Home Affairs and Justice

David Wright Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

This will be done extremely carefully. There has been discussion for some time about whether cameras should be allowed in courtrooms. The ability to film will be limited, in terms of who and what can be filmed. The details of how that is arranged with television companies and the courts will be discussed during the Bill’s passage. I think we all recognise that the filming could be of significant benefit, but it needs to be done in the right way if that benefit is to be achieved.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has been speaking for 20 minutes. She is rightly covering the detail of the Queen’s Speech, and we will want to examine those Bills in detail. However, I am stunned by the fact that not once in 20 minutes has she mentioned the fact that thousands of police officers are marching just a few hundred yards away, taking an unprecedented level of action. They are campaigning because they are very much against 20% cuts in police budgets. Does the Home Secretary agree that we should be given more detail, and perhaps a Bill on police numbers? For instance, 5,000 front-line officers have been removed since May 2010.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman knows very well why it has been necessary for the Government to cut police budgets: because of the deficit that we were left by the Labour Government. As he reflects on the decision to reduce those budgets, perhaps he will also reflect on the fact that reductions of the same order are supported by his party’s Front Benchers, as they have made clear.

Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our justice system means reviewing and reforming aspects that are not operating as they should. All Members will be aware that our current libel laws are having a detrimental effect on freedom of expression and on academic and scientific debate, and that our courts have become a magnet for libel tourists. That is why all three parties included a commitment to reform in their manifestos. We are introducing a Defamation Bill rebalancing our libel laws to offer more effective protection for freedom of speech and reasonable debate, while at the same time protecting those who have been genuinely and unjustly defamed.

The Bill has benefited from extremely detailed and helpful scrutiny in draft by a Joint Committee of both Houses, as well as having been the subject of public consultation. That has been a great advantage, enabling a wide range of views to be expressed and carefully considered in a thorough and open way. It has helped us to draw up proposals that we believe address core issues of concern where reform is needed and where legislation can make a real difference.

The Government's second Session programme contains measures to fight serious and novel crime and to strengthen justice, but we must also ensure that we keep pace with all the threats to our country. The internet revolution has benefited us all—we now communicate and interact in ways that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago—but the communications revolution also presents an opportunity for terrorists to plot attacks, for serious criminals to arrange drug deals, and for paedophiles to share illegal and abhorrent images.

For many years our police, law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies have used communications data from landline telephones and mobiles—that is, the context but not the content of communications—to catch criminals and to protect the public. Understanding whom suspects have contacted, when they did so and where they were at the time can be central to building a case, proving associations between criminals or terrorists and showing that a suspect was at the scene of a crime. Over the past decade, communications data have been used in every major Security Service counter-terrorism investigation and in 95% of all serious crime cases.