New clause 3 - Aggravated trespass
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice). Like him, I have pharmaceutical companies in my constituency, and I have also followed, with approval, much that the Government have done to toughen up still further the laws that we introduced when we were in Government.
I pay tribute to what Ministers have done, not only the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East, but other Home Office Ministers in the previous Parliament. As a member of the shadow Home Office team, I worked with them and Labour Back Benchers to toughen up the law. I take the opportunity also to mention the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman). He is not a member of this Committee, but he did a great deal of work on a previous Bill in Committee on which I was the Conservative spokesman. Between us, we managed to improve previous legislation to give further protection for research scientists.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire said, this is not the right occasion to go into the rights and wrongs of animal experimentation. However, like members of the Conservative Government, Ministers have said time after time that research scientists who are carrying out lawful work should not have to live in fear of their lives. Employees of the companies based in Surrey Heath, such as Novartis and Eli Lilly, are constantly telling me that we need to ensure that the extremists in
the animal rights movement, who behave like terrorists, are not a threat to them and their families.
We all remember some of the appalling events that have taken place, in particular when a scientist in the west country had a bomb placed under his car by the terrorists. When the bomb went off, the force of the blast went sideways, luckily missing the scientist but unfortunately injuring an innocent bystander—a young woman pushing her child in a buggy along the pavement beside the scientist's car. All parliamentarians recognise the need to provide further protection, and as I have a similar constituency interest as my hon. Friend, I thought that it was important reinforce the point.
I hope that even if the Minister cannot accept the precise wording of the new clauses, he will say that he understands the spirit behind them and that he will be prepared perhaps to table Government amendments to incorporate that spirit. If he has any doubts about that, may I urge the hon. Gentleman to confirm that that he will talk to some of his hon. Friends, such as the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), a distinguished cancer scientist who spoke about these issues, and the hon. Member for South Thanet, who has pursued these issues in the past? We all recognise that there is a constant battle to ensure that people carrying out their own law-abiding research are protected against extremists.
There is a national interest. Britain has been a home of research science for a century and more. I declare my personal interest. I think that I am the only Member both of whose parents were research scientists. They are both retired and neither of them worked with animals. However, if one grows up in a family where one's parents are involved in research science, one understands the crucial importance of maintaining Britain's position at the forefront of technological developments. I cannot stress too strongly how important I consider these matters. I hope that we will have the same constructive response from the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as I have had from other Ministers.