Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Victims expect justice to be done, and when someone is convicted of a crime and sentenced, they expect them to serve that sentence. Of course, sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary, and we have complete confidence in its approach.

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

Is the Minister aware that it is not only victims who are affected, but everyone else? A member of my family has just done jury service, and she was amazed by the inefficiency and poor quality of management in the court process, which wastes the time of those on jury service and is wrong for victims. It is wrong for everyone, because it is a badly managed process. Let us get more money for the Ministry of Justice so that it can do things properly.

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point powerfully, as always. We have undertaken a number of reforms of the court system and the criminal justice process, and he will have seen in the victims strategy our clear commitment to improve each stage of the process for victims and witnesses. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), has been doing a lot of work to ensure that cases run more smoothly, with fewer adjournments, so that victims and witnesses know that when they come to court they have a high chance of actually being heard on the day on which they expect to be.

Legal Aid: Post-Implementation Review

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this area. We are changing the process for the funding for exceptional cases to make it easier to apply. Fundamentally, I believe the inquest system should continue to be inquisitorial, but it is very important that bereaved families do not find themselves excluded or disadvantaged—my hon. Friend has made that point with great persistence. That is partly about ensuring that coroners and their staff are properly trained to protect the position of bereaved families, but we are also working with other Government Departments to ensure that there is not unfairness in the system. We continue to engage with other Departments to make sure that bereaved families are not put at a disadvantage.

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

The Lord Chancellor knows of my long-term interest in this policy area. Let us be humble: no party or Government have got this right. It is a very difficult nut to crack. I welcome many of the things the Lord Chancellor has been saying this morning. We look forward to digesting his announcement and commenting and being helpful on this matter.

The central thread must surely be access to justice for all, not just the wealthy, privileged and well educated. That is of course the principle that we must have, and that is what I think about when I look at my struggling constituents in Huddersfield. The fact is that there are issues in particular areas of law. The Lord Chancellor will know that I and the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), are involved in cases of miscarriages of justice, which is one area in which the lack of help in the form of legal aid has been really debilitating. I understand that the Ministry of Justice has had more cuts than any other Government Department, and he has my sympathy, but will he look in particular at the impact on miscarriages of justice? We have just launched a commission on miscarriages of justice and hope to publish a report to help the Lord Chancellor shortly.

[Mr Gauke]

I very much look forward to receiving that report. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the work he does in this policy area, which he and I have discussed in the past. As he says, he has a long-standing interest in this matter, and I hope we can continue to engage in a constructive way to address it. I agree with him about the importance of access to justice, but I stress that that access does not end with legal aid. There are other aspects to consider, and it is important that any sensible Government look into what can be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In calling the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I congratulate him on his tie, inserting only the modest caveat that it is perhaps a tad understated.

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

This is my celebration tie for Autism Day, Mr Speaker—a little bit of flamboyance for autism.

Nobody wants our prisons to have a culture of drugs and violence, but can the Minister imagine what it is like to be in prison and not to be guilty? I co-chair the all-party group on miscarriages of justice—we are meeting tonight. Some people do 18 years in prison are then found not guilty, but have no compensation and no reintroduction into society. When are we going to do something about that?

[Rory Stewart]

I think that this is a slightly different subject, but I would be very happy to sit down with the hon. Gentleman to look at the rare but tragic cases when somebody is wrongfully convicted.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hear the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) burbling from a sedentary position about the spirit of Christmas. I call Mr Barry Sheerman.

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

Mr Speaker, are we really going back to the old days when people used to say that the courts of England were open to everyone, just like the Ritz hotel? The truth is that access to justice in this country is being diminished. The Department’s budget has been cut badly. Indeed, in the area I am very interested in, miscarriages of justice, there is not the money to keep the commission going properly.

[Mr Speaker]

In my experience the hon. Gentleman is interested in every area of every policy in our public life.

Road Safety and the Legal Framework

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered road safety and the legal framework.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling this important debate on road justice and the legal framework from the perspective of vulnerable road users, which follows two debates on road safety held in this House over the past few weeks. The first was led by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and the second was a Government debate led by the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman).

Those important debates highlighted a range of issues that lead to avoidable road death and serious injury, particularly to vulnerable road users, such as those on foot or riding pedal cycles, but also to motorcyclists, wheelchair users, horse riders and others. As well as raising concerns about issues such as investment in highways, road design, training and The Highway Code, Members present at both debates expressed concerns about gaps in the application of road traffic offences and penalties, highlighted by the experiences brought to them by constituents following deaths and serious injuries among vulnerable road users.

I thank Brake, RoadPeace, Cycling UK and the House of Commons Library for helping me to prepare for this debate by providing detailed briefings. I secured this debate jointly with the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). We are both officers of the all-party parliamentary group on cycling, which last year held an inquiry entitled “Cycling and the Justice System”, culminating in a report that was published in May 2017. That report made 14 recommendations, but today we will focus on just four areas of road justice that we contend need review by Government: clarity over the distinction in charging and sentencing between dangerous and careless driving; misuse of the exceptional hardship rule in respect of driving bans; inadequate sentences for leaving the scene of an accident; and car-dooring.

All of those who are involved have no doubt that there is a need for a review. The wider context is that we and the Government share an ambition to make walking and cycling the natural choice for shorter journeys to reduce congestion, cut pollution, improve health, rejuvenate our shopping parades and save us all money. We also need to cut the cost of the effects of death and serious injury, including through lost futures and exorbitant health costs. Part of the solution is to address gaps in our road traffic laws.

The laws and their prosecution should be there to encourage safer driving, reduce casualties, improve road safety through the deterrent effect, and reduce irresponsible behaviour on our roads. The effectiveness of road traffic laws is of particular importance to vulnerable road users because irresponsible driving presents a disproportionate threat to them. It also puts people off travelling by foot or by bike, despite the huge health and environmental benefits of doing so. We generally expect high safety standards and strong obligations to avoid or minimise hazards in other risky professions, such as rail drivers and airline pilots, and other dangerous workplaces, such as construction sites. However, for drivers of vehicles, lapses of concentration that cause death or injury are regularly dismissed as accidents or carelessness, rather than something that is avoidable.

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

My hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech in a very good debate, but will she bear it in mind that many employees in this country are put in a dangerous and vulnerable position because their employers force them to work untrained? I am thinking of Deliveroo, and those delivery people who get on a motorcycle or bicycle with no training and are put in a very vulnerable position. We have all seen it and we know that the accident rate is increasing. Employers are putting untrained people in a vulnerable position.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There are strong standards in certain industries, such as for those who drive coaches and buses, and I agree that there should be a similar standard in that area. That is the only way to ensure that employers are not forcing their employees or contractors to drive too fast in order to get the job done.

We cannot afford to be relaxed about road deaths and serious injuries. The UK’s road death rate is relatively low, but sadly it is levelling off rather than continuing to decline. The legal framework and our justice system need to send the message that road crime is a real crime, and that it is unacceptable to endanger other road users. When I learned to drive 40 years ago, my teacher told me, “Always expect the unexpected,” because even if it is the fault of the dog or the child who runs out between the cars in front of the driver, ultimately it is the driver who will be responsible for their death. My teacher taught me to always drive with that in mind, whatever the driving conditions. That does not always mean driving at 20 mph; it is about appropriateness and safety within the conditions of the road, and always expecting the unexpected.

As I say, the legal framework and our justice system need to send the message that road crime is a real crime. The Government have taken notice of that need, but more action is awaited. In May 2014, the then Secretary of State for Justice, who is now the Secretary of State for Transport, responded to the road justice campaign run by Cycling UK and Brake by announcing plans for a comprehensive review of road traffic offences and sentencing. However, after substantial delays to that review, the Government announced a consultation in December 2016 on a much more limited set of proposals. Those proposals included increasing the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving or death by careless driving while under the influence of drugs from 14 years to life imprisonment, and introducing a new sentence of causing serious injury by careless driving.

After further delays, the Government published a report on that consultation in October 2017. It recorded support for the above proposals, but noted that concerns had been expressed regarding a lack of clarity about the distinction between “dangerous” and “careless”. In response, the consultation said, the Government would work with criminal justice practitioners and victims’ groups to examine ways of improving the information available through the criminal justice process. To the best of our knowledge, no such work has yet been undertaken.

In the meantime, in September 2017, the Department for Transport announced plans for a separate consultation on cycling offences, following the death of Kim Briggs, who died when hit by a fixed-wheel bike ridden by Charlie Alliston that illegally lacked a front brake. That consultation was launched in August this year. Confusingly, it was initiated by the Department for Transport, even though the previous motor offences consultation was announced and conducted by the Ministry of Justice. There was a large response to that consultation, indicating the level of concern about singling out cycling offences based on a single fatality resulting from irresponsible cycling, when the law fails so spectacularly in hundreds, if not thousands, of cases every year in which people are killed or very seriously injured by irresponsible driving. The law is neither clear nor consistent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend has kindly referred twice to Brake, which is based in my constituency. She has not mentioned the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, whose watchword is basing good policy on good research. Is she going to say a little more about what the research needs are to make a clear correlation between what is happening on the roads and in the justice system?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I hope to be able to, but I realise that time is short, so I might not be able to go into the detail that my hon. Friend mentioned. He has just stepped down as chair of PACTS. I am also a member of PACTS, which has done an awful lot of excellent work in this place on road safety.

Due to the subjective nature of the definitions, too often we see the downgrading of cases from causing death by dangerous driving to other charges, simply because they are easier to prove. Using the term “careless” undermines and trivialises the gravitas of the offence and its impact on victims and their families. Cycling UK has done an excellent study called “Failure to see”, which expresses that stark difference in a range of different cases. I recommend that study to those involved in this subject.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

I am a little worried. Emotionally I want to support the hon. Gentleman, but first, the research on exemplary sentencing and a reduction in casualties is not strong. Secondly, when it comes to car-dooring as a serious offence—a lot of young and inexperienced people do it—does he agree that technology is rapidly helping us? New cars can assist us and tell us if there is a car or motorcyclist overtaking.

[John Lamont]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but for the sake of our justice system, it cannot be right that a life is lost and the person responsible for that loss of life faces only a £200 penalty as a consequence. There is surely something fundamentally wrong with our justice system if that is how it works. It is clearly not good either for the victim or for their friends and family if justice is not seen to be delivered, so I think there is a strong case to look at sentencing and the guidance given to the judiciary in such cases.

We are calling for a much wider review of road safety offences than is currently proposed. The Government have taken action, which is to be welcomed. The announcement of life sentences for causing death by dangerous driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol was overdue, although it needs to be implemented soon. The Department for Transport also has plans for a pilot scheme that will offer driving instructors training to put cyclists’ safety at the forefront of their minds when teaching new drivers, and The Highway Code review, with a focus on cyclist and pedestrian safety, is also a good step forward. However, the Government need a wide-ranging review of motoring offences as a matter of urgency.

The Government are right to look again at the law surrounding injury or fatalities caused by cyclists. I have every sympathy with Matt Briggs, who lost his wife, Kim, when she was killed by a reckless cyclist. Kim’s father is a constituent of mine who lives in Coldstream, my own town. It makes no sense to focus on cycling offences without reviewing the much greater number of motorist offences. It is time for the Government to improve road safety for our most vulnerable road users, clear up the inconsistencies caused by the current dangerous and careless driving offences, and review the law on penalty points and hit and run offences.

My party rightly has a reputation for being tough on crime, but I feel we make an exception as a party—indeed, we make an exception as a society—if the crime is committed behind the wheel. Perhaps it is because cars are so commonplace and so central to our daily lives that their potential danger has become normalised. It is time to tackle this issue and send out a clear message to the small minority of irresponsible motorists that the safety of vulnerable road users is more important. I look forward to hearing from colleagues during this debate and from the Minister at the end.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I recently stood down as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for transport safety, and retain my role as chair of the charity the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. I stood down because I now chair the World Health Organisation’s Global Network for Road Safety Legislators.

This issue is rightly called the greatest epidemic of our times by the United Nations. Some 1.3 million people are being killed on our roads, and 10 times that number are being seriously injured. It is an enormous challenge for all of us.

When I introduced my first private Member’s Bill, to ban children from being carried unrestrained in cars, and when we started PACTS and organised the seatbelt legislation, we had one mantra, which was to base all our work on great research. If there are good laws based on great research, enforced rigorously and fairly, that leads to results, and we have seen a reduction in deaths and serious injuries across most of Europe. We need to expand that further. This is a timely debate, as it is Road Safety Week. We have this fine organisation, PACTS, which has organised its work over many years on research, on good laws and on keeping the population of the country with us, which is very important. My plea today is that we keep our minds on evidence-based research.

I know about the feelings when someone is tragically killed. I came into this road safety area after a terrible accident on returning with my No. 2 daughter from her christening. It was a dreadful smash, and thank God we survived. Ever since then, I have been passionate about saving these lives, but we can get carried away. This is not about vengeance. The laws should be right and commensurate. Sometimes, we see appeals for tough legislation and tough penalties, and we can get carried away. I believe that if we look at getting the balance right and carrying the public with us, we will get a reduction and we will get better.

We are lucky to be seeing better technology, but I would add a word of caution. Technology in cars is improving all the time. People are safer and safer, in the safest of cars, but it is the vulnerable road users—the pedestrians, the cyclists, and those on little motorised two-wheelers most of all—who are being killed all over the world. This is a United Nations sustainable development goal, and it is as important here as it is all around the world.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We have 10 minutes now for each of the Front-Bench spokespeople, and a short time for the mover of the motion to respond. I call Stuart McDonald for the Scottish National party.

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[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for securing the debate. I also thank Cycling UK, Brake and RoadPeace for the considerable campaigning that they have done in this area over the years.

I agree with the good doctor, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston): walking or cycling is clearly far better for people’s health than driving. From the contributions that we have heard today, it is clear that many aspects of our road traffic laws are uniquely problematic. I declare that I was a prosecutor for many years—one of those people who make a number of decisions about whether to charge somebody with reckless driving, driving without due care and attention, dangerous driving or other offences of that nature. I will explain some of the challenges that we faced as prosecutors.

We have heard that it is all too easy for someone who is not an inherently dangerous person to drive in a manner that none the less causes obvious and foreseeable danger, which explains the apparent reluctance of some jurors to convict drivers of offences that they can easily imagine committing themselves. That possibly also applies to justices of the peace and magistrates in the lower courts. Many colleagues have mentioned examples where it appears that the law has not been applied properly. The framework for dangerous and careless driving is unclear; more importantly, it is applied inconsistently. That obviously sends a poor message to people—it shows that our justice system is perhaps not operating effectively. As a result, it causes distress to the seriously injured and to bereaved road crash victims. It also reinforces the idea that road danger is to be tolerated rather than eliminated.

Cycling UK has highlighted a case of a driver seriously injuring a pedestrian outside east London’s Westfield shopping centre in February 2017, for which he received just nine points on his licence after pleading guilty to careless driving. He then sent his friends a bragging WhatsApp video saying, “Nine points ain’t stopping me from driving.” Nine months later, he was swerving in and out of traffic at 68 mph on a 30 mph south London street, killing a 19-year-old woman who had crossed the road in front of him. Other videos found on his phone included one captioned “ripping the road at 146 mph”, suggesting that he enjoyed driving dangerously and illegally on a regular basis. The failure to treat his first offence as dangerous driving allowed him to keep his licence, with fatal consequences. Obviously not everyone is in that situation—we have to keep perspective on this—but it demonstrates one of the problems that occurs in courts.

We know that the current distinction between careless and dangerous driving depends largely on whether the court believes that the accused person’s actions fell below, or far below, what would be expected of a competent and careful driver or cyclist. As we know, those terms are highly subjective, and they allow for huge variation in interpretation by individual magistrates and jurors. The distinction is supposed also to relate to whether a defendant’s actions objectively caused danger that should have been

“obvious to a competent and careful driver”.

Evidently, however, prosecutors and courts continue to act as if the defendant’s state of mind were still relevant, despite the removal of reckless driving from the legal framework in the Road Traffic Act 1991. That suggests to me that there is a need for a review into the definitions of “dangerous” and “careless” offences in order to clarify whether the distinction relates to the level of danger caused by the defendant’s actions—an objective test—or to their state of mind, a subjective test.

I hope hon. Members will forgive me for being a bit technical with some examples. An objective test would be clarified by retaining “dangerous driving” but defining it as that which had caused danger that should have been obvious to a competent driver paying due care and attention, without depending on whether the defendant’s actions fell below or far below the standard expected of such a driver.

The lower-tier offence should perhaps be renamed “unsafe” or “negligent” driving, to clarify that the distinction has nothing to do with the driver’s state of mind. The need for that has been demonstrated in the car-dooring offences that hon. Members have mentioned. One example is cyclist Sam Harding, who was killed in August 2012 when a driver opened his car door into Sam’s path, knocking him under a bus. The driver had darkened his car windows with plastic tinting film, reducing their transparency to about 17% of normal levels. The CPS, concerned at the inadequate £1000 maximum penalty, charged him with manslaughter, but was unsuccessful. He received just a £200 fine.

That and several other fatal car-dooring cases, in which the drivers received fines of between £30 and £955, clearly indicate the need for tougher penalties and perhaps a review of legislation on the issue. It is shocking that between 2011 and 2015, 3,108 people—including 2,009 cyclists—were recorded as being injured by a vehicle door being opened or closed negligently. Eight of those incidents resulted in fatalities.

We must be serious about strengthening the role of the justice system in deterring irresponsible road use and removing unsafe drivers from the roads. It is only right that the Government set up a review of road traffic offences and penalties. I remind the Minister that in 2014, the Ministry of Justice promised a comprehensive review of road traffic offences and sentencing, largely in response to the representations of various road crash victims’ groups. After substantial delays, however, the scope of that review was later reduced to two proposals. The first was to increase the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving, or for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs, from 14 years to lifetime imprisonment. The second proposal was to introduce a new sentence of causing serious injury by careless driving. Has the Minister considered the concerns about that? Has the new offence been created, or has anything been done in relation to that?

When the offence of causing death by careless driving came into effect in 2008, prosecutions and convictions for causing death by dangerous driving fell over the following five years by 46% and 51% respectively, as that charge was rapidly overtaken by the lesser new charge, even though the definitions of careless and dangerous driving remained unchanged. There are serious concerns that the proposed introduction of the offence of causing serious injury by careless driving would again lower the bar between dangerous and careless driving, with yet more inadequate sentences. In any case, the proposals would cause huge numbers of problems. We ask that the Law Commission look into this area properly.

I will give some background explaining one of the reasons why we have these anomalies. I remember that when I first started prosecuting a long time ago, in 1987, lawyers, prosecutors and judges—they and their sentencing guidelines were what the law was about—would not often look at the injuries, but would put the emphasis on the actions. There was the feeling that at a small lapse in judgment could cause fatalities, yet people who drive recklessly might cause no injuries or damage and would be dealt with in a very different way. That dynamic is what has caused some of the problems with traffic legislation since then. I know that things have changed and the laws are different now. As a prosecutor, I remember when the new legislation came in and we could look at fatalities and injuries caused. A number of new offences were introduced in order to deal with that matter.

Will the Minister support calls to launch a wide-ranging review of road traffic offences and penalties, as was promised in 2014? I suggest that some of that review be carried out by the Law Commission, so that it can clarify the definitions of dangerous and careless offences, or replace them entirely. It needs to be made clear whether the distinction is supposed to relate to the level of danger caused by the defendant’s actions—an objective test—or their state of mind, which is a subjective test.

The review should also consider the accompanying maximum sentences, and perhaps make greater use of driving bans for offences where danger has been caused by someone who is not obviously a dangerous person, while retaining custody as a sentencing option for more obviously reckless behaviour or for repeat offenders.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some unscrupulous members of her profession specialise in getting high-profile people—David Beckham, for example—off their driving charges, and does she think that is good or bad?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady should know that she has only a minute or two remaining.

Future of Legal Aid

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to the actual, rather than the predicted, effect of LASPO. Without spoiling the surprise, we will find that the Government have overachieved in cutting budgets and underachieved in every other respect.

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

Before my hon. Friend moves on, will he give way on that point?

[Andy Slaughter]

Of course I will give way to the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is those very vulnerable people who find themselves feeling that they have been victims of miscarriages of justice? The Criminal Cases Review Commission was at our meeting yesterday and it explained that a lack of resources inhibits its ability to process the number of cases it would like to. The cuts in legal aid mean that many people are faced with representing themselves in very complex situations.

[Andy Slaughter]

That is not something we discussed during the passage of LASPO, because the impact on criminal law seemed relatively mild compared with the effect on civil law, but that came afterwards. Now, eligibility restrictions and the reduced availability of legal aid practitioners as a result of cuts mean that people often go into court unrepresented, even in quite serious matters, which of course increases the risk of miscarriages of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend knows his business well. That is self-evidently true, and the judiciary is responding magnificently, but we are asking those people, whether in tribunals, magistrates courts, or the higher courts, effectively to do two jobs. They are asked both to be inquisitors and to represent parties—sometimes one party and sometimes both—as well as perform their ordinary functions. That is simply unsustainable in the long term.

Litigants in person can struggle to understand court procedures and their legal entitlements, and cases involving them take longer to resolve. The Personal Support Unit reports that, in 2010-11, its staff and volunteers helped people without access to a lawyer on about 7,000 occasions. By 2017-18, that number had rocketed to more than 65,000. The removal of most welfare benefits law from the scope of legal aid—which, again, we have touched on—has disproportionately affected disabled people. The number of benefits disputes cases with legal aid has fallen by 99% compared with pre-LASPO levels, from 29,801 cases in 2011-12 to 308 in 2016-17. When individuals are able to challenge benefits decisions, the majority of those decisions are overturned. Since 2013, 63% of appeals against personal independence payment decisions and 60% of appeals against employment and support allowance decisions were decided in the claimant’s favour.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is something of a historian in legal matters. Who was it—it may have been H.R. Greaves in his first lecture at the London School of Economics—who said:

“In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel”?

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I think he means that I have been around for too long.

Many Members will have seen the results of LASPO in their surgeries and I am grateful to colleagues for raising this point. Half of the MPs who responded to a survey carried out by the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid said that the volume of constituency casework had increased over the past year. More than half said they had seen a notable increase in the complexity of that work. Many MPs reported that advice agencies in their constituencies had closed, meaning that those MPs were no longer able to refer constituents onwards to get the help they needed. Some MPs even said that citizens advice bureaux were referring constituents to them because the bureaux were unable to cope with the number of people seeking help.

Fearful of falling foul of human rights law, LASPO introduced exceptional case funding. The Government projected that 5,000 to 7,000 such exceptional cases would be funded per year, but only 954 people benefited from that scheme in 2017. In almost every aspect, the consequences of LASPO have been as bad as predicted or worse, and the mitigating measures have not worked.

Unlike my constituents, the Government are not short of advice on what to do. In particular, I commend the 25 recommendations in the Bach Commission report. Those include changes to scope and eligibility; a simplification of the current rules, including for criminal matters; reform of exceptional funding; and better access to existing services, including more face-to-face advice. That report also suggests solutions to other issues of concern. The restrictions on legal aid for judicial review, the lack of representation at inquests for the deceased’s family, and the complicity of the Legal Aid Agency in refusing legal aid in cases that are embarrassing to Government, such as the prisoner book ban, are all subject to recommendations in that report. Those are serious issues, not just of inequality of arms, but of manipulation of resources by Government to avoid proper scrutiny of their actions. I hope the Minister has time to respond on those issues. If not, I suspect we will be debating them again before too long.

Many Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by reiterating our main asks for today. The first is to restore access to early advice. Lack of early advice means that simple problems are left to escalate. Larger problems cost more money to fix. Lack of early housing law advice on disrepair issues can lead to health, social and financial problems, the tab for which will ultimately be picked up by the NHS and local authorities. Prevention is better than cure. A recent report commissioned for the Law Society found that restoring early legal help would save the taxpayer money.

Secondly, we ask that the Government restore access to welfare advice. Welfare benefits law is labyrinthine, and that system is particularly difficult to navigate for people who are disabled. Recent social security reforms have led to a steep rise in inaccurate decisions and benefit sanctions. Thousands of disabled people have been left to challenge unlawful decisions without legal assistance. How many more unfair decisions would be overturned if people who had been treated unlawfully by the Department for Work and Pensions could access welfare advice?

Thirdly, we ask that the Government simplify the criteria for those who need legal aid. The Government should consider a significantly simpler and more generous scheme. The means test should be based on a simple assessment of gross household income following an adjustment for family size. In 1980, civil legal aid was available to 80% of the country. Today, that figure is thought to be under 20%. Ordinary working people who are just about managing are now considered too rich to be eligible for legal aid. Pensioners are among those worst affected by the outdated means test—even modest savings disqualify them from legal aid. The effect is that a vulnerable pensioner unlawfully denied basic care may well have to pay for a lawyer out of their own pocket. Legal aid does not only fund a lawyer, but provides protection from paying the other side’s costs.

I have been sent a huge number of individual case studies. For reasons of time, I am not going to be able to go through all of them—I would be happy to supply them to the Minister, but I am sure she is aware of the problems that arise. I have seen some heartbreaking cases involving mental capacity. Often, elderly people are removed from their own homes, sometimes forcibly, and are unlawfully detained by local authorities. They wish to go back to their homes and to criticise the conditions in which they are being kept, but because they have equity in their property which, frankly, they have no chance of raising money on, they are unable to challenge the decision. That is a fundamental breach of people’s human rights.

Cases such as those should make the Minister think again. I therefore ask her to put her well-thumbed, prepared text aside, because it does not—I know, having heard it earlier this week—address the specific point that I and others highlight in this debate. As a distinguished lawyer, I know she wants to ensure access to justice for all. She knows that even the best justice system is worth having only if it is open to anyone to use it. The requests I have made would go some way to restoring that access. I hope we get a positive response today and when the review reports next month.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman and I both serve on the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice. I do not think that people are saying that the situation is due to malign intent. Many of the things that we are talking about today are unintended consequences. Certainly, it was not intended that there should be miscarriages of justice, or that people should be unable to get any professional help at all. The Ministry of Justice is tiny in the scheme of things, but its resources have been savagely cut.

[Robert Neill]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I agree that there was nothing malign in the intent. The changes were made at a time when the coalition Government were under considerable financial pressure because of the situation that we inherited. I have much sympathy with that, but to adopt the phrase of John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change I change my opinion—what do you do, sir?” The Government need to do that too, because the evidence has been built up, and it is powerful.

For a number of reasons, it was thought necessary to introduce the LASPO reforms at some speed. They were probably not fully worked through, there was no chance to do sufficient impact assessments, and they were not tested. Again, it was not for a malign reason. At the time, there was a compelling budget imperative to get on with it, but it created unintended consequences. As the Prime Minister has observed, we are getting to a stage where, thanks to the Government’s good economic stewardship, we might be able to loosen the purse strings a little in some areas. That gives us the chance to adopt that Keynesian approach and adjust our conclusions to the fresh evidence that has come before us.

Early advice is essential. We have talked about family work and its importance in the criminal system. Any lawyer will advise his client, if the evidence against him or her is overwhelming, of the advantageous discount in sentence for an early plea. Proper advice by specialist lawyers saves time and money, and saves witnesses in criminal cases from the trauma of having to go to court. We should not forget that either, as it is an important part of the system.

Early advice is also important in cases of housing and debt, and related matters. People have come to my surgery, in a comparatively prosperous part of suburban London, having been in effect served with an eviction notice because they did not understand the court papers. Bailiffs were literally coming to the door. We cannot expect people who often have multiple problems in their lives necessarily to be able to resolve such things on their own.

We can certainly make the civil justice system easier to navigate. The reforms to an online court, for example, and better means of entering pleadings and dealing with smaller-sized claims are all perfectly worthy and worth while. However, ultimately, even if a computer can process the pleadings efficiently and effectively, it cannot advise someone on whether there is merit in their claim, whether they have a defence to an action brought against them or how they might best compromise the matter so that they do not, for example, end up on the street or saddled with significant debt. All those things require the legal element, and I suggest that there would be a saving in reinstating some funding there.

I keep in touch with many friends and colleagues at the Bar who now sit on the bench. I sometimes reflect that my career took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. The truth is that anyone in the judiciary—whether from the High Court or, perhaps even more significantly, down to circuit judges and district judges, who shoulder the vast volume of the work, as well as magistrates—will say that the amount of time that is now taken up by litigants in person is placing a serious burden on the system. I go to my local county court and talk to the district judges and the county court judge. Exactly the same thing can be seen at the magistrates court, and I have no doubt that it is replicated across the country.

It is generally thought that a litigant in person will take about three times as long to deal with a case than lawyers would, if they were involved. The upshot is that we are saving cost at one end of the system but piling it on in another part. The net benefit to the public purse is nil—perhaps even negative.

Bedford Prison

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The question is absolutely right. In 2016, when the previous inspection report was published, Bedford prison was already in trouble. It then got significantly worse. There was a riot at the end of 2016, and it is extremely difficult to recover from a riot. When a riot happens in a prison, it takes a long time for that prison to stabilise again. We put the prison into special measures, and that is a long, hard road. I have talked about some of the improvements that we have made to mental health provision and some of the support around key workers. We have now increased staffing numbers dramatically compared with where we were in 2016, and we are bringing in a new management team, but it takes time to turn around deep-rooted problems of this sort. I believe that the green shoots are there, but sadly we are not going to see them overnight. That is why I am determined that we put in more investment now.

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

It is a very long time since I was the shadow prisons Minister and visited a lot of prisons, including Bedford, but is it not a fact that we cannot make excuses? When a prison is in a situation like the one Bedford is in, there is something wrong with the prison’s culture, and if there is something wrong with the culture, it is to do with the quality of the management. Should we not look into that? When I was Chair of the Education Select Committee, we visited prisons and looked at prison education, and we learned a lot by going to Scandinavia, where they have similar challenges but handle them better.

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely correct. First, it is a fact that there are some very, very good, very dedicated prison officers who are doing a very good job, and it is worth paying tribute to them.

One challenge that we face is that we have a lot of new prison officers, partly because we have been doing a recruitment drive—we have 3,500 more officers than we had two and a half years ago. A lot of these people have not developed the five or 10 years’ experience on the wings that are really needed to learn how to exercise legitimate authority. What can we do about that? We can improve the training courses, with a particular focus on violence before the officers arrive in the prisons; we need much more mentoring, with experienced officers alongside new officers; and we need to make sure that people own the wings again—that a particular designated officer is responsible for a particular wing. In the end, though, it is absolutely right that in some prisons—unfortunately, this is the case in Bedford—with some of the less experienced staff, they are backing off the prisoners. They do not have the confidence, experience and training. That is what we need to build up to get the right form of legitimate authority.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Well, it runs in the family, because the hon. Lady’s dad, as many will remember, was a very modest man, with nothing to be modest about.

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

New Hall, one of the largest women’s prisons, is close to my constituency. The message that I am getting from it recently is, first, about the evaluation of whether new prisoners are literate or numerate, and whether they have problems with autism. Secondly, it demands that all women prisoners should be safe and secure from sexual depredation when they are serving their sentence.

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that safety should be at the heart of everything we do in our custodial estate, be that for female prisoners, male prisoners or young offenders. That is safety for the prisoners, safety for their fellow prisoners and safety for the prison officers who are looking after them. It remains a priority for me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Finally—in a sentence, I am sure— Mr Barry Sheerman.

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

Will the Secretary of State do something about the way in which we treat miscarriages of justice in this country, and will he meet the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice to discuss it?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the case that was before the Supreme Court recently. We shall see where that leads, but I am sure that a member of the ministerial team would be delighted to meet the all-party parliamentary group.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The Department has now proposed two options, which the Secretary of State and I will discuss over the coming days in order to get a solution. We are clear that refusing to reveal the location of a body is an absolutely disgusting practice, and we ought to be able to use legal methods to impose consequences on individuals who refuse to do so.

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

Is the Minister aware that many of us would support such legislation, particularly if it were also linked to miscarriages of justice? People who are found to have been wrongly convicted and are released after spending years in prison come out with no compensation and no reintegration into society—surely that cannot be right.

[Rory Stewart]

Perhaps I could sit down with the hon. Gentleman to discuss that in more detail. It is a very important subject, but I think the issue of miscarriages of justice is slightly different and perhaps we could take that offline.

[Mr Sheerman]

It was the only way I could get in.

[Mr Speaker]

It is a phenomenon known in the House, or certainly known in this Speaker’s Office, as “shoehorning”: a colleague shoehorning in his own concern wherever he thinks he can get away with it.

[Mr Sheerman]

Shoehorning Sheerman.

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, Sheerman-horning!

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lee]

If this is my responsibility, the hon. Gentleman can by all means write to me about the details of his case.

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

rose—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Age first: I call Barry Sheerman.

[Mr Sheerman]

Is the ministerial team aware of the growing concern in some women’s prisons about the placement of transgender people in those prisons? What is the Minister going to do about it?

[Dr Lee]

I am fully aware, and I recognise that I have a significant responsibility for the majority of the women in those prisons, so that they are safe and secure. This is a difficult issue to manage, but I am persuaded that robust guidelines are in place, so that nothing untoward would happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

It is absolutely right that there is no point having good educational provision if prisoners are not getting to the classrooms. Fundamentally we need to do two things: first, make sure that prisoners are moved reliably and predictably from their cells into the classrooms; and, secondly, make sure that the educational provision in the classrooms is sufficiently attractive for the prisoners to engage.

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

I apologise for being late, Mr Speaker, but I was at the unveiling of the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square.

May we have an evaluation of how far we have got? Some years ago, when I was Chair of the Education Committee, we looked at skills training in prisons, but I do not think that much has happened since then, particularly for people on the special educational needs spectrum, and especially those with autism.

[Rory Stewart]

There has been a significant improvement in the Ofsted reports, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that people with special educational needs, in particular, and the more than 50% of prisoners who have previously been excluded from school or have literacy challenges remain a big issue for education in prisons.