Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Davies and Mike Penning

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

6. What progress his Department has made on protecting the armed forces from persistent legal claims.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mike Penning)]

We are determined to meet our manifesto commitment to ensure that our armed forces overseas are not subject to persistent legal claims that undermine their ability to do their job. I am continuing to explore the work that my predecessor did, working across Government to bring forward proposals in the very near future.

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend was in the same Department as me before I had the honour of taking on this role. It is very important that those who have done wrong are dealt with, but it is really wrong that tax-paid lawyers are chasing around the country trying to prosecute other people.

[Chris Davies]

Our armed forces are the best in the world and we must do everything to protect them, both on and off the battlefield. Many soldiers are based in barracks at Sennybridge and Brecon in my constituency; will my right hon. Friend assure them and me that the Iraq historic allegations tribunal will look very carefully at the claims made against British forces personnel and whether to reject those allegations, particularly following the demise of Public Interest Lawyers?

[Mike Penning]

I think we all welcome the demise of Public Interest Lawyers. It is for the regulatory authorities to look closely at what it did and how it earned its income. I trained at Sennybridge many years ago. I assure everyone in the armed forces that these Ministers and this Government are behind them and will make sure that we protect them as much as possible.

Dyfed Powys Police Helicopter

Debate between Chris Davies and Mike Penning

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, in my first debate after being reconfirmed as Minister with responsibility for the police—and now for crime, too, including organised crime. I am at both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice—buy one, get one free, apparently. On a serious note, it works very well being the Minister both for the police and criminal justice.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on securing this debate. If I were the MP for his constituency, I would probably call for a debate on this subject as well; I hope he understands exactly where I am coming from on that point. However, I am not an expert or a police officer—I do not believe there is one in this Chamber, unlike in the old days, when there would have been one—so I take my advice from the frontline.

I will try to address some of the issues raised, but if hon. Members do not mind, I will not address the personal attacks on the police and crime commissioner. I do not think they were appropriate for this Chamber, when we are trying to work together. The PCC is duly elected; when the next elections come, perhaps the party political stuff will start—who knows? At the moment, however, I am sure that he is trying to do the best job he can for the people he represents, as we all are in this Chamber.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene. As someone who represents a very rural constituency in the Dyfed Powys area, I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) for securing the debate, because it is absolutely vital that we discuss this issue.

Will the Minister comment on just how hard our police and crime commissioner has worked to get benefits out of this system? I understand that the helicopter broke down—the gearbox had to be replaced—and was off-air for three weeks, during which we did not have any cover in Dyfed Powys. Under this new system, we would have cover constantly. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr spoke of criminals escaping into the night, but said that we would have 24-hour cover under the new system, whereas there had been just 12-hour cover, so if anything, we will have a better system and larger coverage.

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has been reading my speech—or perhaps he wrote it for me. He is absolutely right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) said in his intervention and short speech, we need to get away from the constabulary boundaries—the old, artificial boundaries—as NPAS has done. The truth is that the helicopter was offline extensively; it was not available 24 hours a day. There will be facilities now; there will be more cover. The North Wales, Birmingham, South Wales and Avon and Somerset forces will all be providing cover, so with this new scheme, we have broken away from saying, “This is ours. You can’t have it, and if you do, it’s going to cost you a small fortune.” The police have bought into that, and it is a really important thing to have done.

There are obvious and understandable concerns. I remember when I did a review of the coastguard and everybody said to me, “This is a very dangerous situation”, but just because we had things in a certain way, it did not mean that that was right. The changes that we made to the coastguard stations have worked, not least—interestingly enough—because we get more cover at times than we had before.

It is not for a Police Minister or a Member of Parliament to tell the police their operational duties or how they should run their forces. We can only dream of having the sort of expertise that they have.