Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the criminalisation of our young black people. We need cross-party consensus.

Lastly, I thank my A-team, Becky and Charley, who have been truly amazing.

Before I begin my arguments, I recognise that this is an incredibly difficult and sensitive topic, because behind each joint enterprise case there are victims of crime and their families, many of whom have lost loved ones in situations that most of us find difficult to comprehend. Behind each joint enterprise miscarriage of justice there are people—loved ones, whole families—whose lives have been torn apart by an unjust lifelong sentence where someone has been wrongly punished for the crime of another.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution about a very important Bill. Does she agree that many of the predominantly young people ensnared by joint enterprise come from inner-city black communities? Their families are devastated and often lack the media and political connections to mount an urgent and rapid legal case or campaign, so these young people end up spending several years in prison for an offence they did not commit. Their lives are subsequently damaged severely. This Bill is very necessary. The injustice has gone on for a very long time.

[Kim Johnson]

I agree that the Bill will look at righting those wrongs and challenging those miscarriages of justice.

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[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the informative speech from hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler)—we share a surname, and I too was a magistrate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and support her extremely important private Member’s Bill, and my heart goes out to everybody who has lost somebody to murder.

It is important that the law works as it should in this country. The Supreme Court said that joint enterprise has been wrongly interpreted by criminal trial judges for the past 30 years—a long, long time. The Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association campaign group, which my hon. Friend has been working closely with, has been doing a lot of important work on this topic. As she said, the principle is right, but the law is open not only to interpretation, but to abuse. The judicial system is riddled with bias, and this law makes that worse in many cases. It is nearly four years to the day since I stood in this Chamber to raise the case of my constituent Reshawn Davis, whose only crime was being a1in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr Davis served two months in prison due to the joint enterprise law, and that sentence has had a devastating effect on him and his family.

Some will say that the joint enterprise law is not all bad, and they would be right. It has led to some high-profile convictions, such as bringing some of the racist murderers of Stephen Lawrence to justice, for which we should all be grateful. But it has also seen many innocent people sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. No one who believes in how the law should work could approve of that. Imagine if everyone was found guilty by association. It may be unwise, but it is not illegal, to be friends with someone who is a liar or a cheat. If it were, Mr Speaker, plenty of MPs in this place would be arrested.

Some will be surprised to learn that joint enterprise has been applied to predominantly children and young adults, of whom 57% are from an ethnic minority background. It is not only wrong, but lazy and unjustified to use the law in this way, criminalising a whole group of children and limiting their life chances, just because they may have known somebody from school. Those of us who have spent our lives fighting for justice are acutely aware—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a very strong point. Does she agree that there is a sort of perverse incentive on the police to be quite lazy about investigations of often serious incidents, because they know that, at some point in the future, they can deploy the law of joint enterprise and therefore do not necessarily have to get hard evidence against every single one of the people who may have been in the vicinity of the crime, but not participants in it?

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I shall be very brief, because, clearly, there is a mood in the House to take the Bill forward.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on producing this Bill, and take the opportunity to thank many people over many years who have been campaigning on this. Jimmy McGovern has been mentioned as have all of those involved in Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association. I first met them with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about 10 years ago. As members of the Justice Committee, we were able to persuade the Committee to undertake an investigation into the case. I have never forgotten the power of the evidence that they brought forward of the effect on families. I have met many of the families affected, including those in my constituency. I heard how young people were ensnared into the criminal justice system, because of an incident that took place. Sometimes they knew the people from school. Sometimes, they happened to be on the same bus, or in the same vicinity on the street. It did not mean that they either commissioned or took part in the criminal act that took place. As a result, they received a criminal sentence.

I spent a day—again as a member of the Justice Committee—listening to young people in Feltham describe why they were there and what had happened. It was eye-opening and instructive to learn of the life opportunities they had lost because of the use of the joint enterprise law.

[Mr Sheerman]

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware of this, but I got involved in this matter when, as chair of the Westminster Commission on Autism, I discovered the number of young people on the spectrum who were getting involved in these cases. That is how I got involved. It is remarkable that there is such a link. Does he agree that we should be careful of that as well?

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Looking at the make-up of the imprisoned youth population as well as the adult estate, we find a wholly disproportionate number of people who are on the autism spectrum or other spectrums, because of the complications of their lives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) correctly pointed out, a wholly disproportionate number of young black people are taken into custody and get prison sentences as a result of the law of joint enterprise.

I think everyone accepts that there is a problem here, and the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside offers a way to take this issue forward so that we can reform the law to ensure that each person who receives a sentence is convicted because there is evidence against them as an individual, not because of an association that they happen to have with somebody who has committed a crime. If someone lives in an inner-city area, they are likely to spend a lot of time with a lot of people, some of whom commit crimes and some of whom are criminals. It does not mean that everybody else is a criminal. We almost get into a mood of collective attack on young people because of their association with people who have done bad things, so this Bill is an important step forward.

I understand what the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) was saying, and he made a very interesting and important contribution. There has to be some clarification of the law. I understand that the Minister will express some reservations about this Bill. However, I hope the Government will encourage the Bill to progress today, so that they can go into discussion with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside on the way we can take this issue forward. This is a parliamentary opportunity to right a wrong—that is what we are here for, and it is what Friday debates are all about. It is also about coming to listen to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and I am grateful to him for his 30-minute speech—sometimes they are longer.

It has been a very effective debate, and I hope the Minister will understand that those of us who support this Bill do so out of a genuine concern to ensure there is a proper and effective system of justice in which people can have confidence. In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central, I made the point that it is too easy to get prosecutions by using the joint enterprise law. It should never be easy to get a prosecution; it should be effective to get a prosecution against somebody who has committed a crime.

[Florence Eshalomi]

A few weeks ago, I spoke in a debate on knife crime. Getting prosecutions before the courts is an issue that we have all raised in this House and that our constituents have gone through with us. It beggars belief that victims who are grieving and have lost close family members are trying to get their cases before the courts, yet we are seeing people being convicted just because of where they are, the music they have listened to, who their boyfriends were or who they knew. This is totally unacceptable.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Like her, I represent a constituency where, sadly, we do experience knife crime and death by knife crime. I always visit the families that are victims of knife crime to try to share their pain at what is a horrific experience.

I ask the Minister to recognise the importance of the issue and the burden of the argument that has been put forward by those of us who strongly support this Bill. I hope he will be prepared to have discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside and the promoters of the Bill to see whether it is necessary to table any amendments in Committee. I do not want to hear warm words that, at some indeterminate point in the indefinite future, there will be a proposal coming forward to deal with what we all acknowledge to be a wrong. We have been down too many cul-de-sacs before, and this is an opportunity. Let us take the opportunity to right a wrong in our criminal justice system.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the shadow Minister.