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Mr. Forth: I am, as ever, grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and--for the reasons that you gave--shall not be tempted on this occasion to deal with the issue that my right hon. Friend has raised.
I am trying to establish the extent to which the information that would flow from new clause 2 should be expected to give rise to consequent action, as that is germane to our consideration of the detailed information that new clause 2 proposes should be provided. It would be helpful if we could have some guidance on the matter from either the hon. Member for Stourbridge or the Minister.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, however, has prompted me to ask--I think that, at this stage, it is a legitimate question to ask--whether the Bill's definitions are sufficiently settled for to us rely on the information that would emerge if the new clause were passed.
As we speak, an interdepartmental working group is beavering away on matters that are very closely related to the matters dealt with in the Bill. It would help us if the Minister--on this occasion, the Minister rather than the hon. Member for Stourbridge--told us just what stage the group has reached in it work, and how that work might relate to the information that would emerge from the provisions of the new clause, thereby helping to inform the House of the relevance of the new clause and the information that it would provide.
If we were able to have all that information, hon. Members might conclude that new clause 2 was defective. I am now convincing myself that it is, and that I shall not be able to support it today. However, in the other place--in the light of what has been said today, the guidance that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has given and the comments of the hon. Member for Stourbridge--the proposals in the new clause may be reconsidered, and it may be thought that they are the appropriate means of addressing the issues.
As so often happens at this stage in the consideration of a Bill, we are debating a very important idea that has not been dealt with fully in an amendment. That is my conclusion on the new clause.
I believe that the new clause is on to something very important. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has raised an important issue, but I am not--for the reasons that I have given--entirely happy with the way in which it would operate. However, I hope that, when the Minister answers some of the questions that have been asked, we will find a way of implementing the principle behind the new clause, and thus improve the Bill.
Jackie Ballard (Taunton):
I shall be brief, not only because I am losing my voice, but because I should like to ensure that the Bill makes progress today. I shall therefore not feel it necessary to speak to every amendment that is moved.
I share the widespread view that the Bill was improved greatly in Committee, where the core of our debate was a wish to ensure that the legislation generally provides greater protection to children, but not at the expense of
denying basic rights, especially employment rights, to innocent people--I repeat, innocent people, as that is what matters. We all want to remove, so far as possible, any risk of abuse of children.
As other hon. Members have said, we had very constructive debates in Committee. I particularly welcome acceptance of the need to include in the Bill a time limit between an individual's initial inclusion on the list and the exercise of his or her right to be heard at an appeal. In the time such people are on the list, they are unable to find any work in the profession of their choice. Moreover, the longer they are on the list, the less likely it is that they will be able to find other work in child care, even if they are ultimately found to be completely innocent of any charges. People tend to believe that "there's no smoke without fire" and to ask, "What were you doing for that year or more?" I therefore very much welcome the decision to include such a limit in the Bill.
I welcome also the Minister's hope that the determination of appeals will be dealt with well within the nine-month limit, and that the limit will not be thought of only as a target--as, despite the best of intentions, so often happens when a limit is provided in legislation.
New clause 2 helpfully raises some important issues. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Stourbridge(Ms Shipley) thinks that it is helpful, although I understand her problems in having to temper her desires with the ministerial reality of the Government's views on the matter. However, new clause 2 would enable Parliament to monitor the Bill's progress, after it becomes an Act, by providing information on the number of people included in the list, how provisional listing worked in practice and the efficiency and effectiveness of the tribunal process.
The hon. Member for Stourbridge seemed to take the view that the new clause was too prescriptive, and that it would perhaps limit opportunities for Parliament to scrutinise progress on the Act's implementation. I do not think of it in those terms. A statutory provision requiring Ministers to report in 18 months' time does not mean that, in 18 months or more, a Minister cannot lay before Parliament a report providing more relevant information. I should hope that "open government" entails the Government's wish to provide the most comprehensive progress reports on legislation that they can provide, and that Ministers will not feel constrained in reporting by what the House thought was most important at a specific time.
I therefore hope that at least the spirit of new clause 2 will find its way into future deliberations on the Bill in the other place, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply.
Mr. Maclean:
I give new clause 2 my provisional support, although I am concerned that it may not go far enough to deal with some of the issues that we have touched on this morning.
First, I should like to comment briefly on the Bill as it has emerged from Committee. We often say, particularly on Fridays, that the Bill under consideration has been wonderfully improved in Committee. Over the past 15 years, I can certainly recall occasions when the use of that terminology has been slightly optimistic. Of course, no hon. Members have told untruths about the extent to
which a Bill has been improved, but they may have exaggerated the importance of the one or two technical amendments that have been made.
Today's Bill is in a different category altogether, as is clear from the five sittings of the Standing Committee. On Fridays, we are often asked to make amendments and consider new clauses on a Bill that was bounced through Committee in half an hour and, we are told, wonderfully improved. However, in this case I congratulate the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) and the hon. Members on the Standing Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond).
I now turn more specifically to the new clause and to the libertarian issues that concern me, including some of the arguments advanced by Liberty. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), who, unusually, is not in his place today, for tabling amendments that the hon. Member for Stourbridge was sensible and gracious enough to accept and have improved the Bill. They dealt with the point relating to incompetence, which was one of the main concerns expressed on Second Reading.
Nevertheless, it is possible for a good Bill such as this one, which is better than when it was last before the House, to be improved further. I am not sure that it is perfect legislation, but I can see fewer dangers with it than with the so-called perfect Dangerous Dogs Act 1989. No doubt, if we had had a report after 18 months of the operation of the Dangerous Dogs Act, we might have concluded that there was scope to amend it earlier than we did.
I hope that the Minister will not advance the argument that there should not be a reporting requirement, and that his defensive briefing, written by any of the two or three Departments that may have an interest in the Bill or in the new clause, does not include the advice, "For goodness sake, Minister, do not offer an annual review. Imagine the mess that we will be in if the Bill turns out to be as bad as the Dangerous Dogs Act. We will all be very embarrassed."
I am fairly certain that that is not in the Minister's briefing, but, if he has been advised not to accept a reporting requirement because it may be immature and expose some inadequacies in the Bill, that is not a good enough argument. I seek a reporting procedure not to try to discover any inadequacies in the Bill, so that we can catch the Government out and say that they did not protect children as perfectly as they could have, but because we want to see whether general trends emerge in what the abusers are doing and how they are operating the law and spot potential gaps and loopholes.
The hon. Member for Stourbridge and the Government have admitted that the Bill is not the be-all and end-all, but is only one in a comprehensive series of measures designed to tighten up loopholes in earlier legislation and to ratchet up the measures against those who abuse children.
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