Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The senior presiding judge will keep a close eye on regional discrepancies. In certain cases, there is the power to transfer them from one court to another, but that will depend on the suitability for defendants, and witnesses and victims who need to attend hearings. It is important that we send the message from this Chamber that more than 90% of all criminal trials—the cases that people want resolved such as criminal damage, drugs matters and common assault—are dealt with in magistrates courts, and magistrates up and down our country are doing an excellent job at getting through those cases.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I absolutely endorse the Lord Chancellor’s comments on magistrates working incredibly hard to clear backlogs in courts. He will have seen recent journalistic reporting relating to single justice procedure, which is an important element of magistrates’ work. The principle behind the single justice procedure is good, and I have sat on cases in SJP courts, but there are some concerns, in particular around vulnerable individuals who may have mitigation that is not necessarily being addressed. Does he agree that perhaps he could remind Members that magistrates can already use their discretion to refer cases back to open court, where prosecutors can review cases to ensure that individuals who are vulnerable are not served with un-justice?

Sentencing Bill

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I will be relatively brief. As a member of the magistracy who spends time sentencing—in fact, I was sentencing last week on a whole range of issues that come before the Merseyside bench—I am acutely aware that the British public, including my constituents, want to ensure that the criminal justice system is fair and proportionate and fair to victims as a principal concern. Today we are debating a Bill that will strengthen those principles by making sure that the most serious offenders receive tougher sentences that reflect the severity of their crimes. The Bill will remove from society those who pose the greatest danger to the public while also reducing the rate of reoffending by lower-risk criminals.

Too often, I see familiar faces in the courtroom and I want the Government to do much more to take steps to break the cycle of reoffending. That is not just a matter for the criminal justice system; it is for every part of the Government, in particular the Departments for Work and Pensions and for Education. We can do much more to break the cycle.

The Bill introduces a presumption that sentences under 12 months will be suspended, punishing and rehabilitating offenders by using technology to deliver and enforce tough curfews and work in the community, where they can begin to repay their debt to society. Of all the announced measures, the presumption against an immediate short-term custodial sentence in favour of a suspended sentence or community order is particularly relevant in magistrates courts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) said just a moment ago, that is essentially the approach that we already take in the magistrates court, where, even if the custody threshold for an offence is exceeded, the practice is for magistrates to consider in the first instance whether a suspended sentence or community order would be far more appropriate.

Magistrates consider a range of facts and sentencing, and they do not sentence in an isolated form. The first thing they do is look at the antecedents of the criminal before them. If that criminal has a long list of previous convictions, they are more likely to go back to prison because that is the way magistrates operate in their courts. Magistrates follow very detailed sentencing guidelines. They work tirelessly to ensure that there is consistency across all courts and to consider the statutory aggravating and mitigating factors, and they look carefully to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. However, it is important that magistrates retain the discretion for immediate custody if neither a suspended sentence nor a community order is suitable. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor is aware of that.

I will conclude by touching on two other brief points. First, on prison capacity, I recognise the importance of extending the prison estate, and the Minister has very kindly notified me that Thorn Cross Prison in my constituency is likely to see an increase of 76 prisoners as a result of the increased use of rapid deployment cells once planning permission has been granted. Can the Minister confirm that an appropriate increase in staffing will follow? That prison has had significant issues with drugs being delivered into it. When the Lord Chancellor was prisons Minister, he spent time meeting my constituents to consider that particular area. Can the Department confirm that the relevant experienced prison officers will come alongside the additional prisoners?

Can the Minister also confirm that there will be no change in the type of prisoners that are held there? There had been discussions about holding sex offenders who are coming to the end of their sentences, but it was then decided that that would not happen. The prison is in very close proximity to a school, so I would be very grateful if the Minister ensured that that does not happen.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill, which will put public protection at the heart of sentencing. The Government are taking an evidence-based, long-term approach to sentencing to ensure that we are tough on violent crime, committed to reducing reoffending, and doing what is needed to keep the public safe.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Opposition Front Bencher.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

T3.   One of the primary reasons for adjournment and relisting in magistrates courts is a lack of trained probation officers to carry out pre-sentence stand-down reports. Could the Minister outline what steps he is taking to address this so that courts can get through caseloads more speedily?

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority as a magistrate, and I know from my own experience as a practitioner how important stand-down reports are. They provide the bench with information about the offender—their relationship situation, their record of previous convictions, their mental health problems and so on—so that the court can tailor a disposal that punishes the offender but also progresses their rehabilitation. We are working closely with the probation service to ensure that that resource is properly allocated so that we can have more stand-down reports to ensure better justice on the facts of each case.

Prison Capacity

Andy Carter Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

No, that is wrong. The first part—that this is an idea whose time has come—is correct. I spoke about this when I was a Back Bencher in a speech at the Conservative party conference, of all places. I have come to this as a realisation for some time. What is encouraging is that the Government are putting enormous additional resource into the probation service, because I reckon that it is ultimately critical to the success of community orders; it does a phenomenal job. We are putting more resources in and recruiting more, and we will do everything we can to strengthen the system.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend knows that magistrates think carefully before they commit anybody to custody, because they know that once somebody is sent to prison for a short sentence, their life can spiral downwards very quickly: they can lose their home, their job and, often, their family. Does he agree that more robust community sentences are needed, particularly in relation to drug rehabilitation, which is the root cause of so much offending? Will he set out what steps he is taking to ensure that those on community sentences are suitably supervised?

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. His observation that magistrates do all they can to avoid sending someone to custody and do so only when absolutely necessary was well made. The reason why this reform will be so important is that under a suspended sentence order, the magistrates are saying in effect to that individual, “You must engage in a sensible and productive way with drug rehabilitation. If you don’t, you will go to prison.” That provides the most powerful incentive for that individual to break the cycle of offending while not locking them up, which, as my hon. Friend indicated, would mean they could lose their universal credit, not get the mental health treatment they require and break the family relationships that can be so important to keeping people away from crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

What the hon. Gentleman said is just not the case. He is absolutely right that securing accommodation on release is incredibly important—we have just had a similar conversation about employment, but accommodation underpins so much else, including the ability to get into work—but the tier 3 accommodation that he mentions had, by February of this year, already supported more than 5,000 people who would otherwise have left prison without a home to go to.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Further to the Minister’s comments about the progress made in magistrates courts, may I thank him for recently meeting members of the Cheshire bench who came to Parliament? Will he update the House on the decision to pause the additional sentencing powers granted to magistrates in 2022? Does he agree with me and members of the Magistrates Association that restoring those powers could free up about 1,700 extra Crown court sitting days each year?

[Mike Freer]

The change in sentencing powers was no reflection on the magistrates, whose work is highly valued. The Department continues to keep the sentencing powers under review. I give my hon. Friend the commitment that the issues raised in that meeting with his local bench are being progressed through the Department

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I certainly support the hon. Gentleman’s pursuit of maximum transparency. If he is having problems, he can feel free to drop me a line and I will see what I can do, but the FOI Act sets out clearly prescribed limits, and we want to make sure we process those applications fairly and properly.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Around 12 months ago, the Minister set out a plan to recruit a further 4,000 magistrates. Can he give us an update on how that is progressing? What steps is he taking to retain the most experienced presiding justices?

[Mike Freer]

There are a couple of things we are doing to achieve our target of 1,000 additional judicial vacancies this year, which is on track, and I am willing to share that with my hon. Friend. We have reformed judicial pensions today. In addition, we have increased the age limit, so that we can retain the best judiciary.

Sentencing: Repeat Offenders

Andy Carter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and what he says is reasonable. I have just been reading a book about the former Director of Public Prosecutions and his early career; he is now the leader of the Labour party, I believe. [Laughter.] He was at pains to provide sentencing guidelines in discussions with Ministers—Conservative Ministers, I might add—to try to address some of these issues. I do not think that Ministers can completely wipe their hands of responsibility.

I will elaborate some of the related issues and explain why prison is not as effective as it might be, although it is an important alternative, particularly for serial offenders. As I said, the victim of the particular crime that I referred to has completely lost confidence in the system and has said that he would not give evidence in future, because he thought that the sentence that was given was inappropriate—in fact he said that it was laughable.

When a case goes to court and the outcome is an affront to justice, it is the police who experience the fall-off in public confidence. Members might be aware that YouGov regularly conducts a survey in which it asks the public whether they have confidence in the police’s ability to deal with crime in their area. The trends are very worrying; 47% of the public lack confidence in the ability of the police to tackle crime, compared with only 43% who are confident in the police. Overall, the number of people who believe the police are doing a good job—nationally, and not in County Durham; I think we have an outstanding police force—has fallen from 75% to 53% in the last two years. I hope that sets alarm bells ringing for Ministers.

The failure is systematic. When I presented my Prisons (Violence) Bill in the previous Session of Parliament, I warned that offenders often left prison more damaged and more dangerous than when they arrived. The out-of-control levels of prison violence make rehabilitation in the current circumstances practically impossible. That leads to more reoffending, at a cost of tens of billions of pounds a year to the criminal justice system, as well as causing misery for millions of victims and their loved ones, who have to live with the consequences of even more crime.

That situation is more than an appalling waste of both public money and people’s lives; it is nothing less than a crime against our communities, and I must say that the Government are complicit in it. The Conservative Government and all Ministers are responsible, first, for the devastating cuts to the budgets of the Prison Service during the coalition years of austerity. It was those cuts that triggered the escalating level of violence in prisons. For example, the number of prison officers was cut by a quarter. That meant that a massive amount of experience, held by experienced prison officers, and of that most precious resource, which prison officers refer to as jailcraft, was taken out of the system at a stroke. The vacuum that was created was quickly filled by prisoners who had become more experienced than many officers on the landings of our prisons. The vacuum has also been filled by violence.

Despite recent recruitment drives, the Prison Service has lost almost 90,000 years—I repeat, almost 90,000 years—of prison officer experience since 2010. That is a shameful statistic, but it just gets worse every year. As the experience of the prison officers who are in charge of our prisons goes down, violence goes up; there is a direct correlation. In turn, that leads to even more officers leaving the service. Not surprisingly, the retention rate for prison staff is at a record low, as of course is their morale.

It has not helped that this Government have raised the retirement age for prison officers to 68. Frankly, for prison officers—both men and women—who are grappling with young and fit criminals, 68 is far too old. It is a cruel policy, which we have discussed on many occasions in this place.

The Government consistently ignore the advice of their own experts. The Prison Service Pay Review Body has proffered advice that prison officers should be given a proper pay rise. Ministers have ignored experts for three years running, and we are currently waiting for them to respond to this year’s pay review body recommendations.

The Government broke our Prison Service when they robbed it of resource, in the name of austerity, and now they need to fix it if they want to have any chance of reducing reoffending. The Government have also broken our probation service with a failed privatisation experiment. They took an award-winning service, envied and held up as a model and example around the world, and smashed it—fragmented it into little pieces, each to be run for private profit.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I had the opportunity to visit Thorn Cross prison on Friday and meet the excellent governor, Richard Suttle, who showed me around the site. I was struck by the number of employers now based in the prison, helping young people who are about to leave to find work. The hon. Gentleman talked of reoffending. The Government have taken significant steps to ensure that, when young people in particular leave prison, there is a work-based route for them. Does he acknowledge that that makes a significant difference to the number of people returning to prison?

[Grahame Morris]

That is a good and sensible point, but I draw the hon. Member’s attention to the report of the Select Committee on Education, chaired by the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). That is quite scathing about the opportunities provided by the education service in prison.

[Andy Carter]

The Committee visited the same prison I did, and highlighted the outstanding work at Thorn Cross. Businesses such as Timpson ensure that, when people leave prison, they have a solid job to go to. That work starts inside the prison. I acknowledge many of the comments in that report, but Thorn Cross was highlighted as one prison with an outstanding performance of reducing reoffending.

[Grahame Morris]

That must be one of the prisons on my list to visit, though I hope not as an inmate. I received numerous invitations from prison officers when I was in Eastbourne. I held a surgery for prison officers to raise concerns, anonymously if they wished, and there is a catalogue of issues to be addressed. Prison education is certainly one of those, but that is normally delivered by members of the UCU, the prison educators, who have an unenviable task, which I will come to in a moment.

I want to continue my point about the role of probation. In the complex jigsaw of the criminal justice system, there are vital elements: the police; magistrates; the Crown Prosecution Service; prison officers; the prisons themselves, which should be properly staffed and resourced; probation and prison educators. Those are all important elements of that mosaic. Probation officers play a vital role that is largely unrecognised in reducing reoffending. That is what their jobs are all about and how we gauge their success. They perform a vital public service, protecting our communities from crime, while helping ex-offenders to develop the skills they need to turn their lives around.

By introducing a profit motive into probation—a mistake since acknowledged—the previous Government betrayed the highly skilled and priceless work done by probation officers with many years of experience, leaving their pay, terms and conditions at the mercy of private firms, which tried to reduce their role to little more than a tick-box exercise. That led to a flood of resignations, with people leaving the system, and all the problems we saw as a result.

Even now, two years after the Government admitted defeat and announced a full reintegration and renationalisation of probation, the service is still in the midst of a recruitment and retention crisis, very similar to the one in prisons. Napo has told me about the workload crisis facing its members. Many probation officers are working over their recommended offender management levels—the number of cases they have to look after—by between 20% and 50%, and in one case, by over 90%. The staffing and workload crises in probation have had terrible and tragic consequences in the past. It is no wonder that the mental health of many probation officers is at breaking point.

The Government have put the public at serious risk from reoffending by trying to run prisons and probation on the cheap, and undermining the pay and terms and conditions of those critically important workers in the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

You will wish you had not said that, Sir Gary, but thank you for chairing this debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

It is welcome that the Government have committed to 20,000 new police officers and that we are on target to meet that number. It is interesting that in areas like ours, Sir Gary, such as the South Hams, we have 170 new officers and are due 217 more by the end of 2024, which we are also on target to meet. We have local initiatives such as the councillor advocates scheme, set up by our police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, that help local parishes engage with the police to ensure better representation and visibility and a better ability to disrupt crime networks. Such structures will make a difference and, hopefully, alleviate the problems of crime in rural areas.

[Andy Carter]

We have similar experiences in Cheshire. The police and crime commissioner, John Dwyer, reported just this week that Cheshire is in line to have more officers than ever before in the history of the force by the end of March—a commitment that the Government made and are delivering on. Does my hon. Friend accept that although we often hear about having more police on the beat, many crimes are committed online and behind closed doors? The real value of having forensic investigators working behind the scenes is paying off with higher arrest rates, particularly in areas such as child exploitation.

[Anthony Mangnall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The nature of policing has changed and we have to be clear about how we tackle crime. I do not expect to see as many officers on foot patrol, but I expect to see more of them driving about. Sir Gary, you did say that this debate is about sentencing, so I will get back to that topic. First, it is about crime prevention, and secondly—the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) touched on this—it is about people who repeatedly commit crimes and find themselves with unduly lenient sentences, such as his constituent.

It is not for Members of Parliament to stand in this place and decide what a sentence should be, but perhaps the Minister will clarify what the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act will do to enhance sentencing, because our understanding was that we would have the opportunity to be more stringent when it comes to those who repeatedly commit crimes. I do not want to take up a significant amount of time, but I do want to talk about one way in which we can deal with repeat offenders, which is rehabilitation.

There are three programmes that are relevant to where we are from, Sir Gary. The first is LandWorks, a local organisation in south Devon that works with those who are at risk of going to prison or are coming out of prison and likely to reoffend. It does it in three ways: engagement through a market garden, through pottery and through woodwork. It is a hand-holding exercise for those leaving prison to ensure that, from leaving prison to re-entering society, there is an opportunity to help them to re-enter and ensure that recidivism is not just something that we presume will happen.

I have visited LandWorks and I have asked the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to visit. The Minister answering the debate today is of course welcome anytime in south Devon—it is amazing how many Ministers want to come down over the summer, so he could take a quick holiday and a jaunt to that extraordinary organisation that works to reduce reoffending. It helps the police and the Prison Service, who feel helpless, by ensuring that we do not have more and more prisoners going back in. As a Conservative, I believe passionately that we should have a tough stance on crime but I also believe that the purpose of prisons is rehabilitation and that people deserve a second chance, so we have to find a balance between those two positions.

The second group I will reference is Pathfinder, which has been launched with the police. It is an evidence-based intervention that reduces harm and reoffending and can hold offenders to account for their actions. The scheme integrates offenders and the police, so that they can work together to ensure that offenders do not go down the predicted path of reoffending and are held to account through targets and checklists that they must fulfil. Strict adherence to the programme is already showing some successes.

The third initiative is NHS Reconnect. I recently met someone who was working intimately with the NHS Reconnect service who made the point that after they had left prison they never thought they would be able to get a job in something as big and as brilliant as the NHS. NHS Reconnect is the perfect example to show, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) said, how businesses and public organisations and institutions can play a role. If we can help offenders to find a way into those schemes and structures, we can divert them from the predicted course, and that is where we have to focus.

Using those three initiatives—Landworks, Pathfinder and NHS Reconnect—we have the opportunity to disrupt the chain, the concept and the belief that reoffending is the natural course after leaving the prison system. The statistics accurately prove that crime in our part of the country is going down; I am sorry to keep referring to south Devon but, anecdotally, I am sure there are similar examples across the country, and in fact the statistics prove that. With the police and others coming up with innovative schemes, such as the councillor advocate scheme, we have a way to disrupt.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I congratulate my friend the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on bringing forward this important debate, which, as I said to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), can be viewed from a number of different viewpoints.

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare an interest as a practising solicitor. I was a criminal defence solicitor for 16 years. During the halcyon days of the Labour Government under Tony Blair, I was in court every day and in police stations every evening, representing the reoffenders we have been talking about. I am sure the hon. Member for Easington has not come here just to engage in political point scoring, and he will not want us to get into a debate about this, but I could go through a whole raft of statistics from when I was practising before the courts under the Labour Government. Reoffending was rampant.

This will be my last point, because I do not want to get into this, but I do not know how Labour or any Labour politician can actually challenge a Government Minister when their leader has such an appalling record as Director of Public Prosecutions. There was a fall in conviction rates for serious sexual offending and other sexual offending. We should come to these issues without the political preening and look at what we can do to make things better.

I can tell the Members present that we could have been having this conversation back in 2001, when I first stood up in the magistrates court. The first mitigation I did was completely by luck—I was making it up as I went along. I got there at 9 o’clock in the morning and my new employer said, “Court starts in 45 minutes—off you go.” The first person I represented was a shoplifter. I did not know what to say, having had no experience of these things. It occurred to me that it would be a novel idea if the court was able to impose a sentence of a job and a home. I had no background training whatsoever, having done no criminal law during my training contract. I just had a feeling, at some point, that I would go into criminal law. I thought it sounded interesting. The feeling I had during that first mitigation has never left me: the way to tackle offending, certainly with repeat offenders, is by the state bringing as much stability to their lives as possible. That is an incredibly difficult action for the state.

Sentencing is a bespoke exercise. The idea that the Government impose sentences that are routinely put and that everybody—whether they are in Totnes, Easington or Bury—gets the same sentence in the same circumstances is utterly ridiculous.

[Andy Carter]

My hon. Friend knows that I sit as a magistrate. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) said that Members of this House do not necessarily sentence, but I actually do sentence. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) is absolutely right. One of the greatest debates that benches of magistrates have is on the appropriate sentencing for the offender they see in front of them. Rehabilitation activity requirements and courses to help people understand the issues they face—on drugs, alcohol and dealing with conflict—are incredibly valuable and can form part of a sentencing package. As my hon. Friend says, it is right that magistrates have a full range of sentences available to them to ensure that the punishment fits the crime that an offender has been convicted of.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Mr Magistrate, for the reminder that interventions should be slightly shorter than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Carter]

Will the Minister talk about the changes to Friday release that have been announced? Having visited several prisons, it has always struck me that there are virtually no support services for prisoners when they are released into the community on Fridays. What was the thinking behind the changes?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he is absolutely right about the impact of the changes. He will be aware that our hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) will introduce a private Member’s Bill to tackle this very issue. As we bring that Bill forward—hopefully with support from all parties—it will address my hon. Friend’s point.

On the matter of release, the hon. Member for Strangford asked a specific question: how do we notify the victim when the perpetrator is being released? I cannot comment on the arrangements in Northern Ireland, but we have a victim contact scheme in our jurisdiction. Where an offender receives one year or more in custody, bereaved close relatives and victims of serious sexual and violent offences are automatically referred to the scheme, so that they can choose to receive information on the following: first, when the offender is released or considered for release or conditional discharge; secondly, if the prisoner moves to open conditions; and thirdly, what the court sentence means for the offender’s detention in prison or hospital. We recognise that the point of release is a key moment to help offenders turn their lives around, which is why the issue of Friday release is important. As such, our prison strategy White Paper outlined our ambitious plans to ensure that prison leavers have the accommodation and employment support they need on release to help them to stay away from drugs and crime.

The hon. Member for Easington asked about prison education, and I can confirm that we set out our plans in the prison strategy White Paper to deliver a prison education service within this Parliament and to raise numeracy, literacy and skills in order to secure jobs on release. I have already highlighted the real progress that we are making in securing employment for prisoners, and we will change the law to enable them to undertake apprenticeships for the first time. In combination with our commitment to support prisoners to engage with community treatment ahead of release, we are confident that the measures will help reduce reoffending.

Specifically in relation to female offenders, who are more likely to commit low-level offences, we are delivering on our commitment to pilot a residential women’s centre. This will offer an intensive residential support package in the community for women at risk of receiving short custodial sentences, supporting them to address the underlying causes of their offending behaviour, including drug, alcohol and mental health needs, and to move on to settled accommodation. Last month, we announced that the first residential women’s centre will be in Swansea. The centre will now be subject to planning permission, but it will run as a pilot for five years and has received £10.6 million of spending review funding.

Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Easington for securing the debate. As I said, this is a matter that greatly concerns all our constituents. There is a lot of consensus about the measures that need to be taken, and I assure him that the Government understand the issue and are committed to tackling the harm caused by repeat offending.

Police Grant Report

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2022–23 (HC 1084), which was laid before this House on 2 February, be approved.

It gives me great pleasure to announce to the House the final police funding settlement for the fast-approaching new financial year.

The foremost role of Government is to keep the public safe from harm. Our effort to deliver that most critical of functions depends to a large extent on the work of our police service. As this settlement demonstrates, we remain firmly and fully committed to strengthening the resources and capabilities available to the police as they confront crime and protect our citizens.

Last year Parliament approved a funding settlement resulting in an increase of up to £636 million being made available for the policing system. This included an increase in Government grant funding of £425 million for police and crime commissioners in England and Wales to continue to strengthen police forces through our officer recruitment programme. I am delighted to say that with this funding, along with the £700 million received for year 1 of the programme, more than 11,000 additional officers have been recruited as of the end of December 2021. That means that we are more than halfway to meeting the 20,000 target, which is something to shout about. However, I assure the House that we are not resting on our laurels. We must keep up the momentum, because every new officer through the door is another courageous individual we can call upon in the fight against crime.

Beyond the recruitment drive, this year we have invested £180 million in combating serious and organised crime, £500 million in Home Office-led police technology programmes to replace outdated legacy IT systems, and £45 million in the safer streets fund to put proven prevention measures in place in areas plagued by neighbourhood crime, and to help combat violence against women and girls. The building blocks are now in place; now it is time to hit the accelerator, and next year’s settlement will enable the police to go further than before in confronting crime.

One of the most consistent asks from policing around funding is certainty, and on this we have also delivered. The spending review provides forces with a three-year settlement, ensuring that they have the necessary confidence and stability to pursue long-term strategic planning, as well as maintaining strengthened officer numbers. In 2022-23, the Government will be investing up to £16.9 billion in the policing system—an increase of up to an additional £1.1 billion when compared with last year. Of that significant investment, we have made an additional £550 million of Government grants available to police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. As well as supporting continued officer recruitment, that funding will allow forces to invest in critical capabilities, while focusing on modernising the police service to meet future demand.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am delighted that the work of the Conservative police and crime commissioner in Cheshire is paying off, with more than 100 new officers in post already. Could the Minister tell me, though, what work is going into ensuring that we retain officers? Recruitment and retention go together, and having spoken to members of the Police Federation, I am concerned that we are witnessing some churn. Is that something that he is aware of and dealing with?

[Kit Malthouse]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Cheshire constabulary on their recruitment. I am told that they have recruited 149 officers to their complement, which is a fantastic achievement. They still have to get to their allocation by March, and their allocation next year will, I think, be a further 120 on top, so my hon. Friend should see plenty of uniforms across that beautiful county in the months and years to come.

My hon. Friend is quite right that recruitment is only half the battle; retention is the other half. We are monitoring the attitudes and experience of those new recruits incredibly closely. I know he will be pleased to hear that their satisfaction in the job, the fulfilment of their expectations of the job, is overwhelmingly positive, but we need to bear that in mind as we train them and instil the right values in them. As they hopefully embark on a long-term career, we will be staying in touch with their sentiments very closely.

Hillsborough: Collapse of Trials

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady heard my observations about what has already been done with regard to legal aid and legal eligibility. The effective removal of the upper means test threshold with regard to exceptional case funding for legal help and legal representation in circumstances just such as this is a very important development. I take the point that she makes. That is why I have already undertaken not just to present the response to the 2018 consultation but to develop it further so that any potential change that can be made will be done with the fullest, most careful and earliest consideration.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, as this is the first time I am speaking on this topic, I hope you will allow me to pay tribute to the four victims from Warrington who lost their lives at Hillsborough—in particular, to David Benson from Penketh in my constituency, who was just 22 when he died. Having read some of the comments from Brian, David’s father, it is clear to me that he feels that the system has failed him at every single level. With that in mind, will the Lord Chancellor clarify what steps he is taking following the collapse of the most recent trial in relation to the offence of perverting the course of justice and common law offences that touch on those who hold public office?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend puts in very heartfelt, genuine terms the real sense of loss and frustration, to say the least, that his constituents and their families feel. I have already outlined the steps that I want to take with regard to looking at the public advocate role. In line with that, I and my officials are considering very carefully the work of Law Commission on the offences of misconduct in public office published right at the end of last year. I aim to issue a response as soon as possible with regard to any next steps. There is a joint protocol that we have agreed between my Department—the Government—and the Law Commission. I want to make sure that any potential changes are done in the round so that we are not inadvertently missing out any particular issues that clearly need to be addressed.

Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Andy Carter Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I will judge success—never “mission accomplished”, but certainly success—when I see the number of cases that take six months or longer dropping to well below 20% of all cases. That is my personal benchmark. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a date when that will be achieved; what I can say is that there is now a sustained pattern in which the number of cases being dealt with in both Crown and magistrates courts is larger than the number of cases coming in. That, obviously, means one thing—a decline in the overall number.

The Courts Service’s latest published plan is to see the overall number of cases in the magistrates courts reduce back to pre-covid levels by the end of the year. Every sign that I have been seeing over the past few months suggests that that progress is sustained and sustainable. We should pay tribute to the magistrates, judges and all the court staff who are working so hard to make that real.

The pressures that we are under are all familiar to us in the House. I look around in this place and see so few people, and that reminds me of the challenge in courts. Imagine the difficulty of running a busy court where people are coming back and forth and covid coming into the middle of it all. The work done to make our courts safe, in accordance with guidelines from Public Health England and Public Health Wales, has been immense. We invested about £113 million in safety measures —from perspex screens right through to social distancing measures, plus the Nightingale courts programme, which is allowing us to create the sort of capacity needed to deal with the case load. Plus there is the commitment I made, to which the right hon. Member for Tottenham alluded, that there should be no upper limit on the number of sitting days that can be used by the Crown court.

In other words, the Government and I have clearly signalled to all involved in the system that all systems are go and only the inevitable constraints of the current covid pandemic and social distancing rules would hold back the sort of full-throttle progress that I would love to see. If we continue with the common endeavour of the vaccination programme—that race that it is so important to win—and continue to make progress, I am convinced that will be reflected in improved figures at our courts.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Lord Chancellor is absolutely right to pay tribute to court staff, magistrates and judges. As he knows, I sit as a magistrate and have seen the work that has continued right the way through the pandemic. What he has missed, though, is the investment that the Government have made in technology. I have been able to sit here, in the House of Commons, and undertake justice procedures for Merseyside so that we can keep the process and the wheels of justice moving forward. That investment has made a significant difference, too.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to be prompted by my hon. Friend, who anticipates what I was just about to say about the next limb of our investment, which is in technology. At the beginning of the pandemic, about 500 cases or so were being dealt with by way of telephone or remote technology across the whole of England and Wales. Last week, the number reached 20,000—just under half all the cases heard every week in our various jurisdictions.

That has not happened by accident; it has happened as a result of significant Government investment in the hardware and software so that the technology works as well as possible for all court users. We continue, through the £1 billion court reform programme launched in 2017, to evolve, refine and improve the technology. All the measures that we have invested in are supported by the biggest single increase in court maintenance in nearly 20 years—the £142 million that I announced last summer. That is further evidence of the concerted action that I and the Government have taken since the outset of the crisis.

Plans were outlined for recovery in the criminal courts in September last year—most notably, our commitment to create 290 courts that could be used for jury trials. But we did better than that: we now have over 300 courts that can be safely used for jury trials—and they are happening day after day. We published our plans for other court recovery, relating to other jurisdictions, in November. I can remember a time at the beginning of this crisis when there was a serious question as to whether the wheels of justice could carry on rolling at all, but at no time did we stop. Again, that is as a result of the application and dedication of everybody involved. The most difficult and troubling moment for all of us concerned in the system was the decision to stop jury trials at the end of March 2020. There was a two-month hiatus, but it did mean that in late May of that year we were among the first jurisdictions in the world to start jury trials again. That was a remarkable achievement and a testament to everybody who got involved in that endeavour. Clearly, that has had a consequence and an impact, and I do not seek to shy away from the reality of that. However, I can sincerely say to the House that our robust action—the investment we made, the multi-layered approach we are taking—is yielding the sort of results that all right hon. and hon. Members would welcome: the sort of outcomes for witnesses and victims that we all want to see. Can we do more? Yes, we can, and we are going to do more, not just in the ongoing work to recover from covid, but on the legislative framework, which I think we all agree needs to be enhanced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West). I am pleased to speak in this debate, not just as a Member of Parliament, but as a member of the judiciary. Through the pandemic, I have been to courts on Merseyside regularly as a magistrate, to hear issues being brought forward through the courts system. We have talked today about delays and problems, but it is incredibly important that we put on the record our thanks to the people who have worked all the way through the pandemic in the courts system to ensure that justice was delivered and is delivered in a timely fashion. In particular, let us thank the magistrates, who are, on the whole, volunteers. They did not have to go in, but they chose to get in their cars to drive to magistrates courts. We should also thank the judges, ushers and legal advisers who spent time in courts and had to adapt, innovate and work through with real determination to ensure that the wheels of justice keep turning.

Those who commit criminal offences did not down tools during the covid epidemic. Disputes between neighbours, businesses and family members continued to arise, and vulnerable children and domestic abuse victims, in particular, still needed support and time in the courts. Having sat in many domestic violence courts, I know that, when requests were made by the police, magistrates were there to deliver those orders in swift order.

I am very pleased that we are seeing progress in the courts. Jury trials simply do not mix with a global pandemic, but the UK is the first western common-law nation to resume jury trials, and the Government have put a tremendous amount into ensuring that justice can be delivered. I particularly welcome—I mentioned this earlier—the investment in technology. That has really revolutionised the court system. There is nothing more frustrating as a magistrate than sitting and waiting for papers to be handed round in courts. Today, with a new computer system, things can happen in a much speedier and more efficient manner, so that is a tremendous investment.

Finally, I make a plea to the Minister to ensure that we have the resource readily available to support those with mental health and learning difficulties who are at this moment trying to navigate our court systems. I have a number of cases locally where disputes are causing great distress for my constituents. We need to ensure that these people are not just talking to screens. The benefits of the complex cases court for those suffering mental ill health are invaluable, and I encourage the Minister to look at what we can do to roll that out further.

These issues are far too important to politicise. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor on the work that he has been doing through this global health emergency to ensure that the action required to protect the public and prevent the spread of the virus will also ensure that victims are protected and justice is served.