Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) and I congratulate him on his work in bringing his provision to this point. Before I entered the House, I served as a lay magistrate for 16 years and in cases of people driving under the influence of drugs, was always struck by the complete uncertainty about how we applied the law, compared with the dead certainty in relation to people driving under the influence of alcohol. I therefore welcome the clarity that this provision starts to bring.

I would like to talk about several aspects of the Bill. They are by no means the only elements that have come up this evening, but I want to focus on the issues relating to diversity and sentencing. I endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) in welcoming the amendment inserted in their lordship’s House specifically to introduce a focus on the position of women within the criminal justice system. That provision did not have Government Front-Bench support in the House of Lords, but, given that last week in his oral statement about transforming rehabilitation the Justice Secretary specifically said, in response to a question from me, that he accepted that the specific circumstances and needs of women had to be addressed, I hope, now that this provision has been passed in their lordship’s House, that Ministers will see no reason not to adopt it.

I was pleased to see provisions on judicial diversity and to hear the Home Secretary highlight them in her opening speech. As she said, there has been progress on the diversification of the judiciary, but much more needs to be made. The provisions in schedule 13, on the tie-break and the possibility of full-time equivalent appointments to the senior judiciary, are welcome. In particular, however, I want to comment on the duty now on the Lord Chancellor to encourage diversity in the judiciary contained in paragraph 10. That is certainly a welcome exhortation, but it is important that it not be left at mere words and that substantive progress be made. Willing the end is not the same as willing the means.

It is clear where some of the barriers and blockages lie. As right hon. and hon. Members have commented, women and ethnic minorities are particularly poorly represented in the judiciary. That is not so much the case in the tribunals and lay judiciary, so it speaks in part to difficulties that the Bar and solicitor professions have in developing a pipeline to find more diverse members of the judiciary. I would be interested to hear what work Ministers envisage doing with the Judicial Appointments Commission and the professions to start to strengthen professional routes for women, minorities and other groups with protected characteristics.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said, it is important to have a judiciary that reflects the make-up of society. It is, without question, an issue of public confidence. It also broadens the perspectives that are brought to bear on judicial decisions, as Lady Hale herself highlighted in her submission to the review of the Judicial Appointments Commission. That is an important and valuable reason why we have a number of judges judging more challenging cases, and is a lesson we ought to reflect in the appointments process more generally.

I am concerned that when these provisions and other allied amendments were debated in the House of Lords, Lord McNally made great play of the role of the public sector equality duty in underpinning this clause and the other provisions on judicial diversity. When Lord McNally spoke, the public sector equality duty was a settled and fairly clear duty. Since that debate in June 2012, the Government have of course announced a full review of the duty, which leads me to ask how we can be sure that the very best provisions of that duty will be embedded in the judicial appointments process.

It is worth noting that the Judicial Appointments Commission has welcomed the public sector equality duty as a framework for working on diversifying the judiciary. It has been absolutely explicit in saying that it does not regard it as a tick-box exercise. It is important that we do not lose what has been good in offering a framework for diversification of the judiciary as the review of the duty continues. That is more of a concern now that the requirement to carry out equality impact assessments in relation to policy is being removed.

I am pleased to see specific provision for restorative justice in the Bill. That represents a good start—a good first step in legislative recognition of the value of restorative justice. There have been a number of comments today on the importance and challenge of persuading victims who may feel torn about whether to participate in such a process. I invite Ministers to look carefully at how the concept of restorative justice can be extended, so that it does not necessarily mean the offender meeting his or her victim. Prison Fellowship, whose work I have had the privilege of seeing in Styal prison, has been able to extend the concept so that victims, not necessarily of the women serving the sentences in the programmes they are running, are nonetheless able to act as proxy victims to enable the concept of restorative justice to be extended more widely. It is a powerful programme that deals with serious offenders. I hope Ministers will see the provisions in the Bill as a first step to learning what works effectively in restorative justice, and to looking for opportunities to extend the concept over time.

I want to say a few words about the provisions on non-custodial sentences and the focus on punishment in those sentences, which in most circumstances is now the norm. I recognise that there is a real issue of public confidence regarding community sentences, which is regrettable when they are so much more effective in terms of reoffending rates than short-term custodial sentences. That confidence will not be helped if we start to get the balance of sentencing provisions wrong so that the focus on rehabilitation and reducing the offending is lost and crime rates start to rise. I therefore ask Ministers to tell us how they expect to monitor the impact of this provision and ensure that a proper, rounded approach to sentencing is sustained as it begins to take effect. In my 16 years’ experience as a sentencer in the lay magistracy, it was rare that punishment was not an element of the sentences we imposed. Surely the most important test, however, is the outcome of a sentence. The outcome we want above all is that the offending behaviour stops. I therefore hope that the impact of this policy will be carefully monitored with that in mind.

On the provisions relating to location monitoring, as others have said, technological and other developments have enabled the use of electronic monitoring to be widened and extended since it was first introduced a decade or so ago. There are also some real civil liberties and information-sharing concerns about the use of these techniques. It is clear that on its own it is not a particularly effective method of reducing reoffending. It is also important that, in seeking to monitor and manage the whereabouts of an offender, we do not put members of the public, particularly those close to that offender, at greater risk. I highlight concerns about this provision when, for example, domestic violence has been an issue. I hope that Ministers will perhaps comment on that, and certainly bear it in mind.

The Bill contains a number of important provisions that open up an avenue to new thinking. I hope that this is not seen as a definitive and ultimate position in relation to steps that can be taken to reduce reoffending and improve protection of the public. There are interesting developments, but it is important that their efficacy and effect are carefully monitored. I hope Ministers will give us the assurance tonight that it is in that spirit that they are brought forward in the Bill.