John Hemming
Main Page: John Hemming (Liberal Democrat - Birmingham, Yardley)Department Debates - View all John Hemming's debates with the Leader of the House
(12 years, 3 months ago)
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John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I am pleased, on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, that this debate has been set up today.
Hillsborough is a cover-up that has failed, although it took a long time to fail. Sadly, there are too many cover-ups that continue to succeed. For example, David Southall’s experiments, where he made babies breathe lethal concentrations of carbon monoxide, were covered up by the investigator calling CO an “inert gas”. My constituent Michael Andrews has revealed how he has come under pressure to misreport statistics by my local hospital. The response of the hospital management has been to take action against the whistleblower.
There is a country where there are allegations that crimes by powerful people are not being investigated and prosecuted. A journalist has been refused entry to stop reporting about an issue. The chief of police has been suspended to stop him investigating crimes. Bloggers are being threatened to stop them talking about people. Decisions by the state not to prosecute cannot be challenged, nor is private prosecution allowed. The country is Jersey. The journalist is Leah McGrath Goodman, who is an American. The chief of police was Graham Power. Furthermore, Andrew Marolia, David Minty, David Wherry and Jonathan Sharrock Haworth have, with the assistance of the Jersey Government, obtained a super-injunction against ex-Senator Stuart Syvret—under the Data Protection Act of all things—to prevent from him saying things about them on his blog that are true. Mr Syvret has evidence that criminal offences are being swept under the carpet, but nothing is being done.
A lay judge—known as a jurat—called John le Breton has been allowed to sit as a jurat, even though he was vice-principal of Victoria college when he wrote to the governors in support of Andrew Jervis-Dykes, who ended up getting a jail sentence. Mr le Breton was appointed to judge on a case even though he is a personal friend of a director of the defendant—this is a defamation case where the local politician, Trevor Pitman, has been taking legal action against the local newspaper. The end result in Jersey is that part of these events has been struck from the state’s version of Hansard, and the culture of cover-up continues. Jersey is an independent country, but the UK Government have a responsibility for ensuring good governance in Jersey. The UK is not doing its job properly.
The UK is not as bad, but at times it has a good try. The situation in England and Wales is so bad that foreign countries are expressing concern about the abuse of human rights in the English courts. Over the weekend, there was a three-hour programme on Slovak television debating a case in England. In England, however, we are banned from discussing all the details of the case in the media. International conventions, such as The Hague convention and Brussels II bis, are predicated on the concept that each country can trust the legal system in each other country. As such, the country in which people are habitually resident determines the legal system that has jurisdiction. The existence of the Council of Europe and its European Court of Human Rights—it is not the European Union that deals with the ECHR—provides a body that can adjudicate on cases in the domestic courts. The Government of the Slovak Republic have publicly stated on the Slovak Justice Ministry website that they are willing to support their citizens in any case that reaches the Court. It is clear that the Slovak Government believe that there are a number of cases—not just one isolated case—where the human rights of their citizens are being undermined in England.
To my knowledge, this situation is unique. It does, however, raise the question of whether the human rights of UK citizens and others have been regularly and consistently abused in English and Welsh courts over a number of years. One recent Court of Appeal case involved a judge refusing permission to appeal because no evidence had been provided. The appellant had been given a deadline to provide that evidence by 4 pm on 23 September 2011, which they had met by submitting the evidence earlier that day, but the judge had looked at the case before that had happened. It is therefore not surprising that the judge had concluded that the evidence was not there. That was a clear procedural error by the court administration, but domestic proceedings have now been exhausted. The case also involved a citizen of another country. That country has not yet expressed its view on the matter.
A slightly worse problem is referred to in early-day motion 536. The family division of the Court of Appeal appears not to be correcting all the public family law cases that reach it and that it should correct. Clearly, if it were to correct more of the lower court’s decisions, questions would be asked about how well the system was working, but maintaining public confidence in the system is not a good enough reason to sweep problems under the carpet. Permission to appeal was granted in a case today, however, so that is not always the case.
The only objective analysis of psychological expert reports from Professor Jane Ireland found that around two thirds of the reports submitted to the family courts in care proceedings were either poor or very poor. However, that does not appear to be being picked up by the appellate system. My estimate, on a statistical basis, is that around 1,000 children are wrongfully adopted each year. One advantage of having foreign countries’ human rights commissions reviewing cases affecting their citizens is that we can try to get a better estimate of the total number of miscarriages of justice. It would be nice if our Equality and Human Rights Commission were willing to look at these issues as well.
Michael Mansfield has suggested that the country needs a “commission of truth” to discover cover-ups. My response, in part, is that we already have a body that can do more on this. That body is Parliament. Parliament needs to be willing—collectively, through a Committee—to consider a limited number of individual cases, to work out whether there is evidence of a cover-up. It would not take much use of the collective power of Parliament to identify where a cover-up had happened.
Over the years, our constitution has, to some extent, failed. That has created a situation in which matters that should be more widely considered are being left within the judicial estate of the constitution. That applies particularly to cases involving a lot of secrecy, in which people are prevented from discussing matters. I have already mentioned the fact that Slovak television had a three-hour debate on an issue whose details we are not allowed to discuss. There might be a report in the UK media today following today’s hearing, which, although anonymous, might give some guide as to what has been going on. In practice, enough material is available to enable a three-hour discussion on Slovak television, yet we in the UK are unable to debate the matter.
It is clear from my discussions about other cases that this involves not only the Slovak Republic and one other country; other nations are concerned about the matter as well. People are also leaving this country for these reasons. A Channel 4 report broadcast before the recess highlighted the fact that people were leaving this country because they felt they could not get a fair trial in the family courts in the UK. I follow such cases all around the world, and I will be happy to talk to colleagues about them if they are interested. Such cases demonstrate that the system is not working. However, I had some news today that makes me think that perhaps it might work better in future. These are complex systems.
From a scientific point of view, there has been a tendency to try to rely on unreliable opinion. I was a member of Birmingham city council for 18 years, and its deputy leader for a year, so I got quite used to the council’s operation. The Ministry of Justice believes that an assessment is the same, whether it is carried out by an employee of the council or by an independent assessor. I know, however, that councils are set targets. For example, Surrey county council has been working on its performance assessment figure C23 target to try to increase the number of adoptions from care. We know that the Prime Minister wishes to see more such adoptions taking place, and there is pressure on local government to increase their numbers. That tends to go down the management structure, and those people employed by the council are therefore subject to a conflict of interest. This is nothing new; it has been the case for over 12 years.
I think the Ministry of Justice is making a really big mistake when it considers in the family justice review that a report written by an employee of the council has equal merit to a report written by, say, an independent social worker. The advantage of having an independent social worker is that such a worker is genuinely independent. If a system is run on a cab-rank basis, some independent consideration of the issues is likely, which would not be the case if it was driven by the management structure of the local authority.
Anyone with any experience of local government will understand that biases and pressures are often placed on employees, and sometimes there are bullying management systems. The difficulty comes when judicial decisions are made that rely on that skewed information. As I say, this is nothing new; it has been going on for a long time. Hon. Members will be aware that I often bounce up and down about this issue. At least I now have some Government support—sadly, it is not from the UK Government, but from the Slovak Republic. I would prefer that the UK Government recognised what the Slovak Republic recognises, which is that there are very serious problems here.
I think this matter will go a lot further. Today’s hearing is very positive and things will develop from it. I am aware of the concerns of other east European Governments about exactly the same issue. They might decide to take a robust position in the same way as the Human Rights Commission did in the Slovak Republic. It is unclear whether any of these cases will get before the European Court of Human Rights so that we will see a representative from the UK Government arguing for the UK’s position and a representative from a foreign Government arguing from the alternative perspective. Obviously, if a matter is corrected in the Court of Appeal or in the Supreme Court, it will not get there, but it would be interesting to see how the European Court of Human Rights or the European Court of Justice, which I think has a similar jurisdiction for the purposes of EU members, dealt with this issue. This is a really big problem; there has been a really big cover-up, and it needs to be sorted out.
Tom Brake
As my hon. Friend said, other issues have had to be addressed. The Olympics and Paralympics are now over, but there are other matters to be considered, too. I hope that he will get some satisfaction on this question very soon, but it would not be appropriate for me to specify a time. This issue has been on the Government’s radar for many years, however, and we all want a swift resolution, especially for Mr McKinnon and his family.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) talked about Butterley spillway. As I said, I would be pleased to know more about this issue, and the campaign group that has been established and put that grand staircase on the map. He outlined the actions that Yorkshire Water is taking in relation to the different options it is considering. He made some specific requests and it would be appropriate for the relevant Department to respond to those. Such requests included asking for full transparency of all documents. He also asked questions about whether or not the structure will remain listed, and they need a response.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) has a reputation for campaigning on issues associated with family courts. He probably wanted to put on the record, and he certainly effectively did so, what he had to say about Jersey and its particular case. He rightly said that he bounces up and down to raise this issue frequently—
John Hemming
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his new role, which gives him the challenge of answering this question: I understand from people I have spoken to after I made my speech that there have been protests today outside the British embassy in Bratislava about malpractice in the English family courts, so does he feel that it might perhaps be in the Government’s interest to drop their family justice review and support my Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill?
Tom Brake
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It would certainly be appropriate for the Government to respond to his suggestion, but it would also be totally inappropriate for me to agree to it at this time. He also suggested that a Committee should be set up to consider cover-ups. Again, I am not sure which Department would deal with those, but I am sure that it has noted that request.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) talked about localism. Clearly there is total agreement in the coalition on some issues, and the need to promote localism is definitely one of them. Both parties identified the issue as something we wanted to address, given that the UK has become one of the most centralised countries in the western world. When raising the issue of wind farms, she highlighted the fact that there may be a conflict between localism, which we want to prioritise, and different agendas to which the Government are equally committed in ensuring that we are the greenest Government ever. She posed a number of questions that would be best answered by the Department for Communities and Local Government in writing. I am thinking, in particular, of the issues she raised about where the priorities lie between strategic plans, regional plans and neighbourhood plans, and what opportunities there are for local residents to have an input in that process and change the outcome.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is no longer in his place, has been a consistent campaigner on violent video games. He will be aware that a new statutory system was introduced on 30 July, which will mean that a person who sells a game rated 12-plus to someone below that age will have committed a criminal offence and could be subject to a fine of £5,000. He made a point about prosecutions, and he may need a response about how many prosecutions there have been in respect of that subject. In an intervention, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) rightly raised the role of parents in this matter, and I should put on the record the fact that the “Control. Collaborate. Create.” campaign has been launched. It includes the re-launch of the askaboutgames.com website, which is a resource to help parents better to understand what games are and whether they are appropriate for a given age group. The right hon. Gentleman asked a specific question about the Byron review and what has been implemented that might require a detailed response. Some aspects have been implemented, and the changes to the video games classification system followed its recommendations. A further response detailing the date for implementation of other aspects, if known, might also be helpful.
The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke about the Gloucester City Homes ALMO, which he described in glowing terms. I am sure that it is as effective as mine, the Sutton Housing Partnership. He quite rightly called for it to be able to access capital to ensure a decent capital investment programme to allow the affordable homes needed in his city to be built. We would all support that, in terms both of providing additional homes—there are few parts of the country where there is no pressure on affordable homes—and of creating the jobs that come with the building programme.
The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) spoke about air passenger duty, and I might not be able to satisfy him entirely. I agree that aviation is vital to the UK economy, but the Government undertook an extensive consultation on air passenger duty last year. We received 500 responses and we have published our response, including a summary of the views received. At this point, the Government have no plans to commission further research into the impact of air passenger duty, and although he is right that there has been a substantial increase of 8%, the increases for 2013-14 will be in line with RPI. If air passenger duty is cut as he suggests, its contribution to the Government’s deficit reduction programme will have to be compensated for somewhere else. He mentioned that people power has been very effective in the campaign and I am sure that not a single Member of Parliament or Minister is unaware of the campaign, given the volume of the representations that we receive.
The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who explained that he could not stay to hear the wind-ups, rightly plugged his desire to see through-trains to King’s Cross as part of the franchising process, which has been effectively put on the record.
The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) referred to the importance of ensuring that lending was going to small businesses in particular. Project Merlin was successful, and last year there was a 20% increase in lending and a 13% increase in SME lending compared with in 2010. As she said, we have moved on to a different arrangement with the funding for lending scheme. She made some very sensible points about the importance of ensuring monitoring at a Northern Ireland level so that it could be seen to be effective there, too, and some strong points about the definition of new lending, so that we know that it amounts to new lending. I am sure that her comments will be read closely by the Treasury, which might want to pick up on some of them.
The hon. Member for North Swindon talked about the national citizenship scheme in Swindon. I have a few notes on that, but I cannot tell him anything about it as he has been there five times, was there at the beginning and has watched it develop. The Government are committed to the scheme. Some 8,500 young people participated last year, 30,000 places are available this year and the Prime Minister has announced that a further 90,000 places will be available in 2014. It is the Government’s intention and our ambition, which he shares, to try to make this a universal scheme so that every single 16 and 17-year-old can participate. He also got in a good plug for Swindon college and its need for some clarity on when the money will be available. If more clarity can be given, I am sure that he will secure a written response.
My final point on the hon. Member’s contribution is that it was good to hear in this Chamber a positive story about young people, because too often all we hear are the bad stories, which give the wrong image and do not celebrate the excellent, hard-working, committed and intelligent young people across the country who are participating in schemes such as the one he described in Swindon.
Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) touched on a range of issues, including planning conditions relating to a training ground being used by Colchester United football club, the importance of shopping streets, an appeal for Government support for Witham’s bid for infrastructure investment, bank lending to small businesses—something that was touched on earlier—and, in particular, the difficulties Amelia Rope is having in securing support for her business. Businesses such as hers, which have received a lot of publicity and are clearly doing well, are exactly the sort that we want to secure lending to ensure their expansion so that they can provide additional jobs.
My hon. Friend mentioned fuel poverty and the importance of ensuring that small businesses can switch tariffs. I was due to have a meeting earlier today with a charity called Make It Cheaper, which provides a free switching service for small businesses and charities. I cannot vouch for it, because I have not met it, but it might be able to deal with the problem she highlighted about encouraging small businesses, as we need to do with consumers, to shop around and take advantage of the best offers available.
My hon. Friend then referred to the Dartford river crossing. She might be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), when still a Transport Minister, recently announced that the Department for Transport will carry out a full review of the local residents discount scheme to consider how it can be improved and how take-up can be increased so that residents benefit from the discounts available. The Government have clearly acknowledged the concern about congestion. She highlighted the fact that, although there is supposed to be a scheme in place to ensure that charges are suspended when congestion is particularly severe, the evidence indicates that there are very few occasions when it is invoked. Perhaps the Department needs to look at that more closely.