Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chris Philp

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I do not accept that characterisation. I am sure all of us—[Interruption.] Excuse me, Mr Speaker; I have a bit of a cold this morning. We all accept the right to protest, which, as the hon. Gentleman says, long predates the European convention on human rights. There are limits to that right concerning public order, incitement to racial hatred and so on, and it is for the police to police those laws, but it is reasonable for politicians to hold them to account for doing that, as many politicians on both sides quite rightly do.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The fact that only two Conservative MPs have turned up to defend the Home Secretary shows that she has already lost the support of the House. The Minister is absolutely right when he says that there is no place for hate on our streets, but is not the truth of the matter that there is no place for hate in the Home Office either, and the problem with the present Home Secretary is that she is the person inciting hatred in this country? The Minister is right that it is perfectly fair for us to have scrutiny of the police, but that normally comes after an operational event, not before it. Is it not the case that this Home Secretary is really trying to command the police, which breaches every single understanding we have historically had of the operational independence of the police?

[Chris Philp]

I am slightly concerned that the hon. Gentleman said that there are only two Conservative Members in the House, when it is clear there are a great deal more than that—[Interruption.] Given his—

Machetes: Consultation

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chris Philp

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Yes, I absolutely agree that stop and search is a vital tool. I mentioned a few minutes ago that every month in London alone stop and search takes between 350 and 400 knives off our streets—knives that could be used to injure or even kill our fellow citizens—so I completely agree with that point. And yes, of course I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is nearly three years since John Rees, then 88, left his wife in the car when he popped into Penygraig Co-op to pick up a few groceries. While he was in there, Zara Radcliffe tried to attack another person. He tried to intervene and was killed in the process. Of course, a knife was involved and it was the knife that killed him. But in the end, in a way, it is not the knife but the person who killed him. He was a phenomenal hero.

My anxiety is that if we deal only with more and more legislation and we do not deal with all the other issues, such as the mental health situation surrounding Zara Radcliffe or the problems with youth services up and down the country, we will not come to a solution. A point was made by a colleague of the Minister earlier that I think is really important: there is no point in passing lots more laws if we do not enforce them. He may not be able to answer this question now, and if he cannot I would be grateful if he wrote to me, but can he tell me how many prosecutions there have been since the 2019 Act in relation to possessing a knuckle duster, a throwing star or a zombie knife, or for that matter for the sale of a knife either in person or online without proper reason to someone under the age of 18?

[Chris Philp]

I am afraid I do not have the prosecution figures to hand, but I will certainly write to the hon. Gentleman with them. They are quite substantial. I agree with his general point that legislating is important but that, on its own, it is not enough. It is important that we legislate and that the police have the relevant powers, and it is important that we criminalise dangerous knives, as we are going to do, but we also need to ensure that there are enough police to enforce those laws, hence the police recruitment programme. It is important to have the right youth services, hence the Youth Endowment Fund and the violence reduction units that are being invested in, and the hotspot policing via the Grip programme, where the police identify particular hotspots and have surge policing in those areas. He is right that we need to do all those things. By comprehensively tackling this together, we can continue to make sure that the violent crime figures go down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chris Philp

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Yes, we agree entirely. That is why my hon. Friend’s county and his town have had safer streets funding, and why they are getting extra police officers. The Government completely agree that zero tolerance to ASB is exactly what we need.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The biggest criminal in Europe, with the most blood on his hands, is Vladimir Putin. We have frozen his Russian state assets in the UK; will the Home Secretary support my Bill tomorrow to allow us to seize those assets and give them to the Ukrainian people, so that they can rebuild their country?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chris Philp

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

How many people were prosecuted for assaulting an emergency worker in 2020.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

In 2019, 11,257 cases were prosecuted for an assault against an emergency worker and in that year 9,066 resulted in conviction and sentencing. As you may know, Mr Speaker, the Government are legislating to double the maximum sentence for an assault on an emergency worker from 12 to 24 months. Just this morning, we had Committee proceedings taking evidence on that and the move was widely welcomed by the police chiefs who gave evidence to our Committee.

[Chris Bryant]

It sounds as though that was a very well-written piece of legislation in the first place because it seems to be having an effect. However, we do still have large numbers of emergency workers being assaulted and the Sentencing Council still has not produced new guidelines to insist that magistrates must treat simply spitting as a “proper assault”. Especially in the last year, that has become more important than ever before. May I ask the Minister: how many of the people who have been prosecuted have had sentences longer than six months? That is the key to determining whether lengthening maximum sentences to two years will be effective.

[Chris Philp]

I should start by congratulating the hon. Gentleman on the instrumental role that he played in bringing forward the legislation to which I have just referred. On the question of Sentencing Council guidelines, I understand that the Sentencing Council, which is independent of Government, is in the process of looking at the sentencing guidelines. I hope that it will reflect the very strong feelings on both sides of this House about the seriousness of assaulting an emergency worker and that it will bear that in mind when it publishes those revised guidelines. I am afraid I do not have to hand the number of those being sentenced to more than six months; of course many will be. Where the assault is more serious, it will be prosecuted as grievous bodily harm or GBH with intent, which carry much higher maximum sentences. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with those figures if that will assist him.

Commission on Justice in Wales

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chris Philp

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

You pronounced Cardiff North right.

[Chris Philp]

That is good. Clearly, I need some lessons in Welsh pronunciation. The right hon. Member who moved today’s motion made a case for what essentially amounts to the full devolution of justice functions to Wales in line with the recommendations of the report that Lord Thomas recently published. I respectfully disagree with her conclusion that the wholesale devolution of justice to Wales would be in the interests of Wales for, broadly speaking, two or three different reasons.

I will start with the right hon. Lady’s argument that there should be congruence between the Parliament of Wales and the justice jurisdiction of Wales so that the justice system matches the laws. That argument—to avoid the “jagged edge” that Lord Thomas refers to in his report—is not wholly valid, because many or most laws that apply in Wales are reserved matters that have been legislated on in this Parliament. In fact, if we look at the laws that have been passed in the 11 years since 2008, the Welsh Parliament has passed 62 new laws and this Parliament has passed 600, the vast majority of which also apply to Wales. Looking at the law on reserved matters, legal principles such as criminal responsibility, incapacity, mental elements of offences, criminal liability, sentencing, the law relating to homicide, sexual offences and offences against the person—the very fabric of the legal system—are all reserved matters where England and Wales law applies.

Devolving justice in the context of a body of law where the majority of it applies to England and Wales would actually exacerbate or worsen the jagged edge problem the right hon. Lady referred to, because it would then apply to these reserved matters, which are far larger in number than the matters that have been legislated for separately at the Welsh level. Indeed, it would be further exacerbated because the Thomas report, interestingly, does not recommend that the legal profession, its regulation and its qualifications be separated, but instead that they remain the same. If we were to devolve justice to Wales, we would have a further incongruity in that we would have a single legal profession with the same qualifications across two different systems. That would be a further exacerbating jagged edge.

Some Members speaking today have referred to the interface between justice and other devolved matters, in particular education and health. I put the question to a senior official working in the Ministry of Justice’s Welsh department who deals with day-to-day justice matters. Their view was that whether justice was devolved or not would make no real difference to the interface between justice and education and health. Whether education and health were being run in Wales and talking to an England and Wales MOJ or a Welsh MOJ, that interface between Departments would still exist, whether the MOJ sat under an England and Wales umbrella or a Wales-only umbrella.

[Chris Philp]

I was going to come to that point at the very end, but I will answer it now, since the right hon. Lady has raised it. This report was commissioned by the Welsh Government, by the previous First Minister of Wales. It was not commissioned by the UK Government, so there is not an intention to produce a full and formal response to the Thomas report.

However, we are of course going to discuss in detail with the Welsh Government in Cardiff the issues that it raises, to see where we can constructively improve our working relationships across some of them. The right hon. Lady has touched on a couple of those already. We want to improve the level of co-operation we have with the Welsh Government. We want to ensure that, where there is joint working and an interface with, for example, the health system, which many Members have mentioned, that interface works as well as it can, and that we are co-operating and reflecting some of the unique circumstances in Wales. Those conversations will certainly happen, and we will approach them with a constructive and an open mind.

As I said a moment ago, however, I am afraid we do not agree with the conclusion that we should wholly devolve justice and create a Welsh jurisdiction. One reason for that is the second point I was about to come on to before the intervention: cost. The Thomas report does not talk about the cost at all; perhaps the reason is that there is a very significant cost.

The Silk commission, which reported a few years ago—I think in 2014—did cost the establishment of a separate Welsh jurisdiction. It estimated, adjusting for changes that have happened since, that the extra incremental cost of creating a separate jurisdiction would be about £100 million a year. That is £100 million that could be spent on more probation officers, more police and all the things we have been talking about, and we do not feel that the imposition of that extra cost is at all justified.

For example, we would have to replicate the Ministry of Justice’s functions at the Welsh level. Wales does not have a women’s prison, which itself is an issue, or a category A prison. All those issues would have to be addressed. The MOJ is currently hugely upgrading its IT systems, and there are obviously economies of scale. If a Welsh Ministry of Justice had to do that itself, it would be extremely expensive. We do not believe that that cost of £100 million a year can be justified.

Thirdly, and perhaps unusually, I concur quite strongly with some of the analysis offered by the hon. Member for Rhondda, who asked us to concentrate on outcomes and how our systems work in practice, and on improving those rather than endlessly talking about process and arguing about where powers get exercised. In many ways, it is slightly sterile to argue over who holds the pen and exactly where a power is exercised. Our collective energy, ingenuity, creativity and everything else are better directed at trying to improve the services that are being delivered, so I embrace the point that he made.

[Chris Bryant]

While the Minister is embracing my views, I wonder whether he will look at the issue that has been experienced in Cardiff jail, where there has been a really good programme screening new prisoners arriving in the prison for brain injury. That is an area where there is a clear overlap between the health service, which will be working with the individuals, and the Ministry of Justice. I know that that programme has been extended, but I wonder whether we could keep it running on a permanent basis. It is a simple fact that if people do not get the proper neuro-rehabilitation for a brain injury, the likelihood is that they will end up reoffending.

[Chris Philp]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman mentions Cardiff Prison, which had a fairly positive inspector’s report last July. The programme that he is describing is not one I am hugely familiar with, because my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State is the Prisons Minister. However, it sounds like an extremely worthwhile programme. I know that, in general, the Government are keen to encourage closer work between the justice system and the health service, in order to treat health conditions where they exist, and that programme sounds exactly like the kind of programme that should be continued. I undertake to raise it with my hon. and learned Friend, and I will urge her to consider extending the pilot indefinitely, because it sounds like exactly the kind of thing we should be doing. I will make representations along those lines.

Devolution in itself is no panacea; it does not automatically solve problems. For example, that has obviously been well documented in education, where per capita spending in Wales is much higher than in England, that educational outcomes in Wales are none the less worse than in England. So the idea that devolving something somehow automatically makes it better does not necessarily hold up.

I turn now to the tragic death of Conner Marshall, which was mentioned earlier. Of course, we extend our heartfelt condolences to his family. There were failings in the probation service, which have already been referred to. Therefore, it is right and appropriate that Wales was the first part of England and Wales to have the community rehabilitation companies wound down and wholly replaced by the National Probation Service. It is very welcome that Wales has seen that happen first. Clearly, the Conner Marshall case underlines why that move was so important, and I am glad that we made it.

More generally on the question of resources in the probation system, substantially more money will go into the probation system in the next financial year. Across England and Wales, we will also recruit 800 more probation officers, many of whom, of course, will go to Wales.

The issue of imprisonment rates was raised. The rate of imprisonment for offenders in Wales is very similar to that in England. It is fractionally higher in Wales—it is about 6.5% in England and 6.85% in Wales. So, as I say, the rates are very similar.

Regarding sentencing policy and the implications for the prison population, the Government’s approach is that we want to see very serious offenders, including terrorist offenders, receiving longer sentences and serving more of those sentences in prison. In fact, that is the purpose of the statutory instrument being laid today, which moves back the automatic release point for standard determinate sentences for serious sexual and violent offences that qualify for a life sentence, and where the sentence is over seven years, from halfway to two-thirds of the way through the sentence.

We want to see the most serious criminals serving longer sentences and serving them in prison. However, for less serious offences, and in particular where there is a health problem associated with such offenders, which the hon. Member for Islwyn mentioned earlier, I want—as the Minister with responsibility for sentencing—to see a greater emphasis on treatment, which is the point the hon. Member for Rhondda made a moment ago. I would like to see more community sentence treatment requirement orders being made, so that people who have a mental health problem, a drug addiction problem or an alcohol addiction problem receive treatment for that health problem, rather than serving a short custodial sentence, because the evidence is that short custodial sentences are not very effective.

We will address that area through the sentencing review and the sentencing White Paper, which we will publish a little later this year, and then through the sentencing Bill, which will be introduced subsequently. It is an area where there is more work that we can do to treat the causes of offending, particularly where they are health-related, rather than imposing short custodial sentences.

The issue of court closures was raised. As in England, there have been court closures in Wales, as we try to run the court system more efficiently and effectively. The utilisation of the courts in Wales prior to the start of this programme, which was about nine years ago, was 54%. That is extremely low. The utilisation rate in Wales is now 67%, which is clearly higher.

Regarding attendance in court, which was mentioned, there is no evidence that the rate of attendance at court by defendants or witnesses has declined as a consequence of the programme. In fact, in terms of disposing of cases, in Welsh magistrates courts—where the vast majority of criminal cases in Wales are heard—78% of cases are dealt with in less than six weeks. The equivalent figure for England is 68%, so the Welsh magistrates courts are 10% more effective at quickly dealing with cases that come before them than their English equivalents.

Even after the closure programme that was referred to, 97% of the Welsh population can get to their nearest magistrates court in less than two hours, which is comparable to the equivalent figure in England. The digitisation process is well under way to allow people to access court services digitally. Making civil money claims, probate applications, uncontested divorce applications and entering minor pleas can now all be done online.

We do not concur with the Thomas report’s principal conclusion that justice should be wholly devolved, but we will work closely with the Welsh Government to ensure justice policies are aligned and to take into consideration distinct Welsh needs. For example, the recent transfer of probation services in Wales to the National Probation Service is a clear example of distinct justice policy in Wales, which can be achieved under the current settlement. Joint Ministry of Justice and Welsh Government blueprints on youth justice and female offenders were published last year—a successful example of co-development of strategies across the devolution boundary. Welsh prisons perform well when compared with their counterparts in England, and Welsh law firms benefit from being part of a world-renowned justice system. The justice landscape in Wales is faring well.

That said, we absolutely agree that the administration of justice in Wales requires regular review to ensure the needs of Wales are being met. In addition to ensuring that justice policies are designed with Wales in mind, we regularly evaluate the wider arrangements to ensure they are fit for purpose. Hon. Members will be aware that, during the passage of the Wales Act 2017, the Government committed to undertake a regular review of justice in Wales. An advisory committee was established in 2018, comprising the judiciary, the legal profession, legal regulators, operational deliver arms, and members of the Welsh and UK Governments. The committee published a report in July last year, which made a number of recommendations about the justice system in Wales, particularly around accessibility of law and the management of divergence. We are taking those recommendations forward.

The Welsh Government’s decision to commission Lord Thomas to undertake a review was founded on their belief that there was

“unfinished business from the Silk Commission”.

On the contrary, the decision by the Silk commission that Wales should continue to be part of the single jurisdiction was reached after careful consideration of the merits for and against devolution, and it is our firm view that the current settlement works best for Wales.