Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

That is not a fair characterisation. The capacity in our estate is much greater than when we inherited it—that is point one. Point two is that we have kick-started the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era: £4 billion has been allocated, and we have opened His Majesty’s Prison Fosse Way and HMP Five Wells. HMP Millsike will open next year; we have planning permission for Gartree and Grendon Springhill, and we also have more spaces—rapid deployment cells and so on—coming on at Liverpool, Birmingham and Norwich. We believe that those who commit the most appalling crimes should be locked up for longer. As I say, it was wrong that, in 2010, rapists would be automatically released at the halfway mark. We are the Government who are putting that right.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for building on the work that he and I did together to ensure that the most dangerous and serious offenders spend longer behind bars. The consultation on sentencing in cases of murder concluded a few weeks ago. When can we reasonably expect a response on that sensitive and important issue?

[Alex Chalk]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that it is a sensitive issue. As he knows from practice, those who commit the offence of murder outside, using a knife that is brought to the scene, can expect a starting point of 25 years. However, as the Gould and Devey families have made so powerfully clear, where the crime takes place inside the home, there are very difficult sentencing decisions for judges. The consultation has ended, and I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who has spoken to a number of people about it, as indeed have I. We will respond in the coming weeks, but this matter requires careful thought. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for his work on it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

In a perfect world, the victims of the Horizon IT scandal would have their cases individually assessed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Court of Appeal, but we are not in a perfect world. The scale of the miscarriage of justice is enormous, and there are hundreds of victims who understandably do not want to come forward because they have lost faith in the process. Will my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor now consider the exceptional and unique step of legislating to quash the convictions?

[Alex Chalk]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who speaks with such authority. The circumstances are truly exceptional. When I was a Back Bencher, I went on the record as saying that Horizon is the most serious miscarriage of justice since the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six. But the clue is that there were four in the Guildford case and six in the Birmingham case; we are talking about hundreds of people. The situation is truly exceptional and unprecedented, and it will need an appropriate resolution.

Prison Capacity

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

First, I make it very clear to the hon. Lady and her constituent that we will not take steps that put the British people at risk. The Parole Board will have to make an assessment, in the normal way, on whether a person is safe to be released. If they are considered safe for release, the question is then about the duration of the licence period that remains. IPP effectively continues to hang over them. I am looking at that particular area at the moment, but I want to be clear that it is a sensitive area. We are trying to unwind a very ill-starred policy, but we have to do so in a way that ultimately keeps the British people safe.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for his statement. In so many ways, it echoes and builds on the work we did together in the Department.

I emphasise the importance of building a technologically sound, innovative and direct alternative to short-term prison sentences, which I think this statement presages. We need to get on with that work, because short-term sentences have to be a last resort, as they clearly do not help to cut crime. What more can my right hon. and learned Friend do to redouble efforts to ensure that the prison building programme that started when I was in office is delivered on time, and that we overcome some of the constant barriers of planning permission and other administrative obstacles?

[Alex Chalk]

l pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend. I talked about tough decisions being made in the white heat of the pandemic, and he is the one who said that we will not get rid of the jury system on our watch. My goodness, he was right to say that. It was a tough call, but it was manifestly the right one.

Lest we forget, Five Wells and Fosse Way have opened and HMP Millsike is currently under construction, going alongside Garth, Gartree, Grendon/Spring Hill and other prisons. My right hon. and learned Friend is right that there has been an issue with planning. I have said that, with an additional £30 million, we will identify further sites in 2024 and get the planning permission well in advance, because we cannot have a situation in which these critical building programmes are held up by the planning process. We are changing to a new approach, and we are putting on the afterburners to make sure those prisons get built.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, like me has much experience in the criminal justice system. He will know that deciding whether remorse is real or feigned is sometimes a difficult judgment for a court to make. He makes his point very well.

I think it is right for me to deal at this stage with the concept of whether we should have gone further and introduced a rule of “no body, no release”. Tempting though that might be—and I listened carefully to the arguments—there is a danger that if we proceed too far along that path, we could inadvertently create an artificial incentive for people to mislead the authorities and to feign co-operation or remorse. Of course, in another context, we see the dangers that are inherent in what I have described as superficial compliance with the authorities. There is a fine balance to be maintained, but I think that the Bill as presented maintains it in a way that is clear, that increases public confidence in the system and that makes it abundantly plain to those who are charged with the responsibility of assessing risk that, in the view of this House, this issue is of particular public interest and public importance when it comes to the assessment that is to be made.

I was dealing with the essence of the non-disclosure, and I would add that the Parole Board must in particular take account of what, in its view, are the reasons for the non-disclosure. This subjective approach will allow the board to distinguish between circumstances in which, for example, the non-disclosure is due to a prisoner’s mental illness, and cases in which a prisoner makes a deliberate decision not to say where a victim’s remains are located. This subjective approach is fundamental to the proper functioning of the Bill. It ensures that the non-disclosure and the reasons for it—in other words, the failure by the prisoner to say what they did with the victim’s remains—are fully taken into account by the board when it comes to decision making. It is then for the Parole Board, as an independent body, to decide what bearing such information has on the risk that a prisoner may present and whether that risk can be managed safely in their community. It reflects the established practice of the Parole Board, as included in its guidance to panel members in 2017, but it goes a step further in placing a legal duty to take a non-disclosure into account. This, as I have already mentioned, is part of our intention to provide a greater degree of reassurance to victims’ families by formally setting out the guidance in law.

I turn now to the second part of the Bill, which deals with the non-disclosure of different types of information by offenders. This has been prompted by the horrific case of Vanessa George. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) in his place. Vanessa George was recently released by the Parole Board after serving 10 years in prison, following conviction for multiple counts of sexual abuse against children at the Plymouth nursery where she worked. She also photographed the abuse of those children in her care and sent the images to other paedophiles. This was a horrific case, which those of us who had young children at the time, me included, remember all too graphically. Vanessa George’s crimes have caused widespread revulsion. Her abuse of the trust placed in her by the families of the children she was meant to care for and protect is shocking. Their pain has been compounded by the fact that the children she photographed cannot be identified from the images, and that she has refused to disclose their identities to the authorities. All the families involved have been left in a truly terrible limbo, not knowing whether their child has been a victim.

Again, we are seeking to respond by stipulating in law that such appalling circumstances must be fully taken into account by the Parole Board when making any decisions on the release of such an offender. Clause 2 of the Bill will amend the release provisions that apply to an extended determinate sentence that has been imposed for the offence of taking or making indecent photographs of children and, as in clause 1, we will place a statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider the non-disclosure of information about the identity of a child or children featured in such images when the board makes a public protection decision, including one to release the prisoner. The provision will apply when the Parole Board does not know the identity of the child or children in such an image but believes that the prisoner is in a position to disclose it and has chosen not to do so. It is this non-disclosure and the reasons for it, in the view of the Parole Board, that must be taken into account before any release decision is made.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I heartily applaud the Government for taking this important step. Does the Secretary of State agree that we also need to reassure people that when such an individual comes to be sentenced in the first place, if they have not at that stage disclosed where the body is or the identity of the victims of their crime, the judge should be able to take that into account in setting the minimum period that they should serve? In other words, will my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that the impact does not simply crystallise at the point of release?

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Robert Buckland)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward; as a former member of the legal profession, you will have a particular interest in this important issue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing the debate. I know that he has long had an interest in such issues, and I have debated them with him before in my former capacity as a Law Officer. It is a pleasure now to be able to address the hon. Gentleman and other right hon. and hon. Members as Minister of State for Justice.

We can all agree that the sentence of imprisonment for public protection has long been a source of great concern. I well remember the introduction of that type of sentence, pursuant to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The provision came into force in 2005, and initially it was used quite often.

The sentence was applicable to and used for a range of offences, including serious assault, threats to kill, arson and a range of other offences that we have heard about today; those are, of course, serious, but I do not think that the courts at the time envisaged what the full consequences would be. Indeed, there is a Court of Appeal authority, from the case of Lang, which, importantly, limited the ways in which IPP sentences could be used. It had an immediate effect on the range of uses of the sentence. There was legislative change in 2008 after another Court of Appeal case in which serious concerns were raised about the system’s ability to cope with the relevant cohort of prisoners. Quite rightly, in 2012 the sentence was abolished by the Government under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

The IPP population consisted of many dangerous offenders who often had committed serious violent or sexual offences. At the time there was evidence before the courts of troubling escalations of behaviour, prior to the offending that led to an IPP sentence. The policy that underlay the imposition of that regime was twofold—first, the punishment of offenders, but also a specific public protection function was part of the underlying policy introduced by the Labour Government, who for the first time enjoined sentencers to consider future risk. That was unprecedented: the issue had not been approached in such a way, and it introduced a clearly delineated function that was to be exercised in the form of a determination of dangerousness. Judges were asked to make a decision based on the information and evidence before them—either a pre-sentence report, a psychiatric assessment, or the serious nature of the offence itself—and determine whether an offender was dangerous enough to merit an IPP.

That was the law and policy at the time. We rightly now look back on that with concern and the wisdom of 15 years’ experience, and realise that it has led to some of the cases we have heard about today, and many other cases that we have dealt with in our constituency casework. That was the reality of the situation facing the courts then, and although I hear the view expressed by many right hon. and hon. Members about the possibility of changing the law to effectively re-sentence those offenders, we must take some care. It could be done—there is no immutable bar to passing legislation that would have a retrospective effect, but there is a sensitivity in cutting across the original sentence and the finding of the court. It will be difficult for a fresh sentencer to put themselves entirely in the position of the sentencing judge at the time of the offence, which is why I hesitate before accepting the strong views put forward by hon. Members.

[Alex Chalk]

The Minister makes an entirely fair point, but he began by acknowledging that there are people in custody who have served time far beyond what the original sentencing judge anticipated. My constituent has served 13 years after an IPP with a four-year tariff. I recognise the difficulties with re-sentencing, but should we not be concerned when people are in custody for far longer than the original sentencing judge had in mind?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend has considerable experience of criminal practice, and he has dealt with many cases of great seriousness. He is right to draw to my attention the specific case of his constituent. We can deal with this problem in other ways, and I will outline those to the House as I develop my remarks. Indeed, I hope specifically to answer the queries that have properly been raised by right hon. and hon. Members.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

1. What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to support defendants with mental health issues.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

The Crown Prosecution Service has a duty of fairness to all defendants, including people with mental health issues. In March it launched a public consultation on revised guidance for prosecutors dealing with defendants with mental health issues. It welcomes responses to the consultation to ensure that its published legal guidance gives the best possible help to prosecutors dealing with such cases.

[Alex Chalk]

A fair trial is one in which the defendant can follow the proceedings and advance his defence, and the CPS, as an administerer of justice, will want to ensure that that remains the case. What steps is it taking to engage with experts to ensure that defendants are best placed to have a fair trial?

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend, who has a considerable and distinguished history with regard to the prosecution of serious offences at the Bar, will know that it is vital for experts in the field to be consulted. As part of the consultation, different criminal justice diversions are being considered for some defendants with a range of mental illnesses. I should point out that although autism and other disabilities are included in that consideration, they are not mental illnesses but lifelong conditions. I think that that distinction needs to be drawn very carefully indeed.

Crown Prosecution Service: Funding

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor General]

Again, I have spoken directly to many CPS staff, particularly in Wales; indeed, a lot of them used to instruct me. Some of the staff have been there for 30 years—the CPS’s retention rate is extraordinary. I think I get a bit of frankness from them, and they tell me that, in many respects, working practices have improved. The reduction in offices has helped them to work more smartly. They are now physically co-located in buildings with the police. They are working in ways that they did not dream were possible before.

[Alex Chalk]

Does my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General agree with me, and indeed the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), that if one is to use the independent Bar, it is also important to ensure that equality of arms is observed? There comes a point at which victims’ groups and victims’ families can rightly note the disparity that apparently exists between the seniority of counsel for the defence and the relatively junior status of counsel for the Crown.

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend makes an important general point. Equality of arms is, of course, enshrined in article 6 of the European convention on human rights. It is something that we all understand as practitioners. It would be wrong of me to comment on individual cases, but I will say that where the Crown Prosecution Service is having to deal with complicated and complex issues relating to homicide, resource is never a bar to using the most experienced and senior counsel available, and that of course includes leading counsel.

Time is extremely short, and I want to give the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East a minute to respond, but let me say this. With regard to engagement, the most recent survey of employees of the CPS, of which two thirds took part, showed a welcome increase this year of 5%, right up to a figure of just over 59% telling us that morale in the CPS is good. They face significant challenges, but with increased numbers, particularly in the rape and serious sexual offences units, and an emphasis on the prosecution not just of volume cases but of serious sexual offences, conviction rates continue to stay steady and the numbers of people being brought to justice continue to rise, particularly in the important area of violence against women and girls. I could say much more, but I am mindful of the time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman makes a proper point. Conviction rates for domestic violence remain broadly flat, but the volume of convictions continues to increase, which is good news for every single victim. For example, rape convictions now exceed 2,500 a year, whereas there were only 2,000 some five years ago. I assure him that the CPS, in the light of the comprehensive spending review settlement, is placing continued priority on rape and serious sexual offence units, and no prosecution will be prevented as a result of any budget problem.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The strength of the victim’s evidence in a domestic violence trial can often depend on recalling recollections as close in time to the incident as possible. Does the Solicitor General agree that we should consider allowing victims to record evidence remotely, perhaps via an app on their phones, rather than having to flog off to a police station?

[The Solicitor General]

Like my hon. Friend, I am always enthusiastic about the sensible use of new technology. Police in London are already piloting body-worn cameras, which capture the immediacy of events of domestic abuse. That sort of technology needs to be very much part of the tools available to police officers when investigating such cases.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Installing temporary IT equipment in courts for SFO prosecutions is eye-wateringly expensive and a drain on SFO resources. Does the Solicitor General agree that we need to look again at this issue to establish whether the taxpayer is getting value for money?

[The Solicitor General]

Yes.

Crown Prosecution Service

Debate between Alex Chalk and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor General]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. He presages the point that I was going to make about sufficiency, and about the checks and balances throughout the court process. Arguments can be made about the sufficiency of the evidence at the beginning of a case, at the end of the prosecution case, and, indeed, in some rare circumstances whereby judges withdraw cases from juries—it does not often happen—at the end of defence cases, but the power remains.

In making such criticisms, we are also in danger of calling into question the jury process and indeed the whole system, which is so integral to the rule of law in this country. I was asked—rhetorically, perhaps, but I will give an answer—what strategy this Government have. It is a criminal justice system that upholds the rule of law, enhances public confidence in the system and ensures that there is a consistent approach to bringing cases and sentencing, so that the public feel confident and are protected by due process within the system. That is nothing new—it has been with us for generations—but this Government believe in it as passionately as previous Governments, of whatever colour.

I want to deal with each contribution in turn, but particularly with the opening speech by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead and her experience of giving evidence in a trial. It does not sound to me as though best practice was followed in her case. I am glad she has brought it to the attention of the House, because those with responsibility for the administration of justice, not only in the magistrates court in Bexley but elsewhere, will do well to remember that the housing of witnesses for the prosecution with either defendants or their families is wholly inappropriate and leads to all sorts of complications that I need not recite here.

[Nadine Dorries in the Chair]

The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead asked specific questions about witness care officers. I accept that the numbers have been reduced in line with other staff reductions, but, importantly, those reductions have been accompanied by reforms to better target our limited resources to help witnesses who are intimidated or vulnerable, and those who are in greatest need. Even more is being done with regard to the change of culture to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham referred. For example, the Government are now improving access to information for victims through the new online and telephone-based victim information service that was launched in March. The increasing commissioning of victims’ services through local police and crime commissioners will create a more responsive service—a more localised service—that I do not believe will create a postcode lottery, but will emphasise best practice from which other areas can learn. Although I accept there have been reductions in expenditure, the change in culture that everybody in the system—counsel, solicitors, and lawyers in their role in explaining matters and reassuring and supporting witnesses and victims—has experienced continues to grow.

[Alex Chalk]

On precisely that point, if counsel apply the victims’ charter and explain the situation to witnesses and victims as they come to court, it can have an extraordinary impact on how they end up viewing the criminal justice system, and it does not cost a penny.

[The Solicitor General]

Very much so. A lot of us who pioneered such work in the ’90s now find that a lot of what we said and believed then is becoming standard practice, and that is absolutely right. We have heard reference to the victims’ right to review, and, as was made clear in an intervention on the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), there is an ongoing process in relation to a particular case that means that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it. However, I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will come back to his point about historical child sexual exploitation in a moment.

Importantly, the new victims’ right to review scheme that was established last year gives victims a further opportunity to ask the Crown Prosecution Service, with the help of independent advice, to consider again the merits of particular decisions. So far, between June 2013 and the end of September last year, 263 decisions have been overturned by the new system. It is a small proportion of the number of Crown Prosecution decisions that are made, but it is an extra safety valve that goes a long way, as I said in relation to our strategy, to enhance public confidence in the criminal justice system.

I have referred en passant to the hon. Member for Rochdale, who talked with his usual power about child sexual exploitation. It is a national emergency. I entirely agree with him, and so do the Government. The way in which complainants were dealt with historically in towns such as Rotherham and the town that he represents was wrong. There was far too much emphasis on the reliability of the individual witness, who was often very young and vulnerable, rather than an overall view of the merits of the case. That is rightly acknowledged to have been an incorrect approach. The thrust of the work being carried out by the Crown Prosecution Service now very much reflects the fact that lessons have been learnt, and there are a number of marked successes when it comes to convictions in such cases. A number of so-called celebrities have rightly been brought to justice, and young victims in larger conspiracy-based cases involving many young and vulnerable complainants have now had their voices heard, as the hon. Gentleman says, and can now see that some justice has been brought in order to help them get on with lives that have been torn asunder by the abuse that they suffered.

The hon. Member for Torfaen rightly talked about pressure and efficiency and how decisions are to be made where there is a reduction in the number of lawyers. The way to measure that is by looking at some of the efficiency measurements that the CPS has conducted. The percentage of guilty pleas at first hearing is a good measurement, because that clearly demonstrates that there has been an excellent level of pre-trial and pre-plea preparation in terms of case management, which means that the evidence has been presented clearly and that those advising defendants can confidently tender advice in a proper way. The percentage of guilty pleas at first hearing has increased from 63.4% in 2010-11 to 70.6% in the last financial year. That is a significant increase.

Another vital piece of information relates to the percentage of magistrates court proceedings that are dropped at a third or even fourth or fifth hearing. That percentage has fallen from 44.2% to 34.1%. In the Crown court, cracked and ineffective trials owing to prosecution failure have fallen from 18.2% to 13.5%. That shows that those who are responsible for decision making and case preparation in the CPS are rising to the challenge and yielding significant results. I pay tribute to chief Crown prosecutors in regions such as the west midlands and the south-west for understanding the importance of the management of the huge volume of cases that come across the desks of prosecutors week in, week out, and for making sure that further improvements are made so that, from the CPS’s point of view, they are doing everything they can to ensure that the Courts Service is efficient.

It would be churlish of me not to put on the record my grateful thanks for the service of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras as Director of Public Prosecutions. He came in at a time when the service already knew that it would face important financial challenges under his stewardship, and he managed them admirably. It is in no small part due to the leadership that he showed that the sorts of figures I have been able to bring to the debate today, and the improved efficiencies in the CPS have been achieved. We are grateful to him.

The hon. and learned Gentleman asked about strategy, and I have given him the answer that I think needs to be set out. He also talked about lines of sight and the risks being run with regard to the impact of reduced resources at a time when it is clear that case loads are increasing. I agree with him: case loads are increasing. We have more terrorism cases and an increase in child sexual exploitation cases. He is right to ask questions. I can reassure him that, as in his day, there continue to be regular meetings between the Director of Public Prosecutions and chief Crown prosecutors to ensure that the current director is fully aware of the impact of changes in case load and resources on individual CPS areas. Further to that, both the Attorney General and I regularly meet the CPS’s director and its chief executive, Peter Lewis, to discuss a range of measures that crucially include resources and its case load mix.

[The Solicitor General]

I wanted to come on to finance and I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the CPS continues actively to discuss its requirements and resourcing pressures with the Treasury. The idea that somehow there is a nonchalant, sit-back approach to that is wholly wrong.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured that not only are the pressures understood, but discussions continue at the highest levels of Government with regard to making sure—[Interruption.] I reassure him that when it comes to the prosecution of serious crime, whether terrorism or child sexual exploitation, the question of resources does not come into it. What does come into it is the threshold test that I referred to at the beginning of my speech.

The CPS continues to look at the impact of resource changes and it is working with colleagues in the Treasury as part of the ongoing spending review. It would not be appropriate for me to prejudge the outcome of that review. The debate is timely and I accept that Members are impatient, but that is where we are on the ongoing pressures and risks that the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras talked about.

[Alex Chalk]

On resources, is it not right that where there is a specific need, the Government will step in? There is no clearer example of that than when the Serious Fraud Office had to consider whether it had sufficient resources to go after so-called LIBOR fraudsters and money was found for detailed and complex investigations. When there is a need, resources are delivered.

[The Solicitor General]

I think my hon. Friend was talking about blockbuster funding and the SFO. It would be invidious of me to make direct comparisons, but that point is very well made indeed.

On finance, I hope to demolish the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East’s attractive but somewhat false—I will say colourful—characterisation of the Government’s approach to the CPS budget, which I think he described as a “hope for the best” approach. I am sorry to disappoint him, but that is neither accurate nor fair. As I said, under the stewardship of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, preparations were made before the 2010 spending review for the CPS to start to reduce its costs by, for example, releasing resources from the back-office at HQ to the frontline; renegotiating important IT contracts to achieve significant savings; introducing a new IT equipment and workstation ratio strategy; and looking at the closure of uneconomic smaller offices.

That all began before the spending review, and those policies have been taken further since then. We have seen the consolidation of operations into regional hubs, the end of occupying unnecessary buildings and the number of CPS geographical areas reduced from 42 to 13 together with a reduction in management numbers. In fact, back-office functions have taken the greatest cut, with a 50% reduction in HQ staff; 20% savings from the renegotiation of the IT and communications contracts, and the estate reduced from 95 offices in 2010 to 40 this year. With respect to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East, that is not “hope for the best” or “back of a cigarette packet” stuff, but a carefully calibrated and planned structural change largely authored and led by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras. That process continues.

When it comes to the prosecution of offences, there is no question of negotiations with the Treasury somehow having an impact on individual decisions; the independence of the Crown Prosecution Service is a self-evident truth. To reinforce that, perhaps I should look at some overall results. The CPS’s conviction rate in the magistrates courts is now 83.5%, which has increased from 80.6% back in 2004-05. Similarly, in the Crown court, the conviction rate is now 79.4%, up from just over 75% 10 years ago.

Guilty plea rates continue to rise in both Crown and magistrates courts and I am struck in particular by the increase by both volume and proportion of convictions in cases involving violence against women and girls. The past year saw the highest ever volume and proportion of cases charged: 88,359 cases, which is a rise of nearly 12,000 compared with the previous financial year. We also saw more than 107,000 defendants prosecuted to completion in the past year in cases involving violence against women and girls—the highest ever number. The number of those convicted increased from 67,380 in the previous financial year to 78,773 in the past year.

Those figures are far more eloquent testimony to the success of the Crown Prosecution Service’s continuing work than anything else that I can summon up. I commend its work to the House and thank once again the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead for giving me the opportunity to address that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the work of the Crown Prosecution Service.