Gareth Myatt

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:04 pm on 12 July 2007.

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Photo of Mark Fisher Mark Fisher Labour, Stoke-on-Trent Central 6:04, 12 July 2007

As my hon. Friend knows, Gareth Myatt was my constituent. I wish to make two brief points. First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the extraordinary way in which she has pursued this case. Co-operation between Members of Parliament on cases such as this, which fall in between various Constituency responsibilities, is often difficult and sometimes impossible. In the 24 years that I have been in the House, I have never experienced such willing and tenacious co-operation from a colleague. She has pursued this case, often in the face of blank resistance from the system, as she describes it, with extraordinary tenacity, zeal and intelligence, and has shown great generosity in involving me at all points.

I knew Gareth Myatt; he often came to my advice surgery. He was an extremely difficult child, but he was tiny. My hon. Friend has given some statistics, but he was a shrimp of a young man. He was so small that he hardly existed, and he was frenetic. He was like an eel—

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Pauline Campbell
Posted on 17 Jul 2007 9:49 pm (Report this annotation)

shrimp frenetic like an eel he hardly existed extremely difficult

What an unfortunate choice of words from Mr Mark Fisher, MP, when speaking about Gareth Myatt deceased - a child who died in one of Labour's child prisons.

constituency

In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent