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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“The other difficulty that I have with the Bill is the fact that in the course of attempting to save money, the Government may do damage to the pursuit of criminal justice. It is inevitable that some people who do not receive criminal legal aid because their means are too excessive will choose to represent themselves. The Government have accepted that that will happen in a small number of cases, but I venture to suggest that it might happen in a substantial number of cases. In my experience as a lawyer, when that happens a case inevitably takes longer, and when a case takes longer, it costs more. When the Government calculate the amount that they hope to save through the Bill, they must take account of the lack of saving—if I may put it that way—that will result if more people choose to represent themselves.”
“Many other things in the criminal justice system need to be addressed, such as why cases do not come to court as quickly as they should and why there are innumerable adjournments. That has to do with a range of things—the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) referred to a few of them—including failure to disclose evidence in time and problems relating to witnesses and defendants who fail to attend courts. There are even problems, I am sorry to say, relating to defendants not being produced on time from the prisons where they are on remand. That causes delay, and delay causes cost. If the Government chose to do an analysis of costs, I would not be surprised if they discovered that a good portion of the overspend that they correctly describe in the criminal justice legal aid system results from that sort of problem.”
“Until something is done about those cases, the budget will not be brought under control. In fact, I suggest that the situation is worse than that: the danger is that those who practise at the junior end of the criminal Bar get the blame and must carry the burden of those who cause the real problem at the top end of the criminal Bar. That problem is not addressed by the Bill, which, if anything, perpetuates the myth that lawyers and, indeed, their clients in the criminal justice system are mainly responsible for the overspend. In my view, they are not. Whether the criminal justice system operates at too high a cost is a genuine concern—it very clearly does—but the reason why it does so is not mainly, substantially and certainly not entirely due to the fact that criminal legal aid is paid in too high amounts to lawyers and their clients.”
“First, within the parameters of my experience as a practising criminal barrister, I can think of very few of my clients who would be caught by the scope of the Bill and who would have to pay any contribution to their own legal costs because their incomes would come below—in many cases, well below—the limit that the Government propose. I therefore wonder whether a sizeable percentage of those who were my clients would save us any money at all if they were invited to contribute a proportion of their own costs. The other issue, which goes to the heart of the matter, and to which other hon. Members have drawn attention, is that the Government do not address in the Bill the very high-cost criminal cases that form a significant part of an unacceptably ever-growing criminal legal aid budget.”
“I do not propose to detain the House for long. I declare an interest as a non-practising criminal barrister and as a distinctly thin cat, rather than a fat cat, in the course of my practice. I have two concerns about the Bill. First, it does not perhaps address in the way that the Government hope it will the fundamental problem at the heart of the criminal legal aid budget. Secondly, in trying to address the problem in that way, the danger is that the Bill will damage the criminal justice system. Following the remarks that have been made by other hon. Members on the first issue, I have two points to make.”
“Surely the Minister cannot have it both ways. If, as he says, the eligibility criterion is a straightforward mathematical exercise, an appeal on that basis cannot waste much court time, can it?”
“I am sure that the Minister will agree that the figure is far too high. The Government have spent just under £1 billion on combating truancy, yet the rate of unauthorised absence is higher now than when Labour came to power. Does she think that the taxpayer is getting good value for money from the Government's anti-truancy schemes?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that there is little point in the Government legislating to provide teachers and members of staff with the authority to search pupils unless there is a result when the search discloses a bladed weapon? No doubt that is what my hon. Friend is pointing out to the Minister.”
“One of the difficulties that we noted when antisocial behaviour orders were first introduced was the substantial delay before courts started making such orders on a regular basis. Does my hon. Friend think that that might happen with drink banning orders; and if it did, would not that undermine the Government's proper desire to deal with such problems instantly?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the sort of behaviour that Labour Members are describing sounds very much like antisocial behaviour? If that is so, is not an ASBO the appropriate remedy?”
“I understand a great deal of what the Minister is saying, but is not the logic of her remarks that those who deserve a drinking banning order are behaving antisocially? That is why the court wants to mark their behaviour as antisocial. In those circumstances, would it not make more sense to call the behaviour what it is, by using an antisocial behaviour order?”
“The Minister advanced the same argument in Committee. She might remember that I asked her a question about the matter. Does she accept that it would be perfectly feasible for people to breach the community penalty that they received for breaching a drinking banning order, yet to be able to continue with the drinking banning order? In other words, they could decide not to drink, even though they would have breached their community penalty. If people can do that, does it not underline the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) that the response to the breach of a drinking banning order should directly be a custodial penalty? Such an option would remain available, would it not?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that more alcohol is consumed in some restaurants than in some pubs, so those restaurants would be contributing more substantially to the problems that the Government want to address, yet their purpose as restaurants is not primarily the supply of alcohol?”
“Why should I sign up to all the schemes that the Government want me to join and still have to pay my money?"”
“Under those circumstances, the burden of proof rests with the Government to demonstrate that all those businesses share the blame. There is a risk that the proposals will be counter-productive. In Committee, the Minister talked about various programmes and schemes, including the "best bar none" scheme, to which premises could subscribe. They could sign up to best practice proposals and do everything that the Government and the rest of society expected of them by refusing to serve people who were drunk, by behaving responsibly, and by operating their businesses in a way that minimised any disorder outside their premises, but they would still be liable for payment in an alcohol disorder zone. If that is the case, there is a danger that those businesses will simply throw up their hands and say, "Why should I bother?”
“I, too, support the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) has tabled, particularly amendment No. 18. Alcohol disorder zones have the potential to be not only unfair but counter-productive in many ways. The unfairness has been dealt with in detail by other hon. Members, so I will not address it at length. However, the problem does not, as the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) suggested, stem from the fact it is difficult to isolate individual premises that supply the drink that makes someone drunk or pushes them beyond that point, causing them to come into conflict with the forces of law and order. The problem is that the Government are introducing proposals that financially penalise businesses that operate in the alcohol disorder zone, whatever they do, whether it is right or wrong.”
“The Government must address that difficulty if alcohol disorder zones are to be as effective as they want them to be and, even more worryingly, if they are not to cause our town centres, pubs and clubs to be less inclined to do precisely the things that they would like them to do.”
“If the hon. Lady is saying that people who supply alcohol to individuals who become drunk and cause disorder should bear the burden of costs, I agree. However, I do not agree that we should assume that every supplier of alcohol is therefore irresponsible. The assumption made by those who framed the proposal is that people who live or operate and work in a particular area of town that the council has designated an alcohol disorder zone must be contributing to the problem and will therefore be charged for the expense of sorting it out. That is fundamentally unfair. If we want premises to comply with all the wonderful schemes and positive measures that have been introduced they will not be encouraged to do so if they are subject to a financial penalty, whether or not they take those measures.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is possible to sell alcohol responsibly? If so, can a responsible seller of alcohol work next door to an irresponsible one in an alcohol disorder zone, and would it be right to penalise him?”
“I ask the Government to reconsider that part of this clause. The Minister knows that there is a good deal of support for a great part of the Bill, and even for a great part of the clause. I fully appreciate that those who encourage terrorism should be penalised. We can, however, do that without needing to criminalise a concept called glorification, and I invite the Minister to consider what it is that is glorification but is not encouragement but should still be criminal. That is the crucial point of the debate, and without an answer on it, we cannot be confident that the clause should remain.”
“It is fundamentally unsatisfactory to propose legislation that would have that effect. If we are to look beyond the immediate compass of the current situation—I accept that that situation makes the Government worry about how we deal with it—it must surely be right to construct legislation today and this week that will stand the test of time and enable us to be confident that it will not be misused in future. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, the concept of glorification—indeed, the term itself—does not currently form part of the criminal law. It seems to me that there is good reason for that: it is too broad, too ephemeral and too difficult to define, and if that is so, the fact that it has no place in the criminal law is frankly because it deserves no place there. It will create difficulties in the future.”
“I understand the Government's argument that there is no need to worry about the clause because, although it may be completely inappropriate in all sorts of circumstances, the DPP will put his foot down and prevent it from being used. That seems a profoundly unfortunate position for a Government to be in when proposing a clause to be part of the criminal law. It may be that the DPP currently in office will be able to protect us from all the different situations in which a glorification charge would be inappropriate. It may also be that the next three or four holders of the office will do so. Surely, however, we in this House must make law that will stand as good law, and not simply as law that needs to be propped up by the DPP, or, worse, law from which the DPP needs to protect us.”
“Gummer) raised the fundamental issue about the clause when he asked what sort of action would be covered by the word "glorification" that would not be covered by "encouragement" yet still attract punishment under the criminal law. I believe that no action meets the circumstances of that definition. If that belief is correct, the Government are creating with this clause a piece of law that can have only two possible fates—it will be misused, or it will not be used at all. If the latter is the case, the provision will simply gather dust. Prosecutors will not use it because it is inappropriate to put before a jury, but either fate is unacceptable for a facet of the criminal law. My second concern has to do with the points raised already about the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions.”
“I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but perhaps not so grateful to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox). However, I shall do my best. I fully understand the Government's inclination to respond to people's heightened emotional state in respect of terrorism and to respond to those who talk about terrorism in positive terms. We all find such talk very distasteful, but the Government appear to be falling into the trap of making something distasteful into something illegal. There is a big difference, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr.”
“I understand that the Minister is saying that the glorification provision is designed to be a guideline and an assistance to the courts—I follow that argument—but does she not accept that, as a result of what has been said in the debate, if for no other reason, problems are associated with glorification that are not associated with encouragement? I simply return to a point that has been made many times to which I have not yet heard the answer. What does glorification give us that encouragement does not?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but does he accept that a traffic-congested town such as Kenilworth, which has 23,000 residents, ought to have a station? If he does receive a properly argued business case, will he join me in asking the Government to give their full support to that project, which would provide a huge transport benefit to the people of Kenilworth?”
“As a former member of the junior Bar that the hon. and learned Lady describes, and in every sense of the word junior, I recognise a great deal of what she says. Does she accept that from those figures quoted for junior Bar earnings, one must deduct one's clerk's fees, taxes and anything else that one may need, which in another profession might be provided for? The figures that one ends up with are therefore much smaller than those quoted.”
“It is not automatic that those who join the criminal Bar become silks and make the sort of money that has been mentioned. It is the junior Bar that needs the Government's attention. I hope that they will give it that attention and that they recognise the problems.”
“It is not whether we pay high-ranking barristers £200,000 or £300,000 a year; it is whether we can attract the best quality applicants to the junior criminal Bar, and not—this is where I disagree with her—because we compare the earnings of the junior Bar with average earnings throughout the country. We need to attract the best quality advocates to do the vital job of defending and prosecuting in our criminal courts because they could instead go into other strands of the legal profession, such as the commercial Bar. They could become commercial solicitors or go into other professions with far higher rates of pay. Barristers spend a lot of time and, now, money to train for the criminal Bar. We need to attract them and to retain them.”
“Based on the amount of preparation I do on a Monday night for a Tuesday morning case as a member of the Bar, I could be paid £46.50 or £1,500, depending on factors completely outside my control. Whether the defendant and witnesses for the prosecution turn up determines my fee. I do not suppose that many of my former colleagues at the junior Bar would object if the Government came forward with a sensible proposal for payment of criminal barristers according to the work that they do. The problem is that that is not the proposal and the Government are making cuts without completing the wide-ranging Carter review. The Government promised a review in May but it did not materialise. The criminal Bar has been waiting a long time for the Government to explain their long-term vision. The hon. and learned Lady summed up the issue well.”
“I should also declare an interest: I am a non-practising member of the criminal Bar. As the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) said, the difficulty with what the Government have in mind in relation to criminal legal aid is that although the junior Bar would probably have no objection to the redistribution of money from the top ranks of the Bar to the lower ranks, that is not what is going to happen. The Government have indicated that cuts will be made at the lower ranks of the Bar to the criminal legal aid budget, but there will be no corresponding transfer to those ranks. That will create a number of significant difficulties. There is no doubt that there is room for reform in the system of payments to the Bar. I accept that the current system is ridiculous.”
“Further to my hon. Friend's comments, what often happens is that however hard a barrister may work to resolve a case before it comes to trial and to obtain a guilty plea, if that is the appropriate resolution, he may not be successful because the defendant wants to see whether the witnesses turn up on the day of the trial. In such cases, the cracked trial is not in the barrister's control.”
“My question may be hypothetical, but it is all too possible. A person who reports a fire in my area might not know the locality and so may not be able to describe the address. An operator in a regional fire control centre is far less likely to be able to fill in the gaps in that report than would be the case with a local fire control operator. Therefore, would not a regional fire control centre be less likely to save lives than a local one?”
“My constituents are affected by a much smaller airport than Heathrow, but I agree wholeheartedly with a great deal of what the hon. Gentleman has said. Is not one of the main reasons why neither his constituents nor mine trust the Government's proposed regime adequately to address their needs the fact that the Government are not really committed to reducing decibel levels to a point at which people will not be disturbed? That is why people feel the need to retain a limit on aircraft movements, and why they will not accept a noise substitute.”
“8. Does the Prime Minister accept that busy village halls are often at the heart of thriving rural communities such as those that I represent in Rugby and Kenilworth? However, the huge increases proposed in the Licensing Act 2003—increases in paperwork and in the cost of entertainment licences, rising from £30 to more than £900—will put vital resources at risk. Will the Prime Minister do something about that? [6086]”
“Although I accept that the number of cases that the Solicitor-General is talking about in this context is very small, does he not accept that the difficulty with this proposal is that the arguments that he is deploying can be used to justify the removal of jury trial in a large number of other cases? Arguments of complexity and length apply to more than just serious fraud trials. That is the first thing that is dangerous. Does the Solicitor-General accept that it is also dangerous to include reference to conviction rates in a statement to justify the removal of jury trial? The fact that conviction rates do not include every case may indicate that the system is working as it should be.”
“The Home Secretary will agree that the measures in the Bill, worthy as they may be, will only work if they can be enforced. Will he look again at the crippling burden of paperwork on our police officers so that they can get on with enforcing these measures?”
“We must remember that police officers are overworked, overburdened with paperwork and do not have the time to deal with an arsenal of further obligations. I am all in favour of extra orders and extra measures that give the police and the courts the power to deal with those who cause alcohol-related disorder but there is no point in adding more and more orders and more and more measures to the arsenal of the police if they do not have the manpower, resources or time to make good use of them. I urge Ministers to consider that and I hope that the Bill can be further improved.”
“It is important to consider those who sell alcohol to children, not only the licensees of public houses and clubs but those who sell from off-licences. In my constituency, there is a serious problem in the town of Kenilworth with one particular licensee, who regularly sells to minors whom he knows, so test purchases do not work. Those minors, fuelled by the alcohol that he has sold them, go on to cause trouble in public areas and private streets. Perhaps Ministers would like to examine that problem more carefully. The Home Secretary batted away a point that I raised earlier but I hope that other Ministers will consider it. We must think about the resources that we provide to our police officers to fulfil the obligations that the Bill imposes on them.”
“I hope that the Bill will begin to deal with that problem. In that context, perhaps alcohol disorder zones are the Bill's most significant proposal. My only concern is that perhaps we view the matter too narrowly. Of course, it is correct that a great deal of alcohol-related disorder happens just outside the pubs and clubs but we all know that it spills into residential areas that are slightly further afield. We all receive many letters from constituents, as I did only this morning, who live in residential areas not too far away from the town centres and find that people who drink too much and cause trouble make their lives a misery in the middle of the night. We must therefore consider ways in which to deal with alcohol-related disorder not only in the alcohol disorder zones but outside them.”
“With the night shift of Rugby police, I have watched, with, I suppose, hope and despair in equal measure, the behaviour of young people who go out specifically with the intention of getting drunk and thereafter causing trouble—although of course I agree with the hon. Member for Warrington, North that such young people are merely a minority. I have also watched the compassion and unfailing politeness of highly professional police officers who then have to deal with those problems. Of course, there are wider costs, not only economic but social, which have also been discussed. In our town centres—I include Rugby—we begin to witness a cycle of despair whereby those who are out simply for a good time leave the town centres to those who cause trouble. That leaves a vacuum to be filled by yet more of those who are out to cause trouble.”
“I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) said. I add my congratulations to Members who have made their maiden speeches today—my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes), with whom I share a profession in the criminal law, and the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho), on behalf of whose constituents I have, sadly, often practised that profession. I welcome a great deal of the Bill, particularly its focus on alcohol-related disorder, which, as many hon. Members said, is a problem in many parts of the country—not only in cities but in smaller towns such as those that I represent. Like many hon. Members, I have seen for myself the effects of such disorder.”
“I hope that natural England and the commission for rural communities, if they come about as a result of this debate, will be capable of addressing those problems and will have the full support of the Government in doing so if that is their task. I look forward to the continuing debate on this subject, and I look forward also to serving my constituents and this House to the best of my ability.”
“Goodwill) observed, it is beyond doubt that farmers do not need from this place another large mountain of paperwork and extra regulation; they need support from us in carrying out the vital work that they do in caring for the countryside. Other matters in the countryside need to be addressed: problems of rural crime and policing; the lack of adequate public transport, and the isolation that that can bring about; the absence of affordable housing in our villages; and the often overlooked but very important issue of drug abuse in rural, not just urban, areas. Those are the real problems of the countryside, and they are daunting.”
“If we are not to regard the countryside as a theme park, neither should we look at it as a museum. It is vital that the agricultural sector, and the rural economy more widely, can prosper, develop and diversify where that is appropriate. Farmers across my constituency and, I expect, across the nation take seriously their obligation to maintain the land and to sustain the beauty of our landscape. I do not accept that the conservation of our natural environment and the practice of agriculture are mutually exclusive; indeed, I would argue that they are interdependent. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr.”
“For example, in my constituency stand the home of the Royal Agricultural Society at Stoneleigh park, Ryton organic gardens, which is a leader in its field, and Draycote water, which is a fine example of the co-operation that can exist between private industry and the wildlife agencies. I also represent a great many farms and villages. I therefore hope that this debate will not simply be about process and structures, but about objectives and aspirations. Before we decide what types of agencies will best serve the British countryside, we must decide what we want the British countryside to be. We must not fall into the trap of regarding it as merely a theme park for those who dwell in the cities to visit at weekends, but see it as what it is—a place to live and to work.”
“Andy King, my immediate predecessor, who represented this seat on the Labour Benches for the preceding eight years, was a Member of Parliament who always put his constituents' interests first, and I pay tribute to his hard work over those eight years for the constituents of Rugby and Kenilworth. On a personal note, I thank him for his grace and generosity during the course of the general election campaign, even when I know that it must have been difficult—the point at which the result was announced. I am eager to move from my constituency's past to its future, particularly that of the substantial rural part of it that will be most affected by the Bill that we are discussing today.”
“Since Rugby's association with Kenilworth in this place, I have been preceded by two well-regarded and well-liked former Members of this House. My predecessor-but-one was James Pawsey, who has left, if I may put it this way, some large shoes for me to fill among the very many of my constituents who fondly remember the last time that my seat was held by a Conservative. I suspect that many Members on both sides of the House also recall Jim Pawsey's time here. I know that it is traditional on these occasions for a new Member to speak well of his immediate predecessor. I know also that that is harder for some new Members than it is for others. In my case, it is particularly easy.”
“Kenilworth, which shared a constituency for many years with the towns of Warwick and Leamington and was represented most famously by Sir Anthony Eden, is a very different town with its own challenges—for example, the threat to its very distinct character by indiscriminate and unfettered back land development. That is a challenge that must be faced by all those in this House, and it is certainly one to which I shall address myself in the course of my time here.There is also cause to be optimistic about the future of Kenilworth. I am pleased to say that wholesale reinvigoration of the town centre is under way. Last weekend we enjoyed a very successful festival of arts, drama and music, which showed Kenilworth in its best possible light.”
“From the moment that William Webb Ellis picked up the football and took it down the pitch at Rugby school, the people of Rugby have demonstrated, shall I say, a certain independence of mind, and they do so very often at election time, when they tend to disregard the prevailing political winds and instead send to this House a representative who they believe will best serve their interests. I hope that I shall follow in that tradition. Rugby is a town with a proud industrial heritage. Because of its location and transport links, it is an essential hub in our national distribution network; and because it is the home of the sport that bears its name, we could certainly exploit it far more as a tourist destination.”