Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It is customary, after a reshuffle, to welcome to their places the new Ministers who have been promoted by the Prime Minister. I appreciate that there were a couple of days when the Ministry of Justice was without Ministers and I appreciate that the new ones are part time and unpaid, but I am surprised that they are not here to share the glory of this five-clause Bill. In their absence, I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on his new role, and welcome my good friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) to his new role. It is pleasing that there were finally some willing takers to take up the opportunities in the Ministry of Justice and I wish them luck in their jobs. They will need it over the next 10 months.

So here we are, on the final Monday before the summer recess, in the fifth year of this coalition Government, discussing a five-clause Bill which has been variously described as “complete gobbledygook”, “a turkey” and my favourite one, “the gallinaceous love child” of the Secretary of State and the Minister for Government Policy. Perhaps the most painful of all insults comes from the ConservativeHome blog. The editor of that site put the Bill on the list of those that should not be in the Queen’s Speech. That is how much the Conservative activists think of the Bill. It is hardly a glowing list of endorsements that herald its arrival.

In his own puff piece for the Bill on ConservativeHome, the Justice Secretary wrote:

“SARAH has taken a while to bring to the fore, and she is now getting ready for her debut in the world.”

Given the rather flat reviews that SARAH’s debut has so far received, I cannot help but wonder whether she should ever have seen the light of day.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

If the right hon. Gentleman takes that view of the Bill, why is he not going to oppose it? And why have Labour MPs been told that they are on a one-line Whip, which means that they need not be here?

[Sadiq Khan]

The right hon. Gentleman should give me a chance to complete my speech. Then we can discuss what we are going to do. He has been here for many Parliaments and he will know that we take the opportunity where we can to improve Bills, even five-clause nonsense Bills, in Committee. I look forward to working with him to improve the Bill during the remaining stages of its passage through the Commons.

I have referred to the fact that the Bill has only five clauses, and I accept that we should not necessarily judge its quality by its length, but if we strip out the first clause, which sets the scene, and the fifth, which deals with extent and commencement, it is only a three-clause Bill. It is so small that the short title is almost longer than the Bill itself. Does the content really warrant a Bill of its own?

It goes without saying that we all support those who volunteer. We want to see even more people contributing their time to good causes and to the vibrancy of civil society and communities throughout the country. We do not want to live in a country where there are unnecessary barriers in the way of those who want to donate their time to helping in the local community, nor do we want to live in a society where people feel unable to help out in an emergency because of a fear of litigation. But the premise of the Bill is built on sand. The Justice Secretary has stated:

“All too often people who are doing the right thing in our society feel constrained by the fear that they are the ones who will end up facing a lawsuit”,

and he repeated that in his Second Reading opening speech. One might think that such a sweeping statement would be followed up with some concrete examples of where that has happened, or perhaps some statistics to back it up, but no. Instead we are given generally wishy-washy scenarios where people and organisations might—I stress the word “might”—be put off by fear of litigation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Actually, it is in order normally to hear one. I do not know the circumstances, but I am sure the right hon. Gentleman has made his point. The Secretary of State waited fully until the end of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. I am not sure whether he wanted to hear Sir Edward Garnier’s speech—that is not for me to decide—but the point has been made.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it also not normally the case that members of a political party should come into the Chamber to listen to their Front-Bench spokesman address the House, and is it not the case that there is not one other MP here?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Sir Greg, come on. Not only can you do better than that, but we are certainly not going to waste our time discussing it.