Oral Answers to Questions

Vince Cable Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Of course, access-to-justice considerations are extremely important. Before any court is earmarked for closure, there is an extremely thorough consultation process, and if any courts are due to close in the future, a similarly thorough consultation process will be gone through. I would point out that in the cohort of courts consulted on in 2015 that were subsequently closed, on average their utilisation rates were about one third. We need to balance a reasonable approach to the court estate with the access-to-justice considerations that the hon. Lady quite rightly raises.

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

13. What recent public consultation he has conducted on the law in relation to assisted dying.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

The Government have not conducted a public consultation on the law in relation to assisted suicide. We remain of the view that any change to the law in this sensitive area is a matter of conscience and a matter for Parliament, rather than one of Government policy.

[Sir Vince Cable]

The Secretary of State will be aware that, under the current law, people can be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison for assisting the suicide of a terminally ill loved one in great pain, and that the Crown Prosecution Service is pursuing prosecutions, with traumatic effects in some cases, so why have the Government decided to abandon even the call for evidence that his predecessor initiated only a few weeks ago?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. There was no initiation of a call for evidence. However, I hear his point about prosecutions. The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines, which were actually pioneered by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), in my view strike a very sensitive and sensible balance between the need to protect the vulnerable and the need to understand the sensitive and emotive circumstances of many of these tragic cases.

Assisted Dying

Vince Cable Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and others for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. Members have spoken movingly and from experience about their views.

I am someone whose views have radically changed. Until recently I was a vehement opponent of assisted dying, but I have changed my views and think I should explain why. That change is partly based on an understanding of why I was previously opposed to it, which was due to my own personal experiences. Two of those experiences were relevant, and I think they will resonate with many Members of the House.

One experience concerned my elderly mother who descended, as many do, into confusion and dementia, compounded by mental illness and depression. One week she would say, “Please, please end my life. I am a burden. I want to go”, but a few weeks later she would be enjoying the simple pleasures of life. I could see all too clearly that under a permissive system of assisted dying, people like my late mother would be extremely vulnerable.

My conviction at that time that assisted dying was the wrong route was compounded by my experience with my late wife, who contracted breast cancer and had a very long illness. She eventually died at home with good palliative care, surrounded by a loving family. She was vehemently opposed to assisted dying and wanted to live her life to the full. I guess that I took the view that that was her choice but should also be everybody’s choice.

I came to realise, however, that there are very different situations we need to understand. One thing on my conscience is that in my 20 years as an MP, two constituents came to see me to request help and political support for a campaign in the High Court to be allowed to die through assisted dying and, although I expressed sympathy, as one would expect, I declined to support their campaign. I was very wrong to do so. Both suffered from motor neurone disease, and I think many of us know of such cases. One has surfaced today: a man called Richard Selley in Perth, in Scotland, who is fighting for the right to assisted dying. I think we all know the nature of this condition. Although some people live with it, Professor Hawking being a famous example, in most cases it involves the physical degeneration of all bodily functions combined with absolute clarity of mind and very great suffering. It seems to me that we should consider the position of those living with it and similar conditions.

The argument that is deployed against doing so is that hard cases make bad law. That was quite well summarised by Lord Sumption, who gave the Reith lectures a few years ago, when he said assisted dying should be criminalised but that the criminal law should be broken. That is a somewhat strange way of putting it, but essentially what I think he was saying was that we should keep the law but turn a blind eye to exceptions and treat them compassionately.

I have thought about that argument, but it seems to me that the evidence is very strongly against it for a variety of reasons. However sensitive the Director of Public Prosecutions or the police might be—I am sure they are; the 2015 guidance is very humane—the sheer process of going through a criminal investigation and a caution is deeply traumatic, and probably the most difficult period of any person’s life. It is probably also difficult for the police who have to implement it.

We can all see from the evidence that the law simply is not working: from the fact that 300 people over the past decade have been through the pain—and, indeed, the expense—of the Dignitas solution, and the fact that about 300 people a year are killing themselves, often without medical support and in very painful circumstances. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) gave a very moving example, which I think showed the extent to which the law as it currently stands does not work.

When we put that together with the change in public opinion and the change in the views of the various medical bodies that would have to administer this and would be faced with the awesome responsibility of authorising assisted dying, I think the evidence is now very strongly in favour of a change to the law. I hope that when the opportunity arises, we will progress beyond the theoretical discussion to the practicalities of how we introduce humane legislation with proper safeguards.

Child Imprisonment

Vince Cable Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on securing this debate and on the conviction and professional knowledge she brought to bear on it.

I am afraid I do not have much knowledge of the prison estate; I am speaking for the specific reason that shortly after I become an MP, around the turn of the century, there was an upsurge of interest in precisely this problem and a great flurry of official and ministerial attention. As far as I can see, absolutely nothing was learnt from that time. The events centred on Feltham young offenders institution, which is close to my constituency. There were disturbances; there was a suicide caused by racially aggravated bullying, and many of the things we just heard about were reported in the press. I went there several times with other MPs, and there was an investigation and a report.

Seemingly, the problems had been solved, because the Government at the time and the prison authorities put in more staff; overcrowding among 16 to 18-year-olds was greatly reduced and we were told that the problem had gone away. But it is clear from reports from the same institution and others that many of those problems are still with us in exactly the same form or are considerably worse. It is worth rehearsing some of the main findings from that time, many of which seem highly relevant today. I want to test the Minister’s institutional memory, to know whether he is even aware that we are going round the same cycle as before.

One of the first major conclusions was the neglect of mental health. We heard from the hon. Lady how the dissatisfaction of professionals and the Royal College of Psychiatrists is a problem, as it was then. A second problem was the complete lack, or very flimsy provision, of education facilities, partly because prisoners were being constantly recycled through the prison estate—they had very short stays and there was no time to acquire qualifications. Those who were doing vocational training in workshops were denied access to equipment because of the fear of harm and self-harm. As a result, most young people were going out on to the streets functionally illiterate and without any practical qualifications, perpetuating their problems.

The third problem, which I think is exactly the same today, was a phase of extreme overcrowding. Professional staff were not there for a very long period and, as a consequence, young prisoners were “banged up” for 23 hours a day. They were also put together in very unsuitable pairings; I went into a cell where a young offender who was there because he had been found using cannabis during his first experience of it was put with a very violent rapist, and was clearly traumatised by the contact with his cellmate. It was patently obvious even to a visitor that it was inappropriate. It perpetuated the problem to have remand prisoners and sentenced prisoners mingling together and learning from each other in a bad way.

The situation then, which I think is now significantly worse, was that there was a disproportionate number of BAME prisoners—then overwhelmingly black, and now black and Asian in greater numbers. I think the Asian population has been affected by extreme religious tendencies that have got into the prison system. We have all those ills, which were supposed to have been cured but appear to be back again in force. The simple question I ask is: why have the lessons not been learned? Why do we not progress from one generation to another? As was very eloquently described, the young people concerned reoffend, and their children will in turn reoffend, unless we learn the lessons of the past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Vince Cable Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

This is not an either/or. We have to be confident and practical about doing two things at the same time. Controlling prisons—these include some quite dangerous individuals—involves serious measures on searching people for drugs and weapons, but it also involves treating people like humans and turning their lives around, because that is the way we protect the public from the misery of crime through reoffending when these individuals are released from prison.

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

In the light of the recent disturbances among 16 and 17-year-olds at Feltham young offenders institution, is the Minister aware of the previous episodes of violence at the prison, which were attributed to the lack of education and training facilities, 23-hour confinement in cells and the mixing of remand and convicted prisoners? Why do lessons appear not to have been learned?

[Rory Stewart]

A lot of lessons have been learned since that initial event, but the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; there was a very disturbing event two weeks ago. The basic challenge, as he will be aware, is getting the balance right between ensuring that people are motivated and focused on the regime and that there are high expectations around prisoners and prison officers. To some extent, it is like running a very difficult school, particularly when we are dealing with 16 to 18-year-olds. It is a mixture of being strict on the one hand and loving on the other that is the key to a good prison.