Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is the Minister absolutely certain that he has got it right this time?

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)]

I believe that the Minister is absolutely certain. I am going to put on my glasses to ensure that I get things right.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Third reading

Sentencing

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

That is my point about focusing more on the impact of the crime.

We need to return to the experiment with community courts for lower-level crimes. That kind of approach has public support, even if the legal establishment, which is well represented in the House, is sceptical, and many of my constituents would welcome attention being paid to these matters. Thinking about what the Lord Chancellor said, it seems to me that we need a rethink. This is not about who runs the prisons, but about how they are run. We need to establish the value of short custodial sentences. What does a 10-week sentence set out to achieve? More importantly, we need to know, as he acknowledged, why it is easier to get drugs and other contraband in prison than outside. [Interruption.] Members can say, “It’s your legacy”, but it is a legacy that has been developing for years, and if we reduce the debate to that sort of silly, cheap remark, any benefits we might derive from the time available for debate will be lost. That is why they are wasting their time with that kind of muttering.

I want to know why this continues to happen. Why do we keep reading about prisoners taking us to court? Why can anyone in prison for more than a few months leave still unable to read and write? If the Lord Chancellor really wants to help and to demonstrate that the things he has spoken about today will be activated, he needs to tell us what he is going to do, and to do more than simply repeat the concerns in the Chamber.

We need to clarify the purpose of custody. The priorities for long-term prisoners are straightforward. They should be about security and then a long path to rehabilitation. However, for the short term and the frequent offenders that he mentioned, surely we need to have more credible forms of punishment and restitution, and more imaginative sentencing. That might mean ending the divide between prison and the community. Why not have prison sentences for evenings or weekends? Why not curb leisure time? Surely what matters is that the time is used constructively, and that any activity is not confused with leisure time or voluntary activity; it has to be about punishment, control and making amends.

The public want to see and hear punishment as well as rehabilitation. There have to be fewer opportunities for people to avoid responsibility for their actions, and courts need to entertain fewer excuses. I agree with the Lord Chancellor, but where in his policy are there clear directions and obligations in sentencing? I want to know that there will be rigorous testing, directive counselling and control for offences relating to substance abuse. If the Government were to take us along that path, rather than spending so much time repeating an analysis we all broadly share, and if they were to make clear their intentions, we might be able to have a much more constructive debate, instead of one in the terms being debated today.

Nevertheless, we are having this debate because the Government have set out to cut prison numbers, largely on a cost-cutting basis. The Lord Chancellor has refused to give details of exactly how he is going to provide credible—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I call Philip Davies.

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[Philip Davies]

No, there is not time.

That is what the Secretary of State is proposing. That is what happened to Gabrielle Browne, who sparked the debate when she questioned the Secretary of State—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will be heard. Members will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate in due course. This is quite unacceptable when he is speaking.

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Gabrielle Browne was attacked by an African immigrant, Mohammed Kendeh, who had just been let out of prison four months into a one-year sentence. He had sexually assaulted five other women in the same park a year before, but was spared jail for those offences. Non-custodial sentences do not appear to work in such cases. Similarly, in a recent case in west Yorkshire a serial rapist was freed from jail early only to commit another sickening attack. He had subjected a string of women to terrifying rapes and sexual assaults as far back as 1984, but served only eight years of a 14-year sentence for raping an 18-year-old woman. Upon his release, he carried out a further rape on a 24-year-old as she left a nightclub.

We will get more and more such cases, with people serving more and more derisory prison sentences, then let out to create more and more unnecessary victims of crime. When people with no offending history are caught for crimes and have to wait to be convicted, it is understandable that it should take time to bring them to justice. However, it is unforgivable for people in government to preside over a system that lets people out of prison earlier than necessary, in order for them to go on and commit more crimes and create more victims of crime. We need to review the current situation, in which people are released from prison early.

People keep telling me that Scandinavian countries are marvellous when it comes to these things, so I went to Denmark to see at first hand what they did. One thing that never seems to come out is that in Denmark, people are not automatically released halfway through their sentences. They are released only if they behave well; and in fact, 30% of prisoners in Danish prisons serve their full sentences because they are not deemed safe to release from prison early. Those are the things that the Secretary of State should be looking at, not trying to have people serve lower sentences in the first place. Indeed, it is his proposals that are causing the British public to lose confidence in the British criminal justice system and in this place.

Last week I asked the Secretary of State to read some research commissioned by Lord Ashcroft into the opinion of the public, victims of crime and police officers. Some 80% of those polled thought that sentences were too lenient. Similarly, when asked whether they expected the new coalition Government to be tougher on crime than the last Labour Government, 50% of those polled said that they expected them to be tougher, while 9% said less tough. When asked their views now that they had seen the Secretary of State in action for a year, only 13% thought that the Government were tougher, while 23% thought that they were less tough.

These proposals have to go. I very much fear that if the Secretary of State does not listen to the widespread opposition to these plans, then for us to restore our reputation as a party of law and order, he will have to go as well.

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[Fiona Mactaggart]

I was one of those Home Office Ministers who introduced the concept of victim impact statements, so I am well aware of that, but the problem is that with early guilty pleas, that has not usually been the case in practice. From my reading of the Green Paper it is not clear to me what will happen: will Ministers automatically ensure that the victim impact statement can fully outline what has happened to the victim?

I do not believe therefore that what is proposed is being done to make the victim’s experience better. There is no evidence of that, because there is no evidence of careful listening to victims’ organisations, which is what I would have expected had that been the case. I would have expected real engagement with women’s organisations that deal regularly with the victims of rape and other sexual violence. According to the British crime survey, one in 250 women were victims of sexual assault in the last year. This is a widespread offence, and we are not taking it sufficiently seriously when the Secretary of State for Justice can say, “Well, there’s rape and then there’s rape.” We need to change the way we deal with this issue. We need to be really serious about these issues. Although there is a case for discounts for early guilty pleas, they should not be universally applied to people who have been responsible for some of the most violent and degrading crimes, and his Green Paper does not stop that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order.

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[Anna Soubry]

I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me for saying that one of the difficulties that arise in our discussions on sentencing is when we speak about issues with a lack of information and understanding. First, let me say that victims are not all the same. They come in different shapes and sizes, and with different experiences. Sometimes—although very rarely—victims want to give evidence in order to exorcise what has happened to them. I am not for one moment talking here about rape victims, but this point applies to certain other categories of victim, such as some victims of burglary. Other victims, however, are terrified about giving evidence and would do anything rather than go into the witness box. We must therefore stop taking a broad-brush approach to sentencing, victims and criminals. That is one reason why I so strongly support our proposals: they recognise that defendants and criminals must not be treated in this broad-brush way.

I especially commend community sentences for people who have not committed the most serious offences. Tough community sentences can and do work. When faced with the prospect of another six months in custody or a tough two-year community sentence, many of my clients wanted the community sentence—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Time is up. I call Karl Turner.

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That this House deplores the previous Government’s failure to tackle the national scandal of reoffending and its mismanagement of the justice system; notes that discounts for guilty pleas have been an established principle of common law for decades, and that they can speed up justice and spare victims and witnesses the ordeal of waiting and preparing to give evidence at trial; and welcomes the Government’s intention to overhaul sentencing to deliver more effective punishment for offenders and increased reparation for victims and to reform offenders to cut crime.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Would Members leaving the Chamber do so quickly and quietly, please, so that we can start the next debate? [Interruption.] Private conversations are good, but preferably outside the Chamber.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

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

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendments 6 to 10, 12, 13, 15, 20 and 14.

Amendment 134, clause 156, page 102, line 24, at end insert—

‘(2A) Commencement of Part 1 of this Act is subject to Clause [Commencement of Part 1].’.

Amendment 135, page 102, leave out line 27.

Government amendments 31 to 40, 135A, 136 to 138, 42, 50 and 51.

[Vernon Coaker]

It is very good to be reunited with many of the members of the Committee who did such sterling service upstairs. It falls to us now to scrutinise the Bill on Report, to consider the various improvements that the Government will seek to introduce and—from the Opposition’s perspective—to continue to point out the Bill’s various deficiencies.

As hon. Members will have seen, new clause 4 states that the commencement order for clauses 1 to 103 should not be brought into force until an inquiry into the impact of the Government’s arrangements, which will be given effect in England and Wales by the Bill, has been completed. In other words, the provisions should not be brought into force until we have begun to understand what the impact of police and crime commissioners will be. Obviously, we would ask Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to conduct the inquiry, and that before commencement the Home Secretary has to consider the recommendations. The Minister knows that we oppose the introduction of directly elected police and crime commissioners, which constitute the major part of this part of the Bill, and we will continue to do so. I seek again to persuade hon. Members across the House of some of the deficiencies we see in the Bill, and hence of the need for us to calm down, row back and consider what is happening and what the Government are proposing.

The Minister has provided no evidence of the need for the change. In fact, the responses to the policing and crime White Paper “Policing in the 21st Century” seem to be a mystery. After nearly 900 responses to the White Paper, all the Government did was publish a summary of them—they did not publish any of them. I challenge him again to publish all 900 responses. I have a sneaking suspicion that had those 900 responses been in favour of the introduction of police and crime commissioners, we would not have seen him for dust as he moved to publish them. He would have published them with a fanfare of glory, called a press conference and said to everyone, “Look, the introduction of police and crime commissioners supported by me, the Prime Minister and a couple of other people and whipped through the House of Commons is supported by these 900 people. No need for an inquiry. No need for anyone to be concerned.” However, he did not do that; he published a summary, on the grounds that it would be disproportionate to go further.

The silence from those who support the Government’s proposal is deafening. I do not know about other hon. Members, but I have not had people queuing up outside my surgery, knocking on my door and telling me that the introduction of police and crime commissioners is one of the foremost policies they want introduced in their communities. No doubt, the Association of Police Authorities would be among those to whom HMIC would want to talk in its inquiry. However—and I hope that hon. Members have read the Committee deliberations—the Minister does not think that the APA is worth listening to, because obviously it would be opposed to anything that the Government put forward. Clearly, given that the Bill seeks to abolish police authorities, it is thought that there is not much point in listening to the APA.

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[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Members have to stand if they want to speak—bobbing up and down like this does not help me. I call Julian Huppert.

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[Dr Huppert]

Indeed. We have had a fair discussion in Committee, and I am glad that we are continuing it.

The shadow Minister spoke about a desire for delay, and I can understand why he sees that as his role. I am sure that the Minister will respond to the detailed points that he made. I was rather touched by the shadow Minister’s comment about how I would behave if I were in his position. He did not make it clear whether that was in a scenario where the Labour party had completely collapsed and was now a minor party, whether that had happened to the Conservatives, or whether there was a Labour-Conservative coalition. I am sure he can comment on that later.

I want in particular to speak about Government amendment 14, which deals with a rather detailed point raised in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart). It is a great pleasure to see him in his place. He spotted that lines 4 and 16 on page 22, in clause 30, did not quite fit together—that there was a drafting error. That led to an interesting discussion in which we genuinely explored some ideas—I think we all learned a lot—about what should be the process for suspending a police and crime commissioner, the standards and thresholds and the effects of such a suspension. There is an interesting balance to be struck as regards what should happen. The amendment corrects the drafting error and leaves the provision that a commissioner may be suspended by the panel—I emphasise that the term used is “may” rather than “must”—if charged with an offence that could lead to a term in prison of greater than two years.

Is the balance right? First, the position of police and crime commissioner is very responsible and we would not want to see a holder of it being seriously investigated for a major crime, which would put them in a position that would simply be untenable in the public eye. On the one hand, one could suggest that we should bring the threshold lower and lower until, if we want to be absolutely sure, they would be suspended if they were accused of anything. I think that would be going too far, and I shall come up with a suggestion on that point a bit later.

The flip side of the argument, however, is that such a commissioner has been charged, not convicted. There is a clear difference and a clear principle. Members on both sides of the House mentioned in Committee that we should not punish people excessively based on the fact that they have been charged. There is the principle of innocent until proven guilty that still applies to most public law—I shall avoid talking about terrorist offences on this occasion. Clause 30(3) says that during a suspension period, a commissioner does not draw their salary, their pensions or their allowances. That is a punishment, in effect.

We had a number of discussions in Committee and the Liberal Democrats have had some discussions about our proposals on the way forward. We have also discussed that with the Minister. There is the question of what offences we wish to catch. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West gave a number of examples of offences that would not be covered by the rules for the possible suspension in the context of offences with sentences greater than two years. I shall not go through every example, but they included racially or religiously aggravated assault or harassment, and I think we would have concerns about a police and crime commissioner who was charged with that. Other similar offences include aggravated vehicle taking, causing damage to property and causing injury. Vehicle taking without consent has a sentence of six months, as does assault on a police constable, as my hon. Friend pointed out. One would have great concerns if a police and crime commissioner was being charged with assaulting police constables, particularly on a regular basis. That would suggest that the relationship was not working

We must work out what to do. Our proposal—I hope that the Government will respond to it and will consider it as a way forward, and I look forward to hearing any other contributions—is that the period should be brought down from two years to six months, as suggested in the amendment originally proposed by my hon. Friend. It should be specified that the charge should be carried out by the Crown Prosecution Service—by a prosecutor—rather than a police officer, as they have powers to charge in some circumstances. We do not want police constables to be able to get at a commissioner with whom they disagree over some issue.

The flip side of bringing the threshold down to give greater public certainty is that there should be no loss of pay, no loss of pension and no loss of other allowances that would be incurred in the job—the person might not be doing that job during that period, but there might be some ongoing costs. That would avoid excessive punishment while providing public certainty that a prominent figure in such an area was not under a cloud and could not get out from under it.

There should also be a provision, regardless of the threshold, for the commissioner to be able effectively to suspend themselves and to say that there is an allegation against—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are discussing quite a narrow set of amendments? I am not sure that he is on the point of what we are discussing now—that is, the new clause and the amendments that are being debated and have been selected.

[Dr Huppert]

I was speaking about Government amendment 14, which I think is in this group.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman said at the beginning—and this is my understanding—that that is a drafting amendment and a correction, yet he seems to be making rather a substantial point of debate. If the Government have accepted a change by tabling their own drafting amendment, it normally follows that it is quite minor. That was why I asked him.

[Dr Huppert]

I had almost finished, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall do shortly. There was an interesting debate in Committee about whether we wanted just to correct the drafting order or to go further—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. With respect, people can read the Hansard report of the Committee. I have given the hon. Gentleman a great deal of latitude. I think he has come to the main point of what he wants to say, so if he could now conclude on that point it would be helpful.

[Dr Huppert]

I am happy to do so. I hope that the Government will consider what I have said as well as the self-suspension ideas.

Police Funding

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

I do not think that the Minister is deliberately trying to mislead the House, but is it not fair to say that the 12% cut that the former Home Secretary mentioned would be subject to exactly the same precept conditions, so it would have been reduced in the same way as he has reduced his 20% cut to 14%? He has therefore inadvertently misled the House on that point. Of course, he also completely misleads the House in relation to the west midlands—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may disagree with the Minister, but he cannot accuse him of misleading the House because he is using figures that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with.

[Steve McCabe]

I am happy to apologise. I was suggesting that the Minister was inadvertently misleading the House by quoting figures that do not stand up to scrutiny.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I heard the hon. Gentleman very clearly and he said it twice. I am glad that he has clarified that he believed that it was not deliberate.

[Nick Herbert]

I repeat that the Opposition proposed cuts of exactly the same magnitude. Indeed, the shadow Chancellor—when he was shadow Home Secretary—told the House on 8 September that as Home Secretary he had set out savings of £1.3 billion over the next four years, or about 12% of the Home Office budget. He also said that the HMIC report confirmed that, with a lot of effort, it would be possible to save 12% without affecting front-line services—[Interruption.] Those are not my words: they are the words of the shadow Chancellor.

As I pointed out on Monday, the shadow Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee seminar in Cannock on 22 November that this is a tighter environment for police spending and would be under any Government. Let us nail once and for all the idea that the Opposition would not have cut police spending. They would, and they have admitted it. The order of cuts that they would have made in police spending is exactly the same as we are asking the police to make now—

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[Ed Balls]

I will happily take this opportunity to say that I wrote to Sir Denis O’Connor yesterday on the matter, and I copied the letter to the Policing Minister. In that letter I say that I have not criticised—and will not criticise—the 11% statistic, which was drawn up by HMIC. What I have consistently criticised is the way in which that statistic has been used, in a misleading and smearing way, by Ministers—the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Policing Minister—to do down the important work of the police. The Minister says that 11% of the time is spent on visible policing, with the other 89% wasted on bureaucracy. That excludes people working on organised crime, in CID, on domestic violence, or on child abuse. That is the smear.

Also, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I just read out the HMIC report, which says:

“A re-design of the system…has the potential”—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that he was making an intervention. I think that he has made his point, and the intervention was getting a little long. It would be very helpful if when putting forcefully the arguments on either side of the House, all Members could avoid casting any aspersions on the correctness of another person’s view.

[Nick Herbert]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I strongly agree with that. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman has been caught out—