Amendment of the Law

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I think that it would. Blatantly going around telling people that their pay will go up and that expenditure will be increased in a number of instantly popular ways, along with Labour’s earlier promises to start ordering companies to reduce the prices of sensitive products in highly volatile markets, is totally irresponsible. I hope that, were the population so foolish as to return a Labour Government in six weeks’ time, their policies would be hastily abandoned when they found themselves confronted with the realities of power.

In basic terms, this is a fiscally neutral Budget, which is plainly what was required. During Budget debates, we used to spend more time discussing the Budget judgment, and on this occasion that judgment was “fiscally neutral”, which I think has been widely applauded. That does not mean that the Budget is devoid of significant measures, including measures that will have a considerable impact on the rest of the human race—the ordinary men and women out there who have ordinary, moderate incomes. I am rather surprised that so little attention has been paid to the wider impact of another rise in personal allowances, which will not only have the welcome effect of taking the very low paid out of tax altogether, but will have a big impact on the great bulk of the population who are receiving perfectly ordinary pay. Some 27 million people will benefit, and average taxpayers will be better off by £900 million a year.

However, so that the Budget could remain fiscally neutral, that easing of the problems of the ordinary population has been balanced and financed by a rather eye-watering increase in the bank levy—which I think is a perfectly sensible way of raising money now that the banks are on their way to recovery—and a further reduction in tax relief on the pension contributions of not the very wealthy, but the better off. They can build up a pension pot of £1 million, which is not to be sneezed at; they have secure jobs, are making contributions, and have plans for their retirement. How that measure can be characterised—as the activities of this Government often are—as helping the rich at the expense of the poor and ignoring the demands of the ordinary man, I cannot imagine. It is the banks and the better off whose taxation has been raised, and the ordinary man and woman whose income tax has been lowered. That shows that free-market economics can be combined with a social conscience, which I have always believed is the best guiding principle for the Conservative party when it is running the macro-economic affairs of the country.

There are also further measures—which, again, will not create pleasure among all the rich—to deal with tax avoidance, of which a great deal has been made. On this occasion, they mostly involve corporate tax avoidance. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has set a very ambitious target for the future—he is aiming to get another £5 billion out of tax avoidance—but he has already introduced a general tax avoidance measure in the Finance Act 2012, which has had an enormous impact on what we can do. We have agreements in the G20 and with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and it is now impossible to hide money in the way that caused a scandal recently, when it was discovered that in 2007, under the last Government, thousands of British taxpayers were finding it easy to evade tax abroad. That is not favouring the rich. The present Government have done far more to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, and to make the raising of revenue more efficient, than any of their predecessors for 20 years or more, including the Government in which I served. Looking back, I have to concede that.

I do not have time to go into all the other measures that have been introduced, but ending the annuities racket and giving more flexibility to those who are saving for their retirement and their old age, so that they can make more use of their own resources, is a major social reform, on which I congratulate the Government and the Pensions Minister in particular. All that has been taken further in the Budget, together with our drive to help business. That is very important: we have to be pro-business. We are trying to revive the economy through lower corporate taxation and more extension of investment allowances, and by easing the tax burden on North sea oil. This Budget is an extremely responsible package, and it bodes well for the future if we are returned to office.

The debate has been dominated by extraordinary arguments about deficits: the size of deficits in the past, the size of deficits now, and where the deficit will go in future. Most of those arguments are based on strange interpretations of statistics or wild over-reliance on forecasts that are at least five years out, which has reduced the debate to a rather simplistic level. I agree—indeed, it is absolutely fundamental—that tackling the problems of debt and deficit is an essential pre-condition of putting the disasters of 10 years ago, and since, behind us, and paving the way for a modern, competitive economy in future.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Ind)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clarke]

No, I will not, because, with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, it would not be fair to the 30-odd other Members who wish to speak.

The hon. Member for Leeds West keeps criticising the Chancellor for not succeeding in eliminating the deficit entirely in the last five years. I am very glad that he did not do so. It is the same with all forecasts—[Interruption.] It is not possible to find a Chancellor who has produced forecasts that are three, four or five years out and which resemble what actually happened. It is necessary to take account of what is happening in the real world. Macro-economic policy has to be pragmatic.

I cannot tell what will happen over the next five years, and nor can any Opposition Member. Will China actually have a soft landing? What will happen to the oil market? Is the recovery in the United States really sustainable? Will the eurozone begin to achieve a bit more growth this year and beyond? What about difficult emerging markets like Brazil? The fact is that we are part of a globalised economy—quite apart from the impossibility of forecasting with exactitude what will happen here.

The Chancellor has cut the deficit substantially, and has moved nearer to getting it under control. Had he moved at a faster pace, heaven knows where we would be now, but we would be in a very difficult situation. Actually, I do not know whether the Labour party thinks that he should have moved faster or more slowly, but I am sure that it is not capable of maintaining progress. I hope that we can achieve a surplus in the next Parliament—and so, obviously, does the Chancellor—but that will depend, again, on whether circumstances permit us to do so. In five years’ time, we shall find out where we are.

Meanwhile, having that kind of responsibility is an essential precondition to raising our educational standards and continuing to tackle the skills shortages which always slow up the British economy—we are making great progress with apprenticeships, and we have much further to go. At last we are beginning to see business investment come through, with more confidence and, I hope, improved credit for businesses. That should pave the way for the productivity growth that we desperately require. We need infrastructure investment, which the Government are pressing on with. We need the EU reforms, which the Prime Minister was talking about earlier. If we can complete the single market—if we can extend it to services, if we can have a common energy market, if we can have a common market for the digital economy, if we can have an EU-US trade agreement—all that will reinforce the efforts of the Government to put this country in a much better position than any other to look optimistically to the future.

If we were in the world of traditional politics of 30 or 40 years ago, this Government would be on a walkover in this election, producing figures to die for after taking over a disaster. We still have to rise above the cynical comedy of today’s protest politics. This Budget shows that a competent Conservative Government can finish the job.

Detainee Inquiry

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for explaining why we gave the ISC more powers, and why that very powerful Committee, with its very strong membership, is capable of exercising its responsibilities and—we hope—producing the information that we require. The Gibson report did indeed indicate that when it had previously tried to conduct inquiries into detention and rendition, the Committee had not been given access to much fuller information involving all the incidents of detainee mistreatment that had been complained about, and the full internal investigations of rendition that had taken place. I have no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend’s Committee will rectify that when it returns to the subject.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for allowing me a response at greater length than is usual. May I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his statement and the care he has taken in handling this matter, which I personally appreciate, and may I say that I share many of the sentiments he has expressed?

I greatly welcome today’s announcement that the Intelligence and Security Committee will now inquire into the questions raised by Sir Peter Gibson’s interim report, and that all relevant witnesses will be able to give testimony in person? Such a further inquiry is, surely, imperative given that the 27 sets of issues Sir Peter identifies have been based entirely on the available documents, and not on any statements, or oral examinations of witnesses?

May I tell the House that, as Foreign Secretary, I acted at all times in a manner that was fully consistent with my legal duties and with national and international law, and that I was never in any way complicit in the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state?

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware, as Sir Peter brings out in his interim report and has long been known more widely, that in early January 2002 I agreed that the UK should not stand in the way of UK nationals who were detained in Afghanistan by the United States being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, and that I did so after careful legal advice and because, at the time, it was the only practical alternative to their remaining in custody in Afghanistan? But will the right hon. and learned Gentleman also accept that we never agreed in any way to the mistreatment of those detainees or to the denial of their rights, that we made repeated objections to the United States Government about these matters, and that I was able to secure the release of all British detainees by January 2005?

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that we should never forget the context: that the period covered by this report was the aftermath of the world’s most appalling terrorist atrocity ever, on 11 September 2001, and that in this period there was a continuing and profound anxiety about further terrorist outrages to come—anxieties that were all too well placed, as we all discovered on 7 July 2005?

Finally, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that throughout this difficult period it was the exemplary professionalism and bravery of our armed forces and of the staff of our intelligence and security agencies which ensured that, in so far as was humanly possible, our nation and its people were kept safe?

[Mr Clarke]

I have the greatest respect for the right hon. Gentleman and I have considerable sympathy with him for the frustrating personal position in which he finds himself. There has been briefing around this matter and allegations have been made, and he has had no opportunity of appearing before Sir Peter and giving evidence, which he was anxious to do, and helping Sir Peter and the panel establish what actually happened during the period in question. He will now have the opportunity to do so when the ISC looks into these matters. Obviously, I cannot give any opinion on the issues the right hon. Gentleman raises because they relate precisely to what we are trying to get someone to investigate and reach a conclusion on, but it is certainly the case, as Sir Peter’s report makes clear, that one of the issues that will have to be looked at is whether Ministers were properly informed in full about what was going on and what necessary ministerial authorisation there was.

I also share the right hon. Gentleman’s final sentiment. I hope that all Members agree that we want the toughest and most effective intelligence services we can get and that we want our intelligence services to be at least as effective as those of any other nation. But we are a democracy and we also want to know that what they do is proportionate, complies with essential ethical standards and is authorised by a Minister, and that all the activities are carried out by people who are accountable to the Ministers responsible and to Parliament as well, when possible. That is the conclusion I hope we will eventually reach.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The special advocates surprised me with the ferocity of the evidence they provided. They start from the side of the argument that challenges the security services and is suspicious of what goes on, and judges have told me—some have said this publicly—that they underrate their effectiveness in such actions. They are used to practising the present law and I assume that their position is that the present law is perfectly all right and that they wish to continue with it. I am surprised by the adherence to PII, which has not hitherto been evident.

Let me give the example of another case to show that special advocates can successfully challenge the evidence put forward in closed proceedings by claimants. Ekaterina Zatuliveter, the Russian girlfriend of a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, won her deportation case after a closed hearing in which a special advocate challenged the argument that she was a threat to national security and should be deported. It is simply not the case that in closed procedures it is impossible to challenge these points. Such cases are comparatively new, as no one dreamed we would have such litigation until 10 or 15 years ago.

The claims are getting steadily more numerous as we have an attractive jurisdiction in which the person against whom one makes allegations will probably not be able to call any evidence and one will be paid millions of pounds. The best way forward is the one that has been successfully used in the two cases I have already cited, which is, despite our very limited experience, having closed proceedings and special advocates. It is less than ideal, but it is justice, not secrecy. Secrecy is what we have at the moment, with an uncertain and debatable outcome in all these cases.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct to say, of course, that the previous Labour Administration introduced closed material proceedings in 1997, with support from all parties, as I recall. They have worked. Will he confirm that in at least seven of more than 30 Special Immigration Appeals Commission cases since the beginning of 2007, including the two he mentioned, the court has found against the Government and in favour of the potential deportee?

[Mr Clarke]

I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s statistics. I cannot confirm them, as I do not have them myself, but they sound wholly credible. As he said, a Labour Government introduced these procedures—it might have been him—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

It was me.

[Mr Clarke]

It was he, as Home Secretary, who introduced them. They arose partly at the behest of human rights lobbyists who are now vehemently opposing the Bill. It was the intervention of human rights activists in the case of Chahal in the late 1990s that saw the system of closed hearings develop, but some of the same people are now arguing that closed material proceedings put the Government above the rule of law.

As I have already said and as the right hon. Gentleman has with authority confirmed, people have been successful in fighting the Government in these civil actions under the closed material proceedings, as the number of claims goes—

Detainee Inquiry

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The point that lies behind the debate I have been having with NGOs and detainee representatives about the terms of reference is that our aim would be that the judge-led inquiry might conclude within a year. We do not want an inquiry that takes years and years and becomes too legalistic. We are still open to discussions about that, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman obviously shares my view that it would be much better if we were able to get things under way and hold this inquiry. I am grateful for his support for the inevitability of holding fire and getting Sir Peter to produce what he has done so far.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Sir Peter Gibson is a retired senior judge of the highest integrity and skill and I am personally quite certain that had he had the opportunity to continue this inquiry, he and his colleagues on the panel would have been able to do a most thorough job and would have gained the confidence of the NGOs and others in the course of that inquiry in exactly the same way as Sir William Macpherson, who was faced with a high degree of scepticism when he first began the Lawrence inquiry, was able to assuage the concerns of many of those involved in the course of the proceedings. May I also say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I believe that he is absolutely right to do what he has and that in practice he has had no alternative?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful for that view and for the right hon. Gentleman’s support because I keep trying to assure people that there is no conspiracy here. The Government actually want these things to be properly investigated and want the full facts to be shared with the general public so far as they sensibly can be, consistent with the interests of national security.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain the practical difference between an offender who is given an IPP for, say, a minimum tariff of five years, who will then be released by the Parole Board on proof of meeting certain conditions, and someone who is given a discretionary life sentence with a tariff of five years who is released by the Parole Board on exactly the same conditions? What is the difference?

[Mr Clarke]

Well, there are differences in the regime, the sentence planning and so on, but not very many. I will go back to the point about the regime that we want to introduce for people with extended determinate sentences, but the right hon. Gentleman makes my point. What is wrong with saying that the courts should use the ordinary life sentence? They will use a life sentence when they judge that a case is so serious, and when future risk is so high, that it is the only proper sentence.

For other offenders, we are introducing a new extended determinate sentence. The offender will receive a custodial sentence plus a further long extended period of licence set by the court. Those will be quite long determinate sentences, and the offenders who receive them will serve at least two thirds of them. In serious cases, offenders must apply to the Parole Board for release, and the board may keep them inside until the end of the determinate sentence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I shall come to the Parole Board before I conclude my remarks, but we are not taking away its power: nobody who previously had an IPP will be released, even at the two-thirds point, unless they have first satisfied the board.

The most obvious difference between life sentences, which will now be used more widely, and IPP sentences is that, in the case of life imprisonment, licences are for life and subject always to recall, whereas IPP sentences are not. However, as I said, criminals who complete an extended determinate sentence must then serve extended licence periods, during which time they will be closely monitored and returned to prison if necessary. The courts have the power to give up to an extra five years of licence for violent offenders and eight years for sexual offenders on top of their prison licence.

There are further protections. Some people believe—the Labour Front Bench team certainly affect to believe—that we are exposing people to risk by making this much overdue change. We are also introducing—not in the legislation, but I undertake to introduce them—compulsory intervention plans for dangerous offenders while they are in prison, so that they are supported to change their ways and not commit more crimes when they are eventually released. By the end of sentence, offenders should therefore have undergone interventions—made in a more certain and organised way than at present—to address their offending behaviour.

There is rightly concern that those currently serving IPP sentences should be supported in progressing through their sentences and achieving release on licence. However, we will be using our best efforts to improve the progression of these prisoners through sentence, including with improvements to assessment, sentence planning and delivery, and parole review processes. We continue to monitor outcomes to ensure further improvements in this area.

There are yet further protections available to the court. We do not believe that our proposed changes put the public at risk or weaken our risk-management regime. Most sexual or violent offenders sentenced to 12 months or more in custody will fall under the multi-agency public protection arrangements framework, which means that the relevant authorities will work together to co-ordinate assessments of risk and risk-management plans for the offender once they have been released on licence. Robust risk-management systems are now in place for a range of offenders. Court orders are also available to manage the risk of serious sexual and violent offenders who appear to present a risk at the end of their sentence. Violent offender orders and sex offending prevention orders place restrictions on these offenders, and if they breach those orders, they can be sent back to prison.

In the sentencing Green Paper, we raise the question of whether the Parole Board’s test for release in these cases is the right one, because only a tiny number of people ever emerge from prison at the moment—the rate is less than 5% a year—and we are acquiring people who are still in prison years after they finished the tariff that the judge imposed on them. This is a question that we will explore further. The amendments give the Secretary of State a power to change the release test used by the Parole Board, which is set in statute for IPP prisoners and for prisoners serving the new extended sentence. The power will be subject to the affirmative procedure. We will consult carefully and see what happens to the Parole Board and the courts once we have made the present form of sentence extinct for former prisoners.

The trouble now is that someone who has finished his tariff has to stay in prison unless he can persuade the Parole Board that it is safe to let him out. [Interruption.] That is it; that can be difficult, sitting in a prison cell, although we are going to produce some management plans. On the other hand, if we are keeping someone in beyond their tariff, it is certainly arguable that we should have some positive reason for fearing that there is a risk that he is going to offend when he leaves. We have to reflect—we will consult on this—on whether we have been giving the Parole Board an almost impossible task. It is no good pretending that it can come to a scientifically certain conclusion in each case. None of us would like to say, if we met a range of prisoners, which were now reformed and which would offend again. The Parole Board gets it wrong now: some of those it releases offend again, while some of those in prison are never going to offend again, if we can actually get them out. We will consult on whether the current release tests for IPP sentences and the new extended indeterminate sentence ensure effective public protection while allowing everyone to be satisfied—as far as they can ever be satisfied in this world—that the offenders can now be safely managed in the community.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I shall give way one last time, because I am trying to be brief so that we can have a debate.

[Mr Straw]

Some 40% of discretionary and mandatory lifers are post-tariff. They have to prove that it is safe to release them. Can the Secretary of State please explain what the difference is in substance between someone on a life sentence who has to satisfy the Parole Board that it is safe to release them and someone on an IPP?

[Mr Clarke]

Because the judge, in full knowledge of the circumstances of the offence and the offender, has decided that such a serious offender should get life imprisonment, it is—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

May I correct the right hon. Gentleman? The impact statement will show the Bill as amended. Other things being equal, with no changes in the crime level—which depends far more on how long a recession we have, the levels of youth unemployment, how successful we are in dealing with drugs and how far we get with prison reform—the Bill will reduce the prison population by 2,300. The measure we are now debating will have no effect on the prison population in the period to 2015. The reduction in the prison population is achieved by measures already discussed and approved in the Public Bill Committee.

[Mr Straw]

It would have been helpful to have the impact statement before the House today rather than tomorrow. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying—picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley—that no prisoner who cannot be released until he has proved that he is not a danger to the public will not be released in the future, what on earth are these convoluted changes for?

The original design of the legislation in 2003 was unsatisfactory because it led in some cases to tariffs that were ludicrously short—in one case, 27 days. That was never the intention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and it was causing a major problem. I, with the approval of the House, sought to change the law. It is worth Government Members remembering, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting pointed out, that we got no assistance whatever from the Conservative Opposition at the time. Their complaint was that we were going soft by introducing this change. It was absolutely extraordinary. I do not remember the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), now the Lord Chancellor, standing up either in the House or outside suggesting that there was an alternative. We made that change and, interestingly and wholly contrary to what was said, it has led to a stabilisation of the numbers on indeterminate public protection sentences. According to the Lord Chancellor’s statistical bulletin, in the most recent year the number of such sentences rose by only 3% over the previous year and the number of those receiving IPP sentences was 958 for the year ending March 2011, compared to one short of 1,000 for the year ending March 2010. The changes that were introduced are working.

Yes, it is right that we should look in more detail at the Northern Ireland experience to see what other changes can be made, but it is entirely wrong for the Secretary of State to try to set up a new system that will lead either to the release of dangerous people who are serious and persistent offenders, thousands of whom are in prison for violent offences and sexual offences—in the main—or make no difference at all.

Justice and Security Green Paper

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

On the first point, we canvassed opinion on the prospect of it being extended to inquests. There will be a range of views on that, so this is a genuinely green part of the Green Paper. My view is that in cases where families are desperately anxious to have a proper inquiry and for someone to make some judgments about what caused the death of a family member, it is particularly unsatisfactory if the whole thing cannot be brought to some sort of conclusion because the proceedings are too open to members of the public so the evidence cannot be heard. We will therefore consult carefully on inquests. I am not sure that the legislation proposing that we have a chief coroner would have given him any powers to do much about such inquest cases, but no doubt that issue will be raised if we continue to debate whether we need a chief coroner.

We propose to improve the ISC’s powers to require information to be brought before it. There are of course difficulties and sensitivities relating to operational information, but those will no doubt be raised in response to the Green Paper and are touched on, rather carefully, in the document I have published today.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

On the strengthening of the ISC, I commend what the Secretary of State is proposing. It is 17 years since the ISC was established—a different time and in the shadow of the cold war—and, as he has pointed out, circumstances have changed, so the proposals must be right. On the main part of his statement, I congratulate him on finding what appear to be elegant solutions to the terrible dilemma that successive Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries have faced, as I know, where the pursuit of apparent openness has resulted in injustice being done to the intelligence and security agencies and the plaintiffs, and sometimes defendants, in these actions. Will he confirm that the model he is seeking to extend for criminal-related cases will build on the establishment, many years ago, of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission? He says that the matter is urgent, and I entirely agree, so when does he plan to conclude the consultation and introduce legislation?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He will not be surprised to learn that, although I made the statement today, I have been working very closely with my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary, whose interests are crucially involved, as he well knows, having done both jobs. We propose to complete the consultation by January next year, by which time we expect to be able to come back with legislation for the House to consider. I hope that people will feed in their views, because the whole point is to try to carry as much consensus in the House as possible. Although we have not yet decided, we will perhaps introduce legislation next year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

8. What decisions he has reached on implementing the recommendation of the review by Lord Justice Jackson to abolish referral fees.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

As the House was informed on Friday 9 September in a written ministerial statement, the Government have decided to ban referral fees in personal injury cases as recommended by Lord Justice Jackson. The ban complements our wider reforms to no win, no fee arrangements, which are being taken forward in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

[Mr Straw]

May I first express an unequivocal welcome for the announcement that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), made on Friday not only in respect of motor insurance but more widely about implementing this central plank of Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations? Since the Justice Secretary used the word “ban”, which I think is the correct word, may I ask him whether he accepts that, given the level of malpractice we see across the legal and paralegal industry, the ban will have to be backed by the criminal law?

[Mr Clarke]

First, may I say that I am glad that my old friend the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and I are in complete agreement on this subject? It is not the first time. He got in first, really, because I waited for the opinion of the Legal Services Board, which I have not followed but which I had to consider, and he rightly prompted a decision. People who agree with us include not only Lord Justice Jackson but my noble Friend Lord Young in his report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, the Law Society, the Bar Council and the Association of British Insurers. The main beneficiaries will be claimants who are genuinely referred to the best expert to act for them and the justice system in general. We are now considering the way in which to put this into practice, but it is likely to be in the form recommended.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I shall try to observe your strictures, Mr Deputy Speaker, but this is a very large piece of legislation; I shall probably have to restrict the number of times I give way to interventions.

I am determined to reform the justice system in this country. Keeping the public safe, ensuring that those who break the law face the consequences and providing swift, cost-effective access to justice are fundamental responsibilities of the state towards its citizens. Yet the last 13 years of government have left us a system whose cost and scale have exploded and whose failings can no longer be tolerated.

In the area of criminal justice, more than 20 new Acts of Parliament, thousands of new criminal offences and a huge increase in the prison population cannot mask very deep flaws in the system. Briefly, our sentencing framework is a mess of byzantine complexity that even trained lawyers and judges—never mind the general public—find confusing.

Our punishments do not work. Community sentences are weak, asking little of offenders, and prisons have become so crowded that there is no space for governors to enforce regimes of meaningful work or reparation. Far too many prisoners are left idle in their cells, often on drugs. For that model, the taxpayer has the privilege of paying out an extraordinary sum—£44,000 per prison place per year. I have just been assured that the Ritz is even more expensive, so I slightly exaggerated, but £44,000 per prison place per year is enough to pay the salaries of two newly qualified nurses or teachers.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I give way to my predecessor.

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor. We have heard about this alleged litany of failures. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary, crime was at a post-war peak on both the measures that the Prime Minister used to discuss crime at questions earlier today. Since then, burglaries have dropped by 70%, thefts by 50%, and crime overall by 50%. Is the fact that the Lord Chancellor never, ever refers to the outcomes of our record due to the fact that that happened mainly under us or the fact that the process started under his successor, Michael Howard?

[Mr Clarke]

The idea that I set off a crime wave when I was Home Secretary is a charge that I will answer on some other occasion, frankly. As far as the decline in crime is concerned, the biggest decline has been in theft because car manufacturers made cars more secure. The courts used to be full of taking and driving away offences, but are no longer because it is more difficult to take the cars.

The fall in burglary coincided with an economic boom—one of the consequences that came from it. The 20-plus Bills that the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors brought before the House—more than one criminal justice Bill a year—and the countless changes in sentences filled up the prisons, but in my opinion had no provable, demonstrable effect at all on the levels of crime in this country.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman is an ex-Front Bencher. I will give way to him later, but I should observe the strictures of Mr Deputy Speaker, although I enjoy debating with the right hon. Gentleman. I should move on a little further into my speech.

As the right hon. Gentleman has heard me say before, reoffending rates are a national scandal; that is why the system is failing. Half of offenders—49%—have been reconvicted, in part because the system is not tackling the underlying causes of their criminality such as drug abuse, poor mental health and inadequate skills. The consequence of that failure is new victims of crime every day. Despite improvement, victims and witnesses too often still get treated as an afterthought, not a central concern of justice. That is why we need intelligent, radical reform of the criminal justice system to protect and serve the needs of law-abiding members of society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Without fettering judicial discretion, I think I can give that assurance. There are all sorts of grounds on which bail can be refused. We are saying that where it is likely that a person will not be imprisoned when they come up for trial, they should not be refused bail.

[Mr Straw]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Clarke]

No, I am sorry. I respect the right hon. Gentleman, but I must move on.

I have said that ordinary citizens find the civil law a rather nightmarish experience when they resort to it. Thanks to the present scope of legal aid and the way in which the no-win, no-fee system operates, many people and, in particular, many small businesses live in fear of legal action. I accept that access to justice for the protection of fundamental rights is vital for a democratic society—something on which I will not compromise. However, our current legal aid system can encourage people to bring their problems before the courts when the basic problem is not a legal one and would be better dealt with in other ways. The scope of legal aid has expanded too far. It cannot be right, for example, that the taxpayer is forced to pay for legal advice to foreign students whose visa applications are turned down. There are many other examples.

Our legal aid system also faces a completely unignorable problem of affordability. I have listened to arguments in the media today challenging that, but we have by far the most expensive system in the world, after Northern Ireland, where I am sure the same problem will be tackled. It costs £39 per head of population in this country, each year, compared with £8 in, for example, New Zealand, which has a similar system of law. In any circumstances our system would need reform; in the country’s current financial crisis reform is imperative.

I have some advice for Labour Members. I do not usually give gratuitous advice, but I think the Labour party is facing one of the problems that we faced in 1997. It should find the courage to admit that it made some mistakes and left some things in a mess. It has been acknowledged by my opposite number, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), that, on Labour’s watch:

“Playing tough in order not to look soft made it harder to focus on what is effective”—

wise words. I thought, when we set off on this process of consultation, I had the widespread support of many Opposition Members. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reflect on the way in which he started his consideration before he gets on with the rest of the debate.

In fact, when Labour was in office, its strategy for our prisons and our courts was legislative incontinence combined with kneejerk populism. On prisons, the Labour Government made the mistake of being unable to make proper provision for the demand for places that they stimulated. Overcrowding devoured the very budgets that should have been used productively to cut reoffending and improve public safety in a lasting way. What was the final result that we all remember? They had to reduce the release point from two thirds to halfway through the sentence. They then had to resort to the financial chicanery of keeping the cost of building prisons off the balance sheet—the so-called Carter prisons. Finally—the ultimate absurdity—they had to let out 80,000 prisoners early, before the end of their sentence, to offset the cost of the allegedly tougher sentences that they had imposed. That is why we need reform now—to reverse that nonsense.

On wider justice matters, the Labour Government proved little better at getting a grip. They had 30 consultations on legal aid from 2006; they did not act decisively, put the system on a sustainable footing or address the litigiousness to which its excessively widely available funding contributed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health agrees with the hon. Gentleman and me. My ministerial team and my right hon. Friend’s ministerial team have been holding discussions. My right hon. Friend has a strategy for trying to improve mental health services to the population as a whole. As part of that we are addressing what can be done to help the mentally ill who find themselves in prison. Some of them should be diverted from the criminal justice system altogether; some can be better treated in secure accommodation in the national health service; and many can be treated better than they are at present when being incarcerated in prison is not suitable. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend and I share his concern.

Underpinning punishment, reparation and rehabilitation is what might be called system reform—simplification, restoration of discretion to judges and the relief of unnecessary pressures on the system. At the same time we must take a more robust approach to costs in the system, including that of prison. We have already shown that through competition it is possible to get prison costs down while improving service quality. Key measures in the Bill include reforming the use of remand. I dealt with this a moment ago. I have told the House that preventing reoffending is the central idea of my reforms. One of the main barriers to doing things in the past few years has been the fact that the prisons have been clogged up, sometimes with people who do not need to be there at all. I will not repeat the arguments that I made a moment ago that give rise to the part of the Bill that restricts the power of courts to remand those who have no reasonable prospect of receiving a custodial sentence, with the exception that I have already described of cases of domestic violence.

[Mr Straw]

In answer to the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) the Secretary of State said that where a defendant failed to return to court on time, the court would still be able to remand him in custody so that he could get to court. The Secretary of State clearly spoke in error, because if he looks at page 166 of his own Bill he will see that paragraph (5) to schedule 10 makes it absolutely clear that even where a defendant has failed to surrender to bail and has been arrested he cannot be detained in custody to appear in court unless there is a real prospect of his subsequently being sentenced to imprisonment. How will the public be made safer or witnesses protected by that?

[Mr Clarke]

I will address the extent to which we retain discretion, as determined under the bail Acts, according to which bail is granted or refused. In 2010, more than 16,000 people were in custody but were released when they appeared for trial and either pleaded guilty or were convicted. Continuing a system whereby people are refused bail when everyone knows that they will not be imprisoned if convicted is a very wasteful use of a very expensive place in our prison system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

No, of course I will not. The explanatory memorandum makes exactly the same point.

Let me address the issue of indeterminate sentences for public protection. I entirely endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has said from the Front Bench. The Secretary of State made one of his sweeping statements, saying that those sentences have been discredited. No, they have not. Who has discredited them? He has, because he has been forced to save money on indeterminate public protection sentences having had to surrender the 50% cut in the bail discount, as he well knows. IPPs have worked.

The Secretary of State comprehensively failed to answer the hon. Member for Shipley yesterday, when the hon. Gentleman said that the reoffending rate for IPPs has been spectacularly successful—of the 1,449 people released, only 11 have reoffended. The Secretary of State laughs, but what we are dealing with here is the most serious offenders who, under the law, are expected to show that they would go straight, if they were released. He is laughing, but the laugh will be on the other side of the Conservatives’ faces when and if his measures go forward and people are released before it is safe for them to be released and they commit further offences. He will be the person to blame for that.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman is referring to the 200 people who have been released, but more than 6,000 of them are still in prison with no idea when or if they are going to be released. Their reoffending rate is, I agree, very low, but that is not a justification for the system. The vast majority of respondents to our consultation regard it as something of a disgrace that the measure has been put on to the statute book and is working in this way.

[Mr Straw]

I take that, as they say in court, as an admission. At long last, the Secretary of State now accepts that the reoffending rate of those released under IPPs is low. Perhaps he will now reassess his ludicrous claim that that policy is not working.

Reforming Civil Justice

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I add to the broad welcome from my Front Bench for the decisions that the Secretary of State has announced today? I also add my thanks, as I am sure he does, for the extraordinary work of Sir Rupert Jackson, which underpins them. I should like to pick up on the point raised by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Secretary of State aware that, in my constituency and in many others across the north-west, car insurance premiums for decent, honest drivers with impeccable records have rocketed, despite the fact that the number of accidents and thefts from vehicles has gone down? That is because of the work of those parasitic claims management companies and because the insurance companies, who are complaining about the costs, are themselves guilty of selling on personal data, including the facts relating to a claim, to those companies, often without the agreement of the insured person. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to close down those claims companies altogether? They are parasites milking the system. I apologise for coming late to this decision; I should have taken it when I was in his seat. Does he also agree that we should use data protection legislation to ban insurance companies from selling on personal data?

[Mr Clarke]

When I took over the right hon. Gentleman’s desk and chair about 11 months ago, one of the first things I picked up was the Jackson report, which he had commissioned. As he says, it was on his desk, but he had not had time to implement it. I was immediately attracted by its approach to cutting costs, so I am glad that he and I continue to agree on that. I am astonished to hear his description of insurance companies selling claims, although I have come across it. They do not all do it, but this just adds gloss to the strange way in which this has all developed. I am also struck by the huge cost of these practices for institutions such as the national health service, which, in a bad year, can spend about £400 million—little short of half a billion—on legal fees. In many areas of practice, the legal fees are the biggest bill for the defendant. They often exceed the amount of compensation paid to the claimant. The right hon. Gentleman was obviously anxious to reform the system, and I am anxious to do so as well. I am glad to have taken up the baton.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Why is the Secretary of State so unwilling even to utter the words that would acknowledge that, in the past 15 years—the last two years of his Government, from 1995, and through the 13 years of the previous Labour Government—crime fell by a record 50%? Why does he not acknowledge that and also accept that the cost-cutting led programme that he has announced today may put crime levels at risk?

[Mr Clarke]

Of course I acknowledge that crime fell during that period, as it did throughout most of the western world. I have always acknowledged that. Where we will not agree is on the simple cause and effect that the right hon. Gentleman puts forward. Let me quote from a source whom it would be unexpected for me to quote with total favour: Mr Newt Gingrich. A recent article he published in an American magazine about the situation in the state of South Carolina states:

“Often, in…fiscal crises, we hear that no area of state spending is exempt from budgetary review. But in reality, prison spending often is the proverbial sacred cow. That’s partly because voters…mistakenly believe reductions in the prison budget will lead to putting the ‘bad guys’ back on the street.”

This morning, I was put on Alastair Campbell’s blog. Newt Gingrich seems to agree with the direction we are taking, Alastair Campbell appears to believe that we are going in the right direction, and Members from all three parties, including the Chairman of the Select Committee, agree. The right hon. Gentleman is the representative of a failed past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

We would like to give professionals every possible encouragement to follow that advice. People who are criminal for a part of their lives and then stop often do so because family responsibilities and a secure family environment have taken them back into a more sensible and decent way of life. We intend to give the professionals more discretion in how they do that. The last Government were prone to setting targets, prescribing methods and setting down rules for community sentencing.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

It worked.

[Mr Clarke]

It did not work, despite what the right hon. Gentleman says. Over and over again, the professionals complained they spent half their lives in an office ticking boxes confirming that they had taken the prescribed course, rather than being able to tackle in an individual way the kind of problems my hon. Friend heard about when he met his constituent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We are taking a balanced look at the whole subject. The Prison Reform Trust takes quite the opposite view to that of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It believes that those sentences should be scrapped entirely. It is critical of the way they work, and it is clear that they are not working as intended, but the Government are hoping to take a balanced view. We must obviously protect the public against dangerous people and the risk of serious offences being committed on release. On the other hand, about 10% of the entire prison population will be serving IPP sentences by 2015 at the present rate of progress, and we cannot keep piling up an ever-mounting number of people who are likely never to be released.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that it is inherent in both life sentences and the concept of IPP sentences, which are widely supported throughout the Chamber, that many prisoners will be tariff-expired because the idea is that they are not released until it is judged that it is safe to do so? Does he also accept that although it is true that the precise construction of the clauses was inappropriate and led to some very short tariffs, since the changes that I introduced in 2008, the number of new IPP sentenced prisoners has dropped by 50% from about 1,500 to under 1,000 a year? Would it not be far better for public safety to let that work through instead of prematurely releasing such prisoners?

[Mr Clarke]

No, it has always been the case that some people are held indeterminately, and certainly those on life sentences. The purpose of IPP sentences was to have a sentence below a life sentence for dangerous people for whom life was not quite justified. The right hon. Gentleman will accept that such sentences never worked as intended, which is why, when he was Secretary of State, he introduced an Act of Parliament to try to correct some of the mistakes that had been made. We are now considering how the sentence works in practice, and we will introduce considered proposals in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

On prisoner voting, will the Secretary of State have the grace to accept that before the election, given the implacable opposition from the whole of the Conservative party from top to bottom, with the then shadow Justice Secretary describing the proposal as “ludicrous”, and deep and profound concern on our Back Benches, it was not that one did not want to do something, but that there was no way in the world that such a measure would have passed through this House?

[Mr Clarke]

I am relieved to hear that the right hon. Gentleman, my predecessor, was so implacably determined to press on with this issue throughout his five years. He should perhaps have a word with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who could explain how committed he was. I am impressed that it was solely the opposition of Conservative Front Benchers that caused this five-year delay. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman was having difficulty with Downing street and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and others in coming to any decision about anything, or doing anything about it, before the general election. [Interruption.]

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his sensible proposition. The same issues arise, and I will certainly bear his suggestion in mind. The problem crops up over and over again. We currently have an inquest into the highly important matter of the explosions on 7 July, which has decided to extend itself into an inquiry into the activities of the intelligence services in informing themselves about possible risks to security throughout the country. Wholly foreseeably, it has run crash into the problem of exactly what evidence is supposed to be adduced about that in public. I have no idea—it is for Lady Justice Hallett to resolve—how we move on in that particular case. The Green Paper will be difficult. It will be difficult to reach clear conclusions, but we wish to do so as quickly as possible and the purpose of the Green Paper is to address that problem so that we can be sure that justice is done without compromising national security. At the moment, there is a tendency for claimants, the security service and everyone else to get bogged down in interminable litigation and judicial review. That has to be resolved.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement and the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). Picking up on the remarks of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), may I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether it will be possible for Sir Peter Gibson, who has great judicial experience, to feed into the important work on the Green Paper on the use of intelligence in judicial proceedings?

[Mr Clarke]

Sir Peter Gibson has indeed been the Intelligence Services Commissioner, and still is, although he will probably have to give that up when he takes on this inquiry. If he wishes to give his views on this difficult question, I am sure that they will be welcome, because, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, he is a considerable expert on the subject.

Legal Aid and Civil Cost Reform

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Mr Speaker, if I may, let me first respond to your comments. When I finalised the statement before coming here, I realised that it was far too long, but the fact is that the subject is complex and the leaks were quite detailed but not wholly accurate, so it was necessary to go through it with some care, for those outside this House as well as those within it. I am grateful for the fact that my shadow spokesman was given a little more warning of some of the statement.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on acknowledging that Labour would have been reducing the legal aid bill as well—I came well armed with quotations from him and all his colleagues about their intention to reduce the legal aid bill. Indeed, it featured in the Labour party’s manifesto at the election. It is starkly obvious that the England and Wales legal aid system has become far too expensive, and it is an obvious place to start tackling deficit problems, which has to be done on a logical basis. The Labour party had taken quite a lot of decisions and had made reductions, affecting criminal as well as civil legal aid, but the effect of what it did was largely to stabilise what had been the rapid growth of legal aid before that. Legal aid expenditure exploded in this county until about 1999. Thereafter, the Government wrestled with it, trying to bring it down, but they succeeded only in stabilising it. It is right to get legal aid expenditure back to something nearer to the norm in other democratic and common-law countries throughout the world, which we are far above at the moment.

We intend to go ahead with the last Government’s proposal to make an agency of Government to replace the Legal Services Commission. That will have to feature in our legislation when it comes. We have, obviously, done an equality assessment, to have a look at the impact on various sectors of the population. Apart from the fact that the decision will obviously have an impact on the legal profession, affecting both barristers and solicitors, more importantly, one has to look at what impact it will have on gender, ethnic minorities and the poor. It is inevitably the case, of course, that litigation, and legal aid in particular, tend to be focused on the disadvantaged groups in society. Some aspects of legal aid are more resourced by women, as well as men; nevertheless, we have to be mindful of that. We have done an equality assessment, and we believe that the impact of the changes is, on balance, justified by the public interest in ensuring that the taxpayer pays only where there is a public interest in having a dispute resolved.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the balance between civil legal aid and criminal legal aid and asked why, on this occasion at least, the scope of criminal aid is not affected. First, we already spend more on criminal than civil legal aid in this country. The reason we do so is that it is absolutely essential in the public interest to see that justice is done in every case. It is an unfortunate feature of our legal aid system—I accept it, and we always have accepted it—that we often wind up giving it to people who turn out to be rather unattractive.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Or criminals.

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, or criminals.

Before bringing the full severity of law to bear on a criminal, however, we have to make absolutely sure that he is indeed the guilty party and that he has been given every chance to claim and demonstrate his innocence to save us from making a mistake. As the liberty of the subject is at stake in all serious criminal cases, we really cannot cut back the scope of criminal legal aid.

I think the reason why we spend spectacularly more than other countries on legal advice and litigation is that we have extended the legal aid system in the past to practically every kind of civil and family issue. That is why, when it comes to cutting back the scope, the present package on which we are consulting concentrates on those areas.

[Mr Clarke]

In some cases, as with housing issues where a person’s home is at risk and they may lose possession, we will continue to make legal aid available. Any cases involving the risk of homelessness or loss of liberty will still be covered by legal aid. The right hon. Gentleman gave a list and I will not deal with them each in turn, but they are all addressed in other ways than through litigation. Employment issues go before a tribunal, for example, and those tribunals were originally designed precisely to avoid representation by lawyers and legalism. They were designed to be more straightforward and accessible forms of justice. Debt certainly requires advice, but much of it is not so much of a legal nature as of a practical nature—advising how to cope with negotiating with creditors and sort out the management of the debts incurred. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that citizens advice bureaux and other such organisations are a central source of this advice. We will have to consider how far we can continue to enable such organisations to step in and give a wider range of advice, which will be needed when we stop paying people to go to lawyers all the time, as we tend to on all these issues.

[Mr Straw]

May I endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said in every particular, including with respect to the commitment in our own manifesto to cut legal aid. The Lord Chancellor will understand that my right hon. Friend cannot endorse every particular of what is being put before the House at this stage, but he and I will, of course, examine the proposals with great care.

Let me ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman some specific questions about the proposals on criminal legal aid and guilty pleas. First, I have no argument with the principle, but is he certain that he will structure the payment systems to avoid giving any perverse incentive to lawyers, and therefore to defendants, not to continue to plead not guilty all the way through to the point of trial? That is a real danger.

Secondly, the right hon. and learned Gentleman says that where a case goes to the Crown court but it is judged that it should have been handled at the magistrates court, the fee will be paid only in respect of what would have been appropriate in the magistrates court. I understand that. Under the present legislation, however—I sought to change it, but the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the other place overturned my attempt—defendants have an absolute right in either-way cases to take their case to Crown court. Unless the Lord Chancellor introduces primary legislation to change that, we are left with the odd situation in which the Legal Services Commission says that a case should not have gone to the Crown court while the defendant says that he has an absolute right to that under statute.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The European convention on human rights was produced after the second world war, largely at the instigation of Churchill and others, to ensure that the whole continent developed in line with those values for which the British had fought the war. The principal architect and draftsman of the convention was a man called Maxwell Fyfe. I recall that history because it is relevant to this issue, and we have to improve public understanding of the application of human rights in British law as well as reviewing the operation of the Act.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he had had a range of views on whether the Human Rights Act should be repealed, but he has actually had one view, which he has repeated over and over again—he even described the Prime Minister’s proposal as “anti-foreigner”. Given that consistency, which I commend the right hon. and learned Gentlemen on and welcome because it was supporting a Labour policy, and given that, as he well knows—because he is a very bright man—the issue is not the European convention on human rights but the Human Rights Act passed by this Parliament, will he now rule out the abolition of the Act?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not mind being quoted from my freelance days on the Back Benches. However, in their enthusiasm to find quotes, people find the odd word and attribute them to things. I never accuse any of my colleagues of being anti-foreigner. Part of the confusion about the European convention tends to be that somehow it is not British, which I just addressed in pointing out that it was drafted by David Maxwell Fyfe and very much supported by the British Government and both main parties at the time. The Human Rights Act has now had 10 years, and it is time to review it. There is a range of views and sometimes concern in this country about exactly how it relates to Parliament and where our constitution now is on these matters. In due course, we will set up a convention to advise us on that.