PRESS RELEASE

MP Quiz’s Minister on Silverlands

Runnymede and Weybridge MP, Philip Hammond, raised the issue of the proposed relocation of the Wolvercote Clinic for convicted paedophiles to Silverlands in Chertsey in parliament today.

Mr Hammond called the adjournment debate to express concerns about the process adopted by the Home Office for reviewing the secret decision to relocate to Silverlands in May of this year, in the run up to the General Election.

During the course of the debate, Mr Hammond raised concerns specifically about the transparency of the process. He sought assurances from the Home Office Minister, Beverley Hughes, that she would make public details of the alternative sites considered and would publish the evaluation of the different sites against a set of objective criteria. “Only by doing this, can the process be made transparent and open to scrutiny. If it is not, there will always be a suspicion among local people that this review has been less than a genuine and open process.” The Minister was unable to give a commitment to publication during the debate.

Mr Hammond also expressed concerns about the nature of the promised “consultation”. He noted that, after promising consultation, both the junior Minister and the Home Secretary himself had conspicuously avoided using the word “consultation” in later correspondence, referring to “engagement with the concerns of the community” and “discussions”.

“Since the criteria that the Home Office have set out for reaching their decision are almost entirely inward looking, relating to the suitability of a building itself, it isn’t entirely clear to me how the concerns expressed by individuals and representative groups in this “consultation” process can be fed into the decision making process. It does seem to me that there needs to be an open recognition of the potential impact on a community of the relocation of this clinic, by the inclusion of a criterion which seeks to minimise such impact on the community. This would provide an explicit way of recognising the concerns expressed by the local community and the likely impact on it.

“I am disappointed that, while rejecting suggestions that the review was anything other than genuine and thorough, the Minister was unable to undertake to do the one thing that would give local people confidence in that process – namely, to publish the list of sites considered and their scores in the evaluation process.”

-ENDS-