Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

What a very kind offer. I am sure that call will be echoed by those in the SNP Benches in front of the hon. Gentleman. We, of course, would be delighted to share any best practice. He makes a very serious point. To do all the things we want to do to protect vulnerable people requires boots on the ground—it requires police officers. That is why we are proud of the fact that in this jurisdiction the number of police officers stands at, or close to, an all-time high. We would be happy to commend that approach to our friends north of the border.

On public protection, taking the most serious offenders out of circulation is how we stop them committing crime. But we also want to follow the evidence about what works to prevent reoffending, because that is also how we keep the British people safe. The evidence—not sentiment, evidence—shows that those on immediate prison sentences of less than 12 months are significantly more likely to reoffend than similar offenders who get sentences in the community. They are over 50% likely to reoffend, as compared to less than 25% for those who are required to adhere to tough conditions, with a risk of going to prison if they fail to comply. Let me be clear about what that means. Those who are on suspended sentence orders are required to comply with onerous requirements—be they unpaid work orders, alcohol rehabilitation requirements or whatever—on pain of going straight to prison if they fail to comply. The evidence shows that people see that as a powerful deterrent.

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

My right hon. and learned Friend will want to comment, in that context, on persistent offenders, because he will know that there are many offenders who persistently offend and commit crimes that would not attract a sentence of more than 12 months. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke of shoplifting, for example. Criminal damage would be another example, as would antisocial behaviour. Some 30% of persistent offenders commit 80% of crimes. Is he really saying that none of them should go to prison?

[Alex Chalk]

On the contrary. I know that my right hon. Friend rightly, on behalf of his constituents, wants to ensure that those who destroy lives and have a corrosive impact on communities are brought to book. That is why the provisions have been carefully constructed and calibrated to ensure that those who are unable or unwilling to abide by an order of the court can expect to hear the clang of the prison gate. Not only will the proverbial sword of Damocles be hanging over them, but for those who commit an offence when they are subject to a court order—be it a supervision order, a community order or a non-molestation order—the presumption no longer applies. We send a clear message to criminals: obey the order of the court or expect to go to prison.

Judges will retain their discretion to impose immediate custody when an offender poses a significant risk of physical or psychological harm to an individual—this is to the direct point made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—so that domestic abuse offences and other violent offences against women and girls can and will continue to be punished, with immediate custody protecting victims. Nothing changes, but for those whose sentence is suspended, the courts will be able to continue to use a range of requirements, including curfews, electronic tags, community payback and exclusion requirements. Those who do not comply or who commit further offences can be brought back to court and risk being sent to prison.

Alongside that, we want to ensure that we have the prison places to keep serious and dangerous offenders locked up for longer, while allowing lower risk offenders to benefit from community-based restrictions to assist with their resettlement, get back into work and start contributing to society where that can be safely managed. For that reason, we are extending home detention curfew to offenders serving sentences of over four years and keeping our tough restrictions that prevent serious violent, sexual and domestic abuse offenders from accessing this facility.

The Criminal Justice Bill includes measures that deliver on three strategic objectives: first, protecting the public from violence and intimidation; secondly, enabling law enforcement agencies to respond to changing technology deployed by criminals, including by equipping them with sufficient powers to address emerging types and threats; and thirdly, strengthening public confidence in policing. We will protect the public from violence and intimidation by strengthening the law on the taking of intimate images without consent and expanding the offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It was a pleasure to listen to the Lord Chancellor open the debate with the characteristic moderation and eloquence that he brings to the Dispatch Box. I also welcome the two new Under-Secretaries of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon)—my constituency neighbour—and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), to the Treasury Bench. They are both great assets to the Government team.

I welcome what the Lord Chancellor said in his speech. I will concentrate on justice-related issues, given the pressure of time. The Justice Committee has, in fact, already worked on some of these policy areas, and I am grateful to him and his ministerial colleagues for taking on board some of the issues we have raised. We may want to press them a little further as we see the details of legislation, but I welcome the moves they have made. I appreciate their courtesy throughout our dealings.

I will start with our recent report, “Public opinion and understanding of sentencing”, which is important in the context of the Sentencing Bill and some provisions of the Criminal Justice Bill. The report shows that there is a real problem with the lack of a coherent approach to sentencing policy in the UK, as well as an issue with public understanding of the objectives of sentencing. In particular, there is insufficient analysis of the potential impact of sentencing changes.

This is not unique to the last few years; it has been systemic for all the time I have been involved in politics, and probably for all the 30-odd years I spent in practice at the Bar, specialising in criminal work, before coming to this place. No Government takes particular blame, but systemically we have perhaps not done enough to adequately collect and efficiently and fully use data to drive evidence-based policy. I know the Lord Chancellor and his colleagues understand that, and I know the Department is making moves to improve it, which I welcome. These Bills are examples of where we can try to put some of that into practice. That is certainly what our report is looking to achieve.

Given the public’s view that public protection is the top priority—we came to that conclusion after a very detailed sentencing exercise, I might add—I do not think people object to stronger sentences for the most dangerous offences but, equally, we need to be alert to identify any potential unintended consequences. That means we have to level with the public. If we repeatedly enact measures that increase sentencing, with the mantra of being tough on crime, we have to be honest with the public by saying it will cost money. Keeping an adult male in prison costs £47,000 a year. If they are a danger to the public of if they committed the worst types of crime, that is money well spent, but the Lord Chancellor is quite right to look at alternatives, where that money could be better used, for those who are not a danger and who are, in many respects, inadequate and have been failed much earlier in their lives, leading to a chaotic situation.

Tougher sentencing is sometimes part of the mix, and rightly so, but smarter sentencing is usually what is important. I think the Sentencing Bill recognises that and gives us an opportunity to build on it. That is also important because of the capacity crisis we have identified in prisons through our study of the prison workforce, where we have real difficulties in recruitment and retention. That is also important, as we cannot have rehabilitation without sufficient and adequate staffing.

As Winston Churchill said, “There is, in truth, a golden treasure in the heart of almost every man.” Not everyone is redeemable, but very many are. Far more than people in politics sometimes think. It is a good thing if we can turn people’s lives around through the prison system, because that means less reoffending. That is why the presumption against shorter sentences is right. There are certain areas, which have been mentioned, where we must carefully look at the detail but, overall, the evidence is overwhelming that short sentences do more harm than good. Sentencing policy should be about evidence and preventing reoffending, not about soundbites and grabbing headlines. I know the Lord Chancellor has adopted that approach.

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Sir Robert Neill]

I will give way once and once only, because time presses.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. Those are the arguments that have been used for most of my lifetime: the idea that recidivism is caused not by punishment, or by retributive justice; that somehow this is less important than the fact that, as he said, the people who commit crimes have somehow been failed. For a long time this has been the prevailing view in criminal justice, yet it has brought no decline in recidivism—rather, the opposite.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before the hon. Gentleman comes back on that, I must point out that if those who are trying to catch my eye later intervene before they have spoken, they will be moved down the list.

--- Later in debate ---

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

What a pleasure to follow the thoughtful eloquence of the new hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks). One of his predecessors, Tom Greatrex, shadowed me when I was the energy Minister and became a great friend. I hope that he, too, might become a good friend over time.

When I was a boy, still younger than the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather), I attended my first Conservative party conference in 1975. Margaret Thatcher, the new Conservative leader, declared then that

“The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty…then so will the governed, and…nothing is safe—not home, not liberty, not life itself.”

For a civilised society is an ordered society, and because it is the most vulnerable—the old, the frail and the less well-off—who live on the frontline of disorder, they must be protected from it. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West spoke about the hopelessness that can lead to when people feel they are exactly that: on the frontline of crime. For that reason, a prerequisite of social solidarity is a civil order where law is enforced, justice prevails for all and the guilty are punished. We in this place must stand in defence of the gentle.

Yet too often in my lifetime, those who shape criminal justice have been impervious to the harm their doctrines do. Detached from the concerns of hard-working people, those with power are too often influenced by guilt-ridden, bourgeois liberals. Too many members of this opinion-forming elite have lost any sense of proportion about what matters and what does not. They are unable to gauge the significance of trivialities which waste time and resources; unable to tell the difference between the petty and the pertinent. Many people often believe, rightly, that the criminal justice system is more interested in hurt feelings than in the hurt that crime causes. They cannot understand why elements in the police appear to care more about silly social media than they do about burglaries and theft. It is preposterous that half the calls passed on to frontline police in recent years have been about social media.

Figures released in June revealed that the proportion of crimes resulting in a charge or summons was just 5.7%—a slight increase on last year’s figures, by the way—which means that 95% of crimes in England and Wales go unpunished, and that is leaving aside those that are not even reported. Meanwhile, in the five years to 2023, an incredible 120,000 people were recorded for “non-crime hate incidents”. Causing offence may be rude, but is it really worthy of police time? The liberal elite who offer a multitude of platitudes about equality are none the less content to see a two-tier justice system in which cultural relativism determines what is investigated and what is not. The law must be applied equally to all, whether they are eco-fanatics or Islamic extremists. For such characters, in the absence of a sense of proportion, anything can be legitimised in the cause of self-righteous purity, and that includes, when they glue themselves to roads, stopping ambulances taking the sick to hospital.

We must end the culture of excusing and rewarding deviant and wicked behaviour. I recall from when I studied criminology at university in the 1980s a seminal book, “Rehabilitation and deviance”, which showed that a rehabilitative ideal had become so institutionalised that the criminal justice system had become disconnected from the core concept of justice. Crime is not an illness to be treated. It is a malevolent option chosen by those who carelessly harm and damage people, largely out of greed or spite or malice, yet too many heinous and hardened criminals receive risibly lenient sentences.

We should not be letting people out of prison early, nor should we be suspending custodial sentences for persistent prolific offenders. That is not what the public expect, it is not what our constituents want, and it is not fair because it is not just. Crime must be punished, and punishment matters because the public want to see law-abiding, decent, patriotic people protected from the minority who seek to do them harm. Is that too much to ask? No authentic Conservative should vote for early release, and no authentic Conservative should vote for the end of custodial sentences. If any do, they must answer to their constituents.