Bridget Prentice: I most certainly will, and I will keep the hon. and learned Gentleman informed of any progress that we make in the course of any discussions with the Muslim community. Any advice that he wishes to give me in the course of doing so will be very gratefully received. Sitting suspended.
Bridget Prentice: The two dedicated drug court pilots that we have provided in Leeds and west London have been shown to be good models on which to work, and we are therefore extending those models to a further four sites, which we will continue to monitor closely. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice was very pleased to launch one of these new pilots recently in Cardiff...
Bridget Prentice: My hon. Friend makes a good point, and the judges in those courts recognise exactly what she is saying. They make it clear that if offenders who come before them for the first time do not follow through the sanctions that they have been set, they will be brought back before the very same judge to be dealt with properly. They also make it clear that they will see such people personally, and...
Bridget Prentice: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken in suggesting that the Government do not take mental health problems seriously. As the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), mentioned in response to an earlier question, the launch of Lord Bradley's report last week was an important milestone in the policies that we are developing to deal with...
Bridget Prentice: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. This is an important Bill, which has been much improved by the process of scrutiny in the House. Let me record my thanks, and those of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), to all the Opposition Members for their...
Bridget Prentice: I will come to the charter for the bereaved in a moment. For me personally, it is one of the most important parts of the Bill. It puts the bereaved families at the heart of the coronial system. I have met the Marchioness victims and talked with many other bereaved family organisations. There will be an opportunity for families to appeal to the chief coroner if they feel that a coroner has...
Bridget Prentice: The chief coroner will have a number of powers in setting the national standards and making sure that there is consistency across England and Wales. I spoke to the Local Government Association conference this morning. We will work closely with local authorities to ensure that resources are in place for coroners to be able to carry out their duties properly. As a result of the reforms, there...
Bridget Prentice: Of course I agree with the hon. Gentleman about how important that is, and I think the witness protection programme is sufficiently robust to deal with exactly that. I visited one of my local schools earlier this week. It has been doing some work on knife and gun crime, which the hon. Gentleman knows is very important in our constituencies. The people at the school referred me to the...
Bridget Prentice: I shall deal briefly with the two technical Government amendments in this group. Amendment 142 refines the anonymity provisions to take into account those rare situations where the duty of non-disclosure imposed by an investigation anonymity order may come into conflict with a duty to disclose an anonymous informant's identity that happens to arise by virtue of some other legislation or the...
Bridget Prentice: The hon. Lady makes a good point, and she is quite right. Although it may be fun playing about with these things on computers, there are potentially sensitive issues attached to them. I shall certainly ensure that the Information Commissioner takes up that point when he reviews the situation. I wish to respond to some of the points that the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk made. He asked...
Bridget Prentice: I am speaking a little sooner than I expected, but there we are. I begin with Government amendment 25, which is at the heart of this grouping on data sharing and data protection, and the associated consequential amendment 153. They will remove from the Bill the power to establish new information-sharing gateways by secondary legislation. The proposal in clause 154 for information-sharing...
Bridget Prentice: For the record, and as the hon. Gentleman will know, I said clearly in response to the Committee debate that the clause was too wide and that we would reflect on the debate and look at it again.
Bridget Prentice: I have invited the hon. Member for Cambridge, who moved the new clause, to discuss that with the DPP, and I think that that is the appropriate thing for him to do. I do not think that it is necessarily appropriate to extend that to the whole House, but hon. Members can make their views known to the Attorney-General and the DPP as they think fit.
Bridget Prentice: I have to reject the hon. Gentleman's argument, because the word "threatening", in this context, has to have its normal English meaning. We do not think that it is right to stretch that to include words or behaviour that it would not naturally cover, because it would muddy the waters. I am concerned that if we were to go down the road he suggests in new clause 37, those who make such...
Bridget Prentice: The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) are right: Stonewall's example in the briefing is wrong about what would be caught by this part of the law. Amendment 1 deals with freedom of speech, but it is important that we remember that we are also talking about the freedom of gay people to live their lives free from...
Bridget Prentice: The hon. Gentleman, as always, puts the argument so eloquently that I simply endorse what he says. It was again evident from the debate that there are strong and divided views about where the correct balance lies. I remind the House, however, that the offence covers only behaviour that is threatening and is intended to stir up hatred. I think all Members will agree that that type of behaviour...
Bridget Prentice: I will come on to the guidance in a moment, but let me just point out a key difference to my hon. Friend. Last May, this House voted on and rejected by a majority of 202 a Lords amendment inserting a saving into the sexual orientation offence. By contrast, in January 2006 we accepted, by only one vote, a Lords amendment inserting a freedom of speech saving into the Racial and Religious Hatred...
Bridget Prentice: Of course the House can change its mind, and we will discover in the Lobby in 20 minutes or so whether the House has changed its mind, but I think that the fact that this was introduced last year for an offence that has not yet been put on the statute book is a pretty persuasive argument for believing that that was the House's view at that time. We had long debates about the guidance and...
Bridget Prentice: I shall take the views of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) to heart, and shall not make any party political points about members of the SNP who did not turn up to Committee where they could have raised this issue. The hon. Member for Salisbury is quite right that this point is something that everyone, on both sides of the House, agrees on. Colleagues in government in the Scotland...
Bridget Prentice: I was going to come to that in my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Doran). In the case of a single incident in which there are multiple deaths, the repatriation would be to England. However, if the majority of the deaths happened to be of Scottish personnel, the chief coroner would have a discussion with the Lord Advocate on whether it would be more appropriate...