Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

David Burrowes Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, not least because I have been ill over the last couple of weeks. It is good to be back on my feet today, particularly to support new clauses 6 and 7, along with the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois). Full tribute has already been made to him, and I would like to repeat that he is indeed the best of advocates and a champion for his constituents, particularly when it comes to knife crime.

It has been good for me to be able to co-author the new clauses with my hon. Friend, although there is an element of sadness and no great pleasure because these provisions arise from the concern in Enfield about the prevalence of knife crime, which is shared across London and, indeed, the country. Welcome progress has been made under this Government on tackling knife crime in all its forms—its prevention and what happens when cases are taken to the courts. Knife crime as a serious form of youth violence is down by more than 19% in Enfield, but one knife attack is one too many, and it is hardly surprising that we are here again, wanting to ensure that sentencing on knife crime is as tough as it should be.

This issue is shared by many Members across the House—it is not exclusive to Enfield. The Opposition’s support is welcome. The Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary have been vocal and public in their support for the new clause, as have a number of politicians across the field. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been particularly vocal, and has campaigned with us on this issue for a long time.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend refers to being a defence barrister. I am sure he was very distinguished. Reference was made earlier to prison being seen as the soft option, and that community sentences are much tougher. When he was a defence barrister or solicitor representing his clients, how many times did he ask for his clients to be sent to prison because it was considered to be the softer option and he wanted to avoid a community sentence at all costs?

[Mr Burrowes]

I can actually think of occasions when I looked at a magistrate and knew my client was inevitably going to get a custodial sentence, and I had to try to convince him of an alternative. One client would not come out of his cell and spent his time doing headstands. He could take any sentence doing it on his head. There were the odd occasions when one had to be counter-intuitive, particularly with magistrates, but my hon. Friend makes an important point.

The reality that I saw as a defence solicitor—not as a barrister, I have to say—was that all too often there were occasions when prison was avoided. A good plea of mitigation from an advocate—that the young person had the knife for his own protection, or was led up the wrong path by other people and so on—has led to individuals avoiding custodial sentences. Some may say that that should come within the exceptional circumstances category and that there is full discretion for magistrates. The new clause will make it resoundingly clear that there is a minimum mandatory sentence, and that it should only be in exceptional circumstances—coercion and other serious cases that do arise, but which are an exception—that magistrates can quite properly use their discretion. The new clause would ensure that it was very clear to victims, the public and offenders themselves that those who carry knives will go to prison. That has applied for some years to repeat drug offenders, repeat domestic burglars and repeat firearm carriers, and I understand that it is having an effect in relation to firearms offences in particular.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Ought not the court to consider what sentence would make it most likely that the person concerned would never commit any more crimes?

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[Mr Burrowes]

Obviously the court will always be concerned with the issue of reoffending. However, it must balance a great many factors, not least the severity of offences, the need for deterrence, and the need for offenders to be in prison so that they cannot commit further offences, but also the fact that it is important for others, not least the victims, to know that the offence is very serious. As has already been pointed out, people who carry knives are putting not just others but themselves in danger. We need to ensure that minimum mandatory sentences are par for the course, as they are in the case of other serious offending.

It surprises me that the Liberal Democrats oppose the new clause. In 2011, they agreed—unanimously, I believe—with a measure proposing a minimum mandatory sentence for knife crime which involved the same issue of discretion in exceptional circumstances. When it comes to mandatory minimum sentencing, what is the quantitative, indeed qualitative, difference, in terms of principle, between someone carrying a knife in a threatening manner and someone carrying a knife for the second time? The Liberal Democrats like to say that they are standing on a key issue of principle.

[Dr Huppert]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman cannot work out the answer to his own question. There is a substantial difference between carrying a knife and threatening someone with a knife. In the first instance, the knife could be intended for protection; in the second, the person with the knife risks causing harm to someone else. There is a very clear difference, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman cannot see it.

[Mr Burrowes]

It is clear that they are different offences, but my point is that the Deputy Prime Minister thinks that we should have nothing to do with a mandatory minimum sentence, as a matter of principle. I do not understand the difference between the examples given by the hon. Gentleman when it comes to the principle of mandatory sentencing. He said that people might carry knives for their own protection, but the issue is the same whether a person threatens someone else or whether that person is carrying a knife for the second time. In both cases, a mandatory sentence is applied. It would be necessary to go a considerable way to show exceptional circumstances to avoid a prison sentence.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am puzzling over this as well. The Deputy Prime Minister said this in his article in The Guardian, which is in front of me:

“While minimum sentencing might sound attractive in media headlines there is a serious risk it could undermine the role of the judges, who are best placed to decide on sentencing.”

I cannot see how that differentiates between different offences, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman can.

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman may have put his finger on it. Perhaps the issue is the media, and the difference between the headlines of 2011 and those of 2014. Perhaps a differentiation strategy is now more important than an anti-crime strategy. Perhaps a political party is now more concerned about their own interests than about the interests of victims and the public.

Others wish to speak, so I shall not continue for too long, but the fact is that this is not something that has been cooked up on the back of a media issue to make a point. It follows a long campaign, on which I have fought hard with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North for a number of years. Last year, Joshua Folkes was killed in an awful knife attack in Bowes road in my constituency. The circumstances are still not clear, despite a judicial determination. We do not know what happened, but we do know that knives were present, and that they caused a young person to die. That was unacceptable then, and we must be intolerant of such cases now.

Last year I asked the Prime Minister whether we could please be intolerant towards knife crime, and we have the answer to that today. Yes, we will be intolerant, following a long campaign that has been fought by many. The Mayor joined us in that campaign: in February he organised a meeting bringing together representatives of the Metropolitan police and others, and on 23 April he wrote to the Home Secretary calling for a measure such as this. We certainly have not come to this recently, therefore; we have been there for many years and, on behalf of the victims—the tragic cases of those, like Godwin, who have lost their lives—we must do more. We cannot rest when more people are losing their lives—being cut down in their prime—unnecessarily.

We must do it also because we, certainly on the Conservative Benches, want to stick to our promises. We made a manifesto commitment to ensure there is an expectation that people go to prison for carrying a knife, and we want to continue to honour that, which is what we are doing today. That is why I call on all Members of the House to support new clauses 6 and 7.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I welcome new clauses 45 and 46 that would hold care home providers to account. Police Operation Jasmine was an £11.6 million seven-year investigation into care homes in the south Wales region. It uncovered shocking instances of neglect. Care home residents were not receiving the care and protection they deserved. One director’s inability to stand trial due to ill health saw a case with more than 10,000 pieces of evidence, and more than 100 families calling for justice, collapse. That remains a travesty to this day.

These new clauses will make wilful neglect an offence. They will make prosecutions more likely in the future. Older people in care homes and their families place their trust in care home staff and providers alike. Both should be held equally responsible when that trust is abused. With the support of Age UK, I tabled amendments to the recent Care Bill for one simple reason: so that victims and their families can get the justice they deserve.

Operation Jasmine went on far too long and cost too much money, but still failed to achieve justice. This change in the law will help right that wrong. I tabled an amendment to the Care Bill which would have made corporate neglect an offence. At that point, the Minister acknowledged the importance of this issue, but the Government did not support my amendment when it was put to a vote on Report. Even so, I am pleased that Ministers are now moving this much-needed change in the law to address a problem that refuses to go away.

The Welsh Government, backed by the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, have now begun their independent review into Operation Jasmine. I am thankful that the 100 families involved have a real chance at last to understand what went wrong.

I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) for her support throughout this campaign. It has taken longer than it should, but we got there in the end.

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[Dr Huppert]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s efforts to bridge everything fascinating: he is in favour of mandatory sentencing as long as there is discretion for the police and the judges—and everybody else. He is thoroughly confused. The judge already has the power to sentence somebody for up to four years. Under this proposal, they will also have that power, so I do not understand what the hon. Gentleman’s point is. There are many such cases.

The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) said that the cases in which there are exceptional circumstances are incredibly rare, but a huge range of cases will arise. They cannot be both incredibly rare and very common.

The main argument for the new clause seems to be that it sends out a message. It is not about changing what the judge can actually do; it is about sending out a message. As was said earlier, sending a message through legislation always seems like a pretty poor argument. I would be interested to hear whether there is evidence to suggest that people will listen to what such a message contains. We must understand why people carry knives: the Home Office has done a substantial amount of work on that over the years, and the main reason it found was that people feel they need protection. A Home Office study found that 85% of young people who reported carrying a knife did so for protection and only a tiny fraction did so to threaten or injure somebody.

People should not carry a knife for protection. It is not a sensible thing to do, but we should consider why they do it. We know that knife possession is particularly high among people who have been victims of crime, especially young males. Once they have been victims of crime, they are far more likely to carry a knife afterwards. That tells us something about the motivation, why they are carrying knives and how we can best persuade them not to do so. If somebody is literally terrified that they may be attacked—this is all too common—and they already know that they could get up to four years in jail for carrying a knife, will the new clause send a strong enough message? Are there better things that we could do to address the issue?

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is important to look at existing legislation rather than to over-legislate. It is important to use the right examples: if someone is in terror that they are about to be attacked, the existing common law covers duress and coercion, which could then be a defence. A defence is one thing, but mitigation is another. It does not in any way go against the need to ensure that legislation is tough and includes a mandatory sentence.

[Dr Huppert]

I confess that I am not a lawyer, but I think that it would be hard to make a defence—those who are lawyers may correct me—of generally being scared of being attacked over a long time period, given that people are not carrying a knife because they expect to be attacked on a particular occasion and in a particular place. That is the problem. These people are scared. They are carrying a knife because of the risk that somebody will attack them, not because they ever intend to use it or hope to use it. I recognise that the defence would apply if someone grabbed a knife to defend themselves from an attack, but it would not apply in this case.

The Home Affairs Committee carried out a detailed report into this subject. Incidentally, its findings were unanimous. Earlier, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said from a sedentary position that the Committee had a left-wing majority. It was a unanimous report, and I am not sure whether we are seeing a clear majority on the left at the moment. The Committee concluded that

“evidence suggests that the prospect of a custodial sentence may not deter young people from carrying knives. Many young people do not think about the consequences of their actions, and for a small minority who feel at risk of violence, the prospect of jail seems preferable to the dangers of being caught without a weapon for protection.”

It is that issue that we need to think further about. None of us is happy that that is the way things are, and that people are concerned to that extent, but that is the situation that we face.

The Select Committee took lots of evidence from young people who have been involved in knife crime. They said:

“It does not go through your mind at all about prison or whatever; it does not exist.”

There is lots of evidence to show that sentencing does not have that much effect. The 2001 Halliday report on sentencing found no evidence to suggest that there was a link between differences in sentence severity and deterrence effects. It concluded that

“it is the prospect of getting caught that has deterrence value”

rather than the nature of the sentence itself.

The Centre for Social Justice said:

“An increase in the number of people imprisoned for knife possession does not warrant celebration, particularly when we know that the majority of young people carry knives out of fear and…custody exposes young people to more hardened criminals.”

That is another problem that was briefly touched on earlier. When young people have been led astray, and find themselves involved in gangs and knife crime, there are a number of paths that they can take. If they manage to avoid death or injury—unfortunately that is not the case for all of them—they might clean up their act, or they might settle into a life of repeated criminality. We all hope that they will sort themselves out, but we know that prison sentences push people into repeat offending. Prison has its place, and there are strenuous efforts now to try to improve rehabilitation, but we still see high reoffending levels. We should be wary of increasing the damaging effect that prison has on people’s futures.

We should also be looking for unintended consequences on people’s behaviour—if they are listening to the message being sent out. People in gangs who have been charged once with possessing a knife will simply react—if they pay any attention at all, and that will depend on the quality of policing—by making another more junior, more vulnerable gang member carry a knife for them. That will seem like a sensible and rational response, if they are listening to the message that is being sent out. Under-16s will be put under intense pressure to do that for the obvious reason that they would not be caught by the new clause. That would put under-16s at greater risk by leading them further into gang behaviour. If the new clause is added to the Bill, I expect one of the unintended consequences to be an increase in those aged 15 and under carrying knives.

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[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point that I had not thought to add. He is absolutely right, and I hope that he will support us on the matter.

[Mr Burrowes]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that although the focus of new clauses 6 and 7 is on knives and bladed articles, they cover offensive weapons. Any weapon, whatever it might be, that is determined to be offensive—whether per se, because it is carried with intent or because of its use—would be covered by new clauses 6 and 7.