Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Shailesh Vara and Ann Clwyd

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

I can happily tell the hon. Gentleman that we have no plans to leave the convention. We are signed up to it, along with the other 46 nations, but where we see the need for change, we will ensure that those changes take place, in the same way that changes took place in Brighton last month.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

5. What recent representations he has received on the operation of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

[Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

We receive regular correspondence on the operation of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Following consultation and consideration of the representations received, the Government have introduced a package of reforms to the Act, through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which recently received Royal Assent.

[Ann Clwyd]

Although I welcome the changes made in the 2012 Act, will the hon. Gentleman consider some loopholes that might be closed? A few months ago I brought up the case in the Chamber of a constituent, an ex-miner who had been fined 28 years ago for stealing a bag of coal in the middle of the miners’ strike. He subsequently tried for a job in a care home as a groundsman. He was offered the job, but it was then withdrawn. That seems ridiculous, because the job had nothing directly to do with the people in the care home, and he had not been accused of—