Assisted Dying

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the functioning of the existing law relating to assisted dying.

Six years ago this week, on a sunny July day like today, my father made a decision. At home in Devon, in the bed that he shared with my stepmother for more than 30 years, with his family around him, he took communion for the last time, said a few words of goodbye to each of us, and asked the district nurses to switch off the oxygen and make him comfortable. He could have clung on to life for several more days, but he was ready to go and, after talking it over with my stepmother, made his decision. A few hours later, he slipped away, with my brother by his side. This was the best of deaths: the saddest moments in our lives, filled with love and gratitude, and even joy.

A few months ago, Geoff Whaley made a similar decision. Cut from the same cloth as my dad, he was a gentleman of the old school, but Geoff had motor neurone disease and recognised that he was likely to suffer horribly in the final days and weeks of his life. He knew that his only chance of a good death was to arrange to go to Dignitas in Switzerland. Geoff was a determined and organised man, but there were some things that he physically could not do. He needed his wife Ann’s help. When someone tipped off social services about their plan, the police turned up at the Whaleys’ door and Ann was interviewed under caution. That caution remains on her record.

Thanks to the support of Ann and their daughter Sarah, Geoff died on his own terms, but several months earlier than he would have needed to had the same procedure been available here in the UK. Under Swiss law, none of the family was allowed to be present at his cremation. Yet Ann would describe herself as one of the lucky ones, because she and Geoff could afford the cost—the air fares, the hotels and the fees—of going to Dignitas. Every year, hundreds of other people in our country face the prospect of great suffering at the end of a terminal illness—suffering that cannot be alleviated by our wonderful palliative care nurses—and have no legal means of doing anything to stop it.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way during what is a heartfelt speech, but will he please answer the question of why he feels that the vast majority of disability organisations in this country remain opposed to assisted dying?

[Nick Boles]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. It is incredibly important to understand all the concerns raised, perhaps especially those from such groups. What I think drives that very understandable concern is the fear that although a law might start off tightly constrained, there will be what people refer to as “the slippery slope”, and it might then be abused somehow: there might be situations in which people come under pressure to take their own lives when, in fact, they do not want to do so at all.

All I would say to the hon. Lady—I am happy to have further conversations with her about this—is that in jurisdictions such as Oregon, where for 20 years now there has been a law of the kind that was proposed here, there is no evidence of that slippery slope argument leading to people being put under pressure. If ever there were to be such a change of the law here, it would of course be essential to have safeguards that would prevent that and ensure that disabled people knew they had the same right to life as any of us, for as long as they wanted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. As I mentioned earlier, every situation is different and I think the complexity of framing a law that covers everything is beyond us, to be honest.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am conscious that the late Lord Walton of Detchant spoke passionately on this subject. He was a great neuroscientist, but he was also president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, one of the great disability organisations. He spoke and wrote at length on the issue of vulnerability: it is a massively difficult ethical issue, but it has to be considered.

Draft Non-Contentious Probate (Fees) Order 2018

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Non-Contentious Probate (Fees) Order 2018.

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. The purpose of the draft order is to implement a new, more progressive banded structure of fees for the grant of representation, commonly known as a grant of probate, which will come into force in April. The banded fees relate to the value of the estate. Let me outline how I intend to structure my remarks. I will talk about what the probate is, what the old regime was, what the new structure will be and the reasons we are bringing it in, and then I will deal with some concerns that have been raised.

Probate is an important service that provides valuable support to those who are bereaved. It is administered by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. It helps to ensure that the estate of a deceased person is passed on to the rightful beneficiaries. Under the old scheme, there was a charge of £155 for grant applications made by solicitors and a charge of £215 for those made by individuals. Those were flat fees that applied to estates worth more than £5,000, and they were set at cost recovery levels.

The new structure is different. It is a banded, fairer structure for probate fees and it no longer applies a flat fee. The threshold at which the new fees become payable will be raised from £5,000 to £50,000. That will exempt approximately 25,000 additional estates per year from paying fees altogether. Overall, more than half of estates will pay nothing, because they are either exempt or do not require a grant of probate. Of those that do pay, around 60% will pay fees of £250, which is comparable to the current fee for individual applications. Moreover, the new model means that revised fees will never amount to more than 0.5% of the value of the estate.

The previous Government initially announced plans to introduce enhanced probate fees from February 2017, following a public consultation. The relevant draft affirmative statutory instrument was laid in Parliament, and the order was debated and passed by a Commons Delegated Legislation Committee in April. The announcement of a general election, however, meant that there was not time for the order to be debated and considered for approval in both Houses.

The Government have looked closely at the various criticisms that were made of the previous order. The top band has now been reduced from £20,000 under the previous proposal to £6,000 under this order. The new banded fees structure does not amend the underlying policy rationale and will retain the same progressive banded structure as the earlier proposal, in which the fee payable relates to the value of the estate.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I know that the Government are taking the issue of charities and legacies very seriously in the light of research from the Office for Civil Society. Does the Minister agree that there are serious concerns in the voluntary sector? I was reading a submission from the Institute of Fundraising only this morning. When a charity such as Cancer Research UK fears that the changes could cost it £600 million per year, it highlights the real concerns of organisations in the voluntary sector. Does she agree that we should consider having further discussions, as the Institute of Fundraising has suggested?

[Lucy Frazer]

Of course, the charity sector plays a vital role in supporting those in need. The order will not affect the amount paid out to charities when there is a fixed bequest rather than a percentage, but I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns.

Criminal Justice System: Veterans

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered veterans in the criminal justice system.

It is good to be holding this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank you for the support I know you will give me throughout the debate. On several occasions, I have had the opportunity here in Westminster Hall to highlight the amazing, innovative work with offenders at Her Majesty’s prison Parc in my constituency. The Parc Supporting Families initiative has changed lives. It has brought a focus on being alcohol and drug free and on the impact on families, friends and communities. It has built relationships with families and taught prisoners parenting skills. It includes substance misuse programmes, prisoners reading with their children and making visits more family friendly, as well as building links between the schools of prisoners’ children and the prisoners, so that the children are largely protected from the impact of their parents’ sentences.

Many of the ideas successfully launched at Parc were picked up by the Farmer report and have been applied elsewhere. This new holistic approach to offending, which places increasing responsibility on the offender to address their behaviour while professional staff support and enable change, has had a radical impact on offending. Parc has built on that and in 2015 opened the first ever ex-military offenders unit, Endeavour. I visited just before the recess and promised the staff and prisoners I met that I would seek a Westminster Hall debate to emphasise the impact of the work they are doing on themselves and the wider community.

I commend the work of the staff at the unit. They go beyond just going in to do their job. It is their whole focus, knowing the change that they can bring across Wales. I also emphasise the eagerness I felt from the veterans and their willingness to tackle the issues that had led to their offences, and I pay tribute to the wide range of partner agencies involved. The work has had a huge impact on the lives and futures of the 270 men who have passed through the unit since it was opened. I urge the Minister or someone from the Ministry of Justice to visit and see the work, and the leadership that the unit has from Janet Wallsgrove, the director of Parc, and Corin Morgan-Armstrong, the inspirational head of family intervention, custody and community—does that not just say exactly what prisons should be about?

We have to recognise the task the staff, the volunteers and the inmates at Parc are trying to do. They are tackling years of failure—failure of families and of the state, particularly the education system and the way in which, in this country, we do not teach emotional and relationship education. They are tackling quite a high degree of failure from the Ministry of Defence to address not only the problems that military personnel bring with them into the military, but the negative experiences that they may have had while serving that leave them ill-equipped to deal with life back in the civilian world. Those problems are then left for the criminal justice system to deal with. Quite honestly, society has for far too long dealt with those problems by locking them and the people away.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and pay tribute to her considerable experience in this area. Does she not think this is part of a wider problem in terms of society supporting, or rather not supporting, our military veterans? That is why it is vital that there is a question on this subject in the next census.

[Mrs Moon]

It is absolutely vital that we know how many veterans we have and where they are, but many veterans do not want to self-identify. There is a question of shame and not wanting to be identified, so there would have to be some nuancing around that whole question.

We are failing people who have served their country and that cannot be acceptable to anyone. Let us be clear: not every service leaver is likely to end up in prison, in the same way that not every service leaver will end up with mental health problems—I am deeply concerned that that image is being allowed to grow. For many, the transition to civilian life, while challenging, is successful. The MOD has improved its programmes, although it still lacks anything more than a one-size-fits-all approach.

A recent report from the Forces in Mind Trust and King’s College London looked at data held by liaison and diversion services, and shows that we do not even really know how many offenders have served in the armed forces. I have seen figures for the last five years that vary from 2% to 9%. That has to change; we need better, more effective statistics, so that we know the problem we are dealing with.

Military life provides structure and comradeship, which many may have lacked in their lives before they joined the services. That comradeship and structure might not equip people with the education, skills and coping mechanisms that they need for transitioning into civilian life. Some may not have the emotional skills to cope with relationship issues or their change of status. Emotional issues had played a part in almost all of the cases of men that I spoke to, but all also talked of the trauma of going from hero to zero. One minute they are heroes, respected by family and community, and the next minute, they are nothing and nobody. For many of them, that trauma led in some part to their offending, which exacerbated the feeling of zero-ness, because they were totally rejected by family and community after offending.

Like many MPs, I have dealt with numerous cases of veterans who have hit hard times. In the majority of cases, it was not the veteran who approached me—it was their family and friends. Ex-service personnel are not good at asking for help. They are used to being problem solvers—indeed, that is what they are taught to be—but many also need training in seeking and accepting help. One of the men had been offered help and had turned it down because it was not exactly what he was looking for and he did not want to compromise. He made his life harder as a result.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to speak in this important debate. I want to place on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for all her campaigning and the detail in which she spoke this morning on issues such as spitting and why this change in the law is important for those issues.

I also thank my Welsh hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his fantastic speech and campaigning on this issue. We should remember that his constituents—the people of the Rhondda—voted for him to choose this as his private Member’s Bill. I think that would have been the case in many of our communities, because most people, up and down the length and breadth of this land, are fed up to the back teeth with emergency services workers—the police, A&E staff, prison officers, firefighters or whatever—going to work and just doing their job, yet being treated with such disrespect, being assaulted and their lives being put in danger. That is not right and it should not be allowed. The law is not in the right place at present in this country, and it is absolutely right that my hon. Friend is bringing forward this Bill. I hope it will be supported unanimously and carried through, so that, finally, our country will have better laws on this issue.

When I mentioned to my constituents that I was one of the large number of cross-party co-sponsors whom my hon. Friend had brought together to support the Bill, I asked whether the emergency workers among them had anything they wanted to contribute to this debate. Among the contributions I received was an account from a police officer of why he wants the Bill to be passed. He wrote:

“I was the first to arrive and witnessed a man (a martial arts instructor) assaulting a female and telling her that she was going to die. This man was charged with attempted murder of the female in relation to this assault so I’m sure you can imagine the gravity of the assault taking place before me. The lady was being manually choked on the floor and punched to the face in an attempt to kill her. She was struggling to breathe and could not survive much longer.

I used my limited equipment of captor spray and baton in an attempt to physically hurt the man sufficiently for him to stop trying to kill the lady as my verbal commands fell on deaf ears. Eventually he dropped her like a rag doll allowing her to run for safety.

He then turned to me, adopted a fighting stance and said these words: ‘Now you are going to die’.

The man then began to punch me to the head countless times. As I stated, this man was a martial arts instructor and he was in a rage. I defended myself and fought back as best I could until a colleague arrived and we overpowered the assailant.

The man continued to make threats, stating that he would have killed the female victim had I not arrived and killed me had my colleague not arrived at the scene.

Whilst he was charged with attempted murder he pleaded guilty to threats to kill (in relation to me) assault upon the female and possession of an offensive weapon (in relation to a knife that he took with him to commit the assault). He received six years and four months imprisonment and nothing in relation to assaulting me.

At the time the Judge stated that the actions of my colleague and me prevented the man from killing the woman.”

This account shows what an outrageous position we currently have with the law in this country and it is high time that we changed it. I wholly support the attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The information we have is that only one of those involved in the recent attacks in London and Manchester had spent time in prison. That dated back to 2003 and there was no evidence to suggest that that man had been radicalised in prison. We clearly want the strongest possible joint work between the police, the Prison Service and the probation service. I believe that what we have at the moment is strong, but there are always lessons that can be learned and improvements that can be sought. We are committed not to be complacent but to continue with vigilance and determination.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State spoke in his initial answer of a new initiative. Does that come with new money and, if so, is it adequate?

[Mr Lidington]

It is part of the duty of the Prison Service appropriately to look after all those whom the courts have sent into custody. We have found the money for the separation centres from within Ministry of Justice budgets—a sensible prioritisation of expenditure that will bring benefits to the management of the prison population more generally by separating those who pose a particular risk through extremist ideology.