Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Quin

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, clearly there is an issue. It is entirely appropriate that different police forces should have autonomous powers to be able to take these issues in the direction that they want. Different police forces face different challenges at particular times, then there is the issue of resources as well.

It is absolutely true that this is a growing issue. One problem is that, because police officers may sort of have got used to this behaviour, other emergency workers are now being treated in exactly the same way. Let me read one case from the east midlands last November:

“A man spat at a newly recruited police woman 24 times while under arrest in the back of an ambulance. The handcuffed man laughs as he spits at the officer who warned him he was being recorded on her body camera. He repeatedly targets her face as he sat on the bed next to a paramedic. The police woman was in her first year on the job when she became a victim of the vile attack.”

I think that every single one of us wants to send out an absolutely clear, unambiguous message from this House—I know that the hon. Member for Shipley does not like sending out messages, but sometimes declaratory legislation has an effect as well—that spitting at emergency workers is not on and that the full force of the law should be used against those who do it.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: that is exactly what we do want to send from this House today. If he will forgive me, there has to be a slight torsion if I am to get in the point that I want to make, but it does follow the point that he has just made. I had an officer in my constituency who was giving first aid to someone whom he had to arrest, and he was spat at repeatedly while doing so—similar to the circumstances faced by the person to which the hon. Gentleman referred. When the case finally got to court, it was deemed that the officer had not been acting in his capacity as a police officer when he was applying first aid—that was beyond his remit—which seems to be an extraordinary situation to be in. As courts can look at our proceedings, may I invite the hon. Gentleman, as the proposer of this Bill, to confirm for the record that, in clause 2(b), we are seeking a wide interpretation of an emergency worker acting in the exercise of their functions as such a worker, as it is ridiculous that a court could rule on such a basis.

[Chris Bryant]

To be honest, when the law behaves in such a pernickety way as to be able to provide a ludicrous—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who has some legal expertise, is laughing at the idea of lawyers being pernickety. I know that that is sort of their job, but when we end up with loopholes being abused in such a way, the law ends up looking like an ass. It is therefore incumbent on us sometimes to draw legislation as widely as possible to ensure that all such offences are caught. That has been the deliberate intention of the Bill.

Incidentally, I hope that in drafting the Bill, with the assistance of Government draftspeople and ministerial help, we have managed to land on a piece of legislation that is more effective than the parallel legislation that exists in Scotland. Scotland may, in fact, want to look at our legislation and reshape its own law to reflect this.

Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Quin

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), although I must put it to him, given his comment about our constituents needing to know where we stand, that when my constituents contact me they always know where I stand. He also put it that the public are unclear about the view of the House. In respect of the two resolutions we are discussing, the House approved the motions, so it is very clear where the House stood. It expressed its view.

It is a pleasure also to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I respect his—I see he is busy.

[Chris Bryant]

I can do two things at the same time.

[Jeremy Quin]

He has the better of me. I was genuinely being respectful to the hon. Gentleman, whom I know thinks and speaks passionately about the conventions of this place. I am a relatively new Member, but I regard its role in our national life as very important.

I would not have sought to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, had I not looked carefully into the underlying principles of the application made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). First and critically, as he made clear in his application and as was reiterated by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), Opposition day motions, if carried, are not and never have been binding de jure on the Government. The precedents are clear. Between 1918 and 2015, there were 120 defeats of Governments, most of them on substantive legislative matters on which the Chamber was exercising its core constitutional role of creating and amending the law of the land.

On those occasions, however, when the Government lost a vote on a Supply day, the constitutional position was equally clear. I greatly enjoyed reading one such occasion—the debate on the devaluation of the green pound held on 23 January 1978. I was especially delighted to hear the two contributions, made from a sedentary position, by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who I am sorry is not in his place. One was:

“Leave the Common Market. That is the answer.”

The other one was:

“Get out of the Common Market. That is the answer.”—[Official Report, 23 January 1978; Vol. 942, c. 1071-73.]

He is nothing if not a beacon of consistency. The Labour Government having lost the vote, there was no suggestion in the closing remarks of either the Opposition spokesman or the Minister that the decision would be binding on the Government.

This to me is core to the issue. Clearly, the House can amend primary legislation, including, critically, money Bills, and pray against secondary legislation, debating such matters either in Government time or on Opposition days. What we are discussing here, however, is not an attempt by the Opposition to amend legislation, but the manner outside legislation whereby the Opposition examine and challenge Government policy. This, too, appears well established. The 1981 Select Committee on Procedure quoted, approvingly, an earlier Select Committee of 1966:

“The real nature of Supply Days was the opportunity provided to the Opposition to examine Government activities of their own choice”.

[Jeremy Quin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will be brief so that we can get to that very important debate, which I know matters to many of our constituents. She is absolutely right that examining and challenging Government policy can lead, rightly, to a change in that policy. That is mirrored by the people who turn up to these debates. On the two Opposition days that particularly irked the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, two Secretaries of State, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a Minister of State came to the Dispatch Box, and the speakers were matched one for one on either side. I attended part of both debates and can confirm that the Opposition were certainly doing their best to challenge and examine Government policy, as is their right.

There are good reasons why those debates ended as they did, as was illustrated by my two right hon. Friends for forests, my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), in their interventions. To imply that the whole process was fruitless because there was no physical Division at the end—a vote that we know would have been non-binding—belittles not only that debate but potentially the Backbench Business Committee debates, those in Westminster Hall and, to a lesser extent, the work done in Select Committees, where good contributions are made to the workings of the House and policy examined without Divisions being required.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Jeremy Quin]

I am glad that I now have the hon. Gentleman’s attention.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has always had my attention. It has been not far off the unanimous view of the House for some time now that we would like legislation on circus animals. Several hon. Members have tried to advance it, including the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) and, in the last Parliament, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), but on every occasion the Government systematically let the Backbench Business debate proceed and then had a vote on it, as if to suggest that something would then happen. When the House expresses a view, even if that is because the Government have refused to vote, I think that the Government should listen. Surely the hon. Gentleman must too.