Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Karl Turner Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

You would not be the first person to make that genuine mistake, Madam Deputy Speaker. I entirely forgive you for it, and thank you ever so much for calling me.

I rise to speak in support of new clause 14, and I thank the Minister and the Department for including it in the Bill. It seems like only yesterday when, on 27 January 2013, I received a telephone call and discovered that two of my constituents, Ross and Clare Simons, had been killed that evening while riding a tandem bike down Lower Hanham road in Kingswood. They had been struck by a driver who had been driving, in a police chase, at 70 mph in a 30 mph zone. Obviously, this was devastating for all the families, and when I went to the vigil a week later, I said to Ross’s father, Edwin Simons, that I would do everything in my power as the local Member of Parliament to stand up for the families and for victims. That is what this clause is about: making sure we send out a message that it is unacceptable to cause death by driving while disqualified. For people watching this debate it is simply common sense to say that people who kill through driving while disqualified should never have been in the car in the first place. People wondering why the law has never been toughened up will see that it makes perfect sense to introduce this new clause.

After that fateful day on 27 January 2013, I set up, with the families, the petition “Justice for Ross and Clare”, which called for far tougher penalties for disqualified drivers, especially those who kill by dangerous driving. The perpetrator, Nicholas Lovell, who went to jail, had 69 previous convictions, 11 of which were for driving offences, and he had been disqualified four times. We can only imagine the families’ grief when they found out in court that this person had not only taken away these innocent young lives but done so while he was disqualified. For more than a decade and a half, he had shown a complete disregard for the law.

Our petition gathered 15,000 signatures, and we took it to No.10 Downing street. As part of the campaign, I led the Backbench Business debate on 27 January 2014, which the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) mentioned, and 30 Members took part. It was clear then, and a testament to the power of Backbench Business debates, that we had cross-party consensus for changing the law. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) for introducing a ten-minute rule Bill on the matter. I am glad that this discussion is taking place today.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the work that he has done in relation to this matter. Does he agree that what we should be doing is punishing people who drive while disqualified per se? The higher-end penalty should be for driving while disqualified. The maximum two years, as I think it is now, should be increased, so that we might avoid at a later stage the terrible incident of death while driving disqualified.

[Chris Skidmore]

The important thing to recognise in new clause 14 is that it sends out a message and hope for future legislation. When I first began the campaign, many families were fairly sceptical that there would be any change, particularly this side of the general election. There was a concern that politicians would sit on their hands and not do anything. By passing this new clause we would be opening up future debate. I have great sympathy with new clause 22, but I have not had the time to study the implications of it in detail. If that could be part of the overall review that is taking place, I would absolutely welcome that.

When considering this review, I want to make a pitch for the families of Ross and Clare Simons that we look again at causing death by dangerous driving while disqualified. At the moment, the crime is just death by driving. Nicholas Lovell, who killed Ross and Clare Simons, was given the maximum sentence of 14 years—it is one of the only times that such a sentence has been delivered by the judge. As Lovell pleaded guilty, he was given 10 years and six months. The judge at the time said that had he the legal power, he would have given out a far tougher sentence. He gave the maximum, but he recognised that, because Lovell had been disqualified, there should have been an additional aggravating factor, or that an additional maximum tariff should have been added to the sentence. I would therefore welcome the review looking at death by dangerous driving while disqualified and upping that sentence.

[Karl Turner]

What the hon. Gentleman is saying, in my respectful submission, is that the judiciary and the courts should have more discretion over sentencing. New clause 22 does just that, does it not?

[Chris Skidmore]

We need to look again at the maximum tariff for causing death by dangerous driving while disqualified. The judge at the time wished for that power. I do not know the precise implications, which is why we need a review in the round. We need uniformity across the piece. One thing I realised from the Backbench Business debate was that I was not alone; the families were not alone. We heard about some of the awfully brief sentences that had been handed out, and the unequal nature of those sentences. It is very hard for a grieving family to find out that, in what seems to be an almost identical case, the sentence handed out in one area is entirely different from that handed out in another area. I would like to ensure that we put in place a rigid framework. Obviously, judges should have discretion as well, but victims need to understand—I am not a lawyer and I struggle at times to follow the complicated processes of the law—that if someone is disqualified, they should not be in a car in the first place; that is common sense. Nicholas Lovell should never have been in that car when he ploughed into Ross and Clare Simons’s tandem. It is for those families that new clause 14 has been introduced. For me and for the local families, it is Ross and Clare’s law.

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[Dr Huppert]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) who spoke so clearly on this issue. I agreed with much of what she said about this huge problem. It is astonishing how many people get off time after time. Some law firms even advertise their incredible success rates in achieving that, which we do not want to see.

There may be extenuating circumstances or special cases occasionally, but once someone has said they know they should be banned, and then makes a desperate plea, they should be more careful afterwards. It is not impossible to drive for quite a long time without breaking any rules or getting any points on your licence—some people have clean driving licences. Certainly if I had nine points, or even 12 points, I would try very hard indeed not to speed or drive dangerously. I hope that the Minister will listen carefully to the review.

I have a couple of pedantic points about the hon. Lady’s amendment, as I do not think it covers everything that it needs to. However, that is not the point for today. I hope that we can get the right changes that most of the House would want to see. I welcome the Government’s announcement of a review, and I hope that it will be a substantial review. I also hope that the Minister is successful in obtaining parliamentary time to ensure that the results of the review become law. A review will not solve the problem on its own.

I pay tribute to the work done by the CTC’s road justice campaign, which produced an excellent report called “Road Justice: the role of the police”—I know that the Minister has had some discussions with that organisation—which looked not only at the legal aspects, but at the role of the police and the prosecution. The law is not the only issue. Too often, especially when pedestrians or cyclists are the victims of collisions, the police do not investigate sufficiently to allow charges to be brought. In several cases, people have come to my surgery having been involved in a collision in which someone else behaved very dangerously and the police simply were not interested in doing the basic groundwork, such as taking photographs of the scene at the time. There is very little point us getting the law right if the police do not investigate and prosecutors do not take action. I know that the Minister is not responsible for the police, but I hope the review will look more broadly at the issue to ensure that its proposals will make a difference.

The campaign has had some 12,000 signatures, so we need some action in response. Some of the cases are astonishing. In one case, a gentleman had been drinking and smoking cannabis and then was speeding, with his girlfriend riding pillion, and crashed and killed a pedestrian. He had 45 previous traffic offences but apparently there was not enough evidence to charge him with causing death by dangerous driving, even though there was a clear cause of death—dangerous driving—and he had a long track record. He did get 18 months in jail, but the fact that prosecutors did not even feel able to bring a charge of death by dangerous driving is a problem.

[Karl Turner]

Prosecutions are made on whether there is enough evidence to bring the charge and, secondly, whether it is in the public interest. I do not mean to criticise the hon. Gentleman, but it may be a little unfair to say that a prosecution for dangerous driving should have been brought in that particular case. Perhaps there was good reason why it was not.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is right: I have not been through all the court transcripts in that case. But it is not an isolated case. It is a similar story in literally hundreds of cases—we have heard some today and many others have been collected in various places. I am sure he is not trying to suggest that he would agree with the action taken in every one of those cases.

One problem—and having spoken with many people about this, I cannot see an easy resolution to it—is that juries are often not prepared to convict on offences that perhaps they should be. Prosecutors can have a tendency to low-ball the charge to ensure a conviction. I hope that the review will address that issue, because none of us want to see charges being brought that juries feel are simply too serious to convict.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Karl Turner Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The cost will build up over the next five or 10 years because, as my hon. and learned Friend knows, one cannot apply sentencing rules retrospectively. The proposals on automatic release for the most serious offences are containable comfortably within the existing prison budget and within the expected resources of the Department. Only a relatively small number of people commit the most serious and brutal offences, and those are precisely the people whom we do not want to release automatically halfway through their sentences because of the risk that they pose to the public. I am therefore confident not only that this is containable comfortably within the departmental budget, but that it is the right thing to do.

On part 2, I believe that it is right that young people who commit crimes should face appropriate punishments. That is and always should be a matter for the courts. When young people commit serious or persistent offences and there is a need to protect the public, custody is a necessary option. However, we have taken positive steps over the past three years to ensure that we deal better with young offenders who do not pose an immediate risk to society.

On becoming Justice Secretary, I was appalled to discover that so many young offenders who are released from custody go on to reoffend within a year. Currently, the rate stands at 69%. That is an astounding percentage that far exceeds the reoffending rate for adults on leaving custody. It is simply too high. We spend as much as £200,000 a year per place in some institutions, but the reoffending rate is consistently around 70%. That cannot be right, it cannot be sensible and we have to do something about it.

We must do more to help young offenders back on to the straight and narrow and ready for adult life, and high-quality education is a key part of that. Most young people who end up in our youth offender institutions or secure training centres have dropped out of school, have few or no qualifications, and do not have the skill foundations they need to leave and get into work. We must address that and do more to help them back into having real prospects of an apprenticeship or work. Otherwise, the danger of reoffending will be ever great.

At present, young people in young offenders institutions spend on average just 12 hours a week in the classroom, and latest figures suggest that more than half of 15 to 17-year-olds in YOIs have literacy and numeracy levels expected of seven to 11-year-olds. The Bill contains provisions to create what we are dubbing “secure colleges” so that we can trial a new approach to youth custody, with a stronger focus on the education and rehabilitation of young offenders, equipping them with the skills they need to stop reoffending and become law-abiding members of our society.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for giving way and I am interested in where the £85 million for his secure college is coming from, and from which year’s budget?

[Chris Grayling]

It comes from my Department’s capital budget and it will lead to a reduction in the annual running costs of institutions. We are creating an institution that provides both high-quality education and better value than we get from the current system, which underperforms and is excessively expensive because of the nature of the provision out there. I believe this institution will be a major step forward and deliver high-quality education in a modern environment and campus setting, with the focus on education rather than simply detention. That is a key difference.

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[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the Chairman of the Justice Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). As a former member of his Committee, I know that he always speaks with great knowledge and is very considered in his views. I agree with much of what he has said today.

The Bill is a wasted opportunity. It makes no mention of victims, of probation, of legal aid, of women in the justice system or of ethnic minorities. The Government have missed an opportunity, especially in relation to important issues like the huge changes to criminal legal aid that the Lord Chancellor is about to announce. We await that announcement with bated breath; he has been promising the legal profession that he would make it, but we are still waiting. The Bill could have considered those huge changes to legal aid. The entire legal profession is completely against the Lord Chancellor’s views and the Government’s proposals. On 7 March, criminal solicitors and barristers will be taking a day of industrial action. I think that the solicitors are describing it as a training day, in order to get round certain issues. The Government could have used the Bill to debate those important changes properly.

I do not disagree with everything in the Bill. In fact, I agree with a lot of it—including, for example, the restrictions on the use of cautions. I have expressed my concerns and complained about the use of cautions, along with other Members on both sides of the House.

[Keith Vaz]

I should like to praise my hon. Friend. He served briefly on the Home Affairs Committee after he served on the Justice Committee—has he served on every Committee in the House?—and he asked for an inquiry into this matter and we were going to have one. I congratulate him on his long campaign to make this a subject worthy of discussion.

[Karl Turner]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making those remarks. He rightly said that I raised the issue when I was briefly a member of his Committee, and I wrote to him formally after I had left the Committee to ask for an inquiry, which he kindly agreed to have. This issue has been a problem for a relatively long time. Government Members said that it has become a particular problem since 2007, and that is probably right, but in my experience, from my constituency, it has increased dramatically since 2010. That is a point of debate and hon. Members may wish to disagree with me on it, but I am glad that the Government have finally accepted that this is a definite issue and that they are going to deal with cautions for indictable-only offences and for repeat offenders.

I have some concerns about single magistrates sitting for summary only, non-imprisonable offences. If someone pleads guilty by post for a road traffic offence, I have no problem with their being dealt with by a single magistrate. However, the Bill does not state that this approach will be confined just to road traffic offences, and I have concerns about that. Justice must be done and be seen to be done, and this approach also completely undermines the notion of collective decision making.

Let me now deal with the sentencing provisions. I was a criminal law practitioner before I was elected to this House, and I am on record as saying that I was never a fan of indeterminate sentences for public protection. However, the provisions in the Bill are undoubtedly a knee-jerk reaction by this Lord Chancellor to the fact that his extended sentences in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 simply have not worked—the Government are reacting to that.

I do not wish to speak for too long on my next issue, as other Members have made the point well, but part 4 of the Bill is of particular concern to me because it seems to undermine the possibility of challenging Executive decisions in a judicial review. The Lord Chancellor is on the record, commenting to his favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail, describing judicial review as

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

With respect, that type of comment could be made only by this Lord Chancellor, who simply does not appreciate the importance of the rule of law.

[Kate Green]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Lord Chancellor is completely missing the point, as the majority of judicial review cases involve individuals—disabled people, people with learning difficulties, children and other vulnerable people—who are having to challenge inappropriate state decisions, in a situation where there is huge inequality of bargaining power? Portraying judicial review as being about campaign groups prosecuting an agenda is simply a misrepresentation of what it is predominantly about.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend made the point better than I was about to and has hit the nail entirely on the head. This measure is populist stuff; it is the Lord Chancellor trying to be popular. Judicial review is not the only thing he attacks—he attacks human rights. As a lawyer, I find it frustrating to listen to him when he debates in this House because he seems not to understand the relationship between the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998: he confuses the two. He is attacking the system. He has attacked human rights, judicial review, legal aid and no win, no fee arrangements. He has attacked any opportunity for people to challenge the Government or organisations the Lord Chancellor seems not to be terribly impressed by.

My main concern is clause 50, which seeks to change the threshold for bringing judicial review. People who bring reviews often have legitimate claims; these reviews are not some spurious attempt to challenge the Government, and these people often have lawyers advising them. Solicitors and members of the Bar will discuss the possibility of success in these cases and will give advice. I respectfully submit that judges do not just let spurious cases go through, so I think the Lord Chancellor could do with a lesson in the entire system.

I know that other Members wish to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will leave it there.

[Simon Reevell (Dewsbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). I declare an interest, in that I still practise at the Bar, so to a certain extent I comment on this Bill as someone who may have to make its provisions actually work. In that context, I think the Bill contains some very positive measures, especially on sentencing and cautions.

I had not appreciated that the entire Labour party was against the policy of cautioning that it introduced or that one consequence of the general election of 2010 was that the use of cautioning suddenly escalated. I had understood that this policy was introduced and promoted by the previous Government, and that it has been absolutely corrosive to the criminal justice system. It has undermined the public’s confidence in the police, who are perceived to use cautioning as an easy solution; and it has caused problems in the criminal justice system, where co-accused are separated, with one being cautioned and the other being prosecuted. I am glad that this Government are doing what they can to start to turn around that ship, but let us not forget who launched it and pushed it on its course.

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman speaks on these issues with real knowledge as a member of the Bar—he is a member of my old circuit, so I know him well. Does he not accept that when budgets are constrained and the police have had something like a 30% cut to their budget, there is a temptation for them just to go for a caution without a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service for advice on charging? Is that not possible?

[Simon Reevell]

My recollection is that the hon. Gentleman was a member of my circuit, but I will have a think about that. Cautioning has been utterly corrosive, and even when people have been prosecuted the sentencing procedures that have been put in place have been difficult for lawyers, and impossible for non-lawyers, to understand. The point has been well made that the idea of someone serving no more than half a sentence is difficult for people to take on board, but when somebody reappears after a few days or a few weeks the public simply cannot comprehend it. A good start is linking the release of serious offenders to the scrutiny of the Parole Board. It is an important link and I am glad that it is being reintroduced. I say “reintroduced” because it worked very well in the 1990s, but since then we have had indeterminate sentences for public protection, and judging by some of the comments today it is clear that the party that introduced them still does not understand the problems they caused.

The Bill has the advantage of introducing a system that imposes a period of imprisonment that will be served unless, after a substantial time, the Parole Board approves early release. The Bill retains the incentive for the prisoner and provides a valuable safeguard for the rest of us—that is a good piece of legislation. What a pity that we had to have those years of messing around with alternatives before going back to something that worked well in the 1990s.

When someone is released, is it wrong to use technology to monitor them? I understand that some people will be uncomfortable with the idea of tracking humans with a global positioning system, but is it any different from putting a tag on someone and using different technology to monitor whether or not they enter or leave a building? Surely when people are precluded by court order from going to certain locations, there is nothing wrong in monitoring that with technology. There is always a line with technology that we should not cross, but this Bill falls far short of it.

If someone on licence breaches the terms of that licence and will do so again, why should they not have to serve the remainder of their sentence? Most people probably assume that that is what happens anyway, and would be surprised to learn that the system provided for anything else. People have the licence terms explained to them: if they breach the licence and it looks as though they will do it again, they should serve their sentence, and there cannot be anything wrong with that.

One aspect of the Bill that has received media attention relates to proceedings for judicial review. Is it really controversial that those who wish to be involved in someone else’s case may have to pay towards the cost of those proceedings? Those who appear as interveners are free to provide their assistance, knowledge and experience to any party in any case, but if they want to appear themselves, why should it be assumed that one of the parties will automatically pick up their costs or that they will have no responsibility for the costs that they incur on behalf of others? They are free to pass on their expertise and knowledge, but if they want to take part in the litigation, some responsibility may come with that.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

May I start by thanking all Members, on both sides of the House, who have spoken today? The debate has been both considered and thorough, and the number of points that have been raised confirms the importance of the issues before us.

As my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor set out at the start of this debate, the Bill represents the next stage of our reforms to deliver a cost-effective justice system in which the public can have real confidence. The key elements of the Bill will deliver a firm but fair package of sentencing and criminal law reforms, which will properly punish serious and repeat offenders and better protect victims and the public. We are clear that people who break the law will not escape the law.

The Bill provides for the creation of secure colleges, putting education at the very heart of youth custody, giving young offenders the tools they need to lead a life away from crime. We are modernising the law to tackle the influence of the internet on trials by jury to ensure that defendants receive a fair trial, reflecting how technology and the wealth of information available at the touch of a button has changed the way in which we live. We will reduce the burden of the cost of courts on hard-working taxpayers by making sure that criminals pay towards the cost of their court cases. The Bill will make critical reforms to judicial review, to tackle unmeritorious claims and unnecessary delays in the system.

Members have raised a number of issues, many of which will, of course, be debated further in Committee. However, I should like to touch on some of the points made by colleagues. They will forgive me for not being able to mention every point made in every speech, but I shall try to cover as many of them as I possibly can.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) started by commenting on the proposals for single magistrates to deal with low-level, uncontested cases. This issue was touched on by a number of other colleagues. Let me be clear that we are talking about low-level, uncontested cases. Let me also be clear that where someone wishes to contest a case, they can have it heard before two or three magistrates and it can be dealt with in the usual way. This proposal is for cases—the vast majority of them—where people simply do not bother to turn up or reply, or if they do, they plead guilty.

[Karl Turner]

If that is the Government’s intention, why does the Bill not say that?

[Mr Vara]

It does.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon spoke about the age limit for jurors being raised from 70 to 75. The reason is that we must recognise that people are now living longer and healthier lives. It is important that jurors reflect society at large. If society is growing older, we need to ensure that jurors, who decide cases, reflect that. I accept that we have a problem in attracting young people to become magistrates, and we must continue to try to address that issue, but that is not to say that we should not increase the age.

On court costs, several colleagues were concerned about the rate of recovery. Let me clarify the point. At present, the recovery rates for compensation, fines and the victim surcharge stands at 80%, and there is no reason to believe that court charges will not be recovered at similar rate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is correct that this is an important area in which I have had fruitful discussions with Action for Children about the best way to make progress, and I hope to be able to report further on those discussions shortly.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Why is the Legal Aid Agency expanding the public defender service and recruiting barristers when reports from as far back as 2007 have found that it is between 40% and 90% more expensive than the independent professions? Furthermore, it cannot act in cases of conflict.

[Chris Grayling]

The public defender service was, of course, set up by the previous Labour Government, and it is always important to ensure that it is staffed properly.

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

It is there, but it is hidden away; it is never mentioned by any member of the Select Committee in their speeches. They would like to give the exact opposite impression. They know exactly what they are doing.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I tried to stop myself intervening, but I am afraid that I cannot sit any longer. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the question of whether someone is sentenced to prison is a matter for the judge of the sentencing court? The defendant’s personal circumstances will be considered and mitigation will be put forward. The reality is that women’s circumstances are often different from men’s. It is wrong for him to suggest that the figures in the report are in any way hidden; they are clear. If memory serves—I read the report late last night—it states that 10% of male offenders and 3% of first-time women offenders are sentenced to custody. The figures are not hidden.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Later, I will discuss whether it is justified for special circumstances to apply when deciding whether to send women to prison.

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[Philip Davies]

I am delighted that the Chair of the Justice Committee is leading with his chin on this issue. He fails to acknowledge that the prison population in Texas is far higher, so it is starting from a much higher base. I would be delighted if we could agree that the prison population in the UK should be the same as Texas’s. If he is suggesting that we should emulate Texas in our criminal justice and sentencing system, consensus will have broken out in this Chamber. If that is the direction of travel that he thinks we should go in—Texas—I am all for it, and more power to his elbow.

At least the Chair of the Justice Committee had a bash at answering my question, for which I give him credit. He seemed to indicate that it was the 574 women in prison for drug offences who should not be in prison. That number includes 166 for supplying drugs, 113 for possession with intent to supply, and 140 who were importing or exporting drugs. They are the ones who he believes should not be in prison. I give him credit for putting his head above the parapet, but no one else who says that all these women should not be in prison is prepared to identify which should not be there. The reality is that these women are not in prison for minor offences, and it is an absolute disgrace that people try to suggest otherwise.

I want to emphasise how serious the offences are for which some female offenders are in prison. The argument is made that all these women are in prison for short sentences and perhaps should be serving community sentences instead. That is an absolute myth. According to the prison population figures, just under 16% of women in prison have sentences of less than six months. That is clearly quite a minority. If some do not class six months as a short sentence, I will be charitable and go up to a year; a further 6% of women are in prison for between six months and a year, so 22% of female prisoners are sentenced to less than a year in prison. Some 78% of female prisoners are sentenced to more than a year, and who can say that they are not serious offenders, when we already know that they are given shorter sentences than men? These are clearly serious or persistent offenders, and I hope that we can start nailing that particular myth too.

Sentences of more than a year mean that the magistrates court felt that the offenders’ crimes were so serious that they were not capable of sentencing them. They had to send the cases to the Crown court, otherwise the offenders could not have got those sentences. Let us end the myth that all those women in prison are in for short sentences and for not very serious offences.

[Karl Turner]

Will the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the needs of women in prison differ from those of men? He will be aware of the tragic case that was raised recently by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), with the Justice Secretary. A woman prisoner miscarried in a prison cell and was apparently told by prison officers to clean up the cell afterwards. Does the hon. Gentleman want to comment on that?

[Philip Davies]

I appreciate that the shadow Minister has probably got a wasp in his trousers and is itching to get on with things, but if he bears with me, in a second I will come on to say why I do not necessarily accept his premise that women should be treated differently from men. As it happens—I have made this clear already—if people want to make the point that women should be treated more favourably by the courts than men, that is perfectly legitimate. I do not have a problem with that, so long as we are having an honest argument about what the facts and figures are.

If people are saying that the 2,789 women who are sentenced to prison each year for theft and handling should not be sent to prison—I suspect, given that they have been sent to prison, that they must be serious and persistent offenders—I presume that they think, though they never say so, that the 16,501 men who are sent to prison for that offence each year should not go to prison either. Perhaps that is what people secretly think, but they do not want to be seen to say, “We want to cut the prison population by the thick end of 20,000 each year.” No one ever seems to say that.

I want to move on to another myth, which I hope will deal with the point the shadow Minister raised. The myth is about how prison separates mothers from their children, which unduly punishes them. That goes to the point made by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on why he believes it is right that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. I want to instil some seldom-offered facts into this side of the debate. It is said that 17,000 children are separated from their mothers, and that 60,000 women in custody have children under the age of 18. Those are the figures, as far as I am aware, and I am not sure that anyone would dispute them. As I have said before in a Westminster Hall debate, a senior Ministry of Justice civil servant helpfully confirmed that two thirds of the mothers sent to prison

“didn’t have their kids living with them when they went into prison.”

People use the figures to say, “X per cent. of mothers are sent to prison.” Well, yes, they are mothers—no one can deny that—but in two thirds of cases, they are not looking after their children when they are sent to prison. Why should they become a special case at that point, when the children have already been taken away from them because the mother is presumably considered not fit to look after them? Why do we still consider them to be a special case, simply because they are mothers?

When it comes to the minority of mothers sent to prison who are still looking after their children, it is wrong to assume that they are all fantastic mothers. Many will be persistent offenders with incredibly chaotic lifestyles. Some, no doubt, will end up dragging their children into their criminal lifestyles, and some will scar their children for life along the way. Others will have committed serious offences. Sarah Salmon from Action for Prisoners Families said:

“For some families the mother going into prison is a relief because she has been causing merry hell.”

To most people, that would be a statement of the obvious. Why should those women be treated as a special case, when they are clearly not providing a great role model to their children or having a great influence on their upbringing? If anything, they are having a negative influence on their upbringing. Let us not forget those mothers who are in prison for abusing their children and being cruel to them. I am not entirely sure that anyone would think they should be a special case either.

If we are so concerned about the children of women offenders, what about the estimated 180,000 children who are separated from their fathers, because their father is in prison? In the age of equality, should we not be at least equally outraged about that? If we are not, why not? I thought there was a growing acceptance that a father was just as important to a child’s upbringing as a mother. Why are we treating mothers as a special case in all these cases? I do not see any justification for that when we know for a fact, thanks to the Ministry of Justice and the figures it produces, that two thirds of mothers are not even looking after their children when they are sent to prison. I hope we can nail the myth that that is a reason for treating women differently when they are sentenced in the courts.

Another myth is that women are generally treated more harshly in the justice system than men. Yes, we have now accepted that men are more likely to be sent to prison, but if we go underneath the prison regime, the myth is that women are treated more harshly by the courts before being sent to prison, but that, again, is not true. Even when they are not sent to prison, men are more likely to receive a community order than women. You would think it was the other way round, Mr Amess. So few women are sent to prison, one would think that most of them would get a community order, but no. We do not have any of that. Some 10% of women sentenced are given a community order, compared with 16% of men. The Ministry of Justice confirmed that the

“patterns were broadly consistent in each of the last five years.”

That is not all. The Ministry also points out that the average length of a community sentence is longer for men than it is for women. It said:

“For women receiving a community order, the largest proportion had one requirement (46%), whereas the largest proportion of men had two requirements (41%).”

So the pattern is complete: men are more likely to be sent to prison than women, they are more likely to be sent to prison for longer than women for the same offences, and they are more likely to serve more of their sentence in prison than women. Men are more likely than women to get a community sentence, and to have a community sentence that lasts for longer, and they are likely to have more requirements added to it. It is a full house; that is the picture of how men and women are treated in the courts and the criminal justice system.

I return to where I sort of began. Many of those who take part in these debates are the self-confessed equality issues addicts. They want equality in this, that and the other. It is a perfectly laudable aim; I believe in equality, too. People should be treated the same, irrespective of their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, so why should that not be the case when it comes to sentencing people for committing the same crime? We are dealing with the “equality when it suits” agenda. The argument is that women and men should be treated the same, unless we can get better treatment for women, which we are all in favour of. That is not equality. It is very selective, and in my view sexist. Courts should sentence people on the basis of the crime, not whether they are a man or a woman.

The Select Committee would do well to consider the prison population as a whole and why the male prison population is so large. If it wants to strike a blow for the rights of women, it should argue for men and women to be treated the same by the courts, and that it is the crime committed, not gender, that should count. If we were considering the same phenomenon in relation to race, religion or sexual orientation, it would be considered an outrage. I consider it an outrage that women are treated so much more favourably in the criminal justice system than men. People may think it a good thing for them to be treated differently—some clearly do—but at least let us be honest about the facts and acknowledge them. I am pleased that some right hon. and hon. Members have begun to do that today, so we can draw our own conclusions. If we do nothing else today but set out the inconvenient—to many—facts, the debate will have been useful after all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am pleased to speak on these two excellent reports following inquiries conducted by the Select Committee on Justice. The two reports, “Women Offenders: after the Corston Report” and “Older Prisoners”, raise some important questions and make valuable recommendations about two distinct groups within our justice system. I will begin with women offenders.

Six years after Baroness Jean Corston’s report, which made 43 recommendations to drive improvements in the women’s criminal justice agenda, I and the Justice Committee are concerned that we do not have strong leadership in the Ministry of Justice. That must be an issue. In their response to the Corston report, the Labour Government accepted 41 of the 43 recommendations and set out to implement them under the strong direction of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the then ministerial champion for women and cross-departmental women’s policy unit. However, as the report rightly identifies, leadership has weakened in the Ministry of Justice since 2010. It also identified a two-year hiatus in efforts to implement the Corston recommendations. During the first two years of this Government, there was no designated Minister responsible for women in the criminal justice system, and I remember raising the issue on a couple of occasions with the then Lord Chancellor.

I agree with the report that it is

“clear that the matter of female offending too easily fails to get priority”

in the system

“in the face of other competing issues.”

A much-delayed strategy was published in March 2013 by the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), whom I commend for that. It was welcome, but I submit that the six-page document was a vague strategic objective. I think that the Select Committee was right to say that it was produced in haste with insufficient thought. Despite the Minister’s creation of an advisory board, the report states that

“without wider ministerial involvement”,

it will not

“constitute a sufficient mechanism for high level cross-departmental governance arrangements of the sort that Baroness Corston initially proposed”.

Without such ministerial leadership, the board would not have the authority to bring about integrated strategy and co-ordinated service provision.

I also note concerns that the Government’s “Transforming Rehabilitation” agenda may pay little regard to the needs of women offenders. I believe that there is now general agreement that women should not be dealt with in the criminal justice system in the same way as men. Women end up in prison for different reasons than men do, and women often find themselves in prison for non-violent criminality. There also seems to be general agreement that although prison is absolutely right for some crimes committed by women, for the majority of women offenders, imprisonment is frequently an ineffective response. The very personal story told by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) hits the nail on the head in that regard.

The report states that such recognitions are not about treating women more favourably or implying that they are less culpable, as hon. Members who have spoken in this debate have pointed out; rather, they are about accepting that women face different hurdles from men in their journey towards a law-abiding life, and that the justice system needs to respond appropriately. Again, I fully support those views. It is therefore worrying that the report has found little evidence that the equality duty has had the desired impact of systematically encouraging local mainstream commissioners to provide gender-specific services, tackling the underlying causes of women’s offending, or consistently informing broader policy initiatives within the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service.

The report identifies further failings and states that progress on the NOMS segmentation work, which aims to separate out groups of offenders to understand risks and needs and target resources accordingly, has been far too slow. It is fair to say, and I am sure that people would agree, that the last Government made good progress on the Corston agenda, which has fallen by the wayside, to be perfectly honest, under this Government.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman is slightly overstating his case. What we actually said was that under the previous Government, it took a significant effort, not least by the present deputy leader of his party, to bring together a group of Ministers—women Ministers, as it happened—to get cross-Government signing and implementation. Most of those things were not lost in the first two years of this Government, but further progress might have been more rapid and productive if some kind of similar leadership group had been got together.

[Karl Turner]

I accept that point from the Chairman of the Select Committee, but I think it is absolutely fair to say that during the first two years of the coalition Government, there was no Minister responsible for this area. I respectfully submit that that has been a factor. The governance structures built by the last Government seem to have been pulled down, and the consensus of the majority of witnesses to the inquiry was that progress appears to have stalled under the coalition Government.

In evidence to the Committee, Baroness Corston referred to the previous Government’s abolition of routine strip searches and praised the fact that dedicated funding had been made available to establish community-based women’s centres. Again, I and other Opposition Members are concerned that those centres, which are making a difference in our communities, have suffered funding cuts under the coalition Government. There are now serious concerns about funding to local authorities, which use some of their moneys to fund other centres. I can think of one in my constituency, the Purple House on Preston road, which has done a lot of work with women offenders. It has done a massive amount of work, saving the taxpayer vast amounts of money by preventing people from going into custody.

Like the Committee, I remain unconvinced of the extent to which the approach set out in the Government’s strategic priorities for women offenders is truly integrated across Departments. The Chairman just intervened on me to say that the damage is probably less than I was suggesting, but that is a matter of opinion, and frankly, I disagree. It seems that work on the Corston report’s key recommendation—improvements to high-level governance and cross-departmental working for women offenders—has stalled and is in fact being dismantled. Six years after Corston, we still have far too many women in our prisons, and we need to reduce that number significantly.

In addition to driving the Corston review forward, we look to emulate the success of the previous Government’s Youth Justice Board, which presided over a halving in the number of first-time offences by young people, and a fall of a quarter in the number of young people locked up. Targeting specific groups and tailoring an approach to offenders’ unique circumstances have been shown to work. Using the Youth Justice Board as a blueprint for a similar board for women might have the same impact. Will the Minister consider that?

I congratulate the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), on his new job. He will be responsible for this area, and I know that he will take that seriously. I hope that he will look carefully at the report and implement some of its recommendations.

I turn to older prisoners, who were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). This debate is timely, given the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons that states that an 84-year-old immigrant detainee suffering from dementia died in handcuffs while in detention. That is a matter for the Home Office, but it is shocking and underlines the fact that the needs of older prisoners and detainees in our prisons and detention centres must be recognised.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On our visit to Dartmoor prison, we saw a high level of care and concern for older prisoners, but the facilities were appalling. However good the care and support for individual prisoners, the building is simply not capable of dealing with wheelchairs, among other things. I left the prison thinking that that was not the best way of treating people, and I question the value to anyone of keeping some of those elderly men in prison.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point that was made in the report of the Committee, of which he is a serving member. The idea of elderly prisoners trying to clamber into bunks to sleep is clearly unsatisfactory, but there is no magic wand, and we must address the issue. We must accept that the prison population is getting older and deal with that. Society generally has an ageing population, which is making us reassess health and social care provision, end-of-life accommodation and older people’s living needs. Although it will not be popular, we must also reconsider the needs of older people in prison.

We welcome this inquiry, and the resulting excellent report, which highlights the exact issues facing older prisoners. It makes some key recommendations about how to address those issues. Prisoners over 55 are the fastest-growing age group in custody, and in the last eight years, there has been increasing evidence of the needs of older people in prison. That has led to a developing awareness among prison staff and prisoners of the difficulties facing older people, and a greater understanding that the response is often inadequate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, it seems that prisons are ill-equipped to meet their needs. There are various reasons why our prison population is getting older. Prisoners are serving longer sentences, and they may even be convicted and sentenced at an older age for historical sexual offences; a number of cases of that kind are being reported on in the media.

There is some debate about what age constitutes an older prisoner. Some people argue that due to the early onset of health issues in prisoners, that should be defined as anyone over 50. Others, including the Government and the Justice Committee, argue that it is not sensible to impose a rigid age classification, whether we are talking about those who are 50, 60 or 65. It is worrying that the report states that many older prisoners are being held in establishments that simply cannot meet their needs. We accept that for operational and practical reasons it is not always possible to allocate older prisoners to entirely suitable prisons, but we support the view that NOMS should, as a rule, not allocate such prisoners to an establishment that cannot meet their needs.

The report also raises concerns about fragmented provision and barriers to health care for older prisoners, which is particularly worrying. I support the view that cancelling hospital appointments because of lack of communication between health care providers and prison officers is entirely avoidable; that issue must be addressed urgently.

Mental health care needs are also widespread in prisons with higher levels of depression among older prisoners. It is reassuring that services are being commissioned to address mental health issues in prisons, and that organisations such as Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society are running specific dementia services in prisons with large populations of older prisoners. However, clearly we need to do more, and awareness training in prisons should be increased. We should consider integrating training packages into standard prison officer training.

The report was damning about the provision of social care for older prisoners:

“The lack of provision for essential social care for older prisoners, the confusion about who should be providing it, and the failure of so many authorities to accept responsibility for it, have been disgraceful.”

Those words describe the position appropriately. The Committee found evidence suggesting that current provision is sparse, variable and sometimes non-existent. It found some areas where social care was provided by charitable organisations or by prison officers, but it clearly highlights a fragmented and failing service.

Another concern is the release of older people to no fixed abode. It is deeply worrying when older prisoners are released to face homelessness. Around 85% of prisoners who are released find, or are helped to find, somewhere to live on release, but 15% do not receive help. That is not good enough. Release to no fixed abode undermines any progress that has been made towards resettlement, and will do nothing to help older prisoners to reduce reoffending.

I support the view that older prisoners who are frail and vulnerable should not be released to no fixed abode because there has been no housing referral, or because it has been delayed. I agree with the suggestion in the report that NOMS should ensure that all prisoners who require accommodation are referred to housing agencies in good time. Older prisoners have needs that are distinct from those of the rest of the prison population, and the Government should look seriously at the growth in the older prison population. It is disappointing that they do not agree with that view. I agree with the report that

“It is inconsistent for the Ministry of Justice to recognise both the growth in the older prisoner population and the severity of their needs and not to articulate a strategy”

to deal with the problem. I urge the Minister to look again at the report, and to consider a national strategy for the care of, and an appropriate regime for, older prisoners.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and if particular issues emerge in Worcester, I shall ask the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to take a look at them with her. We obviously do not want inappropriate and unnecessary delays in bringing young people in particular to justice.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

10. When he expects to put out to tender contracts for privatising probation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

On 19 September, the Ministry of Justice launched the transforming rehabilitation competition. It will be open to organisations from the private and voluntary and community sectors, as well as those who are currently working in probation trusts, to bid for contracts for the 21 community rehabilitation companies that will be responsible for supervising and rehabilitating low and medium-risk offenders each year. The competition will continue during 2014, and contracts will be awarded and mobilised by 2015.

[Karl Turner]

Does the Minister accept that the Offender Management Act 2007 was about probation trusts commissioning services locally, rather than about the abolition of local probation trusts and the commissioning of services from Whitehall, which is what he is now proposing?

[Jeremy Wright]

No. I have the Act in front of me, and section 3(2) states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

The Act means what it says. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the last Government passed legislation that they did not intend to pass, no doubt he will want to take that up with the former Ministers in his own party who were responsible.

Transforming Legal Aid

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance. I have listened to the representations made to me by members of the JCHR and privately by members of the judiciary about some of the more specialist situations—where people have been trafficked, where there is a child aged under 12 months, and other similar cases—and we have sought to identify cases where there are individual special needs that need to be met. That is reflected in the proposed changes—to the residence test, for example. When my right hon. Friend reads the detail of what we are proposing, I hope he will see that we have made modifications designed to reflect the concerns he and others have raised.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I cautiously welcome the Lord Chancellor’s U-turn on price competitive tendering, but the devil is in the detail and I still have some reservations that this might well be PCT through the back door. What will be the criteria for obtaining a duty contract? Will it be about price or quality of service?

[Chris Grayling]

As I said in my statement, it will be based on quality and capacity. What has always mattered to me is that we can guarantee coverage around the country, but without some form of contractual mechanism to ensure we secure the supply of duty legal aid services at the very least, we will always risk the availability of a law firm that does legal aid in a particular area being at the whim of the market. I think that this set of compromise proposals will deliver the certainty we need, and that it will do so in a way that is much more acceptable to the legal profession. I am delighted that we have worked together with the legal profession to reach a point on which I think we can all agree and that is good for the country.

Criminal Legal Aid Reforms

Karl Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I am sure it will be a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I have not done so previously, but I am very hopeful.

I am delighted, and relieved, to have secured this debate on an important issue, because without it and the recent Backbench Business Committee debate, the Government had no plans whatever to give Members of Parliament the opportunity to challenge profound, fundamental changes to our justice system.

I am pleased that the Backbench Business Committee granted time to discuss the issue, and it was telling that we had contributions from 31 Members, the vast majority of whom were opposed to the proposals. Furthermore, more than 100 Members of Parliament have put their names to the early-day motion urging the Government to think again about their plans, while the e-petition sponsored by Rachel Bentley has attracted more than 103,000 signatories.

It is a shame that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice was unable to attend the Backbench Business Committee debate as he had more pressing matters—campaigning in a marginal Tory constituency—but I am pleased that the Minister is here to respond for the Government. It would have been fitting, however, for MPs to have had the opportunity to challenge the Lord Chancellor on the latest attack on our justice system, although I suspect that he is not keen to be challenged in whatever guise.

At this point, it is right to pay tribute to Michael Turner, QC, the former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, for his achievements in uniting the two professions—I suspect that the Government were hoping for a divide between the two, which has not happened. I was surprised, and suggest that it was a shame, that the Lord Chancellor refused to meet Michael Turner—who, as chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, represented thousands of criminal barristers—apparently on the basis of his having been rude about the Lord Chancellor. To be clear, Michael Turner has never been rude about the Lord Chancellor. He has, however, dared to criticise publicly the plans and proposals of the Government in their consultation. The Lord Chancellor does not seem to like being criticised.

Furthermore, the Joint Committee on Human Rights report seems likely to be ignored by the Government, and the Lord Chancellor will plough on with his barmy proposals without even considering it.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, which is of considerable importance. I agree that the proposals contain many things that are hugely damaging. On the JCHR’s ongoing investigation, does he agree—I am sure he will—that the least the Lord Chancellor should do is to delay any decision on the proposals until the investigation into whether they are fully legal has been completed?

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. That should be the least that the Lord Chancellor is prepared to do, because the further proposed cuts to legal aid come hot on the heels of the last hacking that legal aid received from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Within a few months of taking power, the Government introduced that Bill to Parliament to slash legal aid and remove many areas of civil legal aid from scope, which has already denied many of the most vulnerable access to justice. We saw the effects in our surgeries when the changes kicked in, in the spring. I have seen a huge increase in the number of people at my surgery who cannot get a lawyer, but who are desperate for legal advice on housing, benefits and other complex legal issues.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the impact on access to justice, with many of our constituents turning to MPs for advice on complex areas of law, although most of us are not in any position to give such advice. Will he mention the big worry about the insidious impact of the new proposals on victims of crime?

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes my point for me. He is right: Members of Parliament are not competent to give legal advice. One option that had been open to us was to signpost people to citizens advice bureaux and other pro bono clinics, but due to budget cuts—local authorities and charities being slashed—they have closed or are buckling under the pressure of reduced resources and vastly increased referrals. Local authorities are desperately struggling to provide advice services as they try to absorb cuts of more than 30%, while charities and authorities up and down the country are being forced by the Government to withdraw vital funding for local projects simply to ensure that they can sustain basic, statutory obligations.

During the first attack on civil legal aid, my party’s Front Benchers and I were accused of scaremongering. Since implementation, however, 600,000 people have been denied access to advice on many aspects of civil law. There has been a 30% fall in the number of providers of civil legal aid and a 12% fall in providers of criminal legal aid, yet the most recent consultation paper, “Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a more credible and efficient system”, which was published on 9 April, goes beyond anything that anyone could have imagined. The proposals can only damage the legal aid system yet further.

The proposals aim to save £220 million from legal aid spending by 2018-19, but the Government have not said from which year’s spend that money is meant to be found. Many of my colleagues in the profession believe that the proposals will cost the taxpayer more money in the long run—a valid point to make. A common misconception promoted by the Government is that legal aid is the principal cost, but as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) rightly pointed out in his contribution to the Backbench Business Committee debate, the cost of our legal aid system is just three quarters that of similar systems in many other European countries. The President of the Supreme Court—no less—supports that notion. He said that the bill for legal aid increased substantially between 1965 and 2000, which I accept, but it has since been cut and projections show that it will continue to decrease over the coming years.

I am persuaded that in some areas there may be further savings to be made, but I do not believe that the proposals are the way to achieve such savings. At the Justice Committee session at which the chairman of the Bar Council, Maura McGowan, QC, Michael Turner, QC, and others gave evidence, Michael Turner suggested savings of a surprising £2 billion. The Government should be prepared to sit down with the professionals, the practitioners and the people who are expert in the area to discuss where those savings might be made.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Is it not the case that some of the motivation for the proposals has nothing to do with savings? The Lord Chancellor himself has acknowledged that, for example, restricting access to legal aid for prisoners is a simple matter of ideology.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point and I will develop it in a moment. She is right to raise the issue, and many people argue that the changes are a false economy because costs will increase. Matrix Chambers and Bindmans LLP have pointed out that the Government’s proposed savings are nonsense. They believe that costs—I suspect that they have done proper research—will increase by £24 million if the proposals go through. I agree with Bill Waddington, chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association—

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which looked at the matter. Does he agree that the inefficiencies of the Courts Service may increase as more people try to represent themselves? I was recently a witness in court and saw for myself at first hand how inefficient that is. Perhaps the Minister should concentrate on some of those inefficiencies.

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a point that, again, I was about to develop. It is accurate to say that costs will increase and people will self-represent.

I was about to say that I agree with the chairman of the CLSA who said that the Government are wrong to say that the issue is simply about savings when their figures show that costs have been coming down for years and projections show that they will continue to fall. Ministry of Justice figures show that public expenditure on legal aid between 2004 and 2009 has fallen by 25%. Figures also show that, between 2004 and 2010, the cost of criminal legal aid fell by £165 million. Those are Government figures, and they are expected to fall by a further £264 million by the end of 2014. My respectful submission is that it is about not saving money, but ideology.

Desperate people who have no choice but to represent themselves—this is my hon. Friend’s point—will clog up the courts and cost more money. Court time is expensive and not only will extended court time cost more money, but self-representation will provide fertile ground for miscarriages of justice and I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making his case very well. A long time ago, I ran a solicitors firm on a high street in north Shropshire. Does he agree that it is extraordinary that a Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government are making proposals that will specifically hit small firms on our high streets which are some of the most important providers of advice and services to local communities?

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend has stolen one of my best points. He is right of course.

I want to concentrate for a moment on the courts and staffing levels. I was not practising in the criminal courts during the recess, but I was there briefly. It is clear that since 2010, the courts have been stretched. There is no doubt that the proposals will put more pressure on the clerks in trying to advise clients who may be faced with no option but to self-represent.

Last year, the National Audit Office found that the cost of our legal aid system was average compared with other countries, and costs continue to fall. I accept that, according to the Government, 48% of criminal legal aid costs account for 1% of cases. Those are the cases that we should look at to make savings. The Government should concentrate their attention on high-cost cases. In times of austerity, we should look at all Departments for efficiencies, and the Ministry of Justice should shoulder its responsibilities and accept the burden for that.

It is right to make those who can afford it pay legal fees. It is also right to freeze the assets of convicted criminals to fund their legal costs. I am sure that my Front-Bench colleagues would be happy to work with the Government on that. However, it is not right that the legal aid system is sold off to the lowest bidder at the expense of quality. It is not right that huge global corporations that also run prisons, probation services and tagging—they do not do that well—are likely to bid for criminal defence contracts. That suggestion is appalling.

It is clear that there is a conflict when organisations involved in criminal defence also run the prisons. It is not right that companies such as G4S, which have great financial power, outbid smaller local firms at the expense of quality and local expertise. Local expertise is valuable. The legal aid scheme has evolved and changed over many years since its inception in 1949, but it remains a system in which the Government fund private expert practitioners to provide a pivotal public service.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. A solicitor in my constituency says that 50% of the clients he deals with are innocent, and are neither cautioned nor charged. Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposals are also an attack on the innocent and, as is sometimes painted by the Government, that they do not affect just people with criminal records?

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. That is correct. Before coming to the House, I was at the Bar with local chambers in Hull, but before that I was a criminal solicitor. I attended police stations and the vast majority of clients I represented had no further action taken against them or were dealt with by an alternative to court, but most often no further action.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

That may be so, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman accepts that even those who turn out to be guilty are equally entitled to legal representation.

[Karl Turner]

Of course, but the point is to dispel the bonkers notion that old lags cost the money. The reality is that people are entitled to a defence, and I will address that later.

I want to deal briefly with the suggestion that the previous Labour Government were profligate with the system. I have spent years defending my party because many practitioners say that the previous Government cut the system to the bone, but we were careful with legal aid spend. I also want to dispel the myth that only self-interested, fat-cat lawyers are concerned about the changes. I have been lobbied by charities, constituents, colleges and trade unions that do not benefit in any way from legal aid, but want a system that continues to be fit for purpose and protects the most vulnerable at the time when they need access to justice.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important matter to the House for consideration. On his reference to those who are less well off, Citizens Advice in my constituency has told me—I am sure that many other hon. Members here have received similar information from their citizens advice bureaux—that the least well off will suffer more and those with little or no money will be unable to take a case to court to protect or defend themselves. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the critical issue is that the less well off will suffer more?

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The reality is that the proposals will lead to a system in which only the rich—those who can afford to be represented privately—will have access to the courts. That is simply not justice.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is rightly making a point about justice and has drawn attention to the danger of miscarriages of justice if we go back to a system that we thought we had left behind. Does he agree that there is another side for the victims of crime because if the wrong person is convicted they suffer a double injustice?

[Karl Turner]

Of course. My hon. Friend highlights the point that victims of crime suffer again because funding for charities that represent the interests of victims of crime has been severely slashed under the coalition Government.

[Kate Green]

On victims of crime, does my hon. Friend not also agree that with access to a good, trusted legal adviser, many defendants will plead guilty early, saving pain to the victim as well as cost to the system?

[Karl Turner]

In my experience, for what it is worth, my advice to a client was based on the evidence. If that was overwhelming or strong, and if, in my opinion, the defendant needed to plead guilty, they were advised accordingly. I think solicitors and barristers will always act in the best interests of the client.

May I address the caricature that the Government have peddled, which is that all lawyers earn salaries like that of the Prime Minister’s very wealthy brother? It is not true. The vast majority of legal aid lawyers, up and down the country, earn a modest wage; often, they will take home less than a nurse or a teacher. I wonder what information the Government have on that issue, because I think that the Bar Council could provide them with information about average salaries at the Bar, and that the Law Society could assist as well.

A very important point, and perhaps an unintended consequence, is that the proposals will prevent many young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, less advantaged backgrounds, and poorer backgrounds from coming into the professions. This is not a plea for the so-called fat cat lawyers, but, as John Cooper, QC, put it:

“This is recognition, before it’s too late, that if the proposals go through we will be complicit in excluding many young people from less advantaged backgrounds from becoming part of what can only be described as the National Health Service of the Law”.

I also want to deal with the misconception that all people seeking legal aid are old lags. I have dealt with that briefly, but the Government seem to suggest that such people do not deserve representation. Of course, there are repeat offenders who are found guilty, or who plead guilty to a further offence, but just because someone has previously been convicted of burglary does not mean—cannot mean, surely—that they are automatically guilty of the further alleged offence. They might not be.

Fundamental to our legal system must be the presumption of innocence. Denying people’s liberty is one of the strongest powers of the state. It is vital, therefore, that that can be done only when a court of law is presented with evidence, for and against, by highly skilled and trained lawyers.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Fundamental to our system is the issue of choice, which the hon. Gentleman may come on to. He is a former member of the Select Committee on Justice, which I now sit on. The right for someone to choose who represents them goes very much to the heart of our system.

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would agree that the price-competitive tendering proposals, as originally drafted, would appear to deny that, but as he knows from the Justice Committee’s hearings and the Backbench business debate, the Government have moved on that issue. I wonder what his feeling is on where that movement on choice, which very much holds the PCT proposals together in their original form, leaves us. He should acknowledge that the Government have already moved a little on the issue.

[Karl Turner]

I will address that point later in my remarks.

I am concerned about what seems to be an outdated concept, in the Government’s vision, of a Tesco-style justice system, but I still believe that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Surely we should be looking to protect that system. I add that these stereotypical clients are not the only people who seek criminal legal aid. Thompsons Solicitors, in its response to the consultation, made it clear that many who seek legal aid are people such as teachers, nurses and police officers, who are wrongly accused of assault or similar, and who need to clear their names and save their livelihoods.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He has not mentioned a category of people who suffer a form of injustice greater than anything he has spoken about. Those people cannot defend themselves, either because they have died as a result of a state action—I am thinking of Baha Mousa, in particular, who was beaten to death by British soldiers—or because they are incarcerated by either British or foreign states. Such people, without legal aid, have no recourse whatever. There is no self-representation, because they cannot do that, and no cheap representation, as they cannot do that either.

[Karl Turner]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valid point, which I, again, want to address briefly in my remarks. I disagree with many aspects of the proposals—the right hon. Gentleman is correct—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said, denying prisoners access to legal representation simply goes against everything that a civil society should represent.

Defending prisoners is not a vote winner, but we live in a civilised society, and I believe that prisoners must have the right to legal representation. The reforms will essentially mean that justice stops at the prison gates and that prisoners are denied legal representation, if the Government plans go ahead. As colleagues have said, denying prisoners access to justice in the way that the consultation proposes seeks to save £4 million. In times of austerity, it would be flippant to say that that is peanuts, but actually, when I think about it, those efficiency savings come at what cost? For goodness’ sake—it seems incredible to me.

[Kate Green]

It is likely that the proposals will save nothing in the round, because they will lead to more inefficiencies inside prisons, as people will be kept in higher-security conditions, when they need not be, for longer, and as there will be greater difficulty in managing discipline and behaviour in prison as a result.

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

I think that this next point was the one made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr David Davis). I am also concerned that the proposals to introduce a residency test will see victims of human trafficking denied access to legal representation and will prevent many cases from being brought against the Government when they are accused of wrongdoing abroad. The new proposals will mean that families such as that of Jean Charles de Menezes would not have been able to fight the case for their dead son, who was wrongly shot by armed police.

I also disagree with the proposals to reform judicial review. They will mean that an individual will no longer be able to hold public bodies to account. Shelter, for example, provides specialist social welfare law advice—on housing issues, in particular—to about 15,000 people each year, under various legal aid contracts. However, it is clear that the proposals will prevent it from doing that.

The Government proposals limit funding for judicial review to only those cases where permission to proceed is granted by a judge. That must severely limit Shelter’s ability to help people. None of us in this place can imagine the prospect of losing our homes. It seems incredible that the Government, in their plans, seek to attack the most vulnerable people at the time when they need assistance the most.

Clearly, the Lord Chancellor has thought about the proposals since the Backbench business debate. Following absolutely overwhelming criticism from many Opposition Members and Government Members, I was very pleased to see the Secretary of State U-turn on the accused having the right to choose their lawyer. However, we do not know what the impact of that will be, because as far as I understand it, the Lord Chancellor is still keen to press ahead with what he thinks is a workable system of PCT. I suspect that it is not workable; I do not think it ever has been.

The client choice issue was designed to assist with PCT, in the sense that it would be attractive for large corporations to bid for contracts on the basis that they are getting a vast client base, but I am not sure what the impact of that will be and how the proposals will change things as a result. I hope, however, that the Lord Chancellor continues to listen, and that he will concede that PCT, in any form, is not suitable for allocating legal aid contracts. Legal aid contracts should not simply go to bidders who are willing to do the work for the lowest price.

As I have said, I am concerned about many aspects of the proposals, but I want to focus, in the time remaining to me, on chapter 4 of the consultation document, which is about PCT in relation to criminal legal aid.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine recently wrote to me in praise of a small local firm of solicitors that had supported her and her family through a long, traumatic and very serious case. She felt that the attention to detail and dedication shown by that small local firm would not be replicated in the new system, in which speed and economics would be of the essence. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. That is an excellent point. It is just the reality of business. Small firms of solicitors have established themselves over a long period. The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) thinks that my remarks are amusing. They may be amusing to him, but I can tell him that the reality of the proposals will not be funny to people in my constituency who are looking to access justice.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, and he is making a strong case for access to justice with which no one, in any part of the House, would disagree. What I would be interested to understand, though, is whether his position is that legal aid as it is currently is pretty much right and cannot be reformed or that reforms are possible but the Government are pursuing the wrong ones. If it is the latter, why has the Bar Council not come forward with more substantive proposals than it has apparently done so far?

[Karl Turner]

I am not the Bar Council; I do not represent the Bar Council. It is not for me to say why it has not come forward with proposals, but my opinion is this. Why should the Bar Council, the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, the Criminal Bar Association or any other organisation that represents the professionals come up and do the Government’s job? I suggest that the hon. Gentleman goes away and reads the evidence of the Justice Committee and looks at the proposals put forward by the experts—the practitioners, the people who do this work every day. Michael Turner, QC, came up with a suggestion for making £2 billion of savings if the Lord Chancellor was only prepared to allow him enough time to sit down and discuss the proposals with him.

[David Mowat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I thought I heard him earlier give that figure of £2 billion, which of course is a very significant amount. I believe that it is 10 times the amount that the Lord Chancellor is seeking. If Michael Turner has identified £2 billion of savings, would it be possible for the hon. Gentleman to identify for other hon. Members the main areas in which those savings would be made?

[Karl Turner]

The former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association put forward various suggestions in the Justice Committee evidence session. I happen to think that some of them are feasible. He talked about saving money in courts. In my experience, an awful lot of money is wasted in the courts system. Then there is the Crown Prosecution Service. I do not mean to criticise colleagues in the profession, but very often defence lawyers are blamed for delays and loss of court time when in fact it is the CPS, whose staff are rushed off their feet, overworked—in my area, the service is terribly understaffed—that causes the delay. There are all sorts of things that the Government could look at, but the reality is that the Lord Chancellor is simply not prepared to sit down and discuss them. I am hoping that the new chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Nigel Lithman, QC, has the ability to persuade the Lord Chancellor to sit round a table and discuss the proposals.

[Mr David Davis]

First, let me help the hon. Gentleman with a reminder of some of the things that were proposed. There was a proposal for a levy on the commercial courts in London that would raise large amounts of money. There were proposals that the banks should pay for the fraud cases that make up a large part of what we are discussing.

I also want to ask the hon. Gentleman a question. The Law Society has come up with a proposal that maintains choice but still puts in place a bidding system— a rather more thoughtful bidding system, if I may so—a rolling three-year bidding system, which would keep in place some of the smaller specialised companies and so on. Does he think that that is a good route to go down?

[Karl Turner]

Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Law Society’s proposal, I think, is a much better alternative. To answer the point made by the hon. Member for Warrington South, of course I accept that efficiency savings have to be made across the board in Departments—I made that point earlier—but it seems to me that the Lord Chancellor has just gone off without really being prepared to consult. I think that we are talking about a period of two months. It seems to me—the Minister shakes his head, but this is the justice system. There are a lot of professionals involved. I think that the Government received 16,000 responses. Surely there was a requirement to have some form of proper consultation—I do not think that it was proper, frankly—so these things could have been discussed more properly.

I think—this point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—that what is proposed defies everything that the Conservatives allegedly stand for. It is contrary to all that they say they are doing to promote growth on the high street. The idea of savagely attacking small businesses seems barmy to me. Do the Tories not believe that small private firms are the backbone of our economy? It beggars belief that this policy will without doubt break the backbone of the legal profession and, in my submission, severely undermine local economies such as my own in Hull. Let me be very clear.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

For the record, I am still a practising solicitor, although my firm does not do criminal law. I want to take up the point about rural areas. Already in places such as Cumbria there are gaps in terms of the legal profession giving advice. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the potential is that the reforms will exacerbate that problem, particularly in rural areas?

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have not read the 16,000 responses to the Government consultation, but I know from my discussions with colleagues in the profession that a vast majority of those responses make the point about advice deserts. Let me refer to my area of Humberside. Bridlington, which is in the area, will, in my submission, become an advice desert. It is covered currently by all the firms of solicitors in the area, but there is one firm of solicitors that is based in that town.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that whatever changes to legal aid are brought in, they will, in Wales, have to accommodate the legal requirements of the Welsh Language Act 1993? It is a great concern of many people that the capacity will not be there to do that.

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point. Clearly, this is not my area of expertise, but the point has been raised by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), the leader of Plaid Cymru in the House, who is very worried. He is a practising barrister and is concerned that that obligation will go as a result of the proposals. That cannot be justice.

I am conscious of the time, so I will now make a little progress. The Government proposals for PCT will irrevocably damage the criminal justice system. PCT will inevitably lead to the market being dominated by the big multinationals—the usual suspects—G4S, Serco, Capita; and I fear that many new entrants to the market who have no experience whatever of delivering criminal justice will dominate the market. The small businesses, the expert businesses, that have established their practices over a number of years and have a great relationship with local authorities will just close their doors. It will become economically unviable for them to continue to exist.

The proposals are designed to cut a further 17.5% on top of the 2011 reduction of 10%. Firms that win the contracts will assert that they can provide the service at the cheapest possible rate. Stack it high and sell it cheap will see our criminal justice system reduced to the lowest common denominator. I have no doubt that it will be taken over by less qualified people providing a less qualified service. We will see the cornerstone of a civilised society reduced to a factory mentality where quantity will trump quality each and every time. The only consideration in our justice system will be the cheapest provider.

The plans also perversely propose the same fee being paid whether the case is resolved by way of a guilty plea or contested at trial. To me, that suggestion beggars belief. There is undoubtedly a concern that that will lead to undue pressure being put on a defendant to plead guilty to speed up the process, thus saving time and money for big legal aid providers. There will be a clear financial incentive for the defendant to plead guilty as quickly as possible, even when a trial would be in the client’s best interests. It is unlikely to happen, because, in my honest view, solicitors always act in the best interests of their clients and always advise based on evidence alone and the strength of the evidence presented in the case, but do the Government not accept that advice might be misconstrued? A particular client might plead guilty to an offence when the evidence is strong and overwhelming, but there might be a later discussion, perhaps in the pub, along the lines, “You pled guilty, mate, because your brief was paid the same money whether they did their best for you in a trial or forced you, with your arm up your back, to plead guilty.” Surely that will be the result.

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not wish to interrupt the flow of the hon. Gentleman and I have no idea how much longer he intends to go on for, but other people wish to contribute, not least some of his hon. Friends. I urge him, in the spirit of co-operation with his colleagues, to consider bringing his remarks to an end.

[Karl Turner]

I am grateful, Mr Davies. I will bring my remarks to a close. I apologise. I think I took too many interventions.

Well-established, local, high-quality providers that have strong links with local police authorities, courts and councils will be replaced by large corporations. That is not a good idea. It is not helpful to the justice system. The reality is that people will suffer as a consequence of the proposals. I hope the Government listen. I hope that the Lord Chancellor—according to rumour, this will be the announcement tomorrow—has changed his mind and decided once and for all to bury the idea of price-competitive tendering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point in relation to settlement. Again, if he will forgive me for now, I will write to him about it, because it is not something that I can go into in the two minutes I have left. Nevertheless, he is right to make the point, and we will certainly explore it—

[Karl Turner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jeremy Wright]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I would rather not give way to him; I want to deal with the point about price-competitive tendering that he referred to. Obviously, it is a crucial question. Should we deal with legal aid reform in that way? I am sure he is aware that as recently as last year, the hon. Member for Hammersmith was still saying that there was no reason not to do price-competitive tendering in legal aid, and that he said that he had seen nothing in the past two years to say why we should not press ahead with it. The hon. Gentleman may want to speak to the hon. Member for Hammersmith about whether price-competitive tendering is a deeply flawed concept that could never work.

However, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East will also know that we are considering a range of submissions—we will also consider his submission—and that the Government will respond to the consultation that we have held. In addition, he knows that there will be a further period of consultation on some of the proposals. I hope that he will be a little more patient and see what those responses entail, because we will want to consider carefully a number of things and to decide what our response to them should be. He will forgive me if I cannot give him a sneak preview today, but he will not have to be patient for very much longer to see how we intend to respond.

There are crucial points to be considered—they have been raised again in this debate today—about the nature of rural areas and the advice to be provided to people there. As I say, hon. Friends and hon. Members have made those points, and they have been listened to and understood. Similarly, the point was made about Welsh language requirements. Any contracts that are issued will include a requirement that Welsh language services be provided. That is the law and that is as it should be.

Again, I stress that this process is an opportunity for people to contribute their views about what we have set out. With our legal aid reforms, the intention is to do two things: first, to address the real financial challenge that we face; and secondly, to reinforce public confidence in what is a very important system of providing taxpayer-funded subsidy to those who need it in our courts. Our proposals have those twin objectives. We will listen to the submissions that have been made to us, but in the end those objectives are what we seek to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Over the past few weeks, I have had very constructive engagement with the Law Society and I welcome the counter-proposals it has put to us. We have recognised many shared objectives in that and it has behaved with professionalism over this matter. I was very disappointed that when the Bar Council submitted its report and recommendations to us in response to our consultation it did not contain the same degree of constructive engagement. I am due to meet the Bar Council later today and I hope we will see that change.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Now that the Lord Chancellor concedes that client choice is integral to the criminal justice system, when will he announce that price-competitive tendering has been dumped once and for all?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman needs to realise that the concept of competitive tendering in criminal legal aid was originated by his own party. Now we are hearing the Labour party oppose the things for which it argued for years, and it is typical of this Opposition that they will say one thing when in government, and when in opposition will say something completely different. I am proud to be part of a party that is defending health budgets and taking tough decisions in other areas; the hon. Gentleman is part of a party doing the opposite.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

One of the comments from colleagues in the House and elsewhere, which we must clearly factor in when developing the next stage of the proposals, is what we will do in areas that are rural or have particular geographical issues. That is something I am very mindful of—

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East)]

It is a mess.

Legal Aid Reform

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered legal aid reform.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the House to debate this very important issue. I am hugely grateful to the many Members who have remained in the Chamber on a Thursday afternoon even though the debate is not on a dividable motion. I offer my apology for the fact that I did not ask for a full day’s debate—clearly, there is much more desire to debate this matter than I expected when I went before the Committee.

As many in the House will know, the background to the debate is that just after the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 came into force, the Government began a new consultation, “Transforming Legal Aid.” That consultation closed on 4 June, and the Government are due to respond after the summer recess. The proposals were incredibly wide ranging and arguably more significant in some ways than those in the LASPO Act, but it looked as if the House would not get an opportunity to debate that consultation document before the Government responded. As the Government are currently proposing secondary legislation for the matter, my concern is that we may not get an opportunity to have a debate before the legislation is introduced.

Because the proposals are so complex and wide-ranging, I think it important for us to get the details right, and I therefore hope that the Minister will view the contributions of Members in all parts of the House as part of the consultation process.

I am grateful to the 31 members of all parties who supported my application to the Backbench Business Committee. I particularly thank the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who is a former legal aid Minister, and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who I know wants to speak later about some of the constitutional implications of the proposed changes.

The fact that so many organisations, including Mind and Shelter, have contacted Members of Parliament with briefings and queries demonstrates that it is not just lawyers who are worried about these proposals.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Is it not very disappointing that that the Justice Secretary has not bothered to come to the House today? As the hon. Lady has pointed out, the debate is very oversubscribed. More than 96,000 people signed the e-petition, and I believe that 96 Members of Parliament signed early-day motion 36. The Justice Secretary should be here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Djanogly]

Further cuts in the rate are the easy option. The market is out of sync with the legal profession and it needs reform.

My theory is that Labour’s contracting proposals failed because they not only succumbed to the reactionary wing of the legal profession but shied from the bottom line facts of criminal legal aid contracting, which are that in order to get efficiencies and savings, contracting will always involve fewer but larger practices operating over a larger area. If the market is to be sustainable, there must be fewer firms each receiving a larger slice of the remaining pie.

Although I support the Government’s consultation and the contracting proposals in general, my personal view is that we are missing an opportunity radically to restructure the market and bring it into line with modern practice norms. At the core of that lies the need to consider the type of organisation that can bid and how they are paid. The historic position in England and Wales is that the client instructs a solicitor and then, particularly for more complicated advocacy, the solicitor employs a barrister. That involves two fees and I would strongly advocate moving to a single fee.

[Karl Turner]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has read the consultation document. The proposals are very different from what the previous Government proposed under best value tender. There are major constitutional differences in these proposals that will ruin the entire criminal justice system.

[Mr Djanogly]

The previous Government were considering contracting, as were Labour Front Benchers during this Parliament. We need to appreciate that the Legal Services Act 2007, brought in by the previous Government with Conservative support, has transformed the potential for legal service provision. To cut a long story short, there is now no reason why solicitors and barristers should not go into partnership together, or indeed, with non-legal organisations, via alternative business structures. There is no reason why barristers should not take instructions direct from the client nor any reason why barristers should not themselves bid for contracts and employ solicitors. In practice, there have been blockers to this kind of progress, not least a barrister regulator that seems unable to see the writing on the wall for its own profession.

If I seem radical, I am explaining a scenario that would seem more or less natural to most Commonwealth common law countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Prior to my election to this House, I worked as a criminal barrister from my local chambers in Hull, and before that, I was a criminal solicitor. I was never a fat-cat lawyer—in fact, my waistline has increased only since coming to this place.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend is not a fat cat, but could he say whether fat-cat lawyers actually attend police stations at 2 o’clock in the morning?

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. As far as I know, it is very unusual for a partner in the firm to come out in the early hours of the morning. The important point is this: a solicitor who attends at a police station in the middle of the night is often dealing with extremely serious allegations—sometimes allegations of murder. I have been in that position on a number of occasions, representing clients who are alleged to have committed murder. The solicitor is there on his or her own, whereas the police have advice from the CPS and many officers to assist them. The solicitor is facing all that pressure and is not being paid properly, even under the current arrangements, for his or her expertise.

Of course we accept that in these straitened economic times, cuts have to be made to Departments across the board, but these plans are massively ill conceived. They will, in my respectful submission, irretrievably damage the criminal justice system. I will focus my remarks on price competitive tendering.

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

Can the hon. Gentleman help with this point, then? If irretrievable damage is done to the criminal justice system by any change to legal aid, why was it that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), when Lord Chancellor, said:

“I hope that everyone…will accept that the growth of spending on legal aid seen in the early part of the decade and before is no longer sustainable”?

[Karl Turner]

It is very disappointing, but I suspect the hon. Gentleman has not read the consultation document.

I shall go on to deal with price competitive tendering, but first let me try to bust a myth. There seems to be a suggestion that the Labour Government were particularly generous to criminal lawyers. We were not. Criminal lawyers have sustained cuts to fees from successive Governments. The current proposals are far reaching and, if they go through, they will be horrifically damaging to the criminal justice system. PCT will inevitably lead to the market being dominated by the big multinationals—the usual suspects—G4S, Serco, Capita, and probably the new entrants to the market who have absolutely no experience, Stobart.

The plans are also unconstitutional. They dismiss the notion that an accused might have the right to choose a solicitor. The cavalier ignorance of the Lord Chancellor was exposed when he remarked:

“I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills.”

Not only does he dismiss everyone requiring legal advice as a criminal before they have even been charged or had a trial, but he apparently has the naiveté to think that those who come face to face with the criminal justice system are not capable of judging the competence of their own lawyers. This is the “too thick to pick” point. The notion is completely contrary to attitudes applied to, say, health services in this country or education, where choice is deemed essential.

The proposals look to implement yet another changing fee structure. Fees would be cut by 17.5%, on top of the 2011 reduction of 10%. Firms that successfully bid for PCT will have demonstrated that they can provide the services at the cheapest possible rate. This means that advice will probably be provided by less qualified people supervised, perhaps, by a single lawyer. The “stack it high, sell it cheap” mentality will reduce the criminal justice system to a sausage factory where the quantity of cases trumps the quality of the service provided every time.

The proposals specify this in paragraph 23, suggesting that there is no need to be concerned about the quality of provision because work shall not be

“above the acceptable level specified by the LAA”—

the Legal Aid Agency. The plans also perversely propose the same fee to be paid, whether the case is resolved by way of a guilty plea or contested at trial. There is strong concern that this will inevitably lead to undue pressure being put on a defendant to plead guilty when in fact they have a defence.

The proposals will change the sort of people coming into the profession. This is not a plea for so-called fat-cat lawyers, but as the eminent barrister John Cooper QC put it to me yesterday,

“This is recognition, before it’s too late, that if the proposals go through we will be complicit in excluding many young people from less advantaged backgrounds from becoming part of what can only be described as the National Health Service of the Law”.

I have only one minute left. The Lord Chancellor showed his ignorance and lack of understanding of the profession. He showed ignorance today by not attending this important debate, yet the civil servants Box is full to the gunwales. The Lord Chancellor should sit down and meet for the first time the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Michael Turner QC, and Bill Waddington, the chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, and discuss alternatives to these undemocratic, unconstitutional and worrying plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Reevell]

My hon. Friend makes the same point very well.

Secondly, as a Conservative, I do not like the removal of choice from the market. It does not really matter that the individual concerned happens to be a defendant in criminal proceedings; after all, at that stage he or she is presumed innocent until proven guilty—we do still have that. The removal of choice in the selection of representation concerns me. The idea that the state will prosecute, that it will contract those who defend, and that those contractors are likely, under these proposals, to employ the defence advocate, is worrying. I have dealt with cases that have involved issues of security and of taking on the Government, for example in relation to what the previous Government did in Iraq. I wonder whether someone working for an organisation that had a contract with the Government would feel as able as I did to take on those issues and seek to expose them in the course of a trial, regardless of consequences, as a member of the independent Bar.

There are smaller difficulties. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) referred to the proposed fee structure. In fact, that already exists elsewhere. Some military cases in Germany are paid for on that principle, but with an escape clause, as it were, that recognises that it is not suitable for the more serious cases. That suggests that it is therefore not suitable to be rolled out across the Crown court system for the vast majority of criminal cases.

The expression of support for an independent Bar in the consultation document is inconsistent with the model that is proposed, under which advocacy would be kept in-house to offset the reductions necessary to take part in the tendering process. That has implications not only for members of the independent Bar but for judicial recruitment and for the availability of experienced prosecutors. The Ministry of Justice might want to think about what it is doing not only in relation to those who defend in the Crown court but to where it will get those to whom it looks to prosecute serious cases—the murders, the rapes, the woundings, and matters of that sort.

Having criticised the consultation document, it does contain something that has not been offered to any other group of people. I used to be a soldier. Soldiers were not told, “These are the proposals—if you’ve got some of your own we’ll look at them”; they were simply told, “These are the proposals.” It is the same for teachers, firemen and everybody else. Lawyers are being told, “These are the proposals—if you’ve got alternatives and they achieve the same result, then the Department will go with them.” Anybody who works in the criminal justice system knows that savings can be made.

[Karl Turner]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the consultation document is really about considering alternatives, the Justice Secretary should meet the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association? He has made himself available on numerous occasions, and the Justice Secretary has refused to see him. Would it not be sensible for the Justice Secretary to agree immediately to that meeting?

[Simon Reevell]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well why that discussion has not taken place and that the prelude to it did not involve a method that was taught at the Bar school course that he did. I hope that those difficulties can be resolved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner]

rose—

[Simon Reevell]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had one go and that is quite enough.

The consultation has a blunt instrument to deal with the expense of long trials which impacts on the majority of Crown court work, but there is a simpler solution—the abolition of very high-cost cases. Nobody needs them, nobody wants them, and they can be got rid of. That would save money at a stroke.

Allowing choice but banning the practice of client poaching is another effective way of saving money. There are simple measures such as making prisons provide video links so that solicitors can have video conferences and therefore not have to be paid to travel to prisons. The majority of prisons will not allow solicitors to have such facilities. Other options would be controlling who within defence teams is paid to read and use material, thinking about whether those with frozen assets can be asked to pay for their own defence, and looking at how those who are convicted can be asked to contribute towards the cost of their representation. There are all sorts of ways of doing this.

If those making these proposals and those opposing them on the grounds of the consultation document, while recognising in principle that savings have to be made, were opposing litigants, a sensible judge would tell them to go outside and settle the case. The flaws in the consultation document are apparent, and the alternatives are there for consideration. I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) that we are getting to the time when this needs to be sorted out and resolved, because that can obviously be done with the acceptance of all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I have given way twice, so my time is running out. I am sure that my hon. Friend will forgive me.

There might be different means by which the same objective can be achieved. It might be possible to have some form of panel system. It might be possible to have a different approach to police station work, where there is a strong argument for saying that firms need a guaranteed volume of work to make the business case sustainable, as opposed to the preparation of litigation and the ongoing court work in both the magistrates court and the Crown court. It is not unreasonable to say that choice has to be provided in the context of affordability. We must not be afraid to say that.

We must recognise that the number of people seeking work at the Bar and in the solicitors’ profession has grown greatly, frankly to an unsustainable level. The profession has to recognise that too many people are chasing a diminishing work load. The number of cases that go to court has reduced by broadly a third since I came to the Bar, whereas the independent Bar and the solicitors’ profession have become about three times as large. Something has to give. Let us sit down sensibly and find ways in which that can be achieved.

[Karl Turner]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I have given way twice and am afraid that I cannot give way any more. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find another opportunity to make his point.

We should not be sniffy about the development of alternative business models that might deliver the service properly. I recognise the points that have been made about accessibility in rural areas and about the particular types of expertise that may be needed. We could do more within the existing mechanisms to assist people with such issues.

I have come across such a situation in my constituency. Bromley council has set up an online platform in negotiation with reputable and well-established solicitors firms in the area that puts potential clients in contact with a solicitor, who provides the initial advice without any charge. There was difficulty in setting that up because, despite the willingness of the established solicitors firms to take part, the Solicitors Regulation Authority would not provide the necessary regulatory clearance. That is a needless bureaucratic obstacle to a practical solution to a genuine problem. That could sensibly be looked at and I hope the Minister will consider what might be done.

There are other ways in which we can make savings in criminal matters. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) has suggested using the independent Bar more within the Crown Prosecution Service. We should look at whether more efficiencies can be made in that body more generally. Perhaps we should look at the operation of the new centralised magistrates courts service. Again, there might be scope for savings.

We spend markedly more on legal aid than any comparable common law jurisdiction. We spend about £39 per head in the UK, compared with about £20 per head in the Republic of Ireland, about £10 per head in Canada and about £13 per head in New Zealand. Those are jurisdictions with the same system and trial processes as we have, but they do it markedly cheaper. I do not believe that a reduction of 10%, which is not out of line with other reductions, is unacceptable.

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[Karl Turner]

It ought to be on the record that it is the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Michael Turner QC, whom the Lord Chancellor is refusing to meet, not the chairman of the Bar Council.

[Valerie Vaz]

Absolutely. I am sure hon. Members received the e-mail from Michael Turner QC stating that the Lord Chancellor refused to meet him.

It is not clear what the Lord Chancellor is trying to achieve, other than to undermine the legal system. The Lord Chancellor does not appear to understand that if people are given access to legal services, they do not need to go to court—if that is where he wants to make the savings. Perhaps he wants to make the savings in court time. However, as a result of these proposals, court time will be filled by people who can afford going to court. In certain circumstances, companies can offset their legal costs against tax and even get the VAT back. An ordinary citizen cannot do that.

Judicial review is an important branch of law. Of course, the Executive do not like it because it holds the Executive to account—it looks at how public bodies come to a decision. Given the legislation enacted since 2010, it is no wonder that the Government want a neutered judicial review. No one can predict the outcome of a case, so having to make a judgment that there is a 50% chance of winning to receive legal aid, is absurd. Evidence has to be heard from both sides and a decision is made based on arguments that are made before an impartial judiciary. Lawyers are obliged to advise a client whether a case has merits before they proceed. What about the figures for judicial review? They are not increasing exponentially. A written answer to me revealed that in 2009 there were 2,145 cases in judicial review, with that figure going up to only 2,304 in 2011. In criminal judicial review, it was 316 for 2011. Those are just the figures for cases lodged; they are not even the figures for cases that have gone to completion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We have taken care with these proposals to put together a package based on our statistical analysis which we think will protect incomes at the lower end of the Bar particularly. It is my intention that where we have to impose changes on the profession, they come through either the reorganisation of businesses or income changes at the top end of the income scale.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

The Justice Secretary knows full well that his plans for price competitive tendering in criminal legal aid are completely opposed by the profession. They are unworkable. Will he now sit down with the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association and discuss a way forward out of this mess?

[Chris Grayling]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the principle of price competitive tendering was first proposed in a report commissioned by the last Government eight years ago. We have looked carefully at the best way in which we can deliver better value in our legal aid system, which we have to do to meet financial targets. We will do so in a way that protects the interests of the justice system, but no change is simply not an option.