Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak on behalf of people in Plymouth to express our condolences to the royal family on the death of the Queen. I have dated a lot of queens in my time, but I have only ever met the Queen once, shortly after being elected in 2018. It was a wet day at Plymouth train station, and I was doubly excited. First, as a train nerd, I was going to get a sight of the royal train. We do not get regal rolling stock in Devon very often, so I was excited about that. Secondly, it was a chance to see a true icon of our age, a leader like no other—the Queen. She toddled off the train, meeting the dignitaries and looking resplendent in a pink outfit and a pink hat. I looked down at my tie, which was bright pink as well, and thought to myself, “Queens really do wear pink.” When she got to me, she said, “Why aren’t you in Parliament?” I thought, “Oh dear, I’d better get this right.” I said. “Well, the Whips let me off.” She said, “I would hope they did, too.” She gave me a little smile, and I thought, “That was all okay.” That was the spirit of the Queen—meeting so many people and putting them at ease.

The Queen was in Plymouth that day to decommission HMS Ocean before it sailed to Brazil. As the head of our armed forces, she visited Plymouth and Devonport dockyard on number of occasions. She was very much part of our military command structure, our Royal Navy and our Royal Marines. She first visited in 1942, at the age of just 16, visiting the dockyards with her father, King George VI. Four years later, she visited again as a sea ranger to see the battleship HMS Duke of York.

The Queen’s visits to our city parallel our recovery, from the ashes of the Plymouth Blitz to the renewal and evolution of our military tactics with the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, the rebuilding of Plymouth city centre and the opening of the civic centre in 1962. In 1988, as we marked the 400th anniversary of the Spanish armada, she opened the sundial in Plymouth city centre, giving our teenagers somewhere to meet their mates in town in the almost 40 years since.

The Queen leaves an incredible legacy. As a daughter, wife and mother to Royal Navy officers, her links to the Royal Navy, and to Devonport in particular, are plentiful. They include not just when she presents the Navy with new colours, as she did in 2003, but her many visits to express sorrow for the members of our armed forces family we lost in action. Often those were visits without fanfare, and conversations with real heart.

For my generation, the Queen was the grandma to the nation, a towering figure of female leadership. For a lifetime of devotion, selfless public service and duty, we say thank you. Long live the King.

Seven Principles of Public Life

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate after so many brilliant contributions from my Labour colleagues. I hope the wide-angled camera that the parliamentary authorities use to broadcast this meeting will show that not a single Conservative Back-Bench MP has bothered to turn up. That is a shame. The Minister and her Parliamentary Private Secretary are rightly in their places, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Standards in public life should not be optional. Every one of us, regardless of party, should seek to uphold, celebrate and share them, and we should tell the story of why they matter, but someone needs to turn up to do that. I hope that people can see the empty chairs in this room and that they will ask why only Labour Back-Bench MPs were speaking in this debate. This issue does matter.

The standards spoken about so brilliantly by my hon. Friends, the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) and for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) are important. We could restrict those standards to selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. We could include others, as many people who have applied the principles of public life to their own organisations have done, such as duty and a requirement to uphold the law—that should be a given but, sadly, we have seen that that is not always so. Other principles are respect, equality and the importance of treating everyone equally, no matter who they are, who they fall in love with, where they come from, the colour of their skin or their religion. The principles, when taken together, are about how to be decent.

I sometimes get things wrong; I sometimes make mistakes. The system should be broad and confident enough to allow us—if we make an honest mistake, because of innovation or because we get something wrong—to put our hands up, apologise and learn that lesson. That is an informed, sensible and confident system. What we have at the moment is a broken system. It is important that we deal with it. It is not broken because of neglect. It is broken because of deliberate decisions to break it. That is dangerous, because it puts us on a path to a place where standards do not matter and are not upheld. It suggests that we are all the same, and that every Member of Parliament—regardless of their party—is somehow in the mud, somehow on the take and somehow unfairly representing their constituents. There are brilliant MPs in every party; there are a lot of good, decent Conservative MPs who would probably want to be here. We need to make sure that this debate is conducted against those high principles and in a language that reflects the political body we are seeking to create. That is the spirit of what I want to say.

The context in which this debate is being held is important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree set it out really well. We are here because the last Administration sought to break many of those standards, sought to evade scrutiny and sought to excuse and protect those who had broken the standards, the system and the principles that we seek to uphold. That gives us a choice, because people care about those standards.

If we were to do a taste test on the streets of Plymouth or in any other constituency and to ask people to name the seven principles of public life, I am not certain that every member of the public would be able to name them all, but they would all give it a good go, and the words we would get back would reflect the overall sentiment of the principles. That is what we should be aiming at, because what we have seen over the past year should scare each and every one of us—no matter whether we are in government or in opposition, aspiring to be in government. This issue matters.

Yesterday, I hosted a group of young care leavers from Plymouth at an event with Barnardo’s. They talked about their experience of being in care, and I am enormously proud of them for the way they travelled from Plymouth—many of them leaving it for the first time—to come to Parliament. One of them asked me, “Why would anyone take notice of us? Why does it matter?” I explained the job of Members of Parliament, and they said, “Aren’t they all corrupt?” That is not an unreasonable question for a young person who has been confronted by years and years of the news coverage that we have had. I am so proud of those young people for telling their story about being in care, but we need to make sure that our day-to-day business here speaks to a place that every young person can look at and aspire to be in and whose principles they can aspire to follow.

That means changing the rules that we have. I do not see a reason why MPs have second jobs. The declarations of who has a second job includes many of the MPs in the south-west near to me. When I at how many hours or days a week they spend doing a second job, I think that is one or two days a week that they are not doing the job that they were elected to do and that they are paid very handsomely to do. What are we getting? Are taxpayers getting a rebate? Are they getting a refund? What influence, decisions and information is being shared? There should be no second jobs, except for those who are keeping up a medical licence or the ability to write a book.

I understand why some people do not want to be in Parliament, because I do not think it is a safe place to work. I say that because I worked in professional workplaces until my election, and I did not doubt that any of those private sector workplaces were safe. People were able to come to work and be safe. I do not always believe that Parliament is a safe place to work, especially for many of our staff. Young people, often not paid very much, are in an atmosphere full of alcohol, where power has a currency all by itself. When we talk about standards in public life, they are not amorphous, blobby things. They are not foggy things that we are trying to catch. They are lived experience for people. We must make this place a safe place for everybody to work. There is a big distinction between the Parliament that I turned up to as a young researcher in 2000 with brown hair and the Parliament that I turned up to with grey hair when I got elected.

[Chris Bryant]

It was grey back then—there is nothing wrong with grey.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

It was brown—I have picture evidence.

None the less, progress has been made in those 20 years. We should not dismiss the fact that MPs of both parties have sought to make change to make this place a better one. However, it is not yet a safe enough place for everyone to work, and it needs to be. That is the reason why the seven principles of public life should not exist on a dusty bookshelf; we should live and breathe them. More than that, they should be visible to everyone in this place. Far from being points of shame, or a tick-list to see what someone has got wrong, they should be a source of pride and strength for us all in this place. We should display them around the building. The refurbished parliamentary building should welcome Members and guests with a celebration of those principles, built into the fabric of the building, just as today’s Parliament highlights the many old dudes in wigs who once ruled Britain hundreds of years ago. We should make them visible to everyone.

Making them modern must also make them personal. If I am lucky enough to be returned as the Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport after the next election, one of the changes that I would like to see is that when we come to swear in, we should not just swear an Oath to the Queen—to God, if we have one—or affirm; I think we should also swear to uphold the principles of public life. If each and every one of us, in our own voice, says those words, lists the seven principles of public life and affirms or swears to uphold them when we are in office, then they are not just a tick box or a document that we have been given as part of the corporate brochure—the new starter’s handbook. They are something that each and every one of us has said and made personal. That matters because if it is personal, it is more likely to be upheld by every individual.

I think we are at a crossroads in our democracy. At a crossroads, taking the right turn is not inevitable. Many places can take the wrong turn, and as we are seeing around the world, where rights are under attack, where democracy is being eroded, where misinformation is sometimes more believed than accurate information, it is not inevitable that we win this fight, that standards win. That only happens when we make the case for it, when people are persuaded by it and when there is no other option but to uphold those standards.

So I hope the Minister will take the Opposition’s suggestions seriously, and make actual changes to the way this place functions—changes not designed to catch people out, but to celebrate those standards and make them something that each and every one of us aspires to make sure we uphold through our activities. When we go into schools and talk about our role as Members of Parliament, I think people see an MP who is proud of their job. They see an MP wanting to share the hope of changing the community for the better. Talking about their politics, their values, every single MP would probably make a case for good practice—for best practice and for hope. Why are we so different when we leave those schools and come to this place, that we find it so easy to qualify and avoid those standards? Why do we find it so easy to protect the people who break those rules? If every Member of Parliament decides today to stop protecting the people who make this place unsafe, to stop protecting the people who break the rules, we will get a Parliament that is better and we will have something that those young kids can be proud of.

Standards in Public Life

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is real concern among staff and Members of Parliament about a culture within Westminster that protects abusers and does not encourage victims to come forward. We see here potentially the start of an unlocking of a type of abuse that has been common in Westminster for far too long, of men abusing other men, particularly young men. That is a scandal that will run for miles and miles, because it has been overlooked and deliberately hidden and those behind it have, in some cases, had the very highest people protecting them, through forgetting that things have happened. Will the Minister give us assurance now that he will treat a sexual abuse attack on a man in the same way as he would an attack on a woman, and make clear that there should not be a single Member of Parliament in this place, in any party, who is guilty of that?

[Michael Ellis]

The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. There is no such culture either in this legislature or in the Executive. I have already said from this Dispatch Box that any victim should come forward about any incident at any time, and make themselves known and make their complaints. All are treated equally and will be treated equally. I have prosecuted personally cases in court. He asks me about that; there are a few barristers in this House who have been in criminal practice, and I am one of those who has prosecuted individuals for sexual assault and other criminal offences. So I am very alive to the issues generally, and I ask him to accept that we all come to this House in good faith to do the best we can, for our constituents and to look after those who work for us. Where there are failings, it is incumbent upon us to do the best we can to remedy and rectify those failings. That does not mean that we expect perfection in all cases, but it means that we should act fairly and reasonably at all times and do the very best we can.

Sanctions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

My party and the whole House stand with Ukraine. Putin’s attack on Ukraine is an unprovoked, unjustifiable outrage and all those responsible must be held responsible for their war crimes. It is a heinous violation of international law that will have tragic consequences—not just for the people of Ukraine, but for peoples right around our continent.

We stand in complete solidarity with the Ukrainian people as they bravely resist this assault. As this conflict goes on and on, and Putin becomes more and more desperate, the tactics he will use will become more barbaric. Therefore, the sanctions we employ against him must become more sophisticated, clearer and bolder. The horrific reports coming from Kharkiv and the alleged use of cluster munitions are already increasingly alarming. The attack today on a TV tower in Kyiv did little to justify the fabricated claims of de-Nazification, as they hit a holocaust memorial. It is our moral duty to do everything we can to help the Ukrainian people against what is a war crime, a clear war crime and more war crimes coming from Russia.

Somewhere in the Kremlin, there will be a desk officer in the Russian Foreign Ministry making a note of this debate. That note should say clearly that all MPs of every party implored the Government to go further. They all backed the sanctions that were being proposed, but they wanted more. More must come. That is a message I hope the Minister will take loud and clear from this debate.

Now is the time for the hardest possible sanctions to be taken against all those linked to Putin and his tyrannical regime, and against all the Russian Government’s interests, working in a co-ordinated and unified way with our allies to ensure that the Putin regime faces the severest possible consequences for its aggression. As was made clear by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), there is now a sanctions gap between what the United Kingdom is proposing and what our EU friends are proposing. We must close that gap and do so immediately.

Labour will, of course, support these sanctions tonight and I think every party in this House will be doing the same. We have pledged to work with the Government to ensure that we can proceed quickly to ensure that the House can pass the necessary legislative measures. When the Government bring forward further measures, we will work at speed to ensure they can be passed. But there is still so much more to be done. Our Parliament sends a united message that we stand up for justice, democracy and sovereignty against the aggressor, and that we condemn in the strongest possible terms Vladimir Putin’s heinous and unnecessary invasion. We stand unequivocally with the Ukrainian people. The Minister must be in no doubt that there is more work to be done.

I want to briefly summarise the excellent speeches made on both sides of the House. Three main themes have been raised in this debate. First, much more is needed. Bolder sanctions are needed and soon. That means matching what our EU friends have done. It means closing the sanctions gap—that was very clearly set out—and it means acting faster against oligarchs who have been hiding Putin’s wealth, and through whom actions will have the biggest effect on the Putin regime. I pay tribute to Members such as the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) who set out clearly how that web, that network of oligarchs, helps to keep Putin in power. He survives on a sea of dirty money hidden in companies, behind the facades run by the oligarchs. We must go further to tackle them.

The second point that was clear in this debate is that we must target more individuals and more companies. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made very clear that while some of our EU friends are targeting fixed assets, the UK Government have chosen not to do so yet. Some members of the public watching this debate will not understand why the French and Italian Governments are going after the mansions of oligarchs in their countries, while the oligarchs in the UK are able to enjoy their luxury lifestyles. The Minister says that he is doing more and I want to see that, because we need to explain to the British public that we are taking those measures. We want the Government to go further and we must do that.

The third point, however, is a difficult one for the House. Brilliant speeches by Members on both sides made it clear that we must get our house in order. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) made a clear proposal about reform of Companies House, which is long overdue and must be done at pace. Another consultation will not cut it; we need lasting reform.

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) made a clear case for getting the City of London to step up. He remarked that “morals and money are not always mutually exclusive”. That will be a good lesson for many in the City of London—the corporate lawyers and bankers, the people who enable the dirty money to flow and who seek to shut down criticism—to take on board.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight spoke about enablers and about Michael Foot. As a Plymouth MP, I feel that when someone mentions Michael Foot, it is normally good to quote him back. However, the hon. Member is right to draw parallels between this and Michael Foot’s “Guilty Men”, to talk about those who appeased and those who did not act when they could have done so. We must look closely at the hon. Member’s remarks about the guilty men of today—the men and women who facilitate the agents of fascism—but we must not pretend that that is news to us. This House is aware of Putin’s actions, painfully so—and not just in Georgia, Crimea and Salisbury. We have seen his actions and modus operandi, and we know that to tackle them we need to go further on sanctions and on joining up our efforts with our friends.

The sanctions that we are debating are supported, but I want to pick up on a point about the dual-use sanctions. When we looked at the different areas, we largely concentrated, rightly, on financial instruments. However, on dual-use sanctions, we are talking about not just dual-use goods, but ingredients and components of weapons of war, and it is clear that we should not allow UK companies to export them. I would like the Minister, with his officials, to look at whether there can be greater clarity on what dual-use items can be used in space, because overhead observation is an important part of what is happening in Ukraine. I would be grateful if he commented on the proposed OneWeb satellite launch—a publicly funded satellite provider—at the Baikonur cosmodrome, because it is not right that UK-funded satellite launches are taking place in what is effectively a Russian-backed facility. I would also like to press him on whether our UK satellites could be launched from our European facilities in French Guyana, which would ensure that we keep control and that progress on that project was unhindered.

I want to pick up on some points made about Belarus. If it is true that the invasion of Ukraine is not just Russian, but that Belarusian Government forces are engaged as well, we need to be clear that the sanctions must apply equally to the Government of Belarus, the financial instruments of Belarus and the powers that keep its dictator in power. Russia and Belarus are in a joint enterprise, as was mentioned. Belarus is a Russian client state.

The UK Government initially sanctioned Russia because of its recognition of the so-called breakaway republics. Why are we not using the same tools to pre-emptively sanction Belarus? If Belarusian forces engage in an attack on Kyiv or if they participate in or support Russian aggression any further than they have done, why are we not saying that here is the big stick that the west will hit them with? Let us get those sanctions ready. Let us get them supported. They can be activated on the intelligence that the Minister will be able to see but might not be able to share. We need to send a message, however, that Russian aggression and the aggression of any client states are unacceptable.

We have the ability to go further and the Government know that they will have the support of the House if they do. We can do much more to cut Putin’s rogue regime out of our financial system in terms of not just the banks and the threatening lawyers, but the property and the money stolen from the Russian people that has flowed through the City of London like a stinking sewer for far too long. A number of Members have made the point that it should not have taken a war for action to be taken. This is not a war of our choice, nor is it the choice of the Ukrainian people, but a war has started so our actions need to be serious and severe.

We need to go further. That is why Labour is urging the Government to widen the sanctions; to increase the list of individuals who have been sanctioned; to reform Companies House to crack open the shell companies that are hiding suspect wealth; to introduce an overseas entities Bill to lift the veil on property ownership; and, finally, to bring forward the full details of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill to enhance that.

We do need to go much further, and that is what this House is calling for. Britain has a proud history of standing up to dictators and this House has a proud history of working in a cross-party fashion to enable the Government of the day to stand up to dictators. That is why the actions that I hope the Minister will take in the coming days should go far beyond the statutory instruments before us. Labour will not oppose the SIs—indeed, we support them—but we encourage the Minister, his colleagues and officials to go further, much further, because President Putin must be in no doubt about the resolve of this House to stand with the Ukrainian people and to hunt down the dirty money that enables his regime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman talks about an issue on which there is agreement across the House. I do not think that anyone in the House wants to see our brave prison officers hurt or put at risk in their place of work. That is completely unacceptable, which is why I was nodding along through his comments on his Bill. I recognise many of the points that he rightly made in presenting his ten-minute rule motion. We note, however, that Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and private prison providers are already subject to statutory duties to protect staff and prisoners from violence. We have committed to further work to improve the safety of everybody behind prison walls through our prisons strategy White Paper, including—I am delighted to say—by March this year, the completion of our £100 million security investment programme to root out the drugs, phones and other illicit items that can play such a terrible role in the safety of our prisons.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)]

Over the last month, I have met offenders participating in the community payback scheme in Birmingham, prisoners at HMP Hatfield who are being supported back into work in partnership with the charity Tempus Novo, and frontline staff at HMP Frankland working to tackle extremism and terrorism, including through their separation centre.

[Luke Pollard]

On behalf of the prison officers I represent in Plymouth, I ask the Secretary of State: now that he has dropped his plans to close Dartmoor prison, what plans does he have to invest in facilities at the dilapidated prison to ensure that it can be a safe and humane environment again?

[Dominic Raab]

I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about that particular prison in his constituency. He will know that we are investing almost £4 billion over the next three years to deliver 20,000 additional modern prison places by the mid-2020s. I have been to look at some of the advantages that they can have, including at Glen Parva prison, which has started the operational build. It is not just about the numbers; it is also about such things as the in-cell technology and workshops that can be a pathway to get offenders to go clean and get into work, in order to cut reoffending and protect the public.

Sue Gray Report

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that among the foundations of our democracy are due process and the rule of law, and allowing the police to get on with their job, and that is what we are going to do.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Paragraph iv of Sue Gray’s general findings states that there is a culture of “excessive consumption of alcohol” and that it is “not appropriate”. Is there also a culture of excessive drug taking in Downing Street?

[The Prime Minister]

Any drug taking would be excessive. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should direct that question to the Labour Front Bench.

Ukraine

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Kremlin does not act in isolation; it acts against a plan. Will the Prime Minister set out what additional support we will be providing to our allies on NATO’s eastern flank, especially that using UK forces already stationed in those countries, to deter any future Russian aggression after any invasion of Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. What we are all discussing at the moment is what we can do to fortify NATO’s eastern/south-eastern flank. The French are looking at Romania. There are questions about Hungary and what we might do there; as he knows, there are complex issues involving the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Everybody—particularly the Americans; he heard what I said about the 8,500 troops getting ready to go to Europe—can see the need now to move NATO forces, to fortify NATO’s eastern flank.

Police Powers to Suspend Driving Licences

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for the way she introduced the debate and so clearly put the case, on behalf of the petitioners, that change here is necessary. It is also good to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). Due to our various appointments over the past few years, we have not been in many debates together. I hope this will be the start of our coming together on Plymouth issues, which this indeed is.

We remember Tom in this debate. He is remembered not only by the family but by the 100,000 people who signed the petition, including the 1,162 people who signed the petition from Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. I also pay tribute to Christina, Tom’s fiancée, and Charlotte, Tom’s mum, for the way they have run this campaign. They have spoken with dignity, compassion and clarity about what changes they would like to see.

[Paul Howell]

I understand how important this particular issue is for Plymouth, which is the focus today. In my constituency, well over 200 people supported this petition, and it is more than just a Plymouth issue. It is so important, and I thank people who have brought this petition for debate today.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He underlines the fact that, when a petition reaches 100,000 signatures, that does not happen by accident. It happens because there is an issue of concern. It normally happens because there is a campaign and passionate people behind it. The fact that we have signatures from all over the United Kingdom speaks volumes for the case that the family are making.

I do not intend to repeat everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View have said, but I will raise a number of aspects to highlight my concerns to the Minister. The rather brilliant Library brief that was put together for this debate put a stress on bail conditions. It is true that if someone is arrested for drink or drug-driving, bail conditions can be applied to the individual to ensure that they cannot drive. The difficulty in this case and many other cases is that bail conditions are not being applied to those individuals, because those individuals are released under investigation.

I have significant concerns about RUI and the effect that it has, not only in parking many crimes, but in not giving victims and their families justice or updates. It elongates the process. We know that there is a crisis in our courts, and our police are stretched, so RUI does give them with the ability to provide longer periods for investigation. That is certainly true, but justice delayed is justice denied. My fear about the increased use of released under investigation, especially in cases of drug and drink-driving, is that it is not giving the police and the authorities the pressure to deliver swifter prosecutions, nor is it delivering the important justice for the families to see someone charged for their crime and that crime brought forward to a court.

[Johnny Mercer]

I think the police would say that they have a certain period of time in which they can hold people, pre-charge, on bail, and that is why they use RUI. When it comes to the issue of drink and drug-driving, the technology is now so good that someone will have a test on the roadside and it will be clear whether they have failed. It is not like investigating an assault or something where there are two sides to the story. It is black and white, and there is no real reason why a bail condition cannot be imposed that someone is not allowed to drive, having abused that privilege by being caught drink-driving.

[Luke Pollard]

The hon. Member raises a good point. One of the difficulties the Minister has in replying to this debate is that, as a Transport Minister, she will only be able to speak on behalf of the Department for Transport. However, this issue stretches across the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The 11 months that Tom’s family had to wait for justice is far too long. That is because of pressures on the court service and the police. As much as I would love to put the responsibility on the Minister herself, it is the responsibility of other Departments. We need to see a joined-up approach to make this work.

Release under investigation is a particular problem that is delaying justice. It is delaying justice in cases like this and in many others. That is why the police and the authorities can attach those bail conditions to individuals. If someone is released under investigation for something that happens many times in the future, there are no such bail conditions attached to a release under investigation status. Therefore, the provisions that exist in law, quite correctly, to limit the behaviour of an individual—in this case, probably to ensure that another crime is not committed in that way—do not apply.

From my interpretation, that is effectively why Tom’s law is seeking to backfill and repair some of the legal fabric that has been changed by release under investigation. If the suspect in this case were bailed, I suspect those bail conditions would have been attached. That is one of the difficulties we have in this case. I hope that the Minister will agree to meet the family to discuss this, but I would also be grateful if she would put in a good case for a meeting with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. I think there is a cross-Government approach that needs to be adopted here.

I mentioned the short sentence. I, too, welcome the increase in the tariff in the sentencing for those people who kill via drink-driving from 14 years to life. However, that did not apply in this case, and I think it is entirely legitimate for any family who have been robbed of the life of their loved one to look at the sentence that has been afforded and say, “Three months and three weeks is not justice.” I have sympathy with the family for the way in which they seek to pursue that aim through the courts, and now through politics as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Neath mentioned one of the remarks of the judge in this case: that “the surest thing” was that the offender would have to live with the consequences. No, the surest thing is that the family will have to live with the consequences for much longer, and with a much deeper sense of pain and loss, than the offender. That is why there is a real difficulty in relation to this issue.

My hon. Friend echoed the words of the family: driving is a privilege, not a right. One of the questions that we must ask ourselves in this place is, “To what extent does that privilege apply where a vehicle has been used to either kill or maim someone and the driver has been under the influence of drugs or alcohol?” At that point, it is reasonable for us as Parliament to take a view as to whether there should be a legal ability to prevent that person from driving. Indeed, to a certain extent, we have already taken that view: long before I or my neighbour, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View, was in this place, Parliament passed legislation that put bail conditions on those individuals. There is precedent here, but that view has not been applied to release under investigation in the same way, so there is a sound argument for looking at whether RUI has changed the social contract—the deal—between the state and victims as to what applies in the event of someone being maimed or seriously hurt when a driver has been under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It is important to look at that issue.

The challenge in this debate is not only how we can remember Tom, and give the family who have campaigned so thoroughly, professionally and compassionately in his memory the justice that the courts, through the low-bar sentencing, did not deliver. The challenge is also how we can we prevent this from happening in future. The responsibility and obligation that falls on parliamentarians is to ensure that no other family goes through what Tom’s family have gone through. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View has been pursuing that aim with the family for some time, and I act as his assistant in this respect to support the measures he has taken.

I would, however, like to add some words of caution. I am concerned that if we give extra responsibilities to the police or the courts system without adequately resourcing them, justice could be further delayed. If steps are to be taken, I would like them to be accompanied by the proper resources, to ensure that doing so does not elongate the process in relation to any cases and that we continue to reinforce the primacy of the courts in this matter. The ability of the police themselves to deliver restrictions on the kerbside or from the point of charge should always be tempered by the ability of a court to judge the person involved. Drink and drug-driving is one of those offences that is peculiar among cases in the criminal justice system, in that the courts see people from every single walk of life. It is important that when applications are put in, everyone can have justice when their cases are heard, but most importantly, that the victims and their families in those cases can have justice at the same time.

I would be grateful if the Minister could look at some of those aspects of this issue. I appreciate that, as a Minister in the Department for Transport, many of the aspects I have raised are not her responsibility. However, there is a need to join up with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to ensure that the right questions are being asked of the competent Departments in relation to this issue, so that Tom’s family can truly have justice and the likelihood of something like this happening again can be reduced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Trudy Harrison]

I will endeavour to do just that. I will ensure that we write to my hon. Friend with that information as far as we can.

Most of all, I would like to thank Christina, Charlotte and Sandra for their bravery and courage campaigning for Tom’s law, and for being present for this debate. I expect the issue of police powers in serious road crime to form part of the call for evidence.

[Luke Pollard]

It is welcome news that the Minister’s Department is looking into this matter. I think she made a commitment for a consultation, and it is welcome that it will be included. Her officials may say that the suspension of a driving licence should be a Home Office matter, but in her Department, would she look at penalty points notices? As it stands, someone who causes death by careless driving with alcohol and drugs above the limit can be subject to three to 11 points on their licence, and over that their licence is removed. The option of suspended penalty points means they can be applied to the licence in the period before conviction, which is another means of achieving what Tom’s law seeks to do. That is not necessarily a licence suspension, but an application, albeit temporary until a court process, of penalty notices or penalty point endorsements.

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank hon. Gentleman for making those points. He will understand that I am not the roads Minister, and I am responding on the behalf of the roads Minister, Baroness Vere of Norbiton. Officials in the Department will be listening closely to what he says and will endeavour to take that into account. He is correct to mention a consultation; a call for evidence will be taken forward.

Prime Minister's Update

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think it would be fair to say that the Supreme Court is a relatively novel institution and this is a novel and groundbreaking judgment, even by the admission of the plaintiffs. We will study its implications with great care, and I think the House might like to reflect deeply on it, because I do think the judgment is of great constitutional interest and importance.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I opposed the Prime Minister’s unlawful Prorogation of Parliament because it shut down debate on Brexit and on other issues as well. In September I asked the Prime Minister to personally step in and prevent the release of Vanessa George, the child abuser that abused babies and toddlers in Plymouth. While Parliament was illegally shut down, she was released early. There have been lots and lots of things that are not good about today’s debate. Could the Prime Minister give one good thing, and agree to meet the families of the victims of Vanessa George, so that we can prevent that ever happening again and keep people like Vanessa George behind bars?

[The Prime Minister]

I am aware of the campaigns that have been run not just by the hon. Gentleman but by other Plymouth Members in respect of Vanessa George, and I will certainly undertake to meet the families.

Priorities for Government

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for the plea that he has put in. He has added the line to Clacton to the long list of infrastructure projects that I propose now to expedite. He is quite right, because our programme is to use infrastructure, education and technology to level up across the country, and that is what we are going to do.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in opposing the early release of Vanessa George, the serial paedophile who abused babies and toddlers in Plymouth, especially as she still refuses to show remorse by naming which one of those babies she abused, filmed and circulated images of?

[The Prime Minister]

I understand why the hon. Gentleman was nodding to my answer earlier. It would be wrong of me to intervene in particular cases, but I think that he and I are at one in agreeing that people should serve appropriate sentences for serious crimes.