Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hughes and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

As I said, the offence of treason has not been used since 1945. It dates from a much earlier statute. The Law Commission has not looked at it recently, but there is no reason why it should not come forward with a proposal to do so. On this issue, the Government are absolutely focused on making sure that people who go abroad and either commit serious offences abroad or when they come back to this country are prosecuted now and effectively. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that we need to make sure that we have the full panoply of powers while respecting our international obligations, and that there are plenty of such powers without using the offence of treason.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What steps he plans to take to enforce the code of practice for victims of crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his continuing interest in this matter, and I hope that he has found the response to the consultation helpful. It makes it absolutely clear that we want to be much more hands-on in terms of managing the role of deputies who are responsible for other people’s estates, to reduce the number of allegations of abuse and misuse of funds and to ensure that vulnerable people are better protected by the courts. I also hope he will have noticed that I have ensured that if anyone wants to make a decision about who should manage any future decisions relating to life or death, that decision will have to be made in person with someone there to witness it, so that there can be no risk of anyone failing to understand the decision they are making.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

T9. I very much welcome the decision by the victims Minister to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) and the families of Tyrell Matthews-Burton. May I make so bold as to ask that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who has responsibility for courts and legal aid, should join us at that meeting? He is already aware of the case, having recently written to me to confirm that one of the gentlemen charged with taking part in the fight in which Tyrell was killed was convicted of carrying a knife just five days before the event but had his sentence suspended so that he could go on holiday.

Education Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Stella Creasy

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the key issues for me is that in Committee the Minister talked about schools triggering an assessment of behaviour, but there is no clarity about how that process might take place. I hope that he will address that point when he responds.

I have a great fear about asking head teachers to become educational psychologists, but that is the implication of putting that power in the hands of schools and making them responsible for trying to work out what provision is best for the children without the support to be able to deliver it. No one is suggesting that head teachers and teachers are not committed to their pupils, but in a system in which they will face only a small financial adjustment of £4,000, in contrast to the cost of supporting a child with emotional and behavioural difficulties and providing special educational needs, it is easy to see where the incentives to act might be.

All Opposition Members ask for is some comfort, assurance and accountability for the use of those new powers, so that we can ensure that young people are not left in the lurch, not left unable to access the appropriate educational systems that they need, not abandoned by schools that are desperate to meet other targets and not abandoned by the professionals from whom they need help because those relationships no longer exist.

The Bill makes putting in place support for children with special educational needs much less likely, not more likely. There might be some wonderful ambitions in the Green Paper, but I am deeply concerned that this Bill means that they will be harder to realise. All of us will be the worse for that, as we see young people in our communities struggle to get the educational opportunities that they need early in life, and are not able to progress later in life.

The new clause and its proposed report would shine a spotlight—a powerful phrase that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) used in Committee, and on which I hope the Minister has reflected—on those young people, and on what is being done to help them to achieve in life. I hope that the Minister will do more than he did in Committee, when he simply said, “Well, we’ll continue to publish individual datasets,” and bridge the gap between what happens to the data that local authorities previously collected, the data on exclusions and the data on special educational needs. He should commit to bringing to the House those regular updates, so that we might all be confident that young people in our communities are being given the support that they need to achieve. We will all be better for that if he does.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am really here to take part in the debate on the next group of amendments, but I want to refer to one issue in this group in my capacity as the advocate for access, because an access issue arises.

New clause 10, in the name of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Secretary of State, addresses the obligations in the Education Act 1996. The 1996 Act says:

“The Secretary of State shall promote the education of the people of England and Wales,”

and the new clause suggests that it be amended to say,

“and ensure fair access to opportunity for education and training.”

That is an important point, which I recognise and want to flag up. I will rehearse it in the next group of amendments, which I have looked at, have much sympathy with and have spoken to Ministers about, but I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to moving from the current definition of the Secretary of State’s duty to a wider one. If the Government are clear that we have to have better and fairer access to opportunity for education and training, they should recognise that it begins in schools, not in sixth-form and further education colleges. It starts earlier.

I have not engaged in the technical debate, and I guess that there is one concern about the wording of the new clause, but I hope that by the time the Bill reaches the Lords we will have been able to seek consensus and agreement. The lawyer in me anticipates that, if we introduce a duty to ensure fair access, we will probably precipitate people going to court, challenging a decision and looking for judicial review. After the Bill has been through its stages here and before the other House deals with it, however, we might consider whether the Secretary of State will accept a duty at least to promote fair access to opportunity for education and training, moving from the current duty to one that ensures that the fair access point is understood throughout the whole education sector in England, including in schools.