Legal Aid: Birmingham Pub Bombings

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Richard Burden

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered legal aid for families of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. This debate follows on from an Adjournment debate in October 2016 led by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). What I am going to say has the support of every single Birmingham MP, irrespective of party, and has wide support across the House, as I think will be demonstrated by the contributions we will hear.

At around 8.20 pm on 21 November 1974, two explosions rocked two pubs in Birmingham: the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town. Twenty-one people were killed and some 222 people were injured. A third bomb placed at Barclays bank on Hagley Road was defused the same evening. We know that six men were jailed for that atrocity, and we now know that that was a miscarriage of justice. It took years for that to be addressed and for those six innocent men to be finally released.

There was, however, to be no release for the families of the 21 who died and the hundreds who were left with injuries and the trauma of that night in November 1974, because nobody has been brought to justice for those 21 murders. There remain big unanswered questions about what exactly happened that night, including the circumstances surrounding the plantings of the bombs, if and how warnings were given and how the police reacted that night and subsequently. Some of those family members are watching our debate, and I am sure all Members would wish to join me in welcoming them to this place and in paying tribute to their tenacity over so many years in trying to get the answers they deserve.

For years, those families have had to overcome hurdle after hurdle in pursuit of justice and to get answers. They had to fight to get the inquest into the pub bombings reopened in the first place. They then had to fight to be granted legal aid to be legally represented at that inquest. Now, having eventually won those battles, they have once again been denied legal aid for a Court of Appeal hearing on the rules governing that self-same inquest. Why is that? Last year, the Chief Coroner, Sir Peter Thornton QC, ruled that the people suspected of carrying out the pub bombings cannot be identified at the inquest. The families disagreed and took their case to the High Court. They won, and the coroner was directed to review the ruling he had made on the identification of suspects. We now know that the coroner has responded by applying for leave to take the case to the Court of Appeal, as he has every right to do. The fact that different conclusions were reached by the High Court and the coroner himself—he is a senior QC—underlines the difficult and complex legal issues that the case raises.

Today’s debate is emphatically not about taking sides on whether suspects should be identified at the inquest—that is properly a matter that should be decided by the courts—but about whether both sides should have an equal opportunity to put their case to the court. However, as things stand, that equality is missing in practice, because although public funds will rightly be available to present the coroner’s appeal against the High Court’s judgment, the families have been told that they have to pay for their own legal representation to defend the High Court’s decision. That is the disparity I am asking the Minister to address today.

The disparity was not addressed when the case was at the High Court. The families were refused legal aid at that stage and were only able to fight and win their case there by the generosity that ordinary citizens showed in response to their crowdfunding appeal. The families should not have to go through that again at the Court of Appeal. It is in the public interest that all the arguments for and against the identification of suspects at the inquest are heard by the Court of Appeal so that it can make its decision on the merits of the case with confidence that a shortage of resource has not hampered either side from putting forward their cases.

It is not only Members and the families who are asking for the situation to be rectified. The coroner himself has said that public funding should be made available to the families so that legal representation can be secured for them to contest the case he is taking to the Court of Appeal.

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate so that we can show our concern as MPs for the families, who still have no closure. The early-day motion tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) has garnered, as far as I know, 21 signatures across the House. It emphasises that the Chief Coroner has called not once, but twice—and recently—for legal aid to be provided. While these events occurred a long time ago, it is still a live issue, and the Chief Coroner, whom we must respect in this matter, has called for legal aid to be granted.

[Richard Burden]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. The early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley—I am pleased to welcome her to the debate—is getting wide support across the House, irrespective of party. This is not a party matter; it is a matter of justice and parity. As the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) said, the fact that the coroner supports public funding being made available for the families of the pub bombing victims underlines that he understands that this is a question of justice. We are asking for Ministers to have that same level of understanding.

The Legal Aid Agency is insisting that existing regulations prevent it from providing assistance, even though the families were eventually granted legal aid for the inquest. One reason the LAA put forward is that the families should instruct lawyers on a no-win, no-fee basis. That argument is undermined by the fact that a protective costs order was already accepted by the High Court and would quite possibly be accepted by the Court of Appeal. The avenue of getting representation on a no-win, no-fee basis is simply unlikely to be available to the families.

However, it seems that the Legal Aid Agency’s main reason for refusing legal aid this time is because the collective capital of the families provides

“potential source of funding from which it would be reasonable to fund the case”.

Indeed, in a letter to one of the law firms representing the families, the Legal Aid Agency went so far as to suggest that the possibility of further crowdfunding appeal could suggest that the families do not need legal aid to present their case. I find that suggestion astonishing. It is in the public interest for this case to be heard; it should not be dependent on how successful the families are in passing the hat around. The bottom line, however, is that in a letter to me and other Birmingham Members, the Legal Aid Agency insists that it has no discretion to come to any decision other than to refuse legal aid.

From my reading of the rules governing legal aid, I do not know whether the Legal Aid Agency has no discretion here. It is not clear how the refusal of legal aid for the Court of Appeal hearing logically squares with the fact that families finally won legal aid for their representation at the inquest. As inconsistent as it may appear, if for whatever reason there is no discretion by which the families can be granted legal aid, my request to the Minister is for the Government to step up to the plate for justice by directly authorising that public funding be made available outside the regular legal aid framework.

Aircraft Noise

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Richard Burden

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend is right, and I will say a couple of words about the noise ombudsman, as it is sometimes referred to, in a little while.

The Government have commissioned Ipsos MORI research on public attitudes to aviation noise. If that is to inform the public debate, it needs to be published. My question to the Minister, again, is when it will be published.

I also want to ask the Minister about airspace redesign, a theme that has come up several times in the debate. Future approaches to the best use of airspace, bearing in mind changes and advances in technology, should inform issues of where to put new runways, and how they should be used. However, even without any airport expansion, the UK needs to modernise its outdated airspace management, in line with the EU single European sky programme. The benefits of doing that are obviously big, but the question is how we are to find a balance between dispersing routes between a number of corridors or concentrating on a number of routes. Either option has pros and cons for communities, and those that are negatively affected must be fairly compensated. However, whatever is done, a decision must be made. We have seen that trust can drain away when trials come out and people do not know what is going on. NATS, the Civil Aviation Authority, airports and communities need clear signals as to what will happen about airspace operations.

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman is a fellow Birmingham-based MP. Does he acknowledge that there was no compensation for people following the airspace changes—nor, indeed, following the runway extension?

[Richard Burden]

The right hon. Lady makes a valid point. The point I am making is that going forward we need a more comprehensive approach to such things. In appearances before the Transport Committee in February the Secretary of State and Department for Transport officials promised to publish a consultation on future airspace “soon”. What they would not say was whether the delay—and possibly further delays—in looking at expansion would lead to further delay in looking at airspace management. How soon is soon? What timetable is the Minister working on?

Whatever the Minister’s answers to the other questions that I have put to him both today and in writing, I must put it to him and the Government that delays, and the fact that there are difficult questions ahead, should not mean there is nothing we can do now. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith made the point correctly that an independent aviation noise authority could be established now, to act as an impartial mediator between airports and communities and help to restore trust and deliver the future of airspace operation. Nothing more is needed before that can be done. Sir Howard Davies and the Environmental Audit Committee endorsed the idea, and if the Minister endorsed it today it would certainly have the Opposition’s full backing, so let us get on with it. Will he do that?

Making use of existing capacity would also alleviate pressure on airspace. A key to utilising capacity is improving road and rail access to different international gateways in the UK. It is the Airport Operators Association’s top priority for 2016 and would bring about environmental and noise improvements around airports. Will the Minister back our calls for the National Infrastructure Commission to look at surface access to the UK’s international gateways?

Finally, I want to put it to the Minister that it is important to work with industry on the issue of noise. The Sustainable Aviation group has produced an aviation noise road map showing how aviation can manage noise from aircraft operations between now and 2050. It emphasises the importance of improving airspace structures and operational procedures, but also points out, importantly, that a key is future aircraft and engine technology. The noise road map shows that, unless that new technology comes on stream and is used, noise output could double, even without expansion, in the coming years. What are the Government doing to encourage innovation, as well as the take-up of lighter, smaller aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and A350? Retrofitting noise-reducing devices to older fleets is also critical, and I think that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling mentioned that. How are the Government promoting that? Does the Minister know what proportion of aircraft at each UK airport have not yet had such devices installed? If he does not know, when will he find out, and what will he do to put such measures in place?

I look forward to the Minister addressing those points. Vital questions have been raised today. At some point down the line the decision on expansion will come. It would be very useful to know when, but, irrespective of that, when will decisions be made on the various questions that I and other hon. Members have raised today?