Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Richard Foord

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that it is a sensitive issue. As he knows from practice, those who commit the offence of murder outside, using a knife that is brought to the scene, can expect a starting point of 25 years. However, as the Gould and Devey families have made so powerfully clear, where the crime takes place inside the home, there are very difficult sentencing decisions for judges. The consultation has ended, and I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who has spoken to a number of people about it, as indeed have I. We will respond in the coming weeks, but this matter requires careful thought. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for his work on it.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Barnaby Webber from Taunton was described by his family as an “extraordinary ordinary person”. His killer was found guilty of manslaughter, rather than murder, on the basis of being subject to paranoid schizophrenia. Barnaby’s mother, Emma Webber, says it is “abhorrent” that murder charges were not pursued against her son’s killer. Will the Secretary of State consider re-categorising homicide laws to introduce first-degree and second-degree murder?

Prison Capacity

Debate between Alex Chalk and Richard Foord

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend; no one did more in government to ensure that serious foreign national offenders were on planes getting out of the country. She did an exceptional job and I pay tribute to her for that.

On public protection, the whole point of the suspended sentence order is that the magistrate will say to the individual, “The crime that you’ve committed crosses the custody threshold. I am going to impose a suspended sentence order, potentially with a curfew and unpaid work”—or whatever the other conditions are. That order is then a sword of Damocles hanging over the person. If they do not comply, they are brought back before the court and they serve that sentence in custody. The choice for that offender is very clear: do what they should and abide by the order of the court, or they will hear the clang of the prison gates.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

As Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett introduced indeterminate imprisonment for public protection sentences. Lord Blunkett has since said that he regrets injustices caused by the awarding of those IPP sentences. In February this year, 372 of the 2,456 women serving sentences in prison were serving indeterminate sentences. How many women are still serving IPP sentences who have already served their full tariff?

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I remember when IPPs came in; they were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I was a barrister at the time and I remember that under the legislation we were required effectively to apply for them and that judges were required to hand them down. There has been an understanding, in the intervening 20 years, that they have not operated as they should. They have created a sense of total despair, hopelessness and, most importantly of all, injustice.

How we deal with this issue is difficult in circumstances where the Parole Board has judged that people remain a danger to society. That is the issue. There is no easy solution where we say simply, “Let people out”, because we know in doing so that they could commit crimes and harm our fellow citizens. So we cannot do that, but what we will do is take every step, including providing additional psychological support so that individuals can prepare for parole hearings, and we will look at the issue of licences. We will not compromise on public safety, but we will do everything we can to scrub out the stain of those misguided sentences.

AUKUS Defence Partnership

Debate between Alex Chalk and Richard Foord

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. I am also grateful to him for the part he played in progressing this matter when he was in the Department. He comes to this subject with enormous knowledge of the NATO context. I want to pick up on his first point, on capability, because we have not spoken a vast amount about it. The ability to be stealthy and undetected is not a capability enjoyed by conventionally powered submarines, and that is one reason why the United States and the United Kingdom no longer operate them. It is vital that submarines have the range, the lack of detectability, and the ability to be more stealthy and detect more in terms of intelligence and so on, so I take that point. On his second point about pillar 2, he is absolutely right and I will certainly undertake to consider the matter he raises. We had very warm and positive discussions with the Australians here in the UK about pillar 2. I think there is a shared recognition among the United States, the UK and Australia that we need to move quickly. There is no time to lose.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On behalf of my party, the Liberal Democrats, I welcome the AUKUS defence partnership announcement. I endorse what the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) said about the stealth it will bring to our partnership. Like the Minister, the US President was at pains yesterday to stress that SSN-AUKUS will be nuclear powered but not nuclear armed. The Minister went further today and talked a little about compliance with international law on proliferation. The International Atomic Energy Agency is satisfied that Australia does not intend to pursue uranium enrichment. Given that since the announcement China alleges that AUKUS undermines the international non-proliferation system, will the Minister provide a little more assurance to the House and the British public that the initiative does indeed comply with the non-proliferation treaty?

[Alex Chalk]

I am happy to do so. The hon. Gentleman is right to say, of course, that this has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. I have made that crystal clear. The NPT is about the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, not nuclear propulsion systems. I am pleased to be able to indicate that the director general of the IAEA reported to IAEA member states that he believes the AUKUS partners are committed to ensuring the highest non-proliferation and that safeguard standards are met. He noted his satisfaction with the engagement and transparency shown by the three countries thus far. Australia, in joining the UK and the US, has joined not just the strongest possible culture of safety, but the strongest possible culture of adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, these systems are the very tools that we bring to the table to defend the rules-based order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Richard Foord

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

Digital and artificial intelligence are central to RAF capability. I was delighted recently to announce that significant investment has taken place in Lincolnshire to ensure that when those aircraft take to the skies, they have the weapons systems but also the battlefield management plans that they require to ensure that they can take the fight to the enemy.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

13. What steps he is taking to prevent former UK armed forces personnel from providing training to the Chinese armed forces.

Service Family Accommodation

Debate between Alex Chalk and Richard Foord

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has experienced, through her own mailbag, the impact on the families of service personnel. I have experienced that myself in Cheltenham. The answer is that we are absolutely clear that that needs to improve. She asks about timelines. From 23 January, if things have not improved, potential financial consequences can follow. Act 1, scene 1 is for Pinnacle to make progress now. I am talking about right now—indeed, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) was talking about today. I am receiving daily dashboards about what the situation is and what proportion has been left without heating for more than 24 hours and so on, and I have made it clear that I want to see improvements every single day.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

When service personnel in service families accommodation are away, their spouse has to take charge of property maintenance. I recall my wife spending hours on the phone to the then contractor, Modern Housing Solutions, waiting in the queue on the phone in the hope that, eventually, the circuitous jingle would come to an end and she would be met with a human voice. Last year, 16,250 armed forces personnel left the armed forces—the largest number since 2016. What account did the Government take of retention of service personnel when they awarded the contract to Pinnacle Group in April?

[Alex Chalk]

Issues of recruitment and retention are, of course, broad-based and multifactorial. All sorts of issues go into determining levels of recruitment and retention, but the hon. Gentleman raises a fair point. I would hope and expect that, at the time of entering into the contract, it was made crystal clear that Pinnacle had to deliver on it, because otherwise the implications for service families—not just the individual serviceman or woman, but their families—would be deeply profound. It has not measured up to that, and I think we need to establish in very short order what it said, when it said it and whether it was being entirely up front about what it could deliver.