His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service

Conor McGinn Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to open this important debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to debate this part of the Ministry of Justice estimates. I am glad to see the Minister and the shadow Minister in their places.

I want to raise succinctly, but in some detail, a number of pressing areas that trouble the Select Committee on Justice. Despite the funding increases that have recently been achieved, there is a background that causes real difficulties to the Prison and Probation Service.

I will highlight four areas in particular where the Minister ought to seek to persuade the Government to prioritise and increase their efforts, for the sake of both those who work in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and the offenders it is meant to manage and hold safely but humanely, with a view to reform wherever possible.

I will flag up the following issues: prison capacity, the projected prison population and overcrowding; the quality of the prison estate; the prison and probation workforce, and workforce shortages; and the youth custody estate. The Select Committee has looked at these matters on a number of occasions, and we are currently carrying out an inquiry into the prison workforce—I am grateful to everyone who has given evidence so far, and I appreciate the engagement we have had with Ministers.

I will start with one of the most pressing issues facing the Prison Service today. We now have the latest prison population projections and the reasons for their increase. The reality is simply that the prison population has grown substantially over the past 30 years. As of last Friday, there were some 85,851 people in prison. The number has changed a bit even since then.

Despite the Government’s efforts to manage the population, England and Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe and, of course, it is projected to grow further. We see no sign of the imprisonment rate falling. At the same time as having one of the highest imprisonment rates in western Europe, we also have one of the worst reoffending rates. Successive Governments have failed to address that ironic dichotomy.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Ind)]

The hon. Gentleman, the Minister and the shadow Minister know my bona fides on matters of law and order. Bad and dangerous people should be in prison to protect the public, but we do not talk often enough about prevention and rehabilitation. It would cost far less to keep people out of prison, and to stop them going back into prison, than to keep them in prison.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I could not agree more. The current Lord Chancellor has said previously that prison is there for the people of whom we are entitled to be afraid, not for the people with whom we are annoyed or angry. That is an important distinction, because prison is there to deal with those who are a danger to society or who have significantly harmed society; it is not there, in an ideal world, to deal with people who, for any number of reasons, have got their life into a mess. Such people can be a nuisance to society, but there is surely a better way to handle them than incarceration in the closed estate at a cost of some £40,000 a year.

The Justice Committee held an inquiry into the prison population back in 2017. There was about a 15% reduction in the prisons budget between 2015 and 2020, and it was found that had an impact on the safety and decency of the estate, following a reduction in the number of prison officers between 2010 and 2015. In truth, there has been underinvestment in prisons and, I would argue, underinvestment in the whole justice system for decades, under Governments of all complexions. Because the Ministry of Justice is both an unprotected Department, in budgetary terms, and a downstream Department, it often picks up the consequences of things that have gone wrong elsewhere in society and elsewhere in Government. The Ministry of Justice is particularly vulnerable.

In 2017 we saw there had been a 20% increase in the prison population over 15 years, and future projections indicated growth to 2022. There was, at that time, a transformation programme committed to expanding the prison estate by 10,000 places and to closing outdated prisons. Sadly, the truth is that the programme was not fully delivered. The Public Accounts Committee reported that just 206 places were delivered by the programme.

In 2018 the Ministry of Justice decided not to deliver the prison estate transformation in full because of budgetary pressures. Around 6,500 places were removed from the programme, but nothing has been done to reduce demand. Indeed, a number of changes to sentencing policy have, in fact, increased demand in a number of areas.

The 2017 inquiry found clear evidence that the reduction of spending in prisons had had a major destabilising effect. Reducing staff numbers put more pressure on remaining staff, and the way in which facilities management services were outsourced through block contracts meant the operation was very remote and very unresponsive to the day-to-day needs in prisons. It was very frustrating for governors, who were frequently finding that it took months to get basic repairs done. The nature of the contract was seriously at fault. I do not have a problem with contracting out in the right circumstances, but the way it was done was extremely inefficient.

Six years on, the Prison Service faces largely the same issues. The population has continued to increase, there is still an issue with the recruitment and retention of staff, and the estate still has capacity pressures. There was another prison expansion programme in 2019, and the “Prisons Strategy” White Paper said the provision of prison places would make a “more modern and secure” estate.

There was an ambitious target of 20,000 additional prison places as part of that programme, but we now know that planning permission has not been granted for three prisons—either it has been refused or no decision has been made—and the Ministry of Justice is having to appeal those planning decisions. That is hardly joined-up government. Surely the risk of delays in planning should have been foreseen at the outset.

On behalf of the Committee, I wrote to the permanent secretary at the MOJ following the publication of its main estimates, and I am grateful to her for responding yesterday. Disappointingly, only 8,200 new prison places will have been created and made operational by May 2025. We are about 11,800 short of the Government’s target of 20,000 by the mid-2020s. Given that background, is the Minister convinced that the current prison expansion programme is genuinely deliverable? When are we going to get to the 20,000 places? What steps are being taken to speed up a rate of delivery that, so far, will not get us there?

Prisons in England and Wales are reaching breaking point; the growth in the adult male population has forced the Government to use police cells to accommodate prisoners, through Operation Safeguard. The Government have said that would be in place for no longer than is necessary, but how much longer does the Minister anticipate that will be? How frequently is Operation Safeguard being used?

I mentioned the changes to sentencing policy, which have put more pressure on prisons. For example, we have seen changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers; there was an increase to two years and then, suddenly, a temporary reduction back down to one year. That is not good lawmaking, and it is not fair or just sentencing policy to have a lottery whereby when a defendant appears before the court decides whether he is dealt with by the magistrates or committed to the Crown court. As we all know, that move was done not because magistrates sentence more heavily—there was no evidence to suggest that—but because if people are sent to the Crown court for sentence, as the magistrates deem their powers insufficient, it will take longer before they end up in prison. There is a bit of sleight of hand here, as that was done to ease out the demand in the prison system, pushing people’s arrival in prison back down the road a bit, in the hope that somebody else will have left by then and so a bit more space is available.

That is not the right approach and it puts more pressure on another part of the MOJ’s responsibility, the Crown courts, because more cases are then being sent to them when they could have been dealt with more quickly by the magistrates. The Government need to address that situation. What is going to be done to deal with it? How long does the MOJ envisage this reduction in sentencing powers lasting? What is being done to consult the judiciary on whether that is a proper approach to the use of judicial resources and sentencing policy? I know that there has been a temporary response in respect of rapid deployment cells, which may offer some support. It may be of some assistance, but what is the long-term plan? How long do we envisage those cells being in use? What is the plan eventually to integrate them with the rest of the estate?

We have the plans for the 20,000 prison places, but the delay is significant. That means there is significant overcrowding in the estate, which is the second point I want to address. The overcrowding is such that it is difficult for prison staff to carry out rehabilitative work, which is one of the objectives of prison. That feeds into that high rate of recidivism and reoffending that I have referred to. It also creates real challenges on our basic duties of care towards both prisoners and prison officers. When the state removes someone’s liberty for the broader public good, it has the duty to commit to keep them safe and in decent conditions.

Equally, the state has a duty to provide decent, safe and reasonable working environments for those who supervise the prisoners and run the prisons. I fear that in a number of our prisons we are simply not getting there at the moment. We are simply failing in that, and repeated reports from His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons have flagged that up. The growth in the number of urgent notifications that have been issued by the inspector to the MOJ is also evidence of that. I appreciate that the Minister has always responded promptly to those urgent notification procedures, and I am grateful to him for that, but it speaks to an underlying problem that needs to be resolved. I suspect that that can be done only through sustained investment and by thinking about whether we are using the alternatives to prison effectively. To go back to the point made by the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), we need to make sure that we use it for those who are dangerous, where there is no other safe means of dealing with them and we cannot use cheaper and often more effective rehabilitative alternatives.

We still have many Victorian prisons—the “local prisons”, as they are often called—some of which are in a very poor state. They have been described as “not fit for purpose” and “dilapidated”. There has been historical under-investment in maintenance and we have a backlog of maintenance work in the prisons. In March 2021 this was estimated to be about £1 billion-worth. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is regularly taking prison cells out of use because of their state of disrepair. In the decade between 2009-10 and 2019-20, some 1,730 prison cells were permanently out of use for failing to meet the required standards. The lack of money going into basic maintenance therefore adds to the capacity crisis.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I have a lot of sympathy with that point. The irony is that the chief inspector of prisons, in his 2021 annual report, describes some of those old prisons as

“cold, dark and shabby cells…often plagued by damp and cockroaches, leaking pipes and toilets, and broken or missing furniture and windows”

but, at the same time, as we have already observed, the new prison building schedule is way behind and, because of the planning situation, so far we have no assurance about when those spaces will be delivered. In any event, they will not replace the dilapidated prisons, as we had originally hoped, but will simply increase capacity, because we have a tap that nobody seems able to find the means of properly turning off, in terms of those coming into the system.

The original plan was to close old prisons as part of the prison estate transformation programme, but that has not happened. In 2019 the Minister’s predecessor said that they would need to be kept open. Well, how long do we expect to keep those prisons open? What is the long-term plan for those prisons? What is the plan to ensure that the risks in relation to planning permissions and restrictive covenants, which plagued the potential redevelopment of Holloway, for example, are recognised and sorted out well in advance of the commitment of the capital?

It is worth observing that we have had an increase in the capital departmental expenditure limits for prisons, which is welcome, but if we are spending only a fraction of it so far—as I recall it is about £4 billion, and we have spent about £1.6 billion so far—clearly we have resource being allocated by the Treasury that we cannot have confidence that the Ministry is able to spend and use to deliver in a timely fashion. What steps is the Minister taking to deal with that? What reassurance can he give us? What is the plan to speed up that programme and get the resource spent where it is needed?

The other issue I want to deal with is the operational workforce—as I said, the Committee is currently running an inquiry on that. I pay tribute to the men and women who work in our prisons. They do a very tough job, which probably no one in this House would want to do. They do it on behalf of society, frequently in difficult and unpleasant conditions—sometimes unacceptable conditions—and at some risk to themselves. They deserve to have the recognition that I do not think they always get. On behalf of the Justice Committee, I recognise and salute them for what they do, but we need more than just recognition and warm words; we need some real support for them.

As part of the inquiry, the Justice Committee undertook a survey of serving prison officers. Some 6,582 staff responded to it, which was a decent number. The responses were striking. We found that half of band 3 to band 5 staff do not feel safe at the prison they work in. Feeling safe at work is surely a basic right for anyone. Half is a frightening statistic. Reports from the inspector and the independent monitoring boards have highlighted the growing number of assaults, both on staff by prisoners and between prisoners. That is a result of the cramped, overcrowded and stressful conditions in which many prisoners are held, so perhaps it is no surprise that the prison officers feel so concerned about that.

Band 3 to band 5 and band 2 are the key operational grades—the frontline people who do jobs on the wings. Only 15% of band 2 operational staff felt they had proper, regular training; 25% of band 3 to band 5 staff said they had regular training. That means the majority of staff do not think that they have such training. Surely training people is a basic part of making sure that we professionalise and keep the workforce up to scratch? We are bringing in various protective equipment for them; they need to be trained to use it.

It is no surprise that morale is low. More than 70% of staff in band 2 and 80% of staff in bands 3 to 5 said that staff morale was not good at the prison in which they worked. If that is the position with the frontline staff, is it any wonder that we have a problem not just with recruitment, but with retention? It is clear that there is a real issue with experienced officers leaving the service. When things get difficult in prison, when those tensions threaten to boil over, and when there is potential dispute or violence on the wings, it is exactly those experienced officers—the old hands, the men and women who have been around the system—who know how to deal with sometimes quite damaged and challenging individuals. Their experience is more necessary than anyone’s to calm things down and to prevent things from escalating. Therefore, unless we have a proper strategy for retention, we are creating a potential powder keg for the future.

Ultimately, we have both to retain and to increase the number of staff. Unless we do that, we will not get the purposeful activity that is necessary to make prisons beneficial; otherwise we end up just warehousing individuals with no benefit at the end of it. That pressure on staffing and overcrowding in prisons is reflected in the concern of the president of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, who said that the prison system faces an immediate crisis and could run out of prison places as early as mid-July. What is the Minister’s assessment of that? Does he agree with the president of the Prison Governors Association that, in a few days’ time, we could run out of space? If so, we are in a very grave situation indeed.

What, too, about the observations of the Shannon Trust—I am very grateful for its information—pointing out that statistics from the Office of National Statistics, HM Prison and Probation Service and the voluntary sector suggest that some 62% of all those incarcerated have a literacy level lower than an average 11-year-old? Given that we have some 85,000 people in prison, that potentially equates to about 53,000 people who have real literacy deficits. Without that being put right, what is their hope of getting a job on release? How do we then get them out of that cycle of reoffending? Because it is so difficult to carry out education activities in those cramped and inadequate facilities and to attract staff to do the tough job of education work in prisons, all too frequently, the level of courses is not being delivered in the way that was intended. What will the Minister do to increase the amount of education and purposeful activity that we see in our prisons? We all say that it is the objective, but so far we are not delivering on it in any consistent manner.

Let me look beyond prison to the critical issue of probation, which is sometimes, I fear, regarded as the poor relation of the two. The bulk of the budget goes on prisons because of the very high fixed costs, but probation is essential and we should pay tribute, too, to the probation officers who work so hard. It is essential to give alternatives to prison in the first place and, secondly, to have a proper means of transitioning prisoners back into society when they are released, without the risk of reoffending.

When we carried out our inquiries, we found high staff vacancies, overloaded probation practitioners working overcapacity, poor staff retention and inaccurate risk assessments, all of which were flagged up by the chief inspector of probation, who said that many services are experiencing exceptional staff shortages, with half the positions at key grades in some areas being unfilled. It is no wonder, therefore, that things are being missed. That is a risk not only to prisoners, but, potentially in the worst case, to the public as well. What is being done to deal with staff pressures in the probation service?

We met many probation officers. They want to improve their service, but they need decent and sustained funding to do so. You cannot have it being switched on and off like a light switch. We know that three fifths of the HMPPS’s expenditure is on prisons. We need to concentrate on and not forget the other two fifths of the budget as well.

[Conor McGinn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Robert Neill]

I will give way one more time and then I shall move on.

[Conor McGinn]

I am sorry to intrude on the hon. Gentleman again. He is making an excellent speech. I think he will agree that the privatisation of the probation service was a disaster and it is right that that is being reversed, but that does not mean that probation cannot work with the private and voluntary sector, particularly around employment. There are some great examples of that, with firms such as Timpson, the voluntary sector and organisations such as the Prison Advice and Care Trust. It is important that the service works collectively with all those groups to ensure that we stop people from reoffending, and help them rebuild, get on and be successful in their lives.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Yet again the hon. Gentleman is spot on. I join him in paying tribute to Timpson, for example. The work of the Timpson family and their firm has been consistently quite exceptional over a long period; I have constituents who benefited through their endeavours and many others in the House will have similar cases.

The hon. Gentleman’s point is an important one. The Justice Committee was critical of the way the probation service was privatised. As he knows, I do not have an ideological objection to privatising services, in the right circumstances and in the right way, but the simple truth is that the way it was done in probation was absolutely the wrong way to do it, splitting up and dislocating the service, with a mixture of that which was retained nationally and that which was with various outsourced companies. It was wholly unsatisfactory and created some dire results.

I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), who, when he was Justice Secretary, took the tough but right decision to reverse the process and unify the service once more. That was welcome. None the less, that privatisation is still affecting morale, it has affected retention and it has created considerable dislocation in data sharing between various services. It also broke a number of the local ties that had been developed between the probation service and local authorities and other providers in the area.

Ironically, as the hon. Member for St Helens North says, there is a role for the private sector. The privatisation of probation was intended to have more private sector groups coming in to the provision of probation work and more smaller-scale charities. What happened instead is that it went on bulk contracts to some of the usual big outsourcers and defeated its own object.

We need to work hard now to ensure that we give charities, not-for-profits and small-scale organisations real access to provide services where they can bring a unique perspective. Again, I would be grateful for the Minister’s observations on what the Government will do to encourage those providers into the sector, where they can work collaboratively with the new unified service. We currently have 220,000 people on probation and 16,000 staff in probation. The service has been through any amount of upheaval. It now needs stability and support—both practical financial support and recognition for the work that it does.

I have only a couple more points, Mr Deputy Speaker. I turn now to the youth custody estate. Youth custody, it should be said, has been a real success. We imprison far fewer people now than we used to. That is a real win that all sides involved can take credit for. The service does not face the same pressure of numbers and we have seen a steady decline in the number of children in custody.

One is tempted to say, “Why, if we can do that for children, largely because of a more holistic approach and far more early interventions, can we not apply the same philosophy to the adult estate as well?” The principle is not different: it is getting in early when we see the first signs of the problem in someone’s life that is likely to make them more vulnerable to falling into offending. If we can do that successfully for youngsters, why should we not at least do much more of it in the adult estate too?

However, although the numbers are not an issue, safety is a real concern in the youth estate. Staff retention is a problem in the youth estate too, which has an impact on safety. Lack of staff and training is also a matter of concern and recent inspection reports from His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons have raised concerns about education in the YOIs.

Safety concerns extend beyond physical harm. If the institutions fail to provide adequate educational programmes, vocational training and rehabilitative regimes, young offenders will not receive the tools they need to reintegrate into society. Instead, they will be all the more vulnerable to being sucked back in to the leadership model of their criminal friends on the outside, whom in many cases they joined up with because of the gaps elsewhere in their life. I wrote to the Minister in May about the woeful findings in relation to His Majesty’s Prison Cookham Wood in the urgent notification procedure there, and I am grateful to the Minister for his response. However, it is pretty disappointing to see yet another urgent notification being issued in relation to a failing prison—particularly one where children are involved. We must see improvements for those children. They have been entrusted to the state’s care, and we have a duty to them to ensure that they are safe and that when they leave those institutions, they are in a better place than when they went in.

I recognise the Government’s attempts to stabilise prisons and probation by injecting funding, but they are trying to make up for the great deal that was taken out earlier. I recognise the Minister’s commitment, and I appreciate the personal courtesy and determination in his words. I recognise in particular the commitment of the new Secretary of State, who understands these issues very well from his own professional background. They will both know that we have a lot of ground to make up to get prisons and probation back to where they should be. The fact that there is some increase in the estimates is good news, as I have demonstrated, but I fear, first, that it may not be enough and, secondly, that we need an assurance that funding will be sustained over a period of years and that the Ministry has the capacity to spend the money wisely and successfully to deliver on all that.

I hope that the Minister will respond on those matters with his usual care and courtesy, but we need not just words but a clear programme of action. Frankly, we need to increase and raise the extent and awareness of public debate about the Prison and Probation Service, as we need to with the whole criminal justice system. It ought to be a decent prisons system and probation system—a means of protecting the public but also of rehabilitating those offenders who can be rehabilitated—and that ought to be as central a mission to any Government as a decent education, health or social care system. It does not get the same level of attention. Perhaps this debate will help, if only in a small way, to flag up some of the issues. We all have a duty to talk about those issues with our constituents, in a measured and calm way, more than perhaps we currently do.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow that forensic speech by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). He took us through many of the problems, particularly those in the Prison Service. I will be rather more selective about the issues I speak about, but I will concentrate in particular on prison conditions.

Three weeks ago, I visited Wormwood Scrubs prison in my constituency. It is a prison that I have visited on and off for the past 30 years as an MP, a councillor and a criminal barrister. Despite meeting many dedicated officers and determined governors, I have never changed my mind about it being an unsuitable institution in the 21st century, particularly for the rehabilitation, or indeed the punishment, of offenders. On my most recent visit, I saw that many of the men were sharing one-person cells with unshielded toilets, making their living conditions cramped and unpleasant with no privacy. In addition, the Scrubs, like many prisons, is still operating a 23-hour lock-up regime, in which some prisoners get only one hour a day outside their cells. Is it any wonder, then, that self-harm and poor mental health are at a high across the prison estate?

I recently asked a series of written questions of the Minister’s Department, mainly on the topic of time out of cell. The MOJ responded that it does not hold those statistics centrally and that it was not practical for it to record the data. How does the MOJ hope to have an overview of the wellbeing of the prison population in its care if it does not know what each prison’s time-out-of-cell regime is? I followed up to inquire about why the MOJ does not collect that data centrally, and I was provided yesterday with a response that said that the MOJ would need to record data for each prisoner individually, based on his or her movements each day, to understand time out of cell for each prison. If I may say so, that is a ridiculous response and the Minister has misunderstood the question—not intentionally, I hope.

To get an understanding of each prison’s time-out-of-cell regime, the MOJ need only ask each prison to report that data to it. As the data is about the time out of cell rather than the individual schedules of prisoners, it will be much simpler to collect than the Ministry pretends. [Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position. I am sure that he will, when he responds, deal with that point in more detail.

A couple of weeks ago at Justice questions, I also asked about the overcrowded conditions in prisons. That data is held and published by the Government, but I do not think it is an accurate representation of what is and is not an overcrowded prison. For example, when I visited Wormwood Scrubs, the governor told me that she had just been asked by the MOJ to increase operational capacity. How will we ever know if a prison is overcrowded if the MOJ keeps moving the goalposts of operational capacity? If the MOJ keeps asking prisons to increase operational capacity, overcrowding will become an even bigger problem, as well as something of a hidden one.

Prisons are overcrowded, single cells are being used to house two people, and most time-out-of-cell regimes are oppressively restrictive. What necessitates much of that is an insufficient number of staff on the wings. Prisons need more staff, but they cannot hire more staff if their budget does not allow it. Prison officers are leaving the profession in their droves, and it is not hard to see why. It is a very dangerous job; prison officers are at very real risk of physical injury. It is also emotionally taxing seeing prisoners at some of the lowest points in their lives, and getting very little assistance by way of productive work, education and other support. The pay does not do the job justice, and is proof that the MOJ has insufficient regard for the profession. It wastes thousands of pounds training new prison officers who then leave within the first two years due to the conditions. It is clear that something is going very wrong, and the Government need to fix the problem.

[Conor McGinn]

As well as prison officers, will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to prison chaplains, particularly at his local prison of Wormwood Scrubs, where Father Gerry McFlynn was the chaplain for a long time? He is now the director of the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) will know him. Father Gerry celebrated his golden jubilee just last week—he is 50 years an ordained priest, and has dedicated his whole life to prisons and prison chaplaincy. I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in sending his regards to Father Gerry, as will all Members.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am very glad to have taken that intervention. I agree that prison chaplains, prison priests, prison vicars and prison imams—we have an excellent imam at the Scrubs—are in many ways unsung heroes, doing a fantastic job alongside the other staff.

I am afraid that often the problem is the MOJ itself, which is seemingly always one of the first Government Departments to offer itself up as soon as the Chancellor of the day mentions cuts. I think its budget is now 12% lower than it was in 2010. If prisons do not have the staff to unlock the prison safely for a reasonable period of time, do not have the money to provide meaningful activities and do not have the resources to provide good-quality education, mental health declines, and that can have tragic consequences for prisoners and staff.

I will come back to the issue of education in a moment, but I will briefly mention mental wellbeing in prisons. I recently met a lawyer who has been representing four bereaved families of prisoners from Wormwood Scrubs who took their own lives. Between April 2020 and February this year, there have been seven self-inflicted deaths at the Scrubs. The pain for the families must be unimaginable, and I am sure that other prisoners and the staff who found the deceased are also struggling. Any self-harm death in a prison is a potentially preventable one that deserves a rapid response to work out what went wrong and to implement learning for the future, but not one of those cases has yet made it to an inquest. An inquest for one of the families is scheduled for August this year, but that is over three years of waiting for answers.

We rightly talk a lot about the court backlog, but maybe not enough attention is paid to the coroner’s court backlog. According to coroner statistics for 2022, the average time from the date of death to the conclusion of an inquest is 30 weeks, but it is a postcode lottery; I think the worst case was at North Lincolnshire and Grimsby, where the wait was 72 weeks. One of the important outcomes of inquests is often the prevention of future deaths report. If an institution such as Wormwood Scrubs is waiting over three years for an inquest into the death of a prisoner and there is crucial learning that a coroner could uncover, how can that prison be expected to make the necessary changes? When the coroner does provide recommendations in their prevention of future deaths report, how do we know that public bodies will implement them?

I recently spoke on a panel for a campaign launched by the charity Inquest, which is asking the Government to implement a national oversight mechanism. The mechanism would collate recommendations from inquests and prevention of future deaths reports, along with the public body response, in a database. It would then analyse these responses, and produce a report. Finally, the mechanism could allow a follow-up procedure to check on the progress of implementing changes arising from the original recommendations. This sounds like a sensible and not expensive approach, and one that could help to lower the number of preventable deaths, if recommendations became centralised and easy to follow up. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), has offered to meet me and Inquest to discuss this, and I hope to hear from him soon. I realise that deaths in custody and deaths in prison are only one part of the equation, but they are an extremely important part.

I want to finish by coming back to education in prisons, In my recent meeting with the governor at Wormwood Scrubs, she explained that individual prisons have little control over their education services. The MOJ employs education providers in the Prison Service, but the quality of these providers can vary greatly from prison to prison. The governor says that she is unable to change the provider, because it has a contract with the MOJ for a number of prisons. That is only one example, but I think it is typical of the disconnect and neglect that is apparent.

I mentioned local and remand prisons. These are often the oldest, Victorian prisons and those in the worst condition. The Government boast—I am not sure why—that they are on this massive prison expansion programme and putting huge sums of money into new prisons. However, that is not to renew the prison estate, but because of the increase in population. I urge the Minister to look at the way that some of our older prisons are being run. They do a disservice not only to the people who work there and run them, as well as of course to the inmates, but to the wider community, because people are not being rehabilitated and are coming out of prison insufficiently supported and going back into prison very quickly. That is a recipe for disaster not only for the individual but for society as a whole, and it is an indictment of the failure of the prison system under this Government.

Terrorist Incident at Liverpool Women’s Hospital

Conor McGinn Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Just from my point of view, a written ministerial statement to the House is not good enough. It should be a statement to Members. They expect it, so please let us not hide behind that in terms of what we think is right or wrong. We all know what is right and wrong.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

One always feels a sense of responsibility and sadness on occasions such as this, but I feel it particularly today as a Merseyside MP. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) said about the emergency services and the victim of the attack, and I thank her for the leadership that she has shown locally over the past number of days.

The criminal investigation of the events in Liverpool is moving quickly. An individual who counter-terrorism police believe is the strong suspect and perpetrator has been named, although many questions remain. It is understandable, after the second incident in a matter of weeks, that the current terror threat level has been raised to severe. As the Minister said, it is critical that people should be not alarmed, but alert. Will he ensure that agencies have the resources to reinforce that message?

There are reports that a home-made explosive device was used in this appalling attack. After the 2017 series of attacks, the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is chaired so well by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), published a report that included recommendations on the use of and construction of such devices—namely, regulation around the ingredients or chemicals used to make them. Why have none of those recommendations been implemented after four years? Will the Minister look at that again?

We need to look at how another perpetrator was radicalised. The Government’s counter-extremism body came forward with several recommendations that, again, have not been implemented. We know that Ministers are taking funding away from key counter-extremism projects. Why is that, and will the Minister look at that again?

We must also look at information sharing between intelligence agencies, our police and public bodies. They need the fullest possible picture of individuals of concern to take the necessary action. Does the Minister agree, and will he look at that again?

We know that the Government have had a report on dealing with self-initiated and self-radicalised so-called “lone actors”. What is happening with that report? What is being done? The Minister will know that the Opposition have called for a judge-led review.

Finally, Liverpool people, in my experience, are resilient, but never, never harsh. Liverpool will continue, I am sure, to be the welcoming and warm place famed the world over for its hospitality.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his questions. As he knows, significant resources are available to our counter-terrorism policing colleagues and there have been significant extra resources over the past couple of years for Merseyside police, which I know and believe they will put into action in this case.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions that invited me to speculate on some of the lessons that we may learn from this incident with regard to, for example, materials or, indeed, the motivation of the alleged attacker. At the moment, the police have said that none of that is yet clear. Once the investigations are complete, and we have the full picture of the individual’s activities online and offline and of his lifestyle and possible associates—we do not know yet—we will be able to learn some of the lessons for the future. And I join the hon. Gentleman in knowing that Liverpool will bind itself together, as the city has done so many times and will again.

Draft Antique Firearms (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Conor McGinn Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 General Committees

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Mr Gray, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, particularly because, as a senior Member of the House, you have always given me great encouragement since my election in 2015. I know we have a shared interest in defence and the armed forces, so it is appropriate, in some respects, that you are chairing this afternoon’s Committee.

First, as the Minister would expect, Labour does not oppose these largely technical regulations. However, I do have a few questions for him. He will know that our priority, like his, is to protect the public, so we strongly support the need for firearms legislation to be robust, clear and kept under constant review so—as in this case—it can adequately respond to any loopholes or challenges. Critical to that is reducing the number of dangerous weapons on our streets—no matter what the danger is—so we of course support the principal aim of these regulations.

More specifically, the draft regulations before us work to correct an error in the more substantial ones approved by Parliament back in January, as the Minister said, in which a certain category of cartridge had been omitted. I understand that our law enforcement and the heritage firearms owning community welcome this clarification, and I appreciate the Minister’s apology and explanation. The mistake was largely a technical one in a list of over 450 cartridges. However, as well as checking, can the Minister assure the Committee that additional procedural safeguards are now in place to prevent any similar errors happening again—perhaps in more serious situations, such as during firearm list reviews or updates?

Antique firearms found in the wrong hands are a serious part of violent crime. They have caused many fatalities, and we have recently seen a rise in the number of such weapons retrieved from crime scenes. What further steps can the Minister take to monitor the firearms still able to be possessed without a licence, so they are not deemed a violent risk?

On the need to inform those antique firearms owners affected by this oversight of the need to apply for a certificate with local police forces before January 2022, can he say when he hopes to issue the advice? I hope it will be soon, because people will need to plan.

Finally, I take the opportunity to say that we welcome the changes the Minister announced last week on the new statutory guidance to chief police officers on firearms licensing coming into force, particularly the requirement for information to be provided about relevant medical conditions, including mental health conditions, as well as the requirements that applicants may be subject to open-source social media checks as part of the process. I know it has only been a week, so not even I would ask the Minister to update us on its early implementation, but I am sure he will commit to doing that in due course. Will he perhaps comment on how regularly that guidance will be kept under review by the Home Office, alongside law enforcement and other key partners?

To conclude, the Opposition support these regulations. Our priority—a shared priority, I think—is to keep people safe, and we are happy to find common ground with the Government on occasions like this to do just that.

Parole Board: Maintaining Public Safety

Conor McGinn Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effectiveness and transparency of the Parole Board in maintaining public safety.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate, and I welcome the Minister to her place. I thank colleagues for joining me this afternoon to debate what is a pressing issue for our constituents and for the wider country in maintaining and ensuring public safety.

Although this debate will focus on the wider parameters and aspects of the Parole Board’s effectiveness and transparency, I would like to draw the House’s attention to a specific and notorious case, which is a matter of considerable concern to my constituents in South Leicestershire—the case of Colin Pitchfork. In 1988, Pitchfork was sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal rape and murder of two young girls in my constituency. On 31 November 1983, 15-year-old Lynda Mann was raped and strangled by Pitchfork in the village of Narborough in Leicestershire, and on 31 July 1986, 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth was raped and strangled by Pitchfork in the nearby village of Enderby.

Although those crimes were committed over three decades ago, the murders of Lynda and Dawn continue to live long in the memories of my constituents. I regularly hear from those who still live in the villages of Narborough and Enderby who have fond memories of growing up with these two young women and will never forget their tragic and untimely deaths.

As hon. Members may be aware, Pitchfork’s case is not only notorious for these heinous and abhorrent crimes, which tragically ended the lives of two young girls; it is also known as a pivotal moment in English criminal justice history. He was the first person in the world to be convicted using DNA fingerprinting evidence pioneered by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester.

Following the tragic deaths of Lynda and Dawn, which made headline news across the country, Leicestershire Police conducted one of the country’s largest manhunts for the perpetrator. In an attempt to find those who were responsible, Leicestershire Police took the unprecedented and innovative step of blooding over 5,000 men—asking them to volunteer their blood and saliva for the purposes of DNA testing—in the hope of finding a match to the evidence that was left at the scenes of those awful crimes.

In a painstaking six-month process, the University of Leicester, the Forensic Science Service and Leicestershire police combed through the samples given by local men, but no matches were found. Only after he was overheard bragging that he had asked a friend to donate a DNA sample in his place was Pitchfork discovered, arrested and tried for his crimes, during which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The brutal and callous nature of Pitchfork’s crimes raises questions as to whether such a person should ever be released from prison or could ever be truly rehabilitated. There is little doubt among professionals, among my constituents in South Leicestershire and in my own personal opinion that, had Pitchfork not been caught, he would have taken yet another young life; that Pitchfork wilfully deceived the authorities during their investigations; and that he continued to exercise his freedom and live his life when his victims could not—a further indictment on this individual’s character.

Mrs Cummins, I would like to inform you and the House of the representations that I have made to the Parole Board regarding Pitchfork’s case on behalf of my constituents and the families and friends of the victims. I also commend the Secretary of State for Justice, the Minister with responsibility for prisons—she is in her place today—and the chief executive of the Parole Board for England and Wales, Mr Martin Jones, for their work and assistance on this matter. Their willingness to assist my constituents and me, and their devotion to this particular case, should be commended. I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to them.

The Parole Board’s purpose is to carry out—independent of the Government, the legislature and the judiciary—risk assessments on prisoners to determine whether they can safely be released into the community. As such, it can be regarded as the final barrier between prisoners and us in wider society.

As I have mentioned, the Parole Board’s independence from the judiciary, the legislature and Government is key. For the most part, prisoners who have served their sentence and can demonstrate their successful rehabilitation should be properly assessed ahead of their release. Their eventual release, if granted, is a crucial part of their rehabilitation and sentence, so that they can go back into the community as a person who is changed for the better and who will be able to make a positive contribution to our society.

Rehabilitation is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system and a hallmark of our tolerant, forgiving society. Although our country has one of the highest prison populations in Europe, we are a freedom-loving, rules-based democracy and I accept the need for our country to recognise that a person’s historical actions do not define them for all time. A person’s historical failures do not mark them for the rest of their life. We, as a country or a people, do not lock up individuals and throw away the key. When we remove people’s liberty, we invest time and taxpayers’ money in prisoners under a duty of care to work with them to rehabilitate them, and to consider an avenue towards their potential future release, a new start in life and a return to being safe, productive members of our society.

Questions, however, will remain for those who are perhaps not capable of being rehabilitated. It is not my place to pass judgment on the suitability of an individual’s character or their ability to re-enter society as a changed person. The rates of further serious offences among those who are deemed to be safe and who are released by the Parole Board are so low that it is clear that the Parole Board has robust practices in place to make those judgments from a specialist point of view. It is tasked by all of us and by all our constituents to ensure that those it deems fit for release no longer present a danger to the public. To the Parole Board’s credit, it does not often get those decisions wrong, but if it does, the wider public pays the price.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I endorse everything that the hon. Gentleman has said thus far, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. The circumstances he outlines in relation to his constituents and the arguments he advances resonate strongly with me and with people in St Helens, particularly the village of Billinge, where Helen McCourt was murdered in 1988. Her mother has fought a successful campaign for the introduction of the rule that if a murderer does not give information about the whereabouts of their victim’s remains, that will strongly affect the criteria for their release by the Parole Board. I pay tribute to the Government for putting that on the statute book in recent months.

Picking up on what the hon. Gentleman said about when the Parole Board gets it wrong, Marie McCourt had to watch her daughter’s killer be released from prison under parole. I accept the argument about public safety, but this is about public decency, too. Releasing someone who murdered a woman and never gave information about her remains is an affront to public decency.

[Alberto Costa]

I entirely agree that it is at the very least questionable when someone who has not shown contrition for their crimes, and over decades of custody, has not assisted investigators but is deemed fit for release.

I ask Members kindly to cast their minds back to 2018 when it was reported that John Worboys, a man convicted of 12 serious sexual offences and suspected of approximately 100, was proposed for release by the Parole Board, having served 10 years in custody. His proposed release caused considerable and understandable outcry among the public, press and, indeed, parliamentarians. Worboys’s case was a watershed moment for much needed reform of the parole process. Victims were not advised of the proposed release, and little information was provided about the reasoning behind the decision, and the then Secretary of State for Justice acted swiftly to bring new, welcome levels of transparency to the system.

I was pleased to feed into some of those changes to the parole process, having a link to the Pitchfork case, and like others I greatly welcomed the changes that were made. The announcement of a new mechanism two years ago for victims and families to request that decisions be reconsidered, and for summaries of decisions to be issued to the public, helped to bring the parole system into the 21st century and, crucially, helped to provide victims and families with a greater say in the criminal justice process, to help them seek the justice they deserve. From being a detached and at times obfuscated process, the parole system appears largely to have learned its lessons from the Worboys case. It has become more open and transparent to those who matter most, but it must continue its challenging work of ensuring public safety.

The Parole Board must have all the necessary resources to arrive at the correct judgment. I encourage the Minister to continue to ensure that it has all the necessary resources to carry out its important task.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for introducing this important debate.

I start by extending my sympathies to the families of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. I cannot begin to understand what they must have gone through over the years, with the victims being so young. My sympathies are with them at this time. My hon. Friend mentioned the impact on the wider community in Leicestershire and I am deeply aware of his interest in the case, the support he has given and continues to give to the victims’ families and his constituents more widely, and his personal efforts to bring the matter to the attention of the Ministry of Justice and to liaise with the Parole Board, meeting with its chief executive and providing a letter to be included in the parole dossier outlining his concerns so that those may be considered at the right time.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, the Parole Board fulfils a significant and fundamental role in protecting the public from harm. In providing a fair way to consider the release of those held in our prisons on indeterminate—and in some cases determinate—sentences, the expertise of Parole Board members is thoroughly to assess the risk and take effective decisions. That expertise is clear, with public protection absolutely at the heart of every case.

My hon. Friend was right to mention that there are only a limited number of cases in which the Parole Board allows a release and the offender goes on to reoffend. Serious further offences are rare. Less than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are convicted of serious further offences, and I believe that this very low level shows that the Parole Board is reaching the right conclusions when it comes to release. None the less, each one is taken extremely seriously, and a review is carried out of all to identify any lessons for the better management of future cases.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, over the past two years, we have taken a number of steps to improve the effectiveness, and particularly the transparency, of the Parole Board system. We introduced two key changes. First, in 2018, we worked with the Parole Board to amend its rules to allow it to provide decision summaries. Previously, the rules prevented the Parole Board from revealing any details of the reasons for its decision. The provision of those summaries allows victims and the wider public to understand why the board has made a decision in a case. To date, around 4,000 decision summaries have been issued, mainly to victims.

Secondly, following last year’s case of John Worboys, whose release decision by the Parole Board was overturned by the High Court, we developed a reconsideration mechanism for decisions made. Where there is evidence that a decision is irrational, or procedurally unfair, the reconsideration mechanism allows the Secretary of State, or the prisoner, to apply for the decision to be looked at again. Victims may ask the Secretary of State to apply for reconsideration on their behalf, and since July 2019 the Government have submitted 23 applications for that, five of which followed victim requests.

Prior to that introduction, there was no way to challenge flawed decisions without resorting to costly and time-consuming litigation. Now, as set out in the 2015 victims code, victims have the right to make a victim personal statement to the Parole Board and the entitlement to apply to attend the hearing to read their statement. Last week, we published a revised code of practice for victims of crime, which reinforces those rights by stating that the Parole Board must agree to the statement being read at the hearing by the victim, or someone else on their behalf, and provide a summary of its decision on application, unless there is a good reason not to do so.

Those important steps have increased the transparency of the process and decisions made by the Parole Board, but we believe there is still more that can be done. We recognise that the Parole Board is responsible for considering the release of prisoners who have committed some of the most serious and violent offences, and who have sometimes caused unimaginable harm and distress to victims and their families. It is entirely understandable, therefore, that members of the public, particularly victims, might struggle to comprehend how prisoners can ever be assessed to be safe to release.

I believe that for victims’ families really to understand the decisions, it is important for them to be more involved in the process. However hard it may be to accept, the board’s difficult role is not to decide whether the offender should continue to be punished for the crimes that they have committed; its decision is about the current risk and whether the offender would pose a danger to the public if they were released. Greater openness and transparency will enable us to increase that understanding, and that will build trust and confidence in the system.

[Conor McGinn]

I believe firmly and passionately in the rehabilitative nature of our penal system, and that rehabilitation is a cornerstone of the system. The Minister has outlined that the threat to the public, or the compromising of public safety, is the first and foremost consideration. Does she accept that for a lot of victims’ families, there are issues around truth and justice, and that in cases where families do not feel as though they have had that, it is an affront to them and to common decency, and it only exacerbates their pain, to see people who were committed for the most heinous crimes being released without showing a shred of remorse?

[Lucy Frazer]

I completely understand that point, and I cannot imagine how it must feel to be in that situation—if someone had taken away a loved one, or done serious damage to me as the victim of a serious crime, such as rape. The justice system requires the person who committed that crime to go before a court and a sentence to be pronounced, and that is the sentence the person serves when they go to prison. The Parole Board must determine whether that person, having served their sentence—having done their time—is safe to be released.

Of course, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire raised then comes come into consideration: is that person safe to be released, or are they manipulating the process? Are they telling the truth? Are they really committed to going forth and not committing further crime? That is when truth and deception come into play.

We are very aware of the importance of victims having their say, so that they have a right to be heard and feel that they have participated in the process. That is why we announced on 20 October—just over a month ago—the launch of the root-and-branch review of the parole system. That will build on the reforms that I have talked about today, and it will look at whether more fundamental reform of the system is required. One of the key things that we will consider in that review is whether we can increase openness and transparency to continue to improve public understanding, so that there is more confidence in the system.

We are running a consultation on whether parole hearings should be open to the public in some limited circumstances. The Parole Board is required to hold hearings in private, so public hearings would be a really significant step towards improving openness and transparency. We recognise that although there would be benefits in that, there are complexities and challenges around protecting the privacy and the safety of all involved—that would include victims—and ensuring that witnesses provided the candid evidence that the board would need to make effective decisions. That is why we are consulting on the process to ensure that any changes are made safely and responsibly. The parole process is extremely difficult for victims and their families, and we are determined to do as much as we can to give them the support and information that they need.

I will pick up further on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire made about sentences, and whether it is appropriate to release someone who has committed a crime such as the crimes committed by Colin Pitchfork, or other horrific crimes, where people are not rehabilitated. If Colin Pitchfork were to be sentenced now, he would likely receive a whole-life order, because under provisions introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the murder of a child that has a sexual or sadistic motivation attracts a whole-life order as its starting point. The Government recognise the particularly abhorrent nature of cases where a child has been murdered, as set out in the sentencing White Paper, and we intend to go further by making a whole-life order the starting point for any premeditated murder of a child.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) made an important point about the significant effect of rape on victims and what a dreadful crime that is. She will know that if a judge determines that an offender is dangerous, it is possible to hand down an extended determinate sentence. She will also know about the changes that we are proposing in relation to people who are sentenced for more than seven years—they will have their sentences increased, because we are recommending that they serve two thirds of their sentence, rather than half. However, I appreciate the important points that she made on the question whether such offenders should go before the Parole Board.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made a point about resources. I hope she spotted that in today’s spending review, our Department’s finances went up by 8%. The Government are committed to ensuring that the justice system has the necessary resources to ensure that we can deliver justice. She will know that demand in relation to the Parole Board has increased significantly and dramatically over the years, with 30 times more cases—that is 8,000 more—being heard each year compared with 20 years ago.

The increase in demand has led to the need regularly to review systems and processes, but also to invest in increased provision. In 2017-18, we injected additional funding to enable the recruitment of over 100 new Parole Board members, so that more hearings could be held. I pay tribute to the Parole Board for managing not only to ensure that it keeps up with the rate of determination during this covid crisis, but to increase the number of matters that it has managed to determine in this difficult and challenging period.

The system is effective at protecting the public from dangerous criminals—it is a thorough and sophisticated process for carefully assessing an offender’s risk—but I want to look at whether it is the most effective model to deliver the parole function over the longer term. The root-and-branch review, which I mentioned, will look at whether we can go further to deliver justice. Together with the Parole Board, we have already made great strides to improve the effectiveness and transparency of the parole system. I am pleased that, through the root-and-branch review, we are now able to take the next steps to ensure that the future delivery of this critical public protection function is the best it can be, with fairness and public safety at the forefront of its focus.

Question put and agreed to.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Conor McGinn Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) in particular, and to close this debate on behalf of the Opposition. I think this has been a serious, reflective and responsible debate about the matter of primary importance for us all, which is the security of the public and the country. My overriding message and that of the shadow Home Secretary and colleagues on these Benches is clear: this Labour Opposition believe it is our first responsibility to keep our citizens, their families and our communities safe. We will be forceful and robust in supporting the fight against terrorism, and we will do everything required to keep our country safe from those who seek to attack our way of life and our values, or to do us harm. That is why we do not propose to divide the House on this matter tonight.

The tone of this debate was set by the Lord Chancellor and the shadow Justice Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The contributions were characterised by the wisdom and expertise of the Chairs of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), and the intervention of the former Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), but also by the experience of former Ministers who brought their recent expertise to bear. I also think, and I say this as a relatively newly elected Member, that it is hugely impressive that so many new Members who came into this House after the last election chose today to make what I think were very considered, serious, thoughtful and non-partisan speeches. I congratulate them on that and I very much welcome it.

Events at Fishmongers’ Hall last November and on the streets of Streatham in February showed the very worst of humanity, but in the face of great darkness, we also saw the best of us shine through. I know we all commend the bravery of those who risked their lives to apprehend the attacker that day. Like others, I want to pay particular tribute to Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who dedicated themselves to help, support and rehabilitate others, and who are remembered by all of us in this House today for their inspirational work and their selfless service to others.

We think also of the victims of the Streatham attack, and indeed of all victims of terrorism. We thank our remarkable police officers, security services and other emergency services for their swift action at these and so many other incidents of terror, when they put themselves in harm’s way to protect us, and for the incredible and dedicated work they do every day, right now, to foil other nefarious plots that never come to fruition.

These events show the need for legislation. That the perpetrators in each case had been automatically released halfway through their sentences, with no mechanism in place to protect the public, showed that there were major holes in the legislative framework in this area that needed to be filled. Of course, this was to be done by emergency legislation earlier this year to prevent the imminent release of dozens of offenders without appropriate assessment of the risk they posed and now this wider piece of legislation before us today.

There remain a number of issues of concern that we wish to draw out during the passage of this Bill to ensure it does not fall short of what is require, because, as I believe the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, this is more complicated than just rhetoric. First, I entirely accept that there is a cohort of offenders who should serve their full custodial sentences. What I do not accept is that at that point of release, even if moving on to an extended licence period, they should not have the fullest possible expert assessment of the risk they pose by the Parole Board or a similar review mechanism. In February, when we, as the Opposition, supported the then Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill, the Lord Chancellor said this about the Streatham attacker:

“The automatic nature of his release meant that there was no parole oversight and no decision as to whether he posed a risk to the public. No one could prevent his release. It is purely thanks to the swift intervention of our incredible police officers that he did not go on to commit even more harm before he was stopped with necessary force.”—[Official Report, 12 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 863.]

My contention is: why can the Parole Board or a similar mechanism not do this, instead of being locked out of decision making for this category of offender? At the very least we will require an explanation of what is, in effect, a proposal from government to void an important part of the current process.

Secondly, on TPIMs, the Government are changing the qualifying threshold by lowering the standard of proof from “on balance of probabilities” back to “reasonable grounds for suspecting”. This is the third change by the Government since 2010. They also propose removing the two-year limit on TPIMs. As has been said, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall, has said:

“TPIMs are an exceptional and valuable means of mitigating the terrorist risk posed by a small number of individuals in the United Kingdom. But there is reason to doubt whether there exists an operational case for changing the TPIM regime at this point in time.”

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, this seems rather anomalous. We will, of course, listen carefully to the operational case the Government set out in Committee, but we will be pressing them on the appropriate safeguards, limits and oversight. We will also want to see evidence that they have taken into account the points raised by the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for North Down (Stephen Farry) on how this applies in Northern Ireland, and by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) in respect of Scotland.

There is woefully little in this Bill on the Prevent strategy or how we counter extremism, radicalisation and hatred more widely, including how we work with and in communities. Those points were eloquently made by my hon. Friends the Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). There is a lack of direction, purpose and, above all, clarity on the independent review of Prevent, which the Government are legally bound to present to this House in August. It should already have reported to government this month and the Minister should now be composing his response to that to present to the House in August. The review was introduced in the last counter-terror Bill, so we have now arrived at another one that is not only seeking to remove a statutory deadline, but that gives very little indication of when we are now to expect the review’s completion, which leaves the door open to yet more delay. We need some clarity on that, because otherwise the effectiveness of the entire programme, and the community’s confidence in it, is at risk.

Finally, as many hon. Members have alluded to, the Government need to focus on the dire situation in our prisons. Sadly, the perception, and in some cases the reality, is that they are taxpayer funded breeding grounds for terror. That cannot continue. It requires serious, effective investment in de-radicalisation strategies, including more prison and probation staff and wider and more comprehensive reform, a point made by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West. Again, we will seek clarity about that in Committee.

In conclusion, we do not propose to divide the House. We accept the need for clear and comprehensive legislation, so we will work with the Government to try to improve the Bill as it proceeds. We on this side of the House, as Opposition Members, are firmly committed to our first duty to protect the public and to show those who seek to attack our way of life, threaten our safety, and drive us apart with their intolerance and hatred that they will not succeed.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Conor McGinn Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), who has been with me and other colleagues every step of the way on this campaign in Parliament over the past three years. For Marie McCourt, it has been much longer than that, and I want to acknowledge her. It might seem a strange thing to say when we are discussing what I suspect many would view as a technical Bill, but the genesis of our being here today to debate it on Second Reading is in love—the love of Marie McCourt for her daughter, Helen. I am so proud and pleased to see Marie and her husband, John, and their close family friend Fiona Duffy, who has done so much work in the campaign, here to see this come to fruition today.

I want to pay tribute to the Secretary of State for Justice and his ministerial team for the way in which they have approached this legislation. As I will go on to say, it is not everything that we had wanted or hoped for, down to the crossed t or the dotted i, but he is a man of his word and put a significant amount of effort into ensuring that all the legal complications that were put before us were overcome. I also want to acknowledge the presence of the Home Secretary on the Front Bench, because from the Back Benches she strongly supported our efforts and used her influence on government, and it is good to see her return to her place. I want to thank her for her support for this Bill.

As has been said, Helen McCourt was murdered in my constituency, in Billinge, which lies between St Helens and Wigan, in 1988. The death devastated her family—Marie, her mother, and her brother, Michael—but it was the love they had for Helen and for each other that allowed them to remain together as a family unit. It was the love that the community in Billinge and St Helens have shown for Marie since then, up to this very week, which has been a tremendous testament to the strong sense of solidarity that we have there. Marie’s campaign, driven entirely by Marie, not only attracted half a million signatures from people across the country, to the purpose of what the Bill is today, but meant that many more families, such as the Joneses, and others, knew that they were not alone. They knew that it was not just them, that they were not the only ones facing the horror, trauma and awfulness of not only having a loved one murdered, but then not being able to give their loved one a final resting place. For Marie, that feeling is centred very much around the church in Billinge where, two years ago, for the 30th anniversary of Helen’s death, hundreds of people from across the community came out to show their love, solidarity and support for Marie.

The Bill applies only to England and Wales, but only yesterday in Northern Ireland the murderer of a young woman called Charlotte Murray was sentenced to 16 years. He has not revealed the location of her remains. Her sister Denise very eloquently and profoundly—I do not know where she got the strength from; it was incredible—talked about the especially cruel suffering that families like hers endured. The judge said that the murderer’s not revealing the location of her remains was the most serious aggravating feature of the case. That is why this Government Bill, based on the private Member’s Bill—Helen’s law—that we first brought before the House to unanimous support three years ago, is so vital, not just for the families we know about already, but unfortunately for the families who will face this heinous and terrible scenario in future.

Today is bittersweet because, as many in the House will know, just last week Helen McCourt’s murderer was released from prison. Marie has shown dignity, tenacity and sacrifice in continuing to pursue the campaign throughout the frustrations of Helen’s law falling because the House was prorogued and Parliament then dissolved. The fact that she has stuck with it because she knows that it will help other families is testament to her and to her character.

Ian Simms was released. The Parole Board in my view made an appalling decision that, to his credit, the Secretary of State for Justice gave it the opportunity to rectify. The Parole Board did not do that. Arising from this Bill and that case are wider questions to be asked about the Parole Board and about how victims feel in relation to its conduct vis-à-vis assessing dispassionately the actions of the perpetrator rather than concentrating on the sensitivities of the family. The fact that he was released just days before the 32nd anniversary of Helen’s death was quite frankly incomprehensible to me and caused additional suffering and hurt to the McCourt family.

The reason I took on the campaign in Parliament on Marie’s behalf was not just that she is my constituent and a dear friend, but that it was the right thing to do. This is very simply a case of what is moral and what is just. If a person murders someone, is convicted of that crime and does not reveal or give information as to the whereabouts of their victim’s remains, they should not be entitled to be released from prison, because the families of victims are never released from their sentence, especially because they have no right or recourse to give their loved ones that final place of rest.

Although the Bill is not absolutely a “no body, no parole” law, I understand that it will hugely strengthen the criteria that have already been laid down by the Parole Board. It would ill behove anyone watching this debate or hearing about the sequence of events that led up to Ian Simms’s release not to ensure that this legislation is a hugely significant factor when they look at parole for convicted murderers.

As I did in the discussions on the initial private Member’s Bill, I wish to address the justifiable concerns of those who ask, “What if someone is innocent?” Of course, the Bill will not take away the right of any convicted criminal to appeal his or her sentence. In the case of Helen McCourt’s murder, he did appeal and has done so on multiple occasions. If anything, his guilt, and the proof thereof, has only been enhanced by that process. The Bill will not in any way absolve our judicial system from the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty; all it does is ensure that when someone is convicted of a crime and proven to be guilty, they should be held accountable and made accountable for what they have done.

I thank the Daily Mirror for its support for this campaign over many years, and my local newspaper, the St Helens Star, as well as so many colleagues from all parties who, in discovering that they had in their constituencies families in awful situations similar to that of the McCourts, made a huge effort to support, reach out to and involve those families in an inclusive, passionate and ultimately just campaign.

I am very proud to see the Government bring forward this Bill, which challenges a few orthodoxies. One is that the Government do not listen; the second is that we cannot change the law from the Back Benches; and the third is that one citizen does not have the power, solely based on her love for her daughter, to do right by her memory.