Sadiq Khan
Main Page: Sadiq Khan (Labour - Tooting)Department Debates - View all Sadiq Khan's debates with the Attorney General
(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gyimah
If it is so easily organised, as the organisations the hon. Gentleman spoke to have said, then we do not need legislation. As I said, every local area would have differing circumstances as far as the register is concerned. What we do not want is EROs spending their time having to go to schools because of legislation, when to maximise the register in their areas they should be going to care homes and talking to elderly people.
Mr Gyimah
The shadow Justice Secretary asks me what I am scared of. What we know is that the Labour party is not against IER. Labour Members are pretending in this House that they are interested in students and young people when they are not. It is all about the block vote—that is what they want.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend will know, a number of steps have been taken to devolve and decentralise what has traditionally been the very over-centralised way in which we raise and spend money. We are not just devolving unprecedented fiscal powers to the various nations in the United Kingdom, but, for instance, giving greater borrowing powers to local government in England. However, the journey is not yet complete, and, in my view, further steps towards further fiscal devolution and decentralisation should be taken in the years ahead.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
We are fast approaching the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Over the last five years, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Government have extended the use of secret courts, curtailed judicial review, and radically reduced access to justice by making massive cuts in legal aid. Which of those policies of his Government does he consider to be most in keeping with the spirit of Magna Carta?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Does the right hon. Gentleman not remember what his Government did to habeas corpus, and that great tradition? Does he not remember his Government’s flawed attempt to impose an identity card database, which we brought to an end? Does he not remember his push to fingerprint innocent children in schools throughout the country, and does he not remember wanting to store the DNA of innocent citizens throughout the country? For heaven’s sake, let him remember his own record and that of his own party before he starts trying to cast aspersions on this Government.
Sadiq Khan
The Deputy Prime Minister has had five years’ experience of this arrangement. It works like this: we ask the questions, and he tries to answer them. Let me try one more question. It may be the last.
It is, of course, important for our country to use its influence with its allies to improve human rights abroad. As the Deputy Prime Minister will know, the Ministry of Justice wants to enter into a £6 million contractual arrangement with the Saudi Arabian justice system to share “best practice”. Many people are rightly concerned about the sentence of 1,000 lashes that was given to Raif Badawi, and the regular use of execution by beheading in Saudi Arabia. What does the Deputy Prime Minister think about the British Government’s making money out of the Saudi Arabian justice system, and what is he going to do about it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The issue is not whether the right hon. Gentleman has the right to ask questions. The issue is his absolute amnesia about what his Government got up to, from invading Iraq illegally to shredding civil liberties on an industrial scale. As for the question that he has asked, the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), says that no contract has been entered into with Saudi Arabia.
Like the right hon. Gentleman and, I suspect, many Members on both sides of the House, I consider some of the practices that we have seen in Saudi Arabia to be absolutely abhorrent, and completely in conflict with our values. What every Government, including his own, have done in such circumstances is make a judgment on whether to cut off relations with other Governments with whom we disagree, or whether to try to influence them and bring them more into line with our values. That is clearly what his Government did, and it is what this coalition Government are trying to do as well.