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.”
The complete record
Every one of 3,601 lines we hold for Sir Jeremy Wright, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 64 of 73.
“Now that we have a national dementia strategy for England, the long-awaited arrival of which was announced to the world by the Secretary of State for Health on the “Andrew Marr Show”, and to the House by written, not oral, statement on Tuesday, may we please have a debate on it in Government time, so that the people who are affected can hear the House discuss what is not in the strategy and how what is in it can be implemented and paid for?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, and I hope that those who will be affected will find it encouraging. We are starting to appreciate the scale of the economic recession and he has just indicated that the Government are speaking to HEFCE about offering more help to people who become unemployed, particularly in respect of disciplines different from those in which they previously worked. I hope that he will accept that what the Government have previously said about financial support for ELQ students risks giving a very mixed message to those whom the qualification is trying to help.”
“Will the Secretary of State assist us by saying exactly when each of those elements will be available?”
“May I return the Secretary of State to dementia? He said that the national dementia strategy will be published shortly. As he knows, there are three elements to the welcome work that the Government are doing on dementia: first, there is the national strategy; secondly, there is the research summit; and thirdly, there is the review of anti-psychotic medication. The timetable has slipped quite significantly in relation to all those elements, and he will recognise the concern of all those involved that the urgency originally expressed by the former Minister with responsibility for care services, the present Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) does not appear to have been persisted with, which is a matter of extreme concern.”
“The Government indicated that the research summit would be held this summer, but that did not happen. I take the opportunity to thank the current Minister with responsibility for care services for coming to the meeting. He explained that all those things will be available shortly, but I simply wonder whether we could have a little more specificity.”
“Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the problems in enabling young prisoners to continue their education or training is that when they move prisons, it is difficult for them to continue the course they were studying? Does she think that the Government should look into that as a matter of urgency?”
“If we expect general practitioners to make diagnoses, as we want them to, we will need to give them the training to allow them at the very least to recognise the signs, and to refer patients to a specialist medical practitioner who can then make a diagnosis.”
“It is often said—rightly, in my view—that where we are with dementia now is roughly where we were with cancer 30 or 40 years ago. There is sometimes a sense in the medical profession that it is not worth diagnosing dementia because nothing can be done. One of the problems is that that is largely true. There is currently no cure for dementia, and there are no effective treatments. However, it is not true that absolutely nothing can be done. Any support for or understanding of those with dementia is of such immense value to them and those who care for them that it is worth making any diagnosis as early as possible.”
“The first aim will be “to increase awareness of dementia and remove the stigma associated with it,” the second to “ensure early diagnosis and intervention,” and the third to “improve the quality of care that people with dementia receive” There can be no argument about any of those aims, and training is key to delivering the second two. I want to talk about two aspects of training, the first of which is training for general practitioners. They are, as the name suggests, practitioners of general medicine. No one expects them to be experts in every medical condition. However, one of the problems that we face in dealing with dementia is that general practitioners are extraordinarily reluctant to make diagnoses. I suspect that the failure to make such diagnoses is in many cases down to reluctance rather than inability.”
“However, an issue of such importance and urgency must be dealt with expeditiously. Those involved with dementia—those who have it, those who care for them, and the professionals working in the sector—regard the situation as urgent. They feel that they have persuaded the Government of that—indeed, the Government have made it clear that they regard dementia as a priority. With that must come a sense of urgency, but if time scales continue to slip, that urgency must fall into doubt, which would be extraordinarily regrettable. The one aspect of the strategy that I urge the Government to regard as especially important is training. Training applies to various different aspects of dementia, and in various ways to those involved with it. The draft consultation document on the dementia strategy says that it will have three main aims.”
“However, the Department of Health issued a press release on 19 July that said: “The full Strategy, to be launched in the Autumn, will have three main aims”. I shall return to those aims in a moment, but it became clear at that point that the Government wished to introduce the strategy in the autumn. We know that the Government have a very flexible concept of autumn, but we are clearly no longer in the autumn now. We then asked the current care services Minister when exactly we might expect the strategy. I asked the Secretary of State that question today, too. The Minister has said that it will be introduced shortly and, under further cross-examination, that that might mean early in the new year. I understand that things are difficult in government. Other priorities arise, and the Government sometimes find that time scales slip a little.”
“He is right to talk in those terms. Two aspects of a tsunami are important, and someone who is about to be hit by one will want to know two things. First, they will want to know how big the wave that is about to hit them is; I have said a little about that. Secondly, they will want to know when it will hit. How urgent is the problem? It is with regard to the urgency of the problem that I have some difficulties with the Government’s position. I have no doubt that the Government have done entirely the right thing in arranging to introduce a strategy, but I am becoming a little concerned, as I know others in the field are, that the Government’s sense of urgency has started to slip. When the former care services Minister spoke about his intention to introduce a strategy, he said that he hoped that it would be available by the summer of 2008.”
“Members said earlier about mental health issues more generally. It is true, and worth recognising, that people do not like to talk about mental health issues in the same way as they like to talk about physical health issues. Some stigma is attached—and that is true of dementia. It is not just recognition of the scale of the problem that we require. We also need people to have the courage to come forward and explain that it is happening to them, and how they are coping with it. In the context of dementia, one of those people is the author Terry Pratchett, who the House will know has recently revealed that he has a form of dementia. Since then, he has actively campaigned on the subject, talked a great deal about research, and described what has happened to him in terms of a tsunami that will hit the United Kingdom.”
“I hope that the House will forgive me if I cover the reasons why a national dementia strategy is so necessary and why dementia is such an important subject. The figures may be well known to hon. Members, but I will repeat them. Some 700,000 people in the UK now have dementia. That figure will probably double in the next 30 years, and the cost to the UK economy will treble during that period. That is a significant figure, because the current estimated cost to the UK economy is £17 billion a year, which is more than the cost of heart disease, stroke and cancer combined. Those are very significant figures, which is why the strategy is, as I said, extremely welcome. The strategy is welcome, at least in part, because a problem of that scale should never be ignored. That fits into the context of what other hon.”
“I shall focus on just one aspect of today’s discussion about the Government’s programme of activity for the forthcoming legislative Session: the national dementia strategy, to which the Secretary of State for Health referred in his opening speech. At the outset, I should say that I fully welcome the concept of a national dementia strategy, as, I suspect, do most Members. It is immensely important, and has been for a significant time. In August 2007, the former care services Minister, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis)—not the other Bury Member, the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor)—said that we should work to bring dementia out of the shadows. He was entirely right to say that and I applaud the Government for acting on that impulse and arranging for a national dementia strategy to be brought forward.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The timetable for research is also slipping. The Government have quite rightly suggested that there should be a research summit, and when the Department of Health’s press release was issued, it said that that summit would be held over the summer—in other words, over this past summer. That clearly did not happen either; the timetables are slipping. My hon. Friend is also right to say that the level of funding for dementia research is minimal compared with the funding for so many other conditions. It becomes all the more important to invest in research when we have no cure and no effective treatments, because we are not going to find either unless a substantial amount of research is done.”
“We must see it brought forward soon, because it seems to me that there are few more important things that any Government can do.”
“As I say, however, counter-intuitively, the right answer may instead be to raise up the social work profession and say how important it is, if we expect people to act as qualified professionals with good judgment, and to give them the training and then the space to exercise it. That is a hugely important lesson to draw from this episode: it is not an easy lesson, but it is an extremely necessary one. Let me finish where I began—on the dementia strategy—and say to the Government simply this: I welcome the strategy, as I think most sensible people would, but the Government have raised many hopes in bringing it forward, so they must not disappoint. The strategy must deliver not just the detail but the urgency that the Government promised.”
“People do not stay in one job for long, and the training that they have received may go to waste if they move on to another job or occupation. We need to examine ways of keeping people in their jobs for longer, and one of the ways of doing that is to recognise that the caring professions are just that. First, they are made up of people who wish to care. Secondly, they are made up of people who wish to be treated as professionals. We have to allow them to achieve both those aims. One of the counter-intuitive aspects of the baby P incident, it seems to me, is that when we hear about those terrible failures in the social work profession, we put down social workers as a result.”
“Members’ speeches today, by saying something about the tragedy of baby P and all that surrounds it. The argument for training for the broader social work profession is also relevant here. We need a better-trained social work profession. We know that numerous substantial mistakes were made in the case of baby P, and in other cases that we have heard about, and it seems to me that training is part of the answer. However, training can be of real value only if we can retain the staff who have been trained. One of the problems in the social work profession generally, and in the care home sector in particular, is that it is very difficult to keep members of staff in position for long. There is a huge amount of churn in the profession.”
“That means that those who have to be cared for in a residential environment will, generally speaking, be those who cannot be cared for at home, and substantial numbers of those people will be in that position because they have an advanced form of dementia. It is therefore becoming more important than ever that those who work in a care home environment understand dementia and receive training in it. The Government’s dementia strategy states that training is important and that the strategy will cover it. I very much hope that when they put the final touches to the strategy, they will recognise how important that subject is, and that it should run through all the aspects of dementia that the strategy rightly seeks to address. In my last point, I want to link what I have been saying to the theme that has rightly emerged in many hon.”
“It is crucial that such people have an understanding of what dementia is, how it affects people and what can be done to ameliorate its symptoms. It is remarkable that anyone who works in a care home has to receive training in lifting, handling, fire regulations and many other things, yet they do not have to undergo even one single hour of training in dementia. That is even more ridiculous when we consider that a substantial proportion of the care home population—perhaps some two thirds of them—have dementia, and that that proportion is likely to increase. The policy of this Government is—as, I am sure, the policy of any future Government would be—that people should be cared for in their own homes for as long as possible, and for as long as they wish.”
“I entirely agree. The problem with dementia is that they have got you coming and going. A doctor will often be unwilling to accept that young-onset dementia could possibly be the explanation, and in cases of older-onset dementia they might well say that there are plenty of other explanations for the symptoms, and that this is simply what happens when people get older. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw our attention to young-onset dementia, and we also need to persuade the medical profession to have the courage—as well as the knowledge—to make these diagnoses in cases of older-onset dementia. Training is also important in another respect—training for those who care for people with dementia, either in a residential care home setting or as visiting social workers for people with dementia who live at home.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and I add my congratulations to her on securing the debate. Does she agree that those who have suffered as a result of this saga would probably be prepared to accept, as does the ombudsman, that the full measure of their loss is unlikely to be repaid to them, but that what they find impossible to understand is why some measure of compensation could not have been worked out by now and paid to them by the Government, who should accept their responsibility?”
“The Leader of the House will recognise the widespread eagerness to see the Government’s national dementia strategy for England, so may we have a ministerial statement on when it will be published? The original Government indication was for it to be ready in the autumn, although I accept that that is becoming a relatively flexible concept. Can she also ask that that ministerial statement include confirmation that an immediate review into the prescribing and use of anti-psychotic drugs to treat sufferers of dementia will be completed before the publication of the strategy?”
“I agree with the Minister that one of the best ways of dealing with crime is to intervene early, before any unlawful behaviour has even been thought about. In the responses that the public have given, has he found that people raised the subject of the Criminal Records Bureau and the complications that face those who wish to work in a voluntary capacity to assist in preventing unlawful behaviour before it is even thought about? If they have said that, can he update us on the progress that is being made to ensure that the process is simpler and not repetitive?”
“On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that the issue is clear in the sense that reasonable force is permitted in defence of oneself or another, but that the real question is how we interpret the word “reasonable”? The problem, it appears, does not lie with the individual, or with the jury considering the case in the final analysis; generally speaking, it lies with the prosecuting authorities in between. They prosecute cases, but if the word “reasonable” were used in its proper sense, those cases would not be prosecuted at all.”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s latter point. Far be it from me to defend the Government, but is not Louise Casey’s point rather different from what he suggested? It is that people need to understand what is being done in community punishment, and therefore the visible exercise of such punishment is good, because it restores faith that real punishment is taking place.”
“The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) made was not about whether the Chamber was representative. He asked whether the hon. Gentleman believed that it was impossible for a single individual to represent a varied group of people, as we do. If he believes that, perhaps he should tell the electors of Eastleigh.”
“I do not want any more of my constituents to say to me, “I am employed at a young offenders institution and, thus, have a high level of clearance for working with young people, but I have to get a separate Criminal Records Bureau check to help the scouts on a Thursday night.” Such a situation is ridiculous. It means that fewer and fewer people will come forward to do this valuable work, and thus our efforts at fighting crime and engaging the public in fighting crime will be impeded. My final plea to the Minister is to ensure that members of the public who are keen to fight crime and engage in that process are encouraged to do so, not only when they contact the police or serve on a jury, but before that, when they help to ensure that there is not a problem in the first place.”
“The people who do such work, and are good at it, are also good at lots of other things, and their time is limited. They do not want to spend a large proportion of that time wading through paperwork; they want to spend it helping young people. What the Government can do, but have not yet done to my satisfaction or, I am sure, to theirs, is ensure that such people face no barriers to helping young people in that way. That means that we must cut back on the amount of paperwork. I understand that paperwork is necessary on one level—to keep our children safe—but it is becoming overly burdensome and repetitive.”
“The best type of public engagement in fighting crime is that which takes place when educating people in school, be it a parent, a teacher, a governor of a school or a local education authority. We know about the well-trodden path from truancy to crime. If people can be kept in education and engaged, they are less likely to become criminals. So if we want the public to engage in the fight against crime, we should not wait until we have to call the police. We should encourage such people in what they do in education and in the voluntary sector. I return to the point that I made in intervening on the Minister. If we want to fight crime effectively, we have got to allow people to work in youth clubs and to encourage them to help with young people’s clubs of all kinds.”
“Why can we not educate and train those people better? If we do do that, let us remember that for a lot of these individuals, the one part of their life that they hated most was when they had to go to school and learn, so it will be punishment for them to have to learn, be educated and gain skills. No one should imagine that a properly run system of educating offenders is anything other than punishment, as well as rehabilitation. In many ways, what I have been talking about in the context of public engagement in and confidence in fighting crime—engagement with the police and with the criminal justice system—is all far too late. The best type of public engagement in fighting crime happens before either of those two stages, and well before the offender knows that he is an offender.”
“The second objective is certainly to punish, and to deter others from committing a similar offence, but there is also an objective of rehabilitation—of preventing that offender from leaving prison and committing further offences. That is absolutely necessary, and most people in this country would say that that is a proper objective for a prison sentence. What I have never understood is why it appears to some to be mutually exclusive to punish and to rehabilitate. In my view, both can be done at once. One of the best examples of this is an area in which we need to improve our prison system: the effort of educating and training those in prison with inadequate skills and qualifications, to make absolutely sure that when they come out, they have no excuse for not earning a law-abiding living.”
“I support a great deal of what is in Louise Casey’s report and in the Green Paper, which is designed to achieve that effect. However, on prison sentences there are important points to be made about the balance between punishment and rehabilitation, and whether the two need to be mutually exclusive. In my view, they do not. I think it right that the first objective of a prison sentence is to protect the public; it is neither punishment nor rehabilitation. The point of a prison sentence—the first objective—is to take someone whom a judge believes to be dangerous to the public out of the public’s way and put them behind bars, so that they can do no harm for the duration of their imprisonment.”
“Governments, of whatever political colour, have got to be careful to set the proper sentencing framework, but not to appear to intervene in individual sentencing decisions. What is absolutely legitimate in the context of this debate is for the public to expect that sentencing, of whatever type, constitutes proper punishment. We have talked a little about community punishment orders. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Eastleigh, it is entirely appropriate that the public should understand clearly what is done as part and parcel of a community punishment order, that they should see that it is real punishment, and that they should have some understanding of the result of it—of what has been achieved on behalf of the community receiving some form of recompense from the offender.”
“However, there is a difference between setting a framework and appearing to intervene in individual sentencing decisions. Public confidence in the system is undermined if what appears to be happening is that the Home Secretary or the Lord Chancellor is writing to judges saying, “Because we’ve got a problem with prison capacity, I don’t think you ought to be sending too many people to prison.” That is precisely the kind of intervention that undermines public confidence in the system and leads the public to say, “I am not engaging with this at all. If the Government cannot respond to a need for prison places, when, frankly, they were told a long time ago that there was a need for them, I do not have confidence in that system”.”
“While I entirely understand the necessity of the public, and the subset of the public most directly affected by a criminal offence, engaging with the process in this way, I am concerned that by doing this we will start to move away from the vital principle that what is most important is not the public’s reaction to the offence, but the criminality of the offender, along with that offender’s particular circumstances and the circumstances of the offence. The Government must also be careful about their intervention in sentencing. Yes, the public will expect the Government to set a sentencing framework, but they will have confidence in the Government’s ability to help fight crime and run a sensible and responsive criminal justice system only if the Government set an adequate sentencing framework.”
“The family of a murder victim may well put forward a very cogent, coherent, moving, emotional response on how a murder has affected them—and they should be able to do so—but we cannot, just because the family have put forward that case, assess that murder as being more serious than a murder where there is no family, and there are no friends and no wider community who came into contact with the victim, and therefore there is no victim impact statement.”
“If the public are to have confidence in the system, it is right for them to expect the judge to take everything of relevance into account, including the views of the victim and the victim’s family, but while I support that concept, there is, again, something that troubles me. That information is gathered from a victim impact statement, which allows the victim—or their family where, sadly, they are no longer available to give their views—to explain to the judge the impact the offence has had on them, the wider community, and their friends and family. Although I commend the intention, I do not believe that sentencing should be carried out on the basis of how much a particular offence has affected those who remain behind, because let us consider the most extreme cases.”
“Louise Casey’s concern is that such a delay is very seldom necessary, and that the judge should be able to say straight away, “A community punishment order is what is necessary, so let’s have one; we don’t need a report.” The only cautionary note I would sound on that is that pre-sentence reports are used for a variety of purposes, and it is right that judges should have all the facts available to them before they pass sentence. One of those facts may be whether it is unsuitable for the defendant to carry out community punishment because of a physical disability or illness, but pre-sentence reports also address many other considerations, and I hope the Government would do nothing to restrict the amount of information the judge has before passing an appropriate sentence.”
“Public interest in sentencing is always legitimate, but, given that they will not have heard all the evidence and mitigation, public outrage—often aided and abetted by the tabloid press—is not always appropriate. We must draw that distinction. Judges have a difficult job to do in every case. They have to weigh up different factors on both sides of the argument and make a sensible decision as to what appropriate sentence should result. I appreciate that the Government will not take up every recommendation in Louise Casey’s report, but may I counsel the Minister against proposal 17? It refers to situations in which a judge who wishes to pass a community punishment order first asks for a pre-sentence report to assess suitability to carry out such work.”
“If a jury has difficulty in understanding a case, that is probably the fault of the advocates and not the fault of the jury. It is important that we maintain our confidence in the system, so that the public can engage with it and have confidence in it themselves. Once the jury has done its job, however, and there is a conviction where appropriate, we must move on to consider sentencing, which is crucial to public confidence in the system. It is perfectly true that the public do not often believe that sentencing decisions are right, but the Minister was also correct to say that in many instances the public have not seen the whole of the case—how could they have done?”
“One would hope that all those who have served as jurors have slightly more confidence in the criminal justice system, and are slightly more reassured that it operates to defend their interests. That confidence should not be undermined by anything that we do, or by anything that the Government do. The Government talk of cases that it is not suitable for a jury to try: cases that are beyond the capacity of jurors, such as serious fraud cases. I have tried such cases with juries who have reached conclusions identical to those that the judge has said that he would have reached on each and every count. If we proceed down the Government’s line, we cannot be surprised when the public say “In that case, you do not have as much confidence in the jury system as you say you do.” The jury system is the right way in which to try criminal cases.”
“If we are discussing public engagement in fighting crime, we must take account of ways in which the public engage with the criminal justice system as well as ways in which they engage with the police. Public engagement is vital in the context of the criminal justice system. The most obvious example is when members of the public serve as jurors in criminal trials. I declare an interest, as one who practised as a criminal barrister for some years in the west midlands. I saw a great number of juries during that time, and gained a huge amount of respect both for the institution and for the people who served as jurors in the criminal cases that I tried. It seems to me that the jury system is the practical and direct application of common sense in the criminal justice system.”
“Confidence in crime statistics is also linked to a more general confidence in the policing and criminal justice system. That is demonstrated by the vicious downward spiral that sometimes results when those who do not trust the crime statistics do not report offences because they do not believe that their reports will be acted on effectively, and then, of course, trust the statistics even less: because they know from personal experience that some crimes are not reported, they conclude that the statistics cannot possibly be an accurate and comprehensive reflection of the level of crime in their communities. Public confidence is not just about the way in which the police respond to crime; it is also about the way in which the criminal justice system responds to crime and those who commit it.”
“When they have supplied information—sometimes, as we know, at considerable risk to themselves—they need to be aware that it has resulted in a positive outcome: that arrests have been made or investigations carried out, and that that has had positive consequences. Confidence can exist only if information is trusted and reliable. The public must be able to believe that what they are being told is accurate and comprehensive. We need not go back too many days or weeks to see that the public’s confidence in crime statistics has been severely dented, although it could be questioned whether it was ever very high in the first place. As has already been said, it is important for crime statistics to come from a trusted, independent source, so that we can all have confidence in them.”
“The most obvious way of doing that is to ensure that, if someone is elected to a position to set particular policing priorities which are not to the public’s liking, the public can get rid of that person. Establishing such a mechanism is vital to supporting public confidence, and public willingness to engage with the policing and criminal justice system. Confidence is also based on the flow of good information, not just from the public to the police—important though that is—but from the police to the public. As Louise Casey rightly points out in her report, it is important for the public to know when the information that they have given to the police has a positive effect.”
“There is an important distinction between those who set strategic priorities for a police force and those who take operational decisions. I do not believe that anyone is suggesting that such operational decisions should be taken by anyone who is elected; in my view, however, strategic decisions most certainly should be. The point about direct election is that it is all well and good telling the public, as they have often heard on so many subjects, “Your views are very important to us; consultation is vital”, but that will not work unless there is a mechanism that not only allows the public’s views to be taken into account but, if those views are roundly and widely ignored by the body concerned, allows the public to act to remedy the problem.”
“At first sight, such a case might not seem like a matter of high priority, but with a fuller investigation of the background facts, it most certainly can become one. Neither the Minister nor the House will need any reminder that nearly every murder case that the courts have to deal with is effectively a domestic incident that has become extremely serious. My second point is about accountability. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) made clear, there is a measure of agreement across the House on the need for better accountability in respect of setting policing priorities. The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) raised the question whether we are talking about directly elected police chief constables—and it was made clear to him that we are not.”