Criminal Justice Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The Conservative writer and statesman John Buchan said:

“You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.”

Too often, our constituents are exposed to how fragile that thread is as they deal with the barbarity of crime. It is true that, as the new Home Secretary said, some crimes have fallen—burglary has certainly declined, as well as some other crimes—but too many of our constituents have a diminishing faith in the rule of law. Order delivers and depends on a secure sense of certainty shaped by shared values and, as communities become increasingly fragmented by social breakdown, those values are eroded. There are many reasons for that, but just two of them are the pace and character of change. We cannot admit 1.3 million people into the country in just two years and hope that communities will hang together. In some places, there is nothing to integrate into, even if the people coming would like to do so. We have to deal with the rapid pace of change and its effect on the character of community and the shared values on which we all depend.

There is another problem, which sadly is prevalent in the Chamber; I hear it prosecuted many times. That is to assume that the focus in criminal justice should be on the criminal, not the crime; the cause, not the event. That implicitly limits—I would say that it reduces—our concern for victims as we perpetually ask why something has happened rather than what has happened. The effect of a crime—the event—is immediately felt, and the consequences of that event are measurable, so let us stop agonising about why, and deal with what and how, and what we will do about it.

What will the Government do about it in the Bill? There is much to be welcomed. The new crackdown on antisocial behaviour is overdue and insufficient but welcome. There is the concentration on knife crime and new offences for carrying knives. That, by the way, needs to be backed up with much more extensive use of stop and search—I hope we will hear that from the Minister when she winds up—because there is no point in having something on the statute book that says, “If you carry a weapon, you will be prosecuted” if we do not know whether people are carrying one or not. We know that stop and search works and we want to see more of it.

There are also sensible changes to the laws on vagrancy. Again, let us be crystal clear about those changes. The Bill says—this is not the hyperbole we have heard from some Opposition Members—that we will ban begging where it is causing a public nuisance such as by a cashpoint, in a shop doorway, on public transport, or approaching people in their cars at traffic lights. It will also introduce a new offence targeted at organised begging, which can be facilitated by criminal gangs to gain money for illicit activity—that is organised, orchestrated begging on a large scale. It will also introduce powers for the police and local authorities to address rough sleeping where it is causing damage, disruption, harassment, distress, or a security or health and safety risk such as the obstruction of fire exits or blocking pavements. That all sounds eminently reasonable.

Of course, those measures are not part of a bigger strategy on homelessness—I acknowledge and accept that—but my constituents tell me that they suffer from exactly the things that I have just detailed and want something done about it. The Government are to be congratulated for responding to those calls. The Government are right, too, to insist that criminals are in court when sentenced. We all saw recently that Lucy Letby was able to avoid meeting the families of her victims by cowering in her cell when she was duly sentenced.

There are things that are not in the Bill. I would have liked it to look at raising minimum and maximum sentences for all kinds of crimes. I would like more custodial sentences, not fewer, and not just for serious crimes. We have heard a lot about shoplifting. Let us imagine if we said to our constituents that the Government are increasing sentences for serious crimes, but a perpetual shoplifter will never go to prison; someone engaged in criminal damage by defacing or attacking a war memorial in our constituencies will not go to prison; someone involved in perpetual antisocial behaviour will not go to prison. That is not good enough, it is not what our constituents expect or want and it is not what the Government should do.

[Richard Graham]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the power of community payback is enormous, visible and makes a huge difference to our communities? When those who commit petty crimes are seen to be painting or gardening in city or town parks, the offence is commensurate with the justice mooted, and we can all benefit from that.

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, but it is a big mistake to assume that the principle aim of criminal justice is to avoid recidivism. That seems to underpin much of what the Government think. It is true that we want to stop people becoming perpetual criminals, but that is not the only measure of criminal justice. The purpose of justice is to punish. People want to see

“the infliction of an ill suffered for an ill done”.

For people’s faith in criminal justice to be maintained, they need to know that if someone does something wrong, they will suffer for it.

Similarly, imprisoning someone takes them away from where they committed the crime and thereby stops them from committing another. In the case of shoplifting, at the very least it provides respite for those plagued by shoplifters—often, the same families, groups and social networks are involved in that concentrated and organised shoplifting. It is not the person stealing the occasional thing; unfortunately, it has been institutionalised in certain criminal communities and among a certain kind of felon. We need to think about criminal justice in those terms. Community sentencing can play a part, but it is important that criminal justice is retributive. That argument is made to me perpetually by my constituents, but in their eyes, it seems to fall on deaf ears among the political elite. Protecting the public, punishing criminals and providing victims with a sense that justice has been done are all essential to maintain popular faith in criminal justice.

I know that others want to speak, and too many speeches in this Chamber are too long. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, there is no such thing as a political speech that is too short. So I will conclude with a different quote from a different character. C S Lewis said:

“I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.”

We will never eradicate the wickedness of crime. No society ever has. But in tackling evil, first we must recognise it, and secondly be intolerant of it. To be intolerant of wickedness is not only the right thing ethically but would allow us to say with pride that we are defending the innocent against those who seek to make their lives a misery. Let us move forward with the Bill with a spirit of righteous intolerance of evil. On that note, I look forward to the new Minister, whom I welcome to her place, illustrating her vigorous intolerance of all that is wicked and criminal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Does the hon. Lady agree that perpetual shoplifters of the kind she describes, who intimidate people and make the lives of shopkeepers and shop assistants a misery, should be banged up?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Again, I find myself breaking out in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman.

If the sanction is too low, people will keep doing it. As with county lines, it is clear that criminal gangs are often using and exploiting vulnerable people to do their dirty work. Those vulnerable people get caught, but we do not get Mr Big. Shoplifting is becoming an epidemic in many of our areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely am. I recommend to my right hon. Friend our report of this year and, I am sorry to say, our back history of reports on this issue, because things have moved so slowly that people might as well read the 2017 report as not much has moved on since.

I am going to come on to the issue of how reporting works, because the Bill misses an opportunity there.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Lady may recall that when I was a Home Office Minister—we are all sharing our Home Office histories here—we set up the National Cyber Security Centre and the national cyber-security strategy. We have made significant progress, but she is right to say that, as with shoplifting, fraud and cyber-crime are at epidemic levels. Part of that is about the way we constructed systems that are interdependent, interconnected and interoperable. Sometimes that adds to vulnerability, so we must change culturally how we go about doing business and interacting.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I do not dispute what the right hon. Gentleman says, but there is a danger that that lets the Home Office off the hook. In the five or six years during which the Public Accounts Committee has been looking at the issue, fraud has got worse. Indeed, I was dealing with some of the issues when I was a Home Office Minister, and we are seeing a growth in the crime but not a growth in the action in response to it. That is not surprising, as the volume and complexity of cases are overwhelming police forces and Action Fraud, the civil body to which people report such crime.

The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes about interdependency is valid. Because the Home Office is dependent on the banking, technology, telecoms and retail sectors to fight fraud, its response has been slow and sluggish, relying on voluntary agreements with organisations in those sectors to deliver change. Frankly, those agreements have not delivered enough. The banks were reluctant to give evidence at all to the Public Accounts Committee—I suggest to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), that she pushes the banks to give more information—and when we suggested publicly reporting fraud levels against the banks, they were apoplectic. We ended up recommending slightly time-delayed reporting as a way of keeping institutions on their toes, so that customers could vote with their feet and know exactly which banks were on top of dealing with fraud. We think that the different sectors where fraud is happening could do more.

Over 70% of fraud has an international element, so whatever we do domestically will not resolve the situation unless we have better relationships with overseas criminal justice agencies. This is immature in the Home Office currently, as we concluded in our report published earlier this year, and the matter is not helped by the lack of capacity in the UK. Only 1% of police are dedicated to fraud, yet it represents 41% of crime. The Home Secretary said that percentage balancing was not possible, but we can all acknowledge that if 1% of police officers are dedicated to fraud and 41% of crime is fraud then the balance is out of kilter.

Some 20,000 new police officers are being recruited, which is a welcome step, but only around 2% of them—some 380 officers—will be focused on fraud. The Public Accounts Committee looked at new officer recruitment; recruiting fast can mean that a lot of junior staff are recruited, not the specialists that are needed, so there has been a missed opportunity. I will not go into that further, as it is outside the scope of the Bill.

Public communications could be improved by the Home Office, working in partnership with others, as campaigns can be effective. When the Committee looked at communications this year, there were 13 public campaigns running about fraud, but fewer than 10% of citizens were aware of any of them. We raised the matter five years ago, when the Take Five campaign was run by the National Crime Agency. However, five years on, that campaign is still being evaluated, so it is not working very well.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North raised the issue of fraud not being reported by people. Only 300,000 cases were reported to Action Fraud by the public, which given the overall numbers is not very many, and another 600,000 were reported by business and industry. Of the 900,000 cases reported annually, fewer than 15% end up with further action and only 1% result in a criminal justice outcome. Action Fraud is set to be replaced in the new year, yet the Bill does not mention the victim experience, which is a missed opportunity. I hope that will be probed further by members of the Bill Committee.

It is sobering that the time taken by law enforcement agencies to take on and tackle fraud is often longer than the sentence that the fraudster receives, so something is going wrong. We need a concerted effort to deal with this wicked issue, which cuts across many areas.

The measure relating to intimate images is welcome. I pay tribute to my previous constituent, Emily, who has now moved back to the United States, who worked tirelessly over a period of years to shift the dial on the issue, after she was filmed naked without her consent. I held an Adjournment debate in April 2018 calling for exactly this issue to be addressed and made an offence. New section 66AA sets out three offences of taking or recording intimate photographs or film, including an offence of “intentionally” taking a photograph or recording a film that shows another person in an intimate state without that person’s consent or a reasonable belief in their consent.

This is a moment to pay tribute to Emily Hunt, who bravely named herself, took on the system and was a force of nature in making sure the issue was tackled. We could not understand why the crime of taking such a photograph was not identified in law. At the time, the fact the person who had taken it had not published it was the issue, but this measure has now been introduced and it would have protected Emily. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) highlighted what happens to many young teenagers, particularly teenage girls, so this measure acts as a protection. In addition, we need to ensure we educate people that such behaviour should not happen. As the Bill makes progress, I hope some of those issues will be picked up in Committee.