Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think that we should wait for the Leveson report to come out. A lot of work has been done. I want a robust regulatory system, and what matters most of all, as I said in the House last week, I think, is to ensure that newspapers can be fined if they get things wrong, that journalists can be properly investigated, and that there are proper prominent apologies. We know what a proper regulatory system should look like. We do not have one now; we need one for the future.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

First, I echo the Prime Minister’s tribute to our armed forces and fallen comrades. The country owes them, their families and their loved ones a huge debt of honour and gratitude.

Last week, we saw the sentencing of former staff of Winterbourne View hospital who were found guilty of ill treatment and neglect. I had hoped that those prosecutions would help to bring some closure, or at least a sense of justice served, to the victims and their families, but we learned this week that patients from Winterbourne View may have been subject to further abuse and neglect elsewhere. Does the Prime Minister agree with me and the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), the former Minister for care services, that care providers such as Castlebeck, which ran Winterbourne View, should be subject to prosecution for wilful corporate negligence?