Community and Suspended Sentences (Notification of Details) Bill

Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I, too, thank the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) for bringing this important Bill to the House today, and I congratulate her on its Second Reading. What my constituents in Truro and Falmouth want and care about above all else is the ability to live in a safe and hospitable community. The way that we deal with those who break that safety or our laws and disrupt our towns and villages is incredibly important to them; it is one of the most important things that they need to feel safe, and it comes up time and again when I am out and about talking to my communities. However, not everybody who commits a crime is considered dangerous, and I am therefore pleased that we have levels of punishments that are appropriate to each crime.

Before I go on to what this Bill might mean to the people of Truro and Falmouth and Cornwall and beyond, I want to say a little about women prisoners and offenders and why the Bill will be so important to them. In Cornwall, the nearest women’s prison is His Majesty’s Prison Eastwood Park, which is in south-west Gloucestershire. For those who are not from the south-west, that may sound close, but in actual fact it is nearly 200 miles away from Cornwall. A low-level woman offender who happens to have a small baby or child, or is pregnant, will potentially have to move 200 miles away from her children. Courts understand that these days, and they want to keep women who are not a danger to society nearer their families. Levelling up the submitting of names and contact details, as offenders would if they were in prison, is therefore another safeguard that courts will have in their back pocket in cases where they wish to give a low-level sentence to somebody who, for whatever reason, they need to keep track of.

Maternity imprisonment impacts an average of 17,000 children each year. By keeping criminals with a sentence of less than 12 months in the community, we are able to prevent hundreds of children from being brought into our prisons and growing up in those unsuitable and unstable environments. It is much better for children across the south-west to live in their communities and grow up with a parent who has clearly given back to the community, albeit through an imposed sentence. Making clear connections between crime, the community and the locals who are affected means that both parents and children will be more aware of the impact of crime.

It is no coincidence that our police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, is leading the charge in Devon & Cornwall police with combined treatment orders, which deal directly with mental health issues, alcoholism and drug addiction for those with community sentences. They keep people out of toxic prison environments where such flaws are likely to be exploited and made unmanageable, and instead support the criminal in the community with regular treatment and programmes. Tackling these factors is essential to reducing reoffending rates and repairing the routes of addiction that may have contributed to people finding themselves in a position where lawbreaking became an option. Helping to rebuild lives is the best way of ensuring that they continue to feed back into their local community. The south-west was the first region to secure funding for mental health treatment requirements as part of a community order. That is because we work as a team in the area—again, led by Alison Hernandez. The work of the Plymouth team in particular, as part of the original pilot schemes, has been held up as good practice to the rest of the country.

There is an opportunity for community payback to expand, hopefully under the Immediate Justice funding of about £500,000 that will come to Devon & Cornwall later this year. Our police and crime commissioner is determined to get offenders filling potholes. Again, we will be working as a region, and we think that it will be rewarding work, building on the precedent achieved in Devon where it has been done by volunteers.

People may think that this does not matter to life in general, but community orders are seen as being important to the community in other ways. In Cornwall everyone knows everyone else, and if someone is seen to be having to pay back to their local community, there is a slight issue of peer pressure. People do not want to be seen doing this, so it can be used as a deterrent. It is different in cities, where people do not know others in their locality to the same extent.

St Agnes parish council, one of the proactive parish councils on the north coast of my constituency, has taken advantage of payback schemes to improve local amenities. People have been sweeping the library building, and litter-picking, weeding and hedge-cutting around the library car park and on the verges. They have been painting benches, cutting back the ivy on buildings owned by the parish council, cleaning noticeboards and bus stops, pressure-washing to deal with slippery pavements, painting toilet blocks and the lych-gate at the Garden of Rest, cutting grass, painting the equipment in Beaconsfield play park, implementing the installation of water pipes, and maintaining the allotment site at Mount Hawke. Those are really useful jobs, and fabulously innovative when parish councils are strapped for cash. Local people who have fallen foul of the law but are not a danger to society are doing something brilliant for the local community. However, as I said earlier, the Bill will level things up so that these people are still recognised as being under a sentence, albeit not a custodial one.

I hope that the Bill will also help those who are covered by Clare’s law. People who are convicted of domestic violence but not seen as a danger to the rest of society are often not given custodial sentences, which is quite frustrating for me and for others in my position. Under Clare’s law they must be on a register, but sometimes, as we know, they change their identities and move to another part of the country or their locality. I should like to know from the Minister whether the Bill will help to strengthen Clare’s law for those who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

This is a very useful little Bill. It is hard to argue with any of it, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) for introducing it.

When I was reading about the Bill, I immediately thought of a case that I had encountered a couple of years ago—I was already a Member of Parliament at that time— which resonated with elements of it. That case originated in an email from an individual. The name that came up on my computer was different from the email address, which was itself different from the name used in the sign-off. Let us just say that the email in question was not necessarily sympathetic to what I thought was the fine work that I was doing in North Norfolk. As a fairly nice chap, which I consider myself to be, I wrote back to the individual and said, “Of course, I will meet you.” I did my own bit of research—MPs’ security is very pertinent at the moment—to discover, from the three different names that I was given, who that individual was. I do not want to give too much away—doing so would reveal that person’s identity—but I found out who they were, and they had served a prison sentence for a crime and were now out. I shall not go into the nature of their crime, but it immediately rang alarm bells, and I contacted the police to request their presence at my surgery.

When reading about the Bill, and how people on community sentences are weaved into it, I thought that that case was pertinent. There are individuals out there who are hiding behind aliases—effectively trying to be anonymous—to contact and meet MPs and other public officials, so this is a good Bill. It is ironic and incredible that in today’s life, in which everything we do is tracked by our smartwatch, mobile phone and Alexa—other brands are out there—people cannot be found. Of course, if someone is using an alias and trying not to be detected, those things can clearly happen.

One reason I thought this Bill so important is that it reminded me of the experience of my friends in the Probation Service. In his remarks, will the Minister set out whether the Probation Service can cope with the additional workload required by the Bill? Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A year ago, I took generators to Ukraine. It takes about nine hours of solid driving to get from North Norfolk all the way across to Ukraine. When driving a Transit van that far, one gets to know one’s cab mates pretty well. I was sitting with a friend who is a probation officer. After hours on end, when every other possible conversation between two blokes had been exhausted—many of which cannot be repeated in the House—we started to talk about his life in the Probation Service. It made me realise just how tough and important a role that is.

In my previous career—I will openly admit that I was an accountant—I had absolutely no idea about the criminal justice system, and did not until I became an MP. The comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) about being a Tory wet were really interesting. I am probably a bit of a Tory wet, but I did not realise it. Before I was an MP, I certainly was not, but now, having learned about the criminal justice system, I have far more awareness of just what the hard-working men and women in our prison service do, and they are quite phenomenal in their roles. After that small conversation about the Probation Service with my friend while travelling to Ukraine a year ago, and with much more understanding of the criminal justice system today, I have far greater awareness of and respect for what those men and women do.

My first trip of this year, on 3 January, when we were in recess, was a visit to HMP Bure, a category C men’s prison in my constituency, right on the border. It is home to 643 prisoners and is run by Governor Rhoden and the other fine men and women who work there. All the strands I have talked about today were conceptualised when I went on that visit, because I realised just how tough a job those working in prisons do, and that rehabilitation is so important. I had been completely unaware of what those incredibly hard-working and decent men and women do behind the scenes. For a few hours, I got to see what prison life is like, what prisoners do and how their rehabilitation works. I admit that I had not taken into account that I would see prisoners on bicycle mechanic courses, art courses and welding courses, which prepare them for life outside prison, and give them a skillset, so that they can find employment.

Again, I want to place on the record—I have said it a few times—my thanks to the hard-working men and women at HMP Bure. They are not respected enough in society, or paid enough, for the hard work they do, and the conditions are not always good. One of their biggest concerns is their retirement age. There is campaign to lower it from 68; perhaps the Minister could comment on that. Is it in the public’s interest or fair that police officers retire at one age and prison officers at another, much older age, which is 68 for new intakes? These people are on their feet all day long, and often put themselves at high risk. In a civilised society, we need to look at their retirement age.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

I am astounded to hear that it takes only nine hours to get from Norfolk to Ukraine, given that it takes five hours to get from Westminster to Cornwall, but that is a different matter.

I agree with all my hon. Friend’s points about prison officers. Does he agree that asking somebody who needs to use their physical strength in their job to work until they are 68 is often quite a big ask?

[Duncan Baker]

I do, which is why the retirement age needs to be looked at properly, in the context of the retirement age for those in similar roles in society, such as police officers. Getting from Norfolk to Ukraine involves nine hours’ driving a day over about two and a half days—my apologies if I did not make that clear. I went through Holland, Germany and elsewhere. It is a long way; let me put it like that.

I will finish there. I again thank the hon. Member for Newport West for introducing a very interesting Bill. It feels like complete common sense, and I hope it is supported.