Dangerous Driving: Penalties

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered penalties for causing death by dangerous driving.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I appreciate the Minister’s making time to respond to the debate, which concerns many MPs across the House.

I was made aware of the case of James Gilbey when his dad, Major Richard Gilbey, came to see me in my constituency surgery earlier this year, about a year after James was killed on a pelican crossing while walking home after a night out in Leeds. He was a 25-year-old man who worked for British Gas and loved his life. On that night he had the misfortune to be in the sights of two men racing their cars through the streets of Leeds, who were travelling at speeds of up to 90 mph despite driving through residential zones with signs that clearly stated the speed limit of 40 mph. Those gentlemen had a history of driving convictions, as well as other convictions. That night—either by tacit or explicit arrangement—they decided to drive with such undue recklessness and negligence that James, who started across the pelican crossing when the cars were 100 metres away, did not stand a chance.

The car driven by Majid Malik hit James so hard that his body travelled 70 metres down the road. While he lay there, the drivers of both cars stopped. Mr Malik reversed and went back to the scene—but only, it appears, to try to retrieve his number plate, which had been wrenched off the car, along with the bumper, by the force of the impact. He then drove off, hid the car, burned his clothes and went to ground. It was only after substantial efforts by the police force that he finally turned himself in. He pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, a charge impossible to avoid because he was seen on CCTV and the car was registered to him. His friend, Kaiz Mahmood, did not plead guilty to causing death by dangerous driving. Nor did he admit to racing his car, despite the fact that his Audi A5 was so close to the vehicle that hit James that it was splashed with James’s blood.

Mahmood went to trial, where he was charged with the most serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving, a level 1 offence, which under current sentencing guidelines carries a maximum custody sentence of 14 years and a starting point of eight years. After a long and painful trial, which James’s parents had to sit through, the gentlemen each received an eight-year sentence for what they had done. It was clear from the judge’s comments that he recognised the severity of the crime and his inability to charge them with more.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady has said that dangerous driving affects a lot of constituencies. In my constituency, a 25-year-old man was mown down in his car by a driver who ran a red light at 80 mph in a 30 mph zone. The driver split my constituent’s car in two, such was the impact. My constituent was killed outright. His parents, the Brown-Lartey family, have launched a campaign, Justice for Joseph, for their son. They also support the charity Brake’s “Roads to Justice” campaign.

Joseph Brown-Lartey’s killer was sentenced to six years, of which he will probably serve only three. When he comes out of prison at the age of 21, he will be younger than Joseph was when his life was taken away. I am really grateful to the hon. Lady for securing this debate.

[Claire Perry]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s comments. Many of us have seen such cases in our constituencies. On 17 September 2015, almost a year ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) introduced a debate in which very powerful points were made, and the Government promised to act on them. I shall say more on that later.

The hon. Lady is right to point out that the tariffs are often cut. For Majid Malik and Kaiz Mahmood, the automatic tariff discount means that they will serve only four years in prison—a sentence so light that Major and Mrs Gilbey had to witness the family members of those defendants celebrating in court. They could not believe that their boys had got away with it: “They’ll be home in four years. Isn’t that fantastic?” Well, it is not fantastic for my constituents and it is not fantastic for anyone who loses a loved one to dangerous driving. They are facing a life sentence of loss.

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. It is agony to hear of the suffering of the family in her constituency and the lack of justice.

The debate is also important to my home town of Eastbourne, where Maria and Richard lost their lives just last month because of dangerous driving. The driver, who was 17 times over the limit, was sentenced to six years for each life, but his sentences will run concurrently, so in all probability he will be back out in three years. The victims’ families do not seek revenge, but their question and mine is whether, if the repercussions for dangerous drivers had been made more serious and far reaching to send a much stronger message about the devastation that can be caused, they would have been spared the agony that my hon. Friend describes on behalf of her constituents.

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady raises the issue of what dangerous driving tragedies mean to families. When we read the victim statements, which I will address at the end of my speech, it is impossible not to want to do something.

I want to focus specifically on the law. I go back to what the then Secretary of State, Paul Channon, said in 1989, in introducing a series of changes to the Road Traffic Acts designed to make those who commit these crimes more accountable:

“We aim to ensure that the penalty matches the offence and that those who drive very badly are properly punished.”—[Official Report, 7 February 1989; Vol. 146, c. 801.]

That has been an aim of many Governments, and very good work has been done on it. In 2004 the Labour Government increased the maximum tariff for death by dangerous driving from 10 to 14 years. In 2011, and again in 2015, the coalition Government introduced various categories of death by dangerous driving, to ensure that deaths caused by texting while driving could be prosecuted as such.

Last year, 188 deaths were caused by dangerous driving and 201 were caused by careless driving. However, although three fifths of people sentenced were jailed, the average sentences were very short—less than four years. Brake, to which I pay tribute for all the work it does, suggests that only a third of people convicted of causing death by dangerous driving are sentenced to more than five years.

I have three matters to raise with the Minister today, and I am grateful that the Justice Secretary has agreed to meet us later this morning. First, why are these cases not tried as manslaughter? Involuntary manslaughter is

“where the offender did not intend to kill or cause really serious harm but where death results from an unlawful act or from gross negligence.”

I cannot conceive how driving at up to 90 mph through a residential zone, wilfully ignoring vulnerable road users and racing a car, is not both unlawful and an exhibition of gross negligence. Indeed, I have been told by Ministers that manslaughter charges can be applied to driving offences, but that they almost never are. In fact, the Library could find only two instances of such charges having been applied.

I am no lawyer, but I know how difficult it is to change the law. No one would ever want to second-guess the decisions made by the judiciary or the guidance given by judges, but it seems perverse that, even if we cannot try more cases as manslaughter, the maximum penalty for what is clearly manslaughter cannot be increased. These men killed James Gilbey as surely as if they had thrown a knife or fired a gun down a crowded street; their weapon of choice just happened to be driving 2 tonnes of steel at 90 mph. Surely the maximum tariff for causing death by the worst kind of dangerous driving, which these defendants did, should be lifetime imprisonment. That should be the tariff with which judges and juries can start to work.

Secondly, would increasing the tariff make any difference? The sentencing guidelines are clearly not allowing judges and juries to apply the existing penalties—in this case, up to 14 years. Why is it that defendants are given automatic reductions in tariffs—I do not mean only for a guilty plea; I will come to that—for not being found to be drunk or on drugs at the scene? How would anybody know whether the defendants, one of whom had convictions for the possession of class A substances, were drunk or drugged? They fled the scene. They sped off, burned their clothes and destroyed the evidence. Why do we presume that they are innocent of those charges?

I ask for something the Government have been promising for two years: will they set a date for the review of sentencing guidelines for this particular suite of crimes? Will they look at the maximum tariff of 21 years? Of course, the Government should never be entirely swayed by public opinion, but it is hard to ignore the fact that nine out of 10 people think that crimes of this sort should be tried as manslaughter. Will they commit to a robust review of the tariffs and sentencing guidelines, in order to set a direction with which the Sentencing Council can work?

Thirdly, we would like to see an end to automatic reductions in prison tariffs for guilty pleas or, indeed, an end to the automatic 50% reduction of the sentence with the remainder served on licence. As somebody who has long been involved in justice debates, I understand that we do not want to fill up our prisons to the point at which they can provide nothing by way of rehabilitation, and I am always sympathetic to Government attempts to divert people from custody. Nevertheless, in this case, in which a life was taken by people behaving so recklessly and callously, with such disregard for James as he lay dying on the road, it is absolutely right that a prison sentence is given.

Surely an automatic reduction in tariff for a guilty plea should be at the judiciary’s discretion. By the way, in this case, one of the guilty pleas was not offered automatically: as I mentioned, Mahmood denied causing death by racing until the very last possible minute, yet he was given the benefit of a reduction in tariff. In my view, those benefits—serving only half a sentence or getting a reduction in tariff—should be at the discretion of the judge and jury.

I want to leave the Minister with a question. We already have a suite of sentencing guidelines that claim to punish those who cause death by dangerous driving. Bearing this case in mind, though, just how dangerous does the driving have to be for a maximum tariff to be awarded? As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) mentioned, these gentlemen will be out on licence within four years, and towards the end of their sentence they will of course be serving a stepped-down version of it. They will be on day release and in open prisons, and they will be back on the streets very soon. My constituents, Major and Mrs Gilbey, have been given a life sentence, as have the rest of their family. They live every day with the loss of James, a man who was walking across a road, using a pedestrian crossing. A man who stood no chance once he was in the lights of those particular cars.

I can end only by reading what Major Gilbey said:

“I want my son, I want to shake his hand, hug him and chat, laugh and joke with him over a pint but I can’t. All I can do is hold and kiss the urn that holds his ashes, talk to him through that and his pictures and light his candles. That is not enough”.

I agree that it is not enough, and I think the whole House agrees. I look to the Minister urgently to repair the situation by bringing forward the sentencing guidelines, setting a date, and setting the maximum tariff to fit the crime.

[Joan Ryan (in the Chair)]

That was very affecting. Thank you, Ms Perry.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) on securing this debate and the passion with which she made the case on the tragic death of James Gilbey. Securing justice for victims and relatives in cases of death by dangerous driving is a priority for the Government.

My hon. Friend rightly made the point that a death caused by bad driving that could have been avoided is heartbreaking. I cannot begin imagine the pain that James’s family and friends have suffered. I understand that the Justice Secretary will be meeting my hon. friend later today to discuss this horrific case. I offer my personal and deepest condolences to the Gilbey family.

The absence of an Opposition spokesperson in this debate notwithstanding, I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will be aware of several tragic cases of road deaths in their constituencies. I hope that Members will appreciate that I will not be able to respond to all the related cases that have been raised over several years, but I shall try to respond specifically to the points that my hon. Friend made today.

As my hon. Friend said, James Gilbey was crossing the road when he was hit by a speeding motorist who was racing another car. Both drivers fled the scene. Within a few days, the driver of the vehicle that hit James handed himself in to the police. The driver of the second car was arrested later. Both were convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and sentenced to eight years in prison on 24 March. They were also banned from driving for 10 years.

In the time I have remaining, I shall try to deal with the issues that my hon. friend has raised about this case and driving offences more generally. Quite rightly and understandably, my hon. Friend made the point that the worst cases should be dealt with as manslaughter. I understand why, in many cases, causing death by driving is thought to be equivalent to attacking someone with a weapon—my hon. Friend gave the example of someone driving at 90 mph in a residential area. Under the existing law, the Crown Prosecution Service can, and will, charge a person with manslaughter when the evidence supports that charge, it is in the public interest to do so and there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction.

Successful prosecutions have secured manslaughter convictions in driving cases, but it is worth making the general point that having everything classified as manslaughter does not necessarily guarantee a conviction. One can imagine a case in which a barrister played to the jury, asked for lower offences to be considered, and asked the jury to put themselves in the offender’s shoes. Classifying cases as manslaughter does not necessarily mean that more convictions will be secured; in fact, the reverse could be true. On top of that, a conviction would not necessarily lead to the expected sentence, because there is no mandatory minimum—it is up to the judge to decide.

[Claire Perry]

Would the Minister or his Department be able to tell us how many of these cases have been tried as manslaughter cases? I accept what he is saying; indeed, that is why some of the lesser offences were introduced, because there seemed to be a perception that it was harder to convict someone for causing manslaughter by motor vehicle than for other offences. However, dealing with that situation is surely a function of guidance to judges. If it is possible to start with a manslaughter charge and then have a barrister argue that, for whatever reason, the case did not fit the definition of manslaughter, then the next point could of course be to have the defendant tried for causing death by dangerous driving.

Nevertheless, if we consider the definition of unlawful manslaughter—we are not saying that these people deliberately targeted James; we are talking about people who behaved so recklessly or illegally, by breaking the speed limit, that James’s death resulted—surely that should be a starting point that the judge could consider? It seems perverse that people argue that just because a judge could not make a manslaughter charge stick, we should not start with that charge.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I hope that I can get for her the information on the number of convictions for manslaughter shortly. However, for a manslaughter charge to be made, the prosecution needs to prove that there was some element of intent or recklessness regarding the death or injuries that were caused, or that the standard of driving was grossly negligent; in other words, exactly the situation that she is describing. However, in many driving cases, the offending behaviour—while highly irresponsible—does not necessarily include the state of mind required for a manslaughter charge to be made. That is why we have specific offences of causing death by careless or dangerous driving.

What amounts to dangerous driving is determined not by considering the driver’s state of mind or intentions, which in the context of driving are often difficult to ascertain, but by examining the nature of the driving. So what does the law do? The law sets out an objective test designed to compare the driving of the defendant in the specific circumstances of the case against what would be expected of a notional careful and competent driver. In general terms, if the court considers that the driving being considered falls far below that standard, and that it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that that manner of driving was dangerous, then the court will find it to have been dangerous driving.

[Claire Perry]

Again, I know that it is always dangerous to argue, based on the specific details of a case, for a general change in the law, but how could it not be that gentlemen knowingly racing their cars at speeds of up to 90 mph through a 40 mph residential zone were not falling so far below the minimum acceptable standard of driving and that there was a serious chance of causing serious injury or death, particularly when they were approaching a pedestrian crossing? I understand that the law, in the current level 1, pays particular attention to vulnerable road users such as James, who was crossing a pelican crossing on the night he was killed.

I do not expect the Minister to rewrite the law during the debate, but it seems to me that it is very difficult to explain to Major Gilbey and Mrs Gilbey, and indeed to everybody out there, why this specific case was not a perfect example of gross negligence manslaughter. If we put a consideration of manslaughter in the sentencing code, we would give courts more opportunity to charge people with manslaughter, with the backstop of level 1 death by dangerous driving, which would establish a very strong deterrent to drivers who consider breaking the law in this way.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. By the way, regarding her previous point about conviction figures, I will examine the statistics and write to her about them. I will not stand here and defend someone in a case where, judging from how things have been described, it does not seem that the punishment has fitted the crime. Obviously, it is not for me to consider such cases; that is for judges to do. However, I will come on to talk about what I think is the remedy for such cases.

Our law needs to reflect that although the harm caused in homicide cases and fatal driving offences is the same—in all of these cases, someone has died—the offender’s culpability for a death may be significantly different; hence the distinction between the two types of case. However, my hon. Friend is asking a different question, which is about the specific case of James Gilbey and why the defendants in that case could not be tried for manslaughter. Shortly, I will say how we can consider such cases.

The second point that my hon. Friend raised was about sentencing and sentencing guidelines. Once someone has been charged and convicted, the sentence that they receive is, of course, a matter for our independent courts. A court decides on the sentence, having considered all the details about the case and the offender; a court is best placed to decide on a just and proportionate sentence.

In deciding what sentence should be given, the courts are also required to follow—unless it would lead to an injustice—sentencing guidelines. The duty on the courts to follow guidelines, and if the guidelines are not followed to say why, leads to greater transparency regarding the level of sentence likely to be imposed and increased consistency in sentencing practice.

To reassure my hon. Friend, I will point out that the independent Sentencing Council, which is responsible for keeping such guidelines under review, currently has in its work plan a review of the guidelines for motoring offences involving death or serious injury. A new draft guideline will be subject to full public consultation in due course.

Child Protection

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). She is extremely knowledgeable about these matters, as are other hon. Members, perhaps much more than I am. I am brought here as a result of a terrible and harrowing case, which has recently shocked the whole nation—the death in Coventry of Daniel Pelka. His parents, now both serving life sentences, having been convicted of murder, were living in my constituency.

Let me make it clear to all my hon. Friends, two of whom I know are qualified social workers—[Interruption.] Three; I am grateful for the correction. I was impressed by that fact, and I know that these colleagues have been at the sharp end, where things seem to go wrong. What I shall convey today are just my impressions—they are not informed by a depth of study—but I shudder to think what the frontal cortex of Daniel Pelka must have looked like after he was killed by a hammer blow to the head at the age of four and a half. I know that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire is involved with early intervention—a crucial area—and I think she and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) held a press conference about it this morning. We cannot leave matters at that, however, or think that things do not happen thereafter. In this particular case of Daniel Pelka, the young boy was going to school in Coventry.

My first impression, then, is that somebody needs to get a real grip on the serious case review. I looked closely at the baby P case, when the then Secretary of State with responsibility for children and education was presented with what he thought was a very poor serious case review from Haringey council. I feared that the same would apply in Coventry, so I pleaded with the council for some element of public accountability. This is a public issue, and I have been astonished by the wide geographical spread of the letters of support I have received since Daniel’s case became public. I have been sent letters from right across the kingdom on a scale that compares with almost any other topic during my long period in this House. This was a public case; I made the case, and then one saw the resistance building up among officials and politicians about having the issue opened in that way.

I was reassured because the new leader of the council, a long-standing friend of mine, issued a very good statement following this case, making her position clear. She said:

“I promise we will not absolve ourselves of responsibility. We’ll not shirk any difficult decisions we will have to make as a result of the review, and we will deliver any changes needed. We will be honest and transparent in the way we do this.”

I am sure she means that and that she will do that. The problem is, though, how good will the report be? Can it really be brutally honest and transparent about what happened in this case? At the crucial period—aged between three and a half and four and a half years old—a young boy was going to school while his parents were inflicting cruel physical abuse on him. It is difficult to come to terms with the sheer evil involved in starving this poor child and then literally hammering him to death. There was not even a motive for it, unlike in some cases where psychological factors might be at play or previous unfortunate personal experiences might be responsible. The motive in this case seems to be sheer evil; that is what appears to have driven these parents.

In circumstances such as this, it is natural for those responsible to recoil and not to want an outside independent view on their performance in the case. The council did not accept the case for that; it went for a standard SCR. I do not know how Amy Weir will perform as the chair of the Coventry local safeguarding children board. Let us wait for the review; I do not want to prejudge it. I am pleased to tell hon. Members that we will have it. It has not taken long; it has not been one of those protracted reviews that lose all topicality by the time they are published. Unfortunately, public interest issues tend to go in waves. That said, we should get the result on Tuesday next week. I might then have further occasion to comment on it here.

We do not expect answers today, but I would like the Minister to say whether he is entirely satisfied with the present system of serious case reviews. Is there not a need for a more independent element to be built into the process right from the beginning? The importance of independence inevitably arises when one sees the nervous, cautionary reaction—aimed at self-preservation—of those involved in such cases. I know that a teacher of Daniel who reported aspects of this case subsequently had a nervous breakdown. The issues and effects are not purely one-sided.

My second thought for the Minister is that although co-ordination between the different departments is obviously necessary—all the departments have to be educated—if we adopt the principle that everybody is responsible, what happens in reality is that nobody takes responsibility. This is where things became unstuck in Coventry. Nobody seems to have felt, “Gosh, this is my case. I have got to look after this. I am responsible.”

We heard the Chairman of the Education Select Committee say that the lead organisation was the Department for Education, which I understand still includes responsibility for children, but that was not clear in Coventry. The first thing several councillors said was that they needed to find out who was responsible—social services or education? In the end, it seems to have been education. I understand that the report has already been sent to London education departments. I hope that it was not for vetting, but as a courtesy—we shall see. It seems odd that those most involved do not see the report, but that the Department for Education sees it in its finished state before it is made public or before it is even shown on a confidential basis to MPs and others in the area.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said that Members of Parliament should take an interest. We should and we do, but although we can take initiatives, it is no good expecting us to be effective. I raised the issue of Daniel Pelka with the department, and was assured that it was in hand. The next thing we knew, the boy was dead. MPs do not have a locus. We can highlight, push and prod, but we must recognise the limitations of our own abilities and responsibilities. So the second thought that I want to leave with the Minister is whether we can ensure that the lead responsibility is much more clearly established where it matters, which is within local authorities. We must of course co-ordinate the police, social services departments and education departments, and all other interested departments, but unless the lead department is clearly identified, we shall not secure the positive reaction and the intensity of interest that such cases clearly demand.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Robinson]

I am sorry, but I will not, because I think I have only three minutes left. On another occasion, I shall be delighted to do so.

May I leave the Minister with one last thought? Since I have become involved, through the Daniel Pelka case, in an issue on which I must confess that I had not been active in the House before, I have been lobbied—I do not know whether we are still allowed to use that word, but I have certainly been contacted and briefed very heavily—about mandatory reporting by various good organisations, including the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, which I believe is well respected. I do not know whether the Department has considered the issue, but, because time is short, I will send the Minister a fuller brief on it, along with some background notes which I hope his officials will look at and at least reply to.

I realise that this is replete with all sorts of dangers, particularly on the legislative front—unintended consequences and all that—but those organisations deserve at least an answer. They have been campaigning long and hard, and I should be grateful if the Department would examine the issue and think about whether anything can be done. I presume that some sort of amendment to the Childcare Act 2006 would be required, although I am not sure what it would involve.

Can we have an answer? Can those organisations have an answer? I have raised this matter on their behalf, and I hope that the Government will consider it seriously. Let us see what they really think about it.

Protecting Children Online

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Once again, he emphasises the importance of the international dimension.

What we are proposing is aimed at reproducing the conditions that we have already established in the real world. The distinction between legal and illegal content is far too simplistic. For cinemas we have the highly respected independent British Board of Film Classification. It produces age ratings—12, 15 or 18. Any cinema found to be regularly flouting the age restrictions would lose its local authority licence. Furthermore, material classified as R18 can be seen only in certain cinemas, and some material deemed obscene is cut entirely. Yet on the internet it is all freely accessible to every 12-year-old. Indeed—this relates to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said a moment ago—the NSPCC believes that one quarter of nine to 16-year olds have seen sexual images online. We are not talking about young women baring their breasts—that is like something from Enid Blyton compared with the Frankenstein images now available.

The dangers are clear. On average, 29% of nine to 16-year-olds have contact online with someone they have never met face to face. Of course there is a real difference between child abuse online and extreme pornography, but unfortunately in the real world people who become addicted to pornography look for more and more extreme images, and that sometimes tips into child abuse images. Addiction is the issue. Users are found to have literally millions of images on their computer, and child abuse sites are signposted on pornography sites. Both are shared peer to peer.

Therefore, an effective age verification system would mean that paedophiles would lose the anonymity behind which they currently hide, and the denial of what they are really doing would be addressed by the third proposal in the motion, which is to have splash warnings before entering filtered sites. Work by Professor Richard Wortley at University College London suggests that that might halve the numbers viewing child abuse online.

Of course, those measures would have a cost to industry. TalkTalk, which has led the way in offering filters, has spent over £20 million. Some in the industry tell us that they do not want to lose their competitive edge, and some say that they do not want to act as censors. That is why the Government should act by putting a clear timetable for those reforms into law in order to speed up change, level the playing field and support parents. We know that most parents want to do what is right by their children, because 66% of people, and 78% of women, want an automatic block, according to a YouGov poll conducted last year, but the industry is not helping them enough. At the moment, some still require people to download their own filters—a near-impossible task for many of us—some see it as a marketing device, and others want to give the option of filters only to new customers. At the current rate of turnover, it would be 2019 before that approach had any hope of reaching total coverage. It simply is not good enough. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) wish to intervene?

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

indicated dissent.

[Helen Goodman]

So what have the Government been doing? Before the general election, the Prime Minister promised that he would lead the most family-friendly Government ever, but so far there has been lots of talking and much less action. After three years and two Secretaries of State, the Government still seem to think that a voluntary approach will work. Do they not know when they are being strung along, or do they not care? How many more years must we wait? How many child deaths will it take to shock them into action?

Let us look at the record. First, the Prime Minister set up the Bailey review, which reported in June 2011. It recommended that after 18 months the internet industry must, as a matter of urgency, act decisively to develop and introduce effective parental controls—with Government regulation if voluntary action is not forthcoming within a reasonable time scale—and robust age verification. But here we are, fully two years on, and nothing has changed. Contrary to the answer I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who is in his place, the fact is that BT, Sky and Virgin are yet to come forward to announce their proposals on how they intend to deliver.

Then we had the independent parliamentary inquiry into child protection online, an all-party group. It recommended an accelerated implementation timetable, a formal consultation on the introduction of an opt-in content filtering system, and that the Government should seek back-stop legal powers to intervene should the ISPs fail to implement an appropriate solution. A year later, no solution has been implemented. Why did the Government not introduce a communications Bill with appropriate measures in the Queen’s Speech?

Finally, last autumn the Government undertook a consultation. It was so badly advertised that 68% of respondents were members of the Open Rights Group, an important group but a lobbying group with 1,500 members, compared with the 34% of respondents who were parents of Britain’s 11 million children. Despite that, the Government concluded that parents did not want to see parental controls turned on by default.

The Government have zig-zagged back and forth but we have seen no action in the real world. The Secretary of State has called a meeting with industry representatives next week. What will she say to them? I hope that she will not engage in yet another round of fruitless pleas and requests. There is a total lack of strategy from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

I want to make an offer to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey): if he brings forward measures, with a speedy timetable, for the introduction of safe search as a default, robust age verification and splash warnings, we will support him. I gather that Ministers are urging their colleagues to vote against the motion. It is time that the Government stopped hoping that everything will turn out for the best and started taking responsibility. The time for talking is over. The time for action is now. We must put our children first. I hope that all hon. Members will vote for the motion in the Lobby this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is not in his place, pointed out how late this motion came to the House. As I have said, it is hard to support a motion that claims that the police lack resources when I have already pointed out that CEOP has significantly increased its manpower; that claims that the Government have failed to implement the Bailey review when I have already pointed out how many of the recommendations we have introduced; and that claims that we have not supported the independent parliamentary inquiry when we supported it from the start and have followed a lot of its recommendations.

The Opposition can decide whether they want to play politics with this issue or whether they want to have a serious debate about how to make progress. They cannot table a tendentious motion such as this and expect us to support it. What I am doing in this speech—and what other Government Members will do in theirs—is raising and addressing important issues, as some Opposition Members have done, and saying what the Government are doing.

[Claire Perry]

Does my hon. Friend share my almost despair that, while some Members present, such as the hon. Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), have been intimately involved in this agenda for two and a half years, others who are heckling and shouting from a sedentary position have, to be frank, shown no interest whatsoever in this topic until it became a front-page issue? Working together will solve the problem. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a terrible and dangerous example of bandwagonism?

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend is an authority on this issue and she has shown, throughout her engagement with it, her willingness to work across party lines and to look for practical solutions that will help keep our children safe. I hope that Opposition Members will listen to what she has just said and take it on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I usually open my remarks by saying that I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in a debate. Today, I do not have that feeling. I raised my children in an age when we did not have to worry about the issues under discussion and when protecting children was far more straightforward, but I am conscious that my grandchildren are growing up in a very different world. I congratulate the shadow Culture, Media and Sport team for ensuring that we have the opportunity to discuss this matter.

I give credit, as many Members will, to the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) for her contribution. However, I think that she should reflect on her remarks about “bandwagonism”. This is the first time that I have spoken in a debate on this issue. She does not know what personal experiences other Members of the House might have had that make it difficult for them to make contributions on this issue, so she should be careful in her choice of words. I have worked with children who are victims of abuse, some of whom were subjected to pornographic images. Sadly, some of them even went on to sexually harm other children. I should not have to justify to her my right to stand here as a Member of Parliament, a parent, a grandmother and someone who has worked in child protection.

[Claire Perry]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. May I extend the offer that has been open for almost three years to every Member of this House who feels that they can help push this agenda forward to please share their experiences and be involved? Please do not make this a partisan issue, because when we do that, industry drives a bus through Parliament. That is what we must avoid.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

I would have welcomed more of an indication of regret from the hon. Lady at the words that she used. If she had experience of working in child protection, she would know that those words should be used very carefully.

I welcome the Minister’s comment that this issue is about much more than just child protection and includes child abuse. Sadly, in this day and age, it is also a matter of life and death. Fortunately, children can and do use the internet safely, and we must not lose sight of that.

Although I might not have been active on this issue in the House, I have been in my constituency. Last Friday, I went to Burgh primary school in Musselburgh, where the children recently took part in a competition to talk about and devise ways of keeping themselves safe when using the internet. That is a great example of how we can empower children. I do not want children to be frightened of using the internet. It is an incredible resource that allows them to socialise, learn, have fun and access entertainment. We must be clear that we do not want to put children off. At Burgh primary school, I saw children being empowered to keep themselves safe. They even taught me a few lessons about how I could be safer. The head teacher and Mrs Gilbert, who leads the IT group, have the children running the school website. That is a great way to show children that the internet is a tool that could be useful to them at any point in their life and, at the same time, to ensure that they are aware of the risks.

Ofcom recently released figures showing that 91% of five to 15-year-olds have access to the internet at home. On average, they access the internet for about 90 minutes a day. A survey of 851 young children in 2012 by the ChildLine website also provided some interesting information. It was clear that what children really enjoyed was the fun, games, information and opportunities for social networking that they could access. What really concerned me, however—I hope the Minister or a Front-Bench Member will respond to this point—was that the survey showed that 69% of children are now accessing the internet through mobile phones, making it far more difficult for parents to supervise what they are saying and how they are interacting. I would be interested to hear whether the Government have any proposals for how we can deal with mobile phone companies and keep children safe, given that that is the way they are increasingly accessing the internet.

We all know horrific stories of bullying and of children accessing inappropriate material, and I have seen first hand through my work the impact that can have on children’s lives, development and their ability to become parents. I remember one child saying to me, “Fiona, I don’t think I should be a parent.” He had suffered such horrific abuse and seen such awful images that at the age of 10, this boy did not think he should be trusted to be a parent. We are discussing the most serious issues of children’s right to a childhood and a healthy adulthood.

We must do more to protect children, and this debate has caused me to reflect on an experience that I had around the age of 16—this was before the age of computers, certainly in the highlands of Scotland. I was getting ready for bed one night and I suddenly caught sight out of my bedroom window of a flashing light. I realised there was a man in the kitchen that overlooked my bedroom who had been watching me undress, and he was flicking the light to let me know that he was doing that. This is the first time I have ever shared that experience, because at the age of 16 I was too scared to tell anyone. I thought I had done something wrong; I was scared to tell my parents. My father had warned me that I should shut my bedroom curtains when getting ready for bed, and I was scared that he might go down and confront the man, or that my father—a very peace-loving man—might be hurt. I just did not feel I could do that, and I lived in fear for many months that the man was going to approach me or tell people what he had seen. We must remember just how difficult it is for young people to tell their stories—it has taken me until the age of 53 to tell that story.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children supports many of the recommendations in the motion, in particular having an opt-in option so that adults must choose if they wish to access adult material. That is the stage we have reached. I am no Mary Whitehouse, but I think we have reached a stage where so many children are at risk that we must do more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I am grateful, as always, for the chance to speak in and listen to a debate in the House on this incredibly important topic, and I will not focus on the unfortunate partisan tone of some of the proposals. I would love to support the motion, and if it had been better worded or perhaps more accurate it would have been easier to do so.

I want to respond specifically to some of the criticisms raised in the motion and refute them absolutely. Criticism has been made of the implementation of the Bailey review recommendations, and those of the parliamentary inquiry in which I was joined by more than 60 Members from across this House and from the other place including—as I have said—two hon. Ladies from the Labour Benches and several of my colleagues from the Government Benches. The inquiry came up with a series of recommendations. In 2011, the Bailey review recommended active choice in which parents have to choose whether they want filters, as well as more help for parents. The four main fixed-line internet service providers control 80% of the home internet market—this relates to a point raised earlier. They signed a code of practice to offer such a filter, and said they would roll it out within a year by October 2012. That deadline was met, but as many Members will remember, a cross-party group of MPs and peers did not feel that it was adequate or went far enough.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I pay great tribute to my hon. Friend who has championed this cause in the House, including in an Adjournment debate back in November 2010, which also coincided with the Safermedia conference. She has been raising the issue of harm related to pornography, and making the point that it is not just a fringe issue for one campaign organisation but a concern shared across the House. That momentum has helped to drive these changes, which will continue, and we do not need to resort to partisanship.

[Claire Perry]

I came to this agenda as a mother, a feminist and someone who is deeply concerned about the long-term social experiment we are conducting with our young children. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said it was good that we had an atheist leftie on the panel as that helped balance out some of the others, and it truly was a coalition of many minds coming together—I hope that will not be depicted in Hansard as an accurate description.

Another recommendation of the cross-party inquiry was for internet service providers to introduce account filters that protect all devices in the home with one click. Only four out of 10 parents in the country have installed device-level protection of any sort on their home computers. That is completely unacceptable, but the situation is complicated. We all have multiple internet-enabled devices and it is simply not good enough to say that consumers are stupid. We called on internet service providers to introduce one-click filtering on the home network, but as the Minister said, we were told by more than one ISP that that was technically impossible. Guess what? They are all going to implement it by the end of the year—a testament to the ongoing campaigning of this House.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Is the real problem with the motion a conflation between the legal and the illegal, and is my hon. Friend worried that those on the Opposition Front Benches are getting this completely wrong? The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) tweeted that we should introduce filters for child abuse, but surely child abuse should be dealt with by the law. Paedophiles should be taken to prison and targeted by the police, working with internet service providers. My hon. Friend is doing the right thing by looking at the issue carefully and in real detail.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have two separate buckets. Some imagery is unequivocally illegal, but we would find other imagery exceptionally unpalatable and not want our young people to see it. Given that 88% of mainstream porn involves violence against women, we need to improve the filters to try to stop that coming into the home.

Another recommendation of the cross-party inquiry was that public wi-fi should be filtered. There is no need to see adult content on public wi-fi. That has been implemented in the majority of cases and we are looking for universal clean public wi-fi to be implemented later this year.

[Ann Coffey]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on her work and on the huge contribution she has made. Has she had any discussions with the retail industry on public wi-fi?

[Claire Perry]

I have not, but retailers source their wi-fi from a small number of providers, which have agreed to provide what is effectively clean public wi-fi.

We asked the Government for a formal consultation on opt-in filtering and got it. As the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) has rightly said, it is not clear that the consultation was entirely representative and democratic. However, it was an open consultation and we did our damndest to encourage people to respond. Consultations are not always democratic, and that one was what it was. Basically, the consultation rejected the idea of opt-in, but the Government response was clear that we should have much better filters that protect all devices; robust age verification; and a system that people cannot simply click through, and in which the filters remain on unless people choose to take them off.

Those changes are being implemented by the four main ISPs, which control more than 80% of the internet market to the home in the UK, and will be rolled out to new customers by the year end.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Claire Perry]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will try to make progress before taking another intervention.

In addition, as the Minister has said, the ISPs are trialling ways in which to get the filter into the installed base. The sea change in attitude among the ISPs—British companies that are family-friendly trusted brands and want to sell us stuff—has been enormous. That is a tribute to all hon. Members and Members of the other place who have campaigned so hard. The change in the situation is like night and day.

The second problem with the motion is that the call for the Government to set a timetable for the introduction of safe-search as a default is confusing. That is the same proposal as mandatory opt-in—it refers simply to Google SafeSearch functionality. The Internet Watch Foundation pointed out to me this morning that that proposal would only screen out material that is sexual in nature, and that anyone seeking illegal child abuse imagery would simply switch it off. That is an important debate, but a slightly different one.

We are already focusing on age verification. The industry is testing much better age verification loops and splash pages. Splash pages alert people who are searching for blocked content that it is illegal and damaging, and that they should go somewhere else to look for help. There is widespread support for that proposal on both sides of the House.

Should we legislate further? As the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland knows, I am not at all averse to calling for legislation, but my sense is that, in this space, it is not helpful. Let me explain why. To make protection work, we need three things. First, we need committed politicians who are completely clear on the ask for industry. Secondly, we need engaged companies. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) referred to one problem with legislation. Children now access the internet via mobile phone, but when the Bailey review came out in 2010, there was only one mention of access to the internet via smartphone. The technological world changes faster than we can possibly imagine. It is a falsehood to say that clunky politicians and—forgive me—civil servants can be ahead of that change, as opposed to the companies that monetise that change. We have to get the companies engaged. Thirdly, we need to educate users—parents, grandparents and children—which is why I welcome what has been done in the primary school curriculum to improve e-safety and digital safety.

Therefore, it is depressing that the motion has been presented in a partisan way. We have had a hugely productive agenda in the House for the past two years by working together. I believe that debates such as this one encourage industry to adopt a wait-and-see strategy, and to say, “Well look, the politicians cannot decide. Unless they make things illegal, we’re not going to engage.” That has been the problem with the internet all along. The industry has said, “We’ll wait till you tell us what is illegal, and that’s as much as we will do.” We must move beyond that situation, which we will do by working together.

I have one final point to make. The House will forgive me if I come across as a politician—I do not want to be a politician on this issue; I want to be a pragmatist. Our recommendations go so much further than the Byron recommendations, which were commissioned by the Government of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. Those recommendations used toothless language, did not require any form of legislation, and were not well implemented. They were also based on a completely false ideology that default filters would lull parents into a false sense of security. There is no evidence of that, but the thought has permeated the debate for the past four years. Hon. Members can tell me if they believe that these two of the Byron recommendations are forward thinking or appropriate, or whether they do more than what we have proposed. The first recommendation is that search engines should make it easy to turn safe search on, and the second is that parents should be given free parental controls when they get a new internet connection. Our Government, with huge cross-party support, have done far more than that and made far more progress.

I encourage the hon. Lady to withdraw the motion, to ask to come to the summit next week, and to build a cross-party consensus on the asks. That is how we will make progress and keep our children safe online.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

All hon. Members agree that child abuse is an horrific crime. I am pleased that the Opposition have provided the House with the opportunity to discuss how to tackle it this afternoon.

I am disappointed that the Government will not support the motion. We tabled it in good faith and it is wrong to accuse us of playing politics on this important issue. After all, all of us in Parliament are politicians and we are debating the big political issues of the day. I am sorry if it is politically inconvenient for the Government to discuss this subject today. It is also a great shame that they were not able to stir themselves to table an amendment to the motion.

Members may be interested to know that in the course of this debate, reports have come in of material that should be taken down. It is therefore good that this debate has taken place.

I would like to mention a few of the contributions that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) talked in a very personal way about how difficult it is for young people to deal with abuse. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) spoke of his experience of hate crime. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) talked about the dreadful murder of Ashleigh Hall and the need to regulate the use of the internet by sex offenders. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) talked about the important role of PSHE and said that it should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) spoke, as usual, with enormous common sense. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made an excellent contribution about the pornified culture that has developed. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) set out clearly how things can be illegal offline but legal online. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee talked about the importance of working not just with the DCMS, but with the Home Office and other agencies on this important issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) spoke with great knowledge about what is happening in her local area, and the problems and challenges that it faces. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) had an excellent idea relating to the role of credit card companies in helping people to download porn.

There were contributions from other Members of the House, including the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). It is important to acknowledge her hard work on this subject. It is unfortunate that she was unable to stay for most of the debate and did not hear the contributions of many hon. Members who have been concerned about this issue and taken it up for many years. The hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) made a sensible proposal about music videos that I hope the Government heard. The hon. Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) also spoke.

The estimate of the number of people in the UK who access child abuse images online is truly shocking and cannot be ignored. I was pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport agreed that it is important to realise that everyone who accesses such material on the web is an abuser, because accessing images of abuse is an inherent element of the process of abuse.

In opening the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) talked about the important work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, as did the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. The work that CEOP does is unpleasant and complicated, but it has the expertise to profile offenders and understand the processes of abuse. However, it is being lost as a separate, dedicated agency and will become part of the National Crime Agency. We have already lost its former head, Jim Gamble, and his 20 years of experience in fighting abuse. He did not feel that the new framework would protect the work that CEOP does. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee also raised concerns about its budget. I hope that the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice will reassure the House on that issue.

Police forces up and down the country are attempting to prevent abuse and to prosecute those who are involved. However, they are having to deal with a 20% cut to the policing budget, which means that they are losing thousands of officers from the front line, as well as back-office staff who investigate crimes and support victims. Will the Minister say whether he considers the work that is carried out in this area to be front-line policing? Although reported crime is falling overall, will he say where the 500,000 people who reportedly access child abuse images online appear in the crime figures?

Dealing with technology for keeping our children safe is not always the forte of the House of Commons, but I pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, and many other Members, for their work on how we can utilise technology in the fight to keep children safe. Sometimes, that will mean working with the industry, and in many cases we are grateful for the research it has done and the work in which it has invested. As the motion points out, however, where the industry—particularly ISPs—do not respond, it is our role as law makers to make it act. The Government must have their own technical advisers so that they do not have to rely on the industry saying whether something is or is not possible. At the summit next week, I hope that Ministers will make clear the need to act swiftly and resolve issues that have been outstanding for some time, with a clear timetable.

In the context of abusive material being freely available, we should be looking to help parents protect children from accessing pornography. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland made an eloquent case for how the three measures that Labour is calling for in the motion could be a practical solution to try to stop children accessing pornography.

The report from the Children’s Commissioner, appropriately entitled “Basically...porn is everywhere”, found that a significant proportion of children and young people are exposed to or access pornography, and it is not uncommon for children as young as 10 to access it. Perhaps more important are the report’s findings on the effect that is having on young people. Access and exposure to pornography affect children and young people’s sexual beliefs, leading to unrealistic attitudes about sex and beliefs that women are sex objects. There is a clear link between access and exposure to pornography, and children’s and young people’s engagement in risky behaviours. Exposure to sexualised and violent imagery has a particular effect on the development of young people’s attitudes to relationships. That is why one of the commissioner’s main recommendations was for proper sex and relationship education to tackle attitudes premised on pornography.

The logic is clear. With children being exposed to ever more graphic and extreme images online and through social media, we should use schools as a forum to have an informed discussion with children about sex and relationships. Of course we want families to do that too, but many parents are asking for such discussions to be part of the school curriculum as well. We should explain to children what constitutes consent and what constitutes abuse.

[Claire Perry]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Diana Johnson]

I will not give way because the hon. Lady was not present for most of the debate this afternoon.

The Government repeatedly claim that good schools are already providing good personal, social, health and economic education. That may be right in some schools, but they cannot continue to deny research that shows that the overwhelming majority of schools do not provide good PSHE. Yesterday, the House had the opportunity to ensure that all schools provide such education, but the Government blocked the measure. Shockingly, the Liberal Democrats voted against their own long-standing party policy on PSHE being made statutory.

It may be too early to talk about the long-term effects of witnessing pornography from a young age, but it is not too early to talk about the current environment that girls face at school. I pay tribute to the work of the End Violence Against Women coalition, and its Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign. It has highlighted the fact that one in three teenage girls has experienced sexual violence from a partner. In a survey of year nine children as part of the From Boys to Men project, 40% of children interviewed reported that hitting a partner was okay in at least one of the circumstances highlighted. If we are serious about tackling child abuse, we must be serious about tackling the climate in which children and young people grow up, and the images to which they are exposed.

As well as stopping child abuse, we need to tackle staged rape and child abuse—the so-called rape porn industry that depicts rape and child abuse and that, because it is staged by actors who are over 18, is legal. The End Violence Against Women coalition and the South London Rape Crisis centre have highlighted the material that is available. It includes: “Young schoolgirls abducted and cruelly raped. Hear her screams”, “Little schoolgirl raped by teacher”, “Tiny girl sleep rape” and “Girl raped at gun point”. One expert, Professor Clare McGlynn of Durham university, has said:

“It is undeniable that the proliferation and tolerance of such images and the messages they convey contributes to a cultural climate where sexual violence is condoned.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland said in opening the debate, both Mark Bridger and Stuart Hazell had viewed violent and misogynistic pornography before they murdered young girls. Labour is committed to looking at how to ban such violent content. I hope the Minister joins the Opposition by committing the Government to the principle of banning such material.

In a free society in the digital age, we cannot protect young people from every danger they could encounter, but we can tilt the odds in their favour. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to support the motion.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

Indeed. As is currently the case, the solicitors awarding the CFA would have to look at the merits and decide whether they wanted to proceed with it. Obviously, the person has to want to instruct the solicitor and the solicitor has to want to take the case; it would cut both ways.

There have been a lot of comments about what assessment has been made of the effects on the NHS of removing clinical negligence from the scope of legal aid. In response to a parliamentary question, the Department of Health indicated that

“the potential effect on the national health service of removing clinical negligence from the scope of Legal Aid will be cost neutral.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 1231W.]

In annexe B of the impact assessment on the reforms, we estimate savings of £50 million to the NHS Litigation Authority as a result of the abolition. My officials are in ongoing consultations and discussions with the NHSLA and stakeholders about how the commissioning of expert reports can be improved so that, for instance, joint reports can be commissioned wherever possible. This, in turn, would help to encourage early notification of claims.

One particular aspect of clinical negligence cases is the significant up-front costs involved in obtaining expert reports. Following consultation, the Government are seeking a tightly drawn power in the Bill to allow the recoverability of after-the-event insurance premiums in clinical negligence cases. The details will be set out in regulations. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who lent us the benefit of his considerable experience in the clinical negligence field, made some important points in this regard.

We have to make some difficult choices about legal aid, and we need to focus our limited resources on those who need it most.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the Minister clarify whether eligibility will be income based or based on the child’s condition, vulnerability or need?

[Mr Djanogly]

My hon. Friend’s point goes back to children and their eligibility on the basis of income. A certificate is issued in the name of the minor or the patient and it is their resources that are assessed in the normal way, not those of the litigation friend, children’s guardian or guardian ad litem who is bringing or defending the proceedings on their behalf.

However, in family cases where the applicant for funding is a child, the resources of a parent, guardian or any other person who is responsible for maintaining him or her, or who usually contributes substantially to his or her maintenance, are required to be treated as his or her resources unless, having regard to all the circumstances, including the age and resources of the child and any conflict of interest, it appears inequitable to do so. The applying solicitor should submit appropriate means forms for the child and parents or others responsible for or contributing to his or her maintenance or, more usually in the first instance, explain in the application itself why non-aggregation of means would be appropriate in the circumstances of the particular case, having regard to the position of each of the parents or others on the issues in the case and the party status of the child.

Where children have sufficient understanding to decide that they want to seek an order in family proceedings for themselves and actually start proceedings, there may be no conflict with one or both parents and it may be reasonable to take the means of the parents, or one of them, into account. However, where a child is joined as a party in ongoing proceedings by an order of the court, the assessing officer is likely to accept that the party status of the child justifies non-aggregation.

I hope that that answers my hon. Friend’s point.

Sentencing

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Last week, the Justice Secretary showed us how out of touch he is with the women of this country, and this afternoon we have had a demonstration of how out of touch he is with communities on the issue of crime. In recent days, the Justice Secretary has said that he does not want to change sentences for serious crime, and he said that again this afternoon. He is playing word games with the public, however, because he knows perfectly well that under his proposals people could spend just one quarter of the sentence given to them by the judge in prison. The safety of our communities is too serious for us to play these word games.

No wonder the public lose trust in the system.

“many people feel that sentencing in Britain is dishonest and misleading.”

The Tories said that in their manifesto, and they promised to improve transparency; another broken promise. As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, they promised to redevelop the prison estate and increase capacity. Instead, they are cutting the prison building programme. The one manifesto promise the Justice Secretary has fulfilled is to

“stop talking tough and meting out ever longer prison sentences”

That promise was in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, of course.

My hon. Friends the Members for Llanelli and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart)—the latter was an excellent Home Office Minister in the previous Government—have spoken of their concerns about the way the issue of rape was treated last week. That revealed that the ministerial team does not know the facts and does not know the law.

Unfortunately, most of the 1,000 rapes that are committed every week in this country are committed by partners and ex-partners. Also, the law has changed since the Secretary of State was practising at the bar in the last century, and he should know what it now is. Consensual sex between an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old is unlawful, but it is not rape.

The Labour Government ended cross-examination by assailants, and they ended questioning on people’s sexual pasts. The way to win the confidence of women in this country is not to cut the sentence for people convicted of rape; rather, it is to keep the specialist police, maintain local authority support for sexual assault referral centres, and listen to the groups and lawyers working with victims. The Ministry of Justice needs a woman in the team, and the Prime Minister should find one PDQ.

Many Members have spoken about the legacy that was left for the current Government. Government Members should remember that Labour cut crime by 43%, and cut reoffending by 15%. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, the Labour Government understood the role that prison plays, which is why we increased the number of places by 26,000.

Everyone wants to cut reoffending and tackle the underlying problems, and the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made an excellent speech on the issues faced by women offenders. The points she made highlight why we followed the recommendations in the Corston report and the Bradley report on prisoners with mental health problems, and why we invested £170 million in literacy and numeracy skills, and set up new workshops in prison.

Early guilty pleas can speed up trials and reduce the pressure on victims, but the real reason why the Government are going ahead is to save money, as the Secretary of State made clear. The Government’s own estimate is that a discount of up to 50% would reduce the number of prison places by 3,500 and save £130 million. The proposal in the Green Paper appears not in the section on victims, but under the heading

“Efficient, effective use of the courts.”

That is the real motivation. Of course cutting the deficit matters, but it is not the only thing that matters, and it is not possible to put a price on justice.

What is so radically wrong with the Government’s proposal to introduce a 50% discount for early guilty pleas is that it undermines the justice of the sentence that is finally served. Many criminals who would have pleaded guilty early anyway will benefit. Can the Minister tell us how many thousands of prisoners fall into that category? The Ministry of Justice estimates in its impact assessment that the average discount will rise from 25% to 34%, and that is totally unjustified.

As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice, Ministers have produced no evidence to suggest that the proposal will affect the number of people pleading guilty early. Indeed, the Sentencing Council will say that the strength of prosecuting evidence is the crucial factor, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges feels that many offenders are

“irrational or dysfunctional and will not face up to the realities until the last possible moment.”

As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) pointed out, short sentences are known to be ineffective—that is obviously why the Ministry of Justice wants to increase the number of people on them. Another problem with the proposal is that the reduction is formulaic, so those who have committed the worst offences get the biggest cuts in prison terms—that is simply not fair. This proposal will apply to terrorists and last week Lord Carlile said:

“The release of every prisoner convicted of a terrorist offence has a national security implication and the sooner they are released the greater the national security implication.”

The overwhelming problem is that the punishment will not fit the crime. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) pointed out that victims will feel let down and the public’s confidence will be shattered.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

The hon. Lady speaks with her usual passion on this subject, but did she speak with this passion when the previous Government introduced a 33% discount for an early guilty plea?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady should have listened to the debate; we have gone through that argument already.

I want to move on to the important issue of the Secretary of State’s “rehabilitation revolution”. That is what he has promised, but the cuts programme he has agreed—23% over four years, with a loss of 10,000 prison and probation staff—will make it impossible. He says that he wants to increase the number of hours that prisoners work from 22 to 40, but his own impact assessment says that that will need more up-front capital and ongoing staff costs to supervise prisoners for longer. He has already cut £170 million from prisons, which means that prisoners will be locked up in their cells for longer. We are already seeing cuts to education and restorative justice work with offenders.

He says that he wants more community sentences, but effective community supervision is impossible with the huge cuts to the probation trusts. As the Chairman of the Select Committee pointed out, we need to reinvest in community supervision, but this year Nottingham’s probation trust faces a cut of 7%, and the trusts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Devon and Cornwall, and West Yorkshire face cuts of 7.2%, 7.8% and a staggering 9.8% respectively.

The strategy is just not credible; nor are the Ministers. The year began with the prisons Minister standing in front of a burning prison as the third riot of his tenure took place. Last week, he said that “a moment’s reflection” would make it clear that giving half off a sentence would help to protect the public. He has now had a week’s reflection and we see from the Order Paper that the Government are stubbornly sticking to their policy. So I urge all hon. Members to reject the amendment and vote for the Opposition motion.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The budget for the Prison Service and the probation service in my Department increased by roughly 50% in real terms over the past seven years. The idea that the only approach to criminal justice policy—as with other policies—is simply to spend and borrow more and more is what got the previous Government into the sorry state in which they eventually collapsed. We must now do things more intelligently and sensibly, and address the problem of reoffending. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman was unsuccessful when he turned to that in 2001.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State talk specifically about the issue of foreign offenders in the prison system and what he proposes to do to free up prison places by a change of policy in that area?

[Mr Clarke]

The number of foreign prisoners in our prisons roughly doubled in the past 10 years, during the period of office of the previous Government who rather went backwards and forwards at various times about whether they were releasing people who might have been deported or keeping them here because they could not be deported. It is difficult to get large numbers out, but we are determined to make an effort to do it. We are looking at ways in which, in suitable cases, conditional cautioning could get people out of the country and diverted out of our criminal justice system altogether on the basis that they never come back. We are also looking at how we can encourage other countries to take back prisoners who are eligible for deportation to ensure that this extraordinary burden, which has grown in the past few years, is eased, because there are better things we can do in the whole system with the money we are spending on foreign prisoners.

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to sit under your supervision today, Mrs Main, and I hope that I do not strain your patience too far.

I join the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), in paying tribute to all our colleagues across the four parties who were members of the Committee. I say four parties as an MP for the Co-operative party, which is the fourth-largest party in Parliament. We do have to remind everyone that we are here, some of the time. The partnership we are in is an open and honest pre-election one, which has lasted for many decades, and so it is worth drawing it to the attention of the House. I also join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the staff of the Committee—Fergus Reid and his team—and particularly to Gemma Buckland who gave enormous good service to the Committee by being good not only at producing evidence and thoughtful contributions, but at challenging members when we got a bit carried away, as we did on occasion.

I thoroughly enjoyed—if that is the right word—my three years on the Committee, and I pay tribute to the consensual way in which the Chairman sought to tackle some major issues. I have now gone on to try different pastures on the Home Affairs Committee, but the complementary nature of the agendas of those two Committees is something that we overlook at our peril. I am certain that the Justice Committee is safe in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman.

The point about justice reinvestment is that it is not an academic concept but a deeply practical one. It is not about being soft on crime—I underline the Committee Chairman’s comments in that regard—but about being effective. It was interesting to discover the clinical approach in the USA, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, which rather goes against the general image of how justice is dispensed on that continent.

There are two exemplary initiatives that the previous Government pursued—not without some challenges—and the right hon. Gentleman referred to them both. One was the previous Government’s success in reducing youth offending at the same time as reducing youth custody, and the second was dealing with women in the criminal justice system. The numbers involved in those two groups are lower than the overall prison population, but we should take very much to heart the lessons about what worked.

In his conclusion, the right hon. Gentleman offered three challenges to Ministers, including whether Ministers are ready openly to take on the “prison works” agenda. We could ask a wider question: is Parliament ready to take on the “prison works” agenda? To my mind, it is only if the consensus on the way forward that developed in the Select Committee is reflected across the Chamber that Ministers will have the authority to do that. I hope that we will provide that sort of supportive opposition in the coming years. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman was certainly right to say that there is a big challenge to ensure that the alternatives are available, and I shall come back to that in a moment. Thirdly, the really big challenge is ensuring that the cuts do not put a roadblock in the way of applying common sense to how we deal with criminal activity.

I want to focus on a small number of points. The first is the use of methodology in analysing crime, to find ways to prevent it. Crime mapping and the methodology of analysing crime has not been applied with the consistency that we might desire. Crime reduction partnerships have been a success, but the methodology has not been driven consistently at every level. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Jonathan Shepherd, who made the point that

“more imaginative use could be made of existing local data without extra cost, if it is collated by the partner agency electronically, anonymised”—

as has happened with health information in Cardiff—

“and passed on to someone with the capacity to analyse it.”

Since that was stated in the report, an appointment has been made jointly by the police and the health authority, so that data could be analysed properly and productively, without having to be transferred. It is striking that not only did the initial work of analysing data lead to steps that helped to reduce crime, but progressively it has been possible to drive crime down further and further.

The implication of some of the evidence that we received was that the skills of mapping and analysing crime are bedded in within the police, but not within other agencies. I rather suspect that there is a difference in methodology, in that local authorities are probably better at doing the longer-term mapping and projections and the police are rather better at taking the incident and asking, “What does this tell us that we ought to be doing today or tomorrow?” Ideally, the combination of that immediacy and that longer-term mapping ought to be a virtuous one, but I rather suspect that some of the time they rub up against each other and that that is one reason why the approach is not as effective as it should be. The approaches should complement each other, and it seems that they do in places such as Manchester and Liverpool. Where the partnership works it is immensely powerful, as the Home Affairs Committee heard from representatives speaking on behalf of the Local Government Association on Tuesday, primarily in relation to Liverpool and Merseyside.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly suggested that I might refer to Jonathan Shepherd’s work, and I want to say why I think that that work is so important. Professor Shepherd came to see me at a surgery about 15 years ago. He said that, as a surgeon, he had discovered that he had, in effect, two in-trays. One was for those who had been injured in car accidents and the other was for those who had been injured in violent offences. He was struck by the fact that the in-tray for car accidents was getting smaller year on year, while the in-tray for incidents of violence was getting bigger, and he wondered why that was. Could it be that science and engineering skills are being applied to understanding motoring injuries, leading to developments such as air bags, seat belts and improved tyres and brakes, but that we are not applying the same skills of analysis to crimes of violence and driving policy forward logically?

The answer came when Cardiff’s new crime reduction partnership tried an experiment. Professor Shepherd supplied a nurse scientist, the local authority supplied a victim support worker and the police supplied a police officer. All the incidents that resulted in people going into hospital were properly analysed. Two things came out of that. First, we thought that the statistics would be pushed up, because many offences were not being reported. In fact, that did not happen. The gain was fairly immediate. Secondly, we thought that the experiment would confirm what we already knew, which was that offending was by and large random across the city centre, but it did not. Instead, it proved that a couple of small locations and one large one accounted for a totally disproportionate number of the injuries that led to people putting a burden of cost, time and effort on the national health service. The benefits of the partnership’s work were enormous in terms of reducing victimisation and the number of people who needed to be taken to court, with the consequences that that has for prison numbers.

We need to return to the methodology put in place in the crime reduction partnerships in the first instance. If that methodology is applied consistently, with requirements being centrally driven, but actions and decision making being local, we will have the best of both worlds. The methodology involved analysing crime and disorder; including the public’s view, as well as police statistics, in analysis; setting priorities; developing a joint strategy that is clinically precise in targeting identified problems—there are a few words there that need unpacking fairly carefully if we are to understand their true significance; setting targets that are jointly measured; undertaking annual evaluation and recalibration; and returning after three years to renew the audit and the strategy so that the link between the facts, the community and the strategy is renewed.

The benefits are local targets and clear understanding. In that way, we have success at a local level driving national success, instead of targets being set under a more top-down system. Generally, the approach that I have described has been a success story, but immense benefits could be gained if the methodology were emphasised more clinically.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

As a new member of the Justice Committee, may I say what an absolute pleasure it is to listen to former members, who did so much incredibly good work in the report, revisiting these issues and making an impassioned case for similar pieces of analysis to be carried out in the future? I wholeheartedly support that view. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that the one piece missing from the list of valuable items that he gave us is accountability? Before the election, I was lucky enough to be involved in work on the Conservative party policy on the rehabilitation revolution. One thing that really struck me—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to keep her intervention brief?

[Claire Perry]

Yes, I am coming to my point. One thing that really struck me was the lack of accountability in the system and the fact that one person should be responsible. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman commented on that.

[Alun Michael]

It is not an individual who needs to be accountable, but the system. The way to ensure that that happens is to have the facts out in the open. It is tragic that, 12 years on, I still cannot get proper local analysis and information on trends in wards in my constituency. I know that the police are analysing the information they get and using it to inform their activity, and I know that the local authority and the police are working in partnership and sharing information, but it is not out there for individual members of the community. This is not about one individual—it does not matter whether they are an elected mayor, the chief executive of a local authority, a chief constable or whatever. Anything that depends on just one individual is doomed to failure; indeed, if I may say so, anything that depends even on one Minister is of limited value. It is a question of having transparency so that there can be proper accountability. To that extent, I agree with the hon. Lady. I am very much describing a system that allows proper accountability and transparency.

I referred to the work of Professor Shepherd in Cardiff because many lessons have been learned from it, but the real lessons—about applying a proper methodology and having transparency—have not been learned adequately or transferred to other bodies. Targeted policing has reduced licensed premises and street violence, as well as reducing violence-related A and E attendance in Cardiff by 40% since 2002. That is a 40% reduction in the number of people going over the A and E threshold for treatment. That is a much more effective measure than any of the general police or criminal justice measurements. That endorses some of the evidence from the British crime survey.

There is a second big point that I want to make. One reason why there is a muddle is that we are still not totally clear about the purpose of the criminal justice system. We need to be much clearer that it has a single purpose, which is consistent with what the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said in recent evidence to the Home Affairs Committee and with what Sir Robert Peel said when he gave his reasons for establishing the police service: the criminal justice system is meant to prevent offending and reoffending. If every agency focused on its contribution to that objective, rather than intermediate objectives, we would reach the point we all want to reach, with fewer people becoming victims.

I mention victims because we keep talking about their interests, and it is right to do so, but let us be clear about what we mean by that. I have been enormously struck by the clarity that has been offered on more than one occasion by Victim Support, which has said that what victims want, other than not to become victims of an offence in the first place, is to know that they will not become victims again. They want to know that something has been done about the activity that led to their becoming victims so that such things are less likely to happen in future.

One positive development in recent months has been the establishment of the Sentencing Council, which I welcome. I sat on the Committee that dealt with the legislation that introduced it. We should go a stage further by being much more precise about the council’s purpose, and I tabled amendments at the time that I would have liked to make to the legislation. The council’s purpose should be to analyse what works so that when sentencers take their decisions, they are fully cognisant of the likely impact on lessening the likelihood of further offences.

The report specifically refers to these issues. The Committee says:

“We believe that the role of the Sentencing Council should be to ensure that sentencing practice succeeds in reducing offending and re-offending.”

We talk about the need for the council to be

“well-resourced to enable it to perform its research function.”

We mention the time that it has taken for data to be adequate to inform decision making. We ask for the council to be told to

“consider how sentencers can be given a better understanding of what works in terms of reducing offending and re-offending”.

Ensuring that judges and magistrates understand the implications and likely effects of their sentences would help the whole criminal justice system and be very much in Ministers’ interests. I could develop that point, but it is fairly clear and simple, and the report’s recommendations are clearly set out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this timely debate, bearing in mind not only yesterday’s announcement but the ongoing nature of the debate on an important area of public policy.

The judiciary have had strong views about this area of public policy for a number of months, if not years. It is no secret that for some time prison governors had expressed their concerns about what they regarded as the overuse of short-term prison sentences, namely those of 12 months or less, because they are ineffective in managing offenders in the prison estate and at dealing with the all-important statistic of reoffending within six months of release from sentence. That is where the public interest lies, which is what I was delighted to hear other speakers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), Chair of the Committee on which I now serve, emphasising. The public rightly demand protection, certainty and reassurance that the system is doing everything that it can to manage out reoffending.

We are moving away from talking about targets and more towards talking about outcomes, but no matter which word is used, the reoffending figures are where it is at. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) got it almost right with his reference to the Diamond project—he was with me at an interesting session a couple of weeks ago. The preliminary evidence from the Diamond project is dramatic—“preliminary” was stressed, because the work is ongoing, with the pilot due to end in March next year. Figures of 28% reoffending are extraordinary, bearing in mind the depressing litany of statistics with which we all are familiar. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Lord Chancellor for having brought into the full glare of publicity the concerns of the judiciary, prison governors and everyone—such as me until my election—who is heavily involved in the criminal justice system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is absolutely right: there needs to be a consensus, even at the risk of that being dull. I would go further than him and say that the old debates about toughness and softness, which have plagued the issue since about the mid-1990s, have really had their day. Instead we should be talking about whether we are being smart on crime or stupid—dumb, if preferred—on crime. That is where the debate should be, where the battle lines should be drawn and what we need to be focusing on.

I was not a member of the previous Committee, which produced the report, but I have read its recommendations and the Government response carefully. The Government response, although I accept that the current Minister is not responsible for those utterances—I am sure he is glad that I remind the Chamber of that—represented a missed opportunity. The report was from a Committee of the House that included senior Members and former Ministers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who could use not only their experience in office but their experience of many years in the House and in their constituencies.

However, I am delighted that Cardiff was mentioned, because I practised for many years as a member of the Bar in that city, in the Crown court, and know intimately the problems and challenges facing the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman and others.

I was disappointed that, instead of a frank owning up to some of the deficiencies in the system, we had an over-defensive approach in the Government response.

[Claire Perry]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, whose constituency of South Swindon is next door to mine, for giving way.

There is so much evidence of interesting, innovative programmes, which we have discussed in Committee. Is my hon. Friend aware of the Vision Housing project in London, which aims to house ex-offenders and which is delivering the most extraordinary reduction in reoffending by providing one of the very things mentioned by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael)—stable housing upon release for ex-offenders? What is the opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon as to why, with all this evidence for and cross-party commitment to making changes in the system, we still seem to be stuck in an old model with the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service? We are not prepared to embrace the innovation that we all see out there every day.

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend hit on an important point about NOMS. While we welcome the dedicated and hard work of members of NOMS, some of us wonder whether the synthesis between dealing with offenders in the prison estate and offenders in the community was ever achieved by NOMS. That was one of its purposes. It was to look in an overarching way at the whole system, and to provide some synthesis which, frankly, has not happened.

Tempting as it is to lament the rise and fall of various quangos—some speakers referred to this but, with respect to them, that misses the point—their best point, which the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentioned, is that we must not lose the expertise and knowledge of the people who worked so hard within those bodies. The Minister, I am sure, has taken that point very much on board in the case of the Youth Justice Board.

I make the point now, I hope clearly, that we must remember that youth justice ought to be treated in a discrete, separate way. It is not appropriate to meld the system of youth justice in with that of adult justice. They are two different beasts, which require two different approaches, and we must not forget that. At the same time, the issue of transition between the youth justice system and the adult system can be difficult—practically, for sentences, in terms of the gymnastics that they have to go through in remembering which particular regime fits what. My point is that the public interest is best served, when it comes to young offenders, by the sort of focused, early-intervention approach that I know everyone in the Chamber and in the wider community supports.

My point is about the public interest and how it is best served. I have talked about reoffending rates, but will now look in some detail at the part of the report that dealt with confidence in community sentences. That has been the issue about which politicians have danced for many years. They have worried about weak community sentences being poorly monitored and implemented, resulting in higher rates of reoffending.

The question of confidence is key here, but how do we achieve that? We have already been shown several important pointers, such as the Diamond project. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to the issue, but it is important that we reiterate it. Community sentences will fail if they are not properly policed, and they will be ineffective if they are not adequately monitored. There are some good examples of community sentences that work. For example, the drug rehabilitation requirement sentence, which is a high-intensity sentence, involves a regular review—it can be monthly or it can be held at less frequent intervals—by a Crown court judge or magistrate. Under such regimes, judges will see defendants on a regular basis and open up a dialogue with them. They will challenge the defendant if the requirement is not being met and assist them if a particular issue needs to be addressed, such as non-compliance because of work restrictions or requirements or problems with a methadone prescription if the defendant has been convicted of possessing or supplying a controlled drug. Such sentences are having a really positive impact on not only the individuals themselves but the communities in which they live.

The power to review sentences regularly already exists in section 178 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The Government, in their response to the Committee, referred to their piloting of the use of section 178 in a range of different orders. I am interested to know—I will forgive the Minister if he does not have an answer today—the results of that pilot. I want to know the extent of it and the different types of orders that were used. It seems that if we give judges more involvement in the policing of community sentences, it will have a greater impact on the offender and go a long way towards promoting confidence in our sentencing regime.

The Diamond project used a range of mechanisms to enforce compliance with the order. Police officers or community support officers regularly knock on the doors of the homes of offenders to ensure that they attend the community project. We were looking at unpaid work in Lambeth the other day. We discussed how the scheme worked and we met offenders and former offenders who were working in the project. The input of former offenders—the euphemism nowadays is service users, which is relevant in this context—was vital, because they had gone through the system, come out successfully and were not reoffending. They were, I suppose, setting an example to those on the current order who, at times, were having difficulties or issues. It was wonderful to see people of experience assisting those who were on the order.

We spoke to some of those on the unpaid work scheme. Most of them understood the purpose of the order. They knew that it was not just about them and their rehabilitation but about their punishment. One gentleman I spoke to—I will not quote him out of court—did not quite get that point. It is important to hold such conversations because it helps us to understand the nature of punishment in our society.

For many years, the role of punishment in the criminal justice system has been hotly debated. Many protagonists say that punishment has no role in the criminal justice system, but, with respect, they entirely misunderstand where we are with punishment now. Their view of punishment comes from the 19th century, and we have moved on a long way since then. Punishment encapsulates not just custody and loss of liberty but a range of approaches that can be taken within the community. The example I would give is the one alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed when he mentioned one of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Justice Select Committee last week. The witness talked about her wish to be challenged by probation officers. Challenging people’s behaviour and facing up to them is a modern form of punishment. I am talking not about having a cuddly cup of tea but about saying, “Look, what you are doing is wrong. The way you are behaving is inappropriate. What are you going to do about it?” That is challenging the individual to face up to what they have done, to understand why they did it and to move on to be a better citizen.

It is wholly artificial to divide punishment from rehabilitation and public protection. The truth is that they all elide to. In many ways, getting the punishment right will ensure that the offender is rehabilitated and the public are protected.

I come back now to the point that I made at the beginning of my address, which is that the public interest is best served by a system that results in a lower rate of reoffending. That is why justice reinvestment is common sense. It not only saves the Exchequer massive amounts of revenue and protects the public but makes better citizens of those people who end up in the system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made a vital point about access to information about local rates of offending, where the hotspots are and what the problems are. It is vital that sentencers—the judiciary and lay magistracy—have full access to the hard facts, because it will help them reflect local sentencing priorities. I am not saying that Cardiff has a particular problem. In fact, it is very well managed by Jonathan Shepherd, the University Hospital of Wales and the local police. There are other parts of the world in which crimes of violence are still a huge problem. The public of those particular towns or cities demand, quite rightly, that sentences be passed to reflect those problems.

Police Grant Report

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I am going to make some more progress, if my hon. Friends and others will forgive me.

I made this announcement at the earliest opportunity to enable forces to plan ways of managing reductions that will not impact on the front line of policing. I am aware that forces will have slightly less money this year than they expected, but this is still £124 million more grant funding than was received last year. Let me repeat: even after this reduction in grant, police forces will still have more cash this year than they did last year, and Government funding for the police in this financial year will be £9.6 billion. To put the grant reduction further in context, it represents, for every force, less than 1% of their expected spend this year.

It is for chief constables to use their expertise to decide what savings make most sense for their force, but I am quite clear that these can be achieved by driving out wasteful spending on support functions, reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency in key functions, leaving the front line of policing strong and secure. We expect forces to be held to this by their police authorities and by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, ensuring that they are delivering the most effective service possible.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

rose—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

rose—

[Nick Herbert]

I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).

[Claire Perry]

It will not be comfortable to stand up and defend the reduction of almost £1 million in the police grant for Wiltshire. However, we can see that this process offers enormous opportunities to improve efficiency. I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees, for example, that police forces waste about £400 million a year by not procuring together. We have 43 police forces which all buy their own uniforms, all in the same shade of blue, thanks to the fact that Labour Members taught them that money was a free commodity. Police forces waste about £17,000 a day on renting cars because they procure them separately. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are enormous efficiency opportunities, the value of which could be about £10 million for each police force in the country?

[Nick Herbert]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I look forward to the hon. Gentleman going back to Crawley and telling the people how he voted today to remove £2.4 million from West Sussex police’s budget. I look forward to him explaining that, and I am sure that he is looking forward to that discussion.

[Claire Perry]

I have already started to explain to many of my constituents, who have of course been writing and e-mailing, why we have to reduce the police support grant. Most people understand that there is no money, thanks to the Labour party’s disastrous economic policy. Labour Members have been unspecific about where they would cut. This is the sort of ideology that led to the former Cabinet’s conclusion that the Labour Government were “finished”, “futile” and—finally in opposition. People are looking for an engaged and informed discussion about what we can do to get the deficit under control.

[Mr Hanson]

I look forward to the people of Devizes learning that the hon. Lady has voted for £1 million to be cut from their police grant—unless my speech convinces her to vote with Labour Members to oppose those cuts. She asked an important question about what the Labour party would do to reduce the deficit. We went into the election campaign with clear commitments. Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Members did not oppose the settlement that we debated on 3 February; we agreed the grants for this year in February. For future years, we agreed that we would spend money above the rate of inflation on policing, health and education, and make the savings that we needed through a deficit reduction plan for other matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

Let us revert to the subject before us. I think that there is scope for mergers of police forces. As a Minister, I encouraged the provision of a grant of £500,000 to help move that process on. I agree with the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that we were burned by forced mergers. I wish the Minister a fair wind if he can continue to encourage forces that, with local support, want to merge. Mergers should not be forced from the centre, but agreed locally. Let us not disagree about that.

Labour supported mergers and procurement measures when in government, and I support the Minister for Police on them in opposition. The key is that we still require resources to undertake policing. This year, resources are being cut in-year, despite an agreed settlement; the 25% that might be cut in future years will also be damaging. That will have a serious impact on crime generally. I do not very often agree with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), as I am sure the Minister does not, but he knew what he was talking about on DNA, CCTV, appropriate prison sentences, reducing reoffending and investment in police. He is right on those issues, and the Conservative party will be proved wrong.

All MPs value the increases in police officers in their constituencies in the past 13 years. Today’s cut could result in the loss of about 4,100 officers from our streets this year alone, according, I should tell the Minister, to House of Commons Library figures.

[Claire Perry]

On that specific point, as I read the Labour party manifesto, the right hon. Gentleman was planning 20% cuts in non-ring-fenced Departments. Did the Home Office calculate what his cuts would mean in terms of a reduction in police numbers?

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Lady should do her homework. The Home Office was one of the Departments that we ring-fenced in the manifesto, and we ring-fenced policing.

[Claire Perry]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Hanson]

With due respect to the hon. Lady, I think I know the Labour party manifesto better than she, so we can stick with that for the moment.

Today’s reduction means a £3.5 million cut for Northumbria police, which will interest my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck, for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott); a £28 million cut for London; a £3 million cut for Lancashire; and a £5 million cut for West Yorkshire, to name but four police areas. This year will be really difficult.

The Home Secretary, who is no longer in the Chamber, will today vote for a £4.3 million cut for Thames Valley police, and the Prime Minister will vote for a £3.4 million cut for his local force. When he visited west Yorkshire during the general election, he assured residents that the Conservatives were committed to PCSOs and police funding, but he will today vote to make a £4.8 million less available there this year. The Police Minister will today vote to reduce the amount for his force, Sussex police, by £2.4 million, after the previous Labour Government increased the number of officers by more than 100 in their 13 years in power. Those are real issues.

In January, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), now a Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, wrote to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) to complain that the funding in the February settlement was not enough for Sussex forces, but today he will vote to cut £2.4 million from the budget. Let us get some facts straight. The Conservatives should support the grant that they agreed in February and should see it through for the police officers and police forces that knew it had been agreed in the third year of a three-year settlement. They should have seen it through before the precepts were set, so that people knew what their funding would be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

No, because the change in trend on crime was achieved by Michael Howard, the then Home Secretary, who delivered a robust policy that effected changes. He was the author of the change in policy, but there is a limit to continuing that process, as there must be to the rate of growth of incarceration. In the end, we cannot lock up everybody who might be a threat to someone, because in that way, the entire population would end up in prison. There is a logical end to that process, and we will do our level best to deliver more effective policies to ensure that there are fewer victims in future.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

13. How many and what proportion of prison inmates are accommodated on a doubled-up basis; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

In 2009-10, the average number of prisoners sharing a cell designed for one was approximately 19,000, and there are more than 1,000 cases in which three prisoners are sharing a cell designed for two. That overcrowding is concentrated in male local prisons, where 47.6% of prisoners are held in overcrowded conditions.

[Claire Perry]

Will the Minister comment on the fact that the previous Government’s mismanagement of the indeterminate public protection sentencing regime in many ways contributed to that overcrowding? That was brought to my attention by a prisoner in HMP Erlestoke in my constituency, who copied me in on a very good letter to Inside Time this month. Will the Minister tell the House what he will do to help to reform the IPP regime?

[Mr Blunt]

I notice that the previous Government had to reform the IPP arrangements in 2008, having introduced them in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We inherit a very serious problem with IPP prisoners. We have 6,000 IPP prisoners, well over 2,500 of whom have exceeded their tariff point. Many cannot get on courses because our prisons are wholly overcrowded and unable to address offending behaviour. That is not a defensible position.