Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My right hon. Friend is right to identify the fact that leaving prison with savings can be hugely beneficial to an offender’s rehabilitation. Although he is right to point out that the relevant clauses of LASPO have not been commenced, we do enable prisoners to save money under the terms of the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996. In addition, all prisoners have access to a prison savings account during their time in custody. We hope that our recent changes in respect of release on temporary licence will enable an even greater number of prisoners to benefit from saving. Since I have been in post, I have been looking actively at how we can ensure that all prisoners have a bank account.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Leaving prison with just £48 is not a great start for someone to manage their own finances. Can the Minister say, first of all, whether the Government plan to review that amount and, secondly, what steps are being taken to streamline the application process for universal credit so that it can start from inside the prison ahead of release?

[Lucy Frazer]

As I mentioned, we are increasing the opportunity for people to do work on release on temporary licence, which will increase their ability to earn money while they are in prison, so we are looking at the point that the hon. Lady raises. In relation to universal credit, my predecessor, now the Lord Chancellor, had a number of meetings with his counterpart in the Department for Work and Pensions and offenders are now able to access a DWP work coach prior to release, so they can make an appointment early and then, even on the day of release, complete their claim, because universal credit is critical.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to participate in this debate, and I congratulate all colleagues who have been involved in bringing the Bill to this point.

I will speak briefly about a particular group of women who have experienced domestic abuse and violence: women who offend. According to Ministry of Justice data, 57% of women in prison and under community supervision who have had an assessment are, or have been, victims of domestic abuse. Research suggests that the true figure is, in fact, likely to be very much higher. Some women are particularly vulnerable—for example, those with learning disabilities—and, as we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), some will suffer traumatic brain injury, a situation disproportionately reflected in women in the penal system.

The Prison Reform Trust report of 2017, “There’s a reason we’re in trouble”, makes clear that for many of these women it is specifically the abuse that drives them to offend. Many offend as a result of coercive control or abuse or threats by an intimate partner. That can lead them to commit offences such as shoplifting, theft, fraud or dealing in illegal substances. The Crown Prosecution Service and sentencers do, of course, take account of that context for a woman’s offending behaviour, but the approach can be patchy and inconsistent. It would be appropriate, therefore, to consider introducing, through the Bill, statutory protection in such circumstances.

We have a precedent for that in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, section 45 of which provides victims of human trafficking and modern slavery with a statutory defence if they are compelled to offend. That opens up a route to proactive early case management. It allows all agencies, including the courts, to become more adept at recognising and responding to circumstances that should indicate either that there is no public interest in prosecuting a case or that a statutory defence should apply.

We do not have equivalent statutory protection in relation to victims of domestic abuse who are driven to offend in not dissimilar circumstances. There is a common law defence of duress, but it applies only in restrictive circumstances. Introducing for victims of domestic abuse a new statutory defence equivalent to that in section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act would lead to improvements in how they are dealt with in the criminal justice system, including identification of victims and provision of support. It would also help the UK meet its international legal obligations.

I understand that Ministers are considering that possibility. Indeed, it was pleasing to hear the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who has responsibility for prisons and probation, refer specifically to that at the Prison Reform Trust’s recent transforming lives conference. As the Bill continues its parliamentary passage, I hope that the option will be taken to include statutory protection for survivors of domestic violence and abuse who offend. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, in her final remarks, the Government’s attitude to that proposal.

Female Offender Strategy: One Year On

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the female offender strategy one year on.

It is a pleasure to open this debate under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I start by thanking the charity Women in Prison, which visited Parliament earlier this month to lobby MPs and to speak about its #OPENUP campaign, along with my own women’s centre, WomenMATTA, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Prison Reform Trust, Crest Advisory, the Magistrates Association, of which I am a life member, and women who have told me stories of their experience of criminal justice over the years. I also thank National Prison Radio, which is carrying a report of this debate because it knows that women in our prisons take great interest in the policy decisions we make here that affect them.

The House has long taken an interest in female offenders, especially since the seminal report by my noble Friend Baroness Corston in 2007. That report highlighted the special circumstances surrounding women’s offending behaviour and the fact that many women who offend have a history of trauma and are vulnerable. The Government’s female offender strategy, published last year, recognised that these important factors underpinned women’s offending and that custody should be a last resort. It was welcome, if late in coming. The strategy included a number of positive measures to encourage the use of alternatives to custody and to help to address the causes of women’s offending, with a focus on early intervention.

Thanks to the Corston report, we already know a lot about the characteristics of women offenders. We know that their needs are often highly complex. Issues include substance misuse and poor levels of education and employment, and many have been victims of abuse themselves. Some 60% of women offenders have experienced domestic abuse, according to the Prison Reform Trust. Many have a history of self-harm and 49% of women prisoners report mental health needs, including anxiety, depression and psychosis. Crucially, many women in our penal system are mothers; over half the women in prison have dependent children. The Prison Reform Trust says that that means around 17,000 children a year will be affected by having a mother spending time in prison.

How do these women come into the criminal justice system? The obvious route is that they will be arrested by the police and taken through the process. Indeed, 103,000 women were arrested by the police in 2017-18. Strikingly, black women were twice as likely as others to be arrested. The most common offences include theft and fraud; shoplifting accounts for 43% of those sentenced for indictable or either-way offences.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the speech she is making. On that point, women are disproportionately represented in the prosecution of offences such as non-payment of council tax or TV licences and truancy. Does she agree that we need to end the punishment and prosecution of poverty?

[Kate Green]

I do agree, and indeed my hon. Friend makes the important point that not all cases that come into the criminal justice system come via the police. They might come via other prosecution routes. Women are disproportionately likely to be represented in those routes. For example, 70% of those sentenced for TV licence offences are women. That disproportionality is also seen in relation to offences such as council tax fraud and truancy.

Most important of all, in terms of the characteristics of women offenders, is the fact that the vast majority are not violent. Crest Advisory has shown that 83% of women in prison are imprisoned for non-violent offences.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, but that is clearly not true. According to the Ministry of Justice figures, of the 3,294 women in prison, 943 were imprisoned for violence against the person. That is almost a third, and over a third of that number were in prison for homicide. Quite clearly, the figures she cites are invented and they are not actually true, are they? Can she stick to the official figures, please?

[Kate Green]

It is important to recognise the circumstances in which women commit offences, the nature of the violence and offences against the person for which they may be convicted, and the level of violence and threat that these women present to society. I will certainly look again at the figures that I have been given, because clearly they are widely different from the figures the hon. Gentleman quotes. I am not disputing his figures; I will check my source. In my experience, the women I have met in prison are more of a danger to themselves than to anybody outside custody.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend seen another set of statistics, which are taken from work done at Drake Hall women’s prison in Staffordshire? Some 64% of women prisoners who had been screened for brain injury showed up as having had a brain injury before their first offence. Their brain injury was likely to have been part of what led to their offending behaviour in the first place. Some 62% of those brain injuries had been caused by domestic violence. Is there not a real danger that the original victim of the crime is ending up in the criminal justice system quite unfairly?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes a good point; we know that traumatic brain injury is one of the routes by which women come into custody, and we see disproportionate representation of women with brain injury inside our prisons.

What sentences do women receive? Fines are most common and their use has been increasing. They are often seen by criminal justice practitioners as an effective and swift means of justice. But as the Magistrates Association points out, many women cannot afford to pay the fines that are imposed, which leads them into debt or pressures them into reoffending.

By contrast, the use of community penalties has been falling since 2015, with community penalties representing only 5% of sentences received by women, which is half the rate we saw a decade ago. While there has been a welcome fall in the number of women sentenced to custody, three quarters of those who received custodial sentences were imprisoned for a period of less than 12 months. I believe that short custodial sentences have been shown not to be effective and not a good use of money. Some 70.6% of women receiving a custodial sentence of under 12 months in the period from April to June 2016 went on to reoffend. Such sentences are not achieving a reduction in reoffending.

Many women are in custody now as a result of being recalled to prison following release and during a period of post-release supervision. That has been exacerbated by transforming rehabilitation changes, which introduced post-release supervision for those who had served short custodial sentences. In practice, the failure of such supervision arrangements to recognise women’s caring responsibilities, their lack of access to transport and their anxiety about leaving the house is leading many women to miss appointments. They are therefore in breach of the terms of their release and find themselves going back in through the revolving door of recall.

I contend that our system is clearly not working for women or for wider society. That was understood by the Government too, because the 2018 female offender strategy sought to address a number of those concerns and issues. What specifically did the strategy introduce? It introduced some £5 million over two years for investment in community provision, including £2 million for programmes to address domestic abuse, and a pilot to introduce five residential women’s centres. The strategy was explicit in its ambition to reduce the number of short custodial sentences served by women. It introduced new guidance for the police on dealing with vulnerability, and guidance on whole-system approaches, such as we have had for a number of years in my home city of Manchester. It also sought to introduce a national concordat on women offenders.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the £5 million is wholly inadequate? I have heard from Nottingham Women’s Centre, which provides the CHANGES—Creating Hope, Achieving New Goals, Experiencing Success—programme for women who are leaving prison, or to help women to avoid prison. It says that

“we had a total of 12 days to bid for the money with a partner. We ended up being funded for a six week pilot project.”

The total amount that it received was just over £11,000. The representative of the women’s centre said:

“The evaluation was so huge for a tiny piece of work…we are being asked to track the women after the end of the project for the next 6 months too. I would say if anything it detracted from our work rather than increased our offer and certainly hasn’t helped to shore up what we already have.”

It simply is not fit for purpose.

[Kate Green]

WomenMATTA, which is my local women’s centre, has also spoken of the inadequacy of funding, which I will come on to, and of the complexity of the application procedures. As my hon. Friend rightly suggests, spending time on preparing the applications detracts from the good work that the centres could be doing in working directly with women offenders.

On 27 June, in a written ministerial statement, the Government set out progress to date. I am grateful to the Prison Reform Trust, which has produced a helpful and comprehensive matrix to track progress against the strategy. It is fair to say that both documents show a mixed picture, although I acknowledge that there has been some good progress. For example, we have recently had the Farmer report on maintaining family links, which makes many welcome suggestions. We have had changes in housing policy so that a tenancy can be maintained for up to six months while a mother is in prison. More police forces are developing and using trauma-informed approaches. Liaison and diversion schemes now cover 90% of forces in the country, and the ambition is to achieve 100% coverage next year.

I was very pleased to hear the right hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke), the last Lord Chancellor—and, if I may say so, a much-missed Lord Chancellor—speaking positively about his intention or wish to see a presumption against the imposition of short custodial sentences, as already applies in Scotland. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) says, women’s centres still lack sustainable funding. Will the Minister say what has happened to the proceeds from the sale of Holloway Prison? That delivered some £80 million into the Treasury’s coffers, but only £5 million appears to have been released to go towards services for women.

It is welcome that the Government, in their strategy, called a halt to the building of new women’s prisons. Many of us had spent much time urging them to take exactly that step. But what evidence can the Minister show for the efficacy of residential women’s centres? Surely priority should be given to funding core women’s centre provision in the community. No prison has to wonder whether it will have the funding to exist after 2021, but that is the case for most women’s centres, with Lord Farmer himself describing their funding as “desperately precarious”.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in this area, on which she has campaigned over many years. With regard to the location of women’s centres, she will be aware that Wales does not have any women’s centre; it does not have a women’s prison. To be clear, we do not want a women’s prison, but we are in desperate need of a women’s centre, because the closest place that women can go to, in terms of custodial sentences, is Gloucestershire. Does she agree that, in addition to her list of questions for the Minister, he might want to consider the fact that a women’s centre is desperately needed in Wales and would be an important part of improving outcomes for female offenders?

[Kate Green]

I do agree. If there is no women’s centre in Wales, that is shocking and there needs to be. Indeed, I would say that for any part of the country that does not have a women’s centre.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I build on what my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) said? For Eastwood Park Prison—it is just outside my constituency, but I visit regularly—the problem now is that because there are a number of women’s centres growing up in the west, there is a disparity with those places that do not have women’s centres, particularly south Wales. It should be remembered that that prison covers the whole of the south-west as well as south Wales. There is such a difference in the ways in which women being released are now treated. We have to get some continuity in the way in which they are looked after, but more particularly some certainty that women’s centres will develop all over the country. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Kate Green]

I agree both that we need women’s centres to develop all over the country and that they need certainty of funding so that they are sustainable.

We have seen other problems with delivery of the strategy. I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I describe the transforming rehabilitation programme as a total failure. It has not been able to deliver, for example, specialist provision for women through community rehabilitation companies, and at the moment we do not know what the new probation model will look like for women. Through the Gate simply has not happened as envisaged.

There are even basic things such as women not being able to apply for universal credit in advance of their release date, or to apply for housing. They will not get a house because they do not have their children living with them, which means that they cannot have their children living with them because they do not have a house when they are released. It is the case that 13% of women are released to no fixed abode—a truly terrifying prospect—and only 22% to secure permanent accommodation, according to Her Majesty’s inspectors of prison and probation. As a result of the lack of a safe destination to release women to, many will be forced to return to the abuser, who may be the root cause of their offending, and will turn to alcohol, drug or other substance misuse and to reoffending.

Pre-sentence reports are still being prepared without full information and without being informed by gender considerations. Sentencers are not always taking account of the interests of children when sentencing a mother to or remanding her in custody, yet the impact on children of a mum going to prison is absolutely dire. Fewer than 10% of children remain in their family home when a mother is imprisoned.

What do we want to happen, and will the Minister offer us assurances that some of these suggestions will happen? First, will he look at what can be done systematically to ensure that the police, wherever possible, divert women away from arrest? That is being considered now by the all-party parliamentary group for women in the penal system, which I have the honour to co-chair with Baroness Corston and the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), whom I am very pleased to see present at this debate.

Will the Minister say what the Government intend to do to spread retail diversion schemes such as we have in Bury, in Greater Manchester, across the country? Will he say how the Government are working with non-police prosecutors, so that we can end the use of custody for TV licence offences, truancy offences and so on?

Crucially, what will the Government do to secure sustainable, adequate funding for community provision and particularly for both women’s centres and the range of partners that work with them? Can the Minister say what role he envisages for the new probation service? How will it develop women-specific programmes, or will women’s centres become the default model for provision? What can be done to build sentencer confidence in community provision? I would argue that one step that the Government must take is to ensure proper information for sentencers and proper training for them on the outcomes from community and custodial sentences. Will the Minister ensure that gender-sensitive, gender-informed, pre-sentence reports are made mandatory and that there is suitable training for report writers? Will he say what the Government can do to put more emphasis on, as part of community sentences, treatment orders, including, as the Magistrates Association has suggested, financial planning support?

All stages of the process must take account of the best interests of children, so will the Minister ensure that sentencers do follow the guidance, which exists, that they should consider the impact on children in sentencing a mother and that they should ensure that arrangements are made for them prior to sending any mother into custody? Better still, in my view, would be ensuring that alternatives to custody are considered in all cases for primary carers.

Will the Government now move forward to legislate for a presumption against short sentences as a matter of urgency? Will they also adopt the suggestion, from the Committee that scrutinised what is now the Domestic Abuse Bill, to introduce a statutory defence in that legislation?

When transforming rehabilitation was first proposed, I thought that post-release supervision was a good idea, but having seen it in practice, I have changed my mind. In 2017, about 1,000 women were recalled to prison while on supervision following a custodial sentence of under 12 months. In the context of the female prison population as a whole, that is a lot of women. Its use appears to be ill judged, disproportionate and harmful.

Will the Minister consider ending post-release supervision and replacing it with holistic support, including housing, education, mental health and employment? No woman should ever be released into homelessness—can the Minister guarantee that that will not happen? Can he guarantee that no woman—or man—will ever be released on a Friday, when services are not available on the weekend to receive them? Will he once again press the Department for Work and Pensions to expedite the ability to start the universal credit application process before a woman is released from prison? Finally on my shopping list, will he ensure that a women’s centre link worker is placed in every single women’s prison?

I urge the Minister to continue the roll-out of the full-system approach across the country, because it works. In Cleveland, where they do not have it, 67 in every 100,000 women offenders are imprisoned, in Greater Manchester it is only 25 per 100,000. A whole-system approach should not be criminal justice driven. We need place-based, gender-informed, holistic preventative services in every local authority accessible to every vulnerable woman. That is the women’s strategy I would like to see; I urge the Government to embrace it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to all colleagues who have participated in this very good debate. There was widespread, if not entirely unanimous, recognition that the experiences of women offenders are different. Their motivation to offend, their vulnerabilities, and the impact of sentences on them and their families are different. The risk that women present is lower than that of men. Although I accept the figures that the Minister and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) cited, I am happy, now that I have found my figures, to share the analysis carried out by the Prison Reform Trust, which led me to the 83% figure. I am afraid that I wrongly suggested that it was a figure from Crest Advisory. It was, in fact, analysis by the Prison Reform Trust. I will write to them, and indeed all Members who participated in the debate, to share that information.

The real lesson that we should take from this debate is that holistic, community-based provision is the most effective way to deal with the vast majority of women offenders, through dedicated, specialist provision. The one message that I want the Minister to take away from the debate is that we must have certain, sustained and adequate funding for a network of women’s centres right across the country. I hope that if he continues as the Minister, he will pursue that agenda. I hope he remains in his role, but if he sadly does not I hope he will pass that message on to his successors.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the female offender strategy one year on.

Assisted Dying

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

I will give way to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) first.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

Let me make a little progress.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

I will give way to the hon. Lady first.

[Kate Green]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I thank him for the case that he is making. I support it, but I, too, recognise what a very difficult and sensitive issue this is.

In relation to disabled people and the concerns to which my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) rightly alluded, it is true that most disability organisations—perhaps all that I have spoken to—oppose the legislation that the hon. Gentleman and I would like to see, but that is not true of every individual disabled person, and we should acknowledge that. Is it not the case therefore that what we need to ensure is that we build into any legislation excellent regulation, excellent audit and an equal commitment to investment in assisted living alongside the investment in assisted dying?

[Nick Boles]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. The truth is that this is not in any way an alternative to the best possible palliative care; it is a complement to the best possible palliative care. We want to ensure that all those who want to choose to live out their lives and die naturally—even through a horrific illness with horrific symptoms—are given every support to be able to make that decision. Unfortunately, we also know—and all the evidence suggests this—that there are some people for whom palliative care cannot help in those final moments, and it is of them that I am thinking.

What do we think of a law that criminalises otherwise law-abiding people, such as Ann Whaley, who are simply trying to act with love in accordance with their marriage vows and their conscience? What do we think of a law that forces people in the final months of a terminal illness to take desperate and even dangerous steps, which may cause even more suffering to themselves and to the people whom they love, in secret and without any safeguards or support? What do we think of a law that denies hundreds of innocent people dignity and control as their lives draw to a close and condemns them to extreme suffering instead? I will tell you what I think, Madam Deputy Speaker: it is a bad law and it should be changed.

However, the purpose of today’s debate is not to propose a new law on assisted dying, but to understand the effect of the current law on people suffering from terminal illnesses, on their families, on the doctors, nurses and carers looking after them, and on social workers and the police. It is only when we have fully understood all the different ways in which the current law impacts on the British people that we should consider returning to the question, last debated in 2015, of what kind of change in the law might be justified.

To that end, I have a request for my hon. Friend the Minister. We all understand and accept that laws such as these are matters of conscience and that it is for Parliament to initiate a change of the law, but Parliament’s ability to gather evidence is very limited. On behalf of those affected by such laws, and in honour of Geoff and Ann Whaley, I ask the Lord Chancellor and his boss, the Secretary of State for Justice, to initiate a formal call for evidence on the impact of our existing laws on assisted dying, so that Parliament can benefit from a comprehensive assessment of the facts when it next decides to debate and vote on a possible change in the law.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill (Second sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Public Bill Committees

Clause 1 retains a minimum period of six weeks between the conditional order and when an application may be made to the court for the final order of divorce, mirroring the current period between decree nisi and when the petitioner may apply for the decree absolute.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I wonder what the Minister thinks the purpose of that six-week delay really is. What does he think will happen in these marriages during that six-week period?

[Paul Maynard]

Part of the objective, I believe, is to improve the financial arrangements. People may wish to delay a little longer until such a point. It is not a maximum period; it is a minimum, and the process might well take longer. It is about ensuring that we take a progressive, step-by-step approach to bringing the marriage to an end, and people may wish to tie up further loose ends, which may take longer than six weeks. There has always been a six-week gap to ensure, if nothing else, that all the paperwork is in order.

Crucially, however, new section 1(5) introduces into the legal process of divorce a minimum period of 20 weeks between the start of proceedings and when a party, or either or both parties to a joint application, may confirm to the court that the conditional order may be made. Those two periods together will now mean that in nearly all cases a divorce may not be obtained in a shorter period than 26 weeks, or six months. The 20-week period is a key element of the reformed legal process. For the first time, a minimum period has been imposed before the conditional order of divorce is made. The intention is to allow greater opportunity for the applicant to reflect on the decision and to decide arrangements for the future where divorce becomes inevitable.

The prospect of a couple reconciling once divorce proceedings have started is low, but our intention is that the legal process should still allow for that possibility. It is never too late for a couple to change their mind, which is one reason why we have decided to retain the two-stage process for divorce.

Separately, the new section 1(8) inserted by clause 1 retains the ability of the court in an individual case to shorten the period between decree nisi and decree absolute, which are now the conditional order and the final order, and also extends this discretion to the new minimum period between the start of proceedings and when confirmation can be given that the court may grant the final order or divorce.

I will come on to some of the points that have been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North and by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bolton South East. My hon. Friend made some interesting and helpful points about how we can ensure, as I have just referred to, that this is as considered a process as possible, and how we can best utilise the 20-week period that I have just set out.

As my hon. Friend may have picked up during the evidence session earlier today, there is more going on to reform the divorce process than just what is in the Bill. There are a number of online initiatives to try to make the process smoother for those going through it, and one thing that we will look at is what changes we can make to that online process to signpost people towards mediation of some sort, counselling and so on, to make sure that they are aware of the broad range of options available to them, which they might not have thought of when they initiated the divorce process.

My hon. Friend also made a point regarding the Law Society’s concerns as to when that 20-week period should start. We have explored this at some length during the consultation. Starting the time period from the acknowledgement of service, as some have suggested, could incentivise an unco-operative party to delay a divorce and could enable a perpetrator of domestic abuse to exercise further coercive control, which is why we have erred on the side of starting it earlier than that.

It is also worth flagging the caveat that we should bear in mind at every stage of this process. When we talk about mediation at this stage of a divorce process, it is often around finances or childcare. The mediation that my hon. Friend and I might think of as laymen is more a form of marriage counselling and relationship support. We should always be careful about that: when we initiate a divorce proceeding, mediation takes on a slightly different meaning from what it might perhaps have during a marriage. As I mentioned to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, 20 weeks allows people more time to sort out their finances, in as constructive a way as possible.

The shadow Justice Minister mentioned the one-year bar on divorce and asked for the reason for that. I confess that I too have asked officials of the first rank what was in the Bill and why this might be. We consulted on it before the introduction of the Bill and there was certainly no broad consensus or hard and fast evidence either way. Many felt that it went against the grain of reforms that recognise marriage as an autonomous troth, as indeed did the Law Society and the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges. Faced with a lack of consensus and a lack of hard evidence at this stage that the bar causes hardship or is a problem, we propose to keep the status quo. That does not mean to say that the law can never be changed, but we do not believe that it would be the right step at this stage.

Understandably, the shadow Justice Minister raised the issue of legal aid and indeed legal support for those going through a divorce. She will be more than aware that legal aid is already available for mediation for couples who have finances or child arrangements that are in dispute. This provides a non-litigious route, resolving issues and helping families to move forward constructively. We are also investing some £5 million to support innovation across the sector that will help people to access legal support as close to their community as possible.

The shadow Justice Minister rightly made a point about litigants in person. As I have said to her in the past at the Dispatch Box, we are doubling our investment in our litigant in person strategy, but the wider reforms that I have just mentioned with regard to online processes for divorce should make it simpler and more straightforward for people to initiate proceedings online, so they would have less need for active legal help at that stage of the process. The reform programme, the litigant in person strategy and the legal support action plan are all about opening up newer avenues to access legal support that are not just about someone getting that legal help as they come through the courtroom door.

On that particular note, I beg to move that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Judicial separation: removal of factual grounds

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Yes, I do think that is a very sensible goal, and sometimes that point has been missed in the debate about the transforming rehabilitation programme. My view is that we need to build on those reforms, and that is why on 16 May I outlined the changes we were making. My hon. Friend is right that we need to be ambitious and provide coverage for as many ex-offenders as possible.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am not sure whether the Secretary of State has had a chance yet to see the report published this morning by Crest Advisory on the management of women offenders. It suggests that police and crime commissioners should develop gender-informed alternatives to cautions and thereby keep women out of the criminal justice system. Will he consider that recommendation and the others in the report, and would he or one of his ministerial colleagues be willing to meet me and representatives of Crest to discuss it?

[Mr Gauke]

I confess I have not had an opportunity yet to read the report published this morning, but from what the hon. Lady says it appears to go in a similar direction to the female offenders strategy I set out last year. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), would be delighted to meet her to discuss the matter further.

Prisons and Probation

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes HM Chief Inspector of Probation’s recent conclusion that the privatised probation system is irredeemably flawed and that public ownership is the safer option; recognises that the Public Accounts Committee concluded that probation services are in a worse position than they were in before the Government embarked on its reforms; further notes the Government’s decision to return HMP Birmingham to public ownership following repeated failures under G4S; is concerned by the Government’s plans for at least two new prisons to be privately run; and calls on the Government to end its plans to sign new private probation contracts and contracts for new privately-run prisons.

Today’s debate will address the widespread failures that affect our justice system as a result of privatisation. Over the past 12 months this issue has shot up the justice agenda after two flagship privatisations ran aground. The Government had to cancel the privatised probation contract two years early. The failing probation companies had proved incapable of tackling reoffending and were financially unsustainable despite the Government handing a £500 million bail-out to them. There was also the decision to return HMP Birmingham to the public sector after unprecedented failures by the contractor G4S.

Yet despite the recent high-profile failings in the privatised justice sector the Government are on the verge of signing yet more private prison contracts and yet more probation contracts, throwing more good money after bad. But just how bad does it have to get before the Conservative party ends its obsession with the private sector? Today, Members have a chance to show their rejection of this flawed policy. The Opposition motion has one simple demand: it calls on the Government to scrap their plans to sign new private probation contracts and contracts for new privately run prisons. As usual, the Government will probably claim that we in the Opposition are driven by ideology in our commitment to ridding the justice system of the scourge of privatisation, but the reality is that only one party in this debate is driven by ideology. It is the Conservative party, whose insistence that the market is always best has proved so costly to our railways and our utilities and so dangerous to our justice system.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to say that these reforms—as the Government call them; I call them destructive measures—are driven by ideology, including the completely misguided idea of splitting the probation service into higher-risk services being covered by the national probation service and lower-risk ones being covered by private companies? Does he agree that, although the Government were warned from the outset that that split would be disastrous, they proceeded with it in any event, in the teeth of all the evidence?

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes an important point very eloquently. As she says, splitting probation into two and part-privatising it has been a disaster. From the outset, the Labour party was among those warning the Government not to take that dangerous road.

If Conservative Members will not listen to the views expressed today on the Opposition Benches, I respectfully encourage them to take seriously the words of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Secretary of State under Margaret Thatcher. Just last month, he wrote in the Financial Times that

“contracting out prisons to the private sector has been a serious mistake.”

He also made a point about the incarceration of human beings for profit—which I wholeheartedly share—when he said:

“The physical deprivation of the citizen’s liberty should not be the responsibility of a private company or of its employees.”

Even if Conservative Members do not share those moral principles, the record of privatisation in leaving the public less safe and the taxpayer out of pocket should put an end to this failed experiment. That is why change is needed: privatisation has been proven not to work.

Nowhere has the experiment of justice privatisation been so thoroughly tested as in the United States of America. Members might be surprised to learn that we have a greater proportion of prisoners in private prisons than the United States federal Government prison system does. That is quite astounding. Concern over safety and value for money in private prisons was one of the reasons behind the Obama Administration’s 2016 decision to plan a gradual phase-out of private prisons by letting contracts expire. Sadly, that decision was overturned by Trump. In the memorandum announcing the plans to phase out private prisons, the US Department of Justice said that

“time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services…and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and…they do not maintain the same level of safety and security. The rehabilitative services…such as educational programs and job training, have proved difficult to replicate and outsource”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who made important points about the need for social reform and how it does indeed cost money.

I want to speak in particular about the value of women’s centres as a community response to women offenders. I start by paying tribute of course to my friend and colleague the inspirational Baroness Corston, whose groundbreaking report led to the establishment of a wider network of women’s centres across the UK. I have visited one such centre—Eden House, in my neighbouring constituency of Bristol East, Baroness Corston’s former constituency—a few times in the past few years, the first time in my former professional role at Respect, the national organisation for domestic violence perpetrator work, in order to discuss specific interventions for women with complex histories of domestic violence and offending.

Women experience the majority of domestic violence. While there are of course male victims, their abusers are disproportionately male partners, although there are female perpetrators. There is no excuse for the abuse of a partner, female or male, but in my previous work I learned a lot about the differences between the profiles of female and male domestic perpetrators, particularly those with a complex picture of experience as a victim and a perpetrator.

Some women are indeed very violent and controlling and do fit the profile of coercive and controlling abusers, but the majority of those who use violence tend to do so either in self-defence or resistance in the context of a partner who is controlling and on whom they may be dependent. Some of the women I met at Eden House had this complex history. Often it started young—sometimes they had experience of child abuse—and their offending was intricately linked to their experience of abuse as well as to mental health and substance misuse. Those are examples of the specific needs and experiences of women offenders that Baroness Corston identified and of the reasons she concluded that specific women-centred responses were needed.

Baroness Corston also identified three specific groups of characteristics. First, the domestic category covers abusive relationships, but also childcare. Single mothers with sole responsibility for children are much less likely than male offenders to have someone on the outside to look after their home and the children, and are therefore more likely to lose both. Secondly, there is the personal category. Many women offenders have severe mental illness or substance misuse problems, which are likely to get worse if they are remanded in prison. They may also be self-harming, or have eating disorders. The third category is the socio-economic. Women are paid less than men, and are more likely to experience relationship breakdown as economically damaging. They are more likely than men to face under-employment or discrimination because of their parenting responsibilities.

A fourth category relates to the offending itself. Most, although not all, women offenders are convicted of non-violent offences, and present little public risk. They actually present a greater risk to themselves than to others. However, because there are fewer of them, they are more likely to be sent further away when they are sentenced. For other reasons, proportionate to their numbers, they are more likely to be remanded in custody than men. Because of their domestic responsibilities, they may therefore experience further, compounding consequences, such as fewer visits from children and other family members, leading to a further likelihood that their children will be taken into care permanently. Shorter sentences are also less likely to deflect future offending.

For all those complicated reasons, prison makes the lives of women and their children much worse than it makes those of male offenders, although I am not suggesting that there are no complications for male offenders. It is also much less likely that their reoffending rates will be reduced by a prison sentence.

Baroness Corston pointed out that because of those differences, there should be distinct, separate and different approaches. She recommended that community sanctions for non-violent women offenders should be the norm, that responses should take into account women’s vulnerabilities and their domestic and childcare responsibilities, and that the Together Women programme should be extended and a network of women’s centres set up as soon as possible. As I am sure you are aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Together Women programme was set up by the Labour Government with £9.1 million in 2005 to develop and test holistic responses to women.

As a result of Baroness Corston’s recommendation, a further £15.6 million was allocated for 2009 to 2011 for the number of women’s centres to be increased to, eventually, 46. At their best, they provide a combination of one-to-one holistic support, help with substance misuse, counselling, therapy, domestic abuse programmes, life skills classes and workshops, referral to other help and, sometimes, on-site childcare and residential facilities. A Ministry of Justice evaluation has found statistically significant differences in favour of women’s centres compared to custodial sentences in respect of the risk of reoffending.

[Kate Green]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am short of time, but I will give way.

[Kate Green]

I just wanted to make a point about cost-effectiveness. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the underfunding of women’s centres relative to other disposals? According to those who run my local centre in Greater Manchester, none of them have been able to access the tampon tax funding. Surely that would have been ideal for them.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that excellent point. In 2011, a report on the social return on investment produced by the Women’s Resource Centre and the New Economics Foundation stated that every £1 invested in women’s organisations generated between £5 and £11 in social value. My hon. Friend has made the important point that there is often a long-term saving to be made, and that those organisations need investment. Other evaluations have documented substantial improvements in mental health and other dimensions such as relationships, work, housing, health and money, all of which, combined with the reduced risk of reoffending, make women’s centres a good investment.

Where are we now? The Women in Prison report “The Corston Report 10 Years On” found that many pioneering women’s centres either do not exist or can no longer provide the full range of services, and that their model does not fit the “payment by results” model which has been introduced into the privatisation of probation. The Government’s female offender strategy acknowledges the legacy of the Corston report and the need for the value of women-specific services, but we just do not have the national network that we should have.

I am told that the Treasury will receive £80 million from the sale of HMP Holloway, which would transform women’s centres. The Howard League for Penal Reform has reminded me that, following its inquiry last year, the all-party parliamentary group for women in the penal system said that there was a real risk that many women’s centres were now so watered down that they could no longer be as effective as they should or could be. I ask the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Treasury about keeping the £80 million and investing it to ensure that there is a fully funded network with a full range of women’s services across the country, because that range really saves lives. It saves women from the risk of reoffending, it saves children from the risk of being taken into care, and it helps to turn lives around. That was true in 2007, when Baroness Corston wrote the report, it was true in the “10 Years On” report, and it is true now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of delays in progressing criminal cases in the courts on access to justice.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

Unnecessary delays can always cause distress for all parties. Some cases are moving more quickly through the criminal courts, but due to the complexity of cases, impacts on the time that they take to reach courts are being realised. The Crown Prosecution Service and the police are driving change across the system through the national disclosure improvement plan, and we are working to reduce delays and improve the way cases are progressed through the system through better case management and transforming summary justice.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer and I am aware of the work that is being done to improve disclosure processes, which both the Law Society and my local police tell me are still contributing to delayed and, in some cases, collapsed trials. What is her view of the Law Society’s suggestion that different disclosure rules should apply in the magistrates courts and Crown courts, where the nature of the cases and the amount of disclosed but unused material differ greatly?

[Lucy Frazer]

Of course, the Attorney General has done a review in relation to disclosure more broadly. I am very happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss any ideas that she would like to put forward on those matters.

Short Prison Sentences

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. She is absolutely right that handing out short sentences is a false economy. I will say more about that later, but as she rightly identifies, it is clear that the current system of short sentences is failing with respect to rehabilitation and reoffending.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. One thing that troubles me is the use of short custodial sentences after a pattern of repeat offending, where people go from fines straight to custody, with little evidence that community penalties, and particularly supervision orders, have been tried along the way. Does she agree that it would be useful if the Government had a particularly careful look at why that is happening and whether there is a lack of confidence in community penalties among sentencers?

[Ellie Reeves]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about escalation to prison sentences instead of increased use of community sentences. Community sentences have halved in the past decade. Again, I will talk a little more about that, because it is really important that we have robust and effective community sentences, and that sentencers have the confidence to hand those sentences out.

The Secretary of State has admitted that shorter sentences do not work. The Ministry’s data shows that adults released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months had a proven reoffending rate of 64%, compared with the overall rate of 29%, yet it has been shown that offenders serving a community sentence typically have a reoffending rate seven percentage points lower than similar people serving prison sentences of less than a year. Those with suspended sentence orders have a reoffending rate nine percentage points lower. The emphasis needs to be on better rehabilitation in the community.

It is clear from the issuing of four urgent notifications on squalid prisons and countless news reports about falling standards that the prison system is failing offenders and the public. It is uncomfortably apparent that committing offenders to custody can cause further issues, which may arise only during an offender’s stay in prison. Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons recently published a report on standards at HMP Durham. Nearly a third of prisoners surveyed said they had developed a drug problem while in prison, 66% of prisoners said they had mental health problems, and many more said they felt depressed or suicidal on arrival in custody. Some 70% of prisoners at HMP Durham were in custody on remand or following recall, and three quarters of the population had been at the prison for less than six months. Those are precisely the kinds of prisoner so disproportionately and negatively impacted by the current model of short sentencing.

Like a lot of the prison estate, HMP Durham is a Victorian building in need of repair, where prisoners are kept in rooms that are falling apart, and often unclean, and are provided with little stimulating activity or purposeful rehabilitation. Sadly, HMP Durham is not alone. A year ago, I visited HMP Rochester with the Justice Committee. That Victorian prison is not fit for purpose, so it was issued with a closure notice, which was later rescinded due to MOJ cuts. When we visited, we were told that lessons had to be cancelled when it rained because there was a leak in the classroom roof, and the drug rehab programme had stopped because the prison thought it was closing down.

More recently, we visited HMP Birmingham—a prison so bad that the private contractor, G4S, had to hand back control to Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The recent inspections at HMPs Nottingham, Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and Bedford all showed that problems with safety and overcrowding are particularly acute at local prisons, where large numbers of people are often held for short periods. A reduction in the use of short prison sentences could significantly reduce overcrowding, particularly in local prisons, which in turn might help restore the standards of decency that the Minister has called for.

In monetary terms, it costs nearly £40,000 a year to keep someone in prison. The point at which prisoners enter the prison system is often the most costly and labour intensive and, given recent falls in prison officer numbers, it can often divert resources from where they might be needed elsewhere on the prison estate.

On the day before International Women’s Day, it is important to recognise that restricting the use of short custodial sentences is particularly important to achieve a reduction in the female prison population. In 2017, some 7,185 women in England and Wales were sentenced to immediate custody. Of those women, 68% were sentenced to less than six months and 26% to less than one month. Women’s offending is often linked to underlying mental health needs, drug and alcohol addiction, and domestic abuse. Many have caring responsibilities, and at least 17,000 children are affected by maternal imprisonment each year. Despite those children having committed no crime, their lives are often uprooted. They end up in care, having to lose their home, their school and their family. The human and emotional cost is immeasurable.

[Kate Green]

Will my hon. Friend therefore join me in welcoming the inquiry being undertaken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights? The Committee is looking specifically at the impact on children of their mother’s imprisonment, whether the law should be changed or strengthened to protect children, and whether sentencers should have a different presumption in those circumstances.

[Ellie Reeves]

I absolutely agree. We know that parental imprisonment is considered an adverse childhood experience, which we hear so much about at the moment. That inquiry is really timely. It is important that we look at this issue very carefully and question whether prison is the right place for women to be much of the time. Women released from prison are likely to reoffend, and reoffend more quickly, than those serving community sentences. Some 48% of women are reconvicted within one year of leaving prison, which rises to 61% for sentences of less than 12 months.

Reducing reoffending has a clear cost benefit not only to Ministry of Justice budgets, but to police budgets, local services and beyond. The failures in our prison system, not least due to the 40% real-terms cut forced on the Ministry’s budgets and the profound problems with the privatisation of the probation service, have left that system in disarray.

Last Friday, the National Audit Office published yet another critical report on the Government’s transforming rehabilitation programme. It stated that not only has the Ministry of Justice failed to achieve the wider objectives of its original reforms, but that those failures were leading to significant numbers of prisoner recalls and that through-the-gate was wholly ineffective. The NAO report suggests that the Ministry of Justice will pay at least £467 million more than was required under the original community rehabilitation company contracts in completely avoidable bailouts. Worryingly, the full costs will not be known until at least December 2020. It is clear that the current model does not work for taxpayers or offenders.

We need meaningful community sentences, far more robust than the CRC-monitored rehabilitation that we have at the moment where offenders too often just have supervision on the telephone rather than face to face, and missed appointments go unchecked. The Government make the right noises, but clear action is required. As the Prison Reform Trust’s latest Bromley briefing succinctly states:

“Short prison sentences are less effective than community sentences at reducing reoffending Yet, the use of community sentences has more than halved in only a decade”,

falling from 193,000 to 91,000 over a decade.

The Ministry of Justice’s own research has shown that community sentences are particularly effective for people who have committed a large number of previous offences and for those with mental health problems. For those with more than 50 previous offences, the odds of reoffending are more than a third higher when a short prison sentence is used rather than a community sentence. Another piece of research by the Ministry of Justice, published in 2017, found that providing treatment for drug and alcohol addictions in the community has also been shown to reduce reoffending. More than two fifths did not reoffend and there was a 33% reduction in the number of offences committed in the two years following treatment. As much as the instinct is to think that repeat offending must mean harsher sentences, that is not what the evidence suggests we should do. Policy must be evidence-led if we are to expect results, and the current approach is too costly and too ineffective to continue following the short sentencing model.

There is the question of the cost of the failures around short custodial sentences not only to prisons and wider Ministry of Justice budgets, but to other Departments and society as a whole. Short sentences can see prisoners lose their homes, their jobs and their family ties. Combined with the failure of the through-the-gate initiative, the impact and effect of prison last much longer than any original custodial sentence.

To be given a custodial sentence is one thing, but to have all the means to reduce the propensity to reoffend and to get back on with life removed in the short time that someone is in prison is quite another, and it has far longer and wider-ranging consequences than the original sentence. One of the most fundamental issues is that of housing. The link between rough sleeping and prison leavers is deeply concerning, and short sentencing does nothing but exacerbate the issue. The latest figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network show that 36% of rough sleepers in London have been in prison—up 3% on last year.

Colleagues have also repeatedly raised concerns and frustrations with Friday releases from prisons as prisoners are unable to contact housing providers until Monday morning or get a prescription to deal with an addiction. If someone does not have a place to stay, it is far harder to register with the council or a jobcentre, and offenders are more likely to end up sleeping rough. The most vulnerable might simply immediately return to crime.

The issue is summarised perfectly by a case study from the social justice charity, Nacro:

“C was released on a Friday after serving a 4 week sentence with a history of homelessness. Given the short amount of time spent in custody, it was not enough time for us to source stable housing for him on release. C had to present at the local authority to make a homelessness application and was told to come back the next week for an appointment. C slept rough that weekend.”

Short sentences do not work. They very often increase rather than decrease reoffending rates. They can tear families apart and put pressure on a crumbling prison system with very little benefit. They have failed. The Government have been making the right noises, but I hope they will now follow in the direction of Scotland and seek to enshrine in law a presumption against short sentences of 12 months or less, backed up with robust, effective and properly funded community sentences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing the debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I wholeheartedly agree with much of what he said.

In England and Wales, roughly 83,000 people are presently in prison, and the majority are there for sentences six months or less. In 2017 almost 50,000 offenders were sentenced to custody for six months or less. In England and Wales, we incarcerate 139 people per 100,000 of the population. That is the highest number in Europe. The Netherlands, for example, incarcerates 61 people per 100,000. In Denmark it is 63 people; in Germany it is 76; in Italy it is 99; and in France it is 104. We therefore incarcerate far more people proportionate to the population than those countries.

In the past five years, more than 250,000 custodial sentences of six months or less have been given to offenders. More than 300,000 sentences were for 12 months or less. However, nearly two thirds of those offenders go on to commit a further crime within a year of being released. Clearly, custody is not working for those people. They are the ones whose situation we need to address so that, as well as punishment, there can be rehabilitation that stops them reoffending.

Some 27% of all reoffending is committed by those who have served 12 months or less, and the most common offence for which a sentence is given is shoplifting. More often than not, offenders who shoplift have a drug or alcohol problem, and almost half of the sentences in question are given to women; 60% of female offenders who are convicted of shoplifting are victims themselves—many have been victims of domestic violence and have mental health issues. Part of the problem, therefore, is that we are not addressing those issues. We need to tackle them in order to get to the root of why the offending occurs in the first place.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right about the high incidence of short custodial sentences imposed on women for shoplifting. Is he aware of the initiative in Greater Manchester that the police have taken up with some large stores? When a woman is found shoplifting in one of those shops, they can immediately refer her not to the police—and into the criminal justice system—but to our women’s centres. Does he agree that that would be a really positive model for the Government to encourage across the whole country?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I am aware of that initiative. More investment in women’s centres would be a great thing that would help to stop reoffending, particularly by female offenders. I support women’s centres in their plight; we should provide them with as much funding as we can.

All the evidence shows that there is a strong case for abolishing sentences of six months or less, but we also need to have a robust community order regime. The Revolving Doors Agency made a freedom of information request and found that, of those people sentenced to six months in custody, three in five reported a drug or alcohol problem on arrival in prison, one in four were released homeless, and seven in 10 reoffend within a year of release. Clearly short sentences are not working. In his speech on 18 February, the Secretary of State for Justice said:

“Why would we spend taxpayers’ money doing what we know doesn’t work, and indeed, makes us less safe?”

I entirely agree with him about that.

I have touched on some of the issues where our investment could help. Accommodation is a big factor. When people leave prison and they are homeless, they are more prone to reoffend. Clearly, the through-the-gate resettlement service has not been working with the probation service, which needs to be looked at. Making sure that prisoners are housed and have accommodation when they leave prison would help prevent reoffending.

Many of the support services that prisoners need when they are released relate to benefits applications. They also need to be looked at, as well as the mental health support that they need. Sometimes people leave prison having had some treatment, but they do not get treatment further on. Finally—I meant to mention this earlier—when they are in prison people can receive treatment for some of their addictions, but six months is too short a time for them to have the full support they need. All these areas need investment.

The Secretary of State also said in his speech that he supported “smart” justice. I agree with the gist of what he said, but much more needs to be done. There is a place for punishing people. We need prison for serious offenders and it should also be there as a deterrent. There may be an issue with why prison is not working as well as it should do; the reoffending rate is high, and there may be issues about what goes on in prison, the prison estate itself, the fact that there are insufficient prison officers, the prevalence of drugs in prison and various other factors. Clearly, prison is not working for some people.

I suggest that community orders are the best way forward for short sentences. There should be an element of rehabilitation but community orders should be tough, should not be treated as a soft touch, should be fully enforced, and people should be made to fulfil them. Serving them over a longer period of time could also help offenders change their ways.

Community orders would also save us money. The Revolving Doors Agency estimates that community sentences would save £9,237 per prisoner. I am often staggered by the fact that it costs roughly the same amount to send somebody to Eton as to send them to prison. I say let us send them to Eton—that is instead of prison, not as well as prison. These areas need to be looked at. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I broadly support what the Secretary of State has set out and I hope he has the courage of his convictions to follow through. We could be in a position where these measures save us money in the long run and we are able to rehabilitate offenders, which has long-term benefits for us all.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

One of the greatest changes in my lifetime, and indeed my time in Parliament, has been the growing gulf between the preoccupations of the liberal establishment, and the hopes and fears of the people who have to live with the effects of their doubt-filled and guilt-fuelled erosion of the collective wisdom of ages.

That collective wisdom is given shape by institutions, small and large. There are large institutions, such as the law, Parliament, the Church and the monarchy, and small institutions, such as civil society, families and Burke’s “little platoons”. Sadly, what Burke said about order being the foundation of the good life and a working civil society—

“Good order is the foundation of all things.”—

is a far cry from where Britain is now, as a result of the work of that liberal establishment over the decades.

Too much of urban Britain, in particular, is either brutish or brutalised. When good order and the rule of law is eroded, it is the vulnerable who suffer most, for they, unlike those bourgeois liberals who live gated lives, survive on the frontline of crime. Those vulnerable people are suffering at the hands of violent criminals who are punishing them every day, through the fear they cause and the hurt they do.

Yet we are very sheepish now about punishing the culprits. We have learned so little from the time when I studied criminology, almost 40 years ago. We have continued down the road of seeing crime as an illness to be treated, rather than a malevolent choice to be dealt with.

[Kate Green]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will make this point, and then happily give way. The effect of that is to put great emphasis on the culprit and, by nature, less emphasis on the event and the victims of crime. That is precisely what has happened, and I know the hon. Lady could not possibly want to agree with that.

[Kate Green]

I do not disagree at all that people’s lives are made a misery by violent and persistent criminals in their community, but I cannot really agree that we have become less willing to take action against criminals, when the prison population has gone from between 42,000 and 43,000 in the mid-1990s to more than 80,000 today.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady is a very distinguished Member of this House, with whom I have worked in the past, so I do not want to suggest in any sense that I am patronising her. However, that could be a measure of either the scale of the problem or of our response to it, and I suggest that it is much more likely to be the former. I have to tell her that the view that is frequently expressed in this House—I put it this way only for the sake of brevity, because it is a little more complex—that we should place greater emphasis on the way we deal with criminals, rather than focusing on the way we support victims and protect those who are at risk of crime, is at odds with the sentiments of most of our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I mentioned recidivism a moment ago, but since the hon. Gentleman was clearly listening, I cannot have made myself clear. I did not say people who had been to prison once; I said repeat offenders. These may be people who have had other kinds of sentences and then gone to prison, because very often, for a first offence, people do not go to prison; they go to prison for a second or later offence. When I speak of repeat offenders, I do not necessarily mean people who are in and out of prison regularly. It is very important to be precise about these things.

The problem with that kind of policy is not only what it would do to public faith in criminal justice, on which it would have a devastating effect—in its response to the Government’s proposals, Civitas, the think-tank, says that it would unleash a crime wave on hundreds of thousands of citizens—but that it would reinforce the idea that prison cannot work. We have profound problems at present; the Minister is aware of that and has spoken very openly and straightforwardly about it. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate has just alluded to those problems—prisons becoming universities of crime, where people who go in are worsened by the experience, rather than rehabilitated.

Even from the rehabilitative perspective, therefore, prison is not doing what it could, but that is not a good enough reason to say to the public, “We are worried about sending people to prison, because they might get worse, so we will leave them on the streets.” That cannot be the signal that this place or this Government want to send. Let us get our prisons right, not be embarrassed or ashamed to send people there.

[Kate Green]

The point we are trying to make in this debate is that people are going to prison for short sentences. By definition, that is unlikely to be for the level of serious crimes that the right hon. Gentleman rightly says our constituents would be horrified if they thought people could commit and then run around at liberty. He is right that we are talking about, in some cases, persistent offenders. A written answer from the Minister, which I received on 5 November last year, said that in 2017, 6,793 people went to prison for less than six months, having never previously received a community penalty for offences that they had committed. I find that baffling. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that sometimes we are too ready to use custody?

[Sir John Hayes]

All I would say in response to that is that the hon. Lady will have seen the national newspaper this week that showed, shockingly, a picture on the front cover of a smirking criminal who, having committed an offence for the second time, took a selfie of himself outside the court. This was a person who was found in possession of both a knife and cocaine, and had been known to the police for a considerable time. Time permitting, I could give account of many similar stories, and particularly of the police’s frustration when we do not, in their judgment, provide the just deserts I mentioned earlier, which so undermines their confidence. As one policeman said of a similar case, “Why do we bother?”.

Prison is of course about trying to put people straight, but it is also about punishing people for the harm they have done. That is an entirely respectable part of criminal justice, and it is what our constituents expect of us and of the Government.

Privatised Probation System

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely right. The key thing is learning what works and how to do it in a way that works for the Government budget. We are increasingly learning that although it is about treatment programmes, it is also about housing, getting people into employment and dealing with addiction issues. Getting all of this properly integrated from within the prison out into the community will be the key. That is how we will protect the public.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The problems with Transforming Rehabilitation were entirely predicted in 2014, so the NAO report should come as no surprise to Ministers.

I want to ask the Minister about women. There is a great deal of evidence that many CRCs are not offering good-quality tailored provision to women. As he and his ministerial colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), know, women’s centres do a much better job. Will he now consider removing women wholly from the remit of the CRCs and making full use of the provision in women’s centres to address the causes of their offending behaviour?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very interesting proposal. The London CRC attempted to do it by setting up a programme designed for women entirely separate from the male programme. There were challenges, however, that were then criticised by the independent inspector of probation. I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady and talk through some of the complexities of doing that.