Abu Qatada
Charles Walker Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs May
I have made it clear that the Government’s view is that the deadline finished on 16 April. I repeat that Opposition Members who think that we would somehow be in a different position if Abu Qatada’s arrest had been delayed for 24 hours need to be careful, as the European Court is able to exercise discretion about the deadline and it could accept a referral outside that deadline.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
The Home Secretary must not delay in getting this scumbag and his murderous mates on a plane out of this country. In so doing, will she send a metaphorical two fingers to the ECHR?
Mrs May
As I have already made clear, this case has been going on for 11 years. At the first opportunity this Government had to take action to resume the deportation of Abu Qatada, we took that action, and when the processes of the European Court are complete, we will take that action again and resume his deportation because, with the assurances we have received from the Jordanian Government, we have a strong case. Our aim, like everybody else’s, is to deport Abu Qatada.
EU Directive on Animal Experimentation
Charles Walker Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Damian Green
By the time I sit down, I hope that I will have provided my hon. Friend with that reassurance. He, too, deserves congratulations, on taking legislation to that stage in the European Parliament, which I suspect is more complex and difficult than anything we try to do in this Parliament.
The Government are strongly committed to ensuring the best possible standards of animal welfare. Current legislation, as was rightly acknowledged by the hon. Member for Scunthorpe, provides that high level of protection: work cannot be licensed if it could be carried out without using animals, and the procedures must cause the minimum possible suffering to the smallest number of animals of the lowest sensitivity. That approach reflects closely what the public want. At the same time, animal experimentation continues to be a vital tool in developing health care improvements and in protecting man and the environment. The potential health and economic benefits from new and innovative treatments are dependent on providing the right framework for the UK’s life sciences sector and university research base, which are vital national assets and critical to our long-term economic growth, so we are determined to provide the right framework.
The transposition of the new European directive for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes provides us with a valuable and timely opportunity to review our own legislation governing experiments on animals. As has been pointed out, many requirements of the directive are similar to current UK legislation and practice. For example, it places a strong emphasis on minimising the use of animals and the promotion of alternatives. Some requirements go further than current UK legislation, most notably the introduction of mandatory minimum standards of care and accommodation for animals. Other requirements are potentially less stringent; the directive does not, as UK legislation does, provide special protection for cats, dogs and horses. Article 2 of the directive allows us to retain current stricter UK provisions as long as they do not inhibit the free market. The directive thus provides us with an opportunity to confirm the best aspects of current UK regulation and to make improvements where we can do better.
During 2011 we held a public consultation on options for transposition. I have slightly different figures from the hon. Gentleman, so I hope they are accurate. More than 13,000 individuals and 100 organisations responded, which clearly confirms a very strong interest in the topic. We are currently completing our analysis of the responses and will announce our decisions shortly—I hope shortly enough to leave proper time for parliamentary scrutiny, which the hon. Gentleman reasonably mentioned.
The directive clearly offers some opportunities, such as helping the work that we are already doing to promote the development of alternatives. The programme for government includes commitments to end the testing of household products on animals, and to work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research. The new directive assists with those objectives by strengthening the protection of animals used in scientific procedures, and promoting the three R’s: the development, validation, acceptance and implementation of methods and strategies that “replace, reduce and refine” the scientific use of animals.
The directive will also allow us to remove unnecessary bureaucracy where it still exists, and to build on the significant improvements we have already made in our day-to-day implementation of current legislation. We are planning to focus on simplifying the details of personal licences, and making further improvements to the project licence application process and to the format of the project licence. The directive requires member states to inspect animal research laboratories and breeders, but the minimum frequency of inspection is less than we currently practise. Many of the responses to our consultation commented on the strengths of our current inspection system, and clearly that is an issue of great interest to the hon. Gentleman.
We are committed to maintaining a strong and properly resourced inspectorate, and a full, risk-based programme of inspections. The relationship between inspectors, licence holders and animal care staff is crucial to the effective implementation of the regulatory framework, and we will not jeopardise that relationship. The hon. Gentleman referred to the current move to centralise the operation of the administrative part of the legislation in London. That does not apply to inspectors. Indeed, it has been confirmed that inspectors will continue to be located close to those they inspect. I hope that that provides the hon. Gentleman with some reassurance.
We are aware of the concerns that have been expressed that transposition will lead to a lowering of welfare standards for laboratory animals in the UK. That is not our intention, and we are determined not to weaken UK standards, but that does not mean retaining stricter UK standards when there is no clear evidence that they translate into better welfare, nor does it mean that we must put everything into the legislation if we can achieve the right outcomes by encouraging good practice. What we are looking for is the right balance. We must ensure that we can maintain and further enhance our high standards, but at the same time we must avoid putting UK research at a competitive disadvantage compared with our counterparts in other member states. For the Government, both are objectives for the transposition of the new directive.
I shall give some specific examples of our approach to transposition. We intend to retain higher UK standards when there is strong and broadly-based support or good evidence for their retention. I mentioned some of those earlier, but it is important to put them on the record, not least to reassure the hon. Gentleman. One example is that we propose to continue to provide special protection for cats, dogs and horses, as well as non-human primates, and will allow their use only when no other species is suitable or available. That was widely supported in our public consultation.
I turn to the specific subject of great apes. We will continue to prohibit the use of great apes. There has been concern—the hon. Gentleman expressed it earlier— that the directive weakens the protection of those animals by providing a derogation allowing their use in exceptional circumstances. I can assure him and the House that we foresee no circumstances in which we would use that derogation, and we will put the ban in the legislation, as he asked. That is a full assurance such as he sought.
We propose to retain protection for foetal and embryonic forms of birds and reptiles during the last third of their development. That is not a requirement of the directive, but we received persuasive evidence from the public consultation of the welfare benefits of giving the same protection to those species as will be given to mammals during their development stages. I hope that that will also be welcome. We were persuaded that the burden of providing that additional protection is proportionate to the benefit. That is the test we are operating. We also propose to retain a system of personal licences as a means of monitoring and ensuring the competence of those working with research animals.
The directive lists methods of humane killing that may be used without project authorisation. Our current UK legislation takes a similar approach to that of the directive in this area, but there are significant differences between the UK list of methods and that in the directive. Some methods listed in the directive are not currently permitted in the UK without specific authorisation. The differences have caused widespread concern, and we are minded to maintain the best of our current approach to humane killing. To take that forward, we have recently published a revised list of humane killing methods for consultation, and will incorporate only the best methods in our updated legislation. Again, I hope that that provides reassurance to the many people who are particularly concerned about this part of the directive.
Another issue of particular concern to many people is animal care and accommodation standards, specifically those examples in which current UK cage and enclosure sizes are greater than those required under the directive. For some, when there is good supportive evidence, we are minded to continue to mandate the UK dimensions. For others, the difference in dimensions may be so small as to make little difference to the welfare of the animals, but sufficient to add significantly to the costs for the life sciences community if they were retained, which would risk making the UK less competitive than other countries in Europe and beyond. Instead, we are considering ways of using the revision of our current UK code of practice on care and accommodation to encourage voluntary improvements in standards of housing.
The UK has a long tradition of housing animals in conditions that are better than those mandated in regulations—for example, the housing of non-human primates in the UK has significantly exceeded the minimum requirements for many years. Our approach has been driven by sound evidence from our welfare scientists, together with a willingness on the part of both the academic sector and industry to provide the best environment for our animals. We want to support that approach by encouraging the work of welfare scientists and the research community. As scientific evidence for higher standards emerges, we will expect our research community to respond.
On freedom of information, which the hon. Gentleman brought up at the start of the debate, most responders to the consultation recognise that section 24 in its current form is not compatible with the directive’s commitment to transparency, and many also recognise that it may be a barrier to the sharing of best practice and information on the three R’s. At the same time, personal details, intellectual property and commercial information will continue to require protection. We will consider how best to provide that protection under the new legislation, at the same time as meeting the aspiration to greater transparency.
The hon. Gentleman also brought up the issue of weighing pain against benefit. UK legislation already requires the Secretary of State to weigh the likely pain against the expected benefit, and in that regard the directive confirms current UK practice.
The hon. Gentleman referred to transport disruption. We have been working actively with the life sciences community and the transport sector to broker a commercial solution to provide a sustainable and resilient supply chain. That will be important to the future of the life sciences industry.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the use of non-human primates, and particularly the definition of a debilitating condition. We do not intend to define further what a debilitating condition is because we believe that that should be done on a case-by-case basis for each project licence application received. Using the current UK code of practice in that way to encourage voluntary improvements, particularly for housing, will lead to better standards. Overall, in addressing these sensitive issues, we believe that good welfare is fundamental to good science.
Animal experimentation is an area in which Government policy must recognise a wide range of opinions. Our current policy is based on the belief that there are real benefits to man, animals and the environment that can, at present, be achieved only with the use of animals, but it reflects the need for all animal use to be fully justified, and for animal suffering to be minimised. Any suffering must be carefully weighed against the potential benefits. Those are the foundations of our current legislation, and the directive provides us with the opportunity to build on them.
As I have said, my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities and others will consider carefully—
Policing and Crime
Charles Walker Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and the sadness of the Opposition’s position is that they would not be making such very important decisions that can lead to a better and improved service to the public. I commend my hon. Friend’s local force for being willing to make such decisions.
I said that I would respond to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on the difference between the 12% cuts, which HMIC suggested could be made, and the Government’s cuts. He and other Opposition Members who have raised the point in the past, including the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, have obviously neither read nor understood the HMIC report, so let me tell them what it said.
HMIC found that more than £1.15 billion per year—12% of national police funding—could be saved if only the least efficient police forces brought themselves up to the average level of efficiency. Well, the state of the public finances that Labour left us is such that all forces must raise themselves up to the level not of the average but of the most efficient forces. That could add another £350 million of savings to those calculated in HMIC’s report. But HMIC did not consider all areas of police spending. It did not consider IT or procurement, for example, and it makes absolutely no sense for the police to procure things in 43 different ways, and it makes absolutely no sense to have 2,000 different IT systems throughout the 43 forces, as they currently do.
With a national joined-up approach, better contracts, more joint purchasing, a smaller number of different IT systems and greater private sector involvement, we can save hundreds of millions of pounds—over and above the savings identified by HMIC.
Likewise, HMIC did not consider pay, because that was outside its remit, but in an organisation such as the police, where £11 billion—80% of total revenue spending—goes on pay, there is no question but that pay restraint and pay reform must form part of the package. That is why we believe, subject to any recommendations from the Police Negotiating Board, that there should be a two-year pay freeze in policing, just as there has been across the public sector. That would save at least £350 million—again, on top of HMIC’s savings.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I know that being in opposition is difficult, but I really hope we were not as bad as that lot over there during our time in opposition.
Would it not be possible to have a royal commission on police terms and conditions? The police do a wonderful job, and we need to maintain high morale and ensure that they do not bear a disproportionate burden of the cuts that we have to make as a result of the financial mismanagement of the Labour Government.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the behaviour of the Opposition today.
On the proposal about the royal commission, the cuts we have to make and the timetable within which we have to make them means that we have to make decisions now. However, we are not just making those decisions as a Government. I set up the independent review into police pay, terms and conditions under Tom Winsor, who has produced his first report. The proposals from that report are now going through the Police Negotiating Board, and decisions will be taken by the Government once those proper processes have been gone through. At the beginning of next year, he will report on the second part of his review. I felt that it was important for the police that we ensured that an independent reviewer looked at these issues who could fully take into account the impact of all the changes.
I remind any hon. Members who are considering the royal commission proposal that in its report last summer HMIC said, in very stark terms, that there is no time for a royal commission because of the nature of the decisions that have to be taken and the speed at which they have to be taken.
Mrs May
A number of those chief constables, including the chief constable of Kent, have made it absolutely clear that they are going to protect neighbourhood policing. Perhaps the right hon. Lady should reflect on the evidence given by the chief constable of Greater Manchester to the Home Affairs Committee, when he said that an artificial numbers game had been necessary under the last Labour Government, with the result that some officers were being put into back-office roles that need not be undertaken by officers.
Crucially, all the savings that I have set out can be made while protecting the quality of front-line services. At the same time, as I have made clear in response to several interventions, we are reviewing police pay, terms and conditions to make them fair to police officers and to the taxpayer. If implemented, Tom Winsor’s proposals to reform police pay and conditions will help the service to manage its budgets, maximise officer and staff deployment to front-line roles, and enable front-line services to be maintained and improved.
Mrs May
I will complete this point and then I might be generous to my hon. Friend.
Winsor proposes rewarding those with specialist skills, those who work unsocial hours, and those who are on the front line. His proposals are comprehensive, wide-ranging and far-reaching. They are things that the Labour party never had the guts to do. Given that the Labour party would be cutting £7 in every £8 that we are cutting this year, the shadow Home Secretary needs to tell the House where her cuts would fall.
Mrs May
There is indeed a process that is taking place in relation to the proposals of the Winsor review. The proposals are before the Police Negotiating Board at the moment, and there will be a proper process to consider its decisions. My hon. Friend will have noticed that the Winsor review identified significant savings that could be made by changing the terms and conditions, and then proposed to plough half that sum back into improved pay and terms and conditions for the police.
We want not only to manage the cuts that we are having to make, but to make the police service better. The Labour Government spent a lot of money on policing in the boom years, but they spent it all on making simple things very complicated. They made an industry out of performance management and league tables; created a forest of guidance, manuals and pointless paperwork; and hugely increased the number of bureaucrats, auditors and checkers. At the same time, they did nothing to increase police visibility, nothing to increase public accountability and nothing to reform and modernise the service. We are putting that right. We are slashing the bureaucracy that Labour allowed to build up.
Earlier this month, I announced measures that would save up to 2.5 million man hours of police time each year. That is on top of the measures that we have already taken to scrap all Labour’s targets and restore discretion to the police. We have got rid of the policing pledge, the confidence target, the public service agreement targets, the key performance indicators and the local area agreements. We have replaced them with a single objective: to cut crime. I want police officers chasing criminals, not chasing targets. The Government do not put their trust in performance indicators, targets or regulations. We put our trust in the professionals and in the public.
Let me address the third fallacy in the Opposition motion. Police and crime commissioners are not an American-style reform; they are a very British and very democratic reform. The Labour party certainly did not consider democratic accountability to be an alien concept when the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said in 2008, when he was the Minister for Policing, Crime and Security, that
“only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical”.
I could not agree more.
Drugs Policy
Charles Walker Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for having the bravery to initiate this important debate. Drugs destroy lives and wreck families. I suspect, sadly, that few families in Britain today have not been touched by the scourge of drugs—the thieving, lying, deceit, violence and unreasonable behaviour that come from drug abusers. Yet families do not talk about that with friends, for fear, in many respects, of criminalisation and because of the instinctive need to protect loved ones. The situation is difficult. There is no one to talk to and no one who can help, in many cases, and it can be lonely for families dealing with such matters. Nevertheless, it is a killer and we have real problem. I am not in favour of the right hon. Gentleman’s proposals for legalisation, but there are some excellent abstinence-based systems in residential programmes, one example of which is the Kenward Trust, in my constituency, which provides respite for the family and treatment for the abuser.
Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)
Order. I think we need to let Mr Ainsworth respond to the intervention. May I say to all colleagues that interventions are getting a little bit long? I am not picking on one colleague. This is a useful juncture at which to remind hon. Members to keep interventions short.
Mr Ainsworth
I thank the hon. Lady for her heartfelt comments. She disagrees with me. Turning the clock back to when I was a relatively new Member of Parliament, I would have said exactly the same as her. When my Government came out with a new drug policy, particularly if I had had the opportunity to have input into it, I would have hoped and thought that a lot of good people were working on it and that it would make a difference. In the period ahead, the hon. Lady should watch what happens. If this new drug policy does not make any difference—I believe it will not—she should keep an open mind and come to another conclusion. I do not know how many years she or the Minister will give it, but she should keep an eye on the policy and stay engaged with this issue. I think that she will, like me, come to different conclusions over time, but that remains to be seen. All I can say is that I hope that she keeps an open mind.
I want to raise one more issue that is not to do with drugs, but I am determined to say this. As I said, I am neither the slightest bit surprised about, nor do I have a problem with, what my party leader said this morning. He distanced the Labour party from what I am saying. I expected that; he was never going to do anything else. However, I am annoyed that an anonymous Labour party spokesperson said that what I am saying is irresponsible. I do not mind that the leader of the party, the shadow Minister or the Labour party spokesperson think that; if they do, they should say it. I will not be the slightest bit upset if anybody disagrees in any terms with what I am saying. But I am upset by anonymous briefings by my party against its members. I used to get angry about that in government. It used to happen to me in government and I am sure that it happens to Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members, too. I will not allow people anonymously to say these things without my making an issue of it, because doing so is the only way that hon. Members can fight back.
The road of anonymous briefings leads to Damian McBride. My party learnt from that problem once; it does not need to learn the lesson again. Whoever this individual is, they should stop, because if they do not stop and if they say these things about me, I will say things like this, publicly, in television studios and in the Chamber of the House of Commons. We will, between us, damage our party. Stop. If they want to say anything about me and my views, they should give us their name and say it on the record. I will not be offended. Anonymous briefing has been a plague of modern politics. I am determined that people will not do it to me without some retaliation.
Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)
Order. Six Back Benchers are here and we have quite a bit of time. Just two Back Benchers were planning to intervene, but given the nature of this debate I would not mind, and I am sure that colleagues would not mind either, if they made short speeches, because this is an important subject.
Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)
Order. It is conventional that I now call an hon. Member on the Government Benches, but I am aware that Caroline Lucas must leave for a surgery, so I will call her now, although I will not make this a habit. I apologise to the hon. Member who has been waiting.