Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

Where they were blocking, we are building, building, building. HMP Millsike, the UK’s first all-electric prison, will open in just a few weeks and deliver 1,500 places. Just last week, the Prisons Minister in the other place attended a groundbreaking at HMP Highpoint, and we have already secured full planning permission for a new prison in Leicestershire and outline planning permission for a new prison in Buckinghamshire. We are getting on with the job.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The Minister will know that the increase in prisoner numbers is often because of the logjam within the Crown court system, and there are too many on remand who are then convicted and released with time served, with no opportunity for rehabilitation or mentoring. Will he confirm that that forms part of the sentencing review or the Leveson review?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

That is why we are doing this big system relook. The right hon. Member is right to draw attention to this. We are going to tackle it and sort it out.

Courts and Tribunals: Sitting Days

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

In welcoming the statement, I reserve judgment on whether we need an additional court—an intermediate court—particularly if it will be resourced from the existing magistrates and Crown court system. Following on from the question from the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), we have a backlog in England and Northern Ireland, and people are on remand for too long. Increasingly, people are being released following a conviction with time served, and there is no opportunity whatsoever for rehabilitation. Will the opportunity to rehabilitate offenders while they are on remand form part of the Brian Leveson review?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise issues relating to remand. We do have a problem with the remand population, which is why I have made the changes that I have highlighted, and why both reviews—the one being conducted by Sir Brian Leveson, which looks at once-in-a-generation court reform, and the one by David Gauke and the independent panel, which looks at sentencing—are so crucial. It is essential that we not only bear down on the Crown court backlog, but get our prison capacity back into balance and have a sustainable prison system in this country.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger]

What the Bill actually says is that a doctor means

“a registered medical practitioner…who has such training, qualifications and experience as the Secretary of State may specify by regulations”.

Obviously they are some sort of regulated medic—I recognise that—but they are not necessarily a doctor. We will find out. I recognise that they will have professional qualifications, but it is not clear what those are going to be because it is not in the Bill.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he is engaging in this discussion, in the same spirit as the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). We often hear that one of the safeguards associated with the Bill is that medical practitioners would be involved and that a diagnosis of a terminal illness, with six months or less to live, would be required. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that medicine is not an exact science? It is the science of uncertainty blended with the art of probability. There is no exactitude in this. No court will second-guess medical opinion; it will simply look at process.

[Danny Kruger]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. I am afraid that the definition of terminal illness is in a sense the essential flaw in the Bill, but I will come on to that.

Going back to the conversation that the patient has with the medical practitioner, the crucial point is that the conversation does not need to be started by the patient, according to the Bill. It could be started by the medic—any medic—perhaps in hospital, who could make the suggestion of an assisted death to a patient who has never raised the issue themselves, whose family have never suggested it and whose own doctor does not think it is the right thing to do. And so the idea is planted.

Then, for whatever reason—and, by the way, there is no need ever to give a reason—the patient says that they want to proceed with an assisted death. They sign a declaration, or rather somebody else can sign it for them. It could be any professional, someone they do not know—maybe a new medical practitioner. A total stranger can do all the paperwork on their behalf. That is what the clause about the proxy entails. Then these two medical practitioners make their assessment.