Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Stuart Anderson

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

With great respect, the hon. Gentleman identifies a complexity, but I think he agrees with me that that difference in the law—the 15 and 25-year tariffs—is not justifiable as it stands and needs to be equalised.

The need for overdue action brings me to elements of the Bill that have taken too long to introduce, but which we welcome. My hon. Friends, often working across the parties, have campaigned passionately on important issues and they have secured change. It is welcome that the Government have finally brought before Parliament the long-awaited legislation to increase the maximum sentence for assault on emergency service workers to up to two years in prison. I want to pay special tribute to the tireless work of my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) in securing this change. They have been campaigning since 2018. Indeed, on 27 April 2018, when the matter of two-year sentences was considered, the then Minister said that

“it would begin to create the kind of situation that exists in Russia, which I hope will never exist in the UK”.

He went on to say that such sentences would create

“a category of a superior form of human being with an entitlement to a quite separate form of protection.”—[Official Report, 27 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 1193.]

Those comments were, frankly, deplorable and the Government’s conversion to the two-year penalty is to be welcomed.

The pandemic has been a powerful reminder, not that one should be needed, of the extraordinary bravery and commitment that our frontline emergency workers have shown throughout. They have put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe day in, day out, even at the very height of the first wave, when tests and PPE were so shamefully hard to come by. Despite that work, emergency service workers have been subjected to a rising number of attacks in this past year, with a 31% increase in attacks compared with in 2019.

[Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

Recently in Wolverhampton, two ambulance staff were stabbed. I am watching you go through this Bill saying that you welcome and agree with so many things, so why on earth have you asked your party to vote against it? It just makes no sense.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I do not want to stop the debate for this, but you do not call the person who is speaking “you”. “You” means the Chair; the right hon. Gentleman is the right hon. Gentleman. I call the right hon. Gentleman.