Phone Hacking

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Yesterday, I momentarily hesitated before rising to support the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), but only because I was unfamiliar with the procedure—I did know that he was doing the right thing. I, too, congratulate him, and not only on bringing this debate to this House. I congratulate him also because I believe that a consensus is forming across this House, and that is to be welcomed.

I thought also yesterday that our newspapers had sunk to the darkest moment in their history, given the revelations about the tapping of Milly Dowler’s phone. It is important that we get the language right; we are talking about the theft of evidence, the destruction of evidence, the impeding of the investigation into the disappearance of a child and, as it turned out, a murder investigation. I might have misheard the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), but if I heard him correctly and he is right in what he was saying, all of that was known by the Metropolitan police back in 2002. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, no investigation was undertaken by the Metropolitan police at that time into what were undoubtedly extremely serious criminal offences. I am absolutely confident that this new inquiry will look into the dealings of the police, because the spotlight is rightly now not just on our newspapers; it is moving on to our police. What has been going on concerns me greatly.

Yesterday was also a bleak day for our newspapers, because we saw the Attorney-General prosecute two of them for contempt of court for their coverage of the arrest of a man in Bristol in relation to the murder of Jo Yeates. I wholeheartedly congratulate the Attorney-General on taking that prosecution, as it was a courageous move. The hon. Member for Rhondda talked about the need for politicians to be courageous and I absolutely agree. We must be not only courageous, but honest. I will be honest and say that I am not sure that I was as courageous as I should have been with my private Member’s Bill in February. That is because any politician treads exceptionally cautiously when they stand up in this place to criticise the press and ask for it to be curtailed. As the hon. Gentleman said, we know the possible consequences of making that sort of move.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Have not the words of Stanley Baldwin some 70 years ago, when he described the press as having

“power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”

been brought to bear by this most grotesque example that we have discussed today?

[Anna Soubry]

I concur absolutely, and I am sure that that sentiment is echoed across the House.

Such is my concern—I have been persuaded by much of what I have heard today—that I think there must now be a pause in the consideration of the matter that has been referred to and will be determined by Ofcom. I urge the Secretary of State to consider whether we should pause things, given what has happened.

In the time remaining, I want to return to the subject of my private Member’s Bill. I am not sure whether it falls within the remit of the public inquiry, but I hope that the Government will consider changing the law. I believe that the press has lost the moral plot and I say that with a heavy heart because before I went back to the Bar I trained as a journalist and worked as one for many years. I am proud to be a member of the National Union of Journalists and I was mother of the chapel at Central in Nottingham. I look on my brothers and sisters at a national level with, frankly, despair. It is important to remind ourselves that small local papers are very different from national papers—

[Chris Bryant]

Any in particular?

[Anna Soubry]

I cannot hear the hon. Gentleman’s sedentary intervention, which is probably a good thing.

In all seriousness, it is right and fair to say that all of us know from our considerable experience that local papers act properly and responsibly. We all enjoy a perfectly proper relationship with them—a relationship that has not been enjoyed between other politicians and national newspapers, which is a situation that must change.

It comes down to this: if people did not buy these newspapers, we would not have this problem. Too many people have an insatiable appetite for gossip, trivia, scandal and the scum of life and that is why we have found ourselves in this position. If people did not buy such papers—I hope that on Sunday the News of the World will get its real punishment through a complete and total slump in its sales—we would effectively see the sort of regulation and change that we all want. There must be a huge cultural shift not only in how we deal with newspapers but in how they conduct themselves. They should act in a much better and more responsible manner in future.

Voting by Prisoners

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Streeter]

I will not give way, if my hon. Friend does not mind, because I have done so twice.

It is time to take a stand. I suggest three things—we are coming now to solutions. First, I suggest that we vote overwhelmingly today to reject the ECHR judgment and support the motion. In doing so, we will send a clear signal to our constituents that we understand and echo their desire not to put up with this nonsense any longer. We will also send a signal to ECHR judges that we do not appreciate, and will not accept, their attempts to legislate for us here in the United Kingdom. That is our job, not theirs.

Secondly, we need to start work immediately on amending, or at least on restricting or clarifying, the European convention on human rights. That will require the political will of the House and of the Government on this side of the channel, and political muscle and skill on the other side. Fortunately, machinery for that is in place—it is called the Council of Europe, which among other duties oversees the work of the European Court of Human Rights. I suggest that our Government, working with the British delegation of MPs to the Council, immediately set on a course to suggest to our friends across the channel amendments to the convention. They could suggest narrowing the rules governing the scope of the Court, or further protocols. We should use whatever the correct procedures are—I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General can advise us on those—to take this important but increasingly abused convention back to its original purpose; namely, to underpin basic human rights, and to prevent the excesses of torture, imprisonment without trial and persecution perpetrated on European people in the second world war from ever being visited upon us again. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that that will not be easy, but it is not impossible, and we should start that journey today.

Thirdly and finally, I know not whether Mr John Hirst, the axe murderer—nice man—fought his case on legal aid, but I am certain that he fought it either on legal aid or on a no win, no fee basis.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It was legal aid.

[Mr Streeter]

My hon. Friend shouts in my ear that Hirst fought his case on legal aid. In any case, we should now make a further change to the consultation process on legal aid reform that is currently being conducted by the Ministry of Justice, and make it clear that legal aid will no longer—from today—be available to prisoners or former prisoners suing the Government because they have been denied a vote. We are in the process of reducing legal aid for all kinds of legal action, so why not expressly exclude those claims, which the whole country deprecates? We have the power to do so and we should exercise it.

I was never any good at physics at school, but I remember one law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Convicted criminals and their lawyers and the ECHR have conspired to create an action. Let this House today decide to put into place an equal and opposite reaction. I support the motion and hope that it receives an overwhelming majority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley). I shall begin by taking off my wig and putting on a very hard hat, because I am another of the lawyers who now have the great pleasure of being in this place.

I will not support the motion if a vote is called, not because I believe for a moment that prisoners should have the right to vote, but because I consider the motion to be a bit of a dog’s dinner. I commend the speech of the Attorney-General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) that the House should debate the subject again properly, because this dog’s dinner confuses a number of issues. As I have said, I do not think that prisoners should have the right to vote, but the subject does not excite me a great deal, although I accept much of what has been said. The Attorney-General made clear his view that it was important for us to debate the issue of prisoners and voting, and to present our opinions on the matter as a Parliament because they might prove useful in another place.

Let me throw this into the mix, for what it is worth. There is no blanket ban at present, as we know. As for whether we should introduce a further restriction, let me say—I have said it before, but I will say it again—that in all the 16 years or so during which I was a barrister in the criminal division, none of my clients who received a custodial sentence ever said to me, “It is an outrage: I have now lost my right to vote.” They said many other things, mostly rather derogatory things about my pleas in mitigation and the like, but that was not one of their complaints.

Please, let us not allow our judges to decide whether someone should retain or lose the right to vote. Indeed, let us not place that burden on them. To put it bluntly, judges have enough to do, and have enough of what is often nonsense to read out. I do not think that it is their role to make such a decision. I think that, in a sense, we would abdicate our responsibility if we gave it to them. We can imagine the nightmare that would result: a draftsman would have to specify the circumstances in which a person should be given the right to vote and those in which that right should be taken away, and then someone would appeal against that. It is a bad idea.

I also urge the Government not to prescribe a particular period. I know why a period of four years has been floated—I will not bore all the non-lawyers with the history of that, and why it has now been removed—but I think it would be a bad idea to specify two years, three years or four years. I know of cases in which paedophiles have received custodial sentences of less than four years; I know of violent offenders who have received custodial sentences of less than four years, and whose period on licence has been extended because the court has found them to be dangerous. There is also the problem that arises when people have been found to be dangerous and have received what is effectively a life sentence because of the nature of their crimes, but the actual period for which they must serve before being considered for parole is well under four years.

I realise that that sounds technical, but these are really important matters. We could end up with a very peculiar state of affairs. Someone who clearly should not have the right to vote because he is dangerous and has committed a truly terrible offence such as a rape, or an offence of wounding with intent under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, might serve a sentence of less than four years. That is one of my reasons for urging caution against a prescriptive figure.

I suggest that when we have considered the matter and returned to the debate, we should consider an idea which, although I wish it were mine, actually belongs to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). As you might imagine, Mr Speaker, he and I have discussed the matter at length, over, obviously, just a couple of pints of lemonade. My hon. Friend’s idea, which I consider very worthy, is that anyone who is given a custodial sentence in the Crown court should lose the right to vote. If an either-way offence is involved, a person takes a risk by opting for trial or a committal for sentence, but if they end up in the Crown court, it is already clear that a serious offence is involved. I think that an admirable way of solving the problem would be to specify that someone who receives a custodial sentence in the Crown court should lose the right to vote.

Ian Tomlinson

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The Home Secretary is sitting on my left, and she has had the opportunity of hearing the hon. Gentleman. As he will appreciate, the points that he makes are again outside the remit of myself as a Law Officer and, indeed, of the Crown Prosecution Service, but I fully accept that they are perfectly pertinent.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Would my right hon. and learned Friend be able to assist in this way: cases involving causation are always difficult, but did the Crown Prosecution Service consider two other charges available to it, neither of which would have been time-barred, namely affray and misfeasance in public office?

[The Attorney-General]

So far as affray is concerned, I am not aware of whether it was considered, and it does not immediately spring to mind as appropriately reflecting what happened in the case. So far as misconduct in public office is concerned, the matter can be looked at, but the test for misconduct in public office is quite clear: it should not be used as a substitute to get around a substantive offence being brought. For those reasons, the CPS took the view that misconduct in public office was not an appropriate charge to bring, and in that it is certainly backed by all precedent.