Prisons in Wales

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts]

That is exactly why it is important that we have the data that allows us to scrutinise what is happening in Wales, which appears to be different from what is happening in England. We have higher numbers of prisoners and, as I will return to, not surprisingly, Wales operates in a social policy context that is different from that anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Health, housing and much of the social policy framework have been devolved since 1999. This is not just a constitutional anomaly; it is affecting outcomes for offenders in prisons. I emphasise that that then affects our communities: people return from prison to communities in Wales, and if they return less healthy, less able to work and without a roof over their heads, the likelihood of reoffending appears to be higher, as we see from some of the crime figures.

Staff retention is a significant problem in Berwyn. Staff from other prisons as far afield as Swansea and Hull are sent there to make up for recruitment short- falls. Detached duty, as that is known, is expensive and is not a long-term answer. The officers do not know the prisoners they are working with; it is just a matter of people making up the numbers. That is not a sustainable solution, and unless we draw attention to it we will not find a solution.

Staff also complain of an experience gap, because more experienced staff are exhausted and burnt out. Let us recall that the Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers has long said that 68 is too late for officers to retire. We lose people because they cannot take it any more.

Just as Berwyn staff are brought in from everywhere else, so too are the prisoners. Berwyn was meant to serve local populations, including, fairly enough, the north-west of England. We were told that was the intention at the time. However, Berwyn has housed prisoners from 75 English local authorities since it opened in 2017, and 62% of the population came from outside of Wales in 2022. For women, the opposite is true: in December 2022, Welsh women were held in 11 of the 12 women’s prisons in England, and were on average—it would be far further from my constituency—101 miles away from home.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The situation of women is particularly acute. Until 2018, I think, there was no provision whatsoever, so women from Wales are housed in Staffordshire, Gloucestershire and elsewhere. The principle should be that prison is punishment—the punishment is not being able to leave at the end of the afternoon—but it should not be for punishment. Many women from Wales and their families are suffering a double penalty because they are held so far away.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Yes, indeed. Of course, the residential women’s centre in Swansea was first mooted in 2018, but it has yet to arrive. We have concerns about the exact nature of the services: will it effectively be just another prison, or will it be equipped to make a real difference to the lives of women?

Welsh women prisoners are on average 101 miles from home, which makes it difficult for them to maintain contact with families, children and support networks, as well as creating issues related to housing and work upon release. Welsh men struggle with issues including identity, discrimination and access to the Welsh language in jails, and Welsh women have their own distinct set of issues.

As 74% of all women sentenced to immediate custody were given sentences of 12 months or less, and one in five given one month or less, there is a real need to consider these issues and opt for alternatives to custody for low-level, non-violent crimes. When I was in Styal in May, I saw in reception that a woman had been admitted to the prison from Wales on the Friday before a May bank holiday, and was due to be released on the Tuesday. What good was that going to do her, except disrupt her life?

The Welsh Government’s women’s justice blueprint is an attempt to do that but, without the political will of the UK Government, such attempts are doomed to fail. Although the Swansea residential centre is a sweetener from Westminster, there are real concerns that it will become a pathway to conventional custody. Swansea remains, but is far away from home for those in northern areas of Wales, who will still be sent, of course, to Styal near Manchester.

The over-representation of certain groups also underlines the need for alternatives. In Wales, black people represented 3.1% of the prison population in 2022, despite comprising only 0.9% of the general population. Those from a mixed or Asian ethnicity background were also over-represented. The average custodial sentence length, between 2010 and 2022, was 8.5 months longer for black defendants than for those from a white ethnic group.

The link between incarceration and homelessness is difficult to justify, as the BBC alluded to in its recent drama “Time”. Like Orla, the character played by Jodie Whittaker, 423 people were released from Welsh prisons without a fixed address in 2022-23. That is the equivalent—this is striking—of eight people a week. The number of those rough sleeping after release into Welsh probation services more than trebled in a year.

Devolution of Justice: Wales

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of the devolution of justice to Wales.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Cadeirydd—thank you very much, Mr Vickers; it is an honour to serve with you in the Chair. I am pleased to have secured this debate on the potential merits of the devolution of justice to Wales.

Wales, of course, has its own distinct legal history dating back to the laws of Hywel Dda, prior to the Acts of Union in the 16th century. In spite of the fact that many of us enjoy talking about Welsh history immensely, I am not here to make the case for devolution by looking into the past. I am here today because of the potential for a better future and because the case for devolution of justice is self-evident for those who care to look. It is a permanent question seeking an answer in the constitutional landscape of the United Kingdom, and I believe this to be irrefutable, whether the matter is approached from a Welsh viewpoint or from a Westminster viewpoint: that is an important point to make.

It has been more than eight years since the Silk commission recommended devolving police and youth justice to Wales, although those powers were not incorporated into the Wales Act 2017. It has been three years since the Thomas commission on justice in Wales published its report in October 2019, setting out a long-term vision for the future of justice in Wales. The Thomas commission produced 78 different recommendations on how Wales can have a justice system fit for the 21st century, the central one being the devolution of justice and policing and the creation of a separate Welsh legal jurisdiction. To quote the report directly,

“the people of Wales are being let down by the system in its current state. Major reform is needed to the justice system and to the current scheme of devolution.”

The weight of evidence is behind devolution. There is a growing consensus across civil society, academia, the Welsh legal profession and justice workers in the system that this needs to move ahead. That consensus is also to be found at the political level. All of Wales’s police and crime commissioners have said that the devolution of justice and policing is the next logical step. All the representatives of the justice unions who speak here and who also speak with the Senedd are engaged with how matters could be dealt with better if justice were devolved—that is the point of devolution: how the outcomes could be better. A majority of Members of the Senedd support the devolution of justice, as outlined in the Welsh Labour Government’s co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru, which is a year old this week.

Despite having a Parliament and a Government, a legislature and an Executive, Wales is a nation without its own legal system and courts. For a nation with 22 years of policy making characterised by the values of social justice, equality and community strength, Wales can only stand by and watch the Westminster Government impose fundamentally different values through the arc of the criminal justice policy. Imagine if Wales had policy control over that arc, from crime to arrest—namely, policing—and prosecution, and then from sentencing to imprisonment and probation. Imagine that the Government of Wales had even the powers equivalent to those held—wait for it—by the Mayors of Greater London and Manchester. This is in stark contrast to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it is unheard of internationally. When the Minister responds, could he tell us of any other examples of nations that have their own Executive and legislature but no judiciary? Does he honestly believe that this is the best way to structure an effective justice system?

The response by the UK Government to the Thomas commission was characterised by a combination of “Westminster knows best” and funding scaremongering. Here we had a former Lord Chief Justice in Lord John Thomas of Cwmgiedd, heading up an expert commission whose work across two years included a vast amount of evidence from across Wales. That extensive overview and analysis of justice in Wales was dismissed out of hand by the UK Government, who did not even bother to formally respond.

Not content with being told no by Westminster, we in Wales have instead been doing what we have had to do all along: building the institutional frameworks and capacity, piece by piece, so that we are ready for proper control and responsibility over justice. The unification of the Welsh tribunals, which put them on a proper footing, is in effect creating a nascent justice institution, which could in turn be the basis for the transfer of the courts to Wales. We are developing our capacity properly to scrutinise the operation of justice in Wales. At present, the Senedd’s Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee—the clue is in the name—undertakes the work of three committees in one. We are also addressing that capacity through the expansion of the Senedd, which again is thanks to Plaid Cymru’s co-operation agreement with Welsh Labour.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

On my right hon. Friend’s earlier point about tribunals, the seven administrative tribunals that operate in Wales are in a sense Welsh bodies, but control from Westminster—from Whitehall, actually—is very strong. That point was made when the tribunals were set up: Whitehall runs them and has the final responsibility.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

We will look at areas where there has been a little moving ahead on other aspects of the courts that have been proposed in Wales.

In that respect, I refer to a groundbreaking new book by Dr Robert Jones and Professor Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University, entitled “The Welsh Criminal Justice System: On the Jagged Edge”. It is a rigorous and thoughtful analysis of criminal justice in Wales. Indeed, it is the first of its kind, because the evidence is only now beginning to become available, and at present we have only a snapshot. I think that all will agree that, if we are looking for an evidence-based system, we do not want a snapshot: we must be able to track trends and developments over time. That is one of my key asks of the Minister, to which I hope he will be able to respond anon. The book presents a thorough overview of how justice operates in Wales, and shows why devolution is a vital step for aligning policy, values and legislative powers. As I have already said, that is the case for Northern Ireland and Scotland, and also to a degree for Greater Manchester and London. It is not possible to over-emphasise that inconsistency.

Justice in Wales is currently controlled at Westminster, but the Senedd controls key devolved services that are just as important for the delivery of justice. That has created what Lord Thomas originally called the “jagged edge”—a jagged edge of intersecting competences and responsibilities. That results in serious disadvantages, which include financial and opportunity costs; a lack of coherent, joined-up policy making; and an overly complex system that leads to a lack of understanding of how justice operates in Wales.

The Cardiff University book lays out how outcomes in Wales are particularly poor. When English and Welsh data are disaggregated, we see that Wales performs even worse than England, which is one of the worst performers in Europe. The figure that we will keep coming back to is imprisonment. England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rates in Europe. Because of the disaggregated data, we now know that Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe. That fuels a cycle of poverty, as well as health and mental health problems. Wales has higher violent crime and conviction rates than England. Black people are six times more likely to be in prison than their white counterparts. Nearly half of Welsh children who are imprisoned are detained in England, far from their homes and family support, and court closures have restricted access to justice across whole swathes of rural Wales. The lack of coherent policy making is one of the key features of the jagged edge, and it is the people in the system—and the communities from which they come and to which they return—who lose out.

First, let us take the case of women in the justice system in Wales. Welsh Women’s Aid notes that the women in the prisoner population, and those in contact with the police and other related services, are far more likely than men to have additional support needs such as mental health diagnoses, a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness, or to have experienced violence, domestic abuse and/or sexual violence. Importantly, the Welsh Government, with the backing of the Senedd, have a specific policy to reduce the number of women entering custody, given their vulnerability. That is a piece of policy extant in Wales from our Senedd and our Government. However, the aim comes crashing down against the reality of how the criminal justice system operates in Wales and the differing Westminster policy in relation to putting more people into prison.

There are no women’s prisons in Wales. Welsh women are sent most often to either His Majesty’s Prison Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire or HMP Styal in east Cheshire, which are tens or hundreds of miles away from their support networks, and getting to these prisons, particularly by public transport, is extremely difficult. Given that roughly 50% of women prisoners are also mothers, the effect of such distance on the mental health of those women and their children, and on the outcomes for the children, must not be underestimated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I will return to that later, but because the right hon. Gentleman has raised the point, I will engage with it now as well. There is a residential unit in planning for one area of Wales, but we really need to know exactly which services will be there. Will it effectively be a small-scale prison, or will it actually offer the services that women need? We also need to know what the interface will be between the devolved service and the reserved provision. That is a very timely point, because it has just become apparent at the private prison near Bridgend, HMP Parc, that the local authority has had to step in to take over social services there. Again, this ad hoc arrangement, the lack of clarity and the lack of scrutiny over who is providing what is resulting in bad outcomes, which is why the debate is so timely.

It is evident that there are not many of us in this room. That is actually part of the issue, because Westminster will concentrate on where the loudest majority issues are. However, there is a phenomenon in Wales: the disconnect. Frankly, if this is the best we can do in relation to the disconnect with the highest imprisonment rates in western Europe, we must consider looking at the issue in an alternative way.

[Hywel Williams]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous and I will pipe down after this, as I hope to speak in the debate. Another small example is when we were campaigning for a prison for north Wales some years ago. We almost got a prison, which would have been a community facility, for the 600 or so men from north Wales who are imprisoned. We also campaigned for units for women and for young people who are held, contrary to the regulations, further than 50 miles away from their homes. What we actually got from Westminster was a 2,000-man super-prison in Wrexham, which does not serve the needs of local people.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Again, I will return to that. This is not just a matter of serving the needs of Wales. Sending thousands of prisoners miles away from home—men or women—does not serve the vast majority of those prisoners well either. If we want a joined-up magic connection with housing, work and maintaining kinship, family and friendship connections, which we know are the routes to successful rehabilitation, we should not send prisoners hundreds of miles away from where they will return, because those links will not be made, be they back home in Wales or in communities in England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to contribute, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on securing the debate. It is unfortunate that we have such limited time, but I will try to canter through some of the key points that I want to make.

I approach this debate as an advocate for devolution and as the former Secretary of State who took the Wales Act 2017 through Parliament. It is hard to believe that in 2010 our inheritance from the last Labour Government was the legislative competence order system, whereby the Welsh Assembly had to ask permission to pass legislation in any particular area. It is worth remembering how far we have moved from the system between 2010 and today, when we have a full law-making Parliament in Cardiff Bay. I hope that sets out the context for my remarks.

During the development of the Wales Act 2017, it was clear that some were determined to devolve justice, irrespective of the evidence from within the profession that did not support that devolution. We agreed to disagree with the Welsh Government in the end, with the First Minister specifically saying that he would revisit the matter. The only conclusion I could draw was that the political elite wish to see the devolution of justice, rather than the issue being raised on the doorstep, or forming part of a campaign from those in the profession or our constituents, who really wish for genuine improvement in this area. That is not to say that improvements do not need to be made—they do—but there have not been calls for devolution of the issue, other than from the political elite.

I also note that the Commission on Justice in Wales was established by a devolved institution on a reserved policy matter. Imagine if the UK Government decided to have a commission on health or education in Wales—devolved policy areas—without there being equal and active engagement with the other party. That demonstrates that the political elite are driving this agenda, rather than this being something that is demanded.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd based her claim around genuine problems that need addressing. I am not denying that there are challenges in the system. We all remember the challenges in Wales—it could be said that they are even greater partly as a result of the intervention by the Welsh Government, who closed down the courts during covid when they were still functioning in England. That is an example where the Welsh Government have sought to influence justice in a negative way.

The right hon. Lady said that devolution of justice is a chance for Wales to have better outcomes. If I wanted to be flippant, I would point to the outcomes in health and education; sadly, our waiting times are longer, and our education outcomes certainly have not improved, as they have across England and Scotland in the past decade or more.

The key point I want to make in the limited time I have is about the importance of the industry that is the legal system operating between Wales and England. Extremely profitable large law firms based in Cardiff form part of an ecosystem that develops businesses, often from the City of London or other parts of the United Kingdom. Functions and professional legal expertise are provided in Cardiff, creating some of the most highly paid jobs in a desired legal profession, creating career opportunities and allowing people to move inside and outside Wales to develop their business model. Some of those firms have office spaces in the City of London and attract the business of the City, and the functions are then conducted in Cardiff. Devolving justice to the Welsh Government and to Wales would really undermine those business models. Those are the businesses that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd should talk to.

[Hywel Williams]

The right hon. Gentleman made the claim earlier that this is a matter of the elite calling for change, and then he makes an argument for elite lawyers in Cardiff.

[Alun Cairns]

I would like to see more elite lawyers in Cardiff, because raises gross value added and creates career opportunities for Welsh people, wherever they come from.

During the negotiations on the Bill that became the Wales Act 2017, I received representations from some of the most senior lawyers in England and Wales, who were very concerned about the agenda of devolving justice and the damage that would cause to the sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) has made a forceful and detailed argument. I support her questions, and I hope we get some answers.

Justice sticks out like a sore thumb as one of Westminster’s biggest devolution failures. Despite later devolution, and the change to a Scottish-style system, London has hung on to justice. Our Senedd now passes laws but it does not control the justice system, the courts or the prisons. Nor does it control the police, although between them local authorities and the Welsh Government provide about 60% of the funding for the police. Again, they have responsibility without power. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, our Senedd is a legislature without its own jurisdiction—the only one I know of in the world.

A lot of public services that make the justice system work are the responsibility of our Government in Cardiff— again, responsibility without power. Even if our public policy changes because of the decisions of our democratically elected Government in Cardiff, that need not follow through to justice. Health, mental health, education, housing, social services, the economy and employment might all improve in one direction, but justice need not change. Those are just some of the services we need to get the criminal justice system to work properly and to ensure that as few people as possible break the law and end up in prison. If they do offend, such services are crucial in getting them back on the straight and narrow. There is a huge hole in the middle of our justice system, which might be one reason why the system in Wales is clearly worse than anywhere else in Great Britain.

My right hon. Friend referred to “The Welsh Criminal Justice System: On the Jagged Edge” by Jones and Wyn Jones, which is an excellent publication that I would recommend to Conservative Back Benchers. Eastwood Park has prisoners from Wales and from England. According to Jones and Wyn Jones, the rate of recidivism—further offending—by the English prisoners is one in 10, but for the Welsh prisoners it is nine in 10. That hugely stark fact points to the problem. I visited Eastwood Park and talked to a prisoner from Aberystwyth who told me she was not going to have any visits, because the hike from Aberystwyth down to Eastwood Park was too much for her young family. That is the sort of system that we have.

I want briefly to note an historical example of the discontinuity between what Wales wants and what is public policy in Wales, and what we actually get. I hope Members will forgive me for going back as far as 2007, when I tried—as I did later under a Tory Government—to introduce a small but significant reform to the jury system in Wales, to fit in with how things really are in terms of the Welsh language and to allow for bilingual juries.

The Juries Act 1974 is clear that juries should understand the evidence as directly as possible. If members of the jury do not understand English, the judge will bar them. There is no such qualification for Welsh. A matter of principle is at stake. The principle of a language qualification for juries is already conceded for English. However, in Wales, if a young person or a child is giving evidence in Welsh, there is no guarantee that the jury will understand the evidence as directly as possible, as would be the case if the child was speaking English. A wrongdoer might get off or an innocent person might be found guilty, not on the evidence but on how it was heard. My private Member’s Bill would have brought some sense to that system, and I recommend it to the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) not just on securing this important debate, but on finding a topic that manages to unite not just Plaid Cymru and the SNP, but also the SNP, the Alba party and the Democratic Unionist party—

[Hywel Williams]

And Labour.

[Richard Thomson]

And the Labour party, indeed. That is quite a set of Venn diagrams to pull together.

Before I get to my in-depth remarks, I will address the commonality of the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) and the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar). We heard that the debate was on a rarefied topic—the preserve of politicians, academics and the political elite—and that it was all airy-fairy, fey and far removed from the doorsteps of the communities they represent. Obviously, I do not spend a huge amount of time canvassing in either of their constituencies, but I would venture to say that, just like my constituents, theirs are probably very concerned with justice matters and with outcomes.

If this debate is about anything, it is surely about how the best outcomes can be achieved and how the current set-ups, boundaries and the jagged edge, of which we have heard so much, militates against that. This morning, we have heard from a former Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), about the benefits that come not just from the separate and distinct nature of the Scottish justice system, but from how the powers of devolution have been used to adapt to particular demands in order to achieve those outcomes, whether those were improved road safety through reducing the drink-drive limit or tackling the menace of air weapons before they were licensed. I could even speak about how the problem of endemic knife crime in west-central Scotland was tackled by adopting a public health approach, which is now being followed in certain measures by the authorities in London. That would not have been possible were it not for the integration not just between the healthcare system and the social services ecosystem, but between the justice system and the policing system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I can enlarge on the points that I made to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). In February of this year, we published an update against each of the recommendations made by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I have mentioned deferred prosecution schemes. There is also a change to the way in which the use of force in prison is scrutinised. We have completely revised the complaints process to ensure that it is fairer. On the recruitment of BAME people into the system, we are on target to meet our objective with regard to the percentage of Prison Service recruits and have increased the number of senior leaders. As the review recommended, we have concentrated on improving the quality and transparency of data, which ensures that we properly monitor ethnicity. A lot of work is being done, but there is a lot still to do.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

It is reported today that Ministers are desperately looking for venues for Nightingale courts. Twenty two magistrates courts were closed in Wales between 2010 and 2020, so will the Minister reopen those courts so that the people of Wales can be properly served?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but what he has to remember is that the extra courts need to be compatible with social distancing. What we are looking for is space and room so that people can stay safe, which is why in Wales we have been looking particularly at civic buildings near the established court centres in Cardiff, Swansea and, I think, Mold and Caernarfon Crown court, which I know well. I am confident from my close consultation with partners in Wales that work is being done that will allow that capacity to increase and allow justice to be served more swiftly in Wales.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Parliament should have a meaningful vote on the EU withdrawal agreement before it is implemented. Clause 9, which is the subject of amendment 7, allows Ministers to implement the EU withdrawal agreement by secondary legislation. That was always a mistake. The courts were never going to accept a situation whereby the EU withdrawal agreement was brought into our law by secondary legislation—major constitutional legislation brought in by statutory instrument.

The Government, to be fair, acknowledged that. After presenting the Bill to Parliament, there came a point where they said, “No, we will need a Bill to implement the EU withdrawal agreement.” That is right, but what a mess. In my view, Parliament is entitled to have a meaningful vote on the agreement before the powers in clause 9 are used, so there needs to be a trigger in clause 9; otherwise, once the Government have reached agreement with the EU, they would be able just to start laying legislation.

Of course, we have had some welcome commitments tonight and during the day, but on something as important as this, where there are very significant powers involved, I feel that as parliamentarians and lawmakers we should have a say and the Bill should reflect what the Government are saying. If they are saying, as I believe they are, that what I have described will not happen until Parliament has approved the agreement, it should say that in the Bill. Indeed, it was noticeable that those who do not agree with the amendment, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), all agree that the provisions are flawed. It has been some time now that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has been saying, “Come forward with your own amendment, O Government, so that this is in the right order and it has the protections that lawmakers would expect in the Bill.”

I am sad to vote, as I am going to, for article 7—[Interruption.] I said “article”, just like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. I am sad to vote for amendment 7, but I feel I should and that it is an important principle that, when we make the law, we get it right in the Bill.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I rise to speak to amendment 355, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friends and sets out our position that an affirmative vote by devolved bodies prior to enactment is required.

If the process of Brexit could be summed up in one word, it would be “control”. For me, taking back control also means bringing the exercise of powers as close as possible to the people. The final deal will be subject to ratification by all EU member states, the EU Parliament and sub-state parliaments, variously numbered at 33, 37 or 38—take your pick. By the same token, I believe that the constituent parts of the UK should have the same final say as our counterparts in the EU. The final deal with the EU should be approved in statute passed by both the Westminster Parliament and the devolved Administrations, hence amendment 355.

We have repeated our arguments many times for remaining in the European single market and customs union. Wales’s goods-based, export-led economy relies on its close links with the EU single market, with 67% of all Welsh exports going to the EU and the single market sustaining 200,000 jobs. We already know that the stakes are high for Wales, so Wales must have a stake and a say in the final deal. I will not revisit the arguments I have made during previous debates on the Bill about the constitutional intricacies of the Sewel convention, but I wish to say to my Labour friends that not giving the devolved Governments a stake in the final deal risks subjecting our nation to policies, and indeed an ideology, that have so far caused our country grievous harm.

To conclude these brief remarks, the whole argument boils down to control. Following the referendum, the principle of returning control is not at issue. What is at issue is where that control lies. The minority Government party asserts that finally control rests here and here alone, but if the UK is a shared enterprise, based on mutual respect between Westminster and the devolved Governments, that party should also accept my amendment 355, which, to adapt a phrase from the Father of the House, is the fundamental minimum for a devolved parliamentary democracy.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I have listened carefully to the many esoteric legal arguments that have been advanced this evening. I am afraid that my comments will be far more prosaic and practical. I was on the remain side of the referendum debate, but, like most of my colleagues, I am now focusing on trying to secure the best possible deal, and that deal must centre on what a meaningful vote would be.

What does “a meaningful vote” mean? If it means “deal or no deal”, I think that that is a recipe for securing the best possible deal, but if it means “deal or no deal, or go back to the negotiating table”, perhaps indefinitely and with no time limit, I think that that is counterproductive. It would be detrimental, and would undermine our negotiating position. I am not suggesting for a second that that is the desire of those who promote a meaningful vote of that kind, but I think that that would be the effect.

Rather than looking only at the legal context, we need also to look at the political, economic and financial contexts. Of course the negotiations were always going to be difficult after 44 years of integration with the European Union, but they will also be difficult because of the European Union’s position. The EU clearly does not want us to leave, which is understandable for some of the reasons that I have given, but also, primarily, it does not want others to leave, and that must be its priority during the negotiations. If this were a marriage of equals and therefore a divorce of equals, that meaningful vote with those three different options would be fine, but that is not where we are. Of course, the EU also recognises that 75% of Members of Parliament were on the remain side of the argument.

We have to look at the EU’s perspective as well as that of the UK, which is why I think that the Prime Minister was not only right to offer a fair deal in her Florence speech, but right to say that we would not be afraid to walk away with no deal. That gives the EU one chance to get this right, whereas a meaningful vote-plus would give the EU many, many chances to get this right—to give the worst possible deal to get it right. Its incentive would be to put the worst deal on the table initially, knowing that Parliament would reject it and keep going back to the table. That cannot be the right negotiating position.

None of us wants to leave on the basis of no deal. WTO rules would clearly not be in the country’s interests, and it would not be in my own interests outside Parliament either. Nevertheless, I do not want to be locked into an organisation that simply will not let us leave other than on disadvantageous terms.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Temporary Chair (Sir David Amess)]

Order. I remind the House of what Dame Rosie said earlier: there is a long list of colleagues still waiting to speak, so unless we have brief contributions, many colleagues will be disappointed, because the first votes come at 6.51 pm.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I rise to speak to Plaid Cymru’s amendment 79, standing in my name and those of hon. Friends from several parties. This amendment to clause 1 would require the UK Government to gain the consent of the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies before they repealed the European Communities Act 1972. It would require proper consideration, consistent with the constitutional settlement within these islands, for the Prime Minister to have all four parts of the UK in agreement before the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill could come into force.

While in each of the devolution statutes the UK Parliament retains the power to legislate in relation to devolved matters, the Sewel convention requires that it should not normally do so without the consent of the relevant devolved legislature. The Supreme Court, in the Miller case on triggering article 50, found that the Sewel convention is no more than that—just a political convention without legal standing. However, to proceed without the available agreement of at least two parts of the UK—Scotland and Wales—and with the agreement of the other parts ascertained only in ways that are obscure to me, and even in ways that are not normal, as the Government appear to intend, would be foolhardy and, indeed, outrageous.

As far as I can see—I hope the Minister can correct me—the Government have launched into this process without properly considering how the views of the four parts of the UK could be ascertained; without proper consideration of the views of the Scottish and Welsh Governments; with the means of ascertaining the views of Northern Ireland unavailable; and with the elephant in the room, of course, being the need to explain precisely who speaks for England—something that is always unconsidered or unspoken in this place.

What we do know, however, following the publication of the EU withdrawal Bill, is that the Scottish SNP and Welsh Labour Governments issued a joint statement calling it “a naked power-grab”. They have since made it clear that the Bill as it stands would be rejected by the respective devolved Governments. Given the continued lack of an elected Assembly in Northern Ireland, given that the Government here in Westminster are being compelled unwillingly to take powers to themselves, and given that the dispute between the parties in Northern Ireland appears to be no closer to resolution, it is also unclear how opinion in Northern Ireland is to be gauged.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman’s amendment refers specifically to a resolution of the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is not a Northern Ireland Assembly in place to grant such a resolution. While we hope there will be one soon, we surely have to countenance the possibility that we could get through to March 2019 still without one, so how would his amendment enable the European Communities Act to be repealed if there is no Northern Ireland Assembly to pass a resolution?

[Hywel Williams]

As I said, it is unclear to me what the situation is in Northern Ireland. I have heard the rumours, one way or another, that they are extremely close to a resolution other than on the Irish language—[Interruption.] It is being motioned behind me that perhaps that is not the case. However, anything could happen.

The principle of our amendments is that the democratically elected Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland and the Parliament in Scotland should have their say.

[Lady Hermon]

It is a constitutional convention of the utmost importance that legislative consent is given by all the devolved institutions, particularly on such a major constitutional change. The fact is that we have no Northern Ireland Assembly and no expectation of having one in the near future. However, even if I were to be surprised by the fact that the main parties—the DUP and Sinn Féin—could agree in an Assembly, the figures are such that the majority of the 90 MLAs are anti-Brexit and will not give legislative consent to this Bill. The Government’s Bill is going nowhere without the legislative consent of Northern Ireland, and that will not be forthcoming.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I am loth to stray into Northern Ireland politics for extremely clear reasons.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I would avoid it.

[Hywel Williams]

I take that advice. I say only that it has been suggested that some in Northern Ireland would surely see the Government’s taking this decision with no Assembly in place as being the diktat of a governor general, or at the very least unwise as a basis on which to proceed.

As I said, the elephant in the room is the question of who speaks for England. This is the last constitutional conundrum—the constitutional exceptionalism that successive Governments have failed to address in this place. Who speaks for England? Clearly on this matter, it appears that this Conservative Government do so. Are the Labour Opposition sanguine about that? I hope to press this amendment to a vote. I do not know how Labour will vote on it, but I remind them that their Labour colleagues in Cardiff are certainly not sanguine.

The Minister may point to the resurrected Joint Ministerial Committee as a cover for—

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Members will no doubt be aware that the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations has met only twice in the past year. Does my hon. Friend agree that that Committee fails to afford the devolved Administrations a real voice in these negotiations and that in its current form it is wholly inadequate for the purpose of facilitating discussion and agreement?

[Hywel Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I was obviously about to come on to that matter.

The Government might wish to use the Joint Ministerial Committee as a cover for proceeding with this matter, but so far that Committee has not proved itself to be a substitute for proper agreement obtained directly with the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. The JMC—as obscure to many Members in this place as it is to the press and the population at large—met in February and did not meet again until October, during which period the most important and momentous events were taking place and fundamental decisions being taken. Following the October meeting, the Government sought to gloss over the real concerns of the Scottish and Welsh Governments, but as I said earlier, these have now been made clear.

In the Brexit Committee on 25 October, I asked the Brexit Secretary what the formal relationship was between himself and the First Secretary of State, who is handling the JMC. I asked:

“What is the formal relationship between your Department and his on this specific issue?”

He replied,

“there is none at all. He is one of my oldest friends”,

to which I replied:

“He is a very fine man, I am sure.”

I have been in this place for long enough—though not in government—to know the ways of Whitehall working. There are two conditions: where there is a formal relationship between Departments and there is accountability, and where there is no formal relationship and there is no accountability. In the case of the JMC, there is no formal reporting back but perhaps a chat between old friends. I have a large number of old friends—fine people whom I respect—but I certainly would not base my decision about the future of my children and my grandchildren on an informal fireside chat.

[Stephen Doughty]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the crucial issue is not the one he deals with in amendment 79, but whether the Government respond to the cross-party amendments about the Scotland and Wales Acts and other important matters, in line with what the Scottish and Welsh Governments have said? Responding to those amendments in a positive way would show true respect for the constitutional settlement, which the Government have yet to show.

[Hywel Williams]

I am arguing in favour of my own amendment, but I accept the force of the hon. Gentleman’s words. As he knows, we have supported several Labour amendments.

Plaid Cymru has warned of the problems for quite some time. We wrote to the Welsh Secretary over the summer outlining our opposition to the withdrawal Bill and asking for answers about what would happen if the Welsh Assembly withheld consent. The response that we received in September was an aspiration, and it was wholly inadequate. It merely replayed the mantra: “We want all parts of the UK to back the Bill.” It was no response at all.

We raised the matter during a general debate on Brexit and foreign affairs on 26 June, during Brexit ministerial drop-in sessions on 19 July, during the debate on the Queen’s Speech on 26 July, in Welsh questions on 6 September, on Second Reading of this Bill on 11 September and during oral evidence sessions in the Brexit Committee on 17 October. Not once has a Minister told us how the Government plan to proceed if the devolved legislatures do not support the Bill. The only conclusion that we can draw, therefore, is that the Government will press ahead regardless. It is, after all, their legal right to do so, for the time being.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

It would be absolutely fascinating if the Government pressed ahead regardless, against the backdrop of three out of the four Assemblies or Parliaments of the United Kingdom opposing such pressing ahead. That would really show that we were not in a union but in an absolute superstate, which is what many Members say they are trying to get away from.

[Hywel Williams]

Amendment 79 might elucidate that point, which the hon. Gentleman put well. The final step of trying to prise an answer out of the UK Government about how they will react if the devolved Parliaments reject this Bill is to gauge their reaction to the amendment, which calls for the Sewel convention to be legally binding in relation to the Bill. That is why, with permission, I will press the amendment to a vote. It already has the support of the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, the Green party and, I understand, at least one Labour MP. In my view, it would be unthinkable for Labour, which is the largest party in Wales, to oppose Wales having a say, contrary to the stance of their colleagues in Cardiff.

If the UK Government are deadly serious about having all four nations on board, and if they are determined to respect the Respect agenda, they will accept the amendment. If not, we must assume that the Prime Minister intends to ignore the clearly expressed will of the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament, breaking her promise of working closely with the devolved Administrations to deliver an approach that works for the whole UK. I urge everyone in this House to support amendment 79.

[John Redwood]

Clause 1 of this historic Bill is the most important constitutional matter to come before the House of Commons since the 1972 Act. I have read some of the debates that Parliament conducted at the time, and we could indeed say that the repeal is more significant than the House believed the original Act to be. When the original Act was passed, the Government reassured the House that it was no surrender of sovereignty to a supranational body and no major transfer of power. They told the House that it was, instead, a major development of a common market; that the areas in which the European Economic Community would have competence would be very narrow and limited; and that the UK would preserve a veto so that if the EEC proposed anything the UK did not like, the UK would be able to exercise its veto and show that Parliament was still sovereign.

That was a long time ago. Over the years, what appeared to be a modest measure to form a common market has transformed itself into a mighty set of treaties and become, through endless amendment and new treaty provision, a very large and complex legal machine that is the true sovereign of our country. It has exercised its sovereignty through the European Court of Justice, the one supreme body in our country during all the time we have remained in the EEC and, now, the EU. We have seen how that body can now strike down Acts of Parliament, prevent Ministers from taking the action they wish to take and prevent this Parliament from expressing a view and turning it into action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman does not serve the interests of his own argument. We acknowledge, as I was just about to say, the position that the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government have taken to date on legislative consent to this Bill, but there has not yet been a vote in the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly on this and we remain confident that we will reach a position that can attract support. I want to stress that this Bill takes no decision making away from devolved Administrations or legislatures. We will, of course, return to these issues in more detail on days four and five in Committee.

In the meantime, we are pressing on with our engagement with the Scottish and Welsh Governments. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has been in contact with the Scottish and Welsh Governments on several occasions, and the First Secretary of State has met the Deputy First Minister of Scotland and the First Minister of Wales to progress discussions between Joint Ministerial Committee meetings. In addition, at the recent JMC (EN) on 16 October, the principles that underpin where frameworks will be needed and where they will not be needed were agreed with the Welsh and Scottish Governments. We are now moving into the next phase of this work, with detailed analysis of the policy areas with those Governments. This is a clear sign of progress, but I reiterate the point I made to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon): we would like to see a Northern Ireland Executive in place, with power sharing back in place, so that they can engage further on the official engagement that has taken place. In tandem, officials met officials met yesterday for technical discussions on the amendments proposed by the Scottish and Welsh Governments. In the past week, I have spoken to no fewer than four committees of devolved legislatures with colleagues from across Government, so I welcome their detailed scrutiny.

We will continue this engagement, and we hope to make the case for the Bill in every part of the United Kingdom, but amendment 79 would provide scope for individual vetoes on our exit from the European Union. We have already held a referendum that gave us a clear answer on the question of leaving the EU, which was subsequently endorsed by Parliament through the passage of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. The amendment goes against the grain of both our constitutional settlement and the referendum result, so I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw it.

[Hywel Williams]

Would the Minister concede that one man’s veto is another man’s respectful disagreement?

[The Temporary Chair (Sir David Amess)]

Order. The Minister has resumed his seat.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I apologise for missing the first few minutes of this debate.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is occasionally my hon. Friend. I remind him that gridlock in Dover is the same as gridlock in Holyhead, Ynys Môn and across north Wales, which causes gridlock for the English economy because so much traffic passes that way. That subject has been even less discussed than gridlock in Dover.

I have only one substantial point to make, which is that the Bill threatens the constitutional settlement between Wales and England, and it seemingly does so almost as an afterthought: Brexit is the issue but, by the way, we are unravelling the last 20 years of careful and moderate devolution, irrespective of the views of the majority of people in Wales, as expressed in two referendums.

I am referring not to the rushed duplicity of the June 2016 referendum, but to the two substantial referendums in Wales specifically on the devolution issue, after decades of the most detailed debates and campaigning. This was not change as an afterthought, when the consequences of the decision on Brexit are beginning to become slightly clearer; these were referendums on devolution itself. Perhaps I need to remind Government Front Benchers of the results of those referendums on the sort of government we want in Wales and with what sort of powers. The first was carried narrowly in 1997 and the second, on a modest extension of powers, was carried overwhelmingly in 2011, with the support of all parties and with the no campaign having degenerated into an obsessional, deluded and irrelevant rabble—I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is not in his place to leap up to correct me.

That is the status quo that this Conservative Government either seek to overthrow or might overthrow by mistake, as carelessly as they might toss a cigarette into a pail of petrol. They will argue, correctly of course, that the Brexit referendum is the superior authority to the devolution referendums, but I take that argument, as will many people in Wales, as exposing the true nature of the relationship between our two countries. It is one not of respect, but of heedless and thoughtless power of one over the other. The “Encyclopaedia Britannica” was wholly right in the index of its first edition when it said “For Wales, see England”.

The current devolution settlement is framed in the context of the UK’s pre-existing membership of the EU. By facilitating leaving in this way, the Bill, as drafted, redefines the UK constitution by default; it creates a new body of law and gives Ministers power to change law as they see “appropriate”, as we see in clause 7(1). The Bill intercepts and retains the returning EU power and funds, and maintains what are the responsibilities of the Welsh Assembly, such as agriculture and convergence policy—as London matters. The Bill amends the devolution settlement so that the devolved Governments will have to accept whatever the Minister here decides, including in respect of the provisions of the Wales Act 2017, which has not even come into force. Many hon. Members who spent a great deal of time on that Act may ponder why on earth we bothered.

I wish to go off on a slight tangent now about the offer or suggestion of having a triage system. I took part in a system that was similar but not exactly the same—hon. Members can look this up if they please—when we looked at the powers being transferred to the Welsh Assembly before legislation gave it those powers. Under this legislative competence order system, members of the Welsh Affairs Committee sat to ponder various bits of legislation and the various powers that would be transferred to Cardiff. This led to some powers of great importance, such as those relating to mental health, being passed with scarcely a murmur, while other far more contentious matters, such as those relating to the Welsh language, were discussed endlessly. They were eventually agreed to, as we had expected, but it was delayed and delayed for political purposes.

We have been told that the Bill is a “technicality” and a “temporary necessity” and we are asked to extend our trust, but I would say that we are being asked to extend our credulity much too far. Both the Welsh and Scottish Governments have said that they cannot grant legislative consent to the Bill in its current form. I have written to the Welsh Secretary asking him what will happen if consent is withheld by the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) asked him about this issue again at Welsh questions last week, but we are yet to get a clear reply. So this is how a constitutional question lurches towards a constitutional crisis. We should avoid it, and it is avoidable if the Government would be more open. Their manifesto in the 2017 election promised not to “devolve and forget”. Through the incompetence and arrogance, I fear that they are forgetting devolution, and we on the Plaid Cymru Bench will oppose their folly.

Policing and Crime Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I intend to speak to new clauses 2, 3, 4, 5, and 44, and I intend to press new clause 2 to a Division. The other new clauses are intended to test discussions that took place in Committee.

I note what the Minister said earlier in support of localism, but would cautiously remind him if he were still in the Chamber that although Wales is one of the four nations of the United Kingdom, it is the only one that has no responsibility for its police forces. The Governments of both Scotland and Northern Ireland are able to acknowledge the specific needs of their communities and direct their police forces to work effectively in response to those needs, but Wales must follow the policing priorities of England.

The four police forces of Wales are unique in the United Kingdom in that they are non-devolved bodies operating within a largely devolved public services landscape. They are thus required to respond to the agendas of two Governments, and to serve a nation whose people have the right to use either the English or the Welsh language. It should be noted that the Assembly’s budget already funds 500 extra police community support officers.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does my hon. Friend, like me, find it peculiar that other services that are vital to Welsh communities, such as social services, education, economic and health—including mental health—are all devolved? Would it not greatly aid the coherence of public policy in Wales if this particular service were also devolved?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I understand that the very fact of having to work to, and be answerable to, two agendas is the reason our colleagues in the Assembly, and the four police and crime commissioners in Wales, are calling for the devolution of policing.

What I am describing contrasts starkly with the situation in Wales. Power over policing is due to be devolved to English city regions: Manchester and Liverpool, for example. The present approach to devolution has been criticised in a House of Lords Constitutional Committee report, published last month, which described it as piecemeal and lacking a coherent vision. I would strongly argue that the devolution of policing to Wales would benefit the people of Wales, and that they are ill served by the antiquated England and Wales arrangement, which, inevitably, is designed with the priorities of English cities in mind.

Our demographics are different in Wales. The need to maintain effective services in rural areas with scattered populations cries out for better consideration. The impact of tourism—populations rocket at bank holidays and in summer months—stretches resources to the limit. Abersoch, in my constituency, has 1,000 year-round residents, yet North Wales police have to deal with an influx of 20,000 visitors in the summer season. I went on patrol with officers last August, and saw that drunken behaviour meant that police officers had to focus attention on that one community, travelling for hours back and forth along country roads to the nearest custody cells 30 miles away. The current arrangement of policing in England and Wales is dominated by English metropolitan concerns, and fails to provide for Wales's needs.

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I congratulate WASPI on its highly effective campaign, particularly all the women from my constituency who have contacted me or come to my surgeries. Women across the UK have been hit hard by the changes. To the surprise and dismay of many of them, the plans that they had made have been disrupted. Often, they face unemployment, with little hope of getting a job—a bleak life on benefits at a time when they should be enjoying the fruits of their long years of work.

Plaid Cymru supports the principle of equalising the pension age. Equalisation is another step towards recognising how radically circumstances have changed since the pension was brought in by my predecessor as the Member for Caernarfon, Lloyd George, when men worked for the money and generally supported women, and women worked at home for free. Those are not the circumstances now. It is not equalisation that is so unfair but the way in which the Government are bringing it in.

The Government say that they are making these changes in response to the increase in life expectancy. As one woman who contacted me said, “That’s all right then—it’s our fault for living longer.” Both life expectancy and life experience vary significantly depending on class and, crucially, on where one lives. Women in Wales will be hit particularly hard by the changes. Life expectancy is generally lower in Wales than in England—there is a difference of up to 11 years. Welsh women and Welsh men therefore have less opportunity to enjoy their retirement. Incomes in Wales are also low, so they have already suffered a disproportionate disadvantage. There are fewer job opportunities and jobs are more insecure, particularly in some constituencies.

On Monday, I asked the Prime Minister about the fate of the EU convergence funding that we in Wales won after a long and hard fight. He smiled sympathetically and went on to talk about Romania and Bulgaria. Disgracefully, that is where the incomes of women and men in Wales are—on a par with those in Romania and Bulgaria. Wales has the lowest income per head of all the UK nations and regions.

The equal treatment of women and men in respect of the state pension is good, but the way in which the Government have handled the matter is not. In fact, it is a disgrace.

Police Widows Pensions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Williams. Would it be in order to allow the police widows and widowers who are attending today to come into the room before we start?

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Yes, they can come and sit in the Public Gallery.

Okay, Mr Graham, I think you should now begin.

[Richard Graham]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams, and a real pleasure to be able to speak on an issue that is important to Members from all parts of the House. The happiness of the many individuals involved and the reputation of the Government and the House for ensuring that, as far as possible, justice is done for those who for no reasons of their own find themselves in a difficult situation hinge to some extent on the decisions made on this matter by Ministers and, in due course, the Government.

I will sketch the background to how I came to bring this debate to the House, run through some of the examples I hope the Minister will consider, and summarise by making the argument that the Government should reconsider how police widows’ and widowers’ pre-1987 pensions are treated. Just before Christmas last year, I received an e-mail from the Police Federation outlining a situation of which I had until then been unaware. It pointed out that the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 did not allow a number of police widows and widowers to marry or cohabit without losing their right to a police widow’s or widower’s pension for life. The e-mail highlighted the case being made by PC Colin Hall’s widow, Cathryn Hall, who was widowed at the age of 24 in 1987 and left to bring up her four-year-old daughter alone.

Cathryn, who is with us today—as are some 15 other widows and widowers—was faced with a difficult decision: to keep her police widow’s pension or to move in with her partner, which would mean that she was no longer eligible to receive the pension. She set up a petition, which has more than 71,000 signatures. The campaign, which I was unaware of until Christmas last year, is one I would like the police Minister to consider. In the petition, Cathryn describes how her husband Colin died and life after his death, and she makes the case as to why she and other widows should be treated in the same way as those whose pensions are covered by the change in the 1987 regulations. She makes the point that the Minister is in a difficult position in balancing the sacrifices of police officers and their widows or widowers against those of members of the armed forces, for whom significant changes were made on Remembrance Sunday last year.

Since I have been in contact with Cathryn Hall, she has kindly introduced me to a number of other widows and widowers, including two from my county of Gloucestershire: Sharon Jones and Julie Shadwick, both of whom have sad stories to tell. Many others have been in contact with their MPs, but there is not time, alas, to read out all their stories. I will mention Sharon’s story. She was married to Ian Jones, a chief inspector in the Gloucestershire police force, who was killed in an accident in June 2005. She survived on the pension that the service provided and brought up three children on her own. She recently met another man and married him at the end of October 2014, which, as she writes,

“brings me a wonderful opportunity to start a new life. However, as a result of this, I have lost my pension entitlement which I object to most strongly. I am being penalised for finding new love after 10 years alone.”

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The point is that nobody has to prove that they are innocent. We are not requiring them to do that. There requires there to be evidence that shows that they could not have committed the offence because they were somewhere else, for example, or because there is new DNA evidence or the offence has not been committed. That is the material difference between the two.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the Minister concede that that puts the burden of proof squarely on the defendant, however? They will have to do what is virtually impossible: prove a negative, and perhaps many years after the alleged offence took place.

[Damian Green]

No, I do not accept that because what would trigger the compensation claim would be the new evidence showing they could not have committed the offence. Something has to happen. Some new evidence has to be brought forward, so it is not simply a situation of the case being redefined.

--- Later in debate ---

I find it hard to take seriously anything he said today, because he still cannot explain the difference, and exactly the import of that difference, between what he is offering in his original clause and the amendment in lieu. The reality is that the only real difference—the valid and important difference—is that which is contained in the Lords amendment. That is why the House should agree to Lords amendment 112.

[Hywel Williams]

I wish to add my voice to those seeking to support Lords amendment 112. I am indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) for his guidance and advice on the matter. He would have been here if that were possible.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) referred to the long-term damage done to individuals, and indeed to their families, by such miscarriages of justice. In the case of the Cardiff Three, damage was clearly done not only to those individuals and their families, but to an entire community. I believe that what happened was a public harm, because it damaged relations between community groups in Cardiff. We must not underestimate the importance of that case.

The Lords rejected the Government’s original intention, which was to place an expectation that the defendant would have to prove that

“the new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that the person was innocent of the offence”

in order to gain compensation. As I said in an intervention, that would have placed a heavier burden of proof on the individual, as he or she would have been forced to prove their innocence of a crime years or even decades after it took place. The Lords instead passed their amendment 112, which means that a person could be awarded compensation, provided that the evidence now used against them could not possibly result in a conviction at trial. That means that the evidence against a person is so undermined that no conviction could be based on it.

Regrettably, the Government now intend to disagree with the Lords and, in effect, reiterate their original intention by saying that the evidence would need to prove that the defendant “did not commit” the offence. We have already heard the debates about the semantic difference between “did not commit” and “innocent”—I was imagining lawyers dancing on the head of a pin. That would once again place the burden of proof on the defendant. It asks the defendant to do something that is virtually impossible: to prove a negative—that they did not do a certain thing—years after the trial has taken place.

The Minister said that it would not be useful to provide examples of individual cases. The Government’s attempts to change the law covering compensation in cases in which an alleged miscarriage of justice has taken place runs contrary to case law, which cements the current position. Some cases have been suggested to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd. In R (Mullen) v. the Home Secretary, Lord Bingham successfully argued that a miscarriage of justice can occur where an individual has been wronged by

“a failure of the trial process”.

The burden is not on the defendant to prove that they were innocent. In R (AH) v. the Secretary of State for Justice, the divisional court ruled that a miscarriage of justice occurs where an individual can prove

“beyond reasonable doubt, that no reasonable jury... properly directed as to the law, could convict on the evidence now to be considered.”

It is chilling to think that the cases of the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven, the Guildford Four and, as I have mentioned, the Cardiff Three would not have satisfied the new test put forward by the Government. If Lords amendment 112 is overturned, individuals who have already suffered a miscarriage of justice will be further wronged by not being able to access the compensation due to them—compensation meant to represent roughly the amount they would have received in earnings had they not been imprisoned.

I do not believe that the Government have offered an adequate reason for introducing this ill-advised provision. The Secretary of State, by refusing to change the Government’s proposals, is not only refusing to listen to Members of the other place, but ignoring the advice of external organisations, such as Liberty and Justice, that oppose the change.

I urge Members to disagree with the Government and insist on Lords amendment 112 in order to uphold the current position based on case law, which determines that a miscarriage of justice has occurred if it can be shown

“conclusively that the evidence against the person at trial is so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based on it”.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, the presumption of innocence is a key principle of the justice system. Defendants should never have to prove their own innocence. There can be no reason why such an unfair burden should be placed on defendants seeking to prove that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. Lords amendment 112 must be upheld.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I rise to support Opposition Front Benchers. Lords amendment 112 uses the words,

“conclusively that the evidence against the person at trial is so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based on it”.

I put it to the Minister that that is surely about as good as we are going to get as an effective definition in taking things forward. If we have to take the route of proving that an offence was not committed, then I see all kinds of injustices occurring further down the line. A point was made about Barry George. We all agree that the murder of Jill Dando was disgusting, appalling and revolting, and obviously the person who did it should suffer the consequences of committing it. Barry George was imprisoned and later released. Therefore, the court had decided that he did not commit the offence. Has he now to prove his innocence even though he has been released by a court? That case is very well known, and I suspect that very many others do not get that degree of publicity. Miscarriages of justice happen all the time.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who has had to leave to chair a Public and Commercial Services Union group meeting but will return, I was very involved in the Birmingham and Guildford cases. Indeed, Paul Hill, who was the first person ever arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974, was a constituent of mine. I went through the whole business of the campaign, and eventually those people were released and compensation was paid. However, I have to say two things about the compensation. First, there seemed to be a calculation based on the expected income of those people throughout their lives, yet at the time of their arrest, the Guildford Four were not particularly well paid, working as part-time building workers in some cases, and one would not have said that their economic prospects were particularly good. But who knows what would have happened to their economic prospects had that terrible miscarriage of justice not happened?

Secondly, one area of compensation was not effectively taken into account. This was not just about the emotional cost to the wider families—my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington is correct that there have been some awful traumas in the families of the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and many others—but the financial cost. In mounting a campaign to try to gain the release of a convicted prisoner, particularly when they have been convicted of very serious offences, it is difficult to gain public support and even more difficult to find anybody to help finance it, so in many cases the families paid out a great deal of money themselves.

The step forward that was taken on the release of the Birmingham and Guildford people was the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, from which we took very interesting evidence last week in the Justice Committee. There are a number of cases that it does not review because it does not think there is enough evidence to do so. When people come back and demand a re-examination, in some cases the CCRC will then review. In the very large number of cases where it does review, it sends those cases back to the Court of Appeal and subsequently the individual is released. On that basis, compensation should be automatic—a given. If someone has been convicted, the case has been reviewed by the Court of Appeal, and they have been released, obviously the Court of Appeal must have had some very good grounds for releasing them. I do not see why they should then have to go through another hoop of trying to get compensation by proving that they did not commit an offence that they have been released for not committing. We are getting into a big problem in this regard.