Prisoners: Ex-Servicemen

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Ministerial Corrections

[Mr Llwyd]

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will conduct a study involving (a) all prisons or (b) more than one prison to ascertain how many former military personnel are in the prison system.

[Official Report, 15 September 2011, Vol. 532, c. 1339W.]

Letter of correction from Crispin Blunt:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) on 15 September 2011.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Blunt]

In September 2010, MOJ and Defence Analytical Services Advice (DASA) published the results of joint work to determine the number of regular ex-service personnel in prison in England and Wales. The report provided a figure of 2,280 ex-service personnel that were serving a sentence in prison in England and Wales.

This remains the most comprehensive and reliable piece of research on this matter to date and we have no current plans to repeat the exercise as there is no evidence to suggest that the proportion of veterans within the prison population has changed significantly.

The correct answer should have been:

Debate on the Address

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Llwyd]

I am always in favour, where possible, of putting the powers in the Bill, because many things happen by way of secondary legislation that slip through on the nod, and suddenly we have unintended consequences and law that is not as workable or useful as we might have thought. I agree, therefore, with the hon. Gentleman.

I have heard it said that there will be a power to name and shame. That is one thing that supermarkets, for example, would be concerned about, but equally there must be a power to impose substantial financial penalties. Small financial penalties will not do the office justice; they must be substantial if they are to mean anything at all.

I referred to the dairy industry. The problems are not unique to Wales—they are across the board—but since 1999 the number of Welsh dairy farmers has halved. This week’s tuppence cut by Dairy Crest has wreaked havoc on many people in north, mid and south Wales. It is said that a cut of between 3p and 4p, for example, means a loss of £65 million to the Welsh dairy sector. I would like the EU dairy package on contracts introduced on a compulsory rather than a voluntary basis, and I hope that DEFRA Ministers will hold a full and frank discussion with devolved Ministers on that basis.

This issue does not only concern dairy farmers, however; suppliers in general are being hammered by the unfair contract terms and pressures being applied. I remember seeing several Ministers about this matter, including Lord Bach, who said, candidly, “I need six or seven names and examples of pressure being applied”, but dairy farmers, concerned about being victimised and losing their contracts, were not prepared to put their heads above the parapet. As one said to me, “Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all.” So, there we are. I understand that there will now be a right to complain anonymously.

I will give the House the example of a farmer in the constituency whom I have the privilege to represent who bottles water—the purest water in Wales, apparently. On occasion, I have even drunk it.

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

When desperate.

[Mr Llwyd]

Well, with something else. [Interruption.]

The farmer came to an agreement with one of the large supermarkets. Believe it or not, it came out like this: the supplier was allowed 1.5p profit per litre of water, but the water was sold by the supermarket for more than 80p. He declined to do it. That 1.5p included travelling from mid-Wales across to Shropshire to deliver the water every day. It simply was not worth his while, yet apparently those terms are typical. We need to get to grips with these issues, otherwise all our home producers —of good vegetables, apples and so on—will say, “Well, it’s not worth it. We’re packing up.” That is the last thing we want.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I shall certainly be following Mr Speaker’s direction, and I hope that we will dispose of this matter in as short an order as we disposed of removing the limit on magistrates’ fines.

The question of how far one can go to defend oneself crops up again and again in the letters Members of Parliament receive from their constituents, and of course it is always a controversial issue in the press and the media. It usually arises because a hard-working, law-abiding home owner or shopkeeper has been forced to defend themselves against an intruder and has ended up being arrested for it. Being confronted by an assailant in one’s home, on the street or anywhere else can be a terrifying prospect. It is essential that the law in this area is clear, so that people who use reasonable force to defend themselves or to protect their properties can be confident that the law is on their side.

There will always be occasions when the police need to make an arrest to enable a prompt and effective investigation, especially if they turn up at an address and somebody is dead. We are working with the Home Office on new guidance for the police to ensure that arrests are made only where necessary, but these provisions should give people greater certainty that the law itself is on their side and they will not be prosecuted or convicted if they have only used reasonable force.

[Mr Llwyd]

Will the Minister advise the House how the provisions change the common law doctrine and principle of a person being able to protect his or her property using force and the doctrine of self-defence, where reasonable force is used to defend oneself? I asked the Lord Chancellor that yesterday and he told me to wait until today for the answer—I am all ears.

[Mr Blunt]

The right hon. Gentleman should listen out for the next passage of my remarks, as I hope it will give him and the rest of the House satisfaction.

On the specific provisions, the new clause is not designed to sweep away the fundamental premise that somebody can use reasonable force in self-defence. In my view, that aspect of the law is entirely sensible. Allowing somebody to use unreasonable or disproportionate force would be very dangerous indeed, as it would effectively sanction vigilantism or violent retribution. Instead our proposals are designed to clarify what “reasonable” force means in practice. The new clause will amend section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 to make it clear that a person can use reasonable force to defend property in addition to defending themselves, other people or preventing crime, and that they are under no duty to retreat from an offender when acting for a legitimate purpose, although if they had a chance to retreat, the court may still consider it when deciding whether the force used was reasonable in the circumstances. We did not consult on these measures because of the limited nature of the amendments, but that should not detract from their importance in reassuring householders and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves and their properties that the law is on their side.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

I cannot comment on that individual case—[Interruption.] The shadow Justice Secretary tempts me down that road, but I will resist. The much clearer message that will be sent if the House chooses to accept the Government’s proposals will mean that the position should be crystal clear to householders and shopkeepers on the force that they are entitled to use. That is the purpose of these provisions. We are seeking to reassure the public, and this all sits as part of our desire to have a society that can exercise its rights and properly defend those rights, and that does not feel that people have to pass by on the other side, particularly when their lives and property are at risk.

[Mr Llwyd]

May I suggest to the Minister that legislating is not all about giving out signals and that it is about making law? I have no axe to grind personally with the Minister, who is a perfectly decent man and who engaged with us in Committee on many matters, above and beyond his brief. However, he may have wished to circulate a photocopy of the Crown Prosecution Service guidance on self-defence and the prevention of crime. Any fool can read and understand it, as it says simply, under the heading of “Reasonable Force”:

“A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances for the purposes of: self-defence; or defence of another; or defence of property”.

It goes on to describe a further two matters. Providing a copy of that would have done, rather than using legislative time.

[Mr Blunt]

I am very grateful—[Interruption.] I am not embarrassed in the least. This measure forms part of the coalition agreement. We are delivering on that, sending a clear message and putting the law beyond doubt. Having things buried away in guidance to prosecutors, given that reassurance is needed for home owners and shopkeepers, is a distinctly sub-optimal way of proceeding on an issue such as this. When viewed in conjunction with the Home Secretary’s plans to strengthen the code of arrest for the police, we hope that these measures will help to fulfil the commitments in the coalition agreement on this issue. We must take together the instructions to Crown prosecutors, the legislation that I hope will go on to the statute book as a result of these Government measures and that code of arrest for the police, and I can therefore happily commend these proposals to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Llwyd]

I hear what the hon. and learned Gentleman says, and I suppose that that is right, but I come back to my earlier point that the whole process is otiose. I understand what he is saying, and he has logic on his side. We talk about logic, but parliamentary time is short. Yesterday we had to leave out consideration of a raft of important matters relating to social welfare and social justice. None of them was discussed. Yet we have time this evening to talk about something that is unnecessary. So although I respectfully disagree with the hon. and learned Gentleman, he has logic on his side. However, the new clause is not the right vehicle for clarification of the law.

Quite why the measure is being introduced now is rather baffling. I can only presume that it is to please the tabloids and that this Government, like the last, want to convince voters that they are not soft on crime. Those on the right of the Justice Secretary’s party have made clear their aspirations to amend the law on reasonable force for some time now. As far back as 2009, the then shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), said that any future Conservative Government would push for prosecutions, and convictions, only where courts judged that the action taken had been “grossly disproportionate”. That would have stood the law on its head. A huge amount of jurisprudence would have emanated from that decision. No doubt the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) and I would have profited from it, but it would have been a bad step in my view. The Conservative party wound back somewhat after that was said.

I am glad that such an extraordinary change to the law has not occurred, at least not yet. As Michael Wolkind QC, who represented Tony Martin, who was found guilty of murder and wounding with intent under the existing law, has said, allowing householders to use force that is not “grossly disproportionate” would amount to “state-sponsored revenge”.

Indeed, an outsider looking in might be forgiven for suspecting that hundreds of people were being prosecuted every year under the current law. But an informal trawl by the CPS suggested that between 1990 and 2005 there were only 11 prosecutions of people who had used force against intruders in houses, commercial premises or private land. So that is what we are dealing with and it leads one to question why we are talking about it tonight.

As the chair of the Bar Council Paul Mendelle QC said—it has been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), but it will stand repetition—

“The law should always encourage people to be reasonable, not unreasonable; to be proportionate, not disproportionate.”

Paul Mendelle also commented in the same article written in The Times that the present law worked well and was well understood by juries. Again, I ask why we are doing this.

Changes to the law should not be brought about to produce good sound bites. The common law of self-defence already makes it perfectly clear that a householder is able to use reasonable force against an intruder in defence of himself or herself or his or her property. Amending the existing law for no gain in matters of substance will serve only to increase vigilantism and is not a good use of parliamentary time. It could lead to people using excessive force because they think they might be above the law—“An Englishman’s home is his castle” and all that kind of thing. I do not know. It might give out all the wrong signs, not the signs that Ministers on the Treasury Bench hope and suspect they are giving out.

I believe that the new clause has more to do with internal party politics than with policy. We are using valuable parliamentary time to play this out. The amendment is otiose and serves only to play to the drum beat of the tabloid press. I have a lot of time for the Justice Secretary, who is a man of great integrity, but I fear that in introducing the new clause he is dancing to the tune of the tabloids.

[Mr Blunt]

I will turn to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) towards the end of my speech, but first let me say how grateful I am to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) for his kind personal remarks. I was marginally upset that I did not leap the amorous threshold that my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary did, but I am grateful for the limited extent of his affection compared to that for my right hon. and learned Friend.

I was amazed at the chutzpah of the right hon. Member for Tooting in lecturing the Government about a public relations stunt and spin. It took me a moment to pick my jaw back up off the Bench as I listened to him. There is a clear answer to the right hon. Gentleman. He properly stood up for the legal system as it now sits. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) said, it is an inconsistent message if we have changed section 76 of the Criminal Justice Act but have not applied it to property, so let us make the position absolutely clear to everyone that not only in the code for crown prosecutors and in the common law but in statute law, as passed by the House, property is included. That is a clear reason for making this change.

The right hon. Gentleman said that presumably the change was for an audience outside the Chamber. Yes, it is. It is all very well for sophisticates such as us, who understand the word “otiose”—used by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd)—but the issue goes right to people’s hearts. They feel that they are entitled to defend their home or their shop, and we owe it to them to make it crystal clear that we absolutely support them in defending themselves, their families and their property. The proposals make that absolutely clear. We need to understand that when something is so central to how everybody feels about their home, shop or place of business we must send a clear signal from this place about whose side we are on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the competition for community pay-back. The first competition will be for the London area, where the boundaries overlap precisely with those of the London probation trust. That will give those probation trusts that need to get together to make a collective public sector bid involving a number of trusts the time and opportunity to put an effective bid together.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Is the Minister aware of the evidence that was given to the Select Committee on Justice about the whole issue of competition and/or commissioning providers and so on? Those points have been very well made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Minister aware that if there is a conflict of interest then, prima facie, the whole system will be unlawful? Does he realise how important it is to separate those functions, because the probation trusts do not have a clue where they are going?

[Mr Blunt]

This is an area of change for probation trusts, and the competition for community pay-back, which we inherited from the previous Administration, is an exemplar of that. I look forward to the opportunity to review all the evidence that has been given to the Justice Committee and I shall come to a view on the basis of the evidence that has been received. I will give my own evidence and take questions in due course in the Committee, presumably at greater length than is allowed here.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Minister will know that it is a basic human right for people to be incarcerated as near as possible to where they reside. When will the Government comply with that basic requirement by providing a prison facility for north Wales, especially as we understand that Shrewsbury prison is to be closed? Such a prison would serve the whole of mid-Wales as well as north Wales, and, as the Minister knows, its establishment is long overdue.

[Mr Blunt]

I am not sure that I recognise that as a basic human right, but it is certainly operationally sensible. Providing support for prisoners when they are incarcerated away from their families is an important part of assisting their rehabilitation into society. However, speculation about which prisons might or might not close in future is not appropriate at this stage. We will conduct a review of prison capacity in the light of the Green Paper and the responses to it, and only at that stage—

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Elfyn Llwyd

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Llwyd]

According to a Ministry of Justice letter leaked last Friday, 14,000 MOJ jobs will be lost, 11,000 of them from the front line. If we are to believe the letter, 60% of those reductions must be made within the next two years. The cost of the redundancy drive will reportedly reach £230 million. Although 85% of that reduction is estimated to be voluntary, it will no doubt be as voluntary as walking the plank.

Meanwhile, 50% of the redundancies are expected to be achieved through natural wastage. Where exactly do we expect those workers to go? The National Offender Management Service will lose 9,940 jobs: 760 from its headquarters and the rest, presumably, from the prison and probation services. Delivery of restorative justice seems like pie in the sky when we consider the bleak road ahead. By March 2014, the justice budget will be cut by 23%, which seems to undermine once again the opportunity for justice reinvestment.

We hear that in the face of those cuts, the Ministry of Justice also wants to cut prison places. The Ministry’s aim is to reduce receptions into custody by 18,000 a year by 2014—indeed, the package of cuts is predicated on a reduction in the number of prisoners—but how can that be achieved? I am afraid that it is more likely that the cuts will lead to an increase in the number of prisoners, especially when slashes in staff numbers are combined with cuts to courts, prosecutors and clerks. The same number of prisoners will be held on remand, but probably for longer.

The premise of the cuts is therefore flawed, and the cuts may well undermine the worthy and proper notion of justice reinvestment. Equally, there are logistical problems with the time scale, as the cuts are expected to come into play by 2014. I spoke yesterday to Mr Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers; I see a wry smile on the Minister’s face. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice expects that the new infrastructure will be put in place by 2014, but NAPO’s opinion is that it will take at least five years to be anywhere near ready. However, that is a matter of debate. The time scale for the cuts is not practicable and risks undermining and damaging our justice system.

We also hear that a large proportion of rehabilitation work will be outsourced to voluntary and private organisations on the basis of payment by results. Where exactly are those volunteers meant to come from? Magistrates courts committees have complained that court orders cannot be made out to private companies. I think that that is true. What would happen in the event of conflicts of interest? On Tuesday, I met Mr John Thornhill and other representatives of the Magistrates Association. If short-term prison sentences are to be avoided, they are concerned that personnel will not be found to oversee defendants.

Although I agree that the Lord Chancellor is right to attempt to avoid the overuse of short prison sentences, that cannot be done without a substantial direct investment in the probation service. When I first qualified as a lawyer in the early 1970s, the local town of Dolgellau had three probation officers. We now have one for half the county. Need I say more? Furthermore, as I said to the Lord Chancellor in a recent sitting of the Justice Committee, the private concerns that receive payment by results will inevitably be profit-driven. They will not want the awkward recidivist cases, that is for sure. That is where I believe probation officers’ skills should come into play.

I understand that many departmental settlements were finalised only a few hours before the announcement of the spending review yesterday. How can we discuss justice reinvestment properly, even in theory, when community reinvestment is being cut? We are expected to set up a private system that we do not agree with, which will take years, while cutting back on probation staff. I am afraid that those drastic cuts have not been properly thought through. As was said earlier, this might be an opportunity missed.

In its report, the Justice Committee presented the case for various essential reforms, which now seem further away than ever. The report tasked the Government with committing to a significant reduction in the prison population by 2015. That is the reduction on which the cuts are predicated, yet ironically, the cuts render such a reduction less practicable. Following on from the Corston report in 2007, the Committee report also tasked the Government with implementing Baroness Corston’s recommendations on reducing the number of female prisoners. A reduction in the number of prisoners whose crimes were driven by mental illness is also overdue. The CSR mentioned those goals, notably in pledging to introduce proposals to invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts in order to intervene at an early stage and divert those suffering from a mental illness into treatment. That is welcome, but will the Minister expand on it? Will related pledges to target the causes of female incarceration be honoured?

The Committee report warned that spending more on rehabilitation will not work while the prison estate is overcrowded. How timely that warning now seems. We cannot expect the criminal justice system simply to work out its problems by itself. Time and investment are needed to reform how the sector functions. As I have said, we cannot merely expect the number of prisoners to decrease as if by magic while cutting staff numbers across the piece.

The report noted that a coherent strategy must be developed by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to target the allocation of resources and reduce crime. I agree, of course. Targeting the causes of crime is essential to reducing the number of people in prison. We must build on and improve the community sentencing structures already in place and seek the advice of probation staff who know the area thoroughly and professionally.

For too long, probation officers have been undermined and marginalised in the NOMS set-up. Instead of making cuts and outsourcing to voluntary organisations, we should focus on improving the probation service that we know and respect by reducing the paperwork that probation officers must do and increasing the time that they spend with offenders. Currently, probation officers spend an average of eight minutes a week speaking to people under their orders. That is ridiculous. What can be done in eight minutes a week? I have no idea.

I have a suggestion. It might be radical, but I have seen it in practice. A few weeks ago, I went to Buffalo, New York, which has a veterans court. Veterans who have offended are referred to the court and come under the watchful eye of Judge Russell. Typically, they have committed high-grade misdemeanours or low-grade felonies and are facing perhaps 18 months in prison. They are given the opportunity to attend the veterans court. If they take it, they are assigned a probation officer and, crucially, an ex-service mentor. For 18 months or less—it is sometimes 15 months or in very rare cases 12 months—they are expected to go to court every three weeks to explain how they are getting on. They are drug tested every fortnight and if they are clean and sober—to use the words they use in the States—at the completion of the course, they graduate. They are given a glowing character reference and any reference to the offences is scrapped. If they are not already in work, they are given work, and they are treated with respect for how they have handled themselves during those months.

I was absolutely struck by the whole thing. I went to the States thinking, as a lawyer, that everyone should be equal before the law and questioning why veterans should have a different course of action—although I have been campaigning for them and will continue to do so for those veterans who unfortunately are in prison, often for reasons beyond their control. The scheme is predicated on having a volunteer mentor who is an ex-serviceperson and a probation officer—or the American version of that—who can put in the necessary time to deal with the offender.

I have just mentioned the result of that scheme to hon. Members. May I tell them what the reoffending rate is? Courts at the federal level are looking at that district court because of its success. For the past three years, the reoffending rate has been 0%. If that is not something to consider, I do not know what is. I submit that the scheme could be adapted to what we are talking about today. It does not have to be a veterans court; it could be any other form of court. The scheme is labour intensive, but if we weigh up the savings to society, the taxpayer and everyone—and indeed to the individual who has his or her life turned around and is back in the mainstream—it is remarkable and worthy of study.

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

Is the hon. Gentleman familiar with the work of Alan Lilly of the Cheshire probation service? I saw him last week in Cheshire—he is a friend of mine and we served together—as I am interested in the work he is doing there on a veterans scheme. I am particularly interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the American experience. We will try to draw those two experiences together.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am grateful to the Minister for that very positive response. I shall send him a booklet—if one exists—about the scheme. I know Mr Lilly; I serve on a committee with him. Indeed, under the auspices of the Howard League for Penal Reform, I went to the States as a member of a panel and am due to report to the Government. I am happy to send the evidence to the Minister, because it is remarkable and worthy of thorough investigation.

[Mr Blunt]

I would be grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s reflections as a lawyer on treating people differently in the criminal justice system. If he has any suggestions about how one might address that issue, I would be grateful to hear them.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I said, I went to the States with a preconception that I would not approve of the veterans court. However, other courts refer to that court as a means of disposal. Other courts deal with ex-service people who have committed such offences, and if they think that the person concerned would benefit from Judge Russell’s assistance, they are referred for disposal to the veterans court. In effect, it is not a twin-track system for any class of society, but it is a different disposal. The scheme is well worthy of examination.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

I can well understand, given the quality of the inheritance that we received, why the right hon. Gentleman would be anxious for me to pursue that line.

Let me comment on some of the other contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made the point that we can be either smart or stupid about our attitude to crime. He spoke about the need for confidence in community sentences, to which I want to return.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) was kind enough to take interventions from me in relation to his experience of a veterans court in the United States. I re-emphasise that I shall want to consider the evidence that he provides to me in that area. I just caution him to be slightly careful, in terms of commenting on leaks, numbers of job losses and everything else, about taking the opinion of some trade unions in this area too directly. Their record of accuracy is not highly precise. The National Association of Probation Officers over-estimated the number of veterans in the justice system by about a factor of three.

[Mr Llwyd]

No.

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Mr Llwyd]

With respect, I can answer that straight away. NAPO estimated that about 8,500 service veterans—9%—were in prison. The Government scoping exercise excluded those under 21, reservists, of whom there are many in Afghanistan as we speak, women and those who served in Northern Ireland. If we process them back in, the figure is 9%.

[Mr Blunt]

I fear not. A very careful study by the Defence Analytical Services Agency assessed the number at 3.5%, but let us not be diverted by that. I was making a wider point about the reliability of the people whom the hon. Gentleman was adducing in evidence. I think that as the position becomes clear with regard to the consequences of the spending review, the probation service will realise that the Lord Chancellor has batted for it in a particularly effective way. If we are to address issues and change the balance in relation to short sentences—we do not expect any savings in terms of the prison system if there are changes in patterns and fewer people being given short sentences—the first thing to say is that we will not end the capacity of the magistracy and the judiciary to use short prison sentences if they feel that that is necessary, but we would obviously hope that their use would be reduced. That means either community sentences or longer sentences. Those are the two alternatives that arise from it, so it would be unwise to assume any reduction in the overall number of prison places required, as a result of a change in policy in that area, because some of the changes will involve people going to prison for longer so that they can be effectively rehabilitated within the safety of custody.

The other point that I want to make to the hon. Gentleman is that the public sector is not the only source of money. I commend to him the social investment model that has begun at Peterborough; it is a model that we will wish to widen. If we can get external investors to invest, so that savings can be made—that is much at the centre of the principle of the justice reinvestment report—it frankly does not matter where that extra capacity comes from.

In the end, this is not about just money; there is an enormous capacity in the community. In the voluntary sector, the charitable community and the private sector there are people who want to give their services, in whatever form, to the Ministry of Justice and to the state, to help us with the task of rehabilitating offenders. At the moment, our system is not very good at making it easy for those people to give their services, or to sell them to us, on a not-for-profit or indeed a for-profit basis, to grow this country’s capacity to deliver rehabilitation. The responsibility that sits on me now, in terms of designing the policies—on rehabilitation in particular—that we will present in the Green Paper, is to create a system that will make it that much easier for us to draw on the capacity that is sitting out there in the country; to ensure that in co-ordination with the existing state services, in probation and elsewhere, we can deliver a much more effective rehabilitation package than we do today. This is not about replacing those services but about adding to them.

The other half of that process is to ensure that all the existing state services, particularly those delivered at a local level, are co-ordinated that much more effectively, to deliver the interventions that are needed to address the multifaceted problems that normally afflict most people who are on a cycle of reoffending and who need particular help to break free from that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) referred to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and to the very good report that he oversaw as chairman of the Commission for Social Justice. Early intervention is not about just the criminal justice system but about what I have described as the entire life cycle of the offender and the potential offender, and that is why I have a place on the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend, precisely to start making interventions earlier and earlier in the process. It is about trying to keep children out of care. It is about looking at the whole business of family intervention programmes for when the indicators start arriving, such as when children are excluded from school and are sent to pupil referral units. Good work was done by the previous Administration, and I happily acknowledge that, but we have to encourage a culture in which we invest early to prevent problems later. At the same time, we are of course left with the responsibility of dealing with the problems that we have now, which is why it is essential to create extra capacity, in whatever form we can.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who I think will make a welcome contribution to the work of the Justice Committee, acknowledged that the previous Administration were perhaps not as tough on the causes of crime as they might have been. When the then Leader of the Opposition coined the slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,” that slogan was empty, as is now clear in his own diaries and in his account. The policies to deliver on that had not been developed when the slogan was coined in 1994, and that is one of the dangers of dealing in rhetoric without there being the reality underlying it and—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is chuntering. The policies began to be developed from that point on, but at that point they did not exist. One has to be careful about the catchphrase that sounds great but does not have the policies—