Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is fair to say that the Brighton declaration was an excellent achievement for Britain. In his speech to Strasbourg on 25 January the Prime Minister outlined three achievements that he hoped for, the first of which was that there should be subsidiarity, with more decision making at the national level in the courts. That has been achieved. The second was that there should be more efficiency in the whole court structure, and that has been achieved. Thirdly, he hoped we would have a greater and better quality of judges in the Court, and that too has been achieved. We are going to have fewer cases going to Strasbourg and those that go will be dealt with efficiently. We dealt with 46 other countries, representing a total population of 800 million citizens, and I think it is a wonderful achievement on the part of Britain’s chairmanship to have got agreement between so many countries.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

T5. Legal aid is a safety net that protects the most vulnerable people in our society, but now that the Government have refused to listen to the concerns of Mumsnet and other organisations that protect vulnerable women, does the Minister accept that there are potentially thousands of women who will be too scared to leave their violent partners as a result of the reforms?

[Mr Djanogly]

It is very important to emphasise that the position for someone suffering from domestic violence remains absolutely unchanged—they will be able to get on-the-spot injunctive relief and that will be non-means-tested.