Draft Justification Decision (Scientific Age Imaging) Regulations 2023
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Jon Trickett
I will try to be reasonably brief, although I need to repeat some of the points that have been made. First, we are not dealing with a huge number of people—over six years, from 2016 to 2022, there were only 700 people a year who were said to be under the age they were claiming to be. Seven hundred a year—that is perhaps two a day. Most of those people have already been identified using other techniques. It is therefore hard to see what the Minister thinks will be added by doing this very unethical and slightly dangerous procedure. Will he tell us how many people he thinks are escaping scrutiny at present?
Secondly, Professor Andrew Rowland, the officer for child protection at the Royal College of Paediatrics, says that the evidence shows that using X-rays to determine age is “widely inaccurate”, and that the “practice is ultimately unethical”. He goes on to say that we will be exposing children to radiation.
There is, surprisingly—perhaps not surprisingly, given the nature of the British establishment—the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee, presumably to provide advice to the Government. It talks about informed consent, which is my third point. How on earth can we explain to people, many of whom will be below the age of majority, and who may be frightened and may not have English as their mother tongue, in a way they can understand, the risks of radiation exposure engaged in the procedure—x-raying a single tooth—that they are about to undergo? It raises the question in my mind that informed consent, which is a basic requirement imposed on medics generally and on the health service, will be lacking in significant numbers of cases. That is why I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments, and why I could not possibly vote for this measure, given the arguments he has made.
What are the Government doing? They are effectively taking the power to bully these people by saying, “If you don’t have this X-ray, there will be a presumption that somehow you are not under the age of consent.”
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is the Age Estimation Scientific Advisory Committee which recommended the use of MRI and X-ray methods. The hon. Gentleman refers to this procedure being a potential risk to somebody’s life—would he suggest to that same person that they never have an X-ray, ever? It feels as if we are stretching the argument that he is trying to put across.
Jon Trickett
I am complaining about the fact that this procedure will be done to children, who are not capable of giving informed consent, which is a basic principle of medical practice. That is my point. Here is the thing: there is no evidence whatsoever that these X-rays will demonstrate the age of the person—the victim. The scientists are not saying that to the Minister. If he can say otherwise, let him say so, but the people who are responsible for this and the advisory committee do not think the procedure produces sufficient evidence.
I will just make one further point. Where are the practitioners doing these x-rays coming from? According to the Royal College of Radiologists, there is a massive under- supply of clinical radiologists in our country. In fact, by 2027, we are going to need an additional 3,365 clinical radiologists. We are already massively under capacity. I can only imagine that this will mean diverting people from looking after the health of ourselves, our friends, our neighbours and our citizens in order to carry out a practice that is unethical, impractical and unscientific. Where will these radiologists come from, and how long will it take to examine each individual?
I will refer to the report that the Minister has referred to, which says:
“Biological age assessment involving ionising radiation is limited to radiography of the third molar”
and/or of the wrist. This is hardly a great operation, is it? The final sentence on page 6 says that the authority notes all this, and says that the applicant—that is, the Government—should
“cease using X-rays when alternative methods are validated.”
If the justifying authority has major reservations about the use of X-rays in this unethical and unscientific way, what are the Government doing to look into alternative examinations, which the JA is clearly proposing we should do?
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Kate Green
The hon. Lady is right to highlight the general importance of the premises in English law in relation to most faiths, but I think she should bear in mind that in the Church of England the clergy are registered, that registrars are registered in our civil system and that, as I have said, Jews and Quakers already operate in a different legislative framework from that governing religions as a whole.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Maria Miller
I am sure that the hon. Lady will be pleased to know that I recently met many of those who are looking at the issue, which, like her, I take seriously. I want women not to have a false choice between having a family and staying in employment; they need to be able to do both. That is why by changing the culture in our workplaces so that businesses look at how they can accommodate women—not just in respect of their statutory duties, but more fully than that—we can make sure that women can not only have their family responsibilities, but continue in their jobs.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
3. What steps she is taking to increase the number of women in senior positions in business.
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Maria Miller)
The Government are supporting Lord Davies’s voluntary, business-led approach to improve the number of women on boards, which has resulted in an unprecedented increase to date. On top of that, our “Think, Act, Report” initiative encourages companies to take action and report on gender equality in the workplace, promoting greater transparency. More than 80 leading companies are signed up so far, representing more than 1.3 million employees.
Dr Coffey
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer about an issue that we both believe to be important. A number of Government Members have undertaken an inquiry. Will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to meet us to discuss some of things that we have raised—such as unconscious bias training, which leading companies are giving as a matter of course to help more women get up the pipeline?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that such work can make all the difference in changing that culture in the workplace. I am aware of the Conservative Women’s Forum’s work in the area, and I applaud it. I would be delighted to meet her.
Human Rights Act 1998 (Repeal and Substitution) Bill
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I have brought the Bill to the House today because human rights are important. Human rights matter, but they are in crisis today, with a substantial majority of the British people regarding human rights as a charter for criminals and the undeserving. A new settlement is needed to restore trust and confidence in human rights—a settlement that works for Britain.
Before 1998, the United Kingdom had a home-grown human rights settlement that worked well. It had been built up over centuries, and it was accepted and even respected by the British people. In 1998, the Human Rights Act brought the European convention on human rights directly into British law, along with the European Court of Human Rights’ body of case law. That change has, without doubt, transformed human rights in the UK in ways that are wholeheartedly rejected by the British people.
It is not difficult to see why there is so much public concern. We see many cases reported in our newspapers day after day, week after week, that give us a sense that a great injustice has happened and that the balance is not right. I will give the House some examples. An alleged Rwandan war criminal, suspected of committing crimes in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, could not be deported because he could not get a fair trial in Rwanda to answer for his crimes. Today, he is to be found driving a taxi around Essex. I do not think that that strikes the right balance, and I think that most people would agree with me.
A Honduran man could not be deported to answer charges of murder because of the family life that he had established in the UK since he arrived here after escaping from custody in Honduras. He killed someone, then came here and established a family, and was able to use that family as a shield against facing justice for the crimes that he is alleged to have committed.
A failed asylum seeker could not be removed from the UK even though he had committed a string of criminal offences, including a hit-and-run incident in which he killed 12-year-old Amy Houston, because of the family life that he had established in this country illegally. I am sure that it strikes us all as odd, if not thoroughly wrong, that someone can deny family life to another yet have their own family life protected.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. What would he say to people who are very concerned about supposed family life being used as an excuse? If a family is together, does it matter where in the world they live? Perhaps the wife or husband and children should move back to their own country. That view is often put forward; what would my hon. Friend say about that?
Charlie Elphicke
That is a fair point. I think we need to look at the individuals asserting a right. They might say “I have established a family; I have a right to family life” and we say, “Yes, family life is important and it does matter”. In view of the fact that someone else’s family life has been taken away, however, how could anyone stand on that right? How can that be right? A key part of my Bill is that anyone who asserts a right cannot just stand on that right and say “That’s my right”. The courts need to look at the wider circumstances of the case, including at the person’s conduct, to establish whether they come to justice, as it were, with clean hands themselves. Their own conduct should be examined and taken into account. We need to assess whether it is in the interests of justice in the round for those people to be able to assert that right.
Leveson Inquiry
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
When Sir David Calcutt produced his second report in 1992, he was damning in his criticism of the lack of serious progress made by the Press Complaints Commission in the previous two years. We in Parliament as well as the press are now reaping the whirlwind of that collective failure. In the intervening years, the Conservatives and then Labour failed to grasp the nettle of press standards. As Lord Justice Leveson makes clear, standards have fallen, not risen, in many, although by no means all, sections of the press. What the McCanns, the Dowler parents, J. K. Rowling and thousands of others have been subjected to should never happen in a society that prides itself on its freedoms, for all these victims have been deprived of the most basic rights of family life and justice to which we are all entitled.
I say to the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) that it is not the case that the problems we are dealing with are simply breaches of the criminal law which have not been investigated. Sir Brian Leveson states in his report:
“There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist.”
The Prime Minister established the Leveson inquiry at the behest of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition because he knew there had to be major changes to end the intrusion and abuse the PCC and the many previous attempts at self-regulation had failed to end. If the Prime Minister deserves credit for setting up Leveson—and indeed he does—he has, I am afraid, undermined that by his extraordinary and impetuous decision to rubbish, within 24 hours of receipt of the report, Leveson’s key recommendation that there must be some statutory underpinning of a much-enhanced system of independent self-regulation.
I am sure that the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon, has looked in detail at the fourth volume of the Leveson report, so he will have seen that what is proposed there by way of statutory underpinning includes providing incentives, such as in respect of costs, for the members of the press board—membership of which would be entirely voluntary.
Instead of a serious study of the Leveson report, the British press have produced some of the most extravagant comment I have witnessed from them. That includes Mr Trevor Kavanagh of The Sun, who claimed that Members of Parliament would risk
“looking like Putin or Beijing”
if we had a new press law.
We are all against any semblance of state control of the press. Sir Brian Leveson could not have been more emphatic about that. He says, in terms, that his proposed press board
“should not have the power to prevent publication of any material”
by the press. Instead he proposes a light-touch regulation system.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Mr Kavanagh might have had in mind the proposal on page 1780 of the report, which Sir Brian Leveson considers laudable and admirable:
“Interference with the activities of the media shall be lawful only insofar as it is for a legitimate purpose and is necessary in a democratic society, having full regard to the importance of media freedom in a democracy”.
One could imagine that being said in the Congress of China or Russia.
Mr Straw
I hope the hon. Lady makes better points than that if she is called to make a speech in this debate.
Turning to the objections that have been expressed about a light-touch regulatory system, I endorse the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). First, there is the objection the Prime Minister uttered, which is that
“for the first time, we would have crossed the Rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2012; Vol. 554, c. 449.]
As I pointed out to the House last Thursday, and as my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out again today, the Prime Minister’s claim is simply incorrect. The Press Complaints Commission came to me when I was Home Secretary to ask for protection to be written into the Human Rights Act 1998, particularly in respect of the apparent ease with which it felt complainants could otherwise get interlocutory injunctions to stop publication of material, for example, where it was likely to intrude into the privacy of individuals. I listened to the PCC and there were negotiations, the result of which is to be found in section 12 of the 1998 Act, subsection (4) of which says that when the courts are deciding whether or not to grant an ex parte injunction, they take into account, among other things, “any relevant privacy code”—the PCC code. In other words, it was the press themselves who wanted statutory force—legal force—to be behind their code, because they wanted protection. That was the crossing of the Rubicon, not anything in Leveson.
The second issue concerns the Irish Defamation Act 2009, to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham made such important reference. The Prime Minister said that we should look at that Act, because it
“runs to many, many pages, setting out many, many powers of the Irish Press Council.”
He added:
“It is worth Members of the House studying the Irish situation”—[Official Report, 29 November 2012; Vol. 554, c. 456.]
I have taken the Prime Minister’s advice, but it is a great pity that he failed to study that Act rather more closely. As my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out, although it runs to 35 pages, the provisions relating to the Press Council consist of one section—section 44—one schedule, which is two and a half pages long, and linking provisions such as those linking back to section 27, which provides a public interest defence for media firms that have signed up to the Press Council and have adhered to its code. I hope that the Secretary of State, or whichever Minister responds to the debate, will answer the question that has been put time and again from the Labour Benches and, to a degree, from her own: if the Irish Defamation Act is good enough for the Irish press, and has worked for them and for the British media with titles in Ireland, why would such a short set of provisions not be good enough for this House and the British press?
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
May I begin by declaring an interest as a practising member of the defamation and media law Bar? I speak here, however, as a Member of the House and not as a barrister representing any particular client, claimant or defendant. The fact that I am currently acting for a well-known claimant whose reputation has been grievously damaged in the recent past has no bearing on what I want to say—
Sir Edward Garnier
As it happens, I have over the past 35—[Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wish to intervene?
Sir Edward Garnier
I think I might be permitted to know a little more about that case than my hon. Friend does. As it happens, I have over the past 35 years or so—[Interruption.] Would she stop mumbling?
Over the past 35 years or so, I have acted for and advised both claimants and defendants in more or less equal measure. Unsurprisingly, many of the defendants were newspaper publishers, editors and journalists and their broadcast media equivalents.
The House and the public as a whole owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lord Justice Leveson. His report is long but comprehensive. It is thorough and analytical. It contains opinion and recommendations, but they are based on fact, founded on the evidence he heard and read. Neither he nor his report can be described as “bonkers” and the report does not resort to hyperbole, make hysterical criticisms of the media or demand state control of the press. It is, in my view, a fair and balanced report that has exposed and tackled some difficult, if not entirely novel, questions.
I say that the questions were not entirely novel, because in this House in January 1960, a Mr Leslie Hale, who was then the Member for Oldham West, moved to repeal the Justices of the Peace Act 1361, among whose provisions was one to outlaw eavesdropping. A predecessor of mine as Solicitor-General, Mr Peter Rawlinson, then the Member for Epsom, said:
“Translated into ordinary terms, the Bill which the hon. Member seeks to introduce, dressed up like a radical bird of paradise, is nothing less than a modest charter for peeping Toms and eavesdroppers…It is also a charter for other strange people who pester law-abiding citizens and persons of that kind.”
He went on to say:
“The modern use of the Bill is mainly to prevent the ordinary citizen from being pestered by those unbalanced eccentrics who, with an imagined grudge, patrol the outskirts of houses, terrifying families by constant use of the telephone, or by those people who are unbalanced and usually malevolent but who do not break the law by means of assault or trespass. Therefore, there is no weapon which the law-abiding citizen has against them except the use of these powers which may be the only effective one which rests in the hands of such citizens.”—[Official Report, 26 January 1960; Vol. 616, c. 54.]
So over a period of about 600 years the issue of intrusion into the private lives of others by use of illegal listening devices, be it the human ear or electric surveillance machinery, has been current. This is one of the reasons why the inquiry by Lord Justice Leveson was initiated.
At heart, it seems to me that we are discussing the age-old problem now described as the tension between articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights. Very often, people seem to remember the rights, but they do not seem to remember the exceptions to those rights. Article 8 says:
“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”,
but it goes on to say:
“There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”,
so it is very much a qualified right, as is article 10, which provides the right to freedom of expression. It states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.”
But paragraph 2 says:
“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”
There are the tensions between articles 8 and 10, and there also are the exceptions to those two great rights which nobody in the House or elsewhere would find in the least bit controversial.
The issue that we are confronting—my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Chairman of the Select Committee, drew this out, as have other Members this afternoon—is not whether we should have state regulation of the press. We are not talking about state regulation of the press in the sense that Mugabe, Putin or the Chinese politburo control the press. What we are talking about is whether the press needs to have a self-regulated body which is recognised by the state as being a competent authority to regulate the press’s activities.
The distinction is important. Much of the argument that one has seen in the press and elsewhere, and to some extent in discussions in and around the House, has been utterly off the point. It is to traduce the work of Lord Justice Leveson to suggest that he wants state control of the press. He has said on any number of occasions—I shall quote one or two examples—that the ideal that he is looking for is that
“the industry should come together to create, and adequately fund, an independent regulatory body, headed by an independent Board, that would: set standards, both by way of a code and covering governance and compliance; hear individual complaints against its members about breach of its standards and order appropriate redress; take an active role in promoting high standards, including having the power to investigate serious or systemic breaches and impose appropriate sanctions; and provide a fair, quick and inexpensive arbitration service to deal with any civil complaints about its members’ publications.”
As a member of the Bar, I would of course like people to litigate—that is how I pay my mortgage—but the short point is that if a system can be devised that has the approval of Parliament and which carries with it public approval and confidence, it seems to me that that mechanism, just as the Financial Services Authority is a body given permission by statute, could allow the press to inhabit a world of free expression, subject to articles 8 and 10, that would not interfere with its rights but would also adequately protect, by self-regulation, the rights of the victims of press intrusion and other forms of activity that are subject to the criminal or civil law. Of course many of the activities that led the Government to set up the Leveson inquiry were already against the criminal law, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) correctly spotted. It is illegal to hack, blag and interfere with other people’s telecommunications under various statutes going right back to the 1361 Act that outlawed eavesdropping.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a privilege to speak in this debate on this important topic.
Why does the inquiry matter so much when, as Ofcom suggests, papers and magazines account for only 11% of news and current affairs consumption, and when the news cycle is such that the fact that Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant got out on Twitter much quicker than it could have got out in a newspaper? The point is that the news cycle of investigative journalism and in-depth analysis means that the press is at the forefront of holding politicians, Executives and the establishment to account, which is why such journalism deserves a special place in the media spectrum.
I agree with Lord Justice Leveson’s overriding principle that the freedom of the press should be maintained. I do not agree that we need to legislate for the Secretary of State to have such a duty, as the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) suggested. I agree with the self-regulation principle. I share the sympathies of hon. Members on both sides of the House who agree to some extent with the Prime Minister that we need to think very carefully about crossing that Rubicon, as he described it last week.
Sir Brian Leveson says in part K, chapter 5.47 that the threat to legislate must be credible. It has not been credible before. He suggests that that is the only reason why the proposals of Lord Black of Brentwood have progressed as far as they have. I would put it a different way. I would say that the threat of legislation has been made several times, which has led to the evolution of press self-regulation since it began in the late ’40s.
I referred earlier to a simple, three-clause Bill that refers to article 10 of the European convention on human rights but which leaves out the criteria of independence on the basis of not interfering in the operation of the media. However, Sir Brian Leveson says that Parliament must legislate for the criteria of independence. That Bill, which might have been simple at first, is already starting to grow.
Lord Justice Leveson also declines to give a definition of public interest, but the phrase is used extensively in the report. If Parliament is pressed down the statutory route, Parliament would have to consider that definition as part of the criteria for independence when setting up the body.
The report gets into the balance of ethics and privacy—it deals with balancing the public interest in the freedom of speech with the public interest in the rights of privacy. Sir Brian says that that is one of the key points, but that is an understatement. I am concerned that members of the public, including victims—including people affected by the Hillsborough disaster—believe that statutory underpinning is the answer to all previous problems. I do not think that statutory underpinning would necessarily solve the problems that people have experienced, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) said.
Sir Brian Leveson refers to extant changes in the code. One of his first recommendations for the regulatory body is that it should undertake a thorough review of the code. I tried to intervene on the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)—she is unfortunately no longer in the Chamber. In evidence to the Leveson inquiry, she suggested that the code is fine and does not need changing. Are we adopting the entire principles and thoughts behind the Leveson inquiry, or are we, on a more careful reading—I have not got through all the report yet and have read only certain sections—beginning to see problems that we need to discuss in more detail, such as the report’s interpretation of how the press and legislation will work? Sir Brian Leveson says that the incentive to join the regime would be the existence of the tribunal route. I understand why that would be an incentive, but one wonders whether the Defamation Bill, which is currently before Parliament, could provide a route towards securing the same ends.
What if we cannot agree? What if not all the press sign up to a new body? Sir Brian refers to needing all national publishers to agree, and that if they do not, then Ofcom should become the regulator. Potentially, we have the same situation we had when Northern and Shell walked away from the Press Complaints Commission. If Northern and Shell or any other publisher walked away, the default recommendation in the Leveson report is for Ofcom to regulate the press. That would be a huge step backwards, and part of the slippery slope which many hon. Members are concerned about venturing on to.
There is an appropriate concern about access to justice. I do not agree with Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations for excessive costs and penalty damages for publishers who do not subscribe to the code. In fact, he is trying to implement Sir Rupert Jackson’s comments on the qualified one-way costs shifting system. That is something we need to think about and more proposals need to come forward. If somebody went to the potential new body, which was not subscribed to by a particular publisher, one could imagine a situation where the regulator said, “Actually, you are absolutely right, that would have failed our tests and we will help you take on the publisher in court.” I can see something like that happening to ensure that people have access to justice.
I have other concerns. The issue relating to the Data Protection Act is a problem for people protecting their sources or for public interest use. Sir Brian Leveson suggests that the names of people should not be disclosed, or that we should not try to identify potential criminals. Frankly, if that was the case for TV, we would shut down the “Crimewatch” programme overnight. The press work with the police to flush out criminals and potential suspects, and to help get the public involved in the search on crime, and the report puts that at risk.
There have been two references to the potential extent of third-party complaints. I am concerned about one particular part of the report, which suggests that the code be amended to have a duty to ensure compliance with Government legislation on the wording of stories. Again, that strays from where we need to be.
A member of the House of Lords would apparently be able serve on the independent board, but an MP or a member of the Government would not.
Chris Bryant
Is it not therefore slightly odd that everybody is now saying that the PCC is independent, despite the fact that it is chaired by Lord Hunt, who takes the Conservative Whip in the House of Lords?
Dr Coffey
My next point is that Sir Brian insists that there will be no involvement of political parties. My concern is that that reinforces the prejudice that to have ever been involved in politics is somehow to be not interested in public service. I know I am taking a different view from a lot of other people. I am not suggesting that a serving MP or a serving Lord should be on any regulatory body, but I am concerned that politics is again being traduced in an unsatisfactory way. Thatis just an example of some of the minor things to which my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) referred—about trying to change the name of briefings and what they could be called. Frankly, that section of the report did not deserve the ink that was wasted on it.
On the problems the report will solve and the problems it will create, we have recently debated, and debated several times, the terrible incident of Hillsborough. There were two other incidents in the late ’80s that forced a change so that we moved away from the Press Council to the creation of the Press Complaints Commission. Not many people will recall that on 9 May 1989, a report from the ombudsman was printed on page 2 of The Sun. Of course, that was not enough. Today, the PCC rules would enable something of equal prominence to be printed, and the ombudsman adjudication at the time indicated that the headline should not have appeared. One concern is that we may start to give false hope to people who have been maligned by the press.
Alun Cairns
How does my hon. Friend reconcile the want of victims for solutions with the inconsistencies of the report, which does not extend to digital media?
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend makes a useful point about digital media. I think somebody suggested that we should begin to look at how we regulate the internet. That is a challenge, even if we think only of closing down access to sites.
Returning to the Hillsborough incident, I do not want people to get false hope that all of a sudden journalists will not produce stories that they do not like. The same could be true of the situation in Bridgend. The PCC did good work on that, and the Government at the time said, “Yes, there was some good stuff.” We should have learned a bit more.
Damian Collins
Does my hon. Friend agree that the biggest steps forward in monitoring what is reasonable in, say, social media have been taken by the courts, not by any regulatory process?
Dr Coffey
That is a fair point. Of course, we all accept that the status quo is not good enough, but there is a great nervousness about the effect of statutory underpinning and the slippery slope. It seems that statutory underpinning is what the overwhelming majority of MPs want, and I hope we will persuade people that it is not right. If the statute is introduced and in a few years’ time it is not working, the argument will be that we need more regulations or that they need tightening up. I wonder where it will stop. It seems to me that what the victims really want is a more robust law on privacy and for a code of ethics to be enforced. Perhaps that is the question that should be consuming us.
This has been a good debate, but there are not enough hours to interrogate the report in the depth that it requires.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
To accommodate more Members, the time limit is being reduced to eight minutes.
Prisons (Property) Bill
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend is right: we need to ensure that this Bill does not give powers that can be taken too far. That is why prisoners will have an opportunity to claim property and appeal for it not to be destroyed. We want to consult on this issue, in order to address the concerns my hon. Friend raises and to make sure we get the Bill absolutely right.
I hope I have succeeded in convincing colleagues of the need for this Bill.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
There are two penal establishments in my constituency; one of them is an open prison, and the other is for young offenders. People who have been barred from attending matches at the local football club have to go to the open prison when games are being played, and they take their mobile phones with them and put them in a locker. Can my hon. Friend assure me that this measure will have no unintended consequences, so that, although mobile phones may be deemed unauthorised items, people will still be able to take them when they leave?
Stuart Andrew
No, there should be no unintended consequences, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the point and will ensure that we double check all the points that have been raised on Second Reading.
I wish to conclude by quoting Jean Taylor, the founder and chair of Families Fighting for Justice. She wrote to me, stating:
“My opinion regarding the matter of a prisoner being given back any illegal item on release from prison is that it is absurd. We may as well give a criminal any items he steals from a property once he has served his time… If something is smuggled into prison, it is therefore illegal, but it also can be used to further taunt a victim’s family, who are already suffering, by means of phone calling them, if it is a phone, or leaving instructions to one of their friends on the outside to fix a job for them.”
I believe that the Bill is long overdue. We should deal with this once and for all. We owe it to people in the Prison Service, to the governors, who frankly should have overall jurisdiction within the prisons, and, more importantly, to the victims of crimes. I commend the Bill to the House.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey made clear, drugs getting into prison is a massive issue. They damage the people there, and the fact that so many people take drugs for the first time while they are in prison should appal us. There is also the intimidation among prisoners as they trade this contraband stuff.
I made a point about nets, which should perhaps be mandatory around prisons to make sure that things cannot be thrown over walls. All that is quite easy.
We know that prison staff are sometimes responsible for stuff getting into prisons. That happens for a number of reasons. There is the normal reason of financial corruption: some prison officers are tempted by the money they can make from allowing things into prison, which is always very sad. Lots of prisoners, particularly long-term ones, can be very manipulative and find ever more ingenious ways of manipulating prison officers into doing things and ensnaring them into traps. If a prison officer goes out of their way to do a prisoner a favour, which may seem small and innocuous in the scheme of things, they have broken with procedure. The prisoner then feels that the officer is trapped and asks them to do ever more unacceptable things knowing that if the officer says anything they will be reported to the authorities and may lose their job. Manipulative prisoners sometimes lead prison officers astray in that way.
The Minister will know that, in an untypically timely manner, I have already been bombarding him with parliamentary questions. On one of his first days, I bombarded him with one that asked how many mobile phones and drugs were seized from prisoners in every prison in each of the past two years. I have the list here. Although the Ministry of Justice and I have gone our separate ways on many issues in the past two years, it is without doubt one of the most helpful Departments in giving proper answers to questions; I say that in all seriousness.
Typically, the Ministry gave a very full and thorough answer to my question. I can bore everybody rigid anyway without any props, but I shall resist the temptation to bore the Chamber by reading through how many things are confiscated from each prison. However, if anybody has a particular question about their local prison, I shall be able to help them.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
I would be very interested to know the figures for Hollesley Bay and Warren Hill.
Philip Davies
A more lengthy intervention would have helped, so that I could get to the right page. My hon. Friend is imagining that I am far more proficient in these matters. Having now killed a bit of time, I have managed to find that at Hollesley Bay the figure for mobile phones was 40. She might want to make a longer intervention so that I can try to ascertain the figure for drugs.
Dr Coffey
I commend my hon. Friend on the important and assiduous work that he has done on prisons. I know that he has visited many to observe the differing situations. It might also be useful to know the total figure for mobile phones in proportion to the prison population and the percentage of prisons affected. I am not suggesting that he provides that information now, but the Minister may wish to comment. It is shocking how many of these effects are getting into prisons in the first place.
Philip Davies
If my hon. Friend is going to be so kind in all her interventions, I will encourage her to make even lengthier ones in future. It seems from the figures—I am only glancing at them—that at Hollesley Bay just one seizure of drugs was made.
We need to bear in mind two separate things. In the case of prisons with very high levels of seizure, one might argue that it is because they have a bigger problem than other prisons, but it is possibly because the authorities are much better at finding these things and more assiduous in dealing with the problem. The fact that my hon. Friend’s prison had only one seizure may indicate that they have got a grip of the problem there and it is not as big as elsewhere; equally, it could be because they are not as assiduous in finding these things. From my experience, which she was kind enough to mention, I would be surprised if that prison had only one example of drugs being in somebody’s cell that should not be there, but that is just a hunch and I am probably completely wrong.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I shall be brief, because the Bill is short and because the context has been well set out by hon. Members.
On the scourge of mobile telephones, these phones are very often used as a communal resource by prisoners. They will obtain SIM cards, which, as hon. Members know, are very small and are sadly brought into prison very easily. The SIM cards are then inserted into a communal phone secreted in a cell, which will be accessible to prisoners during free association time, which is during the day. Of course, I am talking about category A to C prisons rather than open prisons. During the evenings, when there is a lockdown, if the phone is wanted, it can be swung on a piece of cloth out of the cell window to an adjoining cell or to a lower floor. That is what is happening in our prisons currently.
We know about wing phones, but the communal wing mobile phone has been with us for far too long. Although the Bill cannot deal with the problem of getting phones and items into prison—nobody is pretending it can—I believe it gives another resource to the prison authorities to deal effectively with contraband items when they are found.
I should like to raise two points on the Bill, the first of which is on the definition of “prisoner”. I see no definitional clause on whether the definition covers remand prisoners. There are two types of prisoner: convicted prisoners who are serving a sentence, or who have been convicted after a trial or pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentence, and remand prisoners who have not yet been dealt with by the court or convicted of anything. So some clarification of the term “prisoner” would be helpful, although it might well be that the Interpretation Act 1978 covers the definition and that the extra clause is not needed. I would be grateful, however, if my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and my hon. Friend the Minister could deal with that question.
Secondly—this might not be a matter for prison legislation or rules—there is another category of custodial area: the cell area of a court building, where a prisoner will be detained either while awaiting their court hearing or during the day in court. I understand that the prison legislation and rules probably would not apply to a court building, but I seek some clarification and reassurance from my hon. Friends on the arrangements for dealing with unauthorised articles found in the possession of prisoners in the retaining or custody area of a court building.
I see that the prison escort vehicle is covered. That, of course, is within the jurisdiction of the governor and the prison rules.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
Does my hon. Friend think that there is a difference between somebody who is being held in custody but who has not yet been convicted of a crime, and somebody visiting court for an offence perhaps committed while in prison?
Mr Buckland
My hon. Friend is right to raise a potential issue about the distinction between remand prisoners and those who have been dealt with and convicted. It is important that we uphold the rights of remand prisoners. They have not been convicted of an offence, but are awaiting the resolution of the allegation against them, so their rights have to be respected. Nevertheless, withholding the right to bail has its consequences. When people are held on remand in custody, they must surrender their personal effects. The authorities will collect those items in the custody area of the court, bag them up, and record and retain them in the normal way.
The Bill deals with the position of unauthorised articles where there is no reasonable explanation or excuse for them to be held.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thought that a replica gun might not be of enormous value, and that it might therefore be easier to destroy it. Let us, however, take the example of a set of 18th-century duelling pistols. I do not know whether those crop up frequently in prisons, but they might. They are not very effective, the gunpowder that is required for them has got a bit damp and the flint does not work perfectly, so they are not necessarily enormously dangerous items, and they are legal to hold in the outside world. My hon. Friend is right, however: if these were found—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
When it comes to issues of this kind, I am the ultimate Treasury stooge. I am very much against hypothecation of any kind, ever. It is a fundamentally bad principle for a Government to have. All spending should come out of the Consolidated Fund, and all money should go into the Consolidated Fund. That is why it is consolidated, after all. If things are put into specific pots, people sometimes find that they have more money in a pot than is actually necessary. If items are confiscated and then sold, the money should go to the Treasury.
There is another reason, which is always important. You may be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that some local authorities have been accused of ramping up parking fines just so that they have more money to spend on other things. A process that falls hard on the subject is used to raise revenue in a way that was never intended. If the money went to the prison, or to certain areas within the prison, or to a cause that the governor particularly liked, it might give governors a false incentive to be particularly harsh in deciding what to confiscate. Such an incentive would be removed altogether if it were ensured that the money went into the Consolidated Fund. As I have said, in this respect I am very much the Treasury stooge.
Sport and Youth Crime
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin, in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing it.
Anecdotally, we have all seen programmes that touch us in understanding how sport has actively intervened in people’s lives to put them on the straight and narrow or, indeed, to make them positive role models in their own communities and families. My hon. Friend has already set out in substantial detail the wide landscape within which many programmes operate. The Positive Futures programme in Suffolk is run as part of a national programme and has been a significant success. It is funded by the Home Office drugs strategy directorate and I hope that the Minister may have some evidence of its benefits. All of us can think of examples in our constituencies where such an approach has worked.
The Rugby Football Foundation, which has already been mentioned, is involved with the Prison to Pitch initiative. I have been impressed by Sally Pettipher from the Rugby Football Foundation, who has described that scheme to me. I have tried to help to organise some funding and she has been very diligent in trying to get the initiative going, which works with people who are in prison or a young offenders institute. The physical playing of rugby is a useful energy release exercise, but that is not the only beauty of the project. When people leave prison or a young offenders institute, they are invited to join their local rugby club. The intention is that, instead of perhaps going back to the so-called family or friends who lead them astray or back into crime, they can have a new family within the rugby club. Rugby is particularly well set up for that because it has more of a clubhouse feel and that community aspect is far more evident than perhaps with many football teams. Those teams do a great job across the country. Often—how can I put it?—they assemble on Hackney marshes on a Sunday and go for a drink afterwards, but the members of the teams do not necessarily see each other from one week to the next.
I want to encourage the Home Office and the Minister to try to do what they can to support that programme. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who is responsible for prisons, was very supportive of the scheme and, indeed, still is. However, I know that Ministry of Justice officials were initially concerned that allowing a contact sport into a youth offenders institute would introduce safeguarding issues around children. We seem to have got over that, but I encourage the Minister to do what he can to try to stress the positive aspect of sports as opposed to erecting barriers.
A separate programme—the Wooden Spoon programme—essentially involves a group of teams that go out and play and raise money for community projects. That has been very successful; indeed, it has crossed codes, with the league and the union coming together to provide mutual support. The programme’s projects not only tackle things such as disability and opportunities, but, with the Young Men’s Christian Association, focus on NEETs. That has been successful in trying to tackle antisocial behaviour in deprived areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe is a big Manchester United fan. I happen to be a Liverpool fan. After the party conference this year, I was in Manchester, but I made the trip down to Speke in Liverpool. I was made very welcome there by the Liverpool football club community department. I pay particular tribute to Bill Bygroves who is the community officer. He has a focused team of people, and has shown true leadership since the scheme was set up in 2000. From what I could tell from my time there, the scheme has gone from strength to strength and is broadening out into a variety of functions, including addressing issues such as men’s health.
I want to focus on some of the work that the LFC community department does with children and schools. It employs some people who, by their own admission, have strayed off the straight and narrow path but have turned their lives around and have been encouraged by the positive association in the community with a brand as strong as Liverpool football club. That brand association has taken these programmes into places where things that are not very cool, such as a local youth service, might not reach. Of course, it is not only happening in Liverpool. We have heard about Manchester United and I know Everton do it. In addition, the excellent Kickz scheme has been mentioned. The LFC community department has done something very good in systematically associating something positive with a general challenge to attitudes and, critically, with talking about positive relationships.
I have been shown a variety of material that has been shared with many children across Liverpool. The scheme works in such a way that, essentially, children from a class will spend time at a particular sports centre and interact with people who work for the club. Various worksheets are used as part of its education curriculum, which talk about things such as “positive relationships,” “tactics for families,” “respect for all,” “truth for youth,” “drop the drugs,” “ban the bully,” “rule out the racist,” “shoot goals not guns” and “say no to knife crime.” As hon. Members can see, very positive messages are associated with leading football players such as Steven Gerrard and because Stevie says so, kids will stand up and take notice, which is very positive.
On other local activities, I must admit that I do not have children, but I always get a bit fed up when I meet younger people who say that there is nothing to do and blame this, that and the other. If we look around us, we can see the great work that is done in every community across this land, whether by volunteers who help to run the scouts and the guides and enjoy that kind of sport; those who are involved with work in lucky places such as Manchester, Liverpool and other main conurbations where football and rugby teams proactively go out to help their local communities; or people who are involved with the local Army Cadet Force or similar organisations. I genuinely believe that there is a lot out there for young people to do, but sometimes we just need to encourage them in the right direction.
Of course, many of those things are not seen as being very cool. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury talks about civic society, he needs to go and engage with these people. Something we can all do is direct people towards such organisations. One of the lessons we can learn is to associate positive brand ambassadors with these initiatives, whether they are at a football club or a local church school hall youth club that meets on a Thursday night. We need to have such positive brand imagery and to encourage all our local celebrities and respected local people—that may even include Members of Parliament—to fly the flag for the volunteers who are trying to make a difference with youth and sport.
Jim Dobbin (in the Chair)
In case hon. Members are interested, for the record, I should say that I am a Glasgow Celtic fan.
Stella Creasy
The hon. Lady ought to listen to her colleague, the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who talked about priorities. In a time of financial austerity, the national citizen service is a very expensive scheme for a very small amount of time. If we are not able to fund everything—yet we are all in this together—we have to look at what money is being spent on young people. I advise the hon. Lady to look at the Government’s commitment to fund the national citizen service for all 16-year-olds and the amount of money that that implies. She has made a powerful case about value for money and the cost of some of the alternative schemes that support young people, but perhaps she should consider which is the greater priority at this point in time. I have a background in working with a national scheme that provides exactly that sort of citizen service through the uniformed organisations. No one is suggesting that such schemes do not have merit, but in a time of financial austerity, it is absolutely right to ask about the Government’s priorities, especially given the powerful case that Conservative Members have made about the impact of sports provision and the importance of working with voluntary organisations and providing services not just for eight weeks in the summer but throughout a young person’s life, so that they can have mentoring and support, not just to avoid antisocial behaviour, but to secure achievement.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
The hon. Lady suggests that the systems that we have had seem to have worked. It is fair to say that this new initiative is a seedcorn project, but I think that it has great potential. We should not keep throwing money at projects that may not have had the impact that the hon. Lady suggested.
Stella Creasy
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, and I therefore advise her to read the Education Committee’s report on the national citizen service in which questions were raised about the scheme’s value for money and efficacy. That is the key point. If we all agree that sport makes a difference to young people’s achievement, we have to look at how we can use the resources that we do have to make sure that we get results. I will end on that point. The Minister needs to champion the work that we all agree is important and he needs to champion the resourcing, otherwise many young people will not have access to the opportunities that we all agree make such a difference, and we all recognise that Britain would be poorer for it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to eradicate gang culture within prisons and young offenders institutions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Youth and adult custodial establishments have access to a range of accredited programmes that address offending behaviour, including gang-related issues. Programmes include engaging community and voluntary sector groups to help deliver solutions to gang-related issues, and the National Offender Management Service and the Youth Justice Board support this work. The Government are developing a cross-departmental programme of action to tackle gangs and gang violence. An inter-ministerial group will report to Parliament in October.
Dr Coffey
I thank the Minister for that answer, which goes part of the way to addressing these issues. However, when I visited the Warren Hill young offenders institution in my constituency last year after there had been a riot, one of the reasons cited for the riot was the growing emergence of gang culture and the fact that when people are placed in young offenders institutions, proximity takes priority over gang dispersal. I would like him to look at this policy again.
Mr Blunt
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the interest she takes in Warren Hill. I have followed up the discussions that we have had and I assure her in relation to gang violence that there is no absolute, rigid rule that proximity should take precedence. When placing young people and adults into custodial establishments, both the YJB and NOMS take proper account of all the factors required and there is emerging good practice around identifying gang affiliations.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
1. What steps he is taking to reduce the sums spent from the public purse on repeated appeals in immigration tribunals.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to reduce the sums spent from the public purse on repeated appeals in immigration tribunals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
As announced in our response to the consultation “Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales”, published on 21 June, we are removing most immigration cases, including appeals, from the scope of legal aid. We are also removing legal aid for certain repeat judicial reviews in immigration and asylum cases, subject to certain exceptions. We expect those measures to save more than £20 million a year. The Government have also consulted on introducing fees for appeals to the immigration and asylum chamber of the tribunal.
Dr Coffey
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Many of my constituents are becoming increasingly exasperated at the fact that some solicitors seem to exploit changes in circumstances and decisions, such as those on article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998, simply to string out cases for as long as possible. What is he doing to ensure that legal aid is spent appropriately? What conversations has he had with the Immigration Minister on the reform of the immigration decision process?
Mr Djanogly
I can confirm that we are removing legal aid from most immigration cases. That will mean that the taxpayer is no longer funding those cases, which we think are relatively low priority. My hon. Friend has also spoken about cross-departmental co-operation, and we have had a number of discussions with the Home Office about our legal aid proposals, which go in the same direction as its proposals—for example, on making changes to the rules on how relatives of migrants are allowed to come into the UK. That close working will continue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
I strongly agree: we do have a problem at the moment. A recent study showed that nearly a fifth of offenders in prison who had ever tried heroin had tried it for the first time in prison. In some cases, offenders get on to drugs, and we also have a problem with treatments, with drug rehabilitation requirements that are not completed. We have to get more rigour into drug treatment. That is why the payment-by-results model that we will pilot to get offenders off drugs, for both community orders and post-release treatment, is such an attractive way forward.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
2. What definition of a long-term custodial sentence his Department uses.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Criminal Justice Act 1991 defines a long-term prisoner as
“a person serving a sentence of imprisonment for a term of four years or more”.
There are still some prisoners serving sentences under the 1991 Act, but the term has not been in use since 2003.
Dr Coffey
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that answer. I am sure he is aware that another Department is relying on the definition he provides. A lot of my constituents will be concerned that some serious offences are not attracting the term of four years that he refers to. For example, a rape recently carried a sentence of three and a half years and an armed robbery in which the offender brandished a knife carried a sentence of under four years. If we want to be serious about crime, we have to be serious about sentencing.
Mr Clarke
Nobody draws an arbitrary line. However, I quite agree that serious offences do not always attract four years’ imprisonment. I suspect that my hon. Friend’s reference to another Department concerns the Deputy Prime Minister and a prisoner’s right to vote, which I believe is the subject of the next question. The four-year divide is used for some purposes in the Prison Service: people with more than four years are regarded as unsuitable for home detention curfew before release. The approach to prisoners’ voting rights is an attempt to find a rational threshold above which it makes sense to draw the line. No doubt we will return to that issue—perhaps in a few moments.