Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill

Dawn Butler Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Before I begin, I pay tribute to the incredible people who have made it possible for us to be here today, challenging the shocking miscarriage of justice that is joint enterprise. I want to say a massive thanks to Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association families and campaigners both inside and outside prison, some of whom are in the Gallery. Their perseverance and determination has allowed me to present the Bill. Since the early days of the campaign back in 2010, they have fought fearlessly and tirelessly against some of the most powerful British institutions for truth and justice to get to where we are today. They have never given up, and the Bill is a result of their work. I am so proud to have the privilege of working alongside them and bringing their campaign to Parliament.

I thank the many other people who have supported this campaign and helped to raise awareness of and support for our demands. My deepest gratitude goes to Jimmy McGovern, the indomitable screenwriter from my home city of Liverpool, Colin McKeown, the talented Northern Irish film maker, their teams and whole cast of the film “Common”, some of whom are in the Gallery. That film, brought to our screens a decade ago, accurately depicts the injustice of joint enterprise. Massive thanks to LA Productions for so generously producing a half-hour condensed version for us to show at our event in Parliament this week. I urge those who have not seen “Common” to watch it—it is more powerful than “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, and I understand that it will be available shortly.

I pay tribute to the work of Becky Clarke and Patrick Williams at Manchester Metropolitan University, who went above and beyond to produce research on the costs of joint enterprise and have reminded us of the importance of not losing sight of its devastating social cost. Their guidance and expertise throughout this process have been invaluable. I thank Felicity Gerry KC, Professor Matthew Dyson and Nisha Waller from the University of Oxford, who as part of a wider working group organised by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies drew up the simple, common-sense wording of the Bill. I also thank them for their legal support during the campaign. Their commitment to righting this wrong turn in the law has helped to bring the campaign as far as it can possibly go through the courts. Now, together, we have brought it to Parliament. I hope that today will be another step towards righting this massive wrong.

I thank the many hon. Members who have taken up this campaign and helped us to get where we are today, notably my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). I give special thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for his assistance by tabling an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill just this week that mirrors the Bill we are discussing today.

When I was informed that I had been successful in the private Member’s Bill ballot, I was a bit like a frightened bunny rabbit in the headlights, but with the help and guidance of the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), I feel confident that I made the right choice by picking joint enterprise as the subject of my private Member’s Bill. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) for her constructive dialogue in the run-up to this debate.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent Bill. The work by all the people she has mentioned, including Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association, on the Bill has been so important. The Supreme Court has said that joint enterprise has been wrongly interpreted by criminal trial judges for the past 30 years. Does she agree that that is terrible?

[Kim Johnson]

I do, and I will come to that point later in my speech.

I thank the cross-party sponsors of my Bill, notably the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the esteemed Chair of the Justice Committee. His support throughout this process has been invaluable and has demonstrated clearly the potential of the Bill to create cross-party consensus.

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[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the informative speech from hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler)—we share a surname, and I too was a magistrate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and support her extremely important private Member’s Bill, and my heart goes out to everybody who has lost somebody to murder.

It is important that the law works as it should in this country. The Supreme Court said that joint enterprise has been wrongly interpreted by criminal trial judges for the past 30 years—a long, long time. The Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association campaign group, which my hon. Friend has been working closely with, has been doing a lot of important work on this topic. As she said, the principle is right, but the law is open not only to interpretation, but to abuse. The judicial system is riddled with bias, and this law makes that worse in many cases. It is nearly four years to the day since I stood in this Chamber to raise the case of my constituent Reshawn Davis, whose only crime was being a1in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr Davis served two months in prison due to the joint enterprise law, and that sentence has had a devastating effect on him and his family.

Some will say that the joint enterprise law is not all bad, and they would be right. It has led to some high-profile convictions, such as bringing some of the racist murderers of Stephen Lawrence to justice, for which we should all be grateful. But it has also seen many innocent people sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. No one who believes in how the law should work could approve of that. Imagine if everyone was found guilty by association. It may be unwise, but it is not illegal, to be friends with someone who is a liar or a cheat. If it were, Mr Speaker, plenty of MPs in this place would be arrested.

Some will be surprised to learn that joint enterprise has been applied to predominantly children and young adults, of whom 57% are from an ethnic minority background. It is not only wrong, but lazy and unjustified to use the law in this way, criminalising a whole group of children and limiting their life chances, just because they may have known somebody from school. Those of us who have spent our lives fighting for justice are acutely aware—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a very strong point. Does she agree that there is a sort of perverse incentive on the police to be quite lazy about investigations of often serious incidents, because they know that, at some point in the future, they can deploy the law of joint enterprise and therefore do not necessarily have to get hard evidence against every single one of the people who may have been in the vicinity of the crime, but not participants in it?

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[Dawn Butler]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, it is lazy. It also means that we have a target-driven process rather than an informative-driven process, which needs to change. The system penalises and has a disproportionate effect on people of colour. Those with high melanin are judged more harshly because of the colour of their skin. If a person is Afro-Caribbean, they are eight times more likely to get stopped and searched, five more times likely to die in police custody, and 16 times more likely to be charged under joint enterprise than their white counterparts.

It is absolutely fundamental that our legal system is fair and can be trusted by everyone no matter the background or the colour of one’s skin. It is the cornerstone of our democracy. As a civil society, we must aim to hold criminals to account and invest in good policing, good laws and good judges. It is time to reconsider the implications and the unintended consequences of joint enterprise and remove the harm that it has done to too many innocent people whose families are with us today. I pledge my support for the Bill. Although I know the Government may have reservations about some aspects of it, I hope they will commit to my hon. Friend’s Bill and bring it back to the House, so that we can have a system that is fair and right for all.

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[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on her success in the private Members’ Bills ballot, and I am pleased to be responding to the Second Reading debate on her Bill today. It is important that this issue has been brought to the House’s attention. Children and justice is an area of concern for many when joint enterprise is considered and it has been campaigned on for several years. The Bill highlights that, but I am aware that an amendment similar to this Bill has been tabled to the Criminal Justice Bill. Before I go further into the discussion of this Bill, it is right to say that although it is critical of joint enterprise, and there are very convincing arguments for amendment to it, joint enterprise is also a necessary tool in the criminal justice system, as I will explain further.

I thank all Members who have participated in and contributed to this debate: my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum); my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); my hon. Friends the Members for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) and for Easington (Grahame Morris); the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler); the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn); and the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). I have also noted the many comments made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).

Having listened to the debate, the clear overall message is that joint enterprise needs to be reviewed. As we have heard, it allows an individual to be jointly convicted of the crime of another if the court finds that they were involved in the commission of the crime. There is a strong case to tighten the definition currently used to ensure that justice is fair and proportionate. As in the case of R v. Jogee in 2016, the Supreme Court has ruled that joint enterprise had been wrongly used for 30 years—that is extremely concerning. The ruling stated that it was not enough for the prosecution to prove that the defendant foresaw the possibility of violence occurring. Instead, the prosecution should now prove that the defendant intended to encourage or assist the person who committed the crime. Yet, a list of controversial joint enterprise cases continue to this day. The Manchester 10 case, which many in this Chamber will know, was tried under conspiracy legislation, but activists say this mirrors crimes prosecuted in the UK as joint enterprise. The trial’s use of drill music to convict the 10 defendants has also been criticised; this is a common feature of joint enterprise prosecutions for defendants from minority backgrounds. I am aware of the campaign by Art Not Evidence that aims to stop the criminalisation of those who engage in rap and drill music.

[Dawn Butler]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we do not judge people by the music they listen to? Judging one music to be violent, as against another genre, is a very subjective measure.

[Janet Daby]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that; she makes a very meaningful point. There are lots of words in lots of different types of music, and we should not be judged by that.

I have also met Janet Cunliffe, a co-founder of Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association—JENGbA—whose son was imprisoned under joint enterprise. She is a tireless campaigner, who has shared in the experience of her son’s sentence. In 2020, JENGbA released a research report written by academics at Manchester Metropolitan University arguing that women are negatively impacted by joint enterprise. It stated:

“Women were often marginal to the violent event, with almost half not present at the scene and almost all never having engaged in any physical violence”.

And yet, as the report found, women were being seriously penalised.

JENGbA has highlighted the case of a teenager, Carrie. She was 15 years old when, in the early hours, she was walking with two other older people. They had all been drinking and a fight broke out with another group of local adults. One person from the other group was killed by an injury caused by a broken bottle. In the summing up of the case, the judge acknowledged that Carrie was so drunk she did not have the ability to join in with a fight. The judge warned that

“mere presence is not enough there must be some form of participation”.

During the trial, judgments were made about Carrie’s character and not her actions. That became central to her prosecution. The offence was committed by a 35-year-old man. The jury found the man guilty of murder. Carrie, 15 years old at the time of the event, was found guilty of manslaughter. The report found that there are many other women like Carrie in prison.

I have been critical of joint enterprise, but there is a place for it in our courts and the wider criminal justice system. Joint enterprise has helped to secure convictions that otherwise would not have been successful. The conviction of some of the men who killed Stephen Lawrence was secured using joint enterprise legislation. By using joint enterprise legislation, it was found that it did not matter whether Gary Dobson and David Norris carried out the killing; rather, it was important that they were part of an attack that could end in serious harm. Indeed, it did. It has also been successfully used to prosecute paedophile rings and those who commit economic crime. That should not be forgotten.

I am glad that the Bill does not seek to abolish joint enterprise in its entirety. Labour has previously said that it would look to reform joint enterprise, and that remains our ambition. Furthermore, the Lammy review in 2017 advocated for the reform of joint enterprise laws. In particular, recommendation 6 said:

“The CPS should take the opportunity, while it reworks its guidance on Joint Enterprise, to consider its approach to gang prosecutions in general.”

With regard to that recommendation, the CPS commenced a pilot to monitor joint enterprise homicide and attempted homicide cases in February 2023. The results were concerning. Black people make up only 4% of the UK population, but according to the CPS, under joint enterprise cases, black defendants make up 30% of case loads. It was also revealed that joint enterprise prosecutions disproportionately affect children, young people and men.

There has been progress on gathering more data, with the commencement of a full national scheme in all CPS areas. The CPS has said that a report of homicide and attempted homicide cases brought on a joint enterprise basis will be produced annually, and it will contain a breakdown by the protected characteristics of ethnicity, sex, age and disability. I believe that the CPS today convened a scrutiny panel with a focus on joint enterprise cases in which evidence of gang association is a feature.

Let me be clear: the Bill is perfectly reasonable and commendable. However, for the best chance of proper reform, it is important to wait until the CPS has built up more data before legislation is used to tackle the problem. We can solve the issue only when we have the full picture; that way, the law can work as intended.

Many from across the political spectrum believe that change needs to happen. There are some cases of people being convicted of serious crimes despite making no significant contribution to them; we have heard such examples given from across the Chamber. It is not in the public interest to prosecute those who have not made a significant contribution to a crime. I am interested to know whether the Minister agrees.

In reply to an amendment on joint enterprise in the Criminal Justice Bill Committee, the Government said:

“there have been examples of case law since the Jogee case that show that approach being fairly applied.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2024; c. 484.]

What is the Minister’s view on the reported disproportionate impact of joint enterprise on diverse communities?

The Government must end the criminalisation of children and young people associated with rap and drill music, and put in place protective factors to ensure that they are not disproportionately criminalised under joint enterprise.