Mental Health (Discrimination) (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and David Nuttall

Friday 14th September 2012 Commons Chamber

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

It is an honour to take part in this debate on a Bill that, at a stroke, will make huge leaps forward in how we approach mental health in respect of people who serve in this House, on a jury or as a company director, and in how we address the role that people with mental health conditions play in our society.

The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), is absolutely right: there is no binary divide in our society between those who have mental health and those who do not—just as, in fact, there is no binary divide in terms of disability either. It is all a question of degree, and it is important that we, as legislators, send that message out from this place loud and clear both to society in general and in order to express our support for all the organisations in this field. Many of us work with organisations such as Mind, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the many disability organisations that battle every day to get that message across. There is no such thing as normal. We are all unique; we all bring our own qualities to this place, and to whatever walk of life we have chosen. Those qualities, however idiosyncratic they may be, should be celebrated, not hidden.

That is why I am delighted to be here to support this Bill introduced by my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). I have known him for many years; he is a man of great integrity. I know that he introduces this Bill because he, like all of us here, genuinely believes that now is the time to make progress on these issues.

If someone breaks a leg, they get hospital treatment and support not only from the medical services, but from family and friends—there will be a lot of “get well” cards and sympathy and encouragement. When a mental health episode occurs, however, things are far too often rather different. Other people—including friends, sometimes—often have difficulty dealing with it. That is due to centuries of stigma about mental health conditions.

It is not so long ago that people who had poor eyesight were seen as lesser creatures with a disability. I see that a lot of us today are wearing glasses; that is entirely part of the human condition—it is part of who we are. A simple but important analogy can be drawn between that and the situation with regard to mental health.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend must not allow the wearing of glasses to be the only evidence that someone is very short-sighted. I can assure all Members of the House that, were it not for contact lenses, I would be completely unable to find my way to the Chamber.

[Mr Buckland]

I must confess that I am one of a large number of people who are rather squeamish about the concept of contact lenses, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making a good point about invisible conditions, which is another important analogy. We need to understand and have a greater awareness of invisible disabilities such as autism, and you will know of my great interest in that subject, Mr Deputy Speaker.

A significant proportion of all our constituents will have at some time suffered from and reported a mental health condition. In Swindon, the proportion of the GP-registered population with mental health needs in 2010-11 was just over 13%. Some 0.7% of the population were described as having a mental health problem, and 12.4% were suffering from depression. More than one in eight registered patients in the borough of Swindon, which has a population of over 200,000 people, have advised their doctor about a mental health condition. That is not something we can put in a box in a corner and forget about; it is something all around us, visible or invisible, that we need to accept, embrace and understand.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central rightly pointed out that one significant anomaly in the law—the position with regard to school governors—has already been amended this year, and I am delighted that the Government were able to bring that discrimination to an end. That brings into ever more stark relief the outdated and archaic nature of the provisions that the Bill seeks to repeal.

Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and David Nuttall

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the assertion of facts that could be prejudicial to any future investigation, although I would say that I am now of the view that internet and print media are indistinguishable. The only difference between them is that today’s print is tomorrow’s firelighters—tomorrow’s chip paper, as I think I called it in another debate. The problem with the internet is that it is not just for Christmas, it is for life. I could give a number of examples of constituents who, years after having been exonerated and cleared of very serious allegations, still have to live with the fact that when a Google search is made against their name, a newspaper report about that false allegation comes up. It haunts people who are in that unfortunate situation. As I said earlier, that is a matter for DCMS input and for regulation, because we need consensus about how to deal with the sometimes baleful effects of internet reports that linger for years and years.

I return to what I regard as the grey area between arrest and charge, and the somewhat cumbersome nature of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, the leave of the Attorney-General is needed before any prosecution is brought, which can often be a cumbersome way of doing things. Such things take time, because obtaining that leave can interrupt proceedings and lead to a delay before a decision is made, which can be damaging in itself. As she said, the test set out in that Act—whether there is

“substantial risk that the course of justice…will be seriously impeded or prejudiced”—

is a high one. It mentions the course of justice, however, and at the point of arrest we do not know whether there will be a course of justice in the sense of a charge. I can see many a clever lawyer—much cleverer ones than me, although I have received a degree of praise today that I perhaps do not deserve—taking that point firmly by the reins and running with it.

In short, the Act, which is celebrating its 30th year, needs revision, and here is my suggestion. We should consider the point between arrest and charge in a different way from the point from charge to trial or conviction. There should be a presumption against the publication of details of an arrested person prior to charge; then that presumption should be reversed post-charge. In other words, we should apply the interests of justice test, but with safeguards in place, acknowledging that the decision to charge is significant. It means that the prosecution has formed the view that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction, and that it is in the public interest to charge. That is an important and simple test that everybody can understand, both in this place and elsewhere, and it should trigger more disclosure.

Prior to that point, unless there are public interest reasons such as those clearly set out in the Bill, the presumption should be the other way around and there should not be publication unless there is a clear public interest such as that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rightly referred to. I can imagine, and in fact I know of, scenarios in which there is a tight-knit local community or an estate in which a particular issue arises, and it would be in the local public interest to know that suspect A had been arrested. That person may well be known to local people, and it would give them a sense of confidence that the criminal justice system was working. Most importantly, if there were any perceived injustice at that stage, people in the local community could come forward and say, “We think you’ve got the wrong person—will you investigate why?” I can imagine a whole host of community and wider public interest reasons why publication could and should take place.

The observation that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) made earlier about limiting the details that can be published to someone’s name and address has merit. In the spirit of the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe that the Bill is not necessarily the precise device needed to cure the mischief, it could well be that if the Bill proceeds further, or in the course of a wider review of the Contempt of Court Act, we should consider carefully whether setting out clearly in statute a provision for the publication of name and address could cure the problem of the grey area that I have been talking about.

I have mentioned the exceptions that my hon. Friend has set out in clause 2. I welcome them, with one caveat. Subsection (2)(c) and (d) state that it will be in the interests of justice to make a direction when

“it may lead to information that assists the arrested person”

or if

“the conduct of the…defence at trial is likely to be substantially prejudiced if the direction is not given.”

I wonder whether we need the word “substantially”. Perhaps it would be far better to take it out and make the point that if the defendant wants the provision to apply, that is a matter for them. The burden of proof is not on the defendant, as we all know, so perhaps that word should be taken out.

[Mr Nuttall]

I will hopefully have the chance to make this point in my own comments later, but does my hon. Friend agree that subsection (2)(c) and (d) could be removed from the Bill, so that we could have a far easier process whereby the defendant would sign some sort of statement, having taken legal advice, that they were happy for their name to be released?

[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.