Deaths in Police Custody

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

We now come to the debate in the name of Shabana Mahmood on the subject of deaths in police custody. I understand that during her debate, the hon. Lady intends to refer principally to the case of Kingsley Burrell. An inquest is due to take place into Mr Burrell’s death early next year. For that reason, I expect hon. Members who speak or intervene in this debate to take care not to make any remarks which could be construed as assigning blame for Mr Burrell’s death or as expressing opinions on other matters concerning his death which will be decided by that inquest. That is on the legal advice of the Clerks.

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[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing the matter forward for debate. She talks about other families; Colin Holt, a constituent of mine who suffered from schizophrenia, died as a result of how he was restrained by the police. Officers in that case were prosecuted but acquitted at Maidstone Crown court, where the judge, Mr Justice Singh, said—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to return to his seat. He is making a speech, not an intervention—it should be an intervention and a question to the Member whose debate it is. We should have the courtesy of allowing the hon. Lady the time to speak.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to put his constituent’s case on the record. Restraint methods are an issue in cases involving deaths in police custody. My focus is particularly on the way in which these investigations take place and the amount of time that it takes to conduct them.

If the process got results, answered the questions that families have and ensured that the lessons that need to be learned are, in fact, learned, I suppose one could tolerate the fact that sometimes the investigation takes a very long time. But that is demonstrably not the case in the vast majority of cases involving deaths in police custody. The process takes far, far too long and it often leaves families with more questions and much greater pain. That is not something that any of us should continue to accept.

The impact on the wider community is also very profound. Contentious deaths in police custody include an ever-increasing number of people with mental health illnesses, and a disproportionately large number of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds—and, sometimes, people from BME backgrounds with mental health issues. If those cases are not seen to be taken seriously and investigations are not seen to be conducted with due seriousness and as quickly as possible, trust in the system erodes seriously, breeding justifiable anger and resentment, and it is incumbent on all of us to do whatever we can to address that.

Sometimes it does not seem that deaths in police custody are treated as cases in which potentially a crime has been committed. The starting point should always be that we simply do not know what has happened, so all possible scenarios are on the table, but many families report that that is not how it feels to them. In practice, it feels as though a judgment has already been made and an end result is already in mind, long before the investigation has begun.

Despite the more than 900 deaths in police custody and several verdicts of unlawful killing, there has yet to be a single successful prosecution—a point that the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) also raised—of any police officer involved in those deaths. Again, that does not create much confidence in the wider public that the system is robust enough to ensure that when things go seriously wrong, as they do in many of these cases, we will get proper answers and accountability. It is the lack of accountability that bothers so many of my constituents, and it is the potential for lack of accountability that is keeping Janet Brown and her family awake at night. They fear that their questions will never be answered and someone will never be held to account for the death of Kingsley Burrell.

There are other issues in relation to deaths in police custody. People would expect sensitive and thorough handling of the investigation in the immediate aftermath of a death—the so-called golden hours, which are critical to evidence gathering and setting the direction and quality of the investigation that is to follow. Again, many families report that that does not happen in practice.

The independent charity INQUEST also tells us of particular problems in relation to IPCC material and disclosure, including ahead of inquest hearings. For a bereaved family trying to engage in an IPCC investigation, the organisation’s reluctance to provide early and full disclosure or to explain clearly, in language that ordinary people can understand—not lawyer-speak—why they cannot provide that evidence at the early stages of investigations, and when they expect to do so, fosters mistrust and is alienating and deeply unhelpful. Families often feel that they are not kept up to date and involved in the progress of the investigations. Of those who felt that they were kept involved and informed, many reported dissatisfaction because the information given to them was inadequate, difficult to obtain or delayed.

It seems to me that we have an ad hoc and chaotic system for investigations into deaths in police custody. There is no agreed method or structure and no checklist of what needs to happen and when. We need a uniform approach that allows professional judgment to be exercised on a case-by-case basis, but always in the context of a coherent and consistent national protocol for the structure of the relationship between investigating officials and the bereaved, and clear guidelines about the time frames that need to apply. That is the only way we can give the families who suffer in this way some confidence that they will at least understand the system and the process that is supposed to apply, and that they can hold to account the individuals involved.

I have mentioned the IPCC, and I believe that it has lost the confidence of the public and is not fit for purpose. It should be abolished and replaced by a new police standards authority, whose job it would be to take action and raise standards when policing goes wrong. Such an authority should be tasked with creating the national set of guidelines or protocols that should apply to the investigation of deaths in police custody, so that we can ensure that everyone knows what is meant to happen and when.

At this point, however, we still have the IPCC. I know that the Government have started their own review and it would be helpful if the Minister, when he responds to my remarks, could set out exactly what is planned for that review. But whoever ultimately has responsibility for these investigations—whether the IPCC, as now, or another organisation—its key task in the aftermath of a contentious death following police contact must be to begin immediately an independent, effective, accountable, prompt, public and inclusive investigation, so that the rule of law is seen to be upheld and applied equally to all citizens, including those in police uniform.

Young constituents of mine made this point to me only today when I was doing an interview on a local community radio station. They said, “Sometimes it feels that if you wear a uniform, you are above the law. You are there to enforce the law and to keep us all safe, but you should not be above it.” They make a fair point. It sometimes feels as if officers are not held properly to account. That relates not only to the potential for successful prosecutions and convictions but to the sense that if misconduct occurs, it will be challenged.

So often in relation to these cases, we say, “Lessons must be learned,” and we imply that lessons will in fact be learned. However, in my experience the lessons are not learned, because the cases of deaths in police custody that keep occurring all seem to follow the same pattern, and the same mistakes are often repeated. The families involved all report the same things going wrong in the investigations.

The experience of the Burrell family and the amount of time that it took for the investigations to conclude is very similar to that of other families who have suffered in similar circumstances. That says to me that the phrase “lessons must be learned” means nothing. Lessons are not learned, and it is about time that we started to get that right. If people are not held accountable, if there are no prosecutions and if there are no grounds for misconduct charges, at the very least we must fix the processes that apply when someone dies in these circumstances, given that we know there is a problem with them. That is one way in which we can start to give people confidence in the system again.

A few weeks ago, Janet Brown said to me that she has not yet grieved for her son and she will not do so until all her questions about his death have been answered and until she feels at peace that she has done everything she can to get justice for him. I think that making good, decent people wait so long and placing them at the mercy of a very chaotic system is a scar on our collective conscience. I really hope that the Minister, when he responds, can give Janet, the Burrell family and me some confidence that the Government understand not only the policy implications of these cases, but the emotional impact that they have, and that he and the Government will do something about it.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that case. Given the nature of probation service business, mistakes will be made. My contention is that mistakes that might currently be made could very much be exacerbated by the fragmentation of the service and the potential downgrading of its quality, as well as by the fact that the existing public accountability will not be as clear cut.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting speech. I am sorry that I missed its beginning, but I was at the Backbench Business Committee. Has he dealt with the sifting process? Some of my constituents have expressed concern that it is done at a snapshot in time, as they have been allocated to two different services based on the window of 11 November. Has he tackled that?

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[Jeremy Wright]

The pilots that we cancelled were not sufficiently close to the proposals that we are making for us to learn as much as Opposition Members would like us to have learned from their conclusion. That does not mean that we learned nothing from their period of operation. The point has been made from the Opposition Benches that it is possible to learn from pilots even if they are not allowed to run to full term. We certainly have learned from those pilots and from other experiences of payment by results. I will return to that point in a moment.

The Government essentially had two options. We had to decide how to approach the task of tackling reoffending rates within our means. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is right that reoffending rates are too high. We could not allow that situation to continue without a response. We could simply have imposed further significant cuts on the 35 probation trusts without targeting our efforts on those with the highest reoffending rates, or we could have brought in innovative approaches to supporting offenders that would also be more efficient and that would allow us to reinvest some of the savings to target support through the gate on the under 12-month group. We chose the latter option. At the heart of our proposals is the aim of opening up the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers to bring in the best of all sectors to tackle reoffending.

The right hon. Member for Delyn discussed the Offender Management Act 2007. He was here at the time and witnessed the passage of the Act at first hand. He knows that what I have described was the policy of the Government at that time. The Opposition want to forget it now, but they have to be reminded that the powers for which they legislated and to which Parliament agreed in 2007 entirely underpin the reforms that this Government are making. I have explained what Lord Reid said when he was Home Secretary. He made the matter perfectly clear when he said:

“The Secretary of State…will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]

[Mrs Main]

The Minister is making a powerful case for why there needs to be reorganisation. However, will he help the staff who will be involved in the transition process by saying what the new organisations will look like? My constituents have told me that there is uncertainty about the new bodies that they will be obliged to work with and concern about what they will look like. Perhaps that would help to make the transition a little easier.

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important to keep existing staff informed about what is going on. We are trying very hard to do that. If there are specific issues in her area, I am happy to look at them. We are keen to ensure that staff are informed. If she will forgive me, I will come back a little later to the pace of the changes that we are making, which has been a substantial issue this afternoon.

Before I do that, I want to make a couple more points about the background to this point, and the issue of further parliamentary approval for what we are suggesting. I have already made the point that section 3(2) of the Offender Management Act 2007 states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

In Committee, the Opposition were unable to dispute that the power that they legislated for is clear and unambiguous. The phrase

“contractual or other arrangements with any other person”

does not mean solely with probation trusts or trusts commissioning other providers, or solely with the public sector.

Police Pensions

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

Among the Government’s proposals are changes to the contribution rate. At the moment, a contribution rate of 10.5% of gross pay secures a contribution with a value of 24.2%. Under the proposed changes, a much higher contribution rate of 13.7% of gross pay will secure a contribution with a value of just 14.3%.

Police officers have told me that the proposed rate of 13.7% is simply too high and is not even-handed when compared with other public service workers. In fact, the rate is so high that there is a significant risk of opt-outs, including by new recruits who will not be able to afford to join the pension scheme. The Winsor review, upon which these proposals are based, also proposed lower starting rates of pay. Taken together, the two elements will have a devastating effect on recruitment. In addition, current pension contribution rates are already increasing. They increased in April and future increases are expected in 2013-14 and 2014-15, to meet Lord Hutton’s recommendations of an average contribution increase of 3.2%, which effectively means a 3% pay cut for officers.

Every single police officer in the 134,000-strong force will be affected by these changes. I have spoken to many officers, both in my constituency and here at Westminster, who are extremely anxious about them. When this debate was announced, I asked officers to contact me with their stories. I expected one or two to reply. In just seven days, I have received upwards of 120 e-mails, phone calls and letters from concerned officers across the country. Not one of them agrees with what the Government have suggested.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I know that this is a very short debate. My police officers have shared similar views with me, but a particular issue that has been raised is the disproportionate effect of these proposals on women police officers—the right hon. Gentleman named two brave women police officers earlier—who have had career breaks, and on coming back they will find that, under the new system, the years they have served will not add up to the pension that they hoped for when they started in the police.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and she is also right to raise the specific issue of women police officers, which has not been raised in the debate so far. I agree with what she said.

Apart from all those representations that I have received, the e-petition for a debate on this issue was started by Sergeant Nigel Tompsett of the Suffolk force, and it now has more than 100,000 signatures. This debate today in Westminster Hall is not an alternative to a debate on the Floor of the House on this issue; I hope that it is a curtain-raiser for such a debate.

The pension reforms need to be seen in context. They are part of a wider picture of sweeping reforms to the landscape of policing. In comes the National Crime Agency and out goes the Serious Organised Crime Agency; in comes the college of policing and out go the police authorities; and then in come 41 newly elected police and crime commissioners as well. Those are, in my view, the most significant changes to be undertaken since Sir Robert Peel laid the foundations for modern policing nearly two centuries ago. At this moment of seismic change, it is clearly wrong to destabilise the very people we expect to implement the changes.

Morale in the police force, as we have heard, is at an all-time low. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, told the Home Affairs Committee yesterday that this was a very difficult time for many in the service. His predecessor, Lord Stevens, through a survey of 14,000 officers and superintendents conducted by the London School of Economics, found that 95% of police officers do not feel that they have the support of the Government, and that 56% of those surveyed had recently contemplated leaving the force. It is because of measures such as these that officers who risk their lives for our communities feel short-changed and undervalued. The proposals will drive gifted and experienced officers out of the service.

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[Damian Green]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth has this afternoon made a statement on his intention to take forward such issues in Scotland. I hope the hon. Gentleman will go away and reflect on what the Scottish Cabinet Secretary said.

[Mrs Main]

The Minister was helpfully explaining why female police officers will not be disadvantaged, but female police officers have told me that the career-average scheme will disadvantage them, and I am concerned about that. Will the Minister explain that point a little more fully?

[Damian Green]

There is no service requirement, but we could discuss that for the rest of the time available. I would more than happily have that conversation with my hon. Friend offline.

Tom Winsor agreed with Lord Hutton that a normal pension age of 60 is appropriate for police officers. Given the findings of the two independent reviews, the Government believe there is a strong and coherent case for the framework, which will be in place from April 2015.

The Police Federation has been mentioned a lot, and having engaged in the process that followed those reviews, it confirmed that it accepts the outcome as the “best deal possible” for police officers in the context of the reform across public service pensions. Paul McKeever, chair of the Police Federation and the staff side of the Police Negotiating Board said, and I will quote him in full for balance:

“Despite being disappointed with aspects of this announcement, Staff Side accepts it within the context of the Government’s wider public service pensions reform agenda. It is clear from our discussions with the Home Office that, compared to the reference scheme offered by the Home Secretary of 27 March, this was the best deal possible to protect the unique position of police officers.”

The right hon. Member for Leicester East asked me to listen to the Police Federation, and I do in that regard.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked me to listen to ACPO. The ACPO lead for reward and recognition, Chief Constable Simon Ash, said:

“The changes to the Police Pension Regulations by the Home Office are broadly supported by ACPO, who have worked constructively with other stakeholders since March to ensure that the best possible balance is achieved for longer term reform whilst providing sufficient transitional arrangements.”

The degree of consensus is often under-recognised. The right hon. Gentleman set out the general picture, but nevertheless both ACPO and the Police Federation have accepted the proposal. There is much of the detail still to arrange for new pension arrangements to be in place for 2015. Obviously, we will maintain the dialogue to make those arrangements work.

The deal means that the normal pension age for police officers will be 60. Aside from the armed forces and firefighters, other public service workers will have a higher normal pension age linked to the state pension age, which is 65 rising over time to 68. That means that police officers will continue to retire earlier than most others, reflecting the nature of the work they do.

We have heard today that some officers are concerned about the prospect of working to 60, but the evidence shows that the average age of those joining the police in recent years is 26. The current open pension scheme—the 2006 scheme—has a 35-year accrual period, so many officers will already be working beyond 60 to accrue a full pension. I recognise that that is a genuine concern for some officers. The framework, therefore, includes flexibility for officers to retire from 55 with an immediate pension and an actuarial reduction linked to the normal pension age of 60.

The increased flexibility of the career-average model also means that there is no cap on the amount of benefits that can be accrued. Under current arrangements for police officers, benefits are capped after 30 or 35 years, depending on the pension scheme. Under the reform framework, there is no cap, so years worked beyond age 60 would provide an enhanced pension.

We are protecting accrued rights for police officers for pension built up by 2015, as we are for all public servants. Most police officers are members of the 1987 scheme, which is a complex scheme that includes uneven periods of pension accrual, so we have developed tailored arrangements to reflect that, thus honouring the Government’s commitment to protect accrued rights and to give police officers a fair outcome.

The Government also made a commitment to give transitional protection to those who were within 10 years of their current normal pension age on 1 April 2012. That applies across the public services, recognising that those nearest to retirement are likely to have least time to plan for that retirement. Again, the complex design of the 1987 scheme has led us to create specific arrangements. As there is no set pension age under that scheme, we have decided to give protection based on age and length of service. All officers aged 45 at 1 April 2012 will be able to remain in their current scheme rather than moving to the new pension arrangements in 2015. We are also giving protection to those who, at 1 April 2012, were within 10 years of retiring on a full police pension. That will give full protection to a further group of officers, including some who were as young as 38 or 39 at 1 April this year. On top of all that, there is also further tapered protection for those who were within four years of qualifying for full protection, in order to smooth the cliff-edge effect that often happens with pension reforms. That tapering again demonstrates, I hope, that the Government have entered into the process in good faith with a view to finding a fair outcome.

I am conscious that going through the details of pension reform does not make for great parliamentary rhetoric, but it is such a serious issue that detailing it is important. I appreciate as well as anyone the degree of understandable emotion caused by the issue, but the underlying point is that, under the new arrangements, the police pension deal is still one of the best deals on offer. I do not underestimate the level of concern among police officers about pension reform, and it is right that they should have clarity at the earliest opportunity about what it means. Many details of how the reforms will be implemented have still to be decided. I repeat the commitment that the right hon. Gentleman wished me to make: the Government will continue to work with our partners in policing on the issue, including specifically those who represent rank-and-file officers.

Throughout the discussions, we have been committed to reaching a fair outcome for police officers. We have done all that we can to achieve a fair pensions package for police officers that reflects the front-line nature of policing work and protects those closest to retirement. Police officers will continue to retire earlier than most public servants, and will continue to benefit from significant employer contributions on top of their own.

I am grateful to the Police Federation for making it clear that they encourage their members to remain in the scheme and will continue to do so after the proposed reforms. I hope that police officers will be reassured by that eminently sensible advice. It is difficult to envisage another investment that would provide the same guaranteed level of income—

Litigation Friends

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I thank Mr Speaker for allowing this debate.

If somebody is in an accident and ends up in a coma, they need a litigation friend to instruct a solicitor to sue for damages. A litigation friend, or next friend, is very different from a Mackenzie friend. A litigation friend makes decisions for the person who does not have capacity. If somebody is not in a coma, there is a question of what threshold is required before appointing such a litigation friend or guardian. Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, recently stated:

“Persons with intellectual and psycho-social disabilities are today routinely placed under a guardianship regime in several European countries—they are deprived of their ‘legal capacity’. In the eyes of the law they are seen as non-persons and their decisions have no legal relevance. This policy violates agreed human rights standards.”

He refers to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities of 2006.

In England and Wales, the situation is materially worse, primarily because secrecy of the judicial system has allowed widespread malpractice to develop, as revealed last week by Professor Jane Ireland’s report on psychological expert reports. A good example of that is Rachel Pullen’s case, which is currently grinding through the Strasbourg court. Her daughter was removed and adopted, although there were no hearings at which any of the evidence was challenged, because the psychologist appointed to assess her deemed her too stupid to instruct a solicitor. That was clearly not true, as was determined by a later psychological report. However, it was too late. The psychologist said she was incapable of instructing a solicitor. The Official Solicitor came in as her litigation friend and conceded the case against her on paper and there was no hearing. At her appeal, I made two important points for which the court criticised me.

My first point was that the system allows the local authority to veto the appointment of an expert, thus making the expert financially beholden to the local authority. Professor Ireland’s report revealed that the overwhelming majority of experts in the family courts made most, if not all, their income from writing expert reports. Parents only instruct an expert once, but the local authority does so continually. That creates a complacent environment in which experts frequently write the report the local authority would wish to see—well, those experts who drive Ferraris, Porsches and Formula 1 motor cars do anyway.

My second point referred to a letter from the Official Solicitor to Rosleys solicitors. I expressed the view that the letter was created at a later stage and inserted in the file. It was obvious from the letter that whoever did that did not have access to Rosleys office, as there was no received stamp on it, no headed paper was used for its purported sending out, its address format was unusual and the date of receipt and purported posting out was impossible. The court decided that my mentioning those facts was not providing evidence and was critical of my claim. I stand by my claim, and I believe that what I have just said is indeed evidence of forgery. Real problems remain with the appointment of litigation friends. The Rosleys letter was supposed to explain to someone that the Official Solicitor had been appointed as their litigation friend, which is why the letter was so important.

Given the secrecy of the system, people are not generally aware of how the process works. Lee Gilliland, for example, was evicted without notice because he had the Official Solicitor appointed to defend his probate case. The Official Solicitor did not warn him that he was due to be evicted. The Official Solicitor was appointed on the say-so of his general practitioner, Dr Hoyte, who said:

“He has grievances and fixed ideation about many official bodies.”

I find it odd that that is relevant to his having legal capacity. In my view, the fact that someone has a grievance about an official body does not warrant their being turned into a non-person and prevented from making decisions.

The big problem for anyone for whom the Official Solicitor has been appointed is finding any way to challenge such a decision. Most firms of solicitors simply refuse to act for someone without litigation capacity. The civil procedure rules do not really allow people to challenge the appointment of a litigation friend. CPR rule 21.9 states:

“(2) Where a protected party regains or acquires capacity to conduct the proceedings, the litigation friend’s appointment continues until it is ended by court order.”

The assumption is that litigation friends cannot be wrongly appointed. In Professor Ireland’s review of 126 court bundles, she found that two thirds of the reports were “poor” or “very poor”—84 cases where, if the judge relied upon the report, really the decision should be quashed. That raises questions.

England and Wales do not have the facility for a proper review of expert evidence. We do not have the Daubert process that is used in the USA. Any solicitor appointed to act on behalf of a protected party is in danger of being subject to a conflict of interest. Let me mention the case of Anthony Neil Barker, whose website is www.neebert.net. He has written me long, detailed e-mails about how he has regained his capacity, but cannot escape from the Court of Protection. I have some difficulty understanding how that can happen, but when it involves large sums of money, it is not surprising. It is in the solicitor’s interest to keep him as a non-person, as the solicitor can then charge him for things.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Is the hon. Gentleman talking about a case that is no longer active in the UK courts?

[John Hemming]

In this case, there may be activity, but I am referring to things that have happened in the past. I discussed the matter previously with the Clerk, and I am being careful not to refer to any decisions that are coming before the court.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman.

[John Hemming]

Noreen Akhtar is a constituent of mine, whom I have been refused permission to meet. She is a secret prisoner. Experts have determined that she does not have the mental capacity to decide where she lives. I have seen the expert reports, and they look as unreliable as many of the other reports referred to.

Husan Pari has now left the country to get away from the system that made her a non-person. The psychologist who interviewed her through an interpreter said that she was a non-person. A psychologist who later interviewed her in her own language was clear that she did have mental capacity.

The Official Solicitor’s office is an unaccountable place. He has told me that he is not accountable to Parliament on the basis of individual cases. Furthermore, he is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, or at least not within this area, but he is subject to it in other areas of his activity. Instead, the Official Solicitor is accountable to individual secret court hearings. That really is not good enough. There must be some accountability beyond a few people in suits who have a common interest in concealing malpractice. Hon. Members need to read Professor Ireland’s report to find out about that.

An interesting additional function of the Official Solicitor is to deal with people imprisoned for contempt of court. Deborah Paul is currently serving a one-year sentence in Holloway prison for contempt of court, as part of a private family law case that has turned public. The civil procedure rules strictly forbid people being imprisoned in secret. However, it was revealed in Hammerton v. Hammerton that people are imprisoned with reporting restrictions. I wonder who is protecting Deborah Paul’s rights. When I wrote to the Official Solicitor about his duty to protect the interests of contemnors, he gave me no confidence that he was doing anything. The recent striking off of Dr Ruth Coppard and the attempt by Dr George Hibbert to remove himself from the General Medical Council practising register should really ring alarm bells.

Our family legal system is founded on expert opinion. However, these foundations appear to be more like quicksand. The secrecy in family court hearings has allowed a culture of complacency to develop. Although procedures such as a modified Daubert procedure would enable improvements, secrecy creates a culture that tolerates malpractice. Secrecy in family court hearings has led to broader unaccountability in the appointment of litigation friends and their management of decision making.

I was quite surprised when Professor Ireland’s excellent report on the quality of psychological expert opinion was produced, not because I did not know that this was happening, but because the report was part-funded by the Family Justice Council. However, I was not surprised that, although the report was ready for release in September 2011, it was released six months later. There are people who would like to sweep the contents of the report under the carpet.

I will not quote a lot from the report. Anyone who is really interested in justice in our secret courts should simply read it.

Professor Ireland and Professor John Beaumont, who is from the same university, have produced proposals for a modified Daubert procedure, but that is only a partial solution. Secret courts are unreliable courts. What is needed is less secrecy. Anonymous reports by parties to proceedings should not be subject to any constraints. There must be a facility, potentially via the Information Commissioner, to produce fully public reports.

Justice is important, and it is clear that the system is very unreliable. It is also clear that Parliament needs to resuscitate its powers of investigating individual cases. It is too easy for authorities to refuse to provide information. In the Goder case, where a litigation friend was appointed and the daughter, Yvonne Goder, was imprisoned, probably in secret, there is an allegation that the money from three houses was stolen. Even taking the issue through to the legal ombudsman has not identified what happened to the money. Tracking payments is quite easy and accounts can be provided. However, if a case gets to the legal ombudsman without accounts, I am worried about whether the regulatory system is working properly.

The question always is, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In this case, who is regulating the regulators? The answer has to be Parliament. Parliament needs to establish a small inquiries committee to find answers where none are forthcoming. Where litigation friends are appointed in secret hearings based upon expert evidence that is known to be systemically unreliable in three courts and about which there is no other systemic research, it is very difficult to find out what is happening in a very murky system. We know that large sums of money are being paid, but we are unsure what for and whether that is in the interests of those people for whom the money is held.

There is always a question about who is appointed as a litigation friend. The Official Solicitor is supposed to be a last resort, but seems to me to be the first choice in many instances. I tried to use judicial review through a limited company to find out what was happening with one secret prisoner—Matthew Hawkesworth—but got nowhere, and the court decided to punish me for the effrontery of challenging the system by awarding costs against me personally, as well as against the limited company. That is one reason why judicial review is an insufficient remedy for a quite significant, wide-ranging problem.

Some solutions to the problem therefore rest with Parliament, rather than with the Government, but they do need to review the situation. I have always spoken about how our judicial system is not compliant with the European Union standards as applied to Croatia, and I will not repeat that in my speech. The Government must take such things seriously.

I have rattled through my speech reasonably quickly. The Minister is well aware of my concerns, because I have been concerned about this matter for a long time. One great difficulty in respect of how our constitution operates is that we have developed an approach whereby Parliament is regarded primarily as a body holding the Executive to account, but the courts—the judicial estate of the constitution—are held to account also through public consideration of their decision making, which then influences Parliament. Parliament then makes decisions and guides what happens if any rules need to be changed, and they clearly need to be changed in a number of situations.

One of the reasons why I have ended up helping to get rid of the Official Solicitor, as people might put it, or to remove their litigation friend is that it is almost impossible to find a way of doing so. People who are often quite bright go around phoning up firms of solicitors and saying, “Oh, the Official Solicitor is acting for me,” and the firms reply, “Well, we can’t deal with you.” Even then, there is still the matter of legal aid.

I tend to get involved because people must be aware of my concerns about how the litigation friend system operates and come to me. I have talked to other hon. Members who have encountered difficult situations as well, but people often get excited about the being made into a non-person thing. I do not blame them for that, but they get quite angry, and when they present themselves to other hon. Members, they do so in quite an angry state, yet that is in part because the system is simply not responding to them. As described by Thomas Hammarberg, they are treated as non-persons and their decisions have no legal force.

I have spent some time studying the historical records of Parliament, which are interesting and available in the Library. What Parliament used to do more readily, because people came with casework or whatever, was to establish small committees of inquiry into issues that might have developed because they got stuck and could go no further. Parliament needs to have a willingness to establish a committee of inquiry just to find out the facts. The House of Commons may be a court, but, constitutionally, it would be wrong to revert to taking decisions that have legal force on individual cases. What about investigation, however, and that question of who is regulating the regulators? How do we manage the process when a regulatory system goes wrong? In a limited number of cases—we would not want to overwhelm ourselves with work—Parliament has the power to find out what is going on.

To take the case of the three houses, there is clear evidence of some sort of fraud, and finding out what fraud has occurred is critical. One difficulty, as in the recent Asian royal family case, is that sometimes the regulators or the police will steer clear of an issue. Interestingly, in that case, which relates to the funding of al-Qaeda, the Australian police are willing to investigate, whereas I am told that the UK police are not. I do not have that in writing, but I shall pursue it with the Government if I do so.

I leave the Minister a reasonable amount of time to respond. Some serious issues are going on and have been for some time. With Professor Ireland’s report and the recent regulatory action in respect of Dr Ruth Coppard and Dr George Hibbert, it is becoming more obvious that the problem is serious. I am interested in what the Government have to say.

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Anne Main Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith]

So we are talking about the same one. The Diamond initiative is delivered jointly by the Metropolitan police, local authorities and the London Probation Trust. Built on the principle of justice reinvestment, it has reoffending rates of 28% within six months of release from custody. That compares favourably with the 43% figure for those who have not received that intensive support and monitoring.

However, under the previous Government, there was a decline in crime reduction funding through local area agreements to local community safety partnerships. Those intensive options require partnership commitment and resources, which may be less readily available following yesterday’s comprehensive spending review. I am anxious to hear what the Minister can say by way of reassurance on that. Until the Green Paper is published, it is unclear how the new Government will enable those partnerships to fulfil their statutory responsibility to reduce reoffending under the Policing and Crime Act 2009.

We proposed that if the Government could identify moneys that could be used to create a national justice reinvestment fund, there would be an incentive for local partnerships to think creatively about ways of reducing crime and the use of imprisonment, pooling resources at local level and spending money in geographically targeted areas using the results of justice mapping. That technique, which was pioneered in the US and has been tried out quite a lot in Gateshead, for example, measures local needs and the existing flow of resources to particular communities.

The Government’s aspiration to introduce payment by results draws on the experience of Kansas in implementing justice reinvestment approaches. It is not clear whether the Government will go about it in the same way, but some of the options that the Committee has been suggesting could be accommodated in the sort of programme that the Government are talking about. The national investment fund could be part of the big society bank, for example.

If the Government are to place greater emphasis on evidence-based, targeted approaches, determined at local level, means need to be found to provide practical support to local areas in analysing trends, devising new policies and programmes and measuring their impact. A cross-disciplinary centre of excellence, like the Social Care Institute for Excellence, could provide robust economic modelling of what is effective in reducing crime and inform the development of a national justice reinvestment plan. I hope that the Government consider that cross-departmental approach.

All of this has implications for sentences. There remains a great deal of geographical disparity in the consistency of sentencing, to which the Lord Chancellor drew attention in his King’s college speech. Youth courts in some parts of the country are up to 10 times more likely to impose custodial sentences for certain crimes than their counterparts elsewhere. That cannot be explained by social and demographic factors alone.

It is often said by the judiciary that the sentencing of individual offenders should not be driven by the availability or otherwise of resources. In practice, of course, it is, but that is usually because of the scarcity of suitable alternatives to custody in a given area. Prison is always there; alternatives are not always there. It is nevertheless necessary to find a way in which recognition of scarce resources is built into the sentencing process.

We are concerned that sentencing policy, and the Sentencing Council, does not address the need for sentencers to have regard to the available resources and the relative costs of their sentencing decisions. There are few other public servants who are not required to be accountable to the taxpayer in relation to the value delivered for the money that they spend. In order to have such regard, however, sentencers need data on the cost-effectiveness of their decisions and on the outcome of sentences. We have been surprised at how little information comes back to the judiciary about the overall impact of the sentences that they pass.

I spoke earlier about the media and about the public debate on sentencing. The public rightly see prison as a necessary means of dealing with extremely dangerous people who would be a threat to public safety were they not in custody but, in many cases, public safety is not the major issue. A custodial sentence and its length seem to have become the only means that the public and the media feel they have of asserting the seriousness of the offence. That is why we see so many headlines in the press saying, “Yobs only got six months,” or “Con man got less than a motoring offender.” The relative significance of crimes is measured by the sentence length. When the community or victims want to assert that they will not tolerate a crime, they look for a way of expressing that abhorrence, and a longer custodial sentence seems to serve that purpose, even if it is of little or no use in ensuring that the offender does not commit further crimes.

For offenders who do not need to be in custody, we need strong community sentences to be recognised as a punishment—not as a soft option. For some offenders they already are, but there is a media obsession with custody that is not justified by custody’s record in reducing reoffending. We are in a new situation, and there is a real chance to change things in a way that could reduce reoffending and make people safer from crime, at less cost.

In conclusion, we need to know three key things from the Minister. First, are Ministers ready to continue what the Lord Chancellor has started, by openly taking on the “prison works” argument and demonstrating that for many offenders custody is too costly and too ineffective to contribute as much to public safety as well-planned alternatives can? Secondly, how will a shift from the use of custody in appropriate cases be achieved, given that changes in sentencing principles will not work unless alternatives are widely available and the judges and the public are confident in them? Finally, and most important, how will Ministers prevent cuts in the Ministry of Justice budget from putting a roadblock in the way of the reforms that the Committee has advocated and to which the Government are now committed? What will be the impact of yesterday’s announcements on the ability of Ministers to deliver the policy shift that they have signalled? I hope that the Committee, in its work, has provided an underpinning of substance and intellectual coherence for what I see as a radical policy shift of real potential value to the safety of the people of this country. I am very interested to know whether the Government will be able to continue that initiative.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I have letters from seven people who are hoping to catch my eye during this debate, and I also want to give the Minister and the Front-Bench speakers plenty of time for considered response. I hope, therefore, that everyone will keep that timing in mind.

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[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

As a new member of the Justice Committee, may I say what an absolute pleasure it is to listen to former members, who did so much incredibly good work in the report, revisiting these issues and making an impassioned case for similar pieces of analysis to be carried out in the future? I wholeheartedly support that view. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that the one piece missing from the list of valuable items that he gave us is accountability? Before the election, I was lucky enough to be involved in work on the Conservative party policy on the rehabilitation revolution. One thing that really struck me—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to keep her intervention brief?

[Claire Perry]

Yes, I am coming to my point. One thing that really struck me was the lack of accountability in the system and the fact that one person should be responsible. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman commented on that.

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[Mr Buckland]

Absolutely. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for putting the matter in context. I have been talking about the end result—clearing up the spilled milk—but a lot of the targeting work is all about intervention to manage out the problem. That is a very important point here. A lot of the work that the Committee did was about not just looking at the end result of sentencing but intervening at an earlier stage to get it right and to avoid having to rely on a criminal justice system that does not always deal with problems appropriately, particularly when it comes to young offenders. The restorative justice concept is a prime example of the alternative approach.

I will end by reminding the Minister of the meeting that we had some weeks ago in Birmingham with key players in mental health. It was a very productive round-table discussion, hosted by the National Centre for Mental Health. We were lucky to be joined by senior consultant forensic psychiatrists and the mother of a young man who, as a result of serious drug problems, ended up with a mental health problem and was treated inappropriately by the criminal justice system.

I make this plea—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for making it because he has heard it from me before, but I make no apology for that—that we must get the diversionary therapies and methods absolutely right when it comes to mental health, not only in the Crown court and the magistrates court, in terms of making it easier for sentencers to pass mental health treatment conditions as part of a community order, but at the police station too. That means ensuring that if a desk sergeant or even a duty solicitor or any person who comes into contact with an arrested person, an accused person or a suspect is able to have recourse to community psychiatric nursing help—[Interruption.] I do not know if the person who is in charge of the amplification system wanted me to make that point more clearly. [Laughter.] However, I am happy that it has been amplified and made more clearly.

The intervention of community psychiatric nursing at that level and the professional input of mental health services will go a long way to ensuring that people who have genuine mental health problems end up being treated appropriately rather than in a criminal justice system that far too often fails them, resulting in inappropriate prison sentences being imposed and in the alarming statistics that we are all depressingly familiar with regarding the number of people in our prisons who have mental health conditions.

At the top end of the scale, I would argue that the Mental Health Act provides very important and valuable services for those people with acute mental health problems. However, it is more towards the middle and the bottom end of the scale that the system is, I am afraid, quite simply deficient.

It is very much a question of commissioning. The Minister will agree with me that collaborative work with the Department of Health is essential if we are to get the mental health services that we need. So I urge him to do all he can as a member of the new Government to ensure that, by the time we get to the new commissioning regime next year, mental health services are at the top of the list when it comes to new provision.

On that note, I conclude my remarks, Mrs Main, and I am very grateful to you.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I want to say that we are having the sound issues tackled. I also want to say that I will call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 4.50 pm, followed by the Minister. Can those Members who wish to speak before then be mindful of that?

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[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I am suspending the sitting for a few minutes to give the technicians time to sort out the sound problems, because it is impossible to continue.

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On resuming—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

We are sorry for the technical interruption. We are not allowed to add extra time, but Mr Alan Beith has kindly accepted a reduction in his response time. I shall now call the Front-Bench spokesmen at approximately 4.57 pm.

[Mr Llwyd]

According to a Ministry of Justice letter leaked last Friday, 14,000 MOJ jobs will be lost, 11,000 of them from the front line. If we are to believe the letter, 60% of those reductions must be made within the next two years. The cost of the redundancy drive will reportedly reach £230 million. Although 85% of that reduction is estimated to be voluntary, it will no doubt be as voluntary as walking the plank.

Meanwhile, 50% of the redundancies are expected to be achieved through natural wastage. Where exactly do we expect those workers to go? The National Offender Management Service will lose 9,940 jobs: 760 from its headquarters and the rest, presumably, from the prison and probation services. Delivery of restorative justice seems like pie in the sky when we consider the bleak road ahead. By March 2014, the justice budget will be cut by 23%, which seems to undermine once again the opportunity for justice reinvestment.

We hear that in the face of those cuts, the Ministry of Justice also wants to cut prison places. The Ministry’s aim is to reduce receptions into custody by 18,000 a year by 2014—indeed, the package of cuts is predicated on a reduction in the number of prisoners—but how can that be achieved? I am afraid that it is more likely that the cuts will lead to an increase in the number of prisoners, especially when slashes in staff numbers are combined with cuts to courts, prosecutors and clerks. The same number of prisoners will be held on remand, but probably for longer.

The premise of the cuts is therefore flawed, and the cuts may well undermine the worthy and proper notion of justice reinvestment. Equally, there are logistical problems with the time scale, as the cuts are expected to come into play by 2014. I spoke yesterday to Mr Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers; I see a wry smile on the Minister’s face. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice expects that the new infrastructure will be put in place by 2014, but NAPO’s opinion is that it will take at least five years to be anywhere near ready. However, that is a matter of debate. The time scale for the cuts is not practicable and risks undermining and damaging our justice system.

We also hear that a large proportion of rehabilitation work will be outsourced to voluntary and private organisations on the basis of payment by results. Where exactly are those volunteers meant to come from? Magistrates courts committees have complained that court orders cannot be made out to private companies. I think that that is true. What would happen in the event of conflicts of interest? On Tuesday, I met Mr John Thornhill and other representatives of the Magistrates Association. If short-term prison sentences are to be avoided, they are concerned that personnel will not be found to oversee defendants.

Although I agree that the Lord Chancellor is right to attempt to avoid the overuse of short prison sentences, that cannot be done without a substantial direct investment in the probation service. When I first qualified as a lawyer in the early 1970s, the local town of Dolgellau had three probation officers. We now have one for half the county. Need I say more? Furthermore, as I said to the Lord Chancellor in a recent sitting of the Justice Committee, the private concerns that receive payment by results will inevitably be profit-driven. They will not want the awkward recidivist cases, that is for sure. That is where I believe probation officers’ skills should come into play.

I understand that many departmental settlements were finalised only a few hours before the announcement of the spending review yesterday. How can we discuss justice reinvestment properly, even in theory, when community reinvestment is being cut? We are expected to set up a private system that we do not agree with, which will take years, while cutting back on probation staff. I am afraid that those drastic cuts have not been properly thought through. As was said earlier, this might be an opportunity missed.

In its report, the Justice Committee presented the case for various essential reforms, which now seem further away than ever. The report tasked the Government with committing to a significant reduction in the prison population by 2015. That is the reduction on which the cuts are predicated, yet ironically, the cuts render such a reduction less practicable. Following on from the Corston report in 2007, the Committee report also tasked the Government with implementing Baroness Corston’s recommendations on reducing the number of female prisoners. A reduction in the number of prisoners whose crimes were driven by mental illness is also overdue. The CSR mentioned those goals, notably in pledging to introduce proposals to invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts in order to intervene at an early stage and divert those suffering from a mental illness into treatment. That is welcome, but will the Minister expand on it? Will related pledges to target the causes of female incarceration be honoured?

The Committee report warned that spending more on rehabilitation will not work while the prison estate is overcrowded. How timely that warning now seems. We cannot expect the criminal justice system simply to work out its problems by itself. Time and investment are needed to reform how the sector functions. As I have said, we cannot merely expect the number of prisoners to decrease as if by magic while cutting staff numbers across the piece.

The report noted that a coherent strategy must be developed by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to target the allocation of resources and reduce crime. I agree, of course. Targeting the causes of crime is essential to reducing the number of people in prison. We must build on and improve the community sentencing structures already in place and seek the advice of probation staff who know the area thoroughly and professionally.

For too long, probation officers have been undermined and marginalised in the NOMS set-up. Instead of making cuts and outsourcing to voluntary organisations, we should focus on improving the probation service that we know and respect by reducing the paperwork that probation officers must do and increasing the time that they spend with offenders. Currently, probation officers spend an average of eight minutes a week speaking to people under their orders. That is ridiculous. What can be done in eight minutes a week? I have no idea.

I have a suggestion. It might be radical, but I have seen it in practice. A few weeks ago, I went to Buffalo, New York, which has a veterans court. Veterans who have offended are referred to the court and come under the watchful eye of Judge Russell. Typically, they have committed high-grade misdemeanours or low-grade felonies and are facing perhaps 18 months in prison. They are given the opportunity to attend the veterans court. If they take it, they are assigned a probation officer and, crucially, an ex-service mentor. For 18 months or less—it is sometimes 15 months or in very rare cases 12 months—they are expected to go to court every three weeks to explain how they are getting on. They are drug tested every fortnight and if they are clean and sober—to use the words they use in the States—at the completion of the course, they graduate. They are given a glowing character reference and any reference to the offences is scrapped. If they are not already in work, they are given work, and they are treated with respect for how they have handled themselves during those months.

I was absolutely struck by the whole thing. I went to the States thinking, as a lawyer, that everyone should be equal before the law and questioning why veterans should have a different course of action—although I have been campaigning for them and will continue to do so for those veterans who unfortunately are in prison, often for reasons beyond their control. The scheme is predicated on having a volunteer mentor who is an ex-serviceperson and a probation officer—or the American version of that—who can put in the necessary time to deal with the offender.

I have just mentioned the result of that scheme to hon. Members. May I tell them what the reoffending rate is? Courts at the federal level are looking at that district court because of its success. For the past three years, the reoffending rate has been 0%. If that is not something to consider, I do not know what is. I submit that the scheme could be adapted to what we are talking about today. It does not have to be a veterans court; it could be any other form of court. The scheme is labour intensive, but if we weigh up the savings to society, the taxpayer and everyone—and indeed to the individual who has his or her life turned around and is back in the mainstream—it is remarkable and worthy of study.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind everybody that there is approximately 40 minutes left for three speakers. I call Mr Tony Baldry.

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[Alun Michael]

That is very petty; that is not true.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to intervene from a sedentary position.

[Mr Blunt]

There is, however, much in the Committee’s impressive report that resonates with this Government’s plans for overhauling our approach to the rehabilitation of offenders. We share the concern that the size of the prison population is not just a numbers game, and we want to target investment where it is most needed. Most important, we know that we need to place successful rehabilitation at the heart of the criminal justice system, so that we can prevent people from becoming the victims of tomorrow. The forthcoming Green Paper on rehabilitation and sentencing will set out our plans for bringing about real and enduring changes in our approach to reducing reoffending. It will also bring much-needed clarity to the sentencing framework. I hope that members of the new Justice Committee and the right hon. and hon. Members here this afternoon will find much in the Green Paper that reflects and addresses the concerns raised in this debate.

We face huge challenges, and we will clearly work closely with other Departments. I have been asked on more than one occasion about our relationship with the Department of Health on the issues of mental health and addiction, and I am very pleased to be able to report that the Ministry of Justice is getting great commitment and interest from the Ministers and the senior officials in the Department. I am extremely hopeful that we will be able to build significantly on the position that we inherit.

The excellent report that we have debated this afternoon has already informed the thinking of the new Administration, and I suppose that that is hardly surprising. The report is consistent with the direction of travel in criminal justice, and we will present our views in the Green Paper. But again, it is a Green Paper, and we look forward to my right hon. Friend and the members of his Committee making a contribution in response. There is no monopoly on wisdom in this area, and we are open to listening to evidence as it comes in and to trying to find ways of ensuring that successful approaches to widening rehabilitation can be adopted by the whole criminal justice system. If the new Justice Committee is as well informed and authoritative as the report of the previous Committee, I am quite sure that it will do a signal service to our country during this Parliament.

Rights of Victims and Families

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend raises a point that is made time and again: the pain and suffering caused to people when there must be a further autopsy on a body—once, twice or three times. In those instances it is felt that the perpetrators of the crime get a better deal, and the victims’ families are often left without adequate help and support. Such help and support are vital to enable them to come to terms with the horrific crimes, the loss of loved ones and the complicated, drawn-out and distressing process that follows.

The impact can be felt in many areas. It can be financial, as family members may need breaks from employment so that they can recover. Some need extensive medical treatment, and some have to repair damage to homes and property as well. For others the cost is emotional. Many victims suffer from anxiety, the threat of victimisation, and deteriorating mental health. For some the cost is physical. Many people in society, including me, question the leniency shown towards the perpetrators of crime, which is juxtaposed to the psychological and financial cost that the victims and families must deal with. Jean Taylor will tell you that Governments have failed to do their job of supporting victims of crime and their families.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. May I gently remind the hon. Lady that when she says “you” she is referring to the occupant of the Chair.

[Esther McVey]

I apologise, Mrs Main.

It is often charities and voluntary organisations that provide help and support to victims—often with no funding.

So far I have discussed procedural inequalities that need to be addressed, but I want to move now to consider policy areas. As times change, so must laws, to reflect the society and times we live in. I fully appreciate the delicate balance of laws, and the process of cause and effect involved in every situation when changes are made to them, but I do not believe that fear of upsetting the balance is reason not to change them. To the contrary, I believe that our society, with the increase in gang culture and antisocial behaviour, needs law that reflects our times and the changes that have come about. I have three examples.

First, when the body of a murder victim is not discovered, despite a guilty plea, and the perpetrator never reveals its location, the family are deprived of a proper funeral, which leaves them unable to grieve properly; or they are left with the prospect of being confronted with the finding of the body in the future. I know that very few suspects have been convicted of murder in the absence of a body, but some have, and have never revealed where the body is. Would it be possible to charge someone with an extra offence of non-disclosure of the whereabouts of the body? Otherwise the coroner is deprived of the opportunity to do his job properly, and the family are deprived of the opportunity to mourn the loss of a loved one.

Secondly, a person who has been found guilty of a crime can be given the option to appeal against conviction or against the length of sentence, although the grounds for appeal may be arguable. I recognise that the appeal process is an important part of the judicial system, but I do not believe that victims’ rights in that situation are given enough consideration. Not only do they go through a distressing, lengthy process; they may go through a second. I wonder whether we could have a law of malicious appeal, to extend the sentence for people who have been found undeniably guilty and who raise an appeal that will fail, to focus the mind of anyone who brings such an appeal. Thus real appeals would go forward, but appeals that would not be deemed so would not.

Thirdly, there are cases when a gang has killed a person—and I want to refer to Andrew Jones, the young boy murdered by a group of teenagers, none of whom has ever been sentenced. I want law makers to think seriously about increasing the use of joint enterprise sentences, by which a group could be sentenced, rather than all walking free. The law exists, and could be extended. At the same time, there is a need for education in schools on joint enterprise, and a clear understanding that, should anyone participate in crime in a gang, with the intention to act as a gang, those involved would be sentenced as a gang and held responsible for their joint actions. I appreciate that we do not want miscarriages of justice, but the law needs to be modernised to accommodate the culture and climate in which we live.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She talked briefly about the role of education. Does she agree that there is a broader issue about how young people interact with the criminal justice system? In my previous profession I saw many young people come into contact with the system at a young age, but they ended up on a kind of rollercoaster or in a revolving door, as nothing was ever done, so their behaviour got progressively worse.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Gentleman keep his remarks brief, as this is a half-hour debate and I am sure that the Minister wants to respond.

[Andrew Percy]

Of course; thank you, Mrs Main.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need closer working between schools and the judicial process, to get the messages out to young people properly?

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[Esther McVey]

I know that we are in the closing minutes of this debate, but may I ask that the procedural and policy changes mentioned today are considered in your review of the justice system?

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that it is not my review of the criminal justice system but the Minister’s.

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful, Mrs Main, for that clarification. My hon. Friend is aware that because of her generosity in taking interventions I shall not be able to finish my prepared remarks. However, I shall consider carefully what she has said. Indeed, she has repeated here the points that she made directly to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, so they are already included in the process and are being considered.

I was going to speak about Victim Support’s homicide service, an important development that began in April this year. We hope that it will provide a high-quality service that reflects the wishes and needs of the bereaved. We are reviewing the services currently available to witnesses, victims and their families in the criminal justice system. As part of our commitment to restorative justice, and to the big society, we want to ensure that victims are a focus not an afterthought.