Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I have been very clear that I find it profoundly unsatisfactory that people who get sentences of less than 12 months are not provided with supervision post-prison. The changes that we have put in place will include that group and people who receive community sentences. We must remember that 80% of those who end up in our prisons have completed a community sentence, so that part of our system is not working either.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The risk posed by offenders can change, as was illustrated all too vividly by news reports from Chippenham last week. Under his proposals, how will the Secretary of State ensure that medium-risk offenders are assessed to enable them to receive attention from skilled and experienced probation officers should they become a higher risk to members of the public?

[Chris Grayling]

We are very clear that there has to be a simple mechanism for offenders whose risk profile is changing to be reassessed by a public probation officer. As a result of our consultation, we are working through the details of how that process should work. I am very clear that the responsibility for protecting the public from the risk of harm should and will remain with the public sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s support for a prison in north Wales. He might want to discuss the matter with his hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who may not necessarily agree with him. It would be wise for everyone to consider very carefully the proposals that will come forward for suitable sites. We will do that. We have identified north Wales as one of the places where there is a strategic need, so we will consider carefully any proposals that are made.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

10. What recent estimate he has made of the proportion of prisoners (a) entering and (b) leaving prison with an addiction to a class A drug.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)]

A survey of 1,435 prisoners sentenced to between one month and four years in 2005 and 2006 showed that 45% of prisoners reported having taken a class A drug in the four weeks before custody. No recent estimate has been made of the proportion of prisoners leaving prison with an addiction to a class A drug.

[Duncan Hames]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but may I gently suggest that it would be worth while to have more recent estimates and to address the situation of offenders as they leave prisons? Has she ruled out suspicions of collusion by any prison staff in explaining why access to drugs in prisons is so widespread?

[Mrs Grant]

As I said, we do not have the figures on the number of prisoners leaving prison with an addiction to a class A drug, but this Government are absolutely committed to stopping drugs entering prisons and getting prisoners off drugs for good.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Although the games were called London 2012, they were Olympic and Paralympic games for the whole country and it is important that those benefits come through at a regional level. I believe that we will enable that through all our programmes, including Places People Play, which I have mentioned, as well as many others. We will continue to look at regional benefits.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Team GB achieved great success on the water at the Olympics, not just in rowing, but through Bradford-on-Avon’s Olympic gold medallist Ed McKeever in the kayaking. Is the Secretary of State satisfied that sculler schools and canoeing clubs have enough access to rivers, and will she consider having discussions with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about a possible right to roam?

Court-appointed Deputies

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I applied for a debate on this subject to raise the case of one of my constituents, who, for today’s purposes, I will call Mr Able. He has seemingly exhausted every official regulatory channel available, without anyone taking responsibility for remedying what has happened to him. Although cases of his kind may be in a minority, I want to illustrate how easily a vulnerable adult has been appallingly failed through poor communication and a lack of scrutiny in the system of court-appointed deputies and in the Office of the Public Guardian.

In 1997, my constituent was awarded a not insubstantial sum following a road traffic accident in which he was injured. He was assessed as being affected by learning difficulties and additional cognitive impairment following the collision. The following year, the Public Trustee was appointed his receiver—the role now known as that of the deputy—and in 2001 that role passed to a firm of solicitors. They failed not only to protect his existing funds, but to secure and maximise his income. Over the nine years that followed, Mr Able’s award was virtually wiped out, and the local authority has been looking after his deputyship since 2010.

It is clear that the eventual decision to replace his court-appointed deputy with Wiltshire council is the best thing that has happened to Mr Able during my involvement in his case. Before that, inadequate sharing of information across agencies about my constituent’s actions and circumstances led to a large proportion of his capital being eaten up by solicitors’ fees, and to him not receiving the benefits to which he was entitled.

Nearly £33,000 was spent on the cost of his court-appointed deputy, but despite the hefty price tag, the deputy was not able to prevent a further £13,500 being spent on a different firm of lawyers’ pursuit of a speculative unfair dismissal case, which adds up to more than £46,000. That firm predicted that Mr Able could secure between £20,000 and £36,000 in damages, but won him less than a tenth of that, leaving him substantially out of pocket and his deputy trying in vain to get those lawyers’ costs below £13,000. How can the system conclude that it is in the best interests of a vulnerable adult, with no other means, to run up such fees? How could the situation have gone so far with no one in authority suggesting that it was in any way exploitative?

The Court of Protection has a panel of people who can be appointed deputies. My constituent’s case suggests that those considered for appointment are not suitably equipped to serve some of the clients assigned to them. It also suggests a disturbing degree of laxity in how some individuals become deputies. Mr Able’s deputy for much of the period had no links to the panel of deputies. To all intents and purposes, he had inherited his case from a deceased colleague. The level of vagueness that my staff and I encountered when trying to clarify exactly what happened in that period, and how the application process to find Mr Able a new deputy was managed, was disturbing.

I understand from the Office of the Public Guardian that a review has been undertaken of the panel of deputies, one of the aims of which was to introduce clearer procedures on how individuals become and remain panel members. I would appreciate the Minister’s assessment of how that exercise has gone, and how it has treated the question of whether solicitors are, in all circumstances, suitable for appointment by the court as deputies.

Mr Able has gained access to the support he needs only through a patient and conscientious local authority team, to whom he pays nothing comparable to the solicitors’ fees I outlined. However, that support was secured only when he was approaching the point of crisis, and after his money—the management of which was his deputy’s task—had been almost entirely depleted.

It seems that at that and too many other points in this case, Mr Able’s behaviour and capacity have been cited as a reason why certain things did or did not happen, and have been used to explain and justify action, or inaction, by those who were supposed to have his best interests at heart. That is not acceptable. If professional court-appointed deputies are unable to work with their clients’ behaviour, they are probably not the right people to do the job. If that is what happened in this case, they should have said so. Instead, they were just happy to take his money for the time and the attention that he demanded of them.

There is a related point about scrutiny and who monitors whether deputies are undertaking their duties effectively. The Court of Protection visitor had decided to stop visiting Mr Able back in April 2003. Mr Able did not receive another visit until January 2011.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Would this gentleman’s circumstances have been different if the court had recognised early on that he did not have the capacity to look after himself, and if someone suitable had been appointed from an organisation that looks after people with disabilities? Does responsibility for what took place lie with the court or the solicitor?

[Duncan Hames]

That is the astonishing thing about this case. The court made an assessment, in which it determined that Mr Able was not capable of managing his own finances. The things that we are led to believe the system considered Mr Able capable of doing, in terms of looking after his best interests and challenging what was happening to him, is extraordinary given that original assessment. I certainly agree that part of the problem is that inconsistency in what he was expected to be able to do, given the decision that the court had already made about his ability to manage his finances. That does not absolve the court-appointed deputy of the responsibility of saying that in the circumstances they were not the best people to serve him.

Mr Able did not receive a visit from the Court of Protection visitor again until January 2011. Even a change of deputy in 2005 was not considered an appropriate trigger for a visit, despite the fact that it took a year for Mr Able’s deputy’s replacement to be confirmed. As part of the oversight process to protect people who lack capacity, visitors can be commissioned to make reports by either the Court of Protection or the Office of the Public Guardian. I contend that not having Mr Able visited at any time in eight years demonstrates a terrible sense of complacency among those who were meant to be looking after his best interests.

In this case, my constituent was removed from the list of people to be visited for the “time being” on the grounds that regular visits would not “achieve anything”. However, a court visitor was engaged on Mr Able’s case when the deputy applied to be discharged, and produced a report in 2009, which seems to have been compiled without the visitor even meeting Mr Able. In such cases, the system seems to serve the needs of the deputies rather more than those of their clients. I wonder how well the criteria for how deputies manage their clients’ money are set and monitored, especially clients in Mr Able’s position, given the view that had been taken about his capability. I would welcome the Minister’s opinion on whether the system of visits is in need of review to help improve the situation for people in similar circumstances.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I am interested to hear my hon. Friend say that a review is required. Does he agree that there is perhaps a need for a fundamental review of the entire system? I have come across a case of a court-appointed deputy, a solicitor, who made a misleading statement to the Court of Protection, gave incorrect information to agencies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, appointed inappropriate case managers who did not have the required expertise, paid bills against invoices without first checking that the invoices were valid, and took an enormous fee in the process. I must declare an interest, because my wife was recently appointed court deputy in place of the solicitor and is, of course, saving the client a fortune in fees. Does he agree that the system has basically not performed adequately at all, and needs fundamental review?

[Duncan Hames]

I do agree. I hope that the Minister will conclude—if not today, then before long—that a thorough review of the situation is required. I raised this case because it is illustrative of many others. As I shall explain, one of the things about this case that has frustrated me immensely is the lack of accountability for what is happening. In any situation, there will be people whose conduct is not up to the standard that we would hope for. There may even be people who exploit a situation. If there is sufficient accountability in a system, we have some safeguards. I am not convinced that there is such accountability in this case.

[Mr Bacon]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one possible way forward is to increase the powers of the Public Guardian, whom I met quite recently and found to be an extremely reasonable individual? He said that one of the issues is that his current statutory powers are limited. Is one way forward to increase the scope of what the Public Guardian can do?

[Duncan Hames]

I understand that we have a relatively new Public Guardian. I hope that he will be rather more concerned about this situation than his predecessor appeared to be, given the report that I received when I made this investigation. Perhaps that is something that we will hear more about from the Minister.

I have been pursuing this case, with the help of my staff, since before my election in 2010. I have taken every available route, up to and including the parliamentary ombudsman, to get the full facts and to bring scrutiny to bear on the individuals and agencies involved. Frustratingly, after all the reviews and oversight processes that have been triggered at every level, none has found any individual at fault, and that is despite the evident general failure to ensure my constituent’s financial well-being. Indeed when I requested that the parliamentary ombudsman investigate this case, I received a thoughtless parroting of the Public Guardian’s own review, which had been conducted at my request and completed in January last year. It added no value to the scrutiny of the situation, and I find that completely unsatisfactory.

There was consensus among professionals that Mr Able did not have the capacity to manage his finances, so it cannot be suggested that the outcome—the depletion and, in some cases, wasting of his money—was his fault, or something for which he can be held to account; that is the very point of deputies acting on his behalf. None the less, the result, effectively, is that a vulnerable man has been left more or less penniless by the inaction of those who were meant to protect him, and the regulatory reaction has been tacit indifference. For example, on the costs that my constituent was charged by his deputy, the Office of the Public Guardian’s internal review said that it found no evidence that Mr Able was ever formally told by his deputy, or anyone else, that he was entitled to challenge the assessment of his costs by the Senior Court Costs Office.

Similarly, I look at the failure to secure Mr Able’s income through benefits to which he was entitled. The Public Guardian considers that his deputy “made reasonable attempts”' to do that, but that these did not always succeed, and that

“with hindsight, different approaches should have been tried.”

More than a third of the personal capital that Mr Able possessed when control of his financial affairs was passed to court-appointed solicitors was subsequently paid to those solicitors as fees for the job of controlling his expenditure, yet they did not even ensure that he received appropriate benefits when he was unemployed. The Public Guardian, however, does not consider that Mr Able’s deputy was at fault for not providing him with the support to ensure that he attended the right appointments, was able to cope with benefits-related interviews and assessments, and continued to sign on.

However, now that Wiltshire council acts as Mr Able’s deputy, he has qualified for employment and support allowance, and he receives support that addresses his needs appropriately, including the use of reports from medical staff and social workers when applications are made. If the council can achieve that, surely—given the expense that Mr Able was forced to incur—his court-appointed deputy should have been able to achieve it, too.

No review of the case has concluded that any agency has done something wrong, and no lessons have been learned. Although this case may be unique, as we have heard today, the failings exposed by it are certainly not unique. I draw the Minister’s attention to the Westminster Hall debate secured by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) on 19 July 2011, in which I participated, and to the transcript of BBC Radio 4’s “File on 4” report on court-appointed deputies by Fran Abrams—I gave the Minister a copy today—which catalogues failings similar to those I describe.

I ask the Minister what other avenue is available in seeking redress for my constituent. I recognise that she is new in her post, so I ask that she personally looks further into the wider issues discussed today, and raises them with her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice. In particular, I ask her to consider whether the panel from which deputies appointed by the court are drawn is too narrow, and whether it could include, for certain cases, representatives of voluntary sector organisations, especially those with experience of dealing with the sometimes complex circumstances of vulnerable people. My final question is this: is the OPG, as currently constituted, fulfilling its responsibilities to vulnerable people, or has it been captured by the learned and organised legal practitioners who collectively draw such great revenue from this work?

Exasperated as I am to see my constituent suffer this unremedied injustice, it is imperative that—at the very least—lessons are learned from his saga, so that others do not face the same fate in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Grant]

The issue that my hon. Friend raises in relation to over-charging vulnerable people is extremely important. It is worrying and it is one of the reasons why the new Public Guardian has launched a fundamental review into the supervision of deputies. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham raised the matter with me just a few moments ago, and I will look into it. I will write to him, and perhaps we can take matters forward.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issues. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, who I know has met the Public Guardian and who has extensive personal experience of the current system of deputyship. The issues are important and I hope that both my hon. Friends are reassured that the Government take matters very seriously. I will look carefully into the issues they have raised on accountability, visits, the statutory powers of deputies and panel composition. I hope they are both reassured that the OPG continues to look into this area to make further significant improvements.

[Duncan Hames]

I very much welcome the fundamental review that the Minister has advised us of this afternoon. She said that the OPG had been and would be surveying deputies as part of the review. I hope that she will ensure that the clients of deputies are consulted and interviewed and asked their views as part of the review in order that the true customers of the service have their voices heard.

[Mrs Grant]

I am happy to look into all the important issues that my hon. Friend has raised today. The Government consider vulnerable people to be very important and a high priority. I am happy to talk further to my hon. Friend about what more might be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The Government support people’s right to wear a cross, and the law requires employers to consider whether any provisions or criteria that they adopt would disadvantage employees of any religion. We have discussed court actions in a previous Question Time, and common sense is important on behalf of both courts and employers, so as to allow the legitimate expression of religious views in the workplace.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The previous ministerial team offered the astonishing innovation of drug-free wings in prisons. What progress is being made to ensure that prisoners returning to society are not burdened with an addiction to illegal drugs?

[Jeremy Wright]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and of course the situation is worse than that because some prisoners actually gain a drug habit while in custody. There is a great deal of work to do, not only with drug-free wings but in reducing drug addiction across the prison estate. We will continue to work on that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

If there are debts to be collected, bailiffs have to go and collect them; otherwise, the system would break down. However, the Government are clear that aggressive bailiff activity is unacceptable, and we are committed to introducing effective proposals that protect the public and ensure that bailiff action is proportionate.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I hear the Minister’s answer, but does he not agree that when public bodies such as councils procure bailiff services, they should take some responsibility for the methods they sanction?

[Mr Djanogly]

They should indeed, and they do. The new guidelines are there to ensure that minimum standards of behaviour are adhered to. We have introduced the guidelines before legislating.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are consulting on those proposals in relation to that difficult subject. All I can say is that I certainly appreciate its special significance for Northern Ireland and the situation in Northern Ireland, and we will pay the most careful regard to the submissions that we receive from all those interested in Northern Ireland before we come to our conclusions.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Throughout the 18 months to the end of September 2011, consistently more than half of appeal cases relating to employment and support allowance took longer than six months to be decided by the Courts and Tribunals Service, meaning that more than twice as many people as the service’s own target are waiting that long. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that they receive their decisions in good time?

[Mr Djanogly]

The service is under pressure because of an increase in appeals, but I am very pleased to say that in five of the past six months more appeals have gone out the door than have come in.

Office of the Public Guardian

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not sure, Mr Dobbin, whether you think that there is a lack of confidence or awareness at the Office of the Public Guardian, but I certainly think that that is the case. My awareness has been considerably increased by having to deal with the Office of the Public Guardian over the past three years on behalf of my constituent.

My constituent is clear that the property in her case could have been sold on a number of occasions and has supplied documentary evidence to that effect. She believes that those sales were prevented by the lack of action from the deputy and from the Office of the Public Guardian.

I received a similarly disappointing answer from the then Minister, which parroted a lot of what the Office of the Public Guardian itself had said. Throughout this period, my constituent was active in trying to resolve matters both through her solicitors and in corresponding directly with the Public Guardian. In the meantime, she was bearing all the expense of the property, which amounted to a considerable sum.

On 18 March, I again wrote to Martin John, the Public Guardian, emphasising that the sale was being prevented by the lack of authority being provided on Mr F’s behalf and that my constituent was concerned that the property could be placed under embargo to recover charges that she could not afford to pay, which would certainly not be in the interest of either party.

The Public Guardian replied. For the first time—we are talking about one and a half years on into this correspondence— he indicated that the deputy was being advised not to pay any of the share of the charges by their solicitor and that the Public Guardian could apply to the court to discharge the deputy, but did not consider it appropriate “at present.”

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this serious issue. People often feel completely helpless in these situations, especially when a deputy is imposed on them. I do not know whether he knows this, but a constituent of mine—I will call him “Mr Able”—used to have his deputy visited on an almost annual basis by the authorities about 12 years ago. In the period between 2003 and 2006, however, there was a cosy consensus between the Office of the Public Guardian and the solicitors appointed to act as Mr Able’s deputy that there would be no such visits, because they did not find them fruitful. And yet throughout that period, there was no action in response to Mr Able’s demands to have his deputy discharged. Surely there needs to be regular oversight of deputies whose role is being challenged by those whom they are supposed to be caring for?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, there have been reforms since the period that he has referred to. I am afraid to say, however, that those reforms were introduced by the previous Government—I accept that—and as far as I can see they are not bringing genuine change and genuine service to the public. The Office of the Public Guardian should offer genuine service to the public, but from the evidence of my dealings with it, I must say that it has certainly not done that.

It is significant that, in previously advising my constituent that she could apply to the court at her own expense, the Public Guardian did not advise her that it was also within his power to do so. Eight months after the promise of “a swift resolution”, the Public Guardian advised for the first time that the deputy was not accepting responsibility for the shared costs and that he himself was not prepared to act to remove the deputy.

In a separate letter of the same date, the Public Guardian said that he had considered the appointment of a panel deputy, but he also said that that would be too costly and—unbelievably—that it would delay the sale of the flat, after all the delay that there had already been.

Another 16 months on, we are no further forward. My constituent is considerably out of pocket. Seasons change and Governments come and go; regimes fall; media empires crumble; but still the “swift” progress promised by the Office of the Public Guardian has been slower than the progress of a glacier.

By February 2011, as the Minister well knows, we had a new Government in place; in fact, it had been in office by then for a period of nine months. In this new era, I wrote again to the Public Guardian. My constituent had had to shell out a few more thousand pounds in the meantime to prevent the property being embargoed. I asked the Public Guardian how it could possibly be in the interests of Mr F to allow this situation to continue. I pointed out that another buyer from the UK had been lost because they were not prepared to wait for all the paperwork issues to be resolved. I suggested that the inaction of the Office of the Public Guardian was tantamount to maladministration. I understand that the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) may already have taken a case to the ombudsman or that he has a case in progress with the ombudsman.

[Duncan Hames]

indicated assent.

[Kevin Brennan]

I suggested that in the case that I am discussing a referral to the ombudsman might be required. I had a reply on 17 February 2011 from the Public Guardian, in which he raised new issues in relation to the case. For the first time, the Public Guardian said that my constituent had the only set of keys to the property and that he did not think it right that her ex-husband should be liable for any of the service charges on the property. That issue had never been raised in the previous two and a half years of correspondence in relation to the case. The Public Guardian once again blamed the lack of a buyer for the lack of progress, but he admitted in that letter of 17 February 2011 that, despite all of the correspondence that we had had:

“I accept that updates may not have been pursued as frequently as they might and my head of operations has instructions to ensure regular engagement with”—

he names the deputy in the letter, but I will not give the name now—

“and her solicitor with regards to any progress in the sale of the property.”

At the end of that letter, he said this about the deputy:

“I am content with the way she is discharging her duties”.

My constituent wrote to me on 28 February 2011 stating how appalled she was by the Public Guardian’s reply. She made it clear that both parties involved in the case had had keys to the property; that her keys were with the Spanish estate agents and had been all along; that her flat had not been visited for five years and that it was only visited then to deal with a leak; and that she had paid more than £15,000 in charges in the meantime. She went on to rebut the Public Guardian’s position and to express her shock at his reference to a visit to her ex-husband, whose Alzheimer’s meant that he had not been able to communicate on a cognitive level for a number of years.

I wrote again to Martin John, the Public Guardian, on 16 March 2011, enclosing my constituent’s letter to me and saying that I would apply for an Adjournment debate if no progress was made. I have received no reply to that letter, although staff in my office made inquiries about it yesterday and were told that the Office of the Public Guardian had no record of the letter.

I am determined to get this case resolved before I retire, but preferably much sooner. I understand that this is a complex and sensitive area of law, but I have no doubt at all in my mind that if the Office of the Public Guardian had lived up to half of the fine words on its website and a quarter of the promises made to me, this matter would have been resolved some time ago. In the meantime, my constituent has lost thousands; lawyers have pocketed thousands; the Office of the Public Guardian has cost millions; and the fortunes of the person whose interest the office is supposed to defend have undoubtedly been diminished. I do not know why the deputy in this case has not acted more decisively; I do not know why a solicitor who does not even reply to correspondence has been engaged; but I do know that the fact that this matter is unresolved is a disgrace.

I know that this matter is not in the Minister’s brief, but will he commit to ask his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), to undertake a full ministerial review of this case, with a view to galvanising the Office of the Public Guardian out of its “Bleak House” mentality and into a proactive mindset that genuinely serves the public interest?

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

Various alternatives have been suggested by the institution that the hon. Lady mentions and by many others during the consultation. The question is whether they would work and whether they would deliver the required savings within the spending review period. The main proposal of the Law Society, which she mentioned, is an alcohol levy—a penny on your pint to pay for lawyers.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I am glad that the Minister is actively listening on this issue—[Interruption.] We will see, won’t we? Under his proposals, someone with a debt case who faces homelessness will be eligible for legal aid, so why should someone facing homelessness in a case of unlawful eviction not also be eligible?

[Mr Djanogly]

Those are the sorts of issues that we have been considering very carefully through the consultation process. It is very important to realise that even after our reforms we will still be spending £40 million on housing legal aid, for example, and £6 million with debt, so it would be wrong to say that we are abolishing those areas of law. We are looking to get better value and to make sure that the money goes towards helping the vulnerable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

It is not being abolished. First, universal jurisdiction is not as old as suggested, but we welcome the application for, and enforcement of, universal jurisdiction here just as much as the previous Government did. The trouble at present is that the test for issuing an arrest warrant is so low that it is possible for a warrant to be issued when there is not the faintest chance of any serious prosecution going ahead. While I understand the feelings behind some of the applications, there is no doubt that publicity is being sought rather more than a prosecution, and the likely targets are people such as Israeli or Sri Lankan politicians coming here whom dissident groups want to be arrested. The DPP can act promptly, and we will enforce the law when there is a genuine case for a prosecution. Indeed, one Afghan warlord has been successfully prosecuted in this country and is currently in prison.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

In the DPP’s evidence to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, he said about assessing such applications:

“We have people who can work around the clock and we have enough trained people so that someone is always available.”––[Official Report, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2011; c. 126, Q241.]

Can the Lord Chancellor confirm that it will be possible for cases to be submitted in advance of a suspect travelling to the UK so that decisions can be made in time to act?

[Mr Clarke]

I will check with the DPP, but I am almost certain he will confirm that that is the case, because I have had assurances from his officials that they are ready to act very quickly. In a proper case, they should act quickly and a warrant should be issued, but at present the fact that warrants can be comparatively easily sought and occasionally obtained is deterring people from coming to this country who are politically controversial but probably not guilty of any war crime or crime against humanity. Indeed, over the years attempts have been made to arrest people such as Henry Kissinger.