Oral Answers to Questions

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend was an excellent prisons Minister, and he is absolutely right that we need to give the governors greater control. The response that I have received both from the Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Minister for Skills, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has been hugely encouraging. Obviously, we have Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service contracts—the contracts that govern spending in prisons at the moment—which need to be honoured, but I hope that we might be able to move at pace to devolving responsibility to individual governors.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

2. When he plans to open a consultation on proposals for a British Bill of Rights.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

9. When he plans to open a consultation on proposals for a British Bill of Rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

We will bring forward proposals on a Bill of Rights this autumn. They will be subject to full consultation. The preparation is going well. Given the hon. Gentleman’s excellent work on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I look forward to engaging seriously with him on the substance.

[Mr Sharma]

When the Minister’s predecessor published his plans for reform of the Human Rights Act last October, the right hon. and learned Members for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) complained that they contained “a number of howlers” and that they were “unworkable” and “bewildering”. Is it not time for the Secretary of State to listen to his esteemed colleagues and to admit that those plans were written on the back of a cigarette packet from the very start?

[Mr Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but I have to say that the Human Rights Act was also rushed. There was no period of consultation and it was introduced into Parliament in just six months, which is why it has proved flawed in practice. We will take our time to get the plans right, and we will take on board all the views that have been expressed. We want to restore some balance to our human rights regime, and that is what a Bill of Rights will achieve.