United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The Government have run down the clock in an attempt to blackmail MPs at every turn. The Government are in chaos, the country is in chaos, and the responsibility is the Government’s, and the Government’s alone. The Prime Minister pulled the meaningful vote in December because she knew it would fail. Since then, in more than three months, nothing has changed—not one single word in the 600 pages of the withdrawal agreement, not one single word in the 26 pages of the political declaration.
Today, the Government are trying to bounce the House into voting for a damaging deal that we have twice rejected, but, as ever, the Prime Minister refuses to listen. Today’s vote—third time lucky, she hopes—is an affront to democracy and this country. She has separated the withdrawal agreement from the future relationship, despite having told us that the two were indivisible. On 14 January, she told the House that
“the link between them means that the commitments of one cannot be banked without the commitments of the other.”——[Official Report, 14 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 826.]
Today, she is asking us to take a punt on the withdrawal agreement and hope for the best for the political declaration. It is not good enough; the two are linked.
Nothing demonstrates that linkage better than the backstop. The political declaration is incredibly vague, containing as it does a spectrum of possible outcomes, and nothing is even close to being resolved. That makes it even more likely that the UK would fall into the backstop, which would create regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said. We also know that it endures indefinitely, thanks to this Parliament prizing the Attorney General’s legal advice out of a very reluctant Government. Labour will not vote for a blindfold Brexit, and passing the withdrawal agreement today without the political declaration would be just that.
The Prime Minister said at the end of November, when she signed off the deal, that
“we won’t agree the leaving part, the withdrawal agreement, until we’ve got what we want in the future because these two go together”.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said, it would be like selling your house without knowing where you are moving to, although, unlike me, I am not sure he is old enough to have watched “Monty Python”.
Lady Hermon
The Leader of the Opposition should be enormously proud of the achievement of the Labour party in the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, and I am extremely upset and disappointed that the Labour party today will vote against the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, which protects the Good Friday agreement and the consent principle.
Jeremy Corbyn
We in the Labour party are very proud of the Good Friday agreement and the peace achieved in Northern Ireland as a result, and nobody in the Labour party wants to do anything to undermine this great achievement.
As the shadow Solicitor General, my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), said, article 184 of the withdrawal agreement commits the Government to negotiate expeditiously on the terms of the political declaration. That would be a deal based on a very wide range of potential outcomes for the country, and who would decide which direction we go in? Now that the Prime Minister has announced her own departure, we do not know if the future is to be chosen by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), or maybe even the jobbing Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). The Labour party will not play roulette with this country’s future, especially when the roulette wheel is rigged by the Conservative party.
Labour respects the result of the referendum—we reiterated that in our manifesto and again in our party conference last year—but the Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit has been nothing short of a shambles. The choices facing our country post Brexit have been decided solely by what is in the interests of the Conservative party, not the country. The Prime Minister announced her red lines and went to negotiate without any consultation with the House, without any attempt to build consensus. Those red lines were opposed by the representative bodies of workers, businesses and industry, who are now tearing their hair out in exasperation at the Government’s incompetence and the uncertainty that they face.
The first Brexit Secretary said that he would get a deal that would deliver the exact same benefits as now. The current Brexit Secretary obviously felt that that was far too good for the country because, only two weeks ago, he went into the Lobby to back no deal and oppose an extension. That would leave the UK crashing out in just 10 days with no preparations and chaos at our ports and airports, leading to a crisis in factories, shops and hospitals.
What did the Government forecasts say about the Brexit Secretary’s preferred no-deal option? That it would make the economy not 4% worse off, but nearly 10% worse off. So it is no wonder that, faced with a choice between the Prime Minister’s bad deal and a disastrous no deal, this House has given a clear no to both, repeatedly. The Government suffered the largest defeat by any Government ever in parliamentary history in January. The Prime Minister said then:
“It is clear that the House does not support this deal.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 1125.]
So what was the Government’s response? They tried begging, bullying and bribery, and still they were defeated by the fourth largest majority in parliamentary history.
The Prime Minister told us that we must leave on 29 March, and even wrote it into primary legislation. She herself then voted against leaving on 29 March. She then went to Brussels to negotiate an extension and, almost unbelievably, even turned that into another negotiating failure. This Government’s Brexit negotiations have been a litany of failure, culminating today with a Prime Minister who has been forced to announce her own departure tabling only half the deal she has negotiated. This really is a half-baked Brexit.
When she became Prime Minister two and a half years ago, she said that it was her mission to deliver Brexit. She has failed. She also stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised that her Government would tackle burning injustices. Since then, she has failed on every test. Homelessness is up. Life expectancy is falling. Infant mortality is rising. Crime is rising. Police numbers have fallen. This year, the NHS had its worst ever month—people waiting longer in A&E, for an operation and to start cancer treatment—and just yesterday, we learned that more children are in poverty and the scourge of pensioner poverty is increasing again.
The job of Government is to make people’s lives better, and this Government have failed. A botched and half-baked Brexit deal like the one before us today would compound that failure. On Wednesday, the House sought to find an alternative—a new negotiating deal for the Government. Labour’s plan, I believe, provides the best compromise for a deeply divided country and a deeply divided House. It is backed in large part by major organisations in industry and business and by trade unions. It is based around the certainty of a permanent customs union, close alignment with the single market and a dynamic alignment on rights and protections.
Labour urged support for four of the options tabled by members of different parties on different sides of the House. We did so not because we would be equally happy with each of those outcomes but because we recognise that we have to compromise to get this resolved. The whole House knows that the current uncertainty is damaging businesses, reducing investment and costing jobs now and in the future. The stress of people in work is palpable as we travel around the country and talk to people in all parts of the country.
I hope that on Monday, when the House retakes control, parties and Members on both sides will enter into those debates and votes in the spirit of trying to find an acceptable compromise. We need to get a better deal, the country deserves a better deal, and I am convinced that a better deal can be negotiated and, if Members decide, a chance for people to have a final say. If we cannot do that on Monday, I will say—and many others will agree with me—that ultimately there will be no alternative other than to have a general election to decide who rules this country in the future.
To enable the Prime Minister to have sufficient time to respond to the debate, I say this in conclusion. I urge Members to act in the best interests of their constituents and to vote down this unacceptable deal. There are many people who fear for their jobs, for their industry and for whether they and their friends have a future in this country. That is causing immense stress to many people. However they voted in the 2016 referendum, they are united in their stress and concern about their future and that of their communities.
We need to rebuild our country and invest in our communities, too many of which have been neglected, ignored and underfunded for years. A botched and half-baked Brexit deal such as the one before us today would only deepen those problems and divisions. This deal, even the half of it that we have before us today, is bad for our democracy, bad for our economy and bad for this country. I urge the House not to be cajoled by this “third time lucky” strategy and to vote it down today.
The Prime Minister
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that it should be a matter of profound regret to every Member of this House that once again we have been unable to support leaving the European Union in an orderly fashion. The implications of the House’s decision are grave. The legal default now is that the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on 12 April, in just 14 days’ time. That is not enough time to agree, legislate for and ratify a deal. Yet the House has been clear that it will not permit leaving without a deal, so we will have to agree an alternative way forward.
The European Union has been clear that any further extension will need to have a clear purpose and will need to be agreed unanimously by the Heads of State of the other 27 member states ahead of 12 April. It is almost certain to involve the United Kingdom being required to hold European parliamentary elections.
On Monday this House will continue the process to see whether there is a stable majority for a particular alternative version of our future relationship with the EU. Of course, all the options will require the withdrawal agreement.
I fear that we are reaching the limits of this process in this House. This House has rejected no deal; it has rejected no Brexit; on Wednesday it rejected all the variations of the deal on the table; and today it has rejected approving the withdrawal agreement alone and continuing a process on the future. This Government will continue to press the case for the orderly Brexit that the result of the referendum demands.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is now the third time that the Prime Minister’s deal has been rejected. When it was defeated the first time, she said:
“It is clear that the House does not support this deal”.—[Official Report, 15 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 1125.]
Does she now finally accept that the House does not support the deal? She seemed to indicate just now that she will return to this issue again.
On Monday this House has the chance and—I say to all Members—the responsibility to find a majority for a better deal for all the people of this country. The House has been clear: this deal now has to change. An alternative has to be found. If the Prime Minister cannot accept that, she must go—not at an indeterminate date in the future, but now—so that we can decide the future of this country through a general election.
Ian Blackford
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We should all be aware—[Interruption.]
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
This has been a vitally important debate for the future of our country and our future relationship with the European Union, following the decision of the people in the 2016 referendum. The debate today is the culmination of one of the most chaotic and extraordinary parliamentary processes I have ever experienced in my 35 years as a Member of this House. Parliament has held the Government in contempt for the first time ever for failing to publish their legal advice. Then, for the first time in a generation or more, on 10 December the Government failed to move their own business in the House. The Government have been defeated on a vote on their own Finance Bill for the first time since the 1970s.
The Prime Minister opened the debate on her deal more than one month ago. The debate was due to end on 11 December, but she pulled it in a panic. As she conceded, the deal would have been rejected by a significant margin. She has run down the clock in a cynical attempt to strong-arm Members into backing her deal. Despite her promises, she has failed to negotiate any changes to her deal with Europe. No wonder the Prime Minister has suddenly discovered the importance of trade unions. She voted to clip their wings in the Trade Union Act 2016, and she has utterly failed to convince them that she has anything to offer Britain’s workforce. That is the heart of the matter: the Prime Minister has treated Brexit as a matter for the Conservative party, rather than for the good of the country.
But the Prime Minister has failed to win over even her own party. Many Conservative Members who voted remain are opposed to this deal, as are dozens of Conservative Members who voted leave. After losing her majority in the 2017 general election, the Prime Minister could have engaged with Members across the House. She could have listened to the voices of trade unions. If she had been listening, both businesses and trade unions would have told her that they wanted a comprehensive and permanent customs union to secure jobs and trade. The decision to rule out a new customs union with a British say and the lack of certainty in the deal risks business investment being deferred on an even greater scale, threatening jobs and threatening living standards. Even worse, it risks many companies relocating abroad, taking jobs and investment with them. Many workers know exactly that situation, because they face that reality now. Their jobs are at risk, and they know their jobs are at risk.
The First Ministers of Wales and Scotland have made clear to the Prime Minister their support for a customs union to protect jobs and the economy. This deal fails to provide any certainty about future trade. It fails to guarantee our participation in European agencies and initiatives. Losing that co-operation undermines our security, denies our citizens opportunity and damages our industries.
The withdrawal agreement is, in short, a reckless leap in the dark. It takes this country no closer to understanding our post-Brexit future, and neither does the future partnership document. Under this deal, in December 2020 we will be faced with a choice: either pay more and extend the transition period or lock us into the backstop. At that point, the UK would be over a barrel. We would have left the EU, have lost the UK rebate and be forced to pay whatever was demanded. Alternatively, the backstop would come into force—an arrangement for which there is no time limit or end point—locking Britain into a deal from which it cannot leave without the agreement of the EU. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has pointed out on so many occasions, that is unprecedented in British history.
The past two years have given us no confidence that this Government can do a deal in under two years, so at some point before December 2020 the focus would inevitably shift from negotiations on the future relationship to negotiations on an extension to the transition period, including negotiations on what further payments we should make to the European Union. The vague partnership document says that it
“can lead to a spectrum of different outcomes…as well as checks and controls”.
That does not show to me any clarity whatsoever in that document. There is not even any mention of the famed frictionless trade which was promised in the Chequers proposals. The former Brexit Secretary—that is, one of the former Brexit Secretaries—promised a “detailed”, “precise” and “substantive” document. The Government spectacularly failed to deliver it.
I can confirm this: Labour will vote against this deal tonight, and Labour will vote against it because it is a bad deal for this country. As we have heard over the past week, Members in all parties, including many in the Conservative party, will join us in rejecting this botched and damaging deal.
I welcome the fact that there is a clear majority to reject any no-deal outcome. The amendment to the Finance Bill last week demonstrated the will of the House on rejecting the danger—and it is a danger—of a no-deal outcome that would cause such chaos to so many people across this country.
But it is not enough for the House to vote against the deal before us, and against no deal; we also have to be for something. [Hon. Members: “Ah!] So, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.] So in the coming days, it is vital that this House has the opportunity to debate and vote on the way forward, to consider all the options available. The overwhelming majority of the House voted to respect the result of the referendum and therefore voted to trigger article 50. So I say this to our negotiating partners in the European Union: if Parliament votes down this deal, reopening negotiations should not and cannot be ruled out.
We understand why after two frustrating years of negotiations, the European Union might want this resolved, but this Parliament, our Parliament here, has only one duty, to represent the interests of the people of this country—and the deal negotiated by the Government does not meet the needs of the people of this country.
The people of Britain include many EU nationals who have made their lives here. These people have contributed to our country, to our economy and to our public services, including our national health service. They are now anxious, and have no faith in this Government to manage the process of settled status fairly or efficiently, and the early pilots of the scheme are very far from encouraging.
The Prime Minister claimed that this is a good deal, and so confident was she of that that she refused to publish the Government’s legal advice, but her Government’s own economic assessment clearly tells us that it is a bad deal. It is a product of two years of botched negotiations, in which the Government spent more time arguing with themselves, in their own Cabinet, than they did negotiating with the European Union.
It is not only on Brexit that the Government have failed. Under this Government, more people are living in poverty, including—[Interruption.] I am talking about the half a million more children who have fallen into poverty while this Government have been in office. I am also talking of those who have been forced into rough sleeping and homelessness, which have risen every year. Too many people are stuck in low-paid and insecure work. Too many people are struggling to make ends meet and falling deeper and deeper into personal debt on credit cards and with loan sharks. Nothing in this Brexit deal and nothing on offer from this Government will solve that. That is why Labour believes that a general election would be the best outcome for the country, if this deal is rejected tonight.
We need to keep in mind that the vast majority of the people of this country do not think of themselves as remainers or leavers. Whether they voted leave or remain two and a half years ago, they are all concerned about their future, and it is their concerns that the House must be able to answer and meet. I hope that tonight the House votes down this deal and we then move to a general election, so that the people—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Nobody is going to shout the right hon. Gentleman down, just as nobody will shout the Prime Minister down. All they are doing by causing me to intervene is taking time away. It is not necessary, rather foolish and thoroughly counter-productive.
Jeremy Corbyn
The people need to be able to take back control, and a general election would give them the opportunity to decide who their MPs were, who their Government were, and who would negotiate on their behalf. It would give a new Government the mandate that is needed to break the deadlock that has been brought to the House by this Government.
I ask this of the House: vote against this deal. We have had a very long and detailed debate. More hon. Members have spoken in this debate than almost any other debate I can remember, and they have given a heartfelt analysis of the deal. A very large number have explained why they will vote against this deal. Quite simply, this deal is bad for our economy, a bad deal for our democracy and a bad deal for this country. I ask the House to do the right thing tonight: reject this deal because of the harm it would do, and show that we as MPs are speaking up for the people we represent, who recognise that the deal is dangerous for this country, bad for them, their living standards and our collective future.
Mr Speaker
As I explained the sequence earlier, it should now be familiar to colleagues. I begin by inviting the Leader of the Opposition to move amendment (a).
Mr Speaker
I turn now to amendment (k), in the name of the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford).
Mr Speaker
I will come to other colleagues, but first of all a point of order from the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The result of tonight’s vote is the greatest defeat for a Government in this House since the 1920s. This is a catastrophic defeat for this Government. After two years of failed negotiations, the House of Commons has delivered its verdict on the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal and that verdict is absolutely decisive.
I hear the words of the Prime Minister, but the actions of her Government over the past two years speak equally clearly. She is only attempting to reach out now to try to keep her failed process and deal alive after it has been so roundly rejected by Parliament on behalf of the people of this country. Labour has laid out its priorities consistently: no deal must be taken off the table; a permanent customs union must be secured; and people’s rights and protections must be guaranteed so they do not fall behind.
At every turn, the Prime Minister has closed the door on dialogue. Businesses begged her to negotiate a comprehensive customs union. Trade union leaders pressed her for the same thing. They were ignored. In the last two years, she has had only one priority: the Conservative party.
The Prime Minister’s governing principle of delay and denial has reached the end of the line. She cannot seriously believe that after two years of failure, she is capable of negotiating a good deal for the people of this country. The most important issue facing us is that the Government have lost the confidence of this House and this country. I therefore inform you, Mr Speaker, that I have now tabled a motion of no confidence in this Government, and I am pleased that that motion will be debated tomorrow so that this House can give its verdict on the sheer incompetence of this Government and pass that motion of no confidence in the Government.
Several hon. Members rose—
Voting by Prisoners
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
My hon. Friend takes a very absolutist stance, although I have heard him utter such a view before. That is not Government policy, however.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Is not the fundamental issue that the European convention on human rights applies to everyone, including those who are in prison, and that when people are convicted they do not lose their convention rights? They have to suffer a penalty following conviction, but losing their right to vote is outwith the terms of the convention.
The Attorney-General
The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. Indeed, in some countries, the removal of the right to vote effectively forms part of the sentencing exercise. However, that has not been part of our national tradition in this country. I will be interested to hear hon. Members’ reasoning in the debate. I assume that the underlying principle behind the ban—given that many people are convicted and not sent to prison—was that a person who was sent to prison had done something so antisocial towards the civil order that it was justified to remove their right to vote. Speaking personally, I have never thought that there was anything unreasonable about that approach, although I appreciate that some hold other views, including non-governmental organisations such as the Prison Reform Trust, which has argued powerfully in favour of giving prisoners the right to vote.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman has made his point extremely well, and I think that it has been taken by many Members.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am very puzzled by my friend’s approach. If we as a country are signed up to the European convention on human rights, which we frequently use—all of us as Members of Parliament use it in representing our constituents—and if the Court makes a judgment on the question of prisoners’ voting rights within that convention, we are bound by that judgment, by treaty and by law. Why on earth are we debating this issue unless the long-term agenda—and I suspect that it is the agenda of many Members—is complete withdrawal from the convention? Surely that is the real agenda of many people.
Chris Bryant
It is certainly not my agenda, and I hope that I shall be able to please my hon. Friend with some of the things that I am going to say. I would add, however, that politicians engage in pick and mix sometimes—indeed, virtually every day of their lives.
Mr Hollobone
The legal industry has reached a new low in touting for business among convicted felons whereby lawyers will try to get fees for themselves by prosecuting Her Majesty’s Government. That is appalling, and it makes the whole issue even more sickening.
Jeremy Corbyn
What does the hon. Gentleman think are the implications of challenging a European Court of Human Rights decision for all the other human rights that we hold dear and wish to see enacted and enforced in all member countries of the Council of Europe?
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman takes a perfectly reasonable position. I totally disagree with him, but he is a principled man and he makes an important point. The bottom line for me is that there would be less shame in leaving the European convention on human rights than in giving prisoners the vote. He may disagree with that, but it is the line that I would take. What people do in other countries is up to them.
I would like to stay in the convention, but we are dealing with a court that has gone wrong. It is clearly not functioning properly. It has a backlog of tens of thousands of unresolved cases. Many of its so-called judges have no legal training at all; they are probably less qualified than me to make judgments on these things. How has it come about that we, in a sovereign Parliament, have let these decisions be taken by a kangaroo court in Strasbourg, the judgments of which do not enjoy the respect of our constituents?
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
It is a bit strong to describe the European Court of Human Rights as a kangaroo court. That does not do any credit to the debate in this House or to the argument put by the Member who so described it. As a country, we signed up to the European convention on human rights because we wanted to ensure that basic standards of human rights were available to everyone across Europe. We did so because of the horrors of the second world war and the post-war period. It does no credit to anyone in this House to describe the Court in that way, as it is a derivative of a period in the world’s history when we tried to develop a commonality of human rights conditions around the world.
Those who say that our House of Commons is a completely sovereign body and can do whatever it wishes are frankly wrong. Every time a country signs up to a treaty in any sphere of influence or activity, it removes some of its own sovereignty. That is the nature of international law and of signing up to treaties. Let us get real. We are part of the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights, and that has made a big difference to the lives of an awful lot of people across Europe and in this country. We should approach this issue with a degree of rationality and sense about what is meant by human rights.
I remind the House that, in South Africa, prisoners have had the right to vote since the end of apartheid. It is worth thinking about the words of its constitutional court, because it is a country that has been through the most unbelievable turmoil and some of the worst abuses of human rights experienced in the world:
“The universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts.”
That is an important element. I have no more truck with people who commit violent crime or other crime than any Member. However, is prisoners having the right to vote not part of a rehabilitative process? Does it not encourage them to reflect on what they have done? Is it not a fundamental right that is enshrined in the European convention on human rights? Perhaps we should consider it as a useful step forward for this country.
I have received various lobbying letters on this issue, as I am sure have other Members. I will quote from two sources that I think are valuable. The first is an article by Frances Crook, who has spent her whole life at the Howard League for Penal Reform. She has done a great deal of very good work, as has that organisation, in encouraging a better prison system and better rehabilitation of prisoners. Her article from The Guardian online states:
“Voting is one way that people exercise their citizenship and prisoners too are citizens. We infantilise prisoners, treating grown up men inside as if they were small children who are not allowed to decide what they wear, what they do or make any contribution to the running of their lives.”
She makes, I think, a very strong case for treating prisoners in a more sophisticated way in order to improve them and their lives.
The other quotation is from Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe human rights commissioner. When he came to speak in this building, many MPs came to listen to him and applauded what he said, the attitude he took to human rights and his determination to ensure that the European convention applied throughout Europe. He has said:
“Our forefathers accepted the principle that not only male persons, nobles, and those who owned property or paid taxes should have the right to vote, but everyone—irrespective of their status in society. We may now feel that some of these right-holders do not deserve this possibility, but to exclude them is to undermine a crucial dimension of the very concept of democracy—and human rights.”
I urge the House to think carefully about the matter and not to walk away from an important step forward in international law and human rights. We would do so at our peril.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
This afternoon, I feared cutting a rather lonely figure when standing up to argue that we should allow more prisoners to vote. I welcome, therefore, the support of the hon. Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Belfast East (Naomi Long), the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who opened the batting for those supporting voting rights for prisoners, and the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).
I am arguing in favour of allowing more prisoners to vote, and the purpose of the intervention that I made on the spokesman for the official Opposition, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was to highlight the fact that a number of prisoners already do have the right to vote. People who are presenting this as a black-and-white issue, or a new departure, where, for the first time, prisoners are to be given the right to vote, are misleading the public, because we know that a group of prisoners already have the right to vote.
The case that I am making is based on two simple principles. The first is that when the European Court of Human Rights finds that UK law contravenes the European convention on human rights—in other words, that UK law is unlawful—the UK Government should address that illegality. Once we start picking and choosing the laws that we believe should apply and those that we can disregard—the pick-and-mix approach, as the Attorney-General put it—where does it end? The Americans know where it ends: in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
Even if the ruling makes some feel uncomfortable, what about the other rulings that the Court has made? A couple of Members have referred to those, including in the case of S and Marper, in relation to DNA, and the case of Z and others, in relation to child neglect. I would also mention the case of Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. the UK Government in March 2010, when our Government were criticised for failing to obtain assurances from the Iraqi authorities that those men would not face the death penalty there.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Gentleman is right about where we would end up with a pick-and-mix solution. I am sure that he is also aware that the case of the Chagos islanders is coming before the ECHR this summer. A decision will come out, and whatever it is, we hope that the Government accept it. If we go down the other road, everything would be open for debate every time there is a Court decision.
Tom Brake
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He has put on record what I know to be his long-standing interest in the Chagos islands, and I hope that a positive outcome will be secured there.
The second reason why I am speaking in favour of more prisoners being given the right to vote is that it is the appropriate course of action. Prisoners have committed a crime. Their punishment is to lose their liberty. That is fair and just. What is then gained by seeking to inflict civil death on them? In what way does that benefit the victim? Does it increase the chances of rehabilitation? What is the logic behind the ban? We do not remove prisoners’ access to health care, nor do we stop them practising their religion, so why should we impose a blanket ban on prisoners’ right to vote? Surely we have moved on from the Victorian notion of civil death.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Notwithstanding the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), the motion on the Order Paper in my name and that of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House has been carefully crafted in light of the judgments delivered by the Grand Chamber in the Hirst case. For that reason, and given the limit on Back-Bench contributions, I shall confine my remarks to demonstrating why the motion is correct and why it is important that it receives support from hon. Members on both sides of the House.
The previous Government’s decision to refer the Hirst matter to the Grand Chamber is something that we have to live with because of the rule of law. We have to respect the judgment that the Court handed down, whether we agree with it or not, but it is important to bear in mind that the decision in Hirst was far from unanimous. A powerful dissent was delivered by the president of the Court, in which he was joined by four other judges. I add that Judge Costa, who is now the president of the Court, also delivered a dissenting opinion. Those dissenting opinions correctly recognised the importance of the Court not interfering or being seen to interfere in domestic political issues.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am listening intently to the hon. and learned Gentleman. Does he recognise that those opinions dissented from the majority opinion of the Court? If we are to support the whole concept of the European convention on human rights and the Court, we have to accept its judgment.
Stephen Phillips
I am grateful for that intervention, but I ask the hon. Gentleman to listen to where I am going rather than to what he has heard so far.
The minority stressed that
“it is essential to bear in mind that the Court is not a legislator and should be careful not to assume legislative functions.”
I make this point, in answer to the hon. Gentleman, because although I accept, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has made clear, that the Government are bound by the judgment in the Hirst case as between themselves and Mr Hirst, in the sense that it is res judicata between them, they are not bound in relation to future cases brought by other litigants. There is every prospect, given the debate that we are having today, that the judgment in Hirst would not be followed by the Grand Chamber in future should it come to consider the matter again. To be clear, if, as I trust will happen, there is a clear demonstration in the House today of the will of the people, through their democratically elected representatives, to maintain the status quo regarding the removal of voting rights from those who are subject to custodial sentences, I fail to see how that could not subsequently be respected by the courts of this country and by the Strasbourg Court should the matter have to be considered again.
As even the majority in Hirst recognised, there is a substantial margin of appreciation in the context of article 3 of the convention, and the fact remains that there is no consensus across Europe as to whether those serving custodial sentences should have their right to vote removed as a consequence of having put themselves outside the law. Indeed, it was notable in the judgment of the majority in the Grand Chamber that significant reliance had to be placed on decisions from Canada and South Africa. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) quoted from the South African case. It is true that Canada and South Africa are both common law countries, but they have significant civil law traditions stemming from French law and Roman-Dutch law respectively.
The margin of appreciation in the context that is being discussed in the House means, or certainly ought to mean, that if the House passes the motion, as I hope it will, and if it decides that it does not believe, in the name of the people of the United Kingdom, that section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 entails any breach of the human rights of the citizens of the United Kingdom, that, to my mind, must be an end of the matter. It will have to be recognised in the courts of this country. It will, I hope, be recognised by the Court in Strasbourg.
Legal aid
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be under your chairpersonship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate.
When legal aid was first introduced in 1949, the late Arthur Skeffington said that the law at that time was like the Ritz, in that those who could afford to pay had access to it, while those who could not did not. Legal aid was introduced, and it is fundamental to giving everybody in this country access to justice.
When the Green Paper came out, paragraph 1.2 of the summary said:
“The Government strongly believes that access to justice is a hallmark of a civil society”,
which is great. The problem is the rest of the Green Paper; it starts well, but it is all downhill after that. We need to examine a number of issues relating to the Green Paper.
The background has to be that cuts were already being made in legal aid, and many of us in the Chamber who were in the previous Parliament were very concerned about that. Indeed, we raised those concerns consistently with Ministers, because the cuts were leaving the most marginalised, vulnerable people with no redress whatever through the legal system. That deeply concerns me.
The cuts have been accompanied by a series of ill-informed, unfair media attacks on the entire legal profession and the legal aid system, which have been led by the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Evening Standard. Those newspapers routinely print isolated and outrageous figures about payments to some barristers, while at no time looking at the reality of the number of legal aid firms that are paid so little that they can no longer afford to represent anybody and have gone out of business. In inner-urban areas such as the one that I represent, which is the eighth poorest part of the whole country, many people simply cannot get any representation whatever, because there is no legal aid lawyer to deal with them.
Let me quote from a letter dated 1 October 2010—many colleagues will have seen something similar at various times. It says:
“URGENT INFORMATION
CLOSURE OF
SHEIKH & CO SOLICITORS
Non practising as of Midnight on 30th September 2010”
It continues:
“We were unable to secure viable indemnity insurance despite our best efforts particularly in view of uncertainty surrounding the legal aid contracts and so it means Sheikh & Co cannot provide legal services any more.”
This was a busy local practice dealing with a whole range of issues, including housing, immigration and family and education matters, and its closure left thousands of people with no representation. Their files will be passed on through the appropriate body to another solicitor, but that solicitor may go under, and the files will then move on to somebody else and somebody else again. Along the way, they will be lost, which means that very poor and vulnerable people will be left without any representation whatever.
I am proud to represent my constituency in Parliament. I am also proud of Islington law centre, which does fantastic work. When I visited it a couple of weeks ago, the director told me that a
“10% cut across the board is being proposed”
in its Legal Services Commission contract funding and that
“we have been cut hard in both housing and employment, where, although we were ranked first in terms of our tender score, we have been given a much smaller contract from mid-November than we had previously”.
The director added that that will mean
“250 less employment clients per annum that we can help, and 185 less housing clients. I expect the total cut next year to be around £130,000,”
which is more than two full-time equivalent caseworkers. That is a busy law centre, which is doing its best. Such events could be replicated all over the country at hard-working law centres.
When the Minister replies, I hope that he will recognise the value of law centres and the need to give them support and funding.
Jeremy Corbyn
I also hope that he will recognise that, without law centres and legal aid practices at solicitors, many of our most vulnerable constituents will simply go without any access to justice whatever.
Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)
Order. I intend to start the winding-up speeches at 10.40 am, and at least six other Members want to speak. If they can keep their remarks brief, I will get everybody in. I call Robert Buckland.
Jeremy Corbyn
Actually, Mrs Riordan, I was giving way to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). I was not concluding my contribution. If you want me to conclude, I suppose I must, but I would be grateful if you gave me just a bit more time.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to you, Mrs Riordan.
I wanted to pick up my hon. Friend’s point about advice services. I wonder whether it struck him, as it struck me, that the Green Paper suggests that costly legal advice can be substituted with much less costly voluntary advice services. The problem is—and the author of the Green Paper does not seem to realise it—that most such voluntary services are themselves funded by legal aid, and that that funding will go if the proposals are implemented.
Jeremy Corbyn
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which is true. Legal aid funding goes through law centres, Citizens Advice and all kinds of other advice agencies, which will be cut. In any event, none of the advice services’ funding is ring-fenced in local authority terms. I have done a head-count audit of my borough, and there is probably less one-to-one advice available than there was 25 years ago. I suspect that colleagues could tell similar stories. We need fair access to justice.
The Law Society briefing for the debate is very good. It notes:
“The cuts in scope and eligibility for civil legal aid will mean that many fewer people will be able to bring cases to court”.
It continues by pointing out that
“solicitors will either find other areas of work or ‘cherry pick’ cases”.
We have many brilliant law students in this country—many brilliant young people who want to go into law and do their very best. They often end up, whether they want to or not, doing property and commercial law, because that is where the money can be made and where they can get work. They do not do legal aid because there is not enough money around to do it with. There are not enough companies doing legal aid work. So we have amazing levels of representation for well-off people, in commercial or corporate cases, but we do not have the same availability for criminal, housing, immigration or family cases.
There is a lot that I could say, but I take your earlier hint, Mrs Riordan—you do not want me to go on too long. It was very subtly put, if I may say so. I have two quick points that I want to make. The idea of separating family law cases so that legal aid will be given if violence is involved, but not if there is no violence, is utterly absurd. I am sure that we have all seen how families can implode under many pressures. The degeneration of a relationship into a battle and a court case can get very nasty. Mediation does not always work—of course we all want it to, but it does not always. That can degenerate into violence. If sensible, effective legal advice is available at a much earlier stage, much of that degeneration into something far worse can be prevented.
I am pleased that the Green Paper specifically excludes any cut in representation for asylum cases. I welcome that and pay tribute to the Minister for it. Those who face deportation in asylum cases, possibly with the prospect of death or torture on their return to where they have come from, deserve legal aid. I absolutely defend that, and I am sure—or at least hope—that every hon. Member in the Chamber would too.
However, in immigration cases, which are often very complicated, legal aid is limited; it is available for dealing with detention, but not for the case itself. A family who are put in detention—quite wrongly, in my view, if children are involved—can get legal aid to try to get out of detention, but not to deal with the burden of the case. That seems a non sequitur; either we support immigration cases or we do not. I hope that the Minister will recognise that the injustices surrounding that state of affairs, in particular with regard to applications under articles 6 and 8 of the European convention on human rights, are very important and that such cases deserve legal aid.
The late Sir Henry Hodge, who was a judge at the immigration appeal tribunal, constantly made references to the Legal Services Commission wanting sufficient resources to make representation available. An immigration appeal where there is no representation for the applicant, but there is representation for the Home Office, is unbelievably, blatantly and obviously unfair. It is not a credible way of doing things.
I urge the Minister to think again, seriously, about those aspects of the matter, and to remember the principle of access to justice for all. That will not be possible if the cuts go through.
Ian Tomlinson
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
The right hon. Gentleman raises the question of whether an assault charge could have been brought while the investigation continued. I say simply that it could have been. The difficulty that might have arisen is that if that assault charge had been taken to conclusion through the courts during the period of the investigation and subsequently the material on which a manslaughter charge could have been based became apparent, it might then have been impossible to proceed with the manslaughter charge. I do not think that that matter can simply be overlooked.
I did not fully respond to the point put by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) about the timing. I simply say this: there was an IPCC inquiry first of all, which took some months. By the time the Crown Prosecution Service got the material in this case, time had already gone on a fair bit. In those circumstances, I do not take the view from what I have seen that the CPS was in any way dilatory in trying to bring this matter to a conclusion.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Does the Attorney-General understand that a lot of people view his remarks today and his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) with utter consternation? As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) pointed out, this is a question of justice and of seeing justice to be done. If we are to have any confidence in the judicial system and in the ability of the Government or the CPS to mount a prosecution, something must happen in this case where a wholly innocent man was killed in broad daylight on the streets of London and no action appears to be imminent on this matter.