Prison Communications

Debate between Jack Straw and Chris Grayling

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is right. I see no evidence that this practice was part of an attempt to gain and pass on pieces of information. It is a very large and complicated system, with a very large number of people. My first impression is that this practice was the result of a series of errors, but that does not make it acceptable. I will of course ask Nick Hardwick to confirm that it was the result of a series of errors, and to make sure that it does not happen again.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State was generous enough to offer an apology to the House for what happened between 2006 and 2012. That was very generous, not least because he was not in his current office at any time in that period. I was in his office for three of those six years, and I feel that it is appropriate for me to offer an apology for what happened on my watch.

On that matter, I have checked—I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving me prior information—and five or six calls were made to my office while I was Justice Secretary. I think that I had an alibi at all material times: I was not on the end of the call because I was in the House or in the Ministry of Justice. It looks as though all the calls were made to my staff, not to me, and that the prisoner did not identify themselves as a serving prisoner. That underlines the fact that the practice is almost certainly due to inadvertence.

My final point is that the right hon. Gentleman and the House will recall that in 2008, following the disclosure in The Sunday Times that a conversation between my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and a prisoner had been recorded in a prison, I set up an inquiry under Sir Christopher Rose, a former very senior Court of Appeal judge. He found that inadvertence not conspiracy had led to that happening. May I suggest that Sir Christopher Rose’s report is drawn to Nick Hardwick’s attention for any lessons that could be followed through on?

[Chris Grayling]

The right hon. Gentleman is enormously gracious to offer a personal apology, and I thank him for that.

The right hon. Gentleman is right. In relation to his own situation, he highlighted the fact that the practice concerned a discussion between a prisoner and a member of his staff. I venture to suspect that we will find over the course of the investigation that a large proportion of the calls were with members of staff rather than with Members of Parliament. None the less, it is important that such calls can be made without the sense that someone is listening in.

With regard to the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on the earlier report, I have had a quick read of it since I spoke to him on the phone. I will, indeed, pass it on to Nick Hardwick. It is important that we ensure that any lessons to be learned are learned.

EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

Debate between Jack Straw and Chris Grayling

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

It will now, Mr Speaker.

First, will the Secretary of State accept that the wording of article 1 of protocol 30, whereby Britain opted out of the charter, could not be clearer? Nobody was duped; the wording makes it absolutely clear that the charter does not extend the ability of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg or any other court, so far as British rights and duties are concerned. Secondly, as the right hon. Gentleman is now so aerated about this matter, will he explain what action he took once the decision of the European Court of Justice in 2011 first became known to him more than two years ago?

[Chris Grayling]

On the 2011 case, I was not Secretary of State at the time, so I did not take any action at all. That case—this remains the view of my Department—did not restate the legal position. The right hon. Gentleman is right about the protocol, which says that the charter applies to EU law and not to national law. Unfortunately, as we know, the Lisbon treaty is so vaguely worded in many respects that actually it allows the EU institutions to intrude in areas, such as social security, for example, that were expressly not envisioned in the treaty itself.

Electronic Tagging

Debate between Jack Straw and Chris Grayling

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. This was obviously a matter of great concern to us, as we looked at these issues back in May for the first time. I can confirm that the Department has looked closely at the individual cases. The audit carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers so far has gone through cases line by line. We have found no evidence of any issues that would give rise to public safety concerns; this is a financial issue.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

First, I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and also for his courtesy in letting me know that he was going to make it, although I quite understand that, for reasons of commercial sensitivity, he could not inform me of its content. I share the intense anger and shock of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and, above all, the Secretary of State himself about this issue, not least because it was during my watch in 1999 that the original contract was let, before I was again responsible for the contracts between 2007 and 2010. It is a matter of deep regret to me that these failings happened at a time when I was the Secretary of State responsible for them. I want to know exactly why the failure happened, and I am glad to hear that steps are being taken to ensure that robust systems are put in place.

When the Secretary of State said in his statement that there was “a routine inspection in 2008”, but that “nothing substantive was done at that time to address the issues,” can he say whether the “nothing substantive” included not telling Ministers? I do not have complete recall of the contents of my 365 boxes in 2008, but I do not recall the matter ever being drawn to my attention. It would helpful to know whether it was. Lastly, I commend the review that the Minister for the Cabinet Office is establishing, because the control of long-term contracts with outside contractors is an issue that has bedevilled successive Governments for many decades.

[Chris Grayling]

I have seen no evidence to suggest that the issue reached the right hon. Gentleman’s desk. I can reassure him that there is no suggestion that he was briefed about it. There is no evidence that we have so far seen that the Department was aware of the nature of what was happening up until 2008. There have subsequently been a number of interchanges in relation to this matter. In no case do we believe that the Department had full sight of the scale of what was happening, but it is clear to me that things were known at a junior level about what was going on and it should have been addressed. One of the things we are investigating is why it was not, and that might include disciplinary action, as I set out earlier.

[Chris Grayling]

I can confirm that the contracts were originally negotiated in November 2004 and implemented in 2005. The original contracts date back, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, to 2009.

[Mr Straw]

To 1999.

[Chris Grayling]

To 1999—I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon.

As for how the issue has been addressed more recently, let me be clear that none of the team leading the effort in the Ministry of Justice today was in position when the matter first came to the Department’s attention in 2008. The team who are leading the renegotiation have done a first-rate job of putting together a much tighter contract management framework, which highlighted this issue. It is to their credit that they found it, and I am very grateful to them that they did.

Voting Eligibility (Prisoners)

Debate between Jack Straw and Chris Grayling

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let me say in answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about the different options that it will be for the Committee to decide whether there are other elements that it wishes to see in a Bill. We have tried to put together a simple framework within which consultation and discussion can take place. That will undoubtedly involve considering whether there are other options, in terms of either the scope of the Bill or some of the operational issues that underpin it.

As for the right hon. Gentleman’s point about other countries, I must make clear that I do not equate a legitimate democratic debate about these matters in this democratic House of Parliament with some of the extraordinary abuses of human rights that we have seen elsewhere in the past, and all too often today. These are very different issues.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Does the Justice Secretary accept that on matters of fundamental human rights, the United Kingdom, under successive Governments, has been impeccable in observing the judgments of the Strasbourg Court, even—for example, in respect of terrorist suspects—when it has disagreed profoundly with those decisions? Long may that continue.

Given that we are talking about the rule of law, does the Justice Secretary also accept that—in breach of ideas of the rule of law that are based on consent—the Strasbourg Court has extended its jurisdiction from fundamental human rights to social and civic rights, for which we have not signed up? As Lord Hoffmann, the former Law Lord, has said, the Court “lacks constitutional legitimacy” in respect of such matters, and

“has no mandate to unify the laws of Europe”

on subjects of this kind.

[Chris Grayling]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I think it is worth recalling that when the convention was written, back in the 1950s, Stalin was in power in Russia and people were being sent to the gulags without trial. That is what the convention was all about, but over the past 50 or 60 years the Court has moved it away from those fundamentals, and into a territory that many of us find deeply unsettling and wrong. I think there is a compelling case for reform, but while the current situation continues, we must none the less respect the laws of which we are part, and put to Parliament the questions that I am putting to it today.