Joint Enterprise

Debate between Jim Fitzpatrick and Stephen Pound

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I take it from his words and from the emotion behind them that the door to the Justice Committee is now open and that at some future stage it will consider this matter, because I think that is one of the loci from which we can seek to bring an end to this horrendous, disproportionate nightmare, which is a stain on British jurisprudence. In this appalling situation, 40 seconds can lead to 12 years in prison, and somebody who just happens to be within a group of people can find themselves facing the best part of their young life locked away for something they could not stop, even if they wanted to.

It is often said that the House is at its worst when we all agree unanimously, but I think that this is the exception to that rule. Tribute has already been paid to JENGbA, Charlotte Henry, Gloria Morrison and all the other campaigners. I would like to think that even without JENGbA’s informed and passionate prodding, people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) would have brought the matter forward, because this is a stain on the British legal system. The Prime Minister has referred to burning injustice. Well, this injustice is burning so strongly and brightly that the smoke is almost choking us, and we cannot see the sense and sanity of the law for the obfuscation that has come from this ridiculous piece of law.

This law was originally introduced to deal with duelling. I appreciate that duelling used to be a pastime of Members of this House, but how can a provision on aiding, assisting or encouraging—or even for parasitic accessory liability—a couple of people duelling in Hyde Park a couple hundred years ago somehow lead to my constituent Alex Henry, a man with a four-year-old child whom he has hardly seen, facing 12 years in prison for what happened in 40 seconds when he was with a group of young men? How on earth can we move from that piece of medieval law to the present situation in which people are suffering?

I suggest that the reason something happened in this area of jurisprudence in the 1990s comes down to one word. It has already been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, who I must forgive for destroying my stereotype of stern, unbending Conservatism, because he has shown himself to be humane, decent and informed on this, for which I pay him full tribute. The word he used was “gang”. In the 1990s, there was an assumption that groups of young people—and young black people—were a threat and that they were somehow out to destroy society: they were corrosive, their music was unbearable, their accents incomprehensible, their clothes unforgivable and their activities incomprehensible to most people. I like to think that those in the senior echelons of the law are well versed in street culture, but on this occasion I think they saw gangs as a threat. They somehow transposed groups to gangs. This piece of draconian, lead-like law was brought in to crush a threat that did not actually exist. Yes, of course there is street crime and violence, but it is not confined to one group of people. Young people such as Kenneth Alexander and dear Alex Henry, who were simply out with friends, now face the life that is ahead of them because of how the law works.

There are few tasks more melancholy that visiting a constituent in prison, and one of the frustrations is the inability to do much more than sympathise and show that they are not forgotten. I think that JENGbA’s work is so crucial because it shows that these people have not been forgotten. Would it be inconvenient for the judicial system to review thousands of cases? Damn right it will be inconvenient, but I will take a bit of inconvenience over 12 years in prison for hundreds of people, seeing their lives frittered away, living in the place where sunlight comes with stripes. As far as I am concerned, they have the right to call upon the judicial system and, if necessary, to be inconvenient.

When Alex’s sister first contacted me about this case, I could scarcely believe it. I had known the family. He had lived a couple of streets away from me—later he became an economic migrant and moved down to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), but I still think of him as a Hanwell man. I wrote to the then Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). This is what he wrote in reply, in June 2014:

“In my view, the law on joint enterprise serves a useful purpose for bringing people to justice when they have been involved in the commission of an offence. I do not share the view that the law penalises innocent bystanders and no longer serves a valid purpose. We have no plans to review or amend the law at the moment.”

I am sorry, but this law does not serve a useful purpose: it penalises the wrong people, it brings the law into disrepute, it punishes wholly disproportionately, it destroys families, it wrecks individual lives and, above all, it disengages a whole group of people from the legal process, because when they see a system go so wrong, how can they possibly have any confidence in it? I have no argument today with the right hon. Member for Ashford, but I think that he was wrong. I think that his letter was based on a brief that probably came from somebody wearing a wig. As far as I am concerned, this law has to be changed.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend generously gives the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) the benefit of the doubt, but clearly he was reading from a brief and he has been proven wrong, because the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the courts were wrong.

[Stephen Pound]

Absolutely. The Supreme Court ruled that the law had been interpreted incorrectly, but that is only half of it. Interpreting the law incorrectly is one thing, but righting the wrong is what has to happen now.