Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

5. What plans he has to increase employment opportunities for the spouses of armed forces personnel.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

We know that one of the most important factors in enabling spouses to enter employment is making sure that good child care provision is available at a good cost. In addition to the measures that the Government have taken to help all workers, I am pleased to tell the House that £20 million of the LIBOR funding announced by the Chancellor in the autumn will specifically go to help the provision of child care facilities for service families, particularly the infrastructure. We also have a number of excellent schemes to encourage people to go into employment and to support them to set up their own businesses, as well, of course, as the corporate covenant.

[Mr Buckland]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I commend to her the work of the social enterprise Recruit for Spouses, which is doing so much to challenge outdated perceptions of military families always being on the move and to engage with businesses to unlock the potential of armed forces spouses? Recruit for Spouses is based in Wiltshire, and it does a lot of work in both Wiltshire and in Swindon.

[Anna Soubry]

As it happens, I have heard of Recruit for Spouses and I know that its aims are admirable, and of course we support all such projects. That is one reason why I mentioned the corporate covenant: it is very important that businesses recognise the real benefits they get when they employ people who are married to our excellent service personnel, because their spouses tend to be as good.

Regional Pay (NHS)

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Anna Soubry]

I absolutely support anyone who takes a mature and sensible approach to the matters. I also understand why the south-west consortium—like many others, no doubt—is frustrated, because a two-year set of negotiations continues when it should have reached an agreement. The trade unions must take a responsible approach to ensuring that we have a national health service that is sustainable. It is in the interests of their members, and they are meant to represent their members, whose interests they should put first.

The consortium has published two discussion documents. What is our attitude and what are we to do as a Government? To be clear, we support national terms and conditions of service, but not at any cost. Individual employers must have the right to exercise the freedom, which the Labour Government gave foundation trusts in 2003, to be free of ministerial control. That is what the previous Government did.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Having been contacted by many concerned constituents about the matter, I took the trouble to meet my local NHS trust chief executive to discuss those concerns and put them directly to her. Will the Minister assure me that the worrying spectre of a monolithic regional pay structure that would ill-suit employees in Cornwall as much as in Wiltshire will not be welcomed by the Government?

[Anna Soubry]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Monolithic structures would not be welcome. What is welcome is when trusts take a responsible view to ensure that they act in the best interests of their employees and that they have a financially sustainable system. That is in the interests of everyone—staff and patients.

Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

That is absolutely right. We are often told that guidelines are not tramlines, but my worry is that as we develop the system, that will increasingly become the case, which is a matter of legitimate concern to us all. My hon. Friend rightly reminded us earlier about the historic role of the jury. In fact, it is interesting to remind oneself that in addressing juries, counsel will be enjoined not to talk to them about the likely sentence that may be passed on the offender, because that is to trespass not only on the function of the judge, but on the function of the jury. My hon. Friend is quite right to introduce into the debate that element of realism, common sense and public experience that juries bring to the court system. That is why they are there, why the system works and why we as parliamentarians support it, and vigorously so.

Having criticised some of the Sentencing Council’s functions, let me commend its research work. One of the better things that it has done is to start the process of looking at the decisions that are made in our Crown courts up and down the land, and to commission research on the attitude of the general public to sentencing. There are two reports in particular that I think the House would be interested to hear about, one of which I referred to in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). The report commissioned by the Sentencing Council and published in May last year by Ipsos MORI conducted a survey of just under 1,000 members of the public and interviewed offenders and victims of crime. Perhaps inevitably—but for the first time based on empirical evidence—the report quite rightly pointed out a number of key things, including that the public perceive the system as being too lenient, but that some of their concerns are allayed once they have a greater knowledge of the workings of the sentencing system. The points that have been made about greater transparency and awareness, and about the televising of proceedings, are all founded on the research that has been carried out. It is plain and simple: if we give the public a greater understanding of the system, they will give the system greater support.

I was fascinated by the public’s view on the reduction of a sentence in return for a guilty plea. They feel that we, the lawyers, are getting it back to front. They would understand and appreciate the system better if, instead of reducing sentences and giving people credit for pleading guilty, the court were to give longer sentences to those who plead not guilty and string the process out, only to be convicted at the end of a trial. They do not like the notion that offenders are somehow being rewarded for having admitted their guilt. That was a fascinating insight that we, as legislators, should bear in mind. Indeed, the Sentencing Council should also take it into account when it reviews the system of credit being given for a guilty plea.

[Anna Soubry]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the public perhaps do not understand that the courts give credit for a guilty plea because it spares the cost, and the trauma to the witnesses and victims, of a trial? Furthermore, if someone has admitted to having committed a crime, they stand a much better chance of being rehabilitated and helped, so that they will not go on to commit more offences.

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right. The report found that there was an appreciation of the economic and emotional benefits of early guilty pleas. However, the public preferred the argument that guilty pleas spare the victims trauma; they were somewhat resistant to the economic, pounds, shillings and pence argument. That is quite understandable, given that members of the public view sentencing and the other criminal justice procedures with the utmost seriousness. To them, public protection through the criminal justice system is second only to military matters such as the defence of the realm—my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has arrived in the Chamber at just the right moment—and is a matter of the utmost seriousness.

Other work has been commissioned by the Sentencing Council, and it has caused a bit of angst among judges, because they have to fill in forms after every sentence—[Interruption.] I hear involuntary groans in the Chamber at that. For the first time, the courts in England and Wales are being asked to provide a wealth of evidence about what factors and influences are taken into account when those decisions are made. The first report was published in October 2011, and it covers the six-month period from October 2010 to the end of March 2011. The results bear close scrutiny.

The survey covered many hundreds of cases. When studying previous convictions, it found that 78% of offenders with 10 or more previous convictions taken into account by the court were sent to immediate custody. That is a significant and reassuring statistic. It also found that 59% of offenders with one to three previous convictions were also sent to immediate custody, and that 49% of offenders had no previous convictions taken into account when their sentence was determined. Those facts need to be stated. For the first time, there is an emerging body of evidence to show what influences judges and what is going on in our Crown courts.

On the subject of discount for guilty pleas, the survey found that 69% of those who pleaded guilty received a full discount; 12% received a discount of between 20% and 32%; 8% received a discount of between 11% and 20%; and 8% received a much lower discount. That shows, in my view, that judges are using their discretion within the guilty plea discount system and are not formulaically applying the guidelines as laid down by what I think was the Sentencing Advisory Council in a previous incarnation of the Sentencing Council. We have started to create a body of evidence, although we still have a long way to go in working out what decisions are made.

I finish where I started. This is a human system, and it will always be an imperfect system, but if we rob of the system of its humanity, we are doing a disservice to our fellow citizens.

Phone Hacking

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Yesterday, I momentarily hesitated before rising to support the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), but only because I was unfamiliar with the procedure—I did know that he was doing the right thing. I, too, congratulate him, and not only on bringing this debate to this House. I congratulate him also because I believe that a consensus is forming across this House, and that is to be welcomed.

I thought also yesterday that our newspapers had sunk to the darkest moment in their history, given the revelations about the tapping of Milly Dowler’s phone. It is important that we get the language right; we are talking about the theft of evidence, the destruction of evidence, the impeding of the investigation into the disappearance of a child and, as it turned out, a murder investigation. I might have misheard the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), but if I heard him correctly and he is right in what he was saying, all of that was known by the Metropolitan police back in 2002. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, no investigation was undertaken by the Metropolitan police at that time into what were undoubtedly extremely serious criminal offences. I am absolutely confident that this new inquiry will look into the dealings of the police, because the spotlight is rightly now not just on our newspapers; it is moving on to our police. What has been going on concerns me greatly.

Yesterday was also a bleak day for our newspapers, because we saw the Attorney-General prosecute two of them for contempt of court for their coverage of the arrest of a man in Bristol in relation to the murder of Jo Yeates. I wholeheartedly congratulate the Attorney-General on taking that prosecution, as it was a courageous move. The hon. Member for Rhondda talked about the need for politicians to be courageous and I absolutely agree. We must be not only courageous, but honest. I will be honest and say that I am not sure that I was as courageous as I should have been with my private Member’s Bill in February. That is because any politician treads exceptionally cautiously when they stand up in this place to criticise the press and ask for it to be curtailed. As the hon. Gentleman said, we know the possible consequences of making that sort of move.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Have not the words of Stanley Baldwin some 70 years ago, when he described the press as having

“power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”

been brought to bear by this most grotesque example that we have discussed today?

[Anna Soubry]

I concur absolutely, and I am sure that that sentiment is echoed across the House.

Such is my concern—I have been persuaded by much of what I have heard today—that I think there must now be a pause in the consideration of the matter that has been referred to and will be determined by Ofcom. I urge the Secretary of State to consider whether we should pause things, given what has happened.

In the time remaining, I want to return to the subject of my private Member’s Bill. I am not sure whether it falls within the remit of the public inquiry, but I hope that the Government will consider changing the law. I believe that the press has lost the moral plot and I say that with a heavy heart because before I went back to the Bar I trained as a journalist and worked as one for many years. I am proud to be a member of the National Union of Journalists and I was mother of the chapel at Central in Nottingham. I look on my brothers and sisters at a national level with, frankly, despair. It is important to remind ourselves that small local papers are very different from national papers—

JUSTICE

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

Anna Soubry

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. I am sure that everyone in this place would join me in congratulating him and his wife, who is sitting up in the Gallery, on celebrating their 25th—their silver—wedding anniversary.

Moving swiftly on to the important point that my hon. Friend makes, our magistrates are indeed volunteers. They receive a small subsistence allowance. I am sure that, like my hon. Friend, many hon. Members will have received letters and e-mails from magistrates in their constituencies who are concerned about plans to reduce their daily allowance and cut their mileage allowance.

Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)

- Hansard -

It is important to emphasise that the lay magistracy already makes our judiciary in England and Wales one of the cheapest in any comparable Council of Europe country. We would be cutting back a system that is already very efficient.

Anna Soubry

- Hansard - - Excerpts

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Lay magistrates normally sit in threes, as opposed to the stipendiary district judges who sit alone. Despite that fact, lay magistrates are considerably cheaper than stipendiary judges. I am not suggesting that they do a lesser job, however. Both are integral to our criminal justice system.

Another great challenge that our magistrates face is the cutting of 93 magistrates courts. That has been debated at length in this place and in Westminster Hall, and it is a matter of great concern. I do not have much difficulty with the reduction in the number of magistrates courts, but I accept that many people are concerned about the ability to deliver local justice and about the extra strain that this will put on our lay magistrates, who are volunteers, through the extra mileage and work that they will have to do.

Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anna Soubry

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

With great respect to my hon. Friend, I wish it were as simple as that. The Act certainly deals with people who have been arrested, but it states:

“The strict liability rule applies only to a publication which creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced.”

That is a very high test, and my understanding of its interpretation is that there have to be court proceedings that are likely to be impeded or prejudiced. When somebody is charged, they will go into court very soon afterwards—court proceedings are almost inevitable. At the moment, as soon as somebody is charged the sort of coverage in the press that we see when somebody has been arrested ends completely. That is because the press knows that subsection (2) deals with cases once somebody has been charged because, in effect, proceedings will have begun. There are no proceedings when people are arrested because they have merely been arrested. They can be arrested, taken to a police station but not interviewed, and “bailed back” to another day. That is why the Contempt of Court Act, as it stands, is inadequate.

Whatever happens to this private Member’s Bill, I very much hope that as a result of the publicity surrounding this debate and, particularly, that surrounding the first man arrested in the Bristol case, will turn the Government’s attention to the Contempt of Court Act. If that Act were amended, then people who are arrested could have their name and address published, but all the highly prejudicial material that we saw in the Bristol case would not be published because, in effect, it would be in contempt. Contempt is probably not the right word to use: to put it in lay terms, it is plain unfair and wrong. It may well be that through the Contempt of Court Act, or some other instrument, we can make things better and cure the mischief.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes her case very powerfully. Two things strike me about the Contempt of Court Act. First, it is 30 years since it was passed, and that is a long time in terms of criminal justice developments. The length of time between arrest and charge and trial has got longer and longer, so there is an issue about understanding what “active proceedings” means. Secondly, proceedings under the Act can be brought only with the leave of the Attorney-General, which is a time delay and a fetter on the discretion of individual trial judges.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for that intervention by my hon. and learned Friend. I am sorry—he is not actually learned, although he is certainly an hon. Friend. He used to be learned, and is undoubtedly a far better lawyer than I am, as we have just heard. He makes the point far better than I have been making it.

The last thing that anyone wants—including Conservative Members—is more criminal offences. I do not want to make party political points, but there was an abundance of criminal justice legislation under the previous Government. I think that 44 such Acts were passed, and goodness knows how many thousands of new criminal offences were created. I am keen not to add to that burden. However, I am very keen that we sort out this problem. In yesterday’s debate about legal aid, my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) pointed out that in this country we prosecute 1 million more people than other comparable countries, so there is a good argument that we prosecute too much, perhaps because we have too many criminal offences—I know not. I am also keen to try to ensure that we, as a nation, spend less money, not more, and inevitably when we create new criminal offences there is a danger of spending more money.

I urge the House to support the Bill because I want this problem to be solved once and for all. I am getting to the stage where, frankly, it does not bother me so much how it is done, just as long as it is done. I would like the media to regulate themselves, but for reasons that I hope I have explained, that is unlikely.

I want to make a couple of points particularly to the Minister. This issue will not go away, whatever the outcome of the Bill. It is important that we remind ourselves that the Government are laying before this House the Education Bill, which will make it an offence for the name of a teacher to be published, following an allegation from a pupil, until such time as they are charged. It seems as though we have accepted that we have a problem that needs tackling and sorting out and the Government have already seized the nettle, so even if I am not successful today, I will have another opportunity when that Bill comes before the House. There is also the sentencing legislation that will inevitably follow. It is perhaps ironic that the Government, rightly, want to give anonymity to teachers in the circumstances I have described, and yet there is an ex-teacher in Bristol who has been afforded no protection from the vilification and feeding frenzy that we have all witnessed in recent months.

I thank everybody who has sent me an e-mail, written to me or supported me in other ways in introducing this Bill. In particular, I thank hon. Members for their advice and support. I commend the Bill to the House, and I hope that it can make progress today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Buckland]

I am always attracted by arguments that lead to simplicity, and indeed, that could work. I believe that an interests of justice test should be construed widely, and that when we list particular circumstances, lawyers tend to take a prescriptive view. There is a highly attractive aspect to what my hon. Friend says, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe would consider such an amendment carefully.

Perhaps we are getting into legalese, and I apologise for that. I shall move on to highlight an interesting local debate in my constituency. My local daily newspaper, the Swindon Advertiser, quite properly has an interest in reporting local crime and antisocial behaviour, and it does so in a largely responsible way. Once or twice I have taken issue with the editor, perhaps when a photograph has been a little insensitive, but broadly speaking I am very much in support of my local newspaper’s work. An interesting debate recently occurred in the paper about whether the names of young people who have been made subject to interim antisocial behaviour orders should be published. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I thought that would arouse some interest. My view is that, whenever possible, the names of young people who are on full or interim ASBOs should be published. That goes back to my earlier point about the immediate local community and its clear interest in helping the police enforce ASBOs. As we know, enforcement of ASBOs has been one of the main criticisms of the mechanism, which has existed for the past 10 years. Far too often, ASBOs have failed because of poor implementation.

The problem arises with the interim ASBO. There is a legal halfway house between a full hearing, in which the evidence is set before the court, the court is satisfied to a high standard that the case has been proved, and an ASBO is issued—frankly, publicity should follow that because due process has occurred—and the interim stage, for which the test is whether the judge thinks that it is just to impose an interim ASBO. That is a wide test. In reality, a judge is faced with a wealth of documentary evidence, which the complaining authority in civil proceedings—usually the local authority—has amassed, and reached the view that there is a case to be made and that, in the circumstances, the interim ASBO is just. However, no formal findings of fact have been made at that stage. Again, it is a grey area, and I can see both sides of the argument. However, I believe that when we reach such a stage, the presumption should be in favour of publication. I hope that my analogy between civil proceedings and the criminal process after charge is clear.

I read with interest several leaders in national daily newspapers that either support or oppose the Bill. The Daily Telegraph’s leader struck me particularly as falling into the trap of eliding two issues. It brought together the Bill and celebrities such as footballers obtaining injunctions to prevent the publication of their names and details in relation to salacious stories about them. I see no correlation between that scenario and the purpose of the Bill. Why? In the celebrity scenario, we are dealing with behaviour that has not been denied. It is not a question of celebrity X saying, “Prove it. This never happened.” Instead, the celebrity is saying, “It’s my private life. I’m not getting into whether it happened; I’m not making a big fuss about that—I just want privacy.” That is different from the problem that the Bill addresses.

[Anna Soubry]

Did not, unfortunately, the article in The Daily Telegraph omit to mention that under the Bill, the press, the prosecution and the arrested person—notably, in this instance, the press—can apply to a judge for leave to publish a name and address if they believe it is in the public interest? The measure does not constitute a gagging order on the press.

[Mr Buckland]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is not about gagging the press. The Bill tries to strike a proper balance between the interests of justice and the wider public’s right to know about what is going on in their community. It is a sensitive balance. None of us can pretend to have all the answers, but it is incumbent on us as legislators to do our best to meet the pressures of modern life and the dangers and abuses that can occur, as happened in Bristol, and try to be the guardians of essential liberties.