Restorative Justice

David Hanson Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I am grateful for the opportunity to follow my friend—in this context—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who as Chair of the Justice Committee has ably steered our report and brought our conclusions to the House. He covered a number of the report’s points and I do not wish to go over the same ground; I just want to focus on a couple of issues and perhaps focus the Minister’s mind on a couple of the report’s key points and recommendations.

It is clear to all members of the Committee—and, in fairness, I think to the Government, too—that restorative justice has a value. It is a useful tool for helping people who have committed crimes to understand the impact on the victims and, through that process, for helping to prevent reoffending. There is general agreement from the Justice Committee, the Opposition—I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) in due course—and the Government that there is a valuable role for restorative justice. Indeed, when I held ministerial roles, I propagated restorative justice both in Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom as a whole. There is a genuine understanding of it.

[The Minister for Courts and Justice (Sir Oliver Heald)]

The right hon. Gentleman may recall that when he and I served on the Crime and Courts Bill Committee, we both made common cause for the restorative justice condition for deferred sentences, so that it had a stronger footing.

[Mr Hanson]

Indeed. As I say, there is common ground across the House, the various parties, the Justice Committee, this Government and, I believe, the previous Government to ensure that we can facilitate restorative justice. There is evidence—it is anecdotal, so we might not give it too much weight—that every £1 spent on restorative justice can save £8 in further costs down the line. That is important.

The Government’s commitment of £29 million, in their November 2013 plan, to help the development of restorative justice is supportive and indicative of the progress that needs to be made. However, I want to press the Minister on a couple of points, if I may. First, I would welcome some clarity from him on what the £29 million, which we have discussed in the Justice Committee, has been spent on. Has it been spent on restorative justice? I ask because it was not ring-fenced, but was part of a general grant. Has he produced a list of projects that benefit from that £29 million investment? If it is being spent on restorative justice, is it for local decision making? What is the Government’s assessment of what works best for restorative justice? Simply pouring £29 million centrally to police and crime commissioners without a ring fence and hoping that it will develop the seedcorn of good, positive, evaluated, determined restorative justice may not be enough; it may need a little more central direction from Government.

That point leads me to recommendation 66 of the Committee’s report:

“The Ministry of Justice is well placed to take a leadership role in restorative justice and set out a clear overall vision for how it expects restorative justice services to be delivered.”

The Ministry responded to our recommendation—I would be grateful for the Minister’s concentration on this—in paragraph 17 of the Government’s response:

“The Government agrees it is important that all relevant parties have a common understanding of how restorative justice works within the criminal justice system in England and Wales. We will consider the points raised by the Committee before publishing a progress report.”

With due respect, that is civil-service speak for: “We don’t know what we’re doing at the moment and we’d like to come back to it later.”

The test for the Minister is whether he can give some indication today of how he envisages a viable restorative justice scheme that avoids the postcode lottery that our report referred to. That might be through effective use of the £29 million; it might be by picking from operational schemes that the Ministry of Justice thinks are working well, have an output and have proved successful in reducing offending and giving victim satisfaction; or it might be from both those things. It is important that he focuses in his reply on how he envisages ensuring that people in north Wales get the same services and opportunities as people in south Wales, in Hertfordshire, in Bromley and Chislehurst and in every other part of the United Kingdom—perhaps even in Ribble Valley, Mr Evans.

We need a collective understanding of what is available, so that people do not feel left out because they cannot access a service. I recognise that we cannot deliver everything or concentrate on everything. The Minister’s response to paragraph 66 therefore needs to look at the key issues: what works, what is good value for money, what gives best victim satisfaction, what most reduces reoffending and how individuals become aware of the offer in the first place.

Our report refers to the understanding of restorative justice. I have to go back to a point that I know Members will be aware of: someone minding their own business who suddenly becomes a victim of crime may not necessarily know what the courts and the police service do, what restorative justice is, how it is available, what benefit it might bring to them or what it might do to prevent future victims from going through the same experience. Until the day someone is a victim, they are not focused on the criminal justice system. I therefore ask the Minister not only what is available, whether it is a postcode lottery and how the funding is used, but how victims become aware of the facilities and support available in their local area. If the Government’s direction of travel is towards localism, how does someone in north Wales who is minding their own business today, living their life peacefully and not expecting to be a victim of crime, but who wakes up as a victim tomorrow, know that such services are available? How do they know how to access them? How are they helped through at a local level?

Those questions take us back to the postcode lottery. I have no problems with devolving funding to police and crime commissioners or local services through community rehabilitation companies, the voluntary sector or other means, but my test for the Minister on his responsibilities is how he assesses what works, who is doing it and whether it is happening. If he is putting a pot of money in, how does he know that it has been delivered at a local level? I would welcome it if the progress report promised in paragraph 17 of the Government response considered those points.

Finally, I would welcome some information from the Minister on what progress has been made on the victims’ law. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned, it was promised in the Conservative manifesto and there was promise of a Green Paper and of legislation. However, we will have a Gracious Speech in May and there is still no Green Paper on a victims’ law. There may be reasons for that. I understand that this is a five-year Parliament—I believe it is—and if that is the case, it might be helpful to people who are interested in this topic for the Minister to say, without breaching any confidentialities, at what stage in this five-year Parliament he expects to bring forward the Green Paper and at what stage he expects the legislation to be in place, to give some support to the principle of the victims’ law, on which, again, I would expect general cross-party co-operation.

With those comments, I hope I can encourage the Minister to respond in a positive way to what is a positive report.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Heald]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell is looking at that at the moment. The other concern, however, is that although much is about gathering information—I fully accept that—this is an area with an absence of objective research. We need to grab the information about what is effective, why the spending is what it is, and the national picture showing the differences between areas.

[Mr Hanson]

Does the Minister know what the allocated £29 million was spent on?

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Twenty-three million pounds was allocated, and £11 million was spent on restorative justice, so the concern is the gap, which is where we need to gather and work through the information.

[Mr Hanson]

The point I made in my contribution was that if the Minister allocated £23 million, he needs to know what it was spent on and what he allocated it for.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Of course the money is not ring-fenced, so police and crime commissioners who receive it are able to spend it on other victim services. However, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the amount for restorative justice was £23 million, so questions need to be answered. He asked us to say something in our update report on the action plan, which I will mention in a moment, and I will certainly bring that point to the attention of those who are preparing the response.

As we build on those foundations, we will take account of the Justice Committee’s work and the recent review of the Victims’ Commissioner, as well as working closely with police and crime commissioners and their association. It is excellent that the Victims’ Commissioner has been able to be in the Public Gallery for our debate. On a personal note, having attended a Crown Prosecution Service conference at which she spoke a couple of years ago, I was very impressed with the personal commitment she made to this area after experiences in her own life. Her role is very important and the way in which she performs it is admirable.

The priority now is to be satisfied by the evidence that the restorative justice services being funded or delivered meet the needs of victims of crime throughout England and Wales. Victims’ needs must be met. There is good practice in delivery, which it is important to share. My Department will work with a number of police and crime commissioners and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners to identify and share good practice and to obtain the data I mentioned that will not only help us but help areas to assess how well they are doing compared with other areas. In the long term, we want to introduce consistent outcome measures across all victim services, including restorative justice, which will allow us to take a more detailed and systematic approach to identifying and sharing good practice and driving up performance. It will also provide a firm evidence base on which we can make decisions about the future landscape of victim services. I should have said that we are also looking carefully at the range of proposals made by the Victims’ Commissioner and others.

I should perhaps say that if I do not finish dealing with all the points that have been made, we will go through them and write to the Committee.

I was asked about the action plan. The original plan for the period until March 2018 was published in November 2014. Ministers decided to publish a progress report covering that period. However, written evidence to the Committee highlighted the progress so far. We explained, for example, that we had the national conference in 2015, regional workshops to share best practice, and successful awareness-raising campaigns in both years during International Restorative Justice Week. Ministers have decided to continue with the action plan and refresh it. The victims Minister has been engaged in that detailed work since November, and we are not far away from publishing it.