosecuted in the UK.
There is a provision set out in paragraphs 4 and 5 of schedule 13 to the Police and Justice Act 2006 that does not seem to have been commenced, and I wonder whether the Minister for Immigration might be able to enlighten the House on whether it is likely to be commenced, and if so when, so that there can be the kind of forum bar, which I and so many Members have spoken about this evening, to right that balance so that there will not be the lingering feeling of injustice.
The other issue is the European arrest warrant, and I was glad to hear my hon. Friend the Liberal Democrat Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) say that it was an area for righteous renegotiation with our friends in Europe. I agree. We should renegotiate in the national interest and, indeed, in the interests of the people of this country, when it is right to do so, and that area should be looked at, if only because it has been so massively abused—for fishing expeditions, for investigating crimes and for wrongful processes. We therefore need to rebalance that and to get the balance right.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
It is a real privilege to follow my learned hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and to speak in this debate, called by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is so right to be defending the ancient rights of the British people. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) got it absolutely right when he said that we spend a lot of time talking about the human rights of people in this country until, suddenly, extradition comes up and then—bingo!—they have gone, and they are sacrificed to transportation to a foreign land.
The point that we should focus on is the first principle of why we have such protections for the innocent in the criminal law. We have, as we know, a powerful state. The state provides the police and the prosecuting authority, and the state pays the judges and reimburses the juries, and, because of that great power, the state then feels it is right to put in place protections for the individual who is charged: the right to trial by jury; the right to habeas corpus; and the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty. These are the foundation rights of our criminal justice system and have a history stretching back 1,000 years.
But, when it comes to extradition, people can go to countries that do not have or follow that tradition. We have heard about how it works in Hungary, and the criminal justice system there, so one is a protected British subject if charged here, with all sorts of possible ways of defending oneself, but suddenly, if one comes under the European arrest warrant, one can languish in a dank Hungarian jail, with all those protections removed.
The United States is our greatest and closest ally, and a country with which we want to have the friendliest of relations, but we have already heard about the extraordinary approach it takes to plea bargaining: one may be threatened with 400 years without the option of parole, or if one pleads guilty one gets a week in a resort near Canada, as happened to the man who was prosecuted at the same point as Lord Black of Crossharbour—his noble lordship. One of them was offered an enormously long sentence, and the other was offered a Canadian golf club.
Michael Ellis
We do not have a system of plea bargaining in this country, but does my hon. Friend not accept that people who plead guilty in the United Kingdom’s courts will almost invariably receive a lower sentence than if they are found guilty after trial? There are good public policy reasons why.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
There are, indeed, but that is of a completely different order of magnitude: one gets a little off one’s sentence if one pleads guilty early—rather than being threatened with hundreds of years against a week in a golf club. That does not happen under the British system, but we know that it happened to the man who turned the equivalent of Queen’s evidence against Conrad Black. We know that it happens in the United States system, but we are willing to risk British subjects going over there.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is always worth listening to, even if his arguments are not the strongest of cases. He began by espousing the benefits of English—I must add—history, but surely we share that system with our colonial cousins, so having made great merit of the English judicial system he cannot then criticise our American friends.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. It is up to the hon. Gentleman who takes the intervention, but the Member had only just come in.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
But it is such a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman, and the tone of the House is raised by his gracious presence, so I will respond. Yes, of course we should have a hierarchy of countries to which we feel comfortable extraditing people, and of course New Zealand, Australia and Canada would be very high up on those lists—and the United States would be pretty high up too.
However, I do not think that the ambassador to the Court of St James—the extraordinary plenipotentiary of the United States—behaves in a diplomatic way when he starts telling this House how we ought to consider our business. I like to think what the noise would be in Washington if our ambassador there decided to suggest to the Senate or to the House of Representatives how they ought to conduct their business. Sitting as he does in his grand fortress in Grosvenor square like some Persian satrap, he should not be telling the House of Commons how to conduct her business. Of course we should have friendly extradition arrangements with the United States, but crucially ones that protect the ancient rights of the British subject whereby they should be innocent until proved guilty and should remain within the jurisdiction of this country until evidence is produced against them.
If we are worried about the United States, how much more worried should we be about some European countries, which can, in effect, arrest people and have them removed from this country without so much as a by-your-leave? We are risking people’s freedom and liberty. This House exists to protect the freedoms and the liberties of the British subject. Yes, I know that some of them will be guilty and will deserve severe punishment for the crimes they have committed, but have we not set up our justice system on the basic principle that it is better for 100 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man or, indeed, woman, although women commit fewer crimes—[Interruption] It is true; they do—to be imprisoned when innocent? If that is the starting point of our justice system, then surely we ought to apply it when it comes to extradition, and therefore the Government ought to review the arrangements that they have with the United States.
Michael Ellis
Does my hon. Friend give no credence to the fact that in the 500-page Scott Baker report, commissioned by Her Majesty’s Government, eminent jurists came to the conclusion that the imbalance that he is assuming between British and American relations regarding extradition does not exist?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Had my hon. Friend paid closer attention to the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, he would understand that there are differing views on that. It is well known that, with Government reports, the people are appointed who will provide the report that is wanted. That has been practised over many centuries.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, we are the ones who must decide what is right for the country, and we must do so on first principles.
Although the American extradition treaty is not entirely satisfactory—I was very much persuaded by my hon. Friend’s introductory remarks—I am much more concerned about the European arrest warrant, which risks the freedom of innocent people in this country. I really would rather that we did not manage to arrest a foreign criminal if the exchange for that was allowing an innocent English person to be transported abroad—[Interruption.] Or a Scotsman, a Welshman or a Northern Irishman. I do not particularly want the southern Irish to languish in jails unnecessarily either, but that is not my business. It is therefore important for the Government to reinstate these protections. In fact, it would be quite encouraging if, in our efforts to renegotiate with Europe, we started with this.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I must confess that I was looking forward to more of that. I have on occasion referred to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) as the hon. Member for the 13th century, but I think that that was far too radical a century for his liking.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate. He is quite greedy about getting debates. I think he has probably had his fair share for the rest of this Parliament, but he introduced an important matter that is of interest to many.
I also congratulate the many Members who have spoken on behalf of constituents who have had particular problems. I know, from when I was responsible for consular support in the Foreign Office, how often British embassies around the world deal with complicated situations in relation to extradition. In some circumstances, British people did not have to be extradited and were caught up in the criminal justice system in another country, where they did not speak the language, did not understand the system and were a long way from their loved ones, as many hon. Members have said. Some people were languishing in pretty hideous jails. I visited a couple of them in Thailand and Peru and cannot recommend the process to anybody. I therefore commend hon. Members for their comments.
In relation to Andrew Symeou, I tried to ensure, as far as possible, that our embassy in Athens was doing as much as possible to ensure that the family and Mr Symeou had the support that they needed. Of course, we were also trying to provide support to the family who were the victims of the crime in question.
I also congratulate the lawyers who have taken part in the debate. I notice that they keep calling themselves “jurists”. They are not going to get away with that. We know who they are. Unfortunately, I mostly agreed with their contributions, so I will not be rude to them this evening.
It is a fundamental principle that nobody should be arbitrarily arrested without due cause. It inevitably follows that no extradition, no surrender of a person and no arrest under an international warrant should, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer,
“be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly”.
Extradition is a vital part of a modern criminal justice system, as many Members have said. It means that nobody can evade justice simply by fleeing the country. In our case, 581 people have been brought back to the UK to face justice as a result of the European arrest warrant since 2004, including the failed 21 July bomber, Hussain Osman, who was extradited from Italy. Indeed, he was removed from Italy fast enough for his interrogation to inform the decisions on charges that had been placed against others, which was an important part of securing justice in that case.
We need at all times to keep our extradition arrangements, both multilateral and bilateral, under review so that nobody’s freedom is unjustly deprived by them. It seems to me that there are five key issues: the operation of the European arrest warrant, the question of whether a prima facie case should be made in all situations, the issue of double or dual criminality, the implementation of a forum bar and the purported imbalance of the US-UK treaty.
I will first make a few simple points. The first is that the motion refers to the protection of British citizens, as have many hon. Members. However, many UK extraditions are of course not of UK nationals. Many EAW requests are from countries that want their own nationals to face criminal proceedings back home. The report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights seeks a special threshold of proof for British citizens. Leaving aside the matter of Northern Ireland, I believe that the idea of special arrangements for our nationals, as opposed to anybody else, in the UK courts smacks more of the Russian system of extradition, which prevents the extradition of any Russian national, than the historic British position that the law should be blind to nationality.
Mr David Davis
On that point, the hon. Gentleman could have said that it smacked more of New Zealand, Australia, Germany or France. Why did he pick Russia?
Chris Bryant
It was partly because Russia has made a large number of extradition requests to this country to which we have said no because Timothy Workman, the judge in charge, has decided on each occasion that they were being advanced merely for political reasons, whereas when we make extradition requests, such as for Mr Lugovoy, who is sought for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian state simply says that no Russian national will be extradited. I do not think that there should be a distinction between different nationalities.
My second minor point is that I suspect that statistics throw far less light on the matter than one might think. It is true, for instance, as the hon. Member for Esher and Walton mentioned, that the number of extraditions from the UK has risen dramatically since 1975, but then so has international travel. Moreover, although there was just one extradition to Spain in the decade up to 1973 compared with 61 in the past seven years, I suspect that that had more to do with the relations with Franco’s regime than with anything to do with the extradition system.
The same is true, I believe, of the US-UK extraditions to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Since 2004 there have been 73 extraditions to the United States from this country, and just 38 to the UK from the US, yet 70% of UK requests for extradition have been successful compared with just 54% of US requests to the UK. In other words, a US request is less likely to succeed than a UK one. Moreover, far more British nationals go to the US every year than the other way around. I know that that seems counter-intuitive, but the Library’s figures suggest that roughly 4.5 million British people go to the US every year, and fewer than 2 million come from the US to the UK.
Thirdly, cybercrime almost inevitably crosses borders, whether we are talking about conspiracy to fund terrorism, illegal file sharing or industrial espionage. Consequently, I agree with hon. Members who have said today that we have to ensure that we have a better way of dealing with the question of where individual matters may be resolved.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in taking interventions. I put it to him that the original arrangements with the United States were entered into under the cloud of the history of 9/11 and terrorism, and now we are hearing cybercrime as the latest excuse. Is there not always another excuse to worry people about why we should go further in taking away their rights and protections?
Chris Bryant
I was actually agreeing with the hon. Gentleman in my remarks about cybercrime. I think it is legitimate for there to be a point at which we decide where is the right place for something to be tried. I believe that was the point that he was trying to make earlier, so I am grateful to him for his support for my argument.
Having dealt with the minor issues, I want to turn to the more significant ones, and first the operation of the European arrest warrant. It is true that there have been several cases in which the justice system in other countries included in the European arrest warrant has been far from ideal. Several hon. Members have mentioned those cases today. We are all mindful of the horrific experiences of some people who have been held for considerable periods for crimes that, as it turns out, they never committed. Incidentally, that is of course sometimes true in the United Kingdom as well.
Although I believe the EAW operates successfully in the main, there is one key matter that I believe needs to be addressed—the question of proportionality. Between 2004 and the end of March 2011, Poland accounted for 1,659 and Lithuania 355 of the UK’s 3,107 EAW surrenders. In part, that was because of the prosecutorial system in each of those two countries, but in many cases the warrants were for relatively minor offences. We believe that a proportionality test should apply. Indeed, I believe that the majority of members of the European Union would prefer to see some form of proportionality clause inserted into the provisions. It is important, of course, to bear it in mind that in many cases the UK imposes longer sentences than other countries in Europe, so there is a danger that if proportionality is introduced some countries will retaliate in the wrong direction. However, I believe that such a clause should be included.
Richard Drax
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we left the EU, proportionality could be decided in this country, not by a massive bureaucracy?
Chris Bryant
Oh dear, no. Don’t get me started on that. In fact, the hon. Gentleman is wrong about the aetiology of how we got to the European arrest warrant. It was a Conservative Government who ratified our membership of the European convention on extradition in 1991, which has almost all the same provisions and applies to nearly all the same countries. Indeed, in 1993 it also included Hungary.
Secondly, I wish to mention prima facie rules. Under the 2003 Act, there is no prima facie rule in relation to EAW countries, known in the legislation as category 1 territories. However, in countries in whose criminal justice systems we do not have the same legal confidence, a prima facie rule still applies. That includes several Commonwealth countries covered by the London scheme and many others covered by bilateral treaties, such as Brazil and Argentina—the countries that were formerly quite happy to receive people from Nazi Germany without asking any questions.
There is no prima facie requirement for designated category 2 countries that share our respect for human rights and the rule of law, such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the US. The Opposition believe that that distinction is a proper one, even if we would constantly seek to urge reform and modernisation of legal systems in many EAW countries. Hon. Members have said that we cannot just hope that that will happen and that we need to try to ensure that it does. However, we would not do so by suddenly inserting a prima facie case for all EAWs. If we did that, we would be leaving the EAW. Some hon. Members might like us to do that—as well as leaving the EU—but it would be a mistake because of the effects it would have on the UK.
Stephen Phillips
As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman is therefore advocating that it is perfectly acceptable for citizens of this country to be extradited to jurisdictions where conditions in the justice system are less than ideal when no prima facie case is shown. Is that right?
Chris Bryant
The Committee makes it clear in its report that the
“EAW is based on the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions and… mutual trust”
between the judicial authorities of EU states. That is a legitimate position for us to adopt, just as it was adopted in 1991 by the Conservative Government when they signed us up to the ECE—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is chuntering, but I cannot hear what he says. Unless he wants to chunter louder, I am at a loss—[Interruption.] He says he will chunter more quietly, for which I am very grateful.
Chris Bryant
Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman—he will chunter from a standing position.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I will indeed. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman, wise and sensible as he is, thinks that justice across all European states is equal. It self-evidently is not: some systems are much less good than ours, and none is better.
Chris Bryant
That kind of casual British superiority sometimes does not carry the day when it comes to making decisions about our legal systems—[Interruption.] It was a joke. I am sorry. I clearly missed that.
Chris Bryant
I am being more generous than I should be, but of course I will give way.
Mr Davis
I rise to get the hon. Gentleman off the hook. He has accepted that judicial and prison systems in other European countries are less than desirable. He says that he does not want a prima facie test. Does he accept that he is therefore proposing, or what exists, will punish innocent people who are sent to those countries and suffer those problems?
Chris Bryant
No I do not accept that. The return question to the right hon. Gentleman would be this: why did he expressly support in 1991 the ratification of the ECE? If Britain had wanted to, it could have insisted on a prima facie case—that was when many member states had even less advanced criminal justice systems than they have today. The honest truth is that Britain came to the decision that it was more important to close down the costa del crime and the many different ways in which people could evade justice around Europe. I agree with his position at that time.
Chris Bryant
If the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, I am conscious that the Minister’s contribution is far more important than mine and I want to move on to a couple of other issues.
I fully understand the concern that many have with the abolition of double criminality from the framework decision. I understand those who believe that that could mean that one could be extradited for holocaust denial or other matters that are not criminal offences in this country. However, I ask hon. Members to remember that sections 64(2) and 65(2) of the Extradition Act 2003 make it absolutely clear that the conduct must have happened in the member state where it is a crime, not in this country. When people travel abroad, surely people subject themselves to the laws of those other countries.
Under the forum bar, extradition would not be allowed if, in the words of section 42 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, which is now section 19B of the 2003 Act,
“a significant part of the conduct alleged…is conduct in the United Kingdom”
and if, in the opinion of the court, it is not
“in the interests of justice for the person to be tried for the offence in the requesting”
country. Many have pointed to some of the problems inherent in such a forum conveniens test—it could further delay complex proceedings, several of the terms are imprecise, and there could be extensive litigation around them—but the Opposition are not opposed to such a test per se, and merely note that the Government have not thus far introduced the relevant motion in this House or the other place.
Let me turn to the imbalance in the US-UK treaty. Members will know that the US constitution requires that nobody can be arrested without a prosecuting authority proving probable cause. That applies equally for a US arrest for US prosecution, for an international arrest warrant or, under the 2003 treaty, for extradition. The requirement for a UK extradition to the US is that information must be provided that satisfies the reasonable suspicion test. Both tests are based on reasonableness and require similar paperwork and evidence to be submitted. In the case of someone to be extradited from the UK, the US authorities first have to secure a warrant or grand jury indictment, both of which require that the probable cause test is met in the United States of America. The argument that the treaty is imbalanced is simply not made.
Let me briefly turn to the cases of Gary McKinnon and Babar Ahmad, which are much in Members’ thoughts today. It is not for this House to decide the guilt or innocence of anyone, nor do I believe that this motion can legally affect either of the two cases, notwithstanding the points that have been made by others. The length of time that these two cases have taken makes it difficult to see how justice is being done in either of them. Whatever changes the Government bring forward will not directly affect them. None the less, I urge the Secretary of State to make a final decision on Gary McKinnon as soon as possible, and the European Court on Human Rights to do the same by Babar Ahmad. Nothing we do tonight will free either of them, but we can ensure that in future others do not suffer in the same way.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
It is a terrible ministerial cliché to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that this has been a good and useful debate, but tonight it is true. Particular thanks should go to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and to members of the Backbench Business Committee for securing time in this House to debate these important issues. My hon. Friend made some kind remarks about me at the start of the debate and I should reciprocate by praising not just his energy in pursuit of this campaign—this is our second debate in nine days on the subject—but the considerable legal expertise that he brings to the subject, as well as his contribution to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, whose Chairman also contributed to the debate.
As I made clear in the debate in Westminster Hall, the Government are currently considering what action to take to ensure that this country’s extradition arrangements work both efficiently and fairly. I welcome multiple debates on these matters and of course the Government will take them into account when responding to Sir Scott Baker’s independent review of extradition along with the work done by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee.
The debate on extradition in recent years has focused in large part on a number of high-profile cases. Like others tonight, I pay tribute to the hon. Members who have spoken on behalf of their constituents, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax). We understand and take full account of the concerns raised by right hon. and hon. Members in respect of individual European arrest warrant and extradition cases involving their constituents.
As I indicated during the debate, and as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said repeatedly in the context of the extradition review, it is vital that we strike the correct balance between effectively bringing offenders to justice and seeking redress for the victims of crime while protecting the fundamental rights of those who are sought for extradition. That point was made well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). For that reason, this further debate is warmly welcomed.
Many interesting points have been made this evening, but the only one with which I flatly disagree was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who said that 1,000 years ago habeas corpus was an important part of our constitution. I would normally defer to him in matters of mediaeval history, but I do not remember in the dying decades of the Anglo-Saxon kings, underrated though they are in history, that habeas corpus featured particularly highly.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As it happens, one can trace habeas corpus back an extremely long way, but I do not think that I said that.
Damian Green
The record will tell us which of us recollects correctly.
Moving rapidly to the 21st century—
Damian Green
I can feel a fascinating and wholly irrelevant debate coming upon us, Mr Speaker.
Mr Blunkett
I just want to make the obvious point that what matters is not when habeas corpus was agreed in principle but whether people can implement it.
Damian Green
In his known wisdom, the right hon. Gentleman brings me back to the modern era.
When we entered office last year, we recognised that there were long-standing and deeply held concerns about the UK’s extradition arrangements with other EU member states and about our extradition treaty with the United States. That is why in the coalition’s programme for government we made a clear commitment to review the operation of the Extradition Act 2003 and the US-UK extradition treaty to ensure that they were even- handed. That was why the Home Secretary announced an independent review to be chaired by Sir Scott Baker and assisted by two lawyers—an important point given some of the criticisms of the Baker commission—who between them had extensive experience of extradition from prosecution and defence perspectives.
As I made clear during the debate in Westminster Hall, that panel undertook an extensive examination of the issues and carefully examined evidence from a range of parties representing all shades of opinion. Contrary to suggestions by some, the panel assessed representations from those who had experienced extradition first hand and the evidence of their families. It has also been suggested that the panel did not take evidence from solicitors representing the subjects of extradition requests. In fact, one of the panel members was himself an experienced legal representative of those subject to extradition proceedings and brought first-hand insight into the realities of extradition from the UK.
As the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said, the review has evidently reached controversial conclusions, but I hope that we would all acknowledge that it is a serious piece of work, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). I have been interested to hear the further points made this evening, and I am happy to assure the House that these opinions will be given the most careful scrutiny before we publish what action we propose to take in response to the review. There is a significant body of opinion from all sides that we need to assess seriously before reaching a decision.
Members on both sides of the House asked that we deal with individual cases of particular concern to them. I am, of course, happy to do that. Let me first summarise what I said about Babar Ahmad’s case. He was arrested for extradition purposes in August 2004, and in June 2007 he exhausted all the available domestic avenues for contesting the request for his extradition. He then applied to the European Court of Human Rights. On 12 June 2007, the Court imposed a stay on his extradition and on 8 July 2010 declared his case partially admissible. His case remains under consideration by the Court. The allegations against him in the United States relate to alleged conduct that took place while he was in the United Kingdom. As the House knows, an e-petition on behalf of Mr Ahmad calling for him to be put on trial in the UK has attracted more than 140,000 signatures.
Of course, the Government recognise the concern of those petitioners but it is not for the Government to decide if and when someone should be prosecuted in the United Kingdom.
Damian Green
I am about to deal with the hon. Lady’s point.
The decision about whether to bring a prosecution is a matter for the independent prosecuting authorities, and the Crown Prosecution Service has to date decided not to prosecute Mr Ahmad in the UK.
Damian Green
If the hon. Lady will hold on a second, I shall deal directly with her point.
The CPS has advised that a small number of documents relating to Mr Ahmad were seized by the Metropolitan police and were submitted to the domestic prosecutor for advice in 2004. The domestic prosecutor was specifically asked to advise on whether any of those documents might disclose offences under the Terrorism Act 2000 with a view to prosecution in the UK. I am advised that, on the material provided, there was insufficient evidence to mount a UK prosecution. However, when the decision was made not to prosecute Mr Ahmad in the UK, prosecutors here were aware of evidence against him in the possession of the US authorities. I understand that that evidence was far more extensive than that which was in the possession of the UK authorities. Although the CPS extradition team was in possession of some of the US material, it amounted only to that which was necessary to seek extradition, and was provided to the CPS for extradition purposes only.
The extradition proceedings in this country have concluded. The case has been heard extensively through all tiers of the UK extradition process, and extradition has been ordered. The UK courts have held that the US authorities have jurisdiction in relation to the offences of which Mr Ahmad is accused and that they are entitled to seek his extradition. The offences are crimes in both countries, thereby satisfying the extradition test of dual criminality. Mr Ahmad is now challenging extradition before the European Court of Human Rights. The Court has asked a number of questions in relation to the case; both sides have submitted observations on these points on several occasions. The extradition review panel highlighted in its report those cases that awaited a decision by the European Court of Human Rights and the amount of time that they had been before that Court. The panel recommended that the matter of the delay be taken up by the Government urgently and that the Court should be encouraged to give priority to those cases where extradition had been stayed. The Government are considering that recommendation, along with others, but the United Kingdom has pressed, and continues to press, for the Court to reach its decision as soon as possible.
Many concerns have been expressed about the length of time for which Mr Ahmad has been detained in custody awaiting the outcome of the extradition request. This has at all times been on the order of the Court, and we continue to press the Court to reach its decision on the case as soon as possible. Where the Court seeks observations or clarifications from the Home Office on the representations in the case, these are provided as soon as possible. We are acutely aware of the time that has passed since the extradition request was first made and of the importance of dealing with the matters raised as quickly as is consistent with fairness to all sides.
Caroline Lucas
Will the Minister agree to investigate why the CPS acknowledged and admitted that it had not seen all the information only on 23 November, after many, many years in which Babar Ahmad had essentially been in prison? If that information had been available earlier, the process here in the UK could have been much faster.
Damian Green
I am not sure that the hon. Lady’s last point is right, but I take her general point, and obviously the CPS will have heard what she has said.
Let me turn to the case of Gary McKinnon, which has been raised many times, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). This case is different from Mr Ahmad’s, as it falls to be decided by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I shall briefly explain the reasons for this. Mr McKinnon has exhausted all rights of appeal under the Extradition Act 2003, and the European Court of Human Rights refused an application to impose a stay on his extradition. However, under the Human Rights Act 1998 the Home Secretary is under a duty not to act in a manner that is incompatible with a person’s rights under the European convention on human rights. She must therefore consider whether, as a result of events occurring after the extradition proceedings, it would be contrary to the convention for a person to be extradited. The sole remaining issue, therefore, is whether extradition is compatible with Mr McKinnon’s convention rights. The Home Secretary sought the independent advice of the chief medical officer, who has provided the names of two experts whom she believes to be well placed to provide evidence on the relevant medical issues. Those experts are preparing a report that will help the Home Secretary to determine whether extradition would contravene Mr McKinnon’s convention rights. We hope that the experts will report as soon as possible; but clearly a number of issues will need to be considered in depth.
During tonight’s debate, as in the previous debate, a number of concerns have been raised regarding specific European arrest warrant cases. We will take careful account of the points made by right hon. and hon. Members in respect of those cases. In the case of Benny Wenda, which was raised this evening by the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), we understand that an internal red notice for Mr Wenda has been issued by the Indonesian authorities. That does not constitute an extradition request for the purposes of the 2003 Act. Generally, if an extradition request is issued by a country in relation to which the person sought has refugee status, the Home Secretary can refuse to certify the request, and if it comes to the attention of the courts during extradition proceedings that the person sought has refugee status in relation to the country seeking extradition, the courts can discharge the person from extradition proceedings on human rights grounds. I hope that that helps the right hon. Gentleman.
It is worth my repeating what I said on 24 November. We share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and many others—including my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) —about the issuing of European arrest warrants for trivial offences. That is a significant issue which the Government seek to address as a matter of urgency. As I said in our earlier debate, I know that Members’ concerns are shared by other European Union member states and by the European Commission. While we are considering whether wider action is required to meet the challenge and resolve the problem, we continue to discuss the matter with, in particular, our Polish counterparts to encourage their prosecutors and courts to consider proportionality before a European arrest warrant is issued.
The debate has made clear that Members in all parts of the House understand that these are complex and important issues and that there is significant evidence to be assessed, all of which requires careful analysis and reflection. The debate has provided much more useful information and analysis, all of which I know the Home Secretary will take carefully into account. As soon as we can, we will announce what action we propose to take in the light of the extradition review.
Mr Raab
With the House’s permission, Mr Speaker, I rise for the second time to wind up what has been an excellent debate. Let me thank the Backbench Business Committee again for making it happen.
We have heard powerful speeches on the basic principles of justice which are at stake. I doubt that I shall have time to mention all of them, but the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) started us off with the benefit of his considerable experience as Home Secretary; my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) spoke passionately and at length about the importance of the presumption of innocence; the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, talked about the Committee’s review and report; and my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) spoke about the flaws in the European arrest warrant. I am sure that we all look forward to the publication of his report in due course.
We also heard compelling speeches from a range of Members representing victims of rough justice under our extradition laws. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) spoke passionately and powerfully about the arbitrary treatment of Gary McKinnon, while my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) talked about the Michael Turner case. I welcome the Minister’s engagement. He has listened very patiently, and I hope that he has been convinced of the case for reform and the strong consensus in favour of it in the House.
I listened carefully to the considered speech of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He seems to be rather lukewarm about the whole issue of extradition reform, but I am glad that at least he does not oppose the forum provision enacted by the previous Government.
In truth, it is for Members of Parliament in all parts of the House to stand up for our constituents, to stand up for our citizens, and to stand up for the basic principles of British justice.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House calls upon the Government to reform the UK’s extradition arrangements to strengthen the protection of British citizens by introducing as a matter of urgency a Bill to enact the safeguards recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its Fifteenth Report, HC 767, and by pursuing such amendments to the UK-US Extradition Treaty 2003 and the EU Council Framework Decision 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant as are necessary in order to give effect to such recommendations.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I propose to take motions 3 to 5 together.
Ordered,
Environmental Audit
That Simon Kirby be discharged from the Environmental Audit Committee and Paul Uppal be added.
Justice
That Claire Perry be discharged from the Justice Committee and Steve Brine be added.
Public Administration
That Nick de Bois be discharged from the Public Administration Committee and Priti Patel be added.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Bonn Conference (Women in Afghanistan)
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will be aware that the Bonn conference on Afghanistan took place today. More than 1,000 people from 90 states attended and Britain was represented by our Foreign Secretary, who spoke up for the rights of Afghan women during the sessions. The Foreign Office estimated that 10 of the Afghan delegation of 40 were to be women, but I believe that the number was reduced by visa problems. Whether by accident or design, it was a great loss to the conference that Fawzia Koofi, Afghan MP and presidential candidate, was reported not to have obtained her visa in time to travel, although she had a place reserved at the conference. I look forward to hearing more from my hon. Friend the Minister about progress made in Bonn today.
I offer a brief historical perspective on the position of women in Afghanistan. As we all know, the country is a traditional and patriarchal society where women have limited access to decision making and resources. Women’s movement and their freedom to pursue activities outside the home have been severely limited over the years and mostly dependent on male family members. Before the arrival of the Taliban, the extent of the suppression of women varied between tribes and areas. In some parts of the country, women could and did work and had some access to education.
Historically, there has been far too much acceptance on the part of western politicians, mostly men, of the so-called traditional and cultural reasons for the persecution of women by men in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan. Indeed, had western opinion been more outraged at the policies of the Taliban from the mid-’90s onwards, perhaps a great deal of history could have been changed and many lives saved, but that was not to be and the Taliban were allowed to get on with their atrocities and extreme oppression uninterrupted until 9/11.
Jane Corbin, reporting for BBC “Panorama”, interviewed members of the group Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan. She told viewers that, from 1996 to 2001, under the Sunni fundamentalist Government of the Taliban, women were not allowed to leave their homes without being escorted by a male relative and girls were not allowed to go to school. When women did leave their homes, they were required to wear a blue burqa, which covered their bodies from head to toe. The only opening was a small net that provided an eyehole for the women to see through.
In the programme, a female teacher said that during the Taliban regime she was stopped at the market by the Taliban and beaten with a whip. Her crime: she wore a shawl covering her body instead of a burqa. She said that she was too poor to purchase a real burqa, and after that beating she was stuck in her home for months until someone was able to give her a used one.
I will not dwell further on the Taliban. Their evil rule is well documented. Suffice it to say, and with great relevance to the current peace negotiations, women in Afghanistan remember those days with despair and fear their return.
Since 2001, there has been significant progress. The rights of women are enshrined in the Afghan constitution. There is, in theory at any rate, equality in the eyes of the law. Sixty-eight of the 249 seats in Parliament are reserved for women. Nine members of the High Peace Council are women—not many out of a membership of 79, but a sign of progress none the less. There is now a national Ministry for Women’s Affairs and in 2008 the Government launched a 10-year national action plan for women. It is, however, important not to adopt too celebratory a tone because, so far, there is not much to show for that Department’s work and many of the female Ministers and MPs are often pushed into largely symbolic roles, according to the very brave MP and Afghan presidential candidate Fawzia Koofi, whom I had the privilege to meet in October.
Subsequently, however, there have been some welcome changes, including the passing of the elimination of violence against women law. That came into effect in August 2009, and it is a major step forward in the legal protection of Afghan women’s rights. The law seeks to eliminate
“customs, traditions and practices that cause violence against women contrary to the religion of Islam.”
It does so by, for example, making it a crime to buy and sell women for marriage and to offer girls as a means of dispute resolution, and by criminalising forced and child marriage.
Fawzia Koofi has stated that improvements in the rights of women are inextricably linked to improvements in governance and ensuring that there is enough space and funding for non-governmental organisations dedicated to improving governance.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. In the context of Government inaction in protecting women and of elements of corruption, she must be aware of the interesting book written by Malalai Joya, a former Member of Parliament in Afghanistan who was forced into exile because she tried to expose that corruption, and also, frankly, the hypocrisy of those who pretend to be doing something on behalf of women in Afghanistan, but in reality are doing absolutely nothing and just going along with the situation.
Margot James
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point in that there is a great deal of double-speak and hiding behind weasel words of progress. There are also a great many laws designed in theory to protect women which are not in operation on the ground. However, according to the women politicians from that country whom I have met, some progress is being made, and I shall outline the progress that is reported to me by people on the ground.
There are excellent legal aid centres, set up by non-governmental organisations Womankind Worldwide and the Afghan Women’s Network, in Herat, Kabul and Jalalabad. They allow victims of domestic and sexual violence to obtain legal advice and assistance. They also provide training for law graduates on the rights of women under the Afghan constitution. Womankind Worldwide and the Afghan Women’s Network will also collaborate in monitoring how the elimination of violence against women law is being implemented between now and 2014.
The position of women in education and health has also improved. Six times more children go to school now than when Afghanistan was under the rule of the Taliban. Although the total proportion is still only half the children in the country, a third of the pupils are girls, and there are now more than 3 million girls in education—although not many at secondary level. This is a step forward given that the education of girls was almost entirely banned under the Taliban.
In health, there have been great improvements in life expectancy, and a significant decrease in infant and child mortality over the past five years. Save the Children estimates that 20,000 community health workers and 2,500 midwives have been trained since 2003.
Despite the progress that has been made, many obstacles to the freedom of women remain, and there have been setbacks along the way. Much of the judiciary has proved impervious to change. The absolute denial of any form of justice to women under the Taliban is what provokes the greatest fear about the possible return of its rule to parts of the country, and the difficulties women have experienced in upholding their supposed equality before the law are legion. It is illustrated by the scandal of some 300 women estimated to be in Afghan jails at the moment charged with so-called moral crimes. These are women who have run away from forced marriages and terrible domestic violence. Worst of all, these are women such as Gulnaz, who was imprisoned for being raped—one almost has to repeat that, so incredible and barbaric is such a situation. Having been raped by a cousin, Gulnaz was imprisoned for 12 years. I will return to her case briefly in a moment.
So the progress is at best fledgling, it is certainly vulnerable, and it is patchy and non-existent in some regions. Real progress has, none the less, been made since 2001 and it is very much worth fighting to protect. I call on the Government not to trade away the rights of the women of Afghanistan in order to conclude negotiations with the Afghan Government and representatives of the insurgency.
It is important to acknowledge the role of international aid, including the Department for International Development’s commitment of £130 million per annum, the considerable efforts of non-governmental organisations and the courage of individual Afghan women. I am talking about women such as Selay Ghaffar, director of Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, who met me and other MPs here last week on her way to the Bonn conference.
We need to recognise that after the withdrawal of troops in 2014 we will need to leverage this work all the more, and ensure that our aid policies and political pressure support the excellent work of organisations such as the Afghan Women’s Network, Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, ActionAid, CARE International and Womankind, to name some of the most active and effective NGOs in the field. International pressure must be applied to all Governments, and most of all the Afghan Government, as it has been today in Bonn, not to trade away the rights of women during these negotiations.
The Karzai Government have been shown to succumb to international pressure from time to time, and we need to build on that. When the law to legalise rape in marriage was almost passed last year, the international chorus of disapproval forced the Afghan Government to retreat, and The Times has done an excellent job in highlighting the appalling case of Gulnaz, whom I mentioned earlier. She had been imprisoned for being raped, and in response to that international pressure her case has been reviewed by President Karzai and she is to be released. At one point, she faced the horrific prospect of having to marry her attacker as a condition of her release, but that now seems unlikely, thank goodness.
We then encountered the shelter regulation, which aimed to deprive women’s NGOs of their right to run shelters for victims of violence and to make them hand over the shelters to representatives of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. That step was proposed to hide violence towards women by Government officials, including MPs and their sons. That was yet another area where international pressure, supporting the brave campaigning by Afghan women, forced the Government to think again. Both prior to and following the withdrawal date of 2014, it is essential that we mobilise international pressure and aid policies to prevent the hard-won gains that women have made from being sidelined or overturned.
In its vision for women and girls strategy published earlier this year, DFID set out the need for women to take a central role in our development policy. We know that when women are better educated, they are more likely to prosper economically and send their children to school. The World Food Programme has shown that when women are responsible for distributing food it is far more likely to reach the children who need it most. Not just in Afghanistan, but across the developing world, there is plenty of evidence to show that improving the lives and rights of women is a precondition of development, peace and security, which is why joining in this battle with the women of Afghanistan is so much in our own interests post-2014.
In conclusion, women at last have a voice in Afghanistan and the Taliban would dearly like to silence it. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that they do not succeed. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan welcomed a joint report, launched on the eve of the Bonn conference last week by a group of Afghan civil society organisations and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, called “Afghan People’s Dialogue on Peace”.
It is humbling to read the views of the ordinary people of Afghanistan in that report. They express their view on the peace process and what is important to them and to their community’s future. The things that are overwhelmingly important to them are important to people everywhere: integrity in the Government, an end to corruption, basic health and education services, and an end to the oppression of women.
Let me finish by quoting the words of a female lawyer from the Baghlan province who contributed to the report. She expressed a view that the report said was common to many participants:
“All Afghan citizens including women should be equally treated by their Government and they should be able to enjoy from their citizenship rights individually, not based on their gender, tribe or ethnic group; women should not be considered as second level citizens, and their appearance in social or political affairs should not be symbolic or based on their gender; they should be empowered in all aspects of their life, and all human rights standards must be respected by our law enforcement authorities.”
We in this Parliament and in Britain owe it to the brave men who have sacrificed their lives in our mission in Afghanistan and to the brave women who are fighting there and who, in some cases, are sacrificing their lives in the pursuit of the freedom of justice in that country to support those words. I am grateful to hon. Members for their support in this very important debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) on securing this important debate and praise her for her well-informed and compelling speech this evening. It is exceptionally timely, because today’s Bonn conference follows 10 years on from the first Bonn conference. That set Afghanistan on the road to recovery from the damage caused by 30 years of civil war and the misrule of the Taliban. The Afghanistan of 2011 is unrecognisable from the Afghanistan of 2001.
The past 10 years have been difficult but real progress has been made. The Afghan economy is growing and the Afghan Government are providing increasing levels of basic services to the Afghan people, including in education and health. In 2001, under the Taliban, only 1 million children attended school, none of whom were girls. As my hon. Friend pointed out, by last year nearly 6 million children were attending school regularly and more than 2 million of them were girls. More than half the population can now access a health facility within one hour’s walk, compared with 9% in 2002. Security is improving in many parts of the country, increasingly delivered by the Afghan national security forces. There is also progress on governance and the rule of law, but many significant challenges remain.
Today, in Bonn, the Afghan Government have chaired an international conference on Afghanistan to address these challenges and agree a path towards a stable and secure future. Some 100 delegations and about 1,000 participants attended the event. They shared a common objective: to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism and to ensure that the Afghans can be responsible for their own security and their own future.
At the conference, the international community sent a strong message of its long-term commitment to Afghanistan. UK combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but our support for the country will not cease. Participants emphasised that international support for sustainable Afghan national security forces needs to continue after 2014. The international community will work to define a clear vision and an appropriately funded plan for the ANSF before the NATO summit in Chicago in May next year.
The conference also reaffirmed the international community’s readiness to support the Afghan Government in developing their economy. International partners will direct financial support to Afghanistan to help to address her continuing budget shortfall and to achieve self-sustainability. We will work with the Afghans and international partners on detailed plans which we hope to discuss at the Tokyo conference planned for July next year. Alongside those steps, the Afghan Government are committed to revitalising the reform process agreed in Kabul last year and to accelerating progress on the key development priorities. Participants also gave their backing to the Afghan Government’s commitment to an inclusive and representative peace process and agreed a set of guiding principles. In addition to the internal issues, the international community signalled its firm support for improved regional co-operation by backing the Istanbul process agreed at the Istanbul conference in November.
My hon. Friend asked about today’s conference. I can tell her that it focused on a number of key issues relating to the role of women in Afghan society and politics. The conference made it clear, first, that the peace and reconciliation process must be inclusive and must represent the legitimate interests of all the people of Afghanistan, regardless of gender or social status. Secondly, the conference made it clear that the outcome of the peace process must respect the Afghan constitution, including its human rights provisions—notably the rights of women. The Afghan Government reaffirmed that the Afghan people will continue to build a stable, democratic society, based on the rule of law, in which the human rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens, including the equality of men and women, are guaranteed under the Afghan constitution. The fundamental freedoms and rights enshrined in the Afghan constitution, including the rights of women and children, are key to Afghanistan’s future.
It was encouraging to see that 25% of the Afghan official delegation was female and that there was significant representation by women in the Afghan civil society delegation that attended Bonn. In addition, one of the two civil society representatives who participated in the main conference today was female. The Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), attended the civil society forum preceding the Bonn conference. She also held a meeting with representatives from the Afghan Women’s Network. In all her contacts, she reiterated the importance of women’s rights and the UK’s long-term commitment to Afghanistan post-2014.
At the civil society forum, the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and the Afghan Foreign Minister Rassoul both reiterated the commitment of the international community and the Afghan Government to upholding the rights of women in Afghanistan now and in future. Over the past 10 years, the status of women in Afghanistan has improved. A quarter of the MPs now in the Afghan Parliament are female, there are nine female members of the high peace council and there is the first female provincial governor in Bamiyan province. There are clear signs of the effective participation of women in the political process.
The Afghan Government have worked to support women throughout Afghan society by establishing a Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which promotes women’s rights in Afghanistan and implements the national action plan for the women of Afghanistan. In September 2010, the Afghan Government also established a human rights support unit at the Ministry of Justice to co-ordinate and advise on human rights policy and legislation across the entire Government. To complement the work of the Afghan Government there is a growing network of women’s NGOs and advocacy groups across the country, which are increasingly leading the way in calling for change on women’s rights issues and on the wider human rights agenda.
The UK Government continue to support this effort alongside the Afghan Government, local and international NGOs, civil society organisations and international partners to continue improving the status of women in Afghanistan. For example, we have provided support to both the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the human rights support unit in the Ministry of Justice, including human rights training. We participate in the AIHRC donor group to ensure that the commission addresses human rights protection for men and women in Afghanistan. I praise the support from DFID, and I am very pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for International Development on the Front Bench with me this evening. That is a sign of DFID’s commitment and determination to make progress.
Our national action plan on United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security includes a country action plan for Afghanistan which co-ordinates cross-Government activities on gender issues.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I welcome the Minister’s message that involving women is important for security. I was fortunate to visit Afghanistan last month with a cross-party group of MPs and we heard much about the progress being made in training the army and the number of new recruits. To the end that we all seek, can the UK Government assist us by including in the monthly reports progress on gender equality and women’s rights as we head towards transition in 2014?
Mr Bellingham
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that practical and sensible suggestion. I assure her that we will take it on board. I can see my DFID colleague nodding.
We have undertaken wider work in areas such as education, economic opportunities and participation in public life. During a recent visit to Kabul, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development launched Strengthening Afghanistan’s civil society project “Tawanmandi”, which will help Afghan civil society organisations to engage more effectively with the Afghan Government and help to make the Government more accountable and responsive to their citizens, particularly women.
Although there is significant progress, there is still much more to be done. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge made clear, women in Afghanistan continue to face huge challenges, including high illiteracy rates, domestic violence, forced marriages, poor access to health care and lack of livelihoods. The isolation of some rural communities makes it difficult to raise awareness of women’s rights. I agree with my hon. Friend that progress in some of the remoter regions has been patchy, and we need to do our level best to reinforce the progress that has been made.
At the Bonn conference my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made clear in his intervention the UK’s strong support for women’s rights in Afghanistan, and we continue to make it clear that any political settlement must be inclusive and address the concerns of all Afghan citizens. We will continue to support the Afghan Government as they work to address these issues, and continue to emphasise that a political system which represents and includes all Afghans, regardless of gender or ethnicity, is the best way of securing a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.
I conclude by praising my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge for her indefatigable energy in pursuing and pressing this issue. Her work and her focus and passion give hope to many millions of women in Afghanistan.
Question put and agreed to.
Antibiotic Action Initiative
Written Ministerial Statements
ISA Reinstatement (Failure of Financial Firms)
(13 years ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I am today announcing the Government’s intention to make changes to the ISA rules that will benefit investors whose ISA savings have been affected by the failure or default of a financial firm. This includes ISA investors affected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Under current ISA rules, an individual can pay into their ISA a total amount up to the relevant subscription limit each year. The 2011-12 subscription limit for “adult ISAs” is £10,680, of which £5,340 can be in cash.
Where an ISA is affected by the failure or default of a financial firm, any reinstatement of sums held in the account at that point, or investment of any subsequent compensation received, is currently treated as a new ISA subscription, and therefore counts towards the normal annual limit.
We intend to change the ISA rules to permit investors affected by such a failure or default to make certain ISA investments over and above the normal subscription limits.
We intend that investors who have lost their cash ISA will be permitted to reinstate up to the balance of their account at the time of the firm’s failure in a new ISA, outside the normal subscription limits.
Where a stocks and shares ISA has been affected, we intend that the investor will be permitted to invest any compensation (or any similar payment) derived from assets held within their ISA in a stocks and shares ISA, outside the normal subscription limits.
We propose to apply different arrangements for cases in which Lehman Brothers was, at the time of its collapse, the sole counterparty to an ISA product. Affected investors will be permitted to reinstate up to the balance of their ISA at the time of this collapse, outside the normal subscription limits. This is irrespective of whether any compensation has been paid to the investor.
Further details can be found in the HM Revenue and Customs ISA bulletin, published today—a copy of which I have placed in the Library. I have asked HM Revenue and Customs to consult ISA managers and other interested parties on the detailed rules required to implement these changes. I anticipate that draft amending regulations will be made available for consultation in the new year, and that finalised regulations will be laid in spring 2012.
The changes we intend to make will provide a principles-based approach which—together with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s deposit guarantee scheme and other compensation arrangements—will enable investors whose ISAs are affected by the failure or default of a financial firm to continue to benefit from tax-advantaged savings. They also demonstrate the Government’s commitment to ensure that the ISA remains a secure, accessible and tax-advantaged saving product.
Local Government Finance
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
This Government are determined to support businesses—large and small—to support growth and build a stronger economy. In support of those aims, the Government announced two important business rates measures in the autumn statement. We will:
double the levels of relief available to small business ratepayers for a further six months on top of the existing two-year scheme; and
enable business ratepayers to defer payment of 60% of the RPI increase (5.6%) in their 2012-13 business rates bills.
Extending the period for which levels of small business rate relief are doubled means that eligible small businesses will benefit from significant additional reductions in their business rates bills throughout the whole of 2012-13. Approximately half a million businesses in England are expected to benefit, with about a third of a million businesses paying no rates at all for that period.
We have also listened to business concerns about the RPI increase for 2012-13. We are therefore giving businesses the option of spreading the increase over three years. Businesses will be able to defer payment of 60% of the RPI increase in their 2012-13 rates bills until 2013-14 and 2014-15. This will give businesses flexibility to manage their rates bills in the current economic climate and help their cash flow.
Those measures are in addition to the ones that we are already delivering through the Localism Act 2011. Through the Act we are:
simplifying the process for claiming small business rate relief;
waiving £175 million of backdated business rates demands levied on businesses, including some in ports;
giving local authorities wide-ranging, discretionary powers to grant business rates discounts; and
ensuring that all future business rates supplements projects will have to be put to the ballot so that liable businesses can decide whether to impose the business rate supplement upon themselves.
Taken together, the support provided through these measures will help businesses across the country to prosper.
Single Payment Scheme
(13 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I am pleased to confirm that as at the end of 1 December, the first day of the 2011 single payment scheme (SPS) payment window, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) had released payments totalling over £1.2 billion (71.6% of the estimated total fund) to some 84,600 English farmers (80.8% of the estimated total of eligible claimants). Payments to farmers will continue to be made as soon as validation of their claims is complete, with the values adjusted to reflect any significant outstanding overpayments from previous years. There remains much to do, but this promising beginning places RPA in a good position to meet its first SPS 2011 performance indicator, namely to pay 78% of the total estimated fund value to a minimum of 86% of eligible claimants by the end of December 2011.
In line with the commitment in my statement of 8 November, Official Report, column 12WS, RPA will write in early December to those farmers who are unlikely to be paid during the month in order to both explain the additional work that is required to validate their claim and provide an indicative time scale for how long that type of work can take. While it will not be possible to provide specific dates when payments will be made, I hope the additional information being supplied this year will help farmers with business planning.
I will continue to keep the House informed on the agency’s progress.
EU Foreign Affairs Council
(13 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I attended the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) in Brussels on 1 December.
The FAC was chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton of Upholland. A provisional report of the meeting and all conclusions adopted can be found at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/126518.pdf
The agenda items covered were as follows:
Western Balkans
The discussion focused largely on Serbia, and the EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. All expressed concern at implications for the dialogue of recent violence in northern Kosovo. I made clear the UK’s strong support of enlargement in general, but on the basis of meeting the required conditionality. I also stressed the importance of Kosovo’s EU aspirations. The General Affairs Council will return to this issue on Monday.
On Bosnia and Herzegovina, I emphasised the importance of focusing attention on the need for political progress on the ground, including the formation of a state-level Government.
Iran
Ministers agreed conclusions (see link) setting out the EU’s serious and deepening concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme following the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which clearly set out possible military dimensions. They also decided to intensify pressure against the nuclear programme by sanctioning another 180 individuals and entities.
I took the opportunity to thank EU Ministers for their support during and since the attack on our Embassy in Tehran. All my counterparts expressed solidarity and the need for a united response, and a number have already recalled their ambassadors for consultations. Ministers agreed to issue the following response from the Council:
“The Council is outraged by the attack on the British Embassy in Tehran and utterly condemns it. It is a violation of the Vienna Convention. It also deplores the decision to expel the British Ambassador from Tehran. The Council considers these actions against the UK as actions against the European Union as a whole. The EU is taking appropriate measures in response.”
After the meeting I made the following statement:
“Today, the EU demonstrated clear unity and solidarity with the UK on the outrageous attacks on our Embassy in Tehran. No difficulty in relations can excuse the Iranian regime’s complete failure to protect diplomatic staff and property. That is why yesterday I announced the closure of our Embassy in Tehran and the Iranian Embassy in London. This is also why the EU and wider international community have expressed universal condemnation. I welcome the fact that France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have recalled their Ambassadors in Tehran for consultations.
I strongly welcome the EU’s decision to intensify pressure on Iran following the IAEA’s report by sanctioning another 180 individuals and entities. These include those directly associated with the nuclear programme and entities associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The EU made very clear that it will not bow to Iran’s intimidation and bullying tactics. We will not back down and agreed today to work on further sanctions, including in the areas of finance and energy, by the next Council meeting. We want Iran to come to the table and negotiate meaningfully about its nuclear programme. Despite events this week we still want a diplomatic solution.”
Iraq: Camp Ashraf
Baroness Ashton briefly raised Camp Ashraf and the interest the European Parliament was taking on this issue. Member states agreed that this was an issue for the UN and Iraq rather than the EU.
Southern Neighbourhood
Over lunch, Ministers had a positive exchange of views about Syria with the Arab League secretary-general, Nabil El Araby. Ministers agreed conclusions (see link above) and further EU sanctions against the Syrian regime. After the meeting I made the following statement:
“I strongly welcome this substantial further package of EU sanctions, targeted on President Assad, his regime and those who support them. This tenth round of sanctions aims to increase pressure on the Syrian regime to stop the continuing violent repression of the Syrian people. EU sanctions stand alongside measures introduced by Turkey yesterday including the freezing of assets belonging to Assad and individuals in the regime, and the Arab League’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions. I welcome these moves which send a clear message that the Syrian regime’s actions have left it isolated.
EU sanctions are part of a broad international response to the horrific abuses perpetrated by a regime that has lost legitimacy. The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry report, issued on 21 November, highlighted the systematic and wide ranging nature of these abuses including through compelling testimony from many of those who have suffered at the hands of the Syrian regime. The UK worked closely with international and regional partners to secure a third UN Human Rights Council special session on Syria, on Friday 2 December.
The UK continues to support the Arab League’s efforts to bring an immediate end to the violence and supports the work of Syrian oppositionists towards realising the aspirations of the Syrian people for freedom, dignity and a new political system.”
On Egypt, Ministers agreed conclusions (see link above) welcoming the peaceful start to elections but expressing serious concern at the recent violence and calling for a swift transfer to civilian government.
Ministers agreed conclusions on developments in the Southern Neighbourhood and the EU’s response to the Arab spring, including the need for an offer of market access to Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco (see link above). The Council also acknowledged through Conclusions (see link above) the Polish presidency’s initiative to create a European Endowment for Democracy.
Middle East Peace Process
Ministers also had a short exchange of views with the Arab League secretary-general about the latest developments in the middle east peace process.
Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)
Ministers agreed a useful package of CSDP measures (see link above) focused on improving the EU’s contribution to international security on the ground. They agreed to prepare for a small, focused and carefully calibrated civilian CSDP mission in the Sahel, focusing on policing, security, infrastructure development and regional training; and affirmed the EU’s readiness to assist the new Libyan authorities if requested. In line with the UK’s priorities in the Horn of Africa, Ministers agreed to plan for a new mission to help countries in the region improve their own civil maritime security.
These new operations fit well with our vision of CSDP, bringing together a range of security tools for practical effect in areas where NATO, which remains the cornerstone of our security, would not be engaged. In order to improve the coherence of this effect in the Horn of Africa, Ministers agreed to consider activating on a temporary ad hoc basis the existing EU Operations Centre, designed for low-intensity small-scale civilian or civil-military missions that do not require a military headquarters. This could bring together the EU’s work to strengthen regional maritime capacities in Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa region with its existing military training for Somali security forces, currently run through the EU’s planning staffs. The EU’s naval counter-piracy mission Atalanta will continue to be run from the UK’s military operational headquarters at Northwood. This further demonstrates that the EU has all the structures it needs for effective crisis management and does not require new, costly and duplicative institutions such as a permanent EU operational military headquarters - something this Government will never agree to. Council agreed that, without prejudice to the treaties, any future decisions on planning and conducting EU operations will be taken on the basis of unanimity and inclusiveness.
Ministers also highlighted the importance of improving Europe’s civilian and military capabilities, and of strengthening the EU’s partnerships with NATO, the UN and others. We hope that the focus of debate on CSDP will now shift from institutions to practical outcomes, effectiveness and real missions that actually make a difference in the world and can improve our own security and that of other countries within the EU and beyond.
Public Records (Colonial Documents)
(13 years ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
Further to the statements to the House by the Foreign Secretary on 5 May, Official Report, column 24WS and 30 June 2011, Official Report, column 66WS, I wish to inform the House of our plans to make available to the public, over the next two years, the large collection of colonial administration files currently held by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
The timetable for transfer of these files to the National Archives (TNA), which has been approved by Professor Badger, the independent reviewer appointed by the Foreign Secretary, follows our undertaking to move rapidly to put these papers into the public domain.
In keeping with this Government’s commitment to transparency and openness, the entire collection of migrated files will be transferred to TNA. None of the papers will be destroyed. Redactions will be kept to an absolute minimum, for example in order to comply with the Data Protection Act. We expect that 99% of the material will be available for the public to read.
The files will be reviewed and transferred in alphabetical order of the colonial territory concerned with the exception of Kenya, Cyprus, British India Ocean Territory (BIOT) and Malaya, which will be prioritised because there has been particular interest. The first batch of files, representing around 16% of the total collection, is expected to be available for public view at TNA in April 2012. This will include material from Aden, Anguilla, Bahamas, Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Brunei as well as the BIOT and Malaya files and the first tranche of papers from Kenya and Cyprus. Given the volume of material from Kenya and Cyprus, the remaining files will be reviewed and transferred in batches over the following months.
The aim is to have all the papers transferred before the end of 2013. We will be publishing a more detailed timetable on the FCO’s website.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
(13 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
My noble Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Lord Howell of Guildford, has made the following written ministerial statement:
On 23 November, Official Report, House of Lords, column 1051, I said that part of the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary would embrace the question of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s condition and that we were awaiting the precise details of his health from the Libyan Government.
I would like to clarify that the Government have not asked the Libyan Government to provide information about Mr al-Megrahi’s health. The terms of Mr al-Megrahi’s release from prison on licence specify that he has to comply with a number of conditions set by the Scottish Ministers. These conditions include the submission of a monthly medical report to East Renfrewshire council. As I said on 23 November, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have passed on a request from the devolved Administration to the Libyan chargé d’affaires in London asking the Libyan authorities to assist in ensuring that the supervision arrangements of Megrahi’s licence are observed.
The Dumfries and Galloway constabulary’s investigation concerns the involvement of others, with Mr al-Megrahi, in the Lockerbie bombing. The Government will continue to support the police in following any new leads, including any new information that may come to light concerning Mr al-Megrahi.
Missing Children and Adults
(13 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
Safeguarding vulnerable members of our society is a key priority for this Government and I am writing to inform the House that we have today published a cross-Government missing children and adults strategy which seeks to ensure we are doing all we can to safeguard missing children and adults and to support their families. A copy of the strategy has been placed in the House Library.
There are an estimated 360,000 reports of people going missing in the UK each year amounting to approximately 200,000 missing people. Children and young people make up approximately two thirds of the missing reports and account for an estimated 140,000 children who go missing every year in the UK. Although the vast majority of people who go missing return or are found quickly, many vulnerable children and adults suffer harm and exploitation while missing and some never return.
Identifying and ensuring the safest return possible for these vulnerable children and adults is a key part of the police service’s child protection and wider safeguarding role. However, tackling missing persons issues requires a multi-agency response and co-ordination across a range of policies and operational partners including the police, local authorities and the health sector.
Following the recent all-party parliamentary group (APPG) inquiry into support for families of missing people in July 2011, I accepted the overarching recommendation that there should be a cross-Government outcomes policy framework for missing persons. I also accepted the principles behind the inquiry recommendations, including that we can and should do better in the support we provide to families and announced that I would lead development of a cross-cutting strategy on missing children and adults.
Evidence from the APPG inquiry and consultation with stakeholders and key delivery partners showed that, although we have the right policies and responsibilities in place to tackle this issue, agencies are not always clear about these roles and responsibilities, nor do they always recognise the risks of harm that vulnerable children and adults face when missing.
With this in mind, the strategy I have published today provides a framework in which we can all work to collectively deliver the best protection possible for missing children, adults and their families. It includes a small number of strategic objectives which we believe provide the right foundations for any effective local strategy and provides a framework for local areas to put in place their own arrangements. I believe this strategy provides a core framework against which local agencies with a role in tackling this important issue can review the strategy they have in place with their local partners—and consider whether they can and should be doing more.
With the right priority and focus on this issue, and by ensuring we are all working together in the most effective way possible, I believe this strategy will help support the step change in delivery needed at a local level to ensure we provide vulnerable missing children and adults and their families with the help, protection and support they need.
Independent Living Fund
(13 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
The independent living fund (ILF) operates as an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Work and Pensions and provides discretionary cash payments to disabled people to support independent living.
In a written statement on 13 December 2010, Official Report, column 85WS, I announced that, having reviewed the role of the ILF, the fund would remain closed permanently to new applications, but that the care and support packages of current users would be protected until the end of this Parliament.
That decision followed an independent review of the ILF in 2007 which recommended reform to ensure long-term sustainability, and reflected a commitment to ensure that the care and support needs of all disabled people are delivered equitably as part of local authorities’ broader independent living strategies in line with local priorities and accountability.
We committed to a formal consultation in 2011 on how existing users would be supported in the future. That consultation should be placed in the wider context of the reform of the care and support system and will therefore now take place in spring 2012, alongside the publication of the planned White Paper on the future of care and support in England.
DWP remains committed to working with the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly Government on options for the future support for users in Scotland and Wales.