Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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The Solicitor-General
It is important that there should be strong performance in this area. There has been a major improvement since the early months of the contract, when there were the problems that the hon. Lady has rightly outlined. The picture is one of improvement and one where the Government are saving £15 million a year, so we are also ensuring good value for money. There has been an improvement, and we will continue to monitor the area closely.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
7. What proportion of prosecutions for burglary were successful in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement.
The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)
The Crown Prosecution Service’s records show that the proportion of defendants prosecuted successfully for burglary in each of the past three years was 86.1% in 2009-10, 85.8% in 2010-11 and 85.6% in 2011-12.
Miss McIntosh
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his new position and thank him for that answer. Does he believe that fewer prosecutions will be brought if the new offence of using grossly disproportionate force, which the Justice Secretary intends to introduce, is brought in?
Rio+20 Summit
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for her recognition of what I think is our shared commitment to the agenda discussed at Rio. I totally share her support for the zero hunger initiative; I attended a session in Rio at which the initiative was discussed. She asked about the hunger summit that will be held this summer. I do not know the precise agenda, but she referred to the importance of legal rights to property and land, which are crucial to dealing with hunger sustainably.
The hon. Lady asked about the interaction between sustainable development goals, ill-defined though they were at the Rio summit, and the work on the post-2015 agenda. The Government’s strong view is that the sustainable development goals as defined by the group of 30 representatives, which will be established in September, must feed into the wider review of the millennium development goals through the high-level panel that has been established by the Secretary-General.
I will not disguise from the hon. Lady the fact that within that procedural complexity, there are a lot of sensitivities. Candidly, some developing countries have hitherto felt that their voice is not strongly enough heard in some UN processes. The Prime Minister and his co-chairs will work hard to ensure that the voices of the developing world are properly listened to in the review of the MDGs to allay the concern that precisely the part of the world that will benefit most from the process is shut out from it. We need to do quite of lot of work to ensure that the different acronyms and processes do not start becoming rival acronyms and process—that is a danger.
The hon. Lady mentioned the sustainable energy for all initiative, which I am glad she supports; it is an outstanding initiative. I hosted a preparatory meeting of the group on the initiative in London some months ago. We had hoped that the Rio declaration would adopt the initiative as a core conclusion. In the event, because of the nervousness of some participants on what the initiative means and its implications, it was “recognised” in the declaration. We would have inserted a stronger verb, but none the less, as with all those initiatives, we now need to exploit that recognition and work on it.
The hon. Lady complained that the proposal on greenhouse gas emissions reporting does not go far enough. We have to start somewhere. We are the only country doing this. Some people complain that we have already gone too far and are imposing too many burdens on business. Other business groups, such as the CBI, have welcomed the proposal. I think we are breaking new ground, and I hope she will welcome that rather than cast aspersions on it.
The hon. Lady will know that the Darwin initiative is a robust initiative that we are using to monitor the plight of endangered species. Finally, she rightly said that these summits make sense only if one acts consistently with them at home. We are rightly proud of our record: we are the first country to establish a green investment bank; the green deal, which will be up and running in the coming six to eight months or so, will be the largest initiative of its kind for installing energy efficiency measures and bringing down energy bills in homes up and down the country; and the green sector, the green economy, is growing by about 5% a year, employs close to 1 million people in this country and actually runs a trade surplus. That is something we should cherish and celebrate. The carbon floor price is another major innovation of the Government, while the electricity market reform, which is one of the most ambitious legislative and regulatory overhauls of an electricity market I am aware of anywhere in the developed world, is explicitly designed to ensure that we have a sustainable energy mix for future generations.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I congratulate everyone involved on what was a genuine team effort. Will the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that one of Rio’s lasting legacies will be the agreement to reaffirm a universal, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system for food and agricultural products? Will he give an undertaking that we will really push for Doha to deliver this through the World Trade Organisation?
The Deputy Prime Minister
No one is in any doubt that one of the greatest boosts to prosperity across the world would be a successful completion of the very, very, very, very long-awaited Doha development round. It is immensely frustrating that getting agreement on it has proved so elusive. Many have written it off altogether, and it is difficult not to be pessimistic about it, but that does not mean that we should not continue to pursue the cause of multilateral trade liberalisation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T3. May I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister on the excellent and distinguished wise men and one wise woman he has appointed to the West Lothian commission? Will he extend the terms of reference so that they will look at the potential consequences of devo-max on this Parliament?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The commission is to focus on the procedures and practices of this House as they are affected by devolution as we know it right now. The case for further devolution to Scotland, which I happen to believe in as the leader of a party that believes in home rule, can be made but not until we know whether Scotland is going to be part of the United Kingdom in the first place. That can and should be resolved only by a decisive, clear, fair and legally binding vote in a referendum.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Harper
If I remember rightly, that was proposed by my Liberal Democrat colleagues when they were in opposition, and the entire parliamentary Labour party voted against it, including, I suspect, the hon. Gentleman. If he will be a little patient and wait for our proposals in the new year, he will be able to satiate his curiosity.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I hope that, in defining lobbying, the Minister will recognise that it is a perfectly traditional means of trying to ensure that a good Bill is passed. Some of the worst Bills have been passed when both the main parties have agreed. Will the Minister also ensure that any lobbying by a particular trade union will fall within the definition?
Mr Harper
I am yet to present a Bill that has had the support of both the Government parties and the Opposition, and I look forward to the opportunity to do so. However, my hon. Friend has made an important point. Lobbying—in other words, the setting out of concerns by businesses, charities, and our constituents—is a perfectly sensible activity. Indeed, legislation is worse when we do not listen to the outside world, and we do not want to damage that position. I hope that when we present our consultation paper, my hon. Friend will find it acceptable. We look forward to what she, and other Members in all parts of the House, have to say about it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T2. Mindful of the fact that we have not had flooding for a number of months and mindful of the forecasted storm weather, can the Minister for the Cabinet Office assure us that flood rehearsals are taking place between all the relevant emergency services on a regular basis?
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I do not agree that moving to individual elector registration in the way we are—in the way advocated by the previous Government, too—will necessarily lead to the outcome he suggests. That is why we are putting so much time into data matching, making sure that there is a period of grace so that people can re-register on the other side of an election, and ensuring that people go from home to home to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be individually registered.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister told the House that he is responsible for constitutional and political reform. If the ambitious programme that he has set himself proves too ambitious, will he allow a little bit of slippage in reform of the Lords and the equalisation of boundaries?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is important to be clear about our ambitions, and we have been, right from the outset, when the coalition Government were formed. We have five years to deliver the changes. Yes, they are major changes, but as we saw with the reforms to the Act of Settlement, even the most intractable issues that people believe are not susceptible to reform can be reformed if there is sufficient debate, and sufficient consensus in all parts of the House that reform is desirable. Most people believe, for instance, that reform of the House of Lords is long overdue; it is 100 years since it was first debated.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
The size of the legislature has not been reduced right now, so it is not something that we need to do right now. We have accepted the principle. It is now 2011; we have four years until 2015. We will reflect on this and we will act.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Will the Deputy Prime Minister agree to extend the link to the shadow Administration, and does he share the concern of Government Members about the growing number of those serving in the shadow Administration?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I have lost count of who is doing what in the shadow Administration, as my hon. Friend calls it, except for the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who has an increasingly long list of responsibilities to her name. The serious point is the relationship between the legislature and the Executive of the day, and the point that I seek to make is that there is an absolute link in principle between the size of one and the other, and that is something that we will act on in the years ahead.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
We have learned all the lessons about the flaws in the electoral register here. That is exactly what we are seeking to address, not least by looking at the experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T12. I wish to place on record my admiration for the ambition shown by the Deputy Prime Minister, but does he not agree that if he sticks to his present programme and allows the first elections to the House of Lords to be held in 2015, it is over-ambitious—even according to his own test—to hold them in the same month and year as the next rural district elections and the next general election?
The Deputy Prime Minister
“Ambition” was clearly intended as faint praise, and I will take it in that spirit. I think we have shown in past elections that the problems involved in the principle of combined elections can be overcome, as long as there is a clear distinction between the mandates for the bodies that are being elected on the same day.
The Solicitor-General
Of course I do, and it is imperative that trafficked children, who are the victims of this hideous crime, are not prosecuted but are treated as victims. Equally, it is imperative that adults under such duress, too, are not prosecuted but treated as victims. The Crown Prosecution Service recently published a public policy statement, which I am sure my hon. Friend has read, and the Home Office will shortly publish a human trafficking strategy that will deal very much with the points that he has made.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
2. What plans he has to review the prosecution of rape cases by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Solicitor-General
We have no such plans at the moment, but I assure my hon. Friend that the CPS and I take the prosecution of rape very seriously indeed, and that it is constantly under review.
Miss McIntosh
Does the Solicitor-General have any idea about the level of prosecution of rape cases in Scotland compared with that in England? Will he undertake to remove all barriers to prosecution? In particular, will he facilitate the reporting of rape cases, which will speed up the prosecution rate in due course?
The Solicitor-General
I am sure that what is similar in Scotland and in this jurisdiction is not only that rape is taken extremely seriously by the prosecuting authorities and the police, but that prosecution requires evidence. It is essential that victims of rape and sexual assault are enabled to give their evidence and to withstand the hideous stress that necessarily follows from being a witness in a rape or sexual assault case. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Director of Public Prosecutions has personally overseen the drive to improve the approach of the CPS to rape prosecutions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 8 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Well read and well rehearsed! I will tell the hon. Gentleman one thing that I am not going to flinch from for one minute, and that is to clear up the mess left by Labour. Because of the sheer economic incompetence of the Labour party in government, this country, on the backs of our children and grandchildren, is borrowing £400 million a day. He might think that is okay; I do not.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T2. Can the Deputy Prime Minister give the House a timetable for his proposed reforms of the House of Lords? Will it be during the life of this Parliament, and how flexible are the proportions? Would he consider 30, 30 and 30?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The timetable is that the Joint Committee of both Houses first needs to complete its work, and we hope that it will do so in the early stages of next year, with a view to the Government then publishing a Bill in the second Session in order to see the first steps in a reformed House of Lords and the first elections taking place in 2015.
The Solicitor-General
In all prosecuting decisions, the CPS will look at the prosecutors code to see whether there is sufficient evidence and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute. It is not a question of picking one type of crime and not picking another.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I support the Government’s drive for more prosecutions of rape. Will the Solicitor-General support my move to allocate a centre to North Yorkshire and York to help victims of rape? Were we to have such a centre—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am not sure that this is a priority of the Crown Prosecution Service, but the Solicitor-General can respond to the first part of the question briefly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(14 years, 9 months ago)
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Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T4. When can the House expect the Public Bodies Bill? What will be in the Bill, and can we revert to the normal practice, whereby such controversial Bills begin in this House and not in the other place?
Mr Hurd
The Public Bodies Bill is obviously very important—it is an opportunity to improve radically the accountability of decisions and to make significant savings from the vast number of quangos that proliferated under the previous Administration. My hon. Friend will know that the Bill is passing through the Lords, with Third Reading expected on 9 May. Obviously, it is for the House authorities to determine the programming for debate in the House, but we expect the Bill to enter Committee after the Whitsun recess.