Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Prisoners pay for some of those things already, although the innovation we are putting in place is to make provision from the earnings of prisoners for payment to victim services and to dependants outside. I agree that we are not just giving prisoners pocket money. We are giving them money from which they should, perfectly properly, make payment for those things for which they ought to be paying, including some reparation to their victims.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

We have only to look at the Order Paper to see how keen the Secretary of State is to talk about work in prison. It is a shame that the Government are not more interested in the benefits of paid work for those who have not committed a crime.

There are merely two paragraphs on women offenders in his “Making prisons work” report, and there is no detail whatever on how his initiative will make a difference to them. Is it not true that this Government are showing no leadership on women in the justice system, and that there is a very real danger that all progress will be lost?

[Mr Clarke]

It is my Parliamentary Private Secretary’s enthusiasm for the policy of work in prisons that is exemplified, in part, by the Order Paper, together with the enthusiasm of all my hon. Friends who have asked questions on this extremely valuable policy, which is an innovation compared with the neglect of this subject by the previous Government.

We are giving a high priority to the needs of women in prison, and we will continue to address the matter. The previous Government were doing quite good work on women in prison, and we have not reversed anything; indeed, we are building on the Corston report. On work in prisons, we certainly intend that female prisoners should have the same opportunities of work and training as men, and we are thinking of what special arrangements we should make to ensure that such facilities are available and suitable for female prisoners.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

If those are the facts of the case, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He is obviously concerned about this case, and if he thinks something has gone badly wrong, I know him well enough to share his concern. I have had a word with the prisons Minister about this case, and we will investigate the facts and come back to him. The events as described obviously should not happen; that is not how the system is supposed to work.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I have listened to the Secretary of State’s responses on indeterminate sentences for public protection and payments by results and he is clearly feeling very optimistic. While we all like someone with a sunny disposition, when considering public protection issues it is also important to plan for failure. Does the Secretary of State plan to monitor the financial help given to providers of probation services in the community so that we avoid a criminal justice equivalent of Southern Cross?

[Mr Clarke]

When people provide services, of course it is necessary before giving them the contract to do one’s best to check on their financial health, but this issue has moved beyond arguments about whether a provider should be from the voluntary sector or a for-profit or not-for-profit provider. I wish to maximise the service given to the public by those who provide community-based sentences in this country, and we need to encourage innovation and best practice wherever we can.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The honesty in sentencing issue concerns the fact that it is not currently explained to people that sentences are likely to involve so much time in prison and a further amount outside on licence but subject to recall. We will see whether we can address that and make people understand more clearly what sentences actually imply. It was the previous Government, not us, who moved the amount of sentences being served from two thirds to half—a move that we intend to reverse in the cases of the most serious sexual offenders and violent criminals when we move away from imprisonment for public protection sentences to a more sensible system of determinate sentences.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I welcome this latest and expertly executed U-turn from the Government. Cannot the Justice Secretary see that this whole row, as well as the cuts to probation, the cuts to youth offending teams, the banned people being allowed to volunteer in classrooms and the failure to close all the loopholes on the monitoring of sex offenders together create a very ugly picture of the Government’s attitude to victims of crime?

[Mr Clarke]

I have done many U-turns in my time. They should be done with purpose and panache when we have to do them, but I do not think this is a U-turn at all—[Laughter.] No, I do not. Let me explain—[Laughter.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

No, I cannot. [Interruption.] The system requires considerable transformation. We intend to introduce as widely as possible a system in which it is normal for prisoners to have a working day doing proper work, getting into work habits and acquiring skills. We have some—comparatively few—outstanding examples of workshops run by outside companies and we are attracting wide interest from companies in how we can do that. Prison Industries will have to be addressed and we will probably have to put it on a different and more commercial footing. We are looking for work that can properly be done in prison without jeopardising legitimate small businesses outside. A moment ago I was accused of rushing everything. The great thing about such reforms, which will transform the prison system, is that there is no point in delivering straight away experiments that have not been thought through. I intend to change the atmosphere of prisons very substantially once we have got down to practical ways of doing so.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The introduction of work-based regimes more widely will be warmly welcomed by people who know about rehabilitation, but victims are concerned about reparation. Will the Secretary of State make sure that any wages earned as part of a work-based regime go directly to benefit victims or the communities that have been victims of crime?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes. I am glad the hon. Lady agrees on that sensible approach. That, too, is an important innovation that we must make.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the effects on public protection of releasing those with indeterminate prison sentences who have completed their minimum tariff.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Prisoners serving indeterminate sentences who have completed their minimum tariff are released from custody only if the independent Parole Board is satisfied that the risk of harm that they pose to the public is such that it may reasonably be managed in the community.

[Mrs Chapman]

The Secretary of State will be aware that inmates serving indeterminate public protection sentences will have committed some of the most severe offences. Often, the reason they are not released after their minimum tariff is that they still pose a great risk or have not been able to complete the rehabilitative courses that are available. Will he either spend more money on rehabilitation inside prisons or change the method by which risk is assessed?

[Mr Clarke]

We addressed this problem in the Green Paper, on which we are consulting. It is quite obvious that the IPP system has never worked as either the previous Government or Parliament intended. Indeed, the previous Government made one attempt to revise it to stop the unexpectedly large numbers of people who were going into the system. IPP prisoners are almost all high-risk, and they should be released only once they have been assessed by the Parole Board, but of course it is extremely difficult to form judgments about the risks that they pose when they are in prison and sometimes unable to access rehabilitation courses. We published our proposals in the Green Paper and are now consulting on them, but we have no intention whatever of putting the public at more risk by releasing people without some assessment by the Parole Board. However, it has to be a sensible assessment that can sensibly be made.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The answer to that is yes, I will. Restorative justice is proving to be remarkably successful, but I take my hon. Friend’s point that it does not work if victims are not in the leading role. We have ensured very high levels of victim satisfaction in most of our experience so far of steadily spreading restorative justice.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s road-to-Damascus conversion to rehabilitation. I made a note of some of the promises that he makes in the Green Paper, which include regular working hours, restorative justice, custody diversion, and drug, alcohol and mental health services. What bothers me is that if those things are to be effective, they cannot be done on the cheap. It is wrong of him to promise such investment in rehabilitation, because the 23% cut to the Ministry of Justice and cuts in probation mean that those promises are completely undeliverable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Following the conviction of Jon Venables on 23 July for possessing and distributing indecent images of children, I commissioned Sir David Omand to undertake an independent review into the management of Jon Venables from his release from local authority detention in June 2001 until his recall to custody on 24 February 2010. Today, I have placed a copy of Sir David’s report in the Library. Sir David has concluded that Jon Venables was effectively and properly supervised at an appropriate level and frequency of contact, having regard to the particular circumstances of his case. Sir David also concludes that no reasonable supervisory regime would have been expected to detect his use of the computer to download indecent images. The report contains a number of recommendations on the future management of this and similar cases that will be taken forward by the National Offender Management Service.

[Mrs Chapman]

Nineteen-year-old Scots Guardsman Andrew Gibson was killed in a Darlington nightclub. Yesterday, the Attorney-General said that he was unable to refer what many view as an excessively lenient sentence of just two and a half years to the Court of Appeal. Will the Secretary of State undertake to investigate the awarding of lenient sentences in which alcohol is an aggravating factor?

[Mr Clarke]

The Attorney-General has a power to exercise in these cases and he has to exercise it in his quasi-judicial role by making a proper judgment and not just reacting politically. I understand the hon. Lady’s concern about that case, but sentences are normally imposed by the court that has had the opportunity to hear all the evidence, facts and information about the accused person. The Attorney-General takes seriously his responsibility to step in where a mistake seems to have been made and ask a higher court to consider imposing a more serious sentence. I cannot claim to exercise any control over him in that regard; it is his difficult judgment to take in each case.