Lucy Allan debates involving the Ministry of Justice during the 2019 Parliament

Tue 11th Feb 2020
Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill
Commons Chamber

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & 2nd reading

Assisted Dying

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Monday 4th July 2022

(1 year, 8 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Danny Kruger Portrait Danny Kruger
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I recognise the force of that point, but the fact is that Parliament has debated the topic repeatedly over the last 20 years. We have devoted considerable hours of parliamentary time to it already.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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We had the opportunity to vote on the matter in 2015, but that was a great many years ago and many people who are Members of Parliament today were not present. Does my hon. Friend agree that “repeatedly” was perhaps the wrong word to use in that context?

Danny Kruger Portrait Danny Kruger
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As I understand it, we have had 14 hours of parliamentary time devoted to the topic in this Parliament alone. I suggest that there are other topics that we could address. I recognise that assisted dying is worth discussing, but there is something that we should do first, before we consider it. I will come to that point in a moment.

Members who think we can prevent people from being put on the pathway to assisted dying by good drafting, or because doctors are good people—obviously, they are—should think about the “do not resuscitate” scandal we had during the pandemic, and about the Liverpool care pathway, and then suggest there is no risk. I think there is a risk. I know that doctors are good people who want the best, but if we force them to make utilitarian decisions about the best use of resources, will they not push people in this direction?

As well as the pressure on the healthcare system to take this route, I worry even more about the pressure on patients themselves to request assisted dying if it is an option. It will be an option for almost everybody approaching death—that is the proposal. Clinical guidelines for many terminal or chronic illnesses will likely require doctors, at an early stage of planning treatment, to ask patients whether they would wish to have assistance in taking their own life. What a question to ask. Whatever the guidelines, every family will be required to have the conversation, in whispers or openly. In some families, we know how that conversation could all too likely go.

Over half the people in countries where assisted dying is legal choose it because they feel they are a burden to their family. Tragically, a lot also say that they are lonely. Is that not terrible—people getting the state to help kill them because they do not want to be a burden on a family that never visits them? Talk to any hospice manager about relatives and they will quietly confirm it. There are a lot of people who want granny or grandpa to hurry up and die.

--- Later in debate ---
Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate the issue of assisted dying, and I am grateful to every single one of the people who signed the petition—it is a healthy part of our democracy. We need to recognise that public feeling on this issue is strong, and people want us in Parliament to consider it. It would be wrong to shut down debate or pack it up as too difficult. We cannot ignore this issue, and we cannot simply look away.

When terminally ill people have taken their cases before the courts, as in the case of Shropshire resident Noel Conway, the courts have repeatedly affirmed that assisted dying is a matter for Parliament. We cannot shirk that responsibility. As we have heard today, assisted dying is happening, whether that is the DPP exercising discretion after the event, a compassionate doctor giving a little more morphine than he perhaps should, or people travelling to Dignitas. It is time for reform, and for legal clarity on this vital issue.

As a member of the Health Committee, I very much hope that we have the opportunity to hold an inquiry into the issue of assisted dying. There must, in any event, be a full inquiry, and I beg the Minister to listen to that plea and for legislative time to be made available, because our role as legislators is to find a solution to this—to allow the terminally ill the right to determine the manner of their own death, as well as providing the necessary safeguards for the vulnerable and, as many people have said, improving palliative care for all those at the end of life. It is not for Parliament to deny someone at the end of life the option of a peaceful death. As parliamentarians, we all want to improve the lives of our constituents, and as we have heard today, the prospect of a good and peaceful death is something that improves the lives of those facing a terminal illness. The debate needs to be about giving people that option, even if most terminally ill people never take it up. That peace of mind helps them to face death.

I deeply respect the religious views of others on all subjects, and it is their right to express their views and live them out. However, in a liberal democracy, the religious views of some do not restrict the rights and freedom of others, and so it is with this issue. When we debated assisted dying in Parliament in 2015, it was done with great respect for differing views, and it has been disappointing to see that polarisation is creeping into this debate. Instead of debating the arguments, we have seen attacks on campaign groups and a determination to conflate the tragedy of suicide with the right of the terminally ill to decide the manner of their death. We must choose our words with care and have the humility to understand that those who disagree with us are not motivated by malign intent, or are somehow less virtuous.

I want to end with the voice of my constituent Sarah. She said:

“My beloved husband Steve was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2011. What a day that was. It was like a tsunami had hit us. Steve was so brave—a true warrior—but MND is not a fight that can be won. To watch the man I loved, the father to my three children, lose every single scrap of dignity for so long was completely heartbreaking. In truth I was never ready to say goodbye to him, but watching him suffer in that way was so cruel. Steve deserved the right to choose, the right to say when enough is enough.”

Who are we to deny Steve and others like him that freedom and that choice?

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Edward Leigh Portrait Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
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Those who favour assisted dying will get their wish: there will be a debate on the Floor of the House of Commons, and if there is one more debate, there will be others. They will go on through the years, and the majorities against assisted dying will get smaller and smaller, because of course we are up against it. Overwhelmingly, the economics are against us—[Interruption.] It is about economics. We have a vast, ever-growing population of people who are very frail and very elderly, who are a burden on society and know it. Therefore, I predict that, sooner or later, the House of Commons will debate this issue and, sadly, pass a law as so many other countries have done.

This is not a debate about assisted dying. We all want to help people to die peacefully and painlessly. It is a debate about assisted suicide—helping people to kill themselves.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan
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Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Steve McCabe Portrait Steve McCabe (in the Chair)
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I would rather the right hon. Gentleman did not, actually.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan
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My right hon. Friend says that this debate is about suicide, but I wonder whether he has a family member, as I have, who took their own life through suicide, and whether he understands the difference between that and what we are talking about today?

Edward Leigh Portrait Sir Edward Leigh
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I have not had a family member do that, but we have all encountered friends and relatives who have been under intolerable pressure. Hon. Members have cited examples, and I can do so too.

I simply take a very pro-life point of view. It is not from my religious conviction or my belief that everybody is beautiful and wonderful, however small, however tiny in the womb, however old or frail, how much of a burden they are, whether they are a convicted murder or whether they are one of our military enemies. I take a pro-life view, and I think so much of the misery in the world in the last 100 years has been because people are casual about taking life. Many of the arguments that we hear in favour of assisted dying are based on very appalling, horrible and extreme cases. They are similar arguments to what we heard when we had the initial debates on abortion, with foetal abnormality, rape and all the other things. Then we had abortion on demand, and now we are going to get death on demand. That is what it is all about. All the pressure, particularly on the frail and vulnerable, will be about that.

I want to make a theological point. A friend of mine died in the first months of covid. He died in agony. He died in a part of the country where he was sent out of hospital because the medical profession was panicking. He was not given adequate palliative care and he died in agony. It was appalling. We are all agreed that we are still not doing enough about palliative care. We have to do much more. We have to tell everybody that they have the right to go into a hospice—a right that so many people are not given—and receive the full benefit of modern medical technology to die peacefully and painlessly. For the overwhelming majority of people, if they are given palliative care, it is an option they can enjoy.

I actually watched another friend of mine die. He was my best friend and former colleague in this House. He was dying of terminal cancer; I was sitting beside him and I could see the morphine pumping through his wrists. He died peacefully and painlessly, but I have no doubt that it was the morphine that killed him. Theologically, morally and legally, there is nothing against a doctor helping me to die by pumping morphine into me, even if that is the immediate cause of my death. [Interruption.] I can see people shaking their heads, but I have actually seen it happen. Is there anyone in this room who would blame a doctor who helped someone to die if they were in agony? The doctor was not trying to kill them—they were trying to ease the pain. And in easing the pain by delivering that amount of morphine, that might have hastened their demise.

Let us be realistic about it. Let us try to take a pro-life view, and let us remember—

Ten-Year Drugs Strategy

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Monday 6th December 2021

(2 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Kit Malthouse Portrait Kit Malthouse
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I am hesitant to point out that it was the hon. Lady’s party that crashed the economy, but nevertheless I feel compelled to do so. As she may have heard me say from the Dispatch Box, we have committed to bringing in a new funding formula, and work is under way to devise exactly that.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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As somebody who has lost a family member to drugs, I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for bringing forward this 10-year strategy. I know only too well the misery that drugs cause children, families and communities, which so often leads to death. Does the Minister agree that addiction is an illness and we need to treat it as an illness? Sending people to prison time and again does not cure the problem, whereas access to good treatment is the solution.

Kit Malthouse Portrait Kit Malthouse
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I agree that addiction is an illness or affliction that is outwith an individual’s control. Although addiction often drives individuals to commit crime, for which they must be punished, we have a duty to make sure that there is no repetition, which means that we need to treat the addiction in the best way possible in the circumstances. I am very sorry to hear that my hon. Friend has experienced that loss; there are too many families in this country who are in the same situation. I hope that our strategy will mean that those numbers reduce.

Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Wednesday 9th June 2021

(2 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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We all come to this place to speak for the people we represent and give a voice to those who cannot be heard. Today, I rise to speak on behalf of Georgia Williams, a Telford teenager, and her family. Almost exactly eight years ago today, Georgia suffered a brutal death at the hands of a sadistic killer, who repeatedly sought out young victims and groomed and stalked them as he pursued and finally executed a grotesque sexual fantasy. The perpetrator rightly received a whole-life term.

Georgia was 17. She was optimistic, she was fun, she was happy and she shone with life and energy. Full of hope for the future, she had her whole life to live, ambitions to fulfil and dreams to come true. Georgia epitomised what is so good about young people. Her parents, Lynette and Steve, who I have got to know over the years, reached out to me on hearing about the release of Colin Pitchfork because they know the grief and suffering that victims’ families experience and they want others to understand. They want others to know why life must mean life.

Some crimes are so abhorrent and offensive to the moral conscience that society cannot just be expected to accept their perpetrators back in our midst. Society is being asked to forget the crime, forget the victim and forgive the perpetrator. In the most grotesque and heinous cases, why should society be required to accept that the slate must be wiped clean? Why do we insist, just because a period of time has passed, that such crimes must now be forgotten? We are in this place as legislators. We represent the people who put us here and we need a Parole Board that operates under a legislative framework that gives the public and victims trust and confidence.

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and his excellent team for their radical and reforming work. I particularly congratulate them on the action taken on automatic early release for serious sexual and violent offenders. That subject caused much heartache in my constituency and I am grateful for their work on it. I now urge my right hon. and learned Friend to focus on the role of the Parole Board and ensure that it has the full confidence of the public and victims.

No one can begin to understand the terrible grief and devastation that the Williams family suffered, not least because Georgia’s killer could have been stopped before he eventually targeted her. For any parent, losing a child is a tragedy from which they never recover, but to have a child taken in the horrific circumstances that Georgia suffered is a torment and despair that we cannot begin to comprehend.

I will end by sharing the words of Georgia’s parents with the House:

“To hear that Colin Pitchfork, who took the lives of two children for his own pleasure, is to be released, is an insult to the two young victims.

The impact of losing a child is devastating, this anguish is compounded when as parents, you know that those last minutes of your loved one’s life were spent in terror. These monsters destroy more than one life, they destroy whole families.

It has been 8 years of torment for me and my family since Georgia was taken. The impact on my mental health has ruined my life and in turn my family’s—there is no cure for our suffering. Based on my experience as a police detective, I believe Pitchfork will kill again, I’ve seen it all too often.

Victims’ families are forgotten in a short while, but the terror and chaos it causes in our lives goes on. It changes how we live our lives forever—we want to reach out to ease the extreme distress of other suffering families.

Please Lucy, do everything you can for the victims of Colin Pitchfork to ease their families’ suffering.

Keep Pitchfork in prison.

Life must mean life.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Tuesday 3rd November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lucy Frazer Portrait Lucy Frazer
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I would be very happy to visit when we are allowed to do so, and certainly before then to discuss the issues in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I pay tribute to the work of LandWorks in his area. The issue of universal credit is fundamental, as is getting people into homes, and I work very closely with my counterpart at the Department for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State at the Department, along with the Lord Chancellor, to ensure that prison leavers can access universal credit in a timely way on their release, and we are doing other work in relation to their getting a job and a home.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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As we enter another lockdown with severe restrictions on prisoners, will the Minister consider the impact of the very serious other harms that the minimising covid restrictions risk causing to prisoners, prison officers and their families?

Lucy Frazer Portrait Lucy Frazer
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My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. We are very conscious of the impact that the very restrictive conditions we have imposed will have on those in our custody and care. Since restrictions were lifted over the summer, prison staff across the country have worked very hard to open up the estate. Since the end of the previous lockdown we have reintroduced visits in every prison, and 119 of our prisons are operating at stage 3 of the national framework; this reintroduced key work, education and offender management activities where it was appropriate to do so. As we enter a new phase, we are thinking very carefully about the balance between security and resistance to the virus and the mental health needs of our prisoners.

Sentencing White Paper

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Wednesday 16th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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The Lord Chancellor is to be congratulated on bringing forward this excellent White Paper. The measures it contains will be widely welcomed in my constituency and are long overdue. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the additional measures to end automatic early release for serious offenders will protect communities such as Telford, where we have experienced fear and a sense of injustice because of the early release of perpetrators of child sexual exploitation?

Robert Buckland Portrait Robert Buckland
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I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her tireless campaigning on the issue that has affected her community and the lives of people she represents. She is right to remind us of the purpose of this White Paper: we are seeking to protect the public and to achieve a higher level of confidence. When a prison sentence is passed, yes, there is a period on licence during which the individual needs to readjust with the appropriate controls, but there has to be a clear signal that the bulk of their term will be served behind bars. That is what the public expect; that is what will increase confidence in the system; and that is what we are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Allan Excerpts
Tuesday 25th February 2020

(4 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Robert Buckland Portrait Robert Buckland
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I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. He will know that the work of reform should never cease. There is a lot of work being directed by the president of the family division, and I have referred to the meeting that I am having with him tomorrow. My view about family litigation is that we need to take the confrontation out of it, particularly with regard to children’s proceedings, where the interests of the child have been, by dint of statute, paramount for the past 30 years. All too often, those interests are trampled underfoot by a far too adversarial approach. I think that it is in that direction that we need to be going, and I would be happy to engage with him and, indeed, with all interested parties to improve the experience of people in the family system.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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May I say what a joy it is to see such a fantastic team on the Front Bench?

Now that the case of the Post Office workers against the Post Office has concluded with two damning judgments against the Post Office, it is time for those wrongly convicted workers to have their names cleared. Will the Minister work with the Criminal Cases Review Commission to allow these cases to be dealt with as a group, to ensure that justice can be done without further delay?

Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the injustice that has been suffered by so many, including—I am bound to say—someone in my own constituency. The CCRC is seized of this matter. It will, of course, have to consider the cases individually, but I know that it will want to proceed at pace, and I understand that it is meeting in March to consider the issue fully; let justice be done.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Lucy Allan Excerpts
2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020

(4 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) and his excellent campaign, and echo many of the sentiments that he expressed in the superb speech that he just delivered to the House. I also express my gratitude to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor for all his work and efforts, since his appointment, to focus on victims and to put their rights front and centre. I am also extremely grateful to the Home Secretary for her work that focuses on the rights of victims, which traditionally we perhaps have not put so much centre stage. The Government do themselves proud by making such a commitment to victims, and the Bill is an example of that desire to put victims front and centre.

I of course welcome the Bill, understand the rationale behind it and support it, but I wish to make some remarks that I should be most grateful if Ministers considered. Those remarks relate to the Parole Board’s role, which the hon. Member for St Helens North alluded to just a short moment ago. The placing of a statutory duty on the Parole Board to ensure that the issue of non-disclosure is properly considered is a positive step and a very welcome gesture, but the Bill will not fundamentally change the Parole Board’s current practice. The families in such cases will still have to rely on the Parole Board’s discretion, and that raises some questions about the Parole Board’s role when it comes to victims’ interests.

We have already heard about concerns relating to the Parole Board’s accountability and transparency, and there are clearly some gaps in its duties relating to responsibilities to victims. In the light of recent high-profile cases—for example, the Worboys case—there has clearly been a loss of public confidence in the Parole Board. There is a real need for the law to be seen to be on the side of victims. Yes, that is exactly what the Bill seeks to achieve, but in relying solely on the Parole Board’s discretion, it does not quite achieve that.

In the Worboys case, the Parole Board decided in January 2018 to release this serial offender early, after only eight years. The then Lord Chancellor was unable to intervene—in fact, he backed the Parole Board’s decision—leaving it to victims to mount a judicial review, which fortunately found that there had been shortcomings in the decision-making process. The courts were therefore able to require the Parole Board to revisit the decision, more information then came to light, and Worboys was sentenced further for additional attacks.

A feature in the Worboys case was the Parole Board’s failure to notify victims of Worboys’s forthcoming release. Another feature was that the Government felt completely powerless to intervene on behalf of victims. The case was not a one-off. The Parole Board is, of course, bound to balance the need to keep the public safe against the human rights law that prevents the arbitrary detention of offenders—that is the Parole Board’s job and its duty, and that is what it does—and the Bill will still allow the Parole Board to release an offender who has failed to disclose the known whereabouts of a victim’s body or failed to disclose the identity of a child victim. The Parole Board is not bound, by this Bill or by any other requirement, to take into consideration the rights of victims. I would very much like Ministers to consider how in future they can look at the Parole Board’s role and augment it to ensure that victims’ rights are up there with the rights of offenders. Clearly, this Bill will still allow a killer, sentenced to life, to be released, even if he has failed to disclose the whereabouts of a victim’s body. Most people would say that such a person may not be properly rehabilitated if he is refusing to co-operate on something as basic as the location of a victim’s remains, or the identity of a child.

The Bill raises issues about the Parole Board that were out there and being discussed, but that were not satisfactorily addressed in the previous Parliament under previous Lord Chancellors. Perhaps this new Government, with the new approach that has been so much on display with the current Lord Chancellor, could consider how the role of the Parole Board could be looked at in more depth. I know that there was a review of the Parole Board in 2018. One recommendation was that there should be a further, more in-depth review of the Parole Board’s activity to see how legislation might actually make it a more transparent and accountable body. I would very much welcome such a review, especially if we could pursue it in a little more depth. We must continue to ensure that the rights of victims are equal to those of the offenders.

I also wish to touch on another issue around the Parole Board. In Telford, I have been trying to find out whether a serious perpetrator of child sexual exploitation, who was sentenced to a 26-year extended sentence in 2012, has been released. He was eligible for parole seven years later, in December 2019, and I cannot get an answer on whether that has happened. I cannot get an answer because I do not know his prisoner number. If I am unable to learn whether he has been released, the community I represent is also unable to know. The victims and their families also want to know. We do not want a Parole Board that does not feel that it has any duty to the victims. That is something that this new Government, with their commitment to victims and their families, can do so much about. I know that victims’ families and the wider community would truly appreciate such a step.

Daisy Cooper Portrait Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
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I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being late for the start of this debate. The Liberal Democrats also welcome this Bill. It is a good move and we are glad to see it here today. I am pleased that the hon. Member has been talking about the rights of victims in particular. The Bill responds to a number of cases, including that of Vanessa George, a nursery worker who was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse and of taking and distributing indecent images of children. She then refused to name those victims. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need the Government to take many more steps to provide support and advice to victims of sexual abuse, including by providing sustainable grant funding for specialist independent support services in relation to those who are survivors of violence against women and girls?

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan
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I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising the rights of victims, particularly of women and girls, in this place.

Joy Morrissey Portrait Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
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I just wish to thank the Secretary of State for this Bill. On the issue of victims of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, there is nothing better than holding abusers to account for those whom they have victimised. Forcing them to disclose their victims takes away their power, which is why this is such a welcome Bill. It shows that we are listening to the victims and saying to the perpetrator that they can no longer hold in their heart the secrets of the people that they have abused. I very much welcome that, and I thank the Secretary of State for his boldness in taking this forward.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan
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I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I agree with every word that she has said.

I wish to conclude by saying that this is a Government who are on the side of victims and their families, and that this is exactly what this excellent Bill intends to achieve. I urge Ministers on the Front Bench to continue their good work in this arena, and particularly to place some pressure on the Parole Board to focus on the rights of victims. Again, I thank the Government for all their good work.