Detainee Inquiry

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will not try to paraphrase the report, but that is one of the things it raises; there were about 40 occasions when our officers were raising queries about the treatment of detainees they were involved with and sometimes joining in the interrogation of. The question is: how were the queries handled? Not all of them appear to have been referred to Ministers, but these are the issues that are raised. This does underline that the agents involved were perfectly alert, and had the usual sensitivities, to the fact that the foreign officers with whom they were liaising were not necessarily following the same standards that we would wish. The thing I should emphasise, and should have emphasised more as I have gone through, is that this is what the consolidated guidance put out by the Prime Minister underlined when he put it out; it provided absolute clarity, for the first time, about how such concerns should be handled, and gave much better and clearer guidance to the officers themselves about what they should do if they are becoming concerned about the conditions in which detainees are being held.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

These matters are clearly difficult for the police to investigate. My right hon. and learned Friend, like everybody else, is clearly frustrated at the amount of time this is taking. In his discussions with the Home Office, has he come to the conclusion that this is due to a lack of resources, of leadership or of co-operation with other Governments? What can be done to speed up the police investigation?

[Mr Clarke]

I wish I could find some way of speeding up the police investigation—I have wished that several times in the course of the past two or three years. But it is a fundamental principle that police investigations in this country are not subject to political control, and it is just not possible for a Government Minister to start intervening and questioning or second-guessing what the police are doing. I am assured that the police are carrying out thorough investigations and I only have estimates of when they might finish. That is why we have come to the situation, which has dissatisfied some of my colleagues, where we really have to get on and inquire into this, and the best way of proceeding is to put our new ISC to the test.

Bilderberg Conference

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Hollobone

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that I do not think I am being too indiscreet when I say that the subject of the future of the European Union and Britain’s participation in it did come up from time to time over the weekend. People from many countries have quite a strong interest in that subject, so it was discussed, but under Chatham House rules, and I can assure him that no conclusions of any kind were reached.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Is my right hon. and learned Friend the only British citizen on the steering committee, and who does he think his replacement will be?

[Mr Clarke]

The other members at the moment are John Kerr and Marcus Agius, and I do not know who my successor will be. We are slightly overrepresented on the steering committee, which is probably a reflection of the quality of debate in this place and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

We have begun work to improve access to local criminal justice statistics. For example, criminal justice and sentencing statistics are now broken down to court level and are available online. In terms of individuals, pre-sentence reports provide the court with details of a defendant’s offending history and compliance with any previous sentences.

[Mr Hollobone]

That is not quite what I am after. Although it is important to have judicial independence, surely it is not beyond the wit of the Department that each judge and each magistrate should be given an annual report card on the effectiveness of their sentencing decisions. If they have given out a string of sentences and the convicts have reoffended regularly, that judge or magistrate will know that something is wrong with their approach.

[Mr Clarke]

As I said, we have begun work, and that is certainly an interesting suggestion. A massive amount of data would be involved in providing every judge and magistrate with full information about everybody they had ever sentenced, but I agree that we should consider the feasibility of doing so. I gather that someone in Seattle advocates that and has given interesting evidence to the Select Committee on Justice.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad to say that there is an agreement on the transfer of prisoners within the European Union—[Interruption.] Yes, it was negotiated by the previous Government and it will come into force in November this year. Off the top of my head, only two countries, Ireland and Poland, have derogated from it and are delaying implementation. I look forward to the proper transfer of prisoners to all the other countries. It means that British criminals will be brought to our prisons to complete their sentences and that foreign prisoners will be returned elsewhere. We will see who benefits. It is obviously very sensible from every point of view.

We constantly consider with the UK Border Agency the quicker removal of prisoners who are due for deportation. I concede to the UKBA that deportation is not always as simple in individual cases as it is made to sound. It is difficult to get some countries to accept former prisoners, and it is, of course, difficult to get some people to go to other countries. Sometimes, their very identity or nationality is the subject of constant dispute.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Should not judges and magistrates be made aware of the success or otherwise of their individual sentencing decisions, by being kept informed of the reoffending rates of the offenders whom they send down?

[Mr Clarke]

There is a lot of work going on about the transparency of justice and the publication of local figures. We all need to know more detail about what is being done at local level and what the consequences are of the administration of justice in our localities. I am sure that all the best magistrates would welcome some feedback and more information about what is happening as a result of their sentencing policy.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

One day I will convert the hon. Gentleman. With great respect, I think that he has been a great leader in his community in tackling the problem of drugs in Bassetlaw, and it is partly down to his efforts that it has been tackled in that part of Nottinghamshire much more forcefully than ever before. We are going to send repeat offenders to prison; no one is going to stop punishing people who keep offending. It is not a key part of the legal system in north Nottinghamshire that we should keep redundant courts, although we are still consulting on the two courts in his constituency. The foresight that he has shown on the problems of drugs will not be frustrated by our attempts to improve yet further the drug rehabilitation programmes that young people get in his constituency. This is not all about money, and that has not actually been the way he has approached this issue in the past few years either.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Last year, more than 20,000 offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions, and more than 2,500 offenders with more than 50 prosecutions or cautions, avoided a jail sentence. Will my right hon. and learned Friend’s proposals not simply make that matter worse?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not think that they will make any difference, really—[Interruption.] No, do not start misquoting me. If the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) cannot find anything that I have said to disagree with, I hope that he will not start misquoting me in order to find something. I would need to work through those 2,000 cases, and my first question would be to ask what the further offence was that they were up for. I am sure it was not parking. People who have previously committed a crime are not always sent to prison again, and the first thing we have to ask is how serious is the matter for which they are before the courts again. I hate to cast doubt on my hon. Friend’s statistics, but a lot of the statistics used across this whole field as the basis for these arguments are hopelessly unreliable. We are not reducing punishment for serious crime, and we are not letting anybody out of prison. We are using prison as a punishment, and trying to prevent the kind of people that he has described from reoffending over and over again, because that is in the public interest.