Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

I made it clear that because this is the second and last day on Report and because we must have Third Reading, at this round of our deliberations we cannot do that in this building. Other work is taking place, however, not least in the Joint Committee on which I serve with colleagues from both Houses. We want to report in time for our work to be taken into account up the corridor in the House of Lords. Any amendments made in the Lords must still come back to this place, so I ask the Government to give time for the Committees that are working and have not reported to report and for those reports to be considered by the Government in good time to be seen by colleagues in the Lords and for the independent commission to report and to be seen, provided it gets on with the job quickly.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

Before I tackle new clauses 2 and 3 and the amendments, I welcome the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) to his place. I am not sure whether this is his last appearance in his current position—

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

My right hon. Friend has set out all the things that should be of reassurance, which is very helpful to those in the House and, I hope, outside it. Will he repeat the assurance that he and the Leader of the House are willing, if necessary, to have a further conversation with Stuart Etherington or the commission to make sure, face to face, that what has been said is understood? A great deal of heat and noise has been generated, and at the beginning there might have been some justification for that. The Government are trying to deal with it, but it might be better dealt with by also having some further conversation to make sure that there is dialogue as opposed to just two separate statements in different places.

[Tom Brake]

I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the doors of the Leader of the House’s office and mine are permanently open to that sort of approach. In fact, the dialogue with the NCVO has been very active and constant, and I am keen to pursue that. The NCVO is, as I stated earlier, at least partially happy and has in the past said that the amendments significantly meet its concerns. There is common ground and we want to ensure that it is developed further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

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

1. If he will make it his policy to encourage his ministerial colleagues to table Government amendments to Bills whenever possible in the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords; and if he will make a statement.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

It is usual practice for Government to make amendments, where possible, in the House of introduction. However, the Government are rightly expected to listen and respond to debates on Bills in both Houses of Parliament, and it is, of course, the core strength of our Parliament that any amendments made to Bills in the other place must also be agreed by this House.

[Simon Hughes]

Obviously, all Governments try to introduce perfect legislation the first time around, but very few succeed. I hope that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues understand that it is really important that the democratic House has the opportunity to look at any changes that are found to be necessary as a result of the work of Select Committees and others. I hope that this Government will try very hard to ensure that we see amendments first and that they are not left as a sort of teaser at the other end of the building late in the day.

[Tom Brake]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that it is very important that this House is given an opportunity to consider amendments but, as I said in my earlier response, it is inevitable that matters will be raised in the other House that will need to be addressed there. I understand what my right hon. Friend is saying and I will ensure, as far as I can, that what he seeks actually happens.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

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

Some of us are very pleased that the Government are introducing a Bill to deal with transparency of lobbying, which the previous Government never did. There has been an enormous amount of hype and overstatement, but perhaps some improvements could be and need to be made. May I have a clear undertaking that next week’s Committee stage will be open to amendments from across the House, including from relevant Select Committees with an interest in and knowledge of the subject?

[Tom Brake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Clearly, the Government have stated on a number of occasions that we are very keen to work with charities, non-governmental organisations and, indeed, Select Committees to ensure that their views are taken into account. That is very much our intention. We also want to ensure that the issue of parliamentarians and the role we play will be clarified very clearly in relation to this Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

Many Members have experienced some frustrations regarding the private Members’ Bill process. I know that the hon. Gentleman has made a suggestion to the Procedure Committee along the lines of his question, but he will be aware that existing procedures of the House allow for a closure to be sought on debates and to impose time limits on speeches. He will be aware that sometimes when a Member presents a private Member’s Bill there will be other ways of ensuring that it is reflected in Government legislation, in the way that his proposed measures on children and families will be reflected in that Bill.

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

7. Whether he has considered guaranteeing a minimum amount of time for the consideration of Government Bills at Report stage.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

This Government recognise the value of parliamentary scrutiny of legislation. We have provided more days than the previous Administration for Report stages and, where necessary, we will provide more than one day for Report stage.

[Simon Hughes]

I recognise the Government’s commitment to better scrutiny of legislation, but one of the perennial frustrations, under all Governments, is that we get to Report stage and the allocated time is used up by urgent questions or statements and we end up with almost no time to do the job of the House. Will Ministers look at changing that so that we have injury time for any time lost because of earlier business?

[Tom Brake]

I understand my right hon. Friend’s point. The Government have sought to address his concerns by providing more time on Report, but he might want to consider making a submission to the Procedure Committee, which is looking at programming. I am sure that the Government will want to consider his submission, along with others, when the report is published.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She makes a strong point that legal aid lawyers need to be available to provide legal aid advice. I hope that the Government will ensure that that is the case.

I would welcome some clarification about the timetable. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who is no longer in his place, intervened to ask for clarity about the timetable for reaching a conclusion on identifying lower tribunal cases that involve points of law and on how the certification process would work. I look forward to seeing how that will be resolved. I accept that the Justice Secretary’s proposal will not address all the complex welfare benefit cases to which Citizens Advice has referred. It has confirmed to me that it is working on some cases of general advice that are funded through legal aid. It acknowledges that there are already cases where there is no requirement for the work to be legally aided, or legal aid funded, in order for it to be completed.

Members may have looked at some of the case studies in the briefing from Citizens Advice, “Out of scope, out of mind”. For example, there is the Kelly case where her care needs were set out in detail in a three-page letter to the DWP appeals officer, but it was not immediately clear to me that there was a requirement for legal aid to write that particular letter, as it was suggested there was in the briefing. It acknowledges that there are cases where the issues are more about general advice, so the additional Government funding—the extra £20 million, or the £16.8 million this year, and the £20 million next year and thereafter—is welcome.

Of course I acknowledge that local authorities are cutting funding to their citizens advice bureaux, but I would ask all Members what pressure they are putting on their local authorities, which can make choices. It is clear that some have chosen to continue funding for their CABs, while others have chosen not to. Local authorities have some options on where to make the cuts. If some choose to support their CABs, which I welcome, others are choosing not to, which I regret.

[Simon Hughes]

I hope I am not pre-empting my right hon. Friend’s argument, but the other thing the Justice Secretary said that was welcome in respect of this part of the Bill was the commitment he gave that judicial review cases would be covered by legal aid. They are exactly the cases that people were most worried that there would be no support for. Here, legal aid is clearly necessary.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

None of us can stand up and say that there do not have to be reductions, but of course it is not just the lawyers, the citizens advice bureaux or the other advice bureaux we should be concerned about; it is advice workers and qualified advice workers too.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who has just left the Chamber, tried to wind us up earlier. I have one objective in these considerations: if I do not think that a Bill was in the right place when it began, I want to ensure that it ends up in the right place by the time it becomes law, As we know, the reality is that sometimes we can make and win an argument in Committee, but it is very rare for a Government to be defeated in Committee. Sometimes the argument can be won on Report. Arguments are normally won when the Government have been persuaded not only in the Chamber, but outside it. I have had meetings with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and other colleagues, as have many other Members. The press reports that my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches want to make further progress and changes, and we will continue in that.

We have heard that the Minister was very good and said in response to my amendment 145 which we debated on Monday that he would look specifically at the issue of family reunion, and I take him at his word. I think that that is a case where we need change, and I have no reason to think that, if he is helpful today, we cannot make significant progress. Of course, it would be lovely if all the amendments were made today, but we are not necessarily at that stage.

[Tom Brake]

My right hon. Friend has been a Member for many years. Can he recall on how many occasions when the Labour party was in power and we as an Opposition party put forward amendments in Committee that we received its support?

[Simon Hughes]

I cannot, either because there were none or they were very rare. To be serious, however, I have been a Member not quite for ever but for a long time under both Labour and Tory Governments, and I do not want to get distracted by that, because in reality we on the Liberal Democrat Benches all seek to work with the Government to get the right outcome, and we will do so constructively. We shall do that not by megaphone diplomacy but in a way that I hope is persuasive in argument and wins the day.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I think that the hon. Lady may, if she examines her constituency cases, find some examples where people are frustrated at the length of time—it could be years—that a property next to theirs has been empty and has been allowed to fall into disrepair, with all the environmental and other dangers associated with that.

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

I just want to try to disabuse the hon. Lady of a simplistic view about this. The council had determined to knock down a block over the other side of the river—the Pullens estate in my constituency, which is a fantastic old estate—but it was squatted, as were some estates in Surrey Docks. Had that not happened, these places would have been demolished. They were squatted, they were kept, they have been refurbished, and they are now properly let and in use. So this is not nearly as simplistic as it has been made out to be, and often people would rather a property was occupied than sitting empty.

[Tom Brake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, which provides its own explanation.

The final point that I wish to make is about the retrospective nature of the provision as, again, it is an area that the Government need to examine carefully. As we have not had an in-depth debate here tonight, I suspect that it may well be a point that is examined much more closely when the matter is raised in the other place.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

In a second—I shall continue, if I may.

I welcome what the Prime Minister said about the inquiry being extended to all police forces and not just the Metropolitan police, and to all forms of media. I am clear that it should also include looking at appropriate Cabinet papers—I hope that the appropriate releases will be made—party papers, and papers held by previous Ministers in all Administrations. Why? The Prime Minister said that, “There are issues of excessive closeness to media groups and media owners where both Labour and Conservatives have to make a fresh start”, but my Liberal Democrat Friends and others feel that there are not just “issues”, but evidence of dangerous and unhealthy “closeness” in Administrations for at least the past 20 years. Colleagues in both Houses—I am not claiming this for myself—have made that point at every available opportunity. All Liberal Democrat party leaders of the past 20 years, from Lord Ashdown, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, have made that point continuously with other colleagues, on the record, for the past 20 years.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that sometimes, that closeness might have led Governments to take policy decisions that they would not have taken otherwise?

[Simon Hughes]

My right hon. Friend is right, and there is clear evidence for that, and I can perhaps use his intervention to elaborate.

The Competition Bill that was introduced by the Labour Government in 1997 dealt with predatory pricing, including among petrol retailers and supermarkets. My colleagues in the other place, led by Lord McNally, who is now a Justice Minister, managed to pass an amendment that would have included newspapers. The amendment was taken out by the Labour Government—although there were some Labour rebels—when the Bill returned to the Commons. It was absolutely clear that the Labour Government did not want to touch the media empires when they were imposing a tougher competitive regime on other sectors of British industry. I am very clear that that relates to the obvious and evidenced relationships that started under the Thatcher and Major Administrations and continued under the Blair and Brown Administrations. Obviously, such relationships also continued into the beginning of this Government as far as the Conservative party is concerned.

My colleagues and I were clear about that and we tried to do something about it. Lord Taylor of Goss Moor tried to deal with the competitive pricing issue in the House of Commons, and in 1998, Lord McNally said very clearly:

“Concentration of power, married with the advance in technologies, offers a challenge to democratic governments and free societies which we have scarcely begun to address.”

How right he was. Those debates also went to the dominance of particular newspaper titles and the influence of their owners, particularly in relation to the Murdoch empire.

Civil Recovery (England and Wales)

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I am grateful for the opportunity given by Mr Speaker to have this debate and to the Minister for doing a back-to-back session by responding to two successive debates.

Colleagues who have looked at the Order Paper and seen that this debate is about civil recovery in England and Wales may not have realised immediately what the subject of the debate is. “Civil recovery” is not a phrase that people regularly use. I want to introduce the debate by giving two examples of incidents that came to my attention as an MP in Southwark and that precipitated my interest in the subject.

A constituent of mine came to me after her 15-year-old daughter was accused of stealing £6 worth of goods from a London store. The daughter was then sent a demand on behalf of the store from which she was alleged to have stolen those items asking for £137.50. The explanation given was that she was being asked to compensate the store for the £6 worth of items and to pay the rest of the costs of the administration, the store security and so on. Another constituent then approached me on behalf of one of her daughters, who had been with two friends at Primark. One of the three girls—not my constituent’s daughter—was accused of stealing, but demands for £87.50 were sent to all three girls on behalf of Primark. These two incidents alerted me to what I have since discovered is a very widespread practice.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend is right that this is a widespread practice. I want to draw to his attention to a very similar case involving a constituent of mine. She was stopped and accused of shoplifting. Nothing was found, and she was released by the police, but subsequently she received a letter from a civil recovery company saying that she needed to pay £70.

[Simon Hughes]

Like my hon. Friend, all Members of this House who are MPs for any length of time will discover, if they go through their casework files, that this practice is being brought to their attention. At the beginning of this debate, I unambiguously want to pay credit to the citizens advice bureaux and in particular to Richard Dunstan, who had done some work on this issue long before I became aware of it. On behalf of the CAB, he has brought together all the examples of this practice in the best possible place. As a result of his work, two briefings have been published by the CAB, which I recommend to colleagues and others who have an interest in this subject. The first, “Unreasonable demands?”, was published in December 2009, and the second, “Uncivil recovery”, was published in December 2010. The subtitle of the second briefing tells us succinctly what we are talking about. It is:

“Major retailers’ use of threatened civil recovery against those accused of shoplifting or employee theft.”

Colleagues in both the last Parliament and this one have shared my interest in this subject. In the previous Parliament, I know that Ian McCartney was particularly concerned about the issue, and in this Parliament I know that Baroness Hayter has already registered her interest in the subject. I am grateful to her for her continuing interest, which I think that she will want to pursue in the other place.

None of us who are here for this debate are defending shoplifting or employees who shoplift or take property from their employer. However, there are proper procedures, proper criminal processes and proper civil processes. What should not happen is that people who often are young—that is, under the age of majority—vulnerable, mentally ill, distressed or disturbed are intimidated, charged extortionate fees or threatened with what are, bluntly, bogus actions, either by the shops themselves or more frequently nowadays by those who are employed by shops to act for them.

I have discovered that this problem is significant. In each of the past three years, some 100,000 people have received one or more letters demanding a substantial sum of money as “compensation” for their alleged shoplifting or employee theft, and threatening civil court action and associated extra costs if the sum demanded is not paid promptly. Since 2000, more than 600,000 people have received such civil recovery demands, issued by one of a handful of agents acting for well known high street retailers such as Asda, Boots, Debenhams, Tesco and TK Maxx. In the great majority of those cases, the value of the goods or cash allegedly stolen was relatively low. If the accusation is of shoplifting, the value was just a few pounds. In four out of five cases, the goods were recovered intact for resale. In many cases, somebody was apprehended when they were accused of leaving a store with an item—for example, an eyeliner worth £2 or a grocery item worth £1.60—without having paid for it. They then paid for it and were released, but they still received the civil recovery demand later. Among those cases reported to the CAB, one in four of the recipients of such demands are teenagers, most of them aged between 14 and 16, and other recipients are particularly vulnerable.

In many cases, the alleged theft is strongly denied, so it is not always the case—indeed, it is normally not the case—that these allegations are accepted by the person who is charged. In some cases, there was clearly an innocent mistake; in other cases, there was an error; and in other cases there was confusion. However, it matters not, because these stores have behind them a small but growing army of lawyers and other companies that are making a hefty profit from this business.

There is a common feature in these cases. If the sum demanded is not paid, the threat of county court action is often repeated. There is a second threat and then a third threat, giving ever closer dates of notice. However, at the end of all these threats county court action does not materialise, because it was invalid and unjustified in the first place.

The most prolific civil recovery agent, a firm called Retail Loss Prevention, is the biggest player among a small army of players in this sector. It has confirmed that it has never successfully litigated a fully contested county court claim in respect of an unpaid demand. The CAB has also received advice, which I have seen, suggesting that there is no obvious legal authority for most of these demands. Taken together, those two facts suggest that the practice of threatened civil recovery relies on fear and/or shame, as well as ignorance of the law, for its effectiveness.

When I began thinking about how I would raise this issue, I wondered which Government Department I would, as it were, “summon to answer” to me in the first place, because it is very clear that this matter is not only the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. However, I thought that I would start there, because it is a justice issue, and I am very grateful for the Minister’s presence today and for his Department’s interest in this subject. Shortly, I want to put to him some specific issues that I hope his Department can pick up, because I believe that it has a responsibility to do so and that it can do things.

There is no way that that we should continue to permit this system of civil recovery, and I hope that today’s debate will precipitate a working-together across Departments. Obviously, there is a Home Office interest in this issue and there is also an interest for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as well as an interest for the Ministry of Justice, in trying to ensure that we shut down this business and make those who are involved, which are otherwise reputable major retail outlets, behave in a much more reasonable way.

Nobody condones retail theft. It is a big issue, and we need to ensure that stores are not pilfered and that there is the best possible policing of them. However, even if one accepts that retail theft is a big problem, the percentage of the money stolen from shops that is recovered by these means is a very small proportion of the total. So it is not as if the retailers involved are able to cover all their costs by doing this type of thing. I will turn to some examples.

[Tom Brake]

Has my right hon. Friend considered that we should take up this issue in a protection of freedoms Bill No. 2? It is probably too late for the Protection of Freedoms Bill that is about to start its Committee stage, but it could be considered in a future Bill.

[Simon Hughes]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s suggestion, and I hope that the Minister will address the areas that the Ministry of Justice can pick up. If over the next few weeks, with concentrated efforts in both Houses, we can get a coalition—as it were—of determination to do something, I, with my hon. Friend and others, will look for the earliest available opportunity to deal with the legislative changes that I think are part of the response that is needed.

On the protagonists, I have listed some of the major retail players, and I will now deal with the agents. In eight out of 10 of the cases reported to citizens advice bureaux the demand was issued by a Nottingham-based company called Retail Loss Prevention Ltd. Since 1999, that company has issued more than 550,000 demands on behalf of dozens of retailers, including Argos, E.H. Booth, Debenhams, Harrods, Iceland, Lidl, Matalan, Morrisons, Mothercare, Netto, Primark and Waitrose. The company retains some 40% of any money it recovers and the remainder goes to the retailer client. The owner and managing director of the company, who is being pursued by Citizens Advice and by others in the media, has said that the company is

“passionate in our belief that we are helping the community by going after the ‘soft’ criminals who are often seen as lower priority by the police”.

In seven out of 10 of the cases that have come to the notice of citizens advice bureaux, the demand was issued on behalf of one of just six retailers—Boots, TK Maxx, Tesco, Wilkinson, B&Q and Superdrug. The predetermined fixed sum demanded by RLP in most if not all shoplifting cases varies according to, and is determined by, the total value claimed of the goods or cash involved. If the value is between nothing and £10, the sum demanded is £87.50 and the 21-day settlement offer is £70; if the goods are worth between £10 and £100, invariably £137.50 is asked for, with a discounted 21-day-period amount; if the value is more than £100, £187.50 is asked for, with a quick-pay discounted amount of £150; and if it is more than £300, £250 is asked for, with a quick-pay amount of £200. It is clear that the company has never justified the legitimacy of its action. It has been asked persistently about the evidence for its actions, and it has repeatedly declined to produce any evidence that claims have regularly and successfully been pursued by means of county court proceedings.

The company has also clearly misrepresented the position. Until last November, RLP’s website stated that

“we have established operating procedures for Civil Recovery and agreed guidelines with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPOS)”.

However, in October last year, the assistant chief constable who leads on retail crime for ACPO wrote to Jackie Lambert at RLP stating:

“Whilst there may have been agreements in the past about exchanging data and operating civil recovery with ACPO…there are no such agreements in place now and indeed on several occasions over the last few years I and my colleagues have asked that such references be deleted. Please remove from your website any and all references which state or imply that RLP operates its civil recovery in agreement or cooperation with the Police Service. Clearly if you have an agreement with an individual force you could make reference to that, but I know of none.”

In November last year, ACPOS said:

“At no time have ACPOS entered into any formal agreement with RLP or assisted them in any civil recovery”.

The other players are Drydens, a law firm based in Bradford, Nottingham-based Civil Recovery Solutions and, more worryingly in a way, a Florida-based law firm, Palmer, Reifler and Associates, which is a major player on the United States civil recovery scene but is not regulated to practise in the UK and uses Wigan-based law firm Goddard Smith as its agent. Lastly, there is the London-based firm Civil Recovery Limited, which acted for only Tesco and was closely related to a security company called TSS, which supplies security guards to Tesco, Boots and other retailers. Civil Recovery Limited ceased trading last summer.

Penultimately, there is of course a civil wrong if someone steals something from someone else. There is a tort as well as a crime, and there is a breach of contract if an employee steals from their employer. I am not arguing that there might not be proper civil proceedings, but this is a contrivance. It is an intimidation, with the protagonists selling their services to the retail fraternity and then recovering a large amount of money under clearly false pretences. What please can we do about it?

I would like the following from the Ministry of Justice. I would like it to ask the Law Commission, which has a report in the pipeline, to ensure that it urgently reviews the entire law on civil recovery, with a view to eventually ensuring, by law if necessary, that civil recovery is limited to cases involving serious, determined and/or persistent criminal activity for which there has been a criminal trial and conviction. I would like the Ministry, as a matter of urgency, to prepare and disseminate public information and advice on threatened civil recovery, and in particular on the options available to people who might receive a civil recovery demand from Retail Loss Prevention, Drydens or other civil recovery agents. That could be done through the Government’s public information service—Directgov—citizens advice bureaux and other advice outlets.

I also want the Ministry of Justice to talk to the Solicitors Regulation Authority to see whether it needs to take further action to ensure that the civil recovery practice of solicitors, including employed solicitors, is consistent with the solicitors’ code of conduct. I would then like the Home Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the retail industry and the police to identify and develop a range of alternative ways of dealing with those involved who, if they are young, mentally ill or vulnerable, are often better dealt with by cautions and the early stages of the pre-criminal procedure in my experience.

As the total amount recovered by the civil recovery agents for their retailer clients each year seems unlikely to be more than £16 million, the practice is clearly completely unacceptable, given that they say that they lose £4 billion every year as an industry. I hope that some major retailers will hear this debate and agree to review their practice. Most of all, it is clear to me that the practice has become an opportunity for great profit-making by a few at the risk of improperly influencing and intimidating people who ideally should not be in the criminal process, unless they are regular offenders, and certainly should not be the victims of communications that distort the facts, misrepresent the law and often put the fear of God into people who certainly do not have the money to pay large sums.

I hope that the Minister can be helpful, that he understands the importance of this issue to all our constituents, and that today will be the beginning of the end of this practice. I am very grateful to all those people who have brought the issue to the public’s attention, and I hope that there will be continued significant public reporting, until the practice is ended.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Simon Hughes and Tom Brake

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He has put on record what I know to be his long-standing interest in the Chagos islands, and I hope that a positive outcome will be secured there.

The second reason why I am speaking in favour of more prisoners being given the right to vote is that it is the appropriate course of action. Prisoners have committed a crime. Their punishment is to lose their liberty. That is fair and just. What is then gained by seeking to inflict civil death on them? In what way does that benefit the victim? Does it increase the chances of rehabilitation? What is the logic behind the ban? We do not remove prisoners’ access to health care, nor do we stop them practising their religion, so why should we impose a blanket ban on prisoners’ right to vote? Surely we have moved on from the Victorian notion of civil death.

[Simon Hughes]

Nor do we prevent prisoners from continuing to have obligations outside—for example, in relation to any assets they own or income they receive, on which they have to pay taxes. All the countries where prisoners are allowed the vote have the additional advantage that people seeking election have to go into prisons and understand life from the inside, rather than commenting only from the outside.

[Tom Brake]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend and many others here have engaged with prisoners, and that he will have found, as I have, that there is a great degree of interest in what is happening outside the prison walls. It is therefore entirely appropriate that we should seek that engagement.