Lammy Review

Debate between Alex Chalk and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady, for whom I also have a great deal of respect. In December 2017, the Government response to the Lammy review said, at paragraph 8:

“We have…sought to mirror the pragmatic, ‘doable’ tone of the Review by setting out how we will address the underlying issues behind recommendations where there are real constraints that prevent us from following it to the letter.”

If the statement was in isolation—for example, “Have you implemented the change in the name of the Youth Justice Board?”—then, yes, the hon. and learned Lady would have a point, but what was made clear throughout was that the Government were determined to implement the policy objective even if doing things to the absolute letter would not necessarily be the best way of achieving that. I am proud of the fact that we have gone beyond a lot of what was stated in the Lammy review, so we have more data, more transparency, and a better way of drilling down on manifest injustices. Of course there is more to do, and this report has set us on a much better path.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

The Lammy review was an important piece of work and it was also a wide-ranging one. As my hon. Friend knows, chapter 2 of the review deals with the Crown Prosecution Service. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) sensibly made some proposals for improvement within the CPS, but he also said this:

“Other CJS institutions should learn lessons from the CPS, including openness to external scrutiny, systems of internal oversight, and an unusually diverse workforce within the wider CJS.”

My hon. Friend knows that the criminal justice system is an ecosystem and it is important that all parts work with the others, so will he do what he can to make sure that those lessons are learned within the system?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend, who makes a characteristically pertinent point. If we want people to have confidence in the criminal justice system, they need to have confidence in the people who are bringing forward the prosecutions. That means that we need to make sure that it is diverse and representative. I must say that I know it is sometimes fashionable to kick the CPS—I am not suggesting he is doing this—but overall it does an excellent job and takes the issue of diversity extremely seriously. We want to empower it with the tools through the data to promote, entrench and enhance diversity.