Oral Answers to Questions

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I know that the hon. Lady cares deeply about the matters under discussion and was quoted this morning in relation to them. I recently met Peter Tutton, who is head of policy at StepChange. He made the point about independent regulation and we will consider it in due course.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

What was the outcome of the review of the implementation of the bailiff reforms?

[Lucy Frazer]

We reviewed them recently and made a number of proposals to protect vulnerable people. Interestingly, although it criticises enforcement, the Citizens Advice report, which came out this morning, says that the changes we made in 2014 were largely positive.

Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Bim Afolami Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point.

The Bill will have a significant impact on access to justice, and we know that the portal system is nowhere near ready to accommodate the changes. It has not been properly tested. Under successive Tory Governments, access to justice has fast become a luxury available only to the few. A recent survey showed that 63% of Unison members would not proceed or be confident to proceed with a claim without legal representation. The small claims limit changes in the Bill will push nearly two thirds of genuinely injured people away from pursuing a claim if they do not meet the arbitrarily imposed criteria dictated by the Lord Chancellor. The idiom of adding insult to injury has never been more apt, and it is surely time to think again.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I have done something a bit novel: I have listened to what has been said in the debate, and my remarks will focus on that. I did not come here with a prepared speech; I came here and listened to the contributions from both sides.

I would like to start by responding to the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) and taking up a couple of points that she made. The first relates to the idea that the Government are somehow doing this because of special pleading from the insurance industry and that they are somehow in bed with the industry. The aim of the Bill is to reduce premiums for individuals. That is the focus of the Bill. If I were the insurance industry, I would want premiums to go up, but the aim of this package of measures is for premiums to go down for ordinary people. I therefore do not agree with her assertion.

Another point that the hon. Lady made was that the setting of the limit by the Lord Chancellor, or any future Lord Chancellor, was arbitrary, unfair and unjust, but that is why we have this House and why we have Ministers. They are not here just to do interviews on the “Today” programme. We have Ministers to make judgments that they are then held democratically accountable for. I accept that Labour Members—or, indeed, at some point in the very distant future, Conservative Members, when they are sitting on the Opposition Benches—might dislike a judgment that is made by a future Lord Chancellor, but we settle these things through the democratic accountability of this House. To reject that principle and to suggest that every limit in any area of law, whether this or anything else, should somehow not—

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He talks with great passion about the democratic accountability of this House. Does he therefore agree that any changes to the small claims limit should not be done by negative statutory instrument, as the Government are proposing, and that they should instead be debated on the Floor of the House?

[Bim Afolami]

That is an interesting point. I have served on many Committees, as we all have, and some have huge amounts of engagement from lots of Members while others have less. But this House is not just this Chamber; it is also all the Committee Rooms. Negative statutory instruments provide a way for significant amounts of secondary legislation—I do not know how many pieces of legislation; probably hundreds—to go through Parliament. I cannot agree with the hon. Lady 100% that using that procedure will always result in a lack of democratic accountability, because frankly, in modern government, it plays a significant part in our governance process. I recognise the point she makes, however, and it is fair to say that sometimes people do not pay as much attention in Committees as they might do, but that is fundamentally the case for this Chamber, too.

[Ruth George]

Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that, on occasions, statutory instrument Committees do not provide a democratic procedure, as in the case of the cuts to criminal injuries compensation in 2012? At the time, one Committee completely overturned the Minister’s proposals and asked for them to be brought back. A separate Committee was then reconvened, made up of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and it railroaded through exactly the same criminal injuries compensation cuts. This House should not be seeking to use that kind of procedure for something that is so important to hundreds of thousands of accident victims.

[Bim Afolami]

I do not want to leave the House, or the hon. Lady, with the impression that I believe that statutory instruments are undemocratic. They are democratic, and they are a form of how we do things in this House. I was unaware of the case that she mentioned. The broader point is that getting primary legislation through, particularly in a hung Parliament such as this, will always be difficult—[Interruption.] No, primary legislation is not always the place where we make every single change. That is why we have a Committee system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of these claims companies operate on a no win, no fee basis? Therefore, if no payment is made and a claim is defended, the claimant will not be paid if they are defeated.

[Bim Afolami]

That is obviously factually accurate, but we need to ensure that we deal with the cause of these problems. As I have said, the Bill does not deal with everything, but it does deal with at least part of the problem. That, in and of itself, is a valuable thing.

[Ruth George]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the underlying cause that makes these changes necessary, as has the hon. Member for Croydon South. As they have both identified, that underlying cause is surely the fact that insurance companies should not be defending claims that could be fraudulent.

[Bim Afolami]

It is partly that, but the important point is that no single piece of legislation in this House can deal with every single problem. We can identify a particular problem and deal with it in a particular piece of legislation.

[Huw Merriman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we can speak proudly from these Benches about the fact that civil litigation reform over the past few years has led to changes in no win, no fee, as well as to the banning of referral fees and the use of benefits by these companies? Government Members actually have something to say on this. Those changes have also led to a reduction of about £50 in insurance premiums.

[Bim Afolami]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I reiterate that the point of this legislation is to bring down insurance premiums for ordinary people by, I think, between 35% and 40%. I look to the Minister to check whether that is right.

[Jo Stevens]

The UK’s leading insurance companies earned more than £2.6 billion in profits in 2016, up on 2015. The proposed changes do not guarantee any reductions in premiums; they simply say that the premiums may fall. There is no guarantee that they will, and we know from previous Bills that this does not happen. Why does the hon. Gentleman suppose that things will be different this time?

[Bim Afolami]

I take the hon. Lady’s point. The industry has pledged to pass this on. My understanding is that premiums fell by an average of roughly £50 a year in 2012. When we talk about averages, we must bear in mind that if premiums were to fall by an average of, say, £35 under this legislation, the figure in some instances would be much greater—especially for young drivers, for example. Those are my remarks, based on what I have seen and heard today, and I commend this speech to the House.

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Bim Afolami Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 6th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

As I have listened to the speeches that have been made so far this morning—mostly by Conservative Members—I have been struck by the length of time my colleagues have been spending on their mobile phones. I say that because it is important for the thousands, or millions, of people listening to the debate at home, and those in the Public Gallery, to recognise that the purpose of the Bill is not to punish prisoners for wanting to get in touch with their families or friends outside; the purpose of the Bill, which I fully support—like other Members, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) for introducing it—is to improve the security and safety of our prisons, and, specifically, to make it harder for people to engage in criminal activity from behind bars.

As we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), nearly 50% of prisoners reoffend within a year. That is an appalling and sobering statistic, and we should all be very worried about it, not least because those are only the ones we catch within a year. Apart from the fact that reoffending ruins offenders’ lives, the lives of their families and the lives of the people against whom they offend, it costs the country north of £15 billion a year, so we need to tackle it. I know—and all other Conservative Members know, as, I suspect, do most Opposition Members—how hard the prisons Minister is working, along with other Members of the Government, on the whole issue of prison reform, and on ensuring that we can rehabilitate our prisoners more effectively.

As we have already heard, this is, in some ways, quite a technical Bill. It enables the Secretary of State to authorise mobile phone operators themselves to act quickly and effectively to disturb the signals and operation of phones in our prisons. In this place we often talk of big aims and grandiose ambitions, and use soaring rhetoric, but it is often small, technical adjustments that have some of the biggest, most far-reaching consequences, which is another reason why I support the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—a dear friend, not just an honourable one—mentioned loving prisoners and their families. I think that we do love prisoners and their families. We want to give them the best possible opportunity not to be drawn into criminal activity behind bars, but to put their lives back on track. That should accompany all the other reforms that the Government are trying to introduce, such as the recruitment of additional prison officers, additional funding and investment in prisons, and improved drug treatment.

We have heard from many Members about the use of technologies such as drones that are enabling mobile phones to be dropped into prisons. Let me press the Minister, and the Government, to ensure that we are dealing fully with all the different areas of legislation that can help this Bill to be effective. Also on today’s Order Paper is my Bill relating to psychoactive substances, a subject about which we have already heard this morning. Dealing with such substances is one way that could make my hon. Friend’s Bill more effective. Keeping drugs out of prisons and preventing mobile phones from being used illicitly constitutes another step towards sorting out the difficult problem of reoffending.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes again, because it is hard to get Members into the House on Fridays when most of them tend to be in their constituencies. It is testimony to the quality of the Bill, and the commitment that Conservative Members—including the Minister—and a number of Opposition Members have to it that so many are present today, and I think it gives an indication of the importance of what we are trying to do.

Let me end by saying this—[Hon. Members: “More!”] More? I do not want to test the indulgence of the House too much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Politicians spend a lot of time talking. We do that because it is our job, and because we are paid to advocate on behalf of our constituents. However, we must ensure that we talk with purpose, and with action in view. I am very happy to be here today—in fact, I think that this is the first Friday on which I have spoken in the House since being elected—because I know that this talking, not just by me but by other Members, will lead to concrete action to improve prisoners’ lives, and that is why I wholeheartedly support the Bill.