Criminal Law

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 17 July, be approved.

Following my announcement on Friday 12 July and an oral statement to the House last Thursday, Members will know that our prisons are in crisis. The male prison estate has been running at around 99% capacity for 18 months. We now know that my predecessor warned 10 Downing Street of the perils of inaction, but rather than addressing the crisis, the former Prime Minister called an election and left us a time bomb, ticking away.

If we do not act now, and that bomb goes off, our prisons will reach full capacity and the justice system will grind to a halt. The courts would have to stop holding trials and the police would be unable to make arrests. With criminals free to act without consequence, the public would be put at risk. If we do not act now, this nightmare will become reality by September.

We have explored all the options available to us. In the precious little time we have, we cannot build more prisons or add more prison blocks, and we cannot fit out an existing site to make it secure enough to hold offenders. Although we are deporting foreign national offenders as fast as legally possible, we cannot do so quickly enough to address the crisis. Although we must make progress on the remand population—those who are in prison while they await trial—such measures take time we do not have. That has left us with only one option to avert disaster.

The statutory instrument that we are considering today will change the law so that prisoners serving eligible standard determinate sentences will have their automatic release point adjusted to 40% rather than 50% of their sentence. That will mean that around 5,500 offenders will be released, in two tranches, in September and October. They will leave prison a few weeks or months early, to serve the rest of their sentence under strict licence conditions in the community. Thereafter, all qualifying sentences will continue to be subject to the new 40% release point.

Let me turn now to the detail of this legislation, the sentences that qualify for this measure, and those that do not. First, this change applies to both male and female offenders. This is a legal necessity and addresses the pressure in both the male and female prison estate. Although this measure does not apply to those serving in the youth estate, where capacity pressures are less acute, it does apply to a few individuals serving sentences under section 250 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Most of those serving these sentences are serving long terms that are excluded from the measure, as I will go on to explain. However, a few are in scope, and are included because they are likely to end their term in the adult estate.

The provision also includes those on a detention in a young offenders institution, and 18 to 20 year-olds who are held in adult prisons. As such, both contribute to the capacity crisis. As the measure must balance addressing the crisis in our prisons alongside the need to protect the public, certain sentences will be excluded. The worst violent and sexual crimes, which are subject to a 67% release, will not be eligible. Neither will violent offences subject to a sentence of four years or more under part 1 of schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Sexual offences will be excluded, including offences related to child sexual abuse and grooming. We will exclude a series of offences linked to domestic abuse, including stalking, controlling or coercive behaviour and non-fatal strangulation.

National security offences under the Official Secrets Acts and National Security Act 2023, and offences determined to have been carried out for a foreign power, will also be excluded, as will serious terrorism offences and terrorism-connected offences, which remain subject to a 67% release at the Parole Board’s discretion. So too will terrorism offences, which are currently subject to a 50% release.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I clearly understand the Government’s predicament and the reason for bringing forward these legislative changes, but one matter that I and other elected representatives in this House have had to deal with in recent years is the predicament that victims face of meeting the perpetrator of a crime out on the streets, which brings back enormous trauma. I welcome what the Minister says about some conditions taking precedence in relation to those being released, but can she reassure the victims who are worried about what is happening? We need to have that reassurance on the record in this House. Madam Deputy Speaker, those people are worried and they want to be reassured.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He raises an incredibly important matter. I have had the feelings of victims very much in my mind as I have been forced to make this decision. Nothing in relation to the victim notification scheme or the victim contact scheme will change as a result of these measures. All the usual arrangements will apply and I shall detail some of those a little later in my speech.

Returning to the offences that are excluded, in each case we have excluded specific offences, rather than cohorts of offenders. That is a legal necessity. It is only possible to make this change in law, with reference to qualifying sentences.

In addition to these exclusions, there will be stringent protections in place around any early release. This change to the law will not take effect until September, which gives our hard-working Probation Service a crucial six-week implementation period. Probation officers will therefore have the time they need to assess the risk of each offender and prepare a plan to manage them safely in the community. All offenders released under this policy will be subject to stringent licence conditions. Where necessary, multi-agency public protection arrangements will be put in place to protect the public, as will multi-agency risk assessment conferences, which ensure that victims can be protected.

Victims eligible for the victim contact scheme or the victim notification scheme will be notified about releases and developments in their cases. Offenders will be ordered to wear electronic tags where required. Exclusion zones and curfews will be imposed where appropriate. Crucially, if an offender breaks any of the conditions imposed on them, they can be returned to prison immediately.

Prison Capacity

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right that we have broad failure across many of our public services, including within the health service. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has said, we have inherited an NHS that is “broken”. I will have conversations with him on the matter that she raises, but it is important, as we try to return the prison system to health, that we do so in conjunction with the other public services that we know are crucial to the proper functioning of the criminal justice service.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Can I welcome the Lord Chancellor to her place and wish her well in the very important role she now has? It is imperative that, when a judge sentences a criminal, consideration of fulfilling justice prevails more than consideration of spaces in prison. How will the Lord Chancellor address the difficulties to ensure that justice and serving an appropriate sentence will remain the focus? The logistics of that can then be dealt with.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The hon. Member is right. In the end, individual sentencing decisions are for judges. They have discretion to apply the law as they see fit in the circumstances of the cases in front of them, and nothing that we have decided changes that picture. More broadly, we will have a sentencing review—it is something we committed to in our manifesto, and I will say more about that later in the year—to make sure that all our sentencing is consistent and coherent, and that our sentences do actually work, which is what they are meant to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that sensible question. I agree that community payback offers offenders an opportunity to make visible reparations to their local communities, with millions of hours being delivered each year. As an example, this March, for the great British spring clean, offenders spent thousands of hours clearing litter across the country. We are trialling a new way to deliver community payback through the rapid deployment pilot, which was launched last year. Community payback teams are working in partnership with local authorities to see incidents cleaned up within 48 hours’ notice, and we are now expanding that to all 12 probation regions.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Restorative justice in Northern Ireland has been an effective method of ensuring that victims and perpetrators can at least come together and perhaps try to find a solution. It is also a way of ensuring lesser sentences. Has the Minister been able to look at the community restorative justice that we have done in Northern Ireland to ensure that those on the mainland who offend can have a new life as well?

[Gareth Bacon]

I personally have not, but I gather that Minister of Justice officials are abreast of that. I would like to meet the hon. Gentleman to hear more about that from him personally.

Parc Prison

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

As I set out earlier, although I consider assault rates still to be too high, they are lower than they were in 2015-16 and similar years. It is clear that any assault on a member of staff is one too many. Sadly, assaults occur across the estate, and that is why we are backing our staff with body-worn cameras, and why they have PAVA, for example, which they can deploy when they are at imminent risk.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for his answers and helpful suggestions to other Members. What steps can be taken to restore confidence in the safeguarding and access to appropriate medical care for those who are imprisoned in facilities throughout this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? An investigation may well conclude that there was no fault, but this matter has certainly raised questions regarding levels of care and access to medical care and facilities.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his important question. I have set out the steps that we are taking in Parc to train staff to use naloxone in order to buy precious time to enable professional medical services to arrive. Across England and Wales, prisons come under my jurisdiction as Prisons Minister. In Wales, healthcare is devolved; in England, healthcare in prisons is the responsibility of and provided by the NHS. We seek to ensure that prisons have effective and close working relationships, at a macro and operational level, with their local health board or local NHS.

End of Custody Supervised Licence: Extension

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope the Minister will be happy to have a discussion with the MP whose constituency the prison is in, as well.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for his answers to all the questions. The scheme was initially designed to allow short-term early release by a matter of days, yet some releases are now early by some 70 days. Does the Minister understand why victims of crime are anxious that so-called “soft crime” criminals are getting an easier time? Victims of crime are told that perpetrators have been released early, so the victims can prepare themselves to see those perpetrators down the town or at the local supermarket, for example, which can be extremely disconcerting, even if it is not unexpected.

[Edward Argar]

Mr Speaker, I reassure you that I was due to be meeting the Member whose constituency HMP Parc is in at this moment in time, but I am here at the Dispatch Box. The meeting has been rescheduled and there is a date in the diary. As I promised at the last oral questions, that meeting has been arranged.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is right to highlight that point. Our ECSL protections are significantly more stringent than those used by the Labour party when it ran its scheme for three years. Unlike its scheme, ours allows governors to veto the release of any prisoner when they think early release will create a risk to victims. There are a number of exemptions from the scheme and it allows for rigorous conditions to be placed on the release licence, be it tagging, exclusion zones or curfews. Prisoners will be well aware that if they breach those conditions, which are put in place to protect victims, they will hear the clang of the prison gate and be recalled.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

As it was his birthday yesterday, I call Jim Shannon.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You are never going to let me forget about my birthday.

I very much thank the Secretary of State for his answers, and for his very clear commitment to physical and skills training. The other important issue is education. If we keep people’s minds and bodies active, they will not wish to offend when they leave prison, so what is being done to help, educationally? Will the Secretary of State share the ideas he clearly has with the equivalent Minister in Northern Ireland?

Prevention of Future Deaths Report: Terance Radford

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for setting the scene so well, with the compassion and understanding that we expect of him and he has delivered on many occasions. Our sympathies are clearly with the family who are here seeking justice and understanding of what took place. The hon. Member has outlined the case very well, and I just want to make a few comments. It will not take very long, Dame Maria, but I think it is worth putting them on record because of the implications of the case.

I am pleased to see the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), here. We seek an understanding of what happened, how it happened and why it will not happen again. That is what I want to speak about.

When I read the details of the case, I was sickened and shocked. My thoughts immediately went to the family of, as the hon. Member described him, a spritely old gentleman, who had holidays planned and was enjoying a full life when it was taken from him by someone who had demonstrated that he had absolutely no regard for human life. To see this early release under curfew has undoubtedly shown, and sown concern about, a major flaw in the process.

The Minister is a compassionate man, who understands the issues. In his response, he will try to answer the questions we all have, and his response to the coroners’ report and recommendations is clear. The family of that gentleman and others in this place have asked how this was allowed to happen in the first place. How could a man who could not be kept under control in prison have been expected to abide by curfew obligations once released? The hon. Member for Ashfield clearly outlined the attitude of the man in prison, what he did, his threats to staff and his destruction of property. The ordinary person would say that he could not understand why this man was ever released, and yet because legislation or guidance did not directly say this, unfortunately, Terance Radford died.

To me, this is an indication of how decisions are made looking at the letter and not the spirit of the law. This was not about justice, compassion and understanding for family. No reasonable person could have determined that the spirit of this curfew option was for people such as this—I do not normally use this word—thug who had set fires and attacked prison guards in custody. Yet there is such a fear of impinging on the human rights of the prisoner that it must be black and white that this is only an option for those for whom it is safe. I firmly believe that we must come away from this fear and instil in our decision makers—in the courts of the land and in the authorities who make decisions—the confidence that judgment can and should be used, and that they will be supported in such decisions.

The lesson of Terance Radford is, I believe, a shame on society. It was a shame and disgrace that Gavin Collins could be released under the scheme. Here today we must ensure that this slavish adherence to the letter of a law, or omission of expressly stated reasoning, is never—and never can be—sound reason for releasing dangerous people on to our streets until we absolutely have no choice to do otherwise. We must have confidence in the law of the land and in the justice that we seek, support and wish for. This lesson is a hard one. It has been hard for the hon. Member for Ashfield to tell his personal story in this room today. It is harder still for Terance’s family, who grieve his loss and the grief of a society who understand how badly we have failed Terance, and them.

Baby Loss: Coroners

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered baby loss and the role of coroners.

I am afraid you have a double dose of me this afternoon, Ms Elliott. That is obviously far too much for the people in the Public Gallery, who have made a surge for the exits.

This short debate will be focused on my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which has been going for quite a while now and remains unfulfilled in one part; that is the purpose of the debate. My Act started in the private Members’ Bill ballot in autumn 2017. It had its Second Reading on 2 February 2018. It passed all its parliamentary stages in February 2019 and passed into law in May 2019, almost five years ago. There were four parts to this historically quite ambitious and complicated private Member’s Bill.

The first part was that the names and details of mothers should appear on marriage certificates, now an electronic record. That came into being in May 2021, since when I have received many grateful thanks from mothers or the husbands of late mothers whose names could be now recorded on marriage records.

The second part was the extension of civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, which came in on 31 December 2019 and became regulation on the last day of Parliament before the election in 2019. Since then, more than 25,000 happy couples have availed themselves of that facility.

The third part was for the Secretary of State to produce a report on the registration of pregnancy loss. A pregnancy loss committee was set up, and I sat on it. Within the last couple of weeks, baby loss certificates have become a thing and again have gone down very well.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

So early? Of course—how could I resist?

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the four provisions that he brought forward, particularly the pregnancy loss one. It is something that probably all of us have to come to terms with in our family, and it is difficult. It is always a difficult topic to discuss, but the hon. Gentleman is right to bring it forward. As families, we can all feel for those who have lost babies during pregnancy. We feel for our partners, our wives, our mothers, our sisters, and all those who have lost as well. I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this forward.

Child Trust Funds

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Child Trust Fund access for people seeking to manage the finances of others.

It is a pleasure to use this debate to highlight the ongoing issue of disabled young people’s access to their child trust funds and to recognise the good will of the Minister and his Department, but to demand changes that would solve issues for the courts, CTF providers and, above all, the disabled young people and their families. We have the means to secure easy access to funds that rightfully belong to those young people—funds that could prove invaluable but which are being denied to them by a lack of information and processes that may be well-meaning in intent, but are Kafkaesque and off-putting in delivery.

It is a pleasure to move the debate under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I am delighted to see the Minister in the Chamber, as I know he is focused on the issue, as well as other hon. Members who have taken a real interest in getting a resolution on the issue.

I would like to pay tribute to my constituent Andrew Turner. Back in September 2020, Andrew found that his disabled son, Mikey, was locked out of his child trust fund. He simply wanted to buy an adapted bike with Mikey’s money, and Mikey’s life-limiting condition meant that time was of the essence. The child trust fund was Mikey’s only financial asset. That should have been the start of a simple process in which a loving parent who looks after his disabled son can use that child’s own funds to enhance the wellbeing of the child. Instead, Mr Turner found that he and thousands of others were required to go to court when the account matured. Such is the complexity that Mr Turner was independently advised that it would be easier and cheaper for him—I hate to say this—to wait until Mikey died, when a simpler process existed to reclaim the money. He was naturally deeply upset. He was also determined to do something about it, not just for Mikey, but others in the same predicament.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman. As I said to him before the debate, I want to give the Northern Ireland perspective. In Northern Ireland, the responsibility for the management of the child trust fund account for a child when there is no person with parental responsibility is transferred to the Share Foundation, which deals with inquiries until the child turns 18. Does he agree it would be a good idea if the responsibility went to relatives in the extended family, such as grandparents, to ensure that they can provide guidance within a familial setting in relation to finances? That would be a simple way of doing it—letting the grandparents or the extended family look after things.

[Sir Jeremy Quin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will touch on the circumstances in Northern Ireland, but the fundamental point that unites many people in the Chamber is the desire to get easy access for parents to ensure they do not go through a court process, incurring fees, going through bureaucracy and requiring the support of GPs and social workers, to access what in many cases is an average of about £2,000. It is just too much bureaucracy and work when it is rightfully the asset of their child.

I know many people in the Chamber, not just the hon. Gentleman, take a close interest in the matter and have far more personal experience than me, as parents of children with disabilities. They know that parents of children with disabilities have so much to do. Often that involves struggling to get what is rightfully theirs from Government. That is one area in which Mr Turner felt that progress could be made. The good news is he found a groundswell of support from parents and charities. I would like to thank in particular Contact for its support and Renaissance Legal for its tireless campaigning. There is support from child trust fund providers and, indeed, from the Minister, and yet four years on, we are still nowhere near where we need to be.

I would like to set out the scale of the problem. I will set out what I recognise the Government have attempted to do to mitigate the problem and, lastly, what I believe they should do to go further and largely to resolve it for most families with disabled children. Let us be clear: it is not a new issue. It is very apparent and has been well rehearsed—not only as a result of my constituent’s brilliant campaigning. The Public Accounts Committee looked into the issue last year as part of its analysis of child trust funds. The PAC highlighted a wider problem with CTFs as a whole, but it drew particular attention to access for young people lacking the mental capacity to manage their own savings.

In these circumstances, a family or carer must gain legal authority to access funds that belong to the young person involved. To do so requires an application for a deputyship order to the Court of Protection in England and Wales. For England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice estimates that between 63,000 and 126,000 young people may not have the mental capacity to access and manage their matured CTF when they reach 18. All CTFs will mature between 2020 and 2029. Tens of thousands of young people will therefore be subjected to a prohibitively lengthy, costly and complex process simply to access what is rightfully theirs.

In relation to stand-alone CTF applications, there were just 70 court applications between September 2020 and May 2023, compared with about 27,000 accounts maturing over the same period. The Department, in its Treasury minute responding to the PAC, broadened the scope of applications to include not just stand-alone CTF applications but other assets. However, even on that basis, the number of applications for 16 to 21-year-olds between September 2022 and March 2023 was still only 312. Whichever statistic one chooses to cite, thousands of people are missing out on what is rightfully theirs, because we are not informing them of their rights, and if we do, the process is too complex and too costly for all but a few.

I know that the Minister is a decent man. He put aside time to meet Mr Turner and me on this issue, and I know that he has instructed the Department to engage. I know that he is keen to make it simpler for families and he has ensured that changes have been made. I acknowledge that the MOJ last year moved some of the application online, waiving the fees and creating a toolkit for parents. That is to be welcomed, and I believe it was introduced with excellent intent. However, the process still involves completing 12 forms, including the duplication of a number of forms, and 93 pages. This includes requiring time-pressured GPs or social workers to complete a 21-page mental capacity assessment, which not all are prepared to do. With all the pressures on the families of disabled young people and the associated cost of becoming a deputy, is it surprising that they do not prioritise accessing what are, on average, funds of about £2,000? However, that is £2,000 that could and should be used to the benefit of the disabled child.

I know that the Minister and his team wish to help further, and there is a means to do so readily at hand, already in use and absolutely capable of being advertised and delivered on. It could help to deliver tens of millions of pounds—actuarial analysis suggests up to £73 million—into the hands of those who desperately need it. I thank the chief executives of two child trust funds, OneFamily and Foresters UK, for talking me through their proactive approach, which puts their customers first. Those two funds account for more than half of all CTFs. Very commendably, those providers recognise the problem and are applying a common-sense and pragmatic approach to its resolution. That is in effect using the Department for Work and Pensions appointee scheme—a tried and tested system to enable families to manage their child’s benefit income. It provides adequate protection and is the obvious solution to unlock the savings of disabled young people.

Let us be clear: this is no free-for-all. The providers require evidence that the parent or guardian is a DWP appointee; they require identity checks and confirmation of the child’s capacity. This process is available only in relation to funds under £5,000, and complex cases may still have to go through the courts. However, it has enabled the providers to meet the needs of hundreds of disabled children. There is a problem. Despite following a DWP process, and despite the knowledge that were a DWP appointee to be acting fraudulently there would be far more at stake than a modest child trust fund, this sensible route is frustratingly not officially sanctioned. The financial institutions are commendably going on risk to allow access to the funds. They know that there are far more affected families out there, but as responsible, regulated entities, they do not believe they can advertise their willingness to help in this pragmatic way, which combines existing safeguards with swift access.

Those two leading institutions and others with a similar proactive mindset assist 900 families a year—a significant multiple of the number aided through the court route—but thousands still need support. I therefore have three requests for the Minister that would help to resolve this issue. Will he engage with the DWP to extend the appointee scheme and officially include savings held in CTFs? Will he engage with the finance industry to formalise what is already a successful industry process, and in doing so enable it to advertise that route so that families can take advantage of a simple scheme? Lastly, will he help families to secure basic information about their CTF provider if the account has been lost?

Duty Solicitor Scheme

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him before we came in today. In 2018, the Law Society stated that there was a “chronic” shortage of duty solicitors, as he has said, and that nearly half were over 50 and due to retire soon. More than a third of all junior solicitors in Northern Ireland are now employed in large firms. Does he agree that more needs to be done to encourage junior solicitors to take up positions in legal aid schemes to ensure that those who cannot afford to choose a solicitor have readily available access in police stations and in the courts as well?

[Kevin Foster]

I can only agree with my friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), about encouraging people to go into this area of legal aid. There are issues around legal aid more generally, but in this area, police station interviews, police station duty and the right to representation at a police station all create different challenges from those faced in, for example, providing legal aid in planned settings in the courts, particularly when it comes to timing and advice. Being a duty solicitor is literally about getting a phone call in the early hours of the morning asking to come and attend an interview immediately, while someone waits in custody, and we need to look at how to get more people coming into it.

The overall figures do not show how stark the facts are in some regions. There are literally zero practising criminal law solicitors working in the system aged under 35 in Cornwall, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. Not one person who started their legal career in the last 12 years is practising as a criminal law solicitor in those four counties. Other areas are close to that figure, with only one criminal law solicitor aged under 35 in Norfolk, Shropshire and Warwickshire. In Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, East Sussex, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, over 60% of criminal law solicitors are aged over 50. The result is that, with expected retirements, rotas will shrink even further, to the point where there is simply no one left to take part.

The National Audit Office recently highlighted that the Ministry of Justice

“has been slow to respond to market sustainability issues”,

and the Law Society for England and Wales echoes that view. We simply cannot wait until the final generation of criminal lawyers retires to start tackling the issue, not least as those starting law degrees today will be at least five years away from being able to fully practise. To tackle the issue of people retiring in five years’ time, we need to start now.

The issue of the duty solicitor scheme also links to one of the biggest achievements of Boris Johnson’s premiership: putting in place plans to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers as part of the national uplift programme, which has now been delivered. Extra police officers means more issues dealt with, more crimes detected, more suspects to be interviewed and more cases before the courts. It is estimated, based on a National Audit Office report, that an extra 729,000 cases could be set to enter the criminal justice system by 2030 because of the extra 20,000 police officers. A lot of cases will not necessarily require full police interviews. Some might be dealt with by other forms of disposal, but we need to think about the extra demand.

What happens if a police station cannot find a duty solicitor? First, the police might be forced to release a suspect as they cannot interview them without a legal representative. The freshness of evidence might be lost. Even the potential for early admissions, which would make the process a lot easier for victims, might similarly be lost. The pressure builds on police station cells and local court backlogs if they are waiting for a duty solicitor to attend, and victims will be forced to wait longer for justice. We might even find that innocent bystanders arrested in error will have to wait longer before they can be released.

The impact continues once a case gets to court. Nearly half of defendants appearing in the magistrates courts on imprisonable summary offences did not have legal representation recorded on their case in the first half of 2023. That figure rose from 35% during 2022.

One response to the current situation has been consolidation, with criminal defence lawyers and practices becoming part of specialist firms, rather than being departments of larger multidisciplinary teams, but that is not without its own issues. As one criminal defence solicitor working in the south-west region put it:

“The truth is that the local rota is reduced to 9 or 10 people grouped in 4 firms…The 4 firms are crime only and there are no mixed practices who do any duty work or any quantity of criminal work. The consequence of this is that each Solicitor has a 24 hour duty slot every 10 days as well as the duty slots at the court 4 days per week and remand duties over video link 5 days per week which means there is some duty every day.”

It is not clear whether that is physically sustainable, but consolidation has also produced another impact, which may be less visible. That was stated as:

“Another difficulty is with conflicts as once the four firms are used up, there is no one that the fifth defendant on the case can seek advice from. We are starting therefore to get justice deserts in various parts of the country including our own.”

Also, consolidation will remove any form of choice. Most people accept that, while there might not be wide choice around legal aid, the ability to have some choice, particularly when their liberty is on the line, is still important.

It is easy to outline problems, but we also need to look at solutions. In the short-term, we need to stop experienced lawyers leaving duty work for other, more rewarding areas of legal practice, or simply to areas where they do not have the rota obligations. As the Law Society has pointed out, criminal legal aid rates have not really increased since the mid-1990s, while most other areas of law have been able to determine their rate based on the market. The Minister will know that, back in 2022, the independent review of criminal legal aid took place. However, the Government rejected the central recommendation of an immediate increase in rates of 15% as the first step, and instead implemented a 9% rise, which would eventually rise to 11%. Since then, practitioners have continued to leave the system, and the change does not appear to have produced a recovery in duty solicitor numbers. The Minister will be aware of the judicial review, which found back in January that the decisions had been irrational and should be retaken.

To halt the decline and potential collapse of the system, it is clear that the Government must implement the recommendations of the report, particularly given the impact of inflation on the profession since the report was published in 2021. It should be noted that criminal legal aid firms undertake a range of work, so actions should be taken as a package rather than as individual items. Even that will not change the longer-term picture. Quite clearly, we need a strategy to make working in our criminal justice system more rewarding, with specific measures to encourage those learning law at university to train for the duty solicitor scheme when they graduate.

There is not time in this debate to go into all the nuanced details around creating a public defender system akin to the Crown Prosecution Service, which effectively is a nationalisation of prosecution work. It is not a simple thing to do and could be fraught with challenges, in particular around maintaining independence from the state, which will of course be pursuing criminal charges against the individuals seeking to be represented. Like the current duty solicitor scheme, it could find itself struggling to attract the resources and human capital it needs. Yet the Government should consider how they can incentivise new lawyers to train specifically for criminal law work, especially in police station and duty solicitor roles.

Given what I have outlined, there are some specific points to which I would appreciate hearing the Minister’s response. First, what is the Government’s planned response to the recent High Court ruling and its clear findings on the duty solicitor scheme? Secondly, will the Government recognise the crisis in the duty solicitor scheme and put in place the fee increases that its own commissioned review said are needed to prevent the system’s collapse? Thirdly, given the urgent need for more training for this work to prevent the rota from disappearing over the coming decade, has the Minister given any thought to incentives such as a golden hello or funded training package, which could come with requirements to be on the rota for a set number of years? That could be like the packages we see in, for example, the armed forces and other areas of public service, where people are funded to be trained to do a particular job and then have to accept a commitment to do it for the public benefit. Finally, with few entering the profession in recent years, how will the Government support training to ensure capacity while still having criminal lawyers delivering the rota?

As someone who once worked as a criminal lawyer funded by legal aid, there is a lot more I could say about this issue, but time is limited. I said at the start that the duty solicitor scheme lies at the heart of our criminal justice system. It cannot operate without the scheme, yet it is ageing and more people are leaving. This is about ensuring that victims can get timely justice, that miscarriages are avoided and that cases proceed quickly and effectively, for the benefit of all involved. Without urgent investment and action on our duty solicitor scheme, none of those things can happen.