All 2 Debates between Dominic Grieve and Baroness Hoey

Wed 26th Feb 2014
John Downey
Commons Chamber
(Urgent Question)

John Downey

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Baroness Hoey
Wednesday 26th February 2014

(10 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

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Dominic Grieve Portrait The Attorney-General
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No, I cannot give my hon. Friend that assurance. I understand his point, and I am happy to get back to him.

Baroness Hoey Portrait Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
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Does the Attorney-General understand that all these fine words about errors and administration mistakes will not wash with the people of Northern Ireland who will see that this has been an amnesty under another name? It is an amnesty that has been put through without this Parliament’s permission when it specifically decided, when the Bill was withdrawn, that it did not want it to happen for on-the-runs. I want to know why we are blaming an individual in the police for writing or sending those letters; they did not write them without somebody at the very, very top of Government telling them to do so.

Dominic Grieve Portrait The Attorney-General
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As for the hon. Lady’s views about how this would be viewed in Northern Ireland, I suspect that it would be viewed in the same way on this side of the Irish sea. I do not have any reason to differ with her analysis. Most right-thinking people will be shocked and profoundly troubled by what has happened.

I disagree with her characterisation of the letters being tantamount to an amnesty; I do not think that they were, if written as they should have been and sent to the recipients who should have received them. Unfortunately, in this case, as we know, somebody received a letter that they should not have received. I do not wish to comment further. The PSNI has indicated that it takes responsibility for the information that was supplied. The hon. Lady believes that fault might lie elsewhere; I am in no position to comment on that one way or the other. I can only say that the information I have at the moment does not suggest that the fault lies elsewhere.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Baroness Hoey
Thursday 10th February 2011

(13 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Dominic Grieve Portrait The Attorney-General
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There is no doubt that there has been criticism of the Court, just as I have at times heard views expressed in this House applauding judgments made in the European Court of Human Rights—the judgments on stop and search and on DNA databases come to mind. We therefore need to be careful about too much picking and choosing of what we might think is desirable or not. I recognise that there is a fundamental issue in this debate, which the right hon. Member for Blackburn and others touched on, about the extent to which the Court is turning into a micro-manager.

Baroness Hoey Portrait Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
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If compensation was awarded, would it not be appropriate for the Government to decide to take it from the legal aid budget of the civil lawyers who will have brought most such cases about?

Dominic Grieve Portrait The Attorney-General
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That is an interesting proposal from the hon. Lady, but, if I may say so, I would not seek to answer that question at the Dispatch Box today. It raises a number of ethical and practical issues to which, on the whole, I would want to give further consideration.