Northern Ireland Backstop
Debate between Robert Buckland and Nick Smith(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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The Solicitor General
I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he is of course correct on all counts.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
This morning, the Health Secretary said that the NHS is spending £11 million preparing for no deal. In January, this House voted for the Spelman-Dromey amendment to take no deal off the table, so can the Solicitor General explain why the Government are ignoring the will of the Commons by trying to keep no deal on the table, and spending that £11 million unnecessarily?
The Solicitor General
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The Spelman-Dromey amendment actually committed us to a course of action whereby this House would not leave without a withdrawal agreement and future relationship. Those are not quite the same things as the assertions that he makes. He knows that I am as anxious as he is to achieve a deal. He represents a constituency that I know well, which has, shall we say, more than its fair share of challenges. I want to help him and his constituents. The way to do that is to end the uncertainty and support the deal.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Robert Buckland and Nick Smith(6 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Solicitor General
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She is absolutely right to identify the important funding that will support witnesses giving evidence. Without witnesses giving evidence, prosecutions will not succeed.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
By when will the Government introduce the measures necessary to prevent victims of domestic violence from being questioned by perpetrators in family courts?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Gentleman knows that that is and remains a key manifesto commitment for our Government. We want to introduce it via new domestic violence legislation. My colleagues in the Home Office are working on a draft Bill, and I very much hope that it will be introduced for parliamentary consideration as soon as possible this year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Robert Buckland and Nick Smith(9 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Solicitor General
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place—another experienced lawyer. The work that has been done by the Crown Prosecution Service in the past five years in removing excessive expenditure in the back office and concentrating on the front line has yielded results. I am absolutely confident that issues of resource will never get in the way of the proper investigation and prosecution of such allegations.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
3. What his future funding proposals are for the Serious Fraud Office; and if he will make a statement.
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
The Serious Fraud Office is a small and demand-led organisation that comprises investigators, prosecutors, accountants and other specialists. The model, which is known as the Roskill model, gives the director of the SFO the flexibility to have the right combination of expertise to tackle the most complex and large cases. The current blockbuster funding approach allows him to take on cases that are exceptionally demanding in terms of resource, such as the LIBOR case, while avoiding the need constantly to maintain high levels of permanent staff, which are not always necessary.
Nick Smith
The SFO going cap in hand to the Treasury when it wants to take on a major case could mean delaying justice. Why not let moneys recovered by the SFO be kept by it so that it has autonomy?
The Solicitor General
Attractive though that proposal sounds—I take it in the constructive spirit that I know the hon. Gentleman intends—my worry is that that is an even more uncertain means of funding the SFO. The advantage of blockbuster funding is that it allows the SFO the flexibility it needs, allows significant amounts of money to be allocated to its work, and proves the point that funding will never be a bar to the work of the SFO in investigating serious fraud.
Speech Therapy Services (Children)
Debate between Robert Buckland and Nick Smith(14 years ago)
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Sarah Teather
I shall give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).