Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme
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Damian Green
They are not “not eligible”; each case will be considered. [Hon. Members: “Why?”] Because it is sensible to allow discretion in those periods. [Interruption.] We cannot and will not simply continue pouring out taxpayers’ money to little effect. I must again emphasise that the Government are committed to improving support—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is impossible to conduct a debate if Front Benchers, supported by Back Benchers, shout at the Minister all the time. We cannot follow the points being made, so I would be grateful if it stopped.
Damian Green
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We cannot simply continue to pour out taxpayers’ money to little effect. The changes are meant to ensure that the money spent on supporting victims of crimes of all sorts is spent in the most effective way.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. A number of Members want to take part in the debate. I will not set a time limit at the outset, but I ask each Member to try to speak for 10 minutes or less and to be mindful of the fact that interventions from Members who subsequently come into the Chamber will take time from those who are patiently waiting to speak.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Khan, I have already said that there will not be shouting from the Front Bench. Believe it or not, that applies to you as well. Please stop it.
Mr Blunt
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Bless him—three times he said I was being emotional and then we have these interventions.
Difficult decisions have to be made, and obviously changing the scheme in this way involves such decisions. However, in the context of our whole wider victims policy, we have made matters, and are making matters, very much better for victims and tougher for offenders, whom we are going to hold properly to account. We are putting in place the mechanisms by which those offenders can pay compensation to victims of crimes in cases where they have not done before. I thoroughly commend the statutory instrument to the House, not least because much of it was my idea.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is necessary to have a time limit on speeches. I am imposing a time limit with immediate effect of seven minutes on each Back Bencher. May I remind hon. Members who rose that they need to have been in the debate for both opening speeches in order to catch my eye?
Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Barclay
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the most welcome moves made by this Government is to give a greater local say on wind farm developments—such as at Tydd St Giles in my constituency, which has galvanised the local population. The vast majority of people are deeply concerned as we already have many wind farms in North East Cambridgeshire. Fenland now produces more energy than it requires for its own needs. The local countryside was asset-stripped of most of its rural services under the last Government, and one of the few things being added to rural communities is something they do not want. My hon. Friend is right: because of the cost and environmental impact of such schemes, we should instead embrace the big-ticket energy solutions that are going to work.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The Bill suggests a road map for ending fuel poverty; it is not an in-depth discussion of energy generation. I would therefore be grateful if the hon. Gentleman returned to the issues addressed in the Bill. I think Mr Speaker has already given a warning on this matter.
Stephen Barclay
I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as, with characteristic prescience, you anticipate my closing remarks.
The very cost that the PAC has looked at on a number of occasions is what is driving fuel poverty in the fens: the cost of production is adding an extra tariff that is particularly detrimental to my many elderly constituents. We have sought to help them through an initiative that would, perhaps, be welcomed in Madam Deputy Speaker’s constituency, too. The Golden Age Fair is run by Fenland district council and helps those living in fuel poverty to access the limited grants and other aids that are available. It does so by running a computer programme that helps to analyse people’s living costs.
I commend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley for introducing his Bill, and I support his aims. Like me, he seeks to address some very real concerns about child protection. However, although the existing structure clearly has flaws that we need to address, we cannot do that by having more experts commenting on experts. We address it by ensuring expert reports are accurate—not by having more complexity, which serves to create less accountability —and by having a simpler, clearer system that will better champion the interests of the children we seek to protect. By having such a system, I hope we will ensure that my constituent, a loving grandfather, will be able to get custody of his grandson—as he wants, and as I believe is in the best interests of the child.
Mr Ellwood
This CRB issue is very important. The fact is that one local authority does not recognise a CRB accreditation from another local authority. For example, my sister taught at one school and yet she had to pass the CRB accreditation process to pick up her children from, and use a minibus at, another school. Would it not make sense to have a CRB system whereby accreditation is recognised nationally?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I know that the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) realises that he needs to come back to the Bill. Although he and other Members may be tempted to discuss CRB checks in general, they can do so only in so far as they relate to the Bill and not with regard to a rewriting of the scheme.
Dr Lee
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), I have had a CRB check on more than one occasion, which is remarkable. I agree that it would be nice if the checks were portable.
To bring the subject back to the Bill, my point is that we should be cautious about anything to do with CRB. The central thrust of the argument of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is to protect the child, and I am not convinced that CRB checks do that.
Part 3 mentions fuel poverty. As I have said, I serve on the Energy and Climate Change Committee and, on the day on which EDF has announced an 11% increase in fuel prices, the cost of fuel is of great importance to every family throughout the country. I think that that is why the definition of fuel poverty and, indeed, poverty need to be carefully drawn up. On poverty, most of us can only really talk about the experiences of people we know. My grandfather was born into what I would describe as poverty: he did not have running water or a toilet, he shared a tap with six other cottages, and there was no electricity. That was in the 1930s in this country. He also shared a three-bedroom home with eight siblings. I would describe that as poverty.
Today, I struggle with the definition of what poverty is, and I draw on professional experience in making such comments. I have made home visits to pretty socially deprived parts of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, one of which was to somebody who had a fantastic plasma screen TV—I think it was bigger than the one that I am fortunate enough to possess—but no carpets. Ultimately, when we draw up a definition of poverty, we have to bear in mind that attitude and choice make a profound difference to how much money people then have left to spend on fuel.
There are some difficulties with the current definition of fuel poverty in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. The Library briefing paper highlights how the definition relates to problems with fuel prices, household income and dwelling condition. The conditions of the dwelling are the responsibility of the dwellers to some extent. The individuals in the social housing flat that I visited had made a choice to spend money on equipment for a fantastic audio-visual system and Sky subscriptions, and not to spend it on carpets. Does the fact that they are no longer able to afford a properly insulated flat—which it is not if it does not have carpets—mean that they are in poverty or not? On the definition of fuel poverty, which is what the hon. Gentleman seeks to address, let us not shy away from the reality that there are people in this country who make perverse decisions on priorities for home expenditure. If we can deal with that, we may go some way to dealing with the problems of fuel poverty.
I cannot conceive of a situation whereby anybody in this country is as poor as my grandfather was. If they are as poor, that begs the question: where does the £3 billion-plus per week spent on the welfare state go? We spend a significant sum as a proportion of our gross domestic product on welfare payments, so if there are families and individuals who are genuinely without enough finance to pay for food and heating, I suggest that the system is not fit for purpose.
Energy efficiency is mentioned in the Bill. I do not need any convincing that improving the efficiency of both residential and industrial properties is the lowest-hanging fruit in trying to reduce families’ energy bills, and indeed in reducing the cost of energy to the country, given that we import so much of it. I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman in that. I expect that there will be cross-party support for that principle. If the finances allowed the Government to subsidise and incentivise anything, I hope that it would be the proper, fuel-efficient insulation of properties. The Government’s green deal is a good start in that direction, and I hope that there will be more work in that area.
I am not 100% sure that microgeneration is the way forward. Combined air conditioning and water heating pumps are a good idea, and I visited a site in Norway where they were being made. I believe that work on that would be beneficial. Ultimately, we need to find a way of generating our electricity in the most cost-effective, efficient and low-carbon form possible. As I said in an intervention earlier, nuclear is the only option that ticks those boxes. I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s personal position, but I know that his party has some reluctance in the nuclear arena. They should revisit the matter, because as far as I am concerned, the science, engineering and everything else points to nuclear being the solution. If we could bring about the most cost-effective possible installation of nuclear power stations, energy prices would become more stable and affordable in the medium to longer term for families up and down the country. The fuel poverty that is mentioned in the Bill would therefore become less of a problem.
Policing
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Six Members still wish to participate in the debate, so I shall reduce the time limit on speeches to five minutes, starting immediately.
The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)
I am grateful for the opportunity to conclude this debate. You have doubtless heard, Madam Deputy Speaker, of a khaki election, and we have the green and brown of the khaki coalition looking after police interests in England and Wales. It is ideal for me to have the opportunity to respond to the points raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House during the debate and to what I see as the four main criticisms made of Government policy in the Opposition motion. They are as follows: first, that the Government are not spending enough money—a recurring theme; secondly, that we are insufficiently authoritarian when considering the right balance between the power of the state and the liberties of the individual; thirdly, that we are too hasty, as a Government, in our enthusiasm for greater transparency and public engagement in policing; and fourthly—this is an overarching theme—that we are too enthusiastic overall about reform of the police service.
I shall go through those criticisms in the short time available. The first is that the Government are not spending enough money—this is what the motion describes as the “wrong-headed” pursuit of greater efficiency and value for money. It is, of course, always relevant to remind the House that the previous Government, having promised to abolish boom and bust, ended up presiding over an economy that went bust. The new Government came to office with our country looking down the barrel of a gun—we had a bigger deficit than Greece when we took office—and we had to make some difficult decisions to get to grips with that deficit. We have reduced the deficit, but this country is still borrowing a billion pounds every three days. Against that backdrop, it is just not credible to carry on spending money—borrowed money—with reckless impunity. The Government have no choice but to deal with the deficit, and as a service spending £14 billion a year, the police can and must make their fair share of the savings needed.
Underlying Labour’s analysis is a fundamentally flawed case, and I will sum it up for hon. Members. According to Labour, “The more money you spend, the better the results you get”—never mind cutting bureaucracy or getting good value for the taxpayer; it is spend, spend, spend. The problem is that the results do not bear out Labour’s analysis. Last week, the most recent independent crime statistics were published. I am sorry to disappoint Labour Members, but crime has fallen. It has fallen by 6% over the past year and by 10% in the two years since this Government came to office. It has fallen by 12% in the last year—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Bryant, I ask you to stop shouting across the Dispatch Box now.
Mr Browne
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I was just reminding the House that the Government have presided over a 10% fall in crime in the past two years. The latest figures show that crime is lower in England and Wales than at any time since the official survey started in 1981. Chief constables are rising to the challenge of making efficiency savings and providing greater value for money. As Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said:
“The front line is being protected”.
Police reform is working. We have swept away central targets and reduced police bureaucracy. That shows that how the police are deployed, rather than their absolute numbers, is the key to cutting crime.
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could use your good offices with the maintenance department of the House. The most important lift in Portcullis House has been out of commission for more than a month, which impedes our ability to get to votes and to work and meetings on time. It should not be impossible in a modern, 21st-century Parliament to get a lift repaired in less than a month.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I am eternally grateful that I am not responsible for maintenance in the House of Commons, so strictly speaking that is not a point of order. The Leader of the House has heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments and I am sure that he will take the matter further. I should also say to the hon. Gentleman that the last Division was not exactly unexpected in its timing. I am sure that Members bear such things in mind.
Police and Crime Commissioner Elections
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. If we have finished the comments about people’s diaries, perhaps we could return to the important subject of this Adjournment debate.
Damian Green
I will happily do that, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it gives me the chance to correct a number of inaccurate assertions that the hon. Gentleman has made.
I will deal with the hon. Gentleman’s final point about whether Members are doing their best to increase interest in the elections. I cannot remember whether he attended Home Office questions on Monday, but, as the Home Secretary observed, many Government Members took the opportunity to refer to the elections and individual candidates. The only Labour candidate referred to by name, however, was the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), and he was referred to by himself, so, although I agree that Members should help to raise public awareness, I think I can say, in the fairest and least partisan way possible, that the hon. Gentleman might want to spread that message on his own Benches. It has been well spread on ours.
The hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) mentioned police numbers, so it is worth putting it on the record the fact that crime in Leicestershire has fallen by 5% in the past 12 months, which shows how effective the current arrangements for policing are there.
I remind the House why we are introducing police and crime commissioners, the most significant democratic reform of policing ever. It will introduce greater transparency and accountability to a service of which we are rightly proud but which can sometimes be too distant from the public it serves and can fail adequately to reflect their concerns and priorities. For too long before the Government came into office, the Home Office interfered too much in local policing and cared too little about national threats. The introduction of PCCs is a step along the road to reversing that trend. The creation of the National Crime Agency to focus on serious and organised crime nationally is another. PCCs will not just focus on their local area but will have a duty to co-operate in dealing with national threats under the new strategic policing arrangement.
Within four weeks, we will find out who the first PCCs will be. They will be the first people elected with a democratic mandate to hold their local force to account, set the budget and draw up the policing plan. Of course, the wider landscape into which the new PCCs will enter is also evolving fast. The college of policing will be launched later this year, and PCCs will sit on its board. Crucially, then, direct representation of the people of England and Wales will also be introduced on to that board. The purpose of the college will be to enhance professionalism across the service. Everyone in the country cares about the continual improvement of professionalism in the police, and the college will play a significant role in making that happen.
The issue of public awareness lay at the heart of the speech by the hon. Member for Caerphilly. It is worth putting that in the context of the picture we now have of crime. By happy coincidence, the latest crime statistics were out yesterday, and they are very pertinent to this debate. They show that on both measures—the crime survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime—crime is falling. It has fallen by 6% in the crime survey and by 6% in the record crime figures. Most significantly, the fall is across the board—violence, burglary, vandalism, vehicle theft, robbery and knife crime are all down.
PCCs will be taking up their posts, therefore, in a time of a continuing downward trend in crime rates that proves—this is relevant to the point about Leicestershire—that it is not how many officers we have but what we do with them that counts. Wise PCCs will understand that point when they take up their offices and start deploying the police plans that they will need to operate. We are replacing what were bureaucratic and unaccountable police authorities with democratically accountable PCCs so that, for the first time, the public will be given a voice and a seat around the table when key decisions are made about how their communities are being policed and how their money is being spent. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman would agree that that simply does not happen under the current system, and I genuinely hope that the tone of his speech did not reflect an underlying unease about greater and better democratic control of the police.
Defamation Bill
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Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
It was the late Enoch Powell who was first quoted in The Guardian, in December 1984, as saying:
“For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea.”
I hope that all these assurances can be given in the other place. My concern is that the freedom of the press should be maintained and not curtailed, but one would hope that alongside that there was a recognition by the press that with that freedom comes responsibility. We have to acknowledge that the curse of Murdoch has dumbed down British journalism over the past four decades, to the extent that Private Eye is now more accurate and reliable than many newspapers.
I should declare an interest. For a few weeks in 1973 I was a sub-editor on The Sun, then newly acquired by Murdoch and pre-page 3, and that was between jobs as a sub-editor on the former London Evening News and the London Evening Standard. I come from a background of journalistic training where standards were high. In the National Council for the Training of Journalists and in good old-fashioned news gathering there were very high standards. Some 44 years ago I was editor of the Maldon and Burnham Standard, a weekly newspaper in Essex, and before that I was secretary of the north Essex branch of the National Union of Journalists. I mention that because there is no doubt in my mind that journalism is not as strong or as good as it used to be, but that is still no excuse for legislation that could be interpreted as an attack on the free press. I sincerely hope that will not be the case.
Those of us who enter public life must accept that we will be attacked and criticised. I do not think that any of us object to that, provided that we know who is doing the attacking and criticising and that the attacks and criticisms are valid or at least have some merit. Madam Deputy Speaker, you might be aware that last Wednesday I raised a point of order with Mr Speaker about a false Twitter account that had been set up to impersonate me. It was used by someone with a sick, evil and warped mind to make a range of vile comments, such as the inference that I was a paedophile or had paedophile tendencies, which is not very pleasant. I was very grateful for Mr Speaker’s observation that that was unacceptable behaviour and a form of harassment. I am therefore pleased that the Bill includes measures that—I hope—will deal with social media.
When I made my point of order, I said that the Twitter account had to be viewed in the context of three years of dirty tricks against me in Colchester by three immature young men. That included a spoof YouTube video of me, a snooper photograph and letters to newspapers with false names and addresses. With regard to the latter, I have written to Lord Justice Leveson to suggest that one of his recommendations should be that, when a newspaper has been shown to have published in good faith a letter that is subsequently found out to have come from someone who gave a fictitious name and address, the person who has been wronged, as I have been on several occasions, should be given not only an apology by the newspaper, but a right of reply. In fairness, on those occasions when I have been able to take the issue up, I have been given the opportunity to reply.
As a former editor of a weekly newspaper, I argue that the onus is on the newspaper to establish the authenticity of the person who has written the letter. When an attack is made on a public figure, such as an MP or the chairman of a football club, there is an even greater onus on the newspaper to check that the person exists. I have no problem with genuine people having genuine concerns. That is something I hope Lord Justice Leveson will include in his recommendations—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I have allowed the hon. Gentleman to make his case, but we are supposed to be debating Third Reading of the Defamation Bill. References to the Lord Leveson inquiry may be made, but the hon. Gentleman needs to come back to discussing the Bill; he should focus specifically on that.
Sir Bob Russell
I think, Madam Deputy Speaker, that defamation takes many forms, and when it is in the printed form, I think the person who has been defamed should have the right of reply. In my case, the author of all the things I referred to is a gentleman called Darius Laws, who is a member of another political party.
Question put and agreed to
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Defamation Bill
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Zac Goldsmith
Does the hon. Lady agree that there has to be a sense of realism in relation to the web? If every defamatory comment posted on Twitter, Facebook and so on was followed up with some kind of state action we would need a new Government just to police the web. That would be structurally and practically impossible. There has to be a sense that if a lonely Twitter tweeter with 15 followers were to make an insulting comment, that could not be anything like as serious as its being made by someone with 1 million followers. There has to be recognition of the fan base or platform at which insults are hurled.
Let me make one further point about the internet.
Zac Goldsmith
Apologies. Very quickly—this goes back to the point made in the previous speech. When a law is broken and someone is threatening someone’s life, for example, it is incumbent on those who receive such threats to pursue the matter to the maximum possible penalty regardless of whether they are 16, 20 or 25. If they do not, people will continue to be able to inflict that threat and pose real dangers to other people. Even—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. That was a very long intervention, much as it might have been appreciated by hon. Members. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make a longer intervention—it is called a speech—he can try to catch my eye.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman’s intervention was so long that I cannot remember what he said, but I know that when I was listening I agreed with both his major points.
The solution of notice and takedown proposed by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill is a good, pragmatic one, recognising that although we cannot legislate for the net in exactly the same way as we do for other areas, we can reproduce the rights and responsibilities in the real world. I must say to Ministers, however, that given that the Joint Committee report was produced last October, they ought by now to have got parliamentary counsel to have drafted the regulations, so that we could see them and be confident that they were right.
Clause 10 is extremely welcome. We should probably call it the Private Eye clause. For years, high street newsagents refused to stock the Eye because they thought they might be sued over its potentially litigious content. The clause is welcome, therefore, given that we are all deeply dependent on the Eye for keeping up to speed with what is going on.
As is often the case with this Government, however, the problem is not so much with what is in the Bill as with what is not in it. There is nothing to tackle the lack of access to justice for ordinary people, whether as claimants or defendants. That inequity was demonstrated in the case of Trafigura, which damaged the environment in Ivory Coast, and in the case of Barclays and Freshfields concerning tax avoidance. Those large corporations were able to hide and threaten The Guardian, which was trying to publish stories about them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) will say more about those cases. When I am told, not by the editor of The Guardian but by the editor of another quality national newspaper, that his major, No. 1 problem is oligarchs threatening to sue his newspaper when he tries to report on them, I know we have a problem that needs addressing. The Libel Reform campaign, which campaigned for the Bill, has called for it to include a clause requiring non-natural persons to show actual or likely financial harm. The campaign is right. Such a clause should be inserted and would be a helpful strengthening of the Bill.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said, the Government have done nothing to right the wrong of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 through their failure properly to implement the Jackson proposals on no win, no fee cases. The McCann and Dowler families would not have been able to take the newspapers to court under the laws that the Government have implemented. That is a complete disgrace. We want a justice system available to all and a free and responsible press, but we will not achieve the latter without the former.
Neil Carmichael
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way for the third or fourth time. I want to talk about an important aspect of the Bill—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman may have read the conventions of the House, which have been re-circulated. An intervention is on a point relevant to the one that the speaker who holds the floor has just made, not a list of abstract points that the hon. Gentleman might want to make. His intervention should be relevant to the point that Mr Buckland has just made.
Neil Carmichael
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise. The point I was going to make—it is relevant—is that the Bill is not just about defamation and privacy, but about protecting freedom of speech. Does my hon. Friend agree that that must be considered in the debate?
Mr Buckland
There is an element of crossover, but the Bill does not go far enough in addressing fundamental issues of privacy. Some provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 give a nod to the law on privacy, but the Act comes to a rather inelegant conclusion by allowing freedom of expression to have a greater priority over the right to privacy. I defend to the death the freedom of expression—that is why I came to Parliament, thanks to the good grace of the people of my constituency, who have given me this opportunity—but we must get the balance right. The Act does not faithfully reflect the reality of human rights: there is no hierarchy of rights, and each right must be balanced against others. Certain rights are unqualified, but most rights have qualifications. There is no hierarchy of public rights—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This is a very long nod to human rights. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can come back to the Bill.
Mr Buckland
I was trying to illustrate the point by saying that there is a fine balance to be struck between freedom of expression and the rights of individuals to protect not only their privacy, but their reputation.
It has been said that reputation is a question of taste, but it is also a question of approach. Some take a very relaxed approach to attacks on their reputation. For example, when in his old age the Duke of Wellington heard about a book that was to be published about his private life, he famously said: “Publish and be damned.” That might well have been because he realised that most of the allegations in the book were true—I can say that only because the noble duke is long gone. Some take Groucho Marxs’s attitude. To Confidential, the infamous magazine published in the US from the ’50s onwards, he wrote:
“If you don’t stop printing scandalous articles about me, I’ll be forced to cancel my subscription.”
Sometimes, however, when there is no alternative, the only reasonable response to defamatory or libellous representations is for the individual to seek legal advice and to take action. That very much depends on the individual, the circumstances and the context. The Bill addresses, as well as primary legislation can, the nuances and the infinite range of contexts within which libel and defamation actions can be brought.
On alternative dispute resolution, to which many hon. Members have referred, no matter what we do to reform the law, the question of the cost of the legal procedure will remain. Like the Ritz, the law remains open to all, to adapt a well-worn phrase. The Jackson reforms were much criticised in the context of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, but they will not serve to change significantly access to justice in libel cases. Legal firms seeking to build their reputation will always be interested in taking the cases of well known individuals who have had their reputations besmirched, such is the way of practice.
Data Protection in the Areas of Police and Criminal Justice (EU Directive)
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Minister, please resume your seat for a moment. Sir Peter, I thought that you wanted to intervene. You have been in the House a long time and know that you cannot stand up and then ask someone else to speak for you, unless you have lost your voice, which you have not.
Sir Peter Bottomley
You are right to correct me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I think that I am also right in saying that every word in “Erskine May” may create a new precedent. My question, which I think my hon. Friend the Member for Dover would have put better, is this: will my hon. Friend the Minister start talking about costs at some stage during his very good speech?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This debate concludes at 9.20 and I would like to leave a few minutes at the end for the Minister. Members could help each other out by perhaps not speaking for quite so long, and then everyone can get in.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
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Mr Djanogly
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 31.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment 32, and Government motion to disagree.
Mr Djanogly
The Government recognise that mesothelioma is a truly terrible disease—a terminal illness that has a devastating impact on the families of its victims—and we are wholly committed to doing everything we can to help its victims to achieve justice and get the support that they deserve. The Lords amendments seeking to exempt mesothelioma and industrial disease cases from our reforms to no win, no fee agreements in part 2 of the Bill are not the right way to advance the cause of sufferers.
Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is an enormous pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Justice Committee. I agree with almost everything he said. Many lawyers are present, which is not unusual in the House of Commons, especially on a subject like this one. It is absolutely the right approach to highlight the importance of investing resources on prevention rather than at what happens at the end of the criminal justice system. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, that means early intervention—something that no Government seem prepared to do because it costs money up front, whereas at the moment, our system pays to keep people in prison at astonishing rates in order to punish them, but they often come out of prison and reoffend.
When the Solicitor-General winds up the debate—I understand that he is the Government’s spokesman at the end—I hope he will tell us whether Lord Justice Leveson is still chairing the Sentencing Council, even though he is also—[Interruption.] I am most grateful; the Solicitor-General no longer has to wait for the winding-up speech. We work quickly together, Madam Deputy Speaker, as he is my neighbour in Leicestershire, so we understand each other quite well.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Telepathy is difficult for Hansard to pick up and it is not easy for other Members in the Chamber. It would help if we made that sequence a little clearer.
The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)
To make it clear, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) meant that I, not Lord Justice Leveson, was his parliamentary neighbour. I say that in case that does not appear clearly on the record either.
Ian Puddick (Internet Crime)
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Burrowes
I am grateful for the Minister’s response. He will be aware, because I have raised the matter with him before, and agree that what is needed among other things in our justice system is information. Indeed, in the words of the victims commissioner, relentless information is a real driver of change and of accountability, and one aspect of that is the reporting of magistrates court cases, which often go unnoticed. I have raised two examples, but in that area as in others the benefits of more information will raise the stakes on accountability and ensure that Ministers are as aware as others of whether there is a prevalence of such cases and of the actions that could lead to criticism and to operational changes.
I therefore ask the Minister to have an eye for that, as well as just to—