Immigration Statistics

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

Net migration from outside the EU is down 25%, because of the measures we have been working on. I accept that in the last figures the level went up, but since this Government came into office it has gone down by 25%. The reason people want to come to this country is the excellent economic prospects as a result of this coalition Government, rather than the mess left by the previous Administration.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister for once acknowledge the massive contribution made to our economy and our society by those who have migrated to live here and who have sought and gained asylum in this country, which we are bound to offer under the Geneva convention? Given his rhetoric about EU and other migration, what would he say if EU countries as a whole decided to stop British people from going there to study and to work? What would he say if they all decided that British people were a drain on their economy and put their shutters up against us? What would the rhetoric be from him and, perhaps more importantly, from his colleagues in the Daily Mail?

[Mike Penning]

I pay tribute, as I have always done, to the commitment of migrants coming to this country. That was ever so important in the part of the world I grew up in, and we had a very cohesive community there then, just as we do in my constituency today. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are going to go into a negotiation, and if other countries want to put other tariff barriers up or put other problems in the way, that is entirely up to them. We will go into a negotiation with a position that is there, set out today by the Prime Minister. He has said, “This is exactly what will be put to the British people in our referendum”, which we will not get if we have a Labour Government.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valid and pertinent point. I will put it much cruder: the scaremongering on penknives is absolute nonsense and defies common sense. I confirm exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has said. He and other Members may be interested to know that a scout leader—I seem to recall that scout leaders use penknives quite a lot—fully supported the proposals. He had no fear, so I hope the Deputy Prime Minister is reassured.

Let us accept that when an offender comes before a court for carrying a knife, current sentencing guidelines point to the expectation of prison. However, only one in four end up in prison. Our new clauses will make it clear to the court, the criminals, the public and the victims that the minimum expectation is a six-month sentence for over-18s.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nick de Bois]

I was just about to wind up, but I give way to my fellow member of the Justice Committee.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for missing the first part of this speech: I was in a meeting. He and I are members of the Justice Committee and we have interviewed at length people who have served either prison sentences or community service orders. Some have said that community service orders and restorative justice are much tougher and much more effective than going to prison, because they had to make decisions themselves and follow a programme. Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that we should think about this a bit more?

[Nick de Bois]

I remember those evidence sessions and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of them, but I have to look at the evidence on the day and the total numbers involved. We have not had mandatory sentencing under the existing system. I do not dispute the argument that some other measures are tough and are seen as such—I accept that—but the reality is that we do not have mandatory sentencing and I am afraid the record shows that current sentencing is not doing an acceptable job given the statistics I gave at the beginning of my speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that this debate ends at 6 o’clock and we have to go back to the mover of the new clause, which means that we will entirely lose the last group of amendments. It is not possible in the time available for every Member to speak for 25 minutes. Therefore I ask Members to speak for 10 minutes or less and to be courteous to their colleagues in order to try to make time for them.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will restrict my remarks to new clauses 6 and 7 moved by the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who has left the Chamber. Much as I respect his work and his commitment to dealing with knife crime, I cannot agree with or support his amendments. I agree very much with the points just made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on mandatory sentencing. There is a principle at stake here. There is a Sentencing Council and legislation on what is and is not a crime, but surely it must be for the courts to determine what is appropriate for the prisoner in front of them, rather than to have that laid down by statute. Surely that is the right way forward, and we should respect it.

I do not underestimate the issue of knife crime. Less than two weeks ago a young man was killed in my constituency by yet another knife crime. As I have done with the other families concerned, I went to see the family afterwards. The shock, the horror, the loss and the waste, and then seeing the flowers placed alongside the spot where the young man died, and young people congregating around it—that is a pretty significant message to an awful lot of young people that that person died because of a knife crime. It is an important message to them about the loss involved in it.

I have been to funerals where the families have turned up grieving, and hundreds of young people have turned up. We have held memorial events at which an incredibly strong message has been given to young people that carrying knives is not a protection; it is in fact an increased danger to themselves and they are more likely to be injured by the knife they are carrying than they are to be able to defend themselves with it, and it is simply not the right way forward. Surely that is a strong message to get across. The sense of shock that affects young people is considerable. I was astonished when visiting a primary school last week to be asked questions about knife crime, because the pupils had all seen the stories of the murder in the community.

We must ask ourselves a number of questions. Is a mandatory sentence for someone who is carrying a knife for the second time the right thing to introduce? Will it reduce reoffending? Will it make the person who is convicted of carrying a knife for the second time more or less likely to reoffend, or is it more likely to brutalise them—because that is what our prison and youth justice system does—making them more likely to reoffend than someone who has not been given a custodial sentence?

The hon. Member for Enfield North kindly allowed me to intervene and I drew attention to the evidence taken in the Justice Committee when we were examining issues of youth justice. We visited a number of young offenders institutions and took evidence from former inmates and victims of crime. We took evidence from large numbers of people, and the piece of evidence that most strongly sticks in my mind is being told in no uncertain terms by a repeat offender—though not for knife crime—that their toughest sentence was a community service order in which they had to attend a place, carry out a task and do something to try to turn their lives around, because somebody was on their case, in a way that never happens when someone is in prison, and happens only to some extent in young offenders institutions.

Mandatory sentencing looks tough, sounds tough and will please some of the less thoughtful media in our society, but its implications are not helpful. I draw attention to the advisory note given to us for this debate by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which has looked at the issue and knows a thing or two about it. Its estimate is that 200 more young people—children actually, in law— will be put in prison as a result of the new clauses that we are discussing today, should they be agreed to and should the House of Lords want to put them into law.

I also draw attention to another, perhaps more difficult question. Those who are found in possession of a knife and convicted of that have not necessarily committed a crime. They have been found carrying a knife with a blade more than 3 inches in length. Often they have been found by stop and search or by intelligence gathering by the police. The House should not misunderstand me: I do not approve of anyone carrying a knife, but when one then looks at who is stopped and searched, one rapidly finds a wholly disproportionate picture of modern Britain and modern youth. A disproportionate number of black youngsters will have been stopped and searched, therefore a disproportionate number will be in possession of knives, and there will then be a disproportionate number in the prison system and a disproportionate number will reoffend. Surely the courts should have discretion on this matter, and instead we should redouble our efforts to provide young people with the opportunities, inspiration and ambition that takes them beyond gang culture and the idea that possession of a knife will protect them and provide them with some degree of security in the future.

The Prison Reform Trust has also looked at the issue in some detail and the latest Ministry of Justice figures show the rates of child and adult convictions for knife possession. In the first quarter of 2014, 652 offences involving knife possession were committed by children aged 10 to 17, resulting in a caution or a sentence. The adult figure was 3,262. The number of knife possession offences committed by children under 18 in the last quarter reduced by 34%, and I pay tribute to all those who have ensured that it has reduced. The number of knife possession offences committed in the last quarter by adults over 18 fell by 23% over the same period. It is also evidential that custodial sentences have the worst outcome of the sentencing options available, with nearly 70% of children and 58% of young people aged 18 to 20 being reconvicted within a year of release. The Prison Reform Trust says:

“Mandatory prison sentences for knife possession could drive up the numbers of children and young people in custody following a welcome period of decline both in youth imprisonment and youth crime.”

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust have highlighted the disproportionate effect on black youngsters that will result if the new clause goes through.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Amendments 10 to 19, which stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), relate to the Government’s proposed introduction of secure colleges. Let me set out some context. It is welcome that youth crime has come down substantially since the late 1990s, but it has led to new challenges in our youth justice system that need to be addressed. Reoffending rates are too high, and the cohort of young people in custody is a lot smaller now compared with a decade ago. These young people have complex needs and present very different challenges. We need a youth custody regime that can effectively meet those challenges, and effectively punish, rehabilitate and bring down reoffending. The question is whether creating secure colleges is the most effective solution.

More than a year has now passed since the Government consulted on these proposals, but in all that time, the key facts have remained the same. The Government have come to the House today with a set of proposals that they claim “will transform youth custody”, but there are no expert organisations expressing any enthusiasm for secure colleges. The Government claim that the colleges will put education at the heart of rehabilitation, but they cannot say how it will be delivered in practice. They claim the proposals will reduce the cost of youth custody, but it is not clear where the £85 million is coming from, and they have not produced any hard evidence to support this policy.

When we debated these changes in Committee, we said that we would listen to what the Government had to say and work with them constructively to improve the legislation. We also said that if Ministers wanted our support, they would need to present proper supporting evidence to justify going ahead with this experiment and address the serious concerns being raised by experts in the justice sector. Alas, no such evidence or improvements to the Bill have been forthcoming, which is why we cannot support these proposals, and why we have tabled amendments 16 to 18 to delete the secure college proposal from the Bill.

We all know the value of education, and how it can and should play an important role in rehabilitating young offenders. I am sure that everyone across the House agrees with that. The issue is that there are four areas where Ministers have plainly failed to make the case for secure colleges. Let me take each in turn. First, there has been a chronic lack of evidence to justify the creation of secure colleges. It is true that levels of educational attainment and purposeful activity are not good enough in many young offender institutions, and that education provision in the youth estate can and should be improved. We are agreed on that, but it seems the Justice Secretary is the only person who believes that the only way these problems can be solved is to plough tens of millions of pounds of public money into creating an entirely new type of institution.

Members of the Bill Committee took evidence for two full days, yet not one witness had a single word of support to offer for the Government’s plans for secure colleges. The deputy children’s commissioner, Sue Berelowitz, said that

“a 300-bed secure college will result in a large impersonal environment that does not adequately meet the emotional and mental health needs of children in custody.”

Similar concerns have been echoed by experts across the sector, including the Prison Reform Trust, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, and the Howard League for Penal Reform. Even the Government’s own impact assessment states:

“The Secure College model has never previously been tested.”

It confirms that these plans are untried, untested and that the results would be unpredictable. There is no quantifiable evidence that the secure colleges would reduce reoffending rates. Such little detail has been provided that it is hard to see how the reduction will be achieved in practice. So what alternatives to secure colleges has the Minister’s Department considered? He will recall that I asked him in Committee what assessment his Department had made of how the £85 million budget for the secure college could be alternatively spent. For example, instead of building the secure college, that money could be invested in improving educational provision in the existing youth estate. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether that option has been considered, and if not, why not.

The second failure relates to education and welfare provision and goes to the heart of this debate. The Government’s objective is for secure colleges to transform the rehabilitation of young offenders through better education and training. That is a laudable ambition, but it needs to be placed in the context of the existing cohort of young people in custody. We know that the lives of the majority of those young people are characterised by multiple layers of complex disadvantages that include mental health issues, learning disabilities, self-harm issues, and problems with drugs, alcohol and family breakdown. That raises two fundamental points. First, those are not challenges that can be overcome through education alone—significant specialist health and welfare provision would also be required. Secondly, if secure colleges are to deliver educational outcomes over and above what has been achieved in the youth estate before, one of several things would need to happen: secure colleges would need to offer more hours of education and purposeful activity than existing institutions; they would need to have a higher calibre of teaching staff and a higher student-staff ratio; or they would need to offer some new model of transformative teaching that we have not seen before.

Secure colleges would also need to overcome a particular challenge identified by the Justice Committee in its youth justice report last year. It pointed out that the average time spent in custody is only 79 days.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Justice Committee did look at those issues, and one of the problems is that a plethora of agencies, organisations and contractors deals with individual young people in custody. Often, too many people are involved, and a closer focus from one or two clear directions is needed on how individuals will make progress in custody, especially in education.

[Dan Jarvis]

I will come to that point shortly. The average time a young person spends in custody is only 79 days, meaning that most young offenders are not in custody long enough to improve their basic skills, but beyond a few vague commitments, no meaningful detail has been provided on how education or welfare will be delivered.

The House does not need to take my word for that. The Secretary of State wrote to the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights a few weeks ago. Describing the secure college proposals, he said:

“The Bill establishes the secure college in law. Beyond the legal framework, the legislation does not specify details of the regime to be delivered within the secure college.”

So there we have it—there is no comprehensive plan in this Bill for how education or welfare will be provided. But we need to know how this will work. For instance, I have met one prospective bidder who has admitted that it would not be possible for it to deliver education and welfare itself and that it would need to bring in a range of other specialist providers. As my hon. Friend suggests, we could have a situation in which one provider operates the secure college, another delivers the teaching, and two or three others—or even more—deliver welfare services, all in the same institution. Will the Minister tell us what measures will be put in place to ensure that that does not lead to confusion and chaos on the ground? Where are the minimum standards in the Bill to ensure that corners are not cut when secure college contracts are put out for competition?

We have therefore tabled amendment 12, which would place a specific obligation on the Secretary of State on health and well-being provision, and amendment 10, which would require secure college staff in teaching, nursing or counselling roles to hold relevant qualifications. On education in particular, the Opposition believe that teachers should be properly qualified. That should be the case for any classroom, and it should certainly be the case when staff are working with challenging children who have complex needs, such as those who are found in a secure environment, but Ministers have given no guarantees yet that this will be the case in secure colleges.

That brings me to the third failure, which relates to the safeguarding of vulnerable young people who will be detained in the secure colleges. A number of concerns have been raised by groups across the sector, but Ministers have not been able to offer sufficient assurances on any of them. Let me run through three of them. First, there is the question of whether secure colleges should accommodate very young children or girls, which is highlighted by our amendments 14 and 15. These would prevent all girls and all 12 to 14-year-olds from being accommodated in secure colleges.

Both groups are in the extreme minority within the youth estate. In 2012-13, 96% of children in custody were boys, meaning that girls were outnumbered by more than 19 to one. According to the latest figures, there are only about 50 teenagers under the age of 14 in youth custody, and the majority are in secure children’s homes. The Government have signalled, however, that they intend secure colleges to accommodate both boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 17. That would come with huge safety risks. Even the noble Lord McNally, until recently a Minister and now chair of the Youth Justice Board, has warned against this approach. He recently told the Justice Committee:

“I would want to advise the Secretary of State to think very hard about whether young females should be there”—

that is, in secure colleges. He went on to say:

“Of course, co-education has its attractions, but I would not want the scheme to fail because of difficulties in trying to accommodate mixed groups”.

There is a further point here. The Minister told us in Committee that this issue would be addressed by the very architecture of the secure college, with different groups accommodated in separate units. He could not provide any further detail, however, because he said that not all the design decisions had been taken. This is just months before shovels are scheduled to be in the ground and construction of the secure college is due to begin early in 2015.

Secondly, the Government have thrown the future of secure children’s homes into doubt. Twenty-eight beds have already been cut and Ministers have signalled that many of the vulnerable young people currently accommodated in such homes will be moved into secure colleges. The kind of children for whom secure children’s homes cater would be all at sea in a 300-bed teenage Titan prison, and it goes against all the evidence showing that smaller establishments are by far the most effective for young people. It is easier to maintain control in such establishments, they are less violent, and staff are able to offer much greater hands-on support. They are also closer to home, enabling children to maintain links with their parents, which aids rehabilitation. That is why we have proposed amendment 13, which would require an adequate number of places in secure children’s homes to be maintained.

Thirdly, there are the conditions regarding the use of restraint. Opposition Members fully accept that there will be the occasional need to use reasonable force in youth custody environments. The Minister will be well aware, however, of the chorus of concerns raised that the Bill could be interpreted as allowing the use of reasonable force for the maintenance of good order and discipline. If so, this may be unlawful in the light of a ruling by the Court of Appeal in 2008, which we debated at length in Committee.

The Secretary of State’s letter to the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that there should be

“limited and clearly defined circumstances”

where reasonable force could be used to enforce good order and discipline, so I invite the Minister to lay out what these circumstances might be. I suspect he will say that this will all be worked out in the secure college rules, which have yet to be finalised. We keep coming back to this problem. A problem or area of concern is raised, and the Minister assures the House that it will be dealt with in the secure college rules. We then ask to see the secure college rules, but the Government have said they will not be available for scrutiny until after the Bill has become law.

I am sure the Minister will understand that this is a far from acceptable state of affairs. That is why the Opposition have retabled amendment 11, which would revise the wording in schedule 4. This would make it much clearer, resolve the legality issue and put a lot of minds at rest, while still allowing reasonable force to be used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Ministers in the Government who abandoned the Building Schools for the Future programme are now effectively asking Parliament to write a blank cheque for the introduction of the secure college. During my first Public Bill Committee, I was mightily impressed by the contributions of Members and Front Benchers on both sides and by how they comported themselves. There was unanimity on many items in the Bill, but this was a particular area of division. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), I do not think that even Ministers believe in this proposal. Yet the Government’s objective is laudable. The Minister has said that 69% of young offenders go on to reoffend. We should all share the ambition to do better, because that figure is too high.

I have many objections to the secure college. My first objection is to its size and cost, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) pointed out. With 320 beds and at a cost of £85 million, it can only be described—as it has been—as a Titan. The up-front cost for each place is more than £250,000, which is more than places in secure homes, secure training centres or young offenders institutions. What position will they find themselves in once this college has been built? How will it distort the market for our other provision up and down the nation?

Liberty has stated that the proposal will work against the Government’s objective of reducing young offending. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said so eloquently, the position of young female offenders within the provision is completely unclear at the moment. The Youth Justice Board has advised against any accommodation for girls in such a secure college.

My second objection to the secure college is that the Government are not clear about its objectives. Is it supposed to be educational, or to have a custodial function? They have not worked that out. If the purpose is educational, my worry is how any educator in such an establishment can create the necessary relationships between themselves and those they educate. As a school teacher, I had 190 days—based on the old agrarian timetable—to teach a child, to build a relationship with them and their parents, and to pass that on through a sophisticated mechanism for the handover that involved reports and strategy. When he spoke so eloquently about SEN measures, the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) was exactly right to ask how such a process will happen. The average custodial sentence for a young person is less than 80 days, so how can an educator begin to establish such relationships in an educational environment that will bring the young person on? I do not think that there is any chance whatsoever of building such a relationship between educators and the young person. Young people with special educational needs also have complex social and emotional needs.

In conclusion, I could not agree more that large institutions are wrong for children, and they are particularly damaging for the most vulnerable children. Without clear objectives, the leaders we hope to employ in any such institution will find it an almost impossible task to navigate the mission that the Government have failed to clarify in Committee and in the House tonight. The Government should think again.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will be brief so that other colleagues can speak in this important debate. I was pleased that the Front-Bench spokesman gave way to me earlier because, having visited a number of young offenders institutions through my membership of the Justice Committee, I am alarmed by the background of many of the young people in those institutions. They are often the victims of abuse, neglect or simply an uncaring society and a lack of care throughout their lives. They often end up brutalised by the system, then come out and commit further offences. Life gets worse and worse for them.

The endless answer appears to be a bigger and bigger plethora of agencies, contractors and others who are supposed to assist these young people who are going through serious traumas in their lives. One problem is that too many agencies, too many people and too many organisations are intervening, often on a profit-centred basis rather than a care-centred basis. The people who lose out are the young people. The rest of society also loses out because the skills and abilities of those young people are lost to us as they set off on a life of crime and further imprisonment.

The Government now propose these very large secure training colleges. I am appalled by the whole idea. I agree with what has been said from the Opposition Front Bench and by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and others. We do not need big institutions, where people get lost, where self-harm takes place and suicides occur, and where bullying and harassment become a daily fact of life. That culture can become a form of control over those within the centres. We need something that is far more caring and far more focused on educational achievement and building social skills for the future.

I will make one last point so that others can contribute to the debate. During the investigation into youth justice, a number of us on the Justice Committee had the good fortune to visit young offenders institutions in Denmark and Norway. That was very instructive. They spend a great deal more money than us on dealing with young offenders. They have much smaller units in which to deal with them. They focus heavily on education and social skill development, and heavily encourage family visits and, where possible, education in a normal college outside the institution. The person who goes through the process of rehabilitation while in custody maintains a high degree of contact with the rest of society, rather than being totally locked away and coming out after some years having lost lots of social skills, if not lots of contacts. The results in Denmark and Norway are very low levels of reoffending compared with what we have, much lower levels of self-harm and attempted suicide, and, in the long run, a much lower level of crime in society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) pointed to the obsession with the contract culture. That seems to be driving the Ministry of Justice at every turn. There are teams of people in the Ministry of Justice working out how to hive off, sell off, privatise and get rid of services, rather than focusing on the core function, which is the administration of a service and reducing the rate of reoffending—not creating profit centres for companies such as G4S and many others. Please can we not go down that road? I hope that the Minister understands that many of us feel passionately about this. We want to see young people being valued, not having their lives destroyed in these kinds of institutions.

[Julie Hilling]

Nobody except the Minister thinks that secure colleges are a good idea—no educationist, no one who works in young offenders institutions, no one who works in the criminal justice system and no one who campaigns for improvements in the way that we treat children and young people in the justice system.

We do know that the vast majority of young people who end up in the criminal justice system have very poor literacy, numeracy and linguistic skills. The statistics show that 86% of offenders in young offenders institutions have been excluded from school. I maintain that the majority of those young people will have special educational needs because of physical or mental disabilities or emotional difficulties, whether or not those needs have been previously identified. Such children need to be educated in small groups and to do a wide range of activities. Simply sitting them at a desk and expecting them to learn does not work, and it has never worked for them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My proposed residence test would mean that such cases were no longer possible. I think it important for there to be restraints on our legal aid system. I personally find some of the things that we have read about the inquiry into the cases brought as a result of action in Iraq extremely disturbing. I have asked my officials to examine in great detail what has happened, and to consider whether there are appropriate actions for us to take.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Lord Chancellor think for a moment about the logic of his case? Surely all those who come before the courts have a right of representation, a right of access, and a right to have their cases heard. If the Lord Chancellor’s logic had been applied in the past, the Mau Mau people, who suffered the most grievous maltreatment by British armed forces in the 1950s, would never have had a chance to bring their case before the courts in this country, and would never have had any hope of securing justice.

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman and I have always differed on these matters. It is important to deal with historical wrongs, but I do not believe that we should encourage British law firms to deal with cases from other parts of the world, at enormous cost to the taxpayer, when in the end—as in the case of the Iraqi situation—there are serious question marks over those cases. I think we need a system that makes our legal aid available to British people, but not to people in the rest of the world.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We will not change the order of the collection of fines and victims’ charges. The collection of court costs will come after that. It is worth saying that the repayment of the charge will, as is normally the case in the courts in relation to fines and victim surcharges, be set at a rate that offenders can afford, so there will always be an incentive for them to find a job and to work hard. Offenders will be able to earn their way out of the charge if they do not reoffend. We will make provision for the charge, or any outstanding sums of money, to be written off if the offender does not reoffend. There will, therefore, be an incentive to go back into work, get on with it and make regular payments. Then, when they do not reoffend, an amount of money will be written off. That is a fair and balanced way to ensure that we secure a contribution from those who can afford it—there are people in our courts who will be able to afford this money on the spot—and create a system whereby if people do the right thing, we will do the right thing by them and write off any outstanding money.

I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we take the enforcement of such payments extremely seriously. We continue to work hard to improve enforcement levels and we will address some of the historical debt by outsourcing the collection of criminal financial impositions in a more effective way. I hope that that will enable us to recover some of that debt. I want to ensure that those who have the means to pay but refuse to do so, do not escape without consequences. The reality is that many people work very hard to avoid paying money to the courts and we need to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that they pay.

We must continue to look at ways to make the court system more efficient and proportionate to crimes committed. Too much of magistrates’ time and court time is currently spent simply going through the motions of hearing a case where the defendant has pleaded guilty by post or has not responded. We currently have the absurd situation of valuable court time being spent on hearings where paperwork is simply read aloud by lawyers. The Bill allows a single magistrate to deal with such cases away from the traditional magistrates courtroom. It will free up valuable court time to focus on cases where they make a real difference to victims and their communities, while preserving a defendant’s right to request a hearing in open court.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State not think it a bit dangerous for such cases to be dealt with by a single magistrate? Would it not make our justice system more secure for three magistrates to sit on the bench, so that they could at least discuss the case and reach a collective decision?

[Chris Grayling]

We have a high-quality magistracy in this country, and I am confident that, in simple cases—when someone has pleaded guilty to, for example, a motoring offence by post, and the facts are very clear—our magistrates are capable of reaching a decision themselves. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are great strengths in a system that provides for a bench of more than one person to deal with a criminal prosecution when someone’s liberty may be at stake, but I am confident that, when it comes to dealing with simple offences and guilty pleas that are submitted by post, our approach is realistic.

[Chris Grayling]

Indeed, but in my experience, most magistrates would regard themselves as perfectly capable of dealing with relatively simple processes of this kind. I think that the provision will free up court time and create a smoother process.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

At what level would it be decided whether there should be one magistrate or three, and what would be the appeal process in the event of a magistrate’s refusing to call in colleagues if the defendant wanted that to be done?

[Chris Grayling]

Typically, these will be uncontested cases. A contested case in which the defendant wished to plead not guilty would not be dealt with outside the courtroom. These are simple cases in which there is no doubt about the defendant’s guilt because the defendant has pleaded guilty, and which can be dealt with out of court by magistrates, without the formality of a court hearing.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

No, I do not accept that because what would trigger the compensation claim would be the new evidence showing they could not have committed the offence. Something has to happen. Some new evidence has to be brought forward, so it is not simply a situation of the case being redefined.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

If an innocent bystander is watching this debate today and the Minister is saying they have to prove they did not commit an offence, it sounds awfully like they have to prove their own innocence, which of course is anathema to our legal system. Why is he so keen on this new version?

[Damian Green]

I am keen on this new version and consider it to be an improvement on the original version precisely because it does not require anyone to prove they are innocent, and it provides as unambiguous a wording as we can find to ensure we do not have years of judicial interpretation to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

As a lawyer, the hon. Gentleman will know the difference between providing conclusive proof and proving something beyond reasonable doubt. I stress again that the essence of our argument, and that supported by all parties and Cross Benchers in the other place, is that an individual is innocent until proved guilty. We see no good reason why a victim of a miscarriage of justice should suffer a “beyond reasonable doubt” test.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is not the Barry George example one we should think about carefully? He was convicted and spent a lot of time in prison but was later released as “not guilty” of the offence. He was then denied any compensation. Is the amendment in lieu an attempt by the Government to deny people compensation, and thus save money? Or is it a return to the slack days when a large number of people were wrongly convicted? The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which gave evidence last week to the Select Committee on Justice, confirmed that more than 500 people had been released from prison as a result of its intervention—I believe that is the correct figure.

[Jack Dromey]

There is a widespread view, reflected in the debate in the other place—someone talked about “incredulity”—as to why the Government are introducing such a test. A statutory definition providing greater clarity, particularly in the light of some of the cases that have gone before the courts, is one thing, but making it more difficult for people to receive compensation for serious miscarriages of justice is something altogether different. As the Barry George case shows, very few people are receiving compensation. The fear expressed in the other place is that the Government’s proposals will make it yet more difficult to obtain compensation for a miscarriage of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams]

I wish to add my voice to those seeking to support Lords amendment 112. I am indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) for his guidance and advice on the matter. He would have been here if that were possible.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) referred to the long-term damage done to individuals, and indeed to their families, by such miscarriages of justice. In the case of the Cardiff Three, damage was clearly done not only to those individuals and their families, but to an entire community. I believe that what happened was a public harm, because it damaged relations between community groups in Cardiff. We must not underestimate the importance of that case.

The Lords rejected the Government’s original intention, which was to place an expectation that the defendant would have to prove that

“the new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that the person was innocent of the offence”

in order to gain compensation. As I said in an intervention, that would have placed a heavier burden of proof on the individual, as he or she would have been forced to prove their innocence of a crime years or even decades after it took place. The Lords instead passed their amendment 112, which means that a person could be awarded compensation, provided that the evidence now used against them could not possibly result in a conviction at trial. That means that the evidence against a person is so undermined that no conviction could be based on it.

Regrettably, the Government now intend to disagree with the Lords and, in effect, reiterate their original intention by saying that the evidence would need to prove that the defendant “did not commit” the offence. We have already heard the debates about the semantic difference between “did not commit” and “innocent”—I was imagining lawyers dancing on the head of a pin. That would once again place the burden of proof on the defendant. It asks the defendant to do something that is virtually impossible: to prove a negative—that they did not do a certain thing—years after the trial has taken place.

The Minister said that it would not be useful to provide examples of individual cases. The Government’s attempts to change the law covering compensation in cases in which an alleged miscarriage of justice has taken place runs contrary to case law, which cements the current position. Some cases have been suggested to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd. In R (Mullen) v. the Home Secretary, Lord Bingham successfully argued that a miscarriage of justice can occur where an individual has been wronged by

“a failure of the trial process”.

The burden is not on the defendant to prove that they were innocent. In R (AH) v. the Secretary of State for Justice, the divisional court ruled that a miscarriage of justice occurs where an individual can prove

“beyond reasonable doubt, that no reasonable jury... properly directed as to the law, could convict on the evidence now to be considered.”

It is chilling to think that the cases of the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven, the Guildford Four and, as I have mentioned, the Cardiff Three would not have satisfied the new test put forward by the Government. If Lords amendment 112 is overturned, individuals who have already suffered a miscarriage of justice will be further wronged by not being able to access the compensation due to them—compensation meant to represent roughly the amount they would have received in earnings had they not been imprisoned.

I do not believe that the Government have offered an adequate reason for introducing this ill-advised provision. The Secretary of State, by refusing to change the Government’s proposals, is not only refusing to listen to Members of the other place, but ignoring the advice of external organisations, such as Liberty and Justice, that oppose the change.

I urge Members to disagree with the Government and insist on Lords amendment 112 in order to uphold the current position based on case law, which determines that a miscarriage of justice has occurred if it can be shown

“conclusively that the evidence against the person at trial is so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based on it”.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, the presumption of innocence is a key principle of the justice system. Defendants should never have to prove their own innocence. There can be no reason why such an unfair burden should be placed on defendants seeking to prove that a miscarriage of justice has taken place. Lords amendment 112 must be upheld.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I rise to support Opposition Front Benchers. Lords amendment 112 uses the words,

“conclusively that the evidence against the person at trial is so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based on it”.

I put it to the Minister that that is surely about as good as we are going to get as an effective definition in taking things forward. If we have to take the route of proving that an offence was not committed, then I see all kinds of injustices occurring further down the line. A point was made about Barry George. We all agree that the murder of Jill Dando was disgusting, appalling and revolting, and obviously the person who did it should suffer the consequences of committing it. Barry George was imprisoned and later released. Therefore, the court had decided that he did not commit the offence. Has he now to prove his innocence even though he has been released by a court? That case is very well known, and I suspect that very many others do not get that degree of publicity. Miscarriages of justice happen all the time.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who has had to leave to chair a Public and Commercial Services Union group meeting but will return, I was very involved in the Birmingham and Guildford cases. Indeed, Paul Hill, who was the first person ever arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974, was a constituent of mine. I went through the whole business of the campaign, and eventually those people were released and compensation was paid. However, I have to say two things about the compensation. First, there seemed to be a calculation based on the expected income of those people throughout their lives, yet at the time of their arrest, the Guildford Four were not particularly well paid, working as part-time building workers in some cases, and one would not have said that their economic prospects were particularly good. But who knows what would have happened to their economic prospects had that terrible miscarriage of justice not happened?

Secondly, one area of compensation was not effectively taken into account. This was not just about the emotional cost to the wider families—my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington is correct that there have been some awful traumas in the families of the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and many others—but the financial cost. In mounting a campaign to try to gain the release of a convicted prisoner, particularly when they have been convicted of very serious offences, it is difficult to gain public support and even more difficult to find anybody to help finance it, so in many cases the families paid out a great deal of money themselves.

The step forward that was taken on the release of the Birmingham and Guildford people was the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, from which we took very interesting evidence last week in the Justice Committee. There are a number of cases that it does not review because it does not think there is enough evidence to do so. When people come back and demand a re-examination, in some cases the CCRC will then review. In the very large number of cases where it does review, it sends those cases back to the Court of Appeal and subsequently the individual is released. On that basis, compensation should be automatic—a given. If someone has been convicted, the case has been reviewed by the Court of Appeal, and they have been released, obviously the Court of Appeal must have had some very good grounds for releasing them. I do not see why they should then have to go through another hoop of trying to get compensation by proving that they did not commit an offence that they have been released for not committing. We are getting into a big problem in this regard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. We have gone to the Court of Appeal to ensure we can continue to give whole-life tariffs in this country. My view is that this should always be a matter for Parliament, but as he knows, while we have good collaborative relationships across the coalition and while we agree on many things, there are some things we do not agree on, and this is one of them, so I am afraid that wholesale change to our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights, which I personally think is urgently needed, will have to await the election of a majority Conservative Government.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Justice Secretary think about what he just said? He might agree or disagree with an individual decision of the ECHR, but does he not recognise that having a Europe-wide convention which protects the human rights of everybody in every country that is a signatory to it is good for all of us, including victims of irrational justice decisions in other jurisdictions? Will he not declare that we support the idea of a European convention on human rights and that we will not withdraw from it?

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend leads me nicely on to the point I want to make about a concept that is rarely heard of—we have hardly touched on it in the debate—which is punishment. We have hardly heard anything about punishment. Sentencing is also about imprisoning people as punishment for the crime that they chose to commit—whether a man or a woman, they chose to commit the crime. That goes to the heart of the matter.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not here for the start of the debate. I was speaking in the debate on Bangladesh in the main Chamber. As a member of the Justice Committee, however, I have taken part in all the inquiries, and I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider for one moment that societies that obsess solely about punishment end up with large prison populations and a very high rate of reoffending. Countries that go in for a combination approach, including a rehabilitation process, often end up with smaller prison populations, less reoffending and less crime.

[Philip Davies]

Garbage.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On a point of order, Mr Amess, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just described what I said as garbage. Whether that is parliamentary or not, I am not particularly bothered, but if he wants to make an intervention to challenge my assertion, why does he not do so, rather than make such remarks?

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. It is not in order to use the word “garbage”. Someone may wish to make a further intervention, but for now I call Mr David Nuttall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner]

I accept that point from the Chairman of the Select Committee, but I think it is absolutely fair to say that during the first two years of the coalition Government, there was no Minister responsible for this area. I respectfully submit that that has been a factor. The governance structures built by the last Government seem to have been pulled down, and the consensus of the majority of witnesses to the inquiry was that progress appears to have stalled under the coalition Government.

In evidence to the Committee, Baroness Corston referred to the previous Government’s abolition of routine strip searches and praised the fact that dedicated funding had been made available to establish community-based women’s centres. Again, I and other Opposition Members are concerned that those centres, which are making a difference in our communities, have suffered funding cuts under the coalition Government. There are now serious concerns about funding to local authorities, which use some of their moneys to fund other centres. I can think of one in my constituency, the Purple House on Preston road, which has done a lot of work with women offenders. It has done a massive amount of work, saving the taxpayer vast amounts of money by preventing people from going into custody.

Like the Committee, I remain unconvinced of the extent to which the approach set out in the Government’s strategic priorities for women offenders is truly integrated across Departments. The Chairman just intervened on me to say that the damage is probably less than I was suggesting, but that is a matter of opinion, and frankly, I disagree. It seems that work on the Corston report’s key recommendation—improvements to high-level governance and cross-departmental working for women offenders—has stalled and is in fact being dismantled. Six years after Corston, we still have far too many women in our prisons, and we need to reduce that number significantly.

In addition to driving the Corston review forward, we look to emulate the success of the previous Government’s Youth Justice Board, which presided over a halving in the number of first-time offences by young people, and a fall of a quarter in the number of young people locked up. Targeting specific groups and tailoring an approach to offenders’ unique circumstances have been shown to work. Using the Youth Justice Board as a blueprint for a similar board for women might have the same impact. Will the Minister consider that?

I congratulate the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), on his new job. He will be responsible for this area, and I know that he will take that seriously. I hope that he will look carefully at the report and implement some of its recommendations.

I turn to older prisoners, who were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). This debate is timely, given the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons that states that an 84-year-old immigrant detainee suffering from dementia died in handcuffs while in detention. That is a matter for the Home Office, but it is shocking and underlines the fact that the needs of older prisoners and detainees in our prisons and detention centres must be recognised.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On our visit to Dartmoor prison, we saw a high level of care and concern for older prisoners, but the facilities were appalling. However good the care and support for individual prisoners, the building is simply not capable of dealing with wheelchairs, among other things. I left the prison thinking that that was not the best way of treating people, and I question the value to anyone of keeping some of those elderly men in prison.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point that was made in the report of the Committee, of which he is a serving member. The idea of elderly prisoners trying to clamber into bunks to sleep is clearly unsatisfactory, but there is no magic wand, and we must address the issue. We must accept that the prison population is getting older and deal with that. Society generally has an ageing population, which is making us reassess health and social care provision, end-of-life accommodation and older people’s living needs. Although it will not be popular, we must also reconsider the needs of older people in prison.

We welcome this inquiry, and the resulting excellent report, which highlights the exact issues facing older prisoners. It makes some key recommendations about how to address those issues. Prisoners over 55 are the fastest-growing age group in custody, and in the last eight years, there has been increasing evidence of the needs of older people in prison. That has led to a developing awareness among prison staff and prisoners of the difficulties facing older people, and a greater understanding that the response is often inadequate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, it seems that prisons are ill-equipped to meet their needs. There are various reasons why our prison population is getting older. Prisoners are serving longer sentences, and they may even be convicted and sentenced at an older age for historical sexual offences; a number of cases of that kind are being reported on in the media.

There is some debate about what age constitutes an older prisoner. Some people argue that due to the early onset of health issues in prisoners, that should be defined as anyone over 50. Others, including the Government and the Justice Committee, argue that it is not sensible to impose a rigid age classification, whether we are talking about those who are 50, 60 or 65. It is worrying that the report states that many older prisoners are being held in establishments that simply cannot meet their needs. We accept that for operational and practical reasons it is not always possible to allocate older prisoners to entirely suitable prisons, but we support the view that NOMS should, as a rule, not allocate such prisoners to an establishment that cannot meet their needs.

The report also raises concerns about fragmented provision and barriers to health care for older prisoners, which is particularly worrying. I support the view that cancelling hospital appointments because of lack of communication between health care providers and prison officers is entirely avoidable; that issue must be addressed urgently.

Mental health care needs are also widespread in prisons with higher levels of depression among older prisoners. It is reassuring that services are being commissioned to address mental health issues in prisons, and that organisations such as Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society are running specific dementia services in prisons with large populations of older prisoners. However, clearly we need to do more, and awareness training in prisons should be increased. We should consider integrating training packages into standard prison officer training.

The report was damning about the provision of social care for older prisoners:

“The lack of provision for essential social care for older prisoners, the confusion about who should be providing it, and the failure of so many authorities to accept responsibility for it, have been disgraceful.”

Those words describe the position appropriately. The Committee found evidence suggesting that current provision is sparse, variable and sometimes non-existent. It found some areas where social care was provided by charitable organisations or by prison officers, but it clearly highlights a fragmented and failing service.

Another concern is the release of older people to no fixed abode. It is deeply worrying when older prisoners are released to face homelessness. Around 85% of prisoners who are released find, or are helped to find, somewhere to live on release, but 15% do not receive help. That is not good enough. Release to no fixed abode undermines any progress that has been made towards resettlement, and will do nothing to help older prisoners to reduce reoffending.

I support the view that older prisoners who are frail and vulnerable should not be released to no fixed abode because there has been no housing referral, or because it has been delayed. I agree with the suggestion in the report that NOMS should ensure that all prisoners who require accommodation are referred to housing agencies in good time. Older prisoners have needs that are distinct from those of the rest of the prison population, and the Government should look seriously at the growth in the older prison population. It is disappointing that they do not agree with that view. I agree with the report that

“It is inconsistent for the Ministry of Justice to recognise both the growth in the older prisoner population and the severity of their needs and not to articulate a strategy”

to deal with the problem. I urge the Minister to look again at the report, and to consider a national strategy for the care of, and an appropriate regime for, older prisoners.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Amess. I thank the Justice Committee for the considerable hard work that has gone into both reports, and the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), for the way in which he presented the reports in this afternoon’s debate. I also welcome the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner)—it is good to see him in a full speaking role this afternoon. I am sure it will not be the last time.

Let me start with something that is perhaps obvious, but still worth saying: the Government are committed, of course, to ensuring that the criminal justice system is appropriate for all offenders. The Committee has highlighted the particular interests of two types of offenders, and I am grateful for its acknowledgment of some of the good work that has been undertaken in both those areas in recent years. However, it has also made it clear that there is more work to be done, which we agree with. I hope that the Government’s response showed how we are tackling those areas and recognised that there was more to do.

I begin with female offenders, on which there has been considerable debate this afternoon. I am almost tempted to conclude, given the balance of opinion in today’s debate—for my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), we are doing far too much for female offenders, and for one or two other contributors, we are doing far too little—that we may have got it almost exactly right, but I suspect that even that will not meet with approval from everyone in the Chamber this afternoon. However, as has been said, we have made it clear that we are committed to assisting female offenders to turn their lives around. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, we are committed to doing so for male offenders, too.

A large part of what my hon. Friend was describing related to the sentencing regime, and I entirely agree with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North that the sentencing regime should not treat women more leniently than men. It should pass the appropriate sentence in each individual case and that is what we expect sentencers to do, but sentencing in each case is a matter for the judiciary and for magistrates; it is not a matter for politicians. However, what we are concerned with is ensuring that, when the courts decide that someone, male or female, needs to go to prison, they do not go back to crime when they are released. On rehabilitation, which is I think where the burden of the Committee’s report was concentrated, it is right to recognise that different things work in the rehabilitation of different people. Distinct things can be done to rehabilitate female offenders, perhaps more so than male offenders.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

In our report, we made the point that smaller units, closer to the community, tend to work much better in improving the education and life opportunities of women in prison, and in reducing the rates of reoffending. I realise that that is a big change in the prison process, when we have a number of large institutions for women, but does the Minister have any specific plans to reduce the number of places in larger sections and bring in smaller units?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend echoes the view of many people in this country that the whole-life tariff ruling is entirely inappropriate. The Government are considering how best to respond to the ruling, but it is an example of why, in my view, the Court’s reputation in this country has fallen dramatically in recent times, and of why change is now so urgently necessary.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State think more carefully about this issue? Were Britain to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, and consequently, from the European Court, where would our moral stature be in condemning human rights abuses in any other European country, and what would be the future for human rights in this country? Does he not think that, instead, he should be more positive and proactive about the necessity of human rights legislation to protect us all?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss the matter further.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Secretary of State confirm that neither G4S nor Serco will be considered for any further contracts with the Ministry of Justice while the fraud inquiries are continuing?

[Chris Grayling]

Mr Speaker, you will understand that, for legal reasons, I cannot discuss the outcome of a tendering process before the appropriate time. I will make the appropriate statements when the right moment arises.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith]

I give way first to my hon. Friend.

[Sir Alan Beith]

My hon. Friend would be surprised if I did not take rural issues into account, given that I represent the most sparsely populated areas of England.

I give way to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is a member of my Select Committee.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I look forward to the evidence session tomorrow morning. Would it not be far better if the Secretary of State delayed further consideration of this proposal until after our Committee has examined the issue and produced a proper report on it so that there is an evidence base for the legislation?

[Sir Alan Beith]

It is our intention to report quickly on these aspects of the probation changes. There has been a considerable delay since the Bill completed its passage through the Lords, as was referred to by the shadow Secretary of State. Although the process for implementing the Government’s changes is fairly rapid, the consideration of the Bill has been relatively leisurely by parliamentary standards. It is my intention that the Select Committee will still influence the shape of what emerges.

When the Justice Committee reported on the probation service in 2011, we said that a more seamless, through-the-gate approach to dealing with offenders was vital and that less of a probation officer’s time should be wasted on bureaucratic processes that do not involve direct engagement with offenders. We saw potential in payment by results, but some dangers as well.

We also wanted something that the Government do not intend to give us, which is local commissioning. That would enable decisions about what is provided to be taken in the context of local circumstances so that we no longer have the absurd position whereby prison is a nationally provided free good, in that it does not engage local authorities through the provision of any expenditure. It is a national expenditure, whereas almost all other kinds of provision have to be financed and funded locally.

The Justice Committee reported earlier this year on women offenders. I welcome clause 11, which relates to the concern expressed in our report that the system was designed to meet the needs of male offenders and must make appropriate provision for women offenders. The argument is not that women who commit criminal offences are less guilty than men who commit criminal offences, but that the circumstances that generate the offences committed by women and the means by which women can be guided towards not committing further offences are often different. That is another area in which we have given advice that is relevant to the Bill.

There are some important questions about the Bill and the structure of the probation service that will be necessary to support it that must be considered. The first is whether there is a market out there. Are there enough potential providers that could take on the contracts and that could engage, as is necessary, with the wide range of charities, voluntary organisations and other bodies in which there is expertise? [Interruption.] I heard a reference from the Labour Benches to G4S and Serco, and the contracts of both those companies, which were brought about under the previous Government, are now the subject of serious fraud inquiries. One implication of that is that a number of companies may effectively be excluded from the bidding process. We must await the outcome of the inquiries as we cannot reach conclusions at this stage, but even were the process still going on, it would exclude at least two major companies working in that field.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. It is also a great pleasure to participate in such a well-informed debate.

I listened with great interest to a number of the contributions, particularly that of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), with whom I found myself in considerable agreement at many points. The difficulty is that he believes that we should take on trust the need to proceed with the terms of the Bill, and give the Bill a Second Reading, when so many questions have been raised and left unanswered in this debate and the debate that took place in the Chamber a week or so ago. That might not matter if we felt that there was time, during the passage and implementation of the legislation, to undertake careful scrutiny of those concerns, and time to research and implement the measures necessary to address them, but the proposals are being rushed through by the Government.

Already, shadow structures are being set up, the bidding process is under way, and local probation staff are being asked to begin to think about their future under the changed structures. There will be an incredibly rapid approach to trying to implement what a number of my colleagues have rightly described as rather half-baked legislation. If I believed that, if we gave the Bill a Second Reading tonight, the time would be taken to address all the concerns properly, I might be prepared to vote for it, but the problem is that we know that Second Reading will be followed rapidly by the final stages of the Bill and implementation, and a series of major concerns will be left unanswered. That is a real worry.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Has my hon. Friend observed that under the programme motion, we will complete the Committee stage by the beginning of December? It is highly unlikely that any further reports can be prepared by then, and that we can have an informed discussion on the issues, before the whole Bill is disposed of.

[Kate Green]

The timing is of serious concern, and is driven more by electoral imperatives than a desire to make sure that we devise a system that is effective and right.

There is much to welcome in the intentions behind the Bill. Like many others who have spoken, I warmly welcome the wish to introduce post-release supervision for those serving short-term custodial sentences. As many have said, there has been a gap in our system up till now, and it is good to begin to explore ways in which it could be filled. I am also pleased to see a provision in the Bill on considering the needs and circumstances of women offenders. We have been pressing for that since Baroness Corston’s excellent report; it is approaching five years since it was published. It is welcome to see that making an appearance in the Bill.

However, those welcome objectives in no way justify a pell-mell destruction—a wholesale dismantling—of the public probation service that is not founded on logic, and does not appear to be founded on good or consistent evidence. That is why clause 1, with all its flaws—I accept some of the flaws that have been suggested—is important. We should not pursue these far-reaching changes without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the detail of what will be put in place. If the Minister would like to come forward with ways to improve the clause, and suggest to what degree that parliamentary scrutiny is appropriate, I would be happy to hear what he has to say, but it seems quite wrong to continue down the track of implementing the proposals when such serious concerns are being expressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

That is exactly the way forward. Were those extra requirements to be introduced, the probation service would meet them. Despite the attempt to obscure the reality of the Government’s plans, we learn that the probation service will not even be given the opportunity to do so, for some completely fallacious reason to do with not risking public money. That comes against the background of a Bill that will risk £20 billion of public money by giving it to untried and untested private companies. It is true that were the extra responsibilities and work to be offered to the probation service, it would meet the challenge.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

In my hon. Friend’s discussions with West Yorkshire probation trust, were any concerns raised about the work load of probation officers? My intuition is that it has gone up a great deal and that trusts have delivered incredible results. Obviously, the whole service is put at risk if officers are put under too much pressure to achieve the results that are required of them. The stress levels for probation officers are certainly very high.

[Mike Wood]

The large case loads of probation officers is a continuing concern. There is concern across the board about the proposals, but the work load for probation officers and probation trusts is a matter of record, as is the fact that they have in the recent past cut their costs. They have become more efficient, not less.

There are other problems with the proposals. They are untried and untested. The Secretary of State is now at his banquet and we all hope that he enjoys it enormously. In the first week that he was in post—before he even knew where his desk was—he cancelled out of hand the two planned pilots, which would have given us the evidence base by which to judge the proposals.

Payment by results, which has been lauded this afternoon, is unique in criminal justice systems throughout the world. By definition, therefore, we have very little evidence on the efficacy or potential of such a system. We do know that when it has been researched, it has not come out too well. For example, the Social Market Foundation, a cross-party think-tank, has said that even if the private companies reduce reoffending rates by more than 3% and achieve the payment-by-results reward, that would be limited to a reduction of 5% as anything more than that would require huge investment in rehabilitation programmes. It states that most companies would make their profit by cutting costs on staff and interventions, allow reoffending rates to rise by 3%, if necessary, and rely on the fee for service to produce their profits.

The myth has been perpetuated today that payment by results will have an enormous enervating and driving effect on the private companies who take part. We know that that is nonsense. The Government started with the intention that 30% of the fee should be related to results. We know that in the so-called negotiations, that was reduced to less than 10%. As the think-tank points out, the companies will earn a vast amount of their money by winning the contract. That is how they will make their profit. To extend the payment beyond that would be a bonus. Any suggestion that payment by results can have that effect therefore flies in the face of what will actually happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will bear in mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, the fact that I need to end in time for the Minister’s reply, which I am looking forward to hearing.

The hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has just given us an interesting vista of a militarised future for young people about which I have some serious doubts. If he wants to consider the consequences of the kind of solution that he proposes, he need look no further than the USA, which imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world per head of population, has a higher recidivism rate, has more brutality in its prisons and has a very large number of privatised prisons in which unbelievable brutality is carried out against individual prisoners. That does not work; it is not a solution.

Countries with a very low rate of reoffending are those that invest more in education in the first place, to give young people a better experience of life and better opportunities, and invest more in a prison service for young people that offers psychiatric and educational support and in which measurement is based on the educational improvements and achievements of those young people.

Members of the Justice Committee, including its Chair, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), visited Denmark and Norway to look at their experiences of dealing with young offenders. They spend far more money on it than we do and have reoffending rates of 20% and less in some cases, because they invest in those people. In this country, we are heading off in another, fairly ludicrous direction by saying that because there is a problem with the service we will hand it over to G4S, Serco and a few other companies that have a proven track record of incompetence and dishonesty, which will be sorted out by the courts.

[Richard Drax]

I did not suggest at any stage that youngsters should be brutalised in a militaristic fashion in a prison. I am suggesting that they should be taken out of prison and given hope and a structure that gives them a chance in life that otherwise they would not get.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

We are all in favour of young people having a decent chance in life. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said, he would have heard me suggest that we need to invest much more in young people in school and college and beforehand, so that they gain a wider range of life experiences, greater self-reliance and a greater sense of community involvement. I am concerned that he seemed to base his whole argument on the operations of the military, rather than on a much better form of community service and development.

I support the reasoned amendment and am pleased that it has been selected. I draw attention in particular to the last part, which points out that

“the Ministry of Justice’s own internal risk register warns that the Government’s proposals could result in a high risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance”.

We on the Justice Committee will start taking evidence on this tomorrow. Despite the Secretary of State’s refusal—and, indeed, that of previous Governments—I think it is high time that Governments start, as a matter of routine, to publish the risk registers of any service for which they propose major change. It is a simple act of transparency on the way in which the Government operate.

The speed with which this Bill is being pursued is extraordinary. The Justice Committee will take evidence and I hope that we will come up with some conclusions, but that is for the Committee to decide, not me. I hope that any conclusions will be taken on board, but the Bill is going through the House today and has to be out of Committee in three weeks’ time, so there is hardly any time for any considered public discussion or debate or for Members of the Commons to take a proper look at it.

The fundamental issue is that this is about the Secretary of State’s obsession with the privatisation of services. I cannot forget the day when the Justice Committee visited the Ministry of Justice. When we met the Secretary of State, he had hardly sat down at his desk before he said that he was a complete convert to the idea of franchising out and privatising various MOJ services. There clearly is an obsessive attitude that only the private sector can produce results.

I am sure that when the hon. Member for South Dorset meets members of the probation service in Dorset, he tells them what a fine job they are doing and what wonderful people they are. That is because they are wonderful people who are doing a fine job, but how are we rewarding them? We are giving them more work to do with fewer resources and putting them in competition, in a race to the bottom, with the private sector, knowing full well that the financial argument will win out at the end of the day and that the private sector will win, with its profits, low wages and inadequately trained or qualified staff, and the public probation service, which all of us are proud of, will be the loser. This Bill is going down a very dangerous road.

The statistics helpfully provided today by the Library show that the total case load of the probation service in 2003 was 199,000, of which 120,000 cases came from court orders and 80,000 came from pre and post-release supervision. By 2012, the number from court orders had declined to 114,000, while the number from pre and post-release supervision had gone up to 111,000. There is already a significant change in what is going on.

The reoffending statistics quoted are from Doncaster and Peterborough. I welcome anything that brings about a better prison service, better education and less reoffending. That has to be a good thing. The Justice Committee visited Doncaster, and it was an extremely interesting experience, but the statistics show that its reoffending rate of over 40% is still way above the national average of about 30%. It is a privately run prison and many of the regime’s liberal aspects are interesting, but it is perfectly reasonable to ask questions of the company that runs it about the treatment of its inmates.

I will make one last point because I want to leave enough time for the Front Benchers. Both unions that are involved in the probation service—Unison, which has fewer members from the probation service, and the National Association of Probation Officers, which has more—made a number of strong points in the evidence that most Members have no doubt received from them. The Unison paper makes the point that

“probation operates as a seamless whole. Splitting the service in two will allow dangerous offenders to fall down the gap between the two parts.”

Other colleagues have supported that position. NAPO has the same view. I attended its meeting and will conclude with a quotation from it:

“Napo believes that the proposed…agenda will undermine pubic protection procedures and place communities at risk of harm from poorly managed offenders. It will have a detrimental impact on staff who will have limited senior management support and who will be based many miles away and will have little local knowledge of the area they are responsible for. This will place unnecessary pressures on middle managers and front line staff.”

This privatising will not save money, but will cost more through higher rates of reoffending, greater danger to the public and, ultimately, more people in prison, not fewer. We should support the reasoned amendment tonight and give—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I tried not to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but that was a very long quotation. We need to get on to the closing speeches.