Richard Fuller

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. We know that issues of injustice can take an awfully long time to reach a resolution in Parliament. It is important that people who have or feel that they have suffered an injustice at the hands of the state should have worthy champions who have the doggedness and stamina to continue to make their case, so I am delighted to congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing today’s debate. As has been noted, the issue goes back through this Labour Government, previous Conservative Governments, the coalition Government, the Brown Government, all the way back to Blair. Let us take a moment to think about the individuals who have already been waiting two decades and more for what they would see is a full resolution. As a Member of Parliament myself for periods of that time, I have had a sense that this matter is unfinished business. I was interested to listen to some of the comments. One issue that was raised, most notably by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), was on regulation and the role of regulators. On the different perspectives and remedies, I think I am closer to the one suggested by my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth made the point that regulators are being hollowed out. I would say that on average they have greater scope, greater funding and more people. There is an issue with their focus, but more importantly, the structures to hold regulators to account are insufficient. There is no annual review of each regulator that is performed as effectively as in other areas, so I would encourage the hon. Member to press that point to improve our system of regulating the regulators.