Streatham Incident

Debate between Robert Buckland and Pat McFadden

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend asks a pertinent question. I think that the individual offender needs to be assessed. There will be times when isolation is absolutely the right thing to do, but there is always a danger that by isolating prisoners of this nature together we could create further colleges of extremism. We therefore need to get the balance right. I think we are, but we constantly keep it under review.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I want to return to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). Does the Secretary of State not accept that it was a mistake to weaken the control order regime and replace it with a weaker system of supervision—a decision taken not through judicial necessity but through a political deal between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats? Will he now review that decision in the light of the recent incidents?

[Robert Buckland]

I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman asked me that question because it allows me to develop part two of the point. He will have noticed in the years since the debate on TPIMs a welcome increase in the number of prosecutions for offences of terrorism. I have always believed, as I think he does, that the best way to deal with this type of offender is prosecution. The number of returning foreign fighters who have been prosecuted—I personally granted consent to a large number of prosecutions when I was Solicitor General—means that we have had an increasing number of that cohort in our prisons. It is as a result of conviction that they are on sentences, rather than part of that control order regime. I am afraid that he is choosing to ignore this point: it was a system that we had to change and I do not think it was the wrong thing to do.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Pat McFadden

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

The Minister has talked quite a lot about the purpose of this exercise being to provide continuity and certainty, but is it not the case that that will be true only on day one? He cannot guarantee any continuity or certainty on day 100 or day 1,000, but is not that, for many of his colleagues, the whole point of leaving the European Union?

[The Solicitor General]

The right hon. Gentleman is old enough and wise enough to know that, while this exercise of freezing the law in time on exit day has to be done, the law is a constantly evolving creature. None of us can stand here and bind the hands of our successors. What we can do, as men and women of good will seeking to achieve as sensible and smooth a Brexit as possible, is provide legal certainty. That is why I am here. That is why I have undertaken to try to deal with this task. That is why this Government are doing everything they can, within the time they have, to get this right.