Criminal Justice Bill

Julie Marson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to accept the Home Secretary’s invitation to get behind this Bill, because there is much to commend in it. The process is an iterative one, as it builds on so much work that the Government have already done on crime and on the criminal justice system. I was honoured and pleased to serve on the Public Bill Committee that considered the Domestic Abuse Bill, enacted in 2021, and an example of a further improvement in the Criminal Justice Bill is the addition of an aggravating feature to reflect the crimes of men whose control of their partners ends with the heinous crime of murder.

As I say, this is very much an iterative process, and there is much to like in the Bill, such as the way it bears down on drug crime; the way it bears down on knife crime; the way it bears down on sexual offending, and sexual offending against children in particular; and the way it bears down on serious organised crime. The one area that I emphatically support is the Bill’s requiring those criminals—they are cowards—who have the nerve, having committed a crime, not to face up to their victims, to attend their sentencing hearing.

As a proud daughter of a police officer, I welcome the focus on police standards, and I note that, for the vast majority of policemen, there is nothing worse than misdemeanour and criminal activity in their own ranks. I know that the vast majority of police will very much welcome that focus.

There is no such thing as a minor crime. Crime is a violation of that feeling of safety and security that we all deserve. My constituents in Hertford and Stortford certainly deserve that sense of security going about their daily business and their daily lives. Antisocial behaviour is a scourge on our communities and one that we have concerns about in Hertford and Stortford. I wish to pay tribute to my local police as well as to Chief Inspector David Cooke and all his team. They have used closure notices and closure orders, which are very useful tools.

What has been raised with me by my local police—I have also raised this with Ministers—is that we have a bit of a revolving door with closure orders. A closure order can be issued by a court, and it is very effective. The community breathes a sigh of relief, as it has respite from the problems that they have been experiencing for a period of time, but, at the end of that order, the same occupants can go back into the same property, or a similar property, and the community is left absolutely distraught—in fact even worse than the first time, because they have had a sense of relief but then the problems have recurred. Antisocial behaviour is something that we need to bear in mind because it is a blight on local communities.

The provision to extend the power to issue and to apply for closure orders to registered social housing providers is very welcome, because that helps to give extra responsibility to those providers, and it will, I think, encourage them to take the matter seriously to try to avoid that revolving door element and look for more permanent solutions, which will be hugely beneficial to local communities.

As I say, this is an iterative process, and there are opportunities in this Bill to create other criminal offences. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell), who is not in her place, raised the issue of cuckooing, which I would also like to suggest as a separate offence. Very often criminals use properties for illegal activity, and this action is not victimless, because often they move into a property—the better term for it is actually a home invasion—where there are vulnerable people, who are used as a vehicle for criminal purposes. Those people are often physically or mentally vulnerable or have addiction problems. They are real victims, and they need to be protected. Society needs to say, “We do not accept this.”

In order to measure, name and deal with a crime we have to accept it as a crime. This cruel and cynical activity should be criminalised as a separate offence. There are different offences we can use to tackle cuckooing, but those would generally be drug offences or antisocial behaviour offences, which do not reflect the gravity of the crime and the fact that there are victims. We should be saying, “We don’t accept it and we don’t tolerate it. We want to measure it and know the scale of it, so we have to name it and make it a separate offence.”

Along the same lines, another horrific crime that has no separate offence is spiking, which has been mentioned already. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has done a lot of work on the issue already and I know he will continue to do so. It beggars belief that someone would go out and prepare to administer toxic, noxious substances to another person—usually, but not exclusively, a woman—often for sexual or control purposes. Here again we currently rely on other offences, but we must name that offence. We must see it, we must convict it and we must sentence it as the crime it is.

I sat on the bench as a magistrate many times. I saw the victims of offences and I saw how much it means to them to have their day in court—to be able to give their evidence and to have the crime that has been perpetrated against them named and recognised and sentenced. It means a huge amount to them, and it should mean everything to us. We often hear that the punishment should fit the crime but, in the case of cuckooing and spiking, it is my assertion that the crime should fit the crime and that they should be separate offences. I hope that Ministers and the Government will look at them carefully.