Oral Answers to Questions
James Davies Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend has been brilliant in raising this issue time and time again. At least in part because of the pressure she has put on, we held a stakeholder engagement exercise on this issue with the police, criminal justice system partners, local authorities, other Government Departments and so on. The exercise reveals that there are civil orders and criminal offences which are available to disrupt it. It might be, for example, that the underlying offence is the possession of drugs with intent to supply, the possession of firearms or common assault. However, this issue is worthy of further consideration, so I will invite a conversation with her in due course.
Dr Davies
Last week, I was contacted by a constituent who has been named in the local press as a victim of domestic abuse against their expressed wishes. As my right hon. and learned Friend will appreciate, naming has the potential to endanger their safety and harm their recovery. What more can be done to safeguard the confidentiality of victims of domestic abuse?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend raises an absolutely essential point, because giving evidence is a deeply traumatic experience. Powers in section 46 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 allow the court, on application, to make a decision about anonymity and to take account of the circumstances of the alleged offending, the alleged offender, the alleged victim, and so on. That is a matter for the court. The court has to weigh the circumstances of the case against the overarching interests of transparency. That is a matter on which the courts are well placed to decide.
Alex Chalk
It is important to note that, since 2010 when we came into power, the number of under-18s in custody has dropped dramatically. The cohort now in young offenders institutes is, to put it politely, highly complex. We take that extremely seriously and want to ensure there are sufficient staff. We do not give up on people, but it is important to recognise that that cohort will have been convicted of extremely serious offences, and we want to ensure there are sufficient resources to try to get the best out of them.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
Mike Freer
My hon. Friend makes a great point. My officials have already met Dr Richards to discuss her work on the tracker and, together with the Chief Coroner’s office, we are exploring with her team how best to share the tracker on the various websites. However, I am more than happy to meet with my hon. Friend and Dr Richards to discuss how we can work together.
Oral Answers to Questions
James Davies Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)
We are determined to work across Government to modernise the Mental Health Act 2007 so that it ensures that patients receive the right care in the right setting at the right time. Prison should be a place for rehabilitation, not a convenient holding pen for those people for whom mental health is the primary driver of their offending.
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her continuing interest in this important process. We are consulting widely on these proposed reforms, including service users, carers and professionals, to ensure that we get this once-in-a-generation opportunity right. The consultation is now available on the gov.UK website, and will close on 21 April.
Dr Davies [V]
Will the Secretary of State explain how reforms of the Mental Health Act will strengthen the role that the justice system plays in protecting society’s most vulnerable, both in north Wales and across the country?
Robert Buckland
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend who, from his professional experience, has a great deal of expertise and knowledge in this area. Among other reforms, we want, in particular, to increase patient access to the Mental Health Tribunal, which provides vital independent scrutiny of detention orders. We wish to expand its powers so that it plays a greater safeguarding role. Health policy is devolved to Wales, so it will be for the Welsh Government to decide whether they wish to join the UK Government on many of our reforms in the White Paper, and we will continue to work closely with them in order to secure that partnership.
Oral Answers to Questions
James Davies Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
The hon. Lady is right to raise the particular challenges facing women prisoners. There does seem to be a different effect of the current restrictions on women prisoners as opposed to the male estate. Sadly, we have seen rates of self-harm and, indeed, repeated self-harm from individual prisoners increase. I assure her that the female offender strategy that we launched two years ago is at the heart of our considerations. It is all about understanding why a lot of women not just self-harm, but end up in the custodial estate in the first place. We continue with work on that. More investment is coming, with the creation of secure centres. We will continue to look at ways in which we can reimagine and redesign how women are incarcerated. She will be glad to note that overall numbers in the custodial estate remain quite low compared with recent years as a result of covid and, indeed, the approach that the courts have been taking.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con) [V]
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. We have taken steps to minimise the risk from transfers. We allow only essential transfers—for example, where courts need to be served and justice must carry on. We have clear policies in place to define the need for essential transfers, and we have our compartmentalisation strategy, which means that new admissions to prisons are kept separate from the general population. We are testing new prisoners and, indeed, testing those being transferred between prisons to minimise the risk of spreading the virus.
Oral Answers to Questions
James Davies Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) has an identical question, Question 19. It was not grouped with this question, but the position is clear: if he does stand I will call him, and if he doesn’t I won’t. He does. Get in there man!
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
James Davies Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
2. What progress his Department has made on ensuring that offenders are engaged in meaningful work in prison.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
6. What progress his Department has made on ensuring that offenders are engaged in meaningful work in prison.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
We want prisons to be places of hard work and high ambition. That is why we will give governors more autonomy and hold them to account by publishing employment outcomes for prisoners so that we can compare results between prisons.
Mr Speaker
What a worthy representative the hon. Gentleman is of his Government.
Dr James Davies
Is the Minister aware of an outstanding pathfinder project at North Wales Women’s Centre in Rhyl, in my constituency, which offers holistic support to women offenders in line with recommendations in the Corston report? Will he join me in urging the Government to pursue improved provision and rehabilitation for women offenders to help to avoid the cost and family disruption of incarceration for relatively minor offences?
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing the House’s attention to the good work of the North Wales Women’s Centre, and I commend it for what it does. The Government are committed to supporting vulnerable women to turn their lives around, and we plan to expand that important work.
Criminal Cases Review Commission (Information) Bill
James Davies Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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William Wragg
The key safeguard is the fact that there must be a court order, with that judicial oversight. That should give assurance to all Members of this House that the appropriate safeguards are in place in the Bill.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill. In seeking to ensure that the provisions of the Bill apply to England and Wales and, potentially, Northern Ireland, does he agree that the very similar provisions that have been in place in Scotland for 18 years have not resulted in any record of abused power or privacy invasion?
William Wragg
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which is very helpful. We can use Scotland as a case study. Similar powers have been in force, as he says, for nearly two decades and there has been no recorded abuse of them.
I should state for clarity that the provisions of the Bill will extend to England and Wales and Northern Ireland, as, as we have discussed, Scotland has its own measures in place. The Bill does not contain any provision that gives rise to the need for a legislative consent motion in the Scottish Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales.
I want to elaborate now on why this change in the law is necessary. When I visited the CCRC’s headquarters in Birmingham, I saw how the section 17 powers were used. They are an essential tool in the commission’s work. Provided that the power is exercised reasonably, the CCRC’s ability to obtain public sector information is not restricted by any obligation of secrecy or limitation on disclosure. The power extends, for example, to information relevant to national security and to personal information held by the police, by the Crown Prosecution Service, in previous court material, by the NHS, by Government Departments and so on.
The commissioners have also explained to me that the absence of a power to obtain material from the private sector has often hampered their efforts. When material relevant to the CCRC’s work is held outside the public sector, the commission relies on requesting voluntary disclosure by the individuals or organisations with control of the material. Although voluntary disclosure is not uncommon, increasingly organisations regard themselves as unable to assist the CCRC as a result of statutory restrictions on the disclosure of information. Even where voluntary disclosure is made, that will often be after protracted negotiations have caused lengthy and expensive delays in the case review process.
One such example is with solicitors firms, which one would have thought would be among the most co-operative of sources. However, that is not always so. In the past the commission has seen a good level of co-operation in respect of its requests for case files from solicitors who represented applicants at trial and/or on appeal. In part, that co-operation has been thanks to the relevant professional codes of conduct. In more recent times, however, and perhaps owing to increasing pressures on legally aided defence firms, the commission has faced greater difficulties. It is often readily apparent that requests from the commission are placed at the bottom of a solicitor’s list of priorities. On occasion the commission has also been forced to enter protracted negotiations about who bears the cost of transferring the materials in question. The commission tends to encounter four typical situations that, as a result of its lack of power in relation to the private sector, operate to the applicant’s disadvantage. These are, first, the inability to obtain information from a private individual; secondly, the inability to obtain information from a private sector organisation; thirdly, partial information is provided, or a summary of information, which the commission is not in a position to scrutinise or verify; and fourthly, the information sought is obtained, but protracted negotiations with the private sector create lengthy delays in the case review process.
In the brief time remaining to me this afternoon, I shall deal with concerns expressed to me by Members and offer them reassurance. On privacy, I want to address up front one of the principal concerns that Members may have about the extension of the powers—the concern that the proposed power will be an intrusion into the lives of private individuals. Although consent and privacy are to be valued, where information, even of a personal or distressing nature, could make the difference between a person’s incarceration or freedom, it is right that the information should be requested, subject to due process and provision of strict safeguards.
Members should know that there are significant safeguards in place, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South when he intervened. The Bill provides for judicial oversight of the process. The CCRC could compel a private individual or organisation to provide material only by order of the court. All the same safeguards that currently operate in relation to section 17 disclosures would also apply, and the commission agrees that such a process would be appropriate. The main safeguard against improper intrusion is judicial oversight. As specified in clause 1(1), a person will only be obliged to provide the CCRC with that information subject to the order of a Crown Court judge.
A second area of foreseeable objection is cost. Although the Bill has no financial implications, and will not impose any financial costs or charges directly on the CCRC or private bodies, Members may be asking themselves whether the new power could place an unjustified financial burden on private companies—for example, will the power be damaging for small businesses? The best answer to this question is to look at the equivalent power as it operates in Scotland. The Scottish commission advises that there has been only one case in 15 years where a request to inspect material had led to contested proceedings in court.
Let me recap the main reasons why I believe the Bill deserves the support of the House today. First, this important power to request privately held information is currently lacking and hampering the important work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The limits placed on the CCR by its governing statute can hinder its working practices and limit its ability to help victims who may be factually innocent. The chairman of the CCRC, Richard Foster, has said on the record that he is confident that there have been miscarriages of justice that have gone unremedied because of the lack of this power. It is impossible to tell in retrospect whether the outcomes of any cases would have been different had additional information been made available, but I hope I have made it clear how that gap is a problem that should be fixed going forward.
In addition, this power has been lacking and wanted for a long time. The CCRC has long complained of this weakness and, as I said earlier, the Justice Committee, after a thorough inquiry, said that there has been a failure by successive Governments to right the situation. The time to right it has come. The Bill is the direct implementation of an unambiguous recommendation of the Justice Committee in the previous Parliament. The proposed new powers are supported across the board, as evidenced by the list of sponsors of the Bill.
Finally, we must consider the human aspect in this debate. Although the British system works well for the vast majority of cases, mistakes do occasionally happen. Prisons are not nice places. They are not supposed to be, which is why we use them as a criminal deterrent. However, imagine the compounding of that experience when someone has been convicted of a crime and sent to prison, when they know that they are innocent of that crime. They are victims themselves, and there are countless cases of people wrongly convicted who, due to the psychological pressures of their miscarriages of justice, end up taking their own lives, after protesting their innocence, and sometimes while still locked up in prison.
Members who have heard me speak in the Chamber before will know that, as I am a former teacher with a history degree, they are unlikely to escape without at least one reference to history. It was the great British legal thinker Sir William Blackstone—considered the pre-eminent English scholar of and most authoritative speaker on common law in his day—who said on the matter of miscarriages of justice:
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
I do not quite agree with that sentiment, because I believe that it would be better if both numbers were closer to zero, and the role of our justice system, and the place of the CCRC within it, is to shrink those numbers. However, I think that it is apt to quote US President Jimmy Carter:
“The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”
Who is more helpless than those who have been wrongly convicted and failed by our justice system?
Courts and Tribunal Services (England and Wales)
James Davies Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) and the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) on securing this Backbench business debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating the necessary time for it. The estate reform consultation impacts on my constituency. I want to say a few brief words further to my recent meeting with the Minister and his subsequent correspondence with me, for which I thank him.
I fully understand how important it is that the Ministry of Justice ensures value for money and efficiency and that it embraces new technology. Nevertheless, it is also important that true local justice is maintained and that decisions taken as a result of the current consultation are based on accurate facts and projections.
I want to make a general point on behalf of all those Members who represent rural or semi-rural constituencies: we need to consider very carefully the impact of court closures on those who rely on public transport. As a result of some of the proposed changes, not only would many journey times increase significantly, but defendants, victims and witnesses would, in certain instances, need to travel on the same bus and rail services. Clearly, that is of great concern when wishing to minimise further trauma to victims who have already been through difficult circumstances. We must also consider the potential false economy of asking people to travel further when it might increase the possibility of some court users arriving late or even failing to attend.
I have already set out in my consultation submission my specific arguments as to why the proposed transfer of magistrates court functions from Prestatyn to Llandudno may result not in savings but in the opposite. It would not add to today’s more general debate if I went into the precise details, but the key point is that, regardless of the consultation’s outcome, it is intended that the Prestatyn building should remain open to cater for civil, family and tribunal functions. Furthermore, the same building already has a magistrates court utilisation rate which, having been corrected and revised significantly upwards at my request, is at or around the national average. Bearing that in mind, I believe it could and should be converted into what would undoubtedly become a first-class criminal justice centre. That could be carried out inexpensively, and the resulting facility would boast a good overall utilisation rate. Such a facility would, of course, combine the functions of the existing Prestatyn magistrates court and those of nearby Rhyl county court, whose closure was announced in 2010.
It is my belief that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is best arranged to reflect crime statistics, in the interests of both local justice and efficiency, and I respectfully call on the Minister to reconsider the proposal to remove criminal courts from Denbighshire.