Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Cartlidge and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I do see the point he makes. As he knows, the focus has been on dogs and other pets that we keep in the home, but I am happy to speak to colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and to get back to him about what we think of his suggestion.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The Justice Secretary is working with the Law Commission on bringing forward a new corporate offence of failure to prevent economic crime. There are concerns that the offences will be downgraded to regulatory offences, rather than those involving criminal sanctions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there must be criminal sanctions if we are to have a true deterrent against this terrible crime?

Taxation (Post-transition Period) (Ways and Means)

Debate between James Cartlidge and Kevin Hollinrake

Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I have heard quite a lot the argument that Scotland did not vote to leave the European Union, but that is not how the votes were added up. This was a national, United Kingdom vote. Those were the terms of the referendum, which were voted for in this House. That is how the entire nation voted, and we are leaving the European Union. Some of us will be less happy about that than others, but nevertheless, that is what we are instructed to do and what we should do.

For the Opposition, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) said time and again that the Government were irresponsible in these negotiations. Can I just remind her that there are two sides to this negotiation? There are two sides, and I would ask which side she is on, because she is not representing the national interests in the way she is discussing these matters and blaming the Government for being in this position at this stage. Of course—and I am in business today—every business in this land would have liked the situation to be done and dusted last June, as we had hoped. However, there are two sides to this negotiation, and it has to be said that the European Union has been difficult in these negotiations.

If the hon. Lady does not believe my words about that, she should listen to one of the most reliable commentators on her Benches, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), in his speech on 14 September. He was talking about the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, and he said that

“I have to say that I have some sympathy with the Government’s argument: exit summary declarations should not be required for goods moving from Northern Ireland to GB. When Wrightbus sells one of its wonderful buses to a transport operator in the UK, why is the form needed and what is the EU going to do with the form?”

On goods at risk, he said that

“surely it is possible to reach a pragmatic solution, because a lorry load of goods destined for a supermarket in Belfast can hardly be described as being at risk of entering the European Union.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 64.]

Yet those are some of the matters that the European Union was negotiating on or on which it was trying to negotiate hardball.

I ask again: who does the hon. Lady think, and who does the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for the SNP think, is being difficult in this negotiation? Is it purely the United Kingdom? Of course it is not. Why are there no words of criticism for the European Union’s position and for leaving it this late before agreeing what should be a simple trade deal to arrange and negotiate? It has negotiated similar trade deals with many other countries around the world, and we start from a similar position with our regulations and customs duties.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Identical.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

From an identical position. This should have been an easy trade negotiation, but of course it is not, for the reasons that we know. Of course, there is politics behind this negotiation, and the politics in this place should be united on one side, in the UK’s national interests, but they are not. Too often, Opposition Members have represented the European Union’s negotiating position in these negotiations.

Deaths in Mental Health Care

Debate between James Cartlidge and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 30th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Stringer; it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and to follow the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) who introduced the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. He spoke of the case of Matthew Leahy. It is a terrible tragedy, and I pay a huge tribute to his mother, who has campaigned for years through the pain, which is without limit.

We all sympathise, I am sure, but as the hon. Gentleman said the case of Leahy is not the only one at the Linden Centre, Chelmsford. There have been several others, all tragic, including my constituent Richard Wade. I held an Adjournment debate on the case of Richard Wade in October. At the start of that debate, because the HSE case was live, a much stricter sub judice ruling was given, which meant there were things I could not say in the Adjournment debate that I feel able to say today.

I have a very short period of time and I do not have time to give the full details of Richard Wade’s case. The key point is that, on the day he was found hanging in the Linden Centre in Chelmsford, there is strong evidence that his parents have seen—not just documentary evidence, but other evidence that has come to them, including from people who have worked at the Linden Centre—that when his body was first discovered hanging, still alive, the clinicians who found it either panicked, or for some other inexplicable reason left it hanging, locked the door and allowed some minutes to pass before he was discovered a second time, this time with his parents nearby. At that point he was given resuscitation and urgent medical treatment. We do not know the impact of those crucial minutes on his eventual fate several days later, when he passed away. Essentially, his is a life that I believe could have been saved and a death that could have been avoided.

I will not repeat all the points I made about Richard Wade’s case in my Adjournment debate, other than to say that although he died in May 2015—in fact, I met him going to vote in Great Cornard in May 2015, a few days before I had the great privilege of being elected for the first time, and he was dead several days later—in February 2015 another man, who I believe was called Beecroft, also died by ligature in the Linden Centre in Chelmsford, in the very same bathroom where Richard Wade hanged himself that May. The extraordinary thing is that, when the trust reported on Richard Wade’s death in December that year, it never mentioned that there had been a hanging in the same bathroom three months earlier—as if it were a common occurrence or something. It is quite extraordinary.

When the Care Quality Commission came to investigate, because of course, by April 2015, it had taken over from HSE, I am afraid it did not handle the case well. The CQC did not investigate it initially, because, in the words of the report it issued to the Wades in July, the inspectors effectively did not realise that they had taken over statutory responsibility from HSE. It is a catalogue of failures; the Wade case alone would merit an independent inquiry, but there are also Beecroft, Leahy, Morris and potentially other cases.

At the end of my Adjournment debate my hon. Friend the Minister, who was being covered for at the time because she was isolating, announced an independent review into the deaths at the Linden Centre. I was very grateful for that, because I know she has taken huge interest in the matter and very sincerely so. I hope that that can be a full, robust, independent inquiry, like the one we had last week into the Dixon case, which can uncover the truth and can go into places that other mechanisms cannot.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

These are terribly tragic cases; sometimes they cannot be avoided, of course, but at times they are due to the performance of the trust and perhaps of the management of that trust. Where that is the case, does my hon. Friend agree that the leadership of those organisations must be held to account for their performance?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, echoing the concluding remark from the hon. Member for Hartlepool, and he is absolutely right that there must be accountability. However, when we go into an independent inquiry, there is a danger of saying, “Well, it must be a statutory public inquiry,” and getting into the semantics of the mechanism we use.

I think what my constituents the Wades want is the truth. They simply want to know the truth about what happened to their son. We now have a tangible offer from the Department of Health of a mechanism that all the families can use to get involved, to shape the terms of reference and to help us to deliver something in the public interest—as, again, the petitioners seek—to the benefit of the whole country in terms of wider mental health. Above all, that will bring some sense of accountability to all the families who have suffered so tragically at the Linden Centre in Chelmsford, including the Wades and the Leahys. I believe that the Minister will now act and I give her all my support in doing so.

British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Debate between James Cartlidge and Kevin Hollinrake

Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I, too, rise in support of the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) on bringing it forward. I am also going to mention those dreaded words “levelling up,” as they are a key part of this. It is something that many of us have been banging on about for years. We did not call it “levelling up” then; we called it “a fairer deal for the north” or something like that. Having said that, I fully concede that this is not just about the north; it is about every region in the UK. It is about spreading both facilities and jobs throughout the country. It is great to hear that the north-east is doing well in terms of DCMS funding. That has not been particularly apparent in my trips around the north-east—perhaps it was north-east London.

[James Cartlidge]

It is about the economics sector, not the spending of the Department. In terms of the growth in the DCMS sector within our economy, the second fastest growing part is the north-east.