Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Alberto Costa Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con) [V]]

The Government have been taking strong action to tackle violence against women and girls by delivering our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021, legislating to protect women and girls from serious violent and sexual offenders and ensuring they spend longer behind bars, legislating to ban upskirting, and delivering additional support for victims during the pandemic, ensuring that organisations and victims have everything they need. I am proud of the strong measures this Conservative Government have taken to improve our criminal justice system, but today I want to concentrate on the appalling decision made by the independent Parole Board to release Colin Pitchfork.

Pitchfork brutally raped and callously murdered two innocent teenage girls in my constituency 30 years ago. The young lives of Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann were horrifically cut short in the most violent of ways. There cannot be any worse sexual offences committed against women than raping and murdering them. The horrific nature of those crimes has left a lasting and deep impression on the collective memory of my constituents, particularly those living in Enderby and Narborough where these brutal crimes took place. The families and friends of Dawn and Lynda continue to endure endless pain and nightmare memories.

The Lord Chancellor will recall that I campaigned and lobbied his predecessor very hard in spring 2018, at the time when Pitchfork was due to have his first parole hearing. At about that time the Parole Board made another awful decision involving John Worboys, which caused outrage across our country. The victims of Worboys were rightly disgusted with the independent Parole Board’s decision. There was a widespread belief that the Parole Board had completely failed to safeguard women’s safety and had acted manifestly irrationally in choosing to release Worboys. The flawed decision by the Parole Board to release John Worboys eventually led to a new reconsideration mechanism; the rules were presented to the House as the then Government’s response to avoid another Worboys-type situation.

The independent Parole Board’s decision on Monday to release double child rapist and killer Pitchfork has caused widespread alarm; I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) for referring to the Pitchfork decision a few moments ago. The new Parole Board rules have very infrequently been considered, and in some respects the Pitchfork decision is a real test of the efficacy of the reconsideration mechanism rules.

There is a strong and compelling argument that the Lord Chancellor does not need to apply the same stringent judicial review grounds in law. He is acting as an applicant, not as an adjudicator. The decision for him to take is whether to refer the matter back to the Parole Board for it to reconsider, not for him to decide the issue in its place. I end with a plea to my right hon. and learned Friend to exercise a discretion that this House gave his office for cases of this sensitive nature, and not to allow the high threshold for judicial review to obfuscate his ability to refer the case back to the Parole Board for reconsideration.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Laura Farris will be the last speaker on four minutes. We will then go down to three minutes, to get as many people in as we possibly can.