Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“I finish where I began, with the fundamental importance of judicial review in our constitutional settlement. It is that importance that should cause us to be very slow to tamper with it, unless we are convinced first that there is a real need to do so that goes well beyond irritation with Government losses and, secondly, that any changes we make are well judged, thought through and do not cause collateral damage. Although I have no wish to impede the Bill’s Second Reading, given the positive effect of other parts of it, I am not convinced that part 1 on judicial review is yet in the right place to meet those objectives.”
“I do accept that clause 1(9) requires the court to regard such an order as offering adequate redress as well as giving the opportunity for the court to do otherwise if there is good reason to do so. However, the clause still creates a presumption in favour of limiting or removing retrospectivity. As I say, I am not convinced that that is the right approach, but, at the very least, Ministers will need to assure us that in the consideration of whether non-retrospective quashing orders offer adequate redress, the interests of those who would have relied on that retrospectivity, as well as those who may benefit from prospective effect, should be given particular weight in the balancing exercise the court must conduct before making the order.”
“A quashing order will be made only if the court believes that the decision was taken in such a defective way as to require it to be deemed unlawful and therefore of no effect. But removing retrospective effect requires the same court, at the same time, to determine that the decision was not so defective as to require all those subject to it up to the date of judgment to be protected from its impact. There may be circumstances where it is appropriate for the court to decide to do those two conflicting things at once, but they must be rare. The difficulty with the way in which clause 1(9), in particular, is constructed is that it suggests that in fact those circumstances should represent the norm.”
“Those adversely affected by its making, from the point of its making, are then entitled to rely on the court’s ruling to pursue redress for the effect on them of a decision that has been made void. Removing the opportunity for those individuals or organisations to do so may constitute a significant detriment to their interests and should not be done without consideration for those interests. In passing, I observe that others have said that it also gives considerable power to judges to keep unlawful decisions alive for some, which one might think jars with the apparent premise that some use for judicial review reform, justified or otherwise—that judicial review judges have too much power. Removing retrospective effect also presents a logical conundrum.”
“I have more concerns, though, about removing or limiting the retrospective effect of quashing an unlawful decision—not, in itself, a recommendation of the independent review of administrative law. In particular, I am concerned about the suggestion that this would be routine and not exceptional. Finding a decision to be unlawful but then saying that that unlawfulness applies only to those affected by it in the future and not in the past puts the court in a strange position. The general premise of judicial review has, for some time, been that if a court finds a decision to have been made in such a flawed way that it was made unlawfully, it is saying that, in effect, the decision was not made at all.”
“Such acts would be rare, but, if they happened, would constitute a challenge to what Government legislated for and therefore to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, too. The wording of clause 2 will therefore need further discussion. I now come to the additional provisions on judicial review in clause 1. Although it may well be arguable that the court already has power to suspend the effect of a quashing order, I can understand the Government’s wish to make that clear, as I can see that a suspended quashing order is, at the very least, a more elegant option than making a declaration of illegality but stopping short of quashing a decision because of the potential administrative chaos it would likely cause.”
“Having another go at the same argument is what Parliament has said it does not want, but I am not convinced that it said with clarity that it also wishes to exclude challenge to an upper tribunal acting in excess of its powers. I am not convinced, either, that Parliament should say that, but I fear that it may be what the current wording of the clause would achieve. This is no time for the fascinating arguments about the merits and demerits of ouster clauses, you will be relieved to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I do think that if the Government seek to use the mechanism set out in clause 2 they must be rigorous in excluding only what is necessary to give effect to Parliament’s direct will and not to prevent a check on acts beyond the upper tribunal’s mandate or powers as given to it by Parliament.”
“I am much more persuaded by the argument that the current situation undermines another fundamental principle of our constitutional settlement—that of parliamentary sovereignty. It is clear that Parliament intended there to be no appeal against the upper tribunal’s decision itself to refuse an appeal from the lower-tier tribunal. Constructing what is, in effect, a back-door route to such an appeal is a clear challenge to Parliament’s intent. I would therefore support a proportionate measure to exclude such replacement appeals as a matter of routine, but it is important for Parliament to reach a considered view on what it really wants to exclude.”
“That is this country’s commitment to the rule of law in action. The fact that judicial review can be irritating to Governments is not only no reason to erode it; it may, in fact, be a positive reason not to. Changes to judicial review should be approached with caution and this Bill seeks to change it in two specific ways. Let me say just a little about each of them. I will start with judicial reviews against the class of decisions identified in the case of Cart. In those cases, clause 2 seeks to exclude what are, in effect, further appeals by another name. I have sympathy with the Government’s objective, although I do not find the argument of cost and inconvenience to the legal system persuasive.”
“Surely that has rarely been more important than when the Government have sought to curtail our liberties during a pandemic for the sake of public health. Fundamentally, as a matter of constitutional principle, judicial review demonstrates that no one—not even Governments—is above the law. For me, nothing summed that up more clearly than when the Government of which I was part contested a judicial review case in the Supreme Court, on the hugely significant political question of whether the Government could initiate our departure from the European Union without further parliamentary sanction. When the Government lost that case, I—the Government’s Attorney General—could walk out of Court and confirm without hesitation or reservation that the Government accepted the Court’s judgment and would act accordingly.”
“Its focus in on the way a decision is made, not on the wisdom of the decision itself, which means that those whose decisions are ruled to be unlawful in the exercise of judicial review are, in fact, seldom precluded from reaching the same conclusion subsequently via a revised process. Judicial review has practical, as well as constitutional, benefits. It can improve decision making retrospectively, as it obliges badly made decisions to be made again, but also prospectively, as the shadow of judicial scrutiny tends to encourage Government Departments to give more thought to the rationale for decisions before they are made. The lawfulness of Government decisions is not just important for its own sake, but because it enhances their effectiveness by making it more likely that those subject to them will accept them.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), although, unlike her, I find much to welcome in this Bill, particularly the parts of it that deal with sensible reforms to court processes, subject, of course, to the safeguards to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Select Committee, quite sensibly referred. I want to concentrate my remarks on part 1 of the Bill, which focuses on judicial review. It is worth stressing at the outset, as others have done, just how important judicial review is to our constitutional balance. Judicial review is not, of course, there to be used as a route by which judges can run the country, and its limitations are not widely understood.”
“Cathy, Sophie, Jemma, Ben—you know that you have our love and prayers as you mourn him and as you are unfailingly proud of him, as so many of us are too. For the many of us who will think of him first and foremost as our friend, we will remember him that way, but all of us should remember the example he set of how to be a public servant, and strive to follow it.”
“That included, I recall, a gathering of the llama farmers of Northern Ireland, of whom I think there were about four. James went, as always, to take an interest, not just to take a photograph. When we contemplate the two empty spaces on these Benches this week, we think about underrated qualities in politics. James had in abundance those qualities that perhaps the parliamentary sketch writers are not terribly interested in, but which are fundamental to meaningful public service. He was intelligent, brave, determined, compassionate and wise. There was no Cabinet meeting that I attended with him and no Cabinet that he was a member of that was not immeasurably strengthened by his presence. Of course, his family will miss him most.”
“No one who dealt with James was in any doubt on any of those counts: they knew how much he cared; they knew he was capable; and they knew he was committed. That was true in every one of the difficult areas that he dealt with as a Minister and in every case brought to him as a constituency Member of Parliament. I will remember for a long time the weekend that the Wrights went to visit the Brokenshires at Hillsborough Castle, when James was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the course of that visit, I was struck by how James, who had not been in the job long at that point, was widely recognised and warmly welcomed at all the community events, which, James being James, he was keen that we all went to during that weekend.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you and Mr Speaker for allowing time for us to make these tributes to James—tributes that he would never have expected and which he deserves all the more for that. Some of the tributes to James that I have heard have said that he took his work seriously but never took himself too seriously. That is true, but I think it should also be said that he was taken seriously—by those he worked with, by those in every area he had responsibility for as a Minister and by all those he sought to help. That matters, because if you want to get things done in politics and in Government, people have to believe that you care enough to want to help, that you have the capacity to help, and that you will put enough effort into helping to be effective.”
“Friend need to do more to answer legitimate challenges on compliance with environmental standards, and about what was known when about cost overrun.”
“As we have heard, HS2’s budget has risen dramatically, seemingly without anyone being held to account for it, yet in so many of the compensation cases I have dealt with, every penny claimed by vulnerable people whose lives have been ruined by the line has been fiercely contested. I welcome the appointment of a dedicated HS2 Minister, and my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) has been doing a good job of getting to grips with these issues. However, he will agree that there is much more to do, and much more of the construction phase to go. HS2 Ltd and its contractors have to work much harder on talking to and listening to local residents who are affected by their work, and they and my hon.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to speak in this debate. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee for bringing it to this Chamber, and I agree with a great many of the concerns that have already been expressed about HS2. For what it is worth, I always argued that the line should follow existing transport corridors; that would have done a lot less environmental damage. Ever since legislative authority was given for the line as it stands, I am afraid that HS2 Ltd has too often—there are a few individual exceptions—acted in a thoughtless and high-handed way, failing to communicate effectively about the nature of its works and the road closures and other disruption that they cause.”
“That would leave us with a high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham, with all the inconvenience caused to my constituents to build it, but not a wider network. The positive case for a wider network can be made, but the positive case for a new London-to-Birmingham line cannot. Stopping after phase 1 seems to me to be almost the worst-case scenario for my constituents, and I cannot support it. If HS2 is to proceed, the Minister will need to assure us that it will be delivered with more efficiency, flexibility and consideration for the people impacted by it than we have largely seen so far.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right. It is incumbent on everybody involved in the project, including the Government, to make improvements in those respects, and we must expect that to happen. As we have discussed, there is much to criticise HS2 for, but this petition does not ask us to criticise HS2—it asks us to cancel it. It seems to me that we should not be making a judgment based entirely on frustration, considerable though it may be. The reality is that legislative authority for HS2 has already been given, and this debate does not provide a mechanism to reverse it. Even if it did, given the amount already spent and the work already done on phase 1, it is likely that any cancellation decision now would be to cancel phase 2 of the line—not phase 1, which passes through my constituency and others.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said and for what he is doing, but he knows that this problem affects not just those who want to go on holiday, but those who want to see family and may not have seen them now for years. To help those families—particularly larger families—with these costs and to resuscitate the aviation industry, as I know he is keen to do, will he please do more to make sure that the costs of those tests come down to be as low as they reasonably can be?”
“Is not the starting point in this discussion that greater demand for social care is bound to require greater money to pay for it, and anyone who does not like these proposals needs to explain what the alternative is, which is unlikely to be clear, simple and popular? Is it not the case that, in order to create an insurance market to give people even greater reassurance about their future care costs, we need to put a cap on and that is why the cap is most welcome? Will the Prime Minister do all he can to make sure that that insurance market is stimulated? Finally, will he confirm that that cap applies to those who have care needs regardless of their age?”
“As Conservatives, we also argue that high public debt is bad for our long-term capacity to support the vulnerable everywhere. Enduring public support for aid spending may well depend on the public recognising that we have apportioned the financial burden of the covid crisis fairly, and not protected aid spending to the detriment of other areas of spending that they may find at least as deserving. I think the Government are now trying to strike that balance. Recognising though I do the strength of the arguments made by many on both sides of this House in the course of this debate, it is important and necessary to give the Government credit for that effort.”
“Transparent, externally judged criteria, arguably at least, would leave those of us who want to see the preservation of aid spending in a stronger position than under the 2015 Act alone, which applies what are in truth fairly loose shackles to Government on aid spending and leaves it entirely to Government to decide when to escape them, and that cannot help provide the certainty that the aid sector rightly seeks. I believe in the merits of overseas aid spending and I have used many of the arguments made so eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who deserves huge credit for extracting the compromises that the Government have already made. Those arguments, though, must in the end persuade the public whose money we are spending.”
“As far as I can tell, nobody is proposing to amend the 2015 Act, so it will remain unchanged whatever the vote this afternoon. I welcome the Government’s clarification that they are not seeking unilaterally to change the statutory target, but rather to miss it. Those are different things, and the former would, in my view, be both wrong and unlawful, but we either trust the Government or we do not. If we do not trust the Government—and we are here because a large number of Members do not—why would we trust them to keep the 0.7% commitment beyond next year when the Act so clearly allows them to decide not to?”
“There are, I think, two primary arguments for opposing the Government this afternoon. The first is that the 0.7% overseas aid target was a manifesto commitment. That is a serious point, though the electorate will appreciate that the expectations on which those manifestos were based have changed substantially since covid-19. The second is that the target is in statute in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. That is true, but the Act also envisages and allows for circumstances in which the Government might not meet the target in any given year, including the impact on public borrowing, and Parliament cannot stop the Government doing so. The Act, at section 3(1), is very clear about that. We have the right only to be informed of how and why the target is to be missed.”
“Friend accepts that the House is entitled to absolute clarity on which of the two it is. If the Government are really proposing to change primary legislation, is it not incumbent on them to seek parliamentary support for that, rather than expect Parliament to use a device such as estimates in order to discuss it? If, on the other hand, the Government are missing the target but not changing it, then we need a statement to explore how compliance with the target will be restored.”
“Returning to the issue of overseas aid and the target, is it not the case that the Government are doing one of two things? Either they are seeking to change that statutory target without parliamentary approval, in which case, although I would be the last person to ask the Government to disclose their own legal advice, they will have to explain why legal opinions that say that is unlawful are wrong, as I for one, do not believe they are; or alternatively, they are making use of provisions in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, which set that target in statute, that allow it to be missed in exceptional circumstances. Those are two different things and I am not clear, from the pronouncements of various Ministers, which of the two is Government policy. Surely my right hon.”
“My right hon. Friend will recognise the huge service done by independent hospices to those at the end of their lives, to their families and to the NHS, because those people would be likely to otherwise be in hospital. He will also understand the huge impact that the covid pandemic has had on the fundraising capacity of those hospice charities, so may I ask him to consider carefully and personally the case that is being made by independent hospices for greater Government support for their clinical costs—costs which, if they were no longer there, would undoubtedly be borne by the taxpayer and by the hard- pressed NHS?”
“The Government can look at tax incentives and at the role of local authorities, and they should look at ways of ensuring access to the cable network at a fair price, but if we cannot ensure that local enterprises producing locally generated energy can sell their product locally, we will still have a fundamental obstacle to the way that we want to deliver locally generated energy. As I understand it, the Government will produce their net zero strategy refresh this year. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will say that as part of that exercise, the Government will look carefully at how they can deliver the fundamental objects of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend for Waveney, and make sure that we can assist others to assist us in delivering those climate objectives on time.”
“Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) so ably introduced in the previous Session. I would not claim—nor, I suspect, would he—that the Bill was perfect, but its fundamental purposes and objects are worth pursuing. I hope that this afternoon, the Government will accept that they will do exactly that. There is so much growing local enthusiasm to assist the Government in delivering their climate goals. Everybody wants to help, and this is a practical way of doing so. I can think of examples in my constituency, such as the Napton Environmental Action Team, or the Harbury Energy Initiative, which has been in receipt of Government financial assistance in environmental pursuits and is keen to do more. The Government need to help them to help the Government deliver our collective climate goals.”
“There are also psychological advantages. As others have said, if we enhance our capacity to generate energy locally, we help people to participate in the combating of climate change, and we make that effort local, rather than distant from them. Of course, as has already been observed, we have had the right to local energy suppliers for about 20 years, but that is a distinctly theoretical right at the moment. The broader issue that we face is how we go about realising the current unrealised potential of locally generated energy. To do that, we have to address the obstacles. As others have already observed, the entry costs for local energy enterprises are far too high, and their inability to sell directly to local customers is the fundamental problem, which was addressed by the Local Electricity Bill that my hon.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing the debate, and all those who have spoken on this subject not just this afternoon, but on other occasions. I join the consensus that locally generated energy has huge, partly technical, advantages. We can, if we make use of this method, increase the volume of energy generated and, more importantly, the volume of sustainable and renewable energy generated. If energy has to travel less far from where it is generated to where it is consumed, we lose less in transit, and of course, we know from the examples of community energy that we can already see, that it brings huge broader decarbonisation benefits and educational advantages, too, so there is technically very much to commend it.”
“I welcome what my right hon. and learned Friend has said. As he recognises, what is done in the preparation of a case matters at least as much as what is said in court, so I urge him to link closely the work that the Government are already doing on disclosure with the work that he has described this afternoon. However, as he also knows, what is said in court matters too. To reinforce the point that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) made, if we are to ensure that rape myths are properly challenged, will the Justice Secretary make sure that in his conversations with the judiciary he looks carefully at the judicial directions given to juries, and that if they need further refinement, they get it?”
“Anything else will move us from risk management to risk aversion, and risk aversion has consequences broader than the management of the pandemic. Appetite for risk, for example, is a crucial ingredient of innovation and invention—ironically, the things that have delivered the vaccines and the progress we have made against covid so far. Despite my reservations, I will support the Government tonight, but I want a commitment to use that period of extra restrictions wisely and a firmer commitment to end restrictions on 19 July.”
“The second point is that I am extremely concerned, as others have been, about what our recent decision making tells us about our collective tolerance of risk. Scientists and Ministers alike have told us that we are going to have to live with covid indefinitely, but we do not know what that means, if not the acceptance of ongoing risk of illness or even death. We do not understand what tolerable risk looks like. The road map had four stages, no more, and if the logic of this extension to the last stage is to allow greater vaccination, when that is achieved we must be able to say that the restrictions will be lifted, so that businesses and individuals can, at long last, start to plan with certainty.”
“I see the significance in that of the difference between the 57% of the adult population with two doses now and the 76% we should reach by 19 July. That argument allows me, just, to support the Government tonight, but I wish to make two other points. The first is that the logic of this extension is to protect the NHS from a significant increase in hospitalisations from covid-19, and this protection comes at a high cost to the economy and to the rest of society. So we need to take full advantage of it, whether in reducing the backlog of treatments for other medical conditions or in giving NHS staff a break before what may be another difficult winter. It would help if Ministers could explain what we are doing with the time and space this extension is buying us.”
“In all the difficult judgments the House has had to make during the pandemic, this is perhaps one of the most difficult, and I entirely respect the argument of those who have spoken in this debate and come to a different conclusion from me. As ever, this is about a balance of risks: between the delta variant and the risks of ongoing restrictions, which are not insignificant. We have to ask ourselves: what has changed since the last time we looked at the road map and at its end point? The Government’s strategy has not changed; it remains to vaccinate, prioritising the most vulnerable. That cannot require everyone to be vaccinated. That is neither scientifically necessary, nor practically achievable. The significant change is what an effective response to the delta variant now seems to require: two doses of vaccine, not just one.”
“I feel somewhat inadequate that I can only say this in English, but many happy returns, Mr Speaker. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, as and when a trade deal with the United States is agreed, the Government will not compromise on the principle that underpins the online safety Bill—that digital platforms, including American ones, must comply with the duty of care to keep their users as safe as they reasonably can—and that that will hold true whether or not the Bill has completed its legislative passage and is enforced by that point?”
“The problem is evident, but there is a reason why we have not for decades had a functioning social care policy solution. It is because any such solution will be very complicated, and elements of it are likely to be very unpopular. However, this is a collective failure of policy across the political spectrum, and resolving it must be a shared responsibility, because the implementation of any serious social care reform will outlast any single Government. It is also likely to require more of the taxpayer and more of individuals to save for their own care when they can afford to do so.”
“I was pleased to hear in the Gracious Speech an ongoing commitment to overseas aid, but I noted, too, the absence of any proposed legislation to change the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. I hope that means that any reduction in the percentage of our national wealth spent on aid is an aberration and a temporary failure to meet the current target in the exceptional circumstances envisaged by, and set out in, the 2015 Act, rather than a policy change. Urgent clarification of that, and of the circumstances in which we will return to 0.7%, would help those of us who could not support a deliberate, strategic and long-term reduction in aid and help to reassure the rest of the world that we will remain a global leader on this subject. Finally, I come to social care.”
“We must of course ensure that we define carefully a duty of care on online platforms to keep their users as safe as they reasonably can, but these are highly capable companies, and systems or business models that permit or even promote harm can and must be changed. Although we should recognise and commend the progress that platforms are already making, we know, and they know, that self-regulation is no longer sufficient. We need an independent regulator with the capacity and the tools to do the job. That is what the Online Safety Bill can achieve, and we have an opportunity to lead the world in doing it. Of course, in other areas of policy we already lead the world.”
“It is not a full-frontal assault on freedom of speech, as some would claim. It is a way to address the fact that restrictions on bad behaviour and protections for the vulnerable that exist in other environments do not exist at all online, and that is more and more unacceptable, the more of our lives we spend online. Also, the truth is that freedom of speech is not, and has never been, unlimited offline. We cannot say anything we want in print, in broadcast media or on the street. The criminal law confines us, and so do other standards, of decency or protection of children for example. The same should be true online.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), and unlike her, I find much to welcome in this Gracious Speech. It will not surprise the House at all if I pick out the draft Online Safety Bill—a Bill that has had a long journey so far, some of which I have walked myself, and has further to go. Of course, I warmly welcome its publication, and although it is true that the fact that it is a draft Bill means that much of its impact will be delayed, I do appreciate the Government’s determination to get it right, especially if, as I believe to be the case, they are open to refining and improving the Bill as it makes its way through pre-legislative scrutiny. The detail of course needs to be scrutinised, but we can already say what this Bill is not.”
“It is time, surely, to ask the electorate to support the right response to that crisis, too. Finally, I remind my colleagues on the Front Bench that they have considerable political authority to do this. This is a Government who have, as the hon. Gentleman has reminded us, promised to fix social care and who have a substantial parliamentary majority, there to be used, surely, to keep our promises. So let us get on with it.”
“I am tempted to agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. He is right to suggest that all of us, including the Government, have to be braver than we have been and more willing to recognise the urgency of the situation. He is right to say that this reform cannot wait. The truth is that our emergence from the covid-19 crisis demonstrates both the need for social care reform and the political opportunity for it. Let us take the lesson from the election results we have just had. I think we can conclude from those that the different parties in office across the UK have all been rewarded by the electorate for addressing the crisis before them, even when doing so required difficult and unpopular measures. The challenge facing social care is also a crisis, just one unfolding at a slower speed.”
“Will my right hon. Friend explain—if not now, perhaps in writing—why the Government seek to change the 0.7% target set out in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, rather than to utilise the provisions of the Act to explain why they are unable to meet it at this time? If indeed the Government are seeking to change the target and believe that they may do so without further legislation or parliamentary sanction, what does he believe that the 2015 Act was intended to do, if not to stop Governments doing exactly that?”
“Like everyone who has spoken so far and I am sure a large number of people more broadly, I support the intention of this Bill. It is clearly the right thing for us to do collectively to offer what reassurance we can to armed services personnel that they will not be pursued through the courts for offences that are either illegitimately alleged or interminably investigated. I also take the points that have been made about the need to improve investigation. However, like my right hon. Friend, I want to confine my remarks to Lords amendment 1 and the Government’s amendment in lieu.”
“Let me begin by warmly congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on his promotion. He started his Government career as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to me, so I congratulate him in particular on overcoming that disadvantage and acquiring a job that I know he will enjoy, and I am sure he will do it extremely well. I congratulate him too on the way he has handled the business this afternoon. It is no easy task to deal with something this complex, and certainly not when given it at almost a moment’s notice. I want to follow on from what my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has said. I support the Government’s move to change their approach to Lords amendment 1, but like my right hon. Friend, I am concerned about whether they have gone far enough.”