Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I will address all the Government and Opposition new clauses and amendments, but I will spend more time on the provisions dealing with judicial review than the new clauses on planning, partly because the latter are relatively uncontroversial.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister held a party for the 799th birthday of Magna Carta. He said that it was the foundation of all “our laws and liberties”, and made us citizens not subjects, with “rights, protections and security”. He is right about that. Later this afternoon, we will debate new clauses on sentencing for a second offence of possessing a knife. The Deputy Prime Minister objects to that proposal, partly because it includes minimum sentencing, which carries

“a serious risk it could undermine the role of the judges”.

He is wrong about that in relation to the new clauses, and he and his party have supported minimum sentencing when it has suited them to do so. Right or wrong, however, one has to applaud the sentiment that the rule of law and the importance of a strong and independent judiciary are the most important protections against the arbitrary or incorrect use of Executive power, especially in a country with no written constitution.

Sadly, such sentiments and lip service are all we can expect from a coalition Government who, in no less a person than the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, have done more to undermine the rule of law and the operation of the legal system than any Government in modern times. They have presided over the dismantling of civil legal aid and now of criminal legal aid, the privatisation of the probation service, chaos in those courtrooms that are still open, an overcrowding crisis in our prisons, the expansion of secret courts, attacks on human rights, and restrictions on access to justice for victims and those of limited means. Yesterday, to mark Magna Carta day, protests took place outside courts across the country.

In part 4 of the Bill comes the coup de grace—a frontal assault on the key legal remedy of judicial review. Alongside new fees, cuts in legal aid and shorter time limits, the cumulative effect of the proposals in the Bill is to hobble the principal method by which the administrative court can prevent unlawful conduct by the state in the way in which it, in all its manifestations, makes decisions.

One of the 17 experts who gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee memorably described the Government’s proposals for judicial review as a “constitutional provocation”; 16 of the 17 opposed them outright. The seventeenth, the head of planning for Taylor Wimpey UK, did support them, but slightly undermined his case by confessing:

“I have only had sight of the Bill…and I am attending at late notice”.––[Official Report, Criminal Justice and Courts Public Bill Committee, 13 March 2014; c. 151, Q341.]

It is not surprising that the Secretary of State could find no one qualified to support his position, which, as usual, is based on his gut instinct that judicial review is used to defeat Government policy for political reasons and that, as he confided to the Daily Mail, it is

“a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners.”

The truth is that it is inconvenient for the Government when, for example, the High Court and the Appeal Court rule that they acted unlawfully in trying to close Lewisham hospital A and E. No doubt some doughty left-wing campaigners supported that judicial review—not least my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock)—but they won because the Secretary of State for Health acted outside the law.

Clauses 55 to 60 will give protection to such unlawful acts in the future. That is why Labour wholly opposes the proposals for judicial review, and wishes judicial review to be preserved as an essential check on Executive power, as does every serious judicial and professional body that has spoken on the matter. Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls, has said that

“there is no principle more basic to our system of law than the maintenance of the rule of law itself and the constitutional protection afforded by judicial review”.

The former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf has said:

“In our system, without its written constitution embedded in our law so it can’t be changed, judicial review is critical.”

He added that the Ministry of Justice is showing a

“remarkable lack of concern for the precision of the facts”.

Lord Pannick has said:

“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.”

Most recently, the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I am pleased that its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), is in the Chamber to take part in the debate—found no merit in any of the Government’s arguments. Its report stated:

“We…do not consider the Government to have demonstrated by clear evidence that…judicial review has ‘expanded massively’ in recent years as the Lord Chancellor claims, that there are real abuses of the process taking place, or that the current powers of the courts to deal with such abuse are inadequate.”

The truth is that any problems in the administrative court that were caused by the growth in the number of judicial reviews in the area of immigration were resolved by transferring such cases to the immigration tribunal. The process of rationalising the tribunals system, which we started in government, is continuing with the setting up of the planning court.

The first group of new clauses and amendments complement that approach by bringing planning challenges in line with the processes for judicial review in respect of leave and time limits. First, certain decisions may be challenged only by a statutory review, but leave is not required to bring a challenge. The leave of the High Court will now be required in such cases. Secondly, challenges to costs awards will be dealt with as part of the statutory review of a decision. Thirdly, the six-week challenge period will be calculated from the day after the decision is taken. Those practices are more restrictive than the current ones, but we do not oppose them, on the basis that they are tidying proposals that are consistent with other processes that are in place.

I will move on to the amendments that appear in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). We do not support any of the Government’s proposed restrictions in clauses 55 to 60, which we seek to leave out of the Bill. As there will not be time to vote on every amendment, however, we will seek to divide the House on removing the two most immediately damaging proposals. Amendment 23 would delete clause 55, which is known as the highly likely test, and amendment 35 would delete clause 58, which imposes costs on interveners. It seems to us that that is the clearest and most thorough way to improve the Bill, but, for completeness, we also support the other amendments in the group that have been tabled by the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and others to amend the existing clauses to similar effect.

Clause 55 requires that, where a respondent asks, the court should consider whether, had the relevant authority acted lawfully, it would be

“highly likely that the outcome for the applicant would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred.”

Our belief, which is shared by the Joint Committee, is that that reveals a significant lack of understanding about the purpose of administrative law and the function of judicial review. It confuses unlawfulness with remedy and will encourage bad decision making by the Executive. We want the status quo to prevail. That is, the test should be whether the same outcome would be inevitable. Amendment 23 would leave out clause 55 entirely. The alternative amendments, amendments 24 to 32, would restore the status quo. All those amendments have the support of the Joint Committee in its report.

Amendments 33 and 34 would leave out clauses 56 and 57. Those clauses require the court to consider whether to make an order for costs against any organisation or individual beyond the applicant. Justice, the civil liberties group, gave troubling examples of how those proposals may have a chilling effect. If a charity obtains a donation for the purposes of pursuing litigation, will the court be capable of enforcing a costs order against the donor for any sum? What will happen if a solicitor or law centre acts pro bono when a claimant is unable to secure legal aid? Will family members who support litigation brought by a vulnerable or disabled relative who is seeking to challenge the withdrawal of services be affected? Those questions have not been satisfactorily answered and the changes that are proposed in clauses 56 and 57 should be better defined before Parliament approves them.

Clause 58 states that third parties such as non-governmental organisations, charities and human rights organisations—all those who regularly intervene in judicial reviews—will face orders for costs against them on an application by any party, except in exceptional circumstances. That the Government would target interveners in that way is both chilling and counter-productive. The role of interveners is most often to assist the court, and the most frequent interveners are organisations such as Liberty and Justice, whose expertise has proven invaluable in many cases. Often, in an adversarial system, it is only the intervener who identifies the core issue for the court to decide.

Opposition amendment 35 would leave out clause 58. Amendments 36 and 37 would have much the same effect by restoring judicial discretion as to costs. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and others have tabled amendments on this subject. I hope that they will see the force of the argument for voting out clause 58, which would have much the same effect as their amendments. I do not think that we need to split hairs over this matter.

Clauses 59 and 60 place the making of protective costs orders on a statutory footing. Opposition amendments 38 to 40 and 42 agree with the views of the JCHR, which concluded that restricting PCOs to cases where permission for judicial review had already been approved was

“too great a restriction and will undermine effective access to justice.”

It also rejected the

“need for the Lord Chancellor also to have the power to change the matters to which the court must have regard when deciding whether proceedings are public interest proceedings.”

Clause 61 purports to give protection in costs in environmental cases, as required by the Aarhus convention. Although we do not oppose that, we believe that the proposal is flawed because it is not comprehensive and because the precise effect of this important issue is left to the Secretary of State by way of regulations. Opposition new clause 53 would remedy those defects.

Taken as a whole, these changes are designed to hobble judicial review to such an extent that its true purpose—to hold the state to account—may be severely weakened, if not lost. That is an extraordinary position for a Lord Chancellor to take. We know that he is the first non-lawyer to hold the post of Lord Chancellor in more than 300 years, but he must brush up on his British constitutional history. Now that the Secretary of State for Education has stopped the circulation of the Prime Minister’s copies of Magna Carta to schools, there must be a lot of copies lying around in Downing street. The next time the Lord Chancellor is there—unless it is for the reshuffle—perhaps he should read a copy. He will find the memorable words:

“We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.”

Upholding the rule of law and allowing the citizen to challenge the state and other powerful interests are at the heart of our constitution. Judicial review became, in the 20th century, an effective tool for effecting those rights. It is that which the Government now seek to fetter.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I will speak in particular about clause 58 on interveners, about which the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has just spoken, and about amendment 51, which I tabled. I spoke about this issue in some detail in Committee and my view has not changed. In the interests of other Members, I will not go through every single argument that was made in Committee.

There is no doubt that interveners are a positive thing. We should welcome them in our legal system. Baroness Hale of the Supreme Court said:

“interventions are enormously helpful... They usually supply arguments and authorities, rather than factual information, which the parties may not have supplied.”

We should be grateful for that work and for the benefits that we receive.

The status quo does not allow just anybody to intervene. No organisation has a free right to intervene whenever it wants. It is up to a judge who intervenes. The judge can say, “Yes, I would like to hear from you. I don’t want to hear from you about this point. I would like to hear about that issue.” The judge has complete control. They can take lots of interventions or a small number. They can say how much information people are allowed to provide. The judge also has the right to invite somebody to intervene who has not even applied. A court can say, “We would very much like to hear from this person.” Judges therefore have huge discretion. Where there are abusive cases, judges already have the ability to say that they do not wish to hear from somebody.

We made some progress in Committee. We clarified that when a judge invites somebody to intervene, clause 58 will not apply to them. That is very important and it was not clear previously. It certainly was not clear to me and I do not think that it was clear to others. It would obviously be unreasonable to say, “The court has asked you to do something and now you must pay not only your costs, but everyone else’s costs for the privilege.”

I am yet to meet an organisation that intervenes that particularly wants its costs to be covered. That is not the way it usually works. Such organisations accept that they should pay their own costs. What they are concerned about—quite rightly—is the idea that they should have to pay the unenumerated costs of other people. They will have no idea at the beginning of a case how much those costs are likely to be. There could be a very high bill and that will have a chilling effect.

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[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman letting me make an intervention and therefore be an intervener. He says there may be rare cases of frivolous or exploitative interventions, yet none of the witnesses before the Committee could give examples of when they were aware of that.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Lady is right and I will not charge her for my costs in responding to her intervention—I am sure the Minister will not want to either. She is right, but my challenge was to the Minister to identify such cases. If there are any cases—I imagine that there are, because not being a lawyer I know that lawyers are creative at finding ways around the rules—we should try to fix that. However, I think such cases are the minority.

I withdrew my amendment in Committee because I wanted to see what the Minister could do, and he agreed to consider whether there was a way to improve the clause before Report. I had high hopes that the Minister—who comes from the wonderful county of Cambridgeshire—would have been able, with all the resources of the Ministry of Justice, to come up with something that would capture what we do. We should make it clear that we are clamping down on abusive cases, and say, “Whether or not they are happening, they can no longer happen”, and leave everything else alone. I hoped that in just under three months since the Committee proceedings the Minister might have achieved that, but it has not happened. I am disappointed, because it does not seem to be too hard.

I have done my best to provide suggestions, and I have met the Minister and sent in a number of possible ways forward. Today I wish to debate one of those possibilities, to see whether I can get a formal response from the Minister and whether he will look at it as a way forward and ensure we address the issue, even if that has to be in the other place. I turned to the Supreme Court rules as a possible approach. The Government seem happy with those rules on interveners and are not proposing to change them in any way. The rules would certainly be accepted by many legal professionals, given that they seem to work for the Supreme Court—I have heard no concerns. Article 46(3) of the Supreme Court rules state:

“Orders for costs will not normally be made either in favour of or against interveners but such orders may be made if the Court considers it just to do (in particular if an intervener has in substance acted as the sole or principal…appellant or respondent).”

That seems to capture what the Minister says he was trying to achieve, and I think we would all be relatively happy with that. There would not normally be such measures, but where somebody has acted as though they should be the person taking the case, it would be covered.

That led me to table amendment 51, which tries to capture that concept—it may not have caught it absolutely and I would be happy to hear the details, but it strikes me as a way forward. It provides a way to deal with the problems the Minister is concerned about, without stifling the interventions that I think all in this House—from the Joint Committee to many Members from all parties who I have spoken to—would want to protect.

The clause is not acceptable as it stands, and I do not think it will or could become law as currently drafted because of the problems it would cause. I hope the Minister will fix this issue promptly at an early stage in the other place, and that he will consider amendment 51 as a possible way forward.

[Sarah Champion]

I wish to speak broadly to amendments 23 to 32 to clause 55 in part 4 of the Bill, and to the “highly likely” test on judicial review. I also wish to share my thoughts on the specific proposals for judicial review, based on the recent experiences of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions, which directly affects my constituents. As a precursor, I should say that I accept that the number of judicial review cases has risen in recent years, but I am not certain that the proposed revision of judicial review would give a fair outcome to those parties seeking review, or tackle the reasons why instances of judicial review have increased.

In particular, I wish to address the idea that the likely outcome would be assessed as part of the process leading to the granting of a judicial review, rather than the legality of the process leading to the said outcome. On 7 February the South Yorkshire and Liverpool regions won a joint High Court action that ruled that cuts in European funding were unlawful. Lawyers bringing that action argued that the significant reduction in funding of 65% was disproportionate compared with other areas.

Evidence presented to the Court at the time showed that Ministers allocated €150 million less to Liverpool City region, and almost €90 million less to South Yorkshire, than they had estimated their share to be. Obviously, that could not be fair. It meant that over the next seven years, funding to Liverpool City region worked out at €147 per head, compared with €380 in the previous funding round from 2007 to 2013. A judicial review case was filed in September 2013, and the process, rather than the outcome, was deemed out of order. The judge requested the High Court to order the Government to adjust their allocation of funding from Europe because of the flawed calculation method used to distribute €10 billion from the European regional development and European social funds. Had that decision not been challenged, the funding that would have been allocated to Liverpool City region and South Yorkshire would have been spread across other regions.

Under the judicial review process as it stands, South Yorkshire and Liverpool were right to file for judicial review, as they believed that the process by which the decision was made was flawed. Logic would suggest that if the process behind the decision was flawed, the likelihood is that the decision itself would be flawed. Unsurprisingly, the judge ordered the Government to reconsider the funding arrangement.

The difficulty is that we will never know what would have happened if the Government’s proposals on judicial review had been in place at the time of that specific case. I suspect that the Government, already having a series of funding arrangements in mind, would have granted the same levels of funding to South Yorkshire and Liverpool, regardless of the process under which the funding allocation was decided. If, at the application stage, it was deemed that South Yorkshire and Liverpool would have been likely to receive the same amount of funding, their application would have been taken no further. To be clear: in South Yorkshire and Liverpool, I suspect that the likely outcome would have been assessed as the same in this case, regardless of the flawed process. Therefore, at the beginning of this process, the case may have been unable to proceed—a case in which 3.6 million people living in those regions would have not been able to access €10 billion-worth of funding.

Such considerations—those predictions of likely outcomes—will now become law under the Government’s plans. I have no doubt that in some areas judicial reviews may be seen as wasteful, but at the same time I strongly believe that the case I have referred to would not have made it to court under the new proposals.

Was the process flawed? Yes. Is the outcome likely to be similar? Perhaps, yes. Does that mean that the people of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions should not have been afforded the opportunity to challenge? No. On the slim chance that the outcome would change for them, taking the case to the courts would have seen the two regions immeasurably better off. It is only right that the people of those regions be allowed to challenge that decision.

A faulty process often leads to a flawed decision, and even if the outcome might be the same, we need to consider those rare cases in which the outcome is predicted to stay the same so judicial review is not granted, but the outcome is then prevented from being different. In their current form, these plans would prevent case law from forming based on the one in 100 cases in which the outcome might have been predicted to stay the same but in fact did not stay the same. We are taking the power of the formation of case law away from judges, and we are instead putting the power of decision making into the hands of people less experienced in making such decisions.

I implore the Minister to look at the case of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions as an example of why judicial review should be granted not on the basis of the likely outcome, but on the basis of the process of decision-making. We must allow flawed processes to be challenged, so that for the cases in which an outcome is different, the people involved are granted that outcome, rather than having it snatched away from them before it goes to court.

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[Nick de Bois]

I agree. Sadly, that is particularly true for younger offenders, for whom sentencing in London is half the rate of elsewhere.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. He carefully avoided the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) about whether he had had a look at the Home Affairs Committee report on knife crime. I urge him to do so. It is clearly against mandatory sentencing, but it also highlights that evidence suggests that the prospect of a custodial sentence may not deter young people from carrying knives. Does he accept that evidence from many people? Has he seen any evidence to the contrary?

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In my follow-up paragraph, I deal directly with some people’s interpretation that the measure will not act as a deterrent. I urge some caution; it is a little peculiar that the hon. Gentleman’s party voted with such enthusiasm for mandatory sentencing two years ago, but somehow now does not see that as appropriate for existing offences.

I was talking about the shocking number of 2,500 young offenders carrying knives between the ages of 10 and 17, which is why the new clause starts by dealing with mandatory detention and training orders for 16 to 18-year-olds. Make no mistake: I am well aware that people are carrying knives far younger than that, but we have modelled the amendment on the previous amendment that is now part of the Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012, and allowed us to deal comfortably with the 16 to 18-year-olds. As hon. Members may know, the Lord Chief Justice himself has called for an inquiry into the sentencing of younger offenders, given their prevalence in the courts and the courts’ concern at the number of young offenders under the age of 16. I welcome the commitment to explore that at a future date, and the issue may come back to the House.

Some have argued that sending a signal may not be enough and that potential offenders do not think of the consequences of pocketing a knife—a point made a moment ago. That is entirely possible, but let us not miss the wider point of this sentencing change. For those embarking on a journey that embraces the knife culture, the eventual destination may be serious injury to someone else, or even to the carrier of the knife. It may lead to a person’s death. They may take a life. That journey to destruction, which simply ruins lives, included picking up and carrying a knife for the first time. Quite simply, in the vast majority of cases, to kill someone with a knife, one first has to carry a knife. Our courts are dispensing sentences for possession of a knife in thousands of cases, which offenders treat as little more than an occupational hazard. With nearly 8,000 fines and cautions last year, I suggest that that fuels knife crime and does nothing to halt it.

Others may argue that custodial sentences are more likely to turn an offender into a serial offender. Under the new clause, mandatory sentencing would kick in for a second offence. The new clause targets the second offender, giving them a chance to turn their life around the first time. Being convicted a second time suggests that he or she is well on the road to being a serial offender. We have tabled the new clause in the knowledge that the Government are focusing their efforts on rehabilitation and reform in order to reduce reoffending and to help, not hinder, offenders in turning their lives around. For the first time, therefore, short-term prison terms are being accompanied by probation for those serving under a year, with “through the gates” mentoring and payment by results for reducing reoffending. I hope that that works. If prison can reduce reoffending, all the more power to this new clause so that we have yet another opportunity to turn someone’s life around before they potentially go on to commit a far more serious and grave offence.

I have never pretended to be an expert in this subject, and many in this House will probably be happy to support such a contention. However, I have regularly met people here in the Commons and in my constituency, courtesy of widespread engagement over the social media, in some cases, regarding the merits or otherwise of my new clauses. I have had extensive discussions with representatives of voluntary groups that have usually emerged as a result of knife crime in their area or through knowing friends or relatives who have been touched by knife crime or gangs. While not all those representatives necessarily agreed with the new clause—I am pleased to say that the majority did—we were united on one thing: that early intervention, education, mentoring, and focusing on reform and rehabilitation are crucial components in tackling the insidious knife crime culture. I put on record my thanks to those who offered so much of their time.

While I am in absolutely no doubt that we are right to focus on sentencing, that will be only part of the solution, not all of it. However, the idea put to me by some that these two approaches are mutually exclusive does not stack up. Indeed, I argue the exact opposite—that they must go hand in hand as part of a wider solution to the problem. I was particularly impressed by the force of the arguments put by the groups I met that reflect their passion and their background. They are self-starter organisations determined to try to move youngsters away from a life of knife crime. I worry that these groups of volunteers are not being used enough by the official channels, often through local government programmes supported by central Government, to help to turn lives around. These groups often operate on the basis of small private donations, or no money at all, and are not sufficiently resourced to bid for projects to help them further expand their work. I think they should be listened to. I realise that this does not speak to the new clause, but it is worth putting on record that they can be a vital part of the wider solution to the knife culture.

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[Nick de Bois]

Let me make a little more progress; I think I have been pretty generous so far.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) has just illustrated with his comment on statistics, knife possession is not being treated with the gravity required to ensure public safety and justice for victims. It is reasonable to draw that conclusion when 8,000 people are still getting cautions and fines. Today, we can change that by turning the existing guidelines, which have a presumption in favour of prison, into a reality through mandatory sentencing, which would be another vital tool in the challenge of dealing with knife crime and knife culture.

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Nick de Bois]

In fairness, we ought to remember that other Members wish to speak.

Let me summarise something very important. Even the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Deputy Prime Minister, has not quite got this right. The new clause is not an attempt to change the basis of prosecution; we simply wish to toughen up the sentencing. Our new clause would not change the basis for prosecution of someone carrying a knife, so a tradesman carrying his tools or—the Deputy Prime Minister seemed overtly worried about this—someone carrying a small penknife is excluded from the proposal by existing legislation.

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[Nick de Bois]

I remember those evidence sessions and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of them, but I have to look at the evidence on the day and the total numbers involved. We have not had mandatory sentencing under the existing system. I do not dispute the argument that some other measures are tough and are seen as such—I accept that—but the reality is that we do not have mandatory sentencing and I am afraid the record shows that current sentencing is not doing an acceptable job given the statistics I gave at the beginning of my speech.

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Nick de Bois]

I am sorry, but I will not give way any more.

Our new clauses make clear to criminals, the public and victims our minimum expectation with regard to someone who goes out knowingly carrying a knife as a second offence. I believe that everyone should get a chance, but the patience of the public, this House and victims is being sorely tested by what is happening in our judicial system. Today, we can make a difference by supporting new clause 6.

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[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is right that if he is in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), he does have me worried. He will appreciate that the arguments on new clause 34 are rather broader than its cost implications. As I have set out already, we cannot accept it at this stage for several reasons, and that is different from a specifically cost-related calculation.

I note that new clauses 6 and 7 contain some minor, technical flaws that would need to be addressed if either were to receive the approval of the House today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North knows, his objectives have considerable support among Conservative Members. However, as he also knows, although both coalition parties are fully committed to protecting the public, policy agreement has not been reached on these new clauses, so it will be for the whole House to decide on the conclusion to this debate. So that that debate may continue, I shall finally say that I hope that the House will support—

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister coyly described flaws in the new clauses. Would he care to list them so that the House may know exactly what they are?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am not sure that this is the appropriate time. There are some minor and technical flaws, but my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North has made his case and the House will have to consider what he has said and decide what it wishes to do. Regardless of the fate of my hon. Friend’s new clauses, I hope that the Government’s new clauses, new schedule and amendments will find favour with the House.

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[Mr Burrowes]

Obviously the court will always be concerned with the issue of reoffending. However, it must balance a great many factors, not least the severity of offences, the need for deterrence, and the need for offenders to be in prison so that they cannot commit further offences, but also the fact that it is important for others, not least the victims, to know that the offence is very serious. As has already been pointed out, people who carry knives are putting not just others but themselves in danger. We need to ensure that minimum mandatory sentences are par for the course, as they are in the case of other serious offending.

It surprises me that the Liberal Democrats oppose the new clause. In 2011, they agreed—unanimously, I believe—with a measure proposing a minimum mandatory sentence for knife crime which involved the same issue of discretion in exceptional circumstances. When it comes to mandatory minimum sentencing, what is the quantitative, indeed qualitative, difference, in terms of principle, between someone carrying a knife in a threatening manner and someone carrying a knife for the second time? The Liberal Democrats like to say that they are standing on a key issue of principle.

[Dr Huppert]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman cannot work out the answer to his own question. There is a substantial difference between carrying a knife and threatening someone with a knife. In the first instance, the knife could be intended for protection; in the second, the person with the knife risks causing harm to someone else. There is a very clear difference, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman cannot see it.

[Mr Burrowes]

It is clear that they are different offences, but my point is that the Deputy Prime Minister thinks that we should have nothing to do with a mandatory minimum sentence, as a matter of principle. I do not understand the difference between the examples given by the hon. Gentleman when it comes to the principle of mandatory sentencing. He said that people might carry knives for their own protection, but the issue is the same whether a person threatens someone else or whether that person is carrying a knife for the second time. In both cases, a mandatory sentence is applied. It would be necessary to go a considerable way to show exceptional circumstances to avoid a prison sentence.

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[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I welcome new clauses 45 and 46 that would hold care home providers to account. Police Operation Jasmine was an £11.6 million seven-year investigation into care homes in the south Wales region. It uncovered shocking instances of neglect. Care home residents were not receiving the care and protection they deserved. One director’s inability to stand trial due to ill health saw a case with more than 10,000 pieces of evidence, and more than 100 families calling for justice, collapse. That remains a travesty to this day.

These new clauses will make wilful neglect an offence. They will make prosecutions more likely in the future. Older people in care homes and their families place their trust in care home staff and providers alike. Both should be held equally responsible when that trust is abused. With the support of Age UK, I tabled amendments to the recent Care Bill for one simple reason: so that victims and their families can get the justice they deserve.

Operation Jasmine went on far too long and cost too much money, but still failed to achieve justice. This change in the law will help right that wrong. I tabled an amendment to the Care Bill which would have made corporate neglect an offence. At that point, the Minister acknowledged the importance of this issue, but the Government did not support my amendment when it was put to a vote on Report. Even so, I am pleased that Ministers are now moving this much-needed change in the law to address a problem that refuses to go away.

The Welsh Government, backed by the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, have now begun their independent review into Operation Jasmine. I am thankful that the 100 families involved have a real chance at last to understand what went wrong.

I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) for her support throughout this campaign. It has taken longer than it should, but we got there in the end.

[Dr Huppert]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I want to begin by paying tribute to the quality of the speech by the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois). I do not agree with every point he made, but although we disagree on some things, I do not doubt his sincerity or the efforts he is making. I suspect we share a common goal; what we disagree about is how best to get there. However, I think he carefully avoided commenting on the mandatory/non-mandatory issue. It was noteworthy that when he addressed comments made by his colleagues he talked about it being mandatory, but when he addressed Members on the other side of the House he was careful to say that it was not. That is one of the key challenges.

We do not dispute that knife crime is a problem: too many people are attacked and injured with knives. Knife possession is, and should be, a criminal offence, although I was struck by a factual inaccuracy about laws relating to penknives and so on—nobody mentioned that the definition is a limit of up to 3 inches; it is not to do with anything else, and it is not to do with police discretion.

I am pleased that there has been a substantial decline in knife possession offences over the last three years. Fewer people are carrying knives—there are reductions of 30% for children and 23% for adults—which suggests that things are getting better, although they are clearly not perfect.

The argument today is not whether anybody thinks it is all right for people to carry knives. Clearly, it is not all right, and that is why the Government introduced the legislation on threatening people with a knife in a public place, including at school. The key issue there is the difference between threatening and carrying.

The question that the House must consider is whether we should do the thing that sounds the toughest or the things that actually work. A strong sanction is available: judges can, if they think it is appropriate, sentence people to up to four years in jail for first-time possession of a knife. Some of us believe in judicial discretion—that it is up to judges to consider all the details of a case to gain the best understanding.

[Nick de Bois]

I want to return to the point that I am really struggling with. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks and the spirit they were made in, but the question is not the type of offence—on which I believe the Liberal Democrats should be challenged—but the principle of the mandatory sentence. More important than the type of offence—be it waving a knife around or carrying it in a pocket—is the principle of judicial discretion and the mandatory sentence. Two years ago, the hon. Gentleman supported that and now he does not. I have not heard an answer to that question.

[Dr Huppert]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to personalise this, in fact, I did not support it. He can check the record on that one, although I accept that, like all of us, he has not memorised every single Division in this House.

To my mind, there is a huge conceptual difference between possession and the act of threatening someone, because one of them is so much closer to—[Interruption.] Nobody is expecting that a caution should be given for an offence such as murder. Murder is clearly much more serious; there is that scale and there is a clear difference.

I will come on to mandatory sentencing in other areas in a moment, but I want to consider the fascinating evidence on knife crime that was given before the Home Affairs Committee. A range of people gave evidence, including the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), as she now is—she is not in her place, which is a shame—who at the time was speaking for the Scout Association. I recommend her evidence in particular. John Bache, chairman of the Magistrates Association youth courts committee, said that, while he agreed that removing knives from the streets was of paramount importance, the Magistrates Association was against mandatory sentences. That is something we should listen carefully to. We also heard from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hitchcock, who led at the time for the Association of Chief Police Officers on this issue; he is now chief constable of the Ministry of Defence. He was very clear that he opposed mandatory sentencing, and what he said comes exactly to the point:

“I feel there is a difference, for example, between the mandatory sentence for gun crime, where someone has to be within certain criminal networks and has to procure the weapon…and knife crime where you are talking about a weapon that is easily accessible...and the circumstances in which a young person might come to have a knife in their possession can be quite varied. For example, you might have a 16 year old who is a recidivist offender, who is going out and committing robberies, who is going out and threatening other people, who is within a gang environment.”

He then compares them to a young person who

“has been having a bit of a hard time school, a bit of bullying and then stupidly puts the knife in their bag on one occasion and gets caught. If you have got a mandatory sentence then that person who is the recidivist, unpleasant, nasty offender is going to get the same sentence as the young person who has done something really stupid and should have a more appropriate sanction.”

[Nick de Bois]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

I will happily give way, but I should highlight the fact that Commissioner Hitchcock was talking about a first offence, and I accept—if this is the point the hon. Gentleman is about to make—that he did not comment on a second offence. I will still give way if the hon. Gentleman likes, but I suspect he was going to make the point I was about to make myself.

[Mr Slaughter]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman. It is always a pleasure to hear him try to stand up for liberalism, given the legislation that he and his party supported.

[Mr Slaughter]

Whatever.

Yes, there is the question of the second offence, but more importantly, all the examples the Liberal Democrats give—be it the one the hon. Gentleman has just given, or the Deputy Prime Minister’s example of a vulnerable young girl hanging around with a gang—are exactly what judicial discretion, which remains in these clauses, is there to support: particular circumstances relating to the offender.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s efforts to bridge everything fascinating: he is in favour of mandatory sentencing as long as there is discretion for the police and the judges—and everybody else. He is thoroughly confused. The judge already has the power to sentence somebody for up to four years. Under this proposal, they will also have that power, so I do not understand what the hon. Gentleman’s point is. There are many such cases.

The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) said that the cases in which there are exceptional circumstances are incredibly rare, but a huge range of cases will arise. They cannot be both incredibly rare and very common.

The main argument for the new clause seems to be that it sends out a message. It is not about changing what the judge can actually do; it is about sending out a message. As was said earlier, sending a message through legislation always seems like a pretty poor argument. I would be interested to hear whether there is evidence to suggest that people will listen to what such a message contains. We must understand why people carry knives: the Home Office has done a substantial amount of work on that over the years, and the main reason it found was that people feel they need protection. A Home Office study found that 85% of young people who reported carrying a knife did so for protection and only a tiny fraction did so to threaten or injure somebody.

People should not carry a knife for protection. It is not a sensible thing to do, but we should consider why they do it. We know that knife possession is particularly high among people who have been victims of crime, especially young males. Once they have been victims of crime, they are far more likely to carry a knife afterwards. That tells us something about the motivation, why they are carrying knives and how we can best persuade them not to do so. If somebody is literally terrified that they may be attacked—this is all too common—and they already know that they could get up to four years in jail for carrying a knife, will the new clause send a strong enough message? Are there better things that we could do to address the issue?

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is important to look at existing legislation rather than to over-legislate. It is important to use the right examples: if someone is in terror that they are about to be attacked, the existing common law covers duress and coercion, which could then be a defence. A defence is one thing, but mitigation is another. It does not in any way go against the need to ensure that legislation is tough and includes a mandatory sentence.

[Dr Huppert]

I confess that I am not a lawyer, but I think that it would be hard to make a defence—those who are lawyers may correct me—of generally being scared of being attacked over a long time period, given that people are not carrying a knife because they expect to be attacked on a particular occasion and in a particular place. That is the problem. These people are scared. They are carrying a knife because of the risk that somebody will attack them, not because they ever intend to use it or hope to use it. I recognise that the defence would apply if someone grabbed a knife to defend themselves from an attack, but it would not apply in this case.

The Home Affairs Committee carried out a detailed report into this subject. Incidentally, its findings were unanimous. Earlier, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said from a sedentary position that the Committee had a left-wing majority. It was a unanimous report, and I am not sure whether we are seeing a clear majority on the left at the moment. The Committee concluded that

“evidence suggests that the prospect of a custodial sentence may not deter young people from carrying knives. Many young people do not think about the consequences of their actions, and for a small minority who feel at risk of violence, the prospect of jail seems preferable to the dangers of being caught without a weapon for protection.”

It is that issue that we need to think further about. None of us is happy that that is the way things are, and that people are concerned to that extent, but that is the situation that we face.

The Select Committee took lots of evidence from young people who have been involved in knife crime. They said:

“It does not go through your mind at all about prison or whatever; it does not exist.”

There is lots of evidence to show that sentencing does not have that much effect. The 2001 Halliday report on sentencing found no evidence to suggest that there was a link between differences in sentence severity and deterrence effects. It concluded that

“it is the prospect of getting caught that has deterrence value”

rather than the nature of the sentence itself.

The Centre for Social Justice said:

“An increase in the number of people imprisoned for knife possession does not warrant celebration, particularly when we know that the majority of young people carry knives out of fear and…custody exposes young people to more hardened criminals.”

That is another problem that was briefly touched on earlier. When young people have been led astray, and find themselves involved in gangs and knife crime, there are a number of paths that they can take. If they manage to avoid death or injury—unfortunately that is not the case for all of them—they might clean up their act, or they might settle into a life of repeated criminality. We all hope that they will sort themselves out, but we know that prison sentences push people into repeat offending. Prison has its place, and there are strenuous efforts now to try to improve rehabilitation, but we still see high reoffending levels. We should be wary of increasing the damaging effect that prison has on people’s futures.

We should also be looking for unintended consequences on people’s behaviour—if they are listening to the message being sent out. People in gangs who have been charged once with possessing a knife will simply react—if they pay any attention at all, and that will depend on the quality of policing—by making another more junior, more vulnerable gang member carry a knife for them. That will seem like a sensible and rational response, if they are listening to the message that is being sent out. Under-16s will be put under intense pressure to do that for the obvious reason that they would not be caught by the new clause. That would put under-16s at greater risk by leading them further into gang behaviour. If the new clause is added to the Bill, I expect one of the unintended consequences to be an increase in those aged 15 and under carrying knives.

[Nick de Bois]

Does the hon. Gentleman not see a contradiction in what he is saying? He says that no one will pay attention to the law because it will not be a deterrent, but he also says that they will plan to give knives to younger people.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman normally listens carefully. What I said, very clearly, was that if anybody listened, that would be the effect. I am sceptical about how many people will listen to the message being sent out, but even if they do, the new clause would simply drive that strong and unintended consequence. I am sure that some people listen to the messages that come out of this place, and I am sure that some of them read the Hansard transcripts of our debates, but I am sure that not everybody does.

I believe that there is a risk of serious, unplanned harm resulting from this well-intentioned new clause. If it works in the way in which some hon. Members would like, by putting more people in jail, there will be another problem: there is not room in our prisons, which are already overcrowded. Perhaps I should not be surprised that the Labour party could yesterday complain about how full the prisons are and how awful it is that there is no space, but today try to fit more people into them. I am sure that there is a logic in there somewhere.

[Mr Slaughter]

Turning that around, the hon. Gentleman is part of a coalition that says that there is plenty of space in the prison system and more coming on stream. He might want to ask the Government he supports why they have closed 18 prisons.

[Dr Huppert]

We may be going down a sidetrack, but I am delighted that under this Government there are fewer women and children in prison than the previous Labour Government ever managed. I am satisfied with that achievement. However, I realise that the Labour party is still in a space of wanting to lock up as many people as possible to show how tough on crime it can be.

[John McDonnell]

I do wish that the hon. Gentleman would not rile the Front Benchers, because we end up going off on tangents. If someone is listening—with regard to the offenders; I did not mean listening to the Front Benchers—who might carry a knife, my concern is this. I have seen some evidence in my constituency that people have tried to avoid the existing legislation by looking for other weapons. In a recent murder in my constituency, an axe was used, and we have also seen the spraying of acid. If people listen to the message that they will be committing an offence by carrying a knife on two occasions, my fear is that they will diversify into other weapons to avoid that, if they are sufficiently calculating.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point that I had not thought to add. He is absolutely right, and I hope that he will support us on the matter.

[Mr Burrowes]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that although the focus of new clauses 6 and 7 is on knives and bladed articles, they cover offensive weapons. Any weapon, whatever it might be, that is determined to be offensive—whether per se, because it is carried with intent or because of its use—would be covered by new clauses 6 and 7.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I have not checked the exact wording, but I suspect that some things would not fall into that category because they have other uses. That may be one of the flaws that the Minister indicated.

[John McDonnell]

I cannot see how that is covered in the new clauses, and it might be worth getting some clarity from the Minister.

[Dr Huppert]

Perhaps that is one of the flaws. I will move on, because I am not in a position to arbitrate between the two sides while I am speaking.

I see that the Justice Secretary has said that even if such amendments were passed in some form he would have to delay their implementation because there is no space in the prisons. That strikes me as something that we should consider in deciding whether to go ahead. Incidentally, it is also a strong argument for more rational sentencing decisions to ensure that we are locking up the right people and not the wrong people. We ought also to be more rational about how many years people get for different offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick de Bois]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to factor in one other matter, as I think that his attention to the detail of the expenditure misses one valuable point? I would pay that money if my new clauses saved lives, as I believe they will.

[Dr Huppert]

I am fascinated that the hon. Gentleman is prepared to pay £20 million. My point is not for or against saving lives, but about which approach will save lives more effectively. Will we save more lives by agreeing the new clauses, at a cost of £20 million? Or will we save more lives by spending that money on reducing the gang crime that blights our cities and other areas? Which will reduce knife crime by more? I am not saying that the hon. Gentleman’s proposals would not have any effect at all, but I would challenge whether they are the best way of proceeding and of saving the most lives.

If we had that extra money, we could do many more of the things that we should be doing. We could do more to teach 11 to 16-year-olds of the consequences of knife crime and the harm that can come to them, and to encourage them to report knife carrying so that it happens less in our schools and on our streets. We could make more young people aware of the downsides of gang culture and run much more effective anti-gang programs. We could extend the highly successful “This is abuse” campaign to girls who are associated with gang members and who are at particular risk of sexual exploitation. Those are all things that the Government could do that would stop people picking up a knife in the first place. We could use money for that instead of just locking people up.

The Secretary of State used to understand that. When he gave evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs, he said that what

“I would seek to bring to Government, if we win the election, is all around the principle of early intervention...I think that the way in which we make the biggest difference to knife crime and indeed to other violent crimes, particularly amongst the young, is through more effective early intervention.”

He was right when he said that; the money should be spent on early intervention, as I think, and the Justice Secretary used to think, that that is more effective. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hitchcock, as he was then, also explained why we are going to get this wrong, as I highlighted earlier.

We should make it very clear that carrying a knife for whatever reason, whether it is driven by fear or to threaten others, is not tolerated, but banging up people who have been misguided and making the situation worse is not the way to do that. This is about finding alternatives, and there are some fantastically effective alternatives. Since 2006, the organisation Redthread has been embedding workers in the trauma centre at King’s College hospital. Its staff work closely with accident and emergency staff to try to disrupt the cycle of violence that brings hundreds of young people to the hospital each year. Every week, their clinical colleagues see mostly young men who for a range of reasons find themselves victims or perpetrators of gun and knife crime. Redthread staff take the opportunity to try to turn around people who have been involved, injured and seen the worst that can happen as a result of such crime—at a time when they are shocked and their lives can be changed. Supporting anti-gang work at the scene in A and E, with better education and more awareness-raising in schools, seems to me to be the way to reduce knife crime further.

There is another thing we should do and which I am surprised the Justice Secretary has not done: insist that the Sentencing Council re-examine the current guidelines for knife crime. They were last looked at in 2008. There is a strong case to look at them again, and to look at them in the round to make sure that we have the right sentences. I do not know why the Justice Secretary has not done that ahead of time. He could have done so easily, as he did recently for one-punch killing.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with my proposal that in order to ensure that sentences are looked at in the round, that they reflect the views of the public who elect us and that they are effective, the Sentencing Council should be a committee of this Parliament?

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been very generous in giving way, but he has been speaking for some considerable time and there are at least six other Members who wish to speak before this debate terminates at 6 o’clock. May I gently suggest that he be less generous and make progress quickly?

[Dr Huppert]

I am starting the last page of my speech and I shall try to avoid taking more interventions.

If the Justice Secretary did as I suggest, we could look in the round at everything from simple possession through to murder with a knife. We could have coherent guidelines for these offences and more proportionate sentencing. I want to see that. It would also help us with an evidence-based approach. We could look at the facts and at what makes a difference, and make sure we take the right steps to get knives off our streets and out of the hands of children.

I entirely understand the arguments of the supporters of the new clauses. I understand what they are trying to achieve and I have sympathy with it. I do not fault their intentions at all, but we should look at the consequences, the downsides and the alternatives. We should remain tough on those who use knives to harm other people and we should be tough on the causes of knife crime. We should not do just what looks tough.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I hope I will not detain the House for too long. I have had the opportunity to speak about many of the issues in Committee. It is good that so many members of the Public Bill Committee are in the Chamber. I have just two specific issues to flag up before we pass the Bill from this House to the other place; I suspect that neither of them will be a surprise to Ministers.

The first issue is the entire aspect of part 4 of the Bill on judicial review, particularly the provisions on interveners. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), for his earlier comments about how he sees the Supreme Court approach as a way forward. I look forward to working with him to come up with something that will enable judicial review to continue and interveners to act sensibly, in a way that is helpful to the court and to British justice. There is a lot of work still to be done on that issue in the other place. I suspect that their lordships will be interested in other aspects of part 4. I dare say that they will be able to improve much of it.

It is a shame that amendments that could be made in this place are so often made in the other place, whether that applies to this example or not. There are a number of instances when it is this House that should act. Members of this House should not be asked to vote for things if the Government intend to change their mind later on.

I touched on the other issue that I want to raise in my comments on the Queen’s Speech. It is the issue of revenge porn. I notice that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller) has secured an Adjournment debate on that issue. I hope that provisions can be slid in between clauses 19 and 20 because the issue relates to both those clauses. I hope that the Secretary of State will look carefully at the matter and listen carefully to the right hon. Lady. The issue could be addressed in the Bill. Had I thought of that early enough, I would have proposed an amendment to part 1, but we dealt with it before I was ready. However, I am happy to send in my ideas. I hope that we can make those changes and make the Bill substantially better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I was on the Committee when this matter was debated, and the Bill contains a number of provisions that concern me and my hon. Friends. One of those relates to the secure colleges that the Government seem to think are a panacea or solution for young people who get involved in the criminal justice system. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, we heard from countless experts and not a single one said that secure colleges as envisaged by the Government were right or would work. There were questions about whether the college would be segregated and how large the units should be. From the Government proposals it seems that the secure colleges will be large institutions, and it is not guaranteed that segregation will occur and that girls will be in one environment and boys in another. There was not even any information about what will actually happen.

The experts accept that there is no harm in having an educational establishment, but it must be a small unit in which children are looked after. It should be almost like a home, but obviously with an element of rehabilitation and education thrown in. At the moment, the way the secure colleges are envisaged makes it seem as if the old-fashioned borstals are being brought back. We all know that they were completely useless and a waste of time, and they did not rehabilitate or help young people. The new secure colleges are going down the same line.

The Government have not said whether they are willing to put in the resources needed to run a proper establishment for young people, and teach them to mend their ways and stop committing criminal offences. There are issues such as restraint and what methods will be used, and how we deal with young people who misbehave a bit but do not commit offences and how we tackle violent or disorderly behaviour in the secure colleges.

A whole lot of things are missing. That is one reason why many people on the Committee—certainly Labour Members—were concerned about the secure colleges because there is not enough information about them. With all the debates that have taken place, I hope the Ministry of Justice and the Lord Chancellor—I know he is here—will listen and that when the secure colleges are introduced, they will be properly checked and resourced, and that they will deal with issues relating to young people. It is well known that a lot of young people who end up in the criminal justice system often come from broken homes or abusive families, and they often have physical and mental health issues. They need to be looked after, so that they can become good citizens and not continue to be a problem for the state.

Punishment is of course an element of dealing with someone who commits a crime, but another should be rehabilitation. When someone commits a crime, everyone says, “Throw the book at them. Give them the longest possible sentence.” The idea is that that will stop them committing crimes. They may not be able to do anything while they are in prison, but we know that many people who come out of prison end up back there. From my experience of representing young people, and indeed defendants generally, the last thing in their mind when they commit a crime is that they will get five, seven or even 20 years for it. They do not think about the possible sentence: they just see the opportunity that has arisen or they commit offences because of their background.

We have been obsessed in the past few years with the idea that longer and longer sentences of imprisonment will stop the problem of crime, but they will not. We spend thousands of pounds incarcerating an individual, but if we spent our resources at an earlier stage in people’s lives to help and support their families, we would get better balanced citizens. The punitive approach of the criminal justice system should in fact be more about rehabilitation. Until a couple of centuries ago, someone who stole a sheep would be hanged, but that did not stop people committing that offence or other minor offences with the same punishment.

[Dr Huppert]

I agree with what the hon. Lady is saying about prevention. How did she vote a few moments ago, when we discussed exactly that issue in relation to knife crime—whether we should lock people up or try to prevent it?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. I have never said that people should not be imprisoned. When people commit serious offences, or repeat an offence, they should be given prison sentences. My point is that we incarcerate too many people for far too long. No one here will disagree with that point—[Interruption.] Well, some seem to think that people should be in prison for ever. But we know that if we bang people up for a long time, it just costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, whereas if they are on the outside and we help them by rehabilitating them and perhaps finding them accommodation and a job, their lives can turn around. That is where the money should go, but that does not take away from the fact that some people should be imprisoned for a long time, depending on the seriousness of their offences.