Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

David Evennett Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Of course, and that is why I have stressed some of the measures that we are introducing today to try to send the right messages about serious violent and sexual crime and about knife crime. No sensible or civilised person in this country suggests anything other than serious punishment for crimes of that kind.

It is very difficult to win public confidence, because in the course of an ordinary life most people’s contact with the criminal justice system is very sporadic indeed, so most people do not know anything about indeterminate sentences, discounts for early guilty pleas or any of the things that we talk about here. I have a rather sad feeling that for as long as I can remember opinion polls have always said that people think sentences are too short and the criminal justice system is too lax, but, on sensible public opinion, we are their servants and we are trying to reassure them that the criminal justice system will, indeed, protect them, as it should do.

[Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that time in prison should be time well spent and, therefore, that education and training, rather than just leaving prisoners to languish in their cells, is absolutely essential?

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who has expertise in that subject, and I am working very closely with my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department for Work and Pensions. What they are doing to improve the training and work opportunities of people in this country has to include ex-offenders, and we have to ensure that in parallel we do more to get our ex-offenders settled in work wherever the ex-offender is prepared to make the effort to get into honest employment.