Human Rights in the UK

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. I am conscious that several Members wish to speak. I intend to move to the Front-Bench spokespeople at 3.28 pm, so I advise Members that they will have to be relatively concise if everyone is to speak. I call John Howell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. Three people wish to speak. If Members can keep their remarks to about five minutes, including interventions, that might allow Front-Bench speakers time. I intend to call the first Front-Bench speaker at 3.28 pm.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

That is a real worry. This will not get media attention or airtime, but it is a big chunk of our economic footprint. It is not just a trade issue with the EU; it is a trade issue in respect of all the free trade agreements with the rest of the world.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is another complication. If we are saying that we are going to have regulatory alignment on cross-border issues with regard to Northern Ireland, specifically on agriculture, given that we are in the EU orbit in that sense, how on earth can we then have WTO trade arrangements elsewhere unless we give the same conditions that apply to the Irish Republic to every other country in the world, which the EU cannot accept?

[Mr Leslie]

There is a big issue relating to the most favoured nation status arrangement because of clauses in the existing EU free trade agreements. If we are given a deep and special relationship with the EU, the EU will be obliged to offer the same access to Korea and to Canada under the comprehensive economic and trade agreement. There are implications to all this. If we pull one thread, all sorts of things appear.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Put simply, on the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which was a sovereign Act of this House—the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made—the House of Commons agreed, by six to one, that it would deliberately transfer to the people the decision whether to leave or remain in the European Union. Unless that Act is repealed, I do not believe that that decision should be returned to by the House.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to the millions of people who died in two world wars. Those two world wars took place before the existence of the European Union and we in Europe, including this country, Germany and France, have lived in peace for decades. Is not it the case that France, Germany and other countries will now never, ever go to war because of the European Union?

[Sir William Cash]

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that no two democracies have ever gone to war with one another. I declare a personal interest in this issue because my father was killed in Normandy, fighting for this country, and I am proud that he got the Military Cross for that reason. This is something that many people in this country really understand and believe. It is not easy to explain, but it is to do with the fact that people understand the real reasons that self-government is so important.

The proposal in the European Communities Act 1972, which we are now repealing, was the greatest power grab since Oliver Cromwell. It was done in 1972 with good intentions. I voted yes in 1975 and I did it for the reason the hon. Gentleman mentions: I believed it would create stability in Europe. The problem is that it has done exactly the opposite. Look, throughout the countries of the European Union, at the grassroots movements and the rise of the far right, which I deeply abhor and have opposed ever since I set about the Maastricht rebellion in 1990. I set out then why I was so opposed to the Maastricht treaty: it was creating European Government and making this country ever more subservient to the rulemaking of the European Union. As I said in response to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), that has been conducted behind closed doors. We have been shackled by European laws. He asked at one point if we could give one example. The ports regulation is a very good example. We fought that in the European Scrutiny Committee and in the House of Commons, but we were not allowed to make any difference to it. It was opposed by the Government, it was opposed by the Opposition, it was opposed by all the port employers and it was opposed by the trade unions. What could we do about it? Absolutely nothing!

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

Yes. There are massive risks, and if we do not have an orderly transition, there will be big consequences. However, although we have identified 29 March 2019 as a key date, there is another critical date, which will fall in the first quarter of the next calendar year. Many businesses are saying that they must have certainty about what the shape of the transition will be by that time.

The clock is ticking much more swiftly than Ministers may have appreciated. We need to know that they are rolling up their sleeves ahead of the European Council, which begins on 14 December. We may just complete the Committee stage during that week, but it is vital for businesses to have certainty, and it is also vital for Ministers to explain how aspects of the transition will take place. In a way, it would be disloyal to the Prime Minister for them not to do so.

[Mike Gapes]

My hon. Friend has mentioned the concern felt by businesses. That concern is widespread, ranging from the Confederation of British Industry to the Federation of Small Businesses. It is also felt by the workers and their representatives, including the TUC and many individual trade unions. Why on earth are the Government being so stubborn?

[Mr Leslie]

We can only speculate. There was even a suggestion at one point that Ministers had not yet broached the topic of transition with their counterparts in the EU and Michel Barnier. Thankfully the Prime Minister raised it in her Florence speech, and I hope that her Ministers are now getting it under way, but we need more certainty and clarity. There is a serious period—two years plus—during which legal arrangements must be put in place. It is not unreasonable for the House to ask Ministers to clarify the position at the earliest opportunity, and certainly by the time the Bill receives Royal Assent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

For the benefit of viewers who have just tuned in on BBC Parliament, I am happy to give way to the Minister a second time if he would like to state very clearly for the record whether, in his view, on that fundamental point, the jurisdiction of the ECJ will apply during the transition period. It is a very simple question and it only requires a yes or no answer, but he will not respond.

[Mike Gapes]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I will certainly give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mike Gapes]

I suspect that the Minister has been taking lessons from the Foreign Secretary. He says that we should read Hansard, but perhaps we will find a giant lacuna there, and perhaps these issues will come back to haunt him.

Criminal Justice System: Equality of Access

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered equality of access to justice in the criminal justice system.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this important topic. In the past six years, many lawyers have spoken of their fears about access to justice. When they do, they are often accused of special pleading, as if only lawyers care about people being able to use the protection our laws afford us.

There is a problem in this country with the debate about access to the courts and the provision of legal aid. The Government say that our legal aid budget is generous. The Government speak about court users, who must contribute to the running of the courts, as if most people have nothing better to do than spend their lives in court or as if people relish rushing off to court as often as they can. The truth of people’s attitude is, of course, quite different. I can do no better than quote a giant of the Labour movement and labour law, Lord Bill Wedderburn. In his seminal 1965 book “The Worker and the Law”, he wrote that

“most people want nothing more from the law than that it should leave them alone”.

The truth is that most people would hope never to have to use the courts—the employee who is being underpaid or unfairly treated, the businessperson owed money by a customer who will not pay or the mother who is injured in a car accident on the school run. For those who commit criminal offences, the situation is very different, but no doubt many of them wish the law would leave them alone.

There have been cuts to legal aid funding in many areas of law since 2010. It would be wrong to suggest that cuts have been visited only on criminal legal aid, and it is important to put things in context. First came the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. At that time, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was the Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. The Act removed eligibility for publicly funded legal assistance from a raft of areas of social welfare law. For those seeking legal help with debt advice, there is no support—no support for housing advice, unless someone faces being made homeless, and no support for welfare benefits advice; the latter is particularly troubling. Past figures show that many appeals against the Department for Work and Pensions are successful. Between December 2014 and June 2015, 53% of those who appealed against fit-for-work decisions had that decision reversed. People would have to go to court far less if the decisions of Government Departments were better.

The cuts have given rise to a geographical concept I have never heard of before: a legal aid advice desert. The Law Society has a campaign devoted to the eradication of the cuts. There are areas of the England and Wales jurisdiction where legal aid advice for housing cases is disappearing. My constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney shares with the neighbouring area of Rhondda Cynon Taf just a single provider of legal aid housing advice.

The figures show that civil legal aid cases have decreased dramatically since LASPO became law. In July this year, Young Legal Aid Lawyers, along with the Legal Action Group and the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, wrote to the Prime Minister. They explained that in 2012-13, before LASPO, there were 724,243 civil law cases funded by legal aid. By 2015-16, that figure had plummeted to just 258,460. As they told the Prime Minister, that is a picture of justice denied. The Act removed most private family law matters from the scope of legal aid. Divorce proceedings, child contact arrangements and financial and property disputes are no longer eligible, save where there is evidence of domestic violence.

At the time of LASPO coming into force, the Government made a commitment to review the effects of the Act within three to five years. We are squarely in that timescale now. The calls for that review to start have reached a crescendo. In recent months, the Trades Union Congress and Amnesty International have produced reports highlighting the scale of the problem. I pay tribute to both organisations for their work. It is surely time that the Justice Secretary set that review in motion. Perhaps her reason for not acting is that she is in possession of another review—a review of the effect of employment tribunal fees—that the Ministry of Justice appears to be sitting on, which we strongly suspect is because that review is critical of the fees.

In 2013, the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), introduced more reforms. He sought to impose restrictions on the availability of judicial review; to restrict the ability of foreign nationals to receive publicly funded legal assistance; to remove publicly funded legal assistance for nearly every area of prison law; and to make further cuts to immigration law and to family law. A proposal for competitive tendering for criminal legal aid fees was also floated, but later abandoned.

The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell asserted, without providing evidence, that the legal aid bill was spiralling. He also asserted, without providing evidence, that the public had lost confidence in the legal aid system and that campaigners were using judicial review as a tool to block his Government’s unimpeachable legislative programme. We can debate whether the economic argument was ever really made out. However, those reforms were a further restriction on access to justice. Worse still are the restrictions on judicial review, which can only be characterised as a flagrant set of measures to reduce Government’s accountability to the people.

During the past six years, we have witnessed a curious sight little seen before. Outside the Old Bailey here in London and outside courts across the country, we have seen the strange sight of gowned and bewigged lawyers protesting against cuts to legal aid. That, in turn, gave rise to more curious sights still: a huge and grotesque papier mâché likeness of the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell being carried aloft around Parliament Square, and the barrister and former Tory MP Sir Ivan Lawrence taking to a platform erected in Old Palace Yard to call on the legal profession to strike. If 2016 has been the year that saw old certainties undermined, perhaps we should have seen it coming from that moment alone.

The question is, what brought criminal lawyers to that point? The profession has not seen a rise in fees for more than 20 years. While it is abundantly clear that many QCs have done and continue to do well from legal aid, the position is very different for the majority of junior barristers. Some reported at the time not being paid for their work or paying more in travel to get to court than they would receive for the court appearance itself. Solicitors firms throughout that time have had to do much more with much less.

The profession told of a real and present fear that it simply could not take more cuts. Diminishing fees would mean greater case loads and pressure to accumulate more clients and devote less time to those cases, all in order to stay afloat. For some professionals, that would mean compromises in quality and integrity that were a bridge too far, and they feared that firms willing to stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap would prevail.

It was rumoured that long-established and trusted law firms would disappear and that those that had been a presence on the local high street and had served their local communities for decades would be replaced by warehouses of inexperienced and exploited paralegals. It was also rumoured that removing those firms from the high street would leave no physical presence, which would be replaced with a faceless website and call centre run by G4S, Tesco or even Eddie Stobart.

The Government abandoned their restructuring of criminal legal aid and opted for more cuts. Mr Grayling imposed a reduction of 17.5% on solicitors’ fees, a huge reduction in resources that would have serious implications for any business. The cut was to be introduced in two stages: an initial 8.75% reduction last year with a planned further cut of 8.75% cut in April this year. The second cut was postponed for one year by Mr Grayling’s successor, Mr Gove.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is aware that we normally refer to hon. Members by their constituencies, not their names.

[Gerald Jones]

I am sorry, Mr Gapes.

It is hoped that the new Justice Secretary will shortly confirm that there will be no further reduction, but the warnings from lawyers to the Government have continued. They have warned about the future of the justice system, miscarriages of justice, and two-tier justice with one law for the rich and another for the poor. That is the peril we risk creating if ordinary people are denied proper legal representation.

Wealthy defendants in criminal cases sometimes seem to have unlimited resources and create the mistaken impression that justice can be easily bought or easily evaded. That may be unpopular. People convicted of the most serious offences may have benefited from legal aid. Newspapers often howl with outrage at the sums involved, but such cases are often the longest and most complex. The answer is not to deprive people of representation. If the state and the public choose and demand that certain activities are to be criminalised, a cost is involved. It is the mark of a civilised society.

We must ensure that those who want representation are represented. Only then can we be confident they are properly tried, and properly acquitted or convicted. A proper trial means competent prosecution and defence, and since 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service too has seen significant restraint. Its budget has been cut by around 25% and its staff has been reduced by 2,500. The Government will say this has not led to any problems and cannot be blamed for trials collapsing, cases being dropped or disclosure of important evidence being missed, but the truth is that the service is stretched and that has implications for access to justice.

Access to justice does not apply only to those accused. Victims of crime also need access to justice. They must be confident that their case receives the attention it deserves, that it is adequately resourced and that it is handled with care and expertise. Austerity has made access to justice more difficult for thousands of people, not just for the reasons I have given. Yes, the Government have cut legal aid and the budget for the Crown Prosecution Service, but they have also closed courts around the country. In February, it was announced that 86 courts and tribunals would be closed, but it was reckoned that 97% of citizens would be able to reach their required court within an hour by car. That is fine for those who have a car and drive, but what about those who do not? Many people rely on public transport and for them the journey time is greater. With those closures and greater travelling times comes a diminution in the principle of local justice.

Arrests of Chinese Protesters

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

To be fair, this is a massively serious issue, particularly for the three people who were arrested, but it is also a very important issue for the police, and perhaps for the Crown Prosecution Service, but we all need to wait, and perhaps we will all learn a little from that.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a serious matter, but is the Minister aware that a few days before the state visit by the President of China there was a visit to this country by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, and outside the Dorchester hotel the umbrella movement were playing music and shouting into megaphones? Can he tell us whether any of those democracy protesters from Hong Kong were arrested, or is it a case of one country, two systems?

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Gentleman’s question is better than the last one, but I do not think the soundbite quite worked. I do not know because I was not aware of that, so let me find out. If anyone was arrested, I will obviously let the hon. Gentleman and the House know.

Undercover Policing

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like many people of my generation, I spent far too many weekends in the ’60s and ’70s on marches and demonstrations against racism, the Vietnam war and many other issues. Many of those people have now become Members of this House. How do we know whether our names are in any of these files? Some 12 years ago, I was contacted by The Sunday Times, which asked me whether I knew anything about a document in a Stasi file with my name on it that had turned up in Berlin. I would like to know whether the Stasi’s British equivalent also had documents with my name on them.

[Mike Penning]

No matter what wrongdoings have been done, we do not have Stasi police in this country—thank goodness. I have no idea why the Stasi were so interested in the hon. Gentleman. Some of us were doing other things in the ’60s and ’70s. As I said, I will do everything I can to make sure as much information as possible is passed on to colleagues in this House and to those who have left this House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

We need to distinguish between legal aid and general advice. A citizens advice bureau may provide legal aid services, but half do not do so. However, all will provide core advisory services, which are normally funded by local authorities.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I received a reply from the Ministry of Justice saying that the Data Protection Act 1998

“does not cover the…retention and storage”

of the records of deceased persons. That means that hospitals have incentives to lose, mislay or hide records in cases where there is some suspicion about what happened. Can the Minister read my early-day motion 1220 and have urgent discussions with the Department of Health to see whether we can review legislation in this area?

[Mr Djanogly]

That is a matter where co-ordination with the Department of Health will be required, and I should be very happy to do that work if the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me on the matter.

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I do agree. I know that there are people who feel very strongly about the release of Shaker Aamer. We continue to be in contact with the United States, and we continue to hope that he will be released and returned to this country. I know that my hon. Friend has been arguing and campaigning for that for some time. I agree with her, and we are doing our best.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State comfortable with the fact that millions of pounds are being paid out during the week in which he is announcing big cuts in the legal aid budget? Should we not be ensuring that if those who receive the money themselves breach the confidentiality agreement, or their lawyers do, the money is taken back from them?

[Mr Clarke]

That might involve reopening the settlement, which I would not be willing to do. We must be careful about the confidentiality because, certainly in principle, the settlement could be reopened. I entirely understand that there are a large number of aspects of this with which everyone is uncomfortable, and which some people will strongly dislike. However, we must keep our eye on the ball, and decide what is truly in the national interest. What is truly in the national interest is allowing the intelligence services to get on with their job, allowing us to put the reputation of this country beyond doubt, and learning lessons that may have to be learned—we do not know yet—from anything that Sir Peter Gibson puts forward.

As for the legal aid proposals, we said that legal aid would still be available, on a means-tested basis, to anyone who wished to challenge the state by way of judicial review. Other claims would have to involve exceptional public interest.