Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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James Cartlidge
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She talks about the backlog being a problem before the pandemic, but I have to point out to her that the backlog was lower going into the pandemic than it was when Labour was last in power. There is always a backlog of cases. There are always outstanding cases. The point is that when the pandemic hit there was a complete and total collapse in our courts, because they were closed, and then we had two-metre social distancing and they took a long time to recover. But they have recovered and the backlog is coming down. She talks—[Interruption.] I am answering the hon. Lady’s question. She talks about funding. I can confirm that we put in almost half a billion pounds of funding into the spending review. That will ensure, for example, that this year, for the second year on the trot, we are removing the ceiling on sitting days in the Crown court. Provided we reduce the disruption we are experiencing now, we should be able to continue to reduce the backlog and deliver swifter and better justice for our constituents.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor claims that protecting women and girls is his No. 1 priority, yet victims of domestic abuse face an invasive legal aid application that turns many women and girls away. The recent means test review is a step in the right direction, but it still does not go far enough and leaves many vulnerable women representing themselves in court. Will the Minister outline what steps he is taking to increase legal aid accessibility for victims of domestic abuse and violence?
James Cartlidge
I can confirm, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, that our consultation on the means test threshold would result in 2 million more people having access to legal aid in civil cases and more than 3 million people having access in the magistrates court. In both cases, that could of course include domestic abuse. An important point in that consultation is that we are proposing that where property assets are in dispute in a domestic abuse case in relation to the means test and the capital test for civil legal aid, they would be removed. That underlines again, not just in criminal legal aid but in civil legal aid too, that the Government are putting in significant investment and driving very positive reform.
Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme
Afzal Khan Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
Very much so. Of course my hon. Friend knows that, in addition to the ACRS, we also have the ARAP scheme on which MOD officials and armed forces personnel continue to work very tightly. Although we have set the limit at up to 20,000 under the ACRS, the ARAP scheme sits alongside it and has no such limit. International comparisons are difficult, but the equivalent figure for the United States, for example, would be over 100,000 and we do not believe that any other country, thus far, will exceed 10,000. We believe we can be proud of what we have achieved, but we very much recognise that there is a lot of hard work ahead of us to ensure that people who are evacuated to the United Kingdom are given the warm welcome we have rightly promised.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is worsening by the day. Huge numbers of people do not know where their next meal will come from as they endure harsh winter conditions, and Islamic Relief is one of the few organisations working on the ground to provide emergency relief. Despite this, eligibility for ARAP was narrowed by the Home Office in December. The Government have a moral responsibility and duty to protect all vulnerable Afghans. Will the Minister now reverse that decision?
Victoria Atkins
May I take this opportunity to thank not just the hon. Gentleman but his local councils in Manchester, which have done a great job of looking after people in bridging accommodation? I know the councils also want to take people permanently.
On ARAP, I believe the Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), used the phrase “necessary housekeeping.” We had to clarify the rules and eligibility criteria to remove uncertainty on who qualifies. By making it clearer for those who think they might be eligible, there will be more consistent decision making. Spouses and partners, along with children under the age of 18, will qualify as ARAP dependants under the immigration rules and will be eligible for relocation if the lead applicant is successful.
Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme
Afzal Khan Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
As I would say to any other Member of this House, if a request for a meeting has not been acted on, please speak to me at any time, because I will ensure that it happens. I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I have to say that I do not recall having that conversation with him; however, I will certainly act on what he says now.
As for the timeframe, the Ministry of Defence has been evacuating ARAP translators since, I think, 2014. It is right that we put even more energy into that effort from April this year, but as I have said, Operation Pitting was the largest evacuation in living memory. We are proud of the efforts of the military and everyone else involved in it, and we now want to ensure that the work that they did in Kabul is met with a warm welcome here in the United Kingdom.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
We are two months on from the crisis, but many Afghans still have no certainty about their future. Amnesty has accused the Government of moving “at a snail’s pace” in their efforts to assist at-risk Afghans. I want to request two things of the Minister. The first, which a number of colleagues have already touched on, relates to the unaccompanied children in Doha. There are some 200 of them. America, Canada and other countries are dealing with this, but there are 15 children there who have connections with Britain. Can they be looked at urgently? Secondly, there are many family members who are stuck because they are children or husbands who are British citizens, but the wife is not. This also needs to be dealt with urgently, and the family route needs clarification.
Victoria Atkins
On the matter of unaccompanied children in Doha, we have to ensure that the family members who have been put forward are who they claim to be, or who people have claimed them to be. We also have to ensure that they are able to take the child or children and look after them. This is taking a bit of time, and it is very much being done from a place of wanting to ensure the safety of those children once they are in the United Kingdom. As I say, we are very much working on this. In relation to the hon. Gentleman’s other comments, I do not feel that I can add anything to what I have already said.
Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Kit Malthouse
My right hon. Friend raises a critical issue for us in the prevention of crime, behind which so much substance abuse lies. While she is right that the charitable sector has a huge role to play, so do we. She will be pleased to know that earlier this week I had an interview with one of the first recipients of our alcohol sobriety bracelets, who has, for the first time in his memory, been alcohol-free for the last two months. He said to me—it was very moving—that it had literally saved his life. As well as doing good to his society, we have done good for him.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) [V]
Robert Buckland
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he perhaps misses the whole point of the judicial review—independent review—which is all about making sure that the current ambit of administrative law is in the right place, in the sense that we want to make sure that our judiciary are not brought in to a merit space or a political arena. As for individual cases, it is clearly stated in the terms of reference—and I will say it again—that the Government utterly support the right of citizens to challenge their actions or omissions by way of judicial review.
Road Safety and the Legal Framework
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. Let me take the opportunity to contextualise the debate by showing the real impact of unsafe road behaviour when appropriate action is not taken. We should all aim for zero deaths and injuries on our roads and pavements, and the only way to achieve that is by supporting road safety with practical investment and appropriate legislation.
On Saturday, I attended a beautiful service at St Martin’s church at Birmingham’s first World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. I was extremely honoured to have been invited to the event by RoadPeace. It was touching to remember all those who have lost their lives. Since the day was first commemorated 25 years ago, more than 30 million people have died on the world’s roads, including in the horrific scenes in my constituency last year in which six people were killed.
To bring focus to the issue and to the need for strong and fair judicial structures around road safety, I would like to read an extract from the poem that I read this weekend alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey):
“This is not the way things were supposed to be
To stare at a plaque with the words ‘Remember me’
And be filled with thoughts of you.
It had seemed that time was limitless, and there was still so much to say;
It had never occurred that one so full of life could be confined to yesterday.
Back then, road deaths were just stories to us,
small segments on the news,
And we never quite understood all the fuss;
Until we became the next family to walk in those shoes.”
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
In one terrible 24-hour period, three young people and four others were seriously injured on Greater Manchester roads. Our road traffic laws are failing to deliver justice or promote road safety. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must review road safety in its entirety and ensure that we have measures to protect vulnerable road users such as those who have been killed in Greater Manchester?
Preet Kaur Gill
I absolutely agree.
The poem that I have just read was written by Lucy Harrison, the sister of my constituent. She lost her brother when a car going at 93 mph hit him as he crossed the road. Having had him taken from them, his family had to go through a trial and the Court of Appeal before the driver who caused the crash, and who had failed to stop, was given a sentence of four and a half years. The driver is now due to be released after serving just two years.
One point that Lucy has raised is that people talk about the incident as an accident. These crashes are not accidents. Road safety legislation is in place to make sure that people feel safe on and around our roads. If someone breaks the law and commits a crime on the road, we must call it what it is. She is therefore calling for tougher sentencing and a change in society’s perception of death by dangerous driving.
Any road policy designed to keep all road and pavement users safe, regardless of their mode of transport, requires an effective road justice system. A year on from the announcement of tougher sentences for drivers who kill, the Government have failed to introduce legislation. Families of road crash victims across the UK are still waiting for justice. As Lucy says, people need to see that her brother
“was a human with a family, not just a statistic, because it can just be like another road death where he became a statistic or a story.”
On behalf of Lucy, Tony Worth and the many other families of victims, I urge the Government to deliver justice for road crash victims and keep the dangerous drivers off the road.
Joint Enterprise
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this debate and on the way in which she has gone about representing her constituents, many of whom I met a few weeks ago, who are caught up in this terrible nightmare. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who has championed and taken up many of these issues consistently in this House over the past few years.
The doctrine of joint enterprise is a common law doctrine very much derived from judicial decisions, not legislation passed by Parliament. As has been said, it is now time for Parliament to reflect hard on where we have arrived at and on the fact that this debate is essentially about juveniles—people as young as 14 who are looking at spending significant stretches of their lives behind bars. This debate is about what we have come to describe as “gangs”. We do not use the word “gangs” when we are talking about the Bullingdon club; we do when we are talking about black youth in constituencies such as mine or white youth in constituencies such as Salford in north-west England.
That is why it is so important that we look hard at a doctrine that stretches back to 1846, when two cart drivers engaged in a race that killed a pedestrian. Throughout the 20th century, further court judgments clarified the joint enterprise doctrine in the case of murder. Even if there is no plan to murder and one party kills while carrying out a plan to do something else—for example, robbery—the other participants can still be found guilty. The use of that doctrine has been criticised by academics, by legal practitioners and by the Justice Committee. I want to associate myself with all those remarks and, in particular, with the fantastic work of JENGbA over the past few years.
Following the review that I did for the Government, it is important that we recognise that in black, and particularly Muslim, communities, there is tremendous concern about our judiciary. In those communities, the judiciary do not appear to be independent and justice is not perceived to be blind. That is why I was so disappointed that, when I proposed a target in my review, it was roundly rejected by our senior judiciary and by the Government, although a target is not prescriptive but merely a goal.
I am concerned that the independence that our judiciary say they have, and rightly have in our democracy, means that they are hugely detached from the communities that we are talking about. They do not have to defend their actions in Tottenham town hall or Manchester city hall. They are never present in those communities. They do not have the kinds of surgeries that we do. It is really important that they reflect hard on the common law tradition. In other jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, there has been progress on proximity and diversity in relation to the judiciary, but in this country we appear to be stuck. On this occasion, it is absolutely clear that the common law makes no common sense. That is why I referenced joint enterprise in relation to black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in my review.
The offence of joint enterprise has long been justified, by Ministers of both Conservative and Labour hue, on the basis that it sends a wider social message. I will not quote the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), a former Justice Secretary—hon. Members will recognise that I do not need to; they will know what his views would be—but let me quote Lord Falconer. He said of joint enterprise in 2010:
“The message that the law is sending out is that we are very willing to see people convicted if they are a part of gang violence—and that violence ends in somebody’s death. Is it unfair? Well, what you’ve got to decide is not ‘does the system lead to people being wrongly convicted?’ I think the real question is ‘do you want a law…as draconian as our law is, which says juries can convict even if you are quite a peripheral member of the gang which killed?’”
I want to say that the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer got it wrong, and the perception in the sort of communities we are talking about is that this is very wrong. Joint enterprise raises significant issues of miscarriages of justice, which must command the attention of this House and of our wider justice system.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I want to put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend for the work he has done with his review. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who represents a neighbouring constituency.
This issue has also touched the lives of my constituents. Yesterday, I spoke to Louise Otway, whose son was sentenced to 30 years under joint enterprise. I am concerned by two issues, as a former serving police officer in the Greater Manchester police and as a practising solicitor. My first concern is that, although the Supreme Court has said that the law has taken the wrong turn, nothing has been done to put that right, which is not acceptable. Secondly, as is becoming clear from listening to my hon. Friends, BME and working-class defendants are over-represented, with the use of gang narratives playing into the stereotyping and targeting of these groups. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential we have greater transparency, through the official statistics, about the make-up of joint enterprise defendants?
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend’s point is exactly right. The issue is: what would happen if the principal’s intent was graver than the accessory’s? In all the cases that have been mentioned, that is absolutely the case. What would happen if the outcome of whatever act the principal carries out is far graver than the accessory was aware of? Getting into questions about the foresight and intent of a young adult is next to impossible, given all that we know in modern times about child psychology, so it is absolutely right that young people should not be convicted in those cases.
Mental Health in Prisons
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Imran Hussain
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Obviously, it is an issue that is very close to him, as it relates to his constituency, but it is also of concern to us all, and I hope that the Minister will listen and respond.
As recognition of mental illness in society increases, with a greater understanding of just how damaging it can be, so it does in prison. However, prisoners have a much greater likelihood of suffering from mental illness than the general populace, with one in three prisoners estimated to be suffering from mental illness.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I will also be very brief. One of the causes of concern is the impact on black and Muslim prisoners. Reports from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and from Dame Anne Owers say that negative outcomes, stereotyping and discriminatory treatment are consistently experienced by Muslim and black prisoners. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister could take a number of steps to help address that? First, religion and ethnicity should be recorded on all clinical records. Secondly, the uptake and outcomes of mental health services in prison should be examined by religion and ethnicity. Thirdly, mental health literacy and religious literacy training should be provided to all prison officers.
Imran Hussain
My hon. Friend is right to point out some of the particular issues regarding black, minority ethnic and Muslim prisoners. I will come on to the broader recording issues, but he makes some very important and sensible suggestions.
Unfortunately, most evidence suggests that the estimate that one in three prisoners suffers from mental illness is wildly conservative, demonstrating that it is a real problem, which manifests itself in the self-harm that has risen dramatically in recent years. Many of those self-harming and taking their own life are suffering from a mental illness, representing yet another crisis in our prison system that is spiralling out of control. The Government cannot get to grips with the crisis and are not doing enough to address it. I mentioned one of the reasons for that earlier, when I stated that the number of prisoners suffering from mental illness is just an estimate. There is no accurate record, clear marker, or identifiable way to determine who is suffering from a mental illness in prison; there is just an estimation of the scale of the problem—close to sheer guesswork on the part of the MOJ.
Even when prisoners are screened for mental illness, it is done poorly. Rather than a thorough assessment from a qualified mental health professional, most prisoners are briefly assessed, and given 120 questions to complete in often as little as 10 to 20 minutes. When thrown in with the increasingly toxic nature of prisons, the answers that come back are less than truthful. When the MOJ does not even centrally collect the basic number of prisoners in the prison estate who are suffering from mental illness, and when prisoners are not properly assessed, prisons simply do not know who is vulnerable and who is not, so how can they possibly be expected to provide care for them? The MOJ is failing at the first hurdle—being able to treat mental illness—even before we get on to the treatment itself. That is simply not good enough.
Unfortunately, the conditions after a prisoner has entered are little better, which means that even if they are identified as having a mental illness, they are not always properly treated. The commissioning of healthcare means that mental health provision is disjointed and varied across prison estates, with HM Inspectorate of Prisons finding gaps in primary care, professional counselling and therapies across estates, as well as failings in access to services, gaps in those services, and a failure to follow up on mental health concerns. That is bad, and is certainly not improved by the fact that the partnership agreement between the Prison Service and NHS England, setting out the objectives in providing healthcare to prisoners actually expired in April. There has been a transfer of responsibilities from the National Offender Management Service to the new Prison Service during that time, but I do not buy that as an excuse.
Prisoners with serious mental illnesses are treated even worse as they face extended waits for transfer to secure hospitals. NHS England set a target of 14 days from identification to transfer, but the reality is that prisoners awaiting transfer were reviewed in October 2016, with findings showing that prisoners waited an average of 47 days for their first assessment, a further 36 days for their second assessment, and a further 13 days for the Secretary of State to sign a warrant. That is clearly unacceptable.
All of that demonstrates that the Government are just not getting to grips with the crisis and are not moving to address it. To add to that, Government policy is making it worse. Substantial budget cuts to the Ministry of Justice have been passed on to the Prison Service, with the funding that NOMS received significantly falling. That translates to a reduction of around 30% in operational staff, meaning fewer staff on the wings and on the balconies, and crucially fewer staff who are able to understand individual prisoners and recognise when they are vulnerable. Furthermore, staff shortages and safety concerns have resulted in prisoners being forced to spend longer periods of time locked up in cells. Isolation and confinement are bad enough for those without mental health issues, but they can be devastating for those with mental health issues.
Fewer staff also leads to a rise in the number of drugs getting into prisons, as fewer prison officers results in fewer searches and reduced intelligence gathering and awareness. Drugs, both those of which we have an understanding, such as cannabis and cocaine, and those classed as new psychoactive substances, such as spice, are having a major impact on our prison estates and on the mental health of prisoners. Although the Government are introducing powers to stop the use of mobile phones and are training more dogs to combat smuggling, that is simply not enough without more prison officers.
I will conclude there, as I know the Minister has a number of points to come back on. In summing up, I would say that we have seen mental health care in prisons degrade on the Government’s watch. They must prove that they are serious about addressing it, because right now we see no such evidence. They need to record just how big a problem mental health in prisons is, screen prisoners properly and conduct an immediate review, for without that knowledge, they cannot begin to get to grips with the issue. They need to properly invest in getting prison officers back on the wings and the balconies—but not at the expense of support staff.
Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Dominic Raab)
The Government’s litigants in person support strategy provides a range of practical support and information to those without legal representation before the courts.
Afzal Khan
Senior judges are warning that the growing number of litigants in person is creating a huge burden on judges, lawyers and the litigants themselves. Will the Minister commit to restoring legal aid to the family courts, where this problem is most serious, as Labour has promised to do?
Dominic Raab
We have the LASPO review, which I have described. If I may, I will take this opportunity to point out that since 2015 we have invested £5 million in the litigant in person support strategy, which includes practical support such as: online and self-help resources, access to free or affordable legal advice, and, where possible, legal representation.