Debate on the Address

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

For my hon. Friend and me, that is true, but I am thinking about the people who do not drive. I am thinking about disabled people and people who cannot afford a car and who need a better bus infrastructure. These people will feel threatened and will feel that they are being excluded or even prevented from voting. I ask the Government to think very carefully about how they go about this provision, because there are dangers inherent in it for the very people that he and I would seek to protect.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I have been very generous. I will give way one more time, but I would like to finish my speech.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. In Northern Ireland, we brought in photographic identification for voting. The purpose was simple: to stop fraud. We had many examples of fraud across Northern Ireland. In every part of life today, people really need ID—if they want to open a bank account and so on. We need ID for everything. We have an ID system in Northern Ireland. People just need to apply for it, get their photograph done and they get a card. It is really simple and people want to do it. Perhaps she could follow that example.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I understand exactly what he is saying, but I am trying to give voice to opinions that are being expressed to me right now in my emails. The Government need to think very carefully about these provisions, so that if they do bring them in, they introduce them in such a way that does not damage those least able to speak for themselves in our community.

Information Disclosure: Pre-trial Abuse of Process Hearings

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the disclosure of information in pre-trial abuse of process hearings.

As usual, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am pleased to welcome the Minister, who will respond. I am very pleased to have secured this debate, to raise a matter that concerns a constituent of mine, Mr Tom Perry.

The Minister will be aware of the problems arising from failures of disclosure that continue to confront the criminal justice system. Those problems received the attention of the Attorney General in his 11 December 2017 review, which reported on 15 November last year. One of the worst cases, which was reported in The Times on 21 May last year, concerned five defendants who spent seven years in jail after being wrongly convicted of the murder of Mohammed Afsar. Unfortunately, there is another aspect to that disclosure problem, which, despite repeated requests from my constituent, the Attorney General has so far refused to examine to his satisfaction. I applied for this debate to try elicit a response to the concerns of my constituent, who is in the Public Gallery.

Although my constituent’s case is long since over, the abiding issue is the dual and interconnected problem of a non-disclosure by the defence in criminal proceedings in situations where a duty of disclosure rests on the defendant and his or her legal team, and the apparent impossibility of procuring corrections by solicitors and counsel of such failures of disclosure and of erroneous submissions consequently made by them to the court. The procurement of such corrections is part of the professional disclosure obligations that counsel must make to prevent the possibility of a court being misled.

Generally, in criminal proceedings, the duty of disclosure rests not on the defendant but on the prosecution. Exceptionally, however, in cases where the defendant wishes to make an application for an indictment against him to be stayed on permissible grounds under our criminal law and procedure—principally, that to allow the indictment to proceed to trial would amount to an abuse of process—a duty of disclosure rests on the defendant and their legal team to make a full disclosure of all relevant matters, whether or not they are entitled to such an order being made for their benefit.

One class of case in which that frequently occurs is that of non-recent child abuse. Applications for stay indictments in those cases are most often heard in non-evidential proceedings, in which oral submissions are made to the judge only, without any evidence actually being given. As the judge is wholly dependent on the oral submissions made to him, the absence of the production of evidence makes it easier to mislead a court than would otherwise be the case. I am told that there is growing evidence of malpractice arising from this procedure.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way—I spoke to her beforehand to seek her permission to intervene. Does she agree that, although the courts have an overriding duty to promote justice and prevent injustice, the duty to stay an indictment must be used only in extreme and clear circumstances, to ensure that there is no abuse of the judicial process?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

In the context of the debate, the hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point.

My constituent, Mr Perry, was heavily involved in the case of Caldicott School, which was heard in Aylesbury Crown court. As a pupil there in the ’60s, he and many other boys suffered very considerable and grave child abuse that has been the subject of criminal proceedings. The Minister may recall that in that case, the defendant, former headmaster Mr Wright, was eventually tried and convicted on 17 December 2013, and was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on 6 February 2014.

I say “eventually”, because there were two indictments brought in this case. The first was in 2003 and the second in 2012—tried in May and June 2013 and re-tried in November 2013. Of the two indictments, only the second proceeded to trial. The first was stayed by an order made by his honour Judge Connor, following the application of the defendant and his legal team, at a non-evidential pre-trial abuse of process hearing in Aylesbury Crown court on 26 September 2003.

In criminal proceedings, an order to stay an indictment results in the termination of that indictment. The counts that related to the extensive abuse suffered at Caldicott School by my constituent, as well as by four other former pupils, were contained in the first indictment, which was stayed. That meant that the history of abuse suffered at the school by my constituent and the other former pupils was never heard in open court. Not unnaturally, my constituent and the other former pupils were deeply unhappy with that outcome.

My constituent was even more unhappy about that negative outcome because it later emerged that the court had been gravely misled by the failure of the defence, which applied for the stay, to disclose relevant information to the court. With that information, his honour Judge Connor might not have considered the stay of the indictment justified. My constituent tells me that all the details of that were set out in correspondence with the Crown Prosecution Service at the time and copied to the office of the Attorney General.

It emerged in particular that before the hearing in September 2003, the defence solicitors, Blaser Mills, had engaged in private correspondence with the school on the subject of the availability of the school pupil records to the defence. Had that correspondence been disclosed to the court, it could have assisted the prosecution in opposing the application for the stay and, in all probability, would have undermined the grounds of the application to stay the proceedings on the indictment. However, neither the judge nor the prosecuting counsel ever saw the correspondence because it was never produced in open court, even though, according to the transcript of the proceedings, the counsel for the defendant, A. J. Bright QC, had it with him in court and was aware of its contents.

The contents of the hidden correspondence only became known publicly five years later, when in November 2008, the school released it into the public domain. It then became apparent to everyone involved in those proceedings how the non-disclosure meant that the court had been misled and, in effect, deceived into making the order for the stay of the original indictment. That situation was bad enough, but according to my constituent, what followed was arguably worse still.

With the trial on the second indictment looming, my constituent and his co-complainants, who had resigned themselves to the impossibility of their cases ever being heard in open court, were naturally concerned about the position of the other five former pupils whose abuse at Caldicott School was the subject of the second indictment. Their concerns grew when it became known that the defence intended to argue that the second indictment should be stayed on the same grounds as had applied to the first indictment. Accordingly, they repeatedly pressed the CPS to ensure that those submissions made to the judge and accepted by him in the September 2003 abuse of process hearing should be formally corrected to the court.

Their argument was that those submissions, which the defence already knew to be false at the 2003 hearing, were now known to be wrong by all parties and the public at large following the release into the public domain of the correspondence between Caldicott School and the defence solicitors, Blaser Mills. Formal correction of those false submissions was needed to prevent the possibility of the court being misled in the same way that it had been in 2003.

Attention was drawn to the explicit wording of both the Solicitors Regulation Authority handbook and the Bar Standards Board handbook—I have made the relevant sections of both available to the Minister—and to the professional obligation resting on all solicitors and counsel, as officers of the court, to correct submissions of fact made to the court once they are known to be erroneous, to prevent the court from being misled further. It was noted that no one, not even those responsible for making the wrongful submissions in the first place, has been heard to deny that false submissions had been made at the September 2003 hearing or that the effect of that was that the court was misled and proceeded to rule on the basis of false information.

To my constituent’s complete and abiding astonishment, the CPS did absolutely nothing. While not disagreeing that the defence had acted improperly by telling the judge that the pupil records could not be obtained from the school, or even tacitly accepting that the court had been misled by that, it took no action at all. However, not only were the records available but, in the hidden correspondence that the judge never saw, the defence had actually relinquished its request to be given them.

In addition, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board took no action. Likewise, the Office of the Attorney General, from which at least my constituent might have expected some intervention, given the failure of the regulatory bodies to deal with the situation, did nothing. Only at a much later stage, when the defendant, following his conviction and sentence, applied for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal, did the CPS finally agree with the complainants that, if leave to appeal conviction were granted and if the defence were to argue that the grounds of the imposition of the stay of the indictment in September 2003 were relevant to the appeal—in fact, it transpired that the defence did intend to argue exactly that—it would finally take action. It would require corrections to be made to the false submissions made in 2003 by counsel and solicitors for the defence in order to ensure that the Court of Appeal would not be misled in 2014. However, the appeal did not proceed and in the event, therefore, those corrections were never made.

At the request of my constituent, I have referred to what he considers—as I do—the embarrassing irregularities that unexpectedly and unusually came to light in the Caldicott School case, and those have a public profile. I have been led to believe, however, that similar problems were experienced in a number of other cases of lesser profile. My constituent has generously offered to provide the Minister with the details, if she so wishes.

It is too late now for the complainants in the Caldicott School case to be accorded the simple justice of the correction of known false submissions that were made to the court, that derailed the first indictment and that they believe denied them justice in 2003.

Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. As the Democratic Unionist party’s spokesperson on health, I add my support to the hon. Member for Coventry North West, who has endeavoured courageously to push the Bill through. Every one of us is greatly impressed by him. I put my hands on his shoulders last night and said, “You’re making history tomorrow, boy.” We are all pleased that he is able to do that.

I am also pleased that the Minister responded right away in a positive fashion and ensured that the Bill would become a law, through Government support. Today, as happens often in this House—we could probably see it happen a wee bit more, if we are honest—we can all work together collectively to change lives and make things better. It is important for me. The hon. Gentleman asked me if I would be on the Committee, and I was more than happy to do so, to add my support in a small way to the legislation coming forward.

Why is this important? Every one of us has told a story, and we do that because those stories shape who we are as individuals. I met a wee nephew, Peter, who was born with only one small kidney the size of the wee thumbnail on my hand, so from an early stage he was in need of a kidney transplant. The problem for him was that getting the right donor was difficult. At one time his mother was to be the donor, but then she fell pregnant and that was not possible. As it turned out, another kidney became available in the meantime, and from being the small boy who was not physically able to do much and whose face was—if I can use these words—“custard yella” because of his kidney malfunction, his life was changed. This wee boy loved racing motorbikes and wanted to do a newspaper round but could not do that, and the donation totally changed his life for the better. I was therefore keen to be on the Committee because right away I can see the benefits that will flow from this legislation.

The other story I want to tell is one that a gentleman from my constituency came to tell me. His son was injured in an accident in which unfortunately a lady was killed. Ultimately his son’s life-support apparatus and machinery was turned off. I tell the story because he donated all his son’s organs, which then gave life and improved lives as the organs benefited a number of people.

Before I became a Member of Parliament, I was on Newtownards council, which thought it would be good to create a memorial garden in the council’s area. We therefore have a memorial garden in the main town of Newtownards, where families who have lost someone, or whose family members’ organs have been donated—whatever the case may be—can go and have a wee bit of contemplation or quiet time for remembering. The reason I want to tell these stories is because they are all part of why we need the Bill to go through, and of how important it is for the Minister and the Government to support the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Coventry North West.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley, who spoke before me, made a compelling point; everybody made a compelling argument. The right hon. Lady made a reference that I was going to make. I am glad that was done and I will do it again. In this House we always repeat things, but that is by the way. It is important that those who feel they cannot go with this can opt out. That is what the legislation does. It does not compel anybody to do anything, but it gives an opportunity. That is the important issue that the right hon. Lady drew attention to, which I wish to endorse.

I have opted to carry an organ donor card since I started driving, and that was not yesterday, Mr Wilson. In Northern Ireland, legislation requires someone to tick a box on their driving licence application to declare themselves a donor. I have been doing that all those years. I still have the wee donor card and the wallet, which is long-time faded, as it has been there for 40-plus years. It is important that we move this forward.

In conclusion, we have a consensus and a collective opinion. We see legislation that can change lives for the better. That is the great pleasure of coming here as a Member of Parliament. It gives pleasure to be an elected representative at any time, be it on a council, Assembly or in the House. To come forward and be part of a legislative change that brings good gives a good feeling. Today is a good day for Parliament. I thank everyone for their contribution, especially the hon. Member for Coventry North West, and the Minister for supporting the measure so enthusiastically. That means something to us all.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Mr Wilson, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I rise to support the amendments in the names of the hon. Member for Coventry North West and the Minister.

I rise only briefly to say that I am a convert. Originally, when I was Secretary of State for Wales, I was not convinced that an opt-out system would be beneficial. I have changed my mind; when the facts change, one should, as a politician, change one’s mind. One of the things that has changed my mind is personal contact with a family where an organ will be needed to save a young man’s life. There is nothing more powerful than having that presented to one as a politician. That means that all of us must have an open mind about so many things.

The way the trend has been going, particularly in Europe, is interesting. I think now more than 24 countries in Europe have some form of opt-out system. Although we have not yet really seen the benefits in Wales of the legislation that came in in December 2015, I frankly think that we need to improve the mathematical odds. We will do so only by creating a culture in which organ donation is spoken about, not in hushed tones or with accompanying difficulty, so that it becomes part of the common parlance.

The testimonies given by other Members in Committee show that the fact that a loved one may go, but parts of that loved one can contribute to saving or enhancing the lives of others, has to be a good thing. I support the amendments and hope the Bill gets a very fair wind so that it becomes law.

Transforming Care Programme

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Once again, I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing this debate, but I regret that more of our colleagues are not in the Chamber for what I consider to be a very important debate.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and the House will forgive me if I come at this purely from the angle of autism, but, having the privilege of chairing the all-party group on autism, I tend to refer to it on every occasion, as many of my colleagues know. I have just come from a lunchtime event in the other place with the Baroness Browning, Angela Browning, who entered the House in the same year as I did and who was the original inspiration behind the Autism Act 2009, a private Member’s Bill that I took through the House. She was entertaining a group of people from an organisation called Fixers. I appreciate that we are not allowed prompts in the Chamber, but its report, “Feel Happy on the Spectrum: Young Autistic People Speak Out”, has already left an impression on me. Two very impressive young people, Jenny and Gabriel, talked us through their experiences.

As the right hon. Gentleman talked about employment, I had a look at the recommendations in the report, and of course they include something we would all like to see: more education on autism in the workplace. It contains testimony that I thought would be interesting to read into the record from a young person who has obviously found an employer who is understanding and welcoming of their autism. They wrote:

“Civil Service fast-stream is really good for people with autism. They go out of their way to accommodate your autism in their entrance exams with things like extra time and they don’t discriminate if you disclose”.

That is a positive note on which to start my remarks in a debate that is partly a reflection of the very sad and disturbing stories that came out of Winterbourne View care home. The transforming care programme was developed in response to that atrocious scandal. No one could have failed to be moved by the shocking abuse of adults with learning disabilities and autism in that private hospital, which was supposed to be an assessment and treatment unit—it most certainly was not a treatment unit; it was a maltreatment unit. Following that, the Government committed to moving about 3,000 adults with learning disabilities and autism out of in-patient settings and into community-based support by next April.

Although we have seen a small reduction in the number of people in in-patient settings, about 2,500 people are still in hospital, as the right hon. Gentleman said. Some 10% of those patients are under 18—that number has more than doubled since 2015; 61% have been in hospital for over two years and some, sadly, for over 10 years; and 46% have not had a care treatment review in the past six months, as mandated. As he also told us, and as I also understand from an excellent organisation called Dimensions, which provides personalised social care services to people with learning disabilities and autism, more than 22% of people are placed more than 100 km from home. So although there has been a reduction in the number of people living in hospital and some real success in moving people into community support, too many people are still being admitted or readmitted to hospital, and there remain obstacles to moving some of the original cohort considered under the programme into real homes.

The success of the programme relies on the right support being available in the community to prevent people from being admitted in the first place or to help them move out of hospital. The number of autistic people recorded in in-patient units has increased by over a third in the three years since data collection began in March 2015. That is a phenomenal increase. According to the latest figures, almost 48% of people covered by the transforming care programme are in fact autistic. While some of this increase may be put down to better identification of autism, it still displays a concerning over-reliance on hospitals rather than homes. Put simply, if transforming care does not work for autistic people, I am afraid that it will not work. If the programme is to continue, all mental health staff will require better training on and understanding of autism and the right community support will have to be made available.

It is crucial that we hear from the Minister what plans there are beyond March 2019 to ensure that any progress made is not lost and that there is a focus on areas where better progress needs to be made, specifically in supporting autistic people.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am sorry I was not here earlier, but I was in a one-hour Westminster Hall debate. I commend the right hon. Lady for the hard work she does on autism across the United Kingdom. As she will know, Northern Ireland has an autism strategy that leads the United Kingdom. It is similar to the programme in Wales, but we are leading the way. Will she kindly suggest to the Minister that the Government look at the plan in Northern Ireland, along with the one in Wales, as a good way of proceeding?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

Yes, it is very important that we look at what arrangements the devolved countries make for people with autism. Certainly a few years ago, Wales was well in advance with its plans for autism, which I found most commendable, but I think it now needs to revisit and update its plans, because none of these plans must be left to one side; they need to be constantly reviewed and updated.

I am pleased that next year we will have the opportunity to conduct a 10-year review of the Autism Act. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will contribute to the work that many Members are doing on both sides of the House in various areas, from education to employment, healthcare and even the over-representation of people with autism in the criminal justice system, so that we can put down a marker for the Government after 10 years on what progress has been made and how much further we have to go. If the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) would be good enough to send me a link to the plans in Northern Ireland, or point me in the right direction, I am sure they will be taken into consideration as we carry out the review.

I am pleased to see the Minister in her place, as she obviously has a lead role, but I think that all relevant Departments need to play their part. I still have a feeling that we need a cross-departmental ministerial taskforce to cover the areas that I have just been highlighting, such as health, education, housing, and justice, all of which we will include in the APPG’s summary and presentation to the Government next year. Let me put down a marker for the Government. I want to know what plans the Minister has for the future of transforming care, whether she will establish that cross-departmental taskforce to lead the process, and what steps she will take to reduce the number of admissions of autistic people and improve the community services that should support them.

I work closely with many autism charities, and in particular with the National Autistic Society. Alongside Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, it has been leading research on the experience of families who have been affected by the transforming care programme. It wanted to look into exactly how relatives came to be in mental health hospitals, and what was getting in the way of their being discharged back into the community. I commend to the Minister the report “Transforming Care: our stories”. It contains the very powerful stories of 13 families, and I think that she will find it very useful, if she or her officials have not yet been able to read it.

The report found that, despite the existence of a national programme, five areas needed real focus to make the programme successful. The first is

“Making sure the right services are available in the community”.

I think we have covered that. The second is involving and listening to individual families, and helping them to be heard through advocacy if necessary. The third is improving the quality of in-patient care. The fourth is

“Making plans for discharge and sticking to them”.

The fifth is providing specialist support from trained and understanding staff. For me, that last one is key. When we have met someone with autism, we have met just one person with autism. Everyone is different. Staff really need to understand that, and to be trained to understand people with autism.