Criminal Cases Review Commission

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Henderson. I wish to bring up the case of my constituent, Paul Cleeland, who is sitting in the Public Gallery for this debate, in relation to the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I appreciate, Mr Henderson, that this is not a court, you are not a judge and I am not a lawyer. However, the CCRC is a public body, established by the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, and is subject to scrutiny by Parliament.

The CCRC has been the subject of Select Committee reports, particularly the Justice Select Committee report in 2015, which raised concerns about the threshold for the referral of cases by the CCRC to the Court of Appeal, in particular on the safety first principle. That was acknowledged in the Government’s response to the report. Admittedly, some years later it is now the subject of an inquiry by the Law Commission that was established in 2022, although that piece of work is still at the pre-consultation phase. Therefore, I think this is a legitimate area for a debate in Parliament, as the CCRC is a public body.

Mr Cleeland’s case has been presented in Parliament on numerous occasions since he was convicted of murdering Terry Clarke in November 1972 in Stevenage. The case was raised in Adjournment debates in the House of Commons in 1982 and 1988, and by me in 2011 and again today. Many regard it as a miscarriage of justice, one of a series of miscarriages of justices that we are familiar with, certainly from the 1970s, but one that remains outstanding. Mr Cleeland has always maintained his innocence and never accepted guilt; when he was released on licence from prison after 26 years he still refused to admit any liability for the offence, and he has continued to fight to clear his name since, including repeated appeals to the CCRC for his case to be referred to the Court of Appeal.

For the benefit of the Minister and other hon. Members I will give a brief summary of Mr Cleeland’s initial trial and why it was regarded almost from the start as a potential miscarriage of justice. Mr Cleeland was committed of murdering Terry Clarke, a man that he knew, had worked with and was familiar with. Mr Clarke was shot twice with a shotgun at the rear of his property in Grace Way in Stevenage—one shot in the back and, after he turned to face his assailant, a fatal wound in the chest. It was alleged that the Gye & Moncrieff shotgun was found near the scene of the crime. It was established by the Crown in Mr Cleeland’s trial that that was the murder weapon, although there has never been any forensic evidence linking the gun to the murder or to Mr Cleeland.

There was a concern shortly after the trial about the likelihood that Mr Cleeland would have murdered Mr Clarke in that location and in that way. First, it would have required him to wait for Mr Clarke to return home at two in the morning, in a road that was effectively a cul-de-sac with a series of residential properties where he could easily have been observed. Waiting for someone that he knew, the chances are that he would himself have been recognised by neighbours in the area, so many people questioned whether that seemed likely.

Secondly, there were questions about the motive for the crime. In the local reporting at the time of the murder there seemed more likely scenarios. In particular, Mr Clarke was due to give evidence in Stevenage court the following week and it was believed that he might give evidence against other criminals who he felt were complicit in charges that he faced. There may have been other people with a motive for wanting Mr Clarke off the scene.

There are particular concerns relating to the Gye & Moncrieff shotgun. In the evidence considered by the court in Mr Cleeland’s trial, looking at the spread of the pellets on the body of the victim, it was believed that the shotgun must have been fired between 18 feet and 40 feet away from Mr Clarke. That seems implausible. One of the only eyewitnesses to the murder, the man’s widow, said that the assailant shot at close range, was about 5 feet 8 inches—shorter than Mr Cleeland—and that he had dark hair, while Mr Cleeland had fair hair. There was no corroboration, from one of the only eyewitnesses, that he was likely to have been the murderer.

Later that same month, two sawn-off shotguns were found in a weir near Harlow by Essex police. They referred those guns to the Hertfordshire police investigating Mr Clarke’s death, to consider whether they might have been the murder weapons. The significance of sawn-off shotguns was that they were consistent with the assailant’s approaching Mr Clarke at short range, because a sawn-off shotgun would have produced the spread of pellets in the victim’s body consistent with a short-range shooting, but only from a pump-action gun.

Nevertheless, the case was heard in St Albans Crown court. No verdict was reached. Then it was retried and Mr Cleeland was convicted. The case was subsequently considered in 2002 by the Court of Appeal, which discredited a lot of the evidence produced in Mr Cleeland’s initial trial.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am here to show support from the commission on the future of justice and miscarriages of justice. This is a very well-known case. Our commission, which I co-chair with the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), looks at these cases. If we can be of any help, we will be. We know about this case, and we are looking at the adequacy of forensic science at the moment. We would very much like to help.

[Damian Collins]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, and I am sure my constituent is as well. I have some particular asks for the Minister at the end of my speech and they may be relevant for the work the hon. Gentleman is involved in.

I would like to consider what has become known subsequent to the 2002 Court of Appeal case. Much of Mr Cleeland’s conviction rests on the belief by the Crown, as established in the trial, that the Gye & Moncrieff shotgun was the murder weapon and the two guns found in a weir in Harlow were nothing to do with the murder at all. The view of the Court of Appeal was that the two shotguns found in Essex could not be considered to be the murder weapon, and that it might have been established that the Gye & Moncrieff gun was the murder weapon.

Mr Spencer, the forensic expert called to give evidence to the Court of Appeal, discredited a lot of the evidence presented against Mr Cleeland by Mr McCafferty of the Metropolitan Police Service in the original trial. In particular, he noted that there were no case notes for any of the assertions that Mr McCafferty made in the trial, and therefore doubt should be placed on the evidence he had given. Mr Spencer also concluded that there was no hard evidence connecting the gun with either the murder or Mr Cleeland.

There was also the question of the consideration of the other guns that had been found. The summing up of the Court of Appeal case said that it was clear that both Mr Pryor and Mr Spencer discounted the other guns. That was not true. In the transcript from the proceedings of the Court of Appeal, when my constituent was questioning Mr Pryor, Mr Pryor was very clear that he could not rule out that one of the sawn-off shotguns could have been the murder weapon. He may have said he did not believe it was, but he could not exclude that possibility.

It is also not the case that Mr Spencer could have reached that conclusion, because he had never actually examined the guns himself. The Court of Appeal wrongly stated that he had, but he had not—in fact he could not have done, because the guns were destroyed in the 1970s, when it was believed that they were no longer of any importance to the police.

It was clear from the Court of Appeal hearing, despite what was said in the summing up, that there was no forensic link between the gun and the murder and Mr Cleeland, and that the expert witnesses did not discount the possibility that one of the other guns could have been the murder weapon.

[Damian Collins]

I agree. The hon. Gentleman raises a point essential to the work of the Law Commission in reviewing whether enough cases are being referred or whether the CCRC is taking too much of a precautionary approach.

Since the Court of Appeal hearing, other cases have come forward. At Mr Cleeland’s initial trial, Mr McCafferty presented evidence that there was lead residue on Mr Cleeland’s clothing and that this was consistent with firearms discharge. The sodium rhodizonate test was the one used at the time—this was the theme of my 2011 Adjournment debate—but it was not a firearms residue test. It was known not to be so: as early as 1965, it was known within the police that it could not detect firearms residue, but only the presence of lead. Concerns were raised that it was not made clear at the trial that the test was extremely limited, and that the lead residue could easily have come from other environmental pollutants. Mr Cleeland was a painter and decorator at the time and worked with lead-based paints. He had also been to a fireworks party on the evening of the murder and could have picked up lead residue there, but that was never clearly explained.

Further forensic evidence produced since 2002 by Mr Dudley Gibbs has also cast doubt on the judgment. He maintained that there is no forensic evidence linking the Gye & Moncrieff shotgun with Mr Cleeland. He also pointed out, significantly, that the gunshot pellets found in the victim’s body were a different size from those found in the Blue Rival cartridges alleged to have been used at the shooting. It was believed at the time by Mr McCafferty, and presented in court to the jury, that the Blue Rival cartridges came with a highly distinctive wadding that would have linked the cartridges to the gun and to Mr Cleeland. Mr Gibbs made it clear that the wadding was not distinctive in any way and could have come from any number of brands of cartridge that could have been purchased. Again, that casts doubt.

In the Barry George case, Barry George was convicted of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando and later acquitted on the basis that the lead residue found on his clothing and presented in court could not have been evidence of his having fired a gun. Again, it was only a small particle of lead and it could have come from environmental factors. On those grounds, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision, in what is often referred to as the Pendleton judgment, on the basis that it was not possible to know how the jury would have reacted if they had known that the lead residue itself was circumstantial evidence, not evidence of having fired a gun.

All these things apply in Mr Cleeland’s case. The concern throughout—in the subsequent cases he has brought to the CCRC and when he sought to appeal the CCRC’s decision in the divisional court and latterly in the civil court of the Court of Appeal—has been that the CCRC, the courts and the judges have consistently relied on statements that are just not true, and that have been demonstrated in court not to be true. Mr Pryor did not discount the question that one of the Harlow guns was the murder weapon. Neither he nor the other expert believed that there was any forensic evidence linking the Gye & Moncrieff shotgun to the murder or Mr Cleeland—a point that was consistently made.

Mr Cleeland is now in the position of having been accused of being a vexatious litigant simply because he is seeking to correct the record and have the CCRC clearly state these facts instead of relying on previous evidence and previous rulings that are not true and that are inaccurate. He wants the record to be corrected, and he wants the CCRC to acknowledge the complaints that have been made and consider the judgments that have been made by other judges who have relied on evidence presented by the CCRC, which continues to reassert these points.

When we look at the case now, it is hard to know how the jury would have reacted in the 1970s when they considered Mr Cleeland’s case, particularly because almost every principal area of evidence presented by the Crown was subsequently proven to be flawed. That is true even of the evidence from two policemen who described having overheard cell confessions by Mr Cleeland that implicated him in the crime. Subsequent to 2002, those policemen were discredited and regarded as unsafe witnesses, as their evidence was considered to have potentially misled another case. Had that been known at the time, their evidence would have been considered very differently in the case of Mr Cleeland. There is now substantial evidence that challenges what has gone before, but the CCRC continues to reject it. In many ways, it is presenting evidence that does not bear out the facts. Those seem to be the reasons why the CCRC will not refer the case on.

My request to the Minister, which I am happy to set out in writing to her and to the Lord Chancellor, is that there be an acknowledgment of these mistakes; that the record be put right and fresh consideration be given by the CCRC to Mr Cleeland’s case, in the light of these facts having been corrected and amends having been made; and that the Law Commission considers Mr Cleeland’s case directly in its work on the safety principle for referrals.

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is making a persuasive case. May I urge him to get involved with the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice, and the wonderful Welsh lawyer Glyn Maddox who specialises in these cases? I would very much like to introduce the hon. Gentleman and this case to him and to that group. It has been a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman; we have heard many more such cases. I have to give a little bit of a prod: the commission needs more resources.

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about resources. Lack of resources may be a reason why some of the errors have occurred and why the CCRC has not considered some of the other points that have been mentioned. I am happy to take up his invitation to become involved with the APPG on miscarriages of justice and to refer this case to it.

I am calling for acknowledgment of these errors of fact; for the CCRC to correct the record and reconsider the case in the light of the points that I have made; for the Law Commission to consider the case with regard to its current and open investigation; and for the Government to consider the CCRC’s response in Mr Cleeland’s case, particularly in the light of the corrections. The Government have already commissioned a CCRC review based on another case that was launched last year, so clearly reviews are possible if the Ministry is persuaded that there is a case. I certainly believe that there is in Mr Cleeland’s case.

I would welcome a response from the Minister. I will also follow up to her in writing, setting out my requests, and I will be grateful for a response from her to that letter.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the Home Secretary assure us that if this Bill is passed tonight there will be a system in place that accurately tests its success, month by month and week by week, so that we know that all this anger, all this frustration, all this work is not for nothing?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman certainly speaks for a number of Members in the House, although maybe not too many on his own Benches, because it sounds as if he wants this to work, whereas plenty of Opposition Members have tried to frustrate our attempts to deal with illegal migration. But we will of course want to assess the success because we want to be proud of the fact that this Government, unlike the Opposition parties, actually care about strengthening our borders and defending ourselves against those evil people smugglers and their evil trade.

To be clear, we will disapply the avenues used by individuals that blocked the first flight to Rwanda, including asylum and human rights claims. Without that very narrow route to individual challenge, we would undermine the treaty that we have just signed with Rwanda and run the very serious risk of collapsing the scheme, and that must not be allowed to happen. But if people attempt to use this route simply as a delaying tactic, they will have their claim dismissed by the Home Office and they will be removed.

The Bill also ensures that it is for Ministers and Ministers alone to decide whether to comply with the ECHR interim measures, because it is for the British people and the British people alone to decide who comes and who stays in this country. The Prime Minister said he would not have included that clause unless we were intending and prepared to use it, and that is very much the case. We will not let foreign courts prevent us from managing our own borders. As reiterated by the Cabinet Office today, it is the established case that civil servants under the civil service code are there to deliver the decisions of Ministers of the Crown.

The Bill is key to stopping the boats once and for all. To reassure some of the people who have approached me with concerns, I remind them that Albanians previously made up around a third of small boat arrivals, but through working intensively and closely with Albania and its Government, more than 5,000 people with no right to be here have been returned. The deterrent was powerful enough to drive down arrivals from Albania by more than 90%. Strasbourg has not intervened, flights from Rwanda have not been stopped and the House should understand that this legislation once passed will go even further and be even stronger than the legislation that underpins the Albania agreement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that we are in a globally competitive environment when it comes to this country’s quality higher education postgraduate offer. I have no doubt that we are still highly competitive. We will continue to work with the university sector on this and ensure that the people we bring to the UK are here to study and add value, and that no institution in our higher education sector mistakes its role—they are educators, not a back-door visa system.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg the Home Secretary to spread those more enlightened views to some of his colleagues. Migration should not be a dirty word. I am the son of a migrant. I migrated myself to the United States at one stage. My DNA tells me that I am 34% Irish and 32% Swedish. Can every Member of this Parliament have their DNA published so that we can bring some sense to this discussion about migration?

[James Cleverly]

I am not sure that the Government are able to compel such widespread disclosure—perhaps the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority might have a view on such things. Both sides of my family are of immigrant stock: my mother came to the UK in the 1960s, and my father’s family in 1066. This country has benefited from controlled immigration in a fair system, where people who play by the rules are rewarded and we say no to those who refuse to play by the rules.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

As my hon. Friend will know, I worked for his father and my daughter worked for his mother. Does he think that all this is a façade for a form of international development? The Government do not like international development, so is this a way of targeting one country and giving it £140 million, or £200 million?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. He is right to suggest that the vast majority of people fleeing war and persecution end up in neighbouring countries in the region in which their plight is generated, and of course we need an overseas development programme that is focused and seeks, through enlightened self-interest, to ensure that we support those countries.

We are constantly told by Conservative Members that the Rwanda scheme will act as a deterrent, but that claim simply does not stand up to scrutiny, because Rwanda can take fewer than 1% of the asylum seekers who cross the channel in small boats. It is inconceivable that people who have already risked life and limb to get as far as northern France will be deterred by a 1% risk of anything. The Labour party has therefore been steadfast in our opposition to this madness from the very outset. We are absolutely committed to stopping the Tory boats chaos, but we will never vote for a madcap gimmick that is unaffordable, unworkable and unlawful.

We have constantly said that the Government need to redirect the money that is being squandered on this nonsense to a cross-border police unit, a new returns unit, and a security partnership with Europol that can stop the Tory boats chaos at source. We have also consistently called for the Government to speed up decision making and remove swiftly and safely the 30% of asylum seekers who fail to secure leave to remain. A small upfront investment in Labour’s plan would save the taxpayer an enormous £2 billion. Our reasoned amendment sets out why this Bill is a sham and what the Government should be doing instead, and I urge all Members across the House to get behind it. I trust that, in his concluding remarks, the Minister will confirm whether the Government will be accepting any significant amendments in Committee, because the House really deserves that clarity.

The Conservative party is no longer a serious party at all. It is a rabble, an alphabet soup of factions and cabals. The former Home Secretary is constantly on manoeuvres and the former Immigration Minister is firing broadsides on a daily basis. We have a Prime Minister who is so desperate to save his own skin that he apparently invited an outfit called the New Conservatives to No. 10 for breakfast this morning. The reality is that the Prime Minister was not actually at the table at all; he was on the menu, being consumed by the warring factions in his party and devoured by his own weakness and lack of judgment.

Our country simply cannot afford more of this chaos. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis and our public services are crumbling, but we have a Conservative party that is at war with itself and completely incapable of governing. The good news is that the Prime Minister does have a way out of this mess: he can call a general election so that voters across this country can kick him and his shambolic Administration out of office and finally give our country the leadership that it needs and deserves.

Town Centre Safety

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

Policing is a reserved matter, as the hon. Gentleman says, but the experience of communities like his is reflected across all our four nations. That is why I said to his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), that we ought to have that staffing kit as well as the equipment in order to try to protect the public.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I represent the Labour and Co-operative party and I have great sympathy for shop workers who are being harassed and attacked, and having a really tough time. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need not only more community police, but far better co-operation with the big supermarkets and their staff, and for them to bring together a whole team to protect both shoppers and those who are serving?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that intervention from my Co-operative party colleague, because I can express our pride that the Co-operative party is spearheading this work in Parliament. I agree that there needs to be work between retailers and staff, but we should take pride in the work that has already gone on between retailers and the unions. They are in lockstep on this, which is not always the case, and that co-operation is a great asset in this fight.

Even when the Government have attempted to reverse the disastrous implications of cutting 20,000 police officers, they have failed, because in adding back officers, they have squeezed out police staff and moored warranted officers away from the frontline, so we are 10,000 neighbourhood police short of the previous figure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) said. Each officer is another gap in that thin blue line, allowing criminals to run amok. Half the population say they rarely see police on the beat, a figure that has doubled since 2010.

However, we know that the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire has a cunning plan, which he unveiled last week at Home Office questions. To beef up the number of neighbourhood police, the Government are now going to count response police as neighbourhood police. That is risible nonsense. The clue is in the name: neighbourhood police are out on the streets, in their communities, providing a named presence, and building trust and relationships. The dynamic is different.

Neighbourhood police can be proactive, go to local community projects, get to know people, and build trust and relationships. That is a different dynamic from response police, who might attend a community event, but then a day later be in a situation down the road where they have to put in someone’s door or supervise a significant or difficult moment in a community. The relationship with the community is inherently different.

Similarly, response police can be called away at a moment’s notice, to the other side of the force area. It is simply not the same and it is deeply worrying that the Government think that it is. It represents a triple failure: officers cut, officers added back in the wrong place and now other types of officers being rebadged. They are failing communities and failing our hard-working police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

I will not take lectures on police numbers from a member of a party that cut them. As I said to his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), those are devolved matters. As a Government, we will make available the resourcing for 13,000 more police and police and community support officers.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. We want to protect shop workers and stop shoplifting—it would be wrong to say that we did not—but in my constituency, which is similar to that of my hon. Friend, poverty stalks our land. The gap between rich and poor means that the country is the most divided I can remember in my 44 years in Parliament. There are desperate people in our communities. I do not approve of any of them breaking the law, but does my hon. Friend agree that it would be dishonest for any of us to pretend that poverty does not stalk this land?

[Alex Norris]

I do agree. One of the core missions of a future Labour Government will be to tackle that poverty and give everybody the opportunity to live full, productive and happy lives.

Secondly, on our policing guarantee, we will tackle antisocial behaviour in our town centres head on. In particular, we pledge to introduce new respect orders that will give the police and local communities the right tools to exclude from town centres those who repeatedly disrespect them. They will be a quick, effective tool that tilts the balance back to the vast majority of people who do things the right way.

Thirdly, we will stand up for shopworkers. We will scrap the disastrous £200 downgrade in the 2014 Act and thereby make it clear to thieves that open season is over and to retailers that we value their businesses. In the same vein, we will heed the call from USDAW, from all the major retailers and from all the representative bodies for a new specific offence of assault against a retail worker. As a Labour and Co-operative party Member of Parliament, I am proud to have spearheaded attempts to recognise assault against retail workers as an aggravating factor in sentencing, but we need greater clarity in the law. Having it as a sentencing factor alone does not seem to be acting as a deterrent, so we need a specific offence, as there is in Scotland thanks to the excellent work of Daniel Johnson MSP. That will send a clear signal to those who perpetrate attacks that it is not acceptable, and make it easier for the police to police this scourge.

Fourthly, we want to put communities back into community policing. Too often, people tell us that they feel policing is done to them rather than with them, and that they do not think that local policing priorities necessarily match their own. Much of the problem is about resourcing, given the Government’s denuding of police our forces. Our commitment is for town centre planning so that those who live, work, play and trade in our town centres will get to have a say in how they are protected. There will be proper community police plans to reflect the community’s priorities, with a named officer to work with as the plans develop.

Fifthly, the final component of our community policing guarantee is that we will restore the value and cachet of community policing. We will ensure that the path to career progression in policing is through officers getting to know their community, and that all neighbourhood officers have the skills and training to be problem solvers as well as recorders of crime. We will also work with the College of Policing and police chiefs to ensure that neighbourhood policing has access to cutting-edge technology and methods, including data analytics and hotspot policing.

That is our community policing guarantee. Taken in its aggregate, it is by far the boldest commitment to keeping our town centres safe that has been made in recent memory. That is the scale of ambition that we ought to see from the Government, but we simply do not.

This is good moment to talk about the Criminal Justice Bill, which is to some degree an attempt to address some of the issues we are debating. We did not oppose it on Second Reading and intend to work constructively in Committee to improve it. There are good things in the legislation—we are glad to see an enhanced focus on fraud; to see the police given powers to address issues that annoy our constituents, such as the search and seizure of stolen items that are GPs tracked; and to see greater flexibility around public spaces protection orders—but is that really it? This is the final year of this parliamentary term and we have a crime Bill that is tougher on homeless people than it is on those who terrorise our town centres. There is nothing on retail crime and nothing on neighbourhood policing. We will look to add measures in Committee, but we should not have to.

The Government can take the first step to addressing the situation by accepting our motion, but I fear that they may well not be minded to do so. I fear that we will hear the same messages we always hear: an attempt to convince the British public that they have never had it so good on policing—record this or record that—or that in some way our proposals will happen soon. [Interruption.] The right hon. Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire has not learned from the Home Secretary the lesson about chirping from the Front Bench. I say to him that the British public do not buy those arguments and deserve better. If he genuinely believes that the status quo is better than what is offered by those on the Opposition Benches, let us let the British public decide. Ask them whether they have never had it so good, or are ready for change. I will take my chances with them any day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

It is very heartening to hear that those funds are making a real difference in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

I also draw the shadow Minister’s attention to some of the new teeth, if I may call them that, in the Criminal Justice Bill. He will be aware that we have lowered the minimum age at which a community protection notice can be ordered to 10 years old. That is not just to achieve consistency with other aspects of criminal justice, but because we recognise that in reality quite a lot of antisocial behaviour is committed by those in the age 10 to 16 bracket. That is a common complaint that many in this House will be familiar with.

We have extended police powers to implement a public spaces protection order. I mention that simply because I could not differentiate between that and the respect order that the hon. Gentleman was describing, but it gives the police greater powers for a rapid response. We have also expanded the minimum exclusion period by 50%, from 48 hours to 72 hours, to give authorities more powers to implement dispersal arrangements.

Moving on to our Criminal Justice Bill, I think I noted the shadow Minister’s qualified agreement with at least some of its contents, and certainly those on the Opposition Benches did not vote against it on Second Reading. We respectfully say that the Bill takes the fight to the criminals, introducing new powers to enter premises and seize stolen goods—the example given repeatedly during the debate was of stolen mobile phones, the everyday theft that people endure. It contains new powers on knife crime to seize, retain and destroy a bladed article found on private property, without evidence that it has been used in conjunction with a criminal offence, but where there is a reasonable belief that it may be, and new laws on possession of a knife with intent.

I would add one or two other measures that are just as important to community safety. This Bill, for the first time, recognises coercive control as the cancer of a crime that it is, by putting those convicted of a serious offence in that regard under the multi-agency public protection arrangements and then putting them on the violent and sex offender register.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North was critical of the Criminal Justice Bill, but he neglected to say anything about the Sentencing Bill, which has its Second Reading tomorrow. That Bill will put some of the worst offenders away for longer, so some of the men who maraud on our streets to carry out the most grotesque offences against women—we all know their names—can anticipate a whole-life order without the possibility of parole, even if theirs was a one-off offence. Rapists, who under the last Labour Government served just 50% of their sentence behind bars under section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, can now look forward to spending the entirety of their sentence in custody without the possibility of parole.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am not sure that I like the language of “taking the fight to the criminals.” The fact of the matter is that we want to deal with criminals in the right way. If only the Minister would look at the injustices of joint enterprise, under which almost 1,000 young people are in prison with long sentences for crimes in which they did not actually physically take the fight to anyone.

[Laura Farris]

The hon. Gentleman has been a compassionate campaigner on the issue of joint enterprise, and I have listened to him a lot over the years. I know that the matter was considered by the Court of Appeal, and its decision was not consistent with some of his remarks, but that conversation should be continued because it is a developing area of the law.

I will conclude with a quotation from a non-political figure. His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, said recently:

“England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been.”

I make no apology for ending where I began: neighbourhood crime has fallen by 50% since 2010, and I am proud of that. Of course, we can go further, and we are building and developing police powers, new laws and community measures so that we can get there, protecting the law-abiding majority and cherishing the town centres in our communities by keeping them safe.

Criminal Justice Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s intervention. I am more than happy to ensure that her point is discussed with the Department, so that we can see what we can do to incorporate what she hopes to achieve either in this Bill or in guidance to the internet service providers and online platforms.

The Bill also fulfils the Government’s commitment made during the passage of the Online Safety Act to broaden the offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm to cover all means, not just communications, by which serious self-harm may be encouraged or assisted. That could include, but is not limited to, direct assistance such as giving someone a blade with which to seriously harm themselves. This broader offence will give full effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission’s 2021 “Modernising Communications Offences” report.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Home Secretary to his post. Not only is he the Home Secretary, but he is an old friend of mine, and I hope he stays longer in this post than he has in the others. Having had a tragedy close to my family of a young woman taking her own life, may I ask that we remove from social media these aids to and promotion of suicide, and things showing people how to conduct it?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point. Sadly, far too many people have, like him, experienced the implications of this kind of content online, and I take his point very seriously. We will look at both legislative and non-legislative measures to make sure that we genuinely do everything we can to remove content that encourages sometimes very vulnerable people into a dark place.

The Bill creates a new statutory aggravating factor for murders that are connected to the end of a relationship or the victim’s intention to end a relationship. Killing in that context is the final controlling act of an abusive partner, and its seriousness will now be recognised in law. The Bill also adds the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour to the list of offences that require automatic management of offenders under the statutory multi-agency public protection arrangements.

We recognise that antisocial behaviour does so much to blight people’s lives and undermine the pride and confidence that they rightly have in their local communities. At its worst, antisocial behaviour can drastically lower the quality of life for whole neighbourhoods. The Government’s antisocial behaviour action plan, published in March, sets out a strong approach to working with local agencies so that antisocial behaviour is treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. The Bill enhances that with a range of new measures, including enabling the police to make public spaces protection orders and registered social housing providers to issue premises closure notices; lowering the minimum age of a person who may be issued with a community protection notice from 16 to 10; and increasing the maximum amount of a fixed penalty notice from £100 to £500 for breaches of a public spaces protection order or community protection notice.

Every public service should be accountable to the public, and we are strengthening the accountability of community safety partnerships and improving the way in which they work with police and crime commissioners to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. For example, PCCs will be given the power to make recommendations on the activity of community safety partnerships, which in turn will be duty-bound to consider those recommendations. That proposal follows feedback from various sources that the powers available to the police, local authorities and other agencies could be used more consistently. We need every part of the system to work together as one well-oiled machine.

Nuisance begging and rough sleeping can, of course, be a form of antisocial behaviour. The former may be very intimidating and the latter may also cause damage, disruption and harassment to the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

It is good to see the Home Secretary in his place. He was not here for the urgent question earlier, but he has been having a bit of a week of it. He had to pseudo-apologise yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for his language. He has been rude about northern towns and rude about northern MPs. Although he may be all over the place on home affairs, we should perhaps be relieved that he is no longer in charge of diplomacy for the nation—although, to be fair, given the treatment of the Greek Prime Minister in the past 24 hours, things may have got even worse since he left.

As I said, the Home Secretary did not come to the Chamber earlier to answer the urgent question, but I gather from reports that he was meeting Back-Bench Conservative MPs. Certainly, yesterday, he had half his party standing up to complain about his policies. The problem seems to be that he thinks his Rwanda policy is batshit, that has driven his Back Benchers apeshit, and now his whole party is in deep sh-ambles.

The Home Secretary told us yesterday that he does not really know yet what is going on in the immigration system, so I assume from today’s speech that he is still getting the hang of what is going on in the criminal justice system. His claims about how well things are going are incredibly out of touch. Let me sum it up for him. After 13 years of Conservative Government, things are pretty dire: 90% of crimes now go unsolved; the charge rate has dropped by two thirds; more criminals are getting off; and more victims are being let down. The Prime Minister has an excuse when he says that things are great: he only sees things from a helicopter, but the rest of them have no such excuse and they are out of touch.

If a person commits a crime today, they are less than half as likely to be caught as they were under the previous Labour Government. That is the collapse of law and order under this Conservative Government, who have been in power for 13 years. In the past eight years, we have had eight Home Secretaries and 10 Justice Secretaries. We have huge court backlogs and delays, record numbers of crimes being dropped with no suspect identified, and record numbers of victims dropping out of the criminal justice process due to lack of support and unacceptable delays.

New technology has helped to prevent some volume crimes, but serious violence is up by 60% on 2015. The Home Secretary did not have the figures to hand on knife crime, but knife crime is up by 70%, and the number of young victims of violence is at its highest in a decade. I have spoken to mums who have lost their children through knife crime; they feel as if they have lost their future, but they want us to act to save other children’s lives.

Crime at the heart of our communities and town centres is also on the rise. We have seen shoplifting surge to record levels—up 25% in the past year alone—but town centre policing has dropped. Many towns have seen a huge drop in neighbourhood police on the beat and half the country say that they do not see police on the streets. There are now 10,000 fewer police and police community support officers in neighbourhood teams. When the Home Secretary talks about police numbers, we remember the 20,000 police officers that his party cut, for which we are still paying the price across the country. The lack of police on the street means that half the country never see them. That is the result of 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs on our streets, and that is the backdrop to this Bill. Quite simply, it is not enough to tackle the serious problems that the country and the criminal justice system face.

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend is speaking with great authority on this. Every Member of this House knows how underfunded the police are. We have not only an underfunded police force, but a justice system that has been cut and cut and cut again. We must do something to build it up again, and perhaps the way we will do that is to have a new Labour Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that huge damage has been done to policing and the criminal justice system. In addition, because police are often the public face of the criminal justice system, the fact that confidence in policing has been heavily knocked has an impact on confidence in and respect for the rule of law in our country. That is why it is so serious and why there ought to be cross-party support for restoring confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

[Mr Sheerman]

One more very small point: I think my right hon. Friend knows of my interest in miscarriages of justice, but is it not a fact that in this underfunded criminal justice system we see more miscarriages of justice?

[Yvette Cooper]

It is certainly the case that far too many victims are not getting justice, because they are either dropping out of the system or being let down.

The Opposition support the Bill before us and we will support its Second Reading. Of course there will be individual measures that we need to pursue, but there are many measures in it that were Labour policies or that Labour has called for. However, the Bill simply does not go far enough to address the challenges that we face.

We welcome the fact that the Government have now agreed to Labour’s calls to crack down on antisocial behaviour by going after drug dealers with stronger closure orders and the introduction of the power of arrest for breaches of antisocial behaviour injunctions. In 2013, the then Conservative Home Secretary removed the power of arrest when antisocial behaviour injunctions were introduced, and we warned that they would not be strong enough. It has taken the Government 10 years to restore the power of arrest, but we welcome it.

On fraud, we called for the introduction of corporate criminal liability during the passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, so we are pleased to see it in this Bill now. We have also supported stronger sentences on sexual offences. We support the increase in sentencing for the most serious offences and the power to compel perpetrators to attend sentencing in person. Justice must be seen to be done and the victims of the most heinous crimes need to see justice done and sentence given with the perpetrator standing before the court.

We also welcome plans to tackle revenge porn and image-based abuse. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) makes a very important point on that, which we are keen to discuss further and support in Committee. We also welcome tougher sentences for those who commit murder at the end of a relationship.

It is welcome that the Government have ditched the plan to make cancelling tents their entire policy on homelessness, but we will need to pursue the detail of the measures in the Bill, because they do not address the root causes of homelessness. The last Labour Government cut rough sleeping by two thirds, but under the Conservatives that progress has been reversed and it is now up by 75%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I love the full answers, but I am really struggling to get even part-way down the Order Paper.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I draw the Minister’s attention to the sad fact that most MPs have had the tragedy of knife crime in our constituencies. We had a dreadful incident in Huddersfield. Is it not time that we understand more the culture that produces it? This is about the way in which young people communicate on the internet and the fact that we no longer have many youth clubs or youth services. We used to have wonderful police going into schools to talk about these issues. Can we have that back?

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

You are going to be here a while yet.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Home Secretary concerned by recent revelations about the investigation into the Stephen Lawrence murder and what happened in the Brink’s-Mat aftermath? Is she concerned about some of the out-of-work organisations that our police belong to?

[Suella Braverman]

The recent reports on the Stephen Lawrence case are an operational matter for the police, which I cannot get involved in, nor should I. That is a judgment for the police on operational and casework decisions, within which we do not interfere. We have a good track record on the Met turning around performance. Mark Rowley’s turnaround plan and leadership efforts to restore confidence and rebuild trust with London are working. We need to back him to get the best results possible in London.

Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 24th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. There is existing guidance and practice in other areas that quite rightly clarifies or confirms that the assessment of reasonableness includes what somebody ought to have known, and that inferences can be drawn from their behaviour. She is quite right to point to that existing guidance and practice, and I completely agree that we should be consistent on that. I am sure that looking at that would help to draw up the draft in a quick manner. A combination of the approaches suggested by the hon. Lady and by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will quickly lead us to the right answer and enable us to publish something—a draft—and get views on it, as my hon. Friend suggested. It sounds to me as if there is a rapid, sensible, pragmatic and consistent way forward.

Let me turn now to the amendments moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. On the topic of his good humour, I have been informed by the Government Whips—a source of unimpeachable reliability, obviously—that his Mobile Homes (Pitch Fees) Bill has successfully passed its Second Reading unopposed in the other place. I hope that that provides an early boost to his good humour. Although it does not relate directly to an amendment, I just want to respond to one important point that arose in his speech, on something that I have noticed, too: adverts on London underground tubes referring to people’s behaviour in terms of where they look. He said that those were produced by the Government. For the sake of clarity, those advertisements are in fact produced by the Mayor of London in his capacity as the head of Transport for London.

As the House has heard and would expect, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells has given the various amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch close and careful consideration, as have colleagues in the Home Office. We completely understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has tabled the amendments after a great deal of consideration, and we have taken them very seriously indeed, so I will go through them one by one.

First, amendments 2 and 6 would require the other person’s sex—the victim’s sex—to have been the principal motivation for the defendant’s behaviour. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells has set out, he has drafted the legislation in the way that he has so that we are following precedent, and, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow said a moment ago, it is best that, where possible, we are consistent in the way we legislate. If any component of the motivation for the defendant’s behaviour is concerned with the sex of the victim, that is, in itself, of great concern. It may not be the principal component in some cases—it may simply be one component or a subsidiary component—but it is serious none the less.

The aim of the House is to protect people from sex-based harassment, and it strikes me that, whether the sex-based component is the principal component or a subsidiary component, the seriousness remains. Having considered that very carefully and, of course, discussed it with the Bill’s promoter, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells, our feeling on balance is that the drafting as it was best translates the House’s intention into legislation and is consistent with the rest of the statute book.

Amendments 3 and 5 would replace the words “because of”. Once again, as my right hon. Friend has set out, those words appear in a number of other contexts, in other pieces of legislation, and although we cannot, as he said, dispute the command of the English language and elegance of expression of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, there is a great benefit to consistency with other pieces of legislation. We feel that following precedent and maintaining that consistency is a good idea.



Amendments 7 and 8 would restrict the new offence to cases in which the harassing is done because of the victim’s actual sex, rather than what the defendant presumes the victim’s sex to be. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that getting into wider discussions about the distinction between sex and gender would probably not be helpful in the context of this debate. We are considering here a circumstance in which someone harasses someone else in the erroneous belief that that person’s gender is the opposite of what it actually is. I think that what matters is the intent to cause sex-based distress and harassment, and that even if the perpetrator, or the alleged perpetrator, was mistaken in their assumption about the sex of the victim—or the purported victim, the complainant—that does not minimise or mitigate the seriousness of the act, because the intention was there and the act was undertaken.

At this point I should say that I had meant to address at the start of my speech a question that arose while my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was speaking. Let me deal with it now. I agree with my hon. Friend that concerns about prison capacity should not constrain what the House may do in framing new legislation. It is of course incumbent upon Parliament to legislate and set out criminal offences. The police will investigate, the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute and the courts will, if appropriate, convict. It is then up to the Government to ensure that adequate prison capacity is available. I know that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice is engaged in a substantial prison building programme, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that prison capacity constraints or availability should in no way fetter the House as it considers legislation.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is making some very good points, with only one exception: I think that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has had a good record in this general area. When it comes to the prison population, however, is it not about time that we did something about the 1,000 young people who are convicted under joint enterprise? That could open up so much capacity in our prisons.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Let us stick to the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

I will speak very briefly. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) on introducing the Bill. I wanted to speak in support of it as a man on the Opposition Back-Benches; we in the Opposition have some very able women who have led this campaign. I have a vested interest; I have daughters—Lucy, Madlin and Verity—and I have granddaughters: Megan, Lola, Gwen, Elodie, Rosa and Arwen. They are girls, and I want them to grow up in a world where this abuse no longer exists.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The intended consultation will cover topics such as the demand drivers of crime and how we should take account of the different costs of providing a police service in different parts of the country. In the meantime, Bedfordshire’s excellent police and crime commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye, is working incredibly hard to spend his budget effectively and to drive down crime in Bedfordshire.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Minister aware that many police forces are struggling to obtain good forensic science facilities? Is he further aware that the Westminster commission on forensic science, with which I am involved, is deeply concerned about the instability of forensic science in our country?

[Chris Philp]

Forensic science is critically important, as the hon. Gentleman says. The Home Office is continually discussing forensic science provision with our colleagues in the policing family to make sure there is adequate provision. We are always looking at the funding arrangements and the range of providers, so I can assure him that this topic is the subject of continual scrutiny.