Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Guy Opperman and Philip Davies

Thursday 17th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

It is true that women used to lag behind men in terms of workplace pensions, but at 73% their participation rates are now equal to those of men in the private sector. Thanks to auto-enrolment, 10,000 men and women in my hon. Friend’s constituency now have a private pension. Thanks are also due to the 1,670 employers assisting them.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Particularly given her statement at the start of topical questions, will the Minister for Women and Equalities tell us what progress she has made in getting the position of disability commissioner reinstated at the Equality and Human Rights Commission?

Responsible Parking (Scotland) Bill

Debate between Guy Opperman and Philip Davies

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman explain what the procedure would be? He is introducing a Bill to this House, but in 11 days’ time we have an independence referendum. If the referendum was carried, the Bill would have begun in this House, but Scotland would have become independent. The reality would surely be that his Bill would struggle, given that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Yorkshire made clear—

[Philip Davies]

Not the whole of Yorkshire—not yet, anyway!

[Guy Opperman]

It is a very small and insignificant part of Yorkshire, as I am sure our other colleagues from Yorkshire would say. My point is that surely the Bill would be hamstrung by the procedures of this House.

Sentencing (Female Offenders)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Philip Davies

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

No, they are not. For the benefit of the hon. Lady, I have every single category of offence. I have figures for the likelihood of men and women being sent to prison for exactly the same offence. What she is saying is simply not the case.

The Home Office undertook statistical research some years ago to try to ascertain the best comparison for similar situations. Home Office Research Study 170, “Understanding the sentencing of women”, edited by Carol Hedderman and Loraine Gelsthorpe, looked at 13,000 cases and concluded:

“Women shoplifters were less likely than comparable males to receive a prison sentence...among repeat offenders women were less likely to receive a custodial sentence. Women first offenders were significantly less likely than equivalent men to receive a prison sentence for a drug offence”.

The Ministry of Justice publication I mentioned earlier also covers the issue of pre-sentence reports and their recommendations for sentences in the courts. It says:

“In 2009, a lower proportion of women who had a pre-sentence report that recommended immediate custody went on to receive this sentence than men (83% compared with 90% for males). For all other sentence options recommended in pre-sentence reports (Suspended Sentence Order, all community sentences or fines), a higher proportion of males received custodial sentences than females.”

Even probation officers, and we all know how soft on sentencing they are, recommend a higher number of custodial sentences than are actually given, and women again are on the receiving end of that particular benefit.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I am not sure, however, that I agree with the entire thrust of what he is saying. What he is driving at, and the argument behind his thesis, is that women are being treated more preferentially, but would he accept at the very least that one of the reasons why women should be treated more preferentially is that, as mothers, they are in the position of having to look after those who might, if their mothers are not present to support them, lapse into the criminal justice system? I am sure that that is one thing with which he would wish to agree.

[Philip Davies]

I will come to the issue of women looking after children. As it happens, a large number of mothers who are sent to prison are no longer looking after their children when they are sent to prison. None the less, my hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. There may well be good reasons for women to be treated more favourably in the criminal justice system in the courts than men. That is a perfectly legitimate argument to follow. If people want to use the facts to prove that women are treated more favourably than men and then actually give reasons why that should be the case, I am perfectly content for them to do so. What I cannot allow to happen is for the myth to perpetuate that women are treated more harshly in the sentencing regime than men, because that palpably is not the case. If we can start having a debate along the lines that my hon. Friend suggests, I would be perfectly happy, but we are a long way from even getting to that particular point.

In addition to the undeniable evidence that women are less likely to be sent to prison than men is the fact that their average sentence length is shorter than that of men, too. Again, I refer to the Ministry of Justice’s own published figures of November 2010. “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System”:

“In 2009, women given an immediate custodial sentence for indictable offences received shorter average sentence lengths than men (11.0 months compared to 17.0 months for males).”

That is not a minor difference. The figures show that the average male prison sentence is over 50% more than the average female prison sentence. That is something that those who allege to be so keen on equality should think about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is right. That is a fact that is given in the courts, which is why women are less likely to be sent to prison than men. That was a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made earlier. Let me emphasise my point with a case from earlier this year. Rebecca Bernard, who had 51 previous convictions for crimes including violence and threatening behaviour, led an all-girl gang that brought terror to her town. She has been the subject of two antisocial behaviour orders for making the lives of her elderly neighbours a misery. When this 23-year-old attacked two innocent men in a night club with a champagne bottle, it was thought that a custodial sentence was inevitable. However, she walked free from court after a judge decided that she was a good mother to her three young children. Bernard had smashed a bottle over one victim’s head and then stabbed the other in the arm with its jagged neck. A court heard that she had launched the attack because she believed wrongly that the men were laughing at her. Quite clearly, those factors are taken into account by the courts, which explains why someone such as Bernard, who clearly should have been sent to prison, and who, if she had been a male, would definitely have been sent to prison, was not sent to prison. That is the explanation. I am perfectly content for the hon. Lady to say that that should be the case, but at least let us argue from the facts, because then we will be acknowledging that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women.

[Guy Opperman]

I understand the basis on which my hon. Friend is making his case. Will he address the nature of the sentence for female offenders and the degree to which they are required to work, take literacy lessons and address drug and alcohol addiction as part of the offending management programme?

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not, because that is a debate for another day. These are all important issues, but this particular debate is about the sentencing of female offenders, and I am concentrating on the likelihood of people being sent to prison. If my hon. Friend was listening carefully at the start of the debate, he would know that the myth that I am currently exposing is that women are more likely to be sent to prison than men. As the figures that I have just quoted show, that is palpably not the case. I will go through other myths as we go through the debate, but there may not be time to go through every aspect of the criminal justice system at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

These women are in women’s prisons, which are not “masculine regimes”. They are in female prisons, for goodness’ sake.

[Guy Opperman]

Everybody accepts that those women are in women’s prisons, but at the same time we cannot ignore a statistic that says that upwards of 70% of offenders—male or female—reoffend. Therefore, does my hon. Friend accept that we have to look at a different approach, not only to sentencing male offenders—both Governments in the last five to 10 years have tried to do that—but to sentencing and dealing with female offenders.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might be right if it was not the case that according to the MOJ—so I am sure it is true—the longer people spend in prison the less likely they are to reoffend, and quite markedly. The high rates of reoffending that he mentions only relate to people who spend short periods of time in prison. The longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. The figures are something like this: for those sentenced for up to 12 months, 61% of people reoffend; for one to two years, the figure goes down to about 47%; for two to four years, it is about 37%; and for more than four years, it is down to about 17%. So the longer that people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. If my hon. Friend and other people are suggesting that—

[Guy Opperman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

Hold on, hold on. If my hon. Friend and other people are suggesting that the 5,442 women who are sent to prison each year for up to six months should not be in prison, presumably they must also be saying that the 51,588 males who are sent to prison each year for less than six months also should not be in prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I will make an offer to the hon. Lady today: I am happy to go to Manchester and debate sentencing with her, any time that she wants to fix up a debate, and we will see what the majority of her constituents think. I think that the point that she makes is nonsense, but if she wants to argue it, that is perfectly fair. However, the point is that those things apply to men more than women, so this argument that this is all about women is complete nonsense. All of these issues relate to men just as much as they do to women.

[Guy Opperman]

All of us in this House would agree that those who are convicted of serious offences should go to prison. That is not in dispute, and neither is the desire to make prison more effective at rehabilitation. The statistics that my hon. Friend has produced show that longer sentences produce a lower likelihood of reoffending. Does he not accept, therefore, the overwhelming logic that if short sentences do not stop reoffending, short sentences are not necessarily working?

[Philip Davies]

We are getting slightly off the point, but I will respond to my hon. Friend’s intervention. The statistics do not suggest that. They suggest two things. The first is that people should perhaps have longer sentences, for which the reoffending rate is lower, not that they should have no sentences at all. The high reoffending rate for short sentences is an argument for longer sentences, not for no sentences.

The second point is that, in the main, someone has to have committed many offences to get to prison. If someone goes to court with more than 100 previous convictions they are more likely not to be sent to prison than to be sent there. People have community sentence after community sentence, and the only reason they go to prison is that those community sentences have not worked—they have not prevented them from reoffending. The reoffending rate for that cohort of people in prison, therefore, is lower than for those people when they were on community sentences.

Horse Racing (Funding)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Philip Davies

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mr Williams. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who represents Newmarket, on making an eloquent and persuasive case. Right now, racing—along with its partners, the bookmakers—reminds me of the eurozone: a once mighty beast, unable to lead, unfit to govern, almost ungovernable and slowly being starved of cash, with solutions that too many vested interests will not address or embrace for fear of criticism by their members.

I have many things to declare. I am a category B licence holder and the only jockey in the House of Commons. As hon. Members will see, I am now in the heavyweight division. I blame the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) for many things, but I am afraid that the election and the delights of the House of Commons have caused me to lose the racing weight that I enjoyed when I won races in 2009 at Corbridge in Hexham.

I must also declare a definite bookmaking background. At age 11, at school, I survived by running an illegal bookmaking operation, which well and truly persuaded me that the bookmaker will always be one step ahead of the punter. On Fridays, we used to receive five boiled sweets in a bag, which was the currency that we used to run our bookmaking operation. My headmaster tried to stop that illegal betting ring, which clearly paid no tax, but was prevented by the outcry among the punters—my fellow schoolchildren—and by the positive encouragement of my parents, who were pleased to see, although I was not necessarily concentrating on my studies, that at least I was not such a daydreamer that I could not make a bob or two. So I have worked as a bookmaker and understand the difficulties and delights of that noble profession.

I should also declare an interest as a former horse racing journalist. For three halcyon years, I was the racing correspondent for that august racing journal, the Limerick Weekly Echo. I managed to put one Limerick bookmaker out of business by predicting the first, second and third in the grand national of 1981, an accumulator that one would wish to get a hold of. I have worked in horse sales, bred racehorses and worked as a stable lad in various places up and down the country. Also, although I confess that I am not nearly as wealthy as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who has many racehorses, I am in a syndicate with a part share in pointers and a chaser.

Over the years, I have ridden at a multitude of race courses, from Cheltenham to Kempton, and have enjoyed their delights, but I have a particular affiliation with and love for the finest race course in the world, which, as we all know, is Hexham. If hon. Members have not visited it, I urge them to do so. The team behind Hexham, one of the last few privately owned race courses in the country, have racing and the general public’s interest very much at heart. The race course provides employment, tourism and sport, supports breeding, vets and feed companies and is an integral part of society in the north-east. I know that I speak for all Members with race courses in their communities. Each of us will tell the same tale of how integral it is to their community, and how it provides much more than simply a race course where punters can place bets.

As the only jockey in Parliament and someone acutely interested in the issue, I can declare that the future funding of racing is important. It is a harsh reality that the number of horses going through the ranks of racing will increasingly diminish. That is patently obvious from the numbers. Horses will also be taken abroad to be trained. Why would anybody stay in this country to train a horse, unless they were particularly in love with the sport?

My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk spoke eloquently of the disparity in prize money for flat racing. The winner of a steeplechase race in France would get a minimum of £5,000, but the winner of a novice hurdle race at one of the lesser tracks here will probably end up with £1,000 or £1,200. By the time they have paid for travel, entry and all the other bits and bobs, it is almost not worth going to the races from a financial point of view. That 5:1 disparity in funding and prize money will eventually seep down into the system, causing the demise of racing in this country. Let us not be in any doubt. In what other sport is this country a world leader? One could make a case for cricket or a few other things, but in reality, racing is clearly the No. 1 sport at which this country is the champion, and we should support it. I certainly believe that it is a cause worth fighting for.

As others have said—I think that this opinion is cross-party—the present situation is patently untenable. We must address how racing is funded. The Government’s levy solution is clearly not sustainable in the long term. I applaud the Government’s efforts, which I know follow the efforts of previous Ministers, to find a radical new solution to how the levy is funded. I regret to say that I have little faith in bookmakers to volunteer a better system in future. That simply will not happen. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley seeks a discounted version of taxation in relation to offshore. That is a commercial advantage to which bookmakers would sign up gratefully, but it would be no solution whatever.

It is important to note that such companies’ profits are significant. Betfair made £26.6 million to April 2011. William Hill made £277 million to 29 December 2010, and its chief executive’s salary is £1.65 million, which I suspect would fund Hexham about eight times over. All the other organisations make substantial profits as well.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend should know that the fact that I have more horses in training than him is the reason why he is far richer than I am. He rattled off the figures, but will he acknowledge how much those businesses give to racing? Betfair, which has gone offshore, still gives £6.5 million of its £26 million every year in a voluntary levy to racing. If racing is so strapped for cash, is it not bizarre that the British Horseracing Authority is ignoring the advice of two eminent QCs that its customers should not pay a levy, and is spending money needlessly on a judicial review with William Hill? If the racing industry is strapped for cash, one would think that it would spend its money a bit more sensibly.

[Guy Opperman]

To misquote Christine Keeler, they would say that, wouldn’t they? The harsh reality is that Betfair is effectively trying to buy off the racing industry by making a donation that it does not have to make, in the hope that the matter will not be transferred back onshore. That is a strong assertion to make, but I suggest that there is ample evidence to support it.

It is also clear that bookmakers are seeing the writing on the wall. They are trying to diversify away from racing and into sports such as cricket and football. For example, on the subcontinent, in India, there is little betting on racing, because most of it is on cricket.

I urge the Minister to change the tax rules. If overseas operations wish to utilise British racing, they must pay more. I support entirely the idea that the punter based in this country is the source of the taxation.

I want to go one step further. If we do not have a solution and if we do not refinance racing, we will need to look at what to do then. If we do not resolve the issue and if the bookmakers and the Government do not address it properly, there will be only one solution. It is draconian, but it is the only alternative solution, and that is the nationalisation of bookmaking. That is the only way that we could approach the issue if bookmakers are no longer able or no longer willing, and the Government do not create a scheme, to fund it in this particular way. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley chunters from a sedentary position, although I accept that he never usually does that.

The point is that America may be the land of the free, but it has no competition in terms of state-sponsored bookmaking. Similarly, France, which is another competitive society, has a state-sponsored bookmaking system. That is also the way it is done in Australia and other places. Why is it that racing is funded so much better in those countries? Because everything that racing does goes back that way. I stress that I do not want to go down that route, but bookmakers and the Government need to understand that, if they do not sort this out, I regret to say that that will probably be the only remaining option.

I could say much more about how racing has been led and about the disaster of the whip debate and the way in which the British Horseracing Authority and Mr Roy have conducted themselves, but I have probably said enough.