Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Tobias Ellwood

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Corston report, which called for radical change in the way that women are treated throughout the criminal justice system. I am sure that the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) will be pleased to hear me say that there have been real improvements in the five years since the report, including significant investment in women’s community centres to address the underlying causes of women’s offending, such as drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues, and often long histories of abuse. We are fully committed to addressing women’s offending, for their own good and that of the public. The National Offender Management Service has committed to an additional £3.5 million each year to continue to fund 30 women’s community services. Women offenders will also be included in two payment-by-results pilot areas to link productive work to reducing reoffending.

[Mr Ellwood]

In these tough economic times, more people are borrowing money, getting into debt and, sadly, having to deal with the bailiffs, who are, on occasion, aggressive and intrusive. What is being done to ensure that creditors and debtors are aware of their rights and responsibilities?

Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Tobias Ellwood

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Lady has ingeniously raised a point that is wholly relevant to the legal aid provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is in another place, and not to this statement. In family law it is by no means unusual for the parties to face each other, and if one starts behaving badly towards the other, the judges just have to use the powers available to them to stop that happening. It is simply not possible to make every aspect of a dispute in court free of any stress or problem for both sides, because usually the parties in such cases are arguing about very stressful and emotional things about which both parties are considerably overwrought.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome this statement, and in particular the commitment to support British victims of terrorism overseas. As the Secretary of State implies, this is long overdue. As compensation goes, I think terrorism falls into a different category from a broken finger, which he mentioned, or a robbery. It is a brutal message from the state. Terrorists do not recognise borders, but our compensation system does. Will he confirm that Britons affected by terrorist attacks, such as those in Bali, Sharm el Sheikh or Mumbai, will be supported in the same way as those affected by 7/7, including for loss of earnings?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend has campaigned strongly on this subject—again, ever since he has been in the House—and I am very much aware of his views. What I have announced for the ex gratia arrangement—that is, the one that is paid under no legal obligation, but which we have agreed to pay for those whose claims will predate the new scheme’s coming into effect—is in exactly the same terms as what was announced under the previous Government, which was agreed to by both my party and the Liberal Democrat party. That arrangement does not include loss of earnings, and we are not going back to try to revalue it. However, in future claims will be eligible for compensation on exactly the same basis as they would have been eligible for compensation for a similar crime in the United Kingdom.

Reforming Civil Justice

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Tobias Ellwood

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I think that people will think twice, as it were. At the moment, they are lured into making a claim by an advertisement on the back of a bus or in some local office. There are many people with perfectly legitimate personal injuries claims and the method I would wish them to pursue is to go to a solicitor who will consider the reasonable prospects of success and take it on on a no win, no fee basis—on the sort of terms that were always envisaged when we introduced the system into this country in the 1990s. People will have to think more carefully; there will be fewer purely speculative actions; and there will be fewer actions brought in the hope that the size of the legal costs is so great that the other side might be bullied into making an offer of settlement, regardless of their chance of success. I hope, however, that legitimate claims will prosper under a no win, no fee system, which is much closer to the lower-cost systems that other jurisdictions operate.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

Thanks to the blame culture that developed under the last Government, one school in my constituency deemed it necessary to concrete over a very shallow paddling pool, in case a child had an accident and the school were sued. Another school considered cutting down all its trees in case children were to fall out of them, injuring themselves so that the school might be sued. I hope today’s statement will be the start of a fresh approach to this compensation culture.

[Mr Clarke]

I feel strongly, as does my hon. Friend, that we have an unacceptable compensation culture in this country. Like him, I notice it in my daily life. I think that doctors, teachers, policemen and most professional people are constantly concerned about the possible risk of litigation when they do perfectly ordinary things in the course of their daily lives. I dare say that the kind of submissions coming to Ministers are, in comparison with when I first received them, now so full of concerns about judicial review, the Human Rights Act and other legal constraints on what can be done that we are getting further and further away from common sense whereby people can exercise their judgment and, of course, be accountable to the law when they are at risk of breaking it—but only when they are at risk of breaking sensible law and might face litigation at reasonable cost.

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Tobias Ellwood

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

That might involve reopening the settlement, which I would not be willing to do. We must be careful about the confidentiality because, certainly in principle, the settlement could be reopened. I entirely understand that there are a large number of aspects of this with which everyone is uncomfortable, and which some people will strongly dislike. However, we must keep our eye on the ball, and decide what is truly in the national interest. What is truly in the national interest is allowing the intelligence services to get on with their job, allowing us to put the reputation of this country beyond doubt, and learning lessons that may have to be learned—we do not know yet—from anything that Sir Peter Gibson puts forward.

As for the legal aid proposals, we said that legal aid would still be available, on a means-tested basis, to anyone who wished to challenge the state by way of judicial review. Other claims would have to involve exceptional public interest.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. I am sorry that we did not do more to speak out against Guantanamo Bay and everything that it stands for. The creation of the term “enemy combatants” allowed the nation, indeed the world, to ignore the Geneva conventions.

My I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to turn to the issue of compensation for British victims of terrorism overseas? As he will know, those who were caught up in the 7/7 bombings were adequately supported and compensated, but as soon as such an event takes place abroad we see that there is no support whatsoever, whether it be in Bali, Mumbai or Sharm el Sheikh. That is simply wrong, and it needs to change.

[Mr Clarke]

I know of my hon. Friend’s continuing interest in this subject. As part of our policy considerations in the light of the public spending review, we are having to examine the criminal injuries compensation system and the proposed terrorist injury compensation system. We are having to decide how we should judge the Government’s responsibilities for compensating those who have been injured by crime, either at home—we have always compensated those people—or abroad: I know that my hon. Friend has been campaigning for that.