Helen Goodman:
I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s view. However, there are some organisations and institutions in the modern world that have an interest in undermining democracy. There are large global corporations that do
27 Jan 2014 : Column 675
not wish to be accountable to any legal framework, whether European or domestic. It is vital that we build a sense of responsibility and citizenship among our citizens, particularly our young people.
Mr Redwood: If the hon. Lady is such an advocate of democratic engagement on Europe, why will her party not give the British people a vote on whether they want to stay in it?
Helen Goodman: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, that is a completely different issue and is not what we are discussing today. In fact, I am not even sure whether dilating on the matter would be in order, and I do not wish to cut across the Chair.
It is sensible for there to be education on the EU institutions, particularly for young people. The themes of the projects listed in the introduction to the unnumbered regulation are not as hon. Members have described. They are:
“education, vocational training and youth, sport, culture and the audiovisual sector, fundamental rights and freedoms, social inclusion, gender equality, combating discrimination, research and innovation, information society, enlargement and the external action of the Union.”
4.45 pm
Mr Andrew Turner: Is the hon. Lady saying that European law permits anyone, on either side of the Europe debate, to get money from Europe, or is it limited to people who are in favour of Europe?
Helen Goodman: If the hon. Gentleman will allow, I will come on to that point and ask the Minister some questions about the process and scope for amending the regulation.
Hon. Members should find article 2 of the regulation encouraging. Its aim is to
“encourage democratic and civic participation of citizens at Union level, by developing citizens’ understanding of the Union policy making-process and promoting opportunities for societal”
“engagement and volunteering at Union level.”
That is not the vision some Government Members are presenting.
I turn now to amendment 3, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I think he did some philosophy at university. He is trying to prove a negative here. There is no way the Government can say whether a piece of expenditure would influence elections to the European Parliament. It is logically impossible to do what he asks. It is important to remember that the money is not for political parties.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Will the hon. Lady therefore explain the European Movement putting out a leaflet specifically attacking UKIP in an election period? That is party political funding from the EU.
Helen Goodman: With the information available to him, the hon. Gentleman cannot show that money from the European Parliament funded that leaflet. As he knows, the European Movement has a whole array of sources of funding.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 676
Chris Heaton-Harris: Let us try something else. I have here a list of organisations that received money in 2007 for the purposes of fostering European citizenship. How about the European Liberal Forum, which received €107,000 that year? Was that political?
Helen Goodman: The hon. Gentleman’s point is not pertinent to the discussion, because the question is this: how will money be spent in the future? The Minister should tell us what measures he will take to prevent it from going to such political organisations. On Second Reading, I asked him many questions that I hope he will answer this afternoon. What will the application process be? Who will get the money? How can we spread it across the whole country, not just organisations that have been habitual beneficiaries, so as to spread an understanding of Europe? Government Members display such understanding in great measure, but they are much better informed about the mechanisms of the EU than most people in this country, and I do not understand why they want to keep this knowledge to themselves. It is profoundly undemocratic.
I agreed, however, with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) when he raised the issue of money going to non-EU member states under the theme of enlargement and work. It seems to me that whereas we have settled European policies on, for example, education and culture, enlargement is much more contentious.
That brings me to my next point. I am not going to ask the Minister what the process would be if he wanted to veto the regulation, because it is patently absurd to say that because we have a veto, we should use it. There are other matters relating to Europe that I think it would be far more important to veto than this. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are tempting me down a path down which I think it would be wrong for me to go. What I want to ask the Minister is this: what would be the process for amending the regulation, rather than rejecting it in its entirety? We need to get on with some of this work, and we do not want too much delay.
Mr Vaizey: There is no process for amending the regulation. We would have to vote it down and then start again.
Helen Goodman: I am grateful to the Minister for that information.
There are weaknesses in the regulation, such as the one identified by the hon. Member for Bury North, but I think it entirely reasonable for us to have a process allowing voluntary organisations to bid for funds so that people can learn about the European Union. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has provided extremely positive feedback on the grants. It refers to
“Support for participation and democratic engagement. People’s wellbeing…employment, social cohesion and sustainable development. Impact of EU policies in societies”.
What could be more neutral than that? The NCVO also refers to
“Exchange of expertise…Building capacity of voluntary and community organisations.”
Conservative Members claim to support the big society, but now they seem to want to vote down money that would promote it. Finally, the NCVO refers to
“Establishing links between local authorities and community organisations in different countries”.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 677
Although there are weaknesses in the regulation, I think that the positives outweigh the problems raised by Conservative Members.
I should like the Minister to answer these questions. What will the application system be? How will he ensure that the money goes to groups throughout the country, and is not concentrated on small and highly politicised groups? I should also like to know whether he has discovered the answer to the question I asked him earlier about the archiving: why are we locking up the European documents for 30 years—which is what we do with documents in London—and who will have access to them in the meantime?
Mr Vaizey: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
We had a lively Second Reading debate on the Bill last week, and I commented at the time that the Chamber was full of the House’s most prominent European experts. I think it slightly unfortunate—although I do not blame anyone in particular—that today’s debate falls at the same time as the annual parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. Members will be aware that the Council of Europe advertises itself as an organisation consisting of 47 countries and 820 million citizens. I gather than some of our leading experts on Europe are in Athens, debating matters of European import. It is interesting that their expertise is being put to good use.
Mr Redwood: Is the Minister a little disappointed that despite the absence of some of our experts, there are still plenty here to tease him?
Mr Vaizey: I merely note that the experts who were present for the Second Reading debate are experts on so many European matters that they are spread thinly, but able to participate in important European debates wherever they may take place in Europe. There arises from that an important point, which was made by the hon. Member for Hornchurch. [Hon. Members: “Leyton and Wanstead.”] I mean the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer).
Debates such as this are sometimes painted in black and white. It is suggested that if one opposes an initiative from the European Union, one is anti-European, and if one supports it, one is fanatically pro-European, but things are actually much more subtle than that. I think we are all pro-Europeans in this House. It is just that some of us are more critical than others of the European Union and its regulations and assemblies.
We are debating two important amendments tabled by two of our foremost European experts. For clarity, I should say that we are debating only the Europe for Citizens programme. The archive measure appears to be relatively uncontroversial—I say that advisedly—and therefore able to be passed without much comment. The amendments seek to do two things. Amendment 4 seeks simply to limit what the money from the programme can be spent on, so that it could be spent only on events commemorating the holocaust and other events in Europe, particularly those relating to the impact of totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and autocracies on their citizens. Amendment 3 seeks to ensure that any money given out by the programme would not interfere with a European
27 Jan 2014 : Column 678
election or any subsequent referendum. I hope that, once the Opposition stop playing their silly games, we will have the referendum that this country deserves. I know that many Labour Members desire that referendum and will do all they can to persuade the leadership of their party to hold one.
On amendment 4, I understand the desire of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) to make his point as forcefully as possible, but I repeat what I said on Second Reading, which was that it will always be possible to find organisations with which one disagrees receiving money from a grant-giving programme. My hon. Friend has made it clear that there are certain organisations with which he disagrees, along with others with which he agrees. He was humble enough not to propose a Heaton-Harris Europe for Citizens fund, however. He simply told us about the organisations with which he disagreed.
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead talked about grants for swivel-eyed Eurocrats. I challenge him to tell us whether he puts the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, Community Service Volunteers or the National Council for Voluntary Organisations into that category. The ACEVO has stated:
“The Europe for Citizens Programme allows British civil society organisations…to build capacity for the sector in the UK”
“provides opportunities to promote the agenda for social enterprise and social investment”
which this Government have pioneered. It also points out that the UK is now seen as a leader around the world in that regard.
Community Service Volunteers talks about securing funding in partnership with other organisations across Europe, including its Danish partner, FIC, and Croatian organisations. It is applying for a grant to commence on 1 April. The NCVO says that the Europe for Citizens programme exists to support citizens and community organisations in learning from each other across Europe and enables UK organisations to benefit from the best expertise across Europe and to develop their own links to work across borders.
Mr Bone: If the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) is not approved today, will the public not think that Members have voted, on Holocaust memorial day, against providing extra money for the remembrance of the holocaust? Would that not be shocking?
Mr Vaizey: I would not use the word “shocking” to describe an amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry. I shall be visiting his constituency next Monday, and I look forward to supporting his important work at the Royal and Derngate theatre. What would be disappointing, however, is that the amendment would effectively vote down the regulation. We cannot amend the regulation, so if we cannot agree to it, it would be voted down and we would have to renegotiate it.
I do not want to make points about the holocaust that might be seen as party political. Nor do I seek to undermine my hon. Friend’s amendment, because he has tabled it in good faith. He has pointed out, however, that today is Holocaust memorial day, and he will be
27 Jan 2014 : Column 679
aware that the Europe for Citizens programme has funded our national Holocaust Centre and museum. They have written to us to say that the funding enabled them to develop the History Speaks programme, which has provided the world’s first online resource for young people centred on the testimony of holocaust survivors. I have made the point that we negotiated an increase in this budget for holocaust commemorations and commemorations of the impact of totalitarian regimes. I also made the point on Second Reading that we have reduced the overall budget for the programme. We reduced by 7% not only the whole European budget, but the budget for this programme. More money will be spent on commemorations of the holocaust and other such events within a reduced budget. It amounts to about £1 million to £1.5 million from this Government.
John Cryer: On a point of information, I am the Member for Leyton and Wanstead. I used to be the Member for Hornchurch until I was ejected by an ungrateful electorate—I do not really mean that. However, the point I want to make is that a number of organisations that get money from this programme are specifically integrationist organisations that want to see a closer and more centralised European Union. Presumably, if this scheme were to be even-handed, as the chairman of Labour for a Referendum, I could apply for a grant for that organisation.
Mr Vaizey: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. As I understand it, article 6, which covers access to the programme, says:
“The programme shall be open to all stakeholders promoting European citizenship and integration, in particular local and regional authorities and organisations, twinning committees, European public policy research organisations (think-tanks), civil society organisations (including survivors' associations), and cultural, youth, educational and research organisations.”
It does not exclude the organisation mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. He could argue that he was promoting European citizenship and integration by promoting the reform of the European Union. The article does not talk about signing up to the European Union.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked me to monitor the programmes and the grants that are made. Those grants are made by different organisations; all are free to apply. There is no ban on people applying to this fund. They can apply to the European Commission. I will not hold their hand. The fund is there. She can advertise it. I can advertise it on my website. Parliament and the Commission can advertise it. North Tyneside council applied and got money for the Friendship games in 2012. Thetford Twinning Association applied and got funding for Governance in the 21st Century: Sharing International Perspectives. The London borough of Enfield applied and got funding for the European twin town senior citizen network, which was led by Enfield’s over-50 forum. It brought together older people from Enfield, Courbevoie, Halandri in Greece and Gladbeck in Germany. Wigan council got funding for 2020 Together.
I have made it absolutely clear that the amendments would end up defeating the regulation. They would delay funding for important commemoration projects and projects that commemorate the horrific impact of totalitarian regimes in Europe. My hon. Friends may think that there are some individual organisations that
27 Jan 2014 : Column 680
should not receive funding, but there are many other organisations, particularly twinning organisations, that have received funding and that we should support. The Government secured a significant reduction in the budget for this programme, as we did with the overall budget. The amount is about £1 million to £1.5 million a year. We should support the measure, and we certainly should not veto it.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I wish to press my amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee divided:
Ayes 37, Noes 243.
Division No. 193]
[
5.3 pm
AYES
Afriyie, Adam
Baker, Steve
Bingham, Andrew
Bridgen, Andrew
Burns, Conor
Carswell, Mr Douglas
Cryer, John
Davies, Philip
Drax, Richard
Goldsmith, Zac
Heaton-Harris, Chris
Henderson, Gordon
Hoey, Kate
Holloway, Mr Adam
Howarth, Sir Gerald
Jackson, Mr Stewart
Jenkin, Mr Bernard
Kelly, Chris
Lewis, Dr Julian
Main, Mrs Anne
McCartney, Jason
McCartney, Karl
Nuttall, Mr David
Redwood, rh Mr John
Rees-Mogg, Jacob
Robertson, Mr Laurence
Sheerman, Mr Barry
Shepherd, Sir Richard
Simpson, David
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Stewart, Bob
Stringer, Graham
Tapsell, rh Sir Peter
Turner, Mr Andrew
Walker, Mr Charles
Whittingdale, Mr John
Wiggin, Bill
Tellers for the Ayes:
Mr Philip Hollobone
and
Mr Peter Bone
NOES
Aldous, Peter
Alexander, rh Danny
Amess, Mr David
Andrew, Stuart
Arbuthnot, rh Mr James
Baker, Norman
Baldry, rh Sir Tony
Baldwin, Harriett
Barker, rh Gregory
Barwell, Gavin
Bebb, Guto
Bellingham, Mr Henry
Benyon, Richard
Beresford, Sir Paul
Berry, Jake
Birtwistle, Gordon
Blackman, Bob
Blackwood, Nicola
Boles, Nick
Bottomley, Sir Peter
Bradley, Karen
Brake, rh Tom
Brazier, Mr Julian
Brokenshire, James
Brooke, Annette
Browne, Mr Jeremy
Bruce, Fiona
Bruce, rh Sir Malcolm
Buckland, Mr Robert
Burstow, rh Paul
Burt, rh Alistair
Burt, Lorely
Cable, rh Vince
Cairns, Alun
Campbell, rh Sir Menzies
Carmichael, Neil
Chishti, Rehman
Clark, rh Greg
Clegg, rh Mr Nick
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Coffey, Dr Thérèse
Collins, Damian
Colvile, Oliver
Crabb, Stephen
Crockart, Mike
Crouch, Tracey
Davey, rh Mr Edward
Davies, Glyn
Dinenage, Caroline
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan
Doyle-Price, Jackie
Duddridge, James
Duncan, rh Mr Alan
Duncan Smith, rh Mr Iain
Dunne, Mr Philip
Ellis, Michael
Ellison, Jane
Elphicke, Charlie
Eustice, George
Evennett, Mr David
Fabricant, Michael
Fallon, rh Michael
Field, Mark
Foster, rh Mr Don
Fox, rh Dr Liam
Francois, rh Mr Mark
Freeman, George
Freer, Mike
Fullbrook, Lorraine
Fuller, Richard
Garnier, Mark
Gauke, Mr David
George, Andrew
Gilbert, Stephen
Glen, John
Goodwill, Mr Robert
Graham, Richard
Grant, Mrs Helen
Grayling, rh Chris
Green, rh Damian
Greening, rh Justine
Grieve, rh Mr Dominic
Griffiths, Andrew
Gummer, Ben
Gyimah, Mr Sam
Halfon, Robert
Hames, Duncan
Hammond, rh Mr Philip
Hammond, Stephen
Hancock, Matthew
Hands, Greg
Harper, Mr Mark
Harris, Rebecca
Hart, Simon
Harvey, Sir Nick
Haselhurst, rh Sir Alan
Hayes, rh Mr John
Heald, Oliver
Heath, Mr David
Hendry, Charles
Herbert, rh Nick
Hinds, Damian
Hoban, Mr Mark
Hollingbery, George
Hopkins, Kris
Howell, John
Hughes, rh Simon
Hunt, rh Mr Jeremy
Huppert, Dr Julian
Hurd, Mr Nick
James, Margot
Johnson, Gareth
Johnson, Joseph
Jones, Andrew
Jones, rh Mr David
Jones, Mr Marcus
Kawczynski, Daniel
Kirby, Simon
Kwarteng, Kwasi
Lamb, Norman
Lancaster, Mark
Lansley, rh Mr Andrew
Latham, Pauline
Laws, rh Mr David
Leadsom, Andrea
Lee, Dr Phillip
Leech, Mr John
Lefroy, Jeremy
Leslie, Charlotte
Letwin, rh Mr Oliver
Lewis, Brandon
Lidington, rh Mr David
Lilley, rh Mr Peter
Llwyd, rh Mr Elfyn
Lord, Jonathan
Loughton, Tim
Macleod, Mary
Maude, rh Mr Francis
Maynard, Paul
McIntosh, Miss Anne
McLoughlin, rh Mr Patrick
McVey, Esther
Menzies, Mark
Metcalfe, Stephen
Miller, rh Maria
Mitchell, rh Mr Andrew
Mordaunt, Penny
Morgan, Nicky
Morris, Anne Marie
Morris, David
Morris, James
Mosley, Stephen
Mowat, David
Mulholland, Greg
Mundell, rh David
Murray, Sheryll
Murrison, Dr Andrew
Newmark, Mr Brooks
Newton, Sarah
Nokes, Caroline
Norman, Jesse
O'Brien, rh Mr Stephen
Ollerenshaw, Eric
Opperman, Guy
Ottaway, rh Sir Richard
Parish, Neil
Patel, Priti
Paterson, rh Mr Owen
Pawsey, Mark
Penning, Mike
Penrose, John
Phillips, Stephen
Pickles, rh Mr Eric
Pincher, Christopher
Poulter, Dr Daniel
Prisk, Mr Mark
Pritchard, Mark
Pugh, John
Raab, Mr Dominic
Randall, rh Sir John
Reid, Mr Alan
Rifkind, rh Sir Malcolm
Robathan, rh Mr Andrew
Robertson, rh Hugh
Rogerson, Dan
Rudd, Amber
Rutley, David
Sanders, Mr Adrian
Sandys, Laura
Scott, Mr Lee
Selous, Andrew
Shapps, rh Grant
Sharma, Alok
Sheerman, Mr Barry
Shelbrooke, Alec
Simpson, Mr Keith
Skidmore, Chris
Smith, Henry
Smith, Julian
Smith, Sir Robert
Soubry, Anna
Spelman, rh Mrs Caroline
Spencer, Mr Mark
Stanley, rh Sir John
Stephenson, Andrew
Stevenson, John
Stewart, Iain
Stewart, Rory
Streeter, Mr Gary
Stride, Mel
Stuart, Mr Graham
Stunell, rh Sir Andrew
Swayne, rh Mr Desmond
Syms, Mr Robert
Teather, Sarah
Thornton, Mike
Timpson, Mr Edward
Tomlinson, Justin
Tredinnick, David
Truss, Elizabeth
Tyrie, Mr Andrew
Uppal, Paul
Vaizey, Mr Edward
Vara, Mr Shailesh
Villiers, rh Mrs Theresa
Walker, Mr Robin
Wallace, Mr Ben
Webb, Steve
Wharton, James
Wheeler, Heather
White, Chris
Whittaker, Craig
Willetts, rh Mr David
Williams, Hywel
Williamson, Gavin
Willott, Jenny
Wilson, Mr Rob
Wollaston, Dr Sarah
Wright, Jeremy
Wright, Simon
Yeo, Mr Tim
Young, rh Sir George
Zahawi, Nadhim
Tellers for the Noes:
Anne Milton
and
Claire Perry
Question accordingly negatived.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 681
27 Jan 2014 : Column 682
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Extent, commencement and short title
Amendment proposed: 3, page 1, line 16, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
‘(2) Except as provided for under subsection (2A), the provisions of this Act come into force on the day on which it is passed.
(2A) Section 1 comes into force in relation to the draft decision to adopt the Council Regulation establishing for the period 2014-2020 the programme ‘Europe for Citizens’ (document number 12557/13) on whatever day the Secretary of State appoints by order made by statutory instrument.
(2B) The Secretary of State may only make an order under subsection (2A) if—
(a) he has laid a statement before both Houses of Parliament stating that no expenditure can take place under ‘Europe for Citizens’ that could influence any European Parliamentary election or referendum in the year prior to such an election or referendum, and
(b) a draft of the order has been laid before and approved by both Houses of Parliament.’.—(Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The
Committee
divided:
Ayes 36, Noes 240.
Division No. 194]
[
5.16 pm
AYES
Baker, Steve
Bingham, Andrew
Blackman, Bob
Bridgen, Andrew
Burns, Conor
Carswell, Mr Douglas
Cryer, John
Davies, Philip
Drax, Richard
Goldsmith, Zac
Heaton-Harris, Chris
Henderson, Gordon
Hoey, Kate
Howarth, Sir Gerald
Jackson, Mr Stewart
Jenkin, Mr Bernard
Kelly, Chris
Lewis, Dr Julian
Main, Mrs Anne
McCartney, Jason
McCartney, Karl
Nuttall, Mr David
Redwood, rh Mr John
Rees-Mogg, Jacob
Robertson, Mr Laurence
Shepherd, Sir Richard
Simpson, David
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Smith, Henry
Stewart, Bob
Stringer, Graham
Tapsell, rh Sir Peter
Turner, Mr Andrew
Walker, Mr Charles
Whittingdale, Mr John
Wiggin, Bill
Tellers for the Ayes:
Mr Philip Hollobone
and
Mr Peter Bone
NOES
Adams, Nigel
Afriyie, Adam
Aldous, Peter
Alexander, rh Danny
Amess, Mr David
Andrew, Stuart
Arbuthnot, rh Mr James
Baker, Norman
Baldry, rh Sir Tony
Baldwin, Harriett
Barker, rh Gregory
Barwell, Gavin
Bebb, Guto
Bellingham, Mr Henry
Benyon, Richard
Beresford, Sir Paul
Berry, Jake
Birtwistle, Gordon
Blackwood, Nicola
Boles, Nick
Bottomley, Sir Peter
Bradley, Karen
Brake, rh Tom
Brazier, Mr Julian
Brokenshire, James
Brooke, Annette
Browne, Mr Jeremy
Bruce, Fiona
Bruce, rh Sir Malcolm
Buckland, Mr Robert
Burstow, rh Paul
Burt, rh Alistair
Burt, Lorely
Cable, rh Vince
Cairns, Alun
Campbell, rh Sir Menzies
Carmichael, Neil
Chishti, Rehman
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Coffey, Dr Thérèse
Collins, Damian
Colvile, Oliver
Crabb, Stephen
Crockart, Mike
Crouch, Tracey
Davey, rh Mr Edward
Davies, Glyn
Dinenage, Caroline
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan
Doyle-Price, Jackie
Duddridge, James
Duncan, rh Mr Alan
Duncan Smith, rh Mr Iain
Dunne, Mr Philip
Ellis, Michael
Ellison, Jane
Elphicke, Charlie
Eustice, George
Evennett, Mr David
Fabricant, Michael
Fallon, rh Michael
Field, Mark
Foster, rh Mr Don
Fox, rh Dr Liam
Francois, rh Mr Mark
Freeman, George
Freer, Mike
Fullbrook, Lorraine
Fuller, Richard
Garnier, Mark
Gauke, Mr David
George, Andrew
Gilbert, Stephen
Glen, John
Goodwill, Mr Robert
Graham, Richard
Grant, Mrs Helen
Grayling, rh Chris
Green, rh Damian
Greening, rh Justine
Grieve, rh Mr Dominic
Griffiths, Andrew
Gummer, Ben
Gyimah, Mr Sam
Halfon, Robert
Hames, Duncan
Hammond, rh Mr Philip
Hammond, Stephen
Hancock, Matthew
Hands, Greg
Harper, Mr Mark
Harris, Rebecca
Hart, Simon
Harvey, Sir Nick
Haselhurst, rh Sir Alan
Hayes, rh Mr John
Heald, Oliver
Hendry, Charles
Herbert, rh Nick
Hinds, Damian
Hoban, Mr Mark
Hollingbery, George
Holloway, Mr Adam
Hopkins, Kris
Howell, John
Hughes, rh Simon
Hunt, rh Mr Jeremy
Hunter, Mark
Huppert, Dr Julian
Hurd, Mr Nick
James, Margot
Johnson, Gareth
Jones, Andrew
Jones, rh Mr David
Jones, Mr Marcus
Kawczynski, Daniel
Kirby, Simon
Kwarteng, Kwasi
Lamb, Norman
Lancaster, Mark
Lansley, rh Mr Andrew
Latham, Pauline
Laws, rh Mr David
Leadsom, Andrea
Lee, Dr Phillip
Leech, Mr John
Lefroy, Jeremy
Leslie, Charlotte
Letwin, rh Mr Oliver
Lewis, Brandon
Lidington, rh Mr David
Lilley, rh Mr Peter
Lloyd, Stephen
Llwyd, rh Mr Elfyn
Lord, Jonathan
Loughton, Tim
Macleod, Mary
Maude, rh Mr Francis
Maynard, Paul
McIntosh, Miss Anne
McLoughlin, rh Mr Patrick
McVey, Esther
Menzies, Mark
Metcalfe, Stephen
Miller, rh Maria
Mitchell, rh Mr Andrew
Mordaunt, Penny
Morgan, Nicky
Morris, Anne Marie
Morris, David
Morris, James
Mosley, Stephen
Mowat, David
Mulholland, Greg
Mundell, rh David
Murray, Sheryll
Murrison, Dr Andrew
Newmark, Mr Brooks
Newton, Sarah
Nokes, Caroline
Norman, Jesse
O'Brien, rh Mr Stephen
Ollerenshaw, Eric
Opperman, Guy
Ottaway, rh Sir Richard
Parish, Neil
Patel, Priti
Paterson, rh Mr Owen
Pawsey, Mark
Penning, Mike
Penrose, John
Phillips, Stephen
Pickles, rh Mr Eric
Pincher, Christopher
Poulter, Dr Daniel
Prisk, Mr Mark
Pritchard, Mark
Pugh, John
Raab, Mr Dominic
Randall, rh Sir John
Reid, Mr Alan
Rifkind, rh Sir Malcolm
Robathan, rh Mr Andrew
Robertson, rh Hugh
Rogerson, Dan
Rosindell, Andrew
Rudd, Amber
Rutley, David
Sanders, Mr Adrian
Sandys, Laura
Scott, Mr Lee
Selous, Andrew
Shapps, rh Grant
Sharma, Alok
Shelbrooke, Alec
Simpson, Mr Keith
Skidmore, Chris
Smith, Julian
Smith, Sir Robert
Soubry, Anna
Spelman, rh Mrs Caroline
Spencer, Mr Mark
Stanley, rh Sir John
Stephenson, Andrew
Stevenson, John
Stewart, Iain
Stewart, Rory
Streeter, Mr Gary
Stride, Mel
Stuart, Mr Graham
Stunell, rh Sir Andrew
Swayne, rh Mr Desmond
Syms, Mr Robert
Teather, Sarah
Thornton, Mike
Timpson, Mr Edward
Tomlinson, Justin
Tredinnick, David
Truss, Elizabeth
Tyrie, Mr Andrew
Uppal, Paul
Vaizey, Mr Edward
Villiers, rh Mrs Theresa
Walker, Mr Robin
Ward, Mr David
Webb, Steve
Wharton, James
Wheeler, Heather
White, Chris
Willetts, rh Mr David
Williams, Hywel
Williamson, Gavin
Willott, Jenny
Wilson, Mr Rob
Wollaston, Dr Sarah
Wright, Jeremy
Wright, Simon
Yeo, Mr Tim
Young, rh Sir George
Zahawi, Nadhim
Tellers for the Noes:
Anne Milton
and
Claire Perry
Question accordingly negatived.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 683
27 Jan 2014 : Column 684
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
5.26 pm
Mr Vaizey: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
We have had a lively debate, both on Second Reading and in Committee. Interestingly, the other place, which often lauds itself as the scrutinising and revising Chamber,
27 Jan 2014 : Column 685
spent a grand total of 37 minutes on the Bill, whereas we in this House have now debated it for more than four hours, which goes to show that there is life in this place yet.
As I pointed out on Second Reading, the reason we are able to debate the Bill is the far-sighted reform introduced by the coalition Government in the European Union Act 2011, which ensures that this House has a vote on any treaty passed by the European Union and any measure passed by the European Commission that is not part of an existing treaty. That is because Government Members believe in scrutinising European legislation, in giving elected representatives of the United Kingdom Parliament a say and, through that process and direct democracy, in giving the people of Britain a say in the future shape of Europe.
I afraid that this debate takes place in the shadow of the Opposition’s shameful behaviour in blocking in the other place an important measure to bring in a referendum on our membership of the European Union. I hope that all Opposition Members will take this opportunity on Third Reading to disavow that.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab): The Minister makes a very weak point. Why do the Government not arrange, even with Lib Dem opposition, to give the House a vote, in Government time, on whether there should be a referendum so that the matter can be resolved once and for all and their lordships would not be allowed to veto it?
Mr Vaizey: The hon. Gentleman calls my point weak but then asks me to arrange a vote that this House has already had. The House voted for that Bill, and passed it almost unanimously. If he wants to trade insults about weak points, I think that he should look to his own first.
On the Europe for Citizens programme, which has been the cause of most concern to my hon. Friends, I reiterate the points that I have made again and again. I recognise that I will not necessarily convert those who are implacably opposed to the programme full stop, but I ask them to note that we have succeeded in reducing its size by about 7%, that our contribution is one among 27 others over a period of seven years and that this particular part of it amounts to between £1 million to £1.5 million a year. I also ask them to note that we have increased the proportion of funding for commemorating the holocaust and the impact of totalitarian regimes from 4% to 20%, and that in relation to the 60% of the money about which they are concerned, because it appears in some instances to have gone to organisations that they do not support, the vast majority of it goes to organisations that are perfectly innocuous and simply seek to extend the hand of European friendship across borders on our continent.
Mr Redwood: As the Minister wants the European Union to have extra powers and money in this area, against the advice of some Government Members, on which areas does he want it to spend less and to give back powers?
27 Jan 2014 : Column 686
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): Order. We have to watch that we do not go beyond the scope of the Bill, and I think that the Minister is being tempted down a track that he does not want to go down on Third Reading.
Mr Vaizey: I hear what you say, Mr Deputy Speaker—
Mr Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not want you to hear what I say, but to accept what I say. There is a difference.
Mr Vaizey: When I say that I hear what you say, Mr Deputy Speaker, I mean that I accept what you say. That is my interpretation: if we hear Mr Deputy Speaker speak on a subject, we accept it without question. For the avoidance of doubt, if we encounter each other and I say that I hear what you say, I accept what you say.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not think that we need to progress this: we understand each other. You want to get on with the Third Reading, and I want to hear you. Come on, Minister Vaizey.
Mr Vaizey: I hear what you say, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Then speak!
Mr Vaizey: My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) reminds me of another point, which is that even if the House voted down the regulation —which seems unlikely, given the results of the Divisions—the money would not come back to the UK, but would simply be spent by the European Commission in another way, because it is part of the overall budget.
On my personal preference about what Europe should spend less on, first, Mr Deputy Speaker has made it clear that I should not respond and, secondly, even if I were tempted to do so, I would have to defer to the Prime Minister, who is in the course of evaluating our negotiating position to reduce some of the European Union’s competences. However, as a matter of principle, this Government seek to reduce interference by the European Union.
Another important point is that one should be careful about where one deploys one’s opportunities to veto or block European Union legislation. Many countries across the European Union, particularly in eastern Europe, support the programme because, as new EU members who were freed from the Soviet yoke well within living memory, they see a virtue in educating their populations about the fact that they are citizens of a free and democratic Europe, as well as of their own country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Will the Minister explain what gain Her Majesty’s Government have received from giving in to this?
Mr Vaizey: It is important to work with one’s colleagues in the European Union. In the months and years to come, we will ask a great deal of them—we will put forward forceful arguments about how Europe must change—and, at the negotiating tables in Brussels, I do not want to come across colleagues from other countries who say, “Why should we listen to you, because you simply say no to everything in Europe? Anything that comes across your desk is wrong. You do not believe in the European Union, so why should we listen to you about reform?” We want the chance to have a serious debate about reforming the European Union.
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Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con): Will the Minister give way?
Mr Vaizey: I feel that I may have sparked another area of debate and discussion. I give way to my hon. Friend.
Mrs Main: I am not trying to be unhelpful, but is the Minister saying that this is a bone that we are giving to the EU in the hope that we might get a bigger bone back in the future?
Mr Vaizey: I do not know what my hon. Friend’s definition of unhelpful is. I am sure that voting for an amendment that the Government oppose is not unhelpful. I am simply saying that this is a very small programme that costs us between £1 million and £1.5 million a year, and that the vast majority of the programme supports things that we actively should support, such as commemoration of the holocaust, or other areas that, if one were to be pejorative, might be described as innocuous, such as twinning celebrations.
The serious point is that many eastern European member states will use the programme to support their campaign to remain free and democratic nations as part of a free and democratic Europe. Given that the measure has been supported by all the other member states, I think that we in this House should support it and send those eastern European states a signal that we support the journey that they have taken towards freedom and democracy.
5.36 pm
Helen Goodman: I do not share the Minister’s Panglossian view that our debates today and a fortnight ago have provided effective scrutiny. As he pointed out, it is impossible to change the regulation. When this House deals with other legislation, we can amend it. It would be better if we strengthened the scrutiny of proposals that come from Europe when they can still be changed and when there can still be negotiation. As I am sure the Minister knows, the European Scrutiny Committee has produced a report with a number of suggestions, some quite sensible and some not so sensible, on how we could improve our scrutiny processes. It would be far better if we scrutinised European legislation at a much earlier stage than has been the case today and two weeks ago.
We have reached a consensus about the importance of archiving European documents and putting aside resources to remember the holocaust and other serious human rights abuses that have occurred in Europe, particularly in the past century. Her Majesty’s Opposition believe that it is vital to address the apathy and loss of interest in political processes, particularly among young people. We belong to the European Union, even though many Conservative Members wish that we did not. As long as we belong to it, it is important that people use their rights. This is an opportunity to allow people, especially young people, to learn more about the European Union, which might allow them to exercise their rights.
Graham Stringer:
My hon. Friend puts her finger on an important point in talking about many young people’s disillusionment with and alienation from the political
27 Jan 2014 : Column 688
process. Would it not be more important to engage young people if they could vote for the people who make their laws in the European Commission and throw the rascals out? At the moment, those people are appointed in a very undemocratic way.
Helen Goodman: My hon. Friend tempts me to discuss reform of the European institutions. There is a case for reforming them. Perhaps if more young people had a better understanding of how they work, more of them would take the view that he set out. However, we are in the European Union and we have European elections coming up. It is important that people understand the significance of those elections.
I thought that it was a little churlish of the Minister not to describe the application process more clearly, not just for my benefit, but for the benefit of those who are watching the debate. None the less, that is a small point and I shall not divide the House on Third Reading.
5.39 pm
Jacob Rees-Mogg: This is a dreadful Bill of which Her Majesty’s Government should be deeply ashamed. They should hang their head in shame at having done it. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, or the Department of entertainments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) called it, has agreed to something that directly contradicts what the Prime Minister said a year ago. We have a Prime Minister, a leader of Her Majesty’s Government, who says one thing and a Department for Culture, Media and Sport that brings forward a Bill to do exactly the reverse. The Prime Minister said he was against ever- closer union; the money that we are discussing will be spent on promoting ever-closer union.
The Commons, in its wisdom, is to contradict the Prime Minister. Does that show the proper control that the Government should have of their legislative programme, if Bills are introduced that make the Prime Minister’s words look like wormwood? Is that how the Government wish to treat the British people? Can we have trust in our politicians in this nation if the Prime Minister says one thing and his Ministers bring forth Bills saying another? Are we to feel that there is any movement in the Government’s policy towards reducing ever closer union when their Bills say the reverse and when the words, which are cheap, say one thing but the Acts of Parliament say another—and say that which the British people are opposed to? We have a review of competences to see whether there is the right balance, yet we increase the competences without having any review at all.
We have, by unanimity, agreed to spend money on promoting the ideal of the European Union, and we have had no apology for it and no defence of it other than the Minister saying that he does not much like it but he does not think it is a grand scheme and it might cheer up his mates in eastern Europe.
Mrs Main: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Minister has just admitted that the Bill is a message to the European Union and its citizens, not a message to the British public about our intentions?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I give way to my hon. Friend the Minister.
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Mr Vaizey: I am not sure that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) represented my views entirely as I would have them represented. After all, I read out quotations supporting the programme from four British organisations that have as much right as anyone else to say that they represent the views of the British people, including the national Holocaust Centre.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: They are four British institutions that have had to take the European shilling and sign up to promoting closer European integration to get access to money—institutions that are meant to be under British charity law and politically independent, except when it comes to Europe, when they get handouts to be biased in what they say.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that, although the Minister is right that the sums are modest and the grants may well go to organisations of merit that the UK would fund anyway without the need to be given our own money back, the programme will undermine us powerfully as we go to our constituencies to try to persuade our electorate that we are sincere about getting powers back to Britain and putting them to the public in a referendum?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill is cretaceous—
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con): Cretaceous?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes, as in “from Crete”, and we know the reputation—
Sir Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I know that we occasionally allow words from other languages in the Chamber, but I am not sure whether that one should be allowed.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): I must admit, I did not catch the word that was said, so we will proceed.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) will find the word in the “Oxford English Dictionary” if he has a chance to look at it later.
The point is that the programme will absolutely destroy trust and we know that trust in politics is at a low. A recent survey showed that trust in the EU was at an all-time low since the survey was started in 2001. If politicians go around legislating in direct contradiction of what they have said, the British public will take them for untrustworthy.
Graham Stringer: The hon. Gentleman is almost invariably precise on this subject, and I usually agree with him, but he said that the money would be used to promote the ideal of the European Union. In fact, it will be used to promote myths about it, one of which is that the EU, not NATO, has delivered peace in Europe over the past 60 or 70 years.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I apologise for understating my opposition to this Bill. That is not an error I shall repeat.
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The Bill is a desperate disappointment. When I was first elected, I was told by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills that Governments would promise things. They would give guarantees, undertakings and reassurances about how Eurosceptic they were, and I, as a young and naive new Member, would believe them and put trust in the leadership of the party to speak as it did, just as my hon. Friend found when he first came here. He said that as time went by I would find that those promises turned out to be as ashes and dust, and that although the Government were willing to say, to play, and to sing the Eurosceptic tune, they would actually be dancing the pro-European dance. In this Bill, that dance has been taken to a further degree. It would win “Strictly Come Dancing” for its skill in dancing to the pro-European tune. It is a great betrayal of trust.
This is not about the amount of money involved, which is small; it is the principle of proposing and advancing the citizenship of Europe—a citizenship that is odious to most subjects of Her Majesty. It is something we never asked for, never wanted, and that most of us would reject, and we object to our taxes being taken to pay for it.
“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
We know Her Majesty’s Government’s true pro-European colours from this particular fruit.
5.46 pm
Chris Heaton-Harris: I am not sure how I can follow that really.
Sir Peter Bottomley: Just agree with it.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Yes, I suppose I should agree in general principle with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). This has been a legitimate exercise in parliamentary scrutiny of the spending, but I am disappointed with how we got to this point. I have been surprised by some of the points raised in the debate. On Second Reading, when the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) got the number of countries in the European Union badly wrong, she drew a few concerns that perhaps she did not know what she was talking about. Fortunately for us, she proved that exactly today in her speech, so that is all good.
The Minister said that we had a number of experts in Athens; I think the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee is there today. From my list of 1,000 organisations that received money from this budget in 2007, he will doubtless be visiting the Masters and Mates Union of Greek Merchant Marine organisation, which managed to receive €47,316. The problem is not necessarily with the organisations that bid for money, and what the Minister did not say when he responded to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland is that things do not have to be written in the regulations for each budget line. Pages 1, 2 and 3 of the European Union’s budget each year state at the front what is expected of organisations that receive money from the European Union. It will not surprise the Minister to know that those organisations are required to promote ever-closer Union, fly things such as the European flag, and there are other requirements.
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It is disappointing that so many organisations feel they have to bid for European money with so many strings attached.
In a way, this is a bit like the debate on tax credits that we entered when we took office in 2010. So many people had tax credits—someone with up to about £60,000 of household earnings could claim them. However, when we gradually took something away from people because we could not afford it, people were cross because the Government had spread their largesse around. That is what the European Union is doing. It is throwing its largesse around; it is throwing around our cash with its name all over it, and we had an opportunity to change that.
I understand what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset says about the Bill painting a picture. We have heard two great speeches—one from the Prime Minister last February, and one from the Chancellor only a couple of weeks ago—about what a new UK relationship with Europe should be, but the vote points us in completely the opposite direction and leaves me wondering whether we really mean what we say. I would like to think we do, but—heaven forbid—the politics behind today’s decision defeat me.
I am disappointed. We are paying for propaganda and politics, which we just do not do in this country. It is great shame that we have missed this opportunity to straighten those things out.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Third time.
The House divided:
Ayes 246, Noes 28.
Division No. 195]
[
5.50 pm
AYES
Adams, Nigel
Afriyie, Adam
Aldous, Peter
Amess, Mr David
Andrew, Stuart
Arbuthnot, rh Mr James
Baker, Norman
Baldry, rh Sir Tony
Baldwin, Harriett
Barker, rh Gregory
Barwell, Gavin
Bebb, Guto
Beith, rh Sir Alan
Bellingham, Mr Henry
Benyon, Richard
Beresford, Sir Paul
Berry, Jake
Birtwistle, Gordon
Blackman, Bob
Blackwood, Nicola
Boles, Nick
Bottomley, Sir Peter
Bradley, Karen
Brake, rh Tom
Brazier, Mr Julian
Brokenshire, James
Brooke, Annette
Browne, Mr Jeremy
Bruce, Fiona
Bruce, rh Sir Malcolm
Buckland, Mr Robert
Burstow, rh Paul
Burt, rh Alistair
Cable, rh Vince
Cairns, Alun
Campbell, rh Sir Menzies
Carmichael, Neil
Chishti, Rehman
Clark, rh Greg
Clarke, rh Mr Kenneth
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Coffey, Dr Thérèse
Collins, Damian
Colvile, Oliver
Crabb, Stephen
Crockart, Mike
Crouch, Tracey
Davey, rh Mr Edward
Davies, Glyn
Dinenage, Caroline
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan
Doyle-Price, Jackie
Duddridge, James
Duncan, rh Mr Alan
Duncan Smith, rh Mr Iain
Durkan, Mark
Ellis, Michael
Ellison, Jane
Elphicke, Charlie
Eustice, George
Evans, Graham
Evans, Mr Nigel
Evennett, Mr David
Fabricant, Michael
Fallon, rh Michael
Field, Mark
Foster, rh Mr Don
Fox, rh Dr Liam
Freeman, George
Freer, Mike
Fullbrook, Lorraine
Fuller, Richard
Garnier, Mark
Gauke, Mr David
George, Andrew
Gilbert, Stephen
Glen, John
Goodwill, Mr Robert
Graham, Richard
Grant, Mrs Helen
Grayling, rh Chris
Green, rh Damian
Greening, rh Justine
Griffiths, Andrew
Gummer, Ben
Gyimah, Mr Sam
Halfon, Robert
Hames, Duncan
Hammond, Stephen
Hancock, Matthew
Hands, Greg
Harper, Mr Mark
Harris, Rebecca
Hart, Simon
Harvey, Sir Nick
Haselhurst, rh Sir Alan
Hayes, rh Mr John
Heald, Oliver
Heath, Mr David
Hendry, Charles
Herbert, rh Nick
Hermon, Lady
Hinds, Damian
Hoban, Mr Mark
Hollingbery, George
Holloway, Mr Adam
Hopkins, Kris
Howell, John
Hunt, rh Mr Jeremy
Huppert, Dr Julian
Hurd, Mr Nick
James, Margot
Johnson, Gareth
Johnson, Joseph
Jones, Andrew
Jones, rh Mr David
Jones, Mr Marcus
Kawczynski, Daniel
Kirby, Simon
Knight, rh Sir Greg
Kwarteng, Kwasi
Lamb, Norman
Lancaster, Mark
Latham, Pauline
Laws, rh Mr David
Leadsom, Andrea
Lee, Dr Phillip
Leech, Mr John
Lefroy, Jeremy
Leslie, Charlotte
Letwin, rh Mr Oliver
Lewis, Brandon
Lidington, rh Mr David
Lilley, rh Mr Peter
Lloyd, Stephen
Llwyd, rh Mr Elfyn
Long, Naomi
Lord, Jonathan
Loughton, Tim
Macleod, Mary
Maude, rh Mr Francis
Maynard, Paul
McIntosh, Miss Anne
McLoughlin, rh Mr Patrick
McVey, Esther
Menzies, Mark
Metcalfe, Stephen
Miller, rh Maria
Mitchell, rh Mr Andrew
Mordaunt, Penny
Morgan, Nicky
Morris, Anne Marie
Morris, David
Morris, James
Mosley, Stephen
Mowat, David
Mulholland, Greg
Mundell, rh David
Murray, Sheryll
Murrison, Dr Andrew
Newmark, Mr Brooks
Newton, Sarah
Nokes, Caroline
Norman, Jesse
O'Brien, rh Mr Stephen
Ollerenshaw, Eric
Opperman, Guy
Ottaway, rh Sir Richard
Parish, Neil
Patel, Priti
Paterson, rh Mr Owen
Pawsey, Mark
Penning, Mike
Penrose, John
Perry, Claire
Phillips, Stephen
Pickles, rh Mr Eric
Pincher, Christopher
Poulter, Dr Daniel
Prisk, Mr Mark
Pritchard, Mark
Pugh, John
Raab, Mr Dominic
Randall, rh Sir John
Reid, Mr Alan
Robathan, rh Mr Andrew
Robertson, rh Hugh
Rogerson, Dan
Rosindell, Andrew
Rudd, Amber
Rutley, David
Sanders, Mr Adrian
Sandys, Laura
Scott, Mr Lee
Selous, Andrew
Shapps, rh Grant
Sharma, Alok
Shelbrooke, Alec
Simpson, Mr Keith
Skidmore, Chris
Smith, Henry
Smith, Julian
Smith, Sir Robert
Soubry, Anna
Spelman, rh Mrs Caroline
Spencer, Mr Mark
Stanley, rh Sir John
Stephenson, Andrew
Stevenson, John
Stewart, Iain
Stewart, Rory
Streeter, Mr Gary
Stride, Mel
Stuart, Mr Graham
Stunell, rh Sir Andrew
Swayne, rh Mr Desmond
Syms, Mr Robert
Teather, Sarah
Thornton, Mike
Timpson, Mr Edward
Tomlinson, Justin
Tredinnick, David
Truss, Elizabeth
Tyrie, Mr Andrew
Uppal, Paul
Vaizey, Mr Edward
Villiers, rh Mrs Theresa
Walker, Mr Robin
Ward, Mr David
Webb, Steve
Wharton, James
Wheeler, Heather
White, Chris
Whittaker, Craig
Willetts, rh Mr David
Williams, Hywel
Williams, Stephen
Williamson, Gavin
Willott, Jenny
Wilson, Mr Rob
Wollaston, Dr Sarah
Wright, Jeremy
Wright, Simon
Yeo, Mr Tim
Young, rh Sir George
Zahawi, Nadhim
Tellers for the Ayes:
Mark Hunter
and
Anne Milton
NOES
Bingham, Andrew
Bridgen, Andrew
Burns, Conor
Carswell, Mr Douglas
Davies, Philip
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan
Drax, Richard
Goldsmith, Zac
Heaton-Harris, Chris
Henderson, Gordon
Hoey, Kate
Hollobone, Mr Philip
Howarth, Sir Gerald
Jackson, Mr Stewart
Jenkin, Mr Bernard
Lewis, Dr Julian
Main, Mrs Anne
McCartney, Jason
McCartney, Karl
Nuttall, Mr David
Rees-Mogg, Jacob
Robertson, Mr Laurence
Shepherd, Sir Richard
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Stringer, Graham
Tapsell, rh Sir Peter
Turner, Mr Andrew
Whittingdale, Mr John
Tellers for the Noes:
Mr Peter Bone
and
Steve Baker
Question accordingly agreed to.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 692
27 Jan 2014 : Column 693
Bill read the Third time and passed, without amendment.
Business without Debate
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),
AVIATION AND THE EU EMISSION TRADING SYSTEM
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 15051/13 and Addendum, a Draft Directive amending Directive 2003/87/EC establishing a scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community, in view of the implementation by 2020 of an international agreement applying a single global market-based measure to international aviation emissions; welcomes the acknowledgement by the European Commission that the scope of the Aviation EU Emissions Trading System should be adjusted in light of progress made towards agreement on a global market-based measure for aviation emissions at the General Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO, in October 2013; and calls on the Government to seek revision of the System in a manner which will achieve a high level of compliance and reduce the risk of legal, political and commercial retaliatory actions from third countries, with a view to facilitating an agreement at the next ICAO General Assembly in 2016 on a global market-based measure for aviation emissions.—(Gregory Barker.)
27 Jan 2014 : Column 694
Backbench Business
Dangerous Driving
6.3 pm
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con): I beg to move,
That this House has considered the law on dangerous driving.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allotting the time for this debate. Members in all parts of the House feel strongly on this issue and I recognise that I am not the only Member to have raised concerns regarding the law on dangerous driving. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) launched a “Stop Dangerous Drivers” campaign and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) gathered a significant petition relating to a case in his constituency. Many other Members are on the record as being committed to changing the law on dangerous driving. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) recently introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, supported by 12 Members from all political parties, calling for the Government to consider the sentencing guidelines as they relate to penalties for dangerous driving offences that lead to death or serious injury.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con): I applaud my hon. Friend for his work on this matter. He talks about sentencing for dangerous driving. Does he agree that we also need to consider offences linked to dangerous driving? For example, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years, but for causing death while disqualified it is two years. Does he agree that the latter sentence should be 14 years, in line with that for dangerous driving?
Chris Skidmore: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I will address that issue later in my speech. I wanted to ensure that we had a general debate on the law on dangerous driving so that Members of all political parties could have their say on individual cases in their constituencies, giving them an opportunity to raise matters important to them and to the House.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Will he find time in his opening remarks to talk not just about sentencing, but about when the Crown Prosecution Service chooses to prosecute? In my constituency, there was a case where somebody was convicted of another offence and the police decided not to pursue a conviction for dangerous driving because they were already in prison.
Chris Skidmore: I thank my hon. Friend for that remark. I will focus on the law on death by dangerous driving, but other Members have raised the issue of whether the Crown Prosecution Service’s definition of careless driving should be classified as dangerous driving. I understand from alarming statistics that too many drivers have been prosecuted for careless driving when dangerous driving was at play. As a result, their sentences were far more lenient than they would have been if they had been prosecuted for dangerous driving.
27 Jan 2014 : Column 695
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In my time as an MP, one of the most difficult things I have had to do is to meet the parents of young people killed by dangerous driving with regard to the sentences that have been handed down. There was a case in my constituency, three years ago to the day, where two young girls were killed. The driver who caused the accident received a sentence of 36 weeks, despite the fact that he ran away from the scene of the crime and left the young ladies to die. My constituents cannot understand how such sentences can be considered proportionate, when they suffer a lifetime of regret and misery.
Chris Skidmore: I thank my hon. Friend for raising that case from his constituency. I entirely agree that it is shocking and inconceivable that we have so many cases in many constituencies where the penalty does not reflect the severity of the incident—violent death as a result of dangerous driving.
I will not take any more interventions at the moment. I want to carry on with my speech and raise a case in my constituency. Today is the first anniversary of that case.
The Government are committed to reviewing the law surrounding offences of dangerous driving, and I hope the debate is able to influence their position in the next few months. Already, as part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, a new offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving has been established, with a penalty of five years. It came into force on 3 December 2012 and received cross-party support. I hope that the tone of this debate reflects the cross-party support for reviewing and changing the law on dangerous driving.
The debate is topical not just because there are so many Members who want to raise individual constituency cases, but because of the current situation. On 28 August 2013, the Government announced that the Sentencing Council would review sentencing guidelines for the recently introduced offences of causing death by careless driving; causing serious injury by dangerous driving; and causing death by dangerous driving. It was with that review in mind that I wanted to hold the debate, so that the will of the House, and the views of Members from all parts of the House, could be heard and made known to the Sentencing Council. I hope that the Minister will take note of the various issues raised, and that they will inform the Government’s own decisions, once the Sentencing Council has conducted its review, so that they are aware of the strength of feeling about the fact that the laws on dangerous driving need to be changed.
I know that many Members are committed to campaigning for a change in the law as a result of tragic constituency cases of deaths caused by dangerous driving, and they will have met families of victims of dangerous drivers who have had their loved ones cruelly torn from them, often at a young age, only to find that the law is not on their side. The pain and suffering of losing a family member to such a violent death at the irresponsible hands of a dangerous driver are unthinkable, but for the perpetrator of so great a crime then to be given a custodial sentence of a few months or years, or even just a fine and a suspended sentence, is an injustice that few could agree is acceptable. It is in their memory that we hold this debate.
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Today is the first anniversary of one of the most tragic cases of death by dangerous driving—a case that made national headlines and led to a campaign involving thousands of people in the Bristol region demanding that the law on dangerous driving be changed. On the afternoon of Sunday 27 January 2013, Ross and Clare Simons were riding their recently purchased tandem bike along Lower Hanham road in my constituency. The couple, 34 and 30, were in the prime of their lives and had been married just 18 months. Only the previous day, they had celebrated the news that they were about to begin IVF treatment to start a family. With everything to live for, they had their entire future together to look forward to.
Elsewhere in Hanham, Nicholas Lovell, 38, was driving his partner’s Citroen Picasso at speed when he was spotted by police, whose sirens quickly indicated to him to pull over. It was not the first time Lovell had been confronted by the law. Having amassed 69 previous convictions, he was well versed at showing blatant disregard for the rules of the road. Taking part in road races throughout his youth and 20s, he had been in and out of the revolving doors of the courts. Repeatedly, he had shown no interest in either his own safety or anyone else’s. In December 1998, high on drugs, he drove at 70 mph on the wrong side of the road as he fled police in Bradley Stoke, speeding all the way to Downend, before crashing head on into another car. During the ensuing court case, he predicted:
“If I don’t deal with this problem now, I am either going to kill myself or kill someone else.”
It was perhaps the only real truth he had ever uttered. Fourteen years later, on the afternoon of 27 January 2013, he did not know that his chilling prophecy was about to become a reality.
What Lovell did know, speeding in his partner’s Citroen Picasso through Hanham, the police now on his tail, sirens blazing, was that he should never have been in that car in the first place—he was serving a driving ban, having been disqualified from driving. It was not ignorance of the law that had driven him to take the wheel of a car that afternoon; he had simply chosen to ignore it. Neither was it the first time he had been banned from driving. He had committed 11 offences of driving while disqualified and been convicted for dangerous driving four times. Not that he seemed to care: two weeks earlier, he had met an acquaintance, John Fleming—nicknamed “Johnny Fireball”—outside the Jolly Sailor pub on Hanham high street, where he challenged him to a race. “He said, ‘Come on, Johnny Fireball. Let’s have a race. I’ve got a fast car put down’”, Fleming later recalled, adding that Lovell also told him, “I don’t care if I do 90 mph and hit someone.”
At 3.50 pm exactly a year ago today, as Lovell sped into Lower Hanham road, with the police in pursuit, he was driving too fast to control his car. Clipping a parked car, his vehicle launched itself across the other side of the road. Call it what you like—the wrong place, the wrong time, that split second moment that can make the difference between life and death—the uninsured car hit a newly purchased tandem bike being ridden by Ross and Clare Simons. They did not stand a chance, and their deaths were almost immediate. Lovell, on the other hand, was still very much alive—alive enough to run away on foot from the scene of the accident, leaving his partner to claim that she had been driving the car at the time, giving the police a false name.
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The deaths of Ross and Clare Simons quickly made the national headlines, and their loss shook the entire local community I represent. I never met them, but no one had a bad word to say about this couple, who lived their short lives to the full, touching so many people along the way. A week later, I attended the vigil at the site of their deaths on Lower Hanham road, where easily over 500 people stood silent as we marked the minute when they had been struck. I made a pledge then to Ross’s father, Edwin, that I would do everything in my power, as the local MP, to help them and to ensure that they achieved justice for their tragic loss.
Only when Lovell was finally tracked down and charged did the enormity of his crime become known. As I have already stated, he had 69 previous convictions, including for four offences of dangerous driving, for which he was disqualified from driving completely back in 1999, only to be given a further 11 convictions for driving while disqualified.
Rehman Chishti: My hon. Friend paints a shocking picture of a horrific offence by an individual who had 11 convictions for driving while disqualified. The maximum sentence for that is six months, whether it is someone’s first, 15th or 11th offence. Do we not need to ensure a stiffer sentence for repeat offenders, as I proposed in a private Member’s Bill?
Chris Skidmore: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Indeed, it is the basis of my speech, and I will talk later about what needs to happen to toughen up the law and make driving while disqualified at least an aggravating factor, if not something more, in cases of death by dangerous driving. In Canada, for instance, while causing death by dangerous driving can incur a penalty of 10 years, causing death by dangerous driving while disqualified can incur a life sentence. We should be going down that route of much tougher penalties for these people, who should not be let out of jail in the first place so as to be able to commit these crimes.
Back in 1999, Lovell was banned from driving essentially for life. The horror of previous crimes included fleeing from the police in 1998 after being spotted at the wheel of a stolen car and, as I have said, driving at speeds of 70mph. In August 2000, he again fled from the police and drove on a public footpath and subway before crashing into a tree, and eight years later, he was spotted by police who wanted to question him about two robberies, but reversed at speed into their vehicle, causing damage, before mounting a pavement to undertake vehicles waiting at traffic lights, forcing two pedestrians to jump out of the way in order to avoid being hit. He was a ticking time bomb. Given the number of his offences, it was inevitable, as he prophesised himself, that he would one day cause death by dangerous driving.
At first, when these details were revealed in court, it seemed inconceivable that someone with so many convictions and disqualifications could have been allowed to kill in this way. How had he managed to flout the law so many times? How had the justice system, for more than a decade and a half, allowed this man persistently to slip through the net and to treat the police, the courts and the laws of this land with contempt? Perhaps there will never be an answer, but that we have even to ask these questions highlights the need for the law to be changed.
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Lovell pleaded guilty at the trial, and received the maximum possible sentence for causing death by dangerous driving of 14 years—in fact, he was the first person to be given this sentence since its introduction in 2004—but as a result of his guilty plea, it was reduced by a third to 10 years and six months. Both sentences were then ordered by the judge to run concurrently. The result is that, pending good behaviour, Lovell could be out of prison after six years. Ross’s father, Edwin, summed up the mood at the end of the trial, when he said:
“he’s going to serve three years for each of our children’s lives.”
Andrew Bridgen: Does my hon. Friend agree that a motor vehicle in the wrong hands is a lethal weapon and that the sentencing powers for dangerous driving should reflect that?
Chris Skidmore: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It seems bizarre. In 2004, the previous Government legislated, absolutely correctly, to increase the penalty for dangerous driving. A car is a lethal weapon, but the consequences, if someone causes death while driving, are not on a level playing field with deaths caused in other circumstances, and that is what we are fighting for in this debate.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on the poignant, powerful speech that he is making. Does he agree that the charging guidelines may need to be reconsidered? I do not understand why, in many cases, the charge is not one of manslaughter rather than causing death by dangerous driving, given that the imposition of a life sentence is an option for any court that convicts an offender of manslaughter.
Chris Skidmore: I am extremely glad that my hon. Friend has placed that on the record. A manslaughter charge could and should be considered as a way of toughening the law on dangerous driving and increasing sentences. I intend to look into the issue of disqualification. I am not a lawyer, but I think that when judges or barristers have to decide whether intent or lack of intent can be proved, manslaughter or murder should be considered. When it comes to cases in which there was a lack of intent but it is known that someone was driving dangerously in the first place, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con): My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) made an excellent point. The advantage of a manslaughter charge is that it is not necessary to prove a specific intent; what happened may have been the result of a reckless act. As my hon. Friend rightly said, sentencing powers are at large. Is not the issue the way in which we charge offenders? Are we not in danger of limiting the options of the courts by opting for charges such as causing death, which, although convenient and appropriate, may not fully reflect the gravity of the acts committed?
Chris Skidmore:
I defer to my hon. Friend’s knowledge, given that he is a lawyer who, I am sure, has encountered plenty of cases of dangerous driving, and death by dangerous driving, in his time. All I know is that we and the Sentencing Council need to give the courts more tools to deal with these cases. The judge who presided over Lovell’s trial said that he wished that he could have
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imposed a tougher sentence. As it was, he could impose a sentence of no more than 10 years and six months, but if the necessary power had been vested in him by Parliament, he would have imposed that tougher sentence. It is our responsibility as legislators to make our voice heard to the Minister and the Sentencing Council in order to bring about a change in the law.
I am sure that, if we put ourselves in the shoes of the families involved, each one of us would be not only heartbroken by the loss of a relative, but aggrieved by the nature of the sentences handed down by the courts. The fact that the judge in the Lovell case wanted to impose a heavier sentence but was unable to do so simply rubs salt in the wounds.
A full year has passed since the deaths of Ross and Clare Simons, but the devastation remains. As Kelly Woodruff, Ross’s sister, explained:
“What the perpetrators don’t realise is the devastation they cause—people’s lives, like ours, are scarred forever. We will never live the way we should be living, all because of that man, my future has been stolen.”
During this period of unspeakable grief, however, Kelly has also commented:
“Over this year we’ve realised we are not alone. So many people have contacted us who have gone through the same thing all over the country.
The sentences some people have received for dangerous driving are awful—12 months for killing someone.”
Indeed, recent figures relating to convictions for death by dangerous driving offences speak for themselves. In 2011, 153 of the 408 people convicted of causing death or bodily harm while driving dangerously, or under the influence of drink or drugs, avoided jail altogether. Five were given fines, and 63 were given suspended prison sentences.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con): I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Ross and Clare Simons and sending condolences to their family. It appears that the perpetrator of that offence did not care at all that he was causing a risk to others through his actions. If we are to deter such people in future, should it not be possible to impose longer custodial sentences before people reach the point of killing someone? That would be the real deterrent, given that simply caring about other people does not cross their radar.
Chris Skidmore: My hon. Friend is right. Lovell showed no remorse at his trial, just as he had showed no remorse following the offences that had led to his previous 69 convictions and his being banned for life from driving.
A deterrent is a limited option. It may be unlikely that people who think in that way will ever be deterred from getting into a car, driving at speed, and then killing someone. What we need is the opportunity to give the police and the courts the power to ensure that such people are off the road in the first place, and cannot commit crimes. The tragedy for Ross and Clare Simons was that Nicholas Lovell should never have been in that car to start with. He was not allowed to be in a car, but that did not prevent him from getting into one. Rather than being on the road, he should have been in jail serving time for the previous crimes that he had committed so relentlessly. We need to deal with that problem if we are to prevent further tragedies.
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Of the 255 people who went to prison in 2011, 21 were given less than six months in jail, 104 were jailed for under two years, and just 37—one in seven of all those who were convicted of death by dangerous driving—were given prison sentences of more than five years. It is clear that the severity of the sentencing for those who cause death by dangerous driving is a national issue that needs to be addressed.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con): It is not just a question of sentencing; there is also the issue of what happens when someone who has caused serious injury, or death, to another person, continues to drive until his case is heard. If a car is indeed a lethal weapon, as others have suggested, why do courts not exercise their discretion to set bail conditions that make it impossible for people to drive when a test has established that their blood contained alcohol or drugs? That issue has been raised by other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who, like me, has a constituency interest. Jamie Still, the 16-year-old son of one of my constituents, was tragically killed on new year’s eve. The perpetrator drove for months until, finally, there was a conviction. Is that not wrong as well?
Chris Skidmore: I cannot imagine how distressing it must be for the families of those who have been killed by dangerous drivers to know—while awaiting what is bound to be a highly stressful and emotional trial—that someone who, although he has not yet been convicted, has committed a crime which—and the consequences of which—has been clearly witnessed, is behind a wheel yet again. Those families must be distraught. I urge the Minister and the Government to consider the point raised by my right hon. Friend, which may, indeed, be within the remit of the Sentencing Council.
The tragedy of Ross and Clare Simons has been repeated across the country. Sentences are being handed down that do not fit the crime. I believe that the sentencing guidelines for dangerous driving, and, indeed, the law, need to be changed to reflect the added culpability of a driver who has already been disqualified and should never have been in a car in the first place, and who then causes death by dangerous driving. As I said earlier, in Canada the penalty for causing death by dangerous driving is a prison sentence of 10 years, and someone who was already disqualified from driving at the time is given a life sentence. At the very least, the fact of killing someone while driving dangerously and while disqualified should constitute an additional aggravating factor, and should result in a longer sentence.
Over the past year, the families of Ross and Clare Simons have been determined to call for exactly that. Their campaign, Justice 4 Ross and Clare, has issued a petition calling on the Government
“to review and change sentencing guidelines for dangerous driving so that drivers who have previous convictions for dangerous driving, including driving under the influence of drink and drugs, or have been disqualified from driving, and continue to commit dangerous driving offences, causing death or injury as a result, be given far longer and tougher sentences than currently exist.”
The petition has attracted more than 13,000 signatures so far, and is still going strong.
On 9 October 2013, I raised the campaign, and the need to strengthen the law applying to offences of death by dangerous driving, with the Prime Minister in the House. The Prime Minister replied:
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“This is the most appalling crime: someone with 10 previous convictions, as my hon. Friend says, and who was disqualified at the time driving dangerously and killing two people, snuffing out their lives. The sentence was 10 years. As I understand it, the maximum sentence available for a crime like this is 14 years. The Government have introduced a new offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, so we are looking at this whole area. I can also tell him that the Justice Secretary has asked the Sentencing Council to review the sentencing guidelines for serious driving offences, and we should look at this specific case in the light of that.”—[Official Report, 9 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 156.]
In the light of the Prime Minister’s comments, I want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister to ensure that the Sentencing Council is made fully aware of the specifics of the case that I have raised, with a view to considering increasing the sentences for persistent offenders who cause death or injury by dangerous driving. Will the Minister also update the House on when the review will finally produce its report?
Will the Minister also look closely at introducing a change in the law to create a new offence of death or injury being caused by dangerous disqualified drivers, with a far tougher penalty than those that are currently imposed under the dangerous driving laws? Such a change would, I hope, act as a deterrent, even though deterrents are not always enough. I hope that it would also ensure that the likes of Nicholas Lovell could be kept behind bars for as long as possible. I know it is the hope of the family of Ross and Clare that, if anything is to come out of their tragic deaths, it should be a positive step that will ensure that we avoid similar tragedies in the future.
6.31 pm
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on securing this important debate. I want to use this opportunity to ask the Minister to look into what many people feel are the derisory sentences received by those who kill or injure cyclists. I have raised examples of such cases with Ministers before, and we will have to continue to do so until the police investigate them properly and the Crown Prosecution Service prosecutes them properly.
For example, British Cycling employee Rob Jefferies was killed when hit from behind on an open, straight road in daylight by someone who had already been caught speeding. Unbelievably, the driver got just an 18-month ban. He had to resit his driving test, do 200 hours’ community service and pay a small fine. That was in line with the guidelines, so there was no hope of an appeal. Rob’s brother, Will Jefferies, said that
“the present state of the law meant that Rob’s killer could never receive a sentence proportionate to the crime.”
The lorry driver who killed another cyclist, Eilidh Jake Cairns, admitted in court that his eyesight was not good enough for him to have been driving, but he was fined just £200. He was free to drive again immediately, and 18 months later knocked down and killed Nora Guttmann, an elderly pensioner. His eyesight was still poor and he was not wearing his prescribed glasses. Surely that is dangerous driving.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con):
I am spurred to intervene on the hon. Gentleman because one of the things that upsets me about these sentences is that when
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those people have served their time, they presumably consider themselves to have been released from their responsibility for having taken a life. The law should reflect the fact that taking a life is a heinous crime, and it should carry a heavier sentence.
Ian Austin: The hon. Gentleman is completely right, and I am sure that that sentiment will be echoed by many Members on both sides of the House tonight.
If the driver who killed Eilidh had been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, he would have been issued a driving ban and would not have been on the road and able to kill Nora Guttmann just a few months later. In that case, the justice system failed both those women. When police officer Cath Ward was knocked off her bike and killed, the driver was convicted of careless driving and received a short driving ban. Cath’s friend Ruth Eyles wrote to me to say:
“What shocks me is that the driver who killed Rob Jefferies will be able to drive again in 18 months. If that young man had had a legal firearm and had accidentally shot and killed someone through carelessness, would he be given a new licence 18 months later?”
Mr Spencer: Many people who are convicted of a driving offence and sent to prison often receive a driving ban that runs concurrently with their prison sentence. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the ban should not begin until they are released, rather than taking effect when they are in prison and cannot drive anyway?
Ian Austin: I completely agree; those arrangements are nonsense because those people are unable to drive while they are in prison. The ban should obviously start only when the prison sentence has been served.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab): In some cases, there must surely be a good argument for never allowing the person to drive again. Firearms have been mentioned; if someone misused a firearm resulting in death or injury, the chances of their getting a licence to use one again would be nil. Why is that not the case in relation to driving?
Ian Austin: There is no doubt that some people drive in an extremely reckless and dangerous way, without any regard for other road users, and of course they should never be allowed behind the wheel of a car again. Cars are dangerous things, and people must be incredibly careful to obey the law when they are behind the wheel.
I was on the scene of—and the closest witness to—an incident in which a dangerous driver, overtaking when it was not safe to do so, swung aggressively into the path of two cyclists, putting both of them in hospital. He also failed to stop. That driver was simply sent on a course. The police completely failed to investigate the incident properly, and the CPS completely failed to take it seriously. I have known that same police force to investigate other cases in a very poor way. I was careful, when putting together my statement, to demonstrate clearly that that man’s driving met the criteria for a charge of dangerous driving, but no prosecution was brought. The guy was simply sent on a course. In fact, I believe that it was an anger management course, so it was clearly accepted that he had been driving dangerously because he was angry. He was not prosecuted, however. That was absolutely unbelievable.
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All too often, incidents in which people are seriously injured are downgraded from dangerous driving to careless driving because that makes it easier to secure a conviction. However, a conviction for careless driving usually results in the driver just having to attend a course. We need a comprehensive review of how the police investigate such incidents and of how the justice system operates when people are hurt or killed on the roads. Enforcement of traffic laws should be reviewed to improve road safety. That would benefit all road users, but particularly cyclists and pedestrians. Road traffic police numbers have decreased dramatically over the past 10 years, and we should look at reversing that trend to improve enforcement and investigation. Prosecution guidance needs updating to ensure that bad driving that causes obviously foreseeable danger should be classed as a dangerous driving offence. Long driving bans should be more widely used to penalise drivers who have caused serious danger, but not recklessly or intentionally. Where drivers have caused serious danger recklessly or intentionally, or have a history of breaching bans, long prison sentences are more appropriate.
Underpinning all that, there needs to be better information on how the criminal justice system deals with collisions. Currently, the complete lack of information makes it difficult to prevent future accidents from happening. Ministers should look at linking the information taken by the police at the scene of a collision with the information from the criminal justice system. That would make it easier to analyse the response of the justice system to road collisions. It would also help to identify areas that need improvement.
British Cycling, of which I am a member, has been doing extensive work on this issue, and I would urge the Minister and his colleagues in the Home Office to look at its recommendations when they are published on Monday 10 February. I would like to invite the Minister to attend the event, here in the House, at which those recommendations will be launched. I will write to him with the details. Will he also agree to convene a meeting between himself, British Cycling and Ministers from the Home Office and the Department for Transport, to discuss British Cycling’s proposals in detail?
6.39 pm
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con): Madam Deputy Speaker, you have given me permission to refer to your own tragic loss last October when your own mother-in-law was killed in a car crash in Aberdeenshire. All of us who know you understand the sense of grief that you experienced at the loss of Margaret. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that such a gentle elderly lady, who had given her life to caring for people, could be killed in such a brutal and savage way. It must be painful and poignant for you to be in charge of our discussions this afternoon.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) for securing this debate and for the way in which he introduced it. All of us speaking in the House today will have particular constituency cases that have caused profound pain. As Members of Parliament, and not as members of the families involved, we have felt a great sense of anger and distress at the way in which things have sometimes been handled.
On the afternoon of 30 November 2011, William Avery-Wright, a 13-year-old schoolboy at Worth Abbey school in Sussex, but who lived at Crowborough in my
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constituency, was killed when he was crossing the road between the school and its rugby pitches. William was recognised by all as a gifted and promising student. He was a talented young golfer, ranked fourth in the Sussex junior league, with the whole of his life ahead of him. The road was not in a dangerous condition; the driver was driving relatively fast but well within the 60 mph speed limit. That limit has since been reduced to 40 mph, which demonstrates the fact that this stretch of road was recognised to be dangerous.
My comments relate less to the law on drivers with regard to dangerous driving than to the law on others, such as schools, and their responsibility to keep children safe on dangerous roads. In this case, there were failings by the Health and Safety Executive, the Crown Prosecution Service and the school itself, which should have been prosecuted. The way in which the school handled the incident was horrific and compounded the parents’ distress.
At 5pm, as Mr Avery-Wright was on his way to East Surrey hospital, where William had been taken, the headmaster of Worth Abbey, Mr Gino Carminati, sent an e-mail to the parents of all school pupils, with the specific exception of Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright, to say that William had been killed. As a consequence, Mr Avery-Wright was receiving messages of condolence on his mobile, before he had even reached the hospital to identify his son. Although the school has offered its sympathies and condolences on a number of occasions it has never issued Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright with an apology, in writing or in person, for William’s death or for its failings. However, the parents did receive an apology letter from the headmaster for his conduct after William’s death.
The school wanted to act as if the accident had not happened. At times, it seemed more concerned about its own reputation than the loss and grief of William’s parents. Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright understandably wanted to leave flowers at the place of the accident, and the guidance from West Sussex county council is absolutely clear that temporary floral tributes can remain in place for 12 weeks after an accident. On 5 January 2012, just over a month after the accident, the headmaster asked for the flowers to be moved, as he did not want them there at the start of the new school term.
Above all, it is clear that the school breached its own health and safety policy. The coroners’ inquest, which took place on 8 and 9 July 2013, said:
“A School Rule that pupils in his year group [year 8] should not cross the road without adult supervision was not enforced or adhered to.”
The school had long known about the risks. The school bursar, Father Aidan Murray, and the headmaster, Mr Carminati, co-authored a letter to West Sussex county council in December 2007—four years before the accident —acknowledging the inherent risks to school pupils crossing the Paddockhurst road. In the letter, they said:
“The speed and volume of traffic on this section of the road is of great concern to myself and to the Headmaster, who has responsibility for the safety of the 430 pupils of Worth School.”
They talked about the measures outside Ardingly college. They said:
“We feel that similar speed restrictions or a traffic calming scheme on the Paddockhurst Road outside the School and Abbey are needed before a fatality occurs.”
The school was sufficiently concerned about the prospect of injury or death to pupils crossing Paddockhurst road that it was recorded in their risk register ranked as
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“high”. As a result, the school committed to take action to mitigate the risk, by escorting years 7 and 8 pupils across the road. However, as Mr Avery-Wright says in one of his letters:
“The written evidence from pupils interviewed by the police confirms that this ‘Action’ was not enforced or adhered to prior to William’s death.”
Clearly, a bridge across the road, such as the one that has now been constructed, would have been the best solution, but we know from the inquest that, in spite of these long-standing concerns, Worth school made no planning application for a bridge to be constructed in any of the 12 years preceding William’s death.
Furthermore, the school's risk assessment identifies the hazard as “A2”, which means that urgent, early attention is required to remove risk—not just to mitigate it. We need to understand what A2 means. “A” is the level of severity. It means a risk of death, major injury, damage or loss of property or equipment, and “2” refers to the likelihood of incidents occurring. The “2” means frequent or often likely to occur.
In January 2013, the police submitted their findings to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration. Subsequently the police were informed by the CPS that
“there are insufficient grounds to proceed with a gross negligence manslaughter prosecution against any individual at the school.”
Mr Avery-Wright received a document from West Sussex police, which attempts to answer a number of questions raised by him and his wife. He said that the CPS guidance to the police was
“that these failures do not constitute a breach of Health and Safety, for a gross negligence charge of Corporate Manslaughter to proceed.”
In April 2013, Nick May, detective superintendent at the Surrey and Sussex major crime team confirmed to the parents that the Health and Safety Executive would not be taking any action in respect of William’s death. For further inquiries Mr May advised Mr Avery-Wright to contact the Health and Safety Executive director, David Rothery. Mr Rothery, responded in December 2013, repeating that the HSE could not take this matter further and quoted the relevant legislation, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, to support his statement. He said:
“Summarising the factors involved in the evidential test [no prosecution can go ahead unless the prosecutor finds there is sufficient evidence to provide realistic prospect of conviction] the fact that the school recognised the risk and tried to take action by contacting outside authorities, by setting up a system and letting staff and pupils, irrespective of whether that system could indeed be observed in every situation, makes it unlikely that the evidential test would be passed.”
It seems that a school can highlight a serious risk in its risk register, propose actions to mitigate those risks, but then not implement them, and when that results in the death of a child, as far as the HSE is concerned, that does not warrant prosecution.
Mr Avery-Wright replied to Mr Rothery’s letter and raised the following questions. He said:
“How can the Risk Assessment be argued as being impractical, and that the school had done all that was reasonably practicable, the legal requirement, by alerting staff, pupils and other authorities?”
He said that the school risk assessment is unambiguous in what supervision the school will provide for the road
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crossing. It does not use words such as “we will endeavour to” or “in so far as reasonably practical”' to lessen its impact.
Furthermore, Mr Avery-Wright has provided the HSE with photographs taken in October 2013, demonstrating the quality of adult supervision provided on behalf of pupils using the school crossing today. That raises the question: if structured adult supervision for the road crossing of this quality could be provided after William’s death, why could it not have been delivered before his death in compliance with the school’s own risk assessment for the road crossing? Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright maintain that the school was in breach of its statutory duty of care to William, and I agree with that. The lawyers representing the public liability insurer, the RSA, have conceded legal liability for his death, but the school has still not apologised for its negligence.
Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright have been let down by the Health and Safety Executive and the CPS, which decided not to prosecute the school for the catastrophic breach of its own health and safety rules, even though it had already identified the risk and the potential for fatalities. The coroner could not have been more clear about those failings, but the HSE decided that that was not sufficient. I disagree with its findings. They were let down by West Sussex county council, which received letters saying that the road was dangerous. However, it was only after William’s death that the speed limit was reduced from 60 to 40.
Most of all, Mr and Mrs Avery-Wright have been let down in the most shocking and appalling way by the school following the loss of their only child. The headmaster who presided over a failure to enforce the school’s health and safety rules that resulted in the death of a promising student remains in post two years later. Throughout, he has been supported by the chair of governors, Mrs Alda Andreotti. A school has a duty of care to its students. In this case, Worth Abbey has failed in that duty in the most devastating and tragic way.
It is more than 20 years since I was first elected this House, and I do not think that I have ever called publicly for anyone’s resignation. I do not understand, however, how two human beings, the head teacher and the chair of governors, whose primary duty should be the well-being of the children in their care, could possibly countenance staying in post when they have failed so evidently and dismally in their responsibilities with such tragic consequences. If they had any decency, they would both have resigned as a matter of principle, and it is still not too late for them to take that action to show their genuine contrition to William’s parents.
6.51 pm
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab): It is a great privilege to take part in this important debate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) for the thoughtful, comprehensive and moving way in which he opened the debate, which was a great credit to him and to the whole House.
On 8 January, I stood in this Chamber to present a ten-minute rule Bill on driving penalties, with all-party support. I presented that Bill on behalf of the community of Overton and the family of Robert James Gaunt, who was tragically killed in the village in October 2009. Robert Gaunt was a nine-year-old boy who was mowed
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down by a driver while crossing the road. The driver who hit Robert was unlicensed, uninsured and horribly irresponsible. Young Robert was killed. I want to highlight the case again because it shows clearly how the laws on driving offences are not in proportion to the crime. The driver hit Robert, killed him and drove away. He did not stop, he did not report the incident. Indeed, he returned home and re-sprayed his car. He took a life, he ran away and he tried to hide the evidence. In this case, the driver incurred a pitiful sentence of 22 months, with a four-year driving ban. He served only 10 months in jail.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) said, there are clear discrepancies with what would have happened had the car been a firearm. If the case had involved a gun, a knife or a baseball bat and a life was taken, it is highly likely that the sentence would have been vastly longer. In cases when death is caused by a weapon rather than a vehicle, sentences are much longer even when the act is not premeditated.
I recognise that a car is not a gun or a knife and I am not trying to claim that driving a car and carrying a firearm are the same thing. All I am saying is that although the use of a car is a necessity in our modern lives, especially in rural areas, that makes it all the more important that we review the situation. A car in the hands of someone irresponsible or dangerous can cause the same devastation as a firearm. A driver behind the wheel who is dangerous can cause as much damage as a pedestrian with a baseball bat, if not more. Ten months in jail for ending the life of a young boy is not right. It is not right when the deliberately dangerous actions of an individual are not treated seriously enough by the justice system.
My ten-minute rule Bill called on the Government to consider the maximum penalties for driving offences that lead to death or serious injury. Those who cause death by driving currently face a number of charges and a large range of sentences from mere months to 14 years. No driver has been given a 14-year term since Parliament first lengthened the maximum penalty from 10 years in 2004, and the law is clearly letting families down.
Such tragic cases have taken place all over the country. They do not stop at borders and they are not a rural, suburban or urban problem. This is a truly national problem with tragic consequences in all places. For instance, let us consider a similar incident suffered in the constituency that neighbours mine, Wrexham. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) has kindly allowed me to bring it to the attention of the House on his behalf and I know that he is working diligently for the family.
A young woman lost her life after a driver decided to overtake another car at the end of a 70 mph dual carriageway. The driver in question braked hard when the road suddenly became a single carriageway, lost control of his vehicle and crashed head-on into a Ford that was being responsibly driven at 40 mph, considering the wet conditions that day. The driver of the Ford, Ms Christina Barchetti, suffered terrible injuries as her car was pushed through a wall into woodland. Ms Barchetti lost her life at the local hospital following the incident. She also lost the life of the unborn child that she was carrying at the time.
Such tragic cases happen around the country and I pay tribute to the campaigning organisation Brake, which has done so much to bring the issue to the
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attention of parliamentarians and Government. These cases speak for themselves, showing the devastation experienced by families when the rules of our roads are not taken seriously enough.
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con): I support the hon. Lady’s speech, which strikes a chord with me. I have a constituent who lost her niece because someone who was medically unfit to drive, and knew that they were, continued to do so. I am concerned that there are occasions when people who do not consider themselves criminal or dangerous drivers, who have a previously good record and who have been warned that they are unfit continue to drive because they feel all right and cause death and serious injury. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to review the sentences for those individuals, too, so the message is sent to them that it is a serious matter if one drives after being told that one is unfit to do so?
Susan Elan Jones: That is absolutely right. One purpose of today's debate is to ensure that any review of the guidelines is comprehensive and I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point.
Today, we are talking about the devastating results when drivers are dangerous, negligent or careless. When I presented my ten-minute rule Bill on the laws on driving, I was fully aware that no justice or consolation can be given to those families who have lost a loved one. The heartbreak experienced at the loss of a loved one cannot be cured by any debate in this House, but we can ensure that the laws in such cases reflect the crimes that we talk about.
Rehman Chishti: I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the work that she has done on this matter. As regards ensuring that the sentence is commensurate to the injury caused, does she support what I have proposed in my private Member’s Bill on driving while disqualified? At the moment, causing death by driving while disqualified has a two-year maximum sentence, whereas causing death by dangerous driving has a 14-year maximum sentence. Does she agree that the sentence for causing death by driving while disqualified should increase significantly to reflect that for causing death by dangerous driving?
Susan Elan Jones: I certainly do, and I hope that the Sentencing Council is listening to the debate.
I urged the Government to review the sentencing guidelines for maximum penalties for driving offences that lead to death or serious injury. Today, Members are urging the Government to consider the laws on dangerous driving. It is clear that the law is not doing what it should be doing as regards driving offences. The rules and guidelines set out by the law mean that drivers who end the lives of innocent people on our roads sometimes have their sentences reduced to mere months.
The guidelines are terribly subjective and open to interpretation, and they hold back judges from making the decisions that, in all justice, need to be made. The average sentence served by drivers who kill or seriously injure another human being—a mother, father or child—while driving is 11 months. For the family of Robert Gaunt
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in Overton, of Christina Barchetti in Wrexham, or of any of the other people mentioned today, that is clearly not justice.
If we change the law and the sentencing guidelines are reformed properly, my hope is that it will not only bring some comfort to those who have lost treasured family members, but cause people who are uninsured, unlicensed or just frankly irresponsible to pause before they get behind a wheel.
Bob Stewart: I am really concerned about people being killed by dangerous driving. I very much support the idea that whatever the custodial sentence handed down to those drivers, if they have robbed someone of their life, through dangerous driving or stupidity, they should never in their life be given a driving licence.
Susan Elan Jones: I think the hon. Gentleman speaks for many who believe that there should be a thorough review in this area. When the Minister sums up, I would like clarity on the nature of any review that the Government will undertake. I would also like to know about the timing, because that is important. If there is a need for legislation, I hope that the Government will bring it forward, because, to put it as politely as I can, we do not have the fullest of legislative timetables, and I am sure that there would be co-operation.
Bearing in mind what the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) said, we have to be careful not to limit the powers of the courts, and careful to look at maximum penalties, including, as the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said, bail conditions. It is striking that in the Chamber today, there are Members who would probably agree on very little else, politically. Outside the Chamber, too, cross-party, we know that something has to be done on this issue. There is a tremendous amount of evidence on that. The law is not doing enough to hold accountable those who take lives in this way, or to find justice for those let down by the system.
On behalf of families such as the Gaunts and the Barchettis, and countless others across the country, it is vital that we urge the Government to make this logical development to our system, and to consider what sentence is given for what crime. I know that none of this will bring back anybody whose life has been tragically lost in this way, but it is vital that we in Parliament, and the Government, do something to ensure that some measure of justice is done.
7.3 pm
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD): In this Chamber, we often say that it is a pleasure to take part in a debate, but it gives me no pleasure to have to recount the awful experiences of my constituents, just as other hon. and right hon. Members have had to recount the awful experiences of theirs.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), whose work has been a comfort, not only to me in my desire for change but, more importantly, to the families whom I have done my best to represent, as their MP, just as he has done his best to represent the family of Ross and Clare Simons. I met Ross and Clare’s family members when they visited Parliament, and as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have also had
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Jamie Still’s family come to visit Parliament and No. 10. I have also had to deal with the family of David and Dorothy Metcalf. Going through what we have to go through—listening, experiencing, and sitting through the awful accounts of what the victims and their families have been through—is hard enough; imagining what the families have gone through is just about impossible.
Already in this debate—more right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak, and I am pleased that they are here to do so—we have heard of too many incidents of the kind of criminal driving that destroys lives. There is simply a lack of adequate justice for victims and their families. I am pleased to have spoken to the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) on the issue. I am aware that a number of hon. and right hon. Members are very much involved on this issue. They include my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who has a very recent case in her constituency, and the hon. Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham), for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), and for Lincoln (Karl McCartney); there are also others whose cases I am not aware of. We must all get together and ensure change, because when we do get together, I am sure that we will get change.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD): My constituent, whose son was killed in a driving incident nearly a year ago, contacted me very early on with her concerns about lenient sentences. Today, the driver of the car was given a 12-month sentence. I have yet to learn all the details, but on the mother’s behalf, I would like to join my hon. Friend and others here in asking the Minister to look really carefully at sentences for driving offences.
Greg Mulholland: I thank my hon. Friend. That is another example of a sentence, given only today, that surely cannot reflect the reality of killing someone through criminal driving. I use the phrase “criminal driving” very deliberately. This debate is entitled “Dangerous Driving”, but we are all aware that what we are actually talking about are various forms of criminal driving—any form of it that has resulted in someone losing their life. One of the weaknesses in the system is the confusion in both the sentencing framework and the sentencing guidelines as to whether particular forms of criminal driving should be regarded as particularly serious. I will come back to that important point.
I wish to relay to the House briefly the awful case of Jamie Still, who was just 16 years old, with everything to live for. He was a schoolboy in Otley, a market town in my constituency. He was out with friends on new year’s eve in 2010. At around 9 o’clock, when crossing a road in the middle of town, he was hit by a car that was travelling at 50 mph in a 30-mph shopping zone. He was flung through the air. He died later, as a result of the injuries that he sustained, in his mother’s arms; his mother managed to get to see him, but his sister did not. As people were celebrating new year’s eve and seeing in the new year, that family lost a beloved son and brother, and the community lost a young man with an awful lot to give.
Part of the awful injustice is that despite the seriousness of the crime—a crime is clearly what it is—the perpetrator was allowed to continue driving, right up to when he
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was sentenced. He lived only a few miles away, and was seen driving in Otley—the very place where he ended this young man’s life. It is hard to imagine the distress that that must have caused Jamie’s mother, Karen, and his sister, Rebecca. The man responsible was found to have been twice over the drink-drive limit. Eight months later, he was sentenced to four years, but the sentence was reduced to 12 months after he wrote to the judge—not the family—to say how sorry he was. That followed a two-year reduction in his possible sentence after he pleaded guilty, even though, at previous court hearings, he had not done so.
Rehman Chishti: The hon. Gentleman said that the offender was twice over the limit when the incident occurred. Does he agree that the laws on drink-driving and sentencing are completely inadequate? For example, the maximum first sentence for drink-driving is six months. Whether it is someone’s second, third, fourth, eighth, 10th or 15th offence, the maximum they can get is six months. That is completely unacceptable. I introduced a Bill in the House saying that repeat offenders should get stiffer sentences. Does he agree that that deserves serious consideration?
Greg Mulholland: I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. He is quite right. He has exposed to the House yet another area where the law simply does not make sense—it is not common sense.
I have also had to deal with the awful deaths of David and Dorothy Metcalf, who were killed a year after Jamie Still, on new year’s day 2012, on the Stanningley bypass in Leeds. They were an honest, hard-working couple, who had just begun to enjoy retirement. They were hit by a driver—rear-ended—who was speeding at 100 mph. The impact of the crash caused the Metcalfs’ car to be thrown 10 feet in the air before it flipped over. Mr Metcalf died instantly, and Mrs Metcalf some time later in hospital. The driver, Mr Eduard Mereohra, was a Moldovan national in the UK illegally. He had been drinking all night at a party, and even the next morning he had twice the permitted level of alcohol in his system. He had previously been deported for entering the UK illegally, but somehow he had entered the country illegally for a second time. He fled the scene, only to be caught by a heroic bystander, guided by another heroic individual who told the police where the man was fleeing, having witnessed the incident from their house.
When he was caught, Mr Mereohra first tried to deny being the driver. Later he tried to blame David Metcalf for the accident. As if that was not bad enough, to make it even more galling, he had been caught speeding a few weeks beforehand, yet nothing had been flagged up to say that he was here illegally. There was no evidence at all to suggest that he had a valid driving licence, and it could not even be established that he had a national insurance number. I still have not received an answer to that question.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab): The whole House will be shocked by the two cases that the hon. Gentleman has brought to our attention. In respect of the second case concerning a foreign national who has committed a crime in our country, were his convictions in Moldova, or wherever he resided, brought to the attention of the court before his sentence, or was there a problem obtaining that information?
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Greg Mulholland: I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Select Committee on Home Affairs, for that intervention. The speeding offence occurred in the UK. Clearly there was a catalogue of failures, which warranted a full investigation, which I asked for and got somewhere with. The most galling thing is that, because Eduard Mereohra is a foreign national in the UK illegally, he is likely to serve only half of his nine-year sentence—frankly, his offence should automatically have triggered a 14-year sentence, given the catalogue of offences—before, quite rightly, he is deported. The trouble is that we can impose no parole conditions on him in a foreign country, so it is likely that he will serve considerably less time than if he were a UK national. That is another blow for the family.
Those are two cases with which I have dealt, both of which shattered the new year for two families in my constituency. We need change because of their experience and the experiences described by right hon. and hon. Members. The first thing that needs to change is at the core of the Jamie Still campaign, which was set up by Rebecca Still, the amazing sister of Jamie Still. As part of her grieving for her big brother, she decided to launch a petition—without even speaking to her mother. I was delighted to take that petition, along with the family, to Downing street last year. At that stage, it had amassed 13,000 signatures.
The first aim of the Jamie Still campaign is to impose—and this is supported by the excellent charity, Brake—a bail condition in cases in which someone is charged with death by dangerous or careless driving that automatically suspends their driving licence. That is important. Brake says:
“Brake believes drivers who kill and maim should be taken off the road once they are charged, as a condition of bail. Prosecutions often take many months to come to court, and in many cases the driver charged with causing the crash is able to continue driving, potentially putting other innocent road users in danger, and often in the same community where they caused carnage. This can be incredibly offensive and upsetting to bereaved families and people injured by the driver, but it also means that other people are being put at risk.
If you are a teacher being investigated for misconduct, you are immediately suspended from teaching in school to protect pupils. If you are a doctor suspected of malpractice, you are immediately suspended from practising medicine to ensure no patients are harmed. Yet if you are charged with killing someone because of your bad driving, you are allowed to keep driving until you are sentenced in court”.
Bob Stewart: I made that point earlier. Not only do I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman that someone should be suspended immediately, but I feel strongly that someone who has killed someone else, whether wilfully or perhaps as a result of drink-driving, should have the stigma of not being allowed to drive legally in our country ever again in their lifetime, as they have taken another life. I think that that is fair.
Greg Mulholland: I thank my hon. Friend, who has raised something, certainly in serious cases, that should be part of the review, to give the sense that those people can never get behind the wheel of a car, which they have turned into a lethal weapon.
The second thing that needs to change—it has already been covered, and I want to add my support—is the failure of sentencing to give real justice to the families. Let me make it clear that this is not an instance of
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politicians saying, “We want longer sentences per se.” We have a confused and, in some ways, conflicted system for sentencing people. We have too many different offences and a wholly inconsistent approach when it comes to the interpretation of guidelines, and there are weaknesses in those guidelines. After four years and 20 weeks of his sentence, the driver who killed Jamie Still was allowed to move to an open prison, and could drive—potentially in the area where he had committed that crime.
That brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) that it is absurd for driving bans to run concurrently with prison sentences. It is such an obvious, simple and common-sense thing for driving bans to begin on the day on which people can drive again, whether on weekend day release or whether they are out. Certainly, as soon as they have an opportunity to get into a car, those terms must be considered. Far too few people have received the maximum sentence available, even where it is warranted, as in some of the cases that we have mentioned.
Another problem concerns plea bargaining and the fact that far too often the charge for dangerous driving is careless driving. I have great sympathy with Brake’s view that the solution is to get rid of the offence of causing death by careless driving and to have only the offence of dangerous driving. The judge can then sentence on the basis of appropriate guidelines, with a maximum sentence for the worst offences to lower ones for lesser offences.
We have heard of cases today from up and down the country of terrifying, wilful, aggressive, reckless criminal driving being deemed not dangerous, but careless. That is simply dishonest, untrue and wrong. That fails people such as the family of Jamie Still. Due to plea bargaining and due to the CPS deciding that it is easier to obtain a prosecution for death by careless driving, people who are clearly guilty of dangerous driving are allowed to opt for a lower sentence. That is why we need the offence of dangerous driving with adequate sentencing guidelines for all who have driven dangerously, as all the people mentioned clearly have done.
It seems to be police practice, at least in some areas, that someone who has failed a breath test, and is therefore deemed to have broken the law, is not automatically drug tested. There are instances where it is strongly believed, or even known, that someone has taken drugs as well as being over the drink-drive limit, but that is not tested for, because a prosecution will be guaranteed anyway. That is another factor that should be taken into consideration when assessing the severity of the offence, its recklessness, and therefore the sentence.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood said, it is utter nonsense that the maximum sentence for causing death by driving illegally while uninsured or disqualified is two years. That is absurd. In the case of David and Dorothy Metcalf, the driver was in this country illegally and therefore was not allowed to drive here, yet that could not be treated with the severity that it should have been. The fact that someone should not be behind the wheel of a car should be treated as a serious factor in increasing the sentence, as it is in other countries.
At the moment, the families of victims of dangerous, careless driving, who are suffering the most unimaginable loss, are not eligible for compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme, even though they have
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lost their loved one as a result of criminal activity. Why should the families of the victims of murder or manslaughter be compensated through this important scheme, while the families of those who have died as a result of a car being driven in a dangerous and reckless way as a weapon are not? That is another example in this litany of cases of how, despite improvements, our system still does not adequately give justice to the families who have lost their loved ones.
The lives of two families in my constituency have been devastated by the appalling criminal, reckless driving of others. In neither case did the perpetrators of those crimes receive the punishment that they deserved, and therefore the families did not receive justice. I am delighted that the review has happened, but the message from the House today is simple. We have a year of this Parliament to try to change the law. We all speak on behalf of our constituents, and I hope that our voices will be heard loud and clear and that we get not just a review but the kind of common-sense change that we are talking about today. We need justice for all the families who have been referred to today. We need justice for the Simons family, the Still family and the Metcalf family. The amazing campaigning efforts of Karen Strong, Jamie’s sister, Rebecca and Peter, Jamie’s grandfather, show that these people want change to stop such things happening to other families. We cannot prevent people from getting behind the wheel of a car and behaving in a reckless and criminal fashion, but we can, as a civilised country, sentence them appropriately. All hon. Members from both sides of the House who have had these experiences must get together. I look again to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench and ask that we please have some simple, common-sense change, so that in future people will at least know that they will get real justice if they are in the awful situation of losing a loved one to such appalling, reckless, criminal behaviour.
7.26 pm
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab): I too congratulate the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on securing this important debate. I want to approach the matter in a slightly different way and to talk a little more about what precedes a death caused by dangerous driving. I want to talk about how we do not take driving laws seriously in this country. We still believe that driving is a right and that, often, laws are there to be broken. Consider the attitude of many hon. Members to speed cameras. People talk about them being cash cows, not recognising them as devices to get us to obey the law or that they are often in place because of long campaigns by local residents about the dangers associated with a particular piece of road. We know that excessive speed is a contributory factor to the vast majority of serious accidents.
I want to talk specifically about the number of people legally driving on our roads at this moment in time with more than 12 points on their licence. A person in Liverpool is driving with 47 points on their licence, a woman in Bolton with 27 points on her licence, and 8,000 other people with more than 12 points. What does that say about the seriousness with which we treat driving laws? The law says that people should be banned when they have 12 points, unless they would face exceptional hardship. Exceptional hardship is not about losing one’s job, but it could be about losing one’s home or other people losing their job.