Gurkha Pensions

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

Monday 22nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I am nice, so I will allow it.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for allowing me to intervene. I have the honour of representing the Gurkha community in Swindon, and I have wrestled with these issues for many years. Does he, like me, take some encouragement from the Minister’s hard work, particularly on the uplift and the negotiations he has been conducting with the intercession of the Nepalese embassy since September?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that the Minister has been exemplary in his tireless work. I thank the Minister for all the kindness he showed me in preparation for today’s debate, and I thank my right hon. and learned Friend, who was very kind to offer his words of encouragement and knowledge on this issue. This has been a fantastic debate, and it is clear that we all respect the Gurkhas and want to see them well looked after. I look forward to hearing the outcome of the consultation and the Government’s announcement in, hopefully, a few weeks’ time.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 594155, relating to Gurkha pensions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s commitment to this campaign. I am pleased to hear about his energetic efforts in this sphere and I wish him well. Decisions on priorities are, of course, a matter for individual forces, but I am sure he will want to work with his local force to achieve the laudable aims that his campaign represents.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Pet theft is a shameless and disgusting act that harms families across our country. Scumbag Malachy Doherty of Tunstall was recently sentenced to 27 weeks in prison for stealing Labradors Denzel and Welly. Twenty-seven weeks does not seem long enough to me, so does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that, as part of the pet theft taskforce, firmer punishments and vets checking microchips at the first visit will be ways to help prevent the heartache felt by many victims’ families?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend always speaks with vigour on behalf of his constituents, and I wholeheartedly agree with his revulsion at this appalling type of crime. We share his deep concern, which is why the sort of ideas and proposals he outlined are very much at the forefront of Government thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I once again place on the record my thanks to the Lord Chancellor for backing my private Member’s Bill which called for specific protection and punishment for those who desecrate memorials and graves to our glorious dead. The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke also want to know whether this change in the law will protect the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, which may not be a war memorial but is an important reminder to the public of our greatest Briton.

[Robert Buckland]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising an issue of genuine and widespread public concern. He will note that the phraseology in the Bill talks about memorials, which of course would include memorials such as the one to Sir Winston Churchill. The important point is that we can now move away from the court determining on the mere cost of repair to criminal damage to look at the overall cultural and emotional value of statues like that one, and indeed, ordinary “unvisited tombs”, to quote George Eliot, of people who have a great value to the local community and to their loved ones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend will be glad to know that, as a result of the hard work of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the judiciary, we are already reaching a turning point in our magistrates courts, with disposals exceeding receipts. In the Crown court, we continue to scale up jury trials, with more than 100 jury trials being heard every week in our Crown courts. We will have 250 courtrooms ready for jury trials by the end of October, which includes using existing capacity, with safety measures such as Perspex screens, up to 30 Nightingale courtrooms, experiments with different court hours and a range of measures that are designed to reduce the wait for the victims of crime.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank the Lord Chancellor for his answer. Tragically, in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, we are plagued with county lines gangs, who take advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in my community. What steps are the Government taking in the White Paper to tackle county lines offences and ensure that these vile offenders are punished with the full force of the law?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right to talk about the scourge of county lines. Like me, he will welcome the investment of £25 million by the Home Office to boost law enforcement efforts by not only local police forces but the British Transport police, who are doing incredible work across our railway network, which I have seen at first hand. The Sentencing Council for England and Wales is currently revising its guidelines for drug offences. It is important to note that, among the plethora of county lines is the exploitation of vulnerable children and young people, and that needs to be fully reflected by the investigating and prosecuting authorities.

Sentencing White Paper

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments, and I am grateful to him. He makes a very interesting point about young offenders. I am keen to make sure that people who are sucked in—they might be quite young and themselves victims—do not end up becoming criminals themselves. That is why reforms to the remand system for young offenders and alternatives to immediate prosecution, in particular for victims of modern day slavery or abuse, are so important. We are seeing with the county lines operations some really good work by the police in making that distinction between the child as abused victim and the child as criminal. We will keep drawing that distinction in a sensible and sensitive way.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) and I are extremely grateful to our right hon. and learned Friend for picking up our Desecration of War Memorials Bill in his White Paper. Can he confirm to the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that the law will be changed as soon as practically possible to make sure that those who insult the memory of our glorious dead can be given sentences that fit their abhorrent crimes?

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends for their campaign to make sure that the law properly reflects the damage that can be caused to the national consciousness and the wellbeing of communities when war graves, religious graves and important memorials are desecrated. In the White Paper, we have committed to taking up his challenge, and we will reform the law in the year ahead.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We are trying to make sure that the work that is done, particularly in immigration cases, which often involves a lot of preparation in skeleton arguments, is remunerated. That end of it has seen a significant fee increase, but it is an interim measure and the hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that more work is being done in this area. Of course we will engage closely with representative bodies. He may shake his head, but he represents a party that took a knife to legal aid. I will take no lectures from him about legal aid and what he did to it. I had to live with the consequences of what his party did and he can put that in his pipe and smoke it.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give a commitment that the Government will not seek to extend the early release scheme, which residents in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke think is too weak, and instead consider scrapping it?

[Robert Buckland]

I know that my hon. Friend speaks with conviction on behalf of his constituents. He knows that necessary steps were taken with regard to the covid crisis to allow a measured release of certain types of lower-level prisoners as an attempt to contain the outbreak. We have been very careful in the way that we have done that. On the more general issue of release, he will know that a scheme has existed for many years called home detention curfew. There are no plans to extend that, and, again, he can be reassured that we are dealing with prisoners who do not pose a high risk and have been carefully assessed. He will know from the measures I have taken to end automatic early release at halfway that the Government are determined to ensure that when prison terms are given, the majority of the term ordered is served.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Robert Buckland

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on his last point.

This is not—I repeat not—a quickie divorce bill, and he is right to say that we in this House owe it to all our constituents to send the right message. Let me put it straight—this is a matter that he might not agree with: I do not believe that issues of reform of the process of divorce are germane to the issue of marriage itself. The question that was posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is indeed the right one, about society’s attitudes to relationships, the values that are inculcated in young people, and the level of understanding and insight into the nature, degree and complexity of the commitment to join in union, whether it is marriage or civil partnership. All of those are actually the relevant issues to the future of marriage and this Bill will not, should not, and does not have a consequence for those issues.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

As someone who is tragically going through the divorce process and has had to put blame on my partner when I would have preferred to have had a no-fault divorce, I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to reaffirm the message that this is, in no way, a quick decision. As someone going through this process, I can say how painful it is. It was not a decision that I came to easily, but this type of legislation would not require the burden of guilt to be applied to one person or the other.

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend has shared a difficult and sensitive experience with the House, for which we are grateful, and he puts it extremely powerfully. This is not about blame or guilt; it is about acknowledging the fact that the causes of divorce are very complex and will evolve often over a long period of time. I am grateful to him for his powerful contribution. No one benefits, least of all the children of the relationship, from the requirement for parties to dredge up the past in order to end a legal relationship that is no longer beneficial or functioning. It is not in the public interest and cannot be right that the law would encourage one parent to be pitted against the other, when we all know the deeply damaging impact that parental conflict has on children.

Indeed, the limitations of the court process are not particularly well understood by the public. Under existing law, the legal fact that many people choose as their route to divorce bears little resemblance, as my hon. Friend says, to the reality of why a marriage has broken down. A respondent may have behaved despicably, yet a petitioner may reluctantly decide to rely on two years’ separation through fear of abusive repercussions should he or she allege unreasonable behaviour. Likewise, a petitioner may, from a desire not to have to wait for two years, feel compelled to embellish the unreasonable behaviour of a respondent beyond what one might ordinarily expect in normal marital discord. The concept of unreasonable behaviour is also purely subjective, so that what is unreasonable to one spouse in a marriage may not be at all unreasonable to another spouse in a different marriage.