UK and Gibraltar Prosecuting Authorities

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

That is exactly what the then Foreign Secretary said, and I believe the right hon. Member for Leicester East may have been a member of the same Government. Robin Cook was right, and his comment summarises the matter.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I regularly meet Gibraltar Ministers through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and other bodies, and they are always telling me about the robust steps that they have taken in partnership with the UK and Spain to ensure that Gibraltar has the highest standards. Is that the hon. Gentleman’s experience in his conversations with Ministers from Gibraltar?

[Robert Neill]

That is my experience of conversations with Ministers in Gibraltar. It is my experience of conversations with our embassy in Madrid. It is also my experience of conversations with police officers and the senior judiciary in Gibraltar and the senior Crown Counsel and his Department in Gibraltar. It is certainly my experience of conversations with the excellent Attorney General, Ricky Rhoda. All the evidence is clear in such matters. That is a further indication of the permanent and long-running co-operation with the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, the hon. Fabian Picardo QC, who is in London at the moment for a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council of Overseas Territories. Gibraltar works closely with the UK at every level and to the highest standards, and it moves swiftly.

To allow my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General to respond, I will make my final point. No sooner had this House opted back into some European justice issues, from which we had had an opt-out—the justice and home affairs area—on 1 December, the Government of Gibraltar published a series of regulations to give effect to the same principles and arrangements as those that the UK has now opted into. It could not have moved more swiftly to ensure that it met exactly the same standards as the UK on police, criminal and judicial co-operation, including important matters such as exchange of intelligence and information, mutual recognition of criminal freezing orders, asset recovery confiscation orders and financial penalties. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, who I am delighted to see here today and who is highly experienced in such matters, will be able to confirm that.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Leicester East for accepting on the record in this House that any allegations and slurs against Gibraltar were utterly baseless. The people of Gibraltar are entitled to an apology and a correction, and I hope that we have been able to achieve that in this debate and that the Solicitor-General will be able to set out the Government’s position on the excellent co-operation between our two jurisdictions.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor-General]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The delicate network of interlocking mutual legal assistance is vital if we are to have a truly international approach to the fight against crime, which nowadays often exists in many jurisdictions and crosses many boundaries.

[Thomas Docherty]

Two specific allegations could be levelled against Gibraltar. The first is that it is a soft touch on the physical bringing of drugs into its ports; and the second is that it is a soft touch on the financial services-based introduction of laundered money. Will the Solicitor-General confirm, for the record, that Gibraltar’s ports are as safe as, if not safer than, UK ports and that its financial arrangements are as robust as those of the United Kingdom?

Dr David Kelly

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I have to say to my hon. Friend that that is a hypothetical question. It is obviously open to individuals to apply for judicial review of my reasoning and decisions. At the moment, I simply express the hope that they will not feel the need to do so.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Will the Attorney-General say whether he would be content if one of his ministerial colleagues were to publicly dissent from his decision, given his quasi-judicial role?

[The Attorney-General]

I am not aware of any ministerial colleague having expressed any view that dissents from my decision.

Voting by Prisoners

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a privilege, not a right, to participate in this place, and one that I enjoy thanks to the votes of my electorate.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Shame!

[Dr Coffey]

I shall see you later. [Interruption.] Sorry, I do not mean “I shall see Madam Deputy Speaker later”.

Members have already discussed how today’s debate could be portrayed as one of illiberalism versus liberalism, and that is a great shame, because it was Government Members who decided to scrap the DNA database for people who are innocent of crime. That was decided not because of an ECHR ruling, but because it was the right thing to do, so it is a shame when people cite particular examples, because it is this House that makes those decisions, and I am proud of that.

Members have also referred to judgments, and my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) talked about how the issue has become an aspect of the debate about what constitutes a free and fair election. In the Frodl case, the comments on that point were that universal suffrage is required, otherwise it

“risks undermining the democratic validity of the legislature thus elected”—

like this one—

“and the laws it promulgates.”

Personally, I just think that they are wrong, but that is an example of the philosophy we are coming up against.

I, like many other Members, am not a lawyer, but I have a strong sense of justice. People commit crimes not because somebody else has told them to do so, but according to their own free will. Other Members have said that that usually deprives other citizens of their freedoms and rights, so there is a conscious decision to commit a crime, and that is why this House is entitled to make a conscious decision to deprive people who commit criminal offences and are sent to prison of their opportunity to vote in elections.

The 2005 Hirst judgment was a majority verdict, but not one that would pass in a court of law here: a vote of 12 to five means that we are in the situation we are in today. There was a lot of discussion in the judgment about whether this House had had the chance to debate whether depriving somebody of their opportunity to vote is just or proportionate in the light of 21st century standards. That issue has received limited attention today, but the key points about freedom of choice and depriving others of such freedoms have been made.

Members have also cited examples. The hon. Members for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and others talked about the sentences that people have received for particular crimes—the people to whom we would risk giving the vote if the original proposal that the Government made in December were to pass. I have used before in this House the example of someone in Barrow-in-Furness who was convicted of a crime—brandishing a knife during an armed robbery—that carried a sentence of less than four years. There are other examples involving people who have committed rape. These things matter to people in the street. When I went into any pub in Suffolk Coastal in December, everybody was appalled at the idea of any prisoner serving a criminal sentence having the vote.

I want to bring to the House’s attention something that greatly surprised me when I was doing my research on this topic. The AIRE—Advice on Individual Rights in Europe—Centre represented prisoner Frodl from Austria against the Austrian Government at the European Court of Human Rights, and gave a contributing opinion to the 2005 Hirst judgment. It has also given evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I am not saying that the AIRE Centre should not exist, but I was surprised, as other Members may be, by some of the people who contribute to it. It might not be surprising that the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and other charitable trusts provide funding, but I was a little surprised that Comic Relief does so. I was also surprised when I discovered that the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which uses public money, contributes to it, and even more surprised that the European Commission does so. I was most surprised when I found that the Foreign and Commonwealth gives money to this organisation, whose No. 1 priority is to help to represent prisoners in the ECHR. We should look into that use of public money. I hope that the Attorney-General listens to that and acts on it.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being in the Chamber earlier, as I was in the Armed Forces Bill Committee. That got me thinking that this Government have done nothing to make it easier for our gallant men and women serving overseas to get the vote—I will not repeat the arguments that we have had on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill—but seem rather keen to help criminals to get the vote. I hope that the Attorney-General will reflect on that.

[Mrs Laing]

In fact, it was the previous Government who did nothing to help our armed forces to get the vote. Some of us argued from the Opposition Benches, hour after hour, day after day, to try to make the Government do something about it, and eventually, three months before the election, they did.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have a great deal of time for the hon. Lady, but on this occasion she and I will have to disagree, although I hope she will be agreeing with me next Tuesday and Wednesday as we play ping-pong with the other place.

I have been raising the issue of prisoner voting rights for several months, particularly with reference to the Scottish Parliament elections. It is incredibly disappointing that none of the Scottish nationalists saw fit to grace us with their presence today, given that it is their Government in Scotland who have responsibility for the forthcoming parliamentary and local government elections next year. I raised the matter with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice last year. I do not intend to go through all the correspondence that my colleagues and I have had with him and with ministerial teams on this. However, the situation has been confirmed to me and to my colleague, Richard Baker, who is, for now, the shadow Minister but will, I am sure, become Justice Secretary. The SNP Government have not even bothered to write to the Deputy Prime Minister—who, let us be clear, is behind the move to give prisoners the right to vote—to express the Scottish people’s opposition to it.

[The Attorney-General]

indicated dissent.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Attorney-General shakes his head, but this is a Liberal Democrat policy. I remind him that in 2007 the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who was president of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, urged the then Government to give prisoners voting rights in the Scottish elections. I am delighted that my right hon. Friends resisted that request by Scottish Liberal Democrats, and delighted that today we will again be resisting the pressure from Liberal Democrats to give people who have broken the law the right to vote.

I am deeply concerned by the Government’s attitude towards the ongoing test case involving the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies. It is clear from the 2007 case that the European Court is minded to grant prisoners the right to vote in Scottish Parliament elections, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said repeatedly in this debate and elsewhere, the Scottish Parliament is a primary legislative body. It is difficult to envisage how the Attorney-General, as fleet-footed and talented as he is, will persuade the European Court that the Scottish Parliament is exempt. I hope that the Attorney-General, when he is not looking at his BlackBerry, will clarify why he thinks the Scottish Parliament will be exempt from this issue.

My colleague Richard Baker MSP wrote to soft-touch Kenny MacAskill on 10 December last year. As I said, the Scottish Government do not believe that they have any role to play in lobbying the UK Government. That is another stain on the record of the SNP Government, who seem quite happy to pick fights with the UK Government, but will not stand up for what the people of Scotland want.

I think that Members from all parts of the House hold principled views on this issue. Although I fundamentally disagree with the Liberal Democrats on this issue, I respect their stance. I hope that they understand that voting is a right. As a former Prime Minister said, there are rights and there are responsibilities. People who break the law and who commit heinous crimes should not be allowed to vote.

As the Government have yet to clarify what the tariff limit will be if they lose the case, we have to assume that it will still be four years, as was leaked previously. I draw the Attorney-General’s attention to one of the problems in Scotland, which is that the Scottish Parliament has its own sentencing policy, its own judiciary and its own tariffs. Under a tariff system, the limit might be set at one year, six months or four years. Crimes that have a certain sentence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland might not have the same sentence in Scotland. I hope that the Government will reflect carefully on what the impact will be on Scotland if they use a tariff system, rather than using specific crimes. I accept that the Liberal Democrats probably do not intend to give paedophiles the vote. However, if the limit was set at four years or less, the disgusting individuals involved in the shocking case of child abuse in the south of England last year would qualify to vote. I am sure that that is not the intention of any party.

I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak, and I have said my piece. I will vote tonight for the motion in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and other hon. Members.