Policing and Crime Bill
Bill Wiggin ExcerptsTuesday 10th January 2017
(7 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 10 January 2017 - (10 Jan 2017)
Brandon Lewis
As always, my hon. Friend makes an important point. However, let me make it clear again that the Government will make a decision on this once we have had a chance to review the outcome of the consultation and in the light of the legal proceedings, and not before the legal proceedings have concluded.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
But will it not be awkward for the Government if they completely ignore the Press Recognition Panel’s submission? After all, independently overseeing press regulation was what it was set up to do, and it is unequivocally calling for section 40 to be implemented.
Kevin Foster
The amendment talks about ensuring that victims of crime are “not subjected to unnecessary delay”; it does not talk about monitoring. I accept that if we were looking at having a system of guidance, for instance, proposing “must ensure” would be putting something on to the statute book. For me, ensuring victims of crime are supported through the court process would be more beneficial than these amendments. In addition, people now have police and crime commissioners whom they can hold to account for the work they do.
This is a large group of amendments and we could spend quite some time talking about it. I do not believe that adding these amendments to the Bill is the right way forward. We should look at having a properly consulted-on system that does not have unintended consequences. That is why I agree with the Government motion to disagree with the Lords amendments.
Bill Wiggin
I will not delay the House for long. I want to heap praise on the Secretary of State for not giving in to the pressure of the media moguls, and, although we are putting a consultation out, we are determined that no grass shall grow. I want her to be very clear that we truly appreciate what she has done.
Colleagues who are unhappy about amendment 24 ought to pay more attention to the brilliance of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who has put together a fantastic plan for dealing with this thorny issue. If they gave it their full attention, they would, like me, want to see section 40 implemented.
The Press Recognition Panel is completely independent, and given amendment 24 and the concerns being shown by their lordships—
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am so sorry to disagree with my hon. Friend, but the Press Recognition Panel is not independent; it is the creation, under a royal charter, ultimately of the Crown and therefore of the state.
Bill Wiggin
It is still independent because it does not choose who and what is the regulator; it determines only that the regulator is independent. It is perfectly acceptable. I know my hon. Friend is very keen to defend the press, but this whole instrument does exactly that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) emphasised the point that the local press in particular would be very vulnerable if it was not regulated—[Interruption.] Yes, it would. The regulator will protect it from having to pay the costs. This is why colleagues should really study what my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset has put together. It is much, much better than they might originally have thought.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Wiggin Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hayes
It is critically important that they have the resources, but they also need the right powers. That is precisely why we are bringing together those powers—they have been mentioned several times during this question session—in a clear, transparent and comprehensive way. This is a balance between giving those who are missioned to keep us safe what they need to do the job, and having the right checks and balances in place to maintain the role of this House in holding Ministers to account for the exercise of those functions.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
T5. One of the more irritating crimes is antisocial behaviour. Will the Government send a very positive message to the police community support officers who do so much to deal with this problem?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
It is incredibly important that the police tackle antisocial behaviour. It makes a difference to so many of our constituents and is an issue that comes up in our postbags.
Criminal Law
Bill Wiggin Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
Whatever the outcome of the Divisions tonight, I think it would be helpful for the House to know what happened to my constituent whom I visited in Wandsworth prison. I was appalled not only by how horrible prison is but by the miscarriage of justice experienced by my constituent.
In Romania, my constituent gave the equivalent of £2 to a young beggar. Two policemen immediately accused him of having sex with this boy, arrested him and took him to a cash point machine where he refused to pay them off as he had done nothing wrong. The prosecution was based on a witness who gave contradictory statements, and the policemen and the beggar were never seen or heard from again. My constituent was arrested on 11 August and was released from Romanian prison on 3 November 2004 by a judge who recorded that there was no evidence against him and that the original arrest warrant was illegal.
My constituent returned home to the UK later in November, following direct advice from the then consul at our embassy. He refused to give money to his interpreter’s friends to make his files disappear, and so without either his knowledge, or that of the British embassy in Bucharest, he was tried and convicted in absentia—illegally—in 2005. An appeal followed, which led to another trial, of which neither he nor the British embassy were made aware. It was only on 3 March 2007, when he received an e-mail from the Romanian desk of the Foreign Office that he first heard news of these events. It said:
“I am sorry that it has taken so long to get back to you.”
It told him that the Romanian Ministry of Justice had noted that
“you were sentenced to 7 years with…approximately £1,000 fine in moral damages and…approximately £140 for court expenses; your appeal against the above decision was made at the Bucharest Tribunal, the result was that your sentence was reduced to 4 years; this sentence was then open to appeal by the Prosecutor’s Office…and the initial sentence of 7 years was re-set. As far as we are aware, you will not be extradited but will have to pay the damages if the minor involved employs a lawyer to track you down.”
Although the first my constituent knew of these developments was on 3 March 2007, our embassy in Bucharest had been working to find out such information, without any success, for more than two years since the initial trial held in absentia.
On 5 March 2007, just two days later, my constituent was arrested at work in Tenerife, on an European arrest warrant, to serve the sentence in Romania, without any promise of a retrial. He had never been given any opportunity to speak or give evidence in his own defence and was given no promise that he ever would.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The seriousness of the case to which my hon. Friend refers in his excellent speech will be listened to by his constituent and his constituent’s family. Does that not show that the voters who send us here do not want us to get involved in procedural shenanigans in the House of Commons? They would rather we have a proper debate and allow Members to raise constituency cases as my hon. Friend is trying to do.
Bill Wiggin
My hon. Friend is quite right, but this case gets a lot worse. This man was then held in a Madrid prison while an appeal against his extradition was submitted. The Foreign Office sent a letter to the Spanish authorities saying that, unless the Romanians were willing to ensure that a retrial took place, they should decline Romania’s request to have him extradited. No such assurance was given, but on 14 May 2007 he was taken back to Bucharest where he spent a further 21 months in prison, enduring horrendous conditions which fell considerably short of the minimum required by members of the EU. Most importantly, the Spanish constitutional court, following the Foreign Office request, upheld the appeal against extradition—
Mr Speaker
Order. These are matters of judgment and degree, and I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. In the debate on whether the question be not now put, it is perfectly reasonable for Members on either side of the argument to put their case with reference to matters that they think either do or do not require immediate resolution by the House. Where the hon. Gentleman strays somewhat beyond the legitimate parameters of this debate is when he starts to go into great detail, which he is now doing, of the particulars of the matter of the EAW or some other policy matter. That he should not do, and I am clear in my mind, upon receipt of suitable advice, that it would be unwise—I know the hon. Gentleman applied to me to speak in the main debate—for him simply to read out the speech that he would otherwise have made as though the motion moved by the shadow Home Secretary had not been moved. The hon. Gentleman might not have wanted it to be moved, but it has been moved, and he needs to display—dare I say it—a deftness of touch and an adaptability in terms of footwork.
Bill Wiggin
I am most grateful for your guidance, Mr Speaker. I have been at pains to avoid mentioning anything that might fall outside the motion—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that it is very difficult to interpret the precise will of the House on these matters without notice. I am alert to the argument for closure, which is what he is seeking, but several other Members have been standing—[Interruption.] Order. Therefore, I am quite open to the case for closure after a reasonable interval, but I would like to see whether, when the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) has concluded his speech—before it becomes even more disorderly—there are other hon. Members still seeking to catch my eye. If there are, and if my assessment is that they are likely to want to make orderly speeches, I might wish to hear them. If the hon. Gentleman is hopeful that closure might be accepted before too long has passed—I leave the House to consider what constitutes “too long”—he may not be disappointed.
Bill Wiggin
I am sorry that I read some of my speech, Mr Speaker, and will leave it there so that you will not feel that I have strayed again. My purpose in speaking in this debate is that, as you have ruled that we are not debating something that we wanted to debate, I wanted the Home Secretary to hear of the specific injustices suffered by my constituent. I would have been able to read those out, but now I will not. Luckily for the House, I will not take a great deal more time. My constituent was told that he was not going to be extradited, but he was extradited on the day that the Spanish court decided that it would not allow that. I think that we need to be allowed to continue this debate—
Mr Speaker
Order. Ignoring the instruction of the Chair does not cease to be ignoring the instruction of the Chair just because it is done politely and with a charming smile. I think that the hon. Gentleman is concluding his speech—his peroration is being reached, and may even have been concluded.
Bill Wiggin
Therefore, I hope that we will not rush to vote on this important matter, because there are serious cases. My constituent did not get legal aid to allow him to clear his name. Until we get the justice element right, we should not allow debates such as this to be curtailed too speedily.