Tackling Image-based Abuse

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) for tabling such an important debate, and she made some really powerful points.

I declare an interest: being very elderly, at one stage I was the Minister for Women and Equalities, and I was responsible for bringing forward the Revenge Porn Helpline. When that legislation came through, I was hopeful that that vital resource would be something temporary, and that one day it would be abolished because we did not need it any more. In actual fact, quite the opposite is true: it is busier than ever. As the hon. Member for Bolton North East said, it is catching some terrible perpetrators of the most horrific online abuse.

I was also the Minister for Digital and Culture who held the baton for a couple of years on the Online Safety Act 2023. I hope that legislation will offer more protection for the victims of this humiliating crime, which, as we know, disproportionately affects women. But technology moves so fast. I am concerned that, despite the protections in the Act and the Revenge Porn Helpline, the emergence of deepfakes in particular has opened up a new front in the war on women—I say that because 99% of pornographic images and deepfakes are of women. Literally tens of millions of deepfake images are being produced every year, most of them sexual, as the hon. Member for Bolton North East said.

The fact that the use of nudification apps and the creation of ultra-realistic deepfake porn for private use is still legal, and worse, becoming more popular, is a war on women’s autonomy. It is a war on our dignity, and a war on our identity. The creation of these unpleasant sexual or nude deepfakes serves to push us out of those spaces and to undermine and silence us, both online and offline. We must do everything we can to stand against it.

I am sure the Minister agrees that we owe a debt to my noble Friend Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge for her work to legislate in this area. She encountered some hate of her own when she was appointed to the other place—she was too young and too female—but her very presence there indicates exactly why we need young women in both Houses to stand up against these injustices and bring them to the fore. I hope the Minister will do everything in her power to see my noble Friend’s fantastic Bill become law.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that really important question; he raises some serious points. The Ministry of Justice funds over 60 specialist support services for victims of rape and sexual offending as well as dedicated victim support through the witness service. Court personnel provide support during and after hearings, and we have invested in trauma-informed training to improve the victim experience throughout court.

Rape and serious sexual offence victims can also request transcripts of sentencing remarks for free during a one-year pilot. I encourage all those who are eligible please to apply to the pilot.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady please confirm the number of criminals convicted of rape, sexual abuse, domestic abuse and domestic violence who are now back on our streets as a result of her Department’s early release scheme?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

As the hon. Lady will know, the Government took steps to exclude the most serious domestic abuse offenders from SDS40, an exemption that was not made under the previous Government’s end-of-custody supervised licence scheme. That was because we know that we need to protect women and girls, and we have a landmark mission to protect women and girls from violence. All the data on releases will be published as usual—the Lord Chancellor has made that clear—but we know that we need to do more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer]

I refer the hon. Lady to my colleague the victims Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), because I believe he has already met the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) to see how the issues raised by Jade’s law can be implemented. [Interruption.] As I have said, my colleague has met the proponent of Jade’s law to see how those issues can be progressed further.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

8. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of giving grandchildren a statutory right to access their grandparents following a divorce or bereavement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)]

We recognise that grandparents often play an important role in children’s lives and can provide stability in families following divorce or bereavement. However, when making any decision about a child’s upbringing the court’s paramount consideration must be the welfare of the child based on the individual facts of the case, and given the importance of considering each case on its individual merits neither adults nor children have a statutory right of access.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I thank the Minister for his answer but we know that the bond with a grandparent can be one of the most precious relationships in a child’s life, yet so often in the adult wars of family breakdown children are a weapon and actions by grandparents through the family court are often incredibly expensive and frequently fruitless. What more can the Department do to give grandchildren that right to see their grandparents, and is it not about time we followed the example of Scotland, which has an older persons Minister, and Northern Ireland and Wales, which have older persons commissioners, to take up such issues?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend might want to take up the question of an older persons commissioner with the Prime Minister because I suspect that is well above my pay grade. On access for grandparents, I will double-check this but am pretty sure that we recently extended the ability to get legal aid to special guardianship orders, which may well be accessible for grandparents to secure rights of access.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

As the hon. Lady knows, we have discussed these issues at some length in a different context, and she should know that I am ready to continue that conversation.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

This is a really excellent piece of legislation, and I congratulate the Secretary of State and his team on everything they are doing, but I could not miss this opportunity of raising the issue of the intergenerational impact of female imprisonment. As the Lord Chancellor knows, women make up just 4% of the prison population, yet two thirds of them have dependent children. Because they are so few, they are generally placed much further away from home and have much less access to some rehabilitative facilities than their male counterparts. That imprisonment can have a devastating impact on the children, so in many cases the children of women in prisons are victims themselves. There has been some fantastic work across the country by organisations such as Hope Street, run by One Small Thing, which I know the Prisons Minister—the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds)—has recently visited. Does the Secretary of State not feel that this Bill would have been an ideal opportunity to try to address that?

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. She mentions Hope Street, and the Nelson Trust, which I have visited, does excellent work in this regard. I think we do always have to remember that the job of Government is to ensure that the decision of the court can be upheld.

In other words, a court will of course consider the evidence from the prosecution at a sentencing hearing about what has taken place, will hear a plea in mitigation about the impact on the defendant of incarceration—including the impact on friends and children, their future and so on—and will then reach a decision based on all those matters about the correct sentence. So while I do not seek to downplay any of the really important points my hon. Friend mentioned, we need to do our bit within the criminal justice system to give effect to the order of the court, but to ensure it is done in a way that is humane and understands that there are family considerations.

We want prisoners to serve their time, but to be rehabilitated, and one of the critical ways of being rehabilitated is to ensure that family relationships endure. That is why there has been so much investment in courts in areas such technology to ensure prisoners can keep in contact with the outside, so that when they leave having repaid their debt to society they are in a position to pick up those important relationships.

In closing, I want to put on record my thanks to all who have helped to shape this Bill, in particular the victims who shared their stories and contributed to our consultation. I also pay tribute to my predecessors my right hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) for the parts they have played in advancing this Bill.

These measures will help ensure that every victim, from the Telford teenagers I mentioned to the elderly victim of confidence fraud, secures the service from our justice system that they deserve. From the moment of report to the moment of conviction, and indeed beyond if required, victims’ interests must be paramount. That is how justice is done, and I commend this Bill to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Victoria Atkins)]

A huge body of work is going on across every part of the criminal justice system, from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service and through to the courts. It involves the recruitment of more independent sexual violence advisers, who can make such a difference not only to victims’ recovery, but to their willingness and ability to continue with a prosecution. In particular, we are introducing enhanced measures for specialist support within three pilot courts to support victims who are taking forward these very difficult cases. We are working with the judiciary, the police and the CPS to ensure that we measure and identify what is working so that we can replicate it across the country.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

When it comes to female offenders, trauma-informed and gender-responsive programmes are the only way to break a cycle of crime and incarceration. Tomorrow, the brilliant charity One Small Thing will be here in Parliament to discuss the latest research on the intergenerational traumatic impact of maternal imprisonment. I would really love all Justice Ministers, but particularly my hon. Friend the Minister of State, to come along and hear how the justice system could better be formatted to support women and children.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for that kind invitation; I would be delighted to attend. On the impact of intergenerational trauma, one of the many reasons we are piloting the first residential women’s centre in Wales is that we want to see how women who should not be receiving the very short sentences that can be imposed can benefit from an intensive residential course rather than prison. I will be watching the results with interest.

Rape: Criminal Prosecutions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising those historical cases. They are in the system and the injection of investment—£477 million in the overall Crown court system—will help with those particular cases. One of the reasons we selected the three pilots as we did—I should say that the Lord Chief Justice very much worked on this—is that we looked at the backlog of sexual violence cases within courts. For those courts with a lot of sexual violence cases—through no fault of anyone; we are not alleging that there is any fault within the system—and with these backlogs, we hope that this enhanced specialist support will give us some evidence as to whether these measures work, with a view to going further if need be.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I have absolutely no doubt of my hon. Friend’s commitment and dedication to this cause, and I am grateful to her for that. A lot of the figures she quotes are encouraging, but the fact is—she says it herself—that we have a long way to go. As she said, key to this is confidence in the system. Victims need confidence to come forward in the first place and then confidence to stay the course through the process, which can be fairly punitive, as she would be the first to admit. What more can she do to drive that confidence among victims?

[Victoria Atkins]

There are many ways in which we can support victims. One is through specialist support such as ISVAs and the victims charities that do such a vital job of working with women and victims of sexual violence. Another thing that we are in the process of setting up is a 24/7 support line for victims of sexual violence, and I am extremely grateful to Rape Crisis for its help on this. We are testing it carefully over the next couple of months to ensure that we understand when peaks and flows will necessitate proper staffing, but we are absolutely committed to providing those services so that victims can get the help they need when they need it.

Legal Services Regulation

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Written Statements

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

My noble friend the Minister of State for Civil Justice (Lord Faulks QC) has made the following written statement.

The Government are committed to encouraging open and competitive markets. Well-functioning markets are key to the health of the economy and promote growth, innovation and efficiency. Competitive markets are also in the best interest of consumers, enabling consumer choice resulting in better and more affordable products and services.

The legal services market is not only an important contributor to the UK economy, but also to access to justice. The Government are committed to a strong, independent and competitive legal services market, which will promote consumer choice and quality services at lower prices, ensuring greater access to justice for all.

On 30 November the Government published, “A Better Deal: boosting competition to bring down bills for families and firms” which set out the Government’s approach to encouraging open and competitive markets, for the benefit of the UK economy and UK consumers. A key part of the Government’s approach is to ensure that the statutory frameworks underpinning regulatory regimes allow regulators to regulate in a way that is proportionate and promotes competition and innovation.

The “Better Deal” document included a pledge to consult on making changes to the regulatory framework for legal services to remove barriers to market entry, and regulatory burdens on, alternative business structures in legal services, and on making legal services regulators independent from professional representative bodies.

Today, I am publishing a consultation that seeks views on the first of these proposals. The Government intend to consider the detail and timing of a further consultation on regulatory independence, in the context of the preliminary findings of the Competition and Markets Authority study into the legal services market, which are due to be published shortly.

Since 2010, when alternative business structures were first licensed to provide legal services, over 600 ABS firms have entered the market. The introduction of ABS businesses, particularly those that have access to external investment and business and commercial expertise, has benefited the market more widely. Recent research has indicated that ABS firms are more likely to be innovative than other regulated legal services firms: https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/Innovation-Report.pdf. These new, innovative providers have increased competition in the market, which we believe encourages a wider variety of legal services in the market that are more accessible and affordable to consumers.

As a result of concerns raised at the time about the potential risks of these new and unknown business models, the legislative framework for the regulation of ABS businesses, set out in the Legal Services Act 2007, is more onerous and prescriptive than that for traditional law firms.

In practice, ABS businesses have not been shown to attract any greater regulatory risk than traditional law firms and the Legal Services Board and front-line regulators suggest that the current statutory requirements act as a deterrent and an unnecessary barrier to firms wanting to change their current business model to a more innovative one, as well as to new businesses considering entering the market.

The proposals set out in this consultation aim to enable legal services regulators to reduce regulatory burdens on ABS, while taking a more effective risk-based approach to regulation.

[HCWS69]

Cremations

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Written Statements

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

Today the Government are publishing their response to the recent consultation on infant cremations, which sought views on proposals for a number of changes to the Cremation (England and Wales) Regulations 2008, and for improving other aspects of cremation practice.

Improving infant cremation legislation and practice has been a priority for me since I joined the Ministry of Justice last year. I am therefore very pleased to publish this document which sets out the changes we plan to make.

We consulted between December 2015 and March 2016 following consideration of David Jenkins’ report of June 2015 into infant cremations at Emstrey crematorium in Shropshire, and Lord Bonomy’s Scottish Infant Cremation Commission report of June 2014. These reports found that ashes were either not recovered following infant cremations, or were recovered but parents were neither consulted over what should happen to their babies’ ashes nor advised of the ashes’ final resting place.

Such practices caused parents already grieving the loss of their baby immense additional distress. Some parents will never know what happened to their babies’ ashes.

I have always made it clear that such practices should never happen again. It is my aim that the changes I am announcing today will ensure that no bereaved parent suffers in future as many have suffered in the past.

Following consideration of the responses to our consultation, we plan to make the following changes:

Introduce a statutory definition of ashes.

Amend statutory cremation forms to make sure that applicants’ wishes in relation to recovered ashes are explicit and clearly recorded before a cremation takes place.

Where parents choose a cremation following a pregnancy loss of a foetus of less than 24 weeks’ gestation, we will bring such cremations into the scope of our regulations, like all other cremations. I must stress that we have no plans to alter parents’ current choices following a pre-24 week pregnancy loss, so parents will continue to be able to choose between cremation, burial and sensitive incineration or they can ask the hospital to make all arrangements on their behalf.

Establish a national cremation working group of experts to advise us on a number of technical matters related to our proposed reforms, such as the detail of new regulations and forms, codes of practice and training for cremation authority staff, information for bereaved parents, and whether there should be an inspector of crematoria.

Copies of the consultation response document will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses. The response is also available at https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/consultation-on-cremation.

[HCWS67]

Women and the Vote

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this important debate and on an outstanding speech. In fact, she has made a lot of friends on this side of the House.

The 150th anniversary of the Kensington Society petition is an excellent opportunity to take stock of how far women have come in social, economic, cultural and political life. As the hon. Lady rightly said, it is also a time to consider how very far we still have to go. I also congratulate her on the digital debate she led this afternoon on this very issue. That is another new way of engaging with people and hearing their views. I followed it with great interest. As MPs, we must take on this mantle, take on these views and concerns, and work to end sexism and discrimination in every part of our lives.

The petition back in 1866 called for women to be given the same political rights as men. Shocking though it seems now, that was a very radical thought back then. Every woman in this country owes a massive debt of gratitude to those early suffrage campaigners, who did so much to advance the cause not only of women’s political rights, but other rights too. As the 310th woman to have been elected to Parliament, this subject resonates with me, as I am sure it does with all 190 of my female colleagues around the House.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for raising this subject for debate. I am listening to what the Minister is saying about representations of the suffragettes. Does she agree that while the new artwork is fantastic and must be welcomed, anyone who walks around this building realises how hugely influenced it is by men and how many men and statues of men there are? Anybody who goes to the cupboard of Emily Wilding Davison will realise how poor a tribute it is to what she and others did. Perhaps there is more that we can do across these Benches to promote the work of the suffragettes and other women in this Parliament.

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; we need to take every opportunity we can to promote the fantastic work of those who came before us and those who fought and died before us to secure the privileges that we enjoy today.

I am delighted that Parliament commissioned the new permanent work of art to commemorate women’s suffrage. I know that the hon. Member for Wirral South was on the Committee led by my hon. Friend—and real life friend—the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I pay tribute to the Committee for its work.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I could not resist intervening. The hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) made a really serious point. The thing that strikes me is that we have a parliamentary art collection of 8,000 works of art, fewer than 200 of which represent women in any shape or form. Although my Committee works hard to improve on that, we are sometimes stymied by the media. I was struck by the article in “The Sun” online that criticised the new artwork. Is it not incumbent on all of us to try in some small way to make this place feel more relevant and warmer for women?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, it is incumbent on all of us to make this place look a lot more like the people we represent out there in society. The new artwork, “New Dawn”, will be seen not only by MPs and peers, but by many members of the public. I spoke last night to one of the gentlemen who was involved in the creation of it and he told me that it will last for up to 300 years, so long after we have all shuffled off, many people will appreciate the work and be as inspired by it as I am.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the cause of women is international, and that it is truly wonderful that, today, a woman is the presumptive Democratic party nominee for President of the United States? That will mean so much to our daughters and our granddaughters right across the globe.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, absolutely. Hillary Clinton has talked about a massive glass ceiling being broken. Previously, she has spoken about women’s issues being the pet rock in the backpack of some of our politicians. No longer will women’s issues be that pet rock; they will be front and centre of all political parties’ intentions in the future.

One hundred and fifty years on, the world is a radically different place. I am sure that those early campaigners would be pleased to see that we now have not only the vote, but women in Parliament as well. I am sure that, like me, they would feel that 191 female MPs at the moment is still not enough.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

May I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for her excellent speech? Reference was made to the choices that women can make in terms of how they use their voices. I ask the Minister if she would take this opportunity, off the back of this debate, to remind some of her male colleagues who seem to think that women need to “understand” what they are saying that perhaps our way of understanding is that we have a different viewpoint on things, and that sometimes our opinions are worthy of listening to and may actually be right.

[Caroline Dinenage]

It is our different viewpoint on things that makes us most valuable.

I am very proud to be a member of a party that had the first woman to take her seat in Parliament. I am very proud to be a member of a party that had the first female Prime Minister, and to be part of a Government where a third of the people attending Cabinet are now women.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the work of Baroness Jenkin, whom many of us who have recently joined this place have to thank for the enormous amount of support she has given women candidates in trying to become MPs?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Well, yes. We all want to see more women here. In that quest, mentoring is one of the most important things that we can do, and the noble Baroness has been an absolutely outstanding mentor for so many of the women who are among us today. In the other place, there are now 210 female peers, the highest ever number. Two of the three devolved Administrations are now headed by women—

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

rose—

[Caroline Dinenage]

I will give way in a moment. Last year, 44% of new public appointments went to women.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I will in a moment, but first let me say this. I am delighted that, in my local council of Gosport, nearly 40% of our councillors are female, and I pay tribute to every single one of them.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Will she join me in appreciating the fact that, in Scotland, the three leaders of our main political parties are women, and that we have a gender-balanced Cabinet and gender-balanced nominations for our convenerships to the Parliament?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, absolutely. That is very much to be celebrated.

[Barbara Keeley]

I hope the Minister will join me in paying tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). She has been a remarkable leader of this party at times and has almost got to the role. She certainly played her role in Prime Minister’s questions. I hope we can think of her as we applaud these other remarkable women.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Absolutely. The right hon. and learned Lady is also very much to be celebrated. It is a shame that she is not here so that I can thank her personally.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Dinenage]

May I make a bit of progress? I really want to talk about the lasting change that starts with education. Girls are now outperforming boys at school and outnumbering boys at university. We really need to ensure that success in school translates into career success. To do that, we need to free women and girls from the pressure to conform to restricted choices in aspirations. There are no longer such things as boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs; there are just jobs. That is why the Government are working so hard to broaden girls’ career choices by encouraging more of them to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and maths. Those are the skills that our economy needs and those are the career choices that will narrow the gender pay gap, which, I am proud to say, is now narrower than it has ever been, and it is the Prime Minister’s ambition to eliminate it altogether within a generation.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

rose—

[Caroline Dinenage]

I will make a little bit more progress. We have published regulations that will increase transparency around the gender pay gap, and we expect employers to start publishing the required information from next April. We have been working closely with business on these regulations at every stage, and we will provide a package of support to help employers calculate, understand and address their gender pay gap areas.

It is also vital that we continue to gain positions of leadership and influence in business. I am delighted that Lord Davies’s target of 25% of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies has been met and exceeded. Across the whole FTSE 350, the proportion of women is more than double what it was in 2011. Backed by the Government, this business-led approach is working. The work is not over. We need to promote the business-led 33% target for FTSE 350 boards. I am delighted that Sir Philip Hampton and Dame Helen Alexander will be bringing their wealth of business experience to a new review into the executive pipeline.

Many of the initiatives I have mentioned have been led by the Government Equalities Office. I am immensely proud to be a GEO Minister alongside my colleague the Secretary of State for Education, and to continue the work that has been done by making sure that in everything we do we make the UK a better place for women to live and work.

I am also proud of how the Government lead the way internationally on promoting women’s rights. I was honoured to lead the UK delegation to the convention on the status of women in New York earlier this year, which involved delegates from across the world. It was striking how many common issues were raised that affect women globally. Economic empowerment, the violence against women and girls mentioned by the hon. Member for Wirral South, and political representation are all issues for women across the world.

The progress we have made on these issues has not simply been given to us. It has been fought for every single step of the way and there is still such a long way to go to achieve the genuine equality we all want to see. The hon. Member for Wirral South spoke powerfully about the speech made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) earlier in the year. Two women a week still die at the hands of an ex-husband or partner, and although we have made so much progress in increasing the number of convictions and prosecutions for domestic violence, every single one of those women is a woman too many.

[Mims Davies]

I speak as the 380th woman elected to Parliament; we all have our number. We heard about American politics, and, as we heard from Madeleine Albright, there is a special place in hell for women who do not support other women. In this wonderful debate, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) made a point about the safety of women in the context of refuge, of homes and of having a voice. Will my hon. Friend, as women’s Minister, ensure that we as a Government will take that very seriously?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Absolutely. Protecting those who are vulnerable or under threat is fundamentally one of the most important things we can do as a Government, but it is not just about women. As the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) said earlier, men are powerful agents for change in gender equality. It was a man who presented the petition to Parliament 150 years ago and men can still be part of the solution.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Great progress has been made and it is touching and amazing to hear the list of achievements, but does my hon. Friend agree that many women are still being put off engaging in politics and leadership, mainly by the negative and nasty mudslinging style of politics and campaigning that we are sadly seeing in the course of the referendum debate? We need, together with our men, to do something about that.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, and we have already heard about the parity of voice that is so important in this and many other campaigns. We all have a role to play in inspiring the next generation of women to take these seats and we can do that only if we present a face of Parliament and of Government that women aspire to be part of.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

We have referred to the number of women currently in Parliament, but there are still more men in Parliament than there have ever been women in Parliament. We need to point that out on the record. Many hon. Members know that I am a surgeon. I started training as a surgeon in 1982. In 1978, as a medical student, I was told that I could not be a surgeon because I was a woman. At an interview I was asked about monthly mood swings as a problem for a surgeon. I replied that I had worked for consultants with daily mood swings, and that monthly mood swings would be an improvement. Hopefully, we have come a long way, but there are still probably fewer women surgeons than women politicians, so we still have a long way to go.

[Caroline Dinenage]

We have all met men like that. The hon. Lady is right. We need to keep up the fight, we need to talk about the issues that matter to us, we need to encourage the women around us to get politically engaged, and above all we must encourage them to go out and vote. That is the right that those early suffragettes fought for and we must all use it. As the next big decision facing the UK is put to the vote shortly, I am sure hon. Members on the Opposition Benches share my desire to ensure that women are at the forefront of that, and that their votes count.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) Order 2016 Draft ACCESS TO JUSTICE ACT 1999 (DESTINATION OF APPEALS) (FAMILY PROCEEDINGS) (AMENDMENT) ORDER 2016

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 General Committees

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

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) Order 2016.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 2016.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Thank you, Mr Evans. I will refer to the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) Order 2016 as the civil order, and to the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 2016 as the family order. I should start by saying that the Ministry of Justice has worked carefully with the senior judiciary to ensure that these amendments will work and have their support, and we are incredibly grateful to them for their assistance.

Although the civil order may appear quite detailed, the basic aim is to clarify and simplify the appeals process, to ensure that the route of appeal in civil proceedings lies to the next level of judge. That should reduce the number of appeals that are lodged in the Court of Appeal and reduce pressure on that Court by making the best use of judicial time, ensuring cases are heard in the most appropriate level of court.

The family order will amend the Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) Order 2014, so that appeals from certain decisions of circuit judges and recorders in the family court will lie to a single specialist and experienced judge in the High Court, rather than in the Court of Appeal.

In conclusion, the orders will ensure that cases and appeals are heard in ways that are proportionate to the grounds of complaint and the subject matter of the dispute, while ensuring effective access to justice. I therefore commend them to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your fine stewardship, Mr Evans? I omitted to say that at the beginning.

I thank the hon. Member for Neath for all her questions. As she has outlined, both orders respond to concerns about the volume of appeals currently being made to the Court of Appeal. The orders will ensure that cases and appeals are heard in a way that is proportionate to the grounds of the complaint and the subject matter of the dispute, while ensuring effective access to justice.

The hon. Lady asked why we are in the position we are in. The default position, historically, has been that appeals lie to the Court of Appeal, as set out in primary legislation. The orders relate certain appeals to different levels of court for the reasons explained. We seek to amend an historical status quo in a way that will be most beneficial for court users and, indeed, court time.

The hon. Lady asked about a build-up of cases in the High Court. It is really important that cases are heard effectively, efficiently and, chiefly, fairly. We are grateful for the ongoing hard work of the judiciary to continue to achieve that, but judicial recruitment is the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor. That, of course, means ensuring he meets his statutory obligation in respect of appointments and keeping workload under review, as he does, to ensure that enough judges are available to hear appeals within a reasonable timeframe. His decisions are informed by a complement group made up of senior judiciary and HMCTS officials who examine business need at all levels of the judiciary and advise the Lord Chancellor on the optimum complement.

We have spoken to HMCTS, which is fully aware and supportive of the changes. The Ministry of Justice has been working with the senior judiciary, as the hon. Lady said, who are very supportive of the measures and keen for the orders to come into force. The orders will make more efficient use of judicial resources by ensuring cases are heard at the lowest and most appropriate level of court. On their own, they will not necessarily address any backlog of work held by the Court of Appeal, but they will ensure that the backlog does not continue to increase and that cases are dealt with at an appropriate level and as swiftly as possible.

Separate to that, the Civil Procedure Rule Committee has launched a consultation on reforms to the process for appeals to the Court of Appeal. The proposals will raise the threshold for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal and remove the automatic right of renewal for permission to appeal in civil cases, where permission has been refused on the basis of the documents in the case. That consultation closes on 24 June.

Work is under way to make some changes to the current court procedure, as set out in a practice direction that supplements the family procedure rules. It is anticipated that, for example, changes will limit the number of documents to be filed with an appeal, making court bundles more manageable and focused. That revised procedure will apply to all family appeals heard in the High Court. Any changes will be clearly communicated to all those who use the Court, which I know the hon. Lady was concerned about. The Ministry of Justice is working with HMCTS and the judiciary to ensure their guidance is updated to reflect all the changes. As part of the new, streamlined process being designed for appeals, all forms will clearly state where they must be sent, which is fundamental.

In conclusion, the civil order will clarify and simplify the appeals process to ensure that the route of appeal in civil proceedings lies to the next level of judge, and the family order will mean that certain family appeal hearings take place before a single specialist and experienced High Court judge.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 2016

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 2016.—(Caroline Dinenage.)