Gordon Marsden
Main Page: Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)Department Debates - View all Gordon Marsden's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I gave notice of this point of order to your office this afternoon. It relates to three questions that I tabled on Thursday last week pertaining to the trial and sentencing in Preston Crown court of three fracking protesters who have been released by the Court of Appeal without custodial sentences today.
In those questions to the Attorney General, I asked about an investigation into compliance with the judicial code of conduct in relation to the judge’s conduct in that case. Those questions were transferred by the Attorney General’s Office to the Ministry of Justice without any explanation. This lunchtime, the Court of Appeal quashed the custodial sentences. The response that I got from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), was along the lines that no Minister should comment on these areas. However, on looking at the list of ministerial responsibilities, it is quite clear that questions about public interest functions, including the reference of sentences to the Court of Appeal, are valid for the Attorney General. On top of that, the judicial code of conduct, which the Attorney General can look at, talks particularly about family connections.
I seek your guidance Mr Speaker, on the basis on which the Attorney General transferred those questions to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice. She said in her response:
“It would not be appropriate for me or any other government minister to comment on cases which are, or have been, before the courts”,
but that was not the question that I asked. Incidentally, the gentleman who signed off the judicial guidance in the code of conduct is the Lord Chief Justice himself, who today said that the sentences passed by the judge at Preston Crown court were “manifestly excessive”.
Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, of which I had not myself received notice, but about the absence of which notice transmitted directly to me I make no complaint. I absolutely accept that he informed my office of this matter, but it may have been when I was elsewhere.
What do I have to say to the hon. Gentleman and for the wider benefit of the House? First, the transferability of questions from one Department to another is exclusively the preserve of the Government. That is not something in relation to which, however infuriating to an individual Member, an explanation is required to the Chair or even really the Member. It sounds as though some attempted explanation was given, but it has not satisfied the hon. Gentleman. It is, however, a power of a Department to shift an answer to another Department.
Secondly, by implication, the hon. Gentleman asks what recourse he has. The answer is that he can table further questions in an orderly manner, with the assistance of the Table Office, to press his case. That is the concept of what I call “persist, persist, persist,” which is not an entirely novel phenomenon in the House of Commons and with which the hon. Gentleman, from long experience and perspicacity, is well familiar.
Thirdly, although the hon. Gentleman cannot insist on the presence of a particular Minister—for example, to answer an urgent question, although I am not suggesting this would be such a case—if he thinks that it is relevant to the Attorney General, rather than to the Ministry of Justice, he can seek to raise this matter at questions to the Attorney General. The question whether he is then called to ask a question would of course fall to me, and he might find that he is successful. He must find out when there will next be questions to the Attorney General, and he should table a question. If he is fortunate in the ballot, he will be on to a very good thing. If he is not successful in the ballot, he should cast his beady eye over the successful questions and decide how he can relate his inquiry to one of the successful questions. He then leaps from his feet and hopes to catch my eye—