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 69 of 73.
“If it is possible to demonstrate to someone that a student who is just like them—in terms of their background, the challenges that they have faced and the interests that they share—has done well at university, that is the most effective way that I can think of to show a prospective student that they will also do well in a university setting. I hope that what the Government have in mind for developing the widening of participation in higher education will include an element of mentoring, because that is very effective. I want to widen the debate beyond the issues about which we have talked at some length and to concentrate on how we can broaden out the 18-to-30 age group that is going into universities. We could widen participation among those outside that group. I disagree with the Government’s 50 per cent.”
“I say that because for those with a disability, it is particularly challenging and worrying to have to adapt to a new environment. It is important for that group that we make every effort to ensure that the environment is reassuring and that the development they will need to find within the environment that they will move into will be suitable for them. Above all—this applies not just to disabled potential students, but to many of the other groups that we have talked about—we need to find new and imaginative ways to persuade people of something on which everyone has focused. I am talking about the need to explain that, despite their initial perception, university is a place within which they can do well and feel comfortable. One of the most imaginative and effective ways to do that is to develop mentoring programmes.”
“Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) has just observed, that is most distinctly no longer the issue. If anything, the issue is now the opposite of that. It is just as true to say that, as the Secretary of State observed yesterday and this morning, we must look at how to bring more white working-class boys and young men into higher education, as to say that we must look at many ethnic minority groups. The issue is changing and developing and we find new challenges within it. One of those new challenges, to which reference has also been made, is the need to bring more disabled people into higher education. That brings with it specific challenges that are to do with the need to persuade people with disabilities, whether physical or mental, that university is an environment within which they can thrive.”
“I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), because I want to pick up on some of the points that he made about part-time students, but also because I share with him an interest that I should declare: until fairly recently, my wife was in charge of widening participation at Warwick university. I should put that on the record from the outset, before I start complimenting Warwick university on all the wonderful work that it did until recently to widen participation—and, of course, is still doing. It is quite apparent from what we have heard in the debate so far that the issue of widening participation in higher education has been around for a great many years, but the issue has changed and developed. Whereas once upon a time we might have talked about the need to bring more women into higher education, as my hon.”
“I accept, as does the hon. Lady, that it is a good thing to get more people into higher education, so I do not object to the target on those grounds. However, if we set a target of 50 per cent. we instantly suggest to young people who are seeking to go to university that if they do not do so, they must be in the bottom half. There is no problem in saying that we want as many people as possible to go to university who have the capability and ambition to do so, and who will benefit from the experience, but there is no reason to put a figure on it.”
“If we do not take the decision today, we could find that our manufacturing and expertise capacity has been diminished to the point where we cannot make another decision when we want to do so. I shall vote cautiously. I will not take chances with our national security, nor will I play political games with it. I shall vote for the Government’s motion.”
“I do not accept that, and I do not believe that we are in breach of our non-proliferation obligations by renewing what we already have; that is not proliferation. I do not accept that we weaken the message that we send, or that we send the wrong message. The wrong message to send would be a refusal to renew Trident. At this moment in history, that would send precisely the wrong message—a message of weakness when we need to project strength. It would also be a message of complete irrelevance, because I do not believe for a second that if our country gave up what amounts to 1 per cent. of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, it would affect anyone’s judgment in any way. Secondly, I do not accept that the decision is precipitate; this is the right time to make it. We should err on the side of caution.”
“Some nations, which have already been mentioned, are developing nuclear capacity, so it is a spectacularly inappropriate time for Britain to be abandoning its nuclear deterrent. I do not accept the argument that that is not what we are discussing today; it is exactly what we are discussing. If we defer the decision, we may find that it is taken out of our hands. We cannot choose between keeping the deterrent and updating the deterrent; it is one and the same thing, because a deterrent that is out of date is no deterrent at all. I shall briefly deal with the main arguments against the motion. The first is that we set a bad example by renewing Trident and that we weaken our hand as regards non-proliferation.”
“I am sure that they are right, but who, 30 or 40 years ago, would have predicted that those would be the primary threats? The answer is very few people indeed. We have to project forwards, and ask whether we hon. Members are making similarly inaccurate predictions. Our judgments are based on educated guesswork. In some cases, it is highly educated guesswork, but it is guesswork none the less. In those circumstances, I prefer to err on the side of caution. If we do not know what threats we face, surely we must do our utmost to be ready for everything. Even if the threats of today are those that we will face in the next 30 or 40 years, it is hard to argue that we face an increasingly safe world. It is quite the reverse.”
“It would be easy to convince ourselves in this debate that the world would be better off without nuclear weapons—we could all agree with that. We could also easily convince ourselves that we could do something more productive with £15 billion or £20 billion, but neither of those points are the issue. We have a responsibility not to decide the issue in a way that makes us feel better, but to make the decision that we think is best. I accept that that is difficult, because we are trying to develop a response to the security threats of the next 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years, which we cannot foresee. The point has been made that it is impossible to predict the world of the 2050s. Hon. Members who spoke against the motion said that the most important threat that we face is not a nuclear power; it is climate change or world terrorism.”
“The Minister has already mentioned the Adjournment debate that was held on 28 March last year, to which the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central responded. In the course of that response, she was kind enough to indicate that she would be prepared to visit the children’s brain tumour research centre in Nottingham. Has there been a ministerial visit, and if so what was derived from it? If there has not yet been a visit, may I encourage her or one of her colleagues to go as soon as possible to speak to Professor David Walker and his colleagues about the valuable work that they do and how the Government might help?”
“In support of the comments made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley), the grant maxima is adequate in many cases. The problem is that approved contractors have charged £1,000 more than local contractors in some cases in Warwickshire. If the scheme were extended to those local contractors, the grant would not only go further for the individual client, but the scheme as a whole would help more people.”
“I am sure that the Minister will accept that many good causes that receive lottery funding help to alleviate the burden on the state in various ways—the South Warwickshire carers support service in my constituency is a good example. Does he therefore accept that if some of those good causes lose lottery funding, the state will bear the burden and that that would be completely unacceptable if it were the result of further overspending on the Olympics because the Government got their sums wrong?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a bad Bill not only for the reasons that he is giving, but because it is aimed at entirely the wrong target? Many of the cases that the Government have relied on in support of their argument collapsed not because the jury was to blame, but because the prosecuting authorities were to blame. The cases were withdrawn from the jury by the judge before the jury had a chance to consider them. Nothing that the Government have put forward deals with that scenario.”
“Q4. Following yesterday’s television interview with the Prime Minister’s former spin doctor Lance Price, will the Prime Minister confirm that he has not called the Chancellor of the Exchequer psychologically flawed?”
“It is not surprising that 98 per cent. of those consulted in a recent survey by Age Concern regarded post offices as a lifeline. The Government have argued that life is changing and we must change with it. That argument is part of their justification for what is happening, but there is a difficulty with it.”
“Those communities could be rural or, as has been observed, they could be urban. Indeed, postmasters and postmistresses in deprived urban areas are among the most pessimistic about their future. However, I want to focus for a moment on the rural communities that I represent. The Government talk a great deal about communities. They even have a Department for communities nowadays. But “communities” rarely means rural communities. It rarely means villages where the post office is not just the only shop, but often the only point of social contact for many elderly and vulnerable people. It is sometimes the only reason for them to leave the house, and gives them the only opportunity of human contact. Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses provide not just stamps and benefit payments, but a smile or a friendly inquiry.”
“Of course, the use and prevalence of e-mail has an effect, and the existence of an online stamp system will have even more of an effect. Ministers cannot, however, escape significant responsibility for loss of post office income through the removal of Government business—last year, in the order of £168 million. Last month, in a spectacular display of adding insult to injury, the Prime Minister said that the closure of post offices would be the fault of customers for not using the services that his own Government had taken away. We now face plans to reduce the post office network again, significantly, and we know where the axe will fall. It will fall on communities where shops and services have already gone, and where the post office may well be all that is left.”
“The Government, with their considerable resources, could have made the case to all those affected as to why it would be better, more sensible and more beneficial for them to have their benefits or pension paid into a bank account, while leaving them the option to do something else. But that is not what happened. The Government put pressure on all those individuals to do what the Government wanted. They must therefore accept some responsibility for what is happening to the post office network now. By removing that choice, they have effectively removed a large part of the post office network’s income. I accept that other pressures, some of which have been mentioned, have been exerted on the profitability of small post offices.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) for leaving a little time for the rest of us. I shall try to use as little of it as I can. I want to speak about who is to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves, who suffers as a result and what might be done about it. The Government talk a great deal about choice and the importance of offering people choice. Of course, using the local post office to collect one’s pension or benefit payments is, or was, a choice. It might not be the most efficient choice available to an individual, and certainly not the most convenient choice for the Government, but that is not a good reason to prevent people from making it.”
“They may be distant from their families, who may have moved away—especially in rural areas, where the movement of younger family members has been caused by the increased cost of living in those areas. The sub-postmaster or sub-postmistress may be the only person who notices that something is wrong when someone does not come in to collect a benefit or pension. The decisions that are being made have commercial implications, but they also have social implications, and we must bear those in mind.”
“I agree that local shops are important, but my point is that there are communities in our country where all the shops have gone. The post office is all that is left, and it is where people go not just for commercial purposes but for a degree of social interaction. The situation that the hon. Gentleman describes is regrettable, and I should have thought that the worst thing we could do would be to make it worse. That is why we are saying that the post office network needs to be sustained. As I was saying, the Government argue that life is changing and we must change with it. The problem with their argument is that because of some of those changes in lifestyle, the post office network has become even more important in some of the communities that I am describing. More people now live alone, particularly the elderly.”
“If we want them to perform such functions, there is simply no value in the Government pursuing a wholesale closure programme—they have substantially brought that about by their own actions—and in then being worried and disturbed to find that no one is available to deliver the good ideas that Members in all parts of the House are putting forward. I hope that the Minister will take account of the genuine concerns that have been expressed by Members in all parts of the House in respect of the value that the post office network provides not only commercially but socially, and that the Government will desist from doing any more damage to communities that they have done quite enough damage to already.”
“There is certainly potential and opportunity for post offices to deliver more local and central Government services. If this Government have achieved anything in the field of job creation, they have surely achieved a huge growth in the marketplace for those who can help us to navigate the labyrinth of Government benefits and services that now exist. Post offices are already a trusted source of advice, information and help on a variety of day-to-day needs. They are ideal candidates for having that role extended and doing more of such work. For example, the take-up of pension credit is inadequate, and post offices are the kinds of places where we can increase that take-up and give the necessary advice and help. However, they will be able to do that only if they are still in business.”
“No, I am not, and I think that the hon. Gentleman has made a fair point. I do not believe that what the Government are doing will compensate for that loss. They must recognise that they cannot simply regard the post office network as a commercial entity; they must also regard it as a social entity, and they must take account of what will be lost in social terms if village and urban post offices disappear. What can be done? I think that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) was somewhat unfair in saying that no positive ideas had been advanced on either side of the House. It seems to me that positive ideas have been advanced, and I give the Government a degree of credit for at least mentioning some of the things that might be done. However, I remain sceptical about their willingness to pursue some of those positive ideas.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. She will know that the last two Olympic games had cost overruns of more than 100 per cent. Given those circumstances, is it not reasonable to expect further upward revisions of the Olympic budget? If that happens, and given that the national lottery fund is not inexhaustible—and if London taxpayers are not to be asked to pay more—will the Secretary of State guarantee that my constituents and others outside London will not see their taxes rise to pay for filling the gap?”
“I am sure that the Minister agrees that one of the most effective ways of combating childhood obesity is to persuade children to walk to school and to engage in more outside activity in their leisure time. Does she accept that one of the reasons why that does not happen is that parents do not trust their children to play outside because they do not regard it as a safe environment? Is that something else that she would like to talk to her Home Office colleagues about?”
“I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s comments on his proposed offence in new clause 6. Can he conceive, however, of circumstances in which a senior manager of an organisation, as defined in new clause 6(1), could commit the sort of wilful, gross breach of duty described and not be guilty of gross negligence manslaughter under existing law?”
“Gentleman’s approach effectively addressing the wrong problem with the wrong solution?”
“The hon. Gentleman started his remarks by saying that we would not be discussing the Bill if the existing law had worked well. In that, he is, of course, right, but does he accept that what went wrong in the past was the fact that it was difficult to establish the responsibility of companies because of the controlling mind principle? That was the problem that the Bill was designed to deal with, and I believe that it is doing it rather well. Is not the danger of the approach favoured by the hon. Gentleman and other Labour Members that we forget that a criminal sanction has to be applied to an individual and that the standard of proof to which those individual must be held ought properly to be very high; otherwise, we will find ourselves in very dangerous territory? Is not the hon.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Does he agree that the public would find it much more reassuring if the Government said that they have sufficient confidence in the Prison Service and that they believe that it does a good job in the vast majority of cases, but that, on those very rare occasions when a terrible misjudgment or gross negligence takes place, those responsible do not deserve protection?”
“I accept that the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken and the other Members in the Chamber have a legitimate constituency interest in what is happening, but I raise the point because the Government and the Minister are also engaged in a review of assisted area status. Warwickshire is unlikely to receive assisted area status under the new regime, and that will present a particular problem when the 143-acre site that constitutes the Ryton factory ceases to be a Peugeot plant. At that point, it will need assisted area status more than ever. I hope that she will consider whether there are ways by which we can bring the benefits of such status to the Ryton site as and when it will need it.”
“It has done so, first, by indicating that the successor model to the Peugeot 206 would not be built at the Ryton plant; secondly, by announcing that the closure of the plant would take place in July 2007; and thirdly, as has been said, by bringing that date forward to January of next year. The company has obligations to its work force that it must honour, and, as the Minister may know, 450 members of the work force still do not have a job or further training to go on to. I hope that she will be able to put what pressure she can on Peugeot to honour those obligations. I have only one complaint about this Adjournment debate. Its title is erroneous. The Peugeot plant that we are discussing is not in Coventry, but in Warwickshire and in my constituency. I do not make that point purely for the sake of geographical accuracy.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) on securing the debate and I thank both him and you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to contribute briefly to it. There is a broad measure of agreement on this. Points about Peugeot can be made on which I know MPs and councillors across the political spectrum feel very strongly. I hope that the Minister accepts that feeling on this matter is equally strong across the political spectrum. The reason is, as hon. Members have already said, that this company has cut the ground from under the work force in Peugeot not once or twice, but three times.”
“I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way and I accept that she is as keen as I am to bring back manufacturing jobs to the area, and preferably to the site in question. She will accept that all those involved want Ryton to be a productive site in terms of employment. But on the question of assisted area status, which I raised earlier, is there any way in which she can help those trying to market the site to make it more attractive as an employment opportunity?”
“May I ask the Secretary of State about information technology? He will be aware that many of my constituents, and no doubt many of his, who are parents with care wish to apply for a variation on absent parents who are in receipt of working tax credit. The Government believe that they should be able to do that, but I am told by one of his ministerial colleagues that they cannot do so at present because the computer system cannot be adapted to allow them to do so. That has now been the case for three years. How much longer will they have to wait?”
“I apologise to my hon. Friend if he is about to come on to this subject, but he will note that, under the Bill, if a remedial order were breached, penalties would be imposed. How does he think that a remedial order can be monitored, to determine whether or not it is being complied with? Obviously, it is easy for certain other penalties relating to criminal matters to be monitored to ascertain whether they are being complied with, but monitoring a remedial order probably requires a greater degree of technical expertise.”
“I firmly believe, based on my experience, that juries are unlikely to reach the wrong conclusions in such cases. I should like the Bill to be improved. I believe that its principles, aims and objectives are worth while, but it is not the Bill that it should be. It is not the Bill for which thousands of families across the country have waited so long, and it is not the Bill that they deserve, because it appears not to level the playing field between the public and private sectors, although it could do so far more effectively. It is crucial to ensure that the Government—the state—legislates for everyone, not just for everyone else. That is why the Bill needs to be improved. I hope that during its passage through the House it will be improved, and that we will produce the legislation for which we have all been waiting for a very long time.”
“So I think that we ought to trust juries, because that will enable us, as a legislature, to present the public at large, who, as other hon. Members have observed, have waited a very long time, with legislation that is fair and equitable across the board, and does not make exceptions where they should not be made. Of course I accept that exceptions should be made in some cases—military operations in the theatre of conflict are a perfectly good example—but the exemptions in the Bill are too wide. The military exemptions do not just cover operations in the theatre of conflict. They could be interpreted to cover even basic training. That is too wide, and there is no reason why the Government should be concerned about narrowing those exemptions.”
“At this point I, too, should declare an interest: as a barrister, I have had quite a bit to do with juries in my time, and my judgment is that, generally speaking, juries exercise common sense and good judgment, and can tell the difference between what is gross negligence manslaughter and what is not. However, the Government have not given juries the opportunity to do so in relation to a vast swathe of public sector activity, and we should give them that opportunity. The Government fear that the result will be convictions for gross negligence manslaughter in cases where, for example, the police are involved in a counter-terrorist activity, the emergency services are involved in a rescue or the armed forces are operating in a military situation. I do not believe that juries, properly directed by the judge, will reach those conclusions.”
“In respect of this Bill, the maxim remains true that hard cases make bad law—and that includes cases that are hard for the Government, just as it includes cases that are hard for everyone else. I shall explain why such exemptions are needless. There seems to be insufficient trust in two important bodies in the criminal justice system. One is the CPS, on which we rely to choose which cases should be prosecuted and which should not, and the second, which is more important in many ways, consists of juries. We can rely, and we have relied, on juries to make a distinction between cases that genuinely involve corporate manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence and those that do not.”
“I say damagingly, because the impression may be left in the mind of the public that the Government are trying to protect themselves from the things on which they are most vulnerable—the cases that are most likely to come to court under the Bill. It would be most unfortunate if that were the perception given by the Government, although I do not think for a moment that is their intention. However, unless that part of the Bill is amended, there is a distinct danger that that impression will be given. We do not want it to appear that the Government are including in the exemptions all the cases that have appeared in the headlines in recent months and years and all the cases in which the public might think that the Government were most vulnerable to a prosecution in the public sector for corporate manslaughter.”
“That problem has not yet been resolved. The more substantive problem, on which I want to focus specifically, is Crown immunity. Like other Members, I applaud the removal of Crown immunity in principle, but I suspect that through the lengthy, detailed and wide-ranging exemptions under clauses 4 to 8, that good move has been substantially undermined. The exemptions are far too wide. The Government have set out to do something worth while and noble—to deliver a level playing field between public and private enterprises. Unfortunately, that is not what the Bill delivers. The excessive width of the exemptions is wrong for two reasons. They are needlessly and damagingly wide.”
“That is the right problem to focus on, but I fear that we have only a partial solution, because the Government have introduced a piece of legislation that deals with it only inasmuch as it narrows down the offence. The Bill refers to senior managers and the need to identify negligence as being perpetrated by them as a group. I accept that that is better than trying to find an individual manager, but it is still not quite good enough. It will not avoid entirely the difficulty posed to the Crown Prosecution Service and juries by the original common-law offence—trying to find out who in particular was responsible. An element of that concept must be retained, because to determine that the people responsible were senior rather than junior managers, a degree of detective work is required by the CPS and a degree of judgment by the jury.”
“I start by agreeing with a sentiment that has been expressed by Members on both sides of the House during the debate: a great many bereaved families across the country have waited a long time for this gap in the law to be plugged. To that degree, I congratulate the Government on making an effort to do just that. I fear, however, that this Bill is not the legislation for which all those families have been waiting. I want to deal with two problems, both of which other Members have touched on already. The first problem, which the Government have correctly identified, is with the original common-law offence of gross negligence manslaughter—the difficulty of identifying the directing mind.”
“Notwithstanding the understandable nervousness of the Secretary of State about linking contact and financial support, have the Government recognised the practical advantages of deciding issues of financial support within the same framework as issues of contact and residence when, after all, members of the family are deciding all matters in relation to the future of the family?”
“Q11. A month ago, I wrote to the Home Secretary—so far I have not had a reply—about a foreign prisoner who should have been deported in February, at the end of his sentence. In fact, he was deported on 11 June. That delay has cost the taxpayer £20,800. Given that the Home Office has told me that there are 450 others in immigration detention who have finished their sentences, may I ask the Prime Minister whether he will ensure that they are deported more quickly and at less cost to the taxpayer?”
“I think the Minister for that answer. He will realise that it is sometimes difficult and expensive for smaller community pharmacies to set up in business. When the review takes place, will he ensure that as much help as possible can be given to such pharmacies, perhaps in particular by looking again at the exemptions to the control of entry regulations and allowing pharmacies that comply with those exemptions to open for 80 hours a week, instead of 100 hours, so that people can continue to get their medication from not only supermarkets and large chain pharmacies, but smaller community pharmacies?”
“It is difficult to envisage a situation in which the financial loss would not be occasioned to one parent or other, both of whom would be able to make an application for compensation for financial loss under proposed new section 110. Amendment No. 10 would thus remove an unnecessary and possibly damaging aspect of that provision, so I commend it to the House.”
“It is perfectly right to involve a child in decisions about contact because the court recognises that the views of a child about contact are important and thus includes the child as one of the people who can contribute to that process. However, when compensation for financial loss is being considered, blame is being apportioned for something that has gone wrong. That is wholly different in nature from the process of decisions about contact, so it is wholly inappropriate for a child to be involved in such matters. It is also hard to conceive of a situation in which a child would need to be involved in such a process.”