Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Ben Gummer and Jonathan Djanogly(13 years ago)
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Ben Gummer
Again, I regret what the shadow Minister has said. On several occasions, I have sat through three hours of speeches from him in Committee—
Ben Gummer
That was one speech. On several occasions, we had three-hour speeches where points were recycled and regurgitated without use to the legislative process. It is unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman claims that I am padding things out, as I hope that I am addressing points not yet raised in this Chamber. I am going to do so briefly. I feel I should do so, as although I am happy to admit that I am not someone from a legal background and that I do not have a previous interest in this area of domestic violence, I have the experience of sitting in the Public Bill Committee and understanding the arguments put both by the Opposition and the Government in this difficult area. I speak as a layman and I hope to offer my support to points made by Members on both sides of the House.
On amendment 113, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), we face a small issue about whether people from the European economic area are caught within this legislation. It will cover only a small handful of people, but the inevitable consequence of missing it out—if that happens—is that there will be some travesty and miscarriage of justice precisely in a case where someone falls through the gap. I hope that the Government will carefully examine that suggestion in the first half of the amendment.
I also fully support what my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said about undertakings. I have heard much evidence from people practising in this field who give a reasonable argument that a counter-productive eventuality of this Bill is that, if undertakings are excluded, it could end up greatly prolonging cases, and not only to the detriment of litigants: it would also affect the costs of the court. I hope that his constructive and sensible suggestions, which come with considerable experience of sitting on the bench and acting as counsel, will be taken up by the Government as the fair-minded suggestions that they are.
More broadly, we have a problem on self-reporting. I hope that hon. Members, especially Labour Members, will bear me out on this. Anyone who has contact with the family courts and who talks to family judges will know about the impact that allegations of child abuse have had in private law cases. In the opinion of many counsel and judges, in the past few years, allegations of child abuse have increasingly been made far too readily when no substance is behind the claims. It would be unfortunate if, under the new regime, allegations of domestic abuse and domestic violence were made as a precept to gain legal aid, because that would devalue the claims other people make completely legitimately. That is what is happening in the courts at the moment with allegations of child abuse. Several judges have remarked to me that so often is it claimed that one party or another has committed child abuse, it is beginning to numb the senses of the judges hearing those cases. It would be wrong if a similar situation were to arise with this new regime. The Government must therefore phrase the definition of domestic violence very carefully.
I hope that the Government have heard the concerns of Opposition and Government Members, such as those of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, those that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe has voiced on several occasions, and those raised today by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). I can hear from the way in which the Minister has been replying that he understands that some sort of uniformity would be desirable across government and that some recognition of the problems of encapsulating a definition within the Bill will be made here or in another place.
The Opposition went into the last election saying that they would seek cuts to legal aid and that promise has been reiterated both by the Leader of the Opposition, in January, and the shadow Secretary of State, who is sitting on the Front Bench, on several occasions. However, in Committee, the shadow Minister tabled dozens of amendments, some of which were, by his own admission, contradictory and many of which were culled from the handouts given by lobbyists, which extended considerably the Committee’s deliberations when we could have been discussing the meat of the proposals as we have tried to do today. He came to the House with a new amendment having denied the Public Bill Committee the ability to consider properly many of the issues that we should have discussed.
Ben Gummer
I am just coming to that if the hon. Gentleman will listen.
When they table amendments, the Opposition have a duty to explain how their changes would be paid for and what balances would be made elsewhere in the Bill, but so far we have had nothing to substantiate how they would do that, and neither do we have any idea how their changes would fit into the general pattern of the Bill. I cannot therefore vote for their amendment or that of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—amendment 113 —as neither is complete and nor have they been properly discussed.
In conclusion, I hope that we can continue our proceedings without trying to politicise the issue of domestic violence. I hope we can discuss the precise provisions in the Bill without throwing what I feel have been intemperate and sometimes misjudged accusations at one side purely because they happen to disagree with the assertions put by the other.
Mr Djanogly
First, let me confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and other hon. Members that I have listened carefully to the debate, which has been informed and varied. A significant number of general and more specific issues have come up in our deliberations. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) that the debate has, in some ways, become too polarised given the significant agreement and consensus among all hon. Members about the need to counter domestic violence.
Given the number of issues to address, it is hard to know where to start, but I shall begin with the definition of abuse, which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and the hon. Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). The accusation is that the definition of abuse in the Bill narrows the scope of legal aid in comparison with ACPO’s definition. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill weakened the definition of abuse. I can confirm to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that the definition in the Bill does not require physical abuse. Both the ACPO definition and the Bill definition are very broad and embrace abuse that is not physical, and it is difficult to see what description of behaviour in the ACPO definition would not be covered by the broad description of physical or mental abuse used in the Bill.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested that I said in Committee that to widen the definition of domestic violence would induce self-reporting. As I think my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich was heading towards saying, that confuses the definition of abuse, which determines scope, and the criteria for an individual to qualify. The definition of abuse in the Bill is broad and it is difficult to see how it does not cover that which is covered by the ACPO definition. Neither definition says anything about how abuse is to be evidenced.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon injected a sense of balance into the debate and I noted his condemnation of archaic and unacceptable language. I think we can all agree on that.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the Bill and ACPO definitions of domestic violence. To put an end to this issue, let me say that if any right hon. or hon. Member can write to me with a specific, concrete example of abuse that would be covered by the ACPO definition but not by the definition in the Bill I will give the issue serious consideration.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Gummer and Jonathan Djanogly(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Djanogly
Parliament has on previous occasions decided against the ousting of the High Court’s judicial review jurisdiction. The Supreme Court recently indicated that it considered it would not be appropriate for the Government to take that route. However, improvements are being made. The legal aid reforms currently before Parliament seek to remove legal aid from repeat applications for judicial review in immigration and asylum cases.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
13. What recent progress he has made in implementing his policy of payment by results to reduce the rate of reoffending.