Abortion Act

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) must be congratulated on securing this debate, which is extremely topical and follows a great deal of reporting on this very serious issue. It is virtually impossible to be prosecuted in this country for carrying out an illegal abortion. I have found out that between 2003 to 2007, for instance, only seven people were prosecuted. It would be interesting to have more up-to-date information from the Attorney-General when he responds.

The real issue for Parliament and for this debate is whether Parliament makes the laws, or whether the Crown Prosecution Service does. This Parliament makes the laws, and clearly when it framed the Abortion Act—whatever one’s views on the Act’s merit or otherwise—it never envisaged a situation where there would be gender selection in this country. In my view, it is outrageous that in Britain today the most dangerous position to be in is that of a female fetus. That is completely unacceptable. It should not be tolerated in a free society; we should not tolerate it.

The actions of the CPS have been extraordinary. It conducted a 19-month inquiry and has conceded that the evidence is sufficient to warrant a prosecution with a “realistic prospect of conviction.” Jenny Hopkins, deputy chief Crown prosecutor for London, said that

“on balance there is enough evidence to justify bringing proceedings…This is a case-specific decision on the individual facts; it is not a policy decision of general application”.

I think we need clarification from the Attorney-General. If Parliament has framed an Act, and there is enough evidence to prosecute under it, why has the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute?

The decision not to prosecute the two doctors in question may not specifically be a

“policy decision of general application”—

that is what the CPS is talking about—but it certainly seems indicative to us of a pre-existing policy not to prosecute. Putting it simply, the CPS has found that we have an Act of Parliament, and there is enough evidence to prosecute, but it has decided that is not in the public interest to do so. Why is it up to the CPS to determine what is in the public interest?

I remind the Chamber what The Daily Telegraph found. One doctor said:

“I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination.”

Another doctor was also filmed agreeing to conduct the procedure, even though he told the woman:

“It’s like female infanticide, isn’t it?”

Do we want that sort of thing to go on in this country?

The CPS claims that prosecuting the two doctors in question was not “in the public interest”. I believe that the CPS is simply wrong. It is in the public interest that laws are enforced, and if a law is against the public interest, it must be changed through the normal legislative process. If we have not framed the Abortion Act in a sufficiently clear way, it should be looked at again.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good case about what is in the public interest. Is he aware that India has 37 million more men than women, and that what we are debating today is the cause of that? Does he agree that whether that arises from the abortion of female fetuses or female infanticide, and whether it takes place in Bombay, Beijing or Birmingham, it is wrong?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, I am grateful to my hon. Friend—it is quite wrong. India’s 2011 census shows 7.1 million fewer girls than boys under the age of six—a gap that has almost doubled over two decades. Rather than a function of villages being backward or poor, this is a phenomenon that grows more pronounced, apparently, as Indians grow richer. Studies show that wealthier, better-educated Indians are more likely to have boys, because they can afford the newish tools of ultrasound and gender-specific abortion. In Mumbai, some clinics market their services as cheaper than dowries:

“Better 500 rupees now than 500,000 later”,

as one advert put it. We all know that weddings are expensive, but it is a shocking statement. The message is abhorrent in our eyes, and our instinct is not to look at the issue at all, but this is going on, and we do not want it going on in our country.

The General Medical Council is being strong on the issue, and we must commend it for investigating the claims of illegal activity by doctors. We welcome the statements and strong words of GMC chief executive, Niall Dickson:

“Doctors who do not comply with the law relating to abortion are putting their registration and careers at risk”.

I put it to the Attorney-General that given the infinitesimally low rate of prosecutions for illegal abortions, and given what the director of the CPS has said, we live in a situation where doctors, frankly, can get away with it. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate, spoke most forcibly about pre-photocopied forms going out, but it goes further than that. We know, from The Daily Telegraph investigation, that doctors are specifically, personally cognisant that they are committing female infanticide. The issue for this House—for a liberal, western society—is whether that is tolerable. I believe that it is not, and that it is now up to Parliament and the Government to take action. I look forward to the Attorney-General’s response.

Phone Hacking

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Given what we have been told about the extent of the police and media connection, and about the way in which many stories appeared in the press with incredible speed the very next day, thanks to those tip-offs, does my right hon. Friend agree that the public will be satisfied with nothing less than what he is recommending?

[Simon Hughes]

I agree.

Another issue is the future of the companies involved and their interrelationship. I have no criticism of the way in which the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport has carried out his inquiries into competition in the British media industry. However, as the shadow Home Secretary and others have implied, there is a separate issue, which is about “fit and proper persons”. That is to do with the regulation of the media. Ofcom, the regulator, is based in my constituency. The rules are clear and I have checked them with Ofcom today. Under section 3(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1990, Ofcom

“shall not grant a licence to any person unless they are satisfied that he is a fit and proper person to hold it; and…shall do all that they can to secure that, if they cease to be so satisfied in the case of any person holding a licence, that person does not remain the holder of the licence”.

Ofcom therefore has an ongoing duty to be satisfied that those at BSkyB are fit and proper persons to hold a broadcasting licence.

For the avoidance of doubt, I think it is appropriate for Ofcom to be formally requested to consider whether BSkyB is a company whose directors will be fit and proper people. As the local Member of Parliament for Ofcom, I intend to go through its door and make that request in person before the end of the week. It needs to know that this House, which owes the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) a great tribute for initiating this debate, wants that matter to be considered at the earliest possible opportunity.

Ofcom will, of course, not prejudge a criminal trial. It cannot come to a conclusion that somebody is guilty of an offence before they are found to be guilty. However, it has a statutory obligation to consider at any time who is appropriate to hold a broadcasting licence. The message from this House must be that we want it actively to consider that obligation. If it comes to the view that the future owners of BSkyB are inappropriate, it should rule accordingly, which would mean that the BSkyB merger could not go ahead.

Legal aid

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ms Buck]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point; it will be one of the issues that I address. There is an argument in addition to the argument about how much we fund legal aid by. There is consensus that the budget cannot expand indefinitely, but there are still issues about the speed at which and the manner in which legal aid funding is withdrawn and the impact that that could have on providers.

I think that value for money was also at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Is it not the case that expenditure on legal aid and advice services does provide value for money, because it ensures that public services and others operate effectively and well, that errors are corrected and that public law is constantly challenged? It also helps people to redress wrongs and ensures that the take-up of benefits and other services is done properly.

The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, among other organisations, convincingly argues that there is a very poor business case for what the Government propose. Taking so much social welfare out of the scope of legal aid will undermine value for money. It is argued that between £2 and £10 is saved for every pound invested in the legal aid budget. An analysis based on data from the civil and social justice survey and on Legal Services Commission outcomes data estimates a saving of £2 for every £1 spent in relation to housing, £3 for every £1 spent on debt advice, £8.80 for every £1 spent on benefits advice and £7 for every £1 spent in relation to employment. That is besides the benefit to the individual; 80% of social welfare legal aid cases record positive outcomes for the clients.

It is impossible in a limited time—I want other hon. Members to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate—to pay proper attention to every area of civil law affected by the proposals, so I shall make just a few remarks on the areas that cause me greatest concern.

In relation to family law, no one disputes the value of mediation or the fact that in cases that go to court, the court action can have an extremely damaging impact on the families. However, relying on mediation is not always an option. It is not always the case that both partners are prepared to go to mediation. Also, it implies that there is a willingness to compromise and that the compromise should be somewhere around the middle of the argument about child welfare, maintenance or whatever. That ignores the fact that in many instances, one partner or the other has behaved excessively badly or is making unrealistic demands; indeed, it encourages them to make such demands.

Good and powerful cases have been raised by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, and I shall read the details of two into the record as examples. One case study states:

“I am advising a client who is seeking contact with his children. The children’s mother has remarried and has a new child with her husband. She seeks to marginalize our client from the children’s lives, has denied contact, refuses to engage in mediation and has moved to a secret address. The case requires a preliminary application to ascertain the children’s whereabouts and once identified an application for contact. Clearly mediation is impossible and without early advice the client will have absolutely no idea how to re-establish contact with his children. His options would be to try to find them through any means available to him which would not be helpful or to give up which would deny the children the right to have a relationship with their father. With early advice, the application for disclosure would be made by solicitors and once the children’s whereabouts were identified a tactical attempt to negotiate and encourage mediation…would take place. This particular client has some learning difficulties and to navigate the court system as a litigant in person would almost certainly be impossible and any attempts made would be hugely time consuming.”

The other case study states:

“I am advising a client. He has 4 children and has shared residence for all those and is very active in their lives. We have helped him in the past with residence issues with the benefit of legal aid…He is now facing an application by one of the Mothers to take his 14 year old daughter to New Zealand where the Mother has a 2 year work contract. If this is allowed, from seeing his daughter half the week he will be lucky to see her in the holidays and will not be able to afford air fares…In future this client will have to deal with this on his own. This will lead to him probably giving up on fighting the application.”

Even in cases in which domestic violence is not an issue, without legal aid there are real dangers that individuals, particularly those who have difficulty in being sufficiently articulate or confident to navigate the courts system, will lose access to their children.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very powerful case, but given that she has said that civil, family and social law are bearing the brunt of the proposed cuts, I wonder whether she will comment—or the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), will comment later—on where her party would have made the cuts had it been re-elected. As she mentioned, cuts would have been made had Labour been re-elected. The cuts proposed are less than 20%. If criminal law is to be protected, where does she or the shadow Minister suggest that the Government make the cuts? The speed and manner of the cuts seem to be the main criticism. We would like to see more detail.

[Ms Buck]

As I said, the previous Labour Government had already made cuts to the legal aid budget, which were highly controversial. Many hon. Members who are in this Chamber made fierce representations on that point. I have already said that there were areas, particularly very high-cost criminal cases, in which the Government intended to go further. Ministers were also examining ways in which the civil and social welfare budget could be protected within the global legal aid budget, because it was understood that in many cases, savings in that area would lead to a false economy. Therefore I will not be drawn into an argument about equivalence of cuts and into coming out with every figure, because I dispute the basis of what the hon. Lady has said.

One of my greatest concerns is about the proposed cuts in relation to education. The Government’s intention is to take education out of the scope of legal aid. Given the often unfulfilled statutory duty on local authorities to ensure that young people receive an education, that is bound to hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

I am indebted to Just for Kids Law, a specialist organisation in my constituency, for the information that it has provided and for its assistance with a number of cases that I have referred to it. Last year, Just for Kids Law took 34 cases, with two thirds having a satisfactory outcome. These are cases of children without a school place and cases in which there are serious disputes in relation to children who have or who require statements of special educational needs. Given that the latest figures for my borough show that we have 364 children without a school place at this point in the school year, the need for representation for parents is extremely clear.

I shall give a couple of examples of cases, from Just for Kids Law’s caseload, which would receive no representation in future.

“E…is a highly gifted boy who is on the autistic spectrum. His father was offered a job in New Zealand so the family emigrated and E…started Year 7 there. Regrettably there was no special educational needs provision for him and he was so severely bullied that, by August, his parents had withdrawn him from school and made arrangements for the family to return to the UK. They had kept in regular contact with their local authority, however, when they returned in January 2009, there was no place available...After six weeks at home with his mother he was provided with a Personal Tutor for two hours per week. His behaviour was rapidly deteriorating and he started self harming. He told JfK Law he…wanted to go to school like everyone else and didn’t want to end up”—

in a dead-end job. Just For Kids Law made representations to the local authority and, when that was unsuccessful, issued urgent judicial review proceedings. After two mediation meetings with the local authority lawyers, he was eventually offered a place at a specialist autistic centre that integrates into a mainstream school. Without representation at every stage, it is likely that that child would have ended up with no school place and no provision, with catastrophic consequences for him.

The second example states:

“R…was permanently excluded from school in 2006. He has special educational needs and had been receiving specialised support”

for his behavioural problems, which had been successfully managed in reception and year 1, but in year 2 his behaviour worsened. Instead of referring him for an assessment for a statement of special educational needs or asking for the local authority’s advice the school permanently excluded him. His mother felt that was because her relationship with the head teacher had broken down. Just For Kids Law advised the mother at the governing body appeal, which she lost.

“JfK Law then appealed to the Independent Appeals Panel…and made representations that it was not lawful to exclude a child because of the breakdown in relationship between a Head Teacher and the mother, the school should have dealt with the problem by way of a “managed move” to another school that could meet his needs….The IAP agreed with JfK Law’s representations”

and overturned the permanent exclusion, which is no longer on the child’s record. That is a case about a very vulnerable family.

We have referred to housing and homelessness. The Government intend to retain provision in cases of people at risk of imminent homelessness, but, perversely, they are taking debt and other areas of financial advice out of scope. Those issues are almost always the preliminary problems that lead to homelessness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for initiating this incredibly important debate, which cuts to the heart of the kind of society that we want to live in. It is important for the House to record that we do not want to go back to the time when this work was being done by volunteers. We talk about access to justice, but at its heart is social justice and the kind of society that we seek. I believe that we should live in a society where the most vulnerable have access to justice.

I speak as a former Minister with responsibility for legal aid. If we go back to the earlier part of the last decade, before the 30 consultations that we heard of, I was considering fixed fees and new ways of contracting, but that is a long, long way from the Green Paper.

I remind the House of what the Prime Minister said in the run-up to the election about family policies. He said that he wanted to make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe. Only a few days ago, he said:

“The seeds of so many problems, as well as success stories, are sown in the early years. Family is where people learn to be good citizens, to take responsibility, to live in harmony with others. Families are the building blocks of a strong, cohesive society.”

He cannot make such pronouncements and then run a coach and horses through family life in constituencies throughout the country.

The services that family practitioners provide for vulnerable families facing breakdown and for people having to decide who should have contact and how it is to be arranged, are essential in modern society. If we take that advice away, except in cases of domestic violence, we will see chaos. We will see people presenting at court as litigants in person. When those cases come to the county court, people will not be receiving advice from the court clerks or the judges; they will simply get a form to fill in. They will be on their own. What will happen? Families, but mostly women, will not get that advice. I ask the Minister to think hard about whether that is the sort of family that we want, and whether that is consistent with an undertaking to put families at the centre of British life.

[Margot James]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lammy]

I will not give way, as there is so little time.

It cannot be right that people will get a practitioner only if they already have an injunction. Are we really saying that a woman should pitch up to court on her own if she is concerned about her children having contact with her husband, who may be violent? Is it right that she should have to make her way on her own, in such vulnerable contexts, without access to legal advice? Are we really saying that when families are in dispute—perhaps one parent wants to take a child abroad—the parent fighting that decision should have to find access to justice on their own and without sufficient funds?

Are we saying—I ask as the Member of Parliament in whose constituency the baby P case occurred—to the many thousands of families affected by care proceedings that ultimately end in adoption, which changes the legal nature of the child’s relationship with its parents, that they cannot have legal aid to fight it or challenge it in court if they are concerned about losing their children? That cannot be right. That is not the kind of society that we want.

The policy is not consistent with the big society. Yesterday we saw the announcement of cuts of up to 40% in local government budgets. That will decimate much of the voluntary sector that the Ministry of Justice says people should rely upon. How can that be part of the big society? What will happen with welfare benefit cuts, given that many of the groups that support the most vulnerable—those with mental health problems, immigrants and those who have been without work for a considerable time—will find support withdrawn at this time of profound change? How can that be right?

In relation to immigration, the Churches consistently remind the state about its responsibility. We have pared back so much on legal advice about immigration and asylum matters that lawyers specialising in this area now help the system; they help constituents provide information to the bureaucracy—to the court system—that is easy to understand, which makes justice quicker. This Green Paper will drive those people underground; it will drive them into ghettos where they cannot be seen or found, as they will not have the right documents. That is the sort of thing that we see in other parts of continental Europe. We do not want that in this country.

The Green Paper is particularly worrying. It is possible to pass it off as unimportant, but we cannot call ourselves a civilised country unless we provide adequate legal aid. The previous Government stabilised legal aid. In that context, I contend that enough is enough. Now is the time to stand up and say what civilised really means. It is certainly not the time to walk alongside hypocrisy by suggesting that we can support families, that we can have a big society, that we can be fair in a civilised democracy and then run a coach and horses through the only access to justice that vulnerable people need.