Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. and learned Friend makes a very good point. The Government recognise the importance of equipping those on the front line with the tools they need to tackle FGM—and that means across the board. The Department of Health has funded a £3 million FGM prevention programme to support NHS staff and the Department for Education has provided £2 million to support a national programme, backed by Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association, that will create a highly specialised team of skilled social workers.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

25. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Justice on equal treatment of men and women in the family courts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)]

Family law does not discriminate between men and women, and the family courts apply the law to men and women equally. Judges know that they must not discriminate on any grounds, including gender.

[Mr Turner]

The recent case involving a woman who ran away with her son to frustrate an order of the court is the tip of an enormous iceberg. Many children lose contact with their fathers each year, due to women wilfully obstructing child arrangements orders. Will the Minister undertake research on the impact of that on the life chances of the children affected?

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend speaks about an emotive subject, but the law changed last October and now requires the family court to presume that each parent’s involvement will further the child’s welfare unless there is evidence to the contrary. However, the child’s welfare remains a paramount consideration for the court. Where either parent breaches a child arrangements order without a reasonable excuse, the court has the power to deal with it, including by imposing community sentences or even by treating the breach as a contempt of court, punishable by imprisonment or a fine.

John Downey

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that the hurt of the relatives of victims and, indeed, if they survived, of the victims themselves is a matter of which the House should be well aware. I suspect that it is right to say that there are very few Members who do not know people personally who have been affected by the violence in Northern Ireland. I certainly do.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s other points, the best course of action, if I may recommend it to him, rather than asking me questions which, in truth, within my responsibility, I cannot answer, is to initiate the things he wishes. There is a wider review as to what has happened, but first he may wish to see what the police ombudsman has to say in the internal inquiry report. Then, of course, the House is a Chamber in which these matters may be debated.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Who approved the letter en bloc or individually?

[The Attorney-General]

I choose my words to my hon. Friend with care because, over time, the letters may have been approved in slightly different ways. Let us be quite clear: these letters were ultimately the responsibility of the Governments in office at the time at which they were sent. I will not accept the suggestion that it was otherwise. That is a completely distinct issue from that of where mistakes may have been made in the factual analysis before the letter was sent.

Assisted Suicide

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I rise to contribute to this very important debate. First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) for bringing the issue before the House, and to others who have tabled amendments allowing us to have a wide-ranging discussion.

I say at the outset that I am not in favour of assisted suicide. The reason is a strong personal belief in the sanctity of life, which includes not allowing one person to help another take their own life. I appreciate, however, that these are difficult issues, and that decisions are taken by people who are in terrible positions as they watch, and have to live with, the suffering of someone they love. It is hard to put ourselves in that position and know for sure what we would do, whatever our position on the sanctity of life.

With that in mind, I understand the motion and amendment (b), not because I welcome such guidance on prosecution but because I believe there are a very few exceptional cases in which we must show compassion, so I unhappily accept that it may be necessary. The alternatives would be prosecution in every case in which there is enough evidence, or seemingly arbitrary decisions by the DPP, neither of which would deliver justice.

My fear is that when exceptions are made to laws, people find ways to exploit those exceptions and commit acts that are intended to be unlawful. A timely example is the recent revelations about practices in abortion clinics, which seemingly ignore the safeguards in the Abortion Act 1967 to prevent abortion on demand. That is akin to changing the law by the back door. We must ensure that in anything we do in this House we protect the vulnerable from those who would abuse any change in the law on assisted suicide.

I believe that, for the time being, the very difficult and rare cases in question should first be judged on an individual basis by the DPP. The numbers indicate that they are so few that that would not be difficult—only 18 cases of assisted suicide have been in court in the past 10 years.

I have grave misgivings about assisted suicide in any circumstances, but I believe that we must show our support for the wider availability of, and developments in, specialist palliative care. I want to pay a short tribute to the Earl Mountbatten hospice on the Isle of Wight. Like hospices up and down the country, it does an amazing job. Comfort, composure and compassion should be the default setting for those who are dying and those who wish to die, and expert palliative care can help to achieve that in the majority of cases.

I want to thank all my constituents who contacted me, on both sides of the argument, before the debate. They have given me much food for thought. I originally intended to vote against the motion in its entirety, but the wise words of my constituents and my own experience of watching a close friend die last year have taught me that things are not always black and white, however much we wish they were.

No Government could spend enough money in this area, and it is likely that none ever will, but we must do the best we can for those who are dying and those who love them. I believe that to consider the option of assisted suicide is morally wrong. I believe that the law is the law, and that people break it with an understanding that prosecution may follow. However, unless every case is to be prosecuted whatever the circumstances, there have to be some guidelines. I apologise to those of my constituents who feel that I have let them down.

Voting by Prisoners

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

Well, it was one of the reasons it took that view.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that we do not want a discriminatory rule on what we took a view on, but that they want an absolute rule?

[The Attorney-General]

I hope that I have understood my hon. Friend correctly. I do not think that the Court has suggested that there should be an absolute rule. In fact, it has made it quite clear in that and later judgments that there could be substantial flexibility for national legislatures to set their own criteria, which could be variable. For example, leaving a blanket prohibition to one side, it might be desired that a prohibition could be imposed after a particular period, so that someone could be banned from voting if sentenced to one, two, three or four years. The criteria could be different if the judiciary were given complete discretion over whether people should be banned and when such a ban should be applied. So there is a whole range of possible variants available to a legislature, if it were minded to consider them, that might well satisfy the Court’s concerns.

I am mindful of the strong views held in the House on this matter. On the maintenance of a blanket prohibition on all sentenced prisoners, the House should note that the Hirst case was followed by two other cases. This was the cause of my criticism of Labour’s dilatoriness on this matter. The first was Frodl v. Austria, in which the Court found that a ban on voting imposed on people sentenced to more than 12 months was wrong. The second case was Greens and M.T., in which the Court appeared to make it clear that it wanted the United Kingdom to enact some form of legislation.