Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Soubry and Michael Ellis

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)]

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend, and I look forward to doing so to discuss that matter.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Change UK)]

T5. I campaigned against a 60 foot viaduct that HS2 Ltd was planning to build through the village of Trowell to deliver HS2. I am pleased that it has abandoned that plan, but its alternative, which is a cutting that means 20 more homes will be demolished, does not solve the problem of the real economic and environmental damage that will be caused. The alternative and best way to deliver HS2, including the east midlands hub at Toton sidings, is a tunnel. Will the Secretary of State or a Minister—I do not mind who—meet me to discuss the merits of a tunnel as the best way to deliver all the benefits of HS2 to Broxtowe?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Soubry and Michael Ellis

Monday 20th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

There is an unsatisfactory anomaly whereby war widows can keep their pensions if they remarried before 1973 or after 2005, but not in between. That is an unhappy and unsatisfactory anomaly for war widows, so will the Secretary of State or the Minister look at it?

[Anna Soubry]

We have a new Secretary of State, and he, I, and other Ministers, continue to consider that issue. Notwithstanding how much sympathy—perhaps that is not the right word—but support we might have for the argument made, there is a real legal problem and difficulty with retrospection, and that also occupies our minds when deciding what to do.

Forensic Science Service

Debate between Anna Soubry and Michael Ellis

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

There is a very big difference there. Hon. Members will do well to recall that under the McFarland review the previous Labour Government effectively accepted a move towards privatisation but botched the job. There is no point in trying to get away from the fact that the FSS is urgently in need of change, and the Government’s move is the right one for the wider interests of forensics.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree—perhaps this has not been understood—that before a so-called expert can give written or oral evidence to a court the judge has to be satisfied that they are indeed an expert in the field in which they say they are an expert? It matters not where they have come from. What matters to the judge is that they have qualifications, experience and so on, so that it can be determined that they are an expert in the field in which they are giving evidence.

[Michael Ellis]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend—I have made that point already. The reality is that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service would not seek to put a case before a judge and jury that relied on someone who was not actually an expert. Therefore, pursuing that argument is clutching at straws.