Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill

Edward Argar Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

I will be very brief, but I do want to speak in this debate, because I was the Minister for victims in the Ministry of Justice in 2018 who pushed that consultation that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) mentions. I want to highlight her consistent advocacy for an independent public advocate, certainly since my time in the Ministry of Justice.

I am afraid I moved on relatively swiftly to the Department of Health and Social Care, so I was not there to publish the response, or indeed to see it, but I want to put on record that the hon. Lady makes some important points. It is right to remind this House and this country at every opportunity of what happened at Hillsborough and what needs to be done to minimise the risk of that ever happening anywhere again.

Transparency is hugely important. We recently saw very concerning scenes at the champions league final in Paris, with an attempt to push particular and unacceptable narratives around that to blame the fans yet again. That will have stirred some horrific memories, particularly for Liverpool fans and people in the hon. Lady’s constituency and elsewhere.

I support the concept of an independent public advocate and I support what the hon. Lady is seeking to do. I think there is more to be done to work through some of the detail of how it would interact with other investigatory bodies and specific powers; it is important that avoiding duplication in interacting with other bodies is handled appropriately. She may well suggest that Committee is the best place to tidy that up, but it is important that those issues are bottomed out before this Bill passes into legislation.

I put on record my support for what the hon. Lady is seeking to do and the underpinning principles behind that, and recognise how important this is to her constituents, to Liverpool fans and more broadly to anyone who could, through no fault of their own, find themselves or their relatives caught in a horrendous tragedy, and would want to know the truth and learn lessons from it. I do not propose to speak for any longer, because I am keen to hear the debate, but I wanted to put that on record.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Argar Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady has raised an important part of our immigration policy, whose purpose is to ensure that we keep all countries to which we are returning people under review. Quite rightly, Home Office staff will visit appropriate countries—and, indeed, they visited Eritrea in 2014—to make their country assessments. I am confident that Home Office processes are delivered in the correct way, but the hon. Lady can rest assured that we will always keep the position under review.

[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

T2. Although the current police funding formula has not been fully applied to Leicestershire police, meaning a loss of £5.6 million annually even under that unfair funding formula, Chief Constable Simon Cole and his excellent team of officers have continued to drive down crime locally, but can my right hon. Friend reassure me, and them, that they and Leicestershire will secure a fair funding deal very soon?

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Brandon Lewis)]

My hon. Friend has made a good point about the excellent work that is being done by Chief Constable Simon Cole and his team in Leicestershire. We are working to ensure that we achieve a fair, transparent review funding formula, and that all the chief constables and the police and crime commissioners feed into it. I assure my hon. Friend that we will deliver that work as quickly as we can.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Edward Argar Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that important point. The inquiry is, of course, about the victims and survivors. When I wanted to make inquiries about appointing a new chair, I did, of course, consult the victims and survivors consultative panel to ensure that it was supportive, which indeed it was. The right hon. Gentleman is right—we must make sure that the victims and survivors are always at the centre of our words and our deeds.

[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

As well as it being vital that this important inquiry is strictly independent, as hon. Members have emphasised, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital that we let it do its work and await its report, rather than anyone seeking in any way to pre-empt its findings?

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is right. We are caught between our impatience to find out more and the need to keep the inquiry independent. We are hoping for an interim statement on the inquiry for the current financial year—the end of March next year—and I hope that that will shed some light on progress to date.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

Today we debate what is possibly one of the most important pieces of legislation this Session—or possibly even this Parliament. I rise as a non-lawyer amid what could be described as a “brief” or even a “fee” of lawyers, so I shall seek to focus on the broader issues. This Bill goes to the heart of our duty to protect the security of our country and our constituents. A delicate balance is always to be struck between security and individual privacy and liberty. The Bill serves to protect the security of this country in the face of a changing scale and type of threat—both terrorist and criminal.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the evidence we heard from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Committee showing that the Bill is important for tackling online child abuse and for tracking children who have gone missing and are at serious risk of harm?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is exactly the sort of criminality that the Bill will make it easier for the forces of law and order to tackle.

The Bill also serves in tandem to protect the privacy of the individual. That threat, domestic or foreign, seeks to find a safe place in which to operate in the darker recesses of the internet, using modern communications technology to escape justice. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) rightly said that the legislation he took through Parliament as a Minister in the past did not provide for these sort of powers. He is right, but the problem is that the nature of the threat and the technology used have moved on significantly since then. Our duty is to ensure that our security forces, whose often silent toils to keep us safe we should all respect and pay tribute to, have the powers they need to keep up with that change and the reality of the modern world and to pursue those who wish us harm wherever they seek to hide—on the web, or outside it.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), a distinguished lawyer, has said, many powers in the Bill already exist in other legislation, and the additional powers provided by this legislation such as for ICRs and greater bulk collection of data are, I believe, appropriate and reasonable, and they come connected with strong safeguards.

This Bill strengthens the protections for citizens and privacy and overhauls the complex, even byzantine, existing regime governing investigatory powers, modernising and clarifying that framework. Importantly, it includes provision for judicial involvement alongside the Home Secretary’s authorisations. I personally have great faith in this Home Secretary and in her judgment as well as her accountability to this House. However, the double lock of judicial involvement provides an important compromise and further reassurance for those who genuinely and sincerely have expressed concerns.

Taken as a whole, what is set out in this Bill will provide for one of the most transparent and rigorous sets of safeguards and oversight regimes in the world. I believe it is the right approach, but I also set great store by what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), a former distinguished Northern Ireland Secretary with first-hand experience, has said; I hope that the Minister will be able to offer some reassurance on the points my right hon. Friend raised and confirm that the envisaged system will still be sufficiently operationally agile.

I agree with the shadow Home Secretary, whom I have always regarded as a thoughtful and decent man, that finding the right balance between security and privacy is the key and that that balance is never an easy one to strike, which makes it absolutely right for this House to scrutinise what is proposed by using its fullest powers. I believe that the pre-legislative scrutiny and the scrutiny process through which we are taking the Bill through the House are absolutely fit for purpose in doing so. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the shadow Home Secretary’s conclusions. I am convinced that the Bill strikes the right balance between security and privacy and that what is proposed is right, necessary, proportionate and will help to ensure that those who keep us safe have all the tools they need to do that in this modern age.