Section 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anne Main

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I will not give way, because I need to move on and wrap up, as Mr Speaker said.

For the reasons I have given, we have sought an extension up to 30 June, which as I said earlier is before the new European Parliament will be constituted in early July.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

This is a point we have been debating among ourselves here. I gather that the European Parliament has already divvied up the seats, so to speak. What will happen if we take our seats and then do not take our seats? Surely what is being proposed will throw the whole thing into confusion.

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend is right that the European Parliament has had to make contingency plans for constitution with the UK and without the UK, and there is no doubting the complications of that.

Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anne Main

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in the debate. I have to leave at 3.30 pm, as I have advised you, but I have been here for the entire debate. I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) but must say that I disagree with just about every word that he said. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on securing the debate, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud observed, we have had only a day’s notice of it. That was because my hon. Friend the Member for Stone was so fleet-footed and secured it through Standing Order No. 24. Should we not have had that emergency measure, we would have had no discussion whatsoever.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said that we had not had enough time to contemplate the matter, but we should contemplate the impact of this form of legislation even if we do not get debates on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone and my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who is not here at the moment, have spent many long years studying the implications of what goes on in Europe for our economy and our legislature. It is extremely important that we do so. This is not about navel gazing.

I was somewhat disappointed in my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), who seemed to feel that by studying the matter we are somehow being disloyal. It is not disloyalty. We are doing just service to our constituents, because although there may be the political will or ambition in Europe, the impact will be very much on us as a democratically elected Parliament. I, like many other colleagues, have been extremely disappointed by the mission creep throughout Europe, which has in effect led to imposition on a democratic country—such as Greece—by people who were never elected by that country but who now make decisions about it.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to correct a misapprehension. I apologise if I created the impression to which she refers, because it was not my intention at all. I think that we are all patriots in this House—we should be—and that although we may agree on the ends, we may differ on the means by which we achieve them. I should not for a moment question my hon. Friend’s integrity or her sincere devotion to her country.

[Mrs Main]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I end this part of the debate on that conciliatory note.

I have sincere concerns, however, that the mission creep that I mentioned in an intervention has led us to the point at which a democratic country can have something imposed upon it, leading to riots and civil unrest, because it is not willing to take the necessary pain that the EU must inflict on it. Although we are not today debating whether Greece should leave the EU, we all should heed the warning that when Greece signed up to being a full member of the EU it did not sign up to have something imposed upon it, as it has had.

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Debate between Robert Buckland and Anne Main

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Buckland]

Absolutely. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for putting the matter in context. I have been talking about the end result—clearing up the spilled milk—but a lot of the targeting work is all about intervention to manage out the problem. That is a very important point here. A lot of the work that the Committee did was about not just looking at the end result of sentencing but intervening at an earlier stage to get it right and to avoid having to rely on a criminal justice system that does not always deal with problems appropriately, particularly when it comes to young offenders. The restorative justice concept is a prime example of the alternative approach.

I will end by reminding the Minister of the meeting that we had some weeks ago in Birmingham with key players in mental health. It was a very productive round-table discussion, hosted by the National Centre for Mental Health. We were lucky to be joined by senior consultant forensic psychiatrists and the mother of a young man who, as a result of serious drug problems, ended up with a mental health problem and was treated inappropriately by the criminal justice system.

I make this plea—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for making it because he has heard it from me before, but I make no apology for that—that we must get the diversionary therapies and methods absolutely right when it comes to mental health, not only in the Crown court and the magistrates court, in terms of making it easier for sentencers to pass mental health treatment conditions as part of a community order, but at the police station too. That means ensuring that if a desk sergeant or even a duty solicitor or any person who comes into contact with an arrested person, an accused person or a suspect is able to have recourse to community psychiatric nursing help—[Interruption.] I do not know if the person who is in charge of the amplification system wanted me to make that point more clearly. [Laughter.] However, I am happy that it has been amplified and made more clearly.

The intervention of community psychiatric nursing at that level and the professional input of mental health services will go a long way to ensuring that people who have genuine mental health problems end up being treated appropriately rather than in a criminal justice system that far too often fails them, resulting in inappropriate prison sentences being imposed and in the alarming statistics that we are all depressingly familiar with regarding the number of people in our prisons who have mental health conditions.

At the top end of the scale, I would argue that the Mental Health Act provides very important and valuable services for those people with acute mental health problems. However, it is more towards the middle and the bottom end of the scale that the system is, I am afraid, quite simply deficient.

It is very much a question of commissioning. The Minister will agree with me that collaborative work with the Department of Health is essential if we are to get the mental health services that we need. So I urge him to do all he can as a member of the new Government to ensure that, by the time we get to the new commissioning regime next year, mental health services are at the top of the list when it comes to new provision.

On that note, I conclude my remarks, Mrs Main, and I am very grateful to you.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I want to say that we are having the sound issues tackled. I also want to say that I will call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 4.50 pm, followed by the Minister. Can those Members who wish to speak before then be mindful of that?