Oral Answers to Questions

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I refute the claim that we are changing our policy in any way. As the police are funded to search out and investigate further crime with our 20,000 additional officers on the beat, it is inevitable that some further women will go to prison as a result, and it is our obligation to ensure that there is a safe place for them to go. We, too, are concerned about women coming through short sentences, but the judiciary makes those independent decisions on short sentences, and we are ensuring that when people do come through on short sentences, they will have specific probation officers looking after them in the new, reformed probation system to ensure that those women, and men, get the support that they need.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

What assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of criminalising the desecration of a corpse.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

The bodies of those who have died should be treated with dignity and respect. Where that does not happen, the criminal law can intervene and there are a number of offences that may apply: preventing the lawful burial of a body, outraging public decency, perverting the course of justice, removing human tissue without consent and so on. We will of course keep the law under review.

[Dr Mullan]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I am supporting the campaign of the mother of Helen McCourt, whom we know in this place for successfully campaigning on Helen’s law, but who is equally determined, while understanding the points the Minister has made, to see further reform so that the criminal justice system adequately reflects how we would feel if one of our loved ones was desecrated after death. Will he agree to meet me and discuss with Helen McCourt’s mother further steps we might be able to take?

[Alex Chalk]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that excellent point and for paying tribute to Mrs McCourt, whose brave campaign has led to Helen’s law, as he rightly indicates, getting on to the statute book, having recently received Royal Assent, in large part because of her campaigning activity. We keep the matter under review, and I would be delighted to meet him, as he suggests.