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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
I thank the Secretary of State for the way in which he has approached this Bill. The engagement with all parties has been second to none, and I absolutely support that engagement. I have so many people phoning me and talking to me about the positivity of that engagement, so the Bill is being taken forward through the right mechanisms.
I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, and for his consistent analysis, scrutiny and support of all things Northern Ireland. As my new clause is not going forward, we will continue —unfortunately, in my mind—with a twin-track approach. We will have the legacy commission on one hand, which in some cases is underfunded, and inquests on the other hand. We will waste a huge amount of money through that process, because I genuinely believe that that illusionary justice is very unlikely to come about. We will allow the process to drift on, potentially for up to 15 years. Think about what that means to someone who is 80, 75 or 70 years old—15 years of not knowing, of having to be worried about whether they will be called back or have to provide evidence in some way, shape or form about an incident 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes, I cannot even remember what I did yesterday. We will keep our brave veterans, who I think have served valiantly, waiting in limbo. Importantly, a lot of this activity is based on several factors, the first of which is the willingness of Ireland to support us. I completely support the Secretary of State’s move to hold Ireland to account for what it has said it will do, but let us see whether that happens. The second factor is the costs, which are astronomical. At minimum, an inquest costs £20 million. There are tens of inquests to go, and even if they go into the legacy commission, we are still talking about £5 million per inquest. That is significant. Then we have politics to think about. As this process progresses, it will consider Sinn Féin’s activity—either in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland—and how that affects both the legislation and the agreements Sinn Féin have made recently. On top of all of that, if new evidence—new biometrics, the smoking gun—is found, people will only go to prison for two years, so what is the point? As for information recovery, there is no new information unless it comes from Ireland.
It is highly unlikely that there will be new evidence. We can say, “This is nonsense”, but the reality is that it is not going to happen. It has not happened for the last 10 years; it is unlikely to happen now, except in one or two cases.
The likelihood of having a huge amount of new evidence that justifies the amount of money spent, and the pain and anguish that all these people are going to be put through, just does not weigh up. There needs to be one single delivery process; instead, we have a twin-track approach that is going to cost a huge amount of money, and the victims sat underneath cannot decide which way to go. It is completely contradictory. I agree that if there is new evidence, by all means bring it forward —of course we should do that. That is in line with the rule of law, but it has to be balanced with the greater aim, which is truth and reconciliation. From my perspective—this is perhaps equally important —we will also allow those in Northern Ireland who were defeated in a military campaign to now engage in a political one—one that uses every operation to rewrite history, paint the state as the aggressor, and convince the good people of Northern Ireland that reunification is the answer to all of their problems. For a 15-year-old in Northern Ireland now, if they have to put up with five, 10 or 15 years of this going through the courts consistently, it will paint the state in a negative light. Morally and ethically, this approach does not support our veterans as it should, and strategically, it deals the best possible hand to our adversaries.
If we step back and have a think about where we are, a terrorist, a solider or an individual who was engaged in the troubles over the past 10, 20 or 30 years, who remembers having engaged in kinetic activity—having killed someone or conducted something of violence—and who wants to seek solace and to give evidence, will be prosecuted if they do give evidence. It is just worth thinking about that when we talk about justice. A lot of people will want to come forward and clear the deck on the past. If they do, they will be dragged into the courts.
I cannot give way because I am intervening on someone else. We may just want to have a think about that. If we put ourselves in their position, the system now makes it much more difficult to get to the truth.
Scotland is on the frontline of defending the High North, yet despite the very real threats we face, the UK Government spend seven times more on defence in south-east England than in the whole of Scotland combined. Given the very real threats that we face, and given that our coastland is currently undefended by the Royal Navy, will the Secretary of State commit to placing a surface-level vessel permanently on the north coast of Scotland?
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Territorial Army plays an important role in our national resilience? Will he commit to fight for increased funding for the Territorial Army in the forthcoming Budget, and what is he doing to increase recruitment?
The military cannot develop skills unless they can actually train. Does the Secretary of State share my concern? Does he agree that it is absolutely scandalous that non-essential training has been suspended across large parts of the British Army because there is no money? Will he tell the House when training will resume on Salisbury plain?
In the seven years that I have been a Member of this House, I do not think that I have been in a more respectful, positive and high-quality debate. There have been some absolutely outstanding contributions from across the House. I am not going to reach that standard, but I am proud to participate in the debate. I particularly acknowledge the contributions made by colleagues from Northern Ireland. Having visited a number of times recently, I can attest that they do politics pretty well there; there is a standard of speech-making that reflects the seriousness of politics there, and we have all benefited from that this evening. My observation about the Bill and the amendments brought forward by the Government is that they essentially still fail on a core moral principle, which I will come to. The amendments that have been adduced as improving the Bill and addressing the concerns that have been raised do not, I am afraid, offer new protections. Many of them relate to measures that are already in force and could be applied, particularly those on the opportunities for anonymity and remote hearings. The amendments and the new clauses are mostly simply important moral statements of what should be obvious. In particular, new clause 32 states that there is no equivalence between terrorist action and legal actions. It is extraordinary that it needs to be said that “a relevant person” in an inquest or proceedings “must have regard to…the fact that force may lawfully be used to prevent unlawful violence”. And what a thing to need to say that lawful action is not equivalent to terrorism! Why would that have to be stated in law, unless the Bill might be thought to suggest the opposite—that the law as it stands, and the Bill, could imply that equivalence? At the heart of why the Bill remains inadequate is the essential imbalance in the legal procedures that the legacy of Northern Ireland applies. I pay tribute to a group of veterans I met recently—some special forces and some others—led by Dr Robert Parr, an academic at Oxford who was a Royal Marine and in special forces. He has written a very powerful paper that makes the simple point that the legal system—this is not addressed by the Bill; in fact, the Bill consolidates it— “privileges the claims of former paramilitaries over those of the men and women who served the Crown”. Of course, that is not intentional—the intention is to provide equity and parity—but the problem is structural. The fact is that only a 10th of the deaths that happened during the troubles were caused by the security services, but it is men and women in uniform who must bear almost the whole institutional burden under the law as it stands, and that will not change under this Bill. The IRA and other paramilitary organisations got letters of comfort, early release and pardons. They had their weapons decommissioned without any forensic testing being done. Meanwhile, the British Army kept its records—indeed, it operated under the chain of command. It had accountability built into the work that it did; in fact, it had all the elements that made its decisions as safe as possible, as a military operating under the laws of a democracy. It is those elements that are now used against the Army, and that is the structural imbalance we face. That was apparent right at the beginning, when the Good Friday agreement was being implemented. A letter has been released recently from John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary in 2001. He was writing to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and he made it clear that the proposed arrangement, in which an amnesty would be offered to terrorists but not to British veterans, was asymmetric and unjust, but that for reasons of political necessity, that is how it had to be. As Dr Parr has pointed out, the asymmetric exclusion of the security forces was therefore not the product of principled legal reasoning or an honest assessment of comparative culpability; it was the price of republican acquiescence in a political settlement. Just consider the insult that that represents to our soldiers. I pay tribute to and honour the point that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) made. Our soldiers beat the IRA to a standstill. They fought it to the negotiating table, and then they had to take the final indignity, which is that they, not the IRA, would face the threat of the law and of prosecution.
That is absolutely right. There was a question from the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) earlier about who won. The answer is that, in so far as this was a military conflict, we know who won: it was the British Army, particularly with the help of special forces, but it had to suffer that indignity in consequence. It accepted as the price of peace the indignity and injustice of being exposed to the principle of liability and the threat of prosecution, while the IRA was indemnified. That was a bitter enough pill, but the actual practice of repeat prosecutions on the scale that we have seen—not the threat, but the reality—is unacceptable. That is not what was expected or accepted at the time, but back in those days, people reckoned without the European convention on human rights, the consequences of the Human Rights Act 1998, and the lawfare that the convention has brought into reality in our time, in this century. In particular, article 2 of the ECHR applies retrospectively to the investigations, based on the inadequacy of the investigations under standards that did not apply back in those days. That is the essential injustice of the law as it stands and of this Bill; there is a fundamental violation of the principle of legal certainty. Let me quote Dr Parr again. He says that “the requirement that individuals be able to foresee the legal consequences of their actions at the time of those actions” is itself “a foundational element of the rule of law to which the ECHR is ostensibly committed.” In passing, let me turn to one other indignity and injustice that, I am afraid, has been consolidated by this Bill. No accountability has ever been forthcoming from the Irish state, elements of which were arguably responsible for enabling, colluding with and covering up the actions of terrorists during the troubles, and none is expected in the future, despite the warm words of the Secretary of State. Thanks to this Bill, though, the Irish Government will play a crucial role in our own justice system. That is wrong. What is happening is that the Government—and I honour them for doing this—are trying to reconcile common sense and decency, and the obvious appeal for justice on behalf of veterans, with the human rights framework that we have. I am afraid to say that that simply cannot be done, so I will end with a few thoughts about the future and the system that we need. We must start by reverting to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, and to the principles that Tony Blair oversaw back then. He chose peace over justice, and he was right to do so. That was the right principle. Now, in our time, we need to choose truth over individual justice for people who can never realistically hope to attain individual justice. That is the way to heal a community; evidence from transitional justice programmes around the world, particularly in South Africa, demonstrates that that is the way to achieve healing in a community. The hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) put it very well when he talked about the need for positive peace—national peace and reconciliation. Mrs Jones, the lady we have adverted to throughout this debate, is not going to get justice through the law, but if we genuinely open the archives—including the archives in Dublin—and encourage truthfulness, she could get the truth. Going forward, we need to stop all future prosecutions of the sort that have persecuted our veterans, and we need a Bill that draws a line under the Northern Irish troubles, as well as the Haddon-Cave inquiry. We need a new process for war crimes under English law, and a new legal basis for military conduct without European law. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) and the private Member’s Bill he has introduced; I think that Bill goes in the right direction, but we can go even further. It particularly emphasises—this is the core point—that the chain of command is ultimately responsible for the actions of soldiers on the ground, and Ministers are ultimately responsible for the use of force, not the poor bloke who had to take a decision in a split-second, at risk of life. I suggest that something more is needed even than what the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington suggests. We need to go further—we need to pull out of the ECHR altogether. There are many reasons for leaving it, and my party makes those points repeatedly. It protects terrorists and stops the deportation of illegal immigrants, but the most important reason is that it enables the prosecution of our soldiers. On those grounds, we must leave it.
We are very familiar with that argument. I do not think this is the time to have that debate, but I am confident—and there has been a lot of learned advice to this effect—that it is totally possible to withdraw from the ECHR while maintaining our obligations under the Good Friday agreement.
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
Since 2020, the Royal Navy has lost more than half of its frigates, its entire landing craft capability and its only icebreaker, and all of its attack submarines are now inoperable. I fear that our ability to protect the Falkland Islands is now in doubt, so will the Secretary of State take the defence of His Majesty’s overseas territories seriously and rebuild our naval capability?
7. What steps the armed forces take to inform residents of low-flying drills by military aircraft.
Just over a month ago, my constituent had a Chinook helicopter fly extremely low over their farm on two occasions with no prior warning or engagement. Despite guidance that the Minister referred to that farms and livestock should be avoided, the flights caused significant distress, with a vet bill for urgent treatment for an animal who collapsed as a result of the flights. Can the Minister assure me that such incidents are investigated, and will she meet me to discuss this particular one further?
T5. Leuchars station in North East Fife has seen investment as an Army base recently, and it is home to a significant military airfield, too. I welcome service families to the community in North East Fife, but there is always pressure on local services, particularly in areas such as education. Can I be advised as to what engagement takes place, so that we can ensure we are as welcoming a community as possible?
During the Hillsborough law debate, the Prime Minister pledged his support for the families of the 1994 Chinook tragedy. I have since written to him, alongside my hon. Friends the Members for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) and for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt). Sadly, our meeting has been pushed over to the Ministry of Defence. As we come up to the Prime Minister’s 100th day in his role, will the Secretary of State facilitate that meeting between the families and the Prime Minister?
As a west country MP, I am absolutely delighted to see that cider is given as adequate a billing as beer under these proposals. As colleagues have said, the proposals are a simplification and will make things easier for consumers to understand. The Liberal Democrats welcome them.
3. What assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing levels of defence co-operation with the EU.
The Government have been clear that NATO faces the genuine prospect of conflict with Russia before the end of the decade, and our industrial bases across the alliance are critical to ensuring that we deter this threat. Therefore, we must ensure that our world-leading UK defence companies can support our European NATO allies in rearming to counter Russian aggression. That must include formal co-operation with the European Defence Agency as well as involvement in the European competitiveness fund. What further progress has the Secretary of State made with our European partners to deepen our co-operation on defence industrial readiness?
It has been more than a year since the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill was introduced to this House. In spite of the valiant efforts of the Secretary of State and his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), to deal with the legacy left by the Conservatives, I fear that the Bill still does not achieve the admittedly difficult task of squaring the circle of enabling victims to find answers, while providing veterans with the protections that they need and deserve. It is important to begin by recognising the impact that the protracted gestation of this Bill has had on those who fought bravely, in difficult and dangerous circumstances, to uphold the rule of law and save lives during Operation Banner. It has been more than a year of anxiety, uncertainty and anguish for former service members who feared being dragged back to Northern Ireland for further investigation. It has been more than a year in which veterans have found no solace in the vague, uncertain promises of improved protection through recognition of the reality of the circumstances in which they served. The issues that we face are by no means all the fault of the current Government. If the Conservatives had enacted a legacy Act that was fit for purpose and delivered a suitable mechanism for historical inquiries, this Bill would not have been necessary. Sadly, the Tories opted for a barely conditional immunity principle that drew an abhorrent equivalence between those seeking to defend peace and uphold the rule of law, and the terrorists who sought to exploit sectarian division to murder, maim and intimidate. The Tory legacy Act failed to uphold our obligations to international human rights law under the European convention on human rights, the very convention that was so important to our soldiers—challenging inadequate equipment, unjust LGBT exclusion, and investigating sexual assault, bulling and welfare failures. At the time, that was just collateral damage: a damning indictment of the Conservatives’ cavalier attitude to the rule of law and to our international obligations, but it has now become central to their ill-conceived plans to leave the ECHR, thereby fatally undermining the Good Friday agreement.
I thank the Secretary of State for his intervention. I much prefer our amendments 123 to 129. I absolutely agree. That is exactly why we need a Committee to discuss these issues. We need to talk together about these issues. At the moment, I prefer what the Tories have submitted to what the Secretary of State has submitted, but I most certainly prefer amendment 123. But we need a Committee upstairs to discuss these things.
As I said, I prefer our solution: amendment 123. But the Tories’ solution is better than the Secretary of State’s, which is simply far too vague. I strongly support our amendment 123, as does the SAS Regimental Association. My party will also support amendment 23, tabled by the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), to ensure that the Omagh bombing—the deadliest single attack of the troubles—is brought into the scope of the commission. I do not understand the Secretary of State’s reasons for not doing so. I am also proud to support amendment 4, tabled by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), that allows victims of sexual violence access to the legacy commission’s work. I sincerely hope that the Government will support that crucial amendment, to allow as many as possible to heal and move forward. The events of the past month in Drumcree have highlighted that divisions still exist. Concerted efforts must be made to heal the old animosities and ensure that current and future generations are able to grow up in a society characterised by mutual respect and tolerance— “A Northern Ireland where a unionist never has to apologise for being British. Where a nationalist never has to apologise for being Irish”, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East so eloquently put it. Despite the hundreds of Government amendments, I do not believe that the Bill delivers on its essential goals of protecting our veterans, promoting reconciliation and delivering answers to the families who have waited decades. General Parker and General Wall have concluded that no amount of “legal ingenuity” can fix the issues with the Bill. The only path forward is for the Secretary of State to show political leadership by withdrawing the Bill and entering into further dialogue with the various communities and stakeholders who must be satisfied to ensure that we achieve truth, justice and reconciliation across all the communities and stakeholders affected by the troubles.
Support for defence bonds now reaches far beyond political divides; it has spread from the Liberal Democrat Benches to former Conservative Defence Secretaries and many Labour Members. Given that broad support, can the Secretary of State confirm that he will make representations to the Chancellor about including defence bonds in his Budget next week?
I would like to speak to amendment 130 and clause 36. My son, myself, my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather—and pretty well all my ancestors forever—have served in the Army. I was a subaltern in Northern Ireland at the peak of the troubles in 1984, and my regiment, the Queen’s Own Highlanders, saw the death of the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, and 17 more soldiers who were killed in the two explosives in Warrenpoint in 1979. The pain of those deaths was still very live among many of the regiment who were serving five years later when I was serving, but despite the pain, I do not recollect a single person who felt any desire to take revenge. The professionalism of the British soldier could be depended on. I have a son who has just left the Army after several years as a trooper. I told him that I was coming to this debate, and he told me an anecdote. He said, “Well, let me tell you a story. There are four guys, all armed, and they are clearing a building in the middle east. They go upstairs, and as they go along the corridor, out of the back of the building comes a man, and in front of him is a female. Over her shoulder he is firing AK-47 bullets, and spraying them. They shoot that man and that woman—they kill them, but they had no option. It happened on the spur of the moment, and they could not really decide how to get out of it, or they would all have been dead.” Is there any chance that those British soldiers could be charged with murder? If there is, I would strongly recommend the young I meet not to join the Army. British soldiers in my day were always able to depend on the support of the British public, the Government and the judiciary. In my time in Northern Ireland, we knew that we had our backs covered, and that we had to abide by the law. What we did not have then was sharp-suited lawyers looking for any opportunity to pursue us in court, possibly for decades. The recruitment of soldiers is extremely poor at the moment, and unless the concerns of those serving, and of veterans, are put to rest, we will not be able to rebuild our fighting force to the strength we need.
Before I make some brief remarks about a narrow section of the Bill, I pay tribute to right hon. and hon. Members from across the House for the quality of debate we are having. This is an incredibly difficult topic to deal with, and the vast majority of Members, particularly today, have engaged with it in the spirit in which it should be engaged with.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the Petitions Committee for scheduling this important debate, and I thank my constituents who signed the petition. Above all, I thank my constituent Paris Shears, who is in the Gallery today and is the reason we are all present in this Chamber this afternoon. It has been a privilege to support Paris as she has brought this campaign forward. She has taken the worst experience of her life and has turned it into a fight to change the law so that no other victim has to go through what she did. I am incredibly proud to be her Member of Parliament and to speak on her behalf today. I would like to start by saying a little more about what happened to Paris, because her story is the reason the petition exists. Paris’s ex-partner was charged with several offences, including intentional strangulation and controlling and coercive behaviour, to which he pleaded not guilty. For over 530 days, Paris prepared to stand in court and relive what had happened to her, carrying the fear of giving evidence, of facing her former partner and of not being believed. On the morning of the trial, the defendant changed his plea. For that, he was given a reduced sentence for sparing Paris the ordeal of a trial, despite what he had already put her through. When Paris heard the sentence, she fell to her knees and curled up in a ball crying. As she puts it: “He got handed a suspended sentence. I am still living with a life sentence.” No one should ever have to say that about our criminal justice system. It is completely unacceptable that a defendant can continue their cycle of abuse and still be rewarded with a reduced sentence for changing their plea at the last possible moment. Guilty pleas exist for a reason: to spare victims the ordeal of a trial. A plea entered on the day of the trial spares them nothing. This matters especially in cases of coercive control, because this particularly insidious form of abuse is about power. It is about trying to control every aspect of another person’s life. When a defendant pleads not guilty and then holds out until the morning of the trial, that control carries on—only now it is exercised through the courts. Paris’s law would stop this. Although it is welcome that some domestic abuse crimes have been excluded from the early release scheme, that does not go far enough. Domestic abuse does not end when an offender is convicted, and an offender’s release can be one of the most dangerous periods that a survivor will face. Our police forces, probation services, courts and specialist domestic abuse organisations are already struggling to monitor perpetrators of abuse and breaches of release. Releasing more domestic abuse offenders early will only place even greater pressure on a system that is already failing to cope. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify how many domestic abuse offenders the Government expect to be released under the early release scheme. If the Government get this wrong, survivors will pay the price. They and their families may be forced to abandon their homes, their children’s schools, their jobs and their support networks, which will plunge domestic abuse services and refuges into even greater demand. Domestic abuse is one of the most despicable crimes, and those convicted of these offences should not be eligible for early release. We understand why our prisons are full. Years of neglect and mismanagement under the previous Conservative Government let the court backlog spiral and left victims waiting unacceptably long for justice. However, the answer to tackling the crisis of overcrowding cannot be solved by transferring the risk from prisons directly into the homes and communities of survivors. Violence against women and girls is a national emergency. With one in four women having experienced domestic abuse, and with a woman being killed by a man every three days in the UK, greater action is needed to tackle this epidemic. Last December, the Government published a strategy with the aim of halving violence against women and girls within a decade. This is absolutely a welcome ambition, but that ambition must be matched by practical steps. Paris’s law is exactly the kind of practical step that the target demands. Young people of all ages must be taught what a healthy relationship looks like, what controlling behaviour is and how to report problems at home. Paris told me that she believes that if she had received education like that, much of her trauma could have been avoided. The best way to help protect future women from coercive and controlling relationships is to make sure that they are able to recognise the warning signs early on. Paris has been brave enough to tell her story and fight for a change in the law. It is now time for action. I urge the Minister to back Paris’s law and make sure that no survivors of coercive control suffer the same injustice that the current gap in our judicial system allows.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for setting out the petition so clearly on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I congratulate Paris Shears especially, and all those who signed the petition. It is very clear that there was a desire across the country to have this debate. It takes immense bravery to bring deeply personal and traumatic experiences into the public eye in order to try to effect change. I am profoundly impressed by those who use their trauma to try to make the world a better place for those who come after them so that they never have to see somebody suffer in the way that they have. I am very grateful to Paris for all that she has done, as well as to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for her support for Paris. Paris’s story and her tireless efforts have inspired many to sign the petition and share their own experiences. The topic of today’s debate is vital. Controlling and coercive behaviour is an utterly abhorrent and evil crime. As has been said by many Members across the House, it is the sort of crime that stays with the victims forever. It leaves them traumatised and scared, not only while the behaviour is occurring but often for many years afterwards. Victims are often desperate for help but unable to reach out without putting themselves in further danger because of the very nature of the coercion and control, which cuts these people off from their lives, from accessing health services and from even being able to leave their homes. In these instances, warning signs are missed, opportunities for intervention are bypassed and the abuse and trauma continues. It is everybody’s responsibility to ensure these victims receive the support, early intervention and justice that they deserve, but too often the justice system has failed to do that. In cases where the abuse is identified—when criminal charges are brought forward or it ends up in the family courts—victims are faced with systems riddled with issues, including delays to trial and a culture that allows perpetrators to manipulate the system and continue their cycle of abuse. That culture continually undermines faith in our justice system and discourages participation when victims simply want to move on with their lives. It is an agreed principle that many defendants will put in a not guilty plea in the hope that their victim just gets tired and cannot bear the thought of going through a trial. The situation outlined today perfectly demonstrates some of those flaws. As we can attest from the numerous testimonies, victims are seeing their abusers benefit from the system. They see their abuser’s sentence being reduced while simultaneously having to go through re-traumatisation. For a victim who has escaped their abuser, having to go through a trial, provide evidence and face questioning can open old wounds and take them back to the time of their abuse and often undermine their recovery. Sentence reductions for guilty pleas are a long-standing practice, and their importance within our criminal justice system cannot be overstated. They help to avoid costly and lengthy trials that add further pressure to the system and prevent some victims from ending up with a trial that they do not want or have to have. However, we must recognise that there are instances where defendants are exploiting that incentive to harm their victims again. In their response to the petition, the Government stated that they are “committed to updating” the statutory guidance on controlling and coercive behaviour before the end of 2026, so I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government remain committed to that timeline and to provide a timeline for their publication of the review. As part of that review, will the Minister commit to considering a mechanism that has come to mind during this debate, which is one that could look at a rehearing 30 days in advance of a trial to see whether a defendant will change their plea before we get to a trial? A reduction could be included at that point, but not on the morning of a trial. It should be made very clear that a defendant would not have the option of putting in a guilty plea that would result in a reduction if they chose not to make it 30 days in advance.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to reflect that, as part of the Government’s commitment to halving violence against women and girls, we need a multi-agency approach to tackling the root causes of coercive control. The Liberal Democrats also believe that the Government should review, as part of the update, how sentence reductions apply specifically in cases of controlling and coercive behaviour, so that perpetrators cannot use legal proceedings maliciously to continue their abuse. Beyond that, the Government must go further to support victims of coercive control and domestic abuse across the entire court system. The Liberal Democrats tabled multiple amendments to the Courts and Tribunals Bill that aimed to improve the experience of victims in the criminal courts. We often hear from legal experts and victims about a lack of understanding of these issues in the courts in general. One of our amendments would have required judicial staff to receive mandatory training on domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, and all court staff to receive trauma-informed training to ensure that victims receive the best possible support from the moment they arrive at court. On multiple occasions, the Government have argued that such mandatory training would not be possible, especially when it comes to the judiciary. However, similar provisions are included in the Government’s plans for rape and serious sexual offence courts. I struggle to understand how they can commit to having trauma-informed members of the judiciary for RASSO courts but not across the entire court estate. At the heart of this issue are the delays. The Crown court backlog now exceeds 80,000 cases, and victims are waiting longer than ever to see justice. The Government must take real action to address the inefficiencies at the heart of the failing system, rather than pursuing the unevidenced structural changes we have seen in recent months. Real change can be achieved through targeted listing, the better use of court time by holding more sittings in a day and reforming prisoner escort contracts. We believe that failings in the family courts allow abusers to continue abusing victims, and that they too often fail to recognise domestic abuse, despite its presence in over 70% of hearings. Once again, training must be extended to cover these issues and protect individuals who are victims of domestic abuse and coercive control. We must provide sustainable funding for support services for survivors of violence against women and girls and domestic abuse, and expand the provision of high-quality perpetrator programmes in domestic abuse cases, with the aim of preventing further abuse. We want to establish specialist VAWG taskforces in every police force, bringing together officers and specialists with the training, resources and capacity to effectively support survivors, including by working in partnership with frontline women’s services. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) said in his excellent speech, we believe that special measures should be the standard, with victims having the opportunity to opt out of special measures, because so often, and especially for those who do not have access to legal aid, they have no idea what is available to them when it comes to special measures. If they were a standard principle across all courtrooms and a victim could then say, “No, actually, I don’t want the special measures. I want to be able to face the accused in court,” that would be very different from their getting to court and finding out that nothing is in place for them. If we can take one thing from this debate, it is that victims continue to go unheard in our criminal justice system. We must listen to those who have spoken up in support of the petition and ensure that they have their concerns addressed, so that other victims of these horrendous crimes do not suffer in the same way.
Last week, Ukrainian forces were reportedly left exposed to Russian attacks after the US President acted to restrict access to Starshield, showing that the White House is prepared to pressure American companies to interfere in allied military operations, and the importance of sovereign control over military satellite communications in facing the Russian threat. Now the Government are reportedly considering a low-ball American bid to operate Skynet—a system conceived during the cold war to guarantee British sovereignty over military satellite capability—threatening hundreds of jobs in Portsmouth, a great military city still reeling from losing shipbuilding. The Government talk about buying British and strengthening sovereign capability, and here we have a proven world-leading system operated by a European company, so can the Defence Secretary explain to me and the people of Portsmouth why he is considering handing operation of this critical sovereign capability to the US?
The Liberal Democrats have proposed expanding our cadet and reserve forces to include a voluntary civilian resilience strand, equipping British people with skills in cyber-defence, emergency response and protecting critical national infrastructure. Last week, the director general of MI5 warned of escalating Russian hybrid warfare and the need to strengthen our national resilience. The Defence Secretary will be aware that Britain once had a civil defence corps, with tens of thousands of volunteers during the cold war. Will he back our proposals to establish a new civilian volunteer reserve co-ordinated by a new, dedicated civil defence office, harnessing the enthusiasm of Britain’s young people who want to serve their communities and strengthen our national resilience?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Mundell. My constituency has one of the highest numbers of signatures on today’s petition, showing a clear desire to support Paris Shears’s campaign. I am pleased to be here to show my support and urge the Government to put victims at the heart of every stage of their approach to tackling domestic abuse. In Cambridgeshire last year, 16% of all recorded crimes were related to domestic abuse. There were 59 arrests per 100 such crimes, and 31 cases of domestic abuse per 10,000 females were deemed high-risk enough to be discussed at multi-agency risk-assessment conferences. Those are deeply concerning statistics. We all want to reduce those figures to zero, so it is alarming that virtually none of them has significantly reduced in Cambridgeshire in the past five years. Particularly pertinent to today’s debate is the number of high-risk cases that are repeat issues. In Cambridgeshire, 38% of cases are repeatedly discussed at multi-agency risk assessment conferences, compared with 29% nationally. Our area has been consistently above average in this regard for the past five years. It may be that higher repeat referrals reflect agencies getting better at spotting repeat victimisation—I hope that that is part of it—but those figures also suggest that too many of the most serious cases are coming back around and that something in the system is allowing the cycle to continue. The idea at the centre of the debate—sentence reductions for guilty pleas—is good in theory. There is a huge court backlog, which has worn away public confidence in the criminal justice system and has allowed criminals to get away with their offences. A graduated system of sentence reduction provides little reward to the offender for waiting to change their plea and speeds up proceedings where a guilty verdict may have been reached anyway, but in Paris’s case and in so many others, the unique and insidious nature of domestic abuse means that what should be a way of clearing the case backlog for simple cases has been repurposed by abusers into a tool to maintain control over their victim until the very last minute. We cannot let that continue. The Sentencing Council’s guideline is clear about why a discount exists: a guilty plea normally reduces the impact of the crime on victims and spares them from having to give evidence. In most cases, that holds—even a late plea spares a victim the witness box—but coercive control is different because the wait itself is part of the harm. Every month for which a perpetrator maintains a not guilty plea is another month in which they shape their victim’s life. A guilty plea on the morning of the trial does not undo that; it is often the final act of control. The guideline’s assumption that a late guilty plea still benefits the victim simply does not fit these cases. The law already gives courts room to recognise that. Section 73 of the Sentencing Act 2020 requires courts to consider not only the stage at which a guilty plea was indicated, but the circumstances in which it was given. Will the Minister ask the Sentencing Council to look specifically at how those circumstances are assessed in controlling or coercive behaviour cases and whether tactical delay by a perpetrator should reduce the discount or remove it altogether? Paris’s campaign speaks to wider concerns about the lack of support in place for victims of domestic abuse, including controlling or coercive behaviour, throughout the judicial process. This goes beyond the criminal courts. Several constituents have contacted me about serious problems in, for example, the family courts, where victims are failed by irregularities in the provision of special measures. It was welcome that automatic eligibility for measures such as protective screens and curtains, support persons and private testimony was expanded to domestic abuse victims in 2021, but that counts for little if those measures are not actually in place on the day. In much the same way as we have discussed in relation to a last-minute guilty plea, the continual failure to put appropriate protections in place for victims when they attend court is simply allowing their abuse and emotional distress to continue. Has the Minister considered making special measures standard in courtrooms in order to ensure that no victim will ever be without them, and what does he think to recommending that proceedings be suspended where promised protections have failed to be put in place? A 2021 report from the Victims’ Commissioner noted huge gaps in our understanding of the demand for and supply of special measures and recommended that the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office develop a national protocol for data collection. That protocol has been in place since 2024, and I would appreciate hearing how the data is being used to make improvements in the provision of those measures. Victims need to be put first at every stage, and in every bit of guidance, through real measures to protect them both in court and outside it. The Government have committed to updating the controlling or coercive behaviour statutory guidance before the end of 2026, and I hope that they will keep that promise, for Paris and the thousands of others who are being and have been failed by the system.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today the Children’s Commissioner has published a report indicating that children in England face a state of emergency. Has the Secretary of State for Education given any indication that she intends to come to the House to give a statement and allow Members to question her on the Government’s response?
13. What steps he is taking to improve defence preparedness and resilience.
Speaking in Washington last week, the Secretary of State for Defence said: “Defence spending is the measure of our commitment. Defence capability is the measure of our credibility.” How will the Government ensure that in addition to increasing defence spending, this country maximises the capability that it gets for every pound?
I thank those in Taunton and Wellington who signed the petition. In addition to the review of sentencing guidelines for which my hon. Friend has advocated, and which I very much support, does she agree that, in respect of Paris’s law, which I also support, prevention needs to be tackled through greater perpetrator programmes, so that individuals are targeted and coercive and controlling behaviour can be stopped at its root as much as possible?
It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests—I am a social landlord. The Liberal Democrats support and recognise the work that has been done on Awaab’s law and its passing in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which we supported as a major step forward. We therefore welcome the draft regulations to extend the hazards in the definition. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire, who made a good speech on the efficacy of Awaab’s law. My constituents have also found it useful in securing action on matters such as damp and mould and so forth. The electrical regulations appear to be a tidying-up exercise. I do not have any further comments, and we are happy to support them. In regard to the social housing regulations, has consideration been given to extending the hazards to encompass overcrowding? I was pleased to campaign over a number of years in different roles to restore minimum space standards in housing; when I trained as an architect many decades ago, those were a requirement, until the Thatcher Government swept them away and we ended up with the second smallest homes in Europe. I was delighted that we campaigned for that cross party and that Liberal Democrat Minister Don Foster brought in nationally prescribed space standards. However, there is not much point in having space standards if the homes themselves are completely overcrowded. We are therefore interested to hear from the Minister whether consideration has been given to including overcrowding in the hazards in these or future regulations. Other than that, we stand in support of the regulations.
T9. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Putin has proposed a meeting with President Xi and President Trump to agree a deal to end the war in Ukraine. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to confirm that Britain’s support for Ukraine to win this war is unwavering, no matter what dodgy deals are done by autocrats behind closed doors?
Last weekend I was in Iceland for the Arctic Circle Assembly, where I heard a great deal of support for greater co-operation with the United Kingdom in the High North, but also an excitement about the impending Arctic policy framework that was published on Thursday. That document recognised the great strategic importance of the High North to the United Kingdom. Given that, will the Minister say more about when a new icebreaker will be brought online, which is clearly critical to our polar strategy and posture? What other resources will the United Kingdom need in the short term to deliver that strategy?