Community Payback

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Today we have heard from many hon. Members who know that the blight of crime and antisocial behaviour has grown out of control in their constituencies over the past decade, and who know its impact on victims and the failure of this Government to deal with it. We have heard powerful contributions from many hon. Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) made a very powerful speech about the impact of the lack of investment in the probation service over many years, with staff undervalued and neglected. She made a strong argument for improving the system to reduce reoffending. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Blaydon (Liz Twist), who also emphasised that the probation service has been stripped bare, so that courts are less inclined to give those important community sentences. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) made a powerful speech, giving strong examples from within her own constituency of where victims are being let down.

Hon. Members have reiterated that the public want to see solutions rooted in their constituencies and communities. That is why the collapse of community payback has dealt such a heavy blow to the trust in our criminal justice system among both the public and the victims of crime. Not only do victims have to deal with the aftermath of crime, but they must battle incessantly for justice, and many drop out of the system after years and years of waiting.

I speak to victims every day, and the thing I am most commonly told is how horrific going through our justice system is and how rarely it results in justice. Two victims recently shared their experiences with me. One said that,

“the system actively worked against us”,

and the other said that,

“this was the worst and most dreadful experience of my life.”

For 12 years, this Government have let victims down. It is clear that this justice system is not fit for purpose. Only Labour is serious about tackling the criminality that is wrecking our cities, towns and villages.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) said in opening the debate, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” might sound like a slogan from another era of Labour history, but it remains as true and as vital now as it was in 1997, when the last Labour Government replaced a tired Conservative Government who were mired in sleaze and had no new ideas to fix the problems they created. Sound familiar? As is often the case, we are now seeing history repeating itself. Crime is up and prosecutions are down. This week we have seen an epidemic of fraud that hit newspaper front pages. Conservative Members may not think that fraud matters to anyone, but it does, and it matters to Labour too—and after a decade of cuts the police are ill-equipped to tackle it. We see that in the low number of prosecutions and convictions for offences such as theft. Retailers are reporting that the police will not come and investigate shoplifters brazenly walking a trolley’s-worth of alcohol out of their stores because they simply do not have the time or resource. Despite any protestations, our constituents are seeing and experiencing antisocial behaviour day in, day out.

In my own constituency we have seen a local conservation area, Forest Farm, and a climbing frame at Heath Park fall victim, on numerous occasions, to arson attacks, resulting in millions of pounds-worth of damage, not to mention the huge loss to our community. Community payback could and should be a powerful way to address why someone commits such crimes before they go on to commit any more, or worse. It means that those who committed the crime provide visible community benefit that victims and the wider community can see. It allows offenders to be held accountable by the communities they have impacted and it reduces the likelihood of further offences.

But community payback is failing. The service is still reeling from the catastrophe of the 2014 privatisation of the probation service. Even Conservative Members now accept that that was a crucial error. I pay tribute to the incredibly hard-working probation staff who struggle to supervise offenders properly. That is very clear from the statistics that we have seen over the past five years, with 4 million fewer hours of community payback, a quarter fewer offenders finishing community sentences, and a trebling of offenders finishing their unpaid work schemes from home. Community sentences are not paying back. Judges know it and victims know it—we all know it.

Labour has a different vision for community payback. We want schemes that begin to rebuild communities and victims’ trust in the justice system. We want a system where communities and victims come together, set out the tasks that must be completed through community payback and report back on results—one where offenders are properly reintegrated into communities by doing unpaid work that gives them a sense of value.

This can be fixed, but only if the Government put communities and victims right at the heart of the system. That is what our community and victim payback boards offer. Our plan would form part of the community safety partnerships and safer neighbourhood teams, meaning minimal cost to the taxpayer. Instead of emailing an anonymous Government inbox, this would give local communities, as well as victims, an opportunity to create ambitious schemes of real value. We could then publish local data on progress so that communities can really see the difference that these schemes are making. These schemes—community safety partnerships and safer neighbourhood teams—are already taking this approach, including in Labour-run Wales and Labour-run London. This is achievable, and it will bring results.

A constituent told me about the violent threats his neighbour was making to his disabled wife, while another has reported to me that she suffered a miscarriage due to the stress of antisocial behaviour from her upstairs neighbours. We know the distress that antisocial behaviour and crime are causing in our communities. Crime and antisocial behaviour are tearing through the country and destroying our communities while this Government just sit back and let it happen, letting victims down and criminals off the hook. We need a solution, and Labour has one. I hope that the whole House will come together today and back Labour’s plan.