Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Debate between David Gauke and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding transparency. I am pleased that there is cross-party consensus on the need for increased transparency of Parole Board decisions. That should not undermine Parole Board independence, which is important. I hope to move swiftly to change systems in order to ensure that the reasons that the Parole Board has reached a decision become available to the victims. I hope that that will be in place shortly.

The hon. Gentleman touched on the licence conditions. In a way, this is not necessarily as much of an issue as it was. It had been determined that Worboys would be electronically tagged and excluded from London. That may or may not be an issue in the future, depending on future Parole Board decisions.

On the dossier that was provided by the National Probation Service—and, therefore, my Department—for the hearing that occurred on 8 November last year, it is the case that there may well have been information that should have been included in the dossier and that was not provided, but it is worth pointing out that it is the responsibility of the Parole Board to satisfy itself that an offender is no longer a risk to the public. The judgment of Sir Brian Leveson was that the Parole Board failed to probe that evidence sufficiently, as it should have done. I reiterate that the National Probation Service opposed the release of John Worboys.

I made no secret of the fact that I was considering whether to take a judicial review, and I set out in my earlier remarks the reasons why I did not bring that forward. The reality was that the victims were in a better position than me to bring a successful case. It is important that we ensure that when the Parole Board reaches a conclusion that meets certain criteria, there is an ability for it to look again and examine whether the relevant panel has performed its duties as it should have done. Sadly, that is not what happened in this particular case, and that is the issue that we need to fix for the future.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I welcome Sir Brian Leveson’s judgment. The victims have obviously got the justice that they were seeking. Does my right hon. Friend accept that it would have been absolutely scandalous if he, as Justice Secretary, had ignored the legal advice that he got, which sounds to have been perfectly sensible on the basis of facts available to him? It would be a very bad day if Ministers started intervening in criminal sentencing cases in response to campaigning, and did not judge them objectively according to the rule of law and the public interest.

While implementing these extremely welcome proposals, which are obviously needed in the light of all this, would my right hon. Friend make sure that the Parole Board and its panels are not undermined when they carry out properly their extremely difficult task? The Parole Board is often asked almost impossible questions, and we cannot have people making any judgments except on the basis of the best judgment that they can make in the public interest. Criminal sentencing must never be simply a question of campaigning and responding to popular pressure.

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who is also a distinguished predecessor in my post. He is absolutely right on both counts. In terms of whether I took action or not, I thought that it was very important to test the legal arguments. As I made clear on 19 January, I was not going to stand in the way of others and, indeed, others may have been better placed to bring that case. I looked carefully at the advice I had received and based my actions on that advice.

My right hon. and learned Friend’s second point is also important. There were failures in what the Parole Board did, including not probing sufficiently and not being sufficiently inquisitive. We must, however, accept that the Parole Board makes thousands of decisions every year that often involve difficult judgments, and it is not always necessarily going to get it right, but it is not the role of politicians to interfere and second-guess those decisions. We do, though, have a role in ensuring that we have a system in place with clear guidance, clear training and the right people. We clearly need to do some work on that, and I have set out some proposals today.

Budget Changes

Debate between David Gauke and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The richest 1% are paying a greater proportion of income tax revenue than in any single year of the Labour Government. This is the Government that introduced the national living wage, the Government that increased the personal allowance—in a year’s time, a typical basic rate taxpayer will pay over £1,000 less in tax than they paid in 2010—and the Government that are helping to generate record numbers of jobs, helping young people get on the property ladder, increasing spending on health and education, and disability benefits too, and protecting pensions and helping people achieve their aspirations at every stage of their lives. Delivering for Britain, creating economic security, jobs and growth—that is the record of this Government and the record of this Chancellor, and it is a record to be proud of.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary agree that the first duty of a Chancellor and his Treasury team when preparing a Budget is to have regard to the medium-term national interest and to provide sound finances for the benefit of our businesses, our investments and our employment? If we now have a situation in which Chancellors are expected to produce, on every occasion, popular spending commitments and popular tax cuts, while there is a failure to control out-of-control budgets, we will have the sort of economic performance achieved by the recent Governments of Greece, Italy or the United Kingdom under Gordon Brown.

[Mr Gauke]

I entirely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that it is the long-term approach that he took as Chancellor of the Exchequer that we are now taking forward so that we can secure prosperity and economic security for the British people.