Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and John Hayes

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Where I can agree to a degree is that I certainly accept that there are people with mental health problems in prison who, frankly, should not be. The right hon. Gentleman refers, I think, to secure psychiatric units, where there is also a shortage of places. That is another issue that the Government need to accept on the basis of the past 10 years.

I heard what the Justice Secretary said about specialist officers, particularly those in de-radicalisation programmes, but we are tolerating a rise in physical attacks on our prison staff. That cannot be fair to them and it will not produce a constructive environment in our prisons. From September 2018-19, there were 33,222 assaults, including 23,592 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and 10,059 assaults on staff. Levels of self-harm were also the highest ever recorded.

The Bill, I am sure the Justice Secretary will argue, will deal with the immediate crisis of the next few weeks, but he must plan ahead. The crisis in our criminal justice system does not end with our prisons. We also need the best possible probation services and the best possible supervision. In 2014, the Government part-privatised the probation service. I do not think it is unfair to say that it was an absolute disaster. The Government had more than 150,000 people supervised by private community rehabilitation companies and just left the high-risk offenders to be managed by the National Probation Service. The chief inspector of probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, said last year:

“The system which sees private firms monitor criminals serving community sentences is ‘irredeemably flawed’”.

She is right. No wonder the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s predecessor had to announce last year that the supervision of all offenders on probation in England and Wales was being put back into the public sector.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point about capacity, and that seems to be reasonable. Early release—scores of convicted terrorists have been released early since 2013—adds to demand on capacity and he is making a case that we should address that. On that basis, I am sure he would want to support the Secretary of State in taking that pressure away, building morale and, as he described, allowing the police to exercise capacity more effectively.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Well, yes. I have made absolutely clear my support for the measures before us today. My point is simply this: today we will deal with an immediate crisis. What the Bill will not do is deal with the broader and deeper problems we have that will need to be dealt with in the months and years ahead. The National Audit Office announced that the botched part-privatisation of probation cost the taxpayer nearly £500 million. Frankly, it is time for good sense and consistency in policy making at the Ministry of Justice.

The independent review of the Prevent programme, which I secured in the previous Parliament—I think I debated it with the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes)—has been announced, but there is no reviewer. We are now a year from the point at which the Bill that he and I debated received Royal Assent. Lord Carlile was appointed but resigned before Christmas, because he had already expressed views on the programme, and the Government have hardly shown urgency in appointing a replacement. It is high time that they did. I appreciate that that is not the responsibility of the Justice Secretary, but I am sure he will pass on the message to his Cabinet colleagues that the reviewer must be appointed and the review must begin, take place and make recommendations. Today really must be a day when that focus on rehabilitation comes and we turn the page away from a decade of problems in our criminal justice system.

One of the recommendations made by Mr Acheson was for an independent adviser on counter-terrorism in prisons. I would go further and press the Justice Secretary to provide external scrutiny and assessment of the deradicalisation programmes across our prison estate. In that way, this House can regularly assess the position, and we will not again be in a situation where we are taken by surprise or are responding on the hoof. We cannot tolerate our prisons becoming breeding grounds for extremism, and we need to ask searching questions.

I hope that this emergency legislation will pass without a Division. Alongside it, I hope that the Government will now invest in the very best expertise available in counter-extremism and tackle the crisis in our prisons. It is only by doing that that the Government can truly say they are doing all they can to keep our streets safe, and in that we will be holding them to account.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and John Hayes

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

Now I might really test your patience, Dame Eleanor, because my hon. Friend invites me to articulate a Burkean case against natural rights, which I will be happy to do, but perhaps on another occasion. Given that I offered the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) the opportunity to have a debate about this, that might be the very occasion. Perhaps my hon. Friend will agree to be my seconder in such a debate—what a humbling experience that would be for me and an elevating one for him. I hope we will do that on another occasion and we can indeed explore why so many people take for granted the existence of natural rights, as though they spring from the ether. As a Christian, of course I could not possibly take that view, but now is not the time to get into that discussion.

On the specifics of the amendment, my hon. Friend makes a belt-and-braces case, as I said, for a notwithstanding clause. The shadow Minister made the point that that was fundamentally disagreeable and made a constitutional argument against the notwithstanding clause per se. However, he also went on to say that he believed the Government were right, or were likely to be right, in asserting that they were clear that, in any case, this legislation did not contradict any existing rights legislation. We heard that today from the Secretary of State and again subsequently in the debate: the Government do not feel that the proposed legislation is likely to be successfully challenged, as my hon. Friend suggested it might. We have to assume that the Government have taken legal advice to make that claim.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I should make one thing clear: obviously, I have not seen the legal advice the Government are relying on, which I am sure they have sought, quite appropriately. I merely point out that that is the Government’s view and that is what the Secretary of State has put in the Bill. On that basis, article 7 was not engaged—I want to make that point clear to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes).