Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alex Norris and Nick Timothy(1Â week, 3Â days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Norris
The shadow Secretary of State seeks to run ahead of the process that is going on at the moment. It is very important that Parliament has the opportunity to consider this really important legislation in the spirit that he talks about, and we have now reached Second Reading. I have been in this place for nine years, and legislation very rarely looks the same at the beginning of the process as it does at the end. My offer to him, and indeed to colleagues from across the House, is to engage in the conversation. If they have concerns and wish to see things changed, let us have that conversation.
Nick Timothy
I asked the Justice Secretary to rule out reducing access to jury trials, and the House will have noticed that he did not do that. We are not talking about something insignificant; we are talking about an ancient English right dating back to Magna Carta. As with Labour’s early release disaster, the new Prime Minister told everybody he did not like it and would not do it, but he never got round to working out what to do instead. Once again, the Justice Secretary has made much of his desire to work together constructively—although I have not seen much of it in our correspondence—so will he publish the full details of the new plan now, or does he still not know what it is?
Alex Norris
This is interesting: the Opposition do not know how to deal with either the new Prime Minister or the new Government. When we talk about wanting to improve things in the collective interest of the country, we mean it. The hon. Gentleman offers to be my correspondence secretary, but I do not think that is quite the answer.
Mr Speaker
Order. That is quite serious, and I am getting a little bit fed up of this carrying on at the Dispatch Box. Ask a question and respect the answer, because I expect Ministers to listen to the questions—it works both ways. This is becoming a habit, and I do not want it to continue.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
This summer, the Government held five different positions on early release in just six weeks. In seeking to exclude killers, rapists and paedophiles—something the Government previously claimed was impossible—the Justice Secretary has used secondary legislation. He says:
“No further legislation is required in the short term…primary legislation will…be considered when Parliamentary time allows.”
Will the Secretary of State guarantee that after relying on secondary legislation to change Labour’s early release scheme, no prisoner will successfully challenge their exclusion in the courts?
Alex Norris
Yes, I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that I have no concerns in that regard. The device we used was the commencement order. We chose to commence the provisions for some offences, but not for others. The point I was making to him in writing was that for parliamentarians it is discomfiting to have things lying on the statute book that are not intended for use, so it is good practice to remove them. It would not be without precedent for many provisions to be on the statute book without being turned on; nevertheless, that is what I was referring to in respect of further legislation. I am confident in our legal position.
Nick Timothy
The Justice Secretary proposes to let another set of dangerous criminals out of prison as well. Every prisoner serving an imprisonment for public protection sentence has been assessed to be too dangerous for release or returned to prison because of their behaviour—last year, there were 426 of them. The Justice Secretary has reiterated his commitment today to ending IPP sentences by the end of this Parliament. Will he tell the House very clearly if he has decided that it is, indeed, safe to release every single one of them?
Alex Norris
I understand that the hon. Gentleman is a champion of individual liberty, and I understand him to be someone who believes in the equal application of liberty for individuals too. He must, surely, share my discomfort that there are individuals with tariffs of 18 months who have served 18 years on those sentences. This has been a matter of consensus for a long period of time; that is why his colleagues, when in government, discontinued those sentences. That is not to say that it is easy. In exactly the spirit in which he says that it must be done safely, my commitment is to do that with him and with colleagues across the House.
Criminal Justice Reform
Debate between Alex Norris and Nick Timothy(3Â weeks, 3Â days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I welcome the Justice Secretary to his place.
This is the Government’s fifth early release policy in just six weeks, since the Prime Minister took office. At every stage we were told that Ministers had no choice but to include dangerous criminals, because the alternative would be the “collapse” of the “entire system”. Now the plan is to stop one group of dangerous criminals leaving prison early by letting a different group of dangerous criminals out instead.
The Justice Secretary and the Prime Minister have justified the plan to release IPP prisoners as a matter of principle, but it is no such thing. It is a fag-packet policy written to get them out of this crisis. Last year a Justice Minister rejected it, saying it would “put the public at risk”. Some 1,415 IPP prisoners had to be recalled to prison after release. The Parole Board says that the rest—856 prisoners—are too dangerous to be freed. Despite the new exclusions, many violent criminals will still be released after one third of their sentence. That includes domestic abusers and some paedophiles.
The Justice Secretary says that if a domestic abuser breaches the terms of their release, tagging means that probation and the police will be alerted. He said this morning that these are “really good systems”, but most breaches result in no action at all. In fact, the Justice Secretary said this morning that early release is now “business as usual” and will go on for years to come. With that in mind, the Sentencing Act provides no end date to SDS33, so is this a permanent provision? If not, for how long does he think it should last? Can he rule out letting prisoners out even earlier with home detention curfews? Will he publish detailed capacity projections and all relevant data?
Will the Justice Secretary give us a timeline and a target for his promise to get more foreign national prisoners out of the country? What is his plan to overcome barriers to deportation caused by the European convention on human rights, and in particular unqualified rights such as articles 2 and 3? How many cells will be established within the existing estate by the end of 2026, 2027 and 2028? Will he release every IPP prisoner by the end of the Parliament, as suggested in the Ministry of Justice statement on Sunday? Will prisoners who would have received a life sentence, had IPP sentences not existed, remain locked up? Will the Justice Secretary rule out watering down the criteria used by the Parole Board to assess IPP prisoners? And can he confirm that the changes to early release will come through secondary legislation, presenting MPs with a false binary choice and no chance to amend their plan?
We have more than 700 fewer prison cells than last year and 1,600 fewer prison officers since the election. No new prisons have been planned or approved by this Government since the election. There are more than 4,000 operational available places and 4,000 more that are certified but out of use because of rules and regulations, officer shortages, and, in the case of Dartmoor prison, levels of radon gas that local residents live with every day. Describing the early release of criminals, a dangerous and irresponsible policy, as “business as usual” is not just an insult to victims, but a dereliction of duty.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for the shadow Secretary of State’s kind words of welcome. I do not know him well, but I know that he, like me, shares a love for this country and that everything he does is seen through that prism. My commitment to him is to work with him. There will be times, perhaps even including today, when we will need to disagree in the best traditions of this place, but I know there will be a lot that brings us together over the months and hopefully years to come.
On plans and changed plans, I make no apology—certainly not to the Opposition—for being able to grab hold of a system that, when we left here in July, was not going to exclude rape offences, child sex offences and those who have taken lives. We have now done that, which is good. I recognise that it has created uncertainty and I apologise to victims, but I hope they understand that it was done with noble purpose. We must now use the time available to make sure that victims get the right support, particularly when it comes to shaping restrictions on offenders if they do come out.
The hon. Gentleman mentions plans. The reality is that if we followed his plan, we would have a prison system that would be bust before Christmas. What would that mean for justice in this country? How could that be right? He jumps on the phrase “business as usual”. The point I am trying to make is that this Parliament has changed legislation. The Sentencing Act is the basis on which standard determinate sentences will be governed, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future. Linked to that, he talks about how the changes will come into force. That will be done via varying the commencement order. He talks about home detention. I can say that I have no intention of going any further. The work we have put in as a result of the Sentencing Act is our way of managing the pressure in the system.
On capacity, the hon. Gentleman asks for clarity. Well, I can provide a little bit of clarity: we should be clear that we have added 374 places in the adult male estate since the general election. Now, that is nowhere near where we want to get to as the end state—that is why our building programme has 14,000 places in it—but I would hope that wanting to do more is a point of shared interest. Of course, things do come in and out of the estate, including because of fire damage; I would not underestimate the importance of contamination either. Nevertheless, there will of course be significant places added in this Parliament and in our programme to 2031.
The hon. Gentleman also asks about the chance to scrutinise the data. He will know that, under the Sentencing Act, we are committed to publishing an annual report. That is what we will do, and I am sure that he and I will get into it at that point.
On foreign national offenders, if the hon. Gentleman has doubts, I will state my record to him and to the House. We have increased by 41% the removal of foreign offenders in this country. I gently say that that was my role in the Home Office, so he should not doubt my vigour. He mentions changes to article 3. He will know about the important work done on that at the Council of Europe. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), has done a lot of important work in that space. Similarly, our work on article 8 is important and I hope the hon. Gentleman will support that when it comes before Parliament. He should not doubt our vigour; as I say, we are already doing well better than his predecessors—they are sat next to him, so he can talk to them about that—and we will go further.
Let me finish on the IPP point, because I am really interested to see how it does and does not hold. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a champion of individual liberty and a sceptic of what he thinks is uneven justice. If I am able to make this acknowledgment, I hope he will at least reflect on it: there is a real dissatisfaction, as a result of the changes we have had to make, that some people will leave prison earlier than their sentence dictated, and that in many cases there will be people who are still there 10 years after. There is no easy solution to that. All I ask of him is to engage in a process to bring that to its resolution.
Asylum Seekers: MOD Housing
Debate between Alex Norris and Nick Timothy(10Â months, 3Â weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Alex Norris
The hon. Lady mentions an important proposal, and it is a reasonable thing to mention. We are talking about capacity in the system, and one way to resolve that, of course, would be to let significant numbers through the system without processing their claims in the normal way. I cannot support that. As she has heard me say on a number of occasions, the root of this is not just the strong day-to-day administrative running of the system; the reality is that we have managed to really improve the performance of it and reduce costs. But that alone will not stop what is happening, due to the significant pull factor to this country. I believe that doing as she suggests would merely turbocharge that, which I cannot support.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
The Minister has given us the usual Government lines on returns under this Government, when the majority of them are obviously voluntary returns. When it comes to enforced returns, the numbers are lower than in nine of the 14 years of Conservative Government, and 15% lower than the Tory average.
I want to raise the case of Hadush Kebatu. The Home Secretary said that she had “pulled every lever” to deport him, but when it emerged that he was paid £500 after threatening to disrupt his departure, we were told that was actually an operational decision. Can the Minister confirm that Kebatu withdrew his asylum claim and forfeited appeal rights, and admit that we will not be able to deport foreign criminals in sufficient numbers unless we cut off the endless routes for human rights claims and legal appeals?
Alex Norris
I can say to the hon. Gentleman that returns are up by more than 10% under this Government. I think the British public care about that. I make no apology for doing that in the quickest, cheapest and most expeditious way, which is what we pursue in many cases.
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about Hadush Kebatu, a convicted sex offender who had no place on our streets and no place in our country; it is right that he has been removed. He was forcibly deported and a team of five escorts accompanied him on that flight. We turned down an application regarding the facilitated return scheme—which, under successive Governments, has offered grants of up to £1,500—but, given the very real threats to disrupt the flight, an operational decision was taken to provide a £500 payment. That was taken because the alternative would have been slower and more expensive for the taxpayer, and it would have included detention, a new flight and, no doubt, subsequent legal claims. That decision was not taken at the ministerial level, but I am not going to second-guess what is a difficult operational environment.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alex Norris and Nick Timothy(1Â year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Norris
In the view of the Home Office, the most important safeguard is the right-to-work checks. That is why we will strengthen them under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill that is making its way through Parliament, but that will have to be underpinned with rigorous enforcement. That is why I am pleased that enforcement visits are up 50% in the past year, as are arrests.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Community Engagement Principles and Extremism Definition
Debate between Alex Norris and Nick Timothy(1Â year, 8Â months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I will have a go at getting an answer from the Minister, even if he did not answer the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson).
Yesterday, the Department confirmed in answer to a freedom of information request that there is internal Government correspondence about the Muslim Council of Britain that it refuses to publish. Can the Minister overturn that decision, publish the papers and confirm that there have been no discussions and no correspondence within Whitehall proposing re-engagement with the MCB?
Alex Norris
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the position has not moved. I have previously stated in answer to written questions that we are not meeting the Muslim Council of Britain. [Hon. Members: “Say it again!”] I am not sure I can say it any more clearly than at the Dispatch Box in the Chamber of the House of Commons. The position has not changed from the previous Government.