Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I welcome the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman raises his question. When I was Solicitor General, I met the lead official on community sentencing in the Scottish Government, who had a lot of experience here in the capital and elsewhere in England. Yes, there is a lot we can learn, although I am not with him on an absolute abolition of short-term sentences. The evidence does not necessarily point to it making a big contribution to a reduction in reoffending. However, there is a stubborn cohort of prolific offenders who end up in a revolving door situation, and it is that agenda that I will be addressing as part of my smart approach to sentencing later in the year.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

For one category of crime—domestic violence—the moment of release of the perpetrator is the start of a period of fear for their erstwhile victim. Has the Lord Chancellor considered the possibility of extending the restrictions and restraints on those criminals beyond the sentence period they are given in court?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising an issue of deep concern to us all. He will be reassured to know that a range of options is available now to the courts, including restriction orders, serious crime prevention orders and other types of court order, that can prevent the perpetrator from contact or association with his or her victim. I would be happy to discuss the matter further with him. I do not want to add unnecessarily to the statute book, but he will be encouraged, I think, by the provisions in the domestic abuse Bill that will help to knit together the approach we want to take to protect victims of domestic abuse more effectively.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will join me in actively supporting my proposals to change the automatic release to two thirds for serious violence and sexual offenders. That will indeed help local police forces, such as Gwent, with their management of offenders in the community. I pay tribute to the work the police do in that respect.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

When violent criminals are released, it is a time of fear and sometimes terror for their erstwhile victims. Release under licence allows the restriction of both movement and access, but not beyond licence. When the Lord Chancellor reconsiders the issue of licence, will he consider whether restrictions can be put on such criminals after their licence periods are over, to protect the victims?

[Robert Buckland]

My right hon. Friend asks a very important question. I have to accept the limitations on the period of sentencing. Supervision is an important part of the licence period, but what happens beyond that is difficult in terms of court order. However, work can and should be done by the probation service to ensure we are protected as fully as possible.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As a matter of fact, my hon. Friend and I may be the only two Government Members who believe in having a written constitution. I thought I was the only one—

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

Three.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

There are three of us. I am very grateful. [Hon. Members: “Four.”] Let us not count. In any event, the number is small.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the interim, it would be a good step if the rights we identify, as a result of the Government’s analysis, as coming out of the charter—the third category rights—should in due course, although not of course in this Bill, be added to the Human Rights Act in a way that at least enables such a degree of entrenchment?

Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I do not think that we should be doing this the other way round. I will explain why as I go along. My feeling is that this Bill should be about harms. Poppers have not been controlled by any Government. They have been around for decades—I think they were created in the late 19th century. I understand that they were used by some Ministers to keep them going at the Dispatch Box, and that they were prescribed at the time by their doctors. The reality is that if we ban poppers now and then unban them in four months’ time, it would create confusion. It would be better to allow the current situation to continue. If the test of significant harm is proved, then we should ban them and take them off the exempt list. We will not have created any underground laboratories that make synthetic poppers and then sell them in nightclubs. We will not be causing the harm that we would if we did not put them on the exempt list today.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I wish to express a view that is opposite to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). The simple truth is that if we ban something and then take it back again later, we bring the law into disrepute. There is nobody in this House who is fiercer than I am in terms of banning inappropriate substances, but this is the wrong way round. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) that we should keep poppers off the banned list until we know the facts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown]

I totally agree. My hon. Friend probably puts it better than I could.

[Mr David Davis]

I apologise to the hon. Lady for intervening a second time, but I just want to ensure that we get the reference point for harm clear. I know almost as little about poppers as she does—I spent this morning reading about them on the web. They can sometimes cause fainting and minor cases of blood damage. Paracetamol can cause damage; it can be used for suicide. Aspirin can cause damage; one can die from duodenal bleeding as a result. Let us be clear about what damage means. On the face of it, poppers do not appear to be harmful drugs.

[Lyn Brown]

Again, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The Home Affairs Committee concluded that poppers ought to be exempt from the ban. I hope that the Committee’s Chair, who has been in his place for most of the debate, will inform the House of his views on the Home Secretary’s response to his Committee’s recommendations, because I will be listening with great interest.

Poppers are not a new drug that has recently appeared on the market and that we know nothing about. As I have said, they were first created in the 19th century, so they are not a new chemical compound that has been synthetically produced to mimic the effects of already banned substances. There is a good argument to be made that poppers are not only relatively harmless, but are not the sort of “new” psychoactive substance that the Bill is intended to deal with.

We feel that a ban on poppers, even for a short period, would in fact bring about harms; it would take the sale of poppers out of this successful regulatory regime and users might end up being pushed underground, where unscrupulous and unregulated sellers, who are in it for the profit, are more likely to provide harmful compounds and possibly drive users towards harder and more harmful drugs. If it is likely that the review will take between four and six months—it might be even longer—that means four to six months of confusion, potential prosecutions and a real danger of under-the-counter sales of poppers that will not be subject to the same regulation. Even a temporary ban would create a real danger of harm. Will the Minister therefore consider a temporary exemption for poppers until the MHRA and the ACMD report back?

I understand that the Government have told the National AIDS Trust that the fear that I have outlined is unfounded, as a similar ban in Ireland has not led to an increase in popper-related harms. However, the National AIDS Trust has been informed by the gay men’s health service in Ireland’s Health Service Executive that poppers are still openly sold in Ireland’s sex shops and saunas, effectively placing poppers on the exemption list. If that is the case, we would not expect to see any harms associated with pushing popper use underground in Ireland, because the poppers market is still, in effect, out in the open. It therefore cannot be inferred from the situation in Ireland that there would be no health harms as a result of a ban on poppers here in the UK.

Additionally, I fear that including poppers in the ban might undermine the Bill and make it far more difficult to get across the vital message that psychoactive substances can be, and often are, very dangerous. There is a risk that the Bill will become synonymous with a ban on poppers, a substance that is thought to be relatively harmless, and that as a result the public will come to believe that all the substances banned by the Bill are relatively harmless. That would be an absolute disaster, and it would completely undermine the important work that the Bill is seeking to do.

Finally, given that poppers are widely used but relatively harmless, we fear that enforcing a ban would waste scarce police resources. Enforcing this legislation will be difficult enough without disproportionate police time being spent on enforcing a ban on a relatively harmless drug. If in future any evidence to the contrary is produced, then poppers should be removed from the exempted list or controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

The Minister said in Committee that it would be sensible for the Government to take stock of the evidence presented about poppers so that the House could decide on Report. I urge him to place poppers on the exempt list until the MHRA and the ACMD have considered the evidence and reported back. I will be listening intently to what he has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Gillan]

Amendment 1, which stands in my name, is a probing amendment, as I wish to ascertain the Government’s position on a number of products marketed by a constituent of mine through an online marketing company called Focus Supplements. Several weeks ago he came into my constituency surgery. He was very concerned that the products he sells, quite legally—they are effectively health supplements used for various reasons, which I will talk about later—might fall within the ambit of the Bill.

I want to ensure that the Minister and the Department know that there are substances out there that are being marketed by perfectly honest, decent and legal companies, such as Holland & Barrett, and indeed on eBay, that might fall within the ambit of the Bill. It might criminalise substances that are perfectly innocuous, and indeed that are in some demand. I have no personal experience of those products, and I am very supportive of this Bill, so I would not have tabled the amendment or asked for clarification from the Minister if I thought that the substances I have listed would lead to any harm. The purpose of my amendment is to see whether those substances might fall foul of the Bill, and indeed whether clause 3, which has already been discussed, can be fleshed out at this stage, as that would help people listening to the debate.

Many of these products are used by people to combat anxiety, to aid sleep, to enhance memory and learning and to improve focus, and as such they are used as dietary supplements. Cholinergics increase choline in the brain and contain a substance that is found naturally in many foods—foods rich in choline include smoked salmon, fried eggs, chicken livers and Brussels sprouts. Indeed, there are recommendations in some health regimes around the world that people should take a certain level of choline every day in their diet.

Racetams—I hope I am pronouncing these correctly—are sometimes called nootropics. They can in some cases improve one or more functions of the brain. They can improve working memory, motivation or even attention—perhaps Members of this House should take such supplements to improve their attention in some debates. Various products are listed in the amendment as miscellaneous. Oxitriptan, a precursor for serotonin, is sold in health shops such as Holland & Barrett. L-Theanine is found in green tea and is available from companies such as Nature’s Best. Tongkat Ali is available from various health shops. Resveratol, I am reliably informed, is an excellent substance that is found in red wine. Sulbutiamine is two thiamine—vitamin B1—molecules.

When my constituent, Jack Baldwin, met the MHRA, it indicated it was perfectly legal for him to sell those products, but it stressed it was important that no medicinal claims was made for them. Indeed, in many other countries, including the USA, none of the substances listed in amendment 1 are controlled substances and it is perfectly legal to use, own and sell all of them. One of the problems with a lot of these products is that they are relatively young—only 10 years old in some cases. Although many have been subject to studies at academic level, they have not gone through the rigorous testing that medicinal drugs would necessarily go through. Nevertheless, they do not seem to be the sort of products that this Government or this Minister are seeking to ban.

[Mr David Davis]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right, for two reasons. First, many fitness supplements and other supplements work through the brain. There is no doubt about that—growth hormone-related ones do, and benign things like sage oil do. The other problem she faces is in the definition in the explanatory notes, which says that a psychoactive substance is a substance that causes

“a range of effects including, but not limited to hallucinations; changes in alertness, perception of time and space, mood or empathy with others; and drowsiness.”

All of those could apply to everything from antihistamines to, as I say, something as benign as sage oil. The problem is that if we are not careful we will end up with bad law that will undermine the status of people such as her constituent.

[Mrs Gillan]

I could not put it better myself. That is what concerns me about the Bill. The point was made that if this is seen to be a blanket ban—and a stupid ban because it bans perfectly innocuous substances—that will undermine the very purpose for which the law is being passed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

I know that my hon. Friend has done a significant amount of work on this and that he, too, has been trying to use his influence in the right direction. He kindly sent me a message saying that he has been working to make sure that we do not do something really daft on this issue. He is, of course, loyal to Conservative Front Benchers, as am I—or I try to be—but we may differ on how to influence them. I will not be party to something that I know is, frankly, really foolish by voting for such a piece of public policy.

The issue is about supply. The policy might put someone like me into the hands of criminals if he wanted to get a supply of something that he used to think was perfectly okay. Under legislation that I think is absurd, someone like me—obviously not me, because I will, of course, respect the law of the land—might be so minded, and would then find himself in the hands of those who supply everything with which they might conceivably tempt people.

It is manifestly stupid to go down the path we are going down. Let us get the evidence; if the Government then come forward with a case that convinces the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and his colleagues, we can then discuss the issue in due course. Please let us not have a ban.

[Mr David Davis]

Supply does seem to me to be a very grey area. I understand that the policy is not intended to victimise current users, but it puts them in a position—dealing with a criminal—in which they might be susceptible to blackmail if they are a public figure. It seems to me that it will criminalise people whom it does not intend to criminalise.

The Shrewsbury 24

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram]

Hopefully, between us, we will be able to explain to the people here, and to the wider public watching and listening to this debate, exactly how the Government have backtracked on the promises that were made less than two years ago. If the Government are honest about transparent and open government, which we so often hear about from Government Members, the easy thing for them to do is to release the documents.

Two years ago, I said that I believed the course of natural justice had been denied because of arrests

“on trumped-up charges…a dodgy trial and…unsound convictions. That would not be allowed and would not be acceptable today, and it should not have been allowed and should not have been acceptable then. It was a legal process that would shame a third-world dictatorship.”—[Official Report, 23 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 492.]

Given the new evidence seen by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and me, I now believe that to be the case even more than I did following the debate 23 months ago.

Frankly, it is bonkers that the documents we requested in that debate—a request that the House of Commons overwhelmingly supported in the vote—should remain under lock and key. The Minister at the time, Simon Hughes, said that just four documents relating to the Shrewsbury trial were being withheld by the Ministry of Justice, but he could not speak for other Departments. He also conceded that the Government were retaining 625 files from 1972. It is our belief that the process that led to the prosecution of the Shrewsbury pickets is germane to many of those files, which are therefore fundamental to the veracity of the campaigners’ case. Only when those files are placed in the National Archives at Kew for public viewing will that become apparent.

The superficial justification for the Government’s position is that an exemption from disclosure was signed by the Lord Chancellor of the day, Lord Hailsham, who at the time was a Cabinet member, a Law Lord, Speaker of the House of Lords and a member of the judiciary. By coincidence, he acquired a significant range of new responsibilities through the higher courts in England and Wales when the Courts Act 1971 came into force in 1972, and he used his power to suppress information under section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958.

Some might say that this happened a long time ago, and they would be correct. Indeed, other Home Secretaries have had the opportunity to overturn the original decision, but have failed to do so. The most recent instrument, signed in 2011, provides an explanation of the reason for withholding the documents, under section 5, which states:

“The special reason is that transfer of the records after that period to the Public Record Office or a place of deposit appointed by the Lord Chancellor under the Act will create a real risk of prejudice to national security.”

Parliament has been discussing “national security” at length during the past few weeks, and I would never try to diminish the importance of our domestic resilience. As many Members said during the Syria debate, there is no greater priority than the safety of the nation. But can anybody honestly argue that a strike by building workers who sought better pay and working conditions 43 years ago would in any way threaten our national security?

The Shrewsbury 24 campaign submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission on 3 April 2012. The Government have assured them that the CCRC has been given access to all documents relating to the trials, but how do we know this has actually happened? The CCRC is not the advocate for the applicants; it is the adjudicator, and it is there to consider the evidence from the applicants to decide whether or not there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would find the convictions unsafe. There are many files at the National Archives in Kew that have just one or two pages in them that relate to the trials. How can the Government expect the CCRC to go through dozens of files looking for individual documents when it simply does not have the staff for such a monumental task? Although the CCRC has statutory powers to obtain documents, it does not have the resources to conduct the detailed research that is necessary to show a conviction to be unsafe.

In the case of the Shrewsbury 24, the convictions were brought about by Government interference. The applicants have to establish that, and the CCRC cannot do that for them. However, the relevant Government Departments know exactly where their particular documents relating to the case lie, and they could provide them to the applicants to ensure that they can make a complete evidential submission to the CCRC, so that their application can be fully considered—if, of course, there was the genuine will within Government to be open and transparent; and that is why we are here today.

After the debate in 2014, the Minister met my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon, together with the campaign researcher, Eileen Turnbull, and the most well known of the pickets, Ricky Tomlinson. Afterwards, the Minister arranged for Stephen Jones, head of freedom of information and justice devolution at the Ministry of Justice, to send Eileen the references of files held at Kew that could relate to the Shrewsbury pickets. Mr Jones sent her 2,307 references. Eileen diligently and painstakingly went through the references and selected 51 of the files that she believed to include information about the Government’s involvement in the prosecutions, even though they did not specifically refer to the Shrewsbury trials in their titles.

Eileen’s research concluded that there was important material kept on file relating to the Shrewsbury pickets that was not specifically referenced using either the word “Shrewsbury” or the word “pickets”. That was supported by an open document at Kew that stated that information regarding picketing was held under the reference “Security/Subversion”. Staff at Kew acknowledged that the Cabinet Office uses this reference internally. This information establishes, therefore, that there are many files—at least four volumes—kept on pickets by the Government and referenced “Security/Subversion”. When Eileen followed up her request for files with the words “Subversion in industry” in their titles, she was refused, as everything that fits that description—“Security/Subversion”—is classified.

The Government say that they have withheld only three letters and a security services report. We believe that there is much, much more than that on file and we would ask, in the first instance, for the following documents to be released. First, there is the report of West Mercia police and the report of Gwynedd police, which were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by Chief Constable John Williams on 18 December 1972. The campaign believes that these documents demonstrate that the police considered that there was no evidence to bring charges against the Shrewsbury pickets.

Second, there is the communication between the Home Secretary and other Departments, and West Mercia and Gwynedd police forces, including Assistant Chief Constable Alex Rennie, after 6 September 1972 about their large-scale investigations into picketing in north Wales and the Shropshire area during the strike. The campaign believes that these documents reveal the process of decision making that occurred at Cabinet and security services level to bring about charges against the building workers. As we all know, there were no complaints by the police or the public on 6 September 1972. No pickets were cautioned or arrested, even though there was a large-scale police presence at sites in Shropshire that day.

Thirdly, there are the communications between the Home Secretary and the Attorney General in December 1972 and January 1973 about the prosecution of the pickets. Campaigners have long believed that these documents will reveal who made the decision to proceed with charges against the building workers five months after the dispute ended.

Fourthly, there is the note of the phone call from a Government Department to Desmond Fennell, the junior prosecution counsel at Shrewsbury Crown court, that according to Maurice Drake QC, chief prosecuting counsel, was a request to inform the judge that they did not want him to pass custodial sentences. The campaign believes that this document further highlights evidence of the Government’s direct interference with the trial.

Fifthly, there are the MI5 files held on Des Warren, Ricky Tomlinson and any of the other pickets. The relevance of this request is obvious, as campaigners believe that these files will reveal the monitoring of the pickets during the 1972 building workers strike by the security services, as well as the security services’ activities in manipulating the Shrewsbury trials.

Sixthly, a full copy of a letter from Robert McAlpine and Sons Ltd dated 26 February 1973 to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis should be released. Campaigners believe that this letter confirms the role of this construction company in intensifying pressure on the police to bring about charges against the pickets. Just for reference, I point out that the Brookside site in Telford was, by coincidence, a McAlpine site, and Sir Robert was, of course, a senior member of the Conservative party. That site was where the evidence was assembled by the police to bring about charges of conspiracy to intimidate, affray and unlawful assembly.

The Cabinet Office maintains that it would not be in the public interest for the files to be released. That is absolute nonsense, which most reasonable people would categorically reject as an argument. For the Government to resist requests to disclose documents actually brings about distrust and suspicion, which is not in the public interest. However, central to my request for the release of these files is the desire for justice for these men while they are still able to see justice being done. Many of the lives of the Shrewsbury 24 were blighted by the events 43 years ago. The youngest of the Shrewsbury 24 is 68 and the oldest is 90. At least five have passed away since the trials in 1973-74, so time is of the essence.

It is inconceivable that a building workers strike in 1972 could throw up issues of national security in 2015.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very persuasive case. I start from the presumption that, where matters of justice are concerned, the hurdle for withholding information is much higher, so I start from a presumption in his favour. It has been reported in the newspapers today, or by the Press Association today, that the shadow Home Secretary is proposing to withhold support for the Investigatory Powers Bill if he does not, as it were, win his argument today. It seems to me that there are two arguments here: one, which is very powerful, that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) has just made; and another one, which again is powerful, against the Investigatory Powers Bill. It seems to me that both arguments are diminished by joining them. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us that what he is after today is to win by persuasion and not by coercion?

[Steve Rotheram]

I think the argument is persuasive. To tell the truth, I never speak for the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh; he can speak for himself. Given that he will wind up, he will address the points made by the right hon. Gentleman.

It has taken 43 years to get where we are today, and the argument that we are putting forward overwhelmingly demonstrates, I think, that there is no way that any of the documents that would be released could be a danger to national security. That is the nub of this: it is about the documentation being released, so that the CCRC can have the full picture, not a partial one, in deciding whether to refer to the Court of Appeal. That is what the debate is about; others can speak for themselves.

Undercover Policing

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The right hon. Gentleman has put his point to the House very well. It is important that the country has confidence in the way the police operate, and that is exactly why the Home Secretary has instigated the inquiry. I am sure that Lord Justice Pitchford and his officials will be contacting the right hon. Gentleman and others in this House, and those who have left this House, to make sure that their views are known as he addresses the way he is going to take his inquiry forward.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

In the past year there have been a number of revelations about the police improperly hacking into journalists’ telephone calls, and improperly breaching the legal privilege of suspects and using the information they obtain from doing so. The Government have been very coy about responding to my requests about the current state of the Wilson doctrine. If the allegations that have now come out are true, that indicates that the Wilson doctrine was broken in spirit, if not in the letter. Will the Minister make sure that the inquiry comes right up to date in terms of what it looks into and that it is drawn broadly enough to ensure that none of these risks exists today?

[Mike Penning]

Let me say to my right hon. Friend that I have never been coy; it is an attribute that I do not really have. On the Wilson doctrine, it is plainly obvious why we have to be careful. There is litigation in place, and we need to make sure that it goes further. By the end of July, Lord Justice Pitchford will set out his remit, including the sorts of things that my right hon. Friend alluded to. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will put them forward directly to make sure that they are part of the inquiry.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My judgment was that a conventional level of judgment against public interest was not sufficient in this circumstance. We have discussed it extensively in the Department among my ministerial team and with our advisers. I have no qualms about setting a higher test. It will be a matter for the judges to decide how and when that test should apply. As my hon. and learned Friend would expect, rightly, the judges should have the discretion to do that. But I do not think it is unreasonable for this place to say that it wants a test that is a bar higher than the conventional public interest test and that this should be used only in exceptional circumstances.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I speak from memory, so forgive me if I do not have this exactly right. My understanding was that my right hon. Friend wanted effectively to strike out judicial reviews that were almost procedural, in which the outcome would have been the same whether the organisation had obeyed the rules or not. Could he see procedural issues being an exceptional public interest? I think that they are an important public interest: that we make our agencies and our Governments obey the law. It is after all the point of judicial review.

[Chris Grayling]

That is absolutely the case, but on more than one occasion in my ministerial time, and the same applies to Ministers in other Departments, I have faced cases that were brought on matters of public policy but were based on relatively minor procedural defects in a process of consultation, for example. Minor breaches should not automatically lead to a case being brought, with the taxpayer facing a bill of tens of thousands of pounds, when it was highly likely that the decision taken would have been completely unaffected by that procedural defect. That is what these proposals are all about.

Transparency and Accountability Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is in a sense the Bill’s second outing. I had the impression from its previous outing that it would be allowed to get its Second Reading, but now I know that it will be talked out. That is rather sad, because in the long term the Government will regret not having adopted a number of the measures in the Bill at an earlier stage because of the wider impact throughout the world.

There are greater tensions in today’s society. One of the failures of society rests in the tension between the Executive and the legislature. The issues in the Bill are not party political, but they are political in the sense of the tension between the Executive and the legislature. I find sympathy for my concerns across the House in all parties, but there is a blockage when it comes to the Executive responding. It tends to be very difficult to get anything out of the Executive.

For example, in the Ashya King case, the father talked of himself as being a refugee from the UK because he was threatened with care proceedings, and we know that there was a wardship application against the family. It was clear that the hospital would have had an emergency protection order had they not left the country. When I raised that with the Prime Minister, he did not understand that I was asking Parliament to have a collective investigation into what is going on.

There are many issues in the Bill that I will come to, but the difficulty is that, because of the secrecy surrounding such issues, it is easier for this to be debated in other countries. For instance, English family law has been the subject of television programmes in Brazil and Belgium, and there was a three-hour debate on Slovak television, but there is very little discussion in the UK, mainly as a result of the constraints on debate.

I will look first and foremost at some of the matters that were not in my previous Bill and then deal with the others. I aim to finish by 2.10 or 2.15 pm to allow for two other speeches before the 2.30 deadline. Sadly, when the Procedure Committee on which I sat put forward proposals to make private Members’ Bills more effective and to strengthen the legislature, the Executive decided that they did not like it.

The context of the Bill is to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector, and within that I have included a number of different elements. With regard to the super-complaints proposal from Which?, the idea is basically to give a designated representative body the power to make a super-complaint to regulators of public services to address systemic issues. That sort of thing does go on. There can be difficulties within the health service. It is far better to enable challenge from outside the system. We saw with the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Care Quality Commission the tendency for even the regulators to cover things up.

We have too many cover-ups in Britain, and the Bill seeks to reduce their number. If we try to challenge the state, we tend to be hit by costs, which is another aspect dealt with in the Bill. Basically, a super-complaint allows the representative body to bring forward evidence that a feature of a market is harming the interests of service users and ensures that the relevant regulator considers the response to the issue. Under the Enterprise Act 2002, designated representative bodies can make super-complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority about detrimental features of private markets. This power does not currently extend to markets for public services where detrimental features can also arise. We know all about that.

My Bill would address that gap in the super-complaint regime, and in the protection of consumers, by giving designated bodies the power to make super-complaints to regulators of public services to address systemic issues on behalf of consumers. Public services are vital to millions of people across the UK, but people’s voices are not always heard when they experience a problem.

Also, people do not always speak up when they have a problem. Which? has found that a third of people who have experienced a problem with public services in the past 12 months did not complain. That is potentially a huge number of people whose experience, if shared, could help improve public services for everyone. Which? also found that people would be more likely to complain if they felt that it would make a difference to other people’s experience and result in a change. More needs to be done to ensure that people’s voices are heard in our public services.

Those clauses have obviously been written by Which?, and of course it will be progressing the issue outwith the Bill. I scheduled my Bill for the same day as the European Union (Referendum) Bill because I thought that nobody else would, and I think that my judgment was right—ordinarily, I would not have had an opportunity to say anything, so I am pleased to have such an opportunity today. The advantage of a private Member’s Bill is that we get a response from the Government and the Opposition and the issue gets an outing in front of colleagues. It is a way of progressing an idea. It would be nice if we had greater powers for the legislature, but we do not—that is life.

Another organisation that contributed to aspects of the Bill is the Campaign for Freedom of Information. This relates to closing a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that allows contractors providing public services to escape scrutiny. They are not subject to FOI requests in their own right and so provide only the information that they are considered to hold on behalf of the authority.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Does the provision also deal with the issue of limited companies being created to provide public services? The most egregious example was the Association of Chief Police Officers, which, as a limited company, could refuse to answer FOI requests, even though it did serious and sensitive public work.

[John Hemming]

I am not 100% certain that this Bill legally traps it, but that was the intention. I do not think that it is perfectly drafted, so we do not know—that is one of the difficulties with these Bills.

Let us take some examples given by the Campaign for Freedom of Information. The information that the Information Commissioner has said does not have to be made available under FOI includes the number of parking tickets issued, and then cancelled on appeal, by traffic wardens employed by a council contractor and who are offered Argos points as an incentive to issue tickets. That example is similar to what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. We effectively have the exercise of a public power of enforcement but no proper accountability for it. That is a good example.

Other examples include: how often a contractor-managed swimming pool had been needlessly closed to the public because it had been booked by schools that did not use their slots, which again relates to public resources; the arrangements made by a subcontractor to restore the Leyton marsh after its use as a temporary basketball court during the Olympics; the qualifications of assessors used to verify that incapacity benefit claims have been properly dealt with by Atos, the Department for Work and Pensions contractor; and the cost of providing Sky television to prisoners and the number of cells with their own telephones at HM Prison Dovegate, which is privately managed. As the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, said,

“each new outsourcing contract reduces the public’s access to information because of a loophole in the FOI Act. Information that is vital to the public may be kept secret simply because the contract doesn’t provide for access. The Bill would restore the public’s right to know.”

That is another point that shows that this is unfinished business. This cannot just be allowed to drift. We need action from the Government, whoever is in government and at whatever stage, to deal with those exemptions, because what are clearly public functions are escaping accountability.

I will come to the family courts and justice matters later, but the Bill also contains provisions that relate to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.. Again, this is a privatisation issue, because the Forensic Science Service is now a private contractor, rather than one controlled by the state. It no longer has access to information to check whether or not somebody has been subject to a miscarriage of justice. When it was in the public sector, it did have that access, but in the private sector it does not. I believe that the equivalent body in Scotland does have that access.

To me, this is a no-brainer. It is a shame that the Bill will not go to Committee, where those relatively straightforward issues could be resolved. Potentially, they could go through the regulatory reform process, because it could be argued that that would reduce a burden on the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I serve on the Regulatory Reform Committee, and, if I may say so, we are not that busy—not that overwhelmed with things going on. It would be good to free up the Criminal Cases Review Commission to monitor and access information and to reduce the number of miscarriages of justice.

The Bill has another aspect to do with miscarriages of justice. There is the difficulty of people who do not admit their guilt being kept in jail beyond their tariff, and the question of whether their numbers should be counted. If people do not accept their guilt and they are guilty, they are potentially unsafe to release because they do not accept that they have done anything wrong. If they are not guilty and do not admit their guilt, they are stuck. My concern is that the Government do not even count these situations, so we have no knowledge of how many of those cases there are.

Those are the matters that were not covered so much in my previous private Member’s Bill. I will now come to the family court issues and talk more widely about where we stand. I think I mentioned the Brazilian television case. North Tyneside council threatened an injunction against Brazilian television, and there have been attempts to injunct Czech TV as well. The system does not really work. To be fair, I have a lot of time for the current president of the family division, who is making gradual but sustained progress in dealing with the situation. However, there is a long way to go.

Earlier this week, a gentleman from German radio came to see me. He was concerned about the situation in Rotherham, which he had been investigating. Not only did the local authority take children into care, where they were found to be less well protected, but if they became pregnant it put them up for adoption on the basis that there was a future risk of emotional harm. There is always a challenge when medical evidence—medical opinion—is provided as part of judicial processes, and that exists whether it is in the family courts on a balance of probabilities or in the criminal courts on the basis of beyond reasonable doubt. To some extent, when an expert goes around saying that people are guilty, they are treated as guilty. However, a lot of people come to see me saying, “We just took our child to hospital because we thought they were ill and suddenly we find that we are being prosecuted for all sorts of things.”

To be fair, the triad of symptoms of shaken baby syndrome has now been recognised to be flawed. It was always known that this happened spontaneously for cases of butyric aciduria, so we know that in certain circumstances the triad occurs spontaneously. What we do not know is all the circumstances in which that has occurred. However, the symptoms have been used to convict and imprison people and to remove their children and put them up for adoption.

One of the clauses that I am particularly interested in would allow for academic scrutiny of court proceedings. I am talking about academic social workers, medical challenge and psychological challenge. At the moment, in essence, the only really effective audit on family court proceedings, particularly for public family law, is the example of international cases. The advantage of international cases is that two different jurisdictions are looking at the same case. Earlier I cited the King case, where the family went off to Spain and are now in the Czech Republic. Obviously that case was considered by the Spaniards. The family were lucky because they managed to get their story out on YouTube and were not injuncted.

There are similar cases. The Paccheri case is well known—it concerns the lady who was forced to have a caesarean when she visited the UK whose child was then adopted. When we investigate the medical evidence put to the Court of Protection, we find, looking at the considerations by experts on the internet—there are experts on the internet and some people do that work very well, but not everything on the internet is true: do not believe everything you read on the internet—that there was a good, detailed critique of the judgment, but it was published only because we found out about what had gone on; it was not published as part of an ordinary process.

The judge was in a very difficult situation. The court was presented with one piece of medical evidence by the hospital. The medics from the hospital came and said, “You’ve got to force this lady to have a caesarean.” There was no medical challenge to that. There was somebody representing the hospital trust and somebody representing the official solicitor, who is in theory representing the protected person, although I do not think they had spoken to the protected person. The decision, however, was based on medical evidence, but there was no challenge or second opinion. I have been going on about this issue for some time: there is no right to a second opinion. Had detailed consideration been given to a second opinion in this case, it would have said, “Actually, this isn’t necessary.” The traumatic way in which the lady was treated did not help her in the long term.

Last Monday’s “Inside Out” was about refugees from the UK and the issue was also covered in “Panorama” earlier this year. I understand that there are more than 100 families in Ireland who left the UK to escape the system. That is a lot of people. I have been dealing with cases such as that of Angela Wileman for about seven years, so this has been going on for some time. My own personal recommendation is not to go to Ireland, because its authorities will tend to act on behalf of the English authorities, whereas those in Spain or France will not and will treat the case properly.

There are two types of international cases: those whereby people leave the UK to escape the system, and those whereby a foreign citizen’s case is decided on by the UK jurisdiction. The advantage of the Paccheri case is that the Rome family court gave a judgment that is publicly available and basically says that it does not understand what is going on in England.

Another judgment has been issued this week—I think it was last night—in respect of a Czech case. Under The Hague convention, each country has a central authority that deals with international family law issues, be they public or private. The Czech central authority—which, about two years ago, refused to do anything on any case—said, “We can’t understand this case. There is a Czech family living in the Czech Republic with a baby and you won’t let them have their two-year-old.” How is that in accordance with article 8 of the European convention on human rights? If we are going to talk about critiques of the convention, it has been the dog that has not barked in the night about public family law. Marica Pirosikova, who is one of the Slovak Government’s two representatives at the European Court of Human Rights, has expressed concern about that particular aspect. In fact, she was one of the organisers of a conference in Prague about a week and a half ago on public family law, with a particular focus on the UK.

Interestingly, the Council of Europe carried out an investigation on public family law and it was headed by a Russian politician who came to visit me here. Sadly, because the Russians have withdrawn from the Council of Europe, that particular inquiry has got stuck. My understanding is that it managed to get a lot of useful comparative information from different jurisdictions about how they deal with public family law. The inquiry found it odd that more complaints were made about England and Wales than about other countries combined. There was a real hubbub of complaint with regard to the UK. In fact, petitions were presented to the European Parliament either earlier this year or late last year, and a lot of things have been going on at the Council of Europe: this is its second inquiry, but it is much bigger than the first one. When I was asked why the volume was so low, I said it was because people do not do the maths right. My critique has often been that the Government are not adequately scientific.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

As my hon. Friend said, this is the second time that he has had the opportunity to address some of these issues through a private Member’s Bill.

Let me briefly put the Government’s commitment on the record. The coalition agreement drew from the manifestos of both the Liberal Democrat and the Conservative parties and made a commitment to extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to provide greater transparency, as well as to reform family law, reduce delays in care proceedings and reinforce the principle that a child benefits from the involvement of both parents provided that is safe and in the best interests of the child. We also made a commitment to make it easier for loving parents to adopt children.

We have made progress on extending the Freedom of Information Act. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden gave a specific example of the illogicality of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which had turned itself into a company. Its exemption was corrected in the early part of this Parliament and is now covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

[Mr David Davis]

There are other examples.

[Simon Hughes]

There are other examples, but that one has been remedied by this Administration.

Let me summarise what we have done in response to these important issues. About 250,000 people go into our family courts every year in connection with care proceedings, children’s proceedings, adoptions or family divorce and separation. We are not talking about insignificant numbers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley reminded us that this was the context of the Ashya King case, the Rotherham scandal and many other issues. The Ministry of Justice is not the only Department involved; the Department for Education plays a lead role, and I know that my hon. Friend has talked to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who is responsible for children’s issues.

On family justice, we have introduced wide-ranging reform of the family justice system so that cases do not drag on for long periods. We have thus provided greater certainty for the children and families involved, which is positive and a plus. I pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, to the president of the family division for how he has led on this and other issues. We have also reformed the way in which cases are managed before and during the court process so that children are placed firmly at the heart of the system. This very weekend, we are going to confirm that next week the law comes into operation that will mean that the presumption thereafter will be that children will benefit from both parents continuing to be involved in their lives. That is a hugely important principle. It may not always be possible, but that will be the legal presumption from next week onwards.

We have also taken steps to shine a light on the activities of the family court and the Court of Protection by encouraging the provision of more media access to hearings, and by publishing judgments to show how decisions are reached. That is still work in progress, and I spoke to the president of the family division only this week about the need for us to do better.

Police Federation Reform (Normington Report)

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

As ever, you flatter me too much, Mr Speaker.

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Independent Review of the Police Federation conducted by Sir David Normington and calls upon the Government to take action to implement the report’s recommendations and to reform the Police Federation.

I spent a large proportion of the last decade defending the police one way or another, yet I have never experienced a time when public trust in the police was at a lower level. In my view that is a tragedy, both for the vast majority of decent officers who joined up to catch criminals and protect the public, but also for the wider public. We must deal firmly with those who bring the police into disrepute if we are to restore the reputation that most policemen properly deserve.

There was a similar crisis of confidence as far back as 1918-19 after the police strikes of those years, the first of which was called during wartime and caused a similar low perception of the standing of the police. That strike was ended after one day. The police were granted a considerable pay increase, but as a result, as a vital service they were forbidden both membership of a trade union and the right to strike. The Government effectively established the Police Federation in place of a union, to represent the concerns of police officers around the country. They gave it a statutory closed shop, which lasts to this day.

There is no doubt that the Police Federation had a noble beginning, and for many years it was a constructive force behind British policing, raising the reputation of the British copper to the position it ought to hold. Regrettably, the federation today is a bloated and sclerotic body, and has acquired the worst characteristics of the worst trade unions that we thought—and hoped—we had seen the end of in the ’70s.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Police representation crosses boundaries. This is a matter for the police rank and file on the ground, whose confidence has been shaken, and for the public; and it is a matter for hon. Members on both sides of the House and should be beyond party politics. The federation has unfortunately engaged in party politics and has politicised itself by its actions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that hon. Members on both sides of the House need to express our concerns, and that it is therefore disappointing that there are Members in number on only one side of the House to engage in the debate?

[Mr Davis]

I accept one aspect of what my hon. Friend says. He has had cases relating to the misbehaviour of police officers in his constituency and has done a great deal to defend them, sometimes but not always with the help of the federation. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) wants to speak from the Opposition Front Bench, I will happily take his intervention. The breadth of the appeal of the debate is an issue, but I do not want to make this party political. There are now two Members on the Opposition Back Benches and they have strong views—the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has tabled a motion jointly with me in the past, and the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I would not make this a party political issue. Members on both sides of the House have something to gain from the police being truly apolitical and truly upholding our democracy rather than interfering in it in the wrong way.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that leadership comes from the top, and that the Association of Chief Police Officers has not led from the top? Many of the criticisms in the excellent report could also be made of ACPO.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend has a point. I do not want to broaden the debate to include all police issues, but he is right. ACPO is badly constituted and should never have been set up in the way that it was. There are signs that ACPO should have done more to lead firmly. We saw that in the west midlands cases, where the various chief constables were perhaps not as strong in upholding justice as they should have been.

That brings me to the federation itself. I am talking primarily about the national federation, but also about some of the regions. I say that because some of the local federation organisations do a very good job on very thin resources to represent, as they properly should, the interests of their members.

Nevertheless, there are many criticisms to level at the federation, including that it is inefficient and wasteful. There is a duplication of tasks and structures. It is profligate, spending its members’ money on grace and favour flats and on huge bar bills. It is badly governed, with no apparent strong leadership to guarantee direction and stability. It behaves in a manner that sometimes brings police forces into disrepute by pursuing personal and political vendettas—the sort of things to which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has referred—against prominent public persons and bodies, and legal actions against private citizens, sometimes even the victims of crime.

After the Police Federation’s attack on my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the view of the public, and damningly of the federation’s members, was that the federation had to change.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Given my right hon. Friend’s reference to our right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), will he comment on today’s front page of The Times, which I am sure he has seen?

[Mr Davis]

I do not want to widen the debate and have a rerun of the Mitchell case, but I should say a couple of things about it. The House knows full well that I did not approve of the Leveson process—I strongly believe in a free press—but even I am astonished that, after Leveson, a police force has yet again leaked with an incredible spin a confidential document to which the victim in the case, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield, has not had access. First, I expect the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to have a proper leak inquiry into that—I have told him that this morning. Secondly, an astonishing interpretation was put on the leak. The leak shows that an officer, four hours after attempting to stop my right hon. Friend going through the main gates of Downing street—this did not happen in a panic or a rush and was premeditated—wrote to his seniors not to say, “We have a security issue. Will somebody please have a conversation with Mr Mitchell to ensure he understands that we cannot let him through?”, which would have been the proper thing to do and what hon. Members would have done, but to set up a circumstance in which the situation would be resolved by a public confrontation at the front gate after the officer had ensured that his seniors supported him in doing so. If anything, that reinforces the story we were told by an anonymous whistleblower that this was a premeditated action. Today’s press coverage is not a good reflection on the police in two ways: it undermines their main case and it is something that they simply should not have done under these circumstances.

If the House will forgive me, I will try not to rest too much on the Mitchell case, because it is just one of many in which we have reason to be concerned about the role of the federation.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right. Does he agree, as the Normington report sets out very clearly, that the Mitchell case is just one illustration of the, frankly, flagrant and endemic bullying and harassment that often goes on among the federation’s own members, whether online or in person? That is set out very clearly in the report.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend—he is also an old friend—is entirely right. I will elaborate in some detail on some of those cases in a moment.

The federation chose a very good person to write the report. David Normington, a distinguished ex-permanent secretary at the Home Office, is a classic Whitehall mandarin. If anything, he is more tempted than most to be careful and sober in his language, and to pull his punches in his descriptions or at least to mitigate them. However, it is in the best interests of police officers across the country that we reveal very clearly, and perhaps in starker detail than Normington did, the extent to which the federation has failed.

Even in its sober language, the Normington report was, as my hon. Friend intimates, utterly damning of the federation’s performance. It made 36 recommendations, focusing on returning professionalism, democracy and efficiency to the Police Federation. To fully understand the extent of the problem, we should examine a number of areas where the need for reform is particularly apparent.

It is a matter of great concern that the Police Federation is as profligate as it appears to be. There are numerous examples of that. It spent £26 million building its Leatherhead headquarters. Frankly, that is extravagant enough to do justice to one of the London merchant banks at the height of the City excesses. The headquarters have a hotel, a bar, an indoor swimming pool and 11 grace and favour apartments. Even more outrageous is that, to pay for the extravagant cost, members’ subscription fees had to be raised by 23%. The federation’s officers, with their salaries still paid by their respective forces, receive salary enhancements of up to £25,000 from the federation. They are given those enhancements for doing what is, after all, an easier job than being on the cold streets of Britain on the night shift: sitting in their luxury headquarters, instead of performing public duties. I have been told that full-time federation officers have free use of the grace and favour flats and live on company credit cards. The purchase of large quantities of food and alcohol on those cards is apparently not uncommon.

To put a number on this, the accounts show a provision of £2 million in a tax dispute with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. As I understand it, if that provision is to meet any tax liability, at a tax rate of 40%, that means that £5 million of claims have been made on perks, and perhaps unjustifiably claimed as a proper expense. That is astonishing.

In the newspapers only a couple of days ago a police widow—herself a serving police constable, if the report was right—said that federation officials treated memorial services, those most important and high-gravitas of occasions,

“like a drunken jolly, getting drunk on federation credit cards. Their drunken excess upsets families every year”,

so this is not an exception. I heard similar allegations about the behaviour of federation officials at conferences, at which bar bills of hundreds of pounds were again being charged to federation credit cards.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the money might be better spent restoring the damaged national police memorial, on the Mall, which remains broken and damaged, and that that would be a fitting tribute to the brave and dedicated police officers who form the majority?

[Mr Davis]

That is an extremely imaginative suggestion. I have my own ideas about what should happen with the money, but my hon. Friend’s idea should be taken into account.

In making these assertions, I have largely depended on whistleblowers—people who have bravely come forward, shocked at what they have seen—but police whistleblowers are particularly at risk and so are loth to enter the public domain, which makes it hard to check what they have said. As a result, I called on the federation to publish its expense accounts and live up to generally expected standards of transparency. I did this so that I could confirm or deny whether these claims were correct. As far as I am aware, the federation has not published these expense and credit card accounts, which leads me to believe that the whistleblowers are right.

It is up to the federation’s members to say whether they consider this profligacy acceptable, because mostly—but not entirely—it is their money, but they cannot make that judgment unless they know exactly what is being done in their name with their money. So that is another reason to have total transparency in these accounts. Yet another reason concerns my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who as Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims represents the Home Office on the Front Bench today. We put taxpayers’ money into the federation—it is there properly to perform a function we want performed—so it might be the case that taxpayers’ money is being wasted at these conferences.

The federation appears to have a problem with transparency. It is telling that it failed to answer even Sir David Normington’s requests concerning the so-called No. 2 accounts used by the various branches. This money comes from selling insurance and then keeping a rake-off or commission, but so far the federation has not been willing or able to provide the information that Normington asked for. I understand that this probably accounts for £35 million of assets just sitting around the country. Again, this is money that belongs to serving police officers, not the organisation.

Contrary to the federation’s claims earlier this week, the full details of the 11 grace and favour apartments are not published in its accounts. I will not spend much time on this, but, to save colleagues time looking it up, I recommend they read note 3 of the federation’s accounts. It is the only reference to the apartments, but it does not contain what I would recognise as details telling us that these are grace and favour apartments used for the benefit of federation officers, with or without the approval of its members. It is clear that the federation does not know what transparency means, but it can only restore trust in itself if it imposes transparency on all its operations as a matter of urgency.

The federation’s use of funds raises another matter. It has formidable financial muscle. I guess its total assets come to about £70 million, the majority coming from subscription fees, but some from the No. 2 accounts. The last set of audited accounts showed the federation with a surplus, over and above all its costs and profligacy, of £3.5 million per annum.

In addition, we see in the costs that about £10 million was spent on administration, including the profligacies that I talked about. Most astonishingly, £8 million every single year was spent on legal actions. Furthermore, there are provisions against the loss of certain active legal cases—in one case, for up to £1 million. Other such provisions are for £350,000 or £450,000.

Let us understand something. The right hon. Member for Tottenham is here and will well understand that sometimes there are good reasons for the federation to act vigorously on behalf of its members. Big legal and individual interests will be in play in the Duggan case, and in such cases it is entirely proper that provisions should be made. I do not in any way criticise that element of legal defence, although I have to say that it should come about through an insurance function rather than through the discretion of a Fed rep. Never mind.

Such legal action is justifiable, but on many occasions aggressive litigation should not be carried out against those bringing complaints against the police. Chris Mullin, the distinguished predecessor of the Home Affairs Committee Chairman, has previously said that although most unions will not act on behalf of a member who is clearly in the wrong, the federation has a long track record of defending the indefensible and will gleefully launch claims against the victims of crime.

There are two recent examples of the federation’s appetite for litigation. PC Kelly Jones sued a burglary victim after she tripped on a kerb outside his garage and PC Richard Seymour sued another burglary victim after falling over a drain on his property. In both instances, it was the Police Federation that assisted in progressing the claims, despite the pleading of senior officers that such claims were detrimental to the image of the police force. This is based on press reportage, so I cannot be sure of it, but the federation has been accused of pressuring PC Kelly Jones into making her claim when she had no desire to do so. I hear from other whistleblowers that it is not uncommon for federation members to be actively encouraged to make claims that Members might find inappropriate. A particular concern—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I gently remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Backbench Business Committee recommends that the opening speech should last for 10 to 15 minutes. He has now been speaking for 20 minutes. Ten Members wish to participate, and there is another debate this afternoon. We are all hanging on the right hon. Gentleman’s every word, but he should bear it in mind that other people are involved. I would be grateful if he concluded soon.

[Mr Davis]

Absolutely, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been generous with interventions—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that that does not count; the 10 to 15 minutes are not qualified in any way. The right hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way, but other Members will want a reasonable time to participate.

[Mr Davis]

I will be as brisk as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I come to the most serious point of the debate: the bringing of defamation cases against people who disagree with the police’s version of events. There is no downside for a police officer when they pursue a libel action backed by the enormous resources of the Fed. That raises two distinct and concerning issues. First, action against the press, who must hold the police to account, is utterly against the interests of a fair and free society except in very clear-cut circumstances. Secondly, there is the action taken against members of the public, whom the police are charged with protecting, who disagree with the police’s version of events. That insulates the police from criticism and from being held to account for what they do. Such actions should not take place. If the federation is using its financial might to crush legitimate claims against officers or—worse—to pursue those who have already been subject to a police stitch-up, to take an extreme example, that huge injustice would compound existing injustices.

My next point is about the Normington report on politically motivated campaigns. It said:

“Throughout our inquiry we have heard allegations that some Federation representatives who have personally targeted successive Home Secretaries, Andrew Mitchell, Tom Winsor and others, bringing the Federation into disrepute and risking the police reputation for impartiality and integrity…If the Federation wants to be respected and listened to in the future, this has to stop.”

Such actions are completely unacceptable and contrary to the purpose of the Police Federation.

Finally, I turn to what should be done. As we consider whether progress and reform should be left to the federation, we should bear two simple points in mind. Are the interests of its officers, who have something to lose—a cushy job and good pay—or are the interests of the members being pursued? It is vital that the members themselves should be properly represented.

Last week, Fiona McElroy, a former principal private secretary brought in to help the federation achieve the reforms, was fired; her deputy also left the federation in outrage at her treatment. I ask the Minister to give the federation two ultimatums. First, it should immediately sign up to recommendation 1 and accept the revised core purpose to act in the public interest, with public accountability alongside accountability to their own members. Secondly, it should accept all the other Normington recommendations before its triennial elections this year, when it will lock in place a whole set of officers for another three years. If it does not do that, the Government will, I think, be properly authorised to intervene. In my view, if they do intervene, they should implement Normington-plus—put in place all the Normington proposals and in addition act to deal with the profligacy and misuse of public and members’ money.

Such a move, I am afraid, would mean selling the Leatherhead headquarters, centralising the money and giving back to members the funds that the federation has inappropriately used in the past several years. That would be about £500 a member and would still leave a viable federation. That is how we can make the Police Federation serve its members and, equally importantly, serve the public of the nation that its members are there to uphold.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am keen on this new version and consider it to be an improvement on the original version precisely because it does not require anyone to prove they are innocent, and it provides as unambiguous a wording as we can find to ensure we do not have years of judicial interpretation to come.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I assure the Minister I have not risen to intervene to ensure he takes an intervention from every other Member in the Chamber. Can he give me an example of a case that would not pass one filter but would pass the other filter, because I cannot think of one?

[Damian Green]

It would not be helpful to go into individual cases. I have given some examples of what requirements need to be shown for an applicant to receive compensation. What is required is that there must be a new fact that demonstrates that the applicant did not commit the crime. A Court of Appeal judgment that led to the quashing of an applicant’s conviction would have to show what the reasons were. Although I cannot give individual examples, I can tell my right hon. Friend that the reason could be new DNA evidence or compelling new medical evidence, or compelling new alibi evidence that shows the applicant was somewhere else at the time.

To address what lies behind a lot of the unease, let me say that it is fundamentally important to remember that we are legislating here for a compensation scheme that is based on specific eligibility requirements. These are designed to meet our international obligations which only require payment in exceptional cases. The Government believe this clause achieves that.

Everyone has been asking, “What’s the difference between the original clause and this clause?” Of course the substance is not different. However, we recognise that in this area language is very important, and precisely because of the emotion that surrounds the word “innocent”, there is a case for reviewing the reference to that word which has been so controversial, and that is what we have done. We have removed that word, which I hope adds to the clarity and lack of ambiguity.