James Bulger Murder: Public Inquiry

Edward Argar Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Henderson. At the outset, may I join right hon. and hon. Members in acknowledging the dedication and determination of Mrs Denise Fergus, James’s mother, in campaigning on this petition and successfully securing a debate on this hugely important matter through the Petitions Committee? Sadly, in this Chamber and in the main Chamber we are, on occasion, called upon to debate deeply sombre, traumatic and saddening matters, but it is right that we do so and that we cast that light upon them. I am grateful for the tone adopted by all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken; it is appropriate that this debate has been conducted in that manner.

I pay tribute to Denise Fergus for her and her family’s tireless and dignified campaign to obtain justice for her son James, who was so cruelly taken from her in February 1993 when he was just two years old. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) about the circumstances, which to this day remain shocking and harrowing. No one can fail to be shaken by them still, even after the passage of time.

The murder of James was a crime that rightly shocked the nation and continues to do so. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), highlighted the harrowing images on CCTV. I recall seeing those images when I was still at school, many years ago. I recall the dreadful inhumanity—the evil—that we all realised had taken place. I remember not just the horrendous events themselves, but the shock that they were carried out by two 10-year-old boys.

I am grateful for the recognition in the course of this debate that many of the decisions made in the context of the case were made by independent bodies: the Crown Prosecution Service, the sentencing judge and the Parole Board. I will turn to that point in a moment. As has been said, Thompson and Venables were released in 2001 on the recommendation of the Parole Board, subject to a lifelong anonymity order granted by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, to which you quite rightly drew our attention, Mr Henderson.

Thompson has remained in the community on life licence without further offence. However, Venables has twice been recalled to custody and subsequently convicted of further offences involving the possession and sharing of illegal images of children: first in 2010, when he was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment, and then, having been re-released on the direction of the Parole Board in 2013, again in 2018, when he was sentenced to 40 months’ imprisonment. Since Venables became eligible to be considered for release on life licence, following recall, the Parole Board has found on three successive occasions, most recently in December last year, that it remains necessary on the grounds of public protection that he remain confined to custody.

Against that background, I think anyone could well understand the concerns surrounding the first release decision in 2001 and, specifically, understand and appreciate the call for a public inquiry. However, although I fully appreciate the significant concerns that have been expressed and the strength and sincerity of feelings on the issue, I am afraid that I am not today in a position to announce a public inquiry. I appreciate that that will be disappointing to those in the Public Gallery, as well as to Opposition Members. If the right hon. Member for Knowsley considers it helpful, I am open to meeting him and his hon. Friends to have a further conversation about the matters that we are debating.

As hon. Members have highlighted, the then Government commissioned the Omand review, which was published on 23 November 2010. The review did not question the decision that the Parole Board made in recommending Venables’s release in 2001, based on the evidence at that time. The review looked in considerable detail at the management of Venables and made detailed recommendations to address the shortcomings in supervision that had marked some of that period. The subsequent period of supervision, from 2013 to 2017, was consistently tight; in fact, it was the means by which the further offending came to light and a successful prosecution could subsequently be mounted.

I fully understand why the nature of that further offending gives rise to significant concerns as to whether the decisions to release Venables were defective. It may be helpful if I briefly provide a little more explanation about how the Parole Board determines whether prisoners serving life or other indeterminate sentences are released. For any offender sentenced to life imprisonment, a minimum period for that imprisonment is set for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. After the minimum term has been served, by law the prisoner may continue to be detained in custody only so long as their risk requires it—in other words, unless the prisoner’s risk can be effectively mitigated and managed in the community by means of the obligations and restrictions of a post-release licence.

Where it issues a release direction, the Parole Board is concluding that the probation service and partner agencies, taking account of the powers that arise from a post-release licence, have the means to mitigate remaining risks and so prevent the public from being exposed to undue risk. Obviously any such decision involves a judgment, and regrettably the Parole Board can never be completely certain that any prisoner it releases will not reoffend. When the Parole Board determined in 2001 that Thompson and Venables were safe to be released, it took account of risk assessments and reports provided by various professionals. By the time of their release, each had completed their minimum term.

When Venables was recalled to custody in 2010, the then Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, asked Sir David Omand, the former permanent secretary to the Home Office, to undertake a comprehensive review of the management of Venables and set the terms of reference for that review. A version of the review was published in November 2010; I say “version” because, as hon. Members will be aware, it was redacted to comply with the terms of the court anonymity order. The redacted version is available on gov.uk.

In his review Sir David noted that Venables had been detained at Red Bank secure unit, run by St Helens Borough Council. During his time at Red Bank, an allegation was made about an incident involving Venables. I am aware of the press reports speculating about the nature of that incident, but I have seen no contemporaneous official account of it. I appreciate that this will potentially be frustrating for those listening, but I therefore believe that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the basis of the press reports alone.

[Jess Phillips]

I do not think anybody here would expect that; we are not judge and jury in this building. However, as the Minister said, Jack Straw was the last person to ask for a review. If, as the Minister has outlined, he cannot commit to a full public inquiry, is there not a case for another review to look into not only Red Bank, but the period of further mistakes since 2010? All we have currently is a review covering 2001 to 2010. Surely there were errors made post that period that need some transparency.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. At the risk of potentially damaging her reputation, let me say that I have huge respect for her; I did a lot of work with her when I was the victims Minister and she held the role of shadow safeguarding Minister. I appreciate her point. Without prejudice to any decision made, I have made the offer to meet with the right hon. Member for Knowsley. I am happy to have a conversation; I hope the hon. Lady knows from our previous interactions that I do not like to raise expectations that I cannot meet, so I do not intend to do that, but I will have a conversation with the right hon. Gentleman.

The Home Office asked an experienced former prison governor, Arthur de Frisching, to look into the incident at Red Bank. It appears, some years after the event, that no formal reason was found to publish a report into the incident at the time. St Helens Borough Council observed in a public comment that all allegations had been thoroughly investigated, but no copy of that could be found in the archives of either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice. While the terms of reference for the review began with the preparations for the release of Venables, Sir David stated that he had found nothing in the material that he considered to cast doubt on the fundamental judgments made by the Parole Board at the time that the statutory release test was deemed to be satisfied.

Venables was recalled when police officers, having arrived to escort him to a new address on account of concerns for his safety, caught him trying to remove the hard drive from his computer. That led to an investigation, which resulted in his first conviction for downloading and sharing illegal images of children. In Sir David’s report, he made a number of recommendations designed to strengthen the future management of Venables and indeed of Thompson. Those recommendations recognised that the primary responsibility for supervising Venables lay with the probation service, working closely with the police and other relevant agencies under the statutory MAPPA arrangements. In Venables’s case, that meant the key actions to manage his risks being discussed and agreed at formal meetings attended by senior representatives of the probation service and police services, as well as other highly qualified specialists such as psychiatrists.

When Venables was re-released in 2013 at the direction of the Parole Board, the board set the robust licence conditions that it considered necessary to enable the probation service and its MAPPA partners to manage him effectively, mitigate his risk and help to protect the public. There was now a clear difference between the way he had been managed in the period from 2001 to 2010, as covered by the Omand review, and the way he would be managed from 2013 onwards.

It is deeply regrettable that Venables was discovered in 2017 to have been once again downloading and sharing illegal images of children. However, unlike in 2010, his offences were quickly discovered as a direct result of the monitoring and supervision that had been put in place, and there were immediate consequences, with his return to custody. As I have set out, the Parole Board has now concluded three times that Venables remains too high-risk to be released on life licence. For his most recent review, my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary submitted an overarching Secretary of State view recommending that Venables remain in prison on account of substantial concerns over his risk of reoffending and the risk of harm to the public.

I will endeavour to respond to the specific questions from the right hon. Member for Knowsley with as much information as I can, because I believe that that is important. Before I do so, I note that the hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Bootle (Peter Dowd) have highlighted, in their different ways, the impact that such matters can have on victims’ trust in the system. As a former victims Minister working with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley and others, I saw that at first hand. That transparency, that trust and that engagement are central to building the confidence of those who are or have been victims of crimes in the system.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley talked about notifications—or the lack thereof—of breaches. My understanding is that the supervising agencies concluded, based on a number of those breaches, that the threshold for recall to custody was not met; a recall therefore did not take place. The notification comes where a recall takes place, so because the probation officers and others did not deem the threshold for recall to have been met, there would not have been a notification. However, I am happy to take that point away and reflect on it further. The hon. Lady and I were on a Bill Committee in which we looked at the victims code, notifications and victim liaison officers; I am very happy to have another reflection on that.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I will answer two further points and then give way to the shadow Minister.

On transparency, we have made progress since the original Parole Board hearings and the original case. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree for highlighting the steps forward. Victims may now apply for a summary of a board decision; they can also apply for the hearing to be held in public. Discretion still rests with the chair of the Parole Board, who takes into account a range of factors, but there is now the opportunity for a public hearing to be requested and potentially granted in the interests of transparency.

On the shadow Minister’s point about the powers to challenge decisions and suchlike, in July 2019 the Parole Board rules were changed to allow the Secretary of State to apply for the reconsideration of a release decision. Victims of crime and the families of victims of crime can also now make representations to the Secretary of State as to why they should put forward an overarching Secretary of State view calling for the Parole Board to reconsider or not release.

[Alex Cunningham]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for answering the point I raised. I want to go back to the 70 referrals. I accept that they were referrals, rather than confirmed breaches. However, even if 10 or 15 of those referrals were considered to be breaches of his licence, although they may well have been minor, do they not have a roll-up effect, where he is constantly breaching or being referred for breaches, and therefore more serious consideration should have been taken?

[Edward Argar]

The context in which I addressed that was the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley about notifications and thresholds. Those previous breaches—where, cumulatively, there is a breach and another breach—may not bring about a recall, but a probation officer managing the case will look at all those cumulatively in judging whether, when a further breach occurs or anything along those lines, there is a pattern of behaviour. I am wary of speculating on the individual decision making of an individual probation officer, because I will not know what factors they will have taken into account in an individual case, but they do consider those matters.

There were five specific questions raised by the right hon. Member for Knowsley. I will try, in so far as I can, to give him some answers, or more information than perhaps is already out there. First, he asked about the evidence presented at the trial. The police and Crown Prosecution Service, which are independent of Government, will have put all relevant evidence to Preston Crown court that they believed was material to securing a conviction when Venables and Thompson were tried for James’s murder.

The specific question of whether particular pieces of evidence should have been presented to the court, and what was or was not is, I am afraid, a matter for the police and ultimately for the prosecution lawyers in building that case on how they determined what evidence to present to secure the conviction they wanted to secure. That would be a matter for the CPS. With the caveat that I recognise and put on the record the independence of the CPS’s decision making and how it conducts the case, I am of course happy to highlight the points made here today to the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, who, as hon. Members will be aware, have oversight of the CPS.

[Jess Phillips]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir George Howarth]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I will give way to the hon. Lady and then the right hon. Gentleman.

[Jess Phillips]

I apologise if this was what my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley was going to say. We all know the CPS has to build the best case for getting a conviction, and some things will get left out and some things will not. But when the sexual element is left out in a court case, how can the public be certain that it is taken account of in a parole hearing? If the sexual crimes had definitely featured in the court case, the sexual crime element would have been part of the consideration in parole; that is the disconnect that we are concerned about.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. As I say, the decisions on what to include are ultimately down to the prosecuting counsel and prosecuting lawyers from the CPS, but I will touch on those aspects when addressing a further question posed by the right hon. Member for Knowsley in a moment.

[Sir George Howarth]

The point my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) was making is that, had that information been available at the time and during the trial, subsequent decisions that had to be made would have taken on a whole new light. She accepts and I accept—I think we all accept—that the judiciary is independent and that prosecutors should be able to decide what evidence they use, but in this particular case that omission could have led, and probably did lead, to decisions being made in later years that would otherwise have been different.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, and I will come on to address, to a degree, that specific point. Notwithstanding how the CPS and how the case itself was conducted and what evidence was used, when recommending the release in 2001, I am advised that the Parole Board would have been given all relevant information. However, I will undertake further inquiries to see whether it is possible to ascertain this far down the line and within what I can reveal publicly, what that might have constituted. In 2013, the Parole Board did of course have full details of Venables’s conviction for downloading and possessing illegal images of children, and it was therefore able to take that into consideration when considering the risk of sexual harm that he presented to children.

In the second question from the right hon. Member for Knowsley—he is always welcome to correct me if I miss one of his questions out—he asked whether Venables’s sexual interest in children was missed by all the experts, or whether it was known. Again, having discussed it with my officials, my understanding is that prior to his recall in connection to possessing illegal images of children in 2010, the supervising agencies were not aware of Venables’s sexual interest in children. However, they were aware of his broader risk to children, obviously arising in large part from the horrendous events of the murder of James, and that risk was then central to their ongoing management of him.

The third question posed by the right hon. Gentleman was whether proper consideration was given at the trial and at later parole hearings to the attempted abduction of another child earlier on the day that James was tragically murdered. Premeditation is relevant when it comes to any conviction for murder, as a necessity for securing the conviction. As hon. Members would expect, it falls to the CPS and the sentencing judge to consider that factor. I understand that the parole reviews in 2001 and 2013 proceeded on the basis that Venables had been lawfully convicted of murder and of the premeditation and planning involved in that. The Parole Board release decision in 2013 records the board’s awareness and consideration of attempted abductions earlier in the day.

As to the question of whether Thompson and Venables were pronounced to be rehabilitated in order to avoid them entering adult custody, I should clarify for hon. and right hon. Members that it is not the role of the Parole Board to pronounce an offender rehabilitated. Instead, it is constrained to applying the statutory release test when considering whether someone should be released—that is, whether it is necessary on the grounds of public protection for the offender to remain confined in custody, based on available evidence.

I appreciate that that may appear to be a legal splitting of hairs, but there is a slight and subtle difference in the statutory release test about whether there is a necessity on public protection grounds for someone to remain in custody or whether they are deemed to be rehabilitated and a reformed citizen. There is a legal differentiation there. Therefore, in recommending their release in 2001, the Parole Board determined, on the basis of its judgment, that the risks that Thompson and Venables presented were capable of being managed effectively in the community through the restrictions and prohibitions available through the life licence.

Finally, the right hon. Member for Knowsley asked whether representations were made by Lord Chief Justice Woolf to the Parole Board. I asked my officials to look into that and advise, and I can advise all hon. Members that I am not aware that any representations were made by the Lord Chief Justice to the Parole Board. At the time, Thompson and Venables were sentenced to life imprisonment. It fell to the Home Secretary of the day to set their tariff, or how long they would serve, taking account of a recommendation made by the Lord Chief Justice. Therefore, any recommendations from the Lord Chief Justice regarding the tariff would have been made to the Home Secretary. In respect of the parole question, having asked again and looked into it, I am not aware that any such representations were made—I caveat that by saying that I have answered to the extent of my knowledge.

I will end my contribution by again paying tribute to Mrs Fergus for not only her tireless campaigning for James, but her determination, as reflected in the statements read out by various right hon. and hon. Members, to make a difference in the future, to help people to learn the lessons and to support young people by setting up the James Bulger Memorial Trust, which provides holidays and respite for families of disadvantaged young people who have been the victims of crime, hatred or bullying, and those who have made a positive contribution to the welfare of others or society in general. The charity’s motto is “For James”, as Denise rightly wants him to be remembered positively as

“the beautiful little boy with the big sparkling smile”,

and not for how his short life ended.

I conclude this sombre debate by once again paying tribute to the dignity and the courage of Denise and her family, to the right hon. Member for Knowsley for securing this debate and approaching it in his typically measured, courteous and appropriate tone, and indeed to all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken. This debate is a testimony to Denise’s resilience and determination, and above all to her abiding love for James. I hope I will be able to continue the conversations around this matter with the right hon. Gentleman and others.