Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Hussein-Ece and Lord Harris of Haringey

Monday 2nd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment and wish to address the comment made by my noble friend previously. It is quite a serious matter for a family, who may have spent a great deal of money purchasing tickets and planning a holiday, to arrive at a port or an airport to leave and then to have their passports, or one family member’s passport, seized. It seems to me quite reasonable to provide that person with a summary as to why their passport is being seized.

There is also the issue that there needs to be some accountability; otherwise, there is a danger of the whole system being seen as racially profiling people for whatever reason. We have learnt lessons from what happened with stop and search—there was not always sufficient intelligence or reasons given for people being stopped and searched. Further, a report published in 2013 by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary documented the poor training of officers who are exercising the power. It seems eminently sensible to have an extra layer which provides a safeguard and a degree of accountability around what is a no small matter of a passport being seized.

Recently I was travelling back from Paris with my son, who happens to have a Muslim name. He was questioned when we got to immigration control and we almost missed our Eurostar back home. He was asked whether he had been to Turkey recently. He does have family in Turkey and it would be entirely reasonable for him to go there, but he was singled out because of his name; there was no other reason. As it happens, he has not travelled to Turkey in the past year, but we were detained for some time and it was a worrying thing. His passport was not seized or anything like that, but the incident indicated to me that because of my son’s name, and for no other reason that I could see, he was questioned. My son is not a frequent traveller to Turkey and we had been on a day trip to Paris. He was questioned very seriously and we were within a minute of missing our train back. That showed me that this can be done quite randomly and with no proper intelligence.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, this would be a safeguard without substance. What is required here is that a person is given a summary of the reasons for suspicion. The noble Baronesses who have spoken in support of the amendment have said that the summary obviously could not include the full intelligence, and quite rightly so. Presumably, the summary of the reasons will be, “There may be intelligence which suggests that”, which is hardly a reason that will satisfy anyone and seems essentially to be pointless. Surely the fact that someone is told that this is being done under Schedule 1 to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act is all the summary of reasons that will ever be given. Dressing it up by saying, “You are being provided with a summary of the reasons: namely, that you are thought to be a person to whom Schedule 1 to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act applies”, does not provide much of a safeguard. Is this not just gesture politics?

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Hussein-Ece and Lord Harris of Haringey

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I also put my name to this amendment because this is a matter that needs clarification and warrants a bit of debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, there have been a number of these cases. I read the same article that she quoted, on the 114 cases that the Government had dealt with, with some concern. In August there was the case of a woman from a Sikh background who was married to a man who had mental disabilities. He did not annul the marriage because she pleaded that that would cause her stigma. It seems that the interests of the man—who was the victim in that case—were not taken into full consideration, and that needs to be looked at. If this amendment were agreed, would that mean that these sorts of cases could be declared void because people did not have the capacity to enter into marriage?

There was an article in the Times last week about another case concerning a girl of 14. Could we argue that that girl, who was forced into a marriage at gunpoint in Pakistan, had the capacity to enter into that marriage, given that it was forced? The local authority, which has now taken her and her child into her care,

“applied to the family court to have the marriage declared void”.

However, Mr Justice Holman said that he could not do that. He accepted that the marriage was,

“‘on the balance of probability void’ under English law. However, he said that he was prevented from making a solemn declaration to that effect by a section of the Family Law Act 1986”.

I am not a lawyer but, as I read it, it does not make sense that in these types of forced marriages where people either do not have capacity because they have a mental disability or they are under age, or whatever the reason may be, they find themselves at a disadvantage when they try to get the marriage annulled and voided. We have to consider that loophole, and it must be taken into consideration.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Freedom charity. I apologise to the Committee for not being present for the earlier part of our discussions on these topics due to a commitment at the Department of Health.

This is an important principle. If the Minister is planning to respond by saying that the issue is adequately covered either in the clauses we have before us or elsewhere in legislation, I urge him to think again before giving the Committee that response. It needs to be made absolutely explicit that a forced marriage is not valid where there is any question at all that the person being coerced into marriage and who has entered into it does not have capacity. That capacity may be related to age—elsewhere in our legislation there has been all sorts of discussion about capacity and age, and some of the girls concerned are of a very young age—or it may be related to learning difficulties of various sorts. We therefore need to make it absolutely explicit in the legislation that this is intended to cover those circumstances where the individual concerned does not have capacity.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Hussein-Ece and Lord Harris of Haringey

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the noble Lord, with all his experience—albeit, like me, as a non-lawyer—is speaking exactly the truth. In many of those cases, the legal advice would be, “Say nothing”. There therefore needs to be a statutory duty, because then the responsibility of the lawyers concerned would be to advise, “There is no option but to tell the patients or their families”.

An interesting point is that insurers in the United States often require open disclosure policies and practice by health providers to qualify for insurance. The international evidence is that, as well as being the right thing to do morally and ethically, being open and honest when things go wrong can actually reduce litigation and complaints.

My concern is that the Government will say that they are doing enough by saying that the duty of candour can be achieved through a contractual process. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has pointed out, this would apply only to hospitals with an NHS contract; it would not apply to GPs, dentists, pharmacists or private healthcare providers. I do not see why the duty of candour to patients and their families should be regarded as of lesser importance and impact than those things where there is direct regulation. I hope that the Minister will say that the Department of Health will take this away and that he will come back to the House with proposals to give a statutory duty of candour to protect the interests of patients.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

I, too, wish that there was not a need for this duty and that it was unnecessary. However, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, there is a compelling case that now, more than ever, we need a duty of candour.

As has been said already, we know that accidents will never be eradicated, and nor will human error. We know that healthcare has risks—most people accept that—and that health professionals are only human. However, when things go wrong and they are caught up in things that can cause harm to patients, they need to be supported and helped to deal with a very difficult situation.

There has to be absolute clarity that anything less than complete openness and honesty when things go wrong is unacceptable in modern British healthcare. That is what I understand that the amendment is trying to achieve—a duty of candour.

In my previous life, I was a chief officer in a community health council. Unfortunately, I came across many cases in which a complaint was brought to me and, when we started to look into it, it became apparent that all was not what it seemed. It would often take months, if not years, to establish what had happened. For a family who has lost somebody or when something has gone badly wrong, that compounds the distress that is caused. It makes things worse. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, said, most people want to know. They just want information; they want to know the truth of what happened to their loved one. The last thing that they want is to find out, sometimes months or years later, that there has been a cover-up or they were given the wrong information. Sometimes, deliberately, the shutters simply come down because a trust fears litigation, as we have heard. Because of that fear, parents, patients and families are often left floundering in the dark and running to lawyers.

None of us can imagine losing a loved one as the result of an avoidable error and then finding out how the information had been kept from one. As has been said, there is no statutory requirement. It would come as a surprise and a shock to most of the general public that there is simply no requirement to be told when something goes wrong with any of our loved ones. The onus would be on them to find out and get to the bottom of it. Most patient groups that are campaigning for this are coming at it from real experience of having to take up some of the most tragic cases that we have heard about in recent years. The phrase “having regard to” the principle of openness is in the NHS constitution, but it is really not sufficient. It is not adequate to deal with the sort of cases that we have heard about.

Successive Governments have usually agreed that a duty of candour is a good thing and may be required, but so far there has been a failure to establish what that duty should entail. It is different from the contractual duty built into standard contracts between commissioners and some providers of NHS services. I believe that this is wrong; surely, honesty is the only policy in this instance. This should be a commitment to the protection of patients in healthcare and a legal duty of candour, which places a duty on all healthcare professionals to be open and frank with patients and their families. I was disappointed to read just last week that the GPC said that GPs would not back an openness clause in the GP contract, for example. I found that very disappointing.