Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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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?
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(12 years, 3 months ago)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Green
I am conscious that at various times there have been difficulties with the practicalities of the system, and I take on board my hon. Friend’s point.
The other services covered by part V of the Police Act 1997 when determining fees charged for services also apply to the new update service that was launched earlier this year. This will enable employers to verify whether existing criminal record certificates for those signed up to the service remain up to date, allowing us to ensure that the overall costs of the service now provided by the disclosure and barring service are fully recovered through fee income, and not subsidised by the taxpayer.
Earlier this year, when the update service was introduced, we made interim arrangements under the Finance (No. 2) Act 1987 to provide the legal gateway for this measure to apply. However, the overall arrangement was complex and not entirely transparent. For that reason, we believe the new clause will benefit volunteers and the people and communities they support.
New clause 28 contains substantive provisions to replace clause 147, which, as we made clear, was a placeholder clause. The new clause provides the Lord Chancellor with a general power to set fees at a level that exceeds the cost of the related services. The services are those provided by the courts in England and Wales, including the Court of Protection, the tribunals for which the Lord Chancellor is responsible and the Office of the Public Guardian. The primary focus of our proposals for using this power will be the courts of England and Wales. The courts play a vital role in our society, providing access to justice so that the public can assert their legal rights. Ensuring that they are properly resourced is essential to maintaining access to justice. This must be delivered when public spending is required to fall—deficit reduction is one of the Government’s key priorities—and the courts and those who use them must make a contribution.
As new clause 28 makes clear, the purpose of enhanced fees is to finance an efficient and effective court system. This change to the way that fees are set will help to ensure that courts are properly resourced to deliver modern, efficient services so that access to justice is protected. The proposed legislation provides a general power; specific fees would be increased through secondary legislation. When a specific fee or fees are set at an enhanced level for the first time, the order will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure—there will be full debate in both Houses. Any subsequent changes to those fees will be subject to the negative procedure.
We will shortly be consulting on proposals to achieve full cost recovery, less remissions, in the civil and family courts. However, even on this basis the running of the court system in England and Wales costs more than £1 billion a year, so we need to go further in reducing the burden on taxpayers. We believe it is fair and proportionate that those who use the courts and can afford to do so should make a greater contribution to their overall funding. That is why we are bringing forward this provision to allow fees to be set above cost in some circumstances.
Let me assure the House that we will not be using the power to set excessively high fees. In setting fees, the Lord Chancellor must have regard to the principle that access to the courts must not be denied. The new clause requires him to have regard to the overall financial position of the courts and tribunals, and the international competitiveness of the legal services market. We are not bringing forward specific plans for charging enhanced fees at this stage. We want to take some time to ensure that we get the measures right. As I said, we will consult widely on the proposals and look carefully at how any proposed court fees might compare with the overall cost of litigation, the value of the issues at stake and the fees charged by our international competitors. Following the consultation there will, as I have indicated, be full parliamentary scrutiny of any enhanced fees that we decide to introduce.
Amendments 184 and 95 relate to the tests for eligibility for compensation following a miscarriage of justice. I propose that the House hears from the hon. Members who tabled them before I respond.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I, with my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), tabled amendment 95. Does the Minister not recognise that he is proposing a dangerous step forward that would actually reduce the chances of overturning a miscarriage of justice case? Would the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six have been declared innocent under his proposals?
Damian Green
As I said, I think it would be sensible, for the purposes of the debate and the convenience of the House, if the hon. Gentleman makes his case and I then respond to it at the end of the debate. I think that is better than pre-responding to the speech I suspect he will make. [Interruption.] I am happy to make the same speech twice, but you, Mr Speaker, might feel that that was out of order. If the hon. Gentleman wants a taste of what I am going to say, I do not agree with him, but I will wait to hear his fuller analysis to see if he can convince me in the course of the debate.
Dr Huppert
It is nice to be encouraged by the Whips to speak at greater length, but I am sure we have enough to debate and I do not want to take time from the important debates coming up.
On the concerns about clause 143, the hon. Member for Islington North has, of course, tabled his amendment, but the Joint Committee on Human Rights has also tabled an amendment that would get rid of the clause completely. I am not a lawyer, but my assessment is that the JCHR approach is probably a cleaner one, but both amendments aim to achieve exactly the same thing. I agree with the shadow Minister that we should flag this up as a big issue, but leave it to the other place to find the right answer. By then, I hope that the Government will have reflected on it and accepted the principle that it is incredibly hard for anybody absolutely to prove their innocence. That is a really tough threshold. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that and that we can strike a better balance in the other place.
Jeremy Corbyn
I will be brief; because of the odd timetable we have for the Bill, there is not much time to debate any of it. My remarks are concerned solely with amendment 95, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), and for which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) explained, there is strong support.
Clause 143 will fundamentally overturn the huge changes made after the release of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. For many years, along with Chris Mullin and many others, I was one of those who, from this position in the House, raised questions about the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, and I could paper the walls of my house with the letters of abuse we received for taking up their cases. None of us who took up those miscarriages of justice was ever in favour of the bombing and killing of civilians in any circumstances; we were, however, in favour of justice.
The first person arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 was Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, who had been a constituent of my constituency before I was elected, but was in prison when I was elected. Meeting him and the others in prison, I was struck by the sheer hopelessness of being locked up for an offence they did not commit, when every newspaper and commentator in the country said they were guilty and when their family members were abused in the street and vilified because they had a son, nephew or cousin in prison for an offence they did not commit. It made that campaign very difficult, but some very brave people stood up, and eventually those happy days when they were finally released brought about a fundamental change in the whole narrative of justice in this country.
Dr Huppert
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his work on this issue over many years; it is a great tribute to him that he took it seriously. Does he agree that a fundamental principle underlies this point, which is that no matter what somebody has been accused of, however heinous it might be, they are still entitled to due process and due legal protections? That is an essential principle from which we should not vary, whether a person be accused of terrorist activities, sex crimes or anything else. Due process is important, because errors are made.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. However heinous the crime, however vile the accusation against an individual, unless they are treated as innocent until proven guilty, we undermine everything we believe in as a democratic society.
The big change that came after the release of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four—and Judith Ward for that matter—was the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which immediately started looking at 600 miscarriage of justice cases that had not received the sort of publicity that we had managed to engender in the three cases I just mentioned.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I wish to refer to one of those cases. The Cardiff Three, who were accused of a non-terrorism crime, suffered the same injustice and vilification, but eventually got some sort of justice.
Jeremy Corbyn
Absolutely. I recall that campaign very well. Although I was not centrally involved in it, I certainly supported it.
The question really goes back to the Minister. I intervened on him during his opening remarks to give him a chance—a double chance; not double jeopardy, but a double chance—to provide us with good reasons why he is introducing a provision that we, along with Liberty and many others, believe will fundamentally undermine much of what has been achieved through the Criminal Cases Review Commission and by the ability to overturn miscarriages of justice.
Justice can go wrong. The media can get it wrong. There can be a campaign of vilification that gets it wrong. We should not be too holier than thou in this country as we already have a considerable number of people held indefinitely under immigration law, and we have anti-terror laws that I believe are highly questionable in many ways when it comes to justice. I hope that the Minister will explain in his reply exactly how a serious campaign on a miscarriage of justice case would be dealt with in the future and how many more people could indeed be locked up for a long period for offences that they did not commit and could not have committed.
If amendment 95 is not accepted—I support the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington that the whole of clause 143 be deleted—I hope that the House of Lords will look at the provisions in forensic detail. Many of those who did such incredible work, including Baroness Helena Kennedy, in representing these causes and cases over many years, sit in the other place and I hope they will ensure that this legislation is fundamentally changed so that we recognise that mistakes can happen, that terrible injustices can take place and that unless we provide the opportunity and ability to remedy them, they will happen again and again and again. That is very dangerous in any democratic society.
Simon Hughes
I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, to the Minister and to colleagues because I had to slip out briefly at the beginning of this debate, albeit for what I hope are appropriate reasons. I had to meet a press deadline to pay tribute to one of our party members—not a parliamentarian, but a man called Stan Hardy who had been a great campaigner on these sorts of issues. He died last Thursday at the ripe old age of 93. Not just Liberal Democrats or liberals but Labour and Conservative colleagues in London and beyond recognised Stan as a doughty campaigner for civil liberties as well as for the rights of the under-privileged.
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on these sorts of issues, and I join my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) in paying tribute to his doughty campaigning throughout all the time he and I have been together in the place—now more than 30 years in both our cases. The hon. Gentleman’s amendment, supported by his hon. Friends, is designed to deal with a wrong in this Bill that I hope we can remedy.
There is a difference between amendment 95, tabled by the hon. Member for Islington North, and amendment 184, tabled by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis) and me. We argue for our amendment in our own right, but also on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Amendment 95 would amend clause 143, taking out from line 26 the words
“the person was innocent of the offence”
and inserting the words
“no reasonable court properly directed as to the law, could convict on the evidence now to be considered.”
The Joint Committee’s collective view was that we would do better to remove clause 143 as a whole—exactly the issue for which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) argued. I have been here long enough to remember and to have supported numerous campaigns to deal with miscarriages of justice, many of them very unpopular for the reasons we have all identified. Having looked at the issue again, I honestly believe that the removal of the clause would be the better way to deal with the problem. There are technical problems with amendment 95, so I strongly commend to the Minister the amendment to remove clause 143.
Finally, I shall not press the Joint Committee’s amendment to a vote, but we feel strongly about this issue as a Committee. I am sure the Minister knows that we will listen respectfully to what he says, but I hope he can be helpful and confirm that the principle of the Government’s proposal—that the provision should apply
“if and only if the new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that the person was innocent”—
will be changed because that is not the test that should be applied to deal with miscarriages of justice.
Electronic Tagging
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
To 1999—I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon.
As for how the issue has been addressed more recently, let me be clear that none of the team leading the effort in the Ministry of Justice today was in position when the matter first came to the Department’s attention in 2008. The team who are leading the renegotiation have done a first-rate job of putting together a much tighter contract management framework, which highlighted this issue. It is to their credit that they found it, and I am very grateful to them that they did.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, which is quite shocking in its content. Does he not think there is a case for advising local government and the national health service, both of which have large contracts with both companies, of what action he is taking and why he has taken it, to see whether they might care to look at their contracts with the two companies and the performance of them? Does he not think for a moment that his almost love affair with contracting out services to the private sector should be tempered by possibly thinking of a public service option for delivering such important government services, rather than taking the first position, which is always to go to a private contractor?
Chris Grayling
I am absolutely certain that my colleagues in the Cabinet Office will make both local government and health service bodies aware of what has happened. That would be right and proper.
On the hon. Gentleman’s latter point, I appreciate that he did not always agree with the leadership of the previous Government—I give him credit for that—but when he talks about a “love affair” with contracting out, I would remind him that the contracts were not let by this Government, but by the last Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Could the Secretary of State assure the House that none of the e-mailed responses to his consultation has been deleted? To make everybody happy, will he ensure that every single one of them is published, because there seems to be a story out there that somehow or other his Department is not interested in the response to the consultation process, and therefore it has been deleting unwanted e-mails? I am sure that is not the case, but could he assure the House that it is not so?
Chris Grayling
My understanding is that that is not the case, and if there is any suggestion that it is the case, we will ask the people who sent the e-mails to resend them. However, I can assure the House that as far as I am aware, every submission is in our hands, is being read, and will be considered properly.
Chris Grayling
We need to ensure two things. We have to bring down the cost of criminal aid, so no change is not an option. We have consulted on a package of proposals and there will have to be change in the solicitors sector. The Law Society itself accepted that in a letter to the Select Committee yesterday. However, as I have said, one of the issues that arose from the consultation related to rural areas and we will consider it very carefully.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
T4. In answer to questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) and others a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State and his colleagues were less than clear about the European convention on human rights. Which part of it do they object to and want to change, and are there plans to leave the convention altogether?
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not hear my answer. There is genuine discontent about the way in which the perfectly reasonable articles in the convention have been misused in this country’s legal system, such that in many cases people who should not be able to use them misuse them in order to abuse this country’s hospitality by staying here when they have no right to do so and generally bring the whole concept of human rights into disrepute. The hon. Gentleman and I would agree that human rights ought to be the bedrock of a democratic society, but the problem with the current system is that that is in danger of no longer being the case. I would have hoped that he would welcome our attempts to reform it.
Legal Aid Reform
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for reducing the speaking time and ensuring that all Members are called. There is a message here: I hope we have another debate, at greater length, when we can have a vote on this important topic. Although it is always regrettable when the Secretary of State cannot be present, the good news is that he will be before the Justice Committee next week, so we will be able to ask him a few questions there.
There are some serious questions to be asked. We have gone through the miserable experience of LASPO, we have already seen the effects of the loss of legal aid, we have seen in our surgeries many people who cannot find a lawyer to help them, and many legal aid practices have already gone under in high-cost inner-city areas where low-income families are desperate to receive justice. I hope that we will have a serious response to the Ministry of Justice’s rather rushed consultation.
Like all Members who have spoken, I have received many representations on this matter. I do not have time to quote from or refer to them all, but I would like us to remember one important underlying principle. When the current legal aid system, more or less, was introduced in the 1940s—it was built on the rather ineffective system that existed before—the then Government, who were much more far-sighted than this Government, considered legal aid to be as valuable to justice in our society as health, education, housing or the welfare state system that prevented people from falling into destitution. What we are approaching, if we are not already there, is a system in which if someone is poor, destitute, marginalised and up against it, they will get no help and no justice and will continue to suffer. Legal aid is fundamentally important in a democratic, civilized society in which a person can have their day in court to get a verdict in their favour or otherwise.
I will mention the representations I received from INQUEST, a good organisation based in my constituency. It rightly points out that the cases of Jean Charles de Menezes and Jimmy Mubenga could not have been taken to court had these proposals been in operation. It also points out that the proposals are likely to breach article 2 of the European convention on human rights, which concerns the right to life. The Immigration Law Practitioners Association, which over many years has done fantastic work on ensuring that everyone is represented and gets advice, points out, in relation to judicial reviews:
“This is not an immigration problem or even a legal aid problem. It is a problem of access to justice, of equality of arms, of holding the State to account.”
That is what a judicial review must be about.
For those busy telling us that every lawyer is a venal fat cat interested only in practising commercial law and leaving the rest of the people to rot, I have an interesting e-mail from a young solicitor in my constituency. Jed Pennington, who has a good law degree from Cambridge university, turned down work in the commercial sector to work pro bono on many other things and on legal aid the rest of the time. He, like many others, is not a fat-cat lawyer. They are doing it because they believe in justice.
Matrix and Bindmans have pointed out that the proposed savings are nonsense. The cost increase will be at least £24 million if the proposals go through. It is time for this House to assert itself and listen to organisations such as the Islington Law Centre, which does great work in pointing out that loss of legal aid is loss of right and loss of justice. Reject it.
Interpreting and Translation Services
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith
The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous and welcome member of my Committee, but I would not make the rather rash claim that we could meet the savings that the Government want to make in the costs of legal aid out of getting this contract right. However, we should be getting it right and so far that has not been achieved.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am also a member of the Committee, so I am pleased that we are debating this report. When the Ministry comes back to our Committee, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it would be helpful if it came with an analysis of the amount of money lost by the non-attendance of interpreters, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned, and the collapse of trials and all the costs that are loaded on to all three parties: the court, the prosecution and the defence?
Sir Alan Beith
I would welcome a reasonable estimate from the Ministry, but I should like it to devote most of its effort to moving from the bad situation that we have now to a better one. I would not want all its management to be occupied with collecting the figures, but if it starts to claim significant savings, I am afraid that we will all want to insist that some of those costs are set against those claims.
Quite a lot of off-contract booking is going on—courts have to do it to meet the need to go ahead with a trial —but we need more information because we do not know how extensive it is. Of course, that too is an extra cost item.
Interpreters’ organisations have been compiling dossiers of instances where court proceedings have been disrupted by failings in the interpretation service. Such information should be systematically captured by the Ministry. We recommended that there should be a user satisfaction measure, and the Ministry replied that it would discuss this with Capita and other partners. I should be grateful for an update on these discussions.
A lack of basic management information has contributed to the Ministry’s apparent inability to monitor and drive better performance. For example, there are costs of defendants being remanded in custody, additional legal aid costs and all the rest of it. We thought that the Ministry
“must get a better grasp of the costs of underperformance”.
I shall not quote the savings figures that the Ministry quotes, which are seriously at risk because of the additional costs involved.
The Minister could provide further clarification on how much of the expenditure of £13.3 million in the first year is accounted for by off-contract bookings. Perhaps she could let us have that information later, if not today.
We noted in our report that the problems arising in relation to the contract must have meant the Ministry’s incurring additional administrative costs as a result of the higher than expected level of oversight that has become necessary. The Ministry in its response gave a figure for staffing costs of the core project of £315,000 between January 2012 and March 2013, but it did not give an estimate of additional costs that it might have incurred.
We should not assume that there was some golden age under the previous arrangements for court interpreting. We concluded in our report that, despite clear administrative inefficiencies, there does not appear to have been any fundamental problem with the quality of services when sourced under the terms of the then national agreement. It is understandable that any Government would consider whether there were more efficient, cost-effective ways to provide the same service, but the principle must be to provide the same level of service. The Government signally failed to achieve that objective.
We said that there
“was clear potential for problems with ALS’ capacity to deliver on its promises which were not adequately anticipated or dealt with either by the Department or by the contractor itself”.
ALS was a small undertaking, visibly lacking the capacity to undertake anything as major as the entire national court interpreting provision.
The Ministry’s naivety at the start of the process appears to have been matched by its indulgence towards underperformance against the contract once the new arrangements came into operation. In introducing the new framework agreement, the Ministry has alienated many experienced court interpreters. The contract may have achieved a net book saving in its first year of operation, but it has not, on the available evidence, achieved any improvement in service to the courts. Indeed, on the information available to judge performance, which continues to be rather defective and limited, there has been a deterioration in performance and a negative impact on the ability of the courts to do their job properly.
The whole saga has been an inglorious one. It might almost have been constructed as a cautionary tale of what a Department should avoid in undertaking a procurement and contract management process. And this is a Department that intends to undertake several such processes, some of them much larger even than this one, so some lessons have to be learned pretty quickly. The standard of court interpretation needs to be restored, preferably by bringing back those whose experience can return the service to the standards that the courts used to expect.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) on initiating the debate and on the report of his Select Committee.
The right hon. Gentleman is known in the House for his understatement, and that is typified by his description of the system under the new contract as “shambolic”. That is as over-kind a description as it is possible to find. All the available information shows that the system is not only failing abjectly, but damaging seriously the administration of justice in this country. In addition, it is costing the taxpayer huge sums of money in abandoned trials and in other ways.
Jeremy Corbyn
Does my right hon. Friend not think that the lesson can be drawn wider than for the translation services alone? The Ministry of Justice and others are obsessed with the contract culture. It distances Ministers from the immediacy of decisions and, at the other end, leaves the public and the victims in a much worse situation, with much less accountability on the delivery of services.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
How can the Minister possibly claim that these changes are not damaging access to justice, when she knows full well that by reducing the possibility of taking cases to judicial review, public authorities and the Executive cannot be held to account by ordinary citizens? Why is she destroying what is so important in our justice system in this country?
Chris Grayling
On this matter, I have a lot of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. He may have sensed from my recent comments that I am looking closely at this area. I hope to be able to provide further reassurances to him in due course.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
T6. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he and the Government have no plans to withdraw from the European convention on human rights?
Chris Grayling
It is not the policy of the coalition Government to withdraw from the European convention on human rights. My party is looking at what proposals we want to put to the country at the next general election. The vast majority of the population want changes to our human rights framework. If the Labour party disagrees, I look forward to having that debate.
Police Cautions (Young People)
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, I think for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) not only on securing the debate, but on his admirable and in my experience unprecedented brevity in not filling up the entire time available to him. I appreciate his interest not only generally, as a member of the Justice Committee, which has indeed pronounced on the matter recently, but particularly, in the individual case that brought the issue to his attention. I will deal with that later in my speech.
On the generalities, the youth justice system is focused on early intervention and on diversion of children and young people from formal disposals where that is appropriate. In recent times, there has been an increase in the use of informal disposals by the police and an adoption of restorative justice approaches, which I strongly support. All police forces now have trained restorative justice facilitators, and an on-the-spot restorative action can often provide the best disposal when a minor, usually first-time misdemeanour is committed. Such an approach can also be beneficial to the victim, who gets immediate reparation from the young person who has committed the offence. There has been a significant reduction in the use of formal disposals by the police over recent years. Since 2001-02, there has been a 57% fall in the number of reprimands, final warnings and conditional cautions given to young people in England and Wales: 40,757 were given in 2011-12, compared with 94,836 in 2001-02.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on his contribution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) made a good intervention, which I support absolutely. People in inner city areas such as the one that I represent, and in particular minority ethnic youths in those areas, seem to have a disproportionately high chance of being stopped and searched, of getting formal cautions and therefore of being impeded in getting work in the future. Will the Minister look into the geographical breakdown of the cautions given and the operational guidance given to police forces? I, of course, support the much earlier write-off of cautions to preserve the career opportunities of all our young people.
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman might be aware that we are conducting a cautions review at the moment, so feeding into that is important. As I am about to explain in detail, we are concerned to encourage the use of out-of-court disposals but to ensure that, first, the length of time for which they are active beyond the period of the commission of the offence is properly limited and that, at the same time, they provide confidence in the wider justice system and in particular a feeling among victims that appropriate reparation has been made. That is the balance to be struck.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
When I was younger I was a human rights campaigner, and my idea of human rights is not providing artificial insemination to prisoners in our jails. It is up to the Labour party if it wants to defend that. I am going to carry on arguing for change, and I hope that when we are a majority Government we will deliver it.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State not recognise that the ECHR has done a great deal to improve the lot of people who were discriminated against and abused in many countries across Europe. It is an important statement of intent by a large number of countries. Can he not just get behind the principle that human rights are universal? The universal declaration is important, and the European convention was a major landmark in improving human rights around the world?
Chris Grayling
The issue is not about the original convention, which contains a sensible balance of rights and responsibilities. The issue is about how far we have moved over 60 years from the original intentions of those who wrote the convention. That is why a change is desperately needed.