Overseas Electors Bill

Debate between Alex Chalk and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I would like that to happen: before having an extension it would be useful to have a review of where we are now, because that might highlight some of the areas of concern. So, yes, I would like to see that done sooner rather than later.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some important points. On the point he has just raised, does he agree that we would need to be satisfied that, in the event of an allegation of electoral impropriety, there will be the resources and willingness on behalf of overseas authorities to properly investigate that, because it could mean the difference between a correct result in an election or an incorrect result?

[Philip Davies]

I agree. The more people the franchise is extended to, the more chance of a result being affected by it, so my hon. Friend is right. That is why it is absolutely necessary that we get these things right. We must not just do them, find problems later and not really have a plan for how to deal with them. I would sooner we got it in place to start with and knew how we were going to try to prevent problems and deal with them once they arose.

I hope new clause 9 is self-explanatory. It would require the Cabinet Office or Secretary of State to

“within 12 months of the provisions of the Act coming into force,”—

it has a date on it for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough—

“lay before Parliament a report evaluating the effects of the Act and the extent to which it has met its objectives.”

I have to say that we pass legislation on a regular basis in this place, in a slightly willy-nilly fashion in my opinion, and we seem to do it often on a sentiment—a worthy sentiment usually—but I would like to see more legislation come with some conditions attached, one of which would be a review of it afterwards to see whether it is meeting the objectives set out. That should be standard in all pieces of legislation. We just pass a piece of legislation and then that is it so far as most people are concerned. We then move on to the next thing and often nobody ever revisits to see whether it is working. In fact, when anyone is asked to justify anything, they often use the fact that they have passed a piece of legislation as their justification for having done something, regardless of whether or not it was effective. I would like to see this new clause added to many more pieces of legislation.

[Alex Chalk]

May I gently suggest that my hon. Friend is uncharacteristically proposing unnecessary bureaucracy? The reality is that if something were perceived to have gone wrong, he has shown himself to be well able to draw it to the attention of the House. Does he not agree that if such a matter needed to be ventilated in public, there is no doubt that that could be done fully and robustly?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend thinks that flattery is going to get him everywhere, but on this occasion I am not entirely sure that it will. It is very kind of him to say what he did, and—if I may reply in kind—no one is better than him at asking incisive questions and getting to the nub of things, particularly given his background. The problem is that we pass so much legislation in this place covering such a wide area that, no matter how good or bad any of us might be, we just cannot keep on top of it all. It is impossible to do that, and we sometimes need a prompt to remind us of the pieces of legislation that have gone through. I do not think it would do anyone any harm if a report came out that made them think, “Oh yes, I remember this piece of legislation. I’m interested in this one.” Even the best of us forget from time to time what legislation has been passed through this House.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Debate between Alex Chalk and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

That is all very well in theory, and I am pretty sure that that would do the trick in an academic dissertation, but the problem is what we see in the real world time and again. I would be astonished if any Member could not think of an example of a criminal who had committed a serious offence being under-charged and prosecuted for a lesser offence. The reasons for that are numerous, but the biggest one is as follows.

This country supposedly does not have the American system of plea bargaining, but we do in reality. No matter how much the criminal justice system would deny it, we do have that system. The CPS will say that it is going to charge somebody with a serious offence, and the person will say, “I am going to plead not guilty to that.” The defence solicitor or barrister will no doubt then say, “I’ll tell you what, if you charge them with a lesser offence, my client will plead guilty.” So to avoid a trial or to save time or whatever, the CPS, which often feels overstretched, will say, “Oh, go on then. We will charge them for the lesser offence. It will not be the actual offence that they committed, but it will get them a criminal record and get us a guilty plea. It will tidy up our figures, and we will be able to say that we have brought somebody to justice.” The CPS will then consider that a great success. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the victim of the crime, who presumably is barely even considered in this box-ticking, target-driven agenda, sees the person who committed the offence against them being given a derisory sentence. That is what we see time after time. Anybody who thinks that we do not is not living in the real world, because it happens on a daily basis in the criminal justice system.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) is right that the responsibility clearly lies with the CPS to charge people appropriately for the offence they have committed—nobody disagrees with that principle—we know that that does not happen in practice. Therefore, even if the CPS does what it seems to do on a regular basis and charges people for a lesser offence, it is beholden upon us to ensure that the judge or magistrate has an appropriate sentence to give out when the most egregious cases come before the courts. In the example that I just gave, a police officer actually lost a finger but the defendant was charged with assaulting a police officer, and we cannot let it stand that the sentence can be just six months, or even just 12 months.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In that example, my hon. Friend shines a light on the potential issue here. Under the circumstances that he has indicated, there is no doubt that the defendant should be charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. If, under my hon. Friend’s new clause, a defendant is charged with the maximum penalty of 12 months and pleads guilty, they will be entitled to a third off the sentence and would serve only half. In any event, the penalty would therefore be far less than he desires. The real issue here is whether the proper charging decision is made, because that is what makes the material difference to the sentence. This is about the difference between whether someone spends two months or three months in custody.

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend seems to be agreeing with amendment 9 and that he thinks that the sentence in the Bill should be more than 12 months, perhaps 24 months. I will take that as support, but I am unsure whether I have accurately deciphered what he was trying to say. However, he is right that the CPS should charge people for the appropriate offence, but the point is that it does not, and I can assure the House that things will be the same after this Bill comes into effect. The CPS will still prosecute people for offences that it knows will get a conviction. When someone goes before the courts for a particular offence, we must ensure that the judge or magistrate has the appropriate sentencing powers to make sure that justice is done properly and is seen to be done properly. At the moment, however, that is not the case.

I wish that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) was right. I wish that the utopia he describes, in which the CPS accurately prosecutes people for the serious offences that they have committed every single time, was the reality. If that were the case, there would probably be no need for this Bill, but the fact is that the CPS does not do that. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. My hon. Friend has much more expertise in the criminal justice system than me—[Interruption.] On the right side of it, obviously. I respect my hon. Friend’s opinion, but debates in this House on justice issues can often resemble a lawyer’s dinner party. Things can be very interesting, but most people in the real world do not really give a stuff about that. They want to know about what is happening on the ground, rather than what the legal profession would like us to think is happening, which are two very different things.