Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“The UK has shielded Bahrain from international censure and avoided criticising arms of the Bahraini Government that have received UK training. That problem is exacerbated by insufficient transparency related to the reform programme’s risk assessments, funding streams, and other details as basic as which arms of Bahrain’s Government will receive UK assistance in future. Given the violations carried out during the course of UK assistance to Bahrain, the British Government cannot keep UK taxpayers in the dark regarding what their money is doing in Bahrain. The Foreign Office has urgent questions to answer. The UK’s reform efforts in Bahrain have been described as a failure on the basis of the deterioration of Bahrain’s overall human rights records, as well as human rights violations committed by the UK’s reform partners in Bahrain.”
“The UN has described “a clear pattern of criminalizing dissent” and abhorrent cases of intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders. Freedom House ranks Bahrain as less free and more repressive of civil and political liberties today than it did in 2012. In terms of press freedom, Bahrain ranks l66th of 180 countries, and the past six years have been marked by torture in detention, unlawful death sentences resulting from unfair trials, and illegal executions. Deprivation of nationality—so-called statelessness—is also now routine. That cannot be the result for which the Foreign Office hoped. Rather than safeguarding human rights and democracy, the UK’s reform programme has coincided with a brutal assault by the Bahraini Government on the basic rights and freedoms of their citizens.”
“It is unclear why human rights reform programmes should be subject to that level of secrecy. By formally shielding the details of such assistance from public view, the Government risk creating the impression that they are unwilling to accept scrutiny or criticism of their activities in Bahrain. That hardly reflects the values of good governance and openness that the Government apparently seek to advance in that country. The efficacy of the British Government’s reform efforts in Bahrain are in serious doubt. Bahrain, already a repressive autocracy in 2012, has grown only more so since. The country’s only two opposition political societies have been forcibly dissolved. The only independent newspaper in the country has been forcibly closed. A recent constitutional amendment paved the way for military trials of civilians.”
“When asked, Ministers have refused to provide details of those funds, including their objectives, safeguards or assessment frameworks, so Parliament has been unable to provide scrutiny or oversight. It should also be noted that after several years of disclosing basic information about its Bahrain reform projects, the Foreign Office now refuses to disclose such details about its current and future work in Bahrain. In response to freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions, the Foreign Office has refused to tell the public and MPs the true scope of its current and future technical assistance activities in Bahrain, including who the Bahraini recipients are, how much is spent on each programme and which programmes are funded by which funds.”
“ICAI noted that, owing to serious problems with the Government’s human rights risk assessments, “we do not know if CSSF programming is causing harm”, as working with security forces accused of human rights violations “risks legitimising them and their actions, or even becoming complicit in violations.” The IDC noted that cross-departmental funds of that kind risk being slush funds, the lack of transparency and accountability of which “undermines trust” in their use and “risks undermining faith in the UK aid brand.” That is an alarming message, which is very much repeated in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, published this morning. The Foreign Office has shifted the funding stream for those programmes away from the CSSF and to the global Britain fund and the integrated activity fund, about which even less is known.”
“In 2017, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy described it as “opaque”. This year, both the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Committee criticised the fund.”
“The Foreign Office has refused to disclose any of the OSJA assessments completed in respect of its work in Bahrain, leaving Parliament and the public unable to determine whether the risks of such close co-operation with Bahrain’s security apparatus have been properly considered. It is also unclear whether the assessments, which the Foreign Office initially performed in 2011, have been repeated or reconsidered in the wake of serious and documented violations of international human rights law by the Bahraini Government since then. The funding of such programmes also lacks transparency. Technical assistance to Bahrain was initially funded largely from the conflict, security and stability fund—the CSSF—a £1.13 billion cross-departmental fund that has received parliamentary criticism for its lack of transparency and accountability.”
“The policy sets out a human rights risk assessment process that British officials must follow before approving UK assistance to overseas bodies that might be involved in such abuses. When the OSJA policy was introduced, the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, claimed that it would demonstrate the UK’s commitment to “tackling issues related to human rights in an open and transparent way”. In practice, however, the Government have adopted a blanket policy of refusing to disclose OSJA assessments, which have been used to approve UK assistance to human rights abusers. Bahrain serves as an example of this.”
“Government-affiliated newspapers there now refer to a supposed British belief that “Bahrain’s human rights record is flawless.” Meanwhile, despite mounting violations, states have failed to agree to a single joint statement criticising Bahrain’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council in the past three years, and Britain has been unwilling to support such statements. UK reform assistance programmes are too often cloaked in secrecy. That is particularly true when it comes to the human rights risk assessments that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is obliged to carry out in approving assistance of that nature. The Government’s policy on overseas security and justice assistance—OSJA—is designed to prevent UK involvement in human rights abuses such as the death penalty or torture.”
“That stands in stark contrast with UN human rights experts, including the special rapporteurs on torture and summary execution and the Committee Against Torture, which have expressed concern that the ombudsman and the SIU are “not independent” and “not effective”, and that their activities result in “little or no outcome.” There is real concern that the UK’s defence of Bahrain on the global stage has served to deflect international scrutiny of Bahrain’s human rights record at a time when such scrutiny is sorely needed. There is now a false perception among many in the international community that Bahrain’s human rights record has improved thanks to British assistance. Bahrain aggressively promotes that idea.”
“66.] The British Government count the advent of the ombudsman and the SIU among the “reforms”. The Foreign Office continues to describe the ombudsman and the SIU as “independent human rights oversight bodies” that enjoy “increasing public confidence”, and it has not acknowledged their wrongdoing in the cases of prisoners facing imminent execution.”
“In 2017, after the executions, the Foreign Office’s response was to state that Bahrain was aware of the UK’s opposition to the death penalty. It raised no public concern about the torture or unfair trials. Shortly thereafter the Foreign Office stated that it would not support a joint statement on Bahrain’s human rights record at the next UN Human Rights Council session because the statement would “not recognise some of the genuine progress Bahrain has made.” Indeed, the Government have maintained that, while Bahrain “is by no means perfect and...has...a long way to go in delivering on its human rights commitments...it is a country that is travelling in the right direction. It is making significant reform.” —[ Official Report , 20 January 2015; Vol. 591, c.”
“They were tortured by police and prison guards until they made false confessions, and their torture and ill treatment were covered up by torture investigators. Three of them have been illegally executed; the other three could be killed at any time. It is deeply concerning that the UK’s Bahraini partners are responsible for human rights violations as serious as torture and obscuring acts of torture in furtherance of unlawful death sentences. This is a poor result for a reform programme that aimed to improve Bahrain’s human rights record. Of equal concern is the British Government’s reluctance to issue strong criticism of Bahrain’s human rights abuses, in spite of the growing human rights crisis there.”
“Maher Abbas al-Khabbaz faces imminent execution for alleged terrorism offences, despite insisting on his innocence. He was disappeared by Bahraini police for a week and tortured so severely that he had to be transferred to a military hospital. Police forced Maher to sign a false confession, which was used to secure his death sentence in a patently unfair trial. Despite official complaints from his family and lawyer, the ombudsman has never investigated his torture. The SIU has also yet to investigate his torture, despite receiving a formal complaint from the human rights advocacy group Reprieve, which is assisting him, in late July. Those defendants were failed every step of the way by Bahraini bodies the UK sees as reform partners.”
“Despite receiving complaints about their torture and forced confession shortly after arrest, the ombudsman refused to investigate for two years, during which time the men were sentenced to death on the basis of their coerced confessions. Neither man has ever been allowed to meet with a lawyer. After their trial, the ombudsman and the SIU both agreed to finally investigate their torture allegations. The investigations have now been closed, but neither institution has released its findings. Both the ombudsman and the SIU refuse to tell the men or their lawyers whether the investigations confirmed their torture allegations. The SIU eventually recommended a retrial for both men, but their forced confessions, extracted through torture, may now be reintroduced as evidence.”
“The three men were never allowed to meet with lawyers and were eventually convicted and sentenced to death in trials that relied almost entirely on their torture-tainted confessions. Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa face imminent execution for alleged terrorism offences while they insist on their innocence. Both men were arrested and tortured by Bahraini police. Ramadan, a policeman and father of three, was blindfolded, stripped and beaten with iron rods and threatened with the rape of his family members. Moosa was hung from a ceiling by his wrists for three days and beaten with batons. Both men eventually signed false confessions and have since been tortured further by prison guards in a facility where the UK has trained staff.”
“Al-Samea was tortured and al-Singace was raped by prison guards at a facility at which the UK was training 400 members of staff. Al-Samea and Mushaima filed complaints about their torture with UK-trained torture investigators: the ombudsman for the Ministry of Interior and the Special Investigation Unit, the SIU. Those institutions, which are mandated to conduct inquiries into torture complaints lodged by detainees in Bahrain, failed to properly investigate any of the complaints made by the men. Mushaima’s lawyer submitted complaints about his client’s torture and false confession to both bodies, neither of which ever conducted an investigation. The SIU later rejected al-Samea’s torture allegations without interviewing him or commissioning an independent medical examination.”
“Those violations have been especially severe, with catastrophic consequences in the case of death row inmates. I want to spend a little more time talking about some of the people who have directly suffered violations and about the grave abuses they have experienced at the hands of Bahraini bodies supported by the UK. Al-Samea, Mushaima and al-Singace were executed in January 2017. Mushaima and al-Singace were the nephews of prominent peaceful opposition political activists in Bahrain, which their families believe is the real reason they were falsely accused of terrorism offences. All three men were tortured by police and forced to confess. Methods of torture included beatings, electric shocks and sodomy with metal objects.”
“Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) pointed out in his intervention, during the UK’s current assistance to Bahrain, Bahrain broke a seven-year moratorium on capital punishment, with the execution of three torture victims by a secret firing squad in January 2017. The UN special rapporteur on summary executions swiftly declared the executions of Abbas al-Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali al-Singace to be extrajudicial killings. After those unlawful executions, the size of Bahrain’s death row tripled in less than a year, and 21 individuals now await execution. It is a particular concern that specific Bahraini institutions trained by the UK have been responsible for serious violations of international human rights law, either while receiving UK training or shortly thereafter.”
“Hassan Mushaima, now 70 years old and a founding Bahraini opposition leader, was arrested alongside 12 other political leaders in 2011, and then tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is being denied access to his most basic rights, including medical assistance, while in Jau prison, a detention centre that in July 2018 was criticised by the UN for its inhumane conditions. Hassan’s son, Ali, escaped arrest because he was in the UK in 2011. Fourteen days ago he started a hunger strike outside the Bahrain embassy in London, asking that his father be given access to adequate medical treatment, family visitations and books. Ali Mushaima is here today. I hope the Minister will also join his call for more humane treatment for his father and all other political prisoners in Bahrain. Worst of all, as my hon.”
“The Bahraini Government have also persecuted and imprisoned peaceful human rights defenders, not least Nabeel Rajab, the founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and a shortlisted candidate for this year’s Václav Havel human rights prize, awarded by the Council of Europe, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison for tweeting. Sayed Alwadaei, the director of the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy—BIRD—has watched as his family members in Bahrain have been tortured and imprisoned in retaliation for his human rights advocacy in the UK. I note that Mr Alwadaei is here today. I thank him for his bravery and tenacity, and for continuing his laudable work in the face of such persecution, and I hope that the Minister does the same.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is, as always, ahead of me—he is on to the next page of my speech. Since Britain’s reform assistance programme in Bahrain began, that country’s human rights record has deteriorated. Detainees held in Bahraini detention facilities have made frequent and sustained allegations of torture and forced or coerced confession, and courts have routinely convicted defendants on the basis of such confessions. Meanwhile, Bahrain refuses to allow the UN’s torture experts to enter the country.”
“However, the point I wanted to emphasise was that legal aid was an important part of the welfare state settlement. It was about looking after vulnerable people; it was about providing a safety net; and it was about providing justice and equality for people. That is how important it is to our society and that is what LASPO has destroyed. When the Minister replies, she may not be able to deal with all the points that my hon. Friend has made. However, I hope that when the Government give their response to the review, they will dwell on that point, as well as on the individual points and the individual cases that are crying out for justice.”
“I would love to be proved wrong, but in fact we are seeing the effect not only of the lack of representation and advice, but of the huge, swingeing cuts in the Courts and Tribunals Service, which have led to court closures, the inability of courts to function properly and the inability of the prison system to function properly, which was referred to in the main Chamber today. The Minister took over at a rather difficult time, when the fruits of austerity were becoming apparent across the Ministry of Justice which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North said, has suffered the largest cuts of any Department over the last seven or eight years. I made my opening speech in a political debate and it lasted for a mere three hours—you would not consider that to be a long speech, Sir Christopher.”
“The Minister may think that I am exaggerating, but the rights of defendants in the courts have been established over many hundreds of years, and an important part of that has been established through legal aid in civil justice, as it was previously in criminal justice, over that time. I wish I could be in two places at once, because I would like to be taking part in the debate on the Second Reading of the Civil Liability Bill. That is another strong attack on the justice system in this country, where another swathe of claimants will be prevented from getting justice by arbitrary decisions by the Government. That says to me that the Government have not learnt their lessons from LASPO, and therefore it is very unlikely that the review will get us where we want to go.”
“With all due respect to litigants in person, in complex areas of law, particularly when there is an inequality of arms and the other side is represented and they are not, or even when there are two litigants in person, it is very difficult for justice to be done. What a difficult and insidious position that puts the tribunal in, where the established adversarial process of law, which has grown up over several hundred years in this country, is suddenly turned into an inquisitorial one, where the judge has to suddenly act in the role, effectively, of both counsel and an interventionist, rather than simply as somebody who is keeping order and arbitrating in proceedings.”
“Legal aid was often at the forefront of important test cases in establishing and developing the law. That has gone in many cases. I cannot emphasise enough that having an effective system of justice, and particularly challenging the decisions of the state and other powerful institutions, promotes good behaviour. It stops bad landlords and bad employers doing what they want to do, because they know that they are subject to legal challenge. Again, that has gone. I am sure that that is deliberate on the Government’s part, but they should dwell on it. It affects the operation of the whole justice system. The courts are now overwhelmed with litigants in person.”
“We can look at what happened with what was supposed to be the safety net—the telephone gateway that provided ready access for exceptional case funding, which has not been used at all. There was only 2% of the anticipated demand for exceptional case funding in its first year. I know that has grown since, but it is still at very low. We have advice deserts all over the country—areas where there are single practitioners, or sometimes no practitioners, which applies to entire counties for certain areas of law. How can the Government defend their record? It is about the day-to-day effects on individuals seeking justice or redress legitimately and not being able to get it. The Minister, who is a senior practitioner, should be ashamed of that, as should her colleagues. The effects go far beyond that.”
“The Legal Aid Agency’s lack of independence was raised in Committee, and we have seen a series of High Court judgments about unlawful patterns of behaviour on behalf of the Legal Aid Agency. The way the system is run is quite shocking. Rather than dwell on the details, which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North has dealt with expertly, I will talk about the profundity of the changes that the legislation has brought in. It has, of course, affected millions of vulnerable people and people with protected characteristics, which we see in the number of successful appeals in welfare benefits cases. If people have the ability—cynically, the Government hopes that many people do not, or can no longer get advice—to get before a tribunal, they often succeed. Two thirds of appeals are succeeding in many cases.”
“Since 2013, we have moved on, and favourable decisions in our higher courts have restored legal aid in some respects—on prisoner law, on exceptional case funding, and on non-asylum immigration by unaccompanied and refugee children. There have been accompanying decisions in analogous fields—a Supreme Court decision showed that the disgraceful fees for employment tribunals were unlawful. Such decisions are important and benefit large numbers of people, but they only scratch the surface. Opposition has crystallised around certain areas regarding eligibility for early funding, particularly in housing and law on family reunion. I hope there will be specific concessions when the review takes place in those areas and perhaps in others.”
“I appreciate that work is being done and that substantial work is being carried out by practitioners and others to influence the Government. I am interested in hearing from the Minister how much money there will be and how seriously the Government are taking the review. The legislation was very controversial at the time, with double-figure defeats in the other place. The fact that we ended up with only nugatory changes had nothing to do, I am sure, with my lack of eloquence as shadow Justice Minister, and more to do with the coalition Government’s substantial majority. The Liberal Democrats deserve a mention. I dwell on the number of times they waxed lyrical about the importance of legal aid but voted time and again to destroy it as part of the tawdry deal—perhaps that is why we see none of them here today.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and to take part in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing it, on her excellent speech setting out the main issues and on her continuing work as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid. There is no doubt that part 1 of the landmark piece of legislation that is LASPO rolled back 70 years of development in social welfare law. I have nothing complimentary to say about the Government—not even about the review, because it was one of the concessions that was wrung out of them during the passage of the LASPO Bill. Even then, they left it until the last possible moment—five years on from the implementation of the Act—before introducing it. I wonder what we will see from the review.”
“We have just been debating in Westminster Hall the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the legal aid cuts. A sustained attack on access to justice has been going on since 2010: the Government have not learnt since then. Is the Bill not just another sustained attack on victims, restricting people from getting a fair trial in the courts—as my hon. Friend says—in the interests of no one except the insurance companies, which are major donors to the Conservative party?”
“Finally, I turn to the personal injury discount rate. I hope that the Government will be more open to agreement and consensus on that. Tiny changes can significantly affect the damages awarded to or life experiences of very severely disabled people. I urge the Government to look again at the level of risk, which can affect awards over a lifetime, and to look carefully at the issue of the expert panel, allowing it a greater role.”
“The judicial arm is being removed by the introduction of the tariff and the medical role is also being downgraded, because there is no proper medical definition of whiplash and a number of quite serious soft tissue injuries are likely to be included. We have heard time and again that there are abuses that need to be corrected. Pre-medical offers are a recipe for fraud, as is cold calling—I am not sure why certain people are saying that that should not be outlawed. It should. Why are those easy targets, rather than the rights of victims, not being tackled? In employer liability cases, trade unions can effectively represent their members by taking cases to court with representation. Unison says that two thirds of people whom it has helped said that they would not have felt confident enough to pursue their claims without such support.”
“It is not on the face of the Bill, but it is integral to this range of measures. I refer to the increase to £2,000 in relation to employer liability, where no fraud is ever alleged or at least only in very rare cases, and the increase to £5,000 in relation to road traffic accident claims. There is no basis for that. These are complex claims. That has been accepted in a bipartisan way. I am sorry that the House is dividing on party lines, with the honourable exception of the Chair of the Justice Committee. I hope that, in Committee, the Minister will listen more carefully to some of the reasons that have been given. We are deprofessionalising the justice system. People will no longer be able to get representation for even quite complex legal matters and serious injuries.”
“The Minister made a point earlier about there being a conflict between what insurance companies are up to here, but I do not think there is a conflict. Insurance companies want to depress both access to justice, in terms of people getting meritorious claims into court, and the value of that claim, which the Bill does very efficiently for them—I am sure they will be very grateful for it—but if they can make money wearing another hat through claims management companies or the passing on of information, they will be happy to do that as well. Yes, they are commercial organisations in that way, but the eye of the Justice Minister—I would have thought rather better of the Minister—should be on ensuring fairness. Another basic unfairness is the increase to the small claims limit.”
“The tariff will be at a level that is far below—for a year-long injury, about £2,000 below—what would be set by a judicial authority. There seems to be no basis, fairness or logic for doing that. Why should there be two tiers for different types of injury? If the reason is what we have heard about fraud, I think even the ABI would admit that a small minority of cases are fraudulent, so why should the legitimate cases be punished because of the small minority that are fraudulent? I used to be a personal injury practitioner and most of my work was done for insurance companies. I was always very happy to run a fraud defence and to cross-examine on that basis. Insurance companies usually were not. They preferred to settle; their eye was always on the bottom line.”
“I will be brief because a number of my colleagues have made important points that I do not need to repeat and because I have not been here for the whole of the debate. The reason for that is that I wanted to take part in the debate in Westminster Hall on the review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act. There is a certain symmetry to the two debates going on at the same time. The onslaught by this and the previous Government on victims and access to justice really began with the LASPO Act. It continues with this Bill. The measures on road traffic accidents and the change to the small claims limit are basically unfair. A tariff will be introduced in respect of certain types of injury but not others.”
“Is the Secretary of State familiar with the “GP at hand” online service? It is a partnership between a private company and a Fulham GP surgery, and it has poached thousands of profitable patients from GPs all over London, to the alarm of the British Medical Association and of GPs generally. My clinical commissioning group is investigating it, and in the meantime CCGs have blocked Babylon’s expansion to Birmingham on safety grounds. This is creating a two-tier system for GPs, so will the Secretary of State investigate it?”
“Half of the residents made homeless in the Grenfell Tower fire are still in temporary accommodation. Is the Secretary of State embarrassed by that? If he is not, why did he sneak out at the end of last week two pages of waffle on Grenfell as a written ministerial statement, instead of making an oral statement to the House when his predecessor said that we would be kept updated in that way?”
“Last week the Foreign Office confirmed the Government’s position that the death penalty undermines human dignity and that opposing it was in all circumstances a matter of principle. So that confirms what I think the Minister has said, which is that this is an individual decision by this Home Secretary. But the only reason the Minister seems to have given for why the assurance was not sought is that that would not facilitate trial in the United States, so has the US imposed a condition that that assurance is not sought in this case?”
“What matters for present purposes is that two senior members of the Government conspired to break the rules to win a vote they thought they might lose. If I am wrong about that, can the Minister explain why? If I am right, why are they still in their posts?”
“I am encouraged by what the Minister has said. If the Government are committed to equality on this issue, and if they have separately given undertakings that they will not withdraw the option of same-sex civil partnerships, there appears to be a certain logic that we are moving in a particular direction. Although I appreciate that the timetable has been advanced, perhaps the Minister could reiterate that that is the position. It would give comfort if she could give as much guidance as possible on what the vehicle will be following the consultation and tell us how quickly the change in the law is likely to come about.”
“This is an important stage of the process, where the Government have a chance to set out their intentions at length, so it would be helpful if the Minister could set out, as far as possible, the mechanism and timescale involved. Every possible encouragement has been given by the House, the Supreme Court and the public at large, who are hugely supportive. As we have heard, this is a matter of some urgency for some families. I congratulate all those involved in the process. It has been a good example of successful joint working across many institutions and bodies. We just want the Minister to explain where we go next.”
“That decision said to the Government, in judicial language—I have not seen this in a judgment before—“Can you please get a move on here and hurry up?” I think that message has got through to the Minister. Putting the jigsaw together has been a painstaking process. The pressure is on the Government now, with all the indications given, hopes raised and options ruled out. A consultation is now under way and there must be mechanism—of which the Bill is an important part but not the end—to put the measure into law. The law will be changed at some point to allow opposite-sex civil partnerships. However long overdue that unfinished business is, we must welcome it.”
“Member for Orkney and Shetland has said, this anomaly should not have occurred in the first place. We heard from the Minister about the good progress that the Government have made—gradually at first, but now at an accelerated rate. The final piece of the jigsaw should be the Supreme Court judgment. I attended when it was handed down, in part because my constituents Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan doggedly pursued their case despite the difficulty—and let us not underestimate this—of the four-year process of going through every higher court and getting first of all a knock-back, then a partial encouragement, and then a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court.”
“I fully support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North, and I am particularly persuaded by the eloquent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West. I will briefly address the new clause. I pay huge tribute to the way in which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has pursued this issue through the many avenues available to us. He has put together the pieces of the jigsaw such that we now have very powerful arguments for this substantial change to legislation, which will enable millions of people across the country to enter into legally binding and protected arrangements, and which will be very good for them and the security of their families. On those grounds alone, the Government should support it. As the right hon.”
“I am glad my hon. Friend has mentioned the Homelessness Reduction Act. I led for the Opposition on that. There was a healthy degree of consensus then, as there seems to be in this debate. Is she, like me, looking for an assurance from the Minister that that consistency will now apply to extending the 28-day period to 56 days?”
“GP at Hand, a partnership between GP surgeries and Babylon, a private company, is distorting the primary care system not only in my constituency, but across London, according to the British Medical Association, by using a loophole to sign up tens of thousands of mainly young and elderly people from across the region for online medical services, thus leaving other GPs to deal with more complex and expensive conditions. May we have a debate on private sector involvement in the NHS where this puts profit above patient care?”