Immigration and Home Affairs

Debate between George Freeman and John Hayes

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are different types of crimes and different types of prisoners, and that many people in our prison system at the moment, particularly those responsible for relatively low-level, non-violent antisocial behaviour, could powerfully serve much better and more rehabilitative community sentences? I do not want chain gangs in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, but good community service, where people can see that they are actually putting something back into society, would ease a lot of pressure on the system.

[Sir John Hayes]

Community sentences can play a part, that is true, but my hon. Friend will recall that the problem I described earlier of misunderstanding crime as an illness to be treated has its roots in thinking that stretches right back to the 1960s. You will perhaps know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 began intermediate treatment orders, which essentially rewarded young people who had committed crimes with the kind of community activities that my hon. Friend describes. People were sent to the Brecon Beacons when their law-abiding neighbours had to make do with a week in Clacton. I mean no disrespect to Clacton or its representative, I hasten to add. [Laughter.] That is not the kind of response to crime that the vast majority of my constituents—or, I suspect, those of my hon. Friend—expect. Yes, community sentences can play a part, but they must not in any way distract us from the fundamental truth—I think it was Grotius who said it, Mr Deputy Speaker—that criminal justice has to have at its heart the idea of an ill suffered for an ill inflicted. I hope that the new Government will recognise that to crack down on crime, they really do have to restore public faith in the fact that, as I said, justice will be done.

It is fact that 10% of convicted criminals are responsible for half of all convictions. It is true, too, that those individuals are known and can be identified and must not be released in the way that has been suggested. Yet, disturbingly, the new Prisons Minister is on the record as saying:

“We’re addicted to sentencing, we’re addicted to punishment. So many people who are in prison, in my view, shouldn’t be there.”

That is both the opposite of the truth and anything but what most people think.

I welcome the attention given in the King’s Speech to shoplifting, but again I fear that the Government’s approach amounts to little more than wishful thinking. We have a shoplifting epidemic in Britain. Police forces do not respond to almost nine out of 10 serious incidents and UK retailers already spend around £1 billion each year on trying to deal with a problem with which they struggle to cope. Many offenders persistently commit crimes and get away with it.

So let us, in this debate and in the programme that follows it, not simply rely on wishful thinking but face up to the profound truths which seem to have escaped the notice of Labour Governments forever and, too often, of Conservative Governments too: reflecting the sentiments of the vast majority of law-abiding people means the guilty must be punished and the innocent must be protected.