Whiplash

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

My noble Friend the Minister of State for Civil Justice has made the following written statement.

“In response to widespread concerns about the high number of whiplash claims and the impact they have on the price of motor insurance premiums, the Government have recently implemented a whiplash reform programme. A key component of these reforms was the introduction of an independent IT Portal for the sourcing of medical reports. All initial medical reports used in support of whiplash claims must be obtained through the new portal which is operated by MedCo Registration Solutions (MedCo) an independent industry led not for profit company. The new system makes sure that solicitors are no longer able to obtain a report from an organisation with whom they have a financial link, while maintaining competition between MROs in the market.

The Government committed to undertake a review once six months worth of useable data were available. However, since the Portal went live on 6 April 2015, issues relating to a number of new business practices within this sector have emerged which have the potential to undermine the Government’s policy objectives and public confidence in the MedCo Portal.

Today, therefore, I would like to confirm that the Government are bringing their planned review forward and I invite all stakeholders in the personal injury sector to participate in the public call for evidence which will form a key part of the review process. The review will specifically seek evidence on whether the MedCo IT Portal meets the Government’s objectives, and the evidence provided will be analysed to identify whether changes need to be made to the portal or to the framework of rules underpinning it in order to achieve those objectives.

The Government seek views from stakeholders across the medico-legal reporting services sector in respect of whiplash claims, including representatives from the claimant lawyer, medical and insurance sectors. A report with recommendations for action—if required—will be published in the autumn.

Copies of the Call for Evidence have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses. The document is also available online at: https://www.gov.uk/consult.justice.”

[HCWS139]

Information Commissioner

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

On Tuesday 25 November 2014 the triennial review of the Information Commissioner’s Office was announced in Parliament. The review was publicised on my Department’s website and stakeholders were invited to contribute through a call for evidence. I am grateful to all who contributed to the triennial review. I wish to inform the House that it will not be ready for publication before the recess but Ministers will write to the Select Committee when it is published. It will also be available online and placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS144]

Data Protection

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

My noble Friend the Minister of State for Civil Justice, Lord Faulks QC, attended the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 16 June, where a general approach was agreed on the general data protection regulation. Notwithstanding serious concerns, the UK voted in favour of the general approach, with a view to mitigating the negative implications of the text during the subsequent trilogue discussion, and without prejudice to our decision on the final outcome of negotiations.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, provided a written ministerial statement on 23 June. This updated the House that the UK supported the general approach on the General Data Protection Regulation Council text as a basis for negotiations with the European Parliament. It is with regret that I am informing you of a scrutiny override on this dossier because the Commons Scrutiny Committee had not yet been formed when the Justice and Home Affairs Council took place.

[HCWS126]

Human Rights Act

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate on the future of the Human Rights Act.

I listened with great interest to all the contributions. I shall touch on a few of them, such as that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who gave a powerful speech about some of the risks involved in this enterprise. I detected that he is perhaps not quite as sympathetic to the concept of a Bill of Rights as he was when he was shadow Justice Secretary, but I was heartened to hear that he was offering creative solutions along the way.

[Mr Grieve]

The Minister is quite right. In 2009 I worked on a paper with him as my chief of staff about the possibility of a Bill of Rights. As was rightly said, such a Bill of Rights is perfectly possible, but it will not solve the problems or issues that have been the driving force behind the Government’s current project unless we intend to decouple ourselves from the European convention, which, mercifully, I understand not to be our policy. There is the conundrum that my hon. Friend will have to grapple with.

[Mr Raab]

I thought I had detected a slight revival of my right hon. and learned Friend’s former enthusiasm, but perhaps I was too optimistic.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for his contribution. He always speaks powerfully on these issues—I have listened to him speaking on human rights since I joined this House. He took us back to Magna Carta and its modern-day relevance.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I can go back further if you want.

[Mr Raab]

I am sure you could.

I also welcome the contribution made by the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I congratulate him on his election to that post and look forward to being grilled in due course. He counselled us not to treat the Human Rights Act as a holy grail that cannot be questioned. That was a useful injection of common sense into the debate.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who highlighted some of the cases under the HRA that have been of concern to his party. He raised in particular the application of article 8 with regard to deportation. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) made some powerful points on section 2 of the Act and on extraterritorial jurisdiction. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) raised the difficult issue of the balance between liberty and security. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) discussed judicial legislation from Strasbourg—he has huge experience of that as a result of his representation on the Council of Europe.

There were other excellent speeches to which I cannot pay individual tribute, but I should also acknowledge the speech made by the shadow Minister, who reiterated his party’s position and lamented the lack of detail in the Government’s current proposals. I say to him gently that one issue with the Human Rights Act, arguably, is that it was rushed through, as it was introduced within six months. As a result of that haste, some problems have now emerged that we were warned of at the Act’s inception. The Government are not going to rush in the way the then Labour Government rushed through the Human Rights Act. We will take a little time, because we want to get it done right rather than quickly.

[Andy Slaughter]

Most people do not think it was rushed but would say that it was 20 or 30 years too late. The effect of the Act is to incorporate the convention, which it does, to use the phrase of the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), in a very conservative way. What is the problem with that?

[Mr Raab]

The shadow Minister makes an interesting point. If, as a new Government, we had introduced a Bill within six months, it would have been argued that that was too hasty.

On the problems that have arisen as a result, a former shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who is no longer in his place, took to The Daily Telegraph just last year to point out some of the problems with section 2 of the Act:

“Too often, rather than ‘taking into account’ Strasbourg rulings and by implication, finding their own way, our courts have acted as if these rulings were binding on their decisions. As a result, the sovereignty of our courts and the will of Parliament have both been called into question. This needs sorting out.”

If the Labour party has U-turned on that rather thoughtful critique of its own legislation and now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, believes the Act to be a holy grail that cannot be touched, called into question or criticised at all, there are some questions for Labour to answer. I know hon. Members in the shadow Minister’s party would not all agree on that matter.

I shall take this opportunity to set out the Government’s position. I should say that I have found the debate very valuable at this still formative stage of the Government’s process towards enacting a Bill of Rights. To answer some of the questions put, we will be consulting formally this Session, including with the devolved Administrations—I am aware that there are some issues there—and I hope hon. Members will understand if I do not prejudge that consultation or its terms in my remarks today.

I remind hon. Members that the United Kingdom has a strong tradition of respect for human rights that long predates the Human Rights Act 1998. The Government are proud of that tradition and will be true to it in delivering our reforms. As I explained at Justice questions, our plans do not involve us leaving the convention. That is not our objective. We want to restore some common-sense balance to our human rights, which are out of kilter, so nothing has been taken off the table.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

If the proposal is not to withdraw from the convention, would it still be applicable in British law and in decision making by judges in British courts?

[Mr Raab]

The hon. Gentleman is alluding to the idea of having a middle course between throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as some have described it—tearing up human rights, getting rid of the convention and not replacing it—and trying to reform the current model by looking at the way the convention has been applied and interpreted. There are not huge numbers of objections to the black letter law of the convention’s text, but the way it has been applied and extended is a matter of concern. All that will be the subject of debate and consultation.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

I say, in passing, that I hope we never get to the stage where the implementation of law by the courts is entirely to the satisfaction of the Government. Surely the problem is that if we get to a point where we have a British Bill of Rights but remain a contracting party to the European convention, which has a higher standard of human rights protection, anyone dissatisfied with their rights as applied in the UK domestic courts under the British Bill could still have recourse to the wider protection of the European Court in Strasbourg.

[Mr Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman is tempting me to prejudge the substantive content of the Bill and the consultation. He has raised some interesting points, which we will no doubt thrash out in due course; I look forward to that.

I will refer to some of the principal concerns about the Human Rights Act, as that is the subject of the debate. Given the time restraints I will refer to just a few examples from what is by no means an exhaustive list. The first is the exponential expansion of rights that the design of the Human Rights Act, whether tacitly or otherwise, has promoted. It has encouraged a rights inflation that, as has already been acknowledged, has tended to undermine the so-called liberal model of human rights, shifting away from what people like Isaiah Berlin would refer to as negative liberty, or the John Stuart Mill model of shielding the citizen, towards imposing obligations on the state rather than constraining it. If that were in any doubt, the textbooks—I am sure hon. Members across the House are familiar with them—are littered with examples of the celebration of that, whether through the living instrument doctrine in Strasbourg or our own case law.

The practical effect of rights inflation has been to dilute personal responsibility. The growth of rights—the expansion of the realm of rights—increases the power of the individual, however nefarious or otherwise, to trump the good of the rest of society. The more that extends beyond the bedrock of core liberties, the more corrosive the effects. I will give one brief illustration, to highlight the fact that personal responsibility is being eroded or diluted: the claim that the Government’s welfare to work policy amounted to forced labour under the European convention.

I should say straight away that that claim failed, but the fact that it made its way through the UK court system to the Supreme Court is telling. It is striking that lawyers thought they could stretch an article of the convention that was designed, after the experience of concentration camps during world war two, to address grave issues of slavery and forced labour so as to attack the principle of conditionality in welfare reform. It is just one illustration of how the HRA has proved rather malleable material for the ingenious twisting of the basic conception of human rights, rather than simply bringing rights home, which was the Act’s explicit contention.

The second concern I will raise about the HRA is its effect on the rule of law, and in particular the effect that some of the haphazard case law has had on legal certainty. I refer hon. Members to the tragic case of Naomi Bryant, and the review by HM Inspectorate of Probation of the case, which found that the licence conditions placed on Anthony Rice on his release were too lax and noted that lawyers had whittled away the conditions by deploying arguments to do with the Human Rights Act. I will not go into that further—I have the quotes with me but will not read them out—but if anyone wants to look into that case further, they should look at that report.

The third issue I will raise is the way that the Human Rights Act has exposed us unnecessarily to too much judicial legislation from Strasbourg—for example, in the case of prisoner voting. In truth, as we should not make this into some strictly European bogey, there have been examples of domestic judicial legislation as well, about article 8 in particular—we should deal with our home-grown problems, too. That is easy to do without bringing into question our membership of the European convention.

Finally, I hope the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has had the opportunity to read the excellent article by Baroness Faulkner, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on foreign affairs, in May’s edition of Prospect. In case he has not, and for the benefit of this wider audience, I will quote a few choice words:

“Britain can replace the HRA and retain a decent, humane legal system. The human rights lobby has reacted with horror at the government’s proposal. But they are mistaken... A British Bill of Rights is a good idea.”

I do not agree with the whole article but it is well worth a read.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and welcome his contribution. I hope he will not mind if I encourage him to circulate that article among the other members of his party.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

13. What his policy is on the European convention on human rights; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

We will legislate for a Bill of Rights to protect our fundamental rights, prevent abuse of the system and restore some common sense to our human rights laws. Our plans do not involve us leaving the convention; that is not our objective, but our No. 1 priority is to restore some balance to our human rights laws, so no option is off the table for the future.

[Catherine West]

When will Ministers publish a draft Bill of Rights, as mooted in the recent election campaign?

[Mr Raab]

We said very clearly that we shall deliver it in this Parliament. We shall have a consultation in this Session so our plans will be brought forward shortly.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this country has had a proud tradition with regard to human rights, and it will remain a central part of what we do to promote best practice around the world, but in the end, the country’s commitment to human rights will be judged on its actions, not merely the piece of paper it happens to have signed?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a strong record on human rights. We will continue to set an example around the world, but in our own domestic laws we do need to make sure that we have a common-sense balance. It is not a left or right issue; it is what the public expect as a matter of common sense.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Is the Minister aware that the Church of Scotland has expressed concern about his Government’s plans to repeal the Human Rights Act? Will he now support the Church of Scotland’s call for human rights to be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament?

[Mr Raab]

We are well aware of the concerns that have been expressed. We will be consulting fully, including with the devolved Administrations, in due course.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister to his place. We often hear about rights. Does he agree that perhaps it should be renamed the European convention on human responsibilities?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend has been tenacious in his campaigning on this subject. He comes up with an ingenious suggestion. Actually, our concern has been less with the black-letter text of the convention and more with its application. Some of the problems have arisen from judicial legislation in the Strasbourg Court, some of them through the operation of the Human Rights Act, as the former shadow Justice Secretary acknowledged. We want to protect our fundamental rights and prevent abuse of the system.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Sir John Major, giving the inaugural Edward Heath lecture on the subject of Magna Carta last week, said that he respected the “power and significance” of the European convention on human rights, and that where there was conflict with the UK Parliament,

“I expect consultation and compromise to settle this issue.”

Should not the Minister, and indeed the Lord Chancellor, heed the advice of someone with so much experience of running a Tory Government with a wafer-thin majority?

[Mr Raab]

We listen to all the informed voices in this debate. That is why we are going to have full consultation. We look forward to discussing this with the hon. Gentleman and many others across the House.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

16. What discussions he has had with the Scottish Government on the future of the Human Rights Act 1998.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

Do Ministers agree that a British Bill of Rights is an important step towards ensuring that the matter of votes for prisoners remains a matter for this House to decide, and that the best way of rehabilitating offenders is through a good job and education, not political gimmicks?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the House. He is absolutely right: prisoner voting is a question that should be decided by democratically elected Members of this House. Our wider aim with a Bill of Rights is not only to protect our fundamental rights, but to strengthen the role of the British Supreme Court, defend the rule of law and shield the democratic prerogatives of this House.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

The family of Richard Davies are devastated by his death on Yeadon high street. A man has been charged with manslaughter and yet has been granted bail, which is very distressing for the family. What guidance is given to judges—

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois]

I am very happy to answer that question. The clauses the hon. Gentleman voted for in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill had exactly the same wording. If he would like to review those cases, he will get a very good picture. I am surprised he did not show the same concern then as he seems to be showing now, or should I have expected that?

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

On messaging and deterrence, one of the critical issues is the certainty of being caught and the severity of the sanction, which we are trying to toughen up. Does my hon. Friend know the view of the Metropolitan police? Based on what he has said, it seems that a lot of people are being caught but the sanction is not tough enough. Do the police support the new clause?

[Nick de Bois]

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner wrote to the Government several months ago urging them to introduce the measure. The police fully support it and they do not like the fact—and they are right not to like it—that an increasing number of multiple offenders are not getting custodial sentences. They want a better response so that cases are worth prosecuting.

Prison Overcrowding

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I cannot give an exact figure, but I can say that as we introduce resettlement prisons in the last part of this year, the vast majority of offenders—not absolutely all, but almost all offenders—will spend at least the last few months of their sentence in the geographic area into which they will be released, which will help with precisely the links the hon. Gentleman talks about.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Will the Justice Secretary confirm that there are more offenders in jail now than there were under the previous Government, and that crime is lower now than under the previous Government? Will he also confirm that there will be absolutely no repeat of the shambolic early release scheme, which saw 80,000 prisoners let out early, meaning that we had to prosecute hundreds of them, including for murder and other serious violent offences?

[Chris Grayling]

I completely agree. To be frank, I would like to have the capacity to unravel some of the residual schemes that I inherited, such as the home detention curfew scheme, which in my view should not have been introduced in the first place and which people struggle to understand. I will not be able to do that until resources are available, but it is certainly my ambition.

Home Department

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Ministerial Corrections

Arrest Warrants

[Mr Raab]

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many requests for the surrender of an individual under a European Arrest Warrant were received by the Serious Organised Crime Agency in 2010-11.

[Official Report, 1 December 2011, Vol. 536, c. 1063W.]

Letter of correction from Damian Green:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on 1 December 2011.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Damian Green]

[holding answer 7 November 2011]: In 2010-11, SOCA received 6,032 Part 1 European Arrest Warrant requests (relating to individuals who are in the UK) and 256 Part 3 warrants (relating to individuals wanted by the UK).

Member states will often issue an EAW to all other member states when the location of the individual sought is not known. The number of requests received, therefore, is not necessarily an indicator of those individuals being in the UK.

The correct answer should have been:

[Damian Green]

[holding answer 7 November 2011]: In 2010-11, SOCA received 5,770 Part 1 European Arrest Warrant requests (relating to individuals who are in the UK) and 256 Part 3 warrants (relating to individuals wanted by the UK).

Member states will often issue an EAW to all other member states when the location of the individual sought is not known. The number of requests received, therefore, is not necessarily an indicator of those individuals being in the UK.

[Mr Raab]

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many requests for the surrender of an individual under a European arrest warrant were received by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency in 2011-12.

[Official Report, 20 June 2012, Vol. 546, c. 1058-60W.]

Letter of correction from Damian Green:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on 20 June 2012.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Damian Green]

[holding answer 18 June 2012]: During the business year 2011-12, the Serious Organised Crime Agency received 5,832 European arrest warrants issued by EU member states—this figure includes four issued by Gibraltar. The following table breaks this figure down by issuing state.

Police Federation Reform (Normington Report)

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I do not want to widen the debate and have a rerun of the Mitchell case, but I should say a couple of things about it. The House knows full well that I did not approve of the Leveson process—I strongly believe in a free press—but even I am astonished that, after Leveson, a police force has yet again leaked with an incredible spin a confidential document to which the victim in the case, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield, has not had access. First, I expect the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to have a proper leak inquiry into that—I have told him that this morning. Secondly, an astonishing interpretation was put on the leak. The leak shows that an officer, four hours after attempting to stop my right hon. Friend going through the main gates of Downing street—this did not happen in a panic or a rush and was premeditated—wrote to his seniors not to say, “We have a security issue. Will somebody please have a conversation with Mr Mitchell to ensure he understands that we cannot let him through?”, which would have been the proper thing to do and what hon. Members would have done, but to set up a circumstance in which the situation would be resolved by a public confrontation at the front gate after the officer had ensured that his seniors supported him in doing so. If anything, that reinforces the story we were told by an anonymous whistleblower that this was a premeditated action. Today’s press coverage is not a good reflection on the police in two ways: it undermines their main case and it is something that they simply should not have done under these circumstances.

If the House will forgive me, I will try not to rest too much on the Mitchell case, because it is just one of many in which we have reason to be concerned about the role of the federation.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right. Does he agree, as the Normington report sets out very clearly, that the Mitchell case is just one illustration of the, frankly, flagrant and endemic bullying and harassment that often goes on among the federation’s own members, whether online or in person? That is set out very clearly in the report.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend—he is also an old friend—is entirely right. I will elaborate in some detail on some of those cases in a moment.

The federation chose a very good person to write the report. David Normington, a distinguished ex-permanent secretary at the Home Office, is a classic Whitehall mandarin. If anything, he is more tempted than most to be careful and sober in his language, and to pull his punches in his descriptions or at least to mitigate them. However, it is in the best interests of police officers across the country that we reveal very clearly, and perhaps in starker detail than Normington did, the extent to which the federation has failed.

Even in its sober language, the Normington report was, as my hon. Friend intimates, utterly damning of the federation’s performance. It made 36 recommendations, focusing on returning professionalism, democracy and efficiency to the Police Federation. To fully understand the extent of the problem, we should examine a number of areas where the need for reform is particularly apparent.

It is a matter of great concern that the Police Federation is as profligate as it appears to be. There are numerous examples of that. It spent £26 million building its Leatherhead headquarters. Frankly, that is extravagant enough to do justice to one of the London merchant banks at the height of the City excesses. The headquarters have a hotel, a bar, an indoor swimming pool and 11 grace and favour apartments. Even more outrageous is that, to pay for the extravagant cost, members’ subscription fees had to be raised by 23%. The federation’s officers, with their salaries still paid by their respective forces, receive salary enhancements of up to £25,000 from the federation. They are given those enhancements for doing what is, after all, an easier job than being on the cold streets of Britain on the night shift: sitting in their luxury headquarters, instead of performing public duties. I have been told that full-time federation officers have free use of the grace and favour flats and live on company credit cards. The purchase of large quantities of food and alcohol on those cards is apparently not uncommon.

To put a number on this, the accounts show a provision of £2 million in a tax dispute with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. As I understand it, if that provision is to meet any tax liability, at a tax rate of 40%, that means that £5 million of claims have been made on perks, and perhaps unjustifiably claimed as a proper expense. That is astonishing.

In the newspapers only a couple of days ago a police widow—herself a serving police constable, if the report was right—said that federation officials treated memorial services, those most important and high-gravitas of occasions,

“like a drunken jolly, getting drunk on federation credit cards. Their drunken excess upsets families every year”,

so this is not an exception. I heard similar allegations about the behaviour of federation officials at conferences, at which bar bills of hundreds of pounds were again being charged to federation credit cards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point strongly. That point comes across crystal clear in the report. I was going on to say that many of us have watched in this country as cases involving minorities have often been overlooked. The truth is that there are many cases, some of which emanate from my own constituency, where there have been concerns about the Police Federation and a closed shop, particularly in relation to getting at the truth. However, what is so startling is that what may have been a minority concern has broken into the mainstream. When three officers so blatantly tell mistruths and so blatantly refuse to apologise over an event involving a Cabinet Minister in a country such as this, it must tell us something about a culture of impunity that has become endemic in the system. It must also say something about the necessary reform that must now come. I am pleased, therefore, that the Police Federation has accepted the report’s recommendations. The tipping point must surely have been reached if it has come to pass in this way.

As we have this debate in 2014, it is clear that a number of our institutions need to reform and to look closely at these closed practices. We as Members of Parliament are premier among them. We have had debates about closed practices in the NHS and the need for a stronger whistleblowing culture. In the Leveson report, we saw real concerns about parts of the journalism profession. Now, as we come to the police, we must see an end to those closed practices and to the refusal to get to the truth.

We have such discussions not to attack but out of sadness. The practices under discussion have chronic effects on ordinary people’s lives and they put tremendous pressure on families. It is the nature of any state that it leaves the individuals caught up in this feeling desperately powerless. That is why we juxtapose the situation in which the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) has found himself with so many others.

[Mr Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the way in which the Police Federation uses its funds in litigation is critical to the balanced approach that he is discussing? It is one thing for it to defend its own members from litigation—to use the fund as a shield—but another thing to use those funds as a sword to pursue other people, especially victims or other members of the public?

[Mr Lammy]

Absolutely. The point is that some of those funds involve taxpayers’ money, which must demand close scrutiny. I am pleased that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee suggested that scrutiny should be No. 1 on the agenda. It is also the case that the federation has seen fit to go after leading members of our society who are looking at police reform issues. Why is it that it thinks that it can get away with challenging a senior Cabinet Minister? Is it because parliamentarians, MPs and Ministers at this point in the cycle just happen to be a minority group that is up for attack and the federation thinks it can get away with it? There is a connection with the way it might deal with certain types of criminals. There is a connection with the way it might deal with some parts of the Irish community in this country, who would say that they have experienced some sharp practices from parts of the Police Federation. I am talking about the notion that, “It is a minority, the public don’t care that much and we can get away with this.” We must challenge that, because the honour of a great profession is at stake. Some £8 million is spent annually in relation to litigation. These are important budgets. We must ensure that they are being used for the right purposes.

I have been concerned, especially in the Duggan case, that officers have been advised by the Police Federation not to give interviews. Attempts to suspend officers facing serious allegations are always fought, whatever the circumstances. If any of us were caught up in a situation that involved the death of another individual, we would not be able to refuse to give an interview. Why would we accord that power to people who are in uniform? This is a very important issue.

One of the fundamentals of our system is the fantastic idea that we have policing by consent. That is at the heart of our police service. Here in London, there are only 32,000 police officers, and a population heading towards 10 million. In reality, it is the 10 million people who work alongside the police who give us that feeling that we are safe almost anywhere in London. The idea is that we police by consent, not by fear as is the case in America or in parts of continental Europe where police officers carry guns. It is an idea that we must treasure and protect. It is grossly undermined when a minority of police officers misbehave, they are not challenged sufficiently, there is not sufficient scrutiny, and there is the sense of a closed shop where even those who are blatantly lying are protected. That is why this report is so important, why the House must look closely at implementing it and why we must revisit these issues not just in Backbench debates over the coming months and years but in debates in Government time where we are absolutely rigorous about protecting this important fundamental of our democracy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this area. I also pay tribute to the work done by members of his community in Enfield, whom I have met and spoken to. I fully understand the nature of the impact of knife crime on their community and on communities around the country. I assure him strongly that we will keep the issue under review. The clear will of Parliament is that such offences should be dealt with with great severity. I hope that those presiding over our courts recognise the will of Parliament. I also assure him that I continue to look at this area extremely carefully.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

18. What steps he is taking to curb the scope and volume of human rights claims.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

As my hon. Friend knows, we continue to implement the work completed in the Brighton declaration, but he is aware that, as a party, the Conservatives are considering further measures that we would introduce as a majority Government to reduce the scope of the Court in Strasbourg to impose unwelcome judgments upon us.

[Mr Raab]

After Qatada and prisoner voting, the latest ruling from Strasbourg demands that all lifers have the chance to be released. Does he agree that that latest shifting of the human rights goalposts offends the rule of law, erodes democratic accountability and only strengthens the case for that overhaul of our relationship with the Strasbourg Court?

[Chris Grayling]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The decision on whole-life tariffs was entirely regrettable and should not have been taken, and certainly not at the level of an international court. I assure him and all colleagues that the decision simply redoubles my determination to deliver a strategy, which I will do next year, for our party to go into the next general election with a clear plan for change.