Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Grant

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The decision is deliberately left to discretion, so in the end an experienced judge will have to decide whether a case is suitable, but one can conceive of a few exceptional cases whereby the whole thing depends on a question of the veracity of two teams of hard-swearing witnesses, and whereby the judge is persuaded that, because of the particular nature of the case, he would be helped by the judgment of a range of men and women, from a variety of backgrounds, who would bring their collective wisdom to deciding which side to believe.

That is simply one off-the-cuff example which comes to my mind, but if the whole thing turned on an elaborate argument about the application of the defamation laws to the particular circumstances of the publication of a scientific journal, for example, that would be a wholly unsuitable case to leave to a jury, and the whole thing would take longer and cost a lot more, even if the jury got it right in the end. That is the problem we are trying to address.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the proposal could assist with earlier settlement, not just with reducing the length or cost of a hearing?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree strongly with that extremely good point. The more these things can be dealt with by way of a preliminary judgment by a judge, the more settlements we will get, because sometimes the whole thing really turns on one point, which can be dealt with much more quickly if a jury is not involved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Grant

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The future level of crime depends on a huge number of variables, which are not within the control of any Government or Minister. What one does is to make sure that one does not exacerbate any problems, and that one accommodates those who come in. I am trying to establish in prisons a more intelligent regime that will achieve some improvements in reoffending rates for those who have to be punished by going to prison. If any of my predecessors ever gave an exact forecast of the prison population, two or three out, that predecessor was in my opinion an idiot. I do remember, however, that the previous Government so miscalculated things that they had to let 80,000 people out of prison, short of their sentence, because prisons were bulging at the seams and they had nowhere to accommodate them.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to reduce the level of reoffending by people sentenced to one year or less.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Grant

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

The problem is that not all cases can be mediated, and the difficult ones—the ones that we are dealing with—usually end up in court anyway.

The plans have telephone advice as an alternative to a trusted and recommended solicitor, but the law is complicated. The law can be an ass, and it is not easy to understand. Having tried to explain maintenance pending suit or some other aspect of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 to a frightened and vulnerable litigant, I can tell hon. Members that it makes clients feel frustrated and confused and leaves solicitors feeling quite inadequate.

The plans badly impact on women, especially in the categories of family, education and housing law. Some 75% of domestic violence victims are women, 90% of single parents are women, and 97% of those who are eligible for child maintenance are women. Women are more likely to be in non-unionised jobs, and men are more likely to be financially better off and able to pay privately.

Over the years, my firm has looked after about 14,000 clients in south London, Surrey and west Kent. The family profile that I describe is, sadly, not unusual. One mother presented with some learning difficulties and a history of self-harm and drug abuse, but says that she is now clean. She has three children, all girls, with three different fathers. The father of the eldest daughter sought a residence order and a contact order. Mother and daughter were resistant in view of the father’s history of bullying and drunkenness. There were no previous injunction orders, but many police call-outs. All the girls were having problems at school, and the middle daughter had been diagnosed with ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The school had threatened suspension due to disruptive behaviour. The mother was on income support and was being chased by loan sharks due to debt. She was feeling suicidal and was on antidepressants. All the children were on the child protection register.

When I took instructions from that lady, judging by her physical appearance and demeanour, I thought that she was about 50. It was only when I asked her for her date of birth that I realised that she was just 25 years old. Under the current plans, that highly vulnerable woman would not be entitled to help with residence and contact applications, debt problems or her children’s educational difficulties. That is what family life is like for many in our country. Those are the people who rely on the family courts and legal aid to resolve their problems. Tragically, the children growing up in such families are watching and learning bad behaviour, have absent boundaries, and are breeding future generations of victims and perpetrators. It is a vicious circle.

Legal aid cost £500 million in 1982. The cost is £2 billion today. I make no case for ring-fencing from the cuts, and I see a genuine need for reform.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I have a high regard for my hon. Friend’s expertise on the issue, which greatly exceeds mine as a result of her practice. The case that she makes is moving, but surely such things do not lend themselves to litigation. Our argument is not that we will leave such people with no support at all, but that legal advice and litigation are not the best way of proceeding to resolve important social and family problems of the kind that she describes.

[Mrs Grant]

If matters such as residence and contact can be resolved without litigation, as they sometimes are, that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a woman in the situation that I have described and a man who has historically been difficult, drunken and abusive might not, regrettably, be able to sort things out.

We must accept that the past 50 years have created a social mess, caused largely by the demise of the family unit and stalling social mobility. We cannot pull the rug from under the feet of 500,000 people who have no genuine alternative. Civil liberty is about the freedom of our nation; civil legal aid is about protecting citizens. For some, civil legal aid is the only sword and shield in their armoury. We must therefore wear kid gloves when handling that delicate aspect of the public purse. For all the above reasons, I hope that further significant changes will be made to this important Bill in Committee and on Report.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Grant

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

My apologies, Mr Speaker. Probably the problem with my political career is that I have not swivelled enough on occasions.

I believe mediation is a much better way of resolving all kinds of family and other disputes. The taxpayer will continue to pay for mediation; indeed, the mediators will be trained lawyers. Many people will take part in a much better process of resolving disputes. We are planning to increase the amount spent on mediation by £5 million, as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) tells me, in order to make savings by reducing the amount of unnecessary adversarial litigation that we fund.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that mediation is no panacea and that it can fail badly in family cases where there is an imbalance in power?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend has much greater expertise on the practice of family law than I do, so I rely on her and listen to her opinions with great attention. I have discussed these matters with her before. We have to get the balance right. At the moment, the generosity of the legal aid system compared with other systems is bringing more things into adversarial litigation than would otherwise be the case. Expansion of mediation is the better way of proceeding, and I hope that my hon. Friend will contribute her expertise to our development of the mediation system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Grant

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that there has been a reduction in the number of people entering the criminal justice system. Notwithstanding my usual caveats about all crime statistics, which can be used by Members on either side of the House to prove practically anything over whatever period they choose, I think that one thing on which we agree is the need to divert from needless criminality young people who can properly, in the public interest, be dealt with in some other way.

The youth crime action plan, and a number of other interesting experiments involving diversion out of the court system in which the last Government were engaged, will certainly be investigated and followed up by the new Government. We are not remotely partisan about the issue. We wish to look further for more outside experience of how best to tackle reoffending and the underlying problems of youth delinquency, in order to take more young people out of court and out of criminality.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

11. What the reoffending rate was for prisoners who had served custodial sentences of over 10 years in the latest period for which figures are available.