Sentencing

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Secretary of State, who presented a familiar face. There was a mixture of pragmatism, an element of bluster and just the occasional shaft of precision in his argument.

I begin by making an obvious point, and I do so at the risk of sounding like Michael Howard, now Lord Howard. We often lose sight of part of the meaning of what he said on the subject. Prison does work, at least to a limited extent. It seems to me an incontestable fact that while somebody is locked up in prison, they cannot commit offences out in the community. There have been many cases in my constituency over the years in which people have been given a custodial sentence and been taken out of the community, even if only for three or six months, and there has been an appreciable difference in the crime rate. Local police inspectors and senior officers in my area, and I am sure in other areas, will attest to the fact that prison works in those circumstances.

In my remaining time, I wish to cover two issues, the first of which is sentencing in general, which is the main subject of the debate. I approach it from the vantage point—or it might be a disadvantage point—of having sat on the Gage working group, which reported in July 2008. I will refer briefly to that report, then I want to say a word about community sentences.

The Gage working group examined, among many other things, the causes of the increased prison population to which the Secretary of State referred. We highlighted nine points. I will not go through all of them—time forbids, and in any event the Secretary of State has already referred to them, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has covered the same points. However, I wish to pick out one of the nine, because the Secretary of State made a great point of talking about reoffending. Point (5) in paragraph 2.2, on page 5 of the report, states that

“re-offending including breaches of supervision, licence recall, suspended sentences and community orders”

is one of the drivers that increase the prison population. I shall come back to that point later, but it is important to recognise that the prison population increased for reasons relating to the alternatives to prison sentences.

This month, the new Sentencing Council, which was established from the Gage commission and subsequent legislation, produced a survey, “Attitudes to guilty plea sentence reductions”, which is germane to this point—it is included in the note produced by the House of Commons Library. I shall focus on three of the survey’s findings that have some force, the first of which is a point that the Secretary of State used to criticised my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting. First, the survey states:

“The public assume that the key motivation for the guilty plea sentence reduction is to reduce resources (time and money)…There is a strong sense that the drive for cost savings should not impact on a system effectively delivering justice.”

Secondly, it states:

“For the general public, there was weak support for higher levels of reductions beyond the current guideline range of up to 33%”.

Thirdly, it states:

“The public (and some victims and witnesses) do not like the idea of a universal approach to reductions”.

There is therefore a strong disconnect between the Secretary of State’s proposals and how the public feel things need to be handled, which is a real problem. I accept that he is making a genuine attempt to address the issue—he is not one for eye-catching initiatives. However, he has not won over the public, and he certainly has not won over large numbers of his own Back Benchers, and for that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

I am grateful for the chance to have a few minutes to reply to the debate and to present a set of arguments to explain why the Opposition motion is a good example of how not to debate or approach public policy in this area. It was my answer to a question here last Tuesday from the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) that led to the debate last week and, as that has developed and as we have heard this afternoon, there is a growing appreciation and understanding that the simplicity of the Opposition motion cannot do justice to the complexity of the issues and factors we must reconcile. The motion is outside any proper context and is premature, prejudging proper consideration of our policies as a whole. It is also rather instructive that it has come forward after a prompt from media coverage and the right hon. Gentleman. I would have thought that our policy inheritance from the previous Government would have given today’s Opposition Front-Bench team pause for thought before they tabled the motion.

A real reason for regret is that the Opposition motion indicates that a window might be closing on a unique opportunity for Parliament to show collective leadership in a difficult, complex area that is wide open to misrepresentation. We might be missing an opportunity to engage in a responsible debate and support a process in which policy is agreed on the basis of the evidence for its enduring benefit, not designed to deliver maximum short-term appeal, with evidence arranged to suit. Such support requires an exercise of principle and restraint from all of us.

[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Mr Blunt]

I must apologise to the right hon. Gentleman but in order to reply to those who have contributed to this debate, himself included, I will not be able to take interventions if I am to do justice to the speeches that have been made.

Last year, when the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) distinguished his leadership campaign, so successfully managed by the shadow Justice Secretary, by taking a sensible position on criminal justice, moving away from the populist approach of the previous 13 years, it was greeted with enormous relief by many Labour supporters with a deep and continuing interest in criminal justice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) reminded us, the right hon. Gentleman reiterated the position at his party conference speech immediately after his election as leader. So I hope sincerely that we can sustain a level of examination of these issues in this House that we can be proud of in the years to come and not just regret a unique period when we had a great chance of delivering a more effective criminal justice policy of some durability but bottled it. Happily, a number of speakers did actually make a constructive contribution this evening.

Prisons Competition

George Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I was immensely encouraged by what I saw on my visit to Peterborough. I have discussed Peterborough widely elsewhere, and there was tremendous enthusiasm for the social impact bond that raised the ethical investment that has gone in to the project and for the determination to deliver it on the part of the St Giles Trust, which is the partner, the YMCA and the other people who are involved. We are finding this enthusiasm reflected elsewhere, and I hope—Peterborough being another private sector prison—that public sector prisons will get equally keenly involved. There are people in the public sector prison service who wish to contract on such a basis. I hope that payment by results will take off, and social impact bonds are one model for raising important capital to get them under way.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I welcome the inclusion of reoffending rates in the Doncaster contract. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that Serco will not be allowed to cherry-pick which offenders it takes at Doncaster, so that it will be possible to make meaningful comparisons between that establishment and other institutions?

[Mr Clarke]

I think I can. A cohort will be allocated rather than some carefully selected group, so a positive result will reflect some move in reoffending rates, with the consequent reduction in the number of further crimes and victims. I give credit to Serco, because when I went to Doncaster I broached the subject slightly tentatively there, because we were already in a competition process and Serco could just have proceeded perfectly ordinarily on the basis it had already agreed for the tenders with the previous Government. Yet Serco was positively enthusiastic, and I think it sees the pilot as a way of finding out whether it can enter into more such arrangements elsewhere in the criminal justice system.

Legal Aid Reform

George Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

But sadly, when Governments of all colours consider legal aid, they seem to zero in on the lawyers and the money that they make, rather than the millions of people whom they help.

I repeat what Opposition Members have said about the potential of the reforms to undermine totally the law centre movement. Nobody who has seen people queuing outside their law centre for help could support any action by any Government which undermined that movement. I must add, however, that the legal aid reforms will also undermine the practice of many high street solicitors, who are often close to and help their community. A disproportionate number of them are black and minority ethnic solicitors, and I do not believe that the Government have fully considered how the reforms will undermine the structure for providing the legal advice, help and support on which communities rely.

Earlier, a Member said that one reason why people have recourse to lawyers is the inefficiency of the Department for Work and Pensions, to which I should add the inefficiencies of local councils and the immigration service and the inefficiencies and, sometimes, unfairness of education authorities. But what are we to do? We acknowledge the systemic inefficiencies in many parts of the public sector, but are we going to leave tens of thousands of people to suffer injustice and unfairness in order to save money in the short term on the legal aid budget?

I also want to address the limits of phone advice. Talking down a phone might be all well and good for people in wealthier areas, but in the inner city many people do not have English as their first language, and if English is their first language they might be inarticulate, afraid and inhibited. In 20 years as a Member, I have had to advise hundreds of thousands of people. Often, they come in and mumble about some issue or other, and only after carefully questioning them, looking them in the eye and showing them my sympathy do they tell me their real problem. If we submit such people to talking down a phone, we will find that their issues are completely lost. They will put the phone down, never having explained what they really wanted to talk about.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s constituency and mine are different in many ways, but one similarity has been commented on repeatedly over the years: they both have high levels of deprivation. Does she agree that, if we take away access to organisations such as Kirkby Unemployed Centre, Merseyside Welfare Rights and Knowsley citizens advice bureau, those levels of deprivation—in her constituency and in mine—will go up?

[Ms Abbott]

There is no question but that they will go up, because we are talking not about frivolity, serial litigants or people who litigate for fun, but about people who have to go to law to obtain the basic rights and fairness that we in the Chamber take for granted. On the idea of people in communities in the east end of London picking up a phone, Ministers are not being realistic. They must not understand what happens in some parts of the country if they think that going on the phone is a substitute for dealing with somebody who is skilled, looks a person in the eye, can see that they are nervous, knows how to put them at ease and can really draw from them the issue at the heart of their problems.

Opposition Members understand the need to consider the whole administration of justice budget, and there is a lot to be said for encouraging people with marital disputes to try mediation first, rather than going to law. Indeed, I have never heard of a divorce case in which tempers were sweetened by the involvement of lawyers. I do not reject out of hand the notion of encouraging people in marital disputes to go to mediation, but there are other ways of saving money in the Ministry of Justice budget, notably the organisation of the courts. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are wasted every year when cases collapse because people do not turn up and things have not been organised properly. Let us consider saving money through the organisation of the courts before considering these ill-thought-out cuts in legal aid. Government Members have referred to the NHS. It is better to identify liability earlier and save all the costs in contesting cases where people know perfectly well that in the end they will have to settle in some form or fashion.

It is not enough for Ministers to say, “Labour’s spent all the money and that is why we’re doing this.” They have to understand that if we are serious about a big society and the role of Government, we have to ensure that the most deprived and marginalised communities have minimal protection, and part of that, in my mind, is access to justice and the rule of law. I sincerely hope, on behalf of my constituents and Hackney law centre, which is a tremendous organisation, that this is a genuine consultation and that Ministers will listen to some of the things that they hear in this Chamber this afternoon.

Courts Service Estate

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As usual, there is much interest and little time, so brevity from Back-Bench and Front-Bench Members is vital if I am to accommodate the level of interest.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Minister is well aware, not least from correspondence from me, that the data on which he based the Knowsley magistrates court decision were deeply flawed. He has not yet addressed that deeply flawed data. Why has he gone ahead with a proposal that he knows will not work? To make matters worse, why has he also decided that there will be no additional capacity in Liverpool by scrapping the capital investment programme? The Deputy Prime Minister refers to this as a progressive Government, but the past two days have proven that it is a wrecking-ball Government.

[Mr Djanogly]

It is not the case that we have not reinvested. As I said in the statement, we are reinvesting in the remaining courts. The right hon. Gentleman asked about errors in the consultation data. There were 16 area consultation documents. A small number of errors were found, but none was considered to be material to the consultation. In one area—north Wales—even though we were advised that the errors did not affect the consultation, I personally decided that the consultation documents should be sent out again, and that was done. However, we do not maintain that the figures were put out in error—quite the opposite. On the whole, they were accurate.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

It is important to ensure that the incentives are right, that we deter the inappropriate use of custody for young people and that local authorities are fully focused on what they need to do to reduce recidivism before the use of custody becomes important.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that, according to a written ministerial statement today, the Omand review of the case of Jon Venables was released this morning. It is 114 pages long. Is he also aware that my constituent, Ralph Bulger, the father of James Bulger, and his brother Jimmy Bulger knew nothing about the release of this report today until the media contacted them, asking for a statement on what they thought would be in this 114-page document? Can he ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again?

[Nick Herbert]

My understanding is that appropriate arrangements should have been made, and that Mr Bulger was aware of the report but not its release. I shall of course look into the matter, and I am happy to talk to the right hon. Gentleman about what went wrong, if something went wrong in this case.

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that many people will find this settlement a bitter pill to swallow? Will he confirm that, if our intelligence relationship with the United States were to break down, which was a real possibility, it would imperil the lives of many, many citizens of this country?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that the Government’s relationship with the United States and the close relationship between our intelligence services and those of the United States make a vital contribution to our protection of the security of this country and the lives of individuals here. That must not be jeopardised.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We are very interested in taking further the idea of restorative justice. Some very interesting experiments in youth restorative justice are under way and they will be carefully evaluated. In all these matters, evaluation is extremely important. People come forward with extremely enlightened and attractive views on how reoffending might be reduced or on how youth offenders might be diverted from the prison system, some of which work and some of which, alas, do not. One has to take a realistic look at them and evaluate them after a sufficient experiment to decide what works. On rehabilitation generally, that is one of the main reasons why we will concentrate on paying by results, wherever possible.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept, though, that short sentences might have a role to play in cases where a probation order or a community sentence has failed?

[Mr Clarke]

I am not sure where the idea that I am against all short sentences has come from. A short sentence is usually taken to mean any sentence of less than 12 months. My own view, pending this review, has always been that there is indeed a case for some short sentences where there is no realistic alternative and one is dealing with a recidivist offender. Wherever possible, of course, the pointless short term of imprisonment should be avoided where a really effective and convincing community penalty is available in its place.