Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

This is a modest amendment, merely preparing, as the noble Baroness said, an action plan with plans to follow it up. My noble friend has produced his Prisons Strategy, but a paper with “strategy” in the title always worries me because it looks like an overarching result—a sort of deus ex machina which will put the whole problem to bed. In my experience of the human condition, it very rarely results in that. Particularly with prisons and reoffending, results are likely to come about inch by inch, with hard yards of trying things, some which fail and some which succeed, and building on success. I would like us to do something different—something incremental. Let us stop doing the same thing over and over again; we are really not that stupid.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Hodgson, and to agree with what they say. I support this amendment very strongly and I regret that we will not vote on it, because this is so important for justice. At the moment, justice just means taking something away from everyone instead of trying to add things back, both to all the people involved but also to society. Crime has to be seen partly as the result of a broken society; this is what it indicates. It cannot only be addressed—and it certainly cannot be fixed—by policing and punishment. There has to be something more that adds back and enriches us.

Effective restorative justice deals constructively with both the victim and the offender. The primary aim has to be to restore and improve the position of the victim and the community by the offender making amends. It recognises that a person convicted of a crime has the ability to improve the community. We do not at the moment employ restorative justice; we focus instead on punishing the offender, which means more prisons, more stress and more degradation in our society. Therefore, I regret that we will not vote on this, because it is a very important move.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to strongly support this amendment, which was so ably introduced by my noble friend Lady Meacher, particularly if it is matched by a strong commitment to restorative justice among all sections of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, particularly prison governors. I have witnessed an unfortunate case in which a governor admitted to me that none of the recommendations of the very good police officer who was chairing the conference could be provided by the prison concerned, to the detriment of the whole process.

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[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I fully support the amendment. Sometimes I feel a bit as if I am in “Groundhog Day” as we listen to things that are said again and again. When we first discussed the Bill in this House, many people far more learned than me commented on all the issues with the Bill and the fact that so much of it is piecemeal—that we are trying to put sticking plasters over things without looking at the issues holistically and without looking at evidence. So much of it seems to be a reaction—often to populist headlines, let us be honest. There is so much evidence that we are not looking at, and so much of what we are discussing is not backed up by the evidence.

For that reason, I warmly recommend taking a holistic look at what we are doing, why people end up in prison in the first place, what we are doing when we sentence people, what is going on in our prisons and what it means for when people come out through the gate. As has been said, even if people are utterly callous and care only about finance, what we are doing at the moment makes no financial sense whatsoever. I wholeheartedly applaud this amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I also support the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has given us an opportunity to make things a lot better. During that quite irritable debate two days ago—I was irritable, anyway, and I think people got irritable with me—on this policing Bill, it struck me that we just should not have as many women in prison. Some of the things that women go to prison for are ridiculous. It costs a lot of money; it disrupts lives, especially for the women, their children and their support networks; and there is an opportunity cost when compared to the opportunities that we should be providing via rehabilitation and reintegration. Women go to prison for things like not paying their TV licence or their council tax, and that really should not happen. It is hugely disruptive, the cost of doing so exceeds the unpaid debt many times over, and lives are ruined.

For the vast majority of women in the criminal justice system, solutions within the community are much more appropriate. Community sentences could be designed to take account of women’s particular vulnerabilities and their domestic and childcare commitments. Existing women’s prisons should be replaced by suitable, geographically-dispersed, small multifunctional custodial centres. More supported accommodation should be provided for women on release in order to break the cycle of offending and custody. Prisoners should have improved access to meaningful activities, particularly real work, education and artistic and creative facilities. And, of course, all prisoners should be able to attain levels of literacy sufficient to allow them to function effectively in modern society.

That all seems so obvious, but it does not happen at the moment because this Government are obsessed with being “tough on crime”. What does that mean? If it means sending more and more people to prison then it is a very disruptive and damaging way of handling the problem of crime. A royal commission seems an incredibly sensible way forward just to rethink the way in which we handle prisons, prisoners, crime and, in particular, women in prison who really ought not to be there.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I too support this proposal. The objectives set out in each of the paragraphs (a) to (h) of proposed subsection (2) of the amendment are plainly and urgently needed. It should not be necessary to establish a royal commission to focus on, pursue and achieve these objectives, but plainly it is necessary. These deficiencies have been identified, recognised and discussed for years but, as for getting anywhere in terms of achievement—on the contrary.

The main parties on both sides of the House, not least this Government, seem ever more intent on winning the law and order vote. Sentences are being increased; minimum and mandatory terms are being imposed. We now need the impetus, the force, of no less than a royal commission to start to recognise the intense problems of our whole penal system and to start to set the matter right.

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[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, a similar amendment was debated in Committee as part of a series of amendments relating to ensuring that safeguarding and tackling the criminal exploitation of children are a central part of the duty to reduce serious violence as set out in Part 2, with its duties on specified authorities to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence. Children who are groomed and exploited by criminal gangs are the victims and not the criminals. A statutory duty to reduce violence cannot be effective on its own without a statutory duty to safeguard children. This amendment would provide a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation, putting a recognised definition in law for the first time.

The present lack of a single clear statutory definition has contributed to local authorities responding differently to this form of exploitation across the country. The Children’s Society says that just one-third of local authorities have a policy in place for responding to it, yet child criminal exploitation does not stop at local authority boundaries and requires a shared understanding and approach nationally. Barnardo’s has said that it has found that agencies, including police forces, do not routinely collect or record information on this type of exploitation. It reports that a number of reviews have found that children at risk are passed between agencies without meaningful engagement. Indeed, many children are not seen as victims of exploitation and abuse but instead receive punitive criminal justice responses.

A statutory definition, as we now have for domestic abuse, would improve awareness and understanding of child exploitation and its signs, and encourage joined-up working not only across the justice system but across all partners included in the serious violence reduction duty. It would give a common definition of what we are seeking to tackle in response to the abhorrent coercion and manipulation of children and vulnerable young people. This is not a minor issue. More than 25,000 children in the United Kingdom are presently at risk of gang exploitation, according to the Children’s Commissioner.

The response of the Government in Committee to establishing a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation was that they had considered it with a range of operational partners and had concluded that the definitions of exploitation within the Modern Slavery Act were sufficient to respond to a range of child criminal exploitation scenarios. However, the operational partners with whom presumably the Government considered a statutory definition will include the local authorities which according to the Children’s Society do not have a policy in place for responding to child criminal exploitation, the police forces and other agencies which Barnardo’s found are not routinely collecting or recording information on this type of exploitation, and the agencies which pass children at risk between each other without meaningful engagement. The evidence indicates that there is no consistency of approach across the agencies on child criminal exploitation, so it is clear that the existing definitions on which the Government relied when rejecting this amendment in Committee are not assisting in the way they should in responding to abhorrent child criminal exploitation scenarios.

I hope that the Government will be prepared to reflect further on this issue of a much-needed definition of child criminal exploitation as provided for in this amendment, which I move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I would be remiss if I did not point out to the Benches opposite that this is an issue that I have talked about quite a lot, in the context not of county lines and gangs but of the Met Police. I did not even realise that there was not a statutory definition, so I welcome this amendment. The definition talks about another person who manipulates and so on, and, of course, the Met Police manipulates children. We are assured constantly that it is a very small number, but it happens and does so apparently lawfully because the Government have not stopped it, so the Government are complicit in a crime.

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[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the proposed new clause in Amendment 104B would bring Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which provides for the cross-examination of vulnerable witnesses to be recorded rather than undertaken in court, fully into force for victims of sexual offences and modern slavery offences. When we debated this in Committee, the point was made that there have been a number of pilots of this approach in, I believe, three Crown Courts in England and Wales. A further point was made in the response by the noble and learned Lord, the Advocate-General for Scotland, that it would be judge-intensive to have judges present when recording the evidence. For those reasons, we were invited to reject the amendment.

In response to those points, I ask the Minister when the results of the pilot will come forward, so we can have an informed decision about whether to roll out this approach. I also question the assertion that this is a very judge-intensive process because judges have to be present when the recordings are made. I made this point to the Minister when we met in private a few days ago. I have done this procedure several times within youth court and, as far as I am aware, there was never a judge or magistrate present then. I have also done this process in Crown Court and for an appeal. On that instance, I was sitting as a winger and there was a Crown Court judge in the middle. We heard the evidence by videolink and, again, as far as I was aware, there was no judge present. So I question the assertion that it would be very judge-intensive to use this approach in the adult court for victims of sexual offences and modern slavery offences.

The proposed new clause in Amendment 104C would give the complainant a right of representation with legal aid, if they are financially eligible, to oppose any application to admit Section 41 material about them. It would also give complainants the right to appeal to the Court of Appeal if the application is allowed, in whole or in part. The proposed new clause also provides that the complainant is not compellable as a witness at the application. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for putting her name to this amendment.

This issue was again explored at some length in Committee. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer made the point that it is very sensitive. If there is the possibility of somebody’s sexual history becoming known in a wider context within court, it acts as a cooling method for people making allegations. This is a way around that problem to try to give people the confidence to come forward and make complaints of sexual assaults.

Amendment 107C is in the name of my noble friend Lord Coaker. It would require police forces to have a specialist rape and serious sexual offences, or RASSO, unit. As background, I have three facts to share with the House. First, two-fifths of police forces currently do not have one of these units, which specialise in the prosecution of rape and serious sexual offences and supporting victims of these offences. Secondly, the current prosecution rate for reported rapes is about 1.4%. No matter how many times we hear this statistic, it remains deeply shocking. Finally, Home Office figures show that the number of victims dropping out of prosecutions has increased to a record 41%. In each of these cases, we are failing to deliver justice for a victim and to tackle a dangerous predator.

MPs and noble Lords from across this House have worked, with limited success, to make tackling violence against women and girls a part of this Bill, including explicitly recognising violence against women and girls as serious violence under the serious violence reduction duty. We are in a situation where this Government may pass a flagship piece of criminal justice legislation without including any specific plans to improve the investigation and prosecution of rape and serious assaults. This issue needs to be taken forward in partnership with the police and finally recognised as a priority. I look forward to what I hope will be a positive response from the Minister and beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I reassure noble Lords that I will not be speaking on every amendment today, but I regret that all those that we have discussed so far, including this one, will not go to a vote. That is a real shame, because they are so sensible.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on tabling the amendment to which I have put my name. I support all the amendments in this group, not just Amendment 104C. The criminal justice system is hugely distrusted by survivors of sexual violence, based on the way they are treated when they come forward to make a complaint. There have been some important steps forward over the years, but trust is still far lower than it needs to be for survivors to come forward, go through the whole criminal justice system and have their lives pored over. Granting the right to complainants to be represented by a lawyer in an appeal to adduce evidence on questions of sexual conduct would be an important leap forward. The complainant is seen as a neutral third party with no particular legal rights, rather than someone deserving legal protection and representation, and this really has to change.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames is leading for us on this group, but I want to speak on Amendment 107C. I was commissioned by the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, now the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, to conduct a review of rape investigation in the Metropolitan Police, working together with Professor Betsy Stanko OBE.

At that time, the Metropolitan Police had specialist rape investigation units. Their performance was mixed, but they were considerably better than the experiment in community policing that was being conducted in one part of London. Small teams of detectives were allocated to each part of the borough to investigate all crime there, including rape and serious sexual offences. In addition to being overwhelmed by large numbers of more minor criminal investigations, they lacked the experience and expertise of officers who specialise in rape and other sexual offences.

I know from practical experience on the ground within the police service that specialist rape and serious sexual offences units provide much better outcomes for the victims and survivors of these types of crime. I doubt that legislation such as this amendment can override the operational independence of chief constables, but the principle is right and the Home Secretary, the College of Policing Limited—we will come to that in an upcoming group—HMICFRS and police and crime commissioners should all exert pressure on chief constables to ensure that they are established.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I promise that this is the last time that I will speak—this evening; there will be other times. I rise to support this amendment, obviously, and also to troll the Government. Amendment 104D, which they obviously do not support, shows the huge inconsistency that the new statues statute will create. If the Government do not accept this amendment, it is hard to justify the whole plan to bring in a severe criminal penalty for toppling the statue of a slaver. To penalise that but not the destroying of life-saving equipment seems to me very strange, so I would like the Minister to explain that discrepancy to me.

It just shows me that the Government are still in the coloniser mindset. Between 2 million and 4 million enslaved African people died being shipped to America, with no criminal punishment to the slavers. It was just money—they had lots of money—and that is why the Colston statue was standing where it was standing. Somehow, toppling the statue of a slaver is what gets the harsher penalty. The Minister has got to make that make sense.