Ministry of Justice Spending

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and particularly the Chairman of our Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill).

I want to repeat some of what previous speakers have said. The Department has seen its budget slashed by more than 40% since 2010—the greatest cuts of any Department. A great man, Winston Churchill, said, “You judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners”. He would not be very proud of the way we have treated them in recent years. Last year, the Ministry of Justice’s total budget was £8 billion—just 1% of total Government expenditure, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said—but the cost of reoffending has now risen to £18 billion a year.

I want to focus on prison and probation. I want this to be considered against a backdrop of increased demand, which is not in the MOJ’s control. We have seen budget cuts of 40%. Planned efficiencies taken into account in budget planning did not materialise. We have also seen cohort changes: historical sex offenders and elderly people with ill health issues requiring care, attention and hospital escorts for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, rheumatism and mental health illness. It is shameful to see these people in prison. We have young people with learning difficulties, autistic people, people with drugs and substance addiction and women, particularly young mums, separated from children. There is the issue of short-term sentences. Ten per cent. go through the gates—thank God it is 10% and not more. Those women could be treated much better outside, with the support they need to keep them away from crime. They could be rehabilitated and it would save us money as well.

It has been chaotic in the prison system. Most of the prisons are Victorian. There is no planned maintenance programme. Everything is reactionary. It is an inefficient use of what capital resources we have. The capital allocation for 2009-10 was £716 million in real terms. In 2010-11, that changed to £63 million, a real-terms cut in the allocation—it is important to remember that this was a one-year allocation—of £654 million. That was a 91% cut in the first year. The annual allocation steadily reduced from £63 million a year to just £33 million a year, a real-terms cut of 47%. It was as low as £13 million in 2015-16, a real-terms cut of 50%. This is capital investment not going into this old estate that people are living in. We are supposed to be rehabilitating them so that they do not reoffend.

In 2016, the Government announced £1.3 billion for a prison estate transformation programme to create 10,000 prison places by 2020. That was then revised to 2022. Two new prisons were to be constructed and four were to be redeveloped. In 2017, the planned maintenance programme was postponed. Two of the redevelopments were put on hold. The building of a new prison in Wellingborough has started and the construction of a second, Glen Parva, is planned for 2020.

Here’s the interesting part: the MOJ agreed with the Treasury that the capital funding not being utilised could be used to fund current spending—that is day-to-day resource allocation—and £385 million was transferred from capital to resource. This was a one-off, so it won’t be there next year. Once it is spent, it is spent. It is not sustainable. It was essential to providing the day-to-day services and to paying the salaries of people in the prison system. There was not enough resource allocation.

The £385 million could be seen as a further cut to planned, shall we say, capital investment in our prisons, on top of what we talked about earlier. In 2019, we had an announcement of £2.5 billion, which we were told was capital investment and would be spent on creating modern and efficient prisons. I sincerely hope that it is, because previous allocations have not been spent. The £385 million went over to resource spending and the £230 million under the previous Prisons Minister was spent on increasing prison capacity. This leaves just £685 million of the £1.3 billion allocated for new spend. The outturn—actual spending—on allocations is down to 39% in some years and that is not good. It is all very well to make the announcement, but if the money is not spent, we have an announcement with nothing to show for it.

The basic conditions in our prisons are absolutely shameful. Most of them are Victorian. The cells are deplorable. People come out brutalised. Some of them have to remain locked up for 23 hours a day. What chance is there of rehabilitation?

The cost of keeping young people locked up—and that is what they are, locked up—is much higher. In one young people’s prison, Werrington, it is just pounds less than £125,000 a year. I am sure that there are much better ways in which we can help those young people to become better citizens and contribute to society when they come out of prison. The prisons are violent, ineffective and overcrowded. The cost of imprisoning an adult is £40,000 a year. We need to do something radical to reduce the prison population, so that people who need to be and should be in there can be rehabilitated, and those who need help outside and can be dealt with outside are dealt with outside.

The spending has been chaotic. As we heard earlier, the rate of reoffending is at 48.3%, and the rate among those serving short sentences is 64%. Someone serving a short sentence is much more likely to go back to prison. The revolving door of reoffending goes round about 11 times. The reoffending rate among young people is 65%.

I beg the Minister: please get someone to sit down and do some strategic planning and thinking, because at the moment it is just a case of hand-to-mouth spending and putting sticking plaster over where it is needed. There is a lot of money, but it is not being used efficiently because this is not being planned.

Dangerous Driving

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her excellent introduction and the work that she has obviously put into the debate. I pay tribute to other hon. Members who have contributed.

I praise the three people who have made the debate happen: Rebecca and Glenn, who are present in the Chamber, and Violet-Grace, whose tragic and senseless death is the reason for it. I praise everyone who has signed the petition, and I praise the St Helens Star and the whole St. Helen’s community for supporting Rebecca and Glenn’s tireless work to get their e-petition signed, to get the debate and to prevent something similar from happening in future.

Rebecca and Glenn are asking for the law to be changed and for a sentence that fits the crime: “Life sentences for Death by Dangerous Driving”, as the petition states. That will hopefully deter others from reckless driving, so that what happened to Violet-Grace does not happen to another child—or, if it does, so that those responsible receive a sentence that fits the crime they have committed and that gives them the time necessary to reflect, to be rehabilitated, and to have proper regard for, consideration of and understanding of their actions.

The law must be improved for victims and survivors. In the case that we are discussing, the defendant’s barrister objected to the parents reading out their full impact statement and argued that the defendants would find it too upsetting. The judge accepted that, so the CPS barrister gave the parents a copy of the victim impact statement with the parts that they could not read out in open court highlighted. The whole purpose of the victim impact statement is the impact on the victims and the survivors, not the defendant. Guidance should be given to the judiciary that the overriding consideration is for the victim and their family, not whether the impact statement may upset the defendant.

We are asking for a sentence that fits the crime. Violet-Grace was a beautiful, angelic-looking four-year-old child. Some hon. Members may find the following upsetting—my family have not been able to say it or hear it. On Friday 24 March, she was simply walking home from pre-school and calling on her aunty and her four-year-old cousin with her nan. Her nan had lifted her up to carry her safely across the road, but had not put a foot on the road when she was struck by a stolen vehicle, which had been recklessly driven at 83 miles per hour in a 30-mile zone before it collided and mounted the pavement.

The stolen car that struck them was fitted with false numberplates and had a cloned key. The driver had no licence or insurance. The Independent Police Complaints Commission later reported that there had been complaints about the car being driven dangerously since noon that day. The driver and his passenger then fled the scene, running over Violet-Grace, who had been thrown 50 yards away. The passenger ran back to the car, stepping over the child again, to retrieve a bag that he needed. The whole incident was witnessed by her four-year-old cousin.

A fireman working in the area heard the noise and saw two young men running at speed. He ran to the main road, found the scene and Violet-Grace, and worked with a local dentist to resuscitate her. The driver fled the country and travelled to Amsterdam to “clear his head” by getting some weed. He then fled to Alicante.

Glenn Youen received a phone call at work to tell him to get to Whiston Hospital urgently. Rebecca, who was working in Warrington Hospital, received a similar call. She set off driving—sobbing—and spotted a parked police car. She got out, banged on the window and pleaded for help, so the police took her under blue light to Whiston Hospital. Violet-Grace’s injuries were horrific, and it was essential to move her to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. Rebecca and Glenn were told that she could not survive her injuries. They knew her as a loving, caring child, always wanting to help others. They courageously decided to donate her organs to help to save other young children’s lives. They say that that is what Violet-Grace would have wanted.

It was suggested that Rebecca get into bed with Violet-Grace, but she was reluctant to do so with all the tubes and equipment around her. She was persuaded to do so. She prayed and pleaded, “Please breathe, please breathe.”

Violet-Grace passed away with the local priest, Father Tom Neylon, saying prayers around her. He checked the time: it was 11.58 pm on 25 March. He said, “Ah, today is the day that the angel Gabriel came down to tell Mary she is to have a baby called Jesus.” The family wept. Violet-Grace was the angel Gabriel in her school’s nativity play. She was so pleased, and she used to dance around singing, “I’m the boss of the angels, I’m the boss of the angels.” Her kidney and pancreas were donated to save the lives of two other young children.

Nan, a nurse who trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital, suffered numerous injuries and was in a critical condition. It was a miracle that she survived, but she had life-changing injuries. Grandad, a university lecturer, has had to retire to take care of her—all that while the driver was in Amsterdam clearing his head.

Earlier, I said that all we are asking for is a sentence that fits the crime that has been committed. The two men responsible for Violet-Grace’s death will serve less time in prison than she was alive—less than four and a half years. In fact, by pleading guilty, and with good behaviour, the driver might be out even sooner. I ask everyone here today, is that truly a sentence that fits the crime that was committed? I believe that most, if not all, of us would say no. Clearly, the 164,632 people who signed the petition would agree.

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

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for her work on this issue. I reiterate what she says about the Youen family. As well as our sympathy and solidarity, and the outpouring of love for the family from our community in Warrington, Wigan and across Merseyside and the whole north-west, there is a deep sense of anger about how they have been treated and a determination to make sure no other family is ever treated like that.

[Ms Rimmer]

I thank my hon. Friend for saying that.

The current laws on sentencing for dangerous driving are simply not good enough. We need to equip our judges with sentencing guidelines that enable them to provide that key tenet of our judicial system: justice. The Youens actually praised the judge and said his hands were tied. I am sure some will say, “What constitutes dangerous driving? What if I sneeze and lose control of my vehicle? Will I now face those increased sentences?” My simple answer is no. We are talking about giving judges the option through Sentencing Council guidelines to issue a higher sentence where they deem it to be just. A judge will consider all the evidence provided to them and pass a sentence appropriate to the crime committed, whether it be the minimum or the maximum sentence in the guidelines, as with any other crime. I and many others are arguing that the maximum sentence that a judge can issue for dangerous driving is far too low.

For gross negligence manslaughter, judges have the option to issue life as the maximum sentence, with a range of sentencing options below it—one to 18 years. I do not see why dangerous driving should have a lower maximum sentence than gross negligence manslaughter. Both involve a disregard for the lives of others, and as we see too often, both can lead to the death of innocent people. An individual’s direct, reckless and callous actions can lead to the death of another. Stealing a car and driving 83 mph in a 30 mph zone can cause life-changing injuries, and the suffering and death of an innocent four-year-old child. How can we not give our judges the option to deliver a sentence at least on a par with gross negligence manslaughter for dangerous driving?

Another issue that I wish to raise on behalf of Rebecca and Glenn, and that I believe falls within the scope of this debate, is concurrent sentencing. Rebecca, Glenn and many others think it is unacceptable that criminals can serve two sentences at the same time. They describe it as “buy one, get one free”. The crux of this issue is that the current legal system does not adequately explain to victims what is happening, and thus it does not appear to be delivering the justice it is supposed to deliver.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I just cannot imagine the pain that Violet-Grace’s parents feel. As my hon. Friend indicated, two years ago the Government promised to introduce life sentences for death by dangerous driving and create a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving. Many families across this country—including my constituent Mr Addy from Burscough, whose daughter was mown down in 2016 by a driver who received a fine of £500 and no jail sentence—are waiting for that promise to become law. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need not only appropriate punishment but effective deterrents for dangerous and careless driving, excessive speeding and reckless joyriding? We need it now; everyone has waited long enough.

[Ms Rimmer]

I accept what my hon. Friend says; people are feeling that.

I call on the Minister to explain to my constituents why concurrent sentences are used, and to investigate how our judicial system explains its practices to victims. I and others are not calling for a knee-jerk change to the law. We are arguing not for punishment for the sake of punishment, but merely for a sentence that fits the crime that has been committed. We are under no illusions about the impact that the change would have on preventing dangerous driving. Changing the sentencing for dangerous driving may only deter a few people from driving dangerously, but those few people changing their behaviour could save lives like Violet-Grace’s. If it saves more lives, surely it is worth it. It will also send a clear message to those who might consider driving dangerously that we as a society see it as morally abhorrent.

Some may not change their behaviour and may cause death by dangerous driving, but by changing the sentencing guidelines we will finally deliver justice for families such as the Youens and others who are affected by such recklessness. It cannot be acceptable that individuals such as those who struck down Violet-Grace and tore open the Youen family can serve sentences shorter than the time she was alive. They have sentenced Rebecca, Glenn and Violet-Grace’s little brother Oliver to a life of grief, and denied them the joys of watching her grow up and experiencing the joyous occasions and events that a maturing daughter gives to a family. That loss can never be repaid in this life.

In October 2017, the Government pledged to increase sentencing for death by dangerous driving to life, but we have not seen any meaningful movement on that issue in nearly two years. I therefore call on the Minister to set his civil servants to the task of getting the laws on dangerous driving changed. That gap in our legislation and our justice system must be filled sooner, rather than later.

I understand that issues such as Brexit put a strain on Departments and Parliament, but we must not allow this vital issue to be lost in the miasma of current politics. Rebecca and Glenn want the change in the law to be made properly and as quickly as possible. The Government have a duty to get it done. The longer we leave it, the longer our judicial system will fail to deliver the justice that the Youens and the other families we met today deserve. Although we can never heal the wound that has been opened, we must improve justice for victims and survivors and show that we care for them.

Prisons and Probation

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire). The excellent speeches that have been made by Members on both sides of the House have shown how important justice is. It is, I believe, the cornerstone of democracy, and it needs to be respected and resourced as such. The current Transport Secretary clearly did not share that view when, as Justice Secretary, he accepted a 40% cut in the Justice budget at the start of the austerity regime.

Prisons have been reduced to places that brutalise offenders, and have become more like universities of crime. Her Majesty’s inspectorate has reported some of the most disturbing prison conditions that we have ever seen, conditions that have no place in an advanced nation in the 21st century. Prisoners are living in squalor. The inspectorate described conditions in the UK—one of the largest economies in the world—as squalid.

I recognise the improvements that were begun by the previous Prisons Minister in the 10-prison project, but we as a Parliament and the Government need to take a long and concerted look at how those improvements can be replicated in the many prisons that have not benefited from the same focus. We also need to take a long and concerted look at whether privatisation of the prison system is really the appropriate approach. Will the private sector ever share best practice with its competitors, which may well be competing for one of the services that their opponents are providing? I do not think so.

Sadly, the Government’s policies are not limited to the prisons themselves, but extend to the probation service. Irreparable damage is being caused to that system by the breaking up and part-privatisation of the UK’s award-winning probation service, which is served by proud, professional probation officers who are committed to working to help to reintroduce people to society. Their careers have been smashed. The way in which professionals have been treated in our justice system is so unfair.

Owing to the actions of the previous Justice Secretary, one in five people who are released from prison have no fixed abode. The community rehabilitation company, the private sector provider, is issuing tents to people who are released from prison. Some are currently sleeping on 24-hour bus services, and some are even being directed to church graveyards. How can anyone look at the current prison and probation service and see anything other than crisis and failure?

We have new people in; the last Prisons Minister was a good one and I am told we have a good one now and a good Secretary of State. I call on them to be brave; I call on the Government to respect justice as a cornerstone of democracy and to fund it as such. The whole of society benefits from a good justice system, yet at present it is being taken to its knees. I call on the current team to be brave and shout out for more resources and respect justice for what it is: a cornerstone of democracy.

Legal Aid for Inquests

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

Before I start, may I say that it is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Main?

I want to begin by saying how much I empathise with the aim of an inquiry, which is to find the truth of the matter when someone has died whose safety has been entrusted to the Government—truth that, when found, can provide the families of the bereaved with much-needed and sought-after closure; that simply tells them how and why it is that their loved ones are no longer here; and that provides a foundation of understanding about what mistakes may have been made and how we can learn from them to ensure that what happened may never happen again.

Yet what we find in the present system of legal aid is a great barrier to the goals of truth and understanding. The aim of the bereaved families, more than any other party in an inquest, is to ensure that what has happened to their loved ones cannot happen again, and that nobody must again feel the pain of losing somebody they love in the same, preventable way that they did. However, under the present rules, bereaved families are more often than not forced to fund their own legal representation in these inquiries.

Under the current financial eligibility rules, the threshold for receiving legal aid for an inquest is only a gross monthly income of £2,657—a gross income of just under £32,000 per year. Those earning more must pay for rent, food and all the other basic essentials of life, as well as what can be the crippling costs of legal fees in inquiries that can take months, if not years, to complete, as in the case of the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, the Morecambe Bay investigation and the Harris review. All those inquiries provided great insight into how the state needed to make changes to protect the lives of those who had been placed into its care. However, those who cannot cover the costs face the prospect of representing themselves in proceedings.

When talking about the Hillsborough disaster, Bishop James Jones described how families who had no public money provided for their legal expenses, or who were self-funded, would be forced to pool their resources. At one of the mini-inquests, one solicitor represented the interests of over 90 families. At the generic inquest, one barrister represented 43 families. One of the families was represented by the mother of the person who had died. What a harrowing experience for a woman who had lost her son to be forced to question witnesses and untangle legal proceedings just to find out what had happened to her child.

Compounding that is the fact that all those other families had no representation whatever. Their voice was stolen away from them because they did not have the financial means to represent themselves. It is simply not right, and it is simply not justice.

When we compare that to the funding that the Government or linked organisations have in these kinds of proceedings, we find that, unlike the bereaved families of those lost, the Government are able to bring the full might of the public purse to bear on these proceedings. On 3 April, the Secretary of State responded to my question about public funding for bereaved families. He stated:

“We must remember that there are ways in which we can be sympathetic to and supportive of bereaved families without ending up in an arms race of who has the most lawyers, the most expensive lawyers and so on”.

If we must use the analogy of an arms race, then at present the Government can spend money on the legal equivalent of tanks, helicopters, fleets and so on, while the families of the bereaved are left with the legal equivalent of a stick. It is all well and good for the Secretary of State to argue that we must not enter an arms race, when the Government sit in the position of power, possessing the finance to bring those legal arms to bear.

The Secretary of State also stated that he was “keen to ensure that” inquests

“continue to be essentially an inquisitorial process, rather than adversarial”.

However, I and many others in this place and beyond would argue that the process is already adversarial. While the nature of the inquest itself is not adversarial, we often find that the Government and other organisations do not fear the judgment of the coroner’s court, but that of the court of public opinion.

[Jo Stevens]

Quite often in an inquest a person will be gathering information, and that will be the only venue in which they can do so in advance of potential litigation. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important for families to have lawyers with them to enable them to carry out that process?

[Ms Rimmer]

Absolutely, and that is why I am here today. The Government and other organisations approach proceedings with the aim of damage limitation, instructing combative legal teams to defend state policies and practices, rather than to seek the truth that I spoke of earlier.

There are ways in which we can overcome that imbalance. First, automatic, non-means-tested legal aid for families would both help to level the playing field and prevent families from being burdened with crippling legal costs. It would also avoid forcing families to jump through confusing bureaucratic hoops during what can be one of the most traumatic periods, if not the most traumatic period, in their lives. Non-means-tested legal aid is provided in care and supervision proceedings in which children are to be removed from their parents, and in certain cases under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which demonstrates that there is a precedent.

Secondly, funding for families must be equivalent to that enjoyed by the state bodies, public authorities or corporate bodies represented. Ensuring like-for-like spending between the parties involved in inquests would not only further help to level the playing field for bereaved families, but would prevent the arms race that the Secretary of State alluded to in his response on 3 April. The parties mentioned would be able to spend more on lawyers only if the bereaved families received the same funding. As mentioned earlier, bereaved families do not have the means with which to outspend the Government.

I ask the Government to heed the recommendations made by the 1999 Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the 2003 independent review of coroner services, the 2004 Joint Committee on Human Rights, the 2007 Corston report, the 2015 Harris review, the 2016 report of the Chief Coroner to the Lord Chancellor, the 2017 Angiolini review, the 2017 Bach commission, the 2017 Hillsborough review, the 2017 report of the Chief Coroner to the Lord Chancellor, the 2018 Joint Committee on Human Rights and the 2018 Independent Office for Police Conduct consultation response. I ask them then to finally make the reforms necessary to give bereaved families the tools they need to achieve the fundamental goal of inquests, which is to find out the truth—the simple truth.

Disclosure of Youth Criminal Records

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

Let me begin by emphasising two guiding principles for the United Kingdom’s judiciary. The first is:

“It shall be the principal aim of the youth justice system to prevent offending by children and young persons.”

The second is:

“Every court in dealing with a child…shall have regard to the welfare of the child.”

I do not believe that a single hon. Member present would disagree with those principles.

The Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report acknowledges the over-representation of BAME and looked-after children. Since my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has superior knowledge, has already spoken about the incredibly important issue of the over-representation of BAME children in the youth justice system, I will focus on the issues that the Committee raised about discrimination against looked-after children in the judicial system. The sum of the Government’s response to the discrimination against those children is acknowledgment but nothing else. As for children with mental health issues or issues such as autism, they appear, sadly, to have been forgotten in the Government’s response, as they have been in the Government’s justice policy. I do not believe that that is acceptable.

Looked-after children in care are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They have been removed from their homes because life there is no longer beneficial or safe for them, and many have been abused physically or mentally—often both. It is difficult for adults to come to terms with abuse, but for children it can often be impossible to understand what has happened to them and how they feel. It is often those who are closest and most trusted by these children who commit these abuses. These young people deserve care and understanding, but unfortunately the current system of disclosure of youth criminal records does not deliver that.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising such an important point. I declare an interest as the father of a formerly looked-after child. Does my hon. Friend agree that the phrase “looked-after” is one of the biggest oxymorons in our language? Of all the cohorts of young people we have discussed this afternoon, none makes as great a case for changing the criminal records regime as those children, who have been let down the most often—not just by their original parents, but by the state.

[Ms Rimmer]

I agree absolutely. I feel very passionate about this. “Looked-after children” are the most abused and ignored in our society, and they continue to suffer throughout life.

The Criminal Justice Alliance told our Committee that children in care are far more often criminalised than those in family homes. In family homes, minor infringements and indiscretions are dealt with in the home, but children in care do not have such a readily available support system. The records system does not provide context for the young person’s actions, nor does it distinguish between severity of crimes. Just for Kids Law cited the case of a nine-year-old who had been physically abused and transferred to a care home, where he would frequently react badly and assault members of staff because of the high levels of abuse that he had suffered as a child. With help, he managed to do well at the home and when he was moved into foster care, but the charges of common assault against staff that he received during that traumatic time will follow him for years—a constant reminder of the abuse that he suffered and an additional barrier to flourishing as an adult, along with the many other barriers that looked-after children face. He is likely to face difficulties in work, education and social housing applications because of his record.

The impact that a caution can have in later life is often not explained to children. Convictions are often for offences that sound relatively serious, even when the behaviour is at a relatively low level. Just for Kids Law told us that children often focus on the fact that they are receiving a caution rather than on the category of offence. In some cases, for example, children have accepted cautions for non-filterable offences of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, whereas if their case had gone to court, it would have received greater scrutiny and they would have been far more likely to face a charge of common assault. Such cautions will limit people’s access to the job market, because a simple yes/no tick-box is often all the opportunity they will have to state their case in an application, and DBS checks will not provide the full context of their conviction. Barred from employment, many will find their options limited and may be pushed into reoffending in adulthood.

The issue extends to children with mental health issues or issues such as autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, who can struggle to understand what is being said to them or the ramifications of what they are agreeing to. Children with dyslexia may struggle even to read the documents placed in front of them. The director of CRB Problems gave us the example of a person who suffered from autism and entered the judicial system at a time when we did not provide the help or care that we do today and when support was hardly available at all. He received two convictions that cannot be filtered under current rules—a failure of our past system and a failure in how the disclosure of youth criminal records works today.

That example highlights a key problem with the disclosure of youth criminal records: it holds people prisoner to the understanding that we had in the past. People who might be treated with more compassion and understanding as a child today are held to a different standard as adults. I am not talking just about people charged five to 10 years ago, but about people who were charged as far back as the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. In those days, our understanding of the issues that children with mental health issues face was miles behind what it is today, as we know from the National Police Chiefs Council’s evidence on the policing of children and young people.

For all those reasons, it is important for the Government not just to acknowledge the findings and recommendations in the Justice Committee’s report on the disclosure of youth criminal records, but to act on them. I am sure that Ministers will stand up and argue that they have taken action, but I will pre-emptively respond by quoting from the written evidence submitted by the Greater Manchester Youth Justice University Partnership. Statement 3, on “The effects of reforms made in 2013 and 2014”, reads:

“Available evidence suggests that recent reforms have not had a significant impact.”

To put it plainly, we need to be doing far more.

I conclude by going back to the two guiding principles in our judicial system that I set out at the beginning of my speech: that the principal aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by children and young people, and that every court that deals with a child must have regard to the child’s welfare. Along with our report and with the many people and organisations that provided evidence, I argue that we are not meeting those two principles in how our youth disclosure system works, particularly for children with mental health issues and for children who are or have been looked after. Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I am not saying that to accuse the Government or score political points, but to implore the Government to work with us and other key organisations to deliver the reforms that are needed now, not in a few years’ time—reforms that would bring dramatic and meaningful change for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Bailiffs: Regulatory Reform

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and to follow speeches on the important matters raised. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) for securing the debate. As we have heard, rogue bailiffs are a blight on the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and the issue affects those with debt from household bills rather than from consumer credit. People who are struggling to pay their council tax or energy bills—the essentials in life—are having increasing problems with bailiffs.

There are serious, structural problems with how some bailiffs operate, and are allowed to operate, and 850,000 people contacted by bailiffs in the past two years have experienced law breaking. As my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) said, just 56 complaints have been launched with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service. The complaints system is not fit for purpose and lacks teeth. When someone complains directly to a firm, there are no statutory guidelines about how complaints should be reviewed, or about the sanctions or compensation that should result. The process is long-winded, confusing and inaccessible, and rarely leads to any real consequences for the bailiff involved. However, rule breaking by bailiffs has consequences for those they contact. Refusal to accept affordable payment offers is a huge problem—almost one in four people contacted by bailiffs in the past two years had an affordable payment offer rejected.

My constituency suffers from income poverty and has one of the highest levels of suicide. There are also high levels of prescriptions for anti-depressants. One of my constituents, a 65-year-old woman, has already had her personal independence payment stopped and is subject to the bedroom tax. Her gas supply has been capped and she has rent arrears, and has received an offer from the housing association. She now has to pay back a council tax debt at an amount that is simply unaffordable to her. After bailiffs knocked at her door, she was frightened and agreed on the spot to pay the amount suggested. This woman sleeps on a couch—she does not own a bed. As a direct result of bailiff action, my constituent’s mental and physical health has deteriorated.

Almost two in five of those contacted by bailiffs in the last two years experienced some sort of intimidation. I call on the Minister to act as quickly as possible and to take steps to alleviate the problems faced by my constituents and those who are suffering across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

T2. Last year, my constituency had the third highest rate in the country of complaints against bailiffs. Since 2014-15, Citizens Advice has seen a 74% increase in people seeking help with how to complain about bailiffs. Will the Minister commit to exploring the need for an effective mechanism, as well as the independent regulator, for registering complaints against bailiffs?

[Lucy Frazer]

As I mentioned, we are looking into this, and we will, I hope, very shortly launch our call for evidence, which will look at a number of issues.

HMP Liverpool

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The quick answers are yes, yes, yes and yes. My hon. Friend is right on those points, and I am sure that the Minister will respond quickly. It would be bizarre if recommendations from the Care Quality Commission or Ofsted were ignored in the wholesale way in which those of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons have been ignored in the past, and that absolutely needs to change.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the Chair of the Justice Committee, which I have recently rejoined. I also pay tribute to the Minister for the quick actions that he has reported. However, we must not forget why we find ourselves in this situation.

I am pleased about the announcement—made some time ago—of the recruitment of an extra 2,500 prison officers, but we must bear in mind that we lost 7,000, so there is still a gap of 4,500. The prison population figures are falling now, but they did go up. The nature of the inmates changed somewhat. The health needs of those imprisoned for historical sexual abuse, for instance, were obviously different from those of the other, existing prisoners, but the budget was not increased to deal with such differences. There has been a drain on resources. At the same time as the loss of the 7,000 prison officers, the drug Spice appeared, and became big business. There were fewer resources with which to manage the inmates, and morale went down with the loss of those prison officers. When recruitment did begin, a baggage handler could be paid more than one of the new recruits. It is important that when we do recruit—and we are recruiting now—those people are trained properly, not for a week but for months. Resources are what is needed. Of course money is important, but there is also the issue of how that money is used. As far as I can see, there has been absolutely no contract management. When I initiated a debate on mental health in prisons, I noted that there appeared to be no communication between the prisons and the health service. Contracts were awarded and money was given, but there was no monitoring of those contracts.

As the Justice Committee said, and as its Chair has said today, this is about systems and about getting them right. However, it is also about resources. It is about recruiting the right people, training and valuing them.

[Robert Neill]

I welcome the hon. Lady—in fact, I will call her my hon. Friend, because that is what she is—back to the Committee. I am very glad that she is with us once more.

It is true that we must look at all the issues. There is no single silver bullet. We need a comprehensive plan, and I urge the Government to work on that. I take the Minister’s assurances at face value, because I believe that he does have a desire to achieve what is needed. I look forward to working with him, on behalf of the Committee, to ensure that that happens. Staffing, resources, training, morale, the fabric of the establishment, facilities management and proper contract management are all part of the mix that we need to address.

Mental Health in Prisons

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered mental health in prisons.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this intolerable crisis. Suicide and self-harm in prison have reached record highs. In 2016, 119 prison suicides were recorded—the highest number since records began—and there were 41,103 incidents of self-harm in the year to June 2017. Again, that is the highest figure on record. With staff numbers dropping off and some parts of the prison estate unfit for human habitation, it is clear that the Government need to take decisive action to fulfil their statutory duty of care. Some prisoners may have had a mental health problem on entering the criminal justice system, but most prisoners’ mental health deteriorates in prison, because of the conditions imposed on them.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. Before getting into the detail of what happens in prison, my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that many people have mental health problems before entering prison. Does she agree that when the police identify at interview, as they are required to do, that someone is under the care of mental health services, they should be required then to make contact with that individual’s mental health practitioner to get full information on their suitability for custody?

[Ms Rimmer]

I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. What she describes is one major component that is missing and would help to resolve the situation. People are locked up in a small cell for the vast majority of the day, subject to a poor diet and living in inhuman and dirty conditions. Those who were previously healthy often develop depression, anxiety and violent tendencies because they are in effect caged, with little food and no stimulation.

Since March 2017, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, formerly NOMS—the National Offender Management Service—has been responsible for the management and operation of prisons in England and Wales and for ensuring that the prison environment is safe and decent. The Ministry of Justice is now responsible for prison policy and commissioning of services in prisons. NHS England is responsible for healthcare in prisons, in terms of both physical and mental health. In 2016-17, NHS England spent an estimated £400 million providing healthcare in adult prisons in England. It is estimated that £150 million of that was spent on mental health and substance misuse services, although the exact figure is unknown. All those bodies have a fundamental duty of care, yet as the Public Accounts Committee damningly concluded, they do not even know where they are starting from, how well they are doing or whether their current plans will be enough to succeed in caring for prisoners with mental health needs.

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

Does my hon. Friend accept that another problem is that those bodies do not know where people are going post-prison? I have in my constituency the excellent and nationally reputed Nelson Trust; it has a women’s centre in Gloucester. Its big bone of contention is that it gets very little access to the women before release. With all the mental health problems, drug abuse and victim support issues, it needs access in prison before release. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is crucial?

[Ms Rimmer]

I absolutely agree and will come to that point later in relation to communication.

The Government’s efforts to improve the mental health of people in prison have been poorly co-ordinated. Information is not shared across the organisations involved and not even between community and prison GPs. For example, NOMS advised NHS England to commission mental health services for a male prison at HMP Downview and then decided to open it as a female prison. Six months later, healthcare was still catching up with those changes. What a shocking failure of government! Clearly, quality systems of working and communication are urgently required between prison management, HMPPS, policy makers and commissioners at the Ministry of Justice and the commissioned contractors for health services and NHS England.

It is clear that not enough has been done to prevent increases in deaths in custody. That was the subject of last year’s Joint Committee on Human Rights interim report entitled “Mental Health and Deaths in Prison”. The report homed in on why progress has not been made on preventing deaths in prison, despite the numerous insightful and comprehensive analyses produced on the issue following the Woolf report in 1991. Those include reports by Lord Harris of Haringey, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office, the Howard League and the Select Committee on Justice. Those are just some of them. I hope the Minister would agree that there is no lack of knowledge of or information on the problem, as it has been well reported.

While the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry was in progress in March 2017, the Government introduced the Prisons and Courts Bill. Following its Second Reading, the Joint Committee wrote to the Government, proposing key amendments, but unfortunately the Dissolution of Parliament got in the way. The Committee instead published an interim report in May 2017. In November, the Chair of the Joint Committee, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), wrote to the Secretary of State for Justice, expressing her disappointment at the non-inclusion in the Queen’s Speech of the prisons Bill promised before the general election and noting that he had said he would take some administrative steps. The Chair stated in her letter to the Government that the Committee’s findings showed that concrete legislation was needed, and outlined clear steps forward, to ensure that prisoners’ humanity is protected and their welfare safeguarded. The Joint Committee’s proposals included a statutory minimum ratio of prison officers to prisoners, a prescribed legal maximum amount of time for prisoners to be kept in a cell and the provision of a key worker for each mentally ill prisoner.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has a long-standing and serious interest in these issues. Does she agree that one thing that would help in this area would be training prisoners in work in which they could get jobs on release, to fill shortages out in the community, and that that is part of giving people hope and a purpose, which can help to improve mental health?

[Ms Rimmer]

I absolutely agree. Undoubtedly, having work would keep people safer outside. It would give them a purpose and be a way of keeping them sane outside, so that they did not go through the revolving door back to prison.

The Chair of the Joint Committee requested, in her letter of 30 November 2017, a response to both the interim report and the letter by 8 January. That has not happened. The Government are refusing to act and therefore showing contempt for the lives of their detained citizens. The Justice Committee’s report of May 2016 stated that the Government had been reluctant to acknowledge the serious nature of the operational and safety challenges facing prisons and the role of their own policy decisions in creating them. Little appears to have changed.

We know that just 10% of the prison population in England are in treatment for mental illness, but recent inspections show that 37% report having emotional wellbeing and mental health problems.

[Kate Green]

Those figures are shocking. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that it is even more distressing that 70% of women in custody have mental health problems.

[Ms Rimmer]

I absolutely do. The institute of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at King’s College London estimates that more than half of prisoners may have common mental disorders, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and believes that 15% of prisoners have more specialist needs. Those are significant figures, but guesstimates are not good enough. The most commonly used estimate, which is that 90% of prisoners have mental health issues, dates from 1998— 20 years ago. The Government have no idea of the scale of the problem. The Ministry of Justice must address that to plan services and meet needs.

The National Audit Office has recently stated:

“Government does not collect enough, or good enough, data about mental health in prisons, which makes it hard to plan services and monitor outcomes.”

It particularly criticised NHS England for the data collected, which

“do not measure outcomes for prisoners, continuity of care or service quality.”

How damning! This failure to monitor poor mental health levels and the mental health services provided in prison simply would not happen in the outside world. It is costing our citizens their wellbeing and sometimes their lives. Let us remember, it is also costing the taxpayer.

The lack of knowledge about prisoners’ mental health exists at all stages of the cycle: on entry to prison, a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green); during their stay in prison; and after they leave. This means that future prison needs, present prison needs and community needs, and consequently budget requirements, cannot possibly be accurately planned for. For instance, what consideration was given, and finance afforded, to the detained historical sexual abusers? These are elderly people with age-related health needs, such as heart conditions, dementia, diabetes and cancer. The money came from the prison health budget and the issue occurred at the same time as spice arrived. Consequently, there was less money for mental health drug treatment at the most crucial time.

NHS England does not even know what it spends on mental health in prisons. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us—although I know he is a new Minister.

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

No, I am not. I am the last man standing.

[Ms Rimmer]

I apologise.

The Government’s own prisons and probation information states:

“Prisoners get the same healthcare and treatment as anyone outside of prison.”

That is demonstrably not the case in our prisons at present. In reality it is clear that our prisoners are struggling with ever-increasing levels of poor mental health and are actively let down by the system. It is impossible to reach any conclusion other than that the Government’s failure to act adequately is exacerbating what is approaching a mental health emergency in our prisons.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry last year noted that the body of research in the last three decades has overwhelmingly found that the common feature of deaths in custody is a prisoner’s mental health. Figures published by the Ministry of Justice in November of last year confirm that it will have received a “real-terms cumulative decrease”—in other words, a savage cut—of 40% in funding. That is £3.7 billion in a decade by the end of 2019-20. Who is suffering most as budgets are cut to the bare bones? It is prison staff on the ground, working in unsafe conditions and at increased risk of attack; the prisoners in their care; and society as a whole. The cuts have led to dangerous situations in our prisons and have cost lives.

The Howard League report of 2016, “Preventing prison suicide,” damningly concluded that

“Staff shortages have increased the risk of suicide”

in our prisons. There was a cut of almost 7,000 frontline officers—austerity measures. Was there a risk assessment prior to the prison officer reduction of 7,000? I very much doubt it. I would like to see it, if there was one.

I welcome the Government’s pledge to recruit an additional 2,500 staff by the end of 2018. Unfortunately, only half of these have been recruited so far. I believe this promise will not be sufficient to tackle the issue at hand—the facts speak for themselves. There is a serious retention problem: loss of prison staff is outstripping recruitment at a quarter of prisons, often the most dangerous ones. It has been found that prisoners now miss an average of 15% of medical appointments, due to a lack of staff to escort them. The sheer lack of prison staff at present means that prisoners’ physical activity is greatly restricted as their safety outside cells cannot be guaranteed. Some 31% of prisoners at local prisons report spending at least 22 hours a day cooped up in their cells as a result of inadequate staffing and this surely must affect their mental health.

The Howard League reported last year that two children and young people a week call its advice line stating that they have problems accessing prison healthcare. I am advised of two shocking cases. One example was a child who was kept in isolation at a children’s prison for months awaiting transfer, despite prolific self-harm. He was kept in a bare cell with a transparent door for observation. He was judged by a psychiatrist as not medically fit to be segregated, but was kept in almost total isolation for several months before finally being transferred to hospital. Another child, a 15-year-old with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was not consistently given his medication. He was isolated and self-harming, even attempting suicide. It was only after the Howard League raised concerns on multiple occasions about his self-harm and severe needs that his pills were consistently given to him, and it was only when he made a suicide attempt that any action was taken to move him to a more suitable placement. I consider that an inhuman and barbaric way to treat two of our children. Suffer not little children: surely the fifth richest country in the developed world could and must care for such children better and work to rehabilitate them.

Prison psychiatrists overwhelmingly feel that service cuts have adversely affected their ability to provide care for prisoners, which is particularly concerning when there are such inadequacies in transferring acutely unwell prisoners out of these establishments. There are cases where the contractors employed by NHS England failed to carry out the services they were obliged to. In two cases, their costs were not recouped—how damning. These are people denied their care, and public funds gifted. The Government target of 14 days for eligible prisoners to be admitted to a secure hospital from prison was met only 34% of the time in 2016-17, 7% waited for more than 140 days, and one person waited for more than a year in misery. This is cruelty.

The staff are inadequately trained and only 40% receive refresher training. The importance of the screening process has not been sufficiently emphasised to staff. Staff do not always enter data on the “risk of suicide” and “risk of self-harm” of prisoners in their records of these screenings. How can needs be spotted if they are not identified and recorded? As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned earlier, this should take place at the police station. Even when the details are recorded, there simply are not enough prison officers to monitor this adequately.

Evidence received by the Public Accounts Committee bears testimony to the fact that the increase in suicide and self-harm in our prisons is in part due to the use of drugs. I acknowledge the work of Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service—the number of drug seizures has increased rapidly with nearly 3,500 services in our prisons in 2016, following the legislation making spice illegal, and a new test has been introduced to detect psychoactive drugs with trained dogs to sniff out these substances.

The prison estate itself is also in a deplorable condition. Over a quarter of it was built before 1900 and the majority was not built with healthcare in mind. We have all seen the case of HMP Liverpool in recent weeks. Some of the estate there was in such bad condition—dirty, rat-infested and hazardous—that it could not be cleaned at all. The state of that prison was described as one of squalor, in 21st-century Britain. It is not right that we house prisoners in such horrendous conditions. Surely the mental health of anyone living in such unsanitary circumstances would suffer.

With the Government’s brutal cuts showing no sign of slowing down, and the need for staff still outstripping supply in many places, what will this mean for prisoners with mental ill health in the future? I fear there will be no substantial improvement for prisoners facing this plight any time soon. It is in everyone’s interest to improve this situation, not least because effectively treating prisoners with poor mental health is essential to reducing reoffending and ensuring that those who live with mental health problems can do so more cohesively in our society and communities.

We have a fine example of where decency works, and works well: HMP Askham Grange operates on this principle. It refers to prisoners as residents, and has built an atmosphere of respectful relationships. Its reoffending rate is 6%, while latest Ministry of Justice figures show a national average of a 29.6% reoffending rate within a year. There are six prisons with executive governors. Is there any improvement in mental health outcomes in these prisons? But a bigger question remains: should people with mental health conditions be in our prisons at all? Is it as simple as a psychiatrist making a judgment that someone is, as it is sometimes said, “bad, not mad,” and should therefore be incarcerated?

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Is it not also true that prisons have sometimes become dumping grounds for NHS failure, that sometimes in the NHS it is cheaper to let the person go to prison than to take responsibility for their treatment and that that is part of the problem we face?

[Ms Rimmer]

Sadly, I accept my hon. Friend’s point.

It is clear that when people who are already prisoners are acutely mentally unwell, they are being kept in situations that are doubtless of further detriment to them and brutalise them. Evidence obtained by the Joint Committee on Human Rights made clear that acutely mentally unwell people are too often

“inappropriately being sent to prison as a ‘place of safety’”,

and stated that there is an

“urgent need to resource and make better use of community alternatives to prison for offenders with mental health conditions, particularly those who are currently given short sentences”.

I hope that the Minister heeds the points I have made and I am sure that hon. Members will add to them, as the interventions have done. I ask him to commit to looking into the recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Public Accounts Committee. We are at a crisis point in our prisoners’ mental health, and Government should not neglect their duty of care for those who are incarcerated in our prisons.

I welcome the steps taken by the Government to address the issue of spice in prisons, but that is just one component of the mental health emergency and does not tackle the root problems. The Ministry of Justice needs to review policy and commissioning, HMPPS to review the management and operation and NHS England to review the whole system of collating data on health, including mental health needs, and the provision of support. These citizens are owed parity of esteem, quality healthcare and the opportunity for the greatest possible mental health wellbeing both in and out of prison. I call on the Minister to address this as a matter of urgency. The Government have a legal obligation, a moral responsibility and a financial duty to treat these mentally ill people with respect, dignity and humanity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Rimmer]

I thank all Members from right across the House and all parties, and the Minister for his obvious commitment and desire to do things. We wish him well and look forward to the vast improvements in our prisons and in safeguarding for our prisoners, and to the fruitful lives they live in society when they leave prison healthy.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered mental health in prisons.

Dangerous Driving involving Death: Sentencing

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered sentencing in cases of dangerous driving involving death.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your wise chairmanship as ever, Mr Hollobone. As hon. Members and the Minister will know, this debate is timely, given the publication on 16 October of the response to the Government’s consultation on maximum sentences for particular driving offences. Our debate today is inevitably and rightly informed by the changes that the Government announced yesterday, but like many other Members, I sought this debate in response to a case in my constituency in which the perpetrator was convicted after pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving. As a former Minister, I understand and sympathise with the fact that the Minister will not be able to comment on individual cases, but my aim is to use this tragic case as an example to question whether the current sentencing regime is fit for purpose, to discuss some of the Government’s proposals and changes, and to discuss how this case and ones like it need to lead to a change in policy.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I am sure that many will know of the sad case of four-year-old Violet-Grace Youens, who was killed this year and whose grandmother was left seriously injured when they were returning from their nursery. A stolen car crashed into them at 80 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone in St Helens. Two young men were in the car, one driving and one not. One of them ran past dying Violet-Grace laughing, making his getaway. The other posted a video from his prison cell celebrating his birthday; it depicts drug-taking and misbehaviour in prison. One will understand why Violet-Grace’s parents are deeply distressed and have no faith in our justice system. The boy who was celebrating his birthday received a 10-day extension to his sentence for posting the video. I have read these proposals with interest and welcome them, but please consider those who may not have been on drugs and drink at the time.

[Kevin Brennan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Obviously, that is a horrendous case and a great deal needs to be done on our prisons policy. It is not for us to debate that here today, but there is much to be done to improve the current state of affairs in our prisons, and I sympathise with her constituents and their families.

I want to talk about Sophie Taylor, a 22-year-old constituent of mine; she was a young woman in the prime of her life, with much to look forward to. She was described by her distraught mother, Jackie, as a loving and caring individual. I pay tribute to Jackie for somehow finding the strength to come and talk to me about the case, and to talk to the media about her horrific loss and her subsequent experience of the criminal justice and court system.

During the early hours of the morning of 22 August 2016, Sophie and her friend, Joshua Deguara, were chased through the streets of Cardiff by her ex-boyfriend, Michael Wheeler, and another driver. I will not comment on the case of the second driver, because elements of that case might still be sub judice, but I will focus on the actions and sentencing of Michael Wheeler, who entered a guilty plea and whose case is not subject to appeal.

During the chase, Sophie called 999 because she was scared and felt unsafe. She was on the phone, talking to an operator for 24 minutes. As that duration shows, the chase was a sustained and deliberate action by Mr Wheeler. During that time, his car reached speeds of up to 56 mph as he chased Sophie and Joshua into narrow residential streets. Then, he turned his car to the left into Sophie’s, causing her car to crash into a block of flats. The collision caused Sophie a catastrophic brain injury, which led to her death. Joshua suffered life-changing injuries, including a brain bleed, a shattered pelvis and an injury to his leg that has since led to its amputation. News reports stated that Mr Wheeler drove away after the crash before parking nearby, where he was arrested.

The judge who heard the case at Cardiff Crown court described what happened that night as

“nothing more than a pack chasing its prey”.

He added:

“You were trying to ram her off the road and you did”.

It is also worth noting that Sophie had made several reports to the police and visited the police station in the weeks leading up to her death about the problems she was experiencing with Mr Wheeler. The chase was an act of decisive, prolonged and co-ordinated aggression, and in my view, one which should have led to an even more serious charge than causing death by dangerous driving, but the judge was clear, saying

“you were consumed by a self-righteous and jealous rage, chasing her down to frighten her and teach her a lesson”.

We can only imagine Sophie’s family’s loss and the stress and torment that they have endured throughout the legal process. As I said, I met her mother, Jackie. Understandably, she is absolutely devastated by what happened, but she is equally determined to do what she can to prevent other families having to go through what her family has suffered.

As I said, I completely understand that the Minister cannot comment on individual cases. However, the details of the case that I have outlined are extremely pertinent in discussing the sentencing of cases of death by dangerous driving.