Dangerous Driving

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I thank all hon. Members across the House who have spoken in this important debate and made some powerful points. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) did justice to this debate by setting a substantial tone for what I hope will be a serious but productive conversation.

I pay tribute to the petitioners—the parents, friends and family of Violet-Grace—for the strength and courage that they have shown in what must be the most difficult period. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) set out those circumstances in her emotional speech, which no one could help but be moved by. Hon. Members from across the House went through some truly horrific and tragic personal cases that they have had to deal with. I look to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), as we in Bradford are no different—some truly tragic cases have come to us.

I pay tribute to road safety campaigners such as Brake, which my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) referred to. I pay tribute to the campaign run by the Telegraph and Argus in my district and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South. It has led calls locally not just for much stronger sentences for dangerous drivers and those causing death by dangerous driving, but for increasing resources for the police, to enable them to crack down on dangerous driving—I will substantiate that point a little later.

Those who drive dangerously and sit behind the wheel while under the influence of drink or drugs do so with no thought for the consequences of their actions. They care little for the lifetime of grief and misery that they can end up causing the friends and families of those they kill with their reckless actions. While they never set out with the intention to kill, they conduct themselves behind the wheel in a way that makes it a very real possibility. Despite the life-shattering consequences of death as a result of dangerous driving or careless driving under the influence, the sentence that such an offence attracts, in reality, is far from what the public expect or want. As we have heard, in many cases those who have killed through dangerous driving receive a custodial sentence of just a few years.

The offences of causing death by dangerous driving and causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs should be treated with the severity that they deserve, to match the consequences of those actions. However, we must be careful not to tie the hands of the judiciary too tightly, as we must respect its independence and ability to view and judge cases based on the evidence and facts that are brought before it. We must give it the power and flexibility that it needs to pass sentences that fit the crime of which the defendants are convicted.

Because of the backlash, referred to by some hon. Members, over short sentences imposed for such serious crimes, in 2014 the Government rightly stated their intention to launch a consultation on the matter. Many hon. Members have gone through the chronology, but I will look at the pertinent points. It took a further two years for the consultation to be published, and a further year for the Government to publish their response to the findings of the consultation, despite the fact that within days it had become one of the consultations most widely responded to that the Ministry of Justice had ever issued.

Despite being four years on from the Government’s statement of their desire to increase the maximum sentence available to judges, we are still no closer to the legislation that would bring such a desire into effect, as many hon. Members have said. Now we hear that they will bring forward legislation when parliamentary time can be found; they have stated as much to many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who is not in this debate.

The Government have used that excuse for the past two years, but the point has been made that time has been abundant for them to bring forward that legislation, and they have refused to do so. Perhaps the Minister will explain why they have left the words and promises they gave to victims’ friends and family to ring hollow. To be fair to the Minister, I am not levelling criticism directly at him since he was not in his role at the time. As I said, this issue is serious enough that we should work together on it. I hope that in his response, the Minister will say what everyone here wants him to say.

The massive cuts to police numbers have not taken up a lot of time in this debate, understandably, but they are important. I am attempting not to use the issue politically but to make a factual point: since 2010, £2.7 billion in real terms has been cut from police budgets across the country, and over 21,000 police officers have been lost for good. In my region of West Yorkshire, there are more than 700 fewer officers. Those cuts have fallen the hardest on specialist forces who are much harder to recruit, train and replace, such as our road traffic police who, according to The Times, dropped 11% between 2016 and 2018.

The loss is keenly felt on our streets, where the reassuring presence of the police no longer deters dangerous drivers. The Police Federation has said that dash camera evidence from drivers is no replacement for patrols; motorists regularly drive in an antisocial, dangerous and aggressive way because they are less fearful of being caught. Evidence shows that increased levels of road policing can reduce traffic violations and road casualties. We all know that prevention is better than the cure; we do not want to be in a position of sentencing those found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, because by then it is too late—the irreversible damage has been done and another life has been needlessly lost. Instead, we want those who would otherwise drive dangerously to be deterred from ever setting out on the road, because of a near-certain chance of being caught. We want those drivers never to be able to take another life.

In addition to putting police back on our streets and our roads, we need to look at cases of dangerous driving where, thankfully, there is no death or injury, to look at what is driving people to make such foolish decisions behind the wheel. Such offences may rightly warrant a custodial sentence depending on their severity, but they certainly warrant much greater rehabilitative efforts to make sure that the next time a dangerous driver gets behind the wheel, they do not repeat their mistakes, drive dangerously and end up killing someone.

Those killed by dangerous drivers or careless drivers under the influence of drink or drugs deserve real justice. Their friends and family deserve to see punishment for those whose reckless and dangerous behaviour has left huge holes in their lives.

Assisted Dying

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

There is no doubt that this is a deeply sensitive debate on matters of considerable gravity, and I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this important debate this afternoon. The topic of taking a life is not one that this House can or should debate lightly, and clear opinions—including strong points and robust arguments—have been expressed on both sides this afternoon, including by Members who have been directly affected. We heard from the hon. Members for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who all referred to personal experiences. We also heard the passionate and emotional speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). It is always difficult to stand up in this place and refer to very personal matters. Whether we agree on those matters or not, we should pay tribute to hon. Members who show bravery in talking about their experiences.

In the short time I have, I will seek to summarise the debate so far. We have heard arguments made about why the law on assisted dying should be changed. The primary point that is put forward for changing the law is that it would end individuals’ suffering in the final days, weeks and months of their lives after having been put through the tortures of terminal illness. A further point about individual liberty is also made, with hon. Members stating that we have free will, are responsible for our own lives and should be able to choose the time and place of our passing when we face a terminal illness. Many state that the safeguards that would be absolutely necessary should assisted dying be legalised can be put into place to prevent abuse of the system. Several hon. Members have mentioned the finances and the fact that if one has means, one is able to travel out of the country, but none of these issues should ever be linked to one’s ability to pay.

There is resistance to changing the law, and as some hon. Members have pointed out, any attempt to legalise assisted dying for people with terminal illnesses represents a slippery slope that can start with legalised assisted dying but then escalate to legalised assisted suicide and legalised euthanasia. Such a situation, it is argued, would be beyond what was originally envisaged in legalisation for assisted dying and could lead to further issues. For instance, people with terminal illnesses or chronic conditions, particularly the elderly, could see themselves as being a burden on their friends and families and could opt to end their lives to allow them to escape those perceived pressures. Another concern is that the elderly and those with medical conditions could be pressured into ending their lives against their will by a number of different people.

There has been some resistance from the medical profession—the British Medical Association has set out its opposition to the policy, and the Royal College of Nursing has refused to advocate it—although a number of Members have rightly pointed out that the profession’s position has also been shifting of late.

One of the positives that will emerge from this debate is that we are talking about death, because, as a country, we do not do that enough. Death is one of society’s last great taboos, which we still have not overcome. We close up and do not discuss it, because we think that by not discussing it we can avoid it—can prevent it from happening to our friends and family, to those whom we care about and to ourselves. We do not have these conversations often enough or engage in them deeply enough, particularly when a friend or family member is suffering from a terminal illness and approaching the end of their life. That is one of the reasons why palliative and end-of-life care is not as good as it could be, and why too many people are reaching the end of their lives in hospital rather than in their own homes, surrounded by their families.

There is no reason why we, as a society, cannot provide end-of-life care that provides full pain relief and soothes mental distress. That is why we have committed ourselves to providing free social care for those on the palliative care register, starting with those with the highest needs, so that no one will have to die in hospital for want of a social care package of support.

Time does not permit me to say much more; I have already exceeded my allocated time by a few seconds. Let me end by saying that this is a clear issue of conscience. Members on both sides of the debate have advanced strong and robust arguments. If we are to take one thing from the debate, it must be a commitment to improving the care received by those approaching the end of their lives and to giving them dignity in death.

Child Imprisonment

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this important debate. She is a passionate campaigner for the rights and fair treatment of children, and the serious and substantial work she does is a credit to her. She made a brilliant speech and, along with the spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), covered most of the pertinent points, including on solitary confinement and segregation, which was the subject of a lengthy debate in this place not long ago. I will come to that later in my speech.

Another pertinent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West was on the blurring of the lines. The Government are adamant that no child is subject to solitary confinement, but the line between segregation and solitary confinement is blurred. Although the Minister’s intentions are not to be doubted, we need further clarification. The other pertinent point made by all who have spoken was on the sheer disproportionality in BAME representation in our youth estate: more than 50% is the current figure, which is shocking and cause for concern.

It is widely recognised by innumerable studies, reports and testimonies that child and young offenders are some of the most troubled and challenged groups of people in our society. Although they face many of the same issues that all young people do, they also face challenges and have needs of a far more extreme and pressing nature, and their experiences are far from typical of those faced by other children. When compared with the general population and their peers, children in custody are far more likely to experience mental health issues. Figures published by the prisons inspectorate and information collated by the MOJ both state that around 1 in 3 children in custody suffered from emotional or mental health issues. That is worrying enough on its own but, from what we know about mental health issues in the adult estate and wider society, the figure is expected to be much larger in reality. In many cases, mental health issues are aggravated by substance misuse, with nearly half of children assessed as having a substance misuse issue on entering custody—that figure too will no doubt be higher in reality.

Children who have spent time in care, with all the emotional distress, the huge disruptions to their lives and schooling, and likely prior abuse and trauma that life in care brings, are also much more likely to end up involved in criminal activity, and they are disproportionately represented to a significant degree in custody as a result. Less than one in every 100 children in England are in care, but they account for around two in every five children held in secure training centres and young offender institutions.

The Government’s review of youth custody—the Taylor review, to which hon. Members have referred—found that around nine in 10 children held in custody had been excluded from school at some point. Forty per cent. of the under-18s surveyed reported that they had not been to school since they were 14 years old. Many young people in custody are also further hampered by a range of additional mental health challenges that affect their education and learning, with 30% of 10 to 17-year olds suffering from ADHD, more than 50% from dyslexia, and 20% from another learning disability. It is therefore no surprise that their educational attainment is much lower than the national average. The Taylor review further points out that half of 15 to 17-year-olds entering young offender institutions have the literacy or numeracy levels expected of a seven to 11-year-old.

Such a cocktail of challenges and disadvantages are at the core of the drivers of offending for many children and young people. However, despite the challenges, the youth custodial system is fit to neither hold them nor care for them. It is plagued by serious problems that the Opposition have repeatedly warned of, and it is incapable of both ensuring the safety of vulnerable young people and effectively rehabilitating them for life after their release.

We agree that all children should be safe, including those in custody, but on this Government’s watch we have witnessed a marked increase in violence. The Taylor review points out that the number of assaults each month per 100 young people in custody rose dramatically from nine in 2009-10 to 16.2 in 2014-15. Indeed, so bad is the level of violence that the chief inspector of prisons not only described worrying rates of violence and a staggering decline in safety in the youth custodial estate in his 2017 and 2018 annual reports, but was forced to declare that no young offender institution or secure training centre is safe to hold children and young people.

Just today the inspectorate published a report into Her Majesty’s Young Offender Institution Werrington that found that violence remains far too high. That follows a report into the notorious Feltham prison, referred to by a number of Members, which also saw a significant increase in violence. The Government like to praise the reduction in the number of children and young people in custody yet, as a result of their cuts to staff and budgets, those still imprisoned are in much greater danger. They have, like with the adult estate, pushed the youth custodial estate into a spiral of violence, where neither children nor staff are safe.

Children and young people imprisoned in the youth estate are also significantly more likely to carry out acts of self-harm as the vital support once available to vulnerable individuals is eroded and becomes yet another victim of cuts. Self-harm rates in youth custody have soared in a matter of just a few years, almost doubling from 5.1 incidents per 100 children in the year to March 2012 to nine incidents per 100 children in the year to March 2017.

Earlier this month, we saw that the rate of self-harm had doubled at Feltham, some cases of which were extremely serious and involved ligatures or significant cuts. The chief inspector of prisons warned that the

“care for children in crisis was inconsistent”

and that there was no action plan to address the rise in incidents. That is not helped by the fact that more than one in five children feel that it is easy to get illegal drugs into their young offender institution that are proven to aggravate mental health conditions and contribute to rates of self-harm. Nor is it helped by the excessive lock-up of children and young people inside their cells for much of the day—they are often allowed out for as little as 30 minutes for showers, telephone calls and exercise outside.

Thirteen years on from the independent Carlile inquiry into the use of restraint and solitary confinement, children and young people are still being subjected to those degrading and downright dangerous conditions. The internationally recognised Mandela rules state that solitary confinement—I make the point again that the Government call it segregation, and perhaps the Minister in responding could be clearer on what he sees as not the textbook differences but the practical differences between the two—has a devastating effect on physical and mental health, particularly among groups with mental health issues. Despite that, and even its acceptance in the Prison Service rules, in October last year the Children’s Commissioner found that the number of episodes of segregation in youth custody in England and Wales has increased in the past four years, even as the overall number of children detained has fallen.

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons has also raised worrying concerns that the use of force in the youth estate remains too high, with disproportionate force employed against children. So widespread is the use of force and restraint that the UN Committee against Torture took the step of asking the Government to ban all forms of restraint that inflict deliberate pain on children. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us on the Government’s response.

Finally, to a topical issue—the failures in the youth justice system and youth custodial estate are having a particular impact on BAME children. The failure to tackle needs, the drivers of offending and deep mistrust of the justice system among young people—particularly BAME children—are entrenching disproportionality in the system. Two years ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) published his landmark review on the treatment and outcome of those from a BAME background in the justice system. He found that, within the youth justice system, the proportion of those from BAME backgrounds rose from 25% to 41% in the decade from 2006 to 2016. That is a worrying American level of disproportionality that, as he says, leaves the UK sitting at

“the extreme end of the developed world in relation to disproportionality.”

We have heard today that the figure now is higher than 41%. That disproportionality should worry us all, particularly as a greater number of BAME children in the youth justice system live in poor housing, are disengaged from education and are more likely to suffer from mental health issues than their non-BAME counterparts.

The evidence we have heard is clear: the youth custodial estate is in dire crisis, the victim of years of underfunding and neglect by the Government. The Minister faces serious questions over the failure of the youth estate and the Ministry of Justice to keep children safe, treat them humanely, and properly prepare them for release. He must answer our questions and answer for the Government’s failure. He must also set out, as a matter of urgency, a plan to ensure that all children in the youth custodial estate are safe from violence and self-harm; a commitment to end the use of painful restraint techniques and solitary confinement; an explanation of the difference as he sees it between solitary confinement and segregation; and what the Government will do to reduce the unwarranted disproportionality of outcomes for BAME children. We have heard much about that in the last two years, but we have seen little in practice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. and learned Gentleman on his appointment. By now, he will know that since 2010 our prisons have been driven into a spiral of violence and a state of emergency as a direct result of his Government’s cuts, leaving staff, prisoners and the public less safe. Will he answer one simple question: when will our prisons return to being as safe as they were in 2010?

[Robert Buckland]

I think the work being done to recruit extra prison officers and the extra finance and resource given to my Department by the Treasury are allowing us to return to a position of greater safety. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, but I have to say to him that my experience of prisons stretches back a generation, and I know that many of the issues relating to prisons take a long time to resolve, but that will not stop me having a sense of urgency when it comes to dealing with problems of drugs, violence and safety more generally.

Prisons and Probation

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Throughout this debate we have heard strong speeches on the dangerous consequences of privatisation in our justice system, with Members warning against heading further down this path. These contributions were made by those on both the Government and Opposition Benches. The point made earlier around the Tory ex-Secretary of State Sir Malcom Rifkind’s quote is pertinent and should be used again: he said that deprivation of liberty

“should not be the responsibility of a private company”.

And we can be left in no doubt that the needless privatisation of our probation system and the heavy involvement of the private sector in prisons have proved to be nothing less than a catastrophic disaster.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend, the shadow Secretary of State and I all share the same probation trust; it is run by Purple Futures, part of Interserve, which has gone into administration. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this is a developing pattern, and that the former Secretary of State who transformed rehabilitation did not think it through, and we now need to remodel it and bring it back into the public sector?

[Imran Hussain]

I absolutely agree and will come on to that point shortly. I would have liked to say a lot more but have been given firm instructions by the Deputy Speaker that I must stick to a strict time limit, so have had to cut a lot of my contribution.

Much of the focus of today’s debate has been on the privatisation of probation, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), who made important contributions which I will come on to later. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), spoke about the impact on probation and made the point that there have been numerous reports, all of which highlight the failure in probation.

We have seen offenders released into the hands of private companies whose concern is not the public and their safety, but shareholders and profits. It is right that this has been a key focus, for the Government have not transformed rehabilitation but have destroyed it—crushing rehabilitation, not transforming it.

The failure of private provision companies on reoffending is singled out for particular criticism, as while the principal aim of the plans was to reduce reoffending, the MOJ’s own proven reoffending statistics instead show a rise in reoffending. The blame for this lies squarely with the privatisation of probation and the horrendously delivered through-the-gate services, which are so ineffective that prison and probation inspectorates found there would be no impact at all if they were removed. It is easy to see why they reached this conclusion, as private probation companies have consistently failed to deliver effective support for offenders around accommodation, welfare and employment, all of which are factors determining the likelihood of reoffending.

But it gets worse, as inspections of private probation companies routinely found that they were not just delivering a poor level of supervision of offenders but were carrying it out in non-confidential open public spaces such as libraries, and shockingly in some cases through texts, rather than in private locations. So poor is the record of the community rehabilitation companies in providing support that a 2016 report found that none of those serving a sentence of less than 12 months who were met by the inspectorates had been helped into employment or training after release by through-the-gate. That is absolutely shocking.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for breaking his extremely good speech. The people trying to deliver these services are, whoever they work for, incredibly dedicated and want to do an extremely good job, which many of them are capable of doing, but the problem is the fragmentation of the service, about which I warned the former Secretary of State, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). The former Secretary of State’s words were: “I don’t need any evidence, I don’t need to pilot it; I have inner belief that this will work,” but he was wrong.

[Imran Hussain]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who raises important points on staffing, on the two-tier workforce and on staff morale, which has also been impacted. Time does not permit me to go into detail on that today, but the 4.5% pay gap between those who work in the private sector and those in the national public service illustrates the massive difference between them.

The privatisation of probation has proved to be not just a disaster but a costly one, with the taxpayer being forced to stump up a total of £467 million to bail out private probation companies in what is nothing short of a reward for their damning failures. In return for this bumper payment, the public have received no guarantee that the services delivered by probation companies will improve and no certainty that they will make any investment to achieve that. And all the while, the Ministry of Justice remains happy to continue to throw good money after bad. Despite this colossal bail-out, the financial difficulties of probation companies remain, with a number forecasting losses and with Working Links collapsing and Interserve entering administration earlier this year. The financial failure and collapse of a probation provider, a key component of the justice system, should be unthinkable, but under this Government’s privatisation agenda, that is exactly what is happening as they erode key functions of the state that should remain in public hands and hand them over to private companies.

We have also heard today about the failings in the private prison estate. The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) all made important points on this. One of the important things about this debate is that Members on both sides of the House have made pertinent and important points highlighting the serious emergency and the dire situation in our prison and probation systems at the moment. It is disappointing that the Secretary of State opened his speech by referring to the shadow Secretary of State’s contribution as “simplistic, dogmatic and bombastic”. We have an emergency in our prisons, we have a safety issue in our prisons and we have a crisis in our probation service, yet the Secretary of State comes to this important debate and uses words such as those. I find that quite disappointing.

The issues in our prisons were most recently brought to the fore by the prisons inspector’s highly critical report on HMP Birmingham, which has been mentioned a number of times today. The fact that conditions there were so bad and the prisoners so violent forced the removal of G4S as the private operator of the prison. Many Members have referred to individual prisons today, including those in their own constituencies, with particular reference to safety. The Ministry of Justice’s own statistics show that private prisons are disproportionately more dangerous, with 156 more assaults per 1,000 prisoners in private prisons compared with those run by the public sector, and that three private prisons appear in the list of the 10 most violent ones. That highlights the points being made by hon. Members today.

As we have heard, the Government know about the huge problems associated with private prisons and they are aware of their failings, yet they are pressing on with opening two new prisons, at Wellingborough and Glen Parva, which will be operated by private companies rather than public sector operators. If the Government are so confident of the ability of private companies, why will they not allow HMPPS to bid to operate Wellingborough and Glen Parva, rather than burying the evidence on why they have not done so? The Prison Officers Association has repeatedly asked for the HMPPS estates and transformation report, but it has repeatedly been denied access to it. This shows that the Government’s plans are driven not by a desire to deliver the best benefits for the public but by ideology, and we are seeing a complete failure by the private sector to stand on its own merits when compared with the public sector.

In conclusion, this debate not only demonstrates the colossal failure of the Government’s privatisation agenda, but represents a staggering row about the Government’s plans for further privatisation in our prisons and to hand larger contracts to the same private companies. There can be no half-measures in the Government’s actions. They must commit not only to ensuring that Wellingborough and Glen Parva are run by HMPPS, not private companies, but to bringing probation back into public control for good. The Ministry of Justice says that it has learned its lessons, so now is the time to prove it. I urge Members to support our motion today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

A lot of lessons have been learned since that initial event, but the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; there was a very disturbing event two weeks ago. The basic challenge, as he will be aware, is getting the balance right between ensuring that people are motivated and focused on the regime and that there are high expectations around prisoners and prison officers. To some extent, it is like running a very difficult school, particularly when we are dealing with 16 to 18-year-olds. It is a mixture of being strict on the one hand and loving on the other that is the key to a good prison.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree with his party’s former long-serving Secretary of State, Sir Malcolm Rifkind—a self-confessed true believer in privatisation—who wrote recently in the Financial Times:

“The physical deprivation of a citizen’s liberty should not be the responsibility of a private company or of its employees”?

Does the Minister accept that the renationalisation of HMP Birmingham heralds the end of his Government’s failed prison privatisation agenda?

[Rory Stewart]

I respectfully disagree with Sir Malcolm on this issue. It was absolutely right to take Birmingham back in hand, because that prison was not performing properly. On the other hand, the same company is running some very good prisons in Oakwood, Altcourse and Parc. It is doing good things on family work and on technology. Private sector prisons are often among the safer local prisons in terms of assaults per 1,000. We are not ideological on this. The private sector can certainly play a role.

Youth Inmates: Solitary Confinement

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) for securing this important debate. She was absolutely right to do so, as the issue is covered much less than other wide-ranging problems in our criminal justice system. Even within the youth custodial estate as a whole, it sometimes does not get the airtime that it perhaps should. None the less, it is very important. I also congratulate her on making such powerful and substantial points. I will come on to some of the issues she raised, but she comprehensively covered a very difficult area and made particular reference to some of the international rules and laws that we are subject to and that we probably fall short of in terms of our compliance. She mentioned the Mandela rules, which I will come on to later in my speech.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) spoke eloquently and drew on his previous work in this important area. He also spoke well on some of the broader issues and challenges in our criminal justice system. He highlighted some of the disparities around mental health issues—another area that perhaps does not get so much airtime in this place, but that should be of concern not least to the Minister and the Justice team, as well as more broadly across other Departments.

Hon. Members have already mentioned the report published by the Children’s Commissioner’s late last year, which should be a final wake-up call for the Government, as its verdict was so damning. It highlighted excessive use of segregation, solitary confinement or isolation—whatever we want to call it—by institutions holding children and young people, with a rise in the number of episodes of segregation taking place at the same time as we have seen an overall fall in the number of children and young people held in custody and a rise in the length of those episodes of segregation, with many instances going on for many weeks and sometimes months. Although that should be the final wake-up call for the Government, it is far from the first alarm that has gone off, with serious concerns repeatedly raised in recent years by a range of organisations involved in inmate and child health.

The picture painted by the Children’s Commissioner and others might not be the full one; tragically, the situation could be far worse. Hampering the ability of organisations to report effectively on the issue is the lack of data being collected by the Government. The Children’s Commissioner herself stated that the lack of transparency in the recording of segregation is an issue that needs to be corrected. Her report states:

“the number and average length of periods of segregations are not published at all for YOIs...Figures for all segregations of young people should be collected centrally and included in the Youth Justice Statistics.”

On such an important issue as the wellbeing of children and young people, we need better reporting and better data from the MOJ. Frankly, I am alarmed that the data is not sufficiently recorded at present.

What the data and reports do agree on, however, is that segregation has an extremely damaging effect on the mental health of all those subjected to it, and particularly children in the crucial stages of development. The World Health Organisation has identified a range of typical mental health symptoms that are presented among those who have been segregated in custody. Medical associations here in the UK, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health corroborate those findings. That contributes to what is now an unequivocal body of evidence on the hugely damaging effect that segregation has on health and wellbeing.

Segregation poses huge risks of psychiatric and developmental harm, and various studies show that there is also an increased risk of suicide and self-harm among those in segregation. The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who is no longer in her place, asked about that, and I think there is certainly a link between suicide and segregation. Our prisons are already in a severe mental health crisis, with more than one in three offenders across the whole custody estate reporting mental health issues, and many more likely to be experiencing them. We should not be adding to those worrying figures by segregating children and young people.

We cannot look at the issue in isolation, and there are other issues within the broader custodial estate that will have an impact on it. The Children’s Commissioner noted that poor child-to-staff ratios are making it harder for children to be moved around the prison. That difficulty is compounded by the overall shortage of experienced prison officers, as those who have gained vital skills and understanding, having worked with children for years, have left the prison service, and by the specific shortage of mental health-trained officers, who were forced out by Government cuts that left staff undervalued when they were being put through increasingly difficult and trying conditions.

The shortage of mental health beds across the country following underfunding and under-resourcing is also forcing many institutions to keep children and young people in segregation for long periods while they wait for mental health beds to become available. That abhorrent practice is damning of the crisis in our NHS. A report by NHS England last year that looked at the characteristics, needs and pathways in terms of the care of young people in secure settings found that 41% of young people placed in the youth justice estate had mental health or neurodevelopmental difficulties, as the hon. Member for Henley pointed out. We must ask whether we should be sending young people with such difficult challenges to custody in the first place, and whether they would be better placed in secure medical institutions that are better equipped. It is clear to me that, with the cuts to NHS services, many mental health services are being reduced in comparison with the need for them. The justice system is being used as a dumping ground for individuals when there is no capacity elsewhere.

We cannot ignore, either, the lack of procedural safeguards that allows institutions to place young people in extended segregation. The Howard League has stated that, when it requests paperwork on isolation—even when it is the subject of a legal challenge—it faces difficulties in obtaining it. It also states that children are denied clear targets to help them move out of segregation. Particularly critical, however, are cases where institutions were unaware that external professionals such as youth offending teams and social workers should be invited to segregation reviews. Coupled with the length and nature of segregation, that all amounts to a wilful violation of the internationally recognised Mandela rules.

It must also be noted that segregation is just one aspect of the many problems with our youth custodial estate that show how unfit for purpose it is—another point highlighted by other hon. Members. One of the biggest issues is violence. The chief inspector of prisons declared in his 2017 annual report that there is not a single establishment in the youth secure estate where it is safe to hold children and young people. That was followed up by his annual report last year, in which he declared that children continue to feel unsafe in young offender institutions, and that rates of violence against both staff and young people are higher than in previous years.

The youth custodial estate also shows how great the disparity between BME and non-BME offenders has become. According to the prisons inspectorate more than half of young people in YOIs are from a black and minority ethnic backgrounds. That is a massive disparity when compared with the general population, and we should be asking deep and serious questions about why our youth justice system and custodial institutions are locking up so many young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Staff in the youth custodial estate must be able to maintain order in their institutions, but it must not be through painful restraint techniques or extreme segregation measures. That view is shared by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN special rapporteur on torture, who all agree that segregation should never be used on children and young people. The Children’s Commissioner, among others, warns about segregation practices in the youth estate, and the Minister must commit today to an immediate, independent review that has the power to make recommendations not only on the use of segregation in the youth estate, but on every facet of youth custody, with a view to rebuilding the broken system that is failing to keep children safe.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Minister, you have 42 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I am always willing to do my hon. Friend a favour, and he is right to highlight that point. It is important to have processes, but we need to know that they are followed. In a number of cases, I ask for random individual updates and snapshots of information, so that I can get a feel for whether things are being done the way they should be done, and I look at those files as appropriate.

Wherever possible, children should engage with the regular regime, and other children, during their time in custody. However, there are occasions when it is necessary to remove a child from association because their behaviour is likely to be so disruptive that keeping them in an ordinary location would be unsafe, either for them or for others.

[Imran Hussain]

The Minister is being kind with his time.

[Edward Argar]

There’s plenty of it.

[Imran Hussain]

Perhaps that is one of the reasons why. I did not intervene earlier because I wanted to allow the Minister to progress his points, but does he draw a distinction between solitary confinement and isolation? Does he think that they are two different things? The European Prison Observatory states that those are just alternative terms, and even the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, says that although the terminology may change, those things are the same.

[Edward Argar]

As I said clearly to the JCHR, removal from association and segregation is different from solitary confinement or isolation. The Mandela rules mention having no “meaningful human contact”, but that simply is not the case when someone is segregated or removed from association. I set out previously just how much direct, meaningful human contact continues throughout that time.

When a child in a YOI is to be removed from association, they must be supported in making representations, with governors taking into account literacy levels, whether they need help from the advocacy service and what might be behind their behaviour—I have met the Howard League, and others, who make that point forcefully and reasonably. Prior to a segregation or removal from association, our experienced staff will do everything they can to de-escalate the situation in other ways. If a young person is removed from association, it is not a case of, “That solves the problem”. That is a reaction and a last-resort response based on safety considerations, and the focus throughout will be on what can be done to support that young person back into association, and address their underlying issues or concerns.

Rule 36 of the STC rules states that a young person who has been removed from association and placed in their room cannot be left unaccompanied for more than three hours in any 24-hour period. Providers keep records on staff observations, which must be undertaken at least every 15 minutes. Authorisation for keeping children “removed from association” is escalated during that three-hour cycle, with authorisation from the duty director to extend beyond one hour. All episodes are discussed at monthly performance meetings as part of the governance and oversight arrangements. In contracted-out STCs, the YCS monitor is informed within 24 hours about any removal from association. The monitor is given a summary of every occurrence of a child being placed in their room within 24 hours, and they receive detailed incident reports that articulate the circumstances that led to that removal.

As I explained to the JCHR last year, when a child is removed from association, they are given as much access as possible to the usual regime, including education and healthcare. That includes not only the provision of education packs and in-room learning but teachers attending to children in their rooms to teach them in person so that they have regular human contact. Children in YOIs are also given time in the open air, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle said, and access to healthcare, physical education and legal advice, even when they are removed from association.

Individual regime plans designed around the child’s needs are agreed and reviewed frequently for each child by a multidisciplinary team. Staff in all under-18 YOIs have been given additional training on the use of segregation or removal from association, on the rules governing it and on how to ensure they comply with them. The use of segregation is heavily monitored by the youth custody service and the independent monitoring board, and indeed by me through my regular meetings with the chief executive of the service.

I am absolutely clear that the safety and wellbeing of the children and young adults in our care must be our highest priority, and I am committed to delivering wide-ranging reform to ensure that we are able to meet that priority in an increasingly challenging environment. The shadow Minister suggested that we needed a review of how youth justice, or youth custody, is conducted. I point him to the review conducted a few years ago by Charlie Taylor, which did exactly that. That review set out for us the direction of travel, which we are pursuing with the new secure schools programme, for example. I will touch on that before I conclude.

To provide some context, as hon. Members stated, there has been a sustained fall in the number of children entering the youth justice system in recent years. In the decade to 2018, juvenile cautions decreased by 91%, the number of first-time entrants into the youth justice system reduced by 86%, and, importantly in the context of this debate, the number of children in custody fell by 70%. The latest official statistics I have indicate that there were only 812 children in the youth secure estate as of January this year, a significant reduction from the almost 3,500 to 4,000 around a decade ago.

Those figures represent significant successes and are a testament both to the work and dedication of those who serve our youth justice sector in all capacities, and to the determination on both sides of the House to focus on rehabilitation and give young people the opportunity to reform and live a productive and successful life rather than being condemned at an early age to a life of going in and out of prison. However, that overall decline has resulted in a concentration in the youth secure estate of children who are convicted of the most serious offences—those who pass the bar above which custody is deemed the last resort for someone under 18 and demonstrate very complex behaviour.

The shadow Minister and others referred to the report by the Children’s Commissioner. We studied that carefully, but we challenged a number of her assertions, as I did openly at the JCHR. There are several reasons behind our challenge. The first is the change in the nature of data collection in the period that she looked at. That is not the only reason why we have seen the number of incidents we have, but we need to be careful about the data. Previously, if a young person was segregated in their own cell, it was not recorded as a segregation; a segregation was reported only if they went to a segregation unit or wing. It is important that we have clear data on any segregation or removal from association. That is one factor. It is not the only one, but it is a factor, so I just sound a slight note of caution there.

The other reason goes back to that really concentrated cohort of people convicted of the most serious offences. The average number of children held for violence against the person has increased by 11% in the last year. The proportion of children in custody for more serious offences, including violence against the person, robbery and sexual offences, has increased from 59% to 70% over the last five years. That is due to the increase in violence against the person offences, which now account for 41% of the youth custody population. The changing mix of offenders who make up that smaller overall number plays a part in both the rising levels of violence and the challenges faced by our youth custody estate.

Furthermore, as I think the shadow Minister touched on, despite the reduction in overall numbers, there has been an increase in the proportion of children from the black, Asian and minority ethnic community in custody. They currently make up around 45% of the custodial population. I am deeply concerned about the proportion of BAME children in custody, and understanding and addressing that is a key priority for me. Since my appointment, I have had the great pleasure of working with the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on implementation of the Lammy review. We have created a dedicated youth justice disproportionality team, which is working with stakeholders and criminal justice agencies to follow the principles we set out in response to the review, either to explain clearly why this is the case or to change the way the system works to ensure that there is not unwarranted disproportionality of outcomes for BAME children.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle is absolutely right about the importance of not giving up on anyone, however challenging they are. Young people in custody are some of the most challenging people in our society, for a variety of reasons, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley said. People may be challenging for mental health reasons or as a result of substance misuse. Often, people are challenging because they come from a background in which they experienced significant adverse childhood experiences or trauma, family breakup or domestic violence. There is a whole range of factors behind that. Where the severity of a crime justifies and requires a custodial sentence, our judiciary must have the power to impose one, but we should not give up on any of those young people, and we should work with them in custody to try to address the challenges and background issues they face.

Knife Crime

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I too thank the petitioners and the Petitions Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for opening the debate and making very important points, along with the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who rightly set a measured tone across the Floor. Some broader political points need ironing out, but today may not be the day for that. I will refer to them briefly, but in the light of what the hon. Gentleman said I have altered huge parts of my speech—I thought he made a good point about that.

I join many of my hon. Friends in remembering all the tragic victims of knife crime—those who have been mentioned, and those who have not.

[Mrs Hodgson]

It would be remiss of me not to mention two young people from Sunderland who were also victims. In the north-east, we do not have an epidemic of knife crime. There is a regional element to it, but none the less 31-year-old father Gavin Moon from my constituency was a victim, as was 18-year-old Connor Brown, from the neighbouring constituency of Sunderland Central. As my hon. Friend was talking about victims, I thought I should mention those two.

This has been an excellent debate. I did not intend to stay for long, but it has been so good I have stayed for the wind-ups.

[Imran Hussain]

I join my hon. Friend in remembering the victims she refers to, and all other victims. Our thoughts and hearts go out to the grieving families. These are tragedies beyond words.

We have heard moving accounts from hon. Members from their constituencies—from communities coming together to deal with the issues to the broader impact and trauma, which is sometimes not acknowledged, on society as a whole and on communities. All those things happen in the aftermath, and are sometimes not given as much thought as they should be. I thank all hon. Members for their valuable contributions.

The rise in knife crime and the number of young people who have been killed should keep us all awake at night. This is deeply complex. Although we support robust sentencing, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), made pertinent and persuasive points. I do not wish to repeat them, but I believe that she set the tone regarding the broader impacts by giving some hard facts. In particular, she referred to the record numbers of offenders sentenced for knife crime, with more people being given an immediate custodial sentence. She rightly pointed out that we must realise that we cannot achieve lower levels of crime through sentencing alone. We need an approach that is rooted in effectiveness. Only then can we begin to stop the rise in violent crime.

In taking such an approach, we need to understand what is driving knife crime. Although, as we have seen today, there is little consensus on what has been the trigger for the marked increase in knife crime, the drivers and issues that have created the conditions in which this epidemic has been able to grow are difficult to dispute. The clearest is that, with such a dramatic rise in knife crime, young people are now more scared of becoming victims than ever. They have seen friends wounded or killed and fear that the same will happen to them. They even feel ignored by authorities when they raise that fear, particularly since those who are most likely to be victims live in high-crime neighbourhoods where police are sometimes seen as unable to protect them. That is compounded by a rise in violence and a fall in the proportion of crimes for which an offender is identified.

We cannot get away from the fact that police numbers have been slashed: there are 20,000 fewer police officers than there were in 2010, and police community support officers, who are so vital to building relations, have also been lost. At the same time, there are serious issues in our schools: as schools face significant funding pressures, interventions for vulnerable children are being cut and there has been a marked increase in exclusions and illegal off-rolling. We know that vulnerable children are more likely to be off-rolled or excluded, and the Children’s Commissioner has reported that those who are excluded are 200 times more likely to be involved in gangs, which demonstrates that we simply cannot ignore the correlation between the rise in exclusions and the rise in knife crime.

There have also been huge reductions in the services available for young people. Again, I am not making a political point out of this but just giving the hard facts. Some 3,500 youth service jobs have been lost and 600 centres have closed, with 130,000 places lost. There have been sweeping cuts to education, and teachers and vital early intervention services have been lost as councils face unprecedented funding cuts. Youth offending team budgets have been cut in half, curbing interventions and degrading services that help to prevent young people from becoming victims and offenders in the first place. All those services assist people who are already disaffected and vulnerable. It is no coincidence that victims and offenders are from areas of huge social disadvantage.

We cannot address the drivers of offending with more sentencing alone. We can address them only with an interdepartmental approach, because sentencing is a downstream solution that is applied when it is already too late. We need an upstream solution that identifies the root causes of crime, brings together organisations across central Government, local government, the police and the community sector, and is built on the well-documented public health approach that many hon. Members have referred to, which involves collecting data, identifying the factors at play, implementing solutions and rolling out the ones that work.

More broadly, solving the issue requires the stimulation of housing, employment opportunities and community facilities, as the Association of Directors of Children’s Services suggests. It also requires investment in young people, who are overwhelmingly the most affected, and a cross-departmental approach like that of Police Scotland’s violence reduction unit in Scotland, with close co-operation among partners in the NHS, education and social work. That will help to give young people the future they deserve and lift them out of the dire situations in which they find themselves, which all too often lead them to fall into a life of crime.

Such an approach is far from being soft on crime but, as the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) says, it gets results. The considerable success of the approach taken in Scotland, with homicide rates halving between 2004-05 and 2016-17, has led the Youth Violence Commission, the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the head of Scotland Yard to call for it to be implemented in England. Even the Home Secretary has said that we need to treat knife crime “like a disease”. Unfortunately, he has offered to tackle the symptoms—stabbings and possessions—but not the causes.

We need to do more. We need to shift the focus of our model away from purely specific interventions for high-risk individuals and cast the net wider, to focus on low and medium-risk offenders, from whom most of the cases arise, and avoid a prevention paradox. We need joint ownership to be taken of the problems that lead to knife crime, because responsibility does not lie just with police—we have to be clear about that. Ultimately, we need to adopt an approach that recognises violence as preventable, not inevitable. We need a meaningful public health approach that can address knife crime and its causes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

In terms of inexperienced prison officers, it is about longer training courses and better mentoring on the wings, with band 4 officers in particular working day in, day out with new staff. In terms of time out of cells, this is why having 4,700 more staff is really important—it allows us to unlock people more and get back to a regime that allows people to get into education and work and protects the public.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The point that the Minister conveniently misses is that frontline prison officer resignations have more than tripled since 2010, and now one in three officers has less than two years’ experience, as the Minister fails to get a grip on a retention crisis caused by years of relentless cuts. Does he really think that this exodus of experienced staff will keep prisons safe, as assaults and violence rise to record levels?

[Rory Stewart]

There are two separate things here. The shadow Minister is correct that experienced staff are vital, but it is also worth bearing in mind that one reason why there are so many new staff is that we have recruited 4,700 additional officers; by definition, many of them will be new. Retention is vital. The development of the advanced prison officer grade, which allows experienced closed grade officers to move from band 3 to band 4, will be very important in stabilising prisons.

Short Prison Sentences

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is, of course, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for bringing this very important debate to the Chamber. She is right to say that it follows a number of linked debates of equal value. That shows the interest among hon. Members in this important subject, and I thank hon. Members for their valuable contributions.

The starting point is that we cannot shy away from the fact that many short sentences simply do not work. The points in that respect have been eloquently made by my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham West and Penge and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), and, of course, by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill).

The reoffending rate for those serving a sentence shorter than 12 months is higher than that for community orders or suspended sentences. That is causing real damage not just to communities and victims, but to the public finances—another point that has been made. Short sentence reoffending is conservatively estimated to cost the economy between £7 billion and £10 billion a year; others rightly say that the figure could be £15 billion or more.

It is glaringly obvious why short sentences are so ineffective. An offender who is sentenced to just a few months or even a few weeks will still lose their job, their home and their family. These are all things that offenders themselves say are factors that influence whether they reoffend. The problems are exactly the same as those that an offender serving a sentence that runs into years experiences, but crucially, people serving short sentences are not in prison long enough to put in place steps to address these needs before their release.

An offender serving a short sentence also has no time for purposeful activity, which is proven to reduce reoffending. They have no time to equip themselves with skills or gain qualifications to get a job and pay for a home after release, because in most cases a course cannot be taught and skills cannot be gained in a matter of months, particularly when much of the time is spent isolated in cells due to the lack of experienced prison officers and the other issues that we face in the emergency that exists within our prisons.

There is also no time to get help with regard to other drivers of offending, such as mental health issues and substance misuse. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons states that one prisoner in three has mental health issues—a problem that is undoubtedly much greater than is portrayed—and one prisoner in five tested positive for drugs and psychoactive substances in 2017-18. Those are real, serious problems that these offenders face, but when serving short sentences they cannot get the treatment or rehabilitation that they need to get their lives in order. In some cases, people need rehab and medical attention, not cells.

It is clear that we need to end the use of ineffective short sentences, but although the Government have floated the idea on several occasions, the reality is that they are not doing much about it; we have yet to see them take any concrete action.

The proportion of short custodial sentences has barely shifted in the past three years. More staggeringly, community sentences, which can provide an alternative to short custodial sentences, have fallen by 78% over the past five years, with the fastest decline being for non-violent theft and drug offences. The Minister’s first step must be to halt this worrying trend. Forgive me if I do not entirely believe that the Government will act.

I am even less assured by the Government’s record, because every major policy announcement that the Ministry of Justice has made on prisons falls short of the mark and has come to nothing thus far. The female offender strategy promised five new residential women’s centres—a rehashed Labour idea—which are nowhere near being built. The educational employment strategy scrapped careers advice in prison, which is a negative step, and has not done much beyond that. The Minister’s 10 prisons safety project is failing to deliver improvements in safety anywhere, let alone across the whole estate.

If we have learnt anything from the MOJ it is that it is all noise and no substance. I wish that were not the case. The overuse of short sentences is a substantial and important issue. We want to be able to work with the Government on this. We agree that short sentences do not work and that locking someone up for just a few weeks or months provides no benefit to anyone. We have common ground to build on.

However, the Government do not seem serious about tackling short sentence overuse. If they were serious, they would ensure that there was a real alternative to custody, in the form of robust community sentences or a stricter fines regime; they would not allow the disaster that is our probation system, which provides community sentences, to continue; and they would address the dangerous lack of confidence among magistrates in the probation system and community sentences—a point that the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst made very well.

A study conducted last year with the support of the Magistrates Association found that 37% of magistrates are not confident that community sentences are an effective alternative, 45% are not confident that community sentences currently rehabilitate effectively, and almost half believe that community sentences cannot be tailored to suit the individual needs of an offender. By contrast, a survey in 2003 showed that magistrates had much higher levels of confidence in the ability of community sentences to punish and rehabilitate offenders.

Even after that study and numerous recent, high-profile and wide-ranging critical reports, the Government are continuing with their failed privatisation experiment in probation. The reports are long and damning. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation found nine out of 13 community rehabilitation companies to be performing poorly overall, with poor-quality work in reducing reoffending and protecting the public. The Justice Committee ripped into poor performance on reoffending, concerning high workloads and worries over the confidence of judges and magistrates—a point made earlier. Last Friday’s National Audit Office report found that CRCs failed to meet MOJ targets to reduce reoffending and had created an increase in offenders on short sentences who were recalled. Community sentences simply are not viable under their current providers. Magistrates and judges do not trust them, and neither do the public.

We have heard about Scotland’s model in contrast to the Government’s action. The Labour shadow Justice team has committed to bringing probation services back in-house to deliver a service that works, has the confidence of judges and magistrates, and can show the public that there is a real robust alternative to short custodial sentences. The shadow Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), recently visited Scotland, where a presumption against short sentences is being rolled out. He saw the positive work done to deliver justice for the public and victims through sentencing alternatives that do reduce reoffending. The use of community sentences in Scotland has risen by 16% in the past decade, which contrasts to a decline in England and Wales. The Scottish model has been in place for some time and shows a clear way forward, which the Government must seriously address.

The Government must show that they are capable of more than just words and setting the mood music; they must prove that they are serious. The Minister must set out what they are doing to end the huge overuse of ineffective short sentences, which serve little purpose in our justice system, including what action they are taking to stop the dramatic fall in the use of community sentences in recent years and how long it will be before the MOJ gets the proportion of community sentences back to previous levels.

Addressing this important issue can reduce reoffending, so I extend an offer to work with the Minister to bring reoffending down. However, that offer is not a blank cheque. A new consensus must be built on strong proposals by the Government. The Minister must show us that he is doing this for the right reasons: to reduce reoffending and better serve the public, not just to reduce the prison population. He needs to outline how he will regain the confidence and trust of the judiciary, which the Government have lost with their probation changes. Given the growing number of damning reports on these probation changes and their failure to reduce reoffending, he must commit to ending the failed privatisation experiment, which cannot deliver the viable and robust alternatives to custody that are needed, and bring this back into public ownership.