Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Rupa Huq

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for raising this point. Joshua Rozenberg has made a profound and important contribution to our country. Indeed, he is required reading, and I read him most days. I share my hon. and learned Friend’s profound regret, and I echo his sentiments. I think the whole House will wish Joshua Rozenberg well.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

All through Lent, women nationwide have faced intimidation from the anti-choice group 40 Days for Life blocking their entrance to abortion clinics daily. Why is that happening, given that MPs voted by a ratio of 3:1 in 2022 for safe access zones, with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) being one of them?

Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Debate between Alex Chalk and Rupa Huq

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

On the contrary. I know that my right hon. Friend rightly, on behalf of his constituents, wants to ensure that those who destroy lives and have a corrosive impact on communities are brought to book. That is why the provisions have been carefully constructed and calibrated to ensure that those who are unable or unwilling to abide by an order of the court can expect to hear the clang of the prison gate. Not only will the proverbial sword of Damocles be hanging over them, but for those who commit an offence when they are subject to a court order—be it a supervision order, a community order or a non-molestation order—the presumption no longer applies. We send a clear message to criminals: obey the order of the court or expect to go to prison.

Judges will retain their discretion to impose immediate custody when an offender poses a significant risk of physical or psychological harm to an individual—this is to the direct point made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—so that domestic abuse offences and other violent offences against women and girls can and will continue to be punished, with immediate custody protecting victims. Nothing changes, but for those whose sentence is suspended, the courts will be able to continue to use a range of requirements, including curfews, electronic tags, community payback and exclusion requirements. Those who do not comply or who commit further offences can be brought back to court and risk being sent to prison.

Alongside that, we want to ensure that we have the prison places to keep serious and dangerous offenders locked up for longer, while allowing lower risk offenders to benefit from community-based restrictions to assist with their resettlement, get back into work and start contributing to society where that can be safely managed. For that reason, we are extending home detention curfew to offenders serving sentences of over four years and keeping our tough restrictions that prevent serious violent, sexual and domestic abuse offenders from accessing this facility.

The Criminal Justice Bill includes measures that deliver on three strategic objectives: first, protecting the public from violence and intimidation; secondly, enabling law enforcement agencies to respond to changing technology deployed by criminals, including by equipping them with sufficient powers to address emerging types and threats; and thirdly, strengthening public confidence in policing. We will protect the public from violence and intimidation by strengthening the law on the taking of intimate images without consent and expanding the offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. We used to have happy times on the Justice Committee together when we were little striplings. What he is saying sounds good, but my question is this. Last year, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and I amended the Public Order Act 2023 to stop intimidatory protests against women using abortion clinics. Although it was passed, that is the only section that has not been enacted. Ealing Council does not know whether to renew its temporary order, which is coming up again. If the law was passed and enacted, it should not have to. Can he tell Ealing Council and the whole country what to do when women every day face intimidation?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We did indeed have a productive and non-partisan time on the Justice Committee. On the specific important point she raises, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), will address that point in closing—but essentially, it will happen in due course.

We will protect the public from violence and intimidation by strengthening the law on the taking of intimate images, as I have indicated. We will increase the multi-agency management requirements on offenders convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour. As I say, that was not an offence in 2010. We are implementing a further recommendation in the domestic homicide sentencing review, giving judges the discretion at sentencing to add a statutory aggravating factor for a killing connected to the end of a relationship, many of which are committed where there has been a history of coercive or controlling behaviour. That man who says, “If I can’t have you, no one will” can expect a more serious penalty.

Finally, it is a further insult to families when perpetrators refuse to appear in the dock to face up to the consequences of their actions, so it is quite right that we will give judges the power to order offenders to court and punish those who refuse.

Exiting the European Union: Meaningful Vote

Debate between Alex Chalk and Rupa Huq

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

We live in unprecedented times. There have been 20 ministerial resignations and many, many more at Parliamentary Private Secretary level, and the Government have been found to be in contempt of Parliament—the first Government ever to be. No one even seems to bat an eyelid any more. Then, we had the events of yesterday. Yes, the Prime Minister may have spent 22 hours on her feet answering questions on all this, but we are still none the wiser. We have no concrete date for when that meaningful vote will ever come to fruition. Every time legitimate scrutiny is performed by Opposition Members, we are shut down and told that it is political point scoring.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

rose—

[Dr Huq]

I will not give way because a lot of people want to speak.

The Government are crippled by indecision and paralysed by Brexit. Labour was accused of constructive ambiguity when trying to steer a course for both the 48% and the 52%, but now the Government have adopted the same strategy, trying to scare people into supporting their deal by invoking either no deal or no Brexit, depending on who they are talking to—they cannot both be right. Or are they trying to bore us into accepting their deal by saying that the British public are bored of this, even while refusing to make a fresh assessment of what the British public think now?

Of the 164 hon. Members who spoke in the debate, 122 were against the deal. This is a decision bigger than on any piece of legislation, any Budget, anything that any of us has voted for, but it seems that the Government do not want to play ball and follow the parliamentary rules. Every time I have raised the question of a people’s vote with the Prime Minister, she has told me that it would corrode trust in politics and politicians, but can she not see that she is doing just that—corroding faith in democracy? She has whipped MPs to abstain on Opposition day motions—I think it all started with Andy Burnham’s motion on how people are not pawns and should not be used as such in the negotiations. The Government have been forced to publish legal and economic advice. We now know why, having seen that advice. They have been found in contempt of Parliament. And all that before yesterday marching us all to the top of the hill and then pulling the vote at the last minute.

Democracy is not just about turnouts at general elections; it is about votes in this House, and we surely cannot have a Government who decide not to take part when they see that they cannot win. Our unwritten constitution may not have formal checks and balances, but it relies on trust, and that is slipping away from the Government. They are clocking up air miles rather than votes and ditching openness and transparency. Any decision should be taken only when people are in full command of the facts, but this Government believe the opposite. The only way to resolve this is by holding a people’s vote to see if the will of the people in 2016 is still the will of the people now.