Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

As the Home Secretary correctly says, it is possible to do more with less, as the recent crime statistics have demonstrated. Does she agree that the election of PCCs, such as the excellent Angus Macpherson in Wiltshire—the first ever to be announced—is central to deciding how we can use scarce resources to best effect in tackling crime?

[Mrs May]

I congratulate Angus Macpherson on his election; indeed, it was good to see that as the first result. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that PCCs will have an important role to play in ensuring that police forces are delivering against their budgets in a way that we all want, which is by ensuring the protection of services such that we can continue to cut crime.

Women (Government Policies)

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. To the extent that women can plan for such change, they need to know what is going on. At the moment, a lot of women do not know what is happening and are worried. They are starting to hear about the change, but do not know what it is going to mean for them and for their personal circumstances.

Unfortunately, I heard one of the men on the Conservative Benches mutter “Deluded” in response to my call for the Government to U-turn. I have to say to him that he is deluded if he thinks that women across the country will not feel extremely angry. The more that they realise what the Government are doing, the more they will be knocking on the doors of their constituency MPs and asking why their MP is allowing them to lose up to £10,000 as a result of deeply unfair changes.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman; I hope that he can defend the proposals.

[Mr Gray]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. As one of the two Conservative men who signed the early-day motion on this subject, the other being my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), I very much sympathise with the point that she is making on behalf of women born in 1953 and 1954—like me; 1954 was a vintage year. Does she not regret that in the motion she has chosen to make a broad sideswipe at the Government that is much less well thought through than her point about that particular cohort of women? Had she focused her attention on that, she might well have found one or two of us joining her in the Lobby.

[Yvette Cooper]

I apologise for my slightly aggressive reaction to the hon. Gentleman when he stood up; I should have checked the EDM beforehand. I commend him for his defence of his vintage, of all sexes. He is right that this issue is of extreme concern, and I hope that we will have further opportunities to vote on it.

I will turn to the wider points in the motion that the hon. Gentleman criticised, but which I think are important. It is women rather than men who are taking the biggest burden in the Government’s deficit reduction plans. The Government know of our deep concern that they are cutting too far and too fast, and that they are hitting growth and pushing up unemployment, which will cost us more. However, even those who support the scale and pace of the Government’s plans should be worried about the way in which they are carrying them out.

The House of Commons Library has produced detailed analysis of the direct tax and benefit changes in the Government’s emergency Budget and the spending review. A net total of £16 billion is being raised. That takes account of the increase in tax allowances and the cuts to tax credits. It looks at the extra money as well as the cuts. The conclusion is that £5 billion is coming from men and £11 billion is coming from women. Women are paying more than twice as much as men to get the deficit down, yet women still earn less and own less than men. How can that be fair?

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

We shall have another discussion, on aesthetics, later.

I am sure that all Members will be aware that Brian Haw is being treated for cancer, and, whatever our feelings about the protest camp and, in particular, Brian himself, I am sure that we all wish him well in his recovery, even though some might not want a specific geographical location designated for that recovery.

I will explain the background to the amendments, because the issue was excellently debated in what was an entertaining Committee. I am not often placed on such Committees—on average, it happens once every 10 years—but I read the Committee notes and thought that it was an excellent debate about the background to the Bill and the amendments themselves.

As people know, Brian took up his protest a decade ago, and anyone who has ever talked to him will understand his fervent belief in the need for peace and for the avoidance of war, and his concern for the innocent victims of war. His chosen method of protest has been to bear witness in front of the Houses of Parliament to the suffering of others as a result of war, and he has done so by choosing to place an encampment in the square, by addressing Members and others with a loudhailer and by engaging in discussions with others to try to convince them of the errors of entering into military action.

Brian reminds us all of the consequences of the decisions that we take in this place, and he perhaps attempts to influence us in our future decisions. His is a traditional form of protest: peaceful, non-violent and similar to protests that have occurred elsewhere in this country and throughout the world.

When the original proposals came forward under the previous Government, we engaged in that debate and a number of Members expressed their extreme dislike of Brian Haw and his colleagues’ presence outside Parliament. I sat through endless pompous speeches about the sanctity of Parliament square, complaints about not being able to work for the noise of the loudhailer that Brian used, and long-winded debates about the aesthetics of Parliament square. I have a sneaking suspicion that what a number of Members did not like was being reminded of the impact of the decisions that they had taken in this House—decisions that have caused so much human suffering.

The previous Government nevertheless brought forward legislation, which, I think we all agree now, was tedious, bureaucratic and unworkable—and has degenerated into farce. I commend the comedian Mark Thomas for his work to expose its farcical nature. Interestingly, the poor drafting of that legislation meant that it failed to deal with what many Members thought was the harm being done by Brian’s presence, because the legislators—I did not like to point it out to them at the time—failed to make it retrospective, so it never addressed the issue of the encampments. In addition, the permit system became a mockery of what the legislation intended. It degenerated into farce when one person was arrested simply for reading out the names of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I welcomed—and I said so publicly—the statements by the former Opposition that that legislation would be repealed. I made that very clear before the election and during the election campaign as a result of which the coalition Government were formed. The problem is that this Bill does not scrap the previous Government’s proposals. In fact, it impedes peaceful protest. I give this warning: if it goes through, it will degenerate into the same unworkable and unmanageable farce that the previous legislation degenerated into. Having looked at the evidence from Committee and read the discussions, I think that these proposals will put an unmanageable burden on police officers and local authority officers, and increase their vulnerability to conflict rather than reducing it.

In my view, the Government’s proposals are unacceptably restrictive. They replace one unworkable system with another and have the same effect of restricting, for no good, sensible reason, the right of peaceful protest and assembly and free speech in Parliament square. These proposals are still specific to Parliament square, although I accept that the definition is narrower than in the previous Government’s legislation. The proposals still place a burden on a constable, but extend it to a local council officer to direct a person to stop doing something and to use physical force to take equipment away. Under the proposals, a person who is convicted may be fined up to £5,000, which is a level 5 offence—I find that draconian, to say the least, and well over the top—and a formal application would still have to be made concerning loudspeaker use and to prevent the erection of sleeping structures.

The bizarre debate in Committee about what is a sleeping structure was extremely entertaining. The most intense and heated part of the debate involved the modernist versus the traditionalist: those who supported the duvet approach to sleep as against those who supported the blanket and sheet approach. That is the nature of the judgments and valuations that individual police officers will have to make: “Is that a sleeping bag I see in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”; “Is that a sleeping structure you’re carrying with you or a banner supporting the Police Federation?” It will become absolutely ludicrous. The other issue is this: what if someone can sleep standing up, leaning against a structure or against a wall? Does that become a sleeping structure itself? We will go through the same old problems that we had with the previous legislation.

I will be brief, because other Members want to speak, and there is another important group of amendments to discuss. The reasons for the amendments are very straightforward; they have been rehearsed in Committee and in debates on the previous Government’s legislation. In this country, we pride ourselves on a strong democratic tradition of peaceful protest. That has created climates of opinion external to Parliament that have influenced decisions in this House and the decisions of Governments of all political persuasions. It is linked to the fundamental right to free speech and fundamental right of assembly and association. In everything that we do in this House, it behoves us to guard against undermining any of those basic human rights.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman about the right of peaceful protest and the strength of our great British democracy in allowing that. Surely, however, there is a distinction to be made between those who are genuine protesters—I rather agree with him about loudspeakers, incidentally—and those who are campers and dossers staying on a permanent basis, and who are demonstrably an eyesore.

[John McDonnell]

I do not think that the peace campaigners in Parliament square are vagrants or dossers; they are performing a basic democratic service. If they were vagrants or dossers, other legislation, which is used on a regular basis across the country, is available to address that problem. Spending parliamentary time specifically to target half a dozen people who are trying to express their democratic wishes demonstrates to the outside world that we might not have our priorities right.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

Whether or not people agree with Brian—and I do—he provides us with an essential service in reminding us of the consequences of our decisions in the House. That might offend some people, but sometimes it is helpful to have such offence to draw our attention to the consequences of what we do here. Whatever Members think, and whether or not the tents annoy people who think they are messy or untidy, that is no reason to take away people’s right to choose their method of peaceful protest.

[Mr Gray]

If the hon. Gentleman was not prepared to accept the distinction that I proposed to him a moment ago, might he not accept that there is a distinction to be made between Brian Haw, who is quite possibly a genuine peace protester and possibly to be respected for his commitment, and the large number of other people who have appeared in recent months and put up their tents? Who knows who they are? If he will not accept that distinction, how many more tents should we accept in Parliament square before we decide that the people in them are illegal campers rather than protestors?

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Gentleman has an exceptionally valid point, which has to be addressed reasonably. Wherever in the country we find that constructions have been erected that people find objectionable, we use planning legislation to deal with them. That legislation already exists. The other people who have joined Brian Haw are mostly peace protestors, and others have come along in support of other causes. If the hon. Gentleman remembers, we had the Tamils come along when the war in Sri Lanka was going on. They camped there for a week, and it would have been heart-rending to try to shift them when they were seeking to influence us to intervene to seek peace, which we did. We helped as best we could to prevent further disaster in Sri Lanka. It is all a matter of reasonable judgment and trying to ensure that we protect basic human rights. The grounds for incursions on human rights cannot just be about the aesthetic displeasure of a number of Members of the House. That is why repealing the previous Government’s legislation was extremely important.

In the debate on that legislation, and I believe in Committee on the Bill, the question was asked whether allowing one group of people to protest precluded others from turning up to protest. Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, to which I pay tribute for the support it has given us on the issue, has made it clear that there has been no evidence of other people saying that they cannot protest, or of a backlog of protestors unable to get to Parliament square.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that would be a mistake, and we certainly do not make funding allocations on that basis. Of course police forces have had to make savings, but we have decided that the fairest approach is to ensure that all forces make an equal share of the savings. The majority of grant is, of course, allocated according to the formula.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Although co-operation among forces, and indeed between the police, ambulance and fire services, is essential, as the Minister correctly suggests, does he not agree that there is a real risk that if a rural police force such as mine in Wiltshire were to co-operate too closely with, say, Bristol on one side or Swindon or Reading on the other, resources would be pulled out of the rural areas and into the urban ones? Keeping a rural police service is extremely important.

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of keeping rural policing services. In the end, these are matters for the determination of chief constables, who must remain operationally independent and allocate resources properly, and their police authorities. We do not seek to interfere with that, but we do seek to drive savings where they can be made by greater collaboration between forces.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. He will understand that I cannot comment on the case on the Floor of the House, but if he wishes to write to me, I will of course look into it and get back to him as soon as possible.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware of the awful case, widely reported at the weekend, of Sergeant Mark Andrews of the Wiltshire constabulary who was convicted of a serious assault on my constituent, Miss Pamela Somerville, when she was incorrectly in police custody. Will Ministers take a look at the rules, regulations and protocols covering police cells to make sure that that kind of outrageous event cannot occur again?

[Nick Herbert]

It is essential that offenders taken into custody are treated and supervised properly. I will happily look at the matter and ensure that we have adequate systems in place to ensure that is the case.