Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Jonathan Reynolds

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend seems to be agreeing with amendment 9 and that he thinks that the sentence in the Bill should be more than 12 months, perhaps 24 months. I will take that as support, but I am unsure whether I have accurately deciphered what he was trying to say. However, he is right that the CPS should charge people for the appropriate offence, but the point is that it does not, and I can assure the House that things will be the same after this Bill comes into effect. The CPS will still prosecute people for offences that it knows will get a conviction. When someone goes before the courts for a particular offence, we must ensure that the judge or magistrate has the appropriate sentencing powers to make sure that justice is done properly and is seen to be done properly. At the moment, however, that is not the case.

I wish that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) was right. I wish that the utopia he describes, in which the CPS accurately prosecutes people for the serious offences that they have committed every single time, was the reality. If that were the case, there would probably be no need for this Bill, but the fact is that the CPS does not do that. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. My hon. Friend has much more expertise in the criminal justice system than me—[Interruption.] On the right side of it, obviously. I respect my hon. Friend’s opinion, but debates in this House on justice issues can often resemble a lawyer’s dinner party. Things can be very interesting, but most people in the real world do not really give a stuff about that. They want to know about what is happening on the ground, rather than what the legal profession would like us to think is happening, which are two very different things.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says about the reality of the prosecution system and how it operates on the ground, but this Bill is about a little more than just the legal mechanisms we want the Crown Prosecution Service to follow. It is about the signal we send out. It is about trying to change the culture. Right now, we have a situation in this country in which many people think it is okay to engage in this behaviour. Yes, we need to change the technicalities of the law, but we must send out a stronger signal on what is acceptable in society. There must be a change in culture, as well as in practice.

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure I agree. To be perfectly frank, I get rather tired of people passing legislation on Fridays just to send a signal. We could send a signal just by saying something, but we are in the business here of passing law. It would be a rather wasted opportunity if all we achieve today is sending a signal from this House that assaulting police officers and other emergency workers is a terrible thing. I do not want us just to send a signal; I want to see people who are guilty of these offences spend longer in prison. That is what I want to see: not a signal but a real, tangible difference. I am not sure that sending a signal will do the job. We will have achieved something when some of these terrible people end up with longer prison sentences, and that is what my amendments are designed to do.

In the case of the woman who caused a police officer to lose her finger, the maximum sentence on a guilty plea, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham intimated, is actually four months, even given the number of offences of assaulting other police officers. Of course, a maximum of only half the sentence would be served. So, actually, two months in prison is the maximum that person could face for assaulting numerous police officers, leading one of them to lose their finger. In this country we should be ashamed that that is the maximum sentence a court can impose on that person. In my opinion, and for many people in this country, that is a sick joke.

Again, as my hon. Friend said, two years is probably too little, but two years is certainly better than six months. Should the Crown Prosecution Service do what it does day in, day out and undercharge people, surely we must all agree that giving the courts the opportunity to sentence a person to two years in prison is better than the current situation. The purpose of my new clauses is to make sure we can guarantee that, by whichever route a person ends up in court for this offence, a more appropriate sentence can be handed out.

Another more recent example of why the amendments could be helpful is the case of Leroy Parry, who was convicted this week of biting a police officer. He was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison, despite having six previous convictions for assaulting police officers among his 42 previous offences. The police officer, who apparently needed blood tests and antibiotics after being bitten, said that the level of violence exhibited by Parry was the worst he had seen in more than 14 years in the police force.

Increasing the sentencing options for this offence would ensure that magistrates and judges can take the offence more seriously, and much bigger sentences could then quite rightly be handed down by the courts. We would no longer be tying the hands of magistrates and judges, who I am sure also feel frustrated when they cannot pass the sentence they would want to pass. It would mean the seriousness of Parliament to ensure higher sentences for those who assault the police would be recognised, and hopefully sentences, overall, would be higher as a consequence.

This is necessary because the figures are incredible. I asked several years ago how many previous convictions for assaulting a police officer someone had managed to rack up without being sent to prison for doing it again, and the answer showed that, in one year, a person with 36 previous convictions for assaulting a police officer had assaulted at least one more officer and still avoided being sent to prison altogether. By anyone’s standards, surely that is completely unbelievable and completely unacceptable. That is what we should aim to tackle with this Bill.

Such sentences do nothing to help the police, do nothing to deter criminals and do nothing to make our streets safer. If one of my amendments were to be accepted, it would at least assist in increasing the likely consequences of assaulting a police officer, which would hopefully deter some people or, at the very least, keep the culprits off our streets for longer.

Control of Offshore Wind Turbines Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Jonathan Reynolds

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I do not intend to delay the House for long, but I want to put on record my support for this Bill. I hope that all constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) have seen him in action today—I am sure they regularly watch the Parliament channel—and seen how effectively he represents their interests in Parliament. His speech, as ever, was a master class, and shows how lucky the people of Christchurch are to have him batting for them on this issue and many others.

Not many constituencies in the country are more landlocked than Shipley—that is one reason why I will not detain the House for long. We are about as far from the coast as one can get, so the problems that my hon. Friend describes are not ones that people in Shipley will easily recognise unless they have a particularly powerful pair of binoculars. We can sympathise, however, because we have the problem and blot on the landscape of onshore wind farms. It seems to me that if an onshore wind farm is a blot on the landscape locally, an offshore wind farm will equally be one for people who live on the coast. The two issues are connected.

Apart from representing the interests of his constituents, my hon. Friend has also shone a rather useful light on the muddled thinking of the Labour party. Two or three years ago Labour Members made big play at their party conference of the problem of energy prices—[Interruption.] I notice the deputy Chief Whip busily taking notes on the Front Bench, and I am not sure whether I will get another black mark in his book by saying this, but I think the Leader of the Opposition hit on a good point. Many of my constituents are very concerned about the price of energy. We very much welcome the reductions we have seen in recent weeks. They would not have happened if Labour party policy had been implemented, but that is by the by. The Leader of the Opposition was absolutely right to draw attention to, and shine a light on, the problem of energy prices.

It is, however, bizarre that the party that makes a big thing about how problematic energy prices are to their constituents then decides to pursue a policy that can lead to only one outcome—even higher energy prices—by trying to cover the countryside and offshore with as many wind farms as possible. We all know that wind energy is the most inefficient and most expensive form of energy, so why on earth would a party that is so bothered about energy prices want to add as much of that energy as possible when it will only to add to prices?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am heartened to hear of the hon. Gentleman’s support for Labour’s price freeze, which I will pass on to the Leader of the Opposition. In all seriousness, does he not see the benefits of protecting his constituents from the volatility of fossil fuel prices? I am sure he is an avid follower of the work of the Energy and Climate Change Committee. It has modelled what it believes to be a lower bill scenario through a transition to a low-carbon economy and low-carbon generation.

[Philip Davies]

On a point of clarity, I did not say at all that I support Labour party policy on freezing energy prices. I just made it clear that, if we had followed that policy, we would not have had any of the reductions in energy prices that we are seeing at the moment. I am for low energy prices: I want them frozen at a lower level. The Labour party wants to freeze them at a high rate, which seems to me to be a nonsensical policy.

I do not want to get sidetracked. The fact of the matter—the hon. Gentleman could not deny it in his intervention—is that his party’s policy will lead to higher energy prices by supporting a huge expansion of wind energy. My constituency is landlocked, but it will be my constituents, just as much as those of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who will be paying the price for extensive offshore wind farm developments. That is where my interest lies. I want my constituents to be able to have access to the cheapest energy. I do not want them to have access to the greenest energy, irrespective of the cost.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), speaking on behalf of the north Wales economy, rather led with his chin when he mentioned how wonderful offshore wind farms are for manufacturing industry. There is a lot of manufacturing industry in my constituency. I am delighted that, under this Government, manufacturing is thriving again, unlike under the previous Government, but the one thing manufacturing is most concerned about is high energy bills. The fact is that wind energy does not help manufacturing industry. All it does is make it even more uncompetitive against businesses in China and America, which benefit from much cheaper energy bills. The extension of wind energy that the right hon. Gentleman wants to see is not helping manufacturing industry in this country; it is the death knell for manufacturing industry in this country. That is why it is so important that we stop this ridiculous expansion of wind energy.

I have a concern about my hon. Friend’s Bill. I might add that if clause 4, on subsidies, was passed it would make the rest of the Bill redundant. If subsidies were taken away from the offshore wind industry, all the measures on planning would be redundant because nobody would want to start a wind farm offshore. Clause 4 is therefore by far the most important clause, because we want to stop the subsidies to stop the higher energy bills for our constituents.

If my hon. Friend’s Bill goes through, I would not want to see an extension of onshore wind, which is just as nonsensical and has a big impact on my constituency. I am very pleased that I helped to object to the latest wind farm development in Denholme in my constituency. Clause 1(4) states:

“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected offshore within twenty miles of any World Heritage site.”

I just wondered whether my hon. Friend thought it would be far better if it said that “No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected within 20 miles of any world heritage site anywhere.” My constituency has a world heritage site, Saltaire, which is well worth a visit for anybody who has not been. It is a marvellous tourist attraction. It was set up by Sir Titus Salt, a great industrial philanthropist. If no wind turbines were allowed within 20 miles of any world heritage site, it would neatly make sure that there could not be any wind turbines in my constituency at all. That would go down very well with me and with my constituents. What I do not really understand is why my hon. Friend thinks there should be no wind turbines within 20 miles of his constituency’s world heritage site, but that there should be within 20 miles of my constituency’s world heritage site. I hope that that is an anomaly that can be corrected at some future point. I would not want to see, as an unintended consequence of the Bill, more onshore wind farms.

I am against expensive forms of energy that add unnecessarily to the bills of my constituents. The Labour party’s vocal support for wind energy is bizarre. It is, in effect, taking money off poor householders, through their energy bills, and giving it, through huge subsidies, as the party has made clear throughout, to massive corporations and landowners. I have no idea under which part of Labour party socialist thinking that kind of redistribution of wealth was ever envisaged. I always thought that the premise of socialism was to take money from rich people and give it to poor people. The Labour party has stumbled on a policy that is all about taking money from poor people and giving it to big multinational corporations—no wonder it is leaking votes to UKIP at a record rate with that kind of muddled thinking.

I support my hon. Friend’s Bill. My constituents in Shipley, although landlocked and therefore not facing the problems of offshore wind farms, can sympathise, given their own experience of onshore wind turbines, with the issues he has brought before the House today.

I will end where I started by saying I very much hope all of his constituents have seen his speech today, because they can be sure that they are incredibly well represented by him in Parliament.

Forensic Science Service

Debate between Philip Davies and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and I am also pleased to secure this debate on the future of the Forensic Science Service.

My interest in this subject began with a visit from one of my constituents, who works as a senior forensic scientist at the northern firearms unit in Manchester. It was at his invitation that I was able to visit that facility, which is part of the wider FSS. I intend to say a little more about the unit later in my speech, but first I want to say that my constituency owes a wider debt to the work of the FSS.

I am sure that Members are familiar with the crimes of Dr Harold Shipman. He was a trusted family doctor in my constituency who murdered more than 200 of his patients in what remains this country’s worst case of a serial killer. Without the detailed toxicology evidence that the FSS offered to the courts, it is questionable whether the extent of his killings would ever have been proven. This single example is a powerful reminder of the capacity that the FSS gives to our law enforcement agencies.

The 1,100 highly trained staff in the FSS have the skills and expertise to identify an offender or unravel the chain of events that led to a crime, often from studying no more than a pattern of blood, a strand of hair or the tread-markings left by a shoe. Their unrivalled range of expertise includes the analysis of documents, mobile phones, toxicology, marks and traces, DNA, firearms, fibres and hair. Their analysis has helped to secure convictions in 220 so-called “cold cases”, and a further 600 cases are actively under review. Among their groundbreaking achievements was the establishment of the world’s first national DNA database. The FSS is now based in four laboratories across the country and it deals with up to 120,000 cases a year, regardless of their complexity. The quality of its meticulous work has earned the FSS the respect of experts from around the globe.

In December 2010, the Government announced that the FSS will close by the end of March 2012. As I understand it, the Government hope that the closure of the FSS will increase competition. They believe that the vacuum created by its absence will immediately be filled by private providers and in-house police force provision, and they hope that by creating a more commercial market prices will be driven down and turnaround times improved.

I have real fears, however, that the absence of the FSS will impact on the quality of justice in the courts. I know that no Member would want to back proposals that would directly result in our losing the ability to carry out this kind of work. I hope that raising these concerns today will lead the Government to take a second look at their plans.

Any changes to the FSS must have the integrity of our judicial system at their core. There are still too many questions about the scope and quality of the provision that will be available following the closure of the FSS. In my remarks today, I will consider whether the high standards, impartiality and scope of the current provision will survive under the Government’s proposals; I will question the financial argument being put by the Government; and I will ask whether the Minister is willing to risk serious damage to the quality of justice by implementing these reforms.

As I mentioned previously, my concern about this issue began when I recently visited the northern firearms unit, which is part of the FSS. My visit was at the invitation of a constituent who has worked in this sector for more than 24 years and is deeply concerned by the Government’s plans. He is one of several specialists at the unit who are called on to support the police at scenes of shootings around the clock, 365 days a year. Their laboratory analysis can shed important light on the circumstances surrounding a crime. By looking at wounds, blood patterns and bullet casings, they can determine how a person was shot, the number of weapons involved and even if the same gun has been involved in other shootings. The unit has played a major role in solving a number of high-profile gun crimes and in achieving the subsequent convictions.

The unit’s success relies, however, on the flexibility to devote the time necessary to each investigation. Staff at the unit fear that many of their successes might not have been possible within the financial constraints of a more commercial market. They also fear that private providers are unlikely to offer the guaranteed on-call service that is required. I am sure that private companies will bid for the work of the FSS, but the risk is that they will cherry-pick the quickest, least labour-intensive and most profitable parts, which could have a serious impact on the quality of justice delivered by our court system.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, and I agree with the points that he is making. Does he agree that another factor to consider is that the FSS, which I have also visited, keeps an awful lot of DNA samples taken from crime scenes, and that it seems that the Government have not given much thought to what will happen to all those samples when the FSS closes? The work done by the FSS is far too important for us simply to hope that something will be put in its place. The Government need to ensure that something is in place before they go ahead with the closure of the FSS.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I absolutely agree with him. I will address the point he makes later in my speech.

I visited the firearms archive in Manchester, which is truly something to be seen. It is important not only for cross-referencing crimes with other crimes but for the expertise that goes with that work. Using the archive properly is absolutely crucial, but I understand that the Government have not yet decided what will happen to it. The future of the archive is very important.

Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)

Debate between Philip Davies and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I think I am right in saying that it was to allow any Member to speak until any hour. I will be delighted to allow my hon. Friends to speak until any hour later on. I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that if anything I have said so far had been out of order, you would have told me so. From the fact that you have not, I suspect that you are content that the things I am saying are relevant to the debate.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am exceedingly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. May I ask him a question on what I think is the crux of his speech? Does he believe that these green Benches and the right to use them belong to us as Members, or does he believe, as I do, that they and all of Parliament belong to the people who send us here?

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman may feel that, in which case tomorrow during Prime Minister’s questions he will presumably invite one of his constituents to sit in his place. It is not the case that by definition, any of our constituents can come and sit themselves here on these Benches. In fact, he may have noticed that usually, as he gives his constituents tours, there are signs up on the seats saying, “Please don’t sit here”. He appears to be on the verge of supporting the principle that some of his constituents can come and sit on these Benches but others cannot. There is plenty of time for the debate, so I am sure he will wish to tell us in his own words why he believes that and why some of his constituents are second-class citizens.

When a young person comes to me and asks me to talk about Parliament and politics, I always tell them that when a politician is given a problem to solve, their solution will always incorporate two ingredients. The first is that they have to be seen to be doing something, which is the bane of politicians’ lives. I long for the day when a Minister stands at the Dispatch Box and says, “Well, actually, that’s got nothing to do with me. It’s for other people to sort out for themselves.” They never want to underestimate their importance. The second ingredient is that their proposals must not offend anybody. If hon. Members have not already worked that out for themselves, I ask them to look out for what happens whenever a politician is given a problem. If a politician can find a solution that incorporates looking as though they are doing something and not offending anybody, they will jump on it at the first possible opportunity.

That appears to be what we are doing this evening. We want to engage more young people in politics, so what is being proposed is, “We have to look as though we are doing something, so we should let young people sit in the House of Commons Chamber. That does not particularly offend anybody, so let’s go for it.” However, that does not deal with why young people are so disengaged with the political process. If any Member really thinks that this sticking plaster will mean that young people will start turning out in droves at elections or engaging in the political process all of a sudden, I believe they are mistaken.