Hillsborough: Bishop James Jones Report

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his observations, which I listened to with care. On the issue of equality of arms, it has to be observed, I hope, that the changes that have been made are extremely significant, not least because there is a commitment to ensure is proportionality, so we can no longer go back to a situation where the state is apparently using its deep pockets to unfairly load the dice against victims. That is being changed, and we are very committed to that direction of travel.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I listened very carefully to the Lord Chancellor’s very considered statement, and the question that comes to mind is: why not? Why not have a Hillsborough law? That has not been answered.

[Alex Chalk]

This has, of course, been considered very carefully across Government Departments, and there are countervailing interests, which I am very happy to discuss with the hon. Member. There are issues of concern, and if we look at how the Bill was initially drafted by Andy Burnham, there was a very low bar—[Interruption.] Well, there is a lot of complexity to it, and I am very happy to discuss it with the hon. Member. However, the central point I want to get across today is that Bishop James Jones was talking about changing the culture. As he himself has noted, legislation is not always the answer; changing the culture is critically important. Through this charter, with the IPA, we will make enormous strides towards ensuring that this is part of what it means to be a public service in Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. He and I have met, along with the other MP for Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma). As he is aware, a sale is progressing, and of course there is commercial sensitivity attached to that, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that assurances for purchase will be required by solicitors and all required due diligence will be undertaken. I will be happy to talk with him further.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Louise and her family are facing unnecessary and quite challenging delays in the local coroner’s service in Cheshire. This seems to be happening far too often at the moment. What more can Ministers do to speed up that process?

[Mike Freer]

As the coroners are independent judicial office holders, we can continue to raise particular cases to find out what specific issues are holding back those cases. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me with the details of that case, I will ask the Chief Coroner to investigate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

You could always reopen the court at Chorley to help.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Victims of crime are having to wait up to four and a half years for their day in court. Since 2010, 50% of magistrates courts have been closed. Do the Secretary of State and the Minister believe that is a coincidence?

[Mike Freer]

In terms of the efficiency of the courts estate, I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am less hung up about the availability of buildings in every town and city and more hung up about whether we have sitting days and judges to ensure that our criminal justice system is swift and fair.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

If I may start at the end of the hon. Lady’s question—no. I do not think that we will be taking lessons from the Opposition Front Benchers when it comes to clamping down on crime and standing up to criminals.

The people who work in the prohibition service do a unique and immensely difficult job, making difficult judgments and helping to support people, but also determining when it is necessary for them to be recalled to prison. It is important that when things do go wrong we learn lessons, and we have been learning those lessons. Let me also gently say to the hon. Lady that, sadly, serious further offences, although rare among people who have come out of prison on probation, happen every year, and it is important that we bear down on them and seek to learn lessons whenever they occur.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

3. What recent estimate he has made of the size of the backlog of criminal court cases in Weaver Vale constituency.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

4. What steps the Government are taking to reduce the backlog in the criminal courts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)]

The outstanding case load at Chester Crown court at the end of September stood at 626. We are taking action across the criminal justice system to bring down backlogs and improve waiting times for those who use our courts. We have introduced new legislation to give more flexibility for cases to be returned to the magistrates courts, we have ramped up judicial capacity, and we are investing a significant amount of funding for the criminal justice system.

[Mike Amesbury]

We are now witnessing a backlog of 60,000 Crown court cases and 350,000 magistrates court cases, all as a direct result of political choices to close 260 courts, one of them in Runcorn in my constituency—it became a cannabis farm next to a police station before being burnt down. Does the Minister actually believe that a four-year wait for victims to have their day in court is acceptable?

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Gentleman is right on one count: it is about political choices. If the Opposition stopped backing strikers, there might not be the current case backlog in our criminal justice system, which is a direct result of action by the Criminal Bar Association. It is this Government who are increasing the judiciary, who have settled the dispute and who are increasing court capacity, for instance by opening more Nightingale courts. We are taking the action; the Opposition back the strikers.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)]

I am aware that this is an incredibly sensitive issue, and one that the Government want to get right. I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government will be publishing the response to that review very soon—as soon as we can do so.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

T2. Like those of many Members in the Chamber today, my constituency is a legal aid desert; in fact, the nearest centre for special provision, welfare advice, mental health and much, much more is miles away in Wilmslow. After 13 years of Conservative government, that is not good enough, is it? What is the Minister going to do to improve access for all?

[Dominic Raab]

We published our response to the Bellamy review and the criminal legal aid independent review, and indeed are already implementing those reforms. They include uplifts of 15% to most legal aid fee schemes, which is very significant given the current context of public sector pay challenges. The hon. Gentleman needs to put this in some kind of perspective: just to give one aspect, criminal legal aid spend is expected to be £1.2 billion a year, so we are doing the right thing to make sure we support the most vulnerable who need access to legal aid and to the courts.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I want to begin by making a comment in this House on the Government’s procedure in the other place. The Government tried to sideline the Commons from its role in the democratic process by bringing into the Lords substantial but last-minute amendments on protests that would have had a fundamental impact on our rights. The Lords had very little time to scrutinise them and that is generally considered to be very poor form. Instead of chasing headlines and rushing in last-minute sweeping amendments clearly not thought through, they should be focusing on driving up prosecution rates, improving their woeful record on crime and dealing with the problems that really matter to the British people.

Labour voted against the Bill in its entirety on Second Reading and Third Reading because of parts 3 and 4, which represent a power grab that effectively bans peaceful protests and will compound the inequalities experienced by Gypsies and Travellers. I want to pay particular thanks to colleagues in the other place who have stood up for democracy and prevented the draconian provisions on protests that the Government tried to get through at the last minute.

Before I come to the protest amendments, I want briefly to touch on the other amendments in this grouping. First, we are grateful that the Government have listened to reason on so many of our amendments. I want to mention two in this grouping in particular. I pay tribute to the hard work of Lord Bassam in pressuring the Government to extend football banning orders to online racist abuse in Lords amendments 148, 118, 119 and 120. Racists who abuse football players do not deserve to be anywhere near a game of football. The amendments send a strong message that disgraceful racist behaviour has no place in the world of football, online or in person.

We are also glad that Lords amendment 89, which will repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824, has been accepted by the Government and that they have finally decided to act. No one should be criminalised simply for sleeping rough. But I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance to the House that this crucial change will not be kicked into the long grass and that the new legislation will be brought in at the earliest opportunity.

I want to touch on Lords amendment 71. The Government are refusing to introduce a duty of candour on police officers at this stage to co-operate with inquiries. The Minister claimed that the existing schedule on standards of professional behaviour is sufficient, but we do not believe that it is. It states that police officers must act with honesty and integrity, which of course they should, but the amendment passed in the Lords goes significantly further to ensure that where the police are required to provide information to inquiries or other such proceedings, they must have regard to the pleadings allegations terms of reference and parameters of the relevant proceedings, but not be limited by them, in particular where they hold information that might change the ambit of the proceedings inquiry or investigation. That is a really important distinction. The Lords amendment goes significantly further than the statutory duty of co-operation.

In June 2021, the Daniel Morgan independent panel, which took eight years to report, recommended the creation of a statutory duty of candour to be owed by all law enforcement agencies to those whom they serve. It is time for decisions to be made and for actions to be taken to restore public confidence in the police service.

Part 4 of the Bill represents an attack on the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, even though the police have made it clear that they neither want nor need these powers. The Government have rejected our calls to remove part 4, and that is one of the major reasons why we voted against the Bill in its entirety. Although Lords amendments 91 to 93 are very small technical amendments, they confirm the principles around the powers of seizure of property that we Opposition Members believe are unfair.

The problem that many Government Members seem to articulate whenever we debate this issue is actually one of antisocial behaviour. The solution to antisocial behaviour, wherever it comes, is tougher antisocial behaviour action. Under this Government, we saw 1.7 million incidents in the year to September 2021 and nothing has been done. Marginalising an entire minority is not the answer to antisocial behaviour. We need to distinguish between the two and not criminalise a minority.

I turn to the Lords amendments on protest. Over the past five days, thousands of people have been arrested and detained at anti-war protests across Russia. We would all defend their right to protest and yet here we are, in the mother of all democracies, debating an amendment to a Bill that would criminalise singing at a peaceful protest in this country. Britain has a long-standing and important democratic freedom to gather and to speak or to protest. The Minister quoted an HMICFRS report, but he misunderstood its conclusions. The report said that we need a

“modest reset of the scales”

because police forces are usually good at planning protests but the “balance may tip”. The report’s recommendations were not legislative; they were to update and improve guidance to senior police officers, to improve the way in which the police assess the impact of protests, to improve police intelligence and to improve debrief processes, all of which are very sensible.

The Government asked the HMICFRS to look at some legislative options, which it did, and it gave some qualified support to some of them, but at no point was noise any part of that conversation. I have spoken to many senior police officers and at no point have any of them asked for any changes to the law on noise. The Bill goes way beyond the right balance between the right to protest and the right for others, which we agree with, to go about their daily lives.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend concur that those who protested in Peterloo were probably a little bit noisy, as were those who protested for women’s suffrage and those who protested against the poll tax? Indeed, she mentioned the international situation in Russia. This is about freedom and democracy. I am sure that she would concur with that.

[Sarah Jones]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who put it so well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely right. The key worker scheme that we are rolling out allows the prison officer to develop a relationship with an individual prisoner, to work with them on their sentence plan and education plan. One reason why it is so important is that it will help us to settle people into the community much earlier in their sentence.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Between April and December 2017, National Careers Service advisers aided almost 4,000 prisoners into employment or non-OLASS—offender learning and skills service—learning. How many prisoners have been referred to employment or education since the Government scrapped those advisers in March? The Minister has rightly said that this is important for rehabilitation.

[Rory Stewart]

First, I pay tribute to the work of the National Careers Service, but there are many other providers working within the prison estate. The New Futures Network, which we are now rolling out, is doing things that were not done by the National Careers Service, in particular bringing more employers into prison to develop those relationships. There is a great deal we could learn, but we believe the current system will deliver better results and our employment figures for prisoners are looking very promising.

Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

I do not quite understand what the hon. Gentleman is talking about when he says that this “exploitation” has to end. In fact, the trend is that whiplash claims are going down. We have heard the Secretary of State himself say, “Of course, many claims are genuine.” Even the way that that is said implies that somehow people are on the make. Most claims are genuine. [Interruption.] I do not see what is so amusing about that. There is not a compensation culture in this county, whatever the Government’s friends in the insurance industry might be telling them.

When I mentioned pre-eminent legal experts, I was including former Lord Chief Justices who expressed their concerns about the Bill’s impact on access to justice and on the independence of the judiciary. So Labour Members are clear that this Bill, in its current form, cannot be supported. Unless it is very substantially amended in Committee, we will vote against it on Third Reading. We hope that the Government will take seriously the amendments that we are tabling this week, which build on the points raised by many colleagues in the Lords.

Before I talk about our opposition to many of the measures included in the Bill, I want to draw Members’ attention to the associated statutory instruments. This Bill, as we have heard, is a part of a wider package of reforms—a package that will make it harder for workers to get compensation for workplace injuries, and harder for genuinely injured road users to get compensation. Through statutory instrument, the Government are seeking to increase—

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Hundreds of thousands of workers could be denied access to justice for genuine comprehensive claims. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers estimates that up to 350,000 workers could be denied access because of these measures.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. USDAW and other organisations are right to say that hundreds of thousands of people could be negatively impacted.

Through statutory instrument, the Government seek to increase the small claims limit from £1,000 to £2,000 in all cases and from £1,000 to £5,000 in road traffic accident cases. We are very concerned about what that means in practice. A significant number of claims henceforth will be dealt with through the small claims track procedure, where even in a successful claim, no legal costs are usually awarded.

Without legal fees being covered, tens of thousands of working people will simply be priced out of obtaining legal assistance. Many will drop their cases altogether. Others will fight on but do so representing themselves, not only making their pursuit of justice more difficult, but placing serious pressures on the courts. Others will pay their own legal fees out of their compensation, which in effect means a cut in their compensation levels. Of course, other workers will conclude that when their route to justice through a court or tribunal is removed, they have no alternative but to resort to industrial action to achieve redress.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I would like to take away and reflect on the serious points made by the hon. Lady. Obviously the conduct of a trial in court is a matter for the trial judge, but I will look seriously at the issue and write to her when I have had the chance to take advice on the matter.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

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

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Lidington)]

Since the last Justice questions I have introduced a new urgent notification process, which allows the chief inspector of prisons formally and publicly to notify me, as Secretary of State, where he judges that urgent action is required to improve a prison with significant problems. This new procedure will require a joint response from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and my Department to ensure that decisive action is taken to address immediate concerns, and we will demonstrate our commitment to transparency by publishing both the chief inspector’s notification letter and my response within 28 days.

[Mike Amesbury]

I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in condemning the shocking and senseless attack on a police community support officer in my constituency. The PCSO was reportedly deliberately lured into some woods before being attacked with a knife. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet me and other relevant partners to discuss what more the Government can do to ensure that our justice system properly reflects the gravity of such serious crimes?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax]

As my hon. Friend says, even if those debates had happened, the legislation could not have been changed. Where were all these loud voices? Where were you all over the past 40 years? Why did you not question what was being imposed on our country and our constituents? Where were you?

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

rose—

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this historic debate. It is getting late and a good many of the issues that need raising have been raised, but I would just like to return to a few of them.

I rise to support the Bill for one very good reason: it is the sort of Bill most of my constituents would like to see. They voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU and, like me, they want us to leave in as orderly a fashion as possible. The Bill ensures that we do not create legal black holes and therefore grand uncertainty for employers, employees and investors. It allows future Parliaments to amend all laws as they see fit and, in that sense, allows Parliament to become sovereign again. It is adaptable to the inevitable uncertainties of the Brexit process. The Bill achieves all that, and it is to the credit of the Government and of officials that they have managed to do it under tight time constraints.

There are some reasoned and principled objections to the Bill and to how it has been presented. It is clear that parts of the House will require guarantees over the so-called Henry VIII powers. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) mooted earlier, that might be possible if the Government set a legal limit on their ambitions. That said, we must not in our admirable quest for parliamentary scrutiny forget that this is a fiendishly complex transfer of legal powers the like of which this House has never seen. For that reason, we must afford the Government a degree of plasticity. We do not yet know how the final deal will turn out or when it will be available to the House. The Bill must be adaptable to permit that process to proceed as best it can and to allow for a multitude of outcomes.

Getting that give and take on particular clauses and powers will take time. If the House finds that it does not have enough time in Committee, it must have more. Call me boring, Mr Speaker, but I was a bit disappointed when the House did not sit past five on Thursday—it was very sad to see such big beasts manacled by a five-minute time constraint. I heard the Father of the House rightly pooh-pooh the Blairite family-friendly hours under which we labour. Family friendly? Is someone yanking my chain? Which of us in the Chamber today gets to put our children to bed of a night as it is? We should carry on sitting until our work is done; if we have to sit late, if we have to sit some Fridays, if we have to think about the length of recess, we must. The importance of getting the Bill right goes beyond those concerns. This is a job that requires sacrifice.

It is my firm belief that this Bill can be got right. I know that Members opposite feel the same, because in all the hours of debate that we have had none of them has been able to raise a serious reason why it should be voted down on Second Reading.

[Mike Amesbury]

This debate is about not if but how we leave the EU. I was elected to this House very recently to speak up for my constituents, not as a spectator. I want Parliament to take control, stand up for democracy and protect parliamentary sovereignty.

[Alex Burghart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

I know that Opposition Members feel the same as me, because they have not raised a single meaningful reason why the Bill should be voted down. As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said on Thursday with a logician’s concision, to say that we will oppose the whole Bill because we disagree with a few clauses is a non-sequitur. If we go hunting for the sequitur, however, I believe that we can find it in the admirably principled intervention made by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) earlier. The truth is that if the Bill were to fail tonight it would be very difficult to bring it back. The Government would have to introduce a new Bill in a new Session, or this one would have to be reintroduced in a suitably different form so as not to fall foul of the same-question rules. In short, voting this Bill down runs the risk of having no Bill. It runs the risk of legal black holes, of terrible uncertainty, and of investor panic and economic shock. That is what the Opposition will be voting for tonight.

I will go further than that. The Opposition Front Benchers know full well that if they defeated the Government they would not stop there; they would try to bring the Government down. The Opposition wish to vote this Bill down tonight because they know that defeat on such a central piece of legislation might cause the Government to fall. That is their motivation—nothing more, nothing less. The shadow Secretary of State does not want the Government to go back to the drawing board, he wants the drawing board for himself. He says that he wants the article 50 process to succeed. I believe him, but I do not believe that he wants this Government to succeed in doing it. I believe that he will put the interests of his party above the interests of the country in that regard. If he succeeded in his aims, he would do so only after a period of terrible turbulence for the country and after a terrible loss of time—and time, right now, is a terribly precious commodity. He says that he sees this not as a great repeal Bill but as a great power-grab Bill. Well, that is certainly the purpose for which he intends to use it. He is accusing Government Members of that of which he is guilty. I ask him to do the honourable thing and to put his political ambitions on ice for the purposes of the vote tonight so that this House can move more quickly to a detailed discussion of the essential clauses within this Bill.