Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Lord Mann Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I look forward to the report, not least because of the excellent work that I know has been carried out not only by the Chairman and other Members but by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes).

One reason why we have brought this Bill before the House so quickly and why the business managers have given us the time that we needed is the previous inquiry of the Home Affairs Committee

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will give way once I have finished this part of my speech.

The truth of the matter is that we will have an opportunity at Committee and on Report to look carefully at what the Home Affairs Committee has said and to see whether it can be used to improve the Bill.

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[John Mann]

I congratulate the Minister on the speed with which he has introduced this Bill. I have called for a blanket ban several times in the past. Will he clarify this: if this Bill is passed, how quickly will Bing Bong, the outlet in Worksop, be closed down?

[Mike Penning]

We want such places to close down before this Bill is passed. I want this House to send a message to those who are selling these products—head shops or any other premises, or those selling in other ways—that on the day this Bill gets Royal Assent, such selling will become an offence. In saying that, these people have been selling these products perfectly legally for many, many years, so we need to give them an opportunity. This is only part of a process. We are talking about educating the public as well as helping people who are addicted to these substances. At the end of the day, these sellers have to know that, from the day this Bill gets Royal Assent, selling these products is illegal and attracts a seven-year sentence.

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[Lyn Brown]

No, I will make some progress.

[John Mann]

Before my hon. Friend continues, is she aware of the recent evidence from Ireland showing that the number of people who have accessed services for treatment for such drugs has significantly reduced over the past three years?

[Lyn Brown]

I thought I had said that, but I obviously did not say it well enough. However, I thank my hon. Friend for his assistance.

I understand that the ACMD has offered to work with the Home Office to try to overcome the problem of needing to prove psychoactivity, and that the ACMD believes the issue can be resolved. I look forward to the Minister informing the House about what progress is being made on that issue so that we can be assured that the Bill has the teeth it needs. The definition of psychoactivity should be at the core of the Bill, so I am rather surprised that the Government felt able to move the Bill’s Second Reading without that point being resolved. The ACMD recently met the Home Secretary, and the House really needs some detail on how the discussions are progressing.

I want the Minister to consider monitoring and evaluation. I am pleased that the Government are now making a statutory commitment to review how well the Bill works. However, it is important that we are given more details of the intended scope of the review. We need to know that we are breaking up not just the legal market, but the overall supply chain as well. Ultimately, the ban may have the effect of reducing the number of users of NPSs, but of increasing the risk for those who continue to use them. It is clear that a wide-ranging and comprehensive review, backed up by thorough and better research, will be necessary.

I also want the Minister—he can see that I have a long list—to speak to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to see whether the impact on prisons can be given particular attention. I am sure that he was as alarmed as I was by the prisons and probation ombudsman’s report in July, which found that new psychoactive substances were a factor in the deaths of at least 19 prisoners between 2012 and 2014. The annual report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons was just as concerning. It found that NPS

“has had a severe impact and has led to debt and associated violence.”

That is a real problem for our prisons, and we need to know that it is being dealt with.

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[Norman Lamb]

I would have to check that. All I want to do is say what I believe, which is ultimately what we should be doing in debate in this place.

First, let me raise a concern about process. The Government have circumvented the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, but they are unwise to do so. Its clear legal remit has been ignored. It is there to advise precisely on such issues. It seemed somewhat cynical to consult it after the text of the Bill had been drafted and just two days before the Bill was laid, and then for the Government to ignore its recommendations. Instead, the Home Office convened a separate new expert group. What on earth is the point of that when we have an advisory committee that is legally obliged to advise on such issues? It seems that the duty of the advisory committee has been fettered in a very damaging way.

The definition seems to be flawed. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East said, is it not extraordinary that at this point of our consideration of a Bill there is such concern about the possible implications of a definition? The view of many is that it is impossible to provide a scientifically or legally meaningful definition of a psychoactive substance. The definition is very broad. At least in principle, it could cover thousands of plants, spices, herbal remedies and over-the-counter medicines. The degree of psychoactivity necessary to establish a criminal offence is also completely unclear, as it is unspoken in the Bill, but that will create a legal and scientific minefield. As the advisory committee warned, there is a risk of serious unintended consequences.

Under the blanket ban, there will be absolutely no distinction between very risky substances and relatively safe ones, as all are treated exactly the same under the Bill. Two of the most dangerous drugs of all—alcohol and tobacco—are exempted. Hon. Members should bear in mind that tobacco kills 100,000 people in our country every year. What is more dangerous than that? Alcohol causes untold damage to society, yet it is exempted from the Bill, and that seems to undermine respect for the law.

Let us look at the international evidence. Since a blanket ban was introduced in Ireland in 2010, usage has increased to the point where it is the highest in Europe. That is under a system that involves a ban, so should not that make us pause for reflection? In Poland, there was initially a drop in use after the introduction of a ban, but there was then a dramatic increase in use. The number of NPS-induced poisonings—we are now talking directly about harm to individuals—has risen dramatically from 562 cases in 2010 to 1,600 cases in the first 10 months of 2014. Does that not cause the Government to stop and think about the implications of passing the Bill? The analysis of the Home Office—the Department promoting the Bill—says:

“Looking across different countries, there is no apparent correlation between the toughness of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug usage.”

Again, should not the Home Office be reflecting on its own analysis?

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman, like a few others, is making a great play about this Lisbon-based European monitoring body and its report. Can he confirm whether it is a report of all 28 member states and whether the United Kingdom is included in the comparisons, or was the UK, along with the Netherlands and many others, excluded from the Lisbon report?

[Norman Lamb]

The hon. Gentleman might be right—I thank him for his intervention—but that does not in any way undermine my concern about what has happened in Poland since the introduction of a ban. The number of poisonings has gone up dramatically.

The effect of the Bill will be to hand the entire supply of these substances to organised crime. What a triumph of Government policy that is, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[John Mann]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Norman Lamb]

Let me make this point, as I am conscious that other people, perhaps including the hon. Gentleman, want to speak.

Does a criminal have any interest in my welfare? Of course they do not. Remarkably, as we were discussing earlier, the Bill manages to criminalise the purchase of a substance imported from overseas, but does not criminalise the purchase of exactly the same product domestically. Is that not just ridiculous? Can anyone in the Chamber possibly justify that distinction?

The Bill does not criminalise possession for personal use because the expert group acknowledged the negative impact on young people. It is good that that is acknowledged, but if the Government accept that criminalising usage has a negative impact on young people, why not apply that approach to drugs covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act? We have managed to come up with three tiers of approach for substances with a broadly equivalent risk. We have one tier that criminalises the use and supply of drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Another approach—the one taken in the Bill—criminalises supply but not possession, while the third approach is the legal supply and use of two of the most dangerous drugs of all, tobacco and alcohol. It seems to me that that undermines respect for the law.

We should at least consider regulation rather than prohibition. If lower-risk drugs were subject to a regulated legal framework, the incentive to develop and market new psychoactive substances would diminish. That is exactly what has happened in the Netherlands, where the de facto legalisation of cannabis has removed from the market far more risky synthetic cannabinoids. The Government ought to reflect on that.

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[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman cited Poland, but did not reference his source. He now cites evidence from the Netherlands without referencing his source. Is not his source a badly researched, unquantified report by Transform, which is a pro-drug lobby group, rather than academic research?

[Norman Lamb]

Rather than dealing with the accusation that the hon. Gentleman makes, my concern is to encourage him to reflect on what I said at the start of my speech. We ought to be able to discuss these issues recognising that while those the other side may sometimes have a different point of view, they might be seeking the same objective. The Government have not carried out any risk analysis of what happened in Ireland since it introduced a ban, but surely that is exactly what they ought to have done.

The Bill is flawed and our debate suggests that many Members recognise its flaws. My fear is that it will not work and that it will be brought into disrepute. My preference would be to work on an approach that protects young people, that avoids enriching criminals as well as lawyers, that provides clarity, rather than legal confusion that can be exploited in court by lawyers, and that is based on health and the reduction of harm.

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[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), particularly in debates about drugs. Indeed, one could say that he came to the kinder form of politics—and made his initial contribution to the topic under discussion—well in advance of the rest of the House. A number of us have weighed into previous debates and backed the concept that only a blanket ban could possibly work, because anything else would constantly be chasing something that was always elusive.

There are differences of opinion. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) represents another form of kinder politics. He is a great font of wisdom when it comes to his brilliant work on mental health, but he struggled to evidence his case tonight because the evidence is not there. The argument is based on assertions by lobbyists who are lobbying for a particular political outcome. The evidence base does not exist. I would not call this great survey that has been cited a rigged survey, but it is not a full survey. It misses out whole countries—the United Kingdom, for example—so comparing Ireland with all the countries of eastern Europe, where statistics are not calculated in so defined a way as in this country, is not making a valid international comparison. Statistics do not exist, on either side of the argument, about what might or might not work.

We need to look at the evidence base. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has always been consistent in this approach—I do not know whether he has been in the House for quite 45 years, but he has been very consistent all the way along—but that has not been the response of all of us to making legislation. My approach to drugs when I entered the House 14 years ago was not to rush in to demand legislation; it was to go into the communities to talk to those using drugs, to their families and, yes, to the victims of crime who suffered in vast numbers from that drug use in my constituency and get their evidence. That is what I have done when it comes to psychoactive substances: to ask those in the communities that suffer the most about their experience.

My instinct for a long time—this is why I have called, both in my party and in the Houses of Parliament, for a blanket ban for a long time—has been that there was sufficient evidence, from what I could see on the ground, that lives were being damaged. With these substances, I found that it was particularly common for the users to be young. We all talk about young people and the misuse of drugs, but I found that the age profile is much lower for these drugs than for others. It is very much the school or the just post-school generation who are the most susceptible or the most attracted and to whom the worst episodes happen. I could give chapter and verse, as other hon. Members have, of precise examples of horrific things that have happened to my constituents, but what is uniform is how young they are in each case.

It is the traditional working-class mining communities in my area who are the most adamant that shops such as Bing Bong in Worksop—not far from my office—should be shut down. They know who goes past the darkened windows and in through the shut door to buy drugs. Let us kill the myth that that is all done legally. I can tell hon. Members that there is a huge illicit market alongside such shops. How can 14 and 15-year-olds access drugs? If they were going into such shops, that would be easy. I would soon have those places shut down for illegal trading. They are not buying the stuff there; there is a huge secondary market. Who provides the secondary market? The same people. We call them drug dealers, but that term is not particularly accurate. They sell all sorts—alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine and, if they can get it, heroin. They sell anything that is going, any kind of pills and any bag of anything. Those people are providing far more drugs in my community than Bing Bong, although that may well be one of the initial sources.

If hon. Members want to know what is happening with drugs, it is always good to go and talk to those in the post office or the sorting office. They are highly unionised in my area and they are always happy to talk to me. They tell me, officially or unofficially, what is going on. There are all sorts of dodgy packages. Without having to refer to the police, they show me some of the addresses, and I think, “Hang on a minute. I can see what’s going on here.” There are addresses that get no post other than these strange envelopes. Perhaps people are purchasing something else, but I suspect not; I suspect that these substances—often junk—are being provided to them.

What else can we do as a Parliament? Of course education is good, but how can we educate such people when names change and the actual substances can change? That can have a dramatic impact on people, and the motivation for taking something changes, because they do not know until they have had it what it might result in; they can only copy somebody else. That is precisely why I and a few others, including the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), have argued repeatedly that the crudeness of a blanket ban is the only way to deal with this problem. That is why I applaud the Government’s speed. Yes, there will be problems in getting the legislation exactly right, but there is no other coherent approach that will work.

I want this legislation for my constituents, particularly my constituents who are well informed on this matter—the mothers and grandmothers who deal with this problem all the time. They are the ones who come and see me to demand that Bing Bong is closed down and that this stuff is forced off the streets, where possible.

This is not just about legislation. My area has done more to get people off heroin than anywhere else in the country. That has not been done through legislation, but through effective research, arguing the case and putting good systems in place. When I was elected, a lot of people were on heroin. When I look at statistics, I do not look at those for the prevalence of drug use, which are unreliable, but at crime statistics, burglary statistics and hospital statistics on overdoses—how many have there been, how many have resulted in death, how many have resulted in in-patient stays and what the cost of all that is. Those are real statistics that quantify this problem over time. In my area, we have got on top of a lot of these problems, but not through legislation.

I am seeing these problems slowly creep back in. Last weekend, I spoke to people who came off heroin nine or 10 years ago. Their view is that we need to act. Their view is that Bing Bong and its products need to be removed. Why? Their advice is that this market is fuelling the overall market in illicit drugs. They know that because they know what is happening and the people it is happening to. They can give evidence that goes way beyond the normal statistics.

I put only one caveat to the Government. The Government have made a big mistake with heroin treatment. They have decided to play the role of doctor by specifying what should happen with methadone. In Brighton, Pavilion, the privatised service run by Crime Reduction Initiatives has led to the biggest increase in heroin deaths anywhere in Britain. That organisation now runs the privatised service in my constituency and across Nottinghamshire, using the methadone elimination model that the Government have brought in. My message and that of those who have been on heroin in my area—

[Caroline Lucas]

Rubbish!

[John Mann]

No, it’s not rubbish; it’s factual.

My message to the Government and the message of those in my area who have been on heroin is to let the doctors make the medical decisions, not the politicians. Let those who have been on methadone in my area stay on methadone, so that they are stable, out of crime, back at work and are not dragged in with their families and called drug addicts again, which is what is happening in my area with Crime Reduction Initiatives—this so-called charity. I say the same thing when it comes to psychoactive substances: let the doctors determine the treatment, not the politicians. On this, the Government have got it wrong.

Through his brilliant and superb Parliamentary Private Secretary, I invite the Minister with responsibility for drugs to meet some of the people in my constituency in the near future.

[Caroline Lucas]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was only just walking in when he started talking about Brighton, Pavilion. The randomised injecting opioid treatment trial—RIOTT—in Brighton, Pavilion has had some of the best results in the whole country in getting people off heroin. When I was elected in 2010, Brighton was the drugs death capital of Britain. It no longer is and some excellent work on drug deaths is going on. The hon. Gentleman should do a bit of homework and know his facts before he makes such claims.

[John Mann]

I have done my homework and I can tell you that it is a place where heroin deaths are going up. This mickey mouse charity replacing GPs offering real treatment has been disastrous in Brighton, disastrous in Nottinghamshire and disastrous elsewhere in the country. You should talk to those who have been on heroin—

[Caroline Lucas]

I have!

[John Mann]

Talk to those who have been on heroin in my area and see what it is doing to them, their lives, their children and those who are back at work. It is a disaster.

I hope that the Minister will come to my constituency —he will get in and out safely with my assistance—and meet people privately. That will also give him and the Government—[Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Lady asks how I dare. She should come and talk to those heroin addicts about that mickey mouse waste-of-time charity from Brighton that has come in and replaced GPs and the national health service. It is a privatised service. The so-called Green party, with its privatised NHS—but that is a separate argument. I hope the Minister will come to my constituency, because with these substances we should trust GPs and medical experts to solve the problem.

[Caroline Lucas]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The way that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) has been carrying on in the House is completely unacceptable. He has launched into an unfounded attack—[Interruption.] Will you just be quiet? CRI has nothing to do with the Green party, and it is out of order to make such accusations with absolutely no evidence. To blame that on Brighton and the Green party is simply wrong.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point of order, but things are getting a little heated. She was making comments from a sedentary position and the debate got rather heated. I do not know what the facts are so I cannot make a judgment on that, but it would be good if we could move on now. John Mann, is the speech complete?

[John Mann]

The speech is now complete.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

It is always helpful if shadow Ministers do their homework. The proposals to which the hon. Gentleman refers were achieved by the previous Lord Chancellor. As far as his comment on the Justice Committee’s report is concerned, I do not hear him or his boss saying that they will be reversing any of the cuts that we have made. If they want to do that, the shadow Chancellor will have plenty of opportunity so to do in due course.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's oversight of claims-handling companies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

Tackling bad practices by claims management companies is a priority for the Department’s claims management regulator. Recent measures taken to strengthen the effectiveness regulation include tougher rules to crack down on malpractice and a new power to impose financial penalties on CMCs that break the rules. Since regulation began in 2007, the licences of more than 1,200 CMCs have been removed. Between April and December 2014, we stepped up enforcement action, with 338 CMCs being warned for poor conduct or having their licences removed.

[John Mann]

The whole country is sick of these companies ringing up day and night leaving answerphone messages and harassing pensioners. When it comes to PPI mis-selling, they are taking half the money that is due to decent people purely for writing a letter to a bank asking it to investigate the matter. We need to expose the sham of these companies more effectively, because, across the country, people are losing out and are getting increasingly sick of their behaviour.

[Mr Vara]

I agree that many people are very upset with the behaviour of those companies. In fact, millions of people are upset with what is happening. This is something that requires joined-up activity. The claims management regulator is working closely with the primary enforcement agencies at the Information Commissioner’s office and at Ofcom to investigate practices and take firm enforcement action against rogue companies. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that much work on nuisance calls has already been done and that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is leading on reforms in this area. Last year, for example, the Department published a joint action plan, involving all the relevant regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s office, Ofcom and the claims management regulator.

Internet Abuse of Members of Parliament

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I wish to raise the problems that Members of the House and many more people in our communities face from the abuse of social media. For me, and probably for all hon. Members, social media has huge benefits. It is a great liberator and gives many new opportunities to people throughout the world to communicate in different ways. However, it has a small but vicious and nasty downside. Indeed, having called the debated, I noted a story in the newspapers. Mr Yaya Touré, a footballer, went back on to Twitter after five months and was immediately viciously abused by racists. Mr Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, said this morning that internet companies are in denial over the use of the internet by terrorists and criminals.

We have seen the most grotesque misuse of the right of freedom of expression by individuals using the internet in a series of cases affecting Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who successfully prosecuted, said that

“the authorities didn’t even know how to begin investigating whether one person was sending these messages”—

the abusive, hateful and violent messages she was receiving—

“or many individuals”.

The grotesque racist abuse from a whole range of people in the past few weeks aimed at my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) has been a factor in my request to Mr Speaker to grant this debate. On Saturday, 10 people were arrested as a direct consequence of issues raised on the internet. When I had the temerity to raise the issue on a point of order in the House, I received the most extraordinary fake messages, allegedly in my name, which were deliberately meant to upset, alienate and aggrieve individuals in the community: incendiary words that were fiction and mere lies—nothing I would ever contemplate saying—but put up by one of these individuals in my name and then spread by others across the internet. There has been an arrest in the past few days.

The Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, which I chair, and the Anti-Defamation League in the US, have spent the past four years agreeing best practice for responding to cyber-hate. A whole range internet providers—Google, Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, Facebook—have agreed five procedures for internet providers:

“Providers should take reports about cyberhate seriously, mindful of the fundamental principles of free expression, human dignity, personal safety and respect for the rule of law.”

The last three are being violated repeatedly, both in relation to Members and to people—far more people—outside this House. What the internet companies and law enforcement companies are doing in this country is insufficient.

The second guideline states:

“Providers that feature user-generated content should offer users a clear explanation of their approach to evaluating and resolving reports of hateful content, highlighting their relevant terms of service.”

Having had this happen against me and seeing it against others, I have no idea what those terms are. They are not upfront. They are not available for people to see. No one has a clue what the internet companies claim to be doing about it.

The third guideline states:

“Providers should offer user-friendly mechanisms and procedures for reporting hateful content.”

I would advise anyone to take as an example Twitter. To know how to use Twitter’s response one has to be something of a computer expert. It is not user-friendly and it is not immediately available for those being harassed on the internet by others, sometimes in a criminal way.

The fourth guideline states:

“Providers should respond to user reports in a timely manner.”

Even when the police use requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Twitter, Facebook and others, they go to the United States, or even Europe where the companies have their headquarters, rather than have them agreed in this country, This delays hugely the ability of the police to gain the information even to contemplate prosecuting.

Fifthly:

“Providers should enforce whatever sanctions their terms of service contemplate in a consistent and fair manner”.

I am not suggesting, and nobody else is, a hierarchy of victims or any special privileged treatment for MPs, but the fact is that Members of Parliament are receiving the most grotesque and criminal hate abuse on the internet. If that can be done to Members of Parliament, can we imagine what is being done to people out in the community? I am now hearing countless examples of the most extraordinary abuse even of tiny children and of victims being abused when the victim complains. Businesses are another example, with people’s businesses torn apart by abuse on the internet.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his tireless work in this area. Does he agree with me that we must have in mind those people to whom he alludes and who are not in this House and have to suffer in silence and in isolation? They often have no support, and these people should be at the forefront of our minds. We need to do everything we possibly can to tackle this issue for them.

[John Mann]

A system that would work for a Member of Parliament at the top of society—as, in reality, we are—should and must also work for anybody in society. We have the ability to fight back against this abuse. We have the ability to contact the police at a senior level and immediately. I shall come on to what can and should be done even for Members of Parliament, but for people being bullied, intimidated and criminally harassed by people on the internet, there is very little ability and very little knowledge to respond, largely because the internet companies do not take their responsibilities seriously. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are behind the times when it comes to dealing with this problem.

Social media is regarded as a communication tool, but it is also a search engine. Others are going in and seeing what is there. It is used to incite, as happened in the case with me, or to organise, in the case of others, and often goes far beyond the initial expression to cause further damage at the aimed-for victim. There are real-life consequences—huge, real-life consequences—and lack of resource is not a defence that these social media companies can use.

We have seen racist and anti-Semitic abuse with people weighing in across the world, with the most extraordinary stuff being put up in their own domains in their own countries, but linking together because they have been brought together using social media. Then the opportunity is taken to target individuals and to repeat target them, with groups of people joining in the cyber-bullying and harassment, including criminal harassment. Some examples are potentially within the reach of our law enforcement, but others are well beyond it.

Even when there have been convictions—actual convictions for doing this in the most extraordinary and horrific ways to members of the public—Twitter and Facebook, to name but two, have not taken down the associated Twitter and Facebook accounts when people were convicted of abuse on the basis of evidence that those two companies helped to provide. So the culprits continue to glory in that abuse and repeat it against other victims. Something is seriously and significantly wrong with how these internet companies are dealing with the problem, but it can be seen, too, in the sanctions used by the courts and requested by the police in this country.

We need simple systems to report abuse. They should be simple to the police and authorities in this country and simple to the internet companies. We need internet companies that can be contacted directly and that do not hide away so that no one knows who runs them. I am told by these companies that it is very easy to write simple algorithms that can deal with such problems. Why, then, are these algorithms not being used, particularly where abuse has been reported and a conviction has been made?

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a point about simplicity. That is vital, as it will help all of us who want to stand with the victims of abuse to report it quickly, easily and simply to keep others safe.

[John Mann]

Where individuals set up multiple accounts, Twitter finds it impossible to deal with that. That shows a lack of will. In law, there is an ability to ban or block individuals on social media in relation to sexual offences. This needs to be widened to all bullying and harassment on the internet where it can be shown in a detailed way that individuals have taken a considered and determined view in advance to exploit the networks to harm others. These rules should apply in all forms of harassment and abuse.

Why are we not using internet banning orders, ASBO equivalents for social media? If we can ban people from going to a certain pub or a certain football match, or any football match, or into this town or that locality, the same should be done to specific parts of social media or, if necessary, the internet as a whole. The powers exist in law but if the police were to ask for such powers and if those powers were to be implemented by the courts as part of prosecutions, there would be more ability to close down those who refuse to be tolerant and decent and who are criminal abusers of the existing law. We do not need new law. We need the current law to be used imaginatively to remove profiles from the internet, to delete accounts and to stop people continuing their abuse in exactly the same way as the police can confiscate hardware and so on. But we know how easy it is for people to switch to other mobiles or to internet cafes to continue and they are doing that.

This is not simply about using the Malicious Communications Act 1988 or the Communications Act 2003. It is about public order and harassment and those laws and those powers should be available. We need to see this as serious and major crime, not as a minor problem. Some of the abuse that we receive may be unpleasant but it does not cross the threshold. We are not talking about idiots giving us general grief on the internet. We are not talking about special privileges for MPs. We are talking about everyone, including MPs; where there is serial harassment and attempts to incite, including potentially to incite violence. We are talking about that being acted upon.

The parliamentary authorities need to get their act together in dealing with this. This is a workplace. If we are abused, insulted or threatened, and our staff and our families receive similar, they need to be doing more. Communities need to be doing more. I am critical of those, in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree, who said how sorry they were but did not step up to the mark in suggesting solutions and providing solidarity and support, which should be automatic.

Finally, the political parties are not stepping up to the mark when one of their members is being abused in this way. It is being dismissed as par for the course and part of the general thing. We hear that it is not nice or pleasant but is something that is less than other criminal harassment. It is not. It is a fundamental part of criminal harassment. People out there—non-MPs—have had their lives ruined by this. That is why what happens to MPs, as with the rest of the community, needs to be dealt with more effectively in here and in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Michael Connarty. Not here.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

T5. Has the Secretary of State given specific advice to prisons, probation services and magistrates about historic sex abuse? If so, what is it?

[Chris Grayling]

No. It is for the courts to pass sentences. It is for our prisons and probation service to deal with the matter. The national probation service will focus on the most dangerous sex offenders. Our prisons are managing increasing numbers of historic and current sex offenders. We now have a number of prisons that specialise in that and are doing excellent work with those offenders. Let us hope that those numbers do not continue to rise, but if they do we will be ready to tackle that problem.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

What the hon. Gentleman says is absolute nonsense. Names were not drawn from a hat. There was a carefully constructed process of selection and a proper appeal mechanism for those who were unhappy with where they had been allocated.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Recorded rates of reoffending are going to plummet in Bassetlaw because police cells have shut, there are fewer police, and now 800 years of local justice are to be ended by getting rid of the criminal court. Does the Secretary of State not worry that he will wake up one night with destroying local justice on his conscience? What is he going to do to ensure that we can have reoffenders prosecuted locally in Bassetlaw?

[Chris Grayling]

I am not aware of the individual circumstances of the hon. Gentleman’s local court, but I can tell him that any changes being made to the listing procedures in our courts in Bassetlaw are being made at the instigation of local committees, local magistrates and other representatives of the justice system, who are taking a decision in the best interests of the area.

Worksop Magistrates Court

Lord Mann Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

“British justice is the envy of the world,” said the Government in the previous debate. Elizabeth I, James I, Henry III, Henry VIII, Richard I, Richard II, Richard III, Mary Queen of Scots and many, many more monarchs of this country have rested overnight in Bassetlaw. In 617, King Edwin defeated Aethelfrith of Northumbria in a battle that established some of the initial boundaries across the country that we now call England. During the reign of King Alfred, England was divided into shires and counties and then subdivided into hundreds of wapentakes, one of which was Bassetlaw. It was reinforced and confirmed in the Domesday Book when the modern geographic area of Bassetlaw was granted by William the Conqueror to Roger de Busli, a well known northern baron. Why is that relevant to British justice today? Well, the basis of law—the law that the Government say is the envy of the world—is precisely this geographical, political, social and economic history that has meant that, as an entity, Bassetlaw has existed in the concepts of law in this country for 1,000 years.

The local courts, which determined where residents could graze their lands and the rights of tenants under the dukes who resided there, have gone on for the past 1,000 years. Bassetlaw has been the home of many great dukes, including Norfolk, Newcastle, and Portland who, as landowners, administered justice in disputes on their land. Following the dissolution of the abbeys during the reign of Henry VIII—soon after he had visited the great priory of Worksop—the Earl of Shrewsbury was granted the land in Bassetlaw that used to belong to the great priory abbey. The local records note that Gilbert, the new Earl of Shrewsbury, had to pay a tax of 100 shillings to the court when his father died in what was known as knight’s duties. He became a Privy Counsellor to Elizabeth I and was also made a knight of the garter. He gave to the monarch, on behalf of the manor of Worksop, the gloves that were held in the right hand of the monarch in every coronation for many hundreds of years.

It is important to remember that while common law was only introduced in Bassetlaw during the reign of Henry III, canon law had been administered at the local abbeys by monks who were trained to try cases involving the Church. That is how justice in this country was developed—how it originated. Bassetlaw was there at the beginning of English justice. All the way through—be it through the canons or the dukes—justice has been administered in Bassetlaw, by Bassetlaw, for Bassetlaw. The Social and Economic History of Nottinghamshire says that

“summary justice in Nottingham was mainly administered in these local courts”—

such as in Retford and Worksop—

“to which the tenants almost always made suit. The majority of the lords possessed the rights of the gallows, the pillory, the tumbrel…together with the assize of bread and ale.”

All that history and the basis of justice are now threatened for the first time in 1,000 years by the cutbacks of this Government. It is this Government now, in this year, who are proposing a single site for youth work. They are not talking about Bassetlaw, or Retford court, which was closed by the previous cuts of the previous Secretary of State. They are talking about youth work going to Mansfield, with the new single family courts. Worksop is being offered only as an occasional court, “as an overspill”.

New criminal work will never be commenced again in Bassetlaw, shifted to Worksop. There will be no listings of trials at Worksop any more because under this Government and their police cuts the cells at the court room, run by the police, have been mothballed. What does that leave for justice in Bassetlaw in the Government’s consultation document? TV licence offences, while at the same time the coalition Government are consulting on decriminalising TV licence offences. That leaves local taxation enforcement, to quote from the consultation document, “for the time being”.

This is the death of the last remaining court in Bassetlaw—Worksop court—through a thousand cuts. Bit by bit, justice has been stripped away; so have 1,000 years and so has the basis of the law we gave to the rest of the world, which this same Government claim is the envy of the rest of the world—although not for long, if the principle of local justice administered by local people is stripped away from the very place where it was founded.

What are the practical implications? In their document, the Government suggest a small journey—a 30-mile round trip—failing to recognise the geographical size of Bassetlaw. It takes more time, to pick an entirely random comparison, to journey across Bassetlaw by car than it does to journey from this place to Basingstoke. It takes more time to get into Worksop from the villages of Bassetlaw than it does to get from Worksop to Mansfield by public transport. If a person is lucky and buses are available, they could potentially get to Mansfield and the courts in three hours but not in time to turn up for the start of court. Having got there, they would not be able to get back home. That means that magistrates, the basis of local justice, will no longer be able to be recruited from Bassetlaw. Witnesses wishing to appear in court who do not have access to their own transport will not be able practically to make a return journey and, if they do, on the one train they could take from Worksop that gets to Mansfield in time they would be sitting in the same carriages as those they were giving evidence against.

What kind of justice system is that, that we say is the envy of the world, when the Government, through their measly cutbacks, reduce to nothing 1,000 years of justice in Bassetlaw? How will those who are not financially well off, those without access to transport, those who are infirm and those who are unable to drive, either because they no longer have a licence or have not yet acquired one, be able to get the courts and get back? The real hidden cost will be in police officers chasing youths who have failed to turn up in time in court over the 550 square miles of Bassetlaw, an area bigger than the whole of Greater London. Police resources will be wasted on people who have failed to turn up in court when charged with small offences.

Once the Government have cut to ribbons what is left, stripped out criminal trials in Bassetlaw and denuded it of any real opportunity in the field of justice, the last little bits will be taken away because the next cut will be the final cut: the closure of Worksop court. What will that mean when that happens, which will be a matter of months if the consultation goes through? The area that helped create British justice and produced MPs such as the Earl of Liverpool, the last Prime Minister and MP before my good self to live in Bassetlaw while representing Bassetlaw, or Gladstone, who was not an MP for Bassetlaw but spent four years living there—that is what is being thrown away, but this is far greater than that.

Where did the Great Reform Act, which eventually led to this country exporting the universal franchise and the current system of democracy to everywhere in the democratic world, come from? It came from Bassetlaw and the great reformer John Cartwright. Because of the rotten borough of Retford, the Great Reform Act, when it was written, was inspired by events in Bassetlaw. Legal brains from Bassetlaw led to the Great Reform Act and created the model of democracy that this country gave the world, but this is about more than that.

The essence of democracy and the fact that there was so much local democracy in Bassetlaw also led to the confidence that meant that the people who became the pilgrim fathers nearly 400 years ago—the anniversary is in 2020—and formed the United States of America could create the ethos behind the constitution of the United States. Those people were brought up, bred, schooled, educated and churched in Bassetlaw. The history of local justice inspired them to be the ones who dared to go out and have the vision that led to the United States. World democracy was exported by this country. British justice, to quote the Government in the previous debate, is the envy of the world. That 1,000-year-old system of local people in the local area administering local justice is now being kiboshed by this Government and their penny pinching cuts.

My demand is that the Minister should tear up the consultation, reject the death by a thousand cuts of the final court in Bassetlaw, Worksop court, and say to the world that British justice will in the future be the envy of the world and that we will have the principle of local justice administered by local people in the local area. If it has been good enough for 1,000 years in Bassetlaw, it is good enough for a number more years to come. I demand that the Government withdraw these proposals and guarantee the future of Worksop court.

Shrewsbury 24 (Release of Papers)

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

The Johannesburg principles were written a long time ago, but let me quote from them now. This is what was said about freedom of information and the state:

“A restriction sought to be justified on the ground of national security is not legitimate unless its genuine purpose and demonstrable effect is to protect a country's existence or its territorial integrity against the use or threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the use or threat of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government...In particular, a restriction sought to be justified on the ground of national security is not legitimate if its genuine purpose or demonstrable effect is to protect interests unrelated to national security, including, for example, to protect a government from embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing, or to conceal information about the functioning of its public institutions, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to suppress industrial unrest.”

That was not written about this country. It was written in Johannesburg about South Africa under apartheid, about North Korea, about China, and about all the rest of them. However, it applies to this Government now.

That Tory from Aldershot has gone now, but when he quoted from his letter, he forgot to mention the capacity in which he wrote it. At the time, he was secretary of the Society for Individual Freedom. He did not tell us what that organisation was about, but I can tell the House that it worked with BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security. A book has been written about it, and this is how it described that Aldershot MP’s organisation:

“it’s almost certainly a British intelligence front organization which is mainly used for disseminating Establishment-type propaganda.”

That was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) went on to form a new organisation called “Freedom Under Law”, along with Francis Bennion, to counter anti-apartheid. And what did Francis Bennion do in 1972 to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who was campaigning against apartheid? He took out a private prosecution against him for criminal conspiracy. This is what has been going on, and this is why people do not want those files to come out.

Who was it who funded the Economic League’s secret committee—a secret committee in a secret organisation? McAlpine. Even I was put on a blacklist. Who put me on it? I believe that it was one Russell Walters, who today works as Tory researcher, and who was chief of staff for that would-be Tory leader, the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). He was working for the Economic League. There was also a bloke called Ned Walsh, a liar, who said throughout these events that he worked for the unions. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s he was working for the Economic League, infiltrating the unions. That is the conspiracy.

[Katy Clark]

I am intervening on my hon. Friend because I think that he may need some more time. Does he think that this quotation from Construction News, published on 17 December 1970—a very long time ago—gives some indication of the power and influence of the construction industry? The paper said of a private Christmas dinner organised by McAlpine in 1977:

“Anyone who can hold a private party and make it virtually impossible to get a Cabinet quorum cannot be without influence of friends.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may need more time, but it will come out of the hon. Lady’s time, because the winding-up speeches must start at 2.40 pm.

[John Mann]

The fact is that McAlpine was based in that part of the world, and it is no coincidence that this was picked on.

We know what these people do. They did the same during the miners’ strike. What they do is randomly pick out people and claim conspiracy, which is exactly what they tried to do to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath and others in the anti-apartheid movement. That is the mindset of some of these people. They believe that they have some sort of supreme knowledge, and then they claim to defend freedom.

These people are not the friends of freedom; these people are the enemies of freedom. That is why those Johannesburg principles were written, and that is why they apply not just to South Africa under apartheid, not just to North Korea and the lunatic running it, not just to China and the repression of working people there, but to this country and to western democracies. Freedom is about the right to go about your business. It is about the right to engage in protest, including industrial protest. It is about the right to hold your Government to account, and to ensure that if there are documents out there, they are brought to light. Such documents are already slowly emerging. We have seen the documents about Hillsborough, and in future we will see documents about Orgreave and the miners’ strike, and many, many more. There is an information revolution going on in this country, because people are fed up with the secrecy of the state and those misfits around it who set up organisations claiming conspiracies when there is no conspiracy because it suits their political ends—and some of them clearly even participate in events like this but are still elected to this Parliament.

If this is a coalition Government, this Liberal Minister needs to demonstrate that he is part of the coalition. The Liberals have always told us they stand for individual freedoms. Well, prove it; release these documents. These people who have had to fight against this for years deserve it, but there is a bigger cause, too: the rest of us. This is about defining freedom in this country. That is what this debate is about, and why this Liberal Minister has to act.

Interpreting and Translation Services

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

In three minutes, I will summarise my concerns for the Minister and the Chamber. I used to own a large interpreting company, and I looked at this form of interpreting and whether, even on a micro scale, it was possible to break into that market. It is not, because it is not possible to manage quality control. With other forms of interpreting, a range of techniques can be used; anyone can work through what the control mechanisms on quality should be, if they know what they are about. When it comes to this form of interpreting, that is not possible. Capita—or any other large conglomerate—cannot possibly manage quality. By definition, it does not know what the quality is, because it cannot employ the people who know what the quality is. I do not have the time to go through how techniques to do that can be devised for other forms of interpreting, but that is how I grew my business, and I grew it to a very large one.

This is nonsense, regardless of Capita, and we know how bad Capita is from the shambles that it made of the miners’ compensation scheme, when, again, it did not have the managerial experience. That was something that could have been managed, in theory, but it was hopeless. Managing quality cannot be done by a large corporate of that scale; it is not simply about Capita.

Also, the real flexibility needed in providing these services involves knowing the people because, in essence, there is a trade-off—a negotiation. The employer will say, “I desperately need you tomorrow, because we suddenly have this case”—or this prisoner, or whatever else—“and you have to do it, because I have no other option. X, Y and Z are not available; you will have to cancel your hospital appointment and do it.” That trade-off in the real world, with real people, works. Trying to put a conglomerate in charge never works, and that is why, even on a small-town basis, my company decided that it was not worth approaching Government to suggest that we attempt to run part of the system and contract in the interpreters. It is not possible, aside from the other issues of whether a company is any good or not.

That is the fundamental issue that the Ministry of Justice and the Minister need to address. They do not know what they are talking about, and they have created this system. Whoever runs it, it will not work, and it cannot work. Even if it continued on a mediocre basis, quality cannot be assured—ever. That is a fundamental problem for British justice, and it is one that the Minister needs to address. [Interruption.]

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the public that we do not allow clapping in Westminster Hall.

Protecting Children Online

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I will tell the hon. Lady what I am going to do if she stops heckling me from the Front Bench. This is the kind of conduct that the Opposition seek to bring to the debate.

Since 2008, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, set up by the previous Government, has brought together industry, charities, law enforcement and academia to focus on developing measures to keep children safe online. In October 2011, under the auspices of UKCCIS, and under this Government, the internet service providers developed a voluntary code of practice on the implementation of internet parental controls. A year on, the biggest four internet providers met their commitment to offer parental internet controls to new customers. Now, in a further step, the biggest five have committed to delivering whole home, network-level parental control tools by the end of this year. That will allow parents to set, with one click, parental controls on all devices in the home.

When we began these discussions with ISPs, they told us that that was not technically possible, so we have moved a huge way forward. Making it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material was a Bailey recommendation and that has been achieved. Network-level filters for domestic broadband was also a recommendation of the independent parliamentary inquiry into online child protection.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

The Minister has highlighted the success with the five ISPs. How does that compare with agreements reached in other countries in Europe and the United States?

[Mr Vaizey]

We can hold our heads high as being far more advanced than many other countries around the world. I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with details of what other countries are doing and where we rank compared with them. It is also important to point out that those five ISPs cover the vast majority of customers using the internet at home.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said that we have not implemented the recommendations of the Bailey review, but I remind her that this Government set up that review because of this Prime Minister’s passion to protect children from the sexualisation of society. As Reg Bailey himself said in his recently published review of progress:

“I have been pleased to see that many parts of industry have risen to the challenge”

and that good progress has been made against his recommendations.

Bailey called for greater transparency in the regulatory framework through the creation of a single website for regulators. ParentPort, launched in 2011, is a single website, created by media regulators, through which parents can complain about inappropriate material. Bailey also called for a reduction in on-street advertising containing sexualised imagery that is likely to be seen by children, and the Advertising Standards Authority has issued guidelines on the use of such images in outdoor advertising. He also recommended restricting the employment of children as brand ambassadors and ensuring that magazines and newspapers with sexualised images on the cover are not sold in easy sight of children and that the content of pre-watershed TV programming better meets parents’ expectations.

Those recommendations and others have been met. Of course, that is not to say that every recommendation has been met in full. There is still work to do on, for example, online music videos.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I do not profess any specific expertise, but if I have any, it is in relation to the work done on hate crime on the internet. I congratulate the Minister on his work with us. I also congratulate his predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), and Barbara Follett, who is no longer a Member of the House, on their initiatives. All have been effective, and are appreciated.

I initiated a working group in the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism two years ago. We have managed to get senior executives for content from most of the world’s biggest internet companies to sit on the group, including executives from Apple, Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft and Twitter. We also have one of the key interlocutors in the US on free speech, Professor Jeffrey Rosen, and, from the Ministry of Justice, the seconded Association of Chief Police Officers lead on hate crime, Paul Giannasi.

A report has been produced—it has not yet been circulated, but will be in the next week in this country and throughout the world—that the Minister and the Government will find useful. The report is on the problem of hate crime, but the problem is the same as online protection of children in respect of the grey areas that need to be tightened, the technical solutions and approaches, and the mindset in the industry.

Part of the problem the group has identified is the shadow internet. It is fine setting up solutions, but if that happens in separate countries, people will break them if they want to—they have relatively easy ways to do so. The debate so far has concentrated on websites and search engines, but, in fact, even when it comes to child abuse, gaming is as big a problem and a vastly growing one. Texting, smartphones and social networking are equally significant, growing and changing problems—the modality is changing.

The group makes six recommendations in the report on hate crime—they are relevant to the debate. The first recommendation is to create clear policies and include them within the terms of the service of the internet company. That would be a significant change. The working group has the key players and the decision makers—they are not the sub-decision makers, but the actual decision makers. That recommendation is achievable, and it would be significant.

The second recommendation is for mechanisms to enforce those policies. How do intermediaries, including national Governments, enforce them? For international industries, the role of intermediaries, whether they are specialist groups or national Governments, is a second key principle in the approach that should be taken.

The third and vital recommendation, which resonates with this debate, is to establish clear, user-friendly processes to allow users to report abuse. Those processes are not currently there, but they are achievable. If mechanisms are in place, progress ought to be relatively straightforward—far more straightforward in relation to child abuse than hate speech, where issues of illegality are far more complex—where there is criminality. Clearly, there are technical solutions—I will not go so far as to suggest the software that the CIA has recently, allegedly, used—if the processes are in place.

The fourth recommendation is to increase transparency about terms of service enforcement decisions: case studies. For example, if an individual is prosecuted because someone has reported something that their child has stumbled across, the Government and other third parties have a critical role in how it will be reported and made public.

The fifth recommendation, which is probably specific to hate speech, is to encourage counter-speech. It is the same concept as the splash concept.

The sixth recommendation is to unite the industry. The industry will not always be American—with its concepts of free speech—so it is critical to achieve agreement within the industry while it still is.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

If I can bring the hon. Gentleman back to the third recommendation, he makes a good point about reporting and taking down material. The IWF does a good job in that area. Apparently, last year 1.5 million adults came across abusive content on the internet, but only 40,000 reports were made to IWF, which has the powers to do something about it. There needs to be much greater publicity on how to report to ensure that action can take place.

[John Mann]

Publicity on how to do so and technical ease of use in doing so, so that the democratic internet world can hit back effectively and the industry can be monitored, are key. The key members of the working group who really know what they are talking about would be more than happy to meet the Minister, if he would find that useful. We could bring them over from the US.

To get access to the right people, I went to meet industry leaders in their headquarters in California, and I made the point that their brands were in danger. If the users and third parties, albeit national Governments, can show successes in prosecutions, the industry will throw far more resources at the issue. The industry does throw at lot of resources at it. A third of all Facebook employees are dealing with it, because the dangers to its brand are so fundamental, but at the moment it is less of an issue for other companies. They do see the dangers to their brand, however, which is why senior people from PayPal now turn up to meetings.

I intervened on the Minister—it was not a hostile intervention—on agreements in other countries. One danger is that different countries will do different things. Of course, that is not an excuse for any Government to hold back, but the French Government are taking various legal actions against some of the key internet giants, as are the Italians, and there is a danger that the approach will become too bitty. May I suggest to the Minister that he try to up the stakes and achieve European Union consensus from Britain’s lead? If Britain is ahead of the rest of the European Union, that is a good opportunity to set the standards that others can push up to and take forward. That would be pragmatic and significant. We attack the industry—I am happy to attack the industry in various ways—but it does not want terrorists using its platforms to kill people and it does not want paedophiles using their products to abuse children. That is obvious to me and it is also obvious to the industry.

[Geraint Davies]

Some years ago when I first came across Twitter, I tracked a few people who were following various trends and discovered an image of a man who had been beheaded. I wondered then about the extent to which Twitter could be used as a route into child abuse and what should be done about it.

[John Mann]

I am pleased to say that Twitter participates in the working group that I have managed to initiate. The issues are complex, but all these issues are complex. Last night, I went on to the internet using a mobile device to seek the speech made by the Rev. Leslie Hardman when he went into Belsen concentration camp in 1945. I was immediately content blocked. These issues are not all straightforward, but some outcomes are exceedingly obvious and straightforward. I put it to the Minister that the industry and politicians have a mutual interest. That is the industry’s vulnerability. Finding the tools to expose those who refuse to participate properly and effectively is the key to real progress. If the Minister united the industry around that in Europe, he would make a phenomenal mark. My working group would be delighted to provide any help that it can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I still do not think that the Opposition understand the nature of the financial mess they left behind and what we have to do to balance the books. I also think that the public would expect me to do what I can to maintain a strong prison system and a strong court system at the same time as having a legal aid system that provides justice while being affordable. That is what we are doing.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

9. How many prison staff have current unspent convictions for firearms offences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that over 45,000 personnel records are held by the National Offender Management Service and to determine firearms offences for all staff would involve extracting information from those files at disproportionate cost, but I can reassure him that all new recruits to the service undergo security vetting, and as part of this procedure, checks are made on criminal convictions. Any criminal conviction or caution received by staff or recruits is assessed carefully before a decision on recruitment or continued employment is made.

[John Mann]

Rebecca Knighton was sacked using fabricated evidence, Steve Casey resigned following the illegal use of CCTV, and now, I understand, a senior manager has been convicted of a firearms offence but not sacked. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the managerial chaos at Ranby prison?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to comment on the basis of what I know at present about the cases that he has raised, but I will certainly look into them and come back to him on what we think can best be done.