Judicial Review and Courts Bill

Debate between Marco Longhi and John Hayes

Report stage
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I rise to speak on new clauses 8 and 9, which stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt).

Those who served on the Bill Committee will not be unfamiliar with the arguments I intend to address, as we rehearsed them at considerable length in Committee. The Minister knows well my general concerns about the Bill: while it is a good start in dealing with the pressing issue of judicial review and how that has been distorted by recent judicial practice, it is only a start. We need much more wide-ranging reform of judicial review and, indeed, much more wide-ranging reform of the relationship between this House and the judiciary, as set out in the Attorney General’s recent speech in Cambridge on judicial activism.

New clause 8 addresses the courts’ role in curtailing the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and especially in circumventing the role of the investigatory powers tribunal. I take a particular interest in that, having been the Minister at the Home Office who introduced the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which deals with the necessary precautions and safeguards associated with the storage and retrieval of electronic data. Indeed, the Bill I took through the House introduced the double lock: all warrants, as well as being dealt with by the Home Secretary, are, as an additional safeguard, dealt with by a judicial commissioner. That safeguard was to ensure the core principles of proportionality and necessity, which lay at the heart of all considerations of that kind.

The problem is that the courts have taken it upon themselves to become involved in matters that should be the exclusive preserve of this House. It is very important to see the Bill in context. The supremacy of Parliament is fundamental to protecting the interests of the people. Parliament’s role in our constitutional settlement is not—as was suggested in an evidence session with Aidan O’Neill QC—a matter of neutrality.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the events of Brexit showed the vivid importance of always maintaining the sovereignty of this place and respecting the will of the people?

[Sir John Hayes]

Absolutely. The separation of powers does not deal with neutrality. It deals with different powers, which are, by constitutional arrangement, held by the courts and this place. The relationship between the two is critical. It is critical to our considerations today and more critical still to our constitution. A. V. Dicey argued that the separation of powers confers on Parliament a dominant characteristic. Parliament consists of Her Majesty the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons acting together. Therefore, as Dicey says:

“The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, that Parliament… has… the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.”

That is precisely the point that my hon. Friend makes.

We need to reaffirm that principle in general and the Bill is an opportunity to do so. Any Parliament that makes a new law or repeals a law will be obeyed by the courts. That is fundamental to the role of this place. All of us who represent the people, as my hon. Friend says, have a duty, not just a mission, to reflect the will of the people.

Judicial Review and Courts Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Marco Longhi and John Hayes

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Public Bill Committees

Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

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Further to that point of order, Mr Rosindell. I do not want to prolong our proceedings unduly, but I think it is important to amplify the Minister’s remarks. Without wishing to embarrass you, you were a very close friend of Sir David. We were all his friends, but you were particularly close to him. We are grateful for your being here this afternoon, and I think we would all agree that it was a fitting final farewell to a much-valued parliamentarian, a dear friend and, most importantly, a husband and father.

Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)

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Further to that point of order, Mr Rosindell. I echo the previous comments. As a member of the new intake, I had the good fortune of having an office on the same floor as Sir David Amess in 1 Parliament Street. As the lift doors open, his office door is immediately in front. It has been a terrible sadness, as you can well imagine, every time I have seen that door with a candle lit in front of it in recent days and weeks.

As a colleague and a fellow Catholic, I felt today’s mass and funeral celebrations were a very fitting goodbye to someone I did not really get to know that well but someone who, as an elder statesman who had been round the block a few times, if I can put it that way, made me feel very welcome. He made a point of coming to say, “Hello. Who are you? Where are you from?” in his indescribable, unique way.

Judicial Review and Courts Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Marco Longhi and John Hayes

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Rosindell. I do not want to prolong our proceedings unduly, but I think it is important to amplify the Minister’s remarks. Without wishing to embarrass you, you were a very close friend of Sir David. We were all his friends, but you were particularly close to him. We are grateful for your being here this afternoon, and I think we would all agree that it was a fitting final farewell to a much-valued parliamentarian, a dear friend and, most importantly, a husband and father.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Rosindell. I echo the previous comments. As a member of the new intake, I had the good fortune of having an office on the same floor as Sir David Amess in 1 Parliament Street. As the lift doors open, his office door is immediately in front. It has been a terrible sadness, as you can well imagine, every time I have seen that door with a candle lit in front of it in recent days and weeks.

As a colleague and a fellow Catholic, I felt today’s mass and funeral celebrations were a very fitting goodbye to someone I did not really get to know that well but someone who, as an elder statesman who had been round the block a few times, if I can put it that way, made me feel very welcome. He made a point of coming to say, “Hello. Who are you? Where are you from?” in his indescribable, unique way.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Marco Longhi and John Hayes

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I do not wish to comment on the speeches of Labour Members other than to highlight one particular speech that I did find moving, which was from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). I did agree with her comments in a substantive way and I suspect a number of Conservative Members also do, so I hope the Minister is aware of that.

Ask Labour Members if they champion free speech, and no doubt they would all queue up to say, “Yes, of course”, but is there not a spectacular contradiction in this stance and their intention to vote against this Bill? The hon. Labour Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) tweeted today:

“The biggest threat to free speech on university campuses is not student societies’ no-platform policies. It’s the Tory Hate Speech Bill, back in Parliament today, which threatens student societies’ freedom to choose who speaks at their events & their ability to protect students.”

Forgive me, but is not no-platforming exactly a form of censure? Is not describing the ability—the free ability—to choose a speaker simply an Orwellian turn of phrase, no doubt because some speakers must be more equal than others?

If we want universities to be centres of discussion, debate, expression, challenge and places to develop our young brilliant minds, must we not hear both sides of a debate? A young constituent of mine recently invited me to speak at his university’s Conservative Society event. Before I was allowed to speak, the students’ union insisted on assessing me, regardless of the fact that I am, like everyone else in this House, a democratically elected Member of Parliament. How can that be right?

Freedom of speech has allowed our society to evolve, to advance and to protect the vulnerable. It is freedom of speech that gave women the vote and it is freedom of speech that decriminalised homosexuality, but an unacceptable culture of censorship—a wokery, a heckler’s veto—has been allowed to develop on our campuses and to brainwash our young minds. The parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights released a report on freedom of speech in universities in 2018, and it found that one in four students do not share their true opinions because they clash with those promoted by their university, and a staggering 40% of students stated that views held by speakers had led more frequently to cancellation of events.

This very place is seen as a bastion of democracy and free speech underpins any liberal democracy, so I will be supporting the Bill.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), whom I respect very greatly, said this has always been a challenge and a problem, and indeed he is right—there have always been challenges to freedom in universities and elsewhere—but the point is that the circumstances have changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. It is to do with the wider problem of the brutalisation of debate, but it finds form in universities in a particularly arch form, and if we do not recognise that and do not respond to it through legislation, we will be failing in our duty to universities and the students who study at them.

[Marco Longhi]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the intervention, which was most welcome. I wholeheartedly agree with it, and how can censorship be something that we cannot take action against?

It would be nice to know how many Labour Members agree with the Voltairean principle that has now been quoted a couple of times in speeches prior to mine—

“I wholly disapprove of what you say—and I will defend to the death your right to say it”—

or perhaps hypocrisy is the order of the day again.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Marco Longhi and John Hayes

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Gentleman, who, as I said, has made a persuasive case, to which I hope the Government will respond in the way he suggests.

For most of us, home is where the heart is; it is where we find love and warmth. I guess that most people here would say that is true of their constituents, by and large, but for too many of the people we represent, home is where the hurt is. It is a place of hate and pain—a pain that, for many of them, dare not speak its name, because they feel shame. The irony—the bitter irony—is that some of the victims of domestic abuse feel that they are in some way to blame, that they are in some way guilty, and it goes on year after year, unrecognised, unnoticed, and therefore untreated, undealt with. This Bill is a brave Bill that, to some degree, begins a process. It will not end here; this is a start, not a conclusion. It begins a process by which we can highlight, recognise and then act upon this awful spectre of domestic abuse.

I remember the case of a constituent who came to see me. We all have, every week, every month, horrible things to deal with—things that are memorable in the worst way—but this constituent stands out in my memory. It was a gentleman I knew—I had known him for years; I knew his son. I had no reason to believe he was unhappy —he was always cheerful, a rather jolly sort of chap in his mid-50s. He arrived at a surgery; I did not know why, as I had received no notice of what he wanted to see me about. He sat in front of me and, with almost unbearable tension in the air, revealed to me that he had for years been the subject of domestic abuse. His wife had been beating him. He was a disabled man, so the poignancy of that exchange was exacerbated by knowing that she was much stronger than him and much more powerful. As he burst into tears, I recognised that he was far from the only person like that in my constituency and in all our constituencies. In two thirds of cases, the victims are women, but they can be men, too. That personal experience gave me an insight of what domestic abuse can be and mean for so many of those we represent.

         G. K. Chesterton remarked that

“the business done in the home is nothing less than the shaping of the bodies and souls of humanity.”

Home is where most of our experiences take place, and the impact on the formation of an individual’s earthly experience happens disproportionately in homes. That is why the Bill is important and why I commend so warmly Ministers for bringing it to the House, and particularly my great friend, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—I mean no disrespect to my equally good friend, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), by the way—for championing this cause.

My new clauses seek to do two things, as the House will have seen. The first is to monitor the connection between the kind of relationship that people are in and the propensity of domestic abuse. There is some evidence that the sort of relationship in which people are fitted has an impact on the likelihood of domestic abuse taking place. While postmodernists may resent the idea that the Government should play a part in family formation and social solidarity, I do not share that view because I am not postmodern—in fact, I am not even modern, as many people here know. I ask the Government to look at that in some detail, because there is some disturbing evidence to suggest that some kinds of relationships are particularly prone to domestic abuse, which is a heinous crime by any measure.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must absolutely not allow this vital piece of legislation to be potentially used by abusers to coerce pregnant women to have an abortion, and that our duty of protection towards vulnerable people should also have regard for the life of the unborn child, so new clause 28 has no place in the Bill?

[Sir John Hayes]

I was not going to deal with new clause 28 because it has been debated at some length, but I simply say to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who tabled it, and who is a respected and experienced Member of this House, that it was not wise to do so for two reasons: not only because it is imperfectly drawn up, but because, if anything, it takes emphasis away from the main thrust of the Bill, which is to deal with the heinous crime that I have described—