Oral Answers to Questions
John Glen Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
6. What steps her Department is taking to ensure equitable regional funding for arts and culture.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (John Glen)
The Government want everyone to have the best access to arts and culture, wherever they live. That is why I am delighted that 60% of the national portfolio organisation funding announced by the Arts Council this week and 75% of lottery funding from 2018 will be invested outside London.
Lilian Greenwood
May I begin by congratulating the hon. Gentleman on his first appearance on the Front Bench? He will know that austerity has forced midlands local authorities to cut spending on culture, so Arts Council England’s announcement that it is investing extra money outside London is very welcome and I am delighted that it will support City Arts, Primary, Dance4, Nottingham Playhouse and other organisations in our city, which the Minister is welcome to visit.
European Union funding has also been transformational —I do not think that Nottingham Contemporary could have been built without it—so will the Government guarantee to replace that regional support for the arts when Britain leaves the EU?
John Glen
The Government see the value of collaboration in arts and culture funding. She is right to point out that this week’s announcement is excellent news for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. I will do all I can, working with the chief executive and chairman of the Arts Council, to ensure that the sector’s priorities are addressed across this country.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I warmly welcome the new Minister to his place. What advice does he have for smaller regional museums such as Congleton Museum, which has an exciting expansion opportunity for which it needs to secure grant funding?
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Ashfield, like many former coalfield constituencies, receives way below the average in lottery funding. Is not it time that the lottery publish not just how much money it spends in each constituency, but how many tickets are purchased in each constituency, so that we can see whether the poorest areas are subsidising the richest?
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I welcome this week’s announcement of more funding for the arts and museums largely in Nottingham city, but did the Minister hear me mention this week the potential for a mining museum in my constituency of Mansfield? Will he meet me to help us further celebrate that heritage and culture and see whether we can make progress on that?
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Arts Council’s decision to increase funding outside London, but the Minister must be aware that many brilliant institutions such as the People’s History Museum are primarily dependent on local authorities for funding. Will he consider following the Arts Council’s lead and give us back some of the money that has been slashed from local authority budgets, so that we can start to fund again some of this country’s most innovative cultural institutions?
John Glen
I listened very carefully to the hon. Lady. Of course, some local authorities do see the value of investing in arts and culture and make a massive contribution, alongside the Arts Council grants, to extending their footprint, but I am happy to look into the case that she raises.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
The Minister will be aware that Doorstep Arts is a home-grown theatre and arts company resident at the Palace theatre in Paignton and has just become the first organisation in Torbay to be part of the Arts Council’s national portfolio. Will he join me in welcoming that and the £382,000 of funding that it will receive from the Arts Council over the next four years as a result?
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
7. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that digital infrastructure meets the needs of the economy.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
T7. The Stockton international riverside festival, which will be held from 3 until 6 August, attracts thousands of visitors, and has grown into one of the country’s greatest street arts events. This year it celebrates its 30th anniversary. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Stockton Borough Council on its vision in setting up the festival, and congratulating the Arts Council on recognising it for the tremendous success that it has become?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (John Glen)
It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Stockton Borough Council on the wisdom of its investment. It provides a good example for many other local authorities, demonstrating that when they invest in the arts, they will get a very good return.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The announcement this week that £15 million of lottery funding is going to Hull to support its fishing heritage is very welcome, although I have to say that across the river in the Grimsby-Cleethorpes area there is disappointment that repeated attempts to secure similar funding have been rejected. Will the Minister look again at the balance of the share-out of lottery funding between different towns and cities?
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
T8. May I join the Secretary of State in wishing the Edinburgh international festival a happy 70th anniversary? There is no doubt that it shows that the United Kingdom has some of the best sporting and entertainment events in the world. What plans have the Government to control ticket prices, and to ensure that the re-sellers market does not rip off ordinary fans?
Abortion Act
John Glen Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I know that you share my concerns in this debate. I welcome everyone who is here for the debate and I thank the Ministers for coming. Their presence shows the seriousness and concern that are felt about the issue.
The debate has been triggered by The Daily Telegraph’s investigation into gender-selection abortion last year and the subsequent police investigation and decision by the Crown Prosecution Service on 5 September this year that it was not in the public interest to prosecute the doctors who were found to have contravened the Abortion Act 1967. The Director of Public Prosecutions has now given his detailed reasons, following a review of the public interest factors for or against prosecution.
Concerns about the authorisation of gender-selection abortion and the lack of any prosecution have been widely felt in the House and among the public. I am grateful for the support from hon. Members of all parties, despite our usual divide and the divide over the abortion issue. Indeed, 50 signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph. They were united in calling for clarity from the Attorney-General about the policy on contraventions of the Abortion Act. We look forward to that clarity coming from the Attorney-General today.
Keir Starmer, the DPP, recognised in his article on Monday that
“this country has a strong tradition of open and transparent criminal justice, and the probing and debating of prosecutorial decisions is an integral part to that tradition.”
Today I want to follow that fine tradition of probing and debating. The conclusion I have come to, supported by the DPP’s statement, is that the policy on prosecutions or offences contravening the Abortion Act is unclear, and, sadly, largely unenforceable. The DPP has helpfully shone a prosecutorial light on the practice of abortion where doctors have no direct contact with patients, where authorisation forms can be pre-signed, and where assessments concerning physical or mental health risk can be treated as routinely as questions of choice.
Some will argue that the issue of gender-selection abortion is simply a restriction of choice. Ann Furedi is the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the leading provider of abortion services. It has some 40 clinics in England, Wales and Scotland and performs 60,000 abortions a year. She says that sex selection may not be grounds for abortion, but there is no legal requirement to deny a woman an abortion if she has a sex preference, provided that the legal grounds are still met. Indeed, Ann Furedi went so far as to say it would be “wrong” to refuse to consider an abortion request when gender is cited as a reason. Those are the words not of the Chinese or Indian pregnancy advisory service but of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, advocating gender selection abortions and the removal of barriers to abortion. The issue is worldwide: The Economist recently published an article describing the 100 million abortions, which it described as “gendercide”, that are done on the basis of gender throughout the world. Concern is shared throughout the House about the need for proper gender equality and respect for basic rights.
When I heard about the investigation and the Care Quality Commission investigations that followed, I could not believe that such things could be happening in this country. The words I have quoted and the lack of any prosecutorial decision—there have been a handful of prosecutions for abortion contraventions in the past 10 years—give a green light to abortion on demand, which flies in the face of the Abortion Act and the intention of parliamentarians in 1967. Some 98% of abortions tick the box of mental health risk, but if we are honest, the truth is that that covers a multitude of reasons, and one of those reasons might include gender.
The DPP himself has referred in his statement to a programme manager at the Department of Health who indicated that many doctors feel that forcing a woman to proceed with an unwanted pregnancy would cause considerable stress and anxiety. The corollary of that is justifying the mental health grounds. It follows, therefore, that in practical terms we have in this country abortion on demand. I recognise that the Attorney-General is focused on the prosecution policy and will not trespass into the wider health policies, but my question is relevant. How does this reality impact on the policy towards prosecutions? How can it be in the public interest—Ann Furedi has raised this question—to prosecute contraventions of the Abortion Act when there is such a gap between the law and practice?
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
The key issue is about the definition of the mental health issues and the bar that is set for them to be understood to be a meaningful reason for an abortion. That can be a catch-all for an inclination on any grounds to have an abortion. If it is not set clearly and applied appropriately, it will result in what my hon. Friend has set out.
Mr Burrowes
My hon. Friend makes a good point. A wider issue is transparency and honesty around definitions and assessments. It is an issue because 99.6% of the 98% who relied on the grounds of mental health risk are those that this applies to. The investigation and the reasoning have highlighted the lack of guidance and how it is disparate across the country. We need further information. We are in the unknowns, because there is a lack of data and proper information. We do not know enough about the assessments in relation to mental health grounds. Perhaps the doctor is not even present to make the assessment.
Assisted Suicide
John Glen Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I want to open my contribution simply by saying that I endorse and support the DPP’s published prosecution policy. I do not support any move to change the law or the prosecution policy or to put that policy in statute law, and I am concerned that in reality that is the pathway that will follow this debate. I oppose any moves in that direction on the basis that the current law works well in practice. Let us be clear that it does so because of the stop-gap between Parliament and the CPS, which allows a criminal investigation into any case if required but, as with all criminal law, has the element of discretion that allows consideration of mitigating factors in all cases.
I want to offer two practical objections to changing the status quo. First, the law is about protection. We are talking about protection for the most vulnerable members of our society, those with terminal illnesses, those who might be severely disabled or those who might be depressed, confused or anxious. For this reason, we should not have a law that encourages, or is unable to prosecute, any case of coerced, encouraged, pressured or uninformed assisted suicide. Consider the situation for a 97-year-old elderly lady nearing the end of her life. Despite the best motives and intentions of her family, knowing that the option of assisted suicide exists, and given strong ties of loyalty, subtle cues from the family create the risk that she will feel compelled to assist with their emotional and financial uncertainties by agreeing to a premature ending of her life.
When I visited the spinal unit in my local hospital in Odstock in Salisbury last Friday and spoke with the consultant, he told me of the frequent situation for those who become tetraplegic after accidents. He said that their attitude towards their future changes markedly while they come to terms with their situation and their future quality of life. Exemptions to the law on assisted suicide will not provide a deterrent or discouragement in those cases, nor will they provide grounds for investigation or prosecution, if needed. The only way to ensure that every single case is amenable to robust deterrence and proper investigation is to have a blanket law against assisted suicide.
We must also focus on prevention, and that means doing everything we can to aid people when they are suffering towards the end of their life, so I endorse the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), with its renewed focus on palliative care. We have all commended the hospices in our constituencies, as we know that they are an under-used and a misunderstood resource of which so many more people wish to, and could, take advantage.
When we discuss the issue of suicide, we immediately raise the need for counselling and caring for those who are depressed. The same should be true for those who are near death. My submission today is that if we were to create a painful moral dilemma and significant areas of legal uncertainty and ambiguity, we would put at risk the well-being of many people. We should leave the status of the law as it is.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is an honour to speak in a debate that has shown this House at its best, and I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) on moving the motion and the Backbench Business Committee on finding time to debate it. I am in an unusual position, as I can happily support the motion and both amendments—and will do so if we go into the Division Lobby later.
I will start at the end by supporting amendment (b) on palliative care, which my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) tabled and with which I wholeheartedly agree. I join other Members in paying tribute to the hospices that serve their constituencies.
My local hospice is the Treetops hospice in Derbyshire, which does amazing work, and, speaking as someone who has lost a partner to a cancer, I have seen the great care that it gives people in the final stage of their life. We never talked about whether she would have chosen a quicker, less painful and more dignified way of dying, but I remember sitting there for four days while she lay dying, thinking that if I ever got into such a situation I might prefer to go in a less painful and more dignified way.
I join those other Members who support changing the law to allow people that very difficult choice at the end of their life, but that is not what this debate, the motion or the amendment that stands in my name and that of the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) is about; it is about endorsing what the Director of Public Prosecutions has done. His guidance is admirable, I have no criticism of it and I hope that it remains in place and is applied consistently.
I do not think any Member wants the issue to be subject to a different court decision, which moves the line in the sand back or forward a bit, or subject to a different DPP changing the tone of the guidance. Parliament should draw that line, saying, “This is what we think is acceptable; anything beyond that, we think not,” and if the line is to move, that should be down to Parliament as well. That is why I support amendment (a), and I do so not because I want to list loads of criteria in law.
If someone compassionately assists a loved one in ending their life when that is their choice, Parliament should say that that is not a crime. What should be a crime is trying maliciously to encourage someone to end their life when that is not their choice, when it is not what they want and when it is not done through compassion.
John Glen
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, but in reality is it not the practical, individual decisions that matter? Even if Parliament did come up with a set of criteria, would it not be their application individually that mattered? It would therefore be entirely inappropriate for Parliament to try to set criteria that could be binding in every individual situation.
Nigel Mills
The point I am trying to make is that I am not sure whether it would be right for Parliament to list a load of criteria. The feeling today appears to be that we do not think that people should be prosecuted for compassionately assisting a loved one in their free choice to end their life, but that someone should be prosecuted for maliciously encouraging or enticing someone to commit suicide when they do not really want to do so. That principle could clearly be put into statute without having to go through the individual circumstances of every situation. That would then leave the DPP free to consider in each case whether the action was compassionate or malicious. At the moment, the law says that if one assists someone to commit suicide—