Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill represents the vital next stage in this Government’s mission to deliver a more credible justice system that keeps the public safe and secure, reduces reoffending and puts victims first. Under the previous Government, we had a plethora of criminal justice Bills as they jumped from one bandwagon to the next, but that was all to distract us from the real truth that Labour is the party of soft justice and unsafe streets. Too often, those who broke the law got away with a slap on the wrist, did not receive the punishment the public would expect, were released from prison even though they were still dangerous and were allowed to continue the cycle of more reoffending and more victims. This Government, on the other hand, have a consistent and clear approach: the justice system must be on the side of those who work hard and play by the rules, keeping our communities safe and secure.

We are already delivering on that promise. We have ensured that those convicted of a second serious sexual or violent offence face an automatic life sentence, and we are committed to having more prison places for adult males by the end of this Parliament than we inherited in 2010. We have toughened up community sentences, so they are no longer a soft option. I am pleased to say that proposals brought before this House through the Crime and Courts Act 2013 are now law. All community sentences now contain an element of punishment. It is extraordinary that that was not the case already, but it is now.

We have changed the law to give greater protection to householders in defending themselves against burglars—we have dealt with that issue once and for all. We have transformed the regime in our prisons so that they are now places of hard work and discipline, where prisoners are expected to engage with their own rehabilitation and work hard to earn their privileges. We are implementing fundamental reforms to transform rehabilitation by bringing together the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors and paying providers in full only if they reduce reoffending. The Offender Rehabilitation Bill, in its final stages before this House, will finally address the unacceptable situation whereby 50,000 short-sentence prisoners are released each year with no support, free to return to their criminal ways.

We have already achieved a lot, but there is more we can and must do. Too often, the system is inconsistent in the way it deals with offenders, especially those offenders who repeatedly flout the law. It cannot be right that muggers and rapists get off with a caution, or that those who abscond on licence can do so safe in the knowledge that, if caught, they will serve no more than the remainder of their sentence. There are too many offenders who commit serious crimes but are released automatically midway through their prison sentence. We will take action in this Bill to address those issues.

Perhaps most striking of all is the situation with youth offenders. Nearly three quarters of young people who leave custody reoffend within a year. The system simply is not working. We need to equip young people with the skills and self-discipline they need to turn their backs on crime, and that change needs to happen now, starting with this Bill.

My reforms do not stop there. I do not believe it is right that at a time when public finances are tight, the taxpayer continues to shoulder such a heavy burden for the cost of the criminal courts. In my view, the burden should be shared with those who are responsible for giving rise to the costs in the first place—the criminals themselves. Provisions in this Bill will make that a reality.

This Bill also contains some important measures as part of our long-term economic plan. Reforms to judicial review in this Bill, alongside those implemented in the first stage of the reforms last year, will tackle lengthy delays in the system, which put an undue burden on the taxpayer, act as a brake on dynamism and hold back economic growth. The reforms, which have been extensively consulted on, will rebalance the financial elements in judicial review cases so that anyone making a claim shares a fair level of financial risk. That will encourage those who bring claims to consider the merits of their case before doing so, and ensure that public resources are focused only on well-founded claims. I shall return to those provisions after I have dealt with the criminal justice provisions in more detail.

Part 1 of the Bill introduces a firm but fair package of sentencing and criminal law reform. I am determined that those who commit crime will be properly punished so that the public can both have more confidence in the justice system and feel safer in their homes and communities. I strongly believe that serious and repeat offenders should face the full force of the law for their crimes. It is not right that such offenders can be let off with a simple caution time and again.

I want to ensure that victims receive the justice they deserve, and that criminals know that they cannot lightly get away with what they do. That is why this Government are clamping down on the use of simple cautions. Offenders will no longer receive a caution for the most serious offences, such as rape and robbery. For other offences, the Bill will prevent the repeated use of cautions for the same or similar offences committed within a two-year period.

One of the aspects of our justice system that causes me most concern is the concept of automatic early release. As I have said before, I cannot abide a situation in which serious sex offenders and terrorists may serve only half their sentence in prison and—regardless of whether they have been rehabilitated and regardless of the risk they may continue to present to the public—are then simply released automatically midway through their sentence.

I do not think that early automatic release should be a right. That is why I am making a start on tackling it in the Bill, which introduces measures to end automatic early release for anyone given an extended determinate sentence, or sentenced to custody for the rape of a child or for serious terrorism offences. No such offenders will be released before the end of their custodial term, unless the Parole Board judges that they no longer pose a risk of serious harm to the public. I would like to do away with automatic early release in one step. In times of tight resource, I cannot do it in one go, but I can make a start, and that is what the Bill does.

Terrorism poses a serious threat to our society. Terrorists who commit or try to commit horrific crimes in this country must face the very toughest punishments. The Bill will close a loophole that desperately needs to be closed. It will increase to life the maximum penalties for a further range of terrorism offences, and it will extend the enhanced dangerous offender regime so that courts can impose the most serious sentences necessary for such crimes. I want to create a situation in which when courts view somebody as a junior member of a terrorist plot—until now, that might not necessarily carry a life sentence—they can decide to impose a life sentence because they view them as a serious threat to the public, and the Bill will enable the courts to do that.

Once prisoners are released, it is vital that they comply with the conditions imposed on them. If an offender is repeatedly or wilfully non-compliant with the terms of their licence, they should not be continually recalled to custody for short periods and re-released. The measures in the Bill will introduce a statutory test for the release of offenders who have been recalled to prison for breaching their licence conditions that takes into account not just public protection, but the likelihood of the offender committing further breaches, including reoffending.

I want to ensure that we increasingly use cutting-edge technology to monitor better the whereabouts of offenders while they are under supervision. Innovative GPS tagging technology will allow location monitoring of offenders, as well as the monitoring of compliance with other conditions, such as curfew and exclusion. I want us to be ready to harness the potential of this new technology, as it becomes available, to assist with public protection, reducing reoffending and crime detection.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State say what the cost of that programme will be and how successful prosecutions have been in the courts against people who have broken tags? I understand that there have been a lot of problems with tags not being reliable.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the existing radio-based tagging technology has been pretty unreliable. I have seen the new generation of emerging technology in action and it provides some good options. It provides the ability to monitor a curfew or to prevent somebody who has been convicted of child sex offences from going near a school. Some offenders can actually benefit from the use of this technology. On one visit, the police showed me that they had excluded somebody from suspicion in the case of a household burglary because it was possible to demonstrate that they had not been in the area at the time.

As I have said clearly, I want to start using this technology for release on temporary licence. We have seen some very difficult cases over the past few months. The vast majority of people who are released on temporary licence commit no crimes and simply want to be reintegrated into society. However, when dangerous offenders come to the end of their sentences and have to be released on temporary licence, this technology has the potential to ensure that we know where they have been and to provide a degree of restraint as we integrate them back into the community.

The cost of the programme will depend on its scale. The technology that we are introducing to take over from the existing systems will save money. It will cost tens of millions of pounds a year less than what we have spent until now. It will be possible to extend the use of the technology to other groups, such as offenders on temporary licence, at a relatively low cost.

I want us to be ready to harness the potential of the new technology. That is why I am seeking to take powers in the Bill to enable mandatory location monitoring of offenders who are released on licence. As the technology becomes available, we will then have the discretion to be able to use it to the best possible effect to protect the public when people are released on temporary licence and, potentially, when people have committed very serious offences.

I am creating a new offence for offenders who go on the run after being recalled to custody, so that those who try to avoid serving the remainder of their sentence do not go unpunished. There will be a new maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.

The final provisions in part 1 deliver on a commitment that is important to me and the Prime Minister. The Bill will make it a criminal offence to possess pornography that depicts real or simulated rape. I am sure that both Houses will share my view that such images are wholly unacceptable and that it is right to close this gap in the law.

That brings me to part 2 of the Bill and how we deal with young offenders.

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[Chris Grayling]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we already make intense efforts across our detention estate—for young people and others alike—to try to get people off drugs and prevent them from coming into those facilities. He will also know that it is a constant battle because there are people out there making a determined effort to get those drugs in. This is not a problem that simply affects this country; it exists in most other major industrialised nations and elsewhere. We will continue to do everything we can to combat it, and in this institution I want to see treatment available for those who have a problem, but also a real effort to ensure a drug-free environment.

Part 3 introduces a suite of provisions to reduce the burden of court costs on taxpayers by making criminals pay towards the cost of their court cases, streamlining the way magistrates deal with low-level offences and modernising the law on the work of juries. As we work to bring down the costs of the justice system and deliver better value for money, I am clear that it is not fair to continue to ask UK taxpayers to fund a criminal court system, or to ask law-abiding members of the public to pay increased fees in the civil courts, without offenders being expected to make a greater contribution. The provisions will allow us to recover from offenders the cost of criminal courts and make a contribution to the day-to-day running of court services. This is not a novel concept: courts can already order offenders to make payments to victims and victim services, and to pay fines and prosecution costs. There is currently no power, however, to make offenders pay directly towards the cost of the court proceedings that convict them.

[Dr Huppert]

The Justice Secretary is absolutely right that there are other powers. The latest figure I could find is that £1.3 billion of debt is owed as a result of these orders. What fraction of the charges does he think will actually be paid?

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[Chris Grayling]

I hear what my hon. and learned Friend says, but I am not sure that we could afford to raise the retirement age for judges. I do not mean that in a financial sense. Since I took over this position, I have spent quite a lot of time approving the appointment of retired judges to a number of important roles in society, such as chairing commissions and leading reviews. We would lose that expertise if we allowed them to continue as judges until they were 75, and I am not sure that we could afford to do so.

I shall turn now to the final part of my reforms. Judicial review represents a crucial check on public bodies. It rightly allows individuals, businesses and others to ask the courts to consider whether, for example, a Government Department has gone beyond its powers, whether a local authority has followed a lawful process or whether an arm’s-length body has come to a rational decision. However, I am concerned about time and money being wasted in dealing with unmeritorious cases which are often brought simply to generate publicity or to delay implementation of a decision that has been made properly. Moreover, a significant proportion of these weak applications are funded by the taxpayer, through the expense incurred by the defendant public authority, by the court resource entailed, and in some cases by legal aid or by the public authority bearing the claimant’s legal costs.

The first stage of my judicial review reforms sought to tackle unnecessary delays in the system. Provisions in the Bill will build on those—for example, by making it possible for more cases to leapfrog from the court of first instance to the Supreme Court, speeding up a final decision. We will also seek to change the rules on who has to pay the legal bills for cases, so that all parties have an interest in ensuring that unnecessary costs are not racked up.

Provisions in the Bill will result in stopping taxpayers having to subsidise cases unnecessarily by limiting the use of protective costs orders to exceptional cases with a clear public interest, and only when the court grants them permission to proceed. The provisions will also ensure that details of anyone financially backing a judicial review are disclosed to the court, even if they are not a named party, so that costs can be allocated fairly. They will also make third parties who voluntarily join in a JR case as interveners responsible for paying their own way.

[Dr Huppert]

Perhaps I have misunderstood clause 53, but it seems to suggest that interveners will have to pay not only their own way but the costs of everyone else involved. That seems rather harsh. The courts have said that they welcome interventions that help to clarify the law. Does not the Secretary of State feel that this measure might go a little too far, and make it hard for people to intervene even though it would be constructive for them to do so?

[Chris Grayling]

My real concern is when pressure groups use individuals as financial human shields in cases that the groups wish to bring. They find someone who has no financial means, and use them to challenge the Government, and whether or not they win, the Government—that is, taxpayers—are guaranteed to have to pay the bill. The taxpayer will have to foot the bill because there is no prospect of recovering the costs from the individual who is fronting the case. That is what I am seeking to change.

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[Sadiq Khan]

I am happy to have a ding-dong with the Justice Secretary. That figure applies in prisons such as Oakwood, which are failing—new purpose-built prisons. In a prison such as the one I visited last week in Winchester the average cost is £42,000; in a prison such as Wandsworth, it is £44,000; in Brixton, £46,000; and in Pentonville, £48,000. He is just plucking figures out of thin air and assuming that all 87,000 prisoners have the same £15,000-a-year cost. That is not the case and he has to be honest enough to recognise that there are far too many expensive prison places because of the legacy of his cancelling the new prisons and closing down too many over the last four years.

The concern is that the Justice Secretary talks a good talk, especially when briefing the right-wing media, but he simply does not care about or pay attention to detail, as he is working on the basis that he will be long gone before any of his mess needs to be cleared up. After all, he left a huge mess in the Department for Work and Pensions with his Work programme. He is assuming that somebody else will be left to pick up the pieces of privatising probation, of legal aid and of this prison population crisis.

[Dr Huppert]

While the right hon. Gentleman is in the mood to do mathematics, will he advise us of the extra cost to the public purse of the extra 30,000 people in prison between the beginning of the last Labour Government and the end of the last Labour Government? Will he give us an estimate of how much that cost?

[Sadiq Khan]

If we did a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who were saved the misery of being the victims of crime as crime went down by 43%, and of the additional cost of having extra police officers, which led to a record decrease in crime, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that there was value for money.

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[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am pleased to have an opportunity to take part in this debate, although several provisions in the Bill worry me intensely. The Bill has more to do with posturing on the part of the Government than with any real policy initiative. The Justice Secretary has presented it at a time when two other crime-related Bills are still awaiting Royal Assent. Indeed, some of its provisions seem to undermine those set out in the Offender Rehabilitation Bill, which is yet to reach the statute book.

Similarly, the Bill’s proposed reforms to judicial review, as set out in part 4, cut across provisions contained in the Immigration Bill—a point ably made by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. Most people would agree that there is a need to introduce a more robust process to weed out the unmeritorious cases, but we must be very careful not in effect to deny individuals who really rely on it. Furthermore, everybody accepts that the review process is a vital component of a healthy democracy: the individual’s right to challenge the over-mighty and to secure justice in properly decided administrative law cases. We limit those rights at our peril.

I will quote from a very interesting article that appeared in last Thursday’s edition of The Times, penned by a Member of the other place, a very experienced Queen’s counsel who has taken judicial review cases on many occasions and defended Governments in such cases as well. He wrote:

“Clause 50 provides that courts and tribunals must refuse to allow a judicial review application to proceed to a full hearing if the defendant shows that it is ‘highly likely’ that the outcome for the applicant ‘would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred’. If the case does not proceed to a full hearing, the court must refuse any remedy to the applicant if that same test is satisfied.

The proposal is objectionable for constitutional reasons. The clause will instruct judges to ignore unlawful conduct and to do so in a context where the government itself is the main defendant.

All governments come to resent the power of the judiciary to identify and remedy unlawful conduct. But until now they have, with greater or lesser enthusiasm, recognised the value of what is central to the rule of law. After all, they will not be in power indefinitely…It tells the Government, and the world, that what has been done is unlawful. Ministers and civil servants know that they must change their conduct for the future, and they do so.”

He concludes the article by stating:

“Over the past 40 years, judicial review has helped to prevent abuse of power by governments of all complexions. It is ironic that judicial review now needs protection from a politician whose reforms would neuter its force by the use of political slogans that have no factual basis and are ignorant of legal and constitutional principle.”

Those are strong words from an expert in the field. I think that we would do well to take them on board and consider their purport.

The timetabling of the Bill is also a little confusing. Although it is having its Second Reading today, we must assume that its introduction has been orchestrated so that it will be carried over at the end of the Session, no doubt to make the Government appear proactive and to mask the fact that so few significant pieces of Government legislation remain.

[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Gentleman, as ever, is making some interesting points, but is he really saying that the test of a Government is the number of pieces of legislation they pass? I would have thought that he, like me, thinks that Parliament has much more to do than simply pass legislation.

[Mr Llwyd]

No, I am not saying that. In fact, I was a long-time critic of the Blair Administration, who introduced criminal Bills almost every teatime. That is not a test at all. Also, several measures that the Justice Secretary referred to in his opening speech today are rehashes of various things we have seen in the press over the past few months. All I am saying is that when a Government run out of steam, the benchmark is not how many pieces of legislation they pass—otherwise, heaven knows where we would end up.

I am mindful that other Members wish to speak and so will try not to detain the House for long. Part 1 of the Bill creates a number of offences, many of which are considered unnecessary at best and, at worst, vindictive provisions that are likely to increase the prison population considerably. Clause 4 introduces a drastic change to release arrangements for offenders serving extended determinate sentences, who are currently entitled to automatic release after they have served two thirds of their sentence. Instead, they will now be required to appear before the Parole Board so that it can assess whether they are fit to be released on licence.

It is important to note that extended determinate sentences were enacted by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, a very recent piece of legislation. That is not the only example in the Bill of the Government seeking to amend provisions introduced by their own justice Bills. Extended determinate sentences from the outset increased the minimum tariff a person was required to spend in custody from half of their sentence to two thirds. By stipulating that offenders will also have to satisfy the Parole Board before being considered for release, the amount of time that is available for supervision and rehabilitation back into the community is further decreased.

Furthermore, the Government appear to have drastically underestimated the impact those changes will have on the Parole Board’s resources and the size of the prison population. In their impact assessment, the Government predict that the changes introduced in clauses 1 to 5 will result in an increase of 1,000 prison places and an increase of 1,100 Parole Board hearings per year between implementation and 2030. The Prison Reform Trust has written to Members of Parliament urging us to seek clarification from the Government on how they calculate these figures. After all, the Government of the time underestimated the impact that IPP sentences—indeterminate sentences for public protection—would have on the prison population. When those sentences were first debated in Parliament—I recall the debates—the Government were insistent that the new sentence would increase the prison population by 900 places. By June 2013, 5,620 offenders were still in custody serving the now-abolished IPP sentences, 3,549 of whom were being held beyond their tariff date. The impact on the operation of the Parole Board has been nothing short of overwhelming. In August 2013, the backlog of cases still awaiting hearings by the Parole Board was 1,352, with IPP offenders accounting for 61% of indeterminate review cases. Yet the Government think it apposite to increase the workload of the Parole Board yet again by introducing changes to the automatic release of offenders—and this at a time when Parole Board staff numbers have been reduced by nearly one in five.

The release test for recalled prisoners provided for in clauses 7 and 8 will similarly place an extra burden on the beleaguered Parole Board. At present, recalled offenders serving determinate sentences undergo a fixed-term recall whereby they serve 28 days in custody and are then automatically released. Under clauses 7 and 8, however, these offenders will serve the remainder of their sentence in custody if the Secretary of State determines that an offender is likely to breach a condition of their licence. The Parole Board would need to conduct a release test before certifying that the offender can in fact be released. The Prison Reform Trust has drawn attention to the fact that this pays scant regard to the peculiar circumstances of offenders with learning disabilities and mental health problems, many of whom find it difficult to understand the terms of their licence.

Once again, the Government’s estimate of how many offenders will be affected by this change seems worryingly off the mark. The impact assessment calculates that the change will result in 75 offenders per year being affected and an extra 50 prison places being required. However, this blatantly fails to take into account the likely impact of the changes being introduced concurrently by the Government’s Offender Rehabilitation Bill, still being considered by the other place, which will result in mandatory supervision being given to all offenders serving sentences of 12 months or less. The impact assessment for that Bill estimates that 13,000 extra offenders will be recalled or committed to custody each year, with an increase of 1,600 places in the prison population. I would be grateful if the Minister clarified how the Ministry of Justice has calculated that so few offenders will be affected by the combined impact of this Bill and the Offender Rehabilitation Bill.

Clause 8 gives the Secretary of State the power to use the affirmative resolution procedure in order to change the release test for recalled prisoners serving determinate sentences. I am worried that the Government are proposing to use secondary legislation to implement such a significant change, and I hope that they will reconsider this provision ahead of the Bill’s Committee stage.

Clauses 10 and 11 introduce a new statutory offence of being unlawfully at large following a recall to custody. This would be triable either way and could result in a convicted offender being imprisoned for up to two years. Once again, the Government seem to have omitted any safeguard for vulnerable offenders with learning disabilities or mental health problems that would impair their ability to understand the full terms of their release. It would be beneficial if the Government inserted such a safeguard ahead of the Bill’s later stages. For example, it would be useful if the Bill made a distinction between offenders who abscond wilfully and those who do not report as a result of a misunderstanding or a miscommunication. According to research conducted by the Prison Reform Trust in 2007, between 20% and 30% of offenders were estimated to have a learning disability that affected their ability to cope with the complexities of the criminal justice system and the co-operation expected of them. During debates on the Offender Rehabilitation Bill in the other place, the Government pledged to produce special versions of licence conditions for individuals with learning difficulties. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that they intend to keep true to that pledge, and indeed any other provisions that they will be making for vulnerable offenders so that they can understand what actions are strictly required of them.

My final point on part 1 concerns the new offence introduced in clause 16 that criminalises the possession of pornographic materials depicting rape and non-consensual sexual penetration. I truly applaud the Government’s efforts in this regard to minimise the use and dissemination of extreme pornographic materials, and particularly the work they are doing to minimise the opportunities for children to come into contact with this filth. In my view, however, there can be no benefit to society or to the individuals involved if persons convicted of sex offences are left languishing in prison without treatment or, worse, released into the community without treatment. I welcome what the Government are doing, but ask them to go one step further in ensuring that these perpetrators are dealt with positively, if that is the right word.

Although the internet sex offender treatment programme is available for offenders on supervision in the community, it is, rather perplexingly, not available in prisons. In relation to the availability of the sex offender treatment programmes which, conversely, are available in custody, I understand that as of July 2012, 21 prisons offered these programmes, despite the fact that offenders are serving time in relation to sex offences in over 100 prisons. This means that a person convicted of a sex offence has roughly only a one-in-six chance of being able to access treatment that would address his or her offending behaviour. I urge the Government to improve their provision of treatment programmes for these offenders before incarcerating yet more for similar offences.

In summary, the changes in part 1 will result in greater overcrowding of the prison estate and a greater burden being placed on the Parole Board, despite no mention being made, at least as yet, of any extra resources being allocated to deal with this increase. The proposals appear to be rushed and ill thought out, and I hope they do not end up being shambolic, but I would not be surprised. I urge the Government to reconsider the motivation behind these new offences before the Bill reaches its later stages.

I wish to make a few remarks about the changes to youth custody introduced in part 2. The proposal to introduce new secure colleges for children aged 12 to 17, which would be implemented by the passing of clauses 17 to 19, was first published in a recent consultation entitled “Transforming Youth Custody”. I agree with the views posited by the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust that the introduction of secure colleges may result in an increase in custodial sentencing for young offenders and longer sentences being handed out. I am particularly concerned that clause 18 would allow for these secure colleges to be contracted out to private companies, and that under the terms of schedule 4 those companies will be granted the opportunity to use reasonable force and restraint to enforce “good order and discipline”.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am in a slightly unusual position this evening, in that I rise to support the Government on this Bill. It is a particular pleasure to be able to support them on matters relating to criminal justice and courts, because that was not always the case when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice’s predecessor, the Minister without Portfolio, was in place.

I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on reversing the trend that we saw under his predecessor, which seemed to go against every Conservative principle on law and order. He was trying to send as few criminals to prison as possible, culminating —as the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) made clear in his remarks, with which I agreed—in his treatment of indeterminate sentences for public protection. That was the particular low point of this Government in criminal justice matters. I suspect that, as the right hon. Gentleman hinted at in his speech, if the current Secretary of State had been in place all the way through this Government, indeterminate sentences would still be in place. I do not think that he would ever have got rid of them, and some of the measures in this Bill are trying to undo the damage that was done by getting rid of those sentences in the first place. I am delighted that he has had the courage to revisit some of the issues that his predecessor failed on.

I say that I support the Government, and I do; I support this Bill wholeheartedly. However, as we have heard from other speakers, when we have legislation as extensive as this Bill—it is quite a wide-ranging piece of legislation—there will always be areas where one thinks the Government could have gone further, areas where there are missed opportunities and areas where one might have a few reservations. I am no different from other hon. Members in all those respects. I hope not to take too long, but I will go through a few of the areas where I particularly support the Government, where there have been missed opportunities, and where I have reservations, many of which I hope can be dealt with in Committee or on Report, so that in the end we have a much better Bill.

On clauses 1 to 3, anything that toughens up sentencing for criminals, particularly dangerous criminals, will always have my full support, so I am very pleased that the maximum sentence for certain dangerous offences is being increased to life imprisonment. Terrorists are a great threat to our national security, and measures to prevent them from carrying out their terrible crimes certainly have my full support.

With regard to clauses 24 to 28, I see no real problems with single magistrates dealing with very simple matters that do not require a bench of three to deliberate over. Should anyone object to the measure, I note the safeguards that are in place. I am pleased that single magistrates will deal only with straightforward and minor offences, such as television licence evasion. That should not be a criminal offence anyway, because a licence should not be forced on people; paying for a subscription should be a matter of personal choice, but that is a debate for a different day. Single magistrates will also deal with things like road tax evasion cases.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman talks about road tax evasion; he is presumably aware that road tax was scrapped in the 1930s.

[Philip Davies]

I am not entirely sure what the hon. Gentleman is on about, but people do evade their road tax.

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[Dr Huppert]

No, they do not.

[Robert Neill]

Their vehicle excise duty.

[Philip Davies]

Their vehicle excise duty. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has reinforced his reputation for concentrating on the things that are not important, and not concentrating on the things that are.

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I certainly will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again. We have wasted enough time on his nonsense; we will not waste any more on it. I have learned a lesson tonight: not to give way to him. Many people learned that lesson a long time ago, but in my naivety I had yet to learn it. I have learned it now.

I was making a point about single magistrates. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a reservation about the provision being extended to cover more than just the most basic and simple crimes. I share that concern. A system of single magistrates will never be appropriate for cases such as shoplifting, because magistrates have very different ideas about what should happen to offenders, particularly persistent offenders, in those types of cases. I hope that the power will not be extended. I sometimes worry that when a power is granted, it will be the thin end of the wedge and the power will be rapidly extended to other areas. I hope that will not be the case for this power. It will be introduced for very basic offences, and I hope it will stop there, and not be extended.

On clauses 37 to 39 and 40 to 48, I understand the concerns that have perhaps influenced the introduction of the new offences relating to jurors, especially given changes in technology. We already have the Contempt of Court Act 1981, so I am not entirely sure how necessary some of the measures are, but they may well be necessary.

I note the reasons given for increasing the maximum age of jurors from 70 to 75. I could not agree more with the rationale for that change, but I am tempted to table an amendment—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) mentioned this—to extend the change to magistrates and judges. I cannot see any difference between a juror of that age being able to determine the guilt or innocence of somebody in a serious criminal trial, and a member of a bench of magistrates or a judge of that age passing sentence. I do not really see why a person is capable of doing one of those things between the ages of 70 and 75, but not the others.

As the Ministry of Justice helpfully explained,

“According to the latest figures published by the Office for National Statistics, the healthy life expectancy of both men and women at age 65 is at least 10 years in England and Wales.

The existing age limit for jury service, which was set in 1988, does not reflect the current health of older people. Official figures show that healthy life expectancy of 65 year olds in England and Wales has risen since 2000.

We believe the selection of jurors should reflect that fact.”

If that is the case for jurors, presumably the case is exactly the same for magistrates and judges. There would be a cost saving if we extended the measure to magistrates, as they can claim for loss of earnings when they sit, and clearly magistrates who are aged 70 to 75 are less likely to be earning, or concerned with covering their loss of earnings, than those who are younger. Magistrates would still be subject to appraisals, so their competence would not be an issue. I have raised the issue of increasing the age limit before in this place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) once pointed out, it was ironic that the then Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), was past the retirement age for the magistrates of whom he was in charge. The amendment that I would like to see would rectify that anomaly.

I very much welcome the changes relating to judicial review. I hope that they mean that we will have less interference with decisions by judges who hear such cases. Parliament should set the law. Very often, as people will know, I do not particularly agree with Parliament’s decisions, but that is the price of democracy: sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. Parliament should set the laws of the land, and judges should implement the law as it stands. I do not like—we have seen this far too often in recent years—judges thinking that they should determine the law. If judges want to decide what the law is, they should give up being judges and put themselves up for election like everybody else. If they are not prepared to do that, they should accept the will of Parliament, whether they—or I—like it or not.

On clauses 29 to 31, I certainly understand the principle in the Bill that criminals should contribute to the costs of running courts. I note that the proposed criminal courts charge means that in future, somebody could be ordered in court to pay the following financial penalties: a fine; a victim surcharge; compensation; prosecution costs; and now this extra courts charge. The victim surcharge, which is basically a tax on offenders, has been a rather unhelpful development, particularly when it applies to people who are being sent to prison for long periods of time. When it was first introduced, for most offences, it was levied in cases where there was no victim. It seems bizarre that the victim surcharge was paid by offenders solely in cases where there was no victim. If the courts charge replaced the victim surcharge, that might make more sense. I certainly agree with the principle of making offenders pay; I just have reservations about how these things tend to work in practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate. For far too many years we have had a tradition of Governments—Conservative and Labour—trying to talk tough on crime and repeatedly aiming for the tabloid commentary, rather than dealing with the underlying causes of crime. That is why I am pleased that we are taking a different approach now, ensuring that we work on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending and initial offending, and tackling the causes of crime together with other Departments. That is an important process and it is good to have restorative justice and various things such as that in the proposals.

The mark of a good and functioning society is low prison numbers and low crime, not how many people we can fit into prison. In 1980, the prison population was 44,000. The then Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, described that as “dangerously high”, yet we saw numbers continue to rise year after year, helped of course by the previous Government’s 3,600 new criminal offences. We saw a huge 54% increase in the prison population under the previous Government, who wanted to increase capacity to 96,000—almost two and a half times the number described by Willie Whitelaw as “dangerously high”. That is deeply alarming.

It is not just me who thinks that the previous Government made a huge mistake. It is good to see the shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) back in his place. He has said:

“in office…it was a mistake to not focus more on the issue of reducing reoffending. We became hesitant in talking about rehabilitation and the merits of investment in bringing down re-offending rates. We got into the position whereby a focus on rehabilitation and reducing re-offending was seen as being soft on crime when in fact it is effective in reducing crime.”

He was right then—he clearly had not been previously—and it is good that this Government are acting on that, because it does make a huge difference. What we saw was a Government who jailed more people than anywhere else in Europe just to sound tough. We can take a better approach that will reduce crime, and that makes a big difference.

That applies to young people in particular. It is astonishing to look at the figures for young people. We have managed almost to halve the number of children serving custodial sentences, from 2,136 in May 2010 to 1,168 in December 2013. I am incredibly proud of that. In 2009, 600 children aged between 12 and 14 were locked up, some for summary offences. There may well be rare cases where somebody as young as 12 should be locked up, but they should be incredibly rare and I find it bizarre that hundreds of children suffered in that way. The Howard League for Penal Reform states:

“the refreshing approach of police forces across England and Wales to reduce the number of unnecessary child arrests, has allowed a renewed focus on crime prevention and alternatives to custody. Youth justice reinvestment pilots in Manchester and inner London boroughs have also shown how investment in diversion rather than criminal justice can yield benefits in terms of public safety.”

We can make the public safer and not lock children up.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huppert]

No. We heard enough from the hon. Gentleman in his rather long speech earlier. I know he disagrees with Churchill. He probably finds Churchill far too liberal for his own tastes, as he probably was when he criticised road tax.

What I do not want to see is children and young people languishing in detention and coming out and reoffending. That is absolutely not the right thing to do. It is not right for anybody—the Offender Rehabilitation Bill aims to help people with short sentences, which will help—but it is particularly the case for young people. I was pleased to hear the Justice Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister say that we will double the time that young offenders spend in education from 15 hours a week to 30 hours a week by 2015. That was a manifesto commitment we made in 2010—the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) very much remembers that—and something that we are delivering. It makes a difference. Education is a really important thing for these people, so that they can leave custody with skills and an education they can build on.

The secure college has to have an educational focus and that is what makes it good and worthwhile. By making it progressive rather than punitive, we will really engage with people, give them skills and help them to have a life later that does not involve going into crime. Many of these young people are vulnerable and damaged. We have to provide them with care and support in a safe and secure environment to help turn them back into citizens who will reintegrate into the community on release.

That is all very good, but I have some concerns that I will explore in Committee. Schedule 4 allows restraint to

“secure good order and discipline”.

That sounds worryingly Victorian. The courts have already said that that is not appropriate. I hope we can have clarity from the Government on what exactly is intended. I hope that that is not the intention of this Government.

Before I leave the subject of the number of people in prison, it is worth highlighting the changes in the female prison population, which has declined substantially. It was more than 4,000 when we came into office; it is now substantially below 4,000. That makes a big difference. Women’s prisons will become resettlement prisons, so that offenders serve their sentences as close to home as possible to maintain crucial family relationships, especially with children. There are times when women need to be punished in this way, but we need to help to ensure that afterwards they are able to engage better into society and do not suffer the problems that they could be left with.

I am concerned about the criminal courts charge. I heard what the Justice Secretary said, but I am still concerned that it will end up being unenforceable and skew the way our system works. Justice has made it clear that it is

“concerned that the imposition of a charge may have an unfair bearing on the exercise of a person’s right to plead not guilty, and therefore the presumption of innocence.”

How will it apply to appeals? Will people not be able to take advantage of their right of appeal because of concern about cost?

I was interested by what the Justice Secretary said about the £1.4 billion that was owed to the Courts and Tribunals Service. He talked a lot about dead people; I did not fully understand what he was saying. However, if another charge is added to the list, given that he said that that this would be the lowest priority, far less of it will be collected than the 80% that goes to the top priority. That seems obvious, because it will decay faster and faster.

The Justice Secretary said that if people did not reoffend, the charge would be written off. I should like to know more about how that would operate, but, again, far less would be collected. I am also very concerned about how the charge could be recovered without disproportionate enforcement costs, particularly in relation to the contractors involved. I am also worried about whether there is sufficient discretion in the process.

I am still concerned about tagging. I believe that there have still been no successful prosecutions for violations of tagging curfews when people have challenged the prosecutions and pleaded not guilty. Professor Ross Anderson of the University of Cambridge and others have been expert witnesses in cases that have been dropped on the basis of their evidence, because the tags have been proved not to be sufficiently reliable. I should have thought that there were better ways of spending money, especially given that the tags are not satisfactory.

I am very pleased that the Justice Secretary has given ground on judicial review. Many of us have been pressing him on that for some time, and I am glad that he has now taken some sensible steps. It is really important for ordinary people to be able to challenge the Government. We need transparency, and the Government are pushing for it; shielding the Government from legal challenge by clamping down on judicial review would run completely contrary to that. However, I am still concerned about the changes in relation to interveners. Third parties add important value and expertise to cases, at great cost to themselves and in the wider public interest. I did not think that the Justice Secretary addressed my concern about cases in which people intervene, as opposed to cases involving the “human shield” that he described. That is not the only kind of case involved.

Courts already have strong powers to control interveners. They accept only interventions that are in the public interest. Baroness Hale, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, has said:

“Once a matter is in court, the more important the subject, the more difficult the issues, the more help we”

—the judges—

“need to try and get the right answer… interventions are enormously helpful… . They usually supply arguments and authorities, rather than factual information, which the parties may not have supplied.”

Interveners play a very important role, but the Bill would require them to bear not just their own costs—which are not recouped, which I understand—but those of other parties whose involvement results from their intervention. The application of that could be incredibly broad. If someone intervened and that person’s intervention generated extra work to be done by someone else, the intervener would be billed for all of it. That would deter experts from giving useful and potentially instrumental evidence. We would shoot ourselves in the foot: court decisions would become worse, as the courts themselves have said.

The courts already have discretion to control who intervenes, how people intervene, and for how long they can intervene, and they can fine interveners whose interventions are unreasonable. That strikes me as a sensible balance. I think that the Bill goes too far in clamping down on interventions, and I hope that the Government will look at it more carefully. I understand that there may be cases in which intervention is inappropriate, but the Government must protect appropriate and important interventions,

There is much else that we shall need to consider in Committee, because the Bill contains a great deal of detailed material, but I think that the focus is right. I welcome much of what the Government are doing, but I think that they should concentrate even less on how many people can be locked up, and more on how much crime can be reduced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

We heard earlier that such charges would be the lowest priority of claim. The Justice Secretary was clear on that. Surely, if only 80% of the higher priority claims are collected and some people run out of money when they have paid the highest priority, a lower proportion of the low-priority claims will be collected.

[Mr Vara]

My hon. Friend needs to appreciate that the time lag will be longer. This will be the last element to be claimed. It will be claimed after the others. There will be a priority element, and this will be the last bit. There is no reason to conclude that, if the other four criteria have been met with an 80% collection rate, the fifth one will not.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd)—I hope that I have pronounced the constituency name correctly, or close enough—had concerns about prison places. As the Justice Secretary said in his opening remarks, in the next 15 or so months, we expect that there will be some 2,000 more places, and Wrexham prison will have more than 2,000 places by 2017. He raised secure colleges. I emphasise that the aim is to reduce reoffending and have the expertise to provide for educational needs.