Belhaj and Boudchar: Litigation Update

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Attorney General for the statement and for advance sight of it.

Mrs Boudchar is indeed in the Public Gallery, and I am sure the whole House will sympathise with her and with Mr Belhaj. They suffered appalling treatment at the hands of others. What happened to them both is deeply disturbing, and I can only hope that the settlement of the legal case allows some closure on a terrible set of events.

The Prime Minister has written to Mr Belhaj and Mrs Boudchar to apologise for the appalling treatment they suffered. She was entirely right to do so and to accept, unequivocally and unreservedly, the failings on the part of the UK Government at that time. I, of course, agree with the Attorney General that our security and intelligence services carry out great work in helping to make us all safe, but the rule of law must always be respected and must always guide the Government’s actions. Our security and intelligence services must be properly overseen. When things do go wrong, it is right to acknowledge that in very clear terms, to do what can be done to make recompense and to learn lessons going forward. The Attorney General’s statement rightly raised problems regarding information sharing, the need for more actions to reduce the risk of mistreatment and missed opportunities to alleviate suffering. We can and must do all that we can to stop this happening again.

The relationship between our intelligence and security services and the Government is now subject to a different framework, which is a welcome step forward. The statutory rights of the Intelligence and Security Committee, independent of the Government, to review past intelligence operations and to have direct access to agency papers are important. It is crucial that Ministers will be consulted whenever UK personnel are involved in a planned operation and believe that a detainee is at serious risk of mistreatment by another state. I appreciate that the Attorney General is, understandably, limited in what he can say openly, but I would ask for an assurance that such consultation with Ministers will be detailed, considered and informed by as much information as can be reasonably made available to them at the time.

Will the Attorney General assure me that we will always be vigilant in ensuring that the framework within which our intelligence and security services operate is robust and always shaped by our values of the rule of law, liberty and human rights? After all, it is only by behaving according to those standards ourselves that we can stand up for those values all around the world.

[The Attorney General]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and for the tone of them. He is right to say that one thing we should seek to achieve, not least for Mr Belhaj and Mrs Boudchar, is the ability for them to have closure and to move on with their lives. He is also right to say that the framework in place for the future must be properly robust and ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again. He asked me about consultation with Ministers on questions of this nature. I am sure he will be aware of the consolidated guidance published by the coalition Government in 2010, which of course we keep under review. It indicates clearly that when it comes to the treatment of detainees and information obtained from them, there are clear expectations of the intelligence agencies; where necessary, they should refer matters to Ministers; and when they do so Ministers should be properly informed of the background to the decisions they are being asked to take.

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, also right to say that the framework that surrounds all these activities must be fundamentally based on our values, one of which is the capacity of this Government or any Government to accept where mistakes have been made and apologise for them.

Unduly Lenient Sentences

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I refer Members to my relevant entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, indicating that I am a non-practising door tenant at Civitas Law in Cardiff.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing the debate, and on the considered way in which he introduced it. I know he has carried out a number of ministerial roles; I remember in particular his role that combined both justice and policing. While I might not always have agreed with him, I always thought he carried out the job in extremely good faith, and it is good to see him making this contribution from the Back Benches today. He described well how the system works, with the right of appeal for defendants and the unduly lenient sentence scheme as it stands. I wholly agree with him on the question of public understanding of, and confidence in, the working of the scheme and of how victims are communicated with throughout the process, whether by the courts system, the Crown Prosecution Service or their lawyers. The need for clarity is vital, and I am sure the Solicitor General will be able to touch on it in his closing remarks.

There was also a good contribution from the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I know the job he does on the Justice Committee, on which I served briefly in 2015, and he identified well the role of the Committee as a statutory consultee as we set the sentencing framework. That is important, and it is crucial that the Justice Committee makes its views known at that stage, as it can only assist with consistency in sentencing.

I thought there was a thread running through all the other contributions to the debate, whether from the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) or the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). The real sense was about clarity, consistency and public understanding, which are vital to our criminal justice system. If I may say so, it was also a pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke powerfully about his 30 years of public service and the thousands of cases with various sentencing decisions that he has dealt with in Northern Ireland.

Coming to the issue of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, the Solicitor General will be aware of the 19 terror- related offences added to the scheme on 8 August this year. The statistics are instructive, and I looked them up prior to the debate. There is no doubt that the number of requests is increasing, although that is partly due to sentences being added to the scheme. In 2010 there were 342, in 2015 there were 713 and last year—the most recent set of statistics available—the figure was up to about 837. In 2015, of those 713 requests, 136 were referred to the Court of Appeal—[Interruption.]

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes for the Division. If there is a second vote, it will be suspended for a further 10 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I was referring to the statistics about the number of cases that have been referred to the Court of Appeal and subsequent increases. In 2015 there were 136 referrals, and 102 sentences were increased. In 2016, which is the most recent year for which there are statistics, 190 cases were referred and 141 sentences were increased.

I raise those statistics to put the debate in context. Each year, there are about 80,000 Crown court cases. I agree that there is a need for clarity and confidence in the system, which has come through powerfully in all the contributions. We need that at the police and investigation stage, at the charging stage—a number of Members referred to charging issues—and when cases are proceeding through the courts, as well as in the trial process, in the sentencing process and in terms of the options available at sentencing. It is vital that all those things are communicated. The hon. Member for North Devon raised the issue of reporting restrictions. There have to be ways to ensure that victims and their families are still aware of what has happened and get an explanation for why a particular sentence has been imposed.

All those things are very important, but I come back to the fact that in 2016, there were 141 increased sentences and 80,000 Crown court cases. We have to look at where there have been issues with sentences that fall outside the reasonable band.

[Sir Mike Penning]

Using statistics is a wonderful thing. As a Minister, you get them thrown at you all the time. With all due respect, the shadow Minister is not comparing like with like. We can only use the figure of how many sentences are appealed if every one of those 80,000 cases is appealable, and they are not. That is the problem. I understand where he is coming from. We do not want the courts swamped. I do not think they would be, but I am still looking for the evidence from the Justice Department. We are not comparing like with like.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

As a matter of fact, it is obviously the case that the unduly lenient sentence scheme does not cover the entire 80,000 cases. I totally accept that. That is absolutely correct.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be running away with the idea that, of all these cases, only very few are deemed unduly lenient. We must make it clear that these sentences can only be appealed if they are unduly lenient. Sentences may well be lenient, but they cannot be appealed. There could be many more sentences that are lenient. These are just ones that happen to be unduly lenient.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right, but that applies the other way as well. If the defendant appeals something, as long as it is within a reasonable band, it will not be appealable the other way either. The reasonable band exists to bring certainty and consistency to sentencing, which all of us in this House who believe in the rule of law should want.

I take the point entirely that the unduly lenient sentencing scheme does not cover 80,000 cases. None the less, there are thousands of cases where the judiciary, within the sentencing framework it has, does a good job, and we should not lose sight of the fact that we should be backing our judiciary.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Before inviting the Solicitor General to respond, I point out that the debate will end at 5.42 pm.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

It is vital at solemn and serious times like this that we all exercise our right to free speech responsibly, and that we are mindful that criminal investigations are ongoing, as well as concurrent inquests and, of course, the public inquiry. All of us have to make sure that we pass that very high test, and I am afraid that the shadow Chancellor failed that in his remarks this week.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I am sure the Solicitor General would agree that it is vital that the independent public advocate has the powers needed to carry out the role. I pay great tribute to the work of the Hillsborough families over many years, but he will be aware that key to that were the findings of an independent panel in overturning the first inquest verdict. Will the independent public advocate have the powers to appoint an independent panel if they see fit to do so?

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very germane point, and we all need to bear the Hillsborough precedent very much in mind. I am keen, and the Government are keen, to ensure that the independent advocate has as powerful and as meaningful a role as possible. Each case will depend on its merits, but I am certainly prepared to look at all details, including the one he raises.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Does the Solicitor General also agree that it is crucial that there is full public confidence in the role of the independent public advocate? As such, the role should be subject to appropriate scrutiny. Will he also promise that the independent public advocate will place reports before this House on an annual basis, so that Members can look carefully at the work in detail?

[The Solicitor General]

Like many other appointments of this kind, I can envisage the sort of accountability that the hon. Gentleman mentions. The publication of annual reports is a regular and common occurrence. Again, it is a particular point that we will consider very carefully indeed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Picking up on the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, does not the existence of the Serious Fraud Office reduce pressure on the Crown Prosecution Service in terms of prosecuting big-ticket economic crime? Will the Solicitor General therefore guarantee that the Serious Fraud Office will continue to exist as it is and will not be merged with the Crown Prosecution Service or the National Crime Agency?

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government are at all times under a duty to review the mechanism by which we tackle economic crime, because it is a question not just of criminality but of national security. The Government are therefore right to examine the situation. As I said, I think the Roskill model works extremely well.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I did not detect a guarantee in that answer. A month ago, the Solicitor General praised the work of the director of the Serious Fraud Office and how he had enhanced the role of the Serious Fraud Office in our national life. I know that the hon. and learned Gentleman has fine persuasive skills, so if he will not give a guarantee, will he at least undertake to go to see the Prime Minister to speak about the advantages of the Serious Fraud Office and having investigatory and prosecuting services under one roof?

[The Solicitor General]

I am happy to indicate to the hon. Gentleman that I have regular conversations with ministerial colleagues about all these issues. I praise David Green for the work he has done in leading the SFO. I will continue to make the case for the Roskill model.

Serious Fraud Office

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, for what I believe is the first time. I refer to my relevant entry in the register and the fact that I am a non-practising door tenant at Civitas Law in Cardiff. I pay great tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his measured, carefully phrased contribution. Whenever I listen to him, he always adds a great deal to the quality of the debate, and that has to be said about his contribution this morning. I thought he set out extremely well the emergence and creation of the Serious Fraud Office in the 1980s and the importance of the Roskill model, with investigatory and prosecuting functions under one roof together with all the other necessary skills, including forensic accountancy. He set out the SFO’s history extremely well: its emergence from the fraud trials committee and its creation under the Criminal Justice Act 1987.

The contribution from the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) was extraordinarily erudite, if I may say so. He set out extremely well the complexity of the cases, not simply in terms of their scope and scale but in terms of the law itself. We are not in a position where vicarious liability has been extended into the criminal corporate sphere in the UK. We are therefore left with the directing mind concept, which, as he pointed out, was originally devised in the mid-Victorian era, when companies were different from how they are today. Of course, there is the ongoing importance of the failure-to-prevent model under section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010.

The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) put his finger on one of the key issues in this debate: transparency of the funding model. It was put well by the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough when he talked about prospective and retrospective transparency. Although I am not for a moment suggesting there has been political interference from the Treasury, the truth is that the model lends itself to the appearance of a potential conflict of interest in the way it is set up. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) put it quite well when she talked about the public interest in these cases.

I give the Solicitor General great credit for recently providing a letter requesting additional funding. Transparent though that is, the content of the letter illustrates the complexity, because in fact the parliamentary timetable means that the SFO cannot expect to have access to any additional funding from the supplementary estimates until the third week in March, so there has to be a cash advance from the Contingencies Fund to keep cash flowing until then, which is not the clearest of situations to be able to explain to the public.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out very well the importance of value for money, which is what I want to direct my remarks to. Clearly, everyone in this room is united by the desire to see good corporate conduct, and the Serious Fraud Office is an absolutely essential part of that. However, on the funding model, I would press the Solicitor General to look at the balance between core and blockbuster funding and whether we have that precisely right.

It is difficult at times to judge the performance of the Serious Fraud Office. I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough, in that we are always looking to improve. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham was described as a critical friend, and I would put myself in the same category. Looking at prosecution and conviction rates is not the easiest thing to do. In 2015-16, at one point it was down to about 31%. Objectively, that does not look like a good figure, but, looking at the director’s evidence to the Justice Committee, it came about because there were two defendants who ended up not being fit to stand trial, which severely affects the statistics, because we are dealing with such a small number of cases.

Similarly, although the confiscation rates are important, they do not show appreciation for the fact that not every case is as cash-rich as another might be, so even they are not necessarily an essential yardstick. I ask the Solicitor General to look more generally at that and at transparency, which is important, particularly in relation to the use of deferred prosecution agreements and when they are thought appropriate. Cases should be monitored because of the situation I have described of defendants being too ill to stand trial. That may not be within the control of the SFO, but where there can be careful monitoring of whether it is realistic that something will ever come to trial, that should be considered. Over time, we need to look not only at the number of acquittals, because that is not always the best indicator, but at whether, over a long period, there were cases falling at half-time in the criminal courts, which would be a cause for concern.

We could also look at international comparisons. America has a very different legal framework and different corporate culture, but we should still look around the world at how other agencies perform and at how economic crimes are tackled to see whether there can be improvements in that regard.

On the specific model, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham quoted the director of the Serious Fraud Office at the Justice Committee in October last year. He said:

“I would like to move to less dependence on blockbuster funding and more core funding.”

Indeed, the investigation by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate concluded that it was not necessarily providing the best value for money. When the Solicitor General comes to address the matter, I am sure he will mention the issue of unused capacity if the budget was set too high for too long. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that we may be preventing the Serious Fraud Office from building future capability and capacity if, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham pointed out, we have staff who build expertise in a certain area and are then, in essence, lost to the SFO. There is also the issue of large surges of temporary staff. Not only does that create a burden on human resources management, but temporary staff are often more expensive than permanent staff.

I appreciate the flexibility of the blockbuster funding model, but I am directing my remarks to the balance between core funding and the additional funding that is available. In some years, such as 2015-16, the blockbuster funding nearly matches the core funding at the start of the year—I think it is £33.8 million versus £28 million. That may be only one year, but it is illustrative of what can happen.

I have a series of questions to pose to the Solicitor General. Could a greater core element of funding increase the in-house capacity and be of benefit to the Serious Fraud Office? Can it enhance the depth and quality of expertise available in-house? Could it increase value for money? In addition, could it increase diversity? The Solicitor General may have more up-to-date figures, but as of 31 December 2015 the Serious Fraud Office was the only one of the Law Officers’ departments with far more men than women. All the others had more women than men, but not the Serious Fraud Office.

There is also the issue of what I have described as the Treasury veto. Is that system necessarily the best sustainable long way forward? Can the Solicitor General look at ways in which that might not be necessary? For example, could there be a contingency fund, with Law Officers having far more authority over additional funds? Is the Treasury necessarily needed to give that specific assurance or permission?

In conclusion, the Serious Fraud Office plays a vital part in good corporate governance across the United Kingdom. Everyone who has made a contribution to this debate today wants to see that, but of course we want to see the Serious Fraud Office, even with its achievements, improve. I look forward to hearing what the Solicitor General has to say about that.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I thank and pay tribute to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for securing this debate, which has been wide-ranging and well informed. Perhaps we should expect that when we have a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the room and one of my predecessors as Solicitor General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) also has long expertise in and knowledge of combating financial crime.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) raised a specific case. I am grateful to her for raising such a serious matter. She is right to say that from the layperson’s point of view, it can be—to borrow a phrase from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough—a bit of an alphabet soup when it comes to the investigation of serious crime. I have not had notice of that particular issue. I make no criticism of the hon. Lady for that, but my advice would be to write directly, if she has not already, to the director of the SFO, copying in the Law Officers, so that we can have full and up-to-date knowledge of the serious case she raises.

I will do my best in the 10 minutes or so that I have to answer the questions posed by the right hon. Member for East Ham. I come straight to blockbuster funding. I have to confess that I am too young for glam rock, and perhaps that is a good thing. In my mind, the word “blockbuster” conjures up the golden age of Hollywood. I do not know whether that is an appropriate metaphor, because we are dealing with an independent prosecutorial authority that, for the best part of 30 years, has worked in a particularly specialised way, bringing together investigators and prosecutors from the outset. That is the Roskill model to which right hon. and hon. Members have referred. To be scrupulously fair to the right hon. Gentleman, he conceded—I think properly—the point that some element of blockbuster funding is desirable and, indeed, appropriate. When he was in the Treasury, I am sure the same rules were applied to the SFO. The question is not one of principle therefore, but of degree.

I come back to the age old question of balance and how to maintain that from year to year. The particular criterion that is now used by the Treasury was set out back in October 2012, when the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury came to an agreement with the director in relation to the funding of very large cases. Blockbuster funding is applied for when it is expected that costs to investigate and potentially prosecute a case will exceed 5% of the SFO’s core budget, which, at present, are cases likely to exceed £1.7 million. The ability to have recourse to funding for very large cases is a model that the Law Officers fully support. The SFO has to present a business case to the Treasury, but I reassure right hon. and hon. Members that it is not the Treasury’s function to perform the role of gatekeeper and assess the legal merits of a particular case. That is not its function at all. As the right hon. Member for East Ham will well know, its function is to make sure that the case is sound and that there is evidence on which to base that application; that the SFO has demonstrated that there is a real need for the money based on specific investigations or day-to-day needs. It is on that basis that we would see an advance being made.

The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) rightly refers to a written ministerial statement that I am laying today to outline the position. I agree with him that it might seem rather inelegant, but, when it comes to the need to be flexible and to recognise the ever-changing demands on the SFO, I am afraid a degree of inelegance is a price worth paying for the practical effect of making sure that the SFO has fleetness of foot for dealing with a case load that varies dramatically year on year.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I do not think there is any dispute on the principle and the flexibility. The dispute is about the balance. Does the Solicitor General feel that the balance has been right in recent years? Should it be adjusted in favour of core funding?

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman is right to bring me back to balance. From year to year, it is very difficult to predict. There will be times—he cited a year—when the amount of blockbuster funding exceeds the core funding, but there are other years when that is not the case. That underlines more eloquently than I can the essential fluidity of the system.

In replying to the right hon. Member for East Ham, I would deal with the question in this way. It would be troubling if either the Law Officers’ Department—there was once a suggestion that our Department should be the gatekeeper—or the Treasury acted in some way as a second opinion, second-guessing the professional judgments of members of the SFO. That would be wrong and is not what happens when it comes to blockbuster funding. No application for blockbuster funding has ever met with a refusal. That is a very important point to hold on to when it comes to the Government’s understanding of the reputational importance that the fight against economic crime has not just for the Government, but for the United Kingdom generally.

Crown Prosecution Service: Funding

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman is of course right, but I was less than two minutes into my remarks when the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) intervened. If I am allowed to, I will come on to clarify the points being made by the Government Back Benchers.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I refer the Chamber to my entry in the register. The statistic is this: in 2014-15, the Crown Prosecution Service spent £21.5 million preparing cases not heard in court; of that, only £5.5 million can be attributed to factors not within CPS control.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will make that point myself. Excluding guilty pleas, conviction rates in magistrates courts and Crown courts are significantly down, despite the headline figure of an 80% conviction rate. I think the conviction rate in magistrates courts is about 50%, and in Crown courts it is about 25%, excluding guilty pleas. Since 2010, CPS staff numbers have fallen by a whopping 2,400. The CPS is suffering a brain drain and haemorrhaging experienced in-house lawyers, who leave for independent practice, or simply take the money and run.

On a serious note, I mentioned a caseworker bursting into tears in open court, clearly because of the pressure. I am told that the stress levels at the CPS are seriously high. Interestingly, a 2012 LawCare survey of the law profession revealed that more than 50% of the legal profession generally felt stressed, and that 19% were suffering from clinical depression, with more than one fifth of the profession suffering from mostly avoidable and preventable mental ill health. Stress at the CPS must be off the scale, particularly considering a recent Law Society survey in which 95% of respondents said that they were stressed at work.

Furthermore, in May 2016 the Public Accounts Committee inquiry found that

“The criminal justice system is close to breaking point.”

According to the National Audit Office report of March 2016, “Efficiency in the criminal justice system”, the number of cases outstanding in Crown courts had increased by 34% since 2013, and the waiting time for a Crown court case to be heard had increased from an average of 99 days to 134 days—an increase of about 35%.

In 2014-15, the Crown Prosecution Service spent £21.5 million preparing cases that were not heard, as the shadow Solicitor General, my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), helpfully said. What has happened to those cases and the £21.5 million? If memory serves, it costs just shy of £1,000 to prepare a case for Crown court—the CPS says that being trial-ready costs it about £1,000—and £21.5 million has been spent on preparing cases that got nowhere. One must assume that the evidential test had been passed, and that the CPS reviewing lawyer had determined that there was enough evidence—that is, on balance, more evidence than not, and a more than 50% chance of a successful prosecution—and that it was in the public interest to prosecute that case. Twenty-five million quid was spent on preparing cases that went nowhere. The Solicitor General might be able to correct me and clear the matter up, but I assume that that is down to cases coming to nothing. In the magistrates court or, worse still, the Crown court, perhaps the CPS lawyer just gives in for whatever reason. I do not know; I am guessing. I have no idea.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I have already referred to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) on securing this debate and pay tribute to the work he did as a shadow Law Officer. When I came into this House, I watched him carry out the role of shadow Solicitor General and, subsequently, shadow Attorney General, and his was a model to follow. His passionate speech at the start of the debate sums up his depth of feeling about the issues before us.

It was great to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). His praise of the work done by Crown Prosecution Service staff was very well put, and I think we all agree across the House that tremendous work is done in the circumstances in which those staff find themselves. The hon. Members for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) both spoke powerfully and talked about digitisation, which clearly will be an issue.

I think all Opposition Members agree with the hon. Member for Cheltenham that this is not purely about money. Obviously it is not. However, it is now 2017, and the Conservative party, either in coalition or on its own, has been in power and responsible for our criminal justice system for nearly seven years. It has to bear responsibility for the system as it is today.

We have heard eye-watering figures about the cuts in the budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East talked about the overall cut in expenditure. Indeed, the resource budget has seen a real-terms cut of 24% since 2010-11. I am grateful to the Solicitor General for answering my written questions about the staffing budget. The figures given show that the staffing budget in 2015-16 is 40% of what it was in 2010-11.

I will make two broad points about the Crown Prosecution Service. The first is about where our criminal justice system is in 2017. No doubt the Solicitor General will have read the Public Accounts Committee report last May, which said:

“The criminal justice system is close to breaking point.”

We also have to look at how the system is performing today. Let us take the Crown court, for example. From March 2013 to 1 March 2016, there was a 34% increase in the backlog of cases. We can also take average waiting times. I have the quarterly criminal court statistics published in September, which look at the previous six months. Whether this is purely about money or not, the performance of the system is as follows. What is the average waiting time in weeks at the Crown court? For both triable-either-way offences and indictable-only offences, it is now above 20 weeks. There has been a steady increase, going back to 2013. There may be slight variations quarter to quarter, but that is the trend from 2013, when the one figure was below 18 weeks and the other was below 15 weeks. That is the performance of the system.

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman draws attention, quite properly, to a very salient figure, but how can one be absolutely clear that that is to do with the Crown Prosecution Service as against the list office, the offence or the actions of the court? Why focus specifically on the CPS?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I hoped I had made it clear that this is about the performance of the system. The Conservative party, in one way or another, has been responsible for that system for seven years. Wherever in the system we isolate the cause, the Conservative party cannot escape blame for the performance of the system. That is the point I have been seeking to make.

When we talk about money, we have to be extremely careful about false economies, because things can seem as if they will save money. Let me give an example. I drew attention to the staffing budget, which I asked a specific written question about, and the Solicitor General was kind enough to answer very directly. It has been substantially reduced, but at the same time the Crown Prosecution Service is spending substantial amounts of money on agency staff. The response to my written question showed that in 2015-16, more than £7.8 million was spent on agency staff.

When we look at this in the round, we have to do so in two senses. First, of course this is not purely about money, but when money is cut from certain budgets, we have to be conscious of the effect on the system and whether false economies are causing problems further down the line or mean that we have to hire agency staff instead. The second point is about the whole system of which the Crown Prosecution Service is a part. I hope that all of us across this House want to see these measures improve. The responsibility is on the Government for these measures to improve. I am sure they accept that responsibility, but they have to act, and act quickly, because the performance of the system clearly needs to improve rapidly.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend represents a city that has a Crown court and a magistrates court. It is an important court centre in the east midlands. I know from my visits to many regions across England and Wales that those conversations continue. There is local liaison and local discussion.

To respond to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) made about accountability, joint performance management, which is what we are talking about, takes place in most areas and enables local agencies, whether the courts themselves or the defence community, to challenge the CPS when performance is not acceptable. Line managers individually assess prosecutors in the CPS, so accountability is an important part of this.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The Solicitor General read out some of the statistics about magistrates courts. Of course we all want to see and welcome improvement, but is he as concerned as I am that the average number of days from an offence to completion in a magistrates court has increased from 155 days in the second quarter to 2015 to 162 in the second quarter of 2016?

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman is right to make that point, but the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham is the right one. Here we are debating funding for the CPS and we are eliding two issues: the overall performance of the criminal justice system with the performance of one part of it. What is happening with the caseload, particularly in the Crown court, is that complexity is increasing. There has been a marked shift—the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) will agree—away from the sort of volume cases that might take a day or two to quite complex and often difficult cases involving sexual allegations. I am told by many resident judges in the Crown court centres I visit that they now form the lion’s share of court work in the lists. That complexity is definitely resulting in more challenges for the Crown court.

I was glad to note that in recent years the Ministry of Justice has increased sitting days. That has certainly helped to reduce any backlog, but with respect to the hon. Gentleman, it would be a little unfair to lay the problems of delay completely at the door of the Crown Prosecution Service. Let us focus on the debate called by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East on funding.

I accept, of course, that as a result of the tough decisions we had to make in 2010, expenditure was reduced. I pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who stewarded the CPS through that period. He did a remarkable job of delivering efficiency and providing leadership, which was then taken up by Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, who has rightly been praised here today. The hon. and learned Gentleman proved that the job could be done with a declining share of expenditure. When we look at the figures—my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) mentioned this—we see that performance and conviction rates have stayed remarkably steady through the years.

I am delighted to see on my visits to regional offices that there is smarter use of personnel within the CPS. I will give an example. North-east prosecutors will be able to work remotely—and do so—on south-east cases. That is a good emblematic example of how the CPS is making sure it uses all the resources available to it from whatever part of the country they come. That is certainly a boon to the south-east. I know it happens with prosecutors in Wales who are helping out in cases in London. That is another example of how we must not let regional boundaries become barriers to better working.

Digital case management has now made its way into the Crown court and is making a real difference. With my long years at the coalface of the criminal Bar, I was the first to be sceptical about digital and the use of IT. I have seen it before, but, believe you me, when I saw the pilots in Southwark, for example, I was delighted to see judges embracing that and telling me that the system was user friendly and starting to make a difference. Now that it has been rolled out across the country, it is starting to bear fruit.

Hon. Members talked about the challenges of the CPS and about charging decisions. It is right to say that the police have a role with regard to some charging decisions. There was a sea change, in that motoring offences were largely transferred to the police for decision making. That of course added to the reality that, with the increase in sexual offences, the CPS was now dealing with an entirely different caseload. There was not a like-for-like transition, and that complexity means extra challenges for CPS lawyers.

The hon. Member for Torfaen referred to the use of agency workers. I make no apology for that, because I think that using the independent Bar—whether to do agency work in the magistrates court or, vitally, to prosecute serious cases in the Crown court—is exactly what the Crown Prosecution Service should be doing. I am glad to say, having spoken with chief Crown prosecutors across the country, that it is increasingly using the experience and expertise of prosecutors to manage cases effectively within the system, so that we have the excellence in advocacy that we get from the independent Bar and the excellence in case management that we get from experienced CPS employees.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I do not think that there would be any disagreement about the excellence of the advocacy of the independent Bar. I was simply making the point that when we see apparent cuts in the staffing budget, we have to look at the overall picture. We have to look at the temporary staff as well in adding things up to a single figure.

[The Solicitor General]

Again, I have spoken directly to many CPS staff, particularly in Wales; indeed, a lot of them used to instruct me. Some of the staff have been there for 30 years—the CPS’s retention rate is extraordinary. I think I get a bit of frankness from them, and they tell me that, in many respects, working practices have improved. The reduction in offices has helped them to work more smartly. They are now physically co-located in buildings with the police. They are working in ways that they did not dream were possible before.

CPS and Disability Hate Crime

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a great privilege to speak opposite the Solicitor General for the first time. As a fellow Welsh lawyer, I look forward to speaking opposite him and to our future debates.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing this debate and on the nature of his contribution. He started his speech by defining disability hate crime very precisely. The only point I would add to that and to the debate is that we have been talking about disability hate crime in terms of open hostility, but there is also a very different type of crime: those who befriend disabled and vulnerable people, seek to take them into their confidence and take advantage of them. I hope that, in addition to hate crime, the Solicitor General will consider that strand of crime.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle set out the political context extremely well. Hate crime and disability hate crime have a detrimental impact on victims, their families and friends. This is a key issue that goes to the heart of what we are as a society. We in this place should judge the quality of our policies and those of our Government not by their effect on the strongest but by their effect on the most vulnerable in our society and by the protection those people are given.

This has been a constructive debate. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) made a good point about the sensitivity of the prosecutors of such crimes. Indeed, she asked about a response to the Law Commission report, which I will come to in a moment.

The hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) talked well about raising awareness and supporting disabled people in the reporting process. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has momentarily popped out, spoke powerfully about how crimes are committed online—the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) also made that point—and there has to be a strong and powerful message that the keyboard warriors who spread bile and hatred online have no hiding place behind their monitor and keyboard. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke powerfully about attitudes in our society and what we must tackle in that respect.

I agreed with the vast bulk of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean, particularly what he said about awareness in schools. He made a number of constructive suggestions, including about support through the criminal justice system as more and more cases are, hopefully, brought. That will clearly be important. However, I want to take him up on one point. He is entirely right that it is not politicians’ fault what the press choose to write, nor should we interfere in that choice, but politicians can create a permissive environment. I will give one specific example. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), said on the “Today” programme in October 2012:

“It is unfair that people listening to this programme going out to work see the neighbour next door with the blinds down because they are on benefits.”

The problem with a statement like that is that, first, it divides people into workers and non-workers. Secondly, it implies that all those on benefits are the same. It also seems to imply an inherent sense of unfairness that people are on benefits. We must be careful with our rhetoric. The environment that it creates can lead to the demonisation of disabled people in our society.

[Mr Harper]

I tried hard not to be tempted, but the hon. Gentleman has pushed me too far. I take his point, but the former Chancellor made it clear which people he was talking about. The Government made it clear that people who can work should work. He was not attacking people who cannot work, and I do not think that anyone honestly thought that he was. The Government have been clear that we support people who cannot work, but that we expect those who can work to do so, and not to live off others. That is the point that the former Chancellor was making, and it is a reasonable view that I think would be shared by people across the country.

In my experience, the people who get most cross about people who could work but do not are those who live next door to them, who are struggling hard and who see others not doing their fair share. It is in no way an attack on people who cannot work. The Government spend £50 billion a year on supporting disabled people. It is right that we should do so. We will continue to support disabled people who are not able to work, as is right in a civilised society.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

All I can say is that it is a shame that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not go on to make that distinction when he made those comments on the “Today” programme, which I was careful to quote precisely and not to paraphrase. I am afraid that such comments, in isolation, can have the effect that I mentioned.

I will turn to my remarks to the Solicitor General, because I want to make some constructive contributions. One good point made by the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean involved the provision of Hansard reports of debates on this subject to the ongoing Crown Prosecution Service consultation. In its 2014 consultation paper on hate crime and whether the current offences should be extended, the Law Commission said that

“we share the view expressed by most consultees that it is undesirable for the aggravated offences not to apply equally to hostility based on race, religion, transgender identity, sexual orientation and disability. It sends the wrong message about the seriousness with which such offending is taken and the severity of its impact, if offences attaching a specific aggravated label and a potentially higher sentence only exist in relation to two of the five statutorily protected hate crime characteristics.”

Can the Solicitor General comment on the possibility of reviewing the operation of aggravated offences to consider parity across all protected characteristics?

There is also a great issue involving data. Last month, a report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance found a number of areas of concern involving incidents of hate crime in the UK and apparent failure to prosecute such crimes, including specifically a lack of data on the use of extended sentencing powers. It made a couple of recommendations. One involved sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, with which the Solicitor General should be familiar. Where they are imposed, that should be recorded, including, as the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean said, on the criminal records of offenders. I suggest that we also need to collect data on where aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing have been invoked initially but then dropped through the process of accepting a guilty plea. The ECRI report also recommends, finally, that steps be taken to narrow the gap between hate crimes being recorded and subsequently referred for prosecution. I would be grateful if the Solicitor General commented on that in his remarks.

Such measures are extremely important when one looks at the statistics. The latest statistics that I could find, in “Hate crime, England and Wales, 2015 to 2016”, published only last month, show that 3,629 disability hate crimes were recorded by the police in 2015-16, a 42% rise from the previous year. That should be welcomed, of course, but concerns remain that levels of reporting are still extremely low. The 2014-15 national crime survey for England and Wales estimated that the annual figure might be closer to 70,000, which shows that there is much more for us to do.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s own 2016 “Hate Crime Report” showed that 941 of those 3,629 offences, or 26%, were prosecuted, and that 707 of those prosecutions were successful. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle pointed out, that is a 75% conviction rate, which is still below the rate for hate crimes generally, which is 83%. Although we are, admittedly, discussing a low base and small figures, the conviction rate is pretty stubborn. We have managed to move from 503 convictions in 2014-15 to 707, but successful convictions are still around 75%. I also urge the Solicitor General to consider carefully the regional variations, why they exist and what can be done to make the policies comprehensive across this country and give them an impact as close to universal as possible.

Finally, I return to where the debate started. It is vital that we have strong measures, that the Solicitor General reviews and keeps under review the position on aggravated sentencing, that we have strong and robust data and, above all, that we seek with the laws of our land to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing the debate; I am profoundly grateful to him. He and others who have taken part will know that the issue of disability hate crime has been close to my heart not just as Solicitor General but as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, and indeed as a parent, for a number of years.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) made particularly apposite remarks about the fact that many people in our society just do not know somebody with a disability. That lack of understanding and awareness lies at the heart of some of the attitudes that we see towards disability. It is too big a picture to be laid at the feet of any particular Government or of an alleged ideological approach to austerity, which I utterly reject. It is a long-term societal issue, and only in recent years have all of us, irrespective of party, started to wake up to it and put ourselves in the shoes of individuals with disabilities.

I reiterate the Government’s co-ordinated and cross-departmental approach to the issue. I am particularly delighted to welcome the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, whose presence at this Westminster Hall debate eloquently represents her commitment to the issue. We have met about it, and we will continue to meet and, more importantly, to take co-ordinated action to ensure that all relevant parts of Government do everything they can to tackle this scourge, because scourge it is.

I am equally grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who did so much as Minister for Disabled People to advance the cause, paying attention to the sort of detail that he has raised today. I hope to be able to answer his questions, and indeed those of the hon. Member for Bootle. I will seek to do so in the course of my remarks.

As I said, it is important to put ourselves in the shoes of a person with disability. That person faces three things. First, they sometimes lack the awareness that they have been or continue to be the victim of a crime, because for so many people with disabilities it has become normal and part of their way of life—it is just something that they accept. We know that is not good enough. Secondly, when that lack of awareness ends and a person starts to understand that they are a victim, what do they do? Who will listen to them and help them to report the crime? Thirdly, when that crime is reported, how do the authorities deal with it? Those are the three stages of the problem that need to be understood. It is clear that we need to do more to support people with disabilities at every stage.

I am grateful to the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for South Down (Ms Ritchie) for raising the Northern Ireland experience. We have discussed before the Leonard Cheshire initiative, which puts advocacy at the heart of the project. Advocacy for people with disabilities will be the key to unlocking many of the issues that have come up, and we are seeing that approach taken widely in parts of England, Wales and Scotland. In my own area, Swindon, I am lucky to have the Swindon Advocacy Movement, an organisation that empowers people with disability to understand their rights and entitlements and helps them if they have been the victim of crime or abuse. It is all about a move away from doing things to or for people with disabilities and towards helping people with disabilities to help themselves and empowering them to become part of mainstream society.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran was right to remind us that only 20 years ago, before the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which was passed by a Conservative Government—I am proud of that—people with disabilities were facing a kind of Jim Crow situation. They were not able to access mainstream life and were being excluded—not only physically excluded from premises, but excluded, in a societal way, from mainstream life.

Therein lies one of the problems. One of the perceptions we need to challenge at all times relates to what disability means to people with a disability themselves. We sometimes use the word “vulnerable” a bit carelessly; there is an assumption that just because somebody has a disability then they are automatically vulnerable is not helpful to them. I think a person with a disability would say to us that there are times when they end up in situations that make them more vulnerable than others, but that does not mean that they are vulnerable at all times. Once one starts to make that sort of cosy assumption, the wrong sort of conclusions are reached. For example, people start to ask questions about why people with disabilities go out in public. Why do they go nightclubbing or shopping? Why do they do all these things that put them in danger? That is the wrong approach.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I agree entirely with the point that the Solicitor General is making. Nevertheless, does he accept that there can be situations in which vulnerable people are taken advantage of by confidence tricksters? We should focus on that as well.

[The Solicitor General]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point. I welcome him warmly to his position and congratulate him on attaining it. It is a pleasure to work with him. He is quite right to talk about “mate crime”. Perhaps such examples highlight one of the deficiencies and inadequacies of using a phrase such as “hate crime” to describe the full panoply of crimes committed against people with disabilities. Mate crime is an insidious way in which perpetrators gain the confidence of often isolated and sometimes rather lonely people, perhaps with a learning disability such as autism, or another disability, and, using the trust they have built up, proceed to abuse it, very often in the form of financial crime, such as fraud, or worse—violence and sexual crime are also covered by the definition of mate crime. That is worse than confidence tricksters; it is an abuse of trust. In my mind, that makes the crime even more serious.

I am grateful to my right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Members for having raised some of the important figures and statistics relating to the increase in the number of reported disability hate crimes and, indeed, prosecutions for those offences. There has also been an increase in the use of the sentence uplifts that are available to judges under section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, from just over 5% of cases in 2014-15 to 11% of cases in 2015-16. We are coming from a low base, but that is going in the right direction.

The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) asked about the recording of applications in which there has not been an uplift. I hear what he says, but the difficulty is that the Crown Prosecution Service is currently recording a vast number of indices through the flagging system, and it is difficult for every area of the CPS to record information with precision and then translate it in a way that makes it readily available to people like me. I hear what he says and will certainly ask whether it would be feasible, but I have to put that caveat on his request. It is clear to me that having more data is always useful, but it is then a question of how they are to be used and understood. We need to step back from that to a more fundamental position on training and awareness.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

We will undoubtedly need the best advice we can have and the best trade negotiators we can have. Of course, the Government already have some of that capacity, but the Department responsible is looking carefully at exactly what additional capacity we will need to gain, and as soon as it is in a position to give that information to the House, I am sure it will do so.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Our membership of the European Union has brought about substantial enhancements in our health and safety laws. Will the Attorney General guarantee that, with leaving the European Union, none of those health and safety laws will be weakened in any way?

[The Attorney General]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are many of those regulations that we will wish to retain, but of course the exercise of looking at exactly which parts of the canon of European law we wish to transfer into UK law, which we wish to adapt and which we may not wish to continue with at all, is a very lengthy one that we will need to continue with. But I agree with him that it will not, in all likelihood, be the case that all of those rules and regulations will be dispensed with altogether, and both businesses and those who are employed by them benefit from some of those measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that it is important to address the online element of this crime effectively. She will be aware that one of the things the Government have recently done is to strengthen online reporting. Part of the increase in hate crime is due to the tool we set up called True Vision, a website where people can report it online more effectively. She is absolutely right to say that there are different channels through which hate crimes are perpetrated and all of them need a strong response.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

The Minister’s answer on online hate crime and online reporting is very welcome, but does she agree that, given the level of vile hatred that exists in certain parts of social media, it is absolutely essential for law enforcement agencies to chase it down and bring specific cases to court to ensure that there is no hiding place for the violent hatred that people pour on to social media?

[Justine Greening]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As crime moves on to different forums, including online, it is important that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service collectively take strong action to show that this sort of behaviour across our country will not be tolerated and that we will take action against it wherever it raises its head.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I appreciated the constructive part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, and my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice should look at the idea. I am cautious about compulsion, however, because one of the great things about pro bono is that it is voluntary. It is all very well for him to criticise the Government for cuts to legal aid, but he will remember, because he was a Member of Parliament at the time, the so-called Access to Justice Act 1999, when a Labour Government destroyed civil legal aid, so I will not take lectures from the Labour party.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I have always been a supporter of pro bono work—both while I was a practising barrister, before I entered this House, and since—but does the Solicitor General agree that because pro bono work is voluntary, as he said in his last answer, that is precisely why it could never be used as a policy solution to sort out the Government’s cuts to legal aid?

[The Solicitor General]

As the hon. Gentleman well knows, neither the Attorney General nor I—nor, indeed, the Government—advocates pro bono as a substitute. It is an adjunct to legal aid, and it always should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

As I said in last night’s debate on the Gracious Speech, I spoke to the Cabinet Minister with responsibility for education in Scotland earlier this week. There are always ways in which we can learn from each other. I should mention Loughborough University, which I represent as a constituency MP, as it has the highest number of women engineering undergraduates in the country.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I recently visited the Thales site in Crawley and saw some wonderful high-quality engineering jobs; unfortunately, not enough of them are held by women. Will the Government heed the recent findings of the CBI that over 90% are not receiving the careers advice they need, and support face-to-face careers advice from age 11, which would assist more women to enter engineering careers?

[Nicky Morgan]

I have been very clear since taking up the role of Secretary of State for Education that we need to look at careers guidance. That is why, in December 2014, we announced our backing for the Careers & Enterprise Company, which was set up to bridge exactly that gap between schools and colleges and the world of work. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that starting early is very important. I hope that he, along with all Members across the House, has spoken to his local enterprise co-ordinator, through the local enterprise partnership, to support the work of the Careers & Enterprise Company.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that the Attorney General of all people will not underestimate the scope of his scholarly cranium, because the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) clearly does not do so.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

A condition of our membership of the European Union is that we are also a signatory to the European convention on human rights. Can the Attorney General confirm that this Government are committed to remaining a signatory to the convention and not to join Belarus, the only European country that is not a signatory?

[The Attorney General]

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s first statement is entirely correct, but the Government’s intention is nevertheless clear: we are not seeking to leave the convention but we are seeking to construct a better and more sensible arrangement on human rights law in this country. We do not think that the interpretation of the convention by the European Court of Human Rights is always sensible, and we wish to see a good deal more common sense being brought into human rights law. I regret that that opinion is not shared by Her Majesty’s Opposition.