Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Dehenna Davison Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in today’s debate, on a theme that many of us, and certainly our constituents, care passionately about: reducing crime and restoring faith in our criminal justice system. I was very pleased to see the Victims and Prisoners Bill rolled over, as well as the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill and the Sentencing Bill, both of which were announced in the King’s Speech. I will focus my remarks on the Sentencing Bill.

I have not been shy about outlining the key catalyst for my journey into politics, but I hope the House will forgive me for raising it once more, because it is very relevant to today’s debate. For Members who do not know, when I was 13 years old my dad was killed by a single punch: one blow to the head and he was gone in seconds. He was 35 when it happened; it’s funny but at the time I remember not thinking much about his age—he was my dad, so obviously he was just an old man—but now that I have reached the other side of 30, it kind of makes it all the more real and all the more stark. With no warning on a cold February Friday night, he was gone, leaving behind me and my mum, and his own mother, my amazing Nannan Sue, for whom my dad was her only child. I do not want to talk about the perpetrator or go into detail about our specific case, but I want to outline the sheer devastation that this incident caused my family. The family are the indirect victims of crime; we may not have taken a physical blow, but the impacts of the psychological blow will be with us for life—a true life sentence.

Through a lengthy chain of events that followed, I had the privilege of being elected to this place, and I have made it my mission to raise awareness about the impact of single-punch assaults. In a few weeks’ time, One Punch UK, an incredible charity, will be launching its annual “Punched Out Cold” campaign to show in quite grisly but necessary detail the impacts that violence can have. It is to remind people that, yes, it is fine to go out over Christmas, have a few drinks and get a bit merry, but it is never the right time to raise their fists. I hope Members across the House will support that campaign.

Why do I talk about my family’s experience again today? One of the headlines in today’s debate is raising confidence in the criminal justice system, and through my work with One Punch UK, I know all too well that many families who are the victims of single-punch assaults do not feel that the criminal justice system is on their side. Victim support is patchy and varied, and sentencing is felt to be far too low. Some would even say that it is insultingly low. People have lost loved ones through these violent acts and have seen the perpetrator released within a year. I know that no sentence will ever feel enough to make up for the loss of a loved one and the loss of all those future memories of what might have been, but we must do more to restore confidence in sentencing.

There has been concern in the past about overly lenient sentences. Indeed, in 2014 the Sentencing Council was asked by the then Lord Chancellor to develop a guideline for one-punch manslaughter, and a consultation was subsequently launched in 2017. In the seven years prior to that, the average sentence for such offences was just three years and 10 months—frankly, a kick in the teeth for the families of victims who were already going through so much. New guidelines eventually came into force on 1 November 2018, but in my view, sadly they still do not go far enough.

For single-punch assaults, the lowest possible sentence in the guidelines is just 12 months—12 months where a life has been taken, and where the families of victims do go through a life sentence. That is for those with the lowest culpability, and the guidelines state this is for cases where an unlawful act is committed, but where there was

“no intention to cause any harm and no obvious risk of anything more than minor harm”,

but I think many across the House would agree with me that that in itself is deeply flawed, because when throwing a punch there is always an obvious risk of serious harm.

I and the many one-punch assault campaigners I work with believe that sentencing for such assaults should properly reflect that risk, so it is time for new thinking. That is why I would greatly welcome a discussion with the Justice Secretary—and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who I warmly welcome to his new role—about how the new Sentencing Bill could include a specific minimum sentence for one-punch manslaughter that fully reflects the severity of the crime and the real devastating impacts on the families affected. That would be a concrete and tangible way that the Government could restore and raise confidence in the criminal justice system for the families of past victims and, heaven forbid, of future victims of single-punch assaults.

I have a little bit of time left, so, more broadly, I join the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), in welcoming the pragmatic approach taken by the Lord Chancellor on sentencing, with the most serious offenders rightly spending more of their sentence behind bars for the sake of public protection, while also focusing on the very real need for rehabilitation for lower level offenders to, frankly, prevent petty criminals losing their own lives to a vicious cycle of reoffending and incarceration. We know that criminal justice and social justice go hand in hand, so I am very pleased that the Ministry of Justice is taking such a pragmatic approach, and I look forward to supporting the Lord Chancellor and the entire Justice team on this legislative agenda.