Tony Vaughan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Oct 2025 · International Rail Services: Ashford · Hansard source

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  On competition, why did it take a Labour Government to press the Office of Rail and Road to revisit the question of access to Temple Mills, which is key to unlocking competition? Unless other operators use Temple Mills, there is no competition. Why did it take this Government to do that? The hon. Member referred to a debate some years ago after which nothing seemed to happen.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not think anyone is suggesting that people are going to leave their sentences early from the UK and walk free in their country of origin. There is a range of existing rules relating to prisoner transfer agreements and so forth, which will apply in any event. This may be a matter that the right hon. Member will be able to raise in Committee, but I have no doubt whatsoever that this measure—which will still be subject to the safeguards that are already in existence, whether in the deportation process or the justice process—will ensure that justice is done, which is the whole point of the Bill. There is much in the Bill that I welcome, but let me ask the Minister a few questions. How can we keep the strongest possible safeguards in place for victims during the transition to more community sentences, how can we ensure that our Probation Service is well resourced and able to support the expansion of such sentences, and what additional measures are Ministers considering to support more effective rehabilitation of prisoners who have addiction and mental health conditions? The Bill is a serious and radical response to our prisons crisis and our reoffending crisis, which are costing our society more and more every day in every way, and I invite Members to vote for it today.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am glad to support a Bill put forward by the only party serious about reforming our criminal justice system. I say that as a barrister with 19 years’ experience, and I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Having been in full-time practice right up until last July’s elections, I saw at first hand the chaos in our prisons, the leaking and inadequate court buildings, and the overstretched probation officers, criminal barristers and others who were doing more for less in increasingly challenging circumstances. This Bill is critical to delivering meaningful justice for victims, protecting them more effectively, punishing perpetrators and rehabilitating offenders so that they become better citizens, not better criminals. We often talk about the Government’s inheritance from the Conservatives, but I argue that the prison and probation system is the area of the public realm that is most affected by the Tories—where they did most damage. They had 14 years, and they created 500 prison places, as the Lord Chancellor said. The number of frontline prison officers fell by 31% and the Conservatives decimated the Probation Service. Their so-called transforming rehabilitation reforms, which privatised part of the Probation Service, resulted in taxpayers bailing out failing private companies with £467 million of public money. There is nothing more serious than ensuring law and order, and the Conservatives became the party of lawlessness and disorder. It will take time to fix our prison and probation system, and this Bill begins that vital work. There is much I strongly support in this Bill. I particularly welcome the commitment to transition to an earned progression model for standard determinate sentences, inspired by reforms in Texas. There, as we heard, crime is at record lows, and it is important to stress that the behaviour of prisoners will impact their release. The principle on which this reform is based—that offender risk is relevant to how long they will stay in prison—is sound. If they reoffend and breach the terms of release under this system, the system will come down on them like a ton of bricks. The inescapable fact is that we send too many people to prison who then become better criminals. The point of prison is to face punishment as part of taking personal responsibility for their actions, but most people in prison can be rehabilitated. People must be accountable for their actions without us becoming cynical about human nature. I also strongly support other measures in this Bill, such as the expansion of tagging to monitor offenders in the community, which, as the Lord Chancellor said, has been shown to cut crime. I also strongly support the streamlining of deportation for foreign national offenders, on which I have a recent constituency example. In June, three men from Folkestone and Dover were convicted of raping a child and committing related sexual offences. They were together sentenced to around 54 years’ imprisonment. It was an utterly horrendous case. They were foreign nationals. Under existing laws, they can only be deported after serving the minimum term of their custodial sentence, which is often between a third and a half of it. Why should the British taxpayer foot the bill for their incarceration here for the next seven, eight or nine years while our prisons are at capacity? Clause 32 of the Bill answers that question by allowing the Home Office to remove the offender from prison at any time and subject them to deportation action, irrespective of how long they have spent in prison here. I support that common-sense measure, which is yet another example of a measure that could have been enacted by the Conservatives, yet was not.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Human Rights Act 1998: Immigration · Hansard source

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  By leaving the EU, the Tories tore up our returns agreement with the EU, and they completely failed to negotiate a new one, but this Government have now rectified that. Does the Home Secretary agree that the Tories and Reform are in cloud cuckoo land if they think that the French would have signed a returns deal with us if we had left the European convention on human rights?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for her tireless activism on this issue. Twenty months ago, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches Palestinians in Gaza, to protect what the Court found to be Palestinians’ “plausible” right to be protected from acts of genocide. Today, humanitarian reality speaks for itself, as other hon. Members have set out: 470,000 Palestinians face catastrophic food insecurity, and nearly 900 people have been killed while queuing for aid since May—shot by Israeli forces as they waited for food and water. Last month, alongside 27 other countries, the UK rightly condemned Israel’s aid distribution system as “dangerous” and “inhumane”—my hon. Friend rightly described it as a disgrace. It is clear that humanitarian access has worsened and that the Court’s orders are still being systematically ignored. We must see full compliance with the ICJ’s provisional measures, all border crossings reopened, all restrictions lifted and humanitarian operations restored to pre-conflict levels. Under the genocide convention, the UK has obligations to ensure Israel’s compliance with international law, regardless of whether the UK has reached its own conclusions about genocide itself. The ICJ has made enough rulings. The time for action is now.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Relations with the European Union · Hansard source

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  4. What steps he is taking to improve relations with the EU.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Relations with the European Union · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his answer. Given that he leads on UK-EU relations, will he outline how the Cabinet Office will ensure that the new sanitary and phytosanitary agreement will reduce the level of checks on goods at both the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkstone, in my constituency, and the Port of Dover, and improve the flow of trade? What steps are being taken to further break down barriers to trade in goods with the EU?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. I echo the Home Secretary’s remarks about the 7/7 attacks. Alcaline Transport in my constituency was fined £10,000 after it reported that a clandestine migrant was found in one of its vehicles. When will improvements to the clandestine entrant civil penalty scheme be fully implemented, so that hauliers who report issues responsibly are supported, not penalised?

• 2 Jul 2025 · West Bank: Forced Displacement · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) for securing this timely debate. We must be crystal clear about what is going on in the west bank. The forcible displacement of Palestinians there is an act of grave immorality and a breach of international law. Bodies such as the UN, Amnesty International and Oxfam are clear about what is going on. The UN has confirmed that since 7 October 2023, more than 6,463 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in the west bank, including East Jerusalem, following the demolition of their homes. That figure does not include around 40,000 Palestinians who were displaced from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem. Oxfam is clear that we are witnessing the “largest forced displacement in West Bank since…1967”. About 8,000 Israeli military checkpoints, barriers and gates have been constructed, causing unprecedented movement restrictions. Aid deliveries to the west bank face impenetrable obstacles. The Israeli military are conducting an unrelenting campaign in the west bank. They have deployed tanks, carried out air strikes and destroyed buildings and other civilian infrastructure. We have heard eyewitness testimony to that effect from Members present. On 21 May, a diplomatic delegation of representatives from over 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, came under fire from Israeli soldiers while visiting Jenin refugee camp. Mr Turner, 5 June is an important day for Palestinians: Naksa Day, when they remember the forced displacement of approximately 300,000 Palestinians during the war of 1967, when Israel occupied the west bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip. We must learn the lessons from history and not repeat tragic mistakes. This Government’s approach is markedly different from what has come before. They were right to sanction the two Israeli Government Ministers, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who have championed illegal settlements; right to support the independence of our international courts; and right to take an internationalist, multilateral approach, collaborating closely with our allies France, Germany and Canada to call out the Netanyahu Government. We must have as strict a sanctions regime as possible against the illegal settler outposts and organisations in the west bank. We must sanction any Israeli politician or organisation that incites violence in the occupied west bank, as we already have. We must stop trade with the settlements. All that is required because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) said, we are under positive legal obligations to take steps to prevent violations of international law, as the ICJ advisory opinion made clear in July 2024. We must recognise the state of Palestine, along with the 147 other UN member states that already do. Doing this is about our country acting with moral authority and showing the moral leadership that we ought to show.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her statement and for her engagement. My question is about the co-production proposal. By what mechanism will that be given effect, and how is co-production different from consultation? Will disability groups have any entitlements or powers beyond simply giving their views?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Political Prisoners · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must not forget that Hong Kong still, it is said, has a common law system, so Hong Kong must observe the common law and the basic principles attached to a fair trial. That is the bedrock of what the common law is about. It has been a privilege and inspiring for me to meet Sebastien Lai and his father’s lawyers. I pay tribute to them and their work. Because of our fundamentally different political and economic systems, conceptions of democracy and human rights in China and in Britain will inevitably be different. But we must not relent from pushing and raising the case, given that Hong Kong has a common law system, and the international obligations that apply to China and Hong Kong must be upheld. I was encouraged to see that the Prime Minister raised Jimmy Lai’s case when he met President Xi at the G20 in Brazil. I urge the Prime Minister to meet Mr Lai’s son and his lawyers. The UK must of course work closely with our allies to continue to raise his case with officials at every level of the Chinese Communist party. China and Hong Kong should understand that Mr Lai’s case and the treatment that he has received is damaging the standing of China and Hong Kong in the world. But beyond questions of legality, reputation and soft power lies the case of a frail, elderly man who deserves better, more humane treatment. I call on the Hong Kong authorities to release Jimmy Lai.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Political Prisoners · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) for securing this vital debate. I commend her for her work fiercely fighting for her constituents. I declare an interest in this debate as the chair of the all-party parliamentary China group. Jimmy Lai’s situation is desperate and his treatment wholly unacceptable. I am deeply concerned by the treatment that Mr Lai, a 77-year-old British citizen, has received at the hands of the Hong Kong authorities. He has been a tireless campaigner for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong. He has already been sentenced to five years and nine months in prison for a separate case relating to his now closed newspaper, Apple Daily . His lawyers have confirmed that he has been denied independent medical care and is allowed out of his cell for a mere 50 minutes a day. That is inhuman treatment. He is a frail, elderly man who is 77, has diabetes and has lost considerable weight, yet he remains a man of immense courage and unyielding spirit—qualities to which I want to pay tribute today. If he is found guilty he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. As chair of the APPG, I have raised Jimmy Lai’s case in person several times with Chinese officials, including in January when I visited Beijing as part of a visit by a cross-party group of parliamentarians. The Chinese believe it is an internal matter for them, but raising his case firmly has been my duty. It is important that a message is sent by this House and by UK parliamentarians that his treatment is not acceptable.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Farmed Animals: Cages and Crates · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend talks about an additional 1p per egg, but does she agree that some sort of financial incentive or financial reason would be an important factor in increasing the state’s ability to phase out cages and crates? Otherwise, we are not going to see this happen en masse.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am essentially finished. I urge hon. Members to reject amendment (b) to new clause 14 in its current form, not because we oppose its aim, but because we can and must find a better way to achieve it.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I want to put on record my sincere thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for the way that she has approached this Bill. Her willingness to listen to concerns from across the House has been evident, not least in new clause 14, brought forward in the names of the hon. Members for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) and for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin). That is a testament to how we can work together on these deeply sensitive issues. I rise to speak in favour of new clause 14 and against amendment (b) to new clause 14. I absolutely understand the intent behind the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh). Nobody in this House wants to see voluntary assisted dying services being advertised in a way that is insensitive, inappropriate or exploitative. We all want to protect individuals, particularly those who may be vulnerable or more easily influenced, so I fully share that concern. Although I respect the principle behind the amendment, however, I do not believe it offers the right solution. New clause 14 rightly prohibits advertising voluntary assisted dying services to the public, while giving Ministers tightly defined powers to create appropriate exceptions through regulations. That is important, because in a healthcare system as complex as ours, we must be able to draw the line between unethical promotion and responsible professional communication. I think the new clause gets that balance right.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  That will have to be worked out; I do not have the answer at my fingertips, but others might. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley say earlier that she is open to working with my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale and others in the Lords to find a workable way forward on all these issues. I hope that he will take her up on that offer. This is obviously an area where constructive cross-party work could ensure that strong safeguards are achieved without unintended consequences.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will press on. Secondly, the amendment attempts to limit the scope of future regulation by barring any changes to the Suicide Act 1961, but that is already covered by new clause 14, which prevents other changes to this Bill, should it become an Act. The amendment is not only duplicative, but closes off avenues for future clarity that might be needed in the Suicide Act, such as to ensure that offences around coercion or fraudulent practice are properly dealt with. In short, the amendment does not add clarity; it risks confusion. It does not strengthen the advertising ban; it introduces constraints that could make it harder to enforce with evolving practice.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Animal Welfare in Farming · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that, through the Government’s programme of planning reform, we must not create any loopholes that could be exploited to facilitate the destructive, large-scale farming operations that he refers to?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend. As our hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow and I have said, these are human rights issues, and courts have highlighted incompatibilities where that has been the case. It is important that those principles guide our approach. I am in favour of the regulation of abortion, but I am also in favour of decriminalising it, so that abortion can once and for all be treated by the law as a matter of healthcare, not criminality, and individual rights to bodily autonomy can be exercised without fear of prosecution at one of the most physically and mentally vulnerable points in any woman’s life. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other Members and the Government.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered e-petition 700014 relating to decriminalising abortion. It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. The petition creator is Gemma Clark, and this is what it says: “I am calling on the UK government to remove abortion from criminal law so that no pregnant person can be criminalised for procuring their own abortion.” Gemma became involved in campaigning on this issue during the pandemic. She was particularly alarmed by the tactics of some campaigners harassing women trying to access abortion in Scotland. She also has a friend who experienced a stillbirth but was investigated by the police. Gemma is worried that there is a lot of misinformation about abortion, especially late-term ones, and that that is linked to the rise of extreme ideologies and misogyny. She is a primary school teacher and is fearful that the young girls she is educating now will have fewer rights when they grow up than she does. I thank Gemma and the more than 103,000 people from across the UK who signed her petition. That includes 152 from my constituency of Folkestone and Hythe. I also thank 55 of my constituents who emailed me to express their views on the issue. That has fed into this speech. How is abortion criminalised in the UK? It depends on where we live. Abortion is, in effect, decriminalised in Northern Ireland, whereas long-standing laws maintain the criminalisation of abortion in England, Wales and Scotland with two main offences: procuring miscarriage under section 58 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, and child destruction under section 1 of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I come back to what I said to the right hon. Member for Gainsborough: whatever the position at the time of the law’s coming into force, I am not aware of there being a movement or democratic support for changing the law back to what it was before. When we talk about whether laws meet the current standards and societal norms, that is the most important thing. Let me turn to how the law is applied in England and Wales. Until 2022, it was believed that only three women had been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since the 1861 Act, under which most illegal abortions are prosecuted, but there has been a recent increase in the prosecutions of women for procuring miscarriage under the Act. The Crown Prosecution Service reports that in the period January 2019 to March 2023, six people were charged with child destruction and 11 were charged with procuring miscarriage under section 58 of the 1861 Act. One of those people was Nicola Packer, who took home abortion medication following a teleconsultation, believing that she was less than 10 weeks pregnant. She was in fact 26 weeks pregnant, and was accused of having an illegal abortion. On 7 November 2020, she was in hospital. The next day—

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  My understanding is that the case has been disposed of. Ms Packer was found not guilty of those charges last month, I believe.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that statistic, which I was not aware of. Criminalisation involves traumatisation from the moment of investigation to charge, arrest and all the way through the system. The time has come to abandon these outdated practices. I struggle to see how it can be a good use of the scarce resources in our criminal justice system to prosecute and imprison women in these situations. Our laws cannot be fixed relics of the past, but must reflect social attitudes and societal norms. A YouGov poll of 2,098 adults in September 2023 found that 52% of respondents believed that women should not face prosecution for having an abortion, while only 21% of respondents believed that prosecution was appropriate. At the international level, and as the petition creator, Gemma Clark, has rightly reminded me, the World Health Organisation’s 2022 guidelines on safe abortion recommend removing medically unnecessary policy barriers to safe abortion, such as criminalisation. More than 30 organisations representing medical practitioners in this country support decriminalising abortion, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Faculty of Public Health, the Centre for Reproductive Rights, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Dr Ranee Thakar, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has said: “Abortion that happens outside of the current law generally involves very vulnerable women—including those facing domestic abuse, mental health challenges or barriers to accessing NHS care. Yet alarmingly, prosecutions of women have been increasing in recent years…Abortion is an essential form of healthcare and should be subject to regulatory and professional standards like other medical procedures, not criminal sanctions.” As I mentioned, Northern Ireland repealed provisions criminalising abortion. Similarly, my hon. Friends the Members for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) have tabled new clauses to the Crime and Policing Bill that would disapply such provisions, eliminating the risk of prosecution for women who self-manage abortions or seek care beyond current legal limits. Under the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for Gower, access to abortion services would remain exactly as it is, as I understand it, including time limits, grounds for abortion and the requirement for two doctors. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow is in a much better position than me to talk about her new clause, which follows similar principles, so I will not stray into her territory by saying more at this stage. The key point is that although we should maintain regulation, criminalisation is a very different matter. I appreciate that there are organisations passionately opposed to decriminalising abortion. I believe that decriminalisation does not mean deregulation. My hon. Friends the Members for Gower and for Walthamstow propose to maintain a body of rules on access to and provision of abortion, such as the existing time limit, which would remain in force. Some people claim that decriminalising abortion would lead to significant increases in the number of women performing dangerous late-stage abortions at home, as the right hon. Member for Gainsborough suggested, but I think that would be highly unlikely. The latest figures available, from 2022, reveal that 88% of abortions were performed at under 10 weeks gestation. I have not seen, as I said in response to interventions, evidence to suggest that removing the criminal law deterrent would motivate swathes of women to have abortions after 24 weeks. Indeed, I have not heard of any campaigns in Northern Ireland to re-criminalise due to unforeseen consequences.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  I will press on, because I am conscious of the time. Maybe we will come back to this.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Decriminalising Abortion · Hansard source

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  All right then.