Category: Speeches

  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy – 2022 Statement on the Situation in Ukraine (15/04/2022) – 51 days

    Volodymyr Zelenskyy – 2022 Statement on the Situation in Ukraine (15/04/2022) – 51 days

    The statement made by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, on 15 April 2022.

    Ukrainians!

    Our defenders!

    I am sure that you periodically see in the media – Ukrainian and Western – reports on how long this war can last. Some say a few weeks. Others – several years. Some say the war will last until the end of this year. And someone advises to prepare for a permanent confrontation with Russia as long as it exists.

    Of course, I also hear different predictions. I have much more information than some media outlets about the intentions and capabilities of the Russian army. About the potential of the Russian economy. About the emotional state of society in Russia. All this must be taken into account before saying how long the war will last. Therefore, we must take into account the effectiveness of instruments of influence on Russia used by Ukraine and our entire anti-war coalition against Russia’s aggression.

    The success of our military on the battlefield is really significant. Historically significant. But not enough to clean our land from the occupiers yet. We’ll beat them more.

    Sanctions against Russia are very significant. Economically painful. But still not enough for the Russian military machine to be left without means of subsistence. We promote stronger, more destructive ones.

    So, in fact, it is these two areas that determine how long this war will last.

    I always tell all our partners with whom I discuss this issue that the amount of support for Ukraine directly affects the restoration of peace. It literally defines how many more Ukrainians the occupiers will manage to kill.

    If someone says: year or years, I answer: you can make the war much shorter. The more and the sooner we get all the weapons we have requested, the stronger our position will be and the sooner peace will come. The more and the sooner we get the financial support we have requested, the sooner there will be peace. The sooner the democratic world recognizes that the oil embargo against Russia and the complete blockade of its banking sector are necessary steps towards peace, the sooner the war will end.

    So the number one task is to speed up the restoration of peace.

    Our Armed Forces are doing it brilliantly. They are repelling the occupiers’ attacks. They are carrying out counterattacks. They have already tormented – in the true sense of the word – Russian conventional aviation so much that they are forced to use strategic long-range aircraft.

    I am grateful to each of our defenders for this great work.

    Our diplomats must continue their activity in all possible directions, at all possible levels. Both official and unofficial.

    The next package of sanctions against Russia must include an abandonment of Russian oil. In general, the democratic world must admit that money for Russian energy resources is in fact money for the destruction of democracy. When these decisions are made, we will all be able to see that peace is approaching.

    I held a meeting with government officials today. The key topic is the solution of urgent economic issues that arose during martial law.

    It was noted that four-fifths of all Ukrainian enterprises have already returned to work in a safe area. In particular, this applies to heavy industry enterprises. Transport networks are being rebuilt. Good performance is shown in trade and services. And all this is also the fulfillment of the national task of accelerating the restoration of peace.

    That is why I am grateful to everyone who keeps jobs, who employs our people, who helps businesses adapt to these difficult conditions and gives Ukraine the necessary economic strength to live.

    No matter what, in all cities and communities where there are no occupiers and hostilities, it is necessary to restore the economy to the maximum.

    Energy issues and the end of this heating season were discussed. The season was successful in spite of everything. Despite all the predictions, tariffs have not increased. There were no rolling blackouts. Supplies were not disrupted even in wartime. Preparations have also begun for the next heating season. We discussed the purchase of gas, the purchase of coal.

    We offer at least for the next 6 months the electricity tariff in the amount of 1 hryvnia 44 kopecks per kilowatt for those who use less than 250 kilowatts. This is 80% of our people.

    The Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food reported that the sowing campaign has begun and continues in all regions of our country, including Luhansk and Donetsk.

    We also talked to government officials today about filling in the questionnaire that Ukraine received from President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. This is a necessary stage in the preparation of our country to become a candidate for EU membership. The work is almost complete, and we will soon provide the answers to the representatives of the European Union.

    I held an important meeting today with all the leaders of the state power bloc. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Chief of the General Staff, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Commander of the National Guard, Minister of Internal Affairs, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine. The meeting was also attended by the Head of the President’s Office, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and the head of our delegation at the negotiations. The main topic is Mariupol. Details cannot be made public at the moment. But we are doing everything to save our people.

    The restoration of normal life in those areas and districts where the occupiers were expelled continues. The amount of work is really huge. 918 settlements of different scales, but equally important for us, for Ukraine, have already been de-occupied.

    We carry out demining. We restore the supply of electricity, water and gas. We restore the work of the police, post office, state and local authorities.

    Humanitarian headquarters have started working on the territory of 338 liberated settlements. We are resuming the provision of regular and emergency medical care, the work of educational institutions – where it is really possible. In total, on this day, Russian troops have destroyed or damaged 1,018 educational institutions across our country.

    Restoration of roads and railways has begun. In particular, from tomorrow the railway connection with Chernihiv and Nizhyn will be restored. Trains are already running between the cities of the Sumy region.

    The teams of Ukravtodor and Ukrzaliznytsia work quite efficiently, and I am grateful to them for this speed. For giving people back a sense of normal life, which the occupiers tried to destroy forever.

    In the south and east of our country, the situation is still very difficult, far from talking about recovery.

    In the occupied districts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the Russian military continue to terrorize civilian residents of our country. They are looking for anyone who has ever been associated with the Ukrainian army or government agencies.

    The occupiers think that this will somehow make it easier for them to control the territory. But they are wrong. They deceive themselves. The problem of the occupiers is not that they are not accepted by some activists, veterans or journalists. Russia’s problem is that the entire Ukrainian people does not accept it and will never accept it again. Russia lost Ukraine forever. Actually, it lost the whole world. It will not be accepted anywhere anymore.

    And the cruelty with which Russian troops are trying to conquer the Azov, Donbas, Kharkiv regions, only takes away even the slightest chance of these territories and these people to have any ties with this state at least sometime in the future.

    Maybe somewhere in Russia cruelty is respected. But in Ukraine cruelty is despised. And punished. And it is obligatory.

    Today I signed decrees on awarding our military. 237 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were awarded state awards, 34 of them posthumously.

    The title of Hero of Ukraine was awarded to Colonel Kashchenko Dmytro Valeriyovych, commander of the 58th separate motorized infantry brigade of the Operational Command “North” of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For the personal example of heroism that inspires comrades in service, for extremely effective combat operations and concrete and very important results for maintaining the positions of our army and expelling the occupiers.

    And finally. The important words that hope always wins even under seemingly insurmountable circumstances.

    This Saturday, the Jewish community celebrates Passover. Holiday of liberation. Holiday of life. I sincerely wish all those who celebrate in Ukraine and in the world peace, good and the inevitable defeat of any evil that threatens freedom and life on earth.

    Chag Pesach Sameach!

    I am grateful to all our male defenders! I am grateful to all our female defenders!

    Glory to Ukraine!

  • Alistair Darling – 1997 Comments on the Barnett Formula

    Alistair Darling – 1997 Comments on the Barnett Formula

    The comments made by Alistair Darling, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 27 November 1997.

    The Government have made it clear that they intend to keep the existing arrangements. The Government’s position was clearly set out in the two White Papers on which the referendum campaigns in Scotland and Wales were fought and won.

  • Alistair Darling – 1997 Speech on Pension Reform

    Alistair Darling – 1997 Speech on Pension Reform

    The speech made by Alistair Darling, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 9 July 1997.

    I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof: condemns the failure of the last Government to foster security in retirement for either today’s pensioners or pensioners of the future; supports the present Government’s objective of a decent income for all in retirement; believes that the best way to achieve this is by developing second pensions building on the foundation of the basic state pension; commends the Government’s decisive action on the past mis-selling of private pensions; endorses the measures taken in the Budget, particularly the reforms to corporation tax, which will help to create a climate encouraging higher investment and a higher sustainable growth rate increasing the capacity of the economy to support decent pensions; supports the Government’s welfare-to-work proposals, which will improve the employment opportunities for thousands of people, enabling them to save for their own retirement; and welcomes the Government’s commitment to review pensions and achieve security in retirement for all. I shall deal in turn with each point of substance raised by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley).

    The motion mentions misselling. The right hon. Gentleman said at numerous points during his speech that he would come to the subject of the misselling of pensions that took place, to a large extent, while the last Government were in power, but unfortunately he did not get around to addressing that central point. Rather like his right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke)—who is here now, and who said the other night that the business of pensions misselling was something of a “hare in another field”— the shadow Chancellor ignored the fact that misselling is a running sore which, sadly, has yet to be cleared up.

    Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster)

    I hope that the Chief Secretary will accept that the point that I sought to make was that his intervention on misselling was not a defence of what the Government were doing, although I acknowledge that it was a fair debating point.

    Mr. Darling

    I shall return to Government policy, but first I should like to deal with misselling, especially as the Opposition have referred to it in their motion. That reference demonstrates the Tory party’s brass neck because, over the 10 years between the start of misselling and the time that they left office, they did little to sort out the problem.

    It is ironic that, on the day my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury publishes a further list showing what little progress has been made by many pension companies to solve the problem, the Opposition should choose to use the term “misselling”. Many of the 700,000 people who were affected will wonder why the Conservatives, who were in power for so long, did nothing to prevent the problem in the first place and, when it arose, did little to resolve it. It was not until a few weeks before the election that there was the slightest flicker of interest in the Conservative Government in clearing up the problem.

    It was obvious to us on taking office that the Conservative Government had done precious little to put pressure on the companies that were guilty of misselling. I wonder why. Perhaps the Opposition could do with a lesson in history. Let us look at Conservative Government policy in the late 1980s. Their hostility to public provision is well documented, and it extended to the public provision of pensions. Their policy was designed to get people out of occupational pensions and into private schemes.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) drew attention to advertisements—which, I may say, were paid for by the public—which the Government promoted not just in text but on television. They wanted people to believe that the very act of going private was spiritually and materially enriching. People were persuaded that, if they took out a private pension, they would be better off, almost by definition. It is interesting to recall the name of the junior Social Security Minister at the time that policy was promoted—it was the shadow Chancellor. The other Minister, although perhaps now it is a matter of historical interest, was the man who was Prime Minister for some six years.

    Mr. Lilley

    That is not true. I was never a junior Social Security Minister. I was only ever Secretary of State.

    Mr. Darling

    It has nothing to do with the right hon. Gentleman. Is that not typical of the Conservative party?

    Mr. Lilley

    On a point of information, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not customary for someone who makes a false accusation to apologise rather than, after recognising that the person accused is not guilty, letting it be a matter for further derigration?

    Mr. Deputy Speaker

    That is purely a matter for debate.

    Mr. Darling

    A former Minister complains that he has been falsely accused of being a Minister. I can understand why he feels guilty about that. If he thinks that it is an insult to say that he was a junior Social Security Minister, of course I am sorry for insulting him. I did not realise that it was insulting to say that someone was a member of a Government.

    Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry)

    My right hon. Friend was a junior Minister in the Treasury at that time.

    Mr. Darling

    He cannot deny that he was a member of the Government when these problems arose, or is that an insult, too? Is it insulting to say that someone was a member of the Conservative Government? It may be; I do not know.

    The Conservative Government created the climate in which it was possible for unscrupulous salesmen to go into communities, especially former mining communities, and persuade people to leave their occupational schemes and enter private ones that were wholly unsuitable. People who should never have been allowed to sell pensions were let loose among some extremely vulnerable people and, sadly, the managements of some companies turned a blind eye to the problem.

    When we add to that the problem of lax regulation—Tory self-regulation—and the far too many vested interests that were quite happy to turn a blind eye to what was happening, it is not surprising that many people were wrongly sold personal private pensions. The Conservative Government were culpable, collectively and in some cases as individuals, because, during all the time they were in power, they did nothing about that.

    It is to the credit of Sir Andrew Large, the outgoing chairman of the Securities and Investments Board, that he brought the matter to public attention in the early 1990s. His battle, along with other regulators, was fought largely by the regulators on their own, without help from the Government, in the new climate that began to prevail in the past three or four years. Despite the misselling over the past 10 years, little progress has been made. My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary today published a report showing a lamentable lack of progress by the 24 firms that have most cases to review. Of course, there are others.

    Mr. Geraint Davies

    In many cases, the commission charged on pensions was 25 per cent. That is more than the 20 per cent. tax credit about which the Opposition complain. They complain about the withdrawal of the tax credit, which is good for the public Exchequer. Will they condemn the massive commissions that were paid to people who missold thousands of personal pensions?

    Mr. Darling

    For a long time, I have said that the regulator should look at the impact of commission on selling. It can put undue pressure on people who sell pensions, and that can have unfortunate consequences.

    Mr. Campbell-Savours

    I was a member of the Committee that examined the Financial Services Bill. Four years before the rows about misselling broke out, we moved amendments about the disclosure of commission and the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill), who was also a member of that Committee, and some people who have now left the House, opposed such disclosure. The public should know that, if our amendments had been accepted, the great misselling scandal of pensions in the 1980s might not have occurred, because people would have known that they were being ripped off.

    Mr. Darling

    My hon. Friend is right. If there had been the transparency that now exists, many of the problems that occurred in the late 1980s would have been avoided.

    Mr. Butterfill rose—

    Mr. Darling

    The hon. Gentleman is desperate to intervene. According to the Register of Members’ Interests, he is well qualified to intervene on this matter. No doubt he will draw the attention of the House to that if he makes a speech.

    Mr. Butterfill

    The hon. Gentleman is right: I advise the Independent Financial Advisers Association and the British Insurance and Investment Brokers Association. However, that is not the point that I wish to make. Will the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) reconsider what he said? I did not at any time oppose the disclosure of commission. In 1986, I opposed purely the disclosure of commission when it was often necessary to disclose all the other costs of direct selling companies. In many cases, such costs were much higher than those incurred by companies that employed independent financial advisers. I urged the Committee to legislate to disclose all the costs of all companies and not single out one area, as the hon. Gentleman wished to do.

    Mr. Darling

    It is interesting to note that Opposition Members, whether on the Front Bench or the Back Benches, are trying to disclaim all knowledge of what went on in the 1980s. I am intrigued that hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West, who opposed the disclosure of commission, always said that such opposition was for the greater good and that many other things needed to be known as well. I would not have minded if they had argued at that time in favour of disclosing not just commission but all other factors in the make-up of the sale of a product. That is important.

    Mr. Butterfill

    Will the Minister give way?

    Mr. Darling

    The hon. Gentleman should contain himself. I may give way to him later. I was about to be nice to him, so perhaps he will sit patiently. In debates on the Finance Bill and in other debates, he can make helpful suggestions. In debates on a Bill on financial services, which we propose to introduce during this Parliament, I am sure that his comments will be helpful.

    Mr. Butterfill

    The right hon. Gentleman is completely distorting the facts and what I said. I urged the Committee to disclose all costs, including commission paid to salesmen, but it was the Labour party and the hon. Member for Workington who did not want all costs disclosed—the hon. Gentleman wanted only insurance salesmen’s commission costs disclosed. It was precisely because I felt that all costs should be disclosed that I made a principled stand on the entire subject.

    Mr. Darling

    I can see now why the hon. Gentleman is retained at such generous rates. He clearly does his best for the industry.

    Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay)

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    Perhaps I could deal with one point at a time; at some point, I should like to get on to the matters raised by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden.

    I was making the point that many people, including the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill), used to argue against disclosure of commission simply 968because they did not want that aspect disclosed. The House may remember that we are discussing this matter because my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Davies) raised the impact of commission on the selling of financial products. I think that all of us agree that the regulators need to examine the matter. I am all in favour of giving incentives to sales forces to sell products, but we have to watch the impact of those incentives and their propensity for encouraging the misselling of pensions.

    Mrs. Gorman

    Is it not a fact that the people about whose plight the right hon. Gentleman is agonising, shedding some crocodile tears along the way of course, are the very people whose individual pension funds are to be raided by the Government—about 5 million of them? They are paying modest amounts of around £1,000 a year, and they will have to find another £100 to £150 a year to keep their savings intact—because of the depredations that the Government are about to inflict on them.

    Mr. Darling

    The answer is no.

    The point that I was drawing to the attention of the House is that many people who were missold pensions have still not received the compensation that is due to them. I say this in response to the point that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden made, at which the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) may have been hinting. Frankly, I have little time for the argument that is now advanced by some pension companies that they could be making great progress, if only there had not been any change to the corporation tax regime. That might have been a statable case had they been making any progress, but many of them have not.

    When hon. Members read the parliamentary answer of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, which will now be published, of course, they will find that the progress has been lamentably slow. In nearly every company, the percentage of cases that has been dealt with is in single figures, and that cannot be satisfactory. I hope that the pension companies that follow these proceedings will understand that the public will not tolerate such lamentable progress, when so many people are awaiting redress and cannot understand why on earth there is a delay.

    Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset)

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    In a moment.

    We will continue to publish regularly companies’ progress, or lack of progress, because we believe, unlike the Conservative party—presumably, if it had believed that openness was a good idea, it would have done something about it—that openness is essential. I should like to move on to some of the other points raised, but, as the hon. Gentleman seems desperate to intervene, let him do so.

    Mr. Letwin

    I was merely going to inquire whether, after some 15 minutes of eloquence, the right hon. Gentleman intends to move to the subject of the debate.

    Mr. Darling

    If the hon. Gentleman had sat quietly, I would have got to the points about which he asks some 96930 seconds sooner. I have been asked questions and, as a member of the Government, I thought that it was my duty to answer them. Ministers are accountable to the House, and some important points have been made. The performance so far has been unacceptable, and I hope that the National Association of Pension Funds and the Association of British Insurers can find time, when they are not criticising the Government, to put some pressure on their members to resolve the matter.

    The other step that the Government are taking, which the previous Government would not take, despite being pressed to do so, is substantially to reform the Financial Services Act 1986, to ensure that we have a proper regulation system, an end to self-regulation and regulation in the public interest, which will benefit both the industry and the public. We are committed to doing that, and legislation will be introduced during this Parliament, but Conservative Members, despite this debate, still cannot answer this question: why did they so nothing about the problem when they had all the time in the world to do so?

    Let me deal with another point to which reference is made in the Opposition motion but to which, although I may be wrong about this, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, the Opposition spokesman, did not refer—the windfall tax. I am interested in this because, when the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury summed up for the Opposition at the end the Budget debate, he did not mention the windfall tax either. Over the past year or two, and certainly during the general election campaign, I got the impression that the Conservative party thought that the tax was so bad that it would form the centrepiece of its opposition to us in government, yet, in two major speeches, Opposition spokesmen did not mention the tax.

    Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex)

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    Not just now. I do not want to be accused of taking up the valuable time of the House answering Conservative Members’ questions.

    It is interesting that, in the Opposition motion—never mind Conservative Members’ speeches—the Conservatives are no longer defending the privatised utilities, and no wonder, because they have accepted the Budget proposals. I notice that their shares have increased since the Budget, which suggests that what we are doing is reasonable, but the new line from the Opposition is that the tax is an attack on pension funds.

    I want to make a basic point. The reason we have implemented the windfall tax is to fund a programme to get people back into work, which will enable them to make a contribution for themselves and their families, to save for their retirement and to contribute towards their pensions, so the tax is a sensible step. The Government have raised a windfall tax that will get people into work. Instead of paying increased social security bills, about which the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden certainly knows something, we can give people the opportunity to contribute. The windfall tax is entirely justified for that reason, and is widely accepted to be so. Given the strength of feeling on the Conservative Benches over the past few years, I am surprised that the tax was not referred to, although it was in the Opposition motion.

    One matter was mentioned: the allegation that there was an absence of consultation. The Opposition motion contains the words shoddy, hastily prepared and ill-thought-out”. I have heard those words before and not too long ago. I heard them in March when the then Government introduced basic pension plus, which I do not remember being introduced with much consultation. In fact, there was not even a statement in the House.

    Mr. Jenkin

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    In one moment.

    The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, in a sotto voce exchange with the Minister for Welfare Reform, said that the proposal was prepared in secret. If that is true, the Conservative party is in no position to criticise us. I also caution the Conservative party about dressing up in new, ill-fitting clothes as the pensioners’ friend. We have to remember what we are dealing with here. The Tories’ record as the pensioners’ friend does not bear close examination. If one considers the central plank of basic pension plus, one will remember that the tax changes that the then Government were going to make would have cost a person on average income with an occupational pension some £600 extra a year.

    Mr. Jenkin

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    In one moment.

    Talking about consultation and openness, I think that basic pension plus was the first pensions policy ever to be announced without a Government Actuary’s report, which is unusual in relation to social security, so for the Conservative party to accuse us of doing something that was “ill-thought-out” and without consultation simply does not stand up.

    Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green)

    The right hon. Gentleman is busy comparing the Budget to proposals that preceded a Green Paper from the previous Government. Is he suggesting that this section of the Budget will be pushed out to a Green Paper? If he is not suggesting that, he should stop this ludicrous comparison.

    Mr. Darling

    I am simply drawing attention to the fact, that just before the election, the then Government—that is what they were, despite sometimes appearing not to be so—put forward major proposals for the reform of pensions. The then Prime Minister and Ministers—I hope that I am not being rude to Opposition Members by accusing them of being Ministers—all gave the impression that that was their policy and that that was what they intended to do. When we are discussing an Opposition motion, I am entitled to draw attention to the fact that they had a proposal that would have cost someone on an average income about £600 extra a year.

    In addition, the previous Government could never say how their proposals were to be funded. At one point, over the next 20 to 30 years, the cost was rising to about £7 billion a year.

    Mr. Bernard Jenkin rose—

    Mr. Darling

    I will give way in a moment.

    It was not just we who criticised the Government or got the wrong idea about their policy—if that is what they are now telling us. Many newspapers were critical of it. The Financial Times said: look at the fine print and it is clear that the scheme will involve either higher borrowing or higher taxes for 45 years”. In The Times, Graham Searjeant said: Privatising the basic state pension … will raise the tax burden.

    The Consumers Association pointed out: Young people will be paying for their own pension, to meet their retirement needs, but at the same time they will be paying for their parents pension. My point is that the Conservative Government put forward proposals just before the election which would have hammered pensioners. They cannot stand before us today and pretend somehow to be the pensioners’ friend.

    Mr. Jenkin

    Basic pension plus would have given pensioners a better rate of return on their money than the present basic state pension. Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the fact that we are spending time discussing his Budget proposals on advance corporation tax because the tax raised by that measure makes the windfall profit tax look rather modest by comparison? If we had followed the example that he has set with these proposals, we would have kept basic pension plus a secret until after the election.

    Mr. Darling

    Some of the hon. Gentleman’s hon. Friends may have some sympathy with that point.

    Before I turn to the central point raised by the shadow Chancellor, I want to talk about the pensions industry. Despite the fact that we are rightly critical of the performance of some of these companies in clearing up the misselling of pensions problem, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the importance of the industry as an employer, a wealth creator and a service provider.

    Mr. Letwin

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    Not just now.

    It is the purpose of the Government to encourage people to save and invest and to make provision for themselves. We intend to create an economic climate where we have growth and investment that will create the wealth that will enable everyone to enjoy a higher standard of living now and in their retirement. The pensions industry plays an important part in that.

    I want to return to our proposals on corporation tax—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are always complaining that we are being high-handed and are not responding to their questions: now they are complaining because I have been answering their questions.

    I shall start with an important point. The shadow Chancellor said that when Norman Lamont introduced the changes in his Budget in 1993, it was simply a matter of bringing tax rates into line. I notice that the Opposition motion opens by saying: this House condemns the Government’s assault on pension funds through the removal of tax relief on dividend income of pension funds in direct betrayal of their election pledges”. It reminded me that that accusation could more properly be applied to what happened in 1993. The shadow Chancellor told us that it was a matter of bringing tax rates into alignment, but I wonder whether he would refresh his memory and see what Norman Lamont said in his Budget speech. When talking about the reforms, Mr. Lamont said: they are central to the strategy of this Budget, and they raise significant amounts of revenue. He went on to say that it would save the Exchequer

    no less than £1 billion a year.”—[Official Report, 16 March 1993; Vol. 221, c. 185–86.] At that time, the Conservative Government were not proposing to reduce the rates of corporation tax, but were simply taking that money into the Exchequer. We have to rely on the words of the then Chancellor, Norman Lamont, as I do not remember any Minister denying that that was the Government’s intention. Therefore, the shadow Chancellor’s assertion that all that was happening in 1993 was a minor adjustment to ensure that the rates were the same for corporation tax as for other taxes does not stand up.

    Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester)

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr. Darling

    The hon. Gentleman was not a Minister at the time, but I think he knew something about it. I will give way, as long as he does not accuse me of taking too long.

    Mr. Tyrie

    Does the right hon. Gentleman have the end of the 1993 speech? He will find that the then Chancellor confirmed that the intention was to align all the rates at 20 per cent., that there was no intention to bring the rate to below 20 per cent. and certainly no intention ever to consider abolition.

    Mr. Darling

    The point is that the then Chancellor told the House in clear terms that the purpose of his adjustments in the taxation of dividends was to raise money for the Exchequer—£1 billion of it. [Interruption.] I am just about to come to another passage which Opposition Members might find illuminating.

    Mr. Caplin

    I was not in this place in 1993, but I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can refresh my memory as to whether anyone on the Treasury Front Bench at that time or the now shadow Chancellor criticised the then Chancellor for the tax change.

    Mr. Darling

    I believe that, at the time, there was great criticism among members of the Government, but it involved Europe rather than tax changes. Two of the Opposition Members on the Front Bench will recall that.

    I shall press on in case Opposition Members are in any doubt about what their Government were doing. I know that they were not all on the Committee considering the Finance Bill in 1993, and they may not know what went on. I thought that I would see whether the Government ever threw any more light on why they changed the taxation of dividends. The then Financial Secretary, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), told the Committee: We needed to raise revenue in a way that did least economic damage … my right hon. Friend decided that to collect extra revenue he would do so from pension funds

    from a group of people with taxable capacity, but who are not taxpayers, in a way that does minimum economic damage, recognising the substantial tax benefits available to pension funds as collective savings vehicles. I wonder whether Opposition Members would like me to read that again. It tends to suggest that what the then Government were about was a raid on pension funds and that they were not proposing any other measures to compensate for that. [Interruption.] I see that the shadow Secretary of State for Social Security wants to intervene but is being held back by the shadow Chancellor, and no wonder.

    Mr. Duncan Smith rose—

    Mr. Darling

    I will let the hon. Gentleman have his moment.

    Mr. Duncan Smith

    In line with his point about the taxation of dividends, I wonder whether the right hon Gentleman can explain what he said on 31 May 1996. He said: Britain lives in a global economy and the minute you even suggested taxing dividends people would go out and invest in other parts of the world. The right hon. Gentleman has just agreed with his Chancellor that he has taxed dividends. How does he explain his volte face?

    Mr. Darling

    If I remember rightly, I believe that I was being asked about the taxation of investment income at a different rate. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to see the article, I will be able to confirm that I made the remark in that context.

    The argument from Conservative Members that they were simply aligning tax rates does not stand up. If all I could produce in evidence was the quotation from Mr. Norman Lamont, they might have got by, but the quotation from the Financial Secretary in the comparatively quiet waters of the Standing Committee must be borne in mind. I shall repeat it. He said: We needed to raise revenue in a way that did least economic damage. He said that he was raising money from pension funds

    from a group of people with taxable capacity, but who are not taxpayers in a way that does minimum economic damage, recognising the substantial tax benefits available to pension funds as collective savings vehicles”.—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 15 June 1993: C. 377.] It is worth bearing it in mind—although listening to the right hon. Gentleman, one would not have been aware of it—that pension funds have been paying tax since 1993. Our proposed changes will not alter the fact that pension funds will continue to be free of tax on income in the form of capital gains and ordinary shares, as well as on other sources of investment income. That has a net cost to the Exchequer, but one that we feel is justified.

    It is wrong to suggest that what we are proposing is new. In fact, the Conservative party started the process. It is equally wrong to suggest that pension funds will be left without tax advantages.

    Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—

    Mr. Darling

    I will give way, but I want to make some progress.

    Mr. Campbell-Savours

    Should not my right hon. Friend circulate to all Members a copy of the 1993 quote by Mr. Lamont? Many hon. Members would like to see it, and might wish to use it extensively in their constituencies.

    Mr. Darling

    I am happy to make arrangements to do that, subject, as always, to the public expenditure implications. I might even pay for it myself and send it to the National Association of Pension Funds and Mrs. Robinson.

    I want to explain our proposals. We believe that it is necessary to reform the system of tax credits because it contains a major distortion, under which shareholders are better off if companies pay out profits as dividends than if they retain them for reinvestment. It is right in principle to remove that distortion. The principle that underpins our changes to the corporation tax system is absolutely right. It is for the management of companies and the shareholders to make the decisions, not for the tax system to provide an inbuilt bias.

    In the United States, where a similar system exists, pension funds take decisions on their economic merits. An important point to note is that they are as keen on the capital appreciation that then results as they are on dividends. Greater emphasis on capital growth is important. It will help companies and offer them high, long-term growth. It will ensure that they are not starved of capital by the tax system. Indeed, the importance of capital growth is something on which actuaries and others in this country might want to reflect further.

    I was pleased to note that, after the Budget, the Daily Telegraph—which I do not think is yet converted to the cause of new Labour; it certainly was not during the election, but it may be about to turn—said in its business section: The quality of life in retirement … depends on the growth in the economy, reflected in the prices of shares where the contributor’s money is invested. This is the point of the Brown Budget that the pension funds would do well to grasp. That is absolutely right. I want to emphasise that the reason we have taken this decision is right in principle. I wait to hear whether the Conservative party would repeal it were that party ever to return to power.

    The American experience is worth bearing in mind. The central thrust of the Budget is to create a climate in which the level of investment is raised. It is important to keep our eyes on that fact. Currently, the level of investment is lower than it should be at this stage of the economic cycle.

    I was interested in the speech delivered by Sir David Cooksey a few days ago, when he looked at some emerging US companies in 1975 and compared their position then with their current position. He noted that they had expanded dramatically, which is a common feature of the American economy. He said: It is also notable that very few of those companies pay dividends to their shareholders who prefer to benefit from growth in capital value as the companies reinvest all of their profits in the business. He said that that contained a lesson which we should learn.

    The value of a pension depends, to a large extent, on the value of the fund available when someone retires. Someone retiring at the height of the recession would have done less well than someone retiring now because the value of the stock market has increased; indeed, it has increased quite a bit since we came to power. It is important that those who follow these proceedings bear in mind the fact that, at the end of the day, the value of a pension depends largely on the prospects for the economy.

    I very much hope that when actuaries assess the results of our decisions, they will remember that capital growth is an important matter to take into account. When considering our proposals, they should remember that the well-being of the economy as a whole is the most important feature. Not only have we reduced corporation tax for large and small companies, but we have doubled capital allowances.

    Our goal is a long-term one—to improve this country’s investment performance. For many years, our performance has lagged behind that of our major competitors, and continues to do so despite the current recovery. That may be because, in the past, there was so much concentration on the short term. Investment for the long term and for better growth will greatly benefit companies and, therefore, pension funds, which will gain in the long term. Many of those who have commented on the impact of the corporation tax changes have ignored the long term. Indeed, that is far too common a tendency in Britain. The long term is the central point of the Government’s economic strategy.

    Actuaries, who often value shares largely on the basis of prospective income and take relatively little account of market values, should begin to think long and hard about what they have been doing. They have tended to inflate the effect of the loss of tax credits. Over the past few weeks, there has been much comment in the press about that. Actuaries should change their approach. In the United States, actuaries pay much more regard to market values. That is beginning to happen with some funds in this country, but it is necessary for both pension schemes and actuaries to sit down and take a long, hard look at the real effect of the loss of tax credits and to understand the Government’s strategy in the long term.

    Sir Nicholas Lyell rose—

    Mr. Darling

    I will not give way, because I have been speaking for too long already. We have had four days’ debate on the Budget. We are now having an Opposition day, which is substantially on the Budget. Tomorrow, there will be Second Reading of the Finance Bill, and there are further days of debate in the House next week. No one could say that we are curtailing debate on these matters.

    Mr. Lilley

    This is an Opposition day.

    Mr. Darling

    It is an Opposition day, and I am replying to the right hon. Gentleman’s points.

    The steps that the Government are taking will stand this country and its economy in good stead in the years to come. For the first time in many years, Britain has a Government who are looking to the long term and who will create an environment in which there is growth and investment. That will be good not only for companies and pension funds but for all the people of this country.

  • Alistair Darling – 1997 Statement on the Spending Review

    Alistair Darling – 1997 Statement on the Spending Review

    The statement made by Alistair Darling, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 11 June 1997.

    With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a short statement about our approach to public spending in the medium term and to the comprehensive spending review promised in our manifesto.

    We set out our spending plans for this year and next in our manifesto. We made it clear that tough decisions would be needed, but that such an approach was essential. We shall maintain that approach. This statement looks beyond the next two years to the medium term.

    We will deliver prudent and sound management of the public finances to provide a stable platform for investment and growth; and we will ensure that public spending achieves the objectives that we have set ourselves—objectives which are based on our key principles of opportunity, fairness, employment and investment. To achieve that, we must put the public finances into proper shape.

    Since 1990, public sector debt has almost doubled as a proportion of national output. In 1994, we were told there would be a Budget balance in 1998–99; in 1995, we were told it had slipped a year to 1999–2000; and last year, it slipped again to 2000–01. As a result, after five years of growth, we are still borrowing to cover our current spending: the current deficit was about £20 billion last year and the last Budget forecast that we would stay in deficit for the next two years, despite making some questionable assumptions. In order to rebuild public trust in the management of the public finances, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has asked the National Audit Office to review the forecasting assumptions he set out in the House on 20 May.

    The public have a right to know not only that total spending is affordable and prudent, but that their money is being spent on their priorities, that it is being spent efficiently and that the spending is effective. The Government spend more than £300 billion, equivalent to over £5,000 a year for every man, woman and child in the country. We will reorder that £300 billion to meet our objectives, which were endorsed by the people on 1 May.

    Public spending needs to be clearly focused, and we will achieve that objective. There is no better time for a root-and-branch reappraisal of public spending priorities than at the start of a new Government.

    We showed the way when we were in opposition. We said that we would provide nursery places for all four-year-olds, and we will find the money by scrapping nursery vouchers. We promised to cut waiting lists in the national health service, and we will release the funds by releasing savings from red tape and bureaucracy. We promised to reduce class sizes for five, six, and seven-year-olds, and we will find the money to pay for it by abolishing the assisted places scheme.

    We have already made a start in delivering those promises, within weeks of the election. We will continue this approach in government, stripping out ill-targeted programmes that benefit only the few, and redirecting spending towards the priorities of the many.

    The comprehensive spending review I am announcing today will carry on that process. It will set out clear objectives for all Departments. It will examine how we can achieve our objectives of improving standards in education, modernising the welfare state and getting people into work—in short, delivering our manifesto commitments as efficiently and effectively as we can.

    Every Department will scrutinise its spending plans in detail from a zero base, and ask, how does each item of spending contribute to the Government’s objectives as set out in our manifesto? Why are we spending this money? Do we need to spend it? What is it achieving? How effective is it? How efficiently are we spending it?

    Every objective will be costed and Departments’ effectiveness in achieving them will be scrutinised. We will make sure that we know how much we are spending on each objective, and that we can demonstrate to the public what we have achieved as a result.

    We will consider how best to provide services. What should be provided by the public sector, the private sector, or a combination of both in public and private partnerships? As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, what counts is what works.

    As well as looking at spending in each Department separately, we will look at issues that cross departmental boundaries. Those cross-departmental reviews will ensure that we are not hidebound by the existing structure of government. The review will be co-ordinated by the ministerial committee on public expenditure, which will look at spending across Departments.

    We will look in particular at Departments’ efficiency in making the best use of their assets. We have asked Departments to draw up an inventory of their assets—something that no Government have ever achieved before. We need to know what the Government own, and whether they need those assets. If not, we shall reallocate the proceeds where they are needed most.

    The review will be thorough and far reaching. All Departments and all Ministers will be involved. It will take 12 months to complete and its conclusions will inform a new set of public spending plans for the rest of this Parliament—a set that reflects our priorities and meets the country’s needs beyond that. It will take the long-term view.

    The review process is already under way. Terms of reference for the departmental reviews will be published shortly. The Government have already shown their determination to achieve their objectives. The comprehensive spending review will provide us with a clear sense of direction and the long-term view that every Government need. We will ensure that the Government spend public money wisely and fairly, so that public spending matches the people’s priorities.

  • Peter Rawlinson – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    Peter Rawlinson – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    The speech made by Peter Rawlinson, the then Conservative MP for Epsom, in the House of Commons on 21 December 1964.

    The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) in the first half-hour of his speech, referred to the Amendment and to what he said were various ingenious technicalities. He will forgive me, I hope, if I deal solely with the Bill, which, I understand, is the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill—a Bill which I oppose.

    The hon. Member described capital punishment as a grotesque barbarity. I think that there is no one in the House who would not agree that execution by solemn judicial process is a terrible and awful exercise of the authority of the State and of the people. So, also, terrible and awful is the murder of one person by another. It is the most terrible crime that one person can commit against another. Every rational person, when thinking of this serious problem—every rational person inside the House and throughout the country—will always be moved to consider it with mixed feelings of revulsion, of horror and of compassion. Compassion is not the monopoly of any group of people who hold any particular view in this very serious argument.

    This is an argument which crosses the lines of ordinary political controversy and almost of political instinct. It is something which depends on the personal judgment and personal conscience of every Member in the House. It is a matter in which one’s personal experience brings a view, a judgment and eventually a decision which has to be made, and no amount of statistics, of studies and reports affect in most people’s minds their final decision.

    Before the Homicide Act, 1957, in the practise of my profession, I was affected gravely on many occasions by the solemn procedure of the death penalty which I knew in those cases would never be carried out. I believed that it was wholly wrong in a case of that kind and an outrageous penalty prescribed for that act which was then murder under the law, but which in my view was not such thing in reality. So if that had been the price of retention, I think that I would have had grave concern. Therefore, I wholeheartedly welcomed the 1956 proposals and the 1957 Act.

    There is much misconception about the 1957 Act and the motives and ideas of the people who supported it. At that time and now some of us believed that it was an Act which represented the right way of dealing with the problem of capital punishment. It abolished certain technical matters, such as “constructive malice”, it established a new doctrine, of provocation, and it applied the Scottish law of diminished responsibility. It so limited and confined what had been the crime of murder.

    The 1957 Act defined as the crime of capital murder, for which the supreme penalty should apply, murder in the course of theft applying to the gang or robber, and murder by shooting applying to the gangster with a gun, the man who had gone out and acquired a gun or had stolen one, and had bought or stolen the ammunition, who had put the ammunition into the gun, put the gun into his pocket, loaded it and had taken it with him in committing a crime of robbery and then used it.

    The Act retained the death penalty for the killing of a policeman or warder, as well as for the double killing. These things exercised the minds of the most moderate people when we debated this subject in 1956 and 1957. It was the fear—a perfectly honourable fear shared by many people, and shared by the Executive at that time—of the effect of abolition and what the result would be on the practices of the professional criminal if there were total abolition. Would there be an increase of violence or an increase in the use of firearms? It was that which exercised our minds.

    We wondered in 1956 and 1957 whether this country’s crime and criminal activities would develop as they have done overseas; into the use of gangs and gangsters, armed with guns. Would there be an increased danger to the public and would the police have to be armed? All these questions were in our minds during those debates. It was inevitable that our minds should have been exercised in that way.

    Of course it is right for the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne to agree—as he said when replying to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger)—that the 1957 Act adopted what the Royal Commission had stated about the moral heinousness of crime. The Commission said that it could not apply to moral heinousness. One may be able to use that in the exercise of statutory powers where one has power to release, but moral heinousness depends not on any objective characteristic or on a class of offence but on a particular situation, the circumstances of a particular offence and of a particular offender. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North pointed out, it did not claim to distinguish between different categories of murder on the score of heinousness. That, as I say, no statue can do.

    The 1957 Act was produced against the background of the time of a sharp increase in crimes of violence and it set up a frontier, a line, between capital and non-capital murder and it said, in effect, “Cross it at your peril”. It said, “Death where you kill in the course of committing a crime”, and “Death where it affects law and order”.

    Where one creates a line and frontier, there are bound to be anomalies. This applies to any other crime. Crime can be varied between the commission of the same act, but in a different way. The difference between common assault and manslaughter may depend on the thickness of a skull. In certain sex crimes it depend on the sixteenth birthday of a girl as to what the punishment will be and in other cases, such as drunken driving, it might depend on the capacity of the person to take drink. Of course the law contains anomalies. It always will and the remedy must be in the discretion which is retained as to punishment.

    When we were debating the 1957 Act the phrase “The Queen’s peace” was often used. It is an historical almost literary, phrase. It means that the conditions of life for the public should be such—and that the public is entitled to demand that it should be such—that the Executive, acting through Parliament, should provide the Queen’s peace so that people may go about their affairs and upon their business in peace. It can never be absolute. No one suggests that it can be. However, the public is entitled to demand of the Executive and Parliament that provision be made to ensure that all is done reasonably to maintain that peace and reasonably to ensure that people can live and work in those conditions.

    Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

    Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman is developing his argument in a manner which is too sophisticated for me, will he explain how a rapist or poisoner does not disturb the peace, in the sense he means, as distinct from a robber? That is the point of argument we are considering now.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    If the hon. Gentleman will have a little patience I will deal with that point. I do not want to take as long as the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, although I appreciate that he had the task of moving the Second Reading. I should have thought that the answer would be obvious to the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse). He knows it only too well. My argument is that one should use this penalty only where one believes that one can deter. I do not believe that one cannot deter a poisoner or a rapist. There is a duty on the Executive to deter where it can and that is given to the law enforcement officers. It is given to the police. It is a dangerous as well as difficult task.

    Much publicity is given to those occasions when the police are criticised. The failure of the police, whenever it occurs, is always heard about. We do not hear so much and so often, both in the House and outside, of the great executions of courage and bravery which the police perform in the carrying out of their duties. It is easy for us, in the safety of Parliament and sitting here, to theorise. We deal in words. They must deal with crime in action.

    Upon the Executive rests the real responsibility for law and order. The Executive have made their attitude towards the Bill perfectly clear. As the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne pointed out, the Measure was referred to in the Gracious Speech, and he has that signal distinction, one of many to fall upon him. The Government have provided Parliamentary time for the Bill and doubtless they have provided draftsmen to draft it. Nevertheless, Parliament and the public are entitled to obtain from the Government certain advice and information.

    Is there evidence now of an increase of crime by the professional criminal? Is there, in this sense, an increase—or is there evidence of an increase of crime by highly organised gangs? Can they advise positively or can they forecast whether a Bill such as this will, in their view, and in the view of the enforcement machinery, lead to any greater danger to the public? This is the sort of information which I hope we will receive from the Home Secretary.

    Mr. Sydney Silverman

    I agree that I made an inordinately long speech and that I should not now be interrupting. However, I should like the right hon. and learned Gentleman to tell the House, if he can, whether we should retain the death penalty for such crimes as he is describing on the footing that this would deter people from committing them? Is there, in his opinion, any evidence to show that such crimes for which we have retained the death penalty have reduced in number since 1957?

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    I think there is such evidence, but I am giving an impression.

    Mr. Silverman

    Oh.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    The hon. Member spoke for well over an hour and he now again intervenes when I am trying to reply to his question. I hope that he will not intervene again. I did not intervene when he was speaking. I can only give an impression. My impression is that there has been an increase in organised crime. I also have the impression that great care is and has been taken by professional criminals to avoid the risk of violence leading to death because of the difference between the penalty which is paid where violence ends in death, which is capital punishment.

    On 7th December, 1964, I put down to the Secretary of State for the Home Department a Question for Written Answer, because of my belief—it is only a personal impression and it may be wrong—that there is this increasing possibility of gang warfare and the use of firearms. I asked whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman would introduce legislation to provide that any one found in unlawful possession of a firearm should receive a sentence of not less than five years’ imprisonment, irrespective of any offence they might have committed. My reason for asking the Question is that the unlawful possession of a firearm is an offence that a person has to go to some trouble to commit. The right hon. and learned Gentleman replied that he was not convinced there were sufficient grounds for taking the exceptional step of fixing a minimum penalty.

    I wonder whether he consulted his right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, because I am sure that he will appreciate that my suggestion is certainly not a novel one. It was first suggested by the present Lord Chancellor himself in a letter to The Times on 15th July, 1959. His suggestion was an amnesty for all those who took their firearms to a police station. He also suggested then the introduction of legislation imposing a minimum penalty of five years’ imprisonment on those who were found in unlawful possession of firearms.

    If the situation was difficult in 1959, for that is what the Lord Chancellor then believed, what is the position today? I may be wrong, and I hope that the Home Secretary may be able to reassure the House, but I get the impression that there is this increase in organised gangs perhaps arising from matters we discussed in this House in the last Parliament, when new laws were enacted about gambling and clubs and prostitution. I expressed fears, and I believe that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) expressed fears, during the debate on the Wolfenden proposals as to prostitution which led to the Street Offences Act.

    Has the driving of prostitution underground into the clubs led to the greater organisation of protection rackets? Have the police got evidence—and I have the impression that they may have—of gangs being organised in this particular field? There is the fear, and it is an honest fear that I express to the House, that enactment of this Bill at this time would do much to promote the situation that is growing up within the country at this time.

    Public anxiety over crime must be clear to every hon. Member—it is certainly clear to every member of the public. Public opinion has been expressed, and it is public opinion on a matter on which the public have the particular right, have they not, to express a view? We certainly have the duty to pay more attention to it in this respect than, perhaps, in regard to any other single matter.

    That public anxiety has been expressed in the most recent sentencing policy of the courts. We have the actual facts of the mail robbery—just to answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. I remember that just after that operation I was in the United States on a visit to the United States Attorney-General, Mr. Robert Kennedy, and I got the impression in that country of a somewhat rueful admiration for that organised gang. They commented on how skilfully the operation had been worked out, and what little violence was used—although, in that regard, people forget what happened to the guard, and the effect it has had upon him, although the operation was meant to be one with little or no violence.

    Those robbers might, because they were so careful not to use violence, or to have used as little violence as possible, have expected a sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment; had the violence involved a death, they would have expected capital punishment. They got sentences of—what was it?—25 or 30 years. Because of such sentences, the Home Secretary has no power to intervene, except in particular circumstances, where he can release them temporarily because of ill health, for instance. Otherwise, he does not have the statutory power to intervene in that case.

    Those men will have to serve their sentences, except for a one-third reduction for good behaviour, so that any of them with a 30-year sentence will have to serve some 20 years. If the price to be paid for using as little violence as was used then is to be greater than that for using violence involving the risk of death, where is the deterrent for such men as these? Suppose courts were permitted by this Bill to impose a minimum, would it ever be more than an effective 20 years? So we come to the situation in which the price of a live witness to a prisoner’s identity may be the same as that for a dead one.

    These are professional criminals. They weigh up the circumstances and the risks involved. They balance risk against risk, and the booty against the penalty. The prisoner whom one sees in prison is very different from the thug he was before imprisonment. I am sure that most hon. Members will appreciate that there exists a serious assault upon our society. The present situation is that in the next 12 months from now 20,000 people will have suffered some violence of some kind and degree. This is the situation which we now face.

    Would the alternative presented by this Bill be really a life sentence? The Home Secretary possesses powers under Section 57 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, to release on licence where a person has been sentenced to life imprisonment. That is a statutory power which is exercised by the Home Secretary. That means that the Home Secretary and his advisers have to carry out a determination as to how much of a life sentence a man shall serve. If this Bill becomes law, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman propose to retain that power? Or does he propose to abandon that statutory power and replace it with some form of parole board, as has been suggested?

    This is a matter for the decision of the House. We have to decide whether we can and whether we should abandon this deterrent for something that is nebulous and uncertain, and can never carry the effectiveness of a sentence of capital punishment——

    Mr. Emlyn Hooson (Montgomery)

    I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is expressing a genuine fear, and a fear that is widely felt, but would he not agree that the same fear has been expressed by members—and distinguished members—of our mutual profession ever since 1800, when the abolition of capital punishment for various offences was imposed? And does not experience show that in every case the fear has proved to be unfounded?

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    I share some of the hon. and learned Gentleman’s commentary to the extent that I would agree that the crime of murder, as I said at the start of my remarks, seems to have been far too wide. It was certainly wrong to have the death penalty for certain killing offences. I do not believe, and I know that I disagree here with some of my hon. Friends, that we can by capital punishment deter the family murder, the crime of passion. I do not believe we can deter the poisoner or the sexually perverted, but I do believe that we can deter the professional criminal who acquires a pistol and goes out to rob, as an occupation, weighing risk against risk.

    I hope that the Solicitor-General will forgive me for not giving him notice that I intended to refer to what he said in his speech in his constituency. I shall refer to only three points which he made. He said that he had been influenced on the question of men being wrongly convicted for possession of offensive weapons, by the evidence in the Mars-Jones Report and also in the Evans case. This question is not related to that of the gun and the gangster. My argument is addressed to the case of the robber and the public crime in the course of robbery. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that juries did not, and would not, convict in such cases. I would agree if he were referring to the period prior to 1957. I have seen that myself because then a death penalty could be imposed in the case of a mother or child. It seemed totally improper and completely outrageous to be imposed for such a crime although technically it was then murder.

    Since 1957 I think that general experience is different from that. I have recently known juries bring in a verdict of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, because that was what the evidence drove them to, but they would rather have brought in a verdict in those circumstances of murder. He said that the 1957 Act can never be effective, but I say that it is effective because it has retained the deterrent in this particular field. Another of the evils of capital punishment is said to be a morbid interest in murder trials.

    Mrs. Anne Kerr (Rochester and Chatham)

    Hear, hear.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    The hon. Lady says, “Hear, hear,” but it is not capital punishment which creates the morbid interest. It is not the punishment which attracts a great deal of attention or a great deal of morbid interest. It is the circumstances of any case if they are such as to arouse public interest because, say, of the sex nature or the personality involved. That is what brings these weird, strange people—I could not agree more—to a trial. All trials are trials for life.

    All murder trials, whatever the punishment would be, are concerned with death and with life.

    Many other hon. and right hon. Members wish to speak in this debate, so I shall cut short my comments. But I believe that we are witnessing an increase in professional crime and that there is an extension of operations by organised gangs. I fear that the removal of capital punishment from this field of crime would introduce a risk of greater violence, the wider use of guns and greater danger to the public. I am not prepared to brush aside the opinions of those principally engaged in fighting crime on the ipse dixit—I say this with the greatest respect—of humane, sincere and compassionate men as I believe the abolitionists to be. I believe that there is a great distinction between the execution of a murderer and the killing by a man, in murder, for a victim dies unsuspecting and innocent on his lawful ordinary occasions. The murderer dies after he has deliberately with knowledge of the penalty for his deliberate act, committed the crime of murder.

    If there is a balance of choice between those lives, I certainly come down on the side of the life of the victim. I am not prepared to take the risk which I believe exists. Hon. Members may seriously disagree and of course I accept the seriousness of their argument, but I cannot take the risk, as I believe it is a risk, with the lives of innocent citizens, nor can I ignore the opinion of police officers. Terrible and ugly as we recognise the punishment to be, I believe there is a right and a duty on the State to say, “For this deliberate act you will lose your life.” I believe that such warning can and does deter certain men who should be deterred in this day and age. I for one will vote against this Bill.

  • Sydney Silverman – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    Sydney Silverman – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    The speech made by Sydney Silverman, the then Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, in the House of Commons on 21 December 1964.

    I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

    My first word must be one of appreciation and gratitude to the Government for having provided the House and those of us who wish to see a final end of the last remnant of a grotesque barbarity with the opportunity of seeing the end of it at last.

    If I may say one personal word, I suppose that I may claim a unique, if modest, distinction in that I believe I am the only private Member whose Private Member’s Bill has been accorded the distinction of a mention in the Queen’s Speech, and I take this as a good omen. This is a Private Member’s Bill. The Government are officially neutral about it. The vote will be, as it has always been with the notable exception of that on the Homicide Act, 1957, a free vote of the House, but I hope that on this occasion we may count on the neutrality of the Government being a benevolent neutrality.

    The Title of the Bill states that it is a Bill to abolish the death penalty, but I think it useful to say at the outset of the remarks which I hope to make to the House that the Title goes substantially beyond the amendment to the present law proposed by the Bill. I am not proposing to invite the House, on this occasion, to debate all the pros and cons of the preservation or abolition of the death penalty for murder. That battle—a long, grim, sometimes dreary, sometimes exciting battle—was won in 1957 in the Homicide Act.

    We are not concerned today with whether we ought to abolish or preserve the death penalty for murder. That we have already decided. The question before the House today—the only question remaining for Parliament to decide—is whether we shall abolish or retain not the abolition of the death penalty for murder, but the exceptions to that abolition which were made in the Homicide Act, 1957, and since there is scarcely anybody who has a good word to say for these exceptions, the answer to the question which is presently before Parliament ought not to be difficult.

    I thought it was worth while to say this at the outset because some newspapers and cognoscenti of public opinion are still talking as though the battle was to run again, as though we were at the beginning of this long and difficult road instead of, as the truth is, virtually at the end of it.

    Clause 1 of my Bill says: No person shall suffer death for murder, and a person guilty of murder shall, subject to subsection (4) below”— That deals with children— be sentenced to imprisonment for life. This is very like the Homicide Act, 1957, Section 7 of which reads: No person shall be liable to suffer death for murder in any case not falling within section five or six of this Act. Sections 5 and 6 of that Act deal with the exceptions, and I shall be dealing with them later. For the moment I draw the attention of the House to the fact that Section 7 of the Act, with those exceptions, is the same as Clause 1 of the Bill.

    Section 9 of that Act provides that those who are not sentenced to death under that Act shall suffer imprisonment for life. It is important to remember this, because this abolition in principle, subject to the exceptions, of the death penalty for murder did, in fact, abolish the death penalty for murder over about five-sixths of the field. It was done by an official act of policy of the Government of the day.

    No one said “You have no mandate to do it.” No one voted against it on the ground that it ran too far ahead of public opinion. Nobody said that there ought to be a referendum or a Gallup poll or any other method of seeing whether the Government of the day were entitled to call upon their supporters in this House and in another place to vote for the abolition of the death penalty for murder.

    In this, in my view, they were right. We do not govern ourselves in this country by a referendum. We do not govern ourselves by a Gallup poll. We do not, in matters of life and death, think that it is right to decide what is just or unjust by a spot, unconsidered reaction taken on the street corner or in a club or in a “pub”. Indeed, no part of our criminal law has ever been so determined. A good deal of it has not been enacted by Statute at all. It was the long, slow development of the common law.

    Where the law has resulted from Acts of Parliament, from Statute, the Government of the day have taken their responsibility as a Government, knowing that in a Parliamentary democracy it is for Parliament to decide what Parliament thinks right, knowing that in the background there is the public, the electorate, and that we shall all of us have to answer in due course to those who sent us here for what we have done.

    For my part, in this business of Parliamentary responsibility in a Parliamentary democracy, in this business of what it is right or wrong for a Member of Parliament to do, especially when he is acting in accordance with his own judgment and his own conscience and not in accordance with directions from a Whip or out of loyalty to a Government, I am content to confine my eloquence to saying “ditto” to Mr. Burke. It was Edmund Burke who stated this position once for and all in his famous letter to the electors of Bristol.

    To those who are a little, in my opinion, over-sensitive to what is, I think, quite mistakenly thought to be public opinion—I say this, maybe, a little boldly, but with no intention of giving offence to anybody—I should like hon. Members to imagine what their duty would be if they had the responsibility of deciding, if there were a man whom they knew it would be wrong to kill, if, in respect of that man, there were violent public pressure, nevertheless to kill him. Would it be right for a responsible legislator or member of the Government to kill that man, whom he thought he ought not to kill, because of some popular immediate pressure which might change its mind the next morning? Surely, anyone who did that would be repeating the mistake that Pontius Pilate made 2,000 years ago.

    Parliament must take its own responsibility. In exercising that responsibility, we in Parliament must be very conscious that we are responsible to those who send us here and must answer to them for what we do here. This is what we are not merely ready but anxious to do. But that does not mean that we must subordinate our judgment, still less that we must distort our consciences, in order to do something we believe to be wrong because if we do not we might lose a vote or even an election. So I say that the Government of the day were perfectly right to decide, as they did decide, in principle and subject to the exceptions that are left, to abolish the death penalty for murder.

    The result, the Homicide Act, 1957, was not easily reached. It had a history which many of us remember. But today, in spite of the fierce and passionate battles on the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill, 1956, following which the Homicide Act was passed, and although the Act has been law for seven or eight years, there is no one in the House today who is prepared to advise right hon. and hon. Gentlemen to go back to the old law. [HON. MEMBERS: “No.”] I see nothing to that effect on the Order Paper.

    Mr. Speaker has said that the Amendment he will call is that in the names of the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) and a number of other hon. Members. That Amendment states: On Second Reading of Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill, to move, That the Bill be read a second time upon this day six months. That, of course, is the formula for rejection of the Bill. Supposing that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has his way and the Bill is defeated. What will then be the law? Why, Sir, the law then will continue to be what it is now. It will continue to be the law as set out in the Homicide Act, 1957, and the death penalty will still not apply to five out of six murders. That principle will continue to be the law of the land.

    Brigadier Terence Clarke (Portsmouth, West)

    By gradual process, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) has eliminated hanging to the present state it has reached. I want to stop this where it is today. I would like to have a Private Member’s Bill washing out everything which the hon. Gentleman has done in the past.

    Mr. Silverman

    I do not quite understand that. The only exception I would take to what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said is that I really cannot accept his compliment that the law, as his Amendment proposes to leave it, was achieved by me. The law as it stands was not enacted by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. It was enacted by a Government of which the hon. and gallant Member was a loyal supporter. He did not oppose it. He did not vote against it. He accepted it.

    As for wishing to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to repeal that law, I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will take his opportunity when it comes up, as I took mine when mine came up. I am only wondering why, if he feels so passionately that the Homicide Act, 1957, was wrong, he has been so dilatory in attempting to repeal it. But what we are concerned with today is not what the hon. and gallant Gentleman would like to do on some other occasion, but with what he proposes to do on this occasion—and what he proposes to do now expressly is to leave the law on the death penalty as it was left by the Homicide Act.

    But the argument does not stop there. The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) was Attorney-General in the Government responsible for the Homicide Act, 1957.

    Sir John Hobson (Warwick and Leamington)

    I was not even in the House at the time the Act was discussed. I entered the House a day or two before it received the Royal Assent.

    Mr. Silverman

    I apologise to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He was not Attorney-General then. He was only Attorney-General shortly afterwards.

    Sir J. Hobson

    No.

    Mr. Silverman

    Therefore, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has no personal responsibility, since he was not a Member of the House, for the Act. But he has accepted it ever since, just like the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West.

    The reason I brought the right hon. and learned Gentleman into this was not so much for the mistake in thinking that he was Attorney-General at the time, but for what he has been doing in recent weeks. He has taken a leading part in the campaign against the Bill in the country. He has written very impressive and weighty letters in the correspondence columns of The Times. I do not accept the figures that he quoted in The Times. I think that they were all wrong. As he has never quoted us what is the authority for at any rate one of the two columns of figures, his argument has not impressed me.

    Sir J. Hobson rose——

    Mr. Silverman

    I will give way in a moment. Suppose the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s figures are right—they may well be for anything I know to the contrary. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] All I have said is that I would not support them myself and I would not accept them. This does not in any way mean that the figures are necessarily wrong. They may well be right. I am inviting the House, for the sake of argument, to assume that they are.

    Sir J. Hobson

    We should clear this matter up now. The figures I quoted were the result of Answers from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke), the former Secretary of State for the Home Department, and his successor, the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice). They were published in Hansard.

    Mr. Silverman

    One of the two columns the right hon. and learned Gentleman embodied in one of his letters consisted of figures for murder. The other was of figures for executions. The one for murder was in the hundreds. There has never been, so far as I know—and I do not claim any infallibility or to know any more about this matter than any other hon. Member—a time in the history of this country when convictions for murder have reached hundreds a year. I had to say that in answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s interruption, but I come back to inviting the House to assume that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has the right figures and has drawn the right inference from them.

    Again, that seems to me to be very doubtful. What inference did he draw? He said—and I will willingly give way if I misinterpret him in any way—that non-capital murders, since 1957, have increased and that capital murders have also increased. But, he said, capital murders had increased at a slower rate than non-capital murders. He drew the inference, which could be correct, that, therefore, the removal of the death penalty for non-capital murders had increased the number of non-capital murders. Is that right? Is that what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says?

    I hope to have it right, because, if that is so, then I ask why the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not proposing to restore the death penalty for non-capital murders. [HON. MEMBERS: “It is the hon. Member’s Bill.”] I am not talking about Bills now. I am referring to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s contributions to the public discussion outside the House, when he has said distinctly and repeatedly that he is not proposing to go back to the old law. He would not be in favour of restoring the death penalty for non-capital murders. He would not be in favour of restoring the death penalty for any murder for which, under the present law, it is not inflicted.

    If the right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that I am misquoting him, he is here and I am ready to give way. He knows that I am not misquoting him. This is the right hon. and learned Gentleman who has been an Attorney-General and who may be again. How does he invite the House of Commons to believe that we have removed an effective deterrent to non-capital murder but not to restore it? He does not.

    I therefore return to the point which I have been making, that there is not before the House today, and is not, any serious proposal to go back on what was done in 1957, to restore the death penalty for all those murders for which it is not now inflicted, that being five-sixths of all of them, that it is not now proposed to reverse what we did in 1957, namely, in principle to abolish the death penalty for murder. It therefore seems clear that the only question with which the House is concerned is whether to abolish the exceptions which the 1957 Act made to that principle.

    Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

    I know that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to be unfair, but would he not agree that the Long Title of his Bill forbids any Amendment which would have the effect of repealing the Homicide Act, 1957, that the Bill is obviously concerned with abolition and that, therefore, even if we wished, we could not put down an Amendment which would have the effect of restoring the death penalty to non-capital murder?

    Mr. Silverman

    I concede at once that it would not be possible in Committee to put down an Amendment which was outside the Long Title of the Bill. It is not for me to express any view as to what would or would not be within the Long Title. That is Mr. Speaker’s responsibility or, in Committee, the responsibility of the Chairman. However, there was nothing to prevent anyone inclined to that view from putting down a reasoned Amendment to the Second Reading of the Bill, not merely objecting to the Bill, not merely advising its rejection, but advising its rejection because it would have been better to restore the death penalty abolished in 1957.

    May I point out that there is a reasoned Amendment which is not being called and which, like the unreasoned Amendment which has been selected, does not call for any repeal of the 1957 Act? That reasoned Amendment says: That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill”— the next words should be noted— which, while removing the deterrent of the 1957 Act to certain types of killer who might reasonably be supposed to be deterred from killing by the prospect of being hanged … It does not apply to all types of killer. It makes a distinction between those who might be deterred and those who might not and it assumes that the exceptions introduced in the Homicide Act were the exceptions of those who might be deterred, whereas all the others could not reasonably be expected to be deterred.

    In other words, it concedes that there is no deterrent, no unique deterrent, no exclusively effective, deterrent, in the death penalty to most murders, but claims that there is a uniquely deterrent effect is respect of some murders.

    I concede that that is the argument with which I have to deal and I propose to deal with it as shortly as I can very soon. All I am concerned to establish now, and all I have been concerned to establish so far, is that nobody thinks that substantially there is any other question to be decided.

    I now come to the subject of these exceptions and whether to retain them. I am sorry to be a little longer than I had intended, but this is the crux of the matter and I am sure that the House will have a little patience with me while I examine it. This question has a history which goes back a long way. It is 100 years, almost to the day, since a Royal Commission appointed by the House first made an attempt to distinguish between murders which ought to be capital and murders which ought not to be. In 1864, that Royal Commission was appointed. It was in favour of abolishing the death penalty altogether, but it recommended, because it thought that public opinion was not ready for that, precisely the suggestion that murders should be categorised so that some should be capital and some not.

    I confess that to all penal reformers this has always been a very attractive idea. If only we could have found a just and rational way of distinguishing between murders which could rightly and justly and rationally be regarded as capital and murders which could not, we would have seen an end to this controversy many years ago. Many attempts have been made over those 100 years and I will not weary the House by detailing or recounting any of them.

    However, the exceptions introduced into the Homicide Act, 1957, were not intended to distinguish between the more and the less heinous crimes. If they were intended to do any such thing, they lamentably failed any such objective. No one could think that the exceptions in the 1957 Act were the worst murders. Those who accept the position of the 1957 Act accept that the murderers of children shall not be hanged. Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that cold, calculated, premeditated murders shall not be capital.

    Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that foul sexual crimes shall not be capital. Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that if a man waylays his enemy around a dark corner of a back street and stabs him in the back with a knife, that shall not be capital murder, whereas if he waits for him with a revolver and shoots him in the front, that is capital murder.

    Anyone who tried to justify the exceptions in the 1957 Act on the ground that it was a successful attempt to distinguish between the gravest kinds of murder and crimes which were not so grave would have an impossible task. Let the House remember that Ruth Ellis would still have committed a capital crime under the Homicide Act because she used a revolver instead of a knife.

    We know what the exceptions in the 1957 Act are, but we know something else about them. Every single one of them had been defeated by the House of Commons by a substantial majority on a free vote. There is not one of the exceptions included in the 1957 Act that was not proposed in Committee or on Report during the passage through the House of Commons of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill of 1956.

    Perhaps I might add a word to the modest distinction which I claimed for myself at the opening of my speech, because on the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill I suppose that I was the only back bencher who led a coalition of both sides of the House against the Government of the day and won at every stage. It was only when we reached the House of Lords that we were rejected and the right hon. Gentleman who was then Home Secretary or Leader of the House found himself in an inescapable dilemma. He had promised the House of Commons that if it decided to abolish the death penalty on a free vote, the Government would accept its decision. Having done that, he proceeded to give exactly the same pledge to another place, well knowing that the other place was most likely, as indeed it did, to come to the opposite conclusion.

    Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman found himself pledged to the House of Commons to abolish the death penalty and pledged to the House of Lords to retain it. As he could not possibly fulfil both pledges, what he did was, reasonably enough—no one can blame him for it—to attempt a compromise, and the exceptions in the Homicide Act, 1957, were never offered to the House, never offered to Parliament on their merits as penal reform or as criminal law. They were offered to the House of Commons as a political compromise to get the Government of the day out of a serious and awkward dilemma.

    I remind the House that all those exceptions had been rejected one by one, every one of them, when Members of the House of Commons—and I remind the House that it was a House of Commons with a Tory majority—were left to their individual judgment. When they were asked to obey their personal consciences, they had voted against every one of the exceptions introduced in the Homicide Act. It is true that they humbly and tamely accepted them at a later stage, but they accepted them for quite respectable reasons. I do not complain of any of them.

    The Government had put the Whips on and the question then was not whether the exceptions were right or wrong in principle. The question was whether hon. Members would support the Government of which they were supporters, which they wished to support, which they did not wish to embarrass and certainly which they did not wish to defeat. They accepted it on the authority of the Government, the Government taking responsibility for it and they taking only responsibility for not dissenting from the Government view. Their own individual conscientious judgment had already been exercised against it.

    An equally, or even more, curious thing happened in another place, because the Homicide Act, 1957, abolishing in principle the death penalty for murder, was accepted by another place. There were no objections to it at all, although it had just defeated the very same proposition without exceptions a month or two before.

    That is part of the history. There is another part of it. In 1948, I moved a Clause to the Criminal Justice Bill, a consolidating Measure——

    Mr. Iremonger

    I do not want to disturb the train of the hon. Member’s argument, but if he is now leaving the part of his argument which deals with the 1957 Act, may I ask whether he feels it right to do justice to those who supported the 1957 Act in this House by recalling the argument that the Government put forward? It was not that the Government purported to draw a line between those kinds of murder which were most heinous and those which were less heinous. They attempted to differentiate between types of murder as to the degree to which they contributed to the disturbance of public order. If I remember correctly, that was what influenced me and many of my hon. Friends to support my right hon. Friend in his Bill.

    Mr. Silverman

    That is very largely true. It is entirely true with one exception, which I shall take half a minute to deal with presently. I did not want to extend the length of my speech by dealing with all the exceptions separately. The argument about deterability was part of the argument in the Committee stage of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill and it had been rejected on their own conscientious judgment by a majority of Members of the House of Commons at that stage.

    The exception is the question of second murders, because nobody, surely, has ever thought that if a man was not deterred by the death penalty from committing the first murder, he would be deterred from committing, not having been found out so far, a second one. In the case of second murders, the idea was not deterability, but that this was a much graver crime and should be punished.

    As to the other point, the hon. Member is perfectly right. All I am saying is that this was accepted by the House of Commons on the authority of the Government and against hon. Members’ own private conscientious judgment.

    In 1948, when I moved a Clause to suspend the death penalty for five years, it was rejected in another place because, it was said, it was too far in advance of public opinion. If it were done, it could only be done with exceptions, so the other place threw it out. Acting under that inspiration and incitement, my right hon. Friends in the Government of that day proposed a Clause to meet the objections in another place in order to provide exceptions. The exceptions included one or two others, but they also included all those in the Homicide Act, 1957.

    When we sent that back to another place, it was rejected also for the perfectly justifiable ground, which I am inviting the House of Commons today to say is still true, that it was unworkable, that it was irrational, that it was unjust and that public conscience would not stand for it and Parliament had no right to enact it. Therefore, the exceptions were rejected then by both Houses.

    Sir Alexander Spearman (Scarborough and Whitby)

    The hon. Member says that hanging is not a deterrent. He has said in the past that hanging is not a deterrent and, presumably, he bases his Bill upon that. I should like to know whether he will consider, at a later stage, a new Clause incorporating a trial period. If, indeed, hanging is not a deterrent, that would do his cause no harm but it would give some assurance to those, rightly or wrongly, who still have doubts about whether it is a deterrent.

    Mr. Silverman

    I have never said that hanging was not a deterrent.

    Sir A. Spearman

    An effective deterrent.

    Mr. Silverman

    That is the difference. The only point about deterrents, and, I think, the only rational ground on which a death penalty could ever be defended, is that there are fewer murders if we have the death penalty than if we do not have the death penalty. That is the criterion and test. What I have denied, and what I have not denied alone, is that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder in any sense that is more effective than other existing or imaginable deterrents. The Royal Commission has established that proposition beyond further controversy to the satisfaction of all those who wish to know the truth.

    The hon. Gentleman asks about a trial period. This is where I began 16 years ago. We have had already seven or eight years’ experience of the deterrent effect of the exceptions in the 1957 Act. Another five years will not alter the picture one way or the other. I think that this controversy has gone on long enough. The arguments both ways are clear, and I think that everybody knows what they are. I think that everybody has made up his mind about where the balance between the two arguments lies. I do not believe that any useful purpose would be served by prolonging the debate, or by keeping the matter in issue, for another five years with the prospect of having to do it all over again five years’ hence.

    If it should turn out that this is all wrong, and if the abolition of this remnant of the death penalty proves to be a mistake, we do not need a five years’ Clause in the Bill to put it right. Parliament will remain sovereign. It will be able to repeal whatever we do. There is no need to keep the pot boiling, to keep the argument going, when it has been reduced to such a small, narrow limit and has had so much of a trial period.

    Sir Richard Glyn (Dorset, North)

    Would the hon. Gentleman help me about the question of deterrence? The Bill abolishes capital punishment for the offence of murder, whether it be heard and determined in an ordinary criminal court or by court-martial under Section 70 of the Army Act. But under the same section of the Army Act and equivalent sections of the Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts the death penalty can be passed for treason; and for mutiny under Section 31 of the Army Act; and for other specified acts under Section 24(1) of the Army Act.

    As I understand, the death penalty will remain for treason, mutiny and these other acts if the Bill becomes law. If the hon. Gentleman has left capital punishment for these numerous Service offences as a deterrent, will he say why he does not think it should be left as a deterrent for murder?

    Mr. Silverman

    Like, I think, all abolitionists and, though I am not so certain about this, the overwhelming majority of the House of Commons, I am in favour of abolishing the death penalty for any crime, whether it be treason, cowardice, desertion, sabotage in a dockyard, piracy, or anything else, because I do not believe—and this is the gravamen of the whole argument—That we have any right to pursue and carry out this callous, brutal, coldhearted ritual unless we are satisfied that a useful social purpose is thereby attained. I do not believe that it is attained.

    The hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) may well ask why abolition of the death penalty for these offences is not included in the Bill. He must remember that the arguments about treason are very different from the arguments about murder. In peace time, we have not carried out the death penalty on anybody for any crime other than murder for 100 years. Even in war time, or just after war time for offences committed in war, we have executed only three people in the last 100 years. It would have been very bad tactics on our part if we had complicated the simple issue of being for or against the death penalty for murder by introducing a complicated argument for or against the abolition of the death penalty for other crimes when it has not been inflicted for 100 years and is virtually obsolete. We shall take a further opportunity some day of bringing that part of the law into line with the rest of our civilised law, but I do not think that we can do it on this occasion.

    Sir Richard Glyn

    Has the hon. Gentleman the figures for executions for mutiny?

    Mr. Silverman

    I hope that the figures which I have quoted are right; but I am not quoting them on my own responsibility. They have been supplied to me by the Home Office for the purpose of meeting such an objection as the hon. Gentleman has made. I therefore hope that he will accept them and will regard them as a sufficient answer to his question.

    In summing up this question of trying to find a remedy, all I need do is to invite attention to the Royal Commission’s Report. I recommend those who have not read it, and those who have forgotten it and still have doubts about this subject, to re-read the Report of the Royal Commission which examined the whole question and where all the arguments are to be found. It is very lucid and authoritative and is a massive argument against the death penalty.

    On the question of finding degrees or categories of murder, all that I need do is to read paragraph 534: Our examination of the law and procedure of other countries lends no support to the view that the objections to degrees of murder, which we discussed above, are only theoretical and academic and may be disproved by the practical experience of those countries where such a system is in force. We began our inquiry with the determination to make every effort to see whether we could succeed where so many have failed, and discover some effective method of classifying murders so as to confine the death penalty to the more heinous. Where degrees of murder have been introduced, they have undoubtedly resulted in limiting the application of capital punishment and for this reason they have commended themselves to public opinion, but in our view their advantages are far outweighed by the theoretical and practical objections which we have described. We conclude with regret that the object of our quest is chimerical and that it must be abandoned. It is true that the Royal Commission was talking about classifying murders according to whether they were bad or not so bad. But the same argument must inevitably apply to any other way of distinguishing between them unless the figures lead to any different conclusion.

    Mr. Edward Gardner (Billericay)

    The hon. Gentleman has just said that the Royal Commission’s Report on Capital Punishment is an argument in favour of abolition. Is he not aware that the Royal Commission was precluded expressly by its terms of reference, given by the Labour Government, from considering the question that the House today is debating?

    Mr. Silverman

    Of course I am aware of that. I assumed that every Member of the House was so aware of it that it did not need me to say it. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows this subject very well. It is a great mistake to offer cheap debating points about it. He knows that they are nothing more, because he knows perfectly well that the Royal Commission said in so many words that it could not find any way of ameliorating or modifying the death penalty, and that if Parliament wanted to do anything about the death penalty it was faced with the stark alternatives of retaining the death penalty as it was, or abolishing it altogether. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that very well and I think that he might have remembered it before prolonging my speech more than I have, unfortunately, had to do.

    There is one point with which I feel I ought to deal, and that is the question of the alternative. Of course, this question was equally relevant in 1957. Nobody raised it. There cannot be any question of having a different alternative in the case of the exceptions from the alternative which we enact when the death penalty is abolished over most of the field.

    I think that it is necessary to indicate to the House what the present position is. Nobody is ever released from a life sentence. It is true that the Home Secretary, from time to time, at different times and in different cases, lets a man out, but when he does so he lets him out on licence. The licence can be ended; the man can be recalled to prison, and sometimes he is.

    It is sometimes said, “But the average is too short”. But nobody serves an average. If one man is sentenced to life imprisonment and serves 20 years, and another is sentenced for a mercy killing and is let out in two years, the average of the two is 11 years. But that makes no difference to either of them. One serves his 20 years and the other serves his two. The Royal Commission collected all the figures between 1900 and 1949—the figures for half a century—and it found that the largest group were released after 15 years, that the next largest group were released after 10 years. A number of other periods were listed, some of them one year, one as high as 22 years. Thereafter, hon. Members of the House should not be misled by averages.

    I quote again from the Royal Commission’s conclusions about what are the criteria to be considered when the question under review is whether the man should be released or not. My quotation is from paragraph 657 of the Report. I hope that hon. Members will look at it, if they have not got it now, between now and Committee stage—if we ever get a Committee stage. These conclusions are on Section 2 of the Report. The Report says: Our conclusions, then, on this part of our terms of reference are that persons not mentally abnormal who would otherwise have been liable to suffer capital punishment could suitably be detained in the conditions now found in long-term prisons in England and Scotland, though we think that these admit of some improvements; that the principles now followed by the Secretaries of State in determining the actual length of detention in each case are in general appropriate for the purposes of punishment, deterrence and the protection of the public, without undue risk of causing moral and physical deterioration in the prisoner; and that if, in exceptional cases an exceptionally long period of detention is called for, the additional risk of such consequences ought not to be held to rule it out. The proposal is being made that that system should be altered and that the length of actual detention, even though a nominal life sentence is inflicted, should be determined by the trial judge at the time of trial and should be part of the sentence.

    Mr. Norman Cole (Bedfordshire, South) rose——

    Mr. Silverman

    I am trying to deal with the proposal. If, when I have set it out, the hon. Member would still like to ask anything about it, I would be happy to give way. Perhaps I had better state the point first.

    The proposal is that the judge at trial shall be given authority to fix the minimum period of detention appropriate to the particular criminal whom he is sentencing. I invite the House to consider that that would be to disregard one of the two essential criteria. One undoubtedly is the gravity of the offence. I have no doubt that the judges are a better tribunal, though not perfect, than any other conceivable tribunal of what length of detention is appropriate, having regard to the character of the crime which they have been trying.

    I do not doubt that for a moment. But although judges may be the best, though not an infallible, tribunal to judge that, they do not claim for themselves any divine omniscience about the future, and in determining in a life sentence when a man may be appropriately and safely released it may be important to know what he was like when he was sentenced; it must be at least equally important to know what he has become. This, I will say, is true, not merely of life sentences, but of all inordinately long sentences.

    The argument about averages has been a little distorted by comparison with a number of very long sentences passed for the first time in our history in the last three or four years. This is not the place, nor perhaps am I the person, to express any view about the appropriateness or propriety of 30 years for non-fatal robbery, still less to express a view about whether it was right or wrong to lump three maximum sentences together in order to make a maximum statutory sentence of 14 years into a period of 42 years.

    All I am inviting the House of Commons to remember at the moment is that these are exceptional crimes and exceptional sentences. They afford no useful or helpful guide to normal periods of imprisonment or to the normal penalties of our criminal law. If, indeed, the State were to insist at any time, for any purpose, on inflicting the gravest penalty in its power on criminals in respect of crimes which it declares not to be the gravest crime, then it inevitably places itself in a very great difficulty when it comes to determine what is appropriate for the gravest crime.

    All I am saying is that in this question of how long a life prisoner should be detained we must consider three elements: one, the gravity of the offence; two, the safety of the public; and, three, the danger of destroying by degrees over long, long years a life which we have refrained from destroying at the beginning. All these factors have to be taken into consideration, and the Home Secretary has the right, has the duty, has the responsibility and has the means, if we keep the life sentence, of taking them all into consideration.

    I am not saying that the responsibility need necessarily be left solely with him. I imagine that most Home Secretaries would welcome the advice and the assistance of a parole board. I am sure that if we had a parole board it would have a judicial element as well as a number of other elements. But what we must not sacrifice is the Home Secretary’s discretion, the prerogative of mercy to be applied according to his discretion, according to the rights and wrongs of particular cases at particular times. I hope that the House of Commons will accept that view. In any case, it is clearly not an argument which affects the giving or refusing of a Second Reading of the Bill. It is a Committee point, and I expect that many hon. Members will wish to raise it in Committee when it can be considered in much greater detail than it can be considered here.

    I have finished but for one closing remark which I should like to make. It may be said, it may be in many people’s minds, what does it matter? This question of the death penalty, be it right or wrong, is reduced to a very small compass. In 1964 we executed only two people, and those two were executed for one and the same murder. Last year, I think, it was also two. The year before it was either two or three—I am not quite sure which. It is a very small matter, and I can well understand Members on either side of the House saying, “In the face of all our anxieties and preoccupations, what can it matter whether we execute or do not execute two wretched murderers every year?”.

    For my part, I think that it matters. Men and women in my generation have lived through two world wars. They may have cost between them about 80 million human lives. When I was a very young man, in my boyhood in the earlier years of the twentieth century we regarded the twentieth century as synonymous with the ultimate achievement of civilisation, and when we wanted to say that a thing was wrong we said that it was not worthy of the twentieth century.

    Sir Winston Churchill once described this twentieth century, which we began with so much hope, as “this terrible twentieth century”. We have seen in it not merely those two wars, this destruction, this bloodshed. We have seen whole cities of non-combatant men, women and children wiped out without notice at one blow. We have seen a nation collecting from the ends of the earth 6 million human beings not for any military purpose, but for annihilation on grounds of race or creed.

    We are living today in a world under the threat of human extinction. We may be beginning to make our way out of it. But who knows? It is impossible to argue that the execution or non-execution of two people in England every year can make a very great contribution to the improvement of a dark and menacing world. But in this darkness and gloom into which the twentieth century civilisation has so far led us, we can at least light this small candle and see how far its tiny beams can penetrate the gloom.

  • Matthew Rycroft – 2022 Letter to Priti Patel on Rwanda Plan

    Matthew Rycroft – 2022 Letter to Priti Patel on Rwanda Plan

    The letter sent by Matthew Rycroft, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, to Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 13 April 2022.

    Dear Home Secretary,

    MIGRATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP

    This letter summarises my assessment of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) as the responsible Accounting Officer.

    You are looking to enter into an agreement with the Government of Rwanda (GoR). The negotiated agreement will enable the processing of asylum claims which are inadmissible under our current asylum system in Rwanda. Under this approach the UK’s legal obligations end once an individual is relocated to Rwanda, and GoR takes on the legal responsibility for that individual and for processing their claim in line with the Refugee Convention.

    You have made clear the rationale behind the MEDP, with the underlying policy acting as part of a suite of measures in the New Plan for Immigration to break the business model of people smugglers while maintaining a fair and robust immigration and borders system. The policy is also intended to support the Government in its objectives of preventing tragic loss of life in the Channel, deterring hazardous and illegal journeys to the UK and maintaining public trust and confidence in border controls. I also recognise the scale of the issue we are facing. The asylum system is costing the taxpayer over £1.5 billion per annum – the highest amount in over two decades, and current spend on hotels is c. £4.7 million per day including those who have arrived through resettlement programmes. I note the priority you have placed on these measures over the last year.

    My role as Permanent Secretary is to ensure that the Home Office delivers your objectives. It is also my personal responsibility as Principal Accounting Officer to ensure that the Department’s use of its resources is appropriate and consistent with the requirements set out in Managing Public Money (MPM).

    The Accounting Officer advice that I have received comprises a rigorous assessment of the regularity, propriety, feasibility and value for money of this policy, drawing on legal, policy and operational expertise. I have satisfied myself that it is regular, proper and feasible for this policy to proceed. We have incorporated learning from Windrush in developing this policy and the plans for its implementation.

    However, this advice highlights the uncertainty surrounding the value for money of the proposal. I recognise that, despite the high cost of this policy, there are potentially significant savings to be realised from deterring people entering the UK illegally. Value for money of the policy is dependent on it being effective as a deterrent. Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.

    I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money. This does not mean that the MEDP cannot have the appropriate deterrent effect; just that it there is not sufficient evidence for me to conclude that it will.

    Therefore, I will require your written instruction to proceed. I consider it is entirely appropriate for you to make a judgement to proceed in the light of the illegal migration challenge the country is facing. I will of course follow this direction and ensure the Department continues to support the implementation of the policy to the very best of our abilities.

    Should you issue a direction, I am required to copy all relevant papers to the Comptroller and Auditor General (who will inform the Public Accounts Committee) and the Treasury Officer of Accounts. I anticipate publishing our exchange of direction letters as early as practicable.

    Yours sincerely,

    Matthew Rycroft CBE
    Permanent Secretary

  • Priti Patel – 2022 Letter to Matthew Rycroft on Rwanda Plan

    Priti Patel – 2022 Letter to Matthew Rycroft on Rwanda Plan

    The letter sent by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to Matthew Rycroft, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, on 13 April 2022.

    Dear Matthew,

    MIGRATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP

    Thank you for your letter of 13 April setting out your current assessment of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda as the responsible Accounting Officer. As you know, tackling the longstanding issue of illegal migration is a top priority for this Government.

    Working together we have already successfully ended free movement and introduced our new Australian style points-based system, introduced the Government’s New Plan for Immigration and the Nationality and Borders Bill. Through these efforts and others, we will deliver a fair but firm immigration system. That means having an asylum system that prioritises support via safe and legal routes for the truly vulnerable, rather than one that is open to gaming by economic migrants and people smugglers, resulting in the loss of life.

    As we continue work to deliver these changes, despite best efforts, Home Office modelling forecasts that small boat numbers are expected to rise again this summer.

    As Home Secretary my primary responsibilities are to protect the British public and to act in their interest. That means taking steps to address the risks to human life, as well as the soaring costs to the UK taxpayer, that illegal migration entails. Those costs are now at their highest level in over two decades. The cost of the Asylum system stands at over £1.5 billion a year and we are spending over £4.7 million each day to accommodate migrants in hotels.

    We know there is no single solution to tackle the issue of illegal migration. While we understand it is not possible for HMG to accurately model the deterrent effect from day one, together with Rwanda, we are confident this policy is our best chance at producing that effect.

    It is only by introducing new incentives and effective deterrents into the system, as our international partners like Denmark, Greece, and Australia have succeeded in doing, that we can take on the criminal gangs facilitating illegal entry and break their lethal business model.

    I recognise your assessment on the immediate value for money aspect of this proposal. However, I note that without action, costs will continue to rise, lives will continue to be lost, and that together we have introduced safeguards into our agreement to protect taxpayer funding. And while accepting the constraints of the accounting officer framework set out by HM Treasury, I also think there are credible invest-to-save arguments in the long term.

    Finally, I also want to recognise the efforts of our frontline staff who have professionally and unstintingly responded a series of unpredictable migration flows to the UK as a result of events outside of their control. Each day I am struck by the extremely challenging work we are asking Home Office officials and Border Force operational staff at all levels to undertake. It is with this in mind that I also believe there is an imperative to act now to mitigate the impact on staff wellbeing as well as departmental operational and financial pressures in the longer term.

    It would therefore be imprudent in my view, as Home Secretary, to allow the absence of quantifiable and dynamic modelling – which is inevitable when developing a response to global crises influenced by so many geopolitical factors such as climate change, war and conflict –– to delay delivery of a policy that we believe will reduce illegal migration, save lives, and ultimately break the business model of the smuggling gangs. I am therefore formally directing you as Accounting Officer to take forward this scheme with immediate effect, managing the identified risks as best you can. I am grateful for our joint work on this issue, and I look forward to continuing to work with you to deliver for the British people.

    Rt Hon Priti Patel MP
    Home Secretary

  • Nadine Dorries – 2022 Comments on the Online Safety Bill

    Nadine Dorries – 2022 Comments on the Online Safety Bill

    The comments made by Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 17 April 2022.

    The time has come to properly protect people online and this week MPs will debate the most important legislation in the internet age.

    Our groundbreaking Online Safety Bill will make the UK the safest place to surf the web. It has been significantly strengthened following a lengthy period of engagement with people in politics, wider society and industry.

    We want to arm everyone with the skills to navigate the internet safely, so today we’re also announcing a funding boost and plans for experts to join forces with the government to help people spot dodgy information online.

  • Boris Johnson – 2022 Comments Ahead of His Visit to India

    Boris Johnson – 2022 Comments Ahead of His Visit to India

    The comments made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 17 April 2022.

    As we face threats to our peace and prosperity from autocratic states, it is vital that democracies and friends stick together. India, as a major economic power and the world’s largest democracy, is a highly valued strategic partner for the UK in these uncertain times.

    My visit to India will deliver on the things that really matter to the people of both our nations – from job creation and economic growth, to energy security and defence.