Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

We published our response to the Bellamy review and the criminal legal aid independent review, and indeed are already implementing those reforms. They include uplifts of 15% to most legal aid fee schemes, which is very significant given the current context of public sector pay challenges. The hon. Gentleman needs to put this in some kind of perspective: just to give one aspect, criminal legal aid spend is expected to be £1.2 billion a year, so we are doing the right thing to make sure we support the most vulnerable who need access to legal aid and to the courts.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T6. We have an excellent target—up in lights—of recruiting 20,000 more police officers, but prison officers can appear to be out of sight and out of mind. These are brave men and women who regularly get assaulted. What are we doing on prison officer recruitment and retention?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to him for the work he did as Prisons Minister—I remember it, because I was a junior Minister in the Department at the same time. He is absolutely right about the value of prison officers, and how they are out of sight and out of mind; people do not bang pots and pans for them in the same way they do for other public servants, but we should take every opportunity to sing their praises.

To answer my hon. Friend’s specific question, between the end of 2016 and 2022, the number of full-time prison officers increased by 3,677 to 21,632. That shows that the recruitment programme is bearing fruit.

Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

Debate between Andrew Selous and Dominic Raab

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s advocacy and tireless campaigning on behalf of his constituent. Of course we want to secure his release from the Houthis. The hon. Gentleman rather smartly wove in the non-state actor element of these regimes. That is important, because this is not just about perpetrators who come from arms of the state: there are a lot of other people out there, whether from militia, armed groups, various organisations or organised crime, who are aiding and abetting and supporting these human rights abuses, and we need to target all of them.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I particularly welcome the reference to the hundreds of thousands of people who perished in the gulags of North Korea—a country about which we learn very little from television reports or social media posts. In his statement, the Foreign Secretary mentions organisations rather than individuals in respect of North Korea. What are we going to do to publicise the names of the individuals responsible for these heinous crimes, in North Korea and globally?

[Dominic Raab]

Part of the problem in North Korea, as we discussed earlier, is the clandestine nature of the decision-making process. However, my hon. Friend is right that we would certainly now be able and willing to proceed to name and designate any individuals. The two organisations that we are designating are bureau 27 of the Ministry of State Security, which oversees the political prison camps, and the Ministry of Public Security’s correctional bureau, which oversees the ordinary prison camps—both ghastly in their own right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question on this pertinent and salient point. Legal aid remains available for inquests through the exceptional case funding scheme. Although those decisions are obviously decided independently, I reassure her that more than half the applications in relation to inquest cases in 2016-17 were granted.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Full-body scanners that detect drugs that are concealed within the person are successfully used across America. The Ministry of Justice has trialled one scanner. Has there been an evaluation, will we see more trials, and could the scanners be used on a mobile basis?

Brain Tumours in Children

Debate between Andrew Selous and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Raab]

I will make a bit more progress, because otherwise the Minister will not have a chance to respond at length, which I know she will want to do.

The HeadSmart campaign has developed an online education module to help health professionals to recognise the signs and symptoms of brain tumours in children and young people. There is now a network of clinical champions in each of the neuro-oncology centres around the UK giving presentations to fellow health professionals on the subject. There is also, critically, a network of local champions. David’s mum, Sacha, who is also here for the debate, is the first of those.

HeadSmart awareness packs have been distributed to more than 1,000 doctors’ surgeries around the country, and more than 625,000 symptom cards have been distributed across the UK. Only one year after the launch of the HeadSmart campaign, the diagnosis delay has fallen from an average of 9.3 weeks in 2011 to 7.5 weeks in 2012. This year, it is down further to 6.9 weeks. That is terrific progress, and we should welcome it.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Raab]

I am just going to make a bit more progress, if I may, but I will come back to the hon. Gentleman. The progress has been good, but it has also highlighted how easy it is, with practical steps, to save lives and prevent the serious and permanent damage that tumours can inflict on their survivors. HeadSmart’s explicit aim is to get the average diagnosis delay down to five weeks, which represents best practice in the west. That would save countless lives and reduce the number of permanent disabilities.

There are various aspects to the ongoing campaign, and hon. Members have intervened already with particular dimensions that they want to explore. I want to focus on three basic steps, which are well within our gift as politicians, to help us reach that critical five-week target. The crux of the debate, compared with so many others that we grapple with, is that that target is reachable and these three measures are in the “eminently doable” category. We really ought to stretch our sinews as politicians to ensure that the target is reached.

First, and most importantly, the HeadSmart campaign has made it a priority to get its credit card-sized awareness cards into every school and nursery in the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) has mentioned. I have got one here. It can fit into the smallest wallet or purse; it explains the early symptoms of a brain tumour; it differentiates between symptoms depending on the age of the child; it tells you what to do if you are worried; and it gives contact details and a website to find out more information. If the cards are handed out to children at school to take home to their parents, that will go a long way towards heightening awareness and ensuring that children and parents have an easy reference tool to hand.

HeadSmart is already making progress. As we have heard, distribution has been carried out in Wiltshire, East Sussex, Sutton and Reading. Those areas are the trailblazers, and other councils are expected to follow their lead soon. I will be visiting Surrey county council with Sacha tomorrow. To date, the campaign has benefited from local co-ordinators who make contact with councils to encourage them to disseminate the cards through their internal mail system. Critically, because the Brain Tumour Charity pays for the cards and bundles them for distribution, the measure costs the councils nothing.

What we need now from Government is co-ordination and, frankly, political will, rather than pounds and pence. I have a very simple request, which is the most important purpose of the debate. Will the Minister write to every head of public health in all our councils, given their new responsibilities in the area, and urge them to back the campaign by sending out these cards for distribution via every school and nursery? That is the single measure that can contribute the most towards nailing the five-week target.

[Andrew Selous]

Brain tumours are the main cause of cancer deaths in children. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that they get only 0.8% of research funding, given that they are so significant?

[Mr Raab]

Although I am focusing on three practical aspects of the campaign, I thank my hon. Friend for that wider point about research funding. It was well made and I am sure that it has been registered.

The second key measure under the HeadSmart campaign is for the Government to encourage secondary school head teachers to invite the Teenage Cancer Trust to do a one-hour talk on the subject, because that has a proven track record of spreading awareness. Will the Minister take the lead and team up with her colleagues at the Department for Education to deliver on that important step?