Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I have to start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend for the exceptional job that he did working on this issue in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The increase in rape convictions—we are restless to go further—is in no small part due to his efforts. I believe that Operation Soteria is ready for a June national implementation, and Ministers in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are liaising with all the outstanding police forces to make sure they are signed up. Again, I thank him and pay tribute to him for the work he did.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Rhianon Bragg was ambushed and held at gun point for eight hours by former partner Gareth Wyn Jones after years of physical and verbal abuse. He was imprisoned in August 2019. Rhianon and I called for his parole hearing to be held in public, but the Parole Board insisted that the perpetrators’ rights override those of the victim. In the meantime, appallingly, it turns out that Ministry of Justice staff sent a dossier containing intimate details about her, including a clinical psychologist’s letter, to her abuser in prison over 10 months ago. Does the Secretary of State consider that there should be circumstances in which a victim can appeal a Parole Board decision to hold hearings in private? Does he agree that this breach of GDPR means that it is in the public interest for decisions about Jones’s release to be held in public?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that very important and sensitive case with me. I cannot talk about the details, but I will write to her with the answers to the questions she has raised. All I would say more generally is that she will know that we had the first public parole hearing recently, which is part of the increase in transparency that I have introduced across the board, but in particular for parole hearings. We also have that extra check on the release of dangerous offenders, particularly murderers, rapists, terrorist offenders and child killers. I hope it will have her full support when we come forward with legislation to apply that ministerial veto.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

Amid all the bluster and political point scoring, the hon. Lady is losing the opportunity to pay tribute to the important work being done across the justice system, which will give female victims confidence to come forward. That is what we need to see: improvements in police referrals and in the number of suspects charged, improvements in Crown court receipts, and the ability for victims to opt for pre-recorded evidence, so that they go through what must be a harrowing experience without being in the glare of the courtroom. Those are all positive steps. We are restless to do more, but we have made progress, and I do not think it helps to instil or improve confidence in the justice system if inaccurate characterisations of the progress we have made are asserted in this place.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

14. What recent estimate he has made of imprisonment rates.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his constituents, particularly on NHS services. The DHSC recently received the strategic outline case for the transformation of A&E services in Shrewsbury and Telford. It is still being processed, but I can tell him that the trust is aiming to present the full business case in 2023, with construction starting in the same year.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Q12. When the Deputy Prime Minister announced his Bill of Rights last week, he said that it would strengthen our UK “tradition of freedom” Freedom? That is shameless from a Government whose contempt for the rule of law and devolution can be judged in equal measure. They are scrapping Welsh law against our will and denying Scotland the right to choose its own future. That is not freedom. Will he prove me wrong by enshrining self-determination in his Bill of Rights?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady was deft in getting that in. Across the Benches, we have all heard the case for reinforcing free speech, whether that is about judge-made privacy laws or how people are shouted down when they express legitimate opinions. The people of Wales—this is true across the country—will also want to join us in making sure that we can deport more foreign national offenders. That is the reality for the people in Wales and across the United Kingdom. The Bill of Rights will strengthen our tradition of freedom while curbing those abuses and making sure that we inject a bit more common sense into the system.

Bill of Rights

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is correct on all those points. This is a principled and pragmatic reform. It retains membership of the European convention. I have heard various arguments against that, but looking at what we would gain from leaving the ECHR, because of the UN convention against torture, which we are party to, and various other conventions, it would not solve all the problems. It is not the magic wand that some people suggest it is; I say that with great respect. We have made sure that within the bounds of the convention we can get the maximum leeway—the maximum marginal appreciation—in the way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) suggested.

On the permissions test, it is extraordinary that people have criticised doing something that the Strasbourg Court itself does. Making sure that whether they are trivial or frivolous claims, we have a filter early on to make sure that there is significant disadvantage, would, I think, just feel to many of our constituents like old-fashioned common sense.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The UK Government’s scrapping of the Human Rights Act shows a callous disregard not only for the essential universality of human rights but for devolution in Wales too. The Human Rights Act is woven directly into Wales’s constitutional settlement. Changes to the Act will undermine our efforts to promote human rights and equality. When—when, not if—Wales refuses legislative consent to this erosion of human rights, will the Minister use legalistic bully-boy tactics to trample on our democracy too?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

No, of course not. The right hon. Lady talks about “callous disregard”. Conservative Members, certainly, want to stand up for victims of crime who do not understand why, based on the most elastic interpretations, foreign national offenders who have committed some of the most abhorrent crimes cannot be deported.

On parole, I think of the victims I have met recently. I do not want to politicise this, but they expect us to stand up for them. As regards protecting not just those within the prison regime but the public from serious ideologues spreading their poison or those who commit terrorist offences, we should stand up for the public, not for the criminals.

Human Rights Legislation

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I always enjoy hearing my right hon. Friend’s side of the argument. As John Stuart Mill said:

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

I do not take quite the same view as my right hon. Friend, but I welcome his iconoclasm and his challenge to ensure that we get a better balance between individual rights— which, as he has often said to me, Bentham described as “nonsense upon stilts”—and communal and societal needs, and particularly public protection in the areas that I outlined, whether parole reform, police forces or deportation of foreign national offenders.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Mr Llefarydd. During the course of devolution, Wales has developed a distinct body of law, which safeguards specific rights arising from international law, including the rights of children and older people. Schedule 7A of the Government of Wales Act 2006 makes it clear that

“observing and implementing international obligations and obligations under the Human Rights Convention”

are the responsibility of our Senedd.

In Wales, we learn fast. We learn that, for this Government, the word “consult” means a tick-box exercise. I therefore ask the Secretary of State how the proposed consultation on the UK’s international human rights obligations will not undermine the Senedd’s ability to protect and promote human rights in Wales.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

On top of the investment and the scanners, we have the Prisons (Substance Testing) Act 2021, which gives prison officers the powers to test prisoners for any psychoactive substance. We also now have enhanced gate security at 35 high-priority sites, and fixed and portable mobile phone blocking equipment to give officers all the tools that they need to keep their prisons safe.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I speak as co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. Drugs in prisons cause chaos, putting immense strain on prison officers, and such stress is a factor in the prison staffing crisis. This year, 134 band 3 officers left HMP Berwyn. Each officer’s training had cost £13,000; that is £1.74 million of public money wasted. Does the Secretary of State agree that implementing the recommendations of the pay review body is a key part of the solution to the crisis, and that good prison staff deserve proper wages?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in paying tribute, as I did in answer to a question in relation to Scotland, to the heroic effort that our armed forces are making in all four corners of the United Kingdom, in particular in relation to Wales. Our servicemen and women have worked tirelessly to help to build the hospitals, drive the ambulances and deliver the PPE to where it is needed most. We pay tribute to them, along with the other key workers, and we also pay tribute to the UK armed forces in all four corners of the United Kingdom for helping to deliver and get this country through the coronavirus challenge.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]]

Diolch, Lefarydd. If the lockdown is lifted in one nation or region because it is past the peak, we will see confusion and people starting to move around, which runs the risk of spreading further infection. Will the First Secretary of State confirm that if the four-nations approach is to be meaningful, the four Governments must have an equal say and that lifting the lockdown can only happen by the unanimous agreement of the four Governments together?

[Dominic Raab]

May I first pay tribute to the Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales? I think it is fair to say that, through the Cobra meetings, we have had excellent co-operation between all four nations, and indeed with the current Mayor of London. That is critically important. If the right hon. Lady looks at the social distancing measures, she will see that there has been remarkable consistency in all four nations in terms of compliance. I hope that we can continue to work together on a collaborative basis as we look towards the second phase; and, certainly on behalf of the UK Government, we are committed to doing that.