Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We did indeed have a productive and non-partisan time on the Justice Committee. On the specific important point she raises, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), will address that point in closing—but essentially, it will happen in due course.

We will protect the public from violence and intimidation by strengthening the law on the taking of intimate images, as I have indicated. We will increase the multi-agency management requirements on offenders convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour. As I say, that was not an offence in 2010. We are implementing a further recommendation in the domestic homicide sentencing review, giving judges the discretion at sentencing to add a statutory aggravating factor for a killing connected to the end of a relationship, many of which are committed where there has been a history of coercive or controlling behaviour. That man who says, “If I can’t have you, no one will” can expect a more serious penalty.

Finally, it is a further insult to families when perpetrators refuse to appear in the dock to face up to the consequences of their actions, so it is quite right that we will give judges the power to order offenders to court and punish those who refuse.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has outlined some measures to protect women who face really horrific abuse. I have been campaigning on the key issue of girls who are associated with gangs. The fact is that they are groomed and used by gang members for horrific crimes, and those girls are then victimised and imprisoned. Does he agree that we should have a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation, so that girls do not continue to face that horrific ordeal?

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady has made a very important point. I will not bore the House with war stories, but I remember defending a young woman—17 years old. She had been abused by her boyfriend, who had put pressure on her to hold a MAC-10 firearm. The police, of course, then arrested her, and she was at risk of a mandatory minimum sentence of three years, although she had been put under all that pressure by her boyfriend. The courts do have discretion to take personal circumstances into account, and in that case, when the court found that there had been exceptional circumstances, it was not bound to impose the mandatory minimum sentence. It is always worth recalling that in a fair society, before independent courts, there is an opportunity for important points of mitigation to be advanced. The hon. Lady also made a point about grooming, and I now want to turn to the issue of protecting children in that regard.

In April, the Prime Minister and the former Home Secretary announced a package of measures to tackle child sexual exploitation, grooming and abuse, so that our law would keep pace with criminals’ latest warped ingenuity. We are introducing a statutory aggravating factor at sentencing for grooming behaviour in connection with sexual offences committed against under-18s in order to tackle those involved in grooming gangs. There is also a new child sexual exploitation police taskforce—that means analysts in every police region—and a new complex and organised child abuse database. Tackling organised exploitation programmes have also been rolled out, bringing together force-level, regional and national data and intelligence.

The Criminal Justice Bill also takes the fight to criminals. Articles used in serious crime, such as templates for 3D-printed firearm components and pill presses, will be prohibited. The Government have secured from the police agreement to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry, and the Bill creates a power to enter premises without a warrant to seize stolen goods such as mobile phones. The operation of serious crime prevention orders will be strengthened to make it easier for police and other law enforcement agencies to place restrictions on offenders or suspected offenders and prevent them from participating in further crime.

The Bill brings further action on the scourge that is knife crime: that includes creating a power to seize, retain and destroy bladed articles found on private property that are likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence, increasing the maximum penalty for the sale of prohibited weapons and for selling knives to those under 18, and the creation of a criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with the intent to use it in unlawful violence. To increase public confidence in policing, the Bill provides for a duty of candour for policing, and gives chief officers the right to appeal against the result of misconduct boards to police appeals tribunals.

Let me turn briefly to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which will enshrine the principles of the victims code in law, and provide greater oversight and transparency in respect of how victims are treated, with criminal justice inspectorates undertaking joint inspections on victims issues when directed to do so. As one who grappled with the old victims code under the Labour Government, when the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was in power, I should point out that that was a pale imitation of what exists now. The code that was in place under Labour failed to give victims a right to review or the right to make a victim personal statement, it only applied to victims of particularly serious crime, and it failed to give any rights to close relatives.

Our victims code dramatically strengthens the rights of victims. It will be easier for victims of crime to make complaints against a public body by removing the need to go through an MP. It creates a duty for the police to ensure that requests for third-party personal records from complainants are proportionate and necessary. This measure will apply to victims only. There will be an independent public advocate for the victims of major incidents, who will help bereaved families and the injured in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale disaster.

Lammy Review

Debate between Florence Eshalomi and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We need a diverse judiciary. Things have improved a bit—12% of magistrates were from BAME backgrounds as of April 2019, which was 4% higher than in 2012—but we need to go further. The magistrates recruitment and attraction steering group, jointly headed by the MOJ and the magistrates court leadership, held its first meeting in February 2020 and it is promoting the magistracy and increasing recruitment, with a particular focus on increasing diversity.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement, and I want to return to the issue of stop-and-search. In my constituency and in the borough of Lambeth, black people are four times more likely to be stopped and searched, and in the last 12 months, more than 10,000 stop-and-searches were conducted on black people, compared with 5,000 on white people. I spoke to a group of year 12 students last Friday: almost 50% of the boys and one girl put their hands up to say they had been stopped and searched. Why is this still a big issue? Why is there this disproportionality?

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this directly but sensitively. My goodness, if people take the view that what has taken place is victimisation, of course it will corrode confidence in the criminal justice system and the police. Equally, though, we have to make sure that the police have the tools they require to try to hunt down crime and, as I have already indicated, it is very often people being stopped who themselves could be victims of crime. Forgive me for repeating a point I have made already, but the key to this is data—data to ensure that the right people are being stopped and, where they are not, it shines out like a beacon that there is an issue, in a particular borough, or wherever it is in the country, that needs to be addressed.