David Davis
MP for Goole and Pocklington · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on putting a Bill in front of the House that has support from literally everybody in the Chamber?”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined.”
“Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.”
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it.”
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”.”
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in.”
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“On 28 September, a month after the police had started their investigation of the criminal case, McCann expressed great disappointment to Ruddick that someone who had promised to deliver five complainants to him by the end of that week had come up empty, or “overreached”, as he put it. One of the complainants said to Ruddick that she was “feeling pressurised by the whole thing rather than supported”. The day following the Scottish Government’s collapse in a judicial review in January 2019, Ruddick expressed to McCann the hope that one of the complainants would be “sickened enough to get back in the game.” Later that month, she confirmed to Murrell that the complainant was now “up for the fight” and “keen to see him go to jail”.”
“No single sequence of texts is going to provide conclusive proof of what the whistleblower described as a “criminal conspiracy”, but it does show a very strong prima facie case, which demands further serious investigation, by which I mean, at the very least, a thorough review of all the emails and other electronic records for the relevant personnel at all relevant times. For example, these texts show that there is a concerted effort by senior members of the SNP to encourage complaints. The messages suggest that SNP chief executive Peter Murrell co-ordinated Ruddick and Ian McCann, the SNP’s compliance officer, in the handling of specific complainants.”
“He or she starts their communication with the assertion that the evidence provided, and I quote, “point to collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy.” Since I received the data, it looks as though the Committee has received at least some of it themselves, and some has also been put in the public domain by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), a previous Justice Secretary in the Scottish Government. It was described anonymously by one of the Committee members as “just private conversations that we had no business intruding on”. Well, I will let the House be the judge of that.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have, I think, brought whistleblower views to the attention of this House on about a dozen occasions in the last 20 or 30 years and, on every single occasion, I have protected the innocent people involved. The download that I am talking about—Sue Ruddick’s telephone download—is held by the Scottish police, so the accuracy of this account can be checked if they need to. Alex Salmond has asserted that there has been, and I quote, “a malicious and concerted attempt to….remove me from public life in Scotland” by “a range of individuals within the Scottish Government and the SNP”, who set out to “damage” his “reputation, even to the extent of having” him “imprisoned.” These are incredibly grave charges. The whistleblower clearly agrees with those charges.”
“In effect, by not including the amendment of the law resolution, the Government have shut down the rights that the House has enjoyed for more than 100 years. The result is that Members’ hands are tied when it comes to effectively amending the Finance Bill. Mr Deputy Speaker, can you give guidance as to how the House can recover those fundamental rights, which have been arrogated by the Government?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Budgets and Finance Bills were the first reason for having a Parliament —to approve the expenditures of the Executive. For more than a century, the first resolution for a Finance Bill has been what is known as the general amendment of the law resolution. The resolution allows Members to table amendments that deal with tax administration and relief provisions not otherwise provided for by the specific Ways and Means resolution. However, since Philip Hammond’s Finance Bill 2017, the Government have not included such a resolution. The effect is that any amendments tabled by Members to the Finance Bill must be tied to one of the specific resolutions already agreed by the House.”
“Can my right hon. Friend tell the House what steps she is taking to improve the Child Maintenance Service and, in particular, to ensure that children of separated parents get all the money to which they are entitled?”
“The hon. Lady mentions the risk in bounce back loans. Her Committee—our Committee—has done sterling service over the years on the whole question of tax evasion and the investigation of that. Does she have anything to say to the Chancellor about that, because it is a very large, lucrative area that the Government could pay attention to?”
“It is very difficult sometimes, particularly dealing with the Treasury, which is very difficult about dynamic taxation and indeed does not seem to understand it, despite the fact that the British Treasury under Nigel Lawson created the best dynamic tax demonstrator in history.”
“Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who is nodding at me, because of course in the Province that is absolutely a central issue for us all. We have to worry about tax increases from that point of view. I was very pleased to hear the Chancellor’s emphasis on what he called the science superpower strategy, and, as he said, it is not hubristic; we are the country with the highest number of Nobel prizes per capita in the world and should be able to marshal something out of that. We have already had an announcement on setting up our equivalent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the Advanced Research and Invention Agency; we have new strategies and new funding for science, and new tech visas. All those things will help as all—the whole kingdom—in improving our growth rate. What is a growth strategy worth?”
“It requires higher new company formation and higher research and development, and it will, in turn, generate higher aggregate demand. Tax increases help none of those things. The issue of tax increases is not a Tory ideological issue; it is about what delivers the recovery. Income tax increases, whether direct or stealthy, reduce aggregate demand; they reduce the amount of money people can spend. Corporation tax increases suppress investment. Capital gains tax increases deter both domestic investment and foreign investment. The one thing I am worried about in this Budget is the proposal to go to 25% corporation tax in a couple of years. That will have precisely the deterrent effect I worry about with respect to inward investment. I am looking at my Northern Irish friend the right hon.”
“I have heard a number of people say, “The interest rates might go up.” To a large extent, two things are happening here. Every single country in the world has this issue, and therefore every single Government in the world has an incentive to hold interest rates down, and they now have the mechanisms to do it—they have done it time and again with quantitative easing, even before today. To close that £14,000 per household deficit, we need to increase growth, increase employment and increase wages. All those things will increase the tax base. The Chancellor said—and I am glad to hear him say it—that his first priority is employment. That is the centre of those aims, and that is exactly right. That requires higher domestic investment to achieve it. It requires higher foreign inward investment to achieve it.”
“Some £2 trillion or thereabouts amounts to £77,000 per household. I remember only a few days ago a BBC commentator talking about paying off the overdraft. I do not have an overdraft of £77,000. This is a big mortgage that is not paid off in one year. To pay off such a debt rapidly would be crippling. Again, the size says it all. It has to be paid off in the very long term—as the Chancellor said, over decades. Since this is the worst debt and deficit combination since 1944, we should treat it in the same way as they did then: with a 50-year time horizon on the loan—a war loan, if you like. Both the world war one and world war two debts were paid off this century, within the last 20 years, so that gives us an indication of what needs to be done.”
“In my view, they are best understood when looked at in terms of the impact by household or by wage earner, because that gives a better idea of what they mean. For example, the latest deficit figures published before today were £394 billion a year. That is £14,000 per household—that is the size of the black hole we have to fill. Just looking at the size of the number tells us that no tax policy can solve it. The idea of imposing £14,000 per household of taxes is nonsense; it would be designed to destroy any economic recovery. Only a recovery policy designed to restore the tax base and remove the need for subsidies will close that gap, and I am pleased to see that the Chancellor has essentially adopted that strategy. The most recent estimate of the debt is well over £2 trillion and may be £3 trillion.”
“Obviously covid-19 has led to incredibly difficult economic circumstances. The country has suffered the worst peacetime economic shock ever. Indeed, we have the worst outcome in the G7, and the deficit is the worst since 1944—a date that I will come back to—which, in and of itself, is extraordinary. The Chancellor faces quite remarkable economic problems that are worse than any Chancellor has faced in peacetime history, and he has handled it with remarkable sensitivity in the way he has put his policies together. I have a question about one or two, but broadly speaking, he has met this economic challenge of enormous magnitude with great skill. What do these numbers mean? These billions and trillions that are casually thrown about by supposedly expert commentators are incredibly difficult for ordinary people to understand.”
“May I start by associating myself with the comments of the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), on ExcludedUK and helping them, and on the leaseholder issue, which also requires help? I also associate myself with those on both sides of the House who have called for the uplift in universal credit to be rendered permanent, which I think in due course will prove sensible. When I applied to speak in this debate a few days ago, given the headlines in the press I thought that I might be challenging head-on the Chancellor’s strategy, in view of my concern that sudden tax increases would crush any recovery. It is therefore a pleasure today to find that that is not the case, and that I can be much more supportive of my right hon. Friend.”
“Is it not a fact that when you put up corporation tax like that, it does not deliver the arithmetic outcome: you actually get less back and it suppresses your business as well?”
“There is a strong convention that before a Government undertake a policy that puts lives at risk, they get prior approval from this House. We cannot make a 50% cut in this budget without cutting into crisis and healthcare support, thereby putting at least 100,000 children’s lives at risk. Will my right hon. Friend guarantee that before the Budget votes are held next week we can have a written statement giving a breakdown of the cuts made this year in the aid budget and undertaking that no more cuts will be undertaken unless and until this House approves it?”
“I will give way to him now or he can answer when he winds up; I really do not mind.”
“the Home Secretary, on 7 May 2019 Mr James Eadie, the Government’s QC, said that “the state, in tasking the CHIS…is not the instigator of that activity and cannot be treated as somehow responsible for it…it would be unreal to hold the state responsible.” I have always viewed that as a rather Pontius Pilate statement on this matter by the Government’s lawyer. That introduces an ambiguity. The Minister, who is an old friend of mine, will understand better than most the standing of what he says since the Pepper v. Hart case of some years ago—namely, that the courts will interpret ambiguous legislation in the light of the way the Minister describes it. I therefore ask him to confirm, in unequivocal terms, for Pepper v. Hart purposes, that authorisation of acts that would breach the Human Rights Act would always be unlawful.”
“Since the Lords dropped the amendments that related to that, that ambiguity—namely, the sheer scope of crimes and whether they could include torture, murder and the like—still applies to the Bill. That ambiguity arises because of the following. On the one hand, the Government have said that the Human Rights Act intervenes to limit what can be done. I quote Baroness Williams who said that the Human Rights Act provides “limits to the conduct that can be authorised. An authorisation that is not compatible with the Human Rights Act will not be lawful”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 9 February 2021; Vol. 810, c. 181.] However, in the court case that precipitated the Bill, that of Privacy International v.”
“Of course, we all know 17-year-olds who are very mature, but we also all know 17-year-olds who are very immature, and in the context of being involved in a criminal investigation, I suspect the latter are far more common than the former. For that reason, I think it entirely wrong that a police officer or officers, no matter how responsible, should be allowed, even in exceptional circumstances, to make judgments about whether an appropriate adult should be present. That being said, the Bill has made significant movements in the right direction—just, I think, not far enough. The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), raised the more general question of the extent of the sort of crime that CHISs could be approved to authorise.”
“I start by sending my wishes, with everyone else’s, to the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). The House would perhaps like to know that I spoke to him this afternoon and he is making very good progress. We are all happy about that. I also commend, in the strongest possible terms, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for the campaign that she has put together, particularly with respect to the Bill as it applies to children. She has proved yet again a formidable campaigner, for which we should all be grateful. I am still completely against the division between children above and below the age of 16 on whether there is an absolute requirement for an appropriate adult in meetings with the child.”
“That is fine. I will say one last thing with respect to that. If the Government do not make it clear and that still hangs as an ambiguity around the Bill, then the Bill, along with the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, could well end up with this country being in the International Criminal Court for reasons that the House did not intend. It is that important that the Minister makes that clear.”
“May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his calm handling of the European Commission’s misbehaviour over vaccines and Northern Ireland? Nevertheless, we can learn something from our European friends. Andalucia, a Spanish province of 8 million people, had a covid death rate of about 190 deaths per million in November—higher than ours at the time. After giving activated vitamin D—calcifediol—to care home residents and some GP patients, that death rate almost halved, whilst ours was doubling. Will he ask his advisers to look urgently again at the very latest Spanish research about that cheap, safe and apparently effective treatment?”
“The Prime Minister is very properly concerned to protect our national health service, and particularly to prevent hospitals and intensive care units from being overwhelmed this winter. My question is about the scope to enhance primary care to reduce the need for covid patients to go to hospital in the first place. New Canadian studies of 4,500 people published this week show that the use of colchicine has cut hospital admissions by 25% and death rates by almost half. Similarly, some ivermectin studies have shown 75% reductions in death rates. What scope is there to act quickly this winter—this winter, not next winter—to enhance our primary care level to protect populations and hospitals?”
“My right hon. Friend does great service to this House and the Committee. Given what he has just said, does he believe that these terrorists are unable to read the Human Rights Act?”
“As I was listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s very thoughtful speech, it occurred to me that it might be a mistake to have the same Bill cover the security services and everything up to and including the Food Safety Agency.”
“The Minister kindly said that he will be listening before the Bill goes back to the Lords for amendment. I think there are amendments that could meet most of the concerns of those who have spoken, and that is what I would like to see before it goes back to the Lords.”
“Only this morning, MI5 confirmed in court that it would authorise one of its informants to carry out murder as part of its activities. So much, frankly, for the safeguards of the Human Rights Act. If MI5 is willing to say that in court, where in this exercise is the protection of the Human Rights Act, which was the Government’s defence last time and, indeed, the Minister’s defence today? There is a real need for legislation in this area; I agree about that with pretty much everybody who has spoken. This is better in law than in some standard written inside an agency, with all the influences that being inside an agency brings to bear on it. There is a need for legislation, but this legislation is, bluntly, thrown together. In many ways, it incorporates some of the worst elements of the preceding arrangements, which need to be put right.”
“Members, particularly those on the Intelligence and Security Committee—who have close involvement with this issue, and whose experience I recognise—has to be put up against one test: if it is impossible for us, why is it not impossible for Australia, America and Canada? They can operate; why can’t we? The Government have to answer that question, otherwise I think they will find that this Bill will not stand. There are real risks to providing these powers without limit. At the end of last year, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner reported that he had identified several weaknesses in MI6’s agent-running practices in the UK, leading to several errors, and, even worse, that high-risk covert agents had indulged in serious criminality overseas.”
“It mirrors an amendment I tabled in Committee in the Commons, and if the CHIS Bill becomes law without those limits, it is almost certain to be challenged in the courts and may eventually be overturned. This will not be the first time we have been here: those who have been here for some years will remember the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, which went through the same process. Tom Watson and I took it to court; we won, and the Government had to rewrite it. I hope we do not have to do the same with this Bill—it would be unwise to repeat that experience. Let me explain why that is a risk. The argument made by some hon.”
“Our Five Eyes security partners recognise the need for limits. Australia, Canada, and nowadays America all have common-sense limits on what their covert agents can do to prevent this line from being crossed. We must now do the same. Lord Carlile of Berriew, who frankly is a long-standing opponent of mine in these things—he mostly takes the authoritarian state line, despite the fact that he is nominally a liberal—has described this Bill as the most constitutionally dangerous legislation presented in his working life. I agree, which is why I support Lords amendment 2, which places clear, common-sense limits on the crimes that covert agents can be authorised to commit, ensuring that the worst crimes such as murder, torture and rape can never be authorised.”
“In its current form, the Bill also allows organisations to permit their employees and informants to commit criminal activity, with no express limit on the crimes that can be authorised—a point addressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. In my view, this lack of an express limit is wrong. It can never be right for the state to authorise the gravest of crimes—we are talking about a narrow group of crimes here: torture, murder, or sexual violence—yet that is precisely what this Bill will do if left unamended. I am as sceptical about the human rights protections as my right hon. Friend, but for different reasons, and I will explain why. For a start, allowing this type of behaviour puts us out of step with our international allies.”
“Do we really want to give such arbitrary and unfettered powers to such agencies? I, for one, do not under any circumstances. Amendment 4 would limit the deployment of child spies to exceptional circumstances, where all other methods to gain information have failed, and only if there is no risk of any reasonably foreseeable harm. We are not talking about MI5 or MI6 here, but about police agencies that are dealing with people, no doubt in county lines operations, sex trafficking operations and so on. Their first duty is to rescue the child, so it is an entirely sensible amendment, which I will support. It introduces real, meaningful safeguards that have been endorsed by the Children’s Commissioner. However, on its own, amendment 4 is not enough.”
“The result was that the child involved was the witness to a murder, and not just the witness: she was effectively coerced by her circumstance into helping to cover up the murder, having to hide the evidence and so on. This was a youngster who had been a product of the care system, who had bounced from authority to authority—as we have seen happen in so many terrible cases—yet she was left in these circumstances in pursuit of getting more information about the criminal she was under the control of. The Bill also raises the possibility of 16 and 17-year-olds being authorised by any of a number of different agencies to spy on their parents. These agencies include police forces and the intelligence services, but it also extends to the others that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) referred to earlier.”
“The Investigatory Powers Commissioner has already confirmed that child spies can themselves often be part of violent gangs, or continuing victims—continuing: that is the important point—of child sexual abuse, when they are recruited as intelligence sources. We should normally be seeking to move heaven and earth to remove these children from their horrible situations. Instead, the Bill would allow them to be sent back into harm’s way with minimal safeguards in place. I am speaking from memory here, so I hope I get this exactly right, but in the other place, an example was given of a 17-year-old who was basically sold for sex to a variety of people, along with a number of other young women and children—legally, children—under one of these CHIS arrangements, and this was allowed to continue.”
“I have sympathy with many of the Lords amendments, but the business before us today contains, in my view, two vital amendments passed in the other place: Lords amendment 4, concerning the use of children as agents; and Lords amendment 2, placing limits on the type of crime that can be sanctioned. Both are entirely sensible amendments that significantly improve the Bill. Let me start with child spies. The use of children as undercover informants is, in my view, very largely a morally repugnant policy. It results in children being put in dangerous positions during the investigation of serious and violent crimes with, frankly, minimal safeguards in place.”
“That is the one with the so-called licence-to-kill clause—the 007 clause, section 7 of that Act—which explicitly permits the action of the agencies to commit crimes under English law, but with restrictions and ministerial oversight built into it. Nevertheless, this Bill, unamended, in my view goes too far, as is demonstrated by the fact that the amendments in front of us today were voted for in the Lords by a past Cabinet Secretary, a past Home Office permanent secretary, a past Foreign Office permanent secretary, a past National Security Adviser, a past Director of Public Prosecutions and a past reviewer of our counter-terrorism legislation—every single one of them more familiar at a close and tactical level than any Minister serving in Government. That is not meant as an insult; it is just a fact of life.”
“That is the origin of this Bill; that is where it comes from. So what did the Government do? They cobbled together all the existing practices of their various police, intelligence and other agencies, good and bad—there were both good and bad—and set out to put them into law. That is not just theoretically problematic; it does not work perfectly today. For example, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner uncovered a case a couple of years ago where an MI6 agent or informant clearly very seriously broke the law, in breach of the guidelines he had been given, and the agency did not even inform the Minister before it carried on and allowed him to do the same again. I am not prissy about the operation of our intelligence and police agencies. I was one of the Ministers who took through this House the Intelligence Services Act 1994.”
“May I, too, start by paying proper credit to the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire)? James is a very old friend, a very long-standing colleague and an old protégé of mine. I spoke to him only a few days ago, and I have to tell the House that, given the seriousness of the operation that he is facing, he is both calmer and braver than I would be. We wish him well. The origins of this Bill are, to say the least, somewhat doubtful. It started out with a circumstance where the state faced the prospect of being taken to the English courts over its current practice of giving many state agencies, including the Food Standards Agency, the right to authorise any criminal activity by their informants or agents, and having that power taken away from it.”
“I do not think that my right hon. Friend was in the Chamber for the beginning of my speech, because I was going to refer to him and tell him that I did not agree with him that the Blairite approach to terrorism worked at all. Indeed, I think it made it considerably worse. In my speech I listed a whole series of people—the Home Office, the Foreign Office, security and prosecution specialists—who knew their way around this like the back of their hand, and they were not making the recommendations because they thought they needed to uphold some civil liberty. They were making the recommendations because they thought that what they were proposing worked better than what the Government were proposing, and that is what I think, too.”
“I knew my right hon. Friend would liven up the debate. The test is not the test of authority. It is an empirical test. America, Australia and the other Five Eyes all have these limitations, and their intelligence agencies seem to work perfectly well.”
“Over a year ago, one of my constituents had her complaint accepted for investigation by the independent case examiner. Today, she is still waiting for that investigation to start. She is a single parent and is now without universal credit or tax credits for her children. This kind of hardship is often the situation for those taking their cases to the independent case examiner, and the delay is not uncommon. The average time between a complaint being accepted by the examiner and an outcome being provided is a year and a half. That is completely unacceptable, so can the Secretary of State urgently look into the operation of the case examiner and drastically reduce waiting times and ensure that complainants are properly supported throughout the complaints process?”
“Asymmetric, ineffective and fundamentally unfair on British citizens, it is a terrible flaw in our own justice system. The previous Labour Administration approached the treaty as though their duty was first and foremost to support the wishes of our American friends, not to safeguard the rights of UK citizens.”
“Before I enter into the subject, let me say that it was amusing to see the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) rush to his place. He is a friend, but he is also standing in for a great friend of mine, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is an old friend and old protégé of mine. As we all know, he is away ill, and I take this opportunity to wish him the best of luck in his treatment and a rapid return to the Chamber. As you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have consulted with the Clerks, and what I have to say will skirt very carefully around the sub judice rules. Since we agreed the UK-US extradition treaty in 2003, it has been abundantly clear that the British Government of the day struck a truly dreadful deal.”
“We must give our citizens the protection, certainty and justice that they deserve and that our judicial system has a proud history of upholding.”
“Businesses developed by brilliant British inventors and scientists will look to merge and co-operate with or sell to big American companies in the bigger American market. If the current extradition treaty stands, every one of them could face American extraterritorial legal actions and a legal system stacked against them. In the interests of both countries, that must change. The Extradition Act not only touches the lives of renowned political actors and international business executives; it also impacts families such as Harry Dunn’s. If the American Government insist on trying to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction in their interest, perhaps we should mimic Israel and refuse to extradite British citizens for anything other than serious crimes of violence and terrorism.”
“My speech today is, entirely properly, sharply constrained to avoid mention of half a dozen extant cases in the interest of not biasing justice. The US justice system as applied to foreign suspects is not normal justice as we understand it here in the United Kingdom. My argument to the Minister—and I am not expecting a great reply today—is that we must rethink the entire relationship with the United States on extradition. We must navigate a constructive path forward for both countries based on arrangements that are balanced, fair and reciprocal. We should remember that we are friends, not enemies; allies, not rivals. This is particularly important as we seek to embark on a new trading relationship. In the next decade, our two countries will develop even closer commercial relationships.”
“In effect, high-profile defendants in the US face trial by media, as well as trial by jury. That has been laid bare in a string of cases, most famously that of O. J. Simpson, but perhaps most perniciously in the case of the Central Park Five, which is not so well known here but is well known in the United States. That case led to a miscarriage of justice for 13 years—that person was in jail for 13 years, and he was eventually exonerated. Let us compare that with the UK. As you reminded me at the beginning of the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Contempt of Court Act 1981 safeguards the presumption of innocence by preventing anything from being published that prejudices ongoing trials. Indeed, it is those protections that prevent me from discussing cases relevant to the debate that are sub judice.”