Administration of Justice: Daniel Cresswell

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the administration of justice in respect of Daniel Cresswell.

I sought this debate to address a plainly wrongful conviction of my constituent, Daniel Cresswell. It is one of the most serious individual miscarriages of justice that has been brought to me about a constituent in more than two decades in Parliament. Every agency, from the investigating officer through to the Crown Prosecution Service and the legally aided defence barrister as well as the route to the Court of Appeal, the Criminal Cases Review Commission and, to some degree, the prison system, have all failed Daniel Cresswell alarmingly.

The assorted oversight systems could not produce any remedy, either. They included the then Independent Police Complaints Commission, West Yorkshire police professional standards department, West Yorkshire police’s operational and political oversight in the form of its chief constable and its police and crime commissioner, the legal ombudsman, the Bar Council and, to date, even the Government as represented by Ministers. The formal purpose of the debate is to invite the Minister, on behalf of the Government, to instruct a judge to review the whole handling of the case, as agencies and their oversight systems have collectively failed. However, I must say I have no expectation that he can or will put a review in hand. Indeed, any number of junior Ministers are responsible for some element of failure in the system that individually they oversee.

I have the highest respect for the Minister selected to reply on behalf of the Government, and I know that today he can only really listen before consulting his colleagues as to whether the Government will act further. My primary objective is for this speech to serve as a point of reference for my constituent as he embarks on his post-prison life. This speech is for him, and I know the Minister will not be too distressed if I take most of the time available.

As Daniel Cresswell seeks to provide for himself and his family, he will be able to evidence that his Member of Parliament is convinced that his conviction is wholly unsound. Any putative employer, friend or acquaintance of Daniel Cresswell should be able to use this speech to understand why any assessment of his character should not carry the burden of the state’s conviction of him for the serious offence of rape that led to a sentence of seven years in prison.

In summary, Daniel Cresswell was fitted up by the female partner of a major debtor of the company that employed him—a debt he was engaged in pursuing. He allowed himself to be manoeuvred into a position whereby the woman spent the night in his hotel room. She made an allegation of rape from what is alleged to have happened when they woke up the following morning. The investigating officer was entirely focused on obtaining a conviction, not the truth. The defending barrister chose to present a case that was fatally confused by her own view of how to achieve an acquittal, not the defendant’s own account. All avenues of appeal and accountability were either systemically closed off or wilfully obstructed by oversight systems protecting their own.

What was not established in the investigation and trial process, and should have been, was that the claimant had a motive and created the means and opportunity to make a charge against the investigating officer of a company seeking to recover a debt in excess of £80,000. Equally, having made a serious allegation against a previous employer, her character was not introduced in court.

I will not name the complainant as the law requires. However, I will name deliberately and purposefully under the protection of parliamentary privilege the investigating officer: Detective Constable Clare Barran. I am satisfied that there is a prima facie case not only that she failed in her duty in the pursuit of truth and justice but that she lied both in the signed documentation that supported her investigation and in her testimony at the trial at Leeds Crown court.

I can only headline the key issues in the time available, but they were the subject of a 29-page submission to the IPCC. All attempts to have West Yorkshire police properly review the investigation were obstructed by that force, including by its chief constable, Dee Collins, and the subsequently elected police and crime commissioner, Mark Burns-Williamson.

I had a meeting and correspondence with the then Police Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), around December 2016. He encouraged the family and me to engage the police and crime commissioner as offering an improvement on the then current complaints model, which he described as in need of reform. Our experience has been that this PCC has woefully failed to hold his force to account.

The investigating officer was indolent in the extreme when it came to establishing Daniel Cresswell’s account and wholly one-eyed when investigating the complainant’s. Daniel Cresswell spent 415 days on police bail, and, after a year, the telephone records that would have supported his account, which he sought to hand over to the police—the request was declined—were deleted in the usual way by the telephone company, the police inexcusably having failed to request their protection. The only independent witness was not interviewed for 15 months and, while his recollection will plainly have degraded in that time, the police and CPS between them prevented his statement from being disclosed for a further 3.5 years. The video evidence that my constituent sought to protect as supporting his account of the evening became somehow accidentally and irreparably damaged in police protection.

There is then the issue of the central piece of forensic evidence that involves my constituent’s semen appearing on the complainant’s knickers. His account is that he awoke to find her artificially inducing it. The forensic examination made clear that,

“secondary transfer cannot be ruled out”,

but DC Barran altered that to,

“there is significantly more than mere transference”.

In the words of the forensic scientist “a trace” amount of DNA is termed by DC Barran as “a significant amount”. The complainant’s initial statement that her underwear had been “washed once” is changed by DC Barran to,

“washed a number of times”.

DC Barran signed a certification on 3 August 2013 saying that she,

“is not withholding any evidence that will support the defence”,

yet her own notes clearly show that she was aware on 28 May 2013 that the forensic science officer, having received new evidence, had concluded that either party could be telling the truth. Although that shows that DC Barran was aware the forensic science officer accepted that Mr Cresswell could be innocent, she withheld that information from the defence for 13 months, disclosing it only immediately before the trial. I happen to believe that that fatally misled the defence barrister on the strategy she should have employed for the trial. The original statement from the forensic science officer—which DC Barran knew was wrong—was submitted to the CPS and defence along with the above-mentioned certification in August 2013. It was only after 3.5 years that it emerged that she had conducted an interview with Dean Sygrove, the only first-hand witness, which was also not disclosed to the defence.

All the failures of the police investigation served to aid the prosecution and harm the defence. Had the actual evidence as to the course of events that led to my constituent and the complainant being together in the hotel room been disclosed, my constituent’s account would have been supported and the credibility of the claimant would have been undermined. What limited evidence there was from the hotel room received the same biased treatment.

We should at least understand the wider climate in which this police officer was operating: the climate in which DC Barran left my constituent on police bail for 415 days and took 15 months to interview the only first-hand witness, and where, contrastingly, she took one day to seek what she believed was confirmatory evidence for the claimant from the hotel. Ironically, I left office as the Minster for Criminal Justice in September 2012, two weeks after this alleged offence was reported to the police. I was well aware of the public policy anxiety to improve the number of convictions arising from complaints of rape to the police and indeed to support and encourage victims of rape to make those complaints to the police. This was not a climate created by Alison Saunders, the retiring Director of Public Prosecutions, but it was rocket charged under her term of office. Given today’s circumstances, with the discrediting of so many high-profile sexual offence investigations having revealed the one-sided and one-eyed way in which the police and prosecution have sought to deliver convictions and not give the defence the benefit of the information they hold, I personally think it is inconceivable that this case would now pass muster even to arrive at a decision to charge.

Alison Saunders’s recent claim that there are no people in prison today as a result of failures to disclose evidence on the part of the CPS must be nonsense. First, she cannot know, and secondly, the first-hand experience of my constituent plainly suggests otherwise. Daniel Cresswell is another victim of the enthusiasm to improve the conviction rate in rape trials. However, it is the interest of justice that has been sacrificed in the process, along with Daniel Cresswell’s liberty for three and a half years and his future reputation, which this speech is designed to at least alleviate.

Let me turn to Daniel’s representation by his legally aided defence barrister, Fiona Rowling. My review of the case is that her belief was that whatever happened in that hotel room would have been consensual. Therefore, rather than adequately challenging the complainant’s account, or advancing my constituent’s account that he had in fact been indecently assaulted, she attempted to present his account and her belief in parallel. Her performance in front of the jury was described as incoherent and disjointed, and it was muttered and mumbled so quietly and unintelligibly that the disdain and shocked disbelief on the faces of the jurors was conveyed as far as the public gallery. The transcript does not capture the shockingly poor manner of her delivery, which was seen as jaw-droppingly bad, as one member of the jury regarded her with his mouth wide open in astonishment.

Fiona Rowling’s defence strategy had shocked the family when she stated on the first day of the trial that she did not want to make the complainant out to be a liar. Advice was sought from a local Leeds solicitor about whether she could be removed from the case when she refused to follow her client’s instructions. One has sympathy for hard-pressed criminal defence barristers working on legal aid, but that quality of performance cannot be excused or form part of our justice system. Afterwards she asked her client to apologise to his family,

“who may have the impression that that didn’t go very well”.

Her performance was the subject of a complaint to her chambers— unsurprisingly that was rejected—followed by a formal complaint to the legal ombudsman, which bewilderingly found her performance “reasonable”. The legal ombudsman offered a final appeal to the Bar Council, but since the legal ombudsman was put in place because of concerns over the adequacy of the Bar Council as the regulator of professional standards, unsurprisingly that did not result in a satisfactory resolution either, and it was formally out of time. This investigation, and particularly the failure of the legal ombudsman to seek first-hand accounts of the woeful inadequacy of Fiona Rowling’s court performance, was another avenue of accountability that was closed to the family by rules and processes, and I hope that a judge reviewing the entire conduct of this case would seek to investigate that fairly.

In the wake of that one-sided investigation and incompetent defence, my constituent found himself sentenced to seven years in prison. That is when his family sought my help, given the administration of his sentence. Unsurprisingly, he maintained his innocence, and here he fell into a very difficult challenge for the prison service: what to do with myriad offenders—particularly those charged with sexual offences—who maintain their innocence? Among their numbers will be men like Daniel Cresswell, whom I believe to be innocent, yet they are now being doubly punished.

For two and a half years I had the pleasure of working with Michael Spurr, Chief Executive of the then National Offender Management Service, as his overseeing Minister. He said in a letter to me that,

“in prisons running the sex offender treatment programme, priority will be given to those who are willing to address their offending behaviour. Mr Cresswell is maintaining his innocence of the offences for which he is currently imprisoned and he is not ready to participate in a programme solely designed to address his sexual offending”.

As such, Mr Cresswell was detained in a prison much further from his home than would otherwise have been the case. His family visits were impacted as a consequence, and that also appears to have been used as a lever to try to get him to co-operate with his sentence plan—a position that to him was plainly impossible.

In my letter to Michael Spurr of 23 November 2014, I made a suggestion as to how the situation could be improved for non-compliant convicted sex offenders. Regrettably, however, given the litany of different parts of the justice system that need a reference in this time-limited speech, I cannot develop those thoughts further here. However, given the Minister’s responsibility, I am sure that he will give the matter the thought it deserves. I believe it is a growing systemic problem, given the number of sex offenders in custody, alongside our enthusiasm—understandable in many ways—to improve the conviction rate in rape trials. Given the way that such trials are now being conducted, the possibility of convictions such as that handed to Daniel Cresswell should give us pause for thought about the administration of justice.

After a wrongful conviction, the usual course would be to go to the Court of Appeal. An appeal must be made on the basis of facts and points of law, but given the circumstances of this case and the finding of facts by the jury, the family were advised—almost certainly correctly—that the chance of success at the Court of Appeal was frighteningly small. Therefore, two routes were pursued: an attempt to hold the investigation to account by seeking an investigation by the West Yorkshire police professional standards department, and what is known as a “non-appeal application” to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The formal complaint to West Yorkshire police was made in December 2014, and after five months of no progress, the family sought help from the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the police and crime commissioner. That eventually led to an investigating officer being appointed, and throughout 2015 and into 2016 the inquiry was prodded by Daniel Cresswell’s father-in-law, Richard Cordle, who is a retired police officer. It is entirely down to Richard Cordle, who had the expertise to understand the failures in the police investigation system and—happily for Daniel—the time and determination to bring West Yorkshire police to account, that the quality of evidence about the investigation and the rest is so convincing. Indeed, it has completely convinced me of the inadequacy of the entire investigation process.

There is an unhappily fat file on the to-ing and fro-ing between the police force, Mr Cordle and the IPCC, which was occasionally reinforced by letters from me to the chief constable, inviting her to give the matter her personal attention. Any review of the process will demonstrate that this was a police force protecting its own, given that the investigating officer could potentially be facing a trial for perverting the course of justice. That conclusion is supported by the fact that an investigation did not proceed on the basis of such seriousness; it is supported by the failure of the police to interview their officer under caution, and by the delay and obfuscation of the professional standards department and the chief constable. That was topped off by the inaction of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which culminated in letters from me to Dame Anne Owers that even today remain unanswered.

In parallel to that was the route taken to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Understandably, the work of the CCRC is of particular interest to those trying to reverse an injustice. Through the United Against Injustice conference, and the claims of the erudite CCRC spokesman, David James Smith, the family gained encouragement about the powers that the CCRC could employ on their behalf to gain access to undisclosed and securely held material post trial—material that they would not otherwise know about or have access to. However 16 months after embarking on the CCRC route, they were told that it would not utilise those powers on a “fishing expedition”. The family feel utterly let down by the CCRC and are left with the belief that its function is to provide closure and to protect the status quo within the justice system.

Meanwhile, the lack of progress consumed almost half of my constituent’s time in custody. Every day of delay by the CCRC, the IPCC and the PSD of West Yorkshire police made the practical benefits of a remedy —Daniel’s release from his custodial sentence—less meaningful. The family maintain that the CCRC’s failings are borne out in the statistics—in its own headline figures. I welcome the newly created all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice, chaired by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), which aims to campaign to improve the lot of the wrongly convicted, and reform the appeal system. Mr Cresswell’s family are now involved with that.

Stymied by a police force that will not investigate its own, by a police and crime commissioner who refuses to hold his own police force to account, by an Independent Police Complaints Commission that failed to get another force to investigate West Yorkshire police, by the actions of West Yorkshire police, and by the inability of the justice system as it is currently administered, my constituent has almost no effective remedy left. I understand that consideration is being given to finding out whether an out of time approach to the Court of Appeal might be possible. However, given the advice that has been received and the record of the Court of Appeal in cases such as this, personally I doubt the likelihood of success by that route.

Daniel is now out of prison and trying to rebuild his life. I am delighted that he has started so successfully. It is the purpose of this speech to be a published point of reference to my belief in my constituent’s innocence of the charge for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison. It is also my hope that those in a position to help him in future, in employment or in any other way, will pay due attention to this review of the multiple failures of our system of justice. Daniel Cresswell has been poorly served by the justice system, and I hope that this speech will help him to put the experience behind him. He has, however, been incredibly well served by the unstinting love and support of his family, who have enabled me to make this case and this speech for him today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman has made those points on a number of occasions. We are listening very carefully. Indeed, two members of our Department travelled to Port Talbot, to a very lively public meeting where those points were made repeatedly. We are listening very carefully to him.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Would there be an answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question on the industrial estate if any new prison fully incorporated the work of ONE3ONE Solutions, which was designed more than six years ago to increase the productive and commercial output of prisoners? The numbers given by the Justice Secretary just now suggest that we have not made much progress in the number of prisoners who are working. Will any new prison include ONE3ONE Solutions, and how are we getting on with prisoners working overall?

[Mr Speaker]

Particularly if any prospect of their working is in Port Talbot, upon which the question is focused.

Prisons

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right; this is a very serious issue, both in society and in prison. We are looking at additional training for prison officers and have introduced tests to help to get prisoners off these substances, as well as prisoner education programmes. These drugs do have a serious and severe effect. On her point about the community, I want our community sentences to address mental health and drugs issues before people commit crimes that result in custodial sentences. Too many people enter prison having previously been at high risk of committing such a crime because of such issues. We need to intervene earlier, which I think is an effective way of reducing the circulation through our prisons, rather than having an arbitrary number that we release. What we need to do is deal with these issues before they reach a level where a custodial sentence is required. That is our approach, and I shall say more about it in due course.

From April, prison governors will be given new freedoms to drive forward the reforms and cut free from Whitehall micro-management. Governors will have control over budgets, education and staffing structures, and they will be able to set their own prison regime. At the moment, we have a plethora of prison rules, including on how big prisoners’ bath mats can be. Surely that is not the way to treat people who we want to be leaders of some of our great institutions.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I want to say how much I welcome the passage in the White Paper that gives to prison governors the very freedoms that my right hon. Friend has mentioned, particularly in respect of work and the commercial relationships that governors will be able to form with companies and businesses to get proper work into prisons. Will she say something about One3One Solutions?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend must have read my mind, because we were talking about One3One Solutions only this morning, and I know that he was involved in establishing that organisation. Employers are vital to our reforms, and what I want to happen on the inside has to be jobs and training that lead to work on the outside. We need to start from what jobs are available on the outside and bring those employers into prison. We are looking at how to develop that. First, governors will have a strong incentive, because there will be a measurement of how many prisoners secure jobs on the outside, as well as of how many go into apprenticeships on the outside. I want to see offenders starting apprenticeships on the inside that they can then complete on the outside, so that there is a seamless transition into work.

We already have some fantastic employers working with us—Greggs, for example, and Timpson whom I met this morning—but we need more of them to participate. Former offenders can be very effective employees, and we need to get that message across more widely. There would be a huge economic benefit if, once people leave prison, rather than go on to benefits they go into employment instead. That will also reduce reoffending. We shall launch our employment strategy in the summer. I will go into more detail subsequently and look forward to discussing it further with my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt).

A number of hon. Members have mentioned the probation service. Just as we are measuring outcomes for prison services, such as employment, housing and education, we want to see similar measures for the probation services. We need to make sure that when people are in the community, they are being encouraged to get involved in activities and to get off drugs, so that they are less likely to reoffend. We shall say more about probation in April, when we announce our changes to the probation service.

It is difficult, of course, for reform to take place in dilapidated buildings or in old and overcrowded prisons. That is why we are modernising the prison estate to create 10,000 prison places where reform can flourish. This is a £1.3 billion investment programme that will reduce overcrowding and replace outdated prisons with modern facilities. As part of that, we shall open HMP Berwyn in Wrexham next month, which will create over 2,000 modern places. We have already made announcements about new prisons in Glen Parva and Wellingborough, and we shall make further announcements about new prison capacity in due course.

I am pleased to tell hon. Members that the prison and courts reform Bill will be introduced shortly. It will set it out in legislation for the first time that reform of offenders as well as punishment is a key purpose of prisons. One of the issues we faced as a society was that we did not have such a definition of prisons. At the moment, legislation says that as Secretary of State I am responsible for housing prisoners. Well, I consider myself responsible for much more than housing prisoners. I consider myself responsible for making sure that we use time productively while people are in prison to turn their lives around so that they become productive members of society. That is going to be embedded in legislation, and it will be accompanied by further measures, including new standards, league tables and governor empowerment.

We will also strengthen the powers of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons to intervene in failing prisons, and we will put the prison and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing to investigate deaths in custody. Hon. Members have referred to some of the very tragic deaths in custody, and the prison and probation ombudsman performs a vital role here.

The whole House will acknowledge that there is too much violence and self-harm in our prisons. It is also right to say that we have decade-long problems with reoffending. Almost half of prisoners reoffend within a year, at a cost of £15 billion to our society and at huge cost to the victims who suffer from those crimes. That is why this Government’s prison reform agenda is such a priority, and it is why we have secured extra funding and are taking immediate steps to address violence and safety in our prisons. This will be the largest reform of our prisons in a generation. These issues will not be solved in weeks or months, but I am confident that, over time, we will transform our prisons, reduce reoffending and get prisoners into jobs and away from a life of crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), another member of the club of exes. When I held the responsibilities that are now held by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Sam Gyimah), the right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well which bits of the system were difficult to change, and I remember being regularly twitted by him about the impossibility of being able to transfer the necessary number of foreign national offenders out of the system. His regular interrogation on how we were doing on the numbers showed his expertise and understanding of the system. I am delighted with the work that he is doing on the Justice Committee and with his contribution to this debate. I hope that my reflections on the system, as another of the exes, will also make a positive contribution today.

I am delighted that my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey, is now the prisons Minister. In my experience, he has been open to talking to people with experience of the system, to getting ideas and to getting well across his brief. He is to be congratulated on that. He is lucky enough to be serving under the present Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who has the qualities that my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) had. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath and the current Lord Chancellor put policy back into the place where it had been left by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), under whom I had the honour to serve. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) said that the change of policy between 2012 and the arrival of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath as Lord Chancellor had created significant difficulties for the prison service. I know that the policy during that period will have found some favour with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but we are now dealing with the consequences.

The Prison Officers Association is not innocent in this matter. The priority for my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) was to deliver the savings targets that the Ministry of Justice had to meet, and they were significant. He was presented with a deal by the Prison Officers Association: if he ended the competition programme for the potential privatisation of prisons—a programme started by the Labour party—and the wings were left in the control of the public sector, the POA would agree to the establishment changes in the public sector bid to try to hold on to the management of Birmingham prison. Those involved savage cuts to the establishment. Indeed, the winning bid for HMP Birmingham by G4S involved about 150 more staff than the public sector bid.

The second round of cuts, which were put into the service after 2012-13 and implemented during the course of 2013-14, involved severe establishment reductions in the prison service, all in the public sector. My hon. Friend the Minister is now having to wrestle with the consequences of that. The Government have now woken up to those consequences and are putting 2,500 prison officers back into the establishment. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) had to deal with the consequences of the previous policy when he was prisons Minister, and immensely difficult it was, too.

The message that I want to give to my hon. Friend the Minister involves the possible role of the private sector, and I want to try to win this argument across the House. The problem under my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell was the row with Serco and G4S over the management of the tagging contracts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, it resulted in those companies—the biggest suppliers of private sector services in the custodial system—not being considered for contracts. That meant that we lost a serious amount of competition; indeed, the whole competition programme was stopped.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) referred to Doncaster prison, which is run by Serco. When I went to see it as prisons Minister, it was a quite outstanding prison. Serco had engaged with the Department, and its contract to manage the prison incentivised it to deliver the necessary rehabilitation. There is no right or wrong answer on public or private sector involvement, but the big advantage of private sector prisons is that they are cheaper to run and cost the service less. The companies also invest heavily in leadership in those prisons. In my experience, the most innovative practices and regimes, particularly around rehabilitation and the management of offenders, were in the private sector. I know that the reforms in the White Paper will try to give some of those freedoms to the governors of public sector prisons, and I wish my hon. Friend the Minister all power to his elbow in achieving that.

There are two ways in which to get resources into the custodial estate, and that process has to be done in partnership with the private sector. First, we need to change and improve the estate, which means continuing the process of selling off the old prisons—they are expensive to run and often occupy expensive real estate—and building new ones. Those new prisons should be built and operated by the private sector. We can take the savings there. If the money is not available in the public sector budget just now, at least the private sector will give us the ability to deal with the funding over a prolonged period.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What about Oakwood?

[Crispin Blunt]

The former shadow spokeswoman asks about Oakwood prison. The cost of a place there was £13,000 a year, compared with an average cost of £22,000 per place in a more expensive prison.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to be able to close this debate, in which Members have spoken very eloquently and knowledgeably about the issues facing our prison system. Before I go into what they have said, I want to thank our prison officers, prison governors, and all those who work in the Prison Service. They face very great challenges every day of their lives, and we owe them a lot for the work that they do for us.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who has three prisons in her constituency, talked about the work that she achieved as a former Minister in trying to reduce the amount of violence in prisons. She comprehensively set out some of the failures of this Government. I am sorry if that disappoints Conservative Members but, as I will explain, there has been a failure to tackle some of the big issues facing our prisons.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who also has three prisons in her constituency, said that the prisons budget had been cut by a quarter, with £900 million being taken away. That will obviously have an impact on how prisons are run and on their staff. She raised three issues that the Minister should be looking at. First, there are far too many women in prison, especially women with children, and there does not seem to be any clear strategy within the prison system to assist them or to deal with situations such as how children can visit their parents. That is reflected in the Ministry of Justice’s figures on suicides that have occurred in prison, which show that a much higher percentage of women have committed suicide and self-harm. My hon. Friend also talked about reoffending, and the education and training that would prevent it, as well as mental health issues and personality disorders. Funding for those services has been cut, and those things need to be addressed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) talked about the fact that many experienced staff have left the Prison Service and been replaced by inexperienced staff. It is well accepted that prison officers do far more than simply locking and unlocking the gates and taking prisoners in and out. They are often the only people prisoners will speak to. Prison officers act as mentors, advisers and family members, and they provide a sympathetic listening ear. It is not good enough to have inexperienced people taking over that work. I agree wholeheartedly with what the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) said about the tremendous work that prison officers do. As he said, their terms and conditions should be looked at properly and put on the same footing as those of people who do other difficult and sensitive jobs, such as police officers. Prison officers should be remunerated properly.

Since the Government came into power in 2010, they have made massive cuts to the number of prison officers, and that is a big reason for some of the current prison issues. It is all very well for the Government to say that they are trying to do things; that is good, but they should never have cut the number of prison officers in the first place. If they had not made that false economy, we would not be in half the mess we are in now. I try not to be party political about this, but it was the wrong decision and it would be good if the Government accepted that. There is no harm in owning up to the fact that an error was made.

One suggestion for dealing with some of the prison problems was made by the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Although I more or less agreed with him on international issues when I was a member of the Committee, I have to tell him that privatisation in prisons is not the answer. It has not been the answer for probation. The probation service used to have a four-star gold rating but it has gone downhill since the privatisation, and that has had some impact on the Prison Service.

[Crispin Blunt]

The Foreign Affairs Committee’s loss is the Opposition Front-Bench team’s gain. Will the hon. Lady be explicit about the potential role of the private sector under Labour policy? Labour had a commercialisation strategy, and Labour opened up the competition for Birmingham prison in the first place. Is the Labour party saying that there is no role for the private sector in the delivery of justice in our country, simply on ideological grounds?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The Labour party also introduced IPP sentences, and I was not one of those who favoured that provision. I will touch on its impact on our prison system. The Secretary of State spoke about the fact that the Government are trying to deal with the issues caused by the remnants of the IPP regime. One problem is that people who have served their IPP sentence cannot get out of prison until they have done specific, designated training courses, but unfortunately there has been a lack of funding for those courses. The Government have to take responsibility for the fact that many thousands of people in that position have not been released from prison.

As I have said, this has been a very good and interesting debate. Many experienced people have spoken, including former Ministers and Secretaries of State. I think we can all agree that everyone is concerned about this issue. It is not a big vote winner or an issue that is often spoken about on the doorstep, but it is important because it shows what we stand for as a society. The one thing on which most people agree is that we have got problems, and there is a crisis in our prison system.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), a former Minister, talked about some of the proposals in the White Paper that the Government have brought forward to deal with this issue. He set out all the shortcomings and all the questions that have not been answered. The White Paper seems to suggest that each prison will be run by its governor and then every problem will somehow be resolved. However, it does not provide answers to questions such as whether governors will have complete autonomy from the centre, and whether they will have enough money to be able to carry out everything they want to do. For example, if a prison governor thinks that 500 inmates require a two-month detoxification and rehabilitation programme, will he or she have the money to carry that out? It is all very well to say that governors can do such things, but where will the funding come from, or will they have an unlimited pot of money? How will people be recruited, and to whom will they be answerable? The White Paper raises a lot of questions that have not been answered, and it does not deal with the problems.

Prison Safety and Reform

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been clear that staffing is an issue. That is why we are investing in 2,500 more prison officers, but it is not the only issue. We also have an issue with drugs, drones and phones, which we are dealing with, and we have just rolled out testing for new psychoactive substances such as Spice and Black Mamba, which the prisons and probation ombudsman has said have been a game-changer in the system. We are also changing the way we deploy staff, so that there is a dedicated officer for each prisoner, helping keep them safe, but also making sure they are on the path to reform—getting off drugs, getting into work and getting the skills they need to succeed outside.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Unsurprisingly, I wholly associate myself with the question of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). Does the Secretary of State understand that the prisons are in this state now because of the Faustian pact between the Prison Officers Association and the National Offender Management Service and her predecessor-but-one, in order to deliver the savings demanded by the Treasury: to agree to stripping the public sector establishments down to the bone if he stopped the competition programme? That is what happened. Will the Secretary of State now ensure that the private sector builds the new prisons, and is given a proper opportunity, in competition with the public sector, to run both the new prisons and the existing prisons?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Today’s White Paper is about the standards we expect of prisons, in both the private and public sector. I have been to some very good public sector prisons and I have been to some very good private sector prisons, and what I care about is getting the best possible outcomes so that we reduce reoffending and crime.

Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 21st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is of course a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). As a former sort of straight Conservative, we at least appear to have been on half a journey together. No one can doubt the wider case he made for the Bill. On the narrow point he made about the Bill, I entirely agree with him and want to come back to it in the course of my remarks. The emotion with which he presented his case was also more than exemplified by the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), whose speech was characteristic of his usual brilliant self, as one would expect of a world debating champion; I first came across him when I was president of the Durham union society, a horribly long time ago, and his words were both powerful and emotional. He, like the hon. Member for Rhondda, introduced the wider case and the wider background to the Bill, and why this issue matters so much, particularly to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Let me turn to the narrow issue of the Bill, as I wish to confine my remarks to that. The royal pardon given to Dr Alan Turing in December 2013 was widely welcomed as helping to put right the injustice he suffered by being convicted of “gross indecency” in 1952 and the subsequent physical and emotional damage he endured through chemical castration, which led to his suicide. It is true that that posthumous pardon changed the precedent for the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy. As the Government of the day stated:

“A pardon is only normally granted when the person is innocent of the offence and where a request has been made by someone with a vested interest such as a family member. Uniquely on this occasion a pardon has been issued without either requirement being met, reflecting the exceptional nature of Alan Turing’s achievements”.

Towering though Alan Turing’s achievements were—and we should all continue to pay tribute to them—the wrongs done to thousands of gay men, which we recognise today as human rights abuses, are no less in need of being corrected. The hurt, pain and injustice is no different for all these people. The exceptionality of Alan Turing’s pardon cannot hold. Indeed, as a Justice Minister, holding the same responsibilities five years ago as this Minister does today, I held the Government line against granting a pardon to Alan Turing in a Westminster Hall debate, and I made the wider point. Of course, by that time the Government believed they had dealt with the practical issues through the disregard provisions of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. On the pardon point, I said:

“To grant him a pardon under the royal prerogative would change the basis on which such pardons are normally given.

If Alan Turing were pardoned, there would be tens of thousands of other people in respect of whom demands for like treatment could be made. Those persons could include about 16,000 living individuals with convictions for homosexuality, and many times that number of deceased victims.”—[Official Report, 27 June 2012; Vol. 547, c. 127WH.]

This Bill would simply fulfil the logic of the arguments I presented in 2012, and, in doing so, make the same gesture on the part of today’s society through an Act of Parliament to the thousands of men deserving of it.

Yesterday, the Government announced that they would support Lord Sharkey’s amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 through an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill. This would extend the pardon

“for the living in cases where offences have been successfully deleted through the disregard process.”

Although a welcome step, that approach ties the pardon to the process of disregarding convictions from criminal records that already exists and would be extended by clause 3. There need not be such a link. The Government can be more generous. They can make a distinction between the powerful symbolic effect of the general pardon to men—some alive, many dead—and the mechanism by which individuals can benefit from the practical effects of a pardon through the disregard process. This, therefore, ensures that criminal offences that remain criminal offences today are not included in any practical consequences of the pardon. I know that the Minister will present a marginally different view and different concerns, but that discussion should be had at the Committee stage of this Bill. If the Government are not satisfied with the discussion in Committee then this Bill will not make progress towards becoming an Act.

I assume that the sponsors of the Bill are pleased that the Government have at least moved some of the way in their proposal. Even if they were not to move further I would argue that this Bill is a better vehicle for the Sharkey amendment than a rather anonymous amendment within the latest Policing and Crime Bill, which roll off the statute book year after year and would not have the symbolic effects that this Act of Parliament would have. Of course that is the point. This Bill and our debate is at least as much about symbolic restitution and a righting of historic wrongs as of process. The measures adopted, whether the narrower version currently favoured by the Government or the broader approach in this Bill as it is today, would stand much better as a symbol in a stand-alone Act. I hope that a way can be found to use the Bill of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire as the vehicle by which we can make this clear statement of today’s values of today’s Parliament.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and we will certainly take it into consideration. I visited New Hall prison towards the tail end of last year and had a look at some of the excellent work that it is doing to help women offenders both with literacy and numeracy and with their various other complex needs.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware, as will her colleagues, of the work of RAPT—the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust. She may not know that it began its work in Downview prison in my constituency when it was a category C/D male resettlement prison. That work had to come to an end when it was re-roled as a female prison back in 1999-2000. Now that the Minister is moving women prisoners to Downview, will she make sure that RAPT can restart its work as the prison reopens?

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. So many of our female offenders come into the prison system with addictions to both substances and alcohol, and it is fundamental that that is a key part of their rehabilitative process.

Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I am pleased to hear that, and I am grateful to the Minister for his intervention.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lyn Brown]

Oh, okay, Why not?

[Crispin Blunt]

On that point, whatever process the Government go through, it seems to be bordering on crazy to then ban these substances with a view to unbanning them in two or three months’ time. Does the hon. Lady agree, as I do, with the view of the Home Affairs Committee? I intend to support amendment 5.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and, yes, I do agree with him. Despite this seemingly welcome movement by the Home Secretary, I am still minded to vote this afternoon to place poppers on the exempt list. I will do so, because I am fearful that placing a ban on such substances will push their use underground and away from the regulatory controls that currently exist. In short, we may do more harm by that action. If, after a review and further evidence, it is proven that poppers are harmful and that, on balance, a ban would be appropriate, Labour Members will willingly review and test the evidence and, if the case is proven, support a ban on these substances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

If I get called, I will speak in support of the right hon. Gentleman’s excellent Committee’s report. It is every parent’s nightmare that their child should die of drugs. Whether they are legal or not is neither here nor there. If we legislate in a way that makes the use of illegal drugs more likely, which is what will happen if amendment 5 is not carried, we will not be serving our children and others.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and he brings me on to the issue of alkyl nitrites. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), has said—this was a bit of shock for me after 28 years in this House—that Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box having had poppers. I think that is what she said and it was a great surprise to the House. She obviously knows more than I do about such issues, even though she claims that she knew nothing about drugs until she became the shadow Minister with responsibility for drugs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. Quite a large number of Members still want to speak. At this rate, if Members go over 10 minutes we will not manage to get everybody in. I cannot impose a time limit, but if Members are brief we can get everyone in.

[Crispin Blunt]

I will be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. I agree with nearly every part of his argument and I certainly agree with the conclusions of the Committee’s report. I commend every Member who took part in its deliberations. I want to leave enough time for my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) to speak, because he has been fighting a battle behind the scenes to ensure that this Bill does not do anything really daft.

Sometimes a measure is proposed that becomes personal to oneself and one realises that the Government are about to do something fantastically stupid. In such circumstances, one has a duty to speak up. I use poppers—I out myself as a popper user—and would be directly affected by the Bill. I am astonished by the proposal to ban them, as are very many other gay men. It simply serves to bring the whole law into disrepute. If this drug—which I use and which has, as the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), said in her extremely good speech, been used for decades—is banned, respect for the law will fly out of the window.

All the effects warned about in paragraph 43 of the Home Affairs Committee’s report—in particular, the Gay Men’s Health Collective warns that a ban would result in increased class A and B drug use and increased transmission of sexually transmitted infections—will obviously happen. Driving the supply underground will simply put the trade in the hands of criminals.

[Mr Burrowes]

It is right to focus on supply, which is the focus of the Bill. It is important to give the clear message that the Bill will not ban use, but supply: it will not ban the continued personal use of poppers, but it will ban their supply.

The issues are complicated. There are controls on alkyl nitrites in that the sale of poppers to under-18s is caught by the Intoxicating Substances (Supply) Act 1985. There is a wider debate about whether that is a proportionate response for under-18s. However, there are already controls on supplying under-18s. We need to be aware that this is a complicated area of law, beyond the issues relating to psychoactive substances.

[Crispin Blunt]

I know that my hon. Friend has done a significant amount of work on this and that he, too, has been trying to use his influence in the right direction. He kindly sent me a message saying that he has been working to make sure that we do not do something really daft on this issue. He is, of course, loyal to Conservative Front Benchers, as am I—or I try to be—but we may differ on how to influence them. I will not be party to something that I know is, frankly, really foolish by voting for such a piece of public policy.

The issue is about supply. The policy might put someone like me into the hands of criminals if he wanted to get a supply of something that he used to think was perfectly okay. Under legislation that I think is absurd, someone like me—obviously not me, because I will, of course, respect the law of the land—might be so minded, and would then find himself in the hands of those who supply everything with which they might conceivably tempt people.

It is manifestly stupid to go down the path we are going down. Let us get the evidence; if the Government then come forward with a case that convinces the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and his colleagues, we can then discuss the issue in due course. Please let us not have a ban.

[Mr David Davis]

Supply does seem to me to be a very grey area. I understand that the policy is not intended to victimise current users, but it puts them in a position—dealing with a criminal—in which they might be susceptible to blackmail if they are a public figure. It seems to me that it will criminalise people whom it does not intend to criminalise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

Indeed. I suppose I have advertised the fact that I may be vulnerable to that. I therefore plead with the House to make sure that I do not find myself caught in this particular situation. Given that the issue relates to my personal experience, as well as to my experience as a Justice Minister with responsibility for offenders and offender management, I implore my colleagues at the very least, if they do not want to be seen voting against the Government, not to be associated with putting the Bill on the statute book. It is a real mistake, and it would be sensible to do anything possible to ensure that amendment 5 is accepted, with our looking at and considering the matter again in due course.

[Jim Shannon]

I am not alone in having a constituency that has been blighted by the use of legal highs. I do not like the term “legal highs” because, unfortunately, the very words attract young people to them. I have been concerned about that for a long time.

I commend the Government on introducing very strong legislation for us to consider in the House. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), referred to the Minister as his “favourite” Home Office Minister. When he brings such legislation before the House, the Minister is the favourite of many Members. My constituents will be grateful to him for the proposed changes. I am not at all in favour of liberalising drug use, so it is quite clear where I am coming from. I think the Government have the same stance, which I welcome.

I welcome that stance because, just last year in my constituency, we saw an example of the heartbreak, illness and trauma that results from legal highs. A young man, Adam Owens, a constituent of mine—I know his father and stepmother quite well—was found dead in the town of Newtownards in my constituency of Strangford as a result of his addiction to legal highs. The case shocked not just my constituency, but the whole Province. It left the family devastated, and they told me the very nature of their concerns. Adam’s step-mum Dawn said:

“Legal highs are a major problem around here and something has to be done about it.”

I welcome the fact that the Government are now doing something about it.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) on promoting this Bill and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on her speech. It is the first time that I have heard the arguments put forward around the sanctity of life. Those arguments were notably absent from the letter addressed to us all by the two archbishops. I congratulate her on making those arguments. Although some may believe that suffering is a grace-filled opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ, which is selfishly stolen away by euthanasia, I say please count me out.

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Crispin Blunt]

I ask my hon. Friend to forgive me. We are very tight for time, and he will get the chance to make his own arguments.

To die well is a simple concept and one that would not have shocked Socrates or Seneca. However, an aversion or allergy to a proper, weighty consideration of what a good death is and should look like is a shibboleth of a society that has been shaped by Christian concepts of the sanctity of life.

I came to this House in 1997 as a convinced supporter of the principles behind the Bill and, like many of its supporters, I came to that decision through my own personal experience. I watched my two parents and, in particular, my father-in-law die of cancer. He had conversations with his children, saying that if he ever found himself in that situation he wanted them to take care to trip over the cables so that if he was on a life-support machine it would be switched off. He died without even having the possibility of controlling the time of his own death and I found it truly appalling that his personal autonomy was limited in that way.

The Bill contains all the necessary safeguards to protect people.

[Alberto Costa]

rose—

[Crispin Blunt]

I would take interventions, but I am conscious that many people want to speak.

The arguments about a slippery slope or the vulnerability of people in the letter to us from the two archbishops and the religious leaders simply ignore the fact that this applies only to terminally ill people. Two doctors have to sign off on the fact that the person will be dead within six months and the process is overseen by a High Court judge. On the subject of freedom, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to consider who will be the beneficiaries of this legislation. It is not us in here, who, if we were faced with these circumstances would be capable of taking the decision for ourselves, but it is the people who cannot exercise that ability and need someone else to help them make that decision in the last six months of their life; when they want to exercise the option of ending their life with dignity, at a time of their choosing, having had the opportunity to talk to their family and have all the conversations to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden referred. They will then know when the end of their life will come. The Bill gives people in those circumstances a little bit of control at the end. Perhaps most importantly, it gives everyone the potential to have that little bit of control at the end. In Oregon, hardly anyone—0.3% of people dying—exercises the right. The whole Oregon experience entirely supports that this is a practical, sensible, humane and decent measure. I went there to see it in operation, as I am so interested in this issue.

For nearly everyone, the Bill will provide the comfort of having a degree of control over the end of their life. We must and ought to have a right to choose, despite the concerns about what a valid choice looks like. Those issues are addressed in the Bill. I say in particular to my right hon. and hon. Friends that this is an issue of freedom. The logo of our party for a long time was the torch of freedom, and that is why I am surprised that there is so much opposition to the Bill on the Conservative Benches. I understand the Catholic and faith lobby will have in-principle objections, but I am slightly appalled that they should seek to sustain legislation that limits my personal autonomy when 80% of the population, presented with this proposition, would support it.

In the 21st century, mutual tolerance should have taken us beyond that. We are the party of freedom and choice and surely there could be no greater demonstration of our commitment to those principles than the principle in this Bill. Hiding behind the slippery slope argument will not do. If two doctors and a High Court judge are not enough, what is? My hon. Friends should seek to insert in Committee the safeguards they feel are required, but they should not abandon the guiding principle of our party and oppose the freedom that the Bill enshrines today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of my principal concerns is that far too often the courses that have been offered and the qualifications that have been available to women in prison have not reflected the genuine needs—the circumstances that led them into offending in the first place or the needs that they have when they leave custody. One thing that Dame Sally will be looking at is exactly what needs to change, and there are no options off the table.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

In the days of the coalition I discovered as prisons Minister that the budget for prison education was held in a Department led by our coalition ally. The result was that it became very difficult to achieve the objective of getting the commissioning of education in prisons into the hands of prison governors. Does the Secretary of State now have sufficient control to achieve that objective?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend was an excellent prisons Minister, and he is absolutely right that we need to give the governors greater control. The response that I have received both from the Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Minister for Skills, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has been hugely encouraging. Obviously, we have Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service contracts—the contracts that govern spending in prisons at the moment—which need to be honoured, but I hope that we might be able to move at pace to devolving responsibility to individual governors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

We have already legislated to increase the duty on sentencers to consider compensation from offenders to their victims. We have taken powers to increase the amount that can be attached against benefits in future, so that the sums are actually paid to victims. We are increasing work in prisons so that prisoners can earn resources that can be paid to victims. Will the Minister tell us what progress is being made on delivering compensation from offenders to victims of crime in reality?

[Mike Penning]

I am proud to say that we have just announced that there will be £40 million extra each year on top of the £50 million compensation already paid. A lot of that money comes from the perpetrators of crimes. We hope to get more money from offenders, and we are working to ensure that that happens.