Oral Answers to Questions

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady and her constituent, and I am very sorry to hear about that case.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

Colin Pitchfork was convicted of raping and murdering two young girls in the 1980s. Will the Minister please assure me and the public of their safety, given that Mr Pitchfork is being moved to an open prison?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the transfer of prisoners from one prison to another is based on a careful assessment of the risks involved. I am sure that that will have taken place in this case, but I would be happy to discuss the matter with him in more detail if he wants to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

There was an investigation after those reports in the press, but no impropriety was found. I am more than happy for the hon. Gentleman to meet my officials in the Department. If I can publish the review, I will—I understand that it was an internal inquiry—and if I cannot do so, I will explain why. If not, meetings will take place.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

7. What plans he has for the future of Her Majesty’s prison and young offenders institution of Glen Parva.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

From later this month, Her Majesty’s prison and young offender institution Glen Parva will begin to accommodate adult prisoners. This change supports our aim to use the existing estate as effectively and efficiently as possible.

[Alberto Costa]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Will he tell me what the staff ratios are for young adults in Glen Parva, and what they are expected to be once adult prisoners come to the prison? If the answer is not readily available, will he give it to me in a letter by the end of next week?

[Andrew Selous]

I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but I do not have that specific information. I will certainly write to him with it.

Welfare Cap

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Of course we will support the Government tonight, but the fact remains that we should not be having this debate because the cap should not have existed in the first place.

We have to recognise that social security protects the poorest and the vulnerable in our society, but we do not do that through these false measures, which is exactly what this is.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

In his festive mood, the hon. Gentleman has perhaps forgotten what the good people of Scotland said earlier this year, so it is worth reminding him. A Survation poll in Scotland said that a majority of its people, just like those in my constituency and across the UK, support efforts to reduce the cost of welfare, so are not he and his party out of touch with the people of Scotland?

[Ian Blackford]

I am truly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking that question. Of course the Scottish National party wants to reduce the cost of welfare, but we will do that by fixing the economy, driving up productivity and creating jobs. What we should not do is punish people. While we are on the subject of the election, let me take this opportunity to remind the House that we won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland, and we did that while standing on a platform of investing in our communities and in job creation, making sure that we did not punish people with a failed austerity programme, and arguing for investment of an additional £140 billion throughout the whole of the UK over the next five years. That responsible position would have led to the financial deficit coming down to 2% of net national income by the end of this Parliament. The people of Scotland were very happy to support that much more responsible approach, and I commend it to this House.

Although we welcome today’s decision to breach the cap, it is apparent that the Chancellor cannot even stick to his own targets. When will this Conservative Government realise that the inflexibility of the welfare cap is unworkable and that the fact that they will breach the cap illustrates the need to abandon the policy?

We are calling on the Chancellor to abandon the cap and instead to focus on welfare dependency by tackling the structural drivers of higher welfare spending, such as rising rents, low pay and worklessness, as well as the barriers to work. That is a much more progressive way of dealing with the problems we face in the United Kingdom. We agree that it is sensible to control welfare spending, but the Government are simply not doing that with their continued focus on the austerity agenda. The welfare cap is simply not the correct approach.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has chosen not to be here today. I am grateful to the Minister for speaking earlier, but he is here, cap in hand, to seek our support for the Government breaching their own rules and missing yet another target.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I find myself distressingly often these days agreeing with the hon. Gentleman that our prison officers do a fantastic job. I value the meetings I have with them and the feedback they give me. We have recruited 420 new prison officers in the last 12 months. Of course we keep safety and security in our establishments under review, but as I explained earlier we are taking steps on the use of technology and also on the increased powers that governors will have which I hope will make our prison estate safer and more secure for everyone.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

T4. In evidence to the Justice Committee in July, the Secretary of State confirmed that his Department would be undertaking a review of the Legal Services Act 2007. Can he please confirm today if a date has been set for that review, and if not when the date of the review will be set?

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question and he is right that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice did say to the Justice Committee that there would be a review of the regulation of the legal services sector as well as the 2007 Act. Clearly this is something we need to give consideration to. It will happen within this Parliament and the House will be informed in due course of the exact scope and timeframe.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on promoting this Bill and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on her speech. It is the first time that I have heard the arguments put forward around the sanctity of life. Those arguments were notably absent from the letter addressed to us all by the two archbishops. I congratulate her on making those arguments. Although some may believe that suffering is a grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ, which is selfishly stolen away by euthanasia, I say please count me out.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Crispin Blunt]

I ask my hon. Friend to forgive me. We are very tight for time, and he will get the chance to make his own arguments.

To die well is a simple concept and one that would not have shocked Socrates or Seneca. However, an aversion or allergy to a proper, weighty consideration of what a good death is and should look like is a shibboleth of a society that has been shaped by Christian concepts of the sanctity of life.

I came to this House in 1997 as a convinced supporter of the principles behind the Bill and, like many of its supporters, I came to that decision through my own personal experience. I watched my two parents and, in particular, my father-in-law die of cancer. He had conversations with his children, saying that if he ever found himself in that situation he wanted them to take care to trip over the cables so that if he was on a life-support machine it would be switched off. He died without even having the possibility of controlling the time of his own death and I found it truly appalling that his personal autonomy was limited in that way.

The Bill contains all the necessary safeguards to protect people.

[Alberto Costa]

rose—

[Crispin Blunt]

I would take interventions, but I am conscious that many people want to speak.

The arguments about a slippery slope or the vulnerability of people in the letter to us from the two archbishops and the religious leaders simply ignore the fact that this applies only to terminally ill people. Two doctors have to sign off on the fact that the person will be dead within six months and the process is overseen by a High Court judge. On the subject of freedom, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to consider who will be the beneficiaries of this legislation. It is not us in here, who, if we were faced with these circumstances would be capable of taking the decision for ourselves, but it is the people who cannot exercise that ability and need someone else to help them make that decision in the last six months of their life; when they want to exercise the option of ending their life with dignity, at a time of their choosing, having had the opportunity to talk to their family and have all the conversations to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden referred. They will then know when the end of their life will come. The Bill gives people in those circumstances a little bit of control at the end. Perhaps most importantly, it gives everyone the potential to have that little bit of control at the end. In Oregon, hardly anyone—0.3% of people dying—exercises the right. The whole Oregon experience entirely supports that this is a practical, sensible, humane and decent measure. I went there to see it in operation, as I am so interested in this issue.

For nearly everyone, the Bill will provide the comfort of having a degree of control over the end of their life. We must and ought to have a right to choose, despite the concerns about what a valid choice looks like. Those issues are addressed in the Bill. I say in particular to my right hon. and hon. Friends that this is an issue of freedom. The logo of our party for a long time was the torch of freedom, and that is why I am surprised that there is so much opposition to the Bill on the Conservative Benches. I understand the Catholic and faith lobby will have in-principle objections, but I am slightly appalled that they should seek to sustain legislation that limits my personal autonomy when 80% of the population, presented with this proposition, would support it.

In the 21st century, mutual tolerance should have taken us beyond that. We are the party of freedom and choice and surely there could be no greater demonstration of our commitment to those principles than the principle in this Bill. Hiding behind the slippery slope argument will not do. If two doctors and a High Court judge are not enough, what is? My hon. Friends should seek to insert in Committee the safeguards they feel are required, but they should not abandon the guiding principle of our party and oppose the freedom that the Bill enshrines today.