Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reflecting on the valuable and important work that SOCA does around the world. The international network will continue to be maintained. There may obviously be changes over time, depending on requirements and where the intelligence leads us, but it is intended that the international network, which is widely respected because it does such good work, will continue under the National Crime Agency.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I support the restructuring of the landscape of policing but I am a bit concerned about the budgets. When the head of the National Crime Agency gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee he said that the agency would have a budget of £400 million. As the Secretary of State knows, SOCA’s last budget was £400 million, and that of the National Policing Improvement Agency £392 million. The difference is £400 million. Where will the additional money from the merging of those two organisations end up?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that not all parts that were under the NPIA are going into the NCA. Other sections of the NPIA are effectively going into parts of other organisations—some will come to the Home Office; the College of Policing that we have set up will look at standards and training. It is not possible simply to take the two budgets, add them together and say, “Where is the money going?” The money for the National Crime Agency will come from the precursor agencies, but as for other bodies, we will obviously have to look carefully at its budget at a time when forces and others are having to take cuts.

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[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is essential that the victims are comfortable with going through the restorative justice process. The figures show that around 85% of victims who participate are satisfied with the response, but it is important that no victim should feel that restorative justice is being in any sense imposed on them. It must be something that they are willing to go through—he is indeed right about that. Restorative justice can also support rehabilitation by helping offenders to realise the consequences of their wrongdoing. This provision will help to put victims at the heart of justice.

At the same time, we are strengthening the ability of the Courts Service to exchange information with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions, so that the courts have the income and benefits data they need to set fines at a level that properly reflects the means of the offender and supports the enforcement of those fines. We are also making it clear that the courts can take account of an offender’s assets when determining the level of a fine, which will ensure that criminals who seek to disguise their wealth are made to pay their dues.

Finally, the provisions in part 2 will bring the judiciary into this century by ensuring that it reflects the communities it serves. Progress has been made in recent years, but it has been slow. Just over one in five judges in our courts are female, and the proportion of black and ethnic minority judges hovers at around just 5%. We need to do better, particularly at the upper echelons of the judiciary. The Bill therefore includes a number of provisions to encourage progress in this area, including provision for part-time and flexible working in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. At the same time, we are providing that where there are two candidates of equal merit, preference may be given to a candidate from an under-represented group.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way to me a second time. I warmly support what she is proposing. Some of us have been campaigning on the issue for a number of years. I think this will have an effect and will change the nature of the judiciary in this country. I hope, however, that one other issue will also be followed up. I see the Lord Chancellor sitting next to the Home Secretary, and I want to raise the issue of feedback. When in the past ethnic minority and women candidates have applied and been turned down, they have not received effective feedback on how to develop their career in the judiciary. It is not just about changing the law; it is about changing the practices of the Judicial Appointments Commission and the Ministry of Justice to make sure that people have this information.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman raises what I think is an important point, and I can assure him that the Lord Chancellor has heard what he said, and will reflect on those comments and look into that particular issue.

As we bring our courts into the 21st century, our laws must follow suit. Part 3 provides—

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[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has made some big promises about the Bill today. She has said that it will transform the fight against organised crime—indeed, to hear her speak one would think that there was no fight against organised crime before the Bill was drawn up—and that it would solve the problem of economic crime, transform punishment and rehabilitation, stop illegal immigration, and save money, all at the same time. One might think that this Bill alone would persuade all dangerous criminals to stop in their tracks and embark on a life of charity work.

You will forgive Labour Members, Mr Deputy Speaker, if we express a bit of scepticism about the claims that the Home Secretary has made—although we support many of the measures in the Bill—because we have heard such promises about her legislation from her before. When she stood before us to present one Home Office measure, she told us:

“With a strong democratic mandate from the ballot box, police and crime commissioners will hold their chief constable to account for cutting crime.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 708.]

That “strong democratic mandate” turned out to be 15% of the public voting and 3.6% voting Conservative. Introducing the terrorism prevention and investigation measures, she promised that

“public safety is enhanced, not diminished, by appropriate and proportionate powers.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 69.]

As a result of those measures, terror suspect Ibrahim Magag is now on the run, and unless the Home Secretary has any more information with which to update the House, we must assume that she, and we, still have no idea where he is. He was last seen getting into a black cab.

The Home Secretary told us:

“it’s clear… that we can improve the visibility and availability of the police to the public.”

She also said that

“lower budgets do not automatically have to mean lower police numbers”.

The result has been 15,000 fewer police officers, and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has concluded that the police are less visible and less available too. So we start with a certain caution about the promises that the Home Secretary has made. The Bill does not live up to the billing that she has given it. Even when the intentions are good, there are areas in which the detail does not stack up, and Labour Members believe that she is still missing an opportunity to change course on some of the wider policies that are making it harder for the police to keep the public safe.

Parts of the Bill are very valuable. We believe that more can and should be done to strengthen the fight against serious and organised crime, and that more can and should be done to introduce greater diversity into the judiciary. I welcome the points that the Home Secretary has made about that. We also support stronger action against drug-driving. People who drive dangerously, and even kill and maim, on our roads because they have taken illegal drugs and cannot control their cars should be caught and prosecuted. We also think it right for gang injunctions to be imposed by the youth courts; and it is certainly about time we did away with the offence of scandalising the judiciary. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) will comment on many of those justice issues when she responds to the debate.

Let me say a little more about the central reforms in the Bill. The central measure is intended to strengthen the Serious Organised Crime Agency and to rename it. In fact, the vast majority of the National Crime Agency’s work will be what SOCA does now. We agree that SOCA should be strengthened: it has done very important work, but given the changing patterns of national and international crime, it should have more powers and scope. The valuable work that it has done so far, which the Home Affairs Committee has looked at, includes achieving a conviction rate of more than 90%, and bringing to justice people involved in the organising of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, slavery and cybercrime. However, the police need to do more in certain key areas in which action by individual forces alone is not sufficient, including serious organised crime—which can cost up to £40 billion a year—and people trafficking. The number of international and cross-border crimes has been growing. Economic crimes cost an estimated £38 billion a year, and new offences such as cybercrime are becoming increasingly complex to handle.

[Keith Vaz]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the worrying things about SOCA, despite its success in many respects, was that it seized less than it cost overall? It is important not just to create organisations such as the National Crime Agency, but to benchmark them to ensure that they meet the expectations of the public and Parliament.

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Evidence given to his Home Affairs Committee by the new head of the National Crime Agency suggested that it did not necessarily expect to increase the amount that it seized, so we shall want to monitor its work closely. As my right hon. Friend says, it is likely that more action will be expected. We think that more can be done overall by all police forces, particularly in regard to matters such as the proceeds of crime and child exploitation. The recent Savile case shows quite how much needs to done throughout society to increase protection and prevention.

We agree that more action is needed in each of those areas, and the Bill provides an opportunity to ensure that more action is taken, but if we look at each area in turn it is not clear to us that the Home Secretary’s proposed measures will be sufficient. She has said, for example, that the National Crime Agency will be able to do more to deal with international crime, but in fact its hands will be tied. She wants to pull out of European co-operation on justice and home affairs. She is keen to opt out of the European arrest warrant, and wants to ditch the sharing of data with other European police officers on sex offenders who travel across borders. The arrest warrant has been used to bring back 39 people suspected of serious child sex offences, 65 people suspected of drug trafficking and money laundering, and 10 people suspected of human trafficking. Those are the very criminals whom the National Crime Agency is supposed to pursue.

It would be helpful if the Home Secretary, or the Minister who responds to the debate, told us how many of the police officers and crime experts who are currently working on international and cross-border crime support the plans to opt out of European co-operation, and how many of them think that the work of the National Crime Agency will be easier or harder if the Government opt out.

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[Mr Straw]

My point is this: the establishment of the police and crime commissioners is a matter of party controversy, and we will see whether they are embedded or whether there is some change. In any event there has been an increasing focus on giving local people greater say over local policing, and I strongly support that, but it means that national and international priorities—the threats that lead to quite a lot of local crime—could be marginalised. That is why there is a powerful case for a National Crime Agency and the kind of powers of direction that are inherent there. As I say, we have to go a stage further and accept that there will be two levels of policing—a national police service and the local police services—and ultimately the national police service, the National Crime Agency, will have the power to direct the local police services to ensure that national priorities are met.

On the reform of the courts, I welcome the unification of the county courts, which makes complete sense. I particularly warmly welcome the establishment of a single family court. That arises from the review of family justice under David Norgrove, which I established with support from the then Opposition. I am really pleased that, thanks not least to Mr Norgrove’s great acuity and sensitivity about the way in which the system needs to reformed and further changed, it looks as though the review will have important and beneficial consequences.

I changed the law on self-defence back in 2008. I understand why the Justice Secretary was faced with a blank in his proposed speech to party conference and thought he needed to say something on this issue. I doubt very much whether it will make any difference at all, because the practice and the law have already changed satisfactorily, but I certainly will not oppose the measure and I do not think my right hon. Friends will either.

The next issue is the right of appeal on applications for visitor visas. I ask the Minister and his colleagues to look again at the arguments that have been advanced to them by Home Office officials. No one—I say this without any levity at all—has greater affection for Home Office officials than do I. I went to great lengths in my memoirs—available in all good bookshops—to defend and to celebrate officialdom, not least in the Home Office. I never sought to blame officials when it is Ministers who set policy and implement it. However, the truth is—I may give away a secret, but too bad—that it is inconvenient for there to be a right of appeal in visitor cases. There was a lot of resistance to it when I introduced the right of appeal in 1998, and I can disclose that throughout the rest of my ministerial career, about once every two years there was a proposal from other Ministers, once I had left the Home Office, to abolish the right of visitor appeal. I blocked it, whatever position I was in. That is why it survived.

[Keith Vaz]

Another secret missing from my right hon. Friend’s memoirs is the fact that when I was entry clearance Minister he was one of my biggest customers. The important point about that is that the element of discretion—the need to look again at the decision—is absolutely vital, whether it is a Minister saying that they will overturn the decision or whether it goes to appeal. With the reluctance of immigration Ministers to exercise discretion, it is vital that people get the chance to look again.

[Mr Straw]

My book is being reprinted, I am pleased to say, but when there is a revised edition I will add that. The truth is that—

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara). He has obviously campaigned hard on that issue and I commend him for his efforts. I am glad that the measure will be contained in this legislation.

Earlier today, the Home Affairs Committee held a conference to launch our new inquiry into leadership and standards in the police. I am pleased to see three members of the Committee here this evening: my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). We listened carefully to some of the leaders of our police service, including Hugh Orde, Bernard Hogan-Howe and the new chief executive of the college of policing, as well as leaders from abroad, such as the commissioner who heads the Royal Canadian mounted police and the former president of Interpol. It is clear that in order to get effective leadership, there must be effective structures. I am therefore glad that, with the creation of the National Crime Agency, we at last have a body for the head of the NCA, who was appointed 15 months ago.

At that conference, it was interesting to hear the acceptance from all sides of the police service of the need for the Government, the Opposition and those in the police service to sit together and talk about the future of policing. With the Bill, we have an opportunity to streamline a number of the structures that have operated in policing for a number of years. The Labour Government can be praised for the resources that they gave the police, but we would be the first to admit that we did not really spend the necessary time examining the structures and ensuring they were fit for purpose.

What the Government have proposed is a revolution in policing—the abolition of SOCA and the National Policing Improvement Agency, the creation of the College of Policing and police and crime commissioners, and the abolition of police authorities. When on taking office the Home Secretary announced the changes, she talked about uncluttering the landscape. We will probably have more organisations rather than fewer at the end of the process, but I would be the first to accept them if they were fit for purpose, acted upon Parliament wanted and did the job effectively.

My first concern about the new landscape is that it is not complete. We thought that by now we would have a Constable—perhaps “Dedham Vale”—but instead we have the tail-end of a “Guernica”. The good intentions are there, but it is not complete. I thought that after two years, we would have the end of the landscape and the jigsaw would have been completed, but it has not. I urge Ministers to come rapidly to a conclusion about how the landscape will look in the end. The Home Affairs Committee, including its members who are in their places, has scrutinised and monitored what the Government have been doing, but we cannot decide on the structures. That has to be up to the Government. All that the House and the Committee can do is scrutinise and monitor what the Government are doing and give our recommendations on whether the system will work.

We need a conclusion on whether responsibility for counter-terrorism will remain with the Met or form part of the National Crime Agency. Why? Because we were promised a review of that at the end of the Olympics. The Home Secretary specifically said that she would not make a decision until the Olympics were over. I urge the Government to make progress, because it is not in the Met’s interests, and certainly not in the interests of Keith Bristow and his new colleagues at the NCA, that they should delay.

Like the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), I would probably be minded to move responsibility for counter-terrorism into the NCA. It would fit well there, as the NCA will be a national organisation dealing with national and international issues. However, I know that there is resistance to that from the Met. I have discussed it with a number of officers, who feel strongly that responsibility should stay with the Met, because it has within it the expertise needed to deal with the matter.

It is also important that we know the name of the new chair of the College of Policing. Perhaps the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice will tell us that. It has a chief executive, and we heard from him today. He has ambitious plans for what he hopes will eventually be a royal college of policing. Professionalism is vital to the future of our police service, but it is also important that the Government get on and appoint the chair. I know that someone was recently nominated, but that person has not been appointed, for a variety of reasons. If there is a shortlist of additional candidates, I urge the Minister to interview them, as I think he will be doing this week, and then let the Home Affairs Committee have the name of whoever is going to be in charge of the organisation, which is vital for the future of this country’s police service.

It is also important that we deal with the issue of appeals. I do not know whether the Minister will remember this, but when he was Minister for Immigration, he promised in a debate in the House a meeting with myself and colleagues who had an interest in immigration. Actually, I think I put it to the Home Secretary that she should meet us, but she passed it on to him. He, of course, has now left the post, and I hope he will pass the message on to the current Minister for Immigration.

Those of us who deal with a lot of immigration cases want the issue of appeals dealt with. That is not just Opposition Members—I see the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) in his place, and I reckon that he has many immigration cases at his surgery on a Friday evening. The last thing he wants is for us to be in limbo, having to ask people to apply again because there is no right of appeal for family visitors.

I put to Ministers a simple solution. I know that things have to change. I do not accept that there is abuse in the system, but it is a lengthy system and I know that they want to save money. I and others have suggested in the past that we have an administrative review of the decisions made by entry clearance officers. New evidence necessary to ensure that a case can be dealt with satisfactorily could go to somebody in a hub in London—it is quite possible for cases to be reviewed in London. I say to Ministers that the change will affect the settled British community, the diasporas that the Prime Minister and other Ministers feel strongly about bringing on-side. Unless we do something about the problem, British citizens trying to get relatives over for weddings and other family events will suffer.

[Dr Huppert]

It is always a pleasure to speak to the right hon. Gentleman about these issues. There is a problem when more information is required in a case, and I understand the Government’s advice that people should reapply. Would not an alternative approach be for entry clearance officers to be able to specify what extra information they would like and make a decision once they have received it? I have seen a number of cases in which they asked to see specific documents part-way through the process.

[Keith Vaz]

I agree, and my biggest regret from when I was the Minister responsible for entry clearance 10 years ago is that I did not introduce that approach. I left it to the system, and I was wrong to do so. If we had a system that allowed new information to be accepted, we would be able to save the taxpayer a huge amount of money and save those who are seeking to bring people into this country a lot of anguish.

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

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if the motivation for the change is financial, another option may be to increase the fee payable for appeals? I understand that would put some people off and might significantly reduce the number of appeals, but the possibility of entry clearance officers’ decisions being reviewed by a judge might help to ensure that decisions are made better than if the right of appeal is removed.

[Keith Vaz]

That is an option. I would not be enthusiastic about putting up fees, but people do not mind paying fees if they get results and cases are dealt with quickly. If that can be guaranteed, it is certainly an option. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention and that of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) have shown us that it is quite possible to put forward alternative measures to abolishing the right of appeal. I hope that the Government will consider them.

I wish to say a couple of things about the parts of the Bill that I welcome. One is the establishment of the forum bar, which the Home Affairs Committee recommended when we examined extradition. Following the whole Gary McKinnon saga and the marvellous work of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who campaigned so passionately for his constituent, we put forward the idea of the forum bar, and now it will legislated for. We are delighted about that.

I am less delighted by the Home Secretary’s wish to give all the rest of her extradition powers to High Court judges. If we have Ministers, we should allow them to make decisions. I am not sure why people wait so long for ministerial office, then get there and want to hand all their powers over to judges. I actually think it is a good idea that Members of Parliament and others should be able to make representations to Ministers if there are exceptional cases. That will not be the norm—Gary McKinnon and Richard O’Dwyer’s cases were not the norm. They were exceptional cases that got to the Home Secretary’s attention only because of the work of people such as Janis Sharp, Gary McKinnon’s mother; the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate; and Richard O’Dwyer and his mother Julia. They were able to bring those cases to Parliament’s attention, and we should ensure that Ministers keep those powers rather than give them away.

I have been watching how the hon. Member for Croydon Central has pursued the campaign concerning drug offences when people are driving. Given the circumstances of his constituent, it must be a great relief to him and his faith in parliamentary democracy that a case he has raised so frequently in meetings with Ministers over the past year or so has ended in the fruition of a clause in a Bill that will change the law. What satisfaction it must give him as a constituency MP to know that he, along with other Members, has been a part of changing the law. I welcome what the Government are doing, and they are quite right to ensure that that change takes place.

I was never a great fan of the Judicial Appointments Commission introduced by the previous Government. Perhaps because both Lord Chancellors under whom I served—the noble Lord Irvine and the noble Lord Falconer—were, in my view, exceptional people, I thought that they could make better decisions about the diversity of the judiciary than a quango. I was right: they would have made better decisions and the judiciary would today have been quite different. I welcome what the Government are doing; it is a message to those who make such decisions that the judiciary needs to look not as Parliament did when I was first elected but as how it is today—Parliament looks like the country and so must the judiciary. Obviously, people must pass the merit test. Nobody wants jobs given away because someone happens to like the person sitting in front of them, or because they are a particular gender or race. Jobs are given to people who are qualified and able to do them effectively.

I will end with a comment made earlier today by Lord Wasserman, the Government adviser on some of the policing reforms. As the House knows, the Home Affairs Committee has been trying to get Lord Wasserman to appear before it, and he came before the Committee today as part of our international conference. He spoke most eloquently and I was quite taken by his comments. He suggested that the Government look at how police and crime commissioners have operated, and that the Committee hold an inquiry into that at the end of the year—obviously, the Committee will decide whether it wants to do that. The Minister has escaped; he has got political asylum from immigration and gone to policing. He survived the little problem of a few years ago, when I understand from The Sunday Times he ended up in the Cherwell. I did not see the Attorney-General in the Chamber making up with him; he was here earlier, but he is not present at the moment.

The Minister has one of the most exciting jobs in government: the chance to finish off the new landscape of policing. I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) enjoyed being policing Minister, but the way to really enjoy the job is to ensure the jigsaw is completed and that we get a police service that fits the structure. We have the best police service in the world. Let us ensure that the organisations that are there to serve it really work.