Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Julian Huppert

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am happy to have a ding-dong with the Justice Secretary. That figure applies in prisons such as Oakwood, which are failing—new purpose-built prisons. In a prison such as the one I visited last week in Winchester the average cost is £42,000; in a prison such as Wandsworth, it is £44,000; in Brixton, £46,000; and in Pentonville, £48,000. He is just plucking figures out of thin air and assuming that all 87,000 prisoners have the same £15,000-a-year cost. That is not the case and he has to be honest enough to recognise that there are far too many expensive prison places because of the legacy of his cancelling the new prisons and closing down too many over the last four years.

The concern is that the Justice Secretary talks a good talk, especially when briefing the right-wing media, but he simply does not care about or pay attention to detail, as he is working on the basis that he will be long gone before any of his mess needs to be cleared up. After all, he left a huge mess in the Department for Work and Pensions with his Work programme. He is assuming that somebody else will be left to pick up the pieces of privatising probation, of legal aid and of this prison population crisis.

[Dr Huppert]

While the right hon. Gentleman is in the mood to do mathematics, will he advise us of the extra cost to the public purse of the extra 30,000 people in prison between the beginning of the last Labour Government and the end of the last Labour Government? Will he give us an estimate of how much that cost?

[Sadiq Khan]

If we did a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who were saved the misery of being the victims of crime as crime went down by 43%, and of the additional cost of having extra police officers, which led to a record decrease in crime, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that there was value for money.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am terribly sorry, but the Minister did not say that. She alluded to the civil procedure rules and to the Civil Justice Council, but she did not say that she would go away and table an amendment in lieu of the previously amended clause 2. If she had agreed to table, next week, a new amendment containing subsections (1), (2), (3), but not (4)—for the reasons that she articulated—that would be an argument in the right hon. Gentleman’s favour.

This is the tactic. The right hon. Gentleman can vote with us. Members of his party, plus ours, defeat the Government, and we succeed in ensuring that the amended clause 2 is in the Bill.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sadiq Khan]

I will in a moment, but I want to make some progress first. We have only an hour in which to debate the amendments because of the way in which the Government programmed the debate.

Sadly, publishers are routinely threatened with libel proceedings by corporations who do not want negative coverage. The Lords amendment would make that more difficult.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Julian Huppert

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

If the hon. Lady reads the Supreme Court judgment in al-Rawi, she will see that one of the court’s concerns was about not having in its toolkit the ability to have a CMP in an appropriate case. Its point was that it is for Parliament to add the option of a CMP to the armoury in the toolkit to be used after all the other options have been exhausted. Our amendments seek to do that. CMPs will not be the first choice made by a judge, but as a last resort judges might decide to use one if all the other tools in their toolkit are inadequate.

Further amendments were also made that permitted all parties to seek the use of a CMP and not just the Government, and to ensure that the judicial balancing of public interest and national security also took place once proceedings were being held in secret. There was a degree of contentment on Second Reading in the Commons that because of the improvements made by the Lords, the worst excesses of the proposals had been ameliorated. The former leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is also a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), said that

“the amendments made in the House of Lords have been regarded by many people as being entirely favourable and reasonable.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 713.]

We agree. He not only wanted the Government to accept the amendments but wanted to persuade them to accept further amendments with the purpose of extending the discretion of the court, and we also agree with that.

The pity is that the Government shredded the Lords amendments as the Bill progressed through Committee. I must also, at this point, put on record how disappointing it was that the Government tabled its amendments at such late stages on repeated occasions—they did so at the latest stages possible, both in Committee and now on Report. It is unacceptable that the Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Lords on 19 June and yet the Government were still tabling amendments as late as last Thursday, thereby depriving us, interested parties and experts a chance properly to analyse those late amendments. That is not befitting of such a sensitive and complex issue.

Let me turn my attention briefly to the Liberal Democrats. If we are to be successful in our attempts to improve the Bill today, we will need their support. During the passage of this Bill, the Liberal Democrats have had a number of different positions, often at the same time. The grass-roots party voted to ditch part 2 in its entirety, but a Liberal Democrat Minister, the noble Lord Wallace of Tankerness, steered it through its Lords stages and resisted any changes or improvements. Liberal Democrat Back-Bench peers, to their credit, supported the amendments made to the Bill. More than 80% of the Liberal Democrat peers in the House of Lords voted with us to amend the Bill to incorporate the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. In Committee, the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) sided with Labour in our amendments to restore the improvements made to the Bill by the House of Lords.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and he is right that a number of Labour Members voted with us on a series of our amendments. I was grateful for that support and I hope that it can continue in other areas. Is he also concerned about the number of Labour peers who went home rather than vote, as many Liberal Democrat peers did, on issues such as Wiley balancing in the second stage and the principle of closed material procedures?

[Sadiq Khan]

That is a curious intervention. I am trying to be nice to the hon. Gentleman because I want his vote, so I will not respond in the way his intervention deserves. Instead, I will remind him and the House of what he said in Committee. In response to what was then Government amendment 55, which undid some of the House of Lords improvements, he said:

“I accept that the Minister’s case will be bolstered significantly if the Joint Committee on Human Rights agrees with what he is saying, but”—

this was his advice to the Minister—

“he should reflect carefully on what he will do if that Committee, having looked at the amendments he is proposing and the state of the Bill when that Committee publishes a report, disagrees with him.”

He went on to say:

“I will, further, support any other amendments that take us in the direction of improved safeguards and towards the direction of the Joint Committee on Human Rights”.––[Official Report, Justice and Security Public Bill Committee, 5 February 2013; c. 195.]

I hope the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will support us and have the courage to vote for our amendments, which reflect the positions taken by Liberal Democrat MPs in Committee and Liberal Democrat peers in the House of Lords. Any other position would be a tragic betrayal of their liberal instincts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

The Wiley balancing exercise has been applied for many years, and there is a rich history of precedent. The Minister plucks from the air “fair and effective”, but that was plucked from the air at the eleventh hour, at the last minute that an amendment could be tabled in Committee. What we, the Joint Committee, the special advocates and the House of Lords are saying is that if there is to be a gateway test before the decision about whether a hearing should be open or under a CMP, or about which material within a CMP should be open or closed, the judge should carry out a balancing exercise. He should weigh the public interest in having an open and fair hearing against the harm done by the revealing of information that would breach national security. That is the test that judges use now and what the Supreme Court judges in al-Rawi would like to have used had they had the option of a CMP, which this Bill would give them.

[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous, although it sounds as if he needs to be nicer to some of his own party’s Back Benchers to get their support on some of these issues. He is making an interesting point about the last resort, and I have some sympathy with that. He will be aware that closed material proceedings were introduced by the previous Government in respect of a number of other cases in British law—in special immigration cases, control orders and employment tribunals. Will he remind the House whether there was a last resort provision for all those? I simply cannot remember—perhaps he can.

[Sadiq Khan]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, this is an extension into civil actions. He is talking about special immigration appeals hearings, but I am talking about something very different: when one party is suing the Executive—the Government—for damages. Historically, the Government could press the “eject” button, but for the reasons given by the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), we do not want damages to be paid where a case could be exhausted and there could be a resolution of the disputes. That context is very different from one in which somebody’s immigration status is being considered.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

A chilling effect can sometimes be a good thing. A prosecution brought against someone involved in such behaviour can lead to others not doing the same thing for fear of prosecution. The Justice Secretary is right to remind the authorities, who might be watching the debate or might read of it, that they have tools at their disposal to bring criminal prosecutions.

Subsections of clause 5 set out the circumstances in which the defence could be defeated. This is a key area in which technological developments have outstripped our laws. As has been said, a duty will be placed on internet service providers to identify internet trolls without victims needing to resort to costly legal action. The Opposition welcome that development, but the detail will be provided in regulations that we have not seen. It is important that this well intentioned clause does not inadvertently lead to a website being required to disclose the identity of a whistleblower when they are the source of a post on a website, or to websites being easily censored by casual threats of litigation against their operators.

[Dr Huppert]

All hon. Members accept that getting this right is complex. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that he was not quite accurate in saying that there will be duty on websites to reveal who trolls are? If operators choose to use the defence in clause 5, they will be required to follow the regulations. If they choose not to use that defence, there would be no such duty, and therefore some protection.

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman is probably right, but as we have not seen the regulations—they have probably not been drafted—I am not sure. I commend him for his work on this. He has been involved in this issue since he was first elected, as have many colleagues on both sides of the House.

As has been said, many proposals in the Bill, including clause 5, will be introduced by regulations, probably via a negative resolution of the House, meaning, as I have just said, that we are in the dark on exactly how the measure will operate in practice; how a website operator is expected to respond, which was the point raised by the hon. Gentleman; and what protections are given to whistleblowers. For the sake of proper parliamentary scrutiny, it is imperative that the Government publish their regulations before Committee and subject resolutions to the positive procedure. That will allow Parliament properly to consider detailed plans that will have huge impacts on the operation of the Bill and defamation procedures.

Clause 6 creates a new defence of qualified privilege on peer-reviewed material in scientific or academic journals. We welcome the adoption of that recommendation from the Joint Committee.

Clause 8 introduces a single publication rule so that the one-year limitation period in which libel action can be brought will run from the date of the first publication of material, even if the same article is subsequently published on a website on a later date. The reform intends to end the current situation in which material in online archives is regarded as being re-published every time it is downloaded, which, in effect, leaves the archive operator with a limitless risk of being sued.

The Opposition also welcome clause 9, which seeks to deter those eyeing London as a location to pursue libel actions that they would not dream of pursuing in other jurisdictions. In recent years, our courts have clamped down on libel tourism, and I hope the measure, which gives courts more power to decide whether a case can be heard, will help. We need to reduce the potential for trivial claims and address the perception that English courts are an attractive forum for libel claimants with little connection to this country. We welcome steps to tighten the test to be applied by the courts in relation to actions brought against people who are not domiciled in the UK. I am, however, concerned about cases brought by EU citizens or in a state that is, for the time being, a contracting party to the Lugano convention.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The right hon. Gentleman will accept that, like his party, we were in favour of fixed-term Parliaments and that, like his party, we thought four years was the appropriate length of time. In between the ballot boxes closing and Liberal Democrats reaching their ministerial cars, his party changed the figure to five years for the simple reason that it meant that it could gerrymander before the next general election.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman remind the House how he voted on the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill introduced by my predecessor, David Howarth?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman should explain why he has changed his mind in relation to his predecessor’s Bill. He will recall that there was insufficient time to allow the Bill introduced by his predecessor—a very good and honourable man—to receive proper debate in the House of Commons. The question that should be asked is why the hon. Gentleman has done a U-turn on that Bill. [Interruption.] The Whip, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), heckles me but if he wants to get to his feet, I am happy to take an intervention.

This sort of Westminster arrogance will not go down well in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh. People in those places will remember the arrogant way in which the Deputy Prime Minister’s deputy, after a number of hours of debate on this issue on day one of the Committee, and after a number of Members had spoken, pulled from his pocket an option to allow devolved Assembly elections to be brought forward by up to six months in the event of their being scheduled at the same time as a general election. There was no consultation and no discussion with us or the devolved Administrations before that. We have heard how unhappy they are with this.