draft Public Guardian (Fees, etc.) (Amendment) regulations 2017

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Public Guardian (Fees, etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2017.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Flello. The regulations apply to England and Wales and serve to reduce the fee for registering enduring and lasting powers of attorney. The current fee is £110 and it will be reduced to £82. The resubmission fee, paid when an application has to be resubmitted because of an error in the original application, will be reduced to £41 from £55. If Parliament agrees, we intend the changes to take effect on 1 April.

The new fee will be an enhanced fee, allowing us to cover the full cost of registering a power of attorney as well as to ensure the efficient and effective discharge of the Public Guardian’s functions. The power to charge an enhanced fee is contained in section 180 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

There are currently more than 2 million powers of attorney registered, which comprise both lasting powers of attorney and their predecessor, enduring powers of attorney, which remain valid and may still be registered. In October 2017 we will celebrate 10 years since lasting powers of attorney were introduced. In that time, the Office of the Public Guardian, the body responsible for maintaining a register of powers of attorney, has registered nearly 2.5 million LPAs. The high uptake of lasting powers of attorney is an indication of the success of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. They allow individuals to plan ahead for a time when they may lack capacity to make decisions for themselves and appoint someone they trust to make those decisions for them.

It is positive that so many more people are making powers of attorney, but that has led to a position where the income we receive from fees charged exceeds the cost of delivering the service. A detailed review of power of attorney fees together with an improved forecasting model for volumes of applications, taking into account the ageing demographic and the rise in dementia, has enabled us to take decisive action to reduce fees and bring them closer to the cost of providing the service.

As many more people have been registering LPAs in recent years, increased volumes coupled with greater efficiencies in processing applications have resulted in fees being charged above the operational cost of delivering the service without our having exercised the power provided by legislation to allow us to do that. Clearly, that situation must be remedied, which is what the regulations seek to do.

Furthermore, alongside the reduction in fee, we will also introduce a scheme for refunding a portion of the fee to customers who may have paid more than they should. Full details of the scheme will be announced in due course. We will take such steps as are necessary to ensure that people are made aware of and receive the refunds to which they are entitled.

The Government’s aim is to ensure that the Public Guardian’s functions are properly resourced. We consider that an enhanced fee will go towards funding vital wider functions carried out by the Office of the Public Guardian. The enhanced fee will allow the Public Guardian to ensure that those who cannot afford to pay still have access to the key services offered by the Office of the Public Guardian.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

How many people does the Minister estimate are likely to be affected?

[Dr Lee]

I do not have the number to hand. As I said, 2.5 million LPAs have been granted. The number will be less than that, but I am happy to get back to my hon. Friend with the exact figure.

The fee will also contribute to the cost of the Public Guardian’s safeguarding activities, including the annual cost of supervising deputies appointed by the court to manage the affairs of people who have lost capacity to do so for themselves. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Restorative Justice

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans.

The difficulty of coming after the previous two speakers is that they have said everything about the report, and I am scrabbling around to find things to say. However, I will concentrate on two issues. The first is domestic abuse and the second is the youth area. On the one hand, domestic abuse is an area where restorative justice perhaps needs to be restricted—or done very well—as opposed to the youth area, where we should use it more and where it should be firmly embedded in the system.

I turn first to the domestic abuse situation. I fully accept the conclusion that we reached as a Committee: that restorative justice should not be excluded from particular types of offence. I do not think that domestic abuse should be outside of the restorative justice area. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) will say, in the Thames valley, for example, restorative justice is done very, very well, which is a good example of how things can be brought together. Although some police and crime commissioners do not seem to offer restorative justice in domestic abuse cases, I do not see that as justified, for the reasons I have given.

During the Committee’s inquiry, we heard evidence on this point from both sides. We were told about one victim of abuse who talked about how they were “empowered” by restorative justice in a domestic abuse situation. They said:

“When I walked out of that meeting, I felt as if I could knock out Mike Tyson. I could have taken on anything or anyone.”

That is a very powerful statement about the liberating effects that restorative justice has for some people.

On the other hand, we heard from organisations such as Refuge, which argued that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) has said, restorative justice simply provided offenders with a means of exerting more control over their victims. That point needs to be taken into consideration and examined very carefully; I will say something about it later, when I consider the context of how the police operate in this area.

It was interesting to hear from the then Justice Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who said that

“it is absolutely wrong for anybody, whether it be the police or any other part of the criminal justice system, to push and cajole someone into restorative justice.”

I completely agree with that sentiment. It is fine to have restorative justice as part of the domestic abuse landscape, but it is wrong to force people to use it.

However, whichever side one comes down on regarding restorative justice, what we cannot have is restorative justice being applied differently in different areas across the country. That goes back to what the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said about the postcode lottery, or, as I have said, the possibility of people being pressurised to take part. Again, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has already mentioned, this comes down to how restorative justice is applied in domestic abuse cases and whether it occurs at the street level—the so-called level 1 area. Whatever the Ministry may think about how things are operating, the evidence we heard was that level 1 was still being used by the police. That is something we completely disagree with. I accept that the Government are going to talk to the police about this, but the Government need to emphasise that that should not take place. Street level is the wrong location for restorative justice and using it there takes away all the subtlety and all the benefits that can come out of it.

A tremendous amount of guidance can be provided by the Ministry of Justice for the police. Also, a greater degree of training on restorative justice can be provided by the Ministry right across the board, but particularly in the domestic abuse area, to take this issue forward. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed exactly what the Ministry is doing to achieve that.

The second area I want to touch on is the youth system, where I think restorative justice could be used more. We were heartened by how extensively it seems to be used in the youth justice system. I think it is already embedded, but more can be done to ensure that it is firmly part of the youth justice system. Restorative justice helps both victims and offenders to understand what has occurred, what the implications are and why the offence should not be committed again.

As we pointed out in our report, Northern Ireland has youth conferences, which can occur both before and after conviction. However, I understand from the ministerial response to our report that the Ministry is not looking at restoring those for the rest of the country outside of Northern Ireland. I would ask the Minister to have another look at that and see whether there was not something in Northern Ireland that we could apply elsewhere in the UK.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald]

The Government take a markedly different view from the hon. Gentleman about this. The fact is that these tribunals cost money and there are people making applications to them who are not in the category of needing help with fees. Where people need help with fees, we of course have a remissions scheme, but where they do not need help, how can it be wrong that they should pay for the costs of the system? It is only right that they do so.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

21. As the Minister has mentioned, an important element of improving access to justice is reform of the courts system. Would he like to say a little more about the modernisation of that system and, in particular, whether Lord Justice Briggs’s concept of an online court will be introduced?

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Lord Justice Briggs has prepared a report that has been not only revolutionary, but extremely helpful in the modernisation process, and I pay tribute to his work. We do intend to introduce a new online procedure for lower-value civil money claims. This procedure will be a mix of new technology, conciliation and judicial resolution, and will provide a simple dispute resolution process. We intend also to create a new rules committee to design the simpler rules this will require.

Prison Safety

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

Indeed. I was referring to the immediate former prisons Minister with whom the Committee worked. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) graces us on the Select Committee and we have had the benefit of his input.

Let us be blunt. Prison safety is terrible. Those are not my words, but those of the former Secretary of State, my Friend the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in a prompt and frank response to our inquiry. He is entitled to credit for that.

The difficulty, which the current Minister will recognise and accept, is that prison safety was terrible when our report came out and it has got worse. I have hesitated until now to talk about a crisis in prison safety, but I think we are now at that stage. I say that because on every measure, safety has deteriorated and has continued to do so over a long time. That cannot be regarded as a one-off blip and we see no sign yet, despite considerable Government endeavour and intervention—which I do not dispute—of the situation or the underlying reasons being turned around. The situation has become grave and our report is particularly timely. That is important for two reasons.

First, whatever one’s view about the purpose of prison and how much emphasis we place on rehabilitation on the one hand and retribution or prevention of danger to the public on the other—all legitimate considerations to put in the mix—when the state legitimately takes it upon itself through proper process to incarcerate someone for their wrongs against society, there is an element of punishment in doing that properly, but we also take on board responsibility for ensuring that they are treated not only humanely, but safely. If the state fails in that, it fails in one of its primary obligations.

Secondly, in respect of broader policy, the current Secretary of State, like her predecessor, and the Minister, like his predecessor, are committed to a policy of prison reform. I hope that all of us in Westminster Hall today are committed to a policy of prison reform. The reality is that the less safe the prisons are, the harder it is to achieve reform. If we want real rehabilitation, real change and to reduce reoffending, a raft of interventions in prison is required, which can be properly delivered only if prisons are safe to start with.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In the context of what my hon. Friend is saying, does he share my disappointment with the Government response? It seems to paraphrase what we said in our report without giving any substance to our recommendations or to what we want to achieve.

[Robert Neill]

I agree. Although the response runs to several pages, the substance is not yet there. As I will say to the Minister in due course, I am glad that the Secretary of State has talked in terms of a prison reform and safety plan. That is good. There is movement on publishing statistics, but what are absent are the matrices that we said are critical to any proper monitoring. There is also a disconnect in the timeframe of those statistics being available and being made available to the House for scrutiny.

Those were important parts of our report—I will develop the point—because, for a number of reasons, many of us are increasingly questioning the sustained ability and capacity of the National Offender Management Service, as currently constituted, to bear down on this issue. Frankly, NOMS needs a continuing light of scrutiny on it and I know the Secretary of State is keen to achieve clear delivery markers against which progress can be measured. She is right to want that and it is disappointing that we have so little detail so far. I will return to that issue in more detail. My hon. Friend is entirely right.

We have seen a period of decline, not just in the view of the House and the Committee, but independently. Report after report from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, the prisons and probation ombudsman and a raft of criminal justice non-governmental organisations have all spoken of the real difficulties and decline. We have had debates in the House and urgent questions. NOMS has put in place various measures, but the truth is that it does not seem to be delivering on some of the key issues. That is why I say we have reached a crisis point. We need urgent action to identify those difficulties.

My other concern about the Government response is that there is no sense of urgency that, if I may be blunt, we did get from the initial response of the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath, in his swift reply to us. I am not insinuating that good will and good intentions have gone away. It is classically said that there are no votes in prison reform, and one of the tasks of a Justice Department is to keep it at the top of the agenda, to make the case publicly and perhaps to challenge some long-entrenched practices. A sense of urgency must be engendered, not least because the deliverability of the whole broader prison agenda depends on getting safety right so that there is a stable environment in which to deliver it.

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[John Howell]

My hon. Friend may recall that at a recent Justice Committee meeting, I asked the Secretary of State how she would deal with the legacy of the previous Secretary of State’s reforms and the actions that he had taken to deal with prison safety. The response that she gave caused the press to argue that she was going back on the commitments that he had made. Does my hon. Friend share that view?

[Robert Neill]

When I was a Minister, I was sometimes portrayed unfairly in the press, so I shall adopt a practical approach: let us see what happens. But I do think it important that we do not, any of us, send any signals that reform is less pressing or less important. Were that to be the case, it would be disappointing and, I think, an error. I am conscious of the clarification that the Secretary of State issued after her appearance before the Justice Committee, and I will take her at her word on that, but we need the measures that we talked about to be brought forward swiftly. If Brexit means Brexit, to adopt a phrase, pace means pace, but pace requires detail in order for there to be credibility in how things are delivered. That is the approach that I take—we want to be constructive and assist the Government on what I think is the right path, provided that it is followed through consistently.

I shall touch on just a few more matters before I finish so that other hon. Members can speak—this is a well-attended debate. First, I have referred to the matrices showing that everything is going in the wrong direction at the moment, such as on assaults, self-harming and deaths in custody. All those figures are going the wrong way. The data are set out well in a report that is readily available in the public domain, so I shall not cite a raft of figures, because I suspect that that would not add a great deal, but the trend is clear.

Secondly, despite genuine efforts by NOMS to recruit staff, the number of new staff coming in is significantly offset by the lack of retention. The problem is that we are very often losing some of the most experienced officers—some of the coolest heads. When there are difficulties to do with safety, such as dangerous situations arising on a wing, one wants to have experienced prison officers around to deal with it.

The fewer there are, the greater the risk that things will escalate rather than being brought back under control, so there is a direct link between retention and safety, which we highlight in our report. That is one thing that the Government need to do more to address. We are not convinced that NOMS has a deep-seated understanding of what causes that lack of retention, why recruitment is increasingly difficult and what underpins both those factors, so we need more flesh on the bones of that.

Let me deal briefly with some other matters. Steps have been taken—again, let us recognise that—on the possession of knives and new psychoactive substances in prison, but I am not sure that we are fully on top of that issue, either, particularly in relation to those new substances. The issue is one of technology: the ability to fly in substances and a raft of other things with drones is enormous.

Of course, that brings us back to the circular issue referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. If, as we have seen on our visits, people are locked up in their cells for 23 hours a day, and if there are illegal substances in prisons, prisoners’ ability to make use of them is all the greater given their close confinement and the growth of gang culture and peer pressure. The more that people are out of their cells and doing something purposeful, the better it is to combat the misuse of substances. That cannot be done sustainably with the current prison population, which is a very important issue.

The direction is right, but we need to be more vigorous and radical in tackling some of those important issues. That brings me back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell): we are disappointed about some of the detail in the Government response. We called for the Ministry and NOMS jointly to produce an action plan on prison safety, addressing the underlying factors behind violence, self-harm and suicide. We said that that plan should include preventive and punitive measures, because those two things have to be in the toolbox of any prison governor. We also wanted objectives and indices. The Secretary of State is right to commit to a prison safety and reform plan—that is good—but it is the missing detail that people need to see urgently.

We asked for quarterly reports on progress on the plan, rather than the six-monthly reports suggested in the Government response, not as a matter of caprice but because we wanted the reports to coincide with the publication of the quarterly safety in custody statistics. Otherwise, frankly, they are pretty meaningless. The whole point of transparency and scrutiny is to have the two sets of figures together so that we can compare and contrast. That is why I urge the Government to rethink their response on that matter. The information is collated, and there is no doubt that it is available—I am sure it is available to Ministers on a regular basis. There is no practical reason at all why it cannot be made available in the way we suggest in our report. It is not an expensive or a difficult ask, in other words.

We are also looking for specific information on incidents of disorder in prisons, including the deployment of the national tactical response group; a more comprehensive set of data about staffing; and performance ratings for individual prisons. We do not know yet whether the previous Secretary of State’s league table initiative will continue, but certainly we want performance ratings for prisons. I accept that it is not always easy to make complete comparisons, but on safety it is, actually. We can compare data on safety even if we cannot do so for rehabilitation in a particular prison, so there is no reason why those data cannot be available.

The same goes for data on the average number of hours each day that prisoners spend locked in their cells—I stress that in particular. I mentioned this earlier, but the amount of time that people spend locked up is entirely linked to safety levels. Boredom, the abuse of substances, the internet and a raft of other things, and the peer pressure of groups of people locked up together in a confined space for long periods all contribute directly to a deteriorating safety environment.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

At this stage in the proceedings, there is perhaps little that one can say that has not already been said, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Justice Committee. However, I will add my comments to the excellent work that my hon. Friend does in that capacity.

I was also a member of the previous Justice Committee and I say that for a number of reasons. It is not simply because Ministers come and go, whereas we members of the Justice Committee continue examining these issues, which we inherited and which we return to, time and again. I also say it because in the report that we produced at the end of the last Parliament—“Prisons: planning and policies”—we examined safety issues. Indeed, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), as I think the Government and the National Offender Management Service completely underplayed the deterioration of safety in the prison system.

However, that situation was partially improved—indeed, it became a much better situation—by the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who focused on the issue of safety and admitted that our prisons were in a serious crisis. All the speakers today have acknowledged that. Also, a common theme has emerged throughout this debate and it is about the Government response to our report. I will come to that shortly.

Other speakers have already asked whether we have a higher or different prisoner population, compared with the low staffing numbers that we have in prison. Nevertheless, the point that we made in one of the Justice Committee reports—namely, that those factors had been there all along—means that they are not the answer to the problem and none of them is the overriding factor that determines that the situation is as bad as it is. We have to consider other reasons why the situation is so bad.

If we consider what action has been taken so far, we see that it has principally been around legislative change, without much emphasis on implementation of legislation. It is very easy for us as legislators to introduce legislative change and then just believe that the job has been done, whereas the real job comes in ensuring that any new legislation is implemented.

One issue that the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) raised—fortunately, he did not amplify it, because that means that I can amplify it now—was mental health needs, which fully illustrates this point. It is not operational action that is required to deal with mental health needs, particularly the prevention of suicide; the needs in question go beyond the drugs that are available to treat them, whether those are traditional drugs or new psychoactive drugs. Indeed, the prisons and probation ombudsman, Nigel Newcomen, has said:

“It remains the case that I am frequently obliged to repeat recommendations and lessons and it can be depressing how little traction we appear to have on occasions”.

That statement applies not only to the issue of mental health but to the whole of prison safety. As a Committee, we ourselves have frequently issued “recommendations and lessons”, but there is “little traction” to them and they are rarely taken up. Nevertheless, the mental health needs of the prison population must be taken very seriously. The big area of untapped resource, if you like, is being able to deal with those needs.

Since we are also considering the issue of self-inflicted deaths, I will comment on the Government reaction to the Harris review, which I also found to be a disappointment—indeed, Lord Harris himself found it to be a disappointment. It is a disappointment because the Government have not sought to take into account a number of the recommendations that Lord Harris made and so the issues involved have not been addressed. At a recent session that our Committee had with the Secretary of State for Justice, I asked her whether she was aware of Lord Harris’s report or had talked to him. She was aware of the report; I do not think that she had talked to him at that point, but she needs to do so.

[Valerie Vaz in the Chair]



Let me re-echo the point that others have made by saying that I found the Government response to our report flimsy; it was no more than a holding reply. There was a lot of talk about monitoring and some operational improvements; there was the use of what I would call the bogus figure of a net increase of 300 officers, which disguised the reduction in officers; and there was also the hint that we were building five new prisons. I ask the Minister who is here today to comment on those five new prisons and the progress being made on them, to say when we are likely to see them come into operation and to explain how they will improve prison safety.

[Philip Davies]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the Government response to the Committee’s report was thin and “flimsy”; it would be impossible for anyone to disagree with that assessment, really. However, is he being slightly harsh on our ministerial colleagues, given that the Minister who is here today and the Secretary of State have only just taken up their new positions? Perhaps we should give them some opportunity at least to examine these matters themselves before they rush to a conclusion on the Committee’s report. Perhaps we should just give them a bit of time to get their feet under the table and give these issues serious consideration themselves.

[John Howell]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments, but I take a different view. We are still the same Conservative Government who were elected to deal with these issues. Whether it is a new Secretary of State or an old one, the issues are the same. A list of actions was put in place to deal with the issues. I cannot understand why a series of new Ministers want to take the time to throw all those things up in the air and start again. That is precisely what I meant by saying that the Committee has the longevity with these issues to see their continuity on the ground. I do not think I am being too harsh. I bear no grudge against the Minister; I appreciate that he is new to his job, but there are some things that should be continued, and we should be able to pick them up.

One thing that I stress is the changes proposed to the role of prison governor, since those could be introduced pretty quickly. There is a lot in the Government response about empowering prison governors. Can the Minister provide more information on that? I do not mean the detail of how we will empower prison governors or the detail of exactly what powers will be transferred. We should be looking for broader areas of principle to be set out and discussed with the Committee, to show where those are going to go, because governors feel completely left out.

As a Committee, we have come across that issue quite a lot in our visits to various prisons. They see themselves as bit managers of a whole range of different resources that are brought in to their prisons. That situation does not help them get control of their prisons or prison safety. I would like some information about how the role of prison governors will be defined and circumscribed. It will need to be circumscribed, but in the definition we will get the detail of what the Government want for that. What will the nature of the measures be to hold prison governors to account? That is the other side of the question. I do not yet want the specifics of how that will work, but in what areas will that work and how will it continue?

Finally, I want to comment on the action plan. We need considerably more flesh on the bones. That expression has been used by many speakers in this debate. I repeat what I said in an intervention: when we had a meeting with the Secretary of State, I asked how she would take forward the previous Secretary of State’s plans. Her response caused the press to argue that we were going back on our commitment.

I fully accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has said about the role of the press, but there is an issue here, and there was no need to put the whole thing into reverse and suggest that we were going backwards on this matter. As the Minister said, dealing with this issue remains a high priority for Government. I am happy to wait to see the detail of the action plan and how it will control safety, but I would like some more information about whether it will move beyond the legislative and the obvious to empower prison officers to take action and get to grips with a major problem in our prisons.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the Chairman of the Justice Committee¸ my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), on securing this important and necessary debate.

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the debate, although I am filled with slight trepidation, given the number of lawyers in the Chamber, who clearly know the criminal justice system inside out. We also have two former prisons Ministers, no less. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), whom I observed closely, showed a great deal of passion and dedication to the job. His shoes will be difficult for me to fill—both literally and metaphorically.

[John Howell]

I would like to reassure the Minister that I am not a lawyer either, so I fully share his concerns.

[Mr Gyimah]

It is encouraging to know I am not the only minority here.

The comments made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) were music to my ears—I am referring not to his comments about early release and so on, but to his recognition that the new ministerial team is in transition. It is worth stating up front that it is eight and a half weeks since the new ministerial team came to post, and in two or three months’ time we will be having a very different debate. We are committed to coming forward with a new plan, and I am confident that its contents will be as strong, if not stronger, than the Select Committee expects on the issues that have been outlined.

I would go as far as to say that the Secretary of State should be commended for not doing what is very easy to do in a new job: seek a couple of headline-grabbing announcements that are not based on evidence. The Secretary of State is determined to look at the evidence and come up with a plan that addresses the need for safety in our prisons and also focuses on reform.

Safety of Prison Staff

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new role on the Front Bench. I know that he has a distinguished legal career behind him, and that he has represented some of the most vulnerable in our society. His questions today go directly to the heart of the matter and I am grateful to him for giving me this opportunity to respond to them. We have spoken to the Prison Officers Association. Senior figures in the National Offender Management Service have been in touch with the POA, and we will continue to be in touch in the future. When the Prime Minister made a landmark speech on prisons earlier this year, I had the opportunity to talk to senior figures in the Prison Officers Association and found their approach to be constructive and cordial, and I want to maintain good relations with them.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that the £10 million may need to be increased and that we may need to invest more money in staff safety. We will of course monitor how the money is spent. It has been given to individual governors to spend as they think fit, but we will do everything possible to ensure that the resources are there to safeguard not only those who work in our prisons, but the welfare of those in custody.

The hon. Gentleman asked specifically about the prison and courts reform Bill and the principle that the six reform prisons should have a greater degree of autonomy. He asked whether academisation, as an analogy, is a prelude to privatisation. The governors of those six prisons do exercise a greater degree of autonomy, but it is not intended that that should come at the cost of staff terms, conditions, security, safety or prospects. We want to ensure that staff in every prison feel that the idealistic work that they do is valued and rewarded, and that outstanding governors who are taking forward change in such prisons live and breathe respect for their staff every day.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The Prisons & Probation Ombudsman told the Justice Committee about the “pervasiveness” of mental health issues within prisons. What is the Secretary of State doing to address that? How is he improving the response of prison staff when assessing such risks?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. One difficulty is that many of those in custody have mental health problems—undiagnosed in some cases. It is often the case that the prison regime by its very nature and the restrictions that are placed on individuals as part of a sentence may not be the most effective ways of tackling mental health problems and ensuring that offenders do not offend again. We are considering how we can better review mental health provision within the prison estate. More announcements will be forthcoming, but Her Majesty made it clear in the Gracious Speech that improving outcomes for individuals with mental health problems in the criminal justice system is a core mission of this Government over the next 12 months.

Courts and Tribunals Fees

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the spirit in which he made his contribution. I am a friend of the current and the former Secretary of State, and giving credit to those who responded to the evidence is perhaps the appropriate and balanced way to deal with the issue.

It is worth looking at a little of the chronology of one of the matters I am going to turn to. As well as having significant witnesses from the judiciary, we heard evidence from the trade unions, the business community, the Bar Council, the Law Society and a number of individuals and interest groups. We had four oral evidence sessions between November 2015 and February 2016, the last of which was on 9 February, when we heard from the legal profession and then from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara).

We then waited, because we were anticipating the promised post-implementation review of the impact of employment tribunal fees, which had formed an important part of the evidence that was put before us. We knew that the review had been commissioned some time back, so we waited—and nothing came forward. In the end, on 25 April, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is on the Front Bench and who had taken over responsibility, courteously responded, but he was unable to give any indication of a publication date. I have to say that we do not regard that as satisfactory.

It was against that background that, rather than waiting for the two months the Government normally have to reply to a Select Committee report to lapse, we thought it right to bring our report to the House today in this estimates day debate.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend tell us whether we have yet received that report?

[Robert Neill]

No, we have not, and I have to say that we used quite strong language about that in our report, because we were, frankly, disappointed. What happened does actually go against the spirit of courtesy, openness and co-operation I have seen from the Ministry of Justice team throughout the year or so I have chaired the Select Committee, and I hope it is an outlier. I hope the Minister will give us an indication of why the review report has taken so long and when we will get it. I know it is sometimes not easy to agree these things across Government, but it is pretty clear that the data required for the analysis were collected a long time ago, and, as we say in our report, there can be no reason why at least that factual material cannot be published forthwith, even if the Government are not yet in a position to respond, because the more informed the House and the public are, the better. That is an area of regret, and that is why today’s debate is important and timely.

Let me touch on some of the principles we are concerned with. The levels of various courts and tribunal fees have been politically controversial. We all need to bear it in mind that a balance must be struck between the cost to the public purse of administering a justice system, which is an integral part of any civilised society and of the rule of law, and how much can reasonably be recovered from litigants. We say that, in principle, we do not object to the idea that there should be some financial discipline on those who choose to go to law—those who choose to litigate—in deciding whether that is a wise decision for them to make. We do not have a problem with the principle of a certain level of a fees. Equally, however, we must bear in mind the comments that have been made consistently ever since Magna Carta but were recently elegantly captured by the late Lord Bingham of Cornhill in his book, “The Rule of Law”—which I always think should be compulsory reading for anyone in the political sphere—in which he says, in essence, that the accessibility of justice is as much a part of the fundamentals of the rule of law as clarity of the law itself. He says that justice is not a commodity—it cannot be commoditised in the way that, perhaps, other services can be. It is important to get the balance right. That is where we have some concerns that I will now turn to.

We accept that there is no problem, in principle, with fees for litigants. We know that there are financial pressures on the Ministry, which is not a protected Department. I understand the pressures that Ministers were under when these decisions were taken. We think it is entirely legitimate to find a number of means of reducing the number of vexatious claims. That could be done as part of the financial discipline we referred to, but it could also be done by changing the substantive law to raise the threshold or by making changes to court procedure. That is a legitimate part of the mix. But—we then have to say a number of “buts”, looking at the evidence —the answer to what is a reasonable charge in striking this balance will vary depending on a number of factors such as the effectiveness of fee remission, the vulnerability or otherwise of the claimants, and the degree of choice that they have. There is a distinction, for example, between someone who chooses to litigate over a commercial contract dispute and someone who is charged by the state with an offence, or someone whose marriage has broken down and has no other recourse, in order to have the marriage dissolved and move on with their life, than to go to the courts. The degree of choice is an important issue that must be considered carefully in each case.

There is an argument for trying to recover, as far as one can within that balance, some of the costs that fall on the public purse. In some cases, it may be possible to recover all the costs, but that cannot be an absolute. We were particularly struck by the fact that in some cases there are fees that exceed the full cost of the operation of the court; they are sometimes referred to as “enhanced fees”. We take the view, consistent with Lord Bingham’s formulation and with a public policy approach that we have had in this country for decades, that making a profit from the justice system, in effect, albeit one that is intended to be used elsewhere, requires particular care and a strong justification.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Justice Committee. The difficulty for me is that they have already covered all the issues I was going to cover, but let me touch on one highlighted by the right hon. Member for Delyn and the Chairman of the Committee: access to justice.

Access to justice has been the key issue for all of us throughout this process. It was a big issue for the Committee, but it is a big issue for the courts and the senior judiciary. Through an Industry and Parliament Trust Fellowship, I have had the opportunity to talk to members of the judiciary about many of these issues, and I can assure the House that they are very concerned about access to justice.

Without the information from the Ministry of Justice, it is difficult to know what the impact of the changes will be. An enormous number of reforms are taking place; it is not just court and tribunal fees that are being put through at a rapid pace by the MOJ. The Lord Chief Justice is a great reformer, and when talking to him one really gets the feeling that he understands the issues relating to access to justice. At the same time, Lord Justice Briggs is taking forward his views for an online court, which could reduce the costs of justice by taking lawyers out of the equation in bringing a relatively small case to court. A lot of work needs to be done to get the detail of online courts right. Nevertheless, it will be there to provide access to justice.

The Committee’s report highlights the need to consider other means of determining court applications. One of those comes under the term “alternative dispute resolutions”. I happen to be the chairman of the all-party group on alternative dispute resolutions, so it is an area I am aware of. The courts, too, are aware of this. When I sat in the commercial courts, the judges were very keen to ensure that when there was an option of alternative dispute resolution, people took it. Some did and some did not, but it is important that it is offered as an alternative to their carrying on with their day in court. If they do take the option, it is important to ensure that the alternative dispute resolution sector can also keep costs down.

When I sat with judges in the courts, the issue on their minds all the time was how to keep costs down. We went through this with a lot of the cost hearings and cut out quite a lot of the barristers’ fees. It is important to ensure that we can tell whether it is the changes to the courts that are having the effect on tribunal numbers, or whether it is the effect of the fees being charged. I say that because as part of the experience I spent a day with an employment tribunal. There were three members sitting and I asked them how long it would go on for. They said that they had scheduled six days for an employment tribunal that could have lasted one day, so the court fees had not had a significant effect on this individual bringing their case. They had assigned six days to it, because it was a litigant in person and they wanted to bend over backwards to provide the time for that individual to make their case. A much more sensible approach would have been to ensure that the case went on for a lot less time, while still preserving access to justice and ensuring that the litigant in person could still achieve what they wanted to achieve.

The senior judiciary have been pursuing one line of cost reduction, while the Government have been pursuing another. There is nothing wrong with pursuing reductions along a twin track, provided that the two groups work together and talk to each other. The criticism that came back to me from the senior judiciary I sat with was that the Government were not talking to them about the changes they were making. That is a great shame, because without that I do not see how we can make sense of, and really get to the bottom of, access to justice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, the Chair of the Committee, has already highlighted the issues around the impact assessment of the changes to court fees and the fact that the information is still not available. He also pointed out that the Master of the Rolls was absolutely scathing about the quality of that evidence. I put that on record again, because it is very important when someone as senior as the Master of the Rolls is critical of the Government’s approach. I have to say that I share his views. The courts and tribunal fee is not a milch cow; it is a real issue of access to justice. Without the information we still have not received, we cannot assess the impact of the fees on access to justice and what impact they will have.

Homicide Law Reform

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of reforming the law on homicide.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, on this auspicious day. I wish to make crystal clear that the debate is about the law of homicide, not fratricide.

Putting that to one side, the real point is that the law of homicide is a mess. That was put more elegantly by the Law Commission in its 2006 report “Murder, Manslaughter and Infanticide”, in which it said that the law of homicide is

“a rickety structure set upon shaky foundations.”

In essence, the problem is that the law lacks a rational or defensible structure. It does not chime with common sense—and in this area of the law perhaps above all others, it should.

As long ago as 1874, a Select Committee stated:

“If there is any case in which the law should speak plainly, without sophism or evasion, it is where life is at stake; and it is on this very occasion that the law is most evasive and most sophistical.”

That remains the case more than 100 years later, and that will not do. In the words of the Law Commission, the time has come to

“promote certainty…in a way that non-lawyers can understand and accept.”

But the problem is far more serious than mere opaqueness. The problem is that the law of homicide creates injustice—injustice to defendants and injustice to society—and that is something that we in this House must always stand ready to confront and resolve.

What is the solution? It is very simple: to split the current offence of murder into two categories, one of first degree murder and another of second degree murder. Manslaughter should remain as before, albeit more tightly circumscribed.

What, as a matter of law, is murder? It is committed when someone unlawfully kills another person with an intention to kill that person or to do them serious harm. That second element is really important. It means that someone who reasonably believed that no one would be killed by their conduct is placed in the same offence category as the contract or serial killer. That, in a nutshell, is the problem.

Let me give an example. Imagine a retired colonel living in my constituency of Cheltenham. He is aged 65, has lived an utterly unblemished life and served his country with great distinction, and is known for his charitable work. He is upstanding in every way. He lives with his wife, who has Parkinson’s disease and for whom he is the sole carer. A neighbour moves in next door who has a string of convictions for antisocial behaviour. Every night, he holds noisy parties that go on into the small hours. Endless polite requests from the colonel are ignored. Endless local authority noise abatement notices are ignored. So, after the umpteenth such party, with his and his wife’s already poor health suffering, the colonel goes round at 3 o’clock in the morning to remonstrate with his neighbour. He takes with him—this is important—a cricket bat in case there is a violent confrontation. The neighbour, who is very drunk, becomes abusive and the colonel, overcome with anger and frustration and at the end of his tether, says, “Right, that’s it. Let’s see how you party when your big toe is broken,” and strikes the neighbour’s foot with the cricket bat. The neighbour falls back, hits his head on a crate of beer standing in the hallway and is knocked unconscious. The colonel immediately calls 999 and tries to resuscitate him, the police and ambulance arrive and the colonel tells them exactly what happened, but the neighbour is rushed to the local hospital, diagnosed with a bleed on the brain, and dies.

The post-mortem report reveals that the deceased’s toe was broken. When interviewed, the distraught colonel admits that he lost his temper. What happens in this case? The only charge that the law allows for is murder. That means that the only sentence that the judge can impose, despite the colonel pleading guilty at the first opportunity, is life imprisonment, because he intended to do grievous bodily harm by breaking the toe. It is because he took a weapon to the scene—the cricket bat—that the starting point for the minimum term that he must serve is 25 years’ imprisonment, and because the offence is murder, he must serve every last day of that term. In effect, the colonel goes to prison for the rest of his life—25 years. He has a mandatory life sentence.

That is unjust. Although it is clear that a person who kills in such circumstances should be guilty of a serious homicide offence, it is equally clear that because he did not intend to kill, the offence should not be in the top tier or highest category. The current law does not chime with common sense. Academic research into public opinion tells us that, but frankly, we do not need academic research; we need simply to consult our common sense. The particularly daft thing—I hope that that is parliamentary language—is that when Parliament passed the Homicide Act 1957, it never intended a killing to amount to murder, which at that time was a capital offence, unless the defendant realised that his or her conduct may cause death. The law of murder was widened because of an unexpected judicial development immediately following the enactment of the 1957 legislation—the case of Vickers, which is about interpretation of the expression “malice aforethought”. In my view, that colonel should be guilty of second degree murder.

The injustice is further underscored when we add the potential for what are known as secondary parties or accessories to be convicted of a murder. Imagine that before the colonel had set off, his frail wife had told him where the cricket bat was stored and in frustration said to him, “Now, go and use it. Teach him a lesson.” She, too, could find herself facing the punishment and disgrace of a murder conviction and the same 25-year minimum term. She should of course be guilty of an offence, but again, she should be guilty of second degree murder, with the judge having the discretion not to impose a mandatory life sentence.

This issue is particularly topical because the Supreme Court has looked at the case of Jogee and more tightly circumscribing accessory liability—the so-called prosecutor’s friend—but still we are left with a situation in which the unsatisfactory law of homicide leads to manifest injustice.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend has in his mind what the range of sentences should be for second degree murder.

[Alex Chalk]

Certainly, on any view, life imprisonment must remain the maximum sentence—that is the maximum in the United States for federal offences where second degree murder is charged—but the key point is that the judge should have discretion. The Sentencing Council has done a terrific job of laying down guidelines—not tramlines—and the courts have shown themselves to be well able to dispense justice.

The case for reform becomes even clearer when we consider manslaughter, another homicide offence. Whereas, as I have indicated, the law of murder creates injustice for defendants, the law of manslaughter creates injustice for society. What is manslaughter? It can be committed in one of four ways, but just two of those are relevant for these purposes: unlawful act manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter. The latter largely speaks for itself for these purposes, but let me explain what happens when a killing is the result of a defendant’s unlawful act—that is, one that all reasonable people would realise would subject the victim to the risk of some physical harm, albeit not serious harm.

Take this example. The defendant barges into a nightclub queue in Cheltenham. He has a string of criminal convictions for assault and criminal damage. In the queue, he is being drunk and obnoxious. He is insulting women for what they are wearing and telling them to get out of his way. The victim is the mother of two children. She works at nearby GCHQ and she is on a hen do. She politely asks the defendant to move to the back of the queue. His response is to say, “You silly cow; you need a slap.” He then strikes her repeatedly and hard to the side of the face with his open hand. She falls back, hits her head on the kerb and is knocked unconscious. The defendant runs off. The victim later dies, and the post-mortem shows that she suffered bruising—albeit no fracture—to her cheekbone and the fatal injury was caused by the impact on the kerb. The police arrest the defendant, who denies everything, but CCTV proves his guilt.

Under the law at present, that defendant can be charged only with unlawful act manslaughter, because the harm that he caused falls short of grievous bodily harm. The net effect is that he will be convicted of an offence that carries a far lesser stigma than murder and for which there is no mandatory requirement for a life sentence, and if he gets a determinate sentence, he will serve only half of it. Is that thug, I ask rhetorically, less culpable than the retired colonel or his wife? The only distinction is that the colonel intended to break a toe and the thug intended to commit a marginally less serious assault. In my view, that is a distinction without a difference—it is a distinction that is completely lost on the general public and, frankly, on me.

So, what needs to happen? This is not some academic exercise. Those two examples are not entirely artificial and they expose fundamental injustices. The first, as I have indicated, is to the victim, in the case of the colonel, and the second is to society in the case of the pub queue thug. The solution is clear: we need an offence of first degree murder that would encompass intentional killing only. I recognise the Law Commission, in 2006, wanted to add

“killing through an intention to do serious injury with an awareness of a serious risk of causing death.”

That is fine, and I understand it, but in my view it is a complexity that unnecessarily detracts from the simplicity of the proposal I put before the House.

An offence of first degree murder would simply and coherently communicate to the public the particularly heinous nature of the crime of taking life and would attract the special condemnation and opprobrium that that deserves. To paraphrase Colonel Tim Collins’ famous eve-of-battle speech in 2003, anyone convicted of such an offence would truly live with the mark of Cain upon them. That offence should also, as at present, attract a mandatory life sentence.

Under my proposal, second degree murder would encompass killing through an intention to do injury that is more than merely transient or trifling. In plain English: it would encompass killing through unacceptable violence and thuggery. That would include the colonel and the pub queue thug—people who committed a significant assault on others but who did not intend to kill. That category of offence would not require a mandatory life sentence. Instead, judges would be free to do justice, weighing in the balance all of the aggravating and mitigating factors. For clarity, that would not include the case of the most minor assault. Think of someone creeping up behind a person, playing a trick on them and flicking their ear as a piece of horseplay. That is technically an assault, of course, but is obviously very minor. If that person fell over and died that should remain as manslaughter.

So, where does that leave manslaughter? Manslaughter would remain predominantly focused on cases of gross negligence. That is, offences in which there has been no unlawful assault or intention to kill, but in which the negligence has been so dreadful as to become criminal. The advantage of that is that people get it; people would understand that—it chimes with common sense.

Those are not outlandish suggestions. Other jurisdictions—most obviously the United States—have two categories of murder. For murders in the US over which the federal Government have jurisdiction, life imprisonment is only mandatory for first degree murder. For second degree murder the mandatory sentence is described as

“a term of years to life.”

So why now? Because it is long overdue. The current distinction between murder and manslaughter is almost certainly more than 500 years old. No further general category of homicide has been developed in the intervening period, despite the fact that society, values and knowledge have changed out of all recognition.

The need for modernisation was obvious to our Victorian forebears. In this place, William Gladstone himself indicated his willingness to rationalise the law but nothing came of it—it keeps getting put off. That approach led one cynical criminal lawyer to remark at the beginning of the 20th century that the hope of a criminal code being enacted by Parliament that would address the problems of the law on homicide was as remote as

“expecting to find milk in a male tiger”.

We cannot keep putting this off. Modernising this key area of law is, to borrow the words of the Law Commission

“an essential task for criminal law reform.”

It is time for this generation to take up the challenge and to create a law that is truly fit for the modern age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and it is a pleasure to follow two fellow members of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis). I did not intend to speak in this debate, and I am sure many people would rather I did not, but I have been prompted to speak briefly.

If I am well known for anything—I am probably not well known for anything at all—it is for being a hard-liner when it comes to dealing with crime and sentencing. I despair at the shocking sentences that are given out by judges and at some of the sentencing guidelines, which do not do justice to the crimes that have been committed. It may well be that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham thinks that I am instinctively opposed to his plans. I thought it worth saying that, as it happens, I am not instinctively opposed to his plans. He made a very compelling case, as anybody who knows him would expect. I would not say that I am wholly persuaded, but I still have an open mind on this particular issue. I hope that the Government will have an open mind on this issue, because it is worthy of further debate.

One of the attractions, it seems to me, of what my hon. Friend is proposing is that it may lead to some more honesty in sentencing. One of the things that really irritates people about the criminal justice system is that we have sentences that sound tough, and make politicians sound tough when they say they are going to extend life sentences for this and that, but in reality are not tough at all. Dishonesty in sentencing is one of the worst parts of our criminal justice system and brings it into disrepute. If my hon. Friend’s plans were to lead to more honesty in sentencing, that in itself would be a good thing.

[John Howell]

I appreciate what my hon. Friend is saying about sentencing. Of course, we now have the Sentencing Council and, without wishing to create a bit of a love-in for members of the Justice Committee here, we do have the power to review sentences and comment on them. Is he suggesting that we should take a harder line on those in order to get the sentencing right? I get the feeling that the judiciary are simply following our guidelines.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is another member of the Justice Committee who is more talented than me. Yes, we should concentrate more on sentencing guidelines as a Committee and as a Parliament, because these matters are of great importance to our constituents. They are the ones, at the end of the day, who feel that the law comes into disrepute with some of the sentences that are handed down. I do not think we should leave it to unelected people to determine sentencing guidelines. We should be taking a greater role in those guidelines, absolutely.

I have an open mind about what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham proposes, and I hope that the Government will look at it, because I think there are some merits in what he said. I would certainly not rule out supporting some of the changes that he articulated. We should not rush into this either. There are other things that we should think about. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury mentioned the fact that the average minimum tariff for murder had increased from 13 years to 17 years. I was not entirely sure, if she was making a point about that, whether that was a good a thing or a bad thing. Most of my constituents would say that the increase in that tariff is a good thing.

Safety in Youth Custody

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered safety in youth custody.

Thank you, Mr Wilson, for allowing time for this most important of debates. I am most grateful. The safety of our children and young people is of great and continuing interest to many Members of this House, and has been for many years. The question of safety has been discussed in numerous debates here and in the other place. In addition, it has been explored in numerous Select Committee inquiries—most recently by the Select Committee on Justice in 2013—and has been the subject of a tide of media attention, often following shocking revelations arising from the dedicated work of journalists. It is worth reflecting for a moment and asking ourselves why so many Members, people in our society, charities and third-sector bodies, and those in the media, are so tireless in their determination to protect the safety of our children and young people.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way so early in her speech, which I am listening to very carefully. Has she considered the situation of young adults? The Justice Committee is doing an inquiry about that at the moment, and we have learned that the development of the brain means that many young adults are still effectively children when they are sent into prison.

[Judith Cummins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that interesting point, which I hope to cover later.

My belief is that, no matter what someone’s upbringing is, and whatever their political affiliation and perspective on law and order, there is a shared and enduring view that the safety of children and young people is of paramount concern. Each and every one of us believes that we must ensure that each and every child and young person is able to feel safe, wherever in the country they live. As we all know instinctively, each child and young person deserves to grow up in a nurturing, encouraging and, most importantly, safe environment. That is true in all settings—in the home, in schools or, as we are debating today, in our custodial institutions. The setting does not matter because whatever the circumstances, and whatever children and young people may have done in their short lives, regardless of whether they have been found to have acted criminally, they remain children.

We have always quite rightly held children and young people to be different from adults. Children and young people with their whole lives ahead of them are still finding their way in life and learning what it is to make their way in the world. As we sorely know, too many children and young people, especially those who find themselves in custody and in the care system, far too often find their way in life in the most desperate of circumstances. Too many live in unsafe homes or go hungry. Too many see horrific things that no person, never mind a child, should ever see. Too many suffer from mental illness that is often unrecognised and untreated, or have not received the help and support that might, in better circumstances, have lifted them away from criminal behaviour and supported them into becoming successful, loving and humane children and young people.

At this point, I pause and acknowledge that we could very easily spend all day debating the desperate circumstances that so many children find themselves in, but that is not the topic today. Today, I wish to discuss just one very important element of the safety of, without doubt, our most vulnerable children—those who are held in our custodial institutions. In leading the debate, we cannot ignore the scandalous revelations of the past weeks, broken by BBC’s “Panorama”, concerning Medway secure training centre, an institution managed by G4S. I am sure we all recoiled with revulsion at the scenes that played out on our screens during the programme: young people subjected to the most horrific maltreatment and children struggling to breathe as they were restrained by apparent professionals. Such scenes in a documentary about prisons in developing nations would have sent a shiver up our backs, but those scenes took place in a UK establishment that exists to care for children while they are held in custody.

I do not propose to discuss the “Panorama” allegations in any great deal as they are subject to an ongoing police investigation but, as we debate this important matter, the scenes that we saw on our television screens should remain vividly in our minds because they confirm one thing: complacency is never an option. The safety of our most vulnerable children—those held in custody in establishments throughout the country—is forever fragile and under threat. We must be forever vigilant. Further incidents are only a hair’s breadth of complacency away.

With those thoughts clear in our mind, it is worth reminding ourselves of what this House passed into law in 1998. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 did two important things. First, it stated that the youth justice system’s principal aim was to prevent reoffending by our children and young people. Secondly, it established the Youth Justice Board, which was given the job of making that noble aim a reality. The Youth Justice Board, in setting its strategic objectives for 2014 to 2017, recognised that an undeniable cornerstone of successfully helping children back into society is

“to promote the safety and welfare of children and young people in the criminal justice system”.

In recognising that safety and wellbeing is a fundamental cornerstone of the successful rehabilitation of children and young people, the Youth Justice Board acknowledged in clear and unambiguous terms what we all know instinctively as parents, as brothers and sisters, as aunties and uncles and as other family members: where children and young people feel unsafe, insecure, intimidated and under threat of violence, everything else becomes background noise. Efforts to help children to socialise, learn and become confident in themselves stop and begin to regress, as do efforts to teach children the values and principles of choosing to live respectfully, humanely and in a law-abiding manner in society and communities.

If the principal aim of the Youth Justice Board is to prevent reoffending, safety in custodial institutions is not only key, but imperative. Without it, helping children and young people to become respectful, humane and law-abiding adults is an empty hope. Everything else is simply background noise. The question is: what success is our youth justice system having in ensuring that children and young people are being held in a safe environment while they are custody? Sadly, from the statistics provided by the House of Commons Library, the picture is depressing and worrying. That remains the case for the use of restrictive physical intervention—in layman’s terms, when staff restrain children—incidents of self-harm by children, assault on children and young people in custody or, most damningly and depressingly, deaths in custody.

Thankfully, the number of children who have been committed to custody in recent years has steadily fallen. All hon. Members would surely welcome this improving position but, although the number of each type of incident has dropped over recent years, the number of each type of incident per hundred children and young people in custody—the most accurate measure—has steadily increased. Whichever way we look at it, those in custody are becoming proportionately more likely to find themselves in an unsafe environment. With the “Panorama” revelations of the past weeks in mind and the erosion of safety in our custodial establishment only serving to bring the issue into sharper focus, it prompts the question: what are this Conservative Government doing to improve the safety of children and young people, and to help them to re-enter society, equipping them to become law-abiding, respectful and humane members of our communities?

In recent years, there have been a number of expert reports that have explored the safety of children and young people in custody. Inquest, alongside the Prison Reform Trust, released a report in 2012 raising important questions about the number of self-inflicted deaths in our custodial institutions. More recently, in 2015, Inquest released another report raising unsettling questions about deaths in our institutions. The Howard League for Penal Reform released a report in 2011 exploring the questions of restraint in our institutions—that work has become especially resonant following the “Panorama” revelations of the last week. I pay tribute to each of those organisations alongside so many others that I have not been able to mention which, through their continuing and valiant efforts, are successfully keeping the question of safety so firmly on both the parliamentary and public agendas.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), and I am glad that she has secured this debate. As I mentioned in my intervention, the Select Committee on Justice, including the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer), has been investigating the experience of young adults in custody. A key point raised in that inquiry is that the distinction we make between young adults and youths is meaningless. The development of the brain is such that, at times, there are many people who are much more mature for their age and many people who are less mature for their age. Although those people will be treated as young adults in the prison system, they should be treated as if they were much younger. That is an important point that the hon. Member for Bradford South needs to take into account.

Yesterday we held an important informal seminar that was attended by a number of parents of people who were under 18 when they first committed their offences, some of whom have died in custody. It was very sad and moving to listen to their testimony. There were also young people who had been in custody, and it was clear that some of them should really have been treated as youths during that period.

One of the key points to come out was the issue of mental illness. I do not think that the prison system understands mental illness in its complexities or recognises it in individuals when they present with it. We even heard examples of where people had presented with some form of mental illness to start with and their records had been flagged up, but where nobody had had the time to check what the flag meant. If someone had checked that, they would have seen that there was some mental illness attached to that person and would have taken different action while they were in custody.

As I am sure the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston would agree, it was a very moving experience to listen to those testimonies from individuals and to hear the real experience of people who had been through the loss of a son or a daughter—in many cases they were sons rather than daughters—and the reasons for that. The point the hon. Lady made about mental health is a very good one, and it is one that we need our prison system to be more flexible in identifying, picking up and dealing with.

With that, I will leave my remarks there.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[John Howell]

Sorry, I will happily give way.

[Jo Stevens]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me in at the last minute. I am glad that he has raised the issue of the mental health of prisoners, because the prison ombudsman’s report, which I think came out today or yesterday, has highlighted that very issue—in relation, obviously, not only to children in prison, but to adults as well—and the lack of mental health services for prisoners. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it should be a priority for the current Government to address what are clearly failings in the current system?

[John Howell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I do not want to make this a party political piece; it is a duty of all Governments to identify the need for mental health services and to take that issue forward. She makes a valid point.

We also met some people who were dealing with this issue—for example, an organisation called A Band of Brothers—by taking young people in, giving them a role in life and helping them to overcome some of the difficulties they had experienced, including some of the mental health difficulties. I am therefore not saying that it is a forlorn hope that mental health will be dealt with: there are many different ways of dealing with it, and we saw some of those yesterday. I hope that the report we produce will be able to address some of them in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelly Tolhurst]

Absolutely. We must value the work that people in these centres do; in fact, it can be one of the most rewarding things that anyone can do.

As someone who had worked in commerce, my experience of working with young people who had such terrible backgrounds and were facing such severe challenges was one of the best things I have ever done. The staff do go through a training programme, but again there are things that perhaps cannot be learned quickly, and things come up along the way. Every single child—young person, I should say—is different. Every single young person has a completely different set of circumstances that has led to their being in the system. I absolutely agree that this should all be about outcomes.

[John Howell]

Does my hon. Friend have a view on whether institutions for young people are a valid option or whether greater integration of young and adult institutions is a better option?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

Speaking from experience, I absolutely believe that institutions are the right place for some young people. For example, it may not necessarily be easy for them to be in a family. It is absolutely right that we have institutions where adults can be mentors, there to look after those young people on a daily basis and to work with them to rehabilitate them. My personal view is that young people should not be integrated with the adult prison service. They have different requirements, and sometimes the offences are different for particular reasons.

My biggest concern is that all these young people will eventually become adults. Whether they are looked-after children who have had a difficult background in different institutions, or whether they are unfortunate enough—maybe through fault of their own—to end up in a secure training centre, for me there is nothing more important than ensuring that we are doing all we can to ensure that the outcomes for those young people as adults are improved. The Government’s aim is to achieve that. I welcome Charlie Taylor’s review of the system. I would like to see a review in particular of the Medway centre and some of the safeguarding. I point out that I definitely have not seen all the footage and I have not been privy to the information that “Panorama” picked up during recording, but the centre is broken up into different units, and I believe that we are only looking at one element. I would like to hear some of the better stories that have come out of that centre, which I am sure exist.

Fundamentally, I welcome the debate and the review that is taking place. From a local council perspective, I was impressed as a local Member of Parliament by the immediate response that my local authority made to deal with the allegations. The local authority is carrying out due diligence in following through on the investigations in the local authority-designated officer review and in co-operating completely with the police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady asks the central question of the whole debate. I can tell her that I have thought long and hard about it since the “Panorama” revelations. I do not know whether she was in the House for the urgent question when my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice set out in some detail the considerable monitoring arrangements we have. Yet the fact is that they did not detect mistreatment and prevent it from happening. As the Minister responsible for youth justice, I have absolutely fully taken that on board and can assure her we will continue to review seriously how we monitor to ensure we do not find out that terrible things are happening from an investigatory television programme. I will elaborate further during the course of my speech.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who is a valued member of the Justice Committee, rightly drew attention to the issue of mental health. I can tell him and other Members who properly drew attention to that issue that a comprehensive health assessment is completed for every young person on arrival in custody. This includes an immediate assessment of needs during the first day or night, followed by a more comprehensive assessment as part of their induction programme. If an alternative placement is deemed appropriate, this will be referred back to the youth justice board placement team for consideration in consultation with healthcare professionals.

I can also tell the House that each site has healthcare teams and in-reach teams that provide appropriate treatment for young people with mental health issues. I get the seriousness and importance of this issue and will continue to work with colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure we keep a relentless focus on mental health.

[John Howell]

When he gets back to the office, will the Minister look at the transfer of people and how often the transfer of the information about their mental health does not actually follow them on time?

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend raises an important and serious point. Yes, of course I will look into that matter. We have to have a joined-up system as far as health needs are concerned. He makes a valuable point.

My hon. Friend also made points about young adult provision. I know the Select Committee is looking at that at the moment, but I can tell him that a Government consultation on the management of young adults was paused while the Harris review was completed. This is now being reconsidered as part of our wider prison reform strategy work and alongside the youth justice review, about which I will say more in a few moments.

The hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer), who is also an extremely diligent and engaged member of the Justice Committee, asked a general point about the threshold for custody for children. The threshold is high and the courts must state in open court why a youth community sentence with high-intensity supervision and surveillance is not appropriate. I will point out, as have others during this debate, that the under-18 youth custody population has halved in the past five years.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) for her contribution to the debate. She is not only the local Member of Parliament who represents Medway, but a ward councillor in that area, so she has detailed local knowledge that we all respect. I have had frequent dealings with her since the revelations came to light. I also thank her for praising the vast majority of decent staff who work very hard in a challenging environment. She was right to put that on the record, and I do so as the Minister as well. We will be relentless in dealing with staff who fall below the very high standards that we rightly expect of them and will continue to demand.

I thank the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for her contribution. She pointed out that my domain as the Minister extends to England and Wales, and not to Scotland, but generally we take a serious interest in what happens in criminal justice matters and in the youth estate north of our border with Scotland. I have spent time with Scottish academics and others trying to learn what we can from the Scottish prison system, so I thank her for her contribution this afternoon.

The hon. Member for Neath, who speaks for the official Opposition, asked me a large number of questions, which I will do my best to answer this afternoon. I will write to her if I do not answer them all—she posed her questions just before my own contribution, so I will not manage to answer all of them. In general, I repeat what the Secretary of State for Justice said during the urgent question:

“the care and supervision of young offenders in custody is not good enough.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2016; Vol. 604, c. 573.]

We recognise that. That is why the Secretary of State has commissioned the youth justice review. There will be an interim report in due course and a final report in the summer. It is the right thing to do.

The hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) asked her hon. Friend the Member for Neath to ask me how many of Lord Harris’s recommendations had been implemented. The answer is more than half, but I would ask the hon. Member for Cardiff Central to look at our wider prison reform strategy, more of which will be unveiled over the coming months. She and others will see much in that that speaks to the important points that she and others have raised this afternoon.

The allegations made by the BBC in the “Panorama” programme on 11 January were profoundly disturbing and have quite rightly generated concern about the safety of young people detained at Medway. Let me put on the record, as the Justice Secretary did, my thanks to the BBC for the work it has undertaken to bring the serious allegations to light, although it should not have taken an investigatory television programme to do so.

We take all allegations about mistreatment of children in custody extremely seriously and make sure that they are swiftly referred to the local area designated child protection officer for immediate action. Although it would be inappropriate for me to comment on specific allegations while the investigation by Kent police and Medway Council is under way, I can assure Members that we place the highest priority on the safety of the children and young people committed to our care in custody.

It may be helpful for me to outline in further detail the action taken since the contents of the “Panorama” investigation were first reported. First, G4S suspended all seven staff members named by the BBC on 30 December 2015 and referred the allegations to Medway Council’s local authority designated officer, who is responsible for overseeing safeguarding concerns about children across the local authority, and to Kent police. G4S has subsequently dismissed five staff members, and three more are suspended.

Kent police and Medway Council’s child protection team have launched an investigation that will determine whether there is any evidence to justify criminal proceedings against anyone involved. Five members of staff have been arrested and bailed while police inquiries continue. It is important that the police are now able to complete a full and thorough investigation into each incident and to pursue all necessary lines of inquiry. I can assure Members that the Ministry of Justice and the Youth Justice Board will support and co-operate with their inquiries to the fullest possible extent.

Our immediate priority has been the safety of the young people in custody at Medway. As the Secretary of State indicated in his statement to the House on 11 January, we are meeting Lin Hinnigan, the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, regularly to make sure that all necessary action to ensure the wellbeing of young people at Medway is being taken. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and Ofsted also visited Medway on 11 January to meet representatives of G4S, Medway Council and the Youth Justice Board, as well as the children detained there. The findings of HMIP’s report are being considered carefully by the Secretary of State and me.

The YJB, which is responsible for commissioning the youth secure estate, has also taken immediate steps to safeguard the children and young people placed in Medway. It might be helpful for me to outline those steps to the House. The YJB has, with immediate effect, ceased new placements of young people to Medway until further notice—that addresses one of the shadow Minister’s questions. The YJB sought urgent assurance from the G4S director of Medway that the centre had safe staffing levels following the suspension and dismissal of staff. That assurance was received on 31 December and is being kept under review. The YJB has increased both its monitoring activity at the centre and the presence of other of its staff members, including senior managers.

I am concerned that the allegations were not readily identified by the checks and systems that we already have in place. It is clear that my Department and the YJB need to work together to make sure that monitoring in the youth secure estate is more effective and robust. We expect the highest standards from all the providers who operate the youth secure estate. We expect staff to want to work with children, to have the skills and training to engage with children positively, and to act with professionalism and integrity throughout. We expect our providers’ management teams to rigorously supervise their staff and drive a positive culture throughout their organisations.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who was a very distinguished Minister in the Ministry of Justice not so long ago. He is absolutely right. The concept of litigants in person is not new: it has applied for many years, indeed decades. To demystify the court process, we have put better processes in place—online guidance, guidance from court officers and judicial training—to ensure as much support from the judiciary and other legal advisers as possible.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

With the growth in litigants in person there has been a growth in McKenzie friends. There are two types: those who provide backgrounds to unfamiliar settings and those who act effectively as lawyers and charge for their services. What is the Minister going to do about the latter?

[Mr Vara]

The concept of McKenzie friends is relatively new. [Hon. Members: “No, it’s not.”] I said relatively new. We are keeping an eye on advice and what fees, if any, are being charged.

Prisons: Planning and Policies

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I was going to say that I am the last surviving member of the previous Justice Committee, but that would appear to suggest that all the others were dead. Given that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) were two prominent members of that Committee, that is probably not the case. It was interesting to serve with them.

I am one of the few Members left on the Justice Committee, if not the only one, who had a role in preparing the report that we are debating. It was the Committee’s first major report on prison policy. There were good reasons for undertaking it at the time, because prison policy was the subject of much reform. We wanted to look particularly at benchmarking and the new-for-old programme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has referred to. I want to comment on a couple of the points that he raised about resettlement and rehabilitation, and the engagement of prisoners in purposeful activity. Those are crucial, and they are very much interlinked in the whole programme.

As part of the preparation of the report, the Committee had a trip to Denmark and to Germany. Members might imagine, from anecdotal evidence, that the two places were very similar; in fact, we found them to be radically different. That was particularly true of Denmark. Although the feeling on the street may be that its regime is easy for prisoners, we found it to be quite stiff, and some good lessons arose from the experience. For example, we visited an open prison in Denmark that was surrounded by an enormous steel fence. That came as a bit of a shock to us, because one does not expect to see such a thing around an open prison, especially in Denmark. We asked why it was there, and the answer that we were given was that it was not so much to keep prisoners in as to keep the drug pushers out. That brought home to us the first point of similarity between the Danish system and our own: the acknowledgement that the use of drugs in prison is a major problem that has to be overcome. When we went to Germany, we found that there was the same level of drug use but, interestingly, it was not recognised to be a problem.

On our visit to Denmark we gained a particularly interesting insight into rehabilitation, which we bring out in a recommendation in the report, when we went to see how the prisoners cooked their food. I suppose that phrase gives the game away—the prisoners did not eat at enormous benches where food was slopped out to them in the style of the television series “Porridge”; the system allowed them to earn money in the prison and go to buy food, which they could cook communally for themselves and other prisoners. It is true that the knives used in the process were chained to the wall, but such a precaution is only to be expected in a prison.

That single activity was very important, because it created a sense of prisoner responsibility, which was absolutely conducive to the idea of rehabilitation. We pointed out that the Government should consider that for prisons in the UK, and I was pleased to see in their response that they would look to increase the opportunities for self-catering where appropriate. Perhaps I can push the Minister to confirm that that is happening—particularly in new-build prisons, where I think it is perfectly feasible and appropriate to work in such an arrangement.

Something else that we noted on our trip—this was most obviously the case in Germany—was the amount of industrial or commercial activity that the prisoners undertook. We visited a furniture operation in part of the prison, which involved prisoners in a tremendous amount of work producing excellent furniture for sale at a later stage. Such work is absolutely crucial: not only does it give prisoners dignity in work, which we have claimed to be important throughout the process, but it helps with their rehabilitation by giving them the ability to manage their own time and responsibilities. I am conscious that the ability to provide such a facility in prisons in this country is lacking. I ask the Minister what has been done, and what continues to be done, to take that forward.

Our impression from both trips was positive about prisoner rehabilitation. When I looked again at the situation in the UK, I saw that, as we demonstrate in the report, a lot of emphasis is placed on health and safety, on the safety of prisoners in prisons and on the sorts of figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned concerning the performance of the prison estate. I cannot help but feel that those things are linked—that the decrease in safety and the increase of attacks in prisons are due to the difficulty of trying to make purposeful work happen.

Another issue that we point out in the report is the role of prison governors, who are seen by the general public as being almost like latter-day Roman governors in their own prison. In fact, they are not. We visited one prison governor who had virtually no control over the educational activities taking place in his prison. There needs to be some move back to giving prison governors control of the places they run and what they do in them, which will improve the workings of the prisons and the outcomes for prisoners. Implementing the key recommendations of the report will help.