Action Against Houthi Maritime Attacks
Layla Moran Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
We also received support from Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Bahrain in these strikes, as we did last time. I point the right hon. Gentleman to the statements that have been put out previously by over a dozen countries, including New Zealand, Korea, Singapore and others, and also to the UN Security Council resolution from 10 January, which was unequivocal in condemning the Houthi attacks and acknowledging the right of member states, in accordance with international law, to defend their vessels from attacks.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
We now have 25,000 dead. There are still 130 hostages. My extended family are still trapped. While we want to have hope, I dare say that it has now turned to complete despondency. The Prime Minister will have heard with dismay, I am sure, the words of Netanyahu when he said that he is categorically against two states. That echoes the equally awful words of Hamas, who say the same thing. Does the Prime Minister not agree that what we have here are the extremes of the debate? What words of hope does he have to offer those voices in Israel, Palestine and beyond who cling on desperately for the light in this darkness?
Defending the UK and Allies
Layla Moran Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
What I said was that our response was not linked to the conflict in Gaza and should not be conflated as being so. As I have said, we are the penholder on Yemen in the UN Security Council, so we are having extensive diplomatic engagement with allies, notably the Saudis, to see whether we can support the deal that was announced in December, and we will continue to do so. Obviously, the onus is on the Houthis to engage with that process to bring about peace and stability for the people of Yemen.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Nothing angers me more than those who choose to use the plight of the Palestinians to further their own nefarious ends. That applies to Iran primarily, but also to its proxies. Does the Prime Minister accept that the best way to pull the rug from under the Iranian regime is to achieve that two-state solution by way of an immediate bilateral ceasefire in this conflict?
The Prime Minister
As I have said previously, we do support a ceasefire but it must be sustainable, and multiple things have to happen for it to be so. As I have also said previously, we remain committed to a two-state solution, because I believe in a future—as do the Government and, I think, the House—in which Palestinian and Israeli people can live side by side in peace and security and in which everyone can live their lives with dignity and opportunity. That is the future that we are striving to build.
Oral Answers to Questions
Layla Moran Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (Andrew Griffith)
I hope that the hon. Members and their party will join me in celebrating just what a fantastic place the UK is for international researchers to work and live. We have one of the strongest science bases, the world’s leading universities and research institutions, and the largest ever public research and development budget. With our association with Horizon from the beginning of the year, we are central to global research collaboration.
Andrew Griffith
In keeping the UK an open and welcoming place to do international research, in order to deliver the Prime Minister’s vision of being a science superpower, my colleagues and I regularly meet Home Office colleagues. The facts belie the hon. Gentleman’s question: 41% of postgraduate research in the UK today is being conducted by researchers who have come from overseas.
Layla Moran
The Government’s recent spousal visa policy to increase the salary threshold is forcing academics and innovators to leave. I give the Minister the example of a British constituent of mine who is graduating from Oxford with a PhD, which is funded by UK Research and Innovation. His American wife, who is graduating from Bangor with a PhD, cannot live with him because the job he has been offered is paid well below the salary threshold. Why are the Government using taxpayers’ money to educate people to become highly qualified researchers if their immigration policy then forces them to leave?
Andrew Griffith
A fair immigration policy is absolutely part of an open Britain. It is right that those who come here from overseas and live cheek by jowl with those who clean their labs, drive their local buses and empty their bins do their fair share in contributing to the UK economy.
Israel and Gaza
Layla Moran Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Our position on illegal settlements is of long standing and is in accordance with the UN Security Council resolution, which I know the right hon. Gentleman will be familiar with.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
May I start by sincerely thanking Members who have shown me support over the last week? It has been really meaningful.
There is a narrative developing that I think we need to challenge. Someone can stand for Israel and still care about what is happening in Gaza. Someone can stand for Palestine and not support Hamas or the atrocities that they have committed. Both can be true. It is an incredibly sensitive time both in our communities and, as the Prime Minister will know, diplomatically. Will he look again at the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, which is coming to the House on Wednesday and relates to this specific conflict? Whatever one may think of the content of the Bill, I hope that he agrees that now is not the time.
The Prime Minister
The Bill to which the hon. Lady refers delivers a manifesto commitment to ban public bodies from imposing their own boycott, divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries. Those could be divisive policies that undermine community cohesion. It is important that the UK has a consistent foreign policy and speaks with one voice internationally.
Israel and Gaza
Layla Moran Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Of course every country has the right to defend itself, and it would not be appropriate for the UK to define that approach. I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks. We will continue to stand with Israel and, as a friend, we will urge them to take every possible precaution to minimise the impact on civilians.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
As you are aware, Mr Speaker, my immediate family are from the west bank, but I have extended family in Gaza city. Their house was bombed by the IDF, so they went to seek sanctuary in a church—we are Christian Palestinians—and I am afraid to say that they are still there, because they are too old to leave. They say to me that they have nowhere to go.
Because of this, not despite it, I attended a vigil in Oxford organised by the Jewish community. Between our communities, we now share profound emotions, loss and grief. When the Prime Minister says never again, I agree with him. Will he give his assurance that it will be never again and that, whenever we get through whatever happens in the next few days, he will keep the promise he made to my great-grandfather that there will be a Palestinian state to call our own at the end of it?
The Prime Minister
I start by expressing my sympathies to the hon. Lady and her family for what they are going through. I know this will have been an incredibly difficult time for them. I also pay tribute to her, because her presence at the vigil, in spite of everything, will have meant an enormous amount to many people, and the courage she shows in talking about that experience here today is admirable. She looks forward to a more positive future, which is an ambition I share.
This is an unspeakably difficult situation, a tragedy, but we must find a way to move forward to secure a more stable, peaceful settlement for those living in the middle east, because this tragedy has reminded us all of the horrors of war and the horrors of terrorism. We must find a way to bring peace and stability to the region, and that is what I will strive very hard to help bring about.
Northern Ireland Protocol
Layla Moran Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of restoring power sharing and the institutions there for the people of Northern Ireland—that is what they need and deserve—but I know he will agree with me that the right thing is to give all communities in Northern Ireland the time and the space to reflect on the detail of this substantive agreement and come to a considered judgment. I look forward to engaging with those communities and parties over the coming days to have that conversation, but I hope that this can provide a basis for us to move forward positively together.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
May I welcome the change in approach, the co-operative spirit with which we have got to this point, and the positive and, I hope, pragmatic relationship moving forward? However, there is one area that has not been mentioned as a potential area on which to work with the EU, and that is agrifoods. We just need to look at the furore this week over turnips versus tomatoes to see what a difference it would make to our constituents in this cost of living crisis. Will the Prime Minister commit to looking again at a UK-EU veterinary agreement that would ease some of the supply chain issues and build on the positive relationship that I note he wants to have with the European Union?
The Prime Minister
I think that the issues we have seen over recent times have little to do with our institutional and political frameworks, and everything to do with the weather, but we are committed to agrifood innovation. In particular, our gene editing Bill is something that farmers across the UK welcome and we will deliver. It will be good for our food security going forward, and we continue to support our farmers to do that.
Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen
Layla Moran Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
It is a true honour to be able to pay tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of my constituents in Oxford West and Abingdon. I restate the deep sorrow and sadness that many have already expressed.
The ties between the Queen and the community were strong indeed. In every milestone of her reign, Abingdon celebrated with an eccentric and much-loved bun throwing. She was also a regular visitor to our area; she inspected a military parade at RAF Abingdon in 1968, she opened Sophos at Abingdon Science Park in 2004 and she reopened the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford after its refurbishment in 2009.
One constituent remembered the following when he attended the official opening of the Joint European Torus fusion facility at Culham. He said:
“It was opened jointly by the Queen and President Mitterrand. As I recall, the Queen spoke first in English, and then in very polished French. A wonderful way to open a European project.”
Another constituent remembered:
“We were privileged to meet the Queen in Malaysia while living there. I took my six-year-old daughter, who was so excited to meet the real Queen and held a bouquet for her. When the Queen approached, my daughter, reluctant to release the flowers, asked, ‘Are you sure you are the real Queen? You are not wearing a crown, only a hat.’ The Queen replied, ‘I am sorry. The crown was a little heavy to wear today, but I hope you like my hat.’ My daughter, now convinced, released the flowers. I will always remember her warmth and humour while handling my daughter’s mistake.”
Those stories show not just her gargantuan work ethic but how her humility and humanity earned people’s loyalty. I am struck by how many people have been saying, “I am not a monarchist but I loved her.” The fact that she held people’s respect despite and not because of her title is testament to the genius that she brought to the role and is an example to us all.
I am sure that many have not got their heads around what life will be like without her. People have mentioned stamps and coins, but for me as a Brit who grew up abroad, it is the portraits. When we lived in Ethiopia in the ’80s, we would gather as a community at the British club or the embassy, and there she was, glorious in oils, gazing down on our festivities from some ornate framed picture. In the ’90s, when I was in Jamaica, where I remember visiting other schools as part of an orchestra practising both the British and the Jamaican national anthems in preparation for her state visit—of course, she was Head of State there, too. There she was again on the walls. The pictures were often smaller and more humble, but they were always there. Through time and space, she was always there, taken almost for granted, binding her people together, until yesterday, when she was not any more. Like many others, I cried.
My thoughts today are firmly with her family, and especially with King Charles at this incredibly difficult time. Our loyalty transfers to him and, as his pitch perfect address just this afternoon showed, we have absolutely nothing to fear. May our beloved Queen rest in peace. God save the King.
Northern Ireland Protocol Bill
Layla Moran ExcerptsWednesday 13th July 2022
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Protocol Bill 2022-23 View all Northern Ireland Protocol Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 13 July 2022 - (13 Jul 2022)
Sir Robert Neill
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman first.
Michael Ellis
Of course, it takes two sides to discuss such matters and come to a solution. I think it has been accepted by all who have spoken so far that there has been some intransigence on the European Union’s side. That is the clear reality. For example, there have been more than 300 hours of discussions between the parties, over 26 meetings involving my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary or her predecessor Lord Frost, and 17 non-papers. I am not sure how much more could be done in terms of negotiation; it does need two sides.
I will move on, as I have several amendments to address and I do not want to interfere with Members’ right to speak in due course.
On amendment 26 and new clause 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), she is right to raise the important issue of this Bill’s relationship with the UK’s international legal obligations. However, the amendment is not necessary. The Government have already published a statement setting out their legal position that the Bill is consistent with the UK’s international obligations. In line with the practice of successive Governments over several years, it summarises our position but does not set out the full detail of our legal advice. That is not something that any Government of any shade can do, and it is quite rare to give such a memorandum.
The statement makes it clear that the strain that the arrangements under the protocol are placing on institutions in Northern Ireland, and more generally on socio-political conditions, means there is no other way of safeguarding the essential interests at stake other than the Bill we propose. There is clear evidence of a state of necessity to which the Government must respond. As in other areas, it would not be prudent for the Government to publish evidence or analysis underpinning every point of legal detail—the lawyers in this House will know that that would be extremely inappropriate—particularly in advance of specific cases arising in potential future litigation. I therefore urge the hon. Lady not to move her amendment.
Layla Moran
The Minister is arguing that future litigation is why we cannot see the full legal advice, but it is precisely because future litigation is quite likely that this House deserves to see the full legal advice.
Michael Ellis
It is long-standing convention for very good reason that legal advice is not published in full. We know that, famously, from the Labour Government a couple of decades ago, when there was an enormous controversy about that. It stands as a very good reason, as I have discussed. However, we have published a memorandum on the matter that goes some way towards answering the hon. Lady’s question.
I move on to amendments 31 and 32 and new clause 10, tabled by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The Bill is designed to bring swift solutions to the issues that the protocol has created in Northern Ireland. Those solutions are underpinned by the designation of elements of the protocol as “excluded provision”. Put simply, by excluding some elements of the protocol and withdrawal agreement in domestic law, the Bill is able to introduce, with the necessary certainty, the changes that are needed in Northern Ireland.
These amendments, through the conditions they would impose, would undermine the ability to exclude elements of the protocol and therefore undermine the entire operation of the Bill. The first condition in particular—that provision is excluded only if the EU and the UK agree to it—is obviously unworkable. Negotiations with the EU have so far been incapable of delivering the solutions that are needed, so to set that as a condition would clearly be dysfunctional. The second condition—that provision is excluded only if necessary as part of an article 16 safeguard—also fails to meet the needs of the situation. As I have said, article 16 has inherent limitations in its scope in that such safeguard measures could address some trade frictions, but not the broader identified impacts of the protocol.
In sum, the right hon. Gentleman’s amendments would unacceptably caveat the core operation of the Bill. In other words, they would be wrecking amendments preventing it from delivering the swift solutions in Northern Ireland that it is intended to provide, and that is why I ask him not to press them.
Jesse Norman
It has been a splendid debate, and it is my happy privilege to stand as the thorn between two legal roses in my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the acuity of whose interventions has been noted by the House, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), the former Attorney General, with his soaring rhetoric and legal genius.
I will be brief. Everyone in this House recognises, I am sure, that it is vital to make the Northern Ireland protocol work better; that the EU, as described and discussed today, has been intransigent and could do with more direct input from our friends and allied member states, France, Germany, Holland and the rest; and that we need an improved and supported political settlement and situation in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, however, for reasons contemplated and discussed today, and which I will briefly summarise, this Bill is not the answer.
It has been properly pointed out that the doctrine of necessity does not apply in anything like the way the Government describe it. I am not a lawyer, but even I can see that when the Minister concedes at the Dispatch Box that immediacy is not at stake and is not implied by the conception of urgency that the Government wish to deploy. In breaching international law, for the reasons that my right hon. and learned Friend the former Attorney General set out, the Bill breaks the general principle that promises must be kept. However, that is itself an unwritten principle of the British constitution, so this Bill is also a contravention of our constitution. Of course, it appears to breach article 5 of the withdrawal agreement, in which both the UK and EU state that they will faithfully enact the measures to fulfil their obligations arising from the new agreement. Finally, as has been pointed out, the wide powers contemplated under clause 4 are themselves are in clear conflict with the rule of law in the ministerial discretion that they confer.
In principle, this Bill is extremely unwise to say the least, but it is also, just in pragmatic terms, misguided and likely to be counterproductive. As my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned, there is no long-term solution to be reached by a unilateral attempt to impose one side’s will on a shared international treaty. Of course, there is no reason to think that this will change the EU’s behaviour in relation of Northern Ireland. Why should it? The EU’s concern is that the UK has been untrustworthy, and far from allaying that concern, the Bill actively reinforces it. If the EU made a concession in response—if by chance it struck a new agreement with the UK on the basis of the pressure supposedly conferred by this legislation—why should it believe that the UK would then abide by such an agreement? That whole rationale would already have been destroyed. Of course, for reasons already discussed today, this is merely the beginning of the potential trouble involved.
The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) properly talked about the integrity of the United Kingdom, and he was absolutely right to flag that up. However, another kind of integrity is at stake here: the integrity of our overall British patriotic desire to project ourselves as a nation with a historic willingness to lead in matters of reputation and international law. That integrity is being put at risk by this piece of legislation.
I am not going to support amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, not because it is not a perfectly fine piece of drafting, but because this Bill is unamendably bad, in my judgment. I very much hope that this House will not see it through, and that if it does, the Bill will be rejected on Second Reading by the other Chamber.
Layla Moran
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), and I completely agree with him. I and the Liberal Democrats intend to vote against this Bill when it eventually comes to its Third Reading. I will speak today particularly to new clause 8 and its paving amendment 26.
First, however, I want to put on record my huge disappointment that the Bill is in Committee today because, since Second Reading, we have had a lame duck Prime Minister and a Foreign Secretary who cancelled her meeting with G20 leaders in Bali, where she should have been, and instead came back to start her leadership campaign. This Bill is an incredibly controversial move, and it would have been right and proper for it to have gone away for a while—under the definition of “urgent” that the Minister put forward, that would have seemed to make sense—and then come back when it is clear what direction the Government really want to take. Make no mistake, this Bill is going to affect our standing on the world stage.
My amendments relate to the release of the legal advice. It is absolutely right and proper that the Conservative leadership election has turned our eyes to honesty, integrity and, in particular, trust following what has happened with the current Prime Minister, and that is what my amendments do. They ask the Government, “What have you got to hide?” If there is nothing to hide, they should publish the full legal advice and trust this House to scrutinise it properly.
I urge Government Members to look carefully at what the Attorney General has said since giving her advice on this Bill, because she is also running to be leader of the Conservative party, and she has suggested pulling out of the European Court of Human Rights. As we know, the Court underpins the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. The Attorney General does not seem to understand how that correlates with the Good Friday agreement, yet we are relying on her legal advice. I would suggest that that is nothing we can rely on. We understand from newspapers that the Government shopped around for legal advice, and reportedly they even spoke to a former adviser of President Trump. However, if they have nothing to hide, they should publish the advice.
In the Minister’s response to my question earlier, he said the Government may well go to litigation over this and may well be taken to court over the definitions in relation to the doctrine of necessity. As a reason for advice not to be published, he said:
“We know that, famously, from the Labour Government a couple of decades ago, when there was an enormous controversy about that.”
That suggests that we should not see the legal advice because of what happened following the release of the advice on the Iraq war, but we know from the inquiry that that is nonsensical because the Government in that case did have something to hide and were found out later. If this Government want to get the trust of Parliament and do not want to have egg on their face in the international courts, they should release the advice. I urge them to support amendment 26, which I hope—by your leave, Dame Eleanor—we can push to a vote later.
Stella Creasy
We are now nearly three hours into the debate and we have not named what the actual problem is. The honest truth is that the problems did not start with the protocol; the problem is Brexit and the necessity of the protocol. For the avoidance of doubt, to acknowledge that Brexit is the problem is not to say that we do not need to change the protocol, it is not to call for us to rejoin the European Union and it is not to call for a second referendum. It is to recognise that selective democratic deafness when trying to discuss what we need to do will continue to damage all our opportunities unless we recognise that there is not a protocol solution that is as perfect as the previous trading arrangements we had.
The risk is that this Bill will make a bad situation worse, like someone having a bad tattoo and taking a blowtorch to it to try to get rid of it. The Government are like the drunk at a party spilling red wine everywhere and then deciding that throwing white wine after it is the solution. That is what this Bill is, which is why Members need to stop saying, like Homer Simpson, that Brexit is a “crisotunity” and recognise that problems are coming from the opportunities they are looking for. There are problems for civil servants who have to go through 2,500 pieces of legislation, and problems for our constituents, especially if the Bill goes through and we have a trade war with Europe. That will hit everybody—not just those in Northern Ireland, but people in my constituency. There are problems caused by the fact that the EU has already launched legal action and could “restrict co-operation”, and problems for the 33% of businesses that have already given up trading with the European Union, including those mentioned by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson)—I am sorry he is not in his place to talk about these things. [Interruption.] I apologise; he has moved and I could not see him.
We knew these problems were going to happen, yet the Government have done nothing other than introduce this Bill to make things better; they look only to provoke and to make things worse. We talked about oven-ready deals, yet the Foreign Secretary says that the problems were baked in. Frankly, Mary Berry would see the Bill as having a soggy bottom because it is so rubbish.
The report by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law states clearly that the Bill is in breach of international law, and that is why I tabled new clause 7. I hope the Minister will recognise that simply repeating again and again, as the legal memorandum does, that the Government believe that the Bill meets the test of necessity under international obligations, without explaining how, is not tort, it is just a tautology. We cannot say something is necessary and not say why it is necessary, or whether the conditions might change—I agree absolutely with the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on those matters. We know there are things we could do to make that clear, and at least to take back control—after all, the Government said that Brexit was about democracy, but it is turning out to be about Downing Street instead.
New clause 10 would ensure that the Government act within international law. New clause 7 is about evidence that we are acting within international law, and about explaining to our constituents why it would be necessary to take such extreme measures. As the Hansard Society tells us, the Bill is breathtaking in the additional powers it takes and the exercise of those excessive powers, with 19 delegated powers under 26 clauses—I have never seen anything like it in this place in the past 12 years. Those powers are based on ideas that Ministers consider “appropriate”, just as they consider what is “necessary”. As we have seen today, however, they cannot really define what “urgent” means. Most people would recognise that “urgent” probably means “immediate”, rather than “sometime in the future.” Considering that any provision can be made by an Act of Parliament, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) recognised, if we allow that with the Bill, we could see it for other Bills—literally taking back control from these Benches and sending it to the road opposite.
Finally, there is no way that the Bill supports the Good Friday agreement, which, in and of itself, is an international agreement. We want to stand and challenge President Putin as he rips up the rule of law, yet we say that there are rules of law that we think no longer apply to us. How can we say that we will also guarantee the protections of the Good Friday agreement? How can we give the constituents of the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley the certainty they want, and that we recognise they should have, to be able to go about their business and have peace and prosperity, if we act as if the rule of law does not matter or can be bent to shape the will of a particular political movement?
The Bill is about the Government needing Europe to be a bogeyman, and as we have seen from the leadership contest, there are bogeymen aplenty. In reality, this can do only harm. We must recognise that the problem does not start with the protocol. The problem starts with Brexit, and how we negotiate a trade agreement and deal with the problems that arise from leaving the single market and customs union. Our constituents in every part of the United Kingdom deserve that honesty. New clause 7 is about Governments being honest, and just as new clause 10 should not have needed to be tabled, nor should new clause 7, but it did need to be tabled under current circumstances. The people who rely on this place to make reasonable regulations, to admit their problems, as though they were 12-step problems, and to make amends, need and deserve nothing less.
CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits
Layla Moran Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
First, may I thank my hon. Friend very much for everything he did as envoy for freedom of religion or belief? It is at least partly thanks to his energy and efforts that we have a global conference in this city this week on freedom of belief around the world. I can tell him that one of the many things that unite the Commonwealth is a passionate determination to protect that freedom.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Clamping down on Putin’s cronies and their money—far too little, too late, but nevertheless we are getting there—has I think been one of the positives of this war so far. I am glad to hear the Prime Minister say that he is committed to the economic crime Bill 2 and all the measures in it, but I want to ask him specifically about golden visas. Four years ago, the review of golden visas was promised, but it has not been delivered. Why?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to the hon. Member. We are doing everything we can to make sure that we restrict access to this country by Putin’s cronies or anybody who supports the invasion of Ukraine, and that is why we are reviewing the golden visa scheme.
Oral Answers to Questions
Layla Moran Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that. Stillbirth is an appalling tragedy that has the most devastating impact on families across the country. The Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health and Social Care have jointly consulted on proposals to provide coroners with new powers in that regard. I have looked at that personally, and we will publish the Government’s response to the consultation shortly.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will look carefully at any particular proposals that the hon. Lady has. We have got to do everything we can to protect women and girls in this country and to make them feel more confident in the justice system. That is why I am relieved—but restless to go further—that in the last year the volume of rape convictions is up by two thirds. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which came into force this week, we took extra measures. For example, we have: extended the time limit for reporting domestic abuse; and criminalised taking photos of a mother breastfeeding without consent. I will certainly look at her proposals.