Criminal Justice System

Alun Michael Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) on securing this debate. I declare a similar interest; I have been nominated to stand for election as police and crime commissioner in south Wales.

I am proud to say that the needs of victims will be at the heart of my approach if I am elected. I want to be precise that a genuine focus on the needs and interests of victims must involve putting the victim at the heart of the behaviour and performance of the court system and of every agency in the criminal justice system, as well as of the police and the rest of our systems of local and national government. We must bear in mind that there is an enormous variety of victims, ranging from nurses, shopkeepers and police officers to ordinary members of the public. Our response must be right in every set of circumstances. Victims’ experiences are often very personal and different.

In my view, four major steps are required to bring about the radical change needed in how we deal with victims. The first is to act on the wise words given in evidence to the Justice Committee by the then chief executive of Victim Support, who essentially said that what victims want more than anything else, other than not to have become a victim in the first place, is the certainty that it will not happen again. Preventing crime—cutting offending and reoffending—is absolutely central to meeting the needs of victims.

That is clear enough in relation to the police. Sir Robert Peel said in terms, when he established the first police force, that the central purpose of the police was to cut crime—to prevent offending and reoffending. He also said that the police were the public and the public were the police, which must surely mean more than an identification in general terms between the police and the wider community; it must involve a conscious seeking-out of the experience of victims, especially those whose voices are not easily heard and whose suffering is hidden.

Such victims might be abused children or the victims of violence against women and girls and other forms of domestic violence that remain under-reported. They might be those suffering in silence who are exploited in a variety of ways, those victimised within specific communities by things such as female genital mutilation or those who suffer the ongoing victimisation of antisocial behaviour. The police and the public surely have a common interest and a common responsibility in taking the victims’ side.

That also ought to be the clear purpose of the court system. In my view, it was a missed opportunity when the purposes of the Sentencing Council were spelled out in legislation. I urge Ministers to put that right now. At the heart of the work of the Sentencing Council should be the answer to the question, “What works?” It is not, but it should be.

In the Justice Committee report on the role of the prison officer, we concluded that that role could not be clear unless the role and the purpose of prison was clear. The Prison Service, like many other agencies within the criminal justice system, ends up chasing specific targets that have nothing to do with their overall aim or purpose or the expectations of the public, which should be to hold prisoners securely and return them to the community less likely to offend, or at the very least likely to offend less seriously. That must be built into the granular detail of what we expect.

The second step is to ensure that the needs and voices of victims are heard clearly in the court system. Both this Government and the last have clearly wished victims to be listened to and treated better within the court system, but that is mostly dealt with through additional requirements, such as victim impact statements and witness support, which are welcome but do not touch the central purpose of the whole system. I was the first Minister to serve on a jury after the legislation changed, and it did not enhance my respect for the court system, which seems to be run mainly for lawyers and judges.

[Meg Hillier]

To return to the situation of the Levy family, what does my right hon. Friend think could be done to improve the rights of victims at parole stage as well? The victims are still suffering. My constituents rightly say, “The perpetrator has a lot of people arguing on his behalf, but the victims have nobody to argue on their behalf.” They might not even be able to be present at the parole hearing. Does he have any thoughts on that?

[Alun Michael]

My hon. Friend is right. The needs and interests of victims should be present at every stage throughout the court system. I also think that greater use of restorative justice is needed. I was interested to hear a sergeant in the South Wales police say recently that giving victims the chance to tell the offender in no uncertain terms how damaging the experience of the offence had been was, in his words, genuinely life-changing for the offender. It is not a soft option; it is a hard option, as long as it is done properly, professionally and with the interests of the victims in mind.

The third step is to provide proper support for victims at every stage. We have built up a powerful victim support network across the UK. I was involved in the establishment of one of the first support schemes in Cardiff, after the very first had been established in Bristol. I pay tribute to how Victim Support, as a national organisation, has promoted professionalism in recent years among both staff and volunteers in a superb service.

As we see in other fields such as education and health, there is a necessary tension between the national dimension, in which standards are established, and local service, which is sensitive to local needs and realities. Now the Government are putting a significant amount of commissioning in the hands of the new police and crime commissioners. That has introduced an unwelcome element of uncertainty, but it might work in practice. My commitment, if elected, is to ensure that service to victims is enhanced rather than reduced.

In a reply to my recent question, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), promised that more money rather than less would reach the commissioners in carrying out their duties, but there is a worry that support to victims might be fragmented from the other service. A sentence on the Home Office website states that

“the Government will retain responsibility for commissioning services where there are either proven economies of scale or they are genuinely specialist in nature. This includes support for those bereaved through homicide, victims of trafficking, rape support centres and the witness service”.

That makes sense for the other specialist services, but it is essential that the victim as witness is given a seamless service before, during and after the court experience. I hope that the Minister can clarify that and guarantee that the witness service will be delegated to the police and crime commissioners. Given that the worst experience for the victim sometimes occurs within the court system—victims in some cases describe their experience in court as being even worse than the original incident or as compounding their suffering—it would be wrong for it to appear that central Government or the court system were unwilling for support to witnesses to be provided through local and independent services.

Ministers have made it clear, as we saw at Home Office questions this week, that the police and crime commissioners should challenge other parts of the criminal justice system about their work and performance. Being in close contact with support for witnesses surely makes sense in that regard.

The fourth necessary step is to listen and learn from the experience of witnesses. In relation to violence in Cardiff, we stopped measuring reports to the police and started measuring the experience of victims who had to go to hospital for treatment. As a result, we found that many cases were not being reported and that that needed to change.

The purpose of establishing the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was to bring in every aspect of the public service to support the objective of reducing offending and reoffending. That surely has to become the central responsibility of Government, to enable the whole of the criminal justice system to operate much more effectively and in the interests of victims, and to make it a clear priority for the whole of the criminal justice system and every agency.

Changing the focus of the Sentencing Council to make “what works” its clear priority would be part of that. The work of the police and crime commissions will be extremely challenging, but in the House this week Ministers set very high expectations of how commissioners might add value in pursuing the “and crime” part of their role. I am pleased they did so, but if that is to be turned into reality, the direction of the whole criminal justice system needs to support that ambition.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

I am now imposing a limit on Back-Bench speeches of four minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Michael Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is right. Individual PCCs in specific areas will be the best placed to understand the needs of the local community and to commission the services to meet those needs, as they will be taking those decisions closer to the people who will be most affected by them. That is the whole thrust of this important reform.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I first declare an interest, as I am standing as the Labour and Co-operative candidate for police and crime commissioner in south Wales?

Does the Minister agree that the treatment of victims and witnesses remains deeply unsatisfactory in many areas of the court system and in the criminal justice system generally? In providing resources to police and crime commissioners, will he ensure that attrition does not occur along the way and that those resources will be adequate to allow proper, enhanced attention to be paid to the needs of victims?

[Damian Green]

I am enchanted to hear a pre-bid for additional public spending from a candidate, even before the election. The right hon. Gentleman is demonstrating his experience there. As I have just explained to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), we are seeking to increase the amount of money that the perpetrators of crime pass directly to the victims, through the victims surcharge, but it will be a matter for the individual police and crime commissioner—whether that will be the right hon. Gentleman or one of his opponents—to decide how best to spend that money in their local area. I am sure that he would agree that such decisions are better made locally than centrally.

Police

Alun Michael Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

Let me make a little more progress, and I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman later.

Following careful consideration of all those responses, I have decided that force level allocations will remain as announced in my written ministerial statement of 8 December. Each police force in England and Wales will face an equal percentage reduction in core Government funding in 2012-13. I believe that that is the most transparent, straightforward and equitable means of apportioning the funding reductions. It is important to note that the allocations were set out last year and have remained the same.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is talking about the level of cuts and maintaining the figures as originally set out. Does he accept that although it might not be his choice, it is the Government’s choice that the reductions are front-ended, and therefore place an additional burden which is more difficult for police forces to meet?

[Nick Herbert]

The profile of the reductions for police forces was set by the spending review. There are larger reductions in the first and second years than in the third and fourth years, and that reflects the overall need for the Government to get on top of the deficit and build credibility in this area. The position and allocations I have announced remain the same, so there are no surprises for police forces, which have been working on that basis since the spending review was announced.

Policing

Alun Michael Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I declare two interests: first, my son is the chief executive of the North Wales police authority—something that I declare when we discuss policing in the Select Committee on Home Affairs—and, secondly, that I have announced my intention to seek nomination as the Labour and Co-operative candidate to be the police commissioner for South Wales, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), mentioned.

My decision to stand for office was made not out of admiration for the frenetic pace of change since the general election, but out of enthusiasm for protecting the best features of police work and continuing the drive to cut crime and reduce reoffending. That enthusiasm is for the whole of England and Wales, which is why I particularly enjoy my work on the Home Affairs Committee, but it relates particularly to south Wales, which has experienced considerable success in recent years in reducing crime. I want that process to accelerate, rather than flag—a point that I will return to in a few minutes.

I do not want to repeat what is in the Select Committee report, and I certainly cannot deal with all the issues that it raises, which are reflected in the list of Government initiatives to which the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) referred. I want to reflect primarily on the nature of policing and the Government’s role.

Reorganisation is sometimes inevitable, but it almost always leads to a drop in performance and effectiveness in the short term, so the advice to anyone considering it is to lie down in a dark room and reflect on whether the proposed reorganisation is really necessary. The drop in performance often happens even if the ground is well prepared and the objectives clear. A problem now is that the objectives and the eventual landscape are not altogether clear and the ground has not been properly prepared everywhere.

I give the Minister credit, because he is genuinely committed to his role and wants to make improvements. I think that we would agree on many points of principle about the purpose of policing and the Government’s role. At a time of front-ended cuts to the police coming too fast and too deep, the challenge is compounded by the enormous scope of the reorganisation of central functions in which the end pattern of organisations and responsibilities is not yet clear. That is a serious drawback. The map has not yet been accurately drawn. It looks like one from the middle ages in which certain parts of the landscape are just marked by the words, “Here be dragons”, without giving full details of what is happening in those territories. That is a pity, because some changes might prove to be beneficial in the long term, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East said. If there is no certainly or clarity, the short-term drop in performance might be significant.

As the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, we need more transparency and more clarity about the evidence on which the approaches are based. I agree with him on the need to ensure that new systems connect with local authorities. For example, when we took evidence in Wales, we saw the benefits of the Welsh Government making a joint appointment with the Youth Justice Board to ensure proper understanding of national priorities and how they link to the work of local government and youth offending teams in Wales. That is important, because the reorganisation of national organisations is not the only challenge facing the police.

The challenges range from international terrorism, organised crime—it seems to get more business-like by the day and sometimes looks as though it benefits from university-level business studies more than perhaps some businesses do—and the significant use of the internet for criminal activity, across to the riots in August 2011 and the ever-present problems of daily and weekly local crime and disorder. I will touch on those logistical challenges for the police and others in a moment.

In evidence to the Select Committee, the Minister stressed the importance of the Peelian principles. Sir Robert Peel underlined two principles particularly when he established the first police force: first, that the first responsibility of the police is to reduce crime and offending, which the Minister quoted in evidence to the Select Committee; and, secondly, the rather delphic utterance:

“The police are the public and the public are the police”.

To unpack that, it means that there must be confidence on both sides of the equation—there must be trust and an understanding of the roles of the community and the police. Of course, Sir Robert Peel laid down other issues on integrity, trust and how policing is done, which is all very important, but we must stress the practical implications of putting the first priority of the police at the forefront of all our discussions and debates.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gave clear focus to the creation of local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. That legislation has been enormously successful, as the Minister has been kind enough to acknowledge. Since then, the partnership work between the police and local authorities has been more integrated into the local and wider scheme of partnership working. In general, that is a good thing, but there is always a danger that the specific focus on crime reduction could be eroded, and we must be careful in future to ensure that that is not the case.

I underline the lessons to be drawn from violence reduction in Cardiff. I apologise to members of the Select Committee who have heard me expand on that topic more than once in the past, but it is a significant demonstration of what can be achieved. With a clear focus on the nature of violent incidents—what provoked them, where they happened and what could be done to prevent them—violence in Cardiff has reduced by roughly 25% ahead of the reductions in equivalent cities in England and elsewhere. Not only is that measurement based on police figures, but it has been tested in a peer-reviewed article in the British Medical Journal based on evidence of the number of people who go to accident and emergency units requiring treatment, and it therefore has real validity.

The figures show a significantly reduced number of victims, and Victim Support has stated on more than one occasion that more than anything else, victims want to know that they will not become a victim again—it is not retribution that they seek, but confidence and security in the community. The reduction in offences is enormously important from that point of view. It reduces the waste of police time. That is significant because police can attend to other things: reassuring the public and investigating crime. It also reduces the burden on the NHS. Putting people’s faces together after a serious attack is significant and expensive for the NHS, as has been commented on by Professor Jon Shepherd, who has led the work. We have seen that success.

I feel safe in the centre of Cardiff, because I know the figures show that it is a relatively safe place. However, it is significant that evidence from some programmes undertaken by John Humphrys two years ago demonstrated that a lot of people find that the activity and feeling on the streets—the discourtesies, such as the noise and the ebullience—make them feel less safe. People’s behaviour is not based just on the facts of crime; they also react to their environment. We need to focus on the accurate measurement of crime and its reduction to ensure that people are safer, but we also need a greater focus on enabling the public to know the facts and to feel safe, if they are, and to know that any remaining problems are being addressed.

In a leader column last week, The Guardian expressed worry that the election of police and crime commissioners would turn into a rat-catcher’s election. I am not entirely sure what was in the mind of the writer. I think that they feared that we would go to the lowest common denominator in debating policing and crime and populist sloganising in the approach to the elections. I assume that they did not want to imply that a police commissioner would be unpaid and, therefore, take revenge along the lines of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, by leading all the children of the police force area into the river.

[Mark Reckless]

The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that Peel’s principle was that the police should be the public and the public should be the police. Is the problem not that the two have become disengaged? What will change under the new landscape is that, through the process of election, a police and crime commissioner will be able to bring them back together.

[Alun Michael]

One approaches this either with pessimism or optimism. I admire the hon. Gentleman’s optimism, as I do often in our discussions in Committee. I hope that proves to be the case. I was reflecting The Guardian article’s fear of populist sloganising, rather than a base of evidence. That is one reason for my decision to stand, and why all parties interested in the matter need to ensure, given that the legislation has gone through and that we will have police and crime commissioners, that they are people who can add value to the process and address the public’s experience. I hope very much—perhaps we all need to contribute—that the outcome desired by the hon. Gentleman will be the one that we see.

The same leader referred to me as more of a builder of partnerships and consensus than a rat-catcher. I think that I take that as a compliment, because it goes back to Peel’s principles of trying to build consensus, reflect the public will and ensure that crime is reduced.

It is of course important that the police and crime commissioner should hold the chief constable to account. There is the responsibility of appointing the chief constable; there is the responsibility of deciding the budget and the policing plan. All those things are vital and need clear leadership. The commissioner will also need to take a lead in connecting and reconnecting the police and the public, as well as the police and the local authorities and other organisations. One of the biggest lessons that came out of the report of the Select Committee on Justice, “Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment”, was that most things that affect offending are not only outside the aegis of the police, but outside the criminal justice system. Therefore, connecting that, looking for evidence of the real problems experienced by the public and ensuring they are addressed through a partnership approach, must be an absolute priority for the commissioner, as well as for the chief constable and those who lead policing locally and lead local authorities.

Some of the costs of policing cannot be avoided, even if it is possible to reduce crime locally. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and Chief Constable Peter Vaughan of South Wales police. I stress that that meeting took place long before I decided to stand as commissioner. When we met the Minister, we focused on the capital city challenge that the south Wales police force faces, as well as policing the two great cities of Swansea and Cardiff. It also faces the challenges of a top-slice to its finances, to assist other police forces in Wales. The Minister listened carefully and promised to take away the points that we made. I hope that that will be reflected at some point in a reconsideration of the police funding formula.

I was on the streets of Cardiff when we had a visit from the English Defence League, a much larger demonstration and march by Unite Against Fascism and an element of conflict, with some people wanting to turn it into a pitched battle, which good policing prevented. That took place on the same day as South Africa was playing Wales at rugby at the Millennium stadium, the West Indies were playing England—and Wales, if I can put it in those terms—in the SWALEC stadium, and the Stereophonics were in concert in the city. That was an enormous addition to the normal day-to-day work of policing. Both Cardiff and Swansea are doing well at sport and seeking to grow and expand as cities. Given that set of capital-city challenges, a formula that gives Cardiff and therefore the South Wales police rough equivalence to the policing of similar-sized cities that do not have those capital-city responsibilities places an additional burden. I ask the Minister to continue to reflect on that and find out whether he can develop the formula to help meet that challenge.

The police have to plan in the light of the riots that took place in a number of cities, including a number of parts of London, last August. The Select Committee produced a good report, which I hope will inform Government policy and assist the police in planning and responding to such matters, but I still have a concern. Although our approach is evidence-based, we still do not have the sort of in-depth report that Lord Denning produced in response to riots in the 1980s. That report was enormously important and influential. [Hon. Members: “Lord Scarman.”] I apologise. I am sure that I am referring to two equally distinguished Law Lords. It was Lord Scarman’s report, and I am grateful for that correction.

It is important to note a lesson coming out of the riots. There was an initial concern that social networks might have played a part in accelerating the activity and some of the damage. The question was asked whether something should be done to control or even close down the social networks for a period. That was answered by chief constables who appeared before us, including the chief constable of Manchester. They thought about it for about two minutes and then realised that what they had to do was engage and not try to control. There was very intelligent use of networks by some forces, again particularly in Manchester. Networks were used to warn that, if there were riots in certain places, the police would be there to deal with them, and to encourage people not to be on the streets where there were clear dangers.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend has been consistent. He has felt all along that there ought to be a much more in-depth study into what happened during the riots. Darra Singh’s report is due out shortly—next week, I think—and does my right hon. Friend not agree that it would be appropriate to look at that first, along with what the Select Committee has done? The police are undertaking their own review. Once all that information is available, we can see whether anything further needs to be done.

[Alun Michael]

My concern is that the trail will have gone a little cool by the time that we arrive at that position, but my right hon. Friend is right that it would be best to get all that information. I ask the Minister, however, to accept that we should not rule out the need for an in-depth look at the causes by a body that could do more such work than the Select Committee. The report does credit to the Select Committee and to the Select Committee system, which is developing in positive ways.

I am not criticising, but I believe that we are still in danger of many individuals thinking that they know what caused the riots, when we do not. We know a lot about the riots. We know more as a result of the reports and we will know more as a result of further reports, but we will not have a single, comprehensive analysis that can inform us for the long term.

There is now agreement on the enormous importance of the policing protocol. I have some concern that the protocol has been written when the Home Office has every right to say what it expects from the new arrangements and when the Association of Chief Police Officers is in existence and able to play a significant part, but not when the commissioners are in place. When they are, there will be a need to revisit the protocol. I am sure that there will be many interesting discussions between different organisations and with the Minister. In a sense, what we have is a framework, and what will be needed for the longer term is more along the lines of conventions, agreements and building on experience.

In particular, I agree with the comments made about the professional body. It is important that it is not only a successor to ACPO. I note the agreement in the Government response to our report that the body ought to be inclusive from the outset, with a separate chiefs’ council, but what is not clear from the response is whether such a council would have any policy-making function for professional activities. Such a body ought to be separate from the professional body, and the professional body needs to be owned by all police. A new body is needed, starting with a fresh, clean sheet and a focus on the professionalism of the police, rather than its becoming confused with the variety of different functions currently held by ACPO.

I was one of those who argued for the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which continues to need our cross-party support. I urge the Minister to look again at the serious suggestion of extending its role and its flexibility to look at service improvement. Often, when people make a complaint, they do not want someone to be hung out to dry or suspended from work for six months or six years—it is sometimes for very extended periods. What they want to know is that their concerns will be addressed and that they will get a proper response. A lot is about how the police respond to customers and about quality control and quality management. Giving more flexibility to enable the IPCC to address such issues might help to avoid some of the expenses arising from complaints that fall into the sort of category to which I refer.

As a suggestion for the Minister to take elsewhere in the Government, it would be good for the police service if the Ministry of Justice looked again at the composition of the Sentencing Council, which is too focused on judges and legalities and not sufficiently focused on what works. What in sentencing makes a difference to the likelihood of reoffending? I am repeating something that I said as a member of the Justice Committee under a Labour Government, but I commend it because I still believe it to be right and true, now as then.

On collaboration and IT, I urge the Minister not to be overambitious in thinking of IT schemes as a quick solution or providing major savings. I have some experience in Government IT procurement, such as of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s e-nabling DEFRA programme, which no one hears about because it was a success—that is why I am proud to refer to it—but there are many examples of central Government procurement, in particular by the Home Office, I am sad to say, that do not inspire confidence and were perhaps over-engineered and ended up not delivering as expected but being more expensive and late coming into place. Learning lessons and ensuring proper procurement are enormously important. The IT company might or might not be the right vehicle for delivery, but the Minister would need to take a keen interest in how a project develops—the question is about not so much the vehicle as the processes adopted and the expertise brought to bear to ensure that the right work is done, the right things procured and the objectives actually met.

I have touched on a limited number of aspects of the Select Committee’s work on the landscape of policing, as well as a number of other aspects of policing. An enormous amount of change is going on. I look forward to being a part of that process of change and ensuring that the initiative, which is now in law, results in us improving the quality of policing and the service given to the public, to ensure that we continue to drive down crime and reoffending and, in particular, to drive up public confidence in the police.

I certainly commend to the House the Select Committee’s report, and I very much hope that the Minister will continue to listen to our consensual and cross-party comments and suggestions. In Committee, during our discussions, we challenge each other, sometimes quite vigorously, but our findings—as with the Justice Committee recommendations on justice reinvestment—give food for thought, which Ministers and the Government as a whole would be wise to heed.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I welcome the report of the Home Affairs Committee on the “New Landscape of Policing”, to which the Government have responded, as being a very considered and thoughtful contribution to the changing landscape of policing and the Government’s reforms. I also welcome the debate that the Chairman of the Select Committee has introduced today and the opportunity that it has given for the members of the Select Committee, the official Opposition and, indeed, the Government to consider, in a very constructive manner, the challenges that currently face British policing.

Precisely because right hon. and hon. Members have referred to the pace of change of the reforms and because those reforms are significant, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said, it is important for me to remind them of the reasons why the Government embarked on such a reform programme. It is not, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, because the Government wish to make their mark, because they are a new Government or because change for change’s sake is a good thing. None of those is an adequate reason to embark on a reform agenda of such a scale.

The reason for the reforms is that policing faces significant challenges, which have changed—some have changed recently and significantly—and we should ensure that British policing is equipped to change with them. Clearly, crime and the need to fight it are ongoing challenges, but new challenges are emerging in relation to new forms of crime. There is ongoing concern about certain forms of crime, not least serious and organised crime—hon. Members have mentioned cybercrime—and there is considerable public concern about antisocial behaviour, much of which is criminality that we must ensure the police can deal with.

Therefore, there is a challenge of dealing with a high volume of crime locally and ensuring that policing is equipped to deal with national problems and national threats. As that is a twin challenge, we have had to look again at the structure of British policing. The Government are not the only ones who have taken that view. It is also the view of policing professionals that the structure of British policing needs to adapt to deal with those challenges. However, there are differing visions of what those new structures should be, and I will return to that point later.

The second new challenge is an obvious one—it was referred to by the shadow Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson)—and it is the funding situation. It is a fact that funding for policing is being reduced during the four-year period of the spending review, because the Government have to deal with the deficit. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that funding would have been reduced by his party if it had remained in power. Therefore, under any Government, the police would have to deal with significant reductions in funding. There is a debate about what the level of those reductions should be, but there is no doubt now that, under any Government, the police would have to deal with a very significant reduction in funding. At the end of a period of considerable expansion, during which policing resources have risen year on year and police numbers have risen accordingly, that reduction in funding is obviously a very significant change that the police have to deal with.

The third challenge, or issue, had been neglected, at least in part, for too long, although it was referred to by some Members during the debate, and it is the role of the public in partnership with the police to help fight crime. Indeed, what exactly is the relationship between the police and the public? That relationship can be tested and has sometimes come into focus when we have experienced or debated certain events in policing, whether they are highly controversial police operations—for instance, public order policing operations—or events in relation to the ongoing discussion about community policing and the importance of a strong connection between the police and the public, which is necessary to ensure that there is community policing that commands public confidence. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) reminded us, Peel—the founder of modern policing—bequeathed to us the important principle that the police are the public and the public are the police. The legitimacy of British policing is conferred by policing by consent and by public confidence in the great public service that is the police.

The Government did not believe that it would be possible for policing to rise to any of the challenges that I have mentioned—maintaining both public confidence in the police and a strong link between the police and the public, dealing with declining policing budgets, ensuring a continuing fight against crime and dealing with the new challenges in fighting crime—with the existing structures, nor with the means by which the previous Government had sought to drive up standards. I say that in a non-partisan manner, but essentially those means were top-down targeting and direction that sought to lever up standards by central control.

With that approach came a proliferation of bureaucracy and a level of direction that had not been experienced in policing before. The policing pledge is a very good example. It was a highly prescriptive central pledge that told police forces exactly how they should behave—for example, even how they should answer telephone calls. This Government have had a different approach to the delivery of public services, which is to seek to decentralise and reduce—or even eliminate—all that top-down central direction. Instead, we have tried to ensure that there is greater accountability, as a means of holding public services to account and making them responsible for the outcomes that they are required to deliver.

I entirely reject the suggestion made again today by the shadow Policing Minister that there is a lack of coherence—indeed, that there is a muddle—in the agenda that the Government have set out in relation to police reform. I would argue strongly that our approach is an entirely coherent one that enables the police to meet today’s challenges. I say that because, as I have argued before, there has been a paradox in policing in the last few years. That paradox is that central Government interfered far too much in local policing matters and were far too directive where they should not have been, while they were not always strong enough on the national policing matters that required central Government to exert a stronger view or influence.

We have sought to turn that paradox on its head and to restore local accountability, professional freedom and professional discretion where it is proper to do so, thus freeing up the police to be the crime fighters that they want to be and ensuring greater local accountability, while refocusing the role of the centre and the Home Office on those matters that they should be focused on, particularly national threats, to ensure that we have a strong policing response not only to the terrorist threat but to other threats—for example, serious and organised crime.

The alternative vision that has been set out by some, but not all, in policing was experimented with by the previous Government, and it is to create regional police forces as a means of addressing the new challenges that we face. That vision did not find favour in the country or in the House, and in the end the last Government decided not to proceed with it. I do not believe that it is a deliverable vision. In the absence of the creation of regional forces, if we say that we want to retain 43 individual forces—43 or thereabouts—we must then answer this question: how do we ensure that we have a structure that enables those 43 forces in England and Wales to be accountable to their local communities, where the chief constable is responsible for the totality of policing and those who are holding the chief constables to account hold them to account for the totality of policing, but that ensures that those 43 forces co-operate and collaborate, so that they can work efficiently, driving out unnecessary cost, and deal with serious and organised crime and those threats that cross force boundaries?

In my view, it is absolutely coherent—indeed, it is entirely the right approach—to say that we should on the one hand enhance local accountability through the election of police and crime commissioners, while on the other hand introducing a new national crime agency to strengthen the fight against serious and organised crime, to strengthen our borders and to deal with the new crime threats. Moreover, that new agency will not only work with police forces but have a significant new role in its relationship with those forces, as expressed through a new strategic policing requirement.

[Alun Michael]

The Minister is reflecting the tension that exists between ensuring that strategic national and regional issues are dealt with and ensuring that there is proper local accountability. Obviously, the Government have chosen the election of police and crime commissioners as their instrument to ensure local accountability. However, does he accept that part of the last Government’s approach—I suspect that it is something that he might agree with—was to strengthen the element of local partnership by requiring the police, down at local commander level, to work with the local authorities in their area, by putting a responsibility on local authorities and other agencies to engage in that partnership approach and by ensuring a connection between police interpretation and the public view of crime that needed to be dealt with? In particular, at that local level, the police should be judged on their success in reducing crime and disorder.

[Nick Herbert]

I was going to come to that, but I am very happy to respond to the right hon. Gentleman and to repeat what I have said to him, to which he has kindly referred. The development of partnerships between the police and local authorities and, indeed, other partners was an important step forward, and he played a particularly central role in ensuring that that was delivered under the previous Government. I think that it is widely accepted that such partnerships can be effective in reducing crime, and the Government wish to see them strengthened and continued, in spite of diminishing resource.

Up and down the country, I have seen action-oriented partnerships with a purpose that are not bureaucratic and that can deliver the kinds of results that the right hon. Gentleman was discussing. Others are more bureaucratic, and they need to adapt to the new world in which resources are at a premium and to ensure that their focus is very action-oriented, but we wish the partnerships to continue. We also wish to ensure that the police and crime commissioners are part of the arrangements and do not work against them, and we have conferred duties on all sides to ensure that. I am happy to endorse the important principle of partnership.

We need action locally and nationally to ensure that policing is structured such that it can meet the demands both of the volume of crime and of the population, in relation to the day-to-day antisocial behaviour and crime issues affecting it. However, we must also ensure that policing is equipped to deal with more serious issues, which, in the end, also affect people’s everyday lives. Drugs issues, for example, are linked to serious and organised criminality. A new strategic policing requirement will ensure for the first time that police forces and the newly elected police and crime commissioners are equipped to deal with those national threats. The creation of the National Crime Agency, along with the Organised Crime Co-ordination Centre in an intelligence-led approach and the introduction of police and crime commissioners is a strong, coherent and powerful response to the challenges that I have described.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East, reflected on the Government’s ambition to declutter the policing landscape, and I welcome the fact that he noted that that would not necessarily relate to the number of bodies but could involve a more logical ordering of the existing national policing bodies. I of course believe that the phasing out of the National Policing Improvement Agency was the right decision, and I have said so to the Select Committee. There were accountability issues, in spite of the many good things that the agency did and does—I certainly join others in paying tribute to its functions, and I have noted the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). Wishing to change the accountability arrangements for the functions, however, to find a better home for them, is not the same as saying that the Government do not value them. The agency clearly does important things, but it has become a kind of Christmas tree quango, with many policing functions loaded on to it and ownership and responsibility for what it was doing neither clearly with the Government nor with the police service.

We think that it is both coherent and right to seek greater accountability for the agency’s two principal functions. Of course, it is responsible for many other things. On the one hand there is IT and the development of improved information and communications technology for policing, which is so important, and has been referred to, and on the other is the training and development function, which is equally important to policing’s human resources. Separating those functions by creating a police-owned and led ICT company, for which the police service will accept responsibility, is the right solution to ensure better IT and a more coherent approach. These issues have bedevilled policing for too many years, and since we are having a sensible debate, we must reflect on why, even after more than a decade of rapidly rising resource for policing, we have still ended up with police IT systems that, frankly, are not good enough. They are disjointed, require multiple keyed entry by police officers and add to the bureaucratic burden.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend; that was indeed the expression.

We have made it clear that we wish to reconceive the idea of a professional body for policing and to ensure that it is inclusive. That is one of the important principles that I have set out, and I have a working party looking at how we would set up such a body. I am very pleased that in spite of the continued reservations of the Police Federation, which I acknowledge because I do not wish to mislead Members, the federation’s chairman has been attending the working party meetings. The Police Superintendents Association is also represented, as are the ACPO representatives and UNISON, and we now have representation from the police and crime commissioners’ side as well. I am also seeking some independent advice for the working party.

[Alun Michael]

Unless I missed it, I do not think that the Minister referred to the Police Superintendents Association, and in my experience its contribution, at that level of senior but local management, can often provide a crucial element in such discussions. Is the association included?

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the value of the advice of the Police Superintendents Association. I certainly share his view and have mentioned that the association is represented, which is important. I want to make it clear that we envisage that this will be an inclusive body. It is important that we raise our sights and consider the great advantage of the creation of a professional body that will have responsibility for standards, professional development and training. That is something that I think has been absent from the policing world. It is surprising that policing does not have such a body, which will be immensely positive.

I will explain briefly why this is so important. The development of professionalism in policing—the acquisition of the right skills—is an important part of our agenda to ensure that police officers are equipped to deal with modern challenges without the kind of bureaucratic approach that we have seen in the past. If we are to develop in policing an agenda of trusting professionals and the extension of professional discretion, we must ensure alongside that that police officers are trained, equipped and incentivised in a way that reflects the exercise of professional judgment, skills and discretion that commands public confidence and trust.

[Nick Herbert]

I noticed my hon. Friend’s puzzlement, so I should have offered clarification. What I meant is that Kit Malthouse, the deputy Mayor of London who has responsibility for policing in London, now attends the working party that I have set up, as does the chair of the Association of Police Authorities, Mark Burns-Williamson, who is also the chair of West Yorkshire police authority. That side of the tripartite is now represented, as are the policing professionals, which is important. Moreover, on Monday the arrangements will change so that, effectively, the first police and crime commissioner will be created in London. That is what I meant.

[Alun Michael]

With the greatest respect to the Minister—I do not want to introduce a note of disharmony—to describe the deputy Mayor of London as equivalent to a police and crime commissioner is, frankly, ridiculous. The whole point of the principle of police and crime commissioners, as the Minister has spelled out, is that they should be elected and accountable for policing issues to the electorate of the police force area. My personal view is that the exclusion of the Metropolitan police and the City of London police demonstrates a lack of confidence on the Government’s part in the posts that they are establishing. I do not object to their engagement in what will be such an important function, but they really do not have the authority to be there as precursors of the police and crime commissioners. The engagement of the APA’s representative is sensible in terms of continuity, but there is still a gap.

[Nick Herbert]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. I know that he is keen to become a police and crime commissioner—I welcome that—but he must not get ahead of himself. It is sensible to ensure, as we did in the negotiations on the protocol, that there is representation from those nominated by existing police authorities and from the deputy mayor, because he has responsibility for holding to account a quarter of policing in England and Wales. As I have said, on Monday the Mayor will become the police and crime commissioner, in law, for London, so it is entirely appropriate to have that representation on the working party. I emphasise that it is a working party.

[Alun Michael]

indicated dissent.

[Nick Herbert]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. It makes sense to have those two individuals on the working party, given the acceleration of this process in London ahead of the election of police and crime commissioners, the date of which—this November—will, as sure as night follows day, be firmly noted in the right hon. Gentleman’s diary.

[Alun Michael]

As I have said, it makes sense for representatives of the police authorities to be involved in the discussion, because they have experience, which helps continuity. However, although the situation in London may end up in law via the attachment of the words “police and crime commissioner” to an individual’s name, that is not what the Minister is putting in place everywhere else in England and Wales, namely the direct election of somebody to be responsible for policing in a police force area. The situation in London is inevitably muddled, and the Mayor is also involved in decisions on a number of issues that are relevant to police in the rest of England and Wales. That may be reviewed in a couple of years’ time, but at the moment such decisions go well beyond the Metropolitan police area. The situation is not as clear as the Minister suggests.

[Nick Herbert]

Yes, it is. I am completely bemused by the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The Mayor has responsibility in London. That will become an enhanced responsibility on Monday, because the Metropolitan Police Authority will be abolished and the Mayor will take full responsibility for policing and will become the police and crime commissioner for London—in law. The first police and crime commissioner will be created.

[Alun Michael]

In law, but not reality.

[Nick Herbert]

In law, on Monday. It is up to the Mayor whether he wishes to delegate that function. That power of delegation was, of course, established by the previous Government, so I am sure that there will be no criticism of it whatsoever. It makes sense for us to ensure that the deputy Mayor of London, as the person responsible, at present, for holding to account the country’s biggest police force and a quarter of all police officers, takes part in such discussions, because he can give voice to those who hold, and who will hold, police forces to account.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Michael Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Apart from continuing to give support to victims organisations, as I said, we are about to implement the Prisoners Earnings Act 1996, which will see up to £1 million taken from prisoners’ wages going into victims’ services. We have given Victim Support its three-year grant for the first time. It has never had such assured support—£38 million a year. We have honoured our coalition commitment to place rape support centres on a secure financial footing, giving them long-term funding, and we are about to open four more.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the most important thing for victims is the prevention of further offences and reoffending, since what victims want is to know that they are not going to become a victim a further time after a bad experience?

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Alun Michael Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

We are hardly setting up a bureaucratic system. It is one that involves direct democratic accountability. The two things that the hon. Gentleman describes are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to maintain neighbourhood policing and local accountability while still introducing direct democratic accountability and governance, for the reasons that I set out.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I must say that I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the usefulness of PACT meetings. The Minister referred to accountability and to the Metropolitan police. There is an issue with the governance of the Metropolitan police, because they do not and will not have a police commissioner, as that is part of the Mayor of London’s muddle of responsibilities. Of course, the Metropolitan police’s activities go far beyond London and have implications not only for other parts of England but for Scotland and Wales, yet we have a Mayor with devolved responsibility getting rid of a Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Is there not a bit of a muddle over the accountability issues right across this new pattern of policing?

[Nick Herbert]

I do not accept that there is a muddle. The right hon. Gentleman will know that it was the previous Government who set up the current governance arrangements in London. The Metropolitan police have national policing responsibilities and therefore answer in part to the Home Secretary, which makes them unique. However, the reforms in London to give greater local accountability have been popular with the public, and it is that principle that we seek to extend. Indeed, the principle of having one accountable individual directly responsible for the totality of force activity is crucial to the Government’s vision. Policing governance by committee has led to an unelected body having power over the precept, with no one being properly held to account for decisions or poor performance and no one truly being in charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

That is the point I am making. Front-line officers are not just uniformed officers visible on the street; they might include officers in the specialist units to which my hon. Friend refers. I agree that they are particularly important.

[Alun Michael]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a big difference between this and the approach adopted under the Labour Government, which was about highlighting a problem or concern when something needed to be done? It was about how to hear from the police and how to learn from them about what was needed to tackle issues like antisocial behaviour, for instance, thereby providing the tools necessary to do the job. It was about teamwork between the Government the police, which contrasts greatly with what is happening now.

[Vernon Coaker]

That is absolutely right. The teamwork, collaboration and partnership working was, I think, one of the consequences of a Bill that my right hon. Friend took through in 1998. I believe that was one of the most successful reforms carried out under the last Government.

Let me deal with a fundamental issue that will be dealt with more fully in the next group of amendments. It is important, so I shall refer to it now, as it is one of the crucial issues on which the hon. Member for Cannock Chase might want to reflect further. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, one thing he could not do was sack chief constables in individual areas. Under the Bill, however, the police and crime commissioner will be able to sack the chief constable, without the police and crime panel having any power to control it. That is an important difference; in my view, it is a big flaw in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am tempted to say that there is no need for me to rise to my feet now, given that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has given the name of the new commissioner. As I have just come into the Chamber, the policing Minister and I were discussing the best way to announce to the House the appointment of Bernard Hogan-Howe as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He is the former chief constable of Merseyside, where he had a fine record of crime fighting, seeing crime levels go down by just under 40% over three to four years. I am sure that he will bring that crime-fighting capability to London and the Metropolitan police.

[Alun Michael]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is good that the Home Secretary has now spoken to the House, but before this debate, when the Chancellor was at the Dispatch Box, the new commissioner’s appointment was widely publicised on television. So, as my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee was suggesting, the appointment has not come to the attention of the House as quickly as it should have.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House a long time and will recognise that that is not a point of order. He has put his point on the record.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Alun Michael Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

This Bill is a shambles and so is the Lord Chancellor’s approach to crime. Far from being a significant reforming measure, it is an incoherent fragment. The Opposition admire the panache of the Lord Chancellor, who is a much-loved and robust performer and who has sought to rise above the U-turns forced on him by a Prime Minister who is more interested in headlines than in reform, but it does not wash.

The Justice Secretary should take particular note of the criticism from his Back Benchers and the significant criticism from the Chair of the Justice Committee. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) kindly said that he thought that the baby was not totally being thrown out with the bathwater, but I am not sure about that and I am certainly worried about the health of the baby.

When the Secretary of State was Home Secretary, he presided over a crime wave. He also offended virtually every profession in sight, especially the police, by the cavalier way in which he fulfilled his duties. This Bill is a shambles, his strategy is in tatters and everyone is in confusion. The main problem is that he has such a piecemeal approach to the issue. The Justice Committee’s report, “Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment”, states:

“A piecemeal approach to justice reinvestment is unlikely to work and a holistic approach to reform is necessary, with a very clear and explicit statement of the purpose of the whole system against which organisational aims can be tested to assess their contribution to cutting the extent and seriousness of offending and re-offending.”

This Bill fails that test.

In that report, we also called for better use of resources and a focus by every part of the criminal justice system on cutting offending, because that is what victims want. We keep being told that the views of victims are important, but more than not to have become a victim in the first place, they want to know that they will not become a victim again in the future. Therefore, the purpose of the criminal justice system—and of sentencing—is to ensure that victims are protected from further offending.

Let us cut to the chase—cutting the number of people in prison may save money, but cutting prison numbers to save money is to approach the problem from the wrong end. There is only one acceptable reason for cutting prison numbers, and that is that offending and reoffending have fallen; fewer people are becoming victims; there are fewer offenders who need to be incarcerated; and our streets and homes are safer.

It is a matter of some pride to me that the number of places in young offender institutions has been cut for precisely those reasons. As a result of the work of the Youth Justice Board and the youth offending teams, fewer individuals are reoffending and so fewer places are needed. That reduction in numbers leads to immediate savings, but it is even more significant given that time in custody often acts as a training course in criminal activity for young people. So the long-term benefit of keeping people out of youth offending and preventing reoffending patterns is enormous. That makes it very odd that the Secretary of State will do away with the Youth Justice Board and I urge him to reconsider. I know that he is taking many activities inside the Ministry of Justice—and I am glad that he is encouraging the continuation of those activities and the youth offending teams—but he is taking in people who, as part of an independent body, have acted as the touchstone for success in that aspect of reducing reoffending.

[Mr Burrowes]

The right hon. Gentleman obviously has great experience and was no doubt the architect of the first such legislation in 1997. He will be interested to know that reoffending rates were very high over the 13 years to 2010, and that is something for which the previous Government should be held accountable. Does he not welcome the fact that in this Bill there is now provision for supervision of prisoners who have a sentence of less than 12 months? That has never happened in the past. Giving supervision to offenders after they are released will no doubt help to reduce reoffending levels.

[Alun Michael]

I have said for a long time that we should do more to ensure that short sentences work and that they do not accelerate offending. In this legislation, there are things to be welcomed, but the big picture is not bright enough for us to welcome the Bill as a whole.

Yesterday, in answer to my question, the Justice Secretary said:

“The Sentencing Council is already under a duty to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice”.—[Official Report, 28 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 738.]

Unless there is a clear focus on reducing reoffending and ensuring that that is understood by sentencers, the Bill will not be effective. That is why I call on the Justice Secretary to change his approach and put a real focus on the work of the Sentencing Council not just to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice but to ensure that sentencing practice is driven in ways in which it can increase the success of the system.

The work of the Youth Justice Board and the youth offending teams shows what can be done if there is a clear and unremitting focus on cutting offending and reoffending. Why not use a new mechanism to focus on the 18 to 25 age group? We are seeing a reduction in the numbers of 18 to 25-year-olds who are reoffending because of the success of intervention with young offenders. Why not learn that lesson and apply it properly to that reduced cohort so that we can further drive down the numbers who reoffend?

The Justice Secretary has admitted that the criminal justice system is fragmented; it does not work as a single system. A series of agencies operate to their own objectives and are held to account for different purposes. Bring it all together. Make it coherent. Let us have some coherent legislation from the Justice Secretary. The criminal justice system should pay attention to the Select Committee’s recommendations on justice reinvestment. The whole of the system should focus on reducing reoffending.

Victims want to feel that they are less likely to be offended against in the future. The Home Affairs Committee heard evidence from people who had been involved in restorative justice and it found that it actually works. When offenders are faced with their offending, they are less likely to reoffend. They are made to engage in relationships, which they have often failed to do in the past and which may have led them into offending in the first place. They do not see the victim as another person.

Although it is essential that we do something about what has been described as relational justice, there is nothing about it in the legislation. Too often, it is low down the agenda. The possibility is there but we are not driving it through the system and getting the benefits. I appeal to the Secretary of State to push relational justice up his agenda.

I also appeal to the Secretary of State to work with the Home Secretary to derive greater success from crime reduction partnerships, which again have been important, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said in his contribution a few moments ago. We have been successful in reducing crime, but we can go further and go faster if the right mechanisms are used. In this regard, I commend the violence reduction project in Cardiff, which, since I last referred to it in this Chamber, has been endorsed by the World Health Organisation and is the subject of an article in The British Medical Journal. Such acclaim shows that the approach in Cardiff has worked. It has driven down violent crime by 25% more than the cohort of cities with which it can properly be compared. The project works; it reduces offences and protects people from becoming victims. That is what needs to be put at the centre of our criminal justice system.

I regret that we have a Home Secretary who has failed to defend her budget and is imposing cuts on the police that are too deep, too soon and disgracefully front-loaded, and a Secretary of State for Justice who, by his failure to apply clarity and logic to the challenge of justice reinvestment and effectiveness in cutting crime, is doomed to fail. Sadly, it is the victims and not he who will pay the penalty for that.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I declare an interest as a legal aid practitioner for nearly 20 years and a recorder of a Crown court. I am one of those damned lawyers, I am afraid to say, and I apologise for that at the beginning of my speech.

I was particularly struck by the measured and reasonable contribution of the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). I have great respect for the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), whose parents live in my constituency, and her contribution was excellent. If only the debate about legal aid and sentencing was heard in those tones throughout the House and in the media.

Twenty years ago, criminal justice and sentencing was not a matter for great and low party politics; it was a matter for measured discussion. There were occasional criminal justice Acts, to tidy up a system that was perhaps at times not keeping pace with the changes in our society, but then something got into the DNA of the body politic and things took a turn for the worse. Egged on by the populist press, politicians from both sides of the House got into an arms race about being tough on crime, as opposed to being soft.

Where are we now, 20 years later? We have ended up being just plain stupid on the subject—stupid in the amount of legislation that we have passed; stupid in the language that we have used about crime and criminality; and stupid and vain to claim that politicians’ actions in the House can have a significant effect on crime rates in this country. We know the real reasons why crime rises and falls; they are economic, familial and social. They relate to a range of issues that are best dealt with by means of crime prevention and social policy.

Opposition Members should take my speech in its intended spirit—that of cross-party co-operation. I invite them to make constructive proposals about what to do with our broken system. If they had got into power, they would have had to deal with the system.

[Alun Michael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Buckland]

No; I am afraid that I will not take interventions, as there is no time. I say that with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, who has much experience in these matters. I am sure that he will forgive me, but there is a lot that I need to say. This is my first opportunity in 20 years to speak about criminal justice legislation from this side of the fence. I have been one of the people dealing with the reality of the impact of year after year of incontinence in legislation.

Court staff, practitioners and judges have all had to deal with the baleful consequences of the avalanche of work that ill-judged reform, sponsored by, among others, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who had the brass neck to come to the House today and tell us that, under his guidance, all was well with the world. He would not allow me to intervene on him. Had I done so—I am grateful that he is here—I would have reminded him about sentences of indeterminate length for public protection and the chaos that that system caused the Government. They were warned by the Court of Appeal that the system that they had introduced was in danger of being untenable.

As a result, the Government passed an Act in 2008 to amend the system, but it was still a bad system, because it was not transparent to the victims. When victims of crime went to court and heard about sentences of indeterminate length for public protection, they did not know what that meant; they did not know when the perpetrator of the crime against them was to be released. They did not understand the system. That was a failure of transparency. It was the single most important failure of the regime, which is why I will be glad after the review to see the back of the system and to see clear, long, determinate sentences with automatic release after two thirds of time is served. We have been here before; that was the system that existed before the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Sentences of longer than four years attracted automatic release after two thirds of the time was served. The merry-go-round has come around again.

Opposition Members say that the Bill is imperfect. That is inevitable, because it must undo years of damage inflicted by their party. The Bill is not finished business; I accept that. It would be good to have a consolidation Act to bring sentencing provisions under one umbrella. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Blackburn for doing so in 2000 with an excellent measure, but within two years it was all upended again by some brave new policy initiative designed to assuage the populist press. It is time to end the charade in the debate on criminal justice. It is time to start talking clever rather than tough. It is time to change the ambit of the debate. The Bill gives us an opportunity to do so, which is why I will support it on Second Reading.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Michael Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

As I said, we have begun work, and that is certainly an interesting suggestion. A massive amount of data would be involved in providing every judge and magistrate with full information about everybody they had ever sentenced, but I agree that we should consider the feasibility of doing so. I gather that someone in Seattle advocates that and has given interesting evidence to the Select Committee on Justice.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is considerable evidence that judges do not know enough about what happens once they sentence prisoners and those sentences have been disposed of. Will the Justice Secretary do what he can to increase the experience obtained by judges of those disposals and will he ask the Sentencing Council to advise, with a particular focus on what works in preventing offending and reoffending?

[Mr Clarke]

The Sentencing Council is already under a duty to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice and I am sure that it supplements that advice and information in every possible way. As I have said to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), we will certainly consider the feasibility of doing such a thing, as it would be valuable, but we are talking about a vast number of cases and not every judge will find it possible to find out exactly what happened in later years to everybody who appeared before him.

Police Funding

Alun Michael Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend asks almost a rhetorical question to which the answer must be, “No—people will not be motivated if those cuts take place,” but he is right to raise those concerns. That is why this debate is important. The Home Affairs Committee is of course aware of the deep concern in the west midlands, which is demonstrated by the number of west midlands MPs in the Chamber this afternoon.

A number of police forces have already issued statements on how the CSR will affect them. In a statement on 22 November, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police and the treasurer of the Greater Manchester Police Authority said:

“Final spending details are not expected until the end of November or early December but if the headline reductions in spending totals for the Police Service are ultimately reflected in GMP’s Formula Grant and Specific Grants, the Force and Police Authority will need to find savings of £134m over the four year period…Savings of £52m will need to be found in 2011/12.”

They estimate in their report that GMP will lose approximately 2,950 posts from a total of 12,000 over the four-year period, and BBC News has reported that 1,387 officers and 1,557 civilian posts could go in Greater Manchester.

Northumbria police also issued a statement, saying that the likely impact of the cuts would be the loss of 450 members of the civilian staff out of a total of 2,500. As my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) said, it looks as though 2,000 jobs will be lost in the West Midlands police force, including 1,050 police officers over the four-year period.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should declare an interest, because my son is the chief executive of a police authority. Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the large numbers of police officers that will be lost? The Government imply that the loss of police officers will not be seen on the streets because people can somehow be pulled out of back offices, but many officers who are not on the streets investigate internet-related crime and child abuse, and undertake intelligence and scientific activities to prevent crime. They investigate a range of crime, the evidence for which is not to be found on the streets of our towns and cities.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is extremely knowledgeable, as a former Police Minister. He will know that, depending on the police authority or station, 85 different functions could be performed every day in a police station by people from IT experts to those on the switchboard and reception. Of course, the temptation is to remove the back office, but if we do so, those in the front office—the visible police officers—will have to go there, because there will be nobody else to do that work. My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the problems caused by the suggested front-loaded reductions.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Alun Michael Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The number of foreign prisoners in our prisons roughly doubled in the past 10 years, during the period of office of the previous Government who rather went backwards and forwards at various times about whether they were releasing people who might have been deported or keeping them here because they could not be deported. It is difficult to get large numbers out, but we are determined to make an effort to do it. We are looking at ways in which, in suitable cases, conditional cautioning could get people out of the country and diverted out of our criminal justice system altogether on the basis that they never come back. We are also looking at how we can encourage other countries to take back prisoners who are eligible for deportation to ensure that this extraordinary burden, which has grown in the past few years, is eased, because there are better things we can do in the whole system with the money we are spending on foreign prisoners.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased that the Justice Secretary intends to build on the success of the youth offending teams, which I introduced in 1998. Will he ensure that the youth courts, and indeed the courts generally, follow the central recommendations of the justice reinvestment report by focusing clearly on what works in reducing reoffending and incentivising those outside the criminal justice system who can help to bring down crime?

[Mr Clarke]

The answer is yes. One thing on which I totally agree with the right hon. Gentleman is that we have to concentrate our resources on what works. By that I mean, from the point of view of the potential victims and society at large, what gets down the level of crime committed by young offenders in particular.