Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

On co-location, there are a number of places in our current system where men and women, or indeed different age groups, are located near each other without being mixed together. I expect the secure college to have a range of age groups, but for them to be separated so that 12-year-olds are not mixed with 17-year-olds. Living on the same site, using the same facilities at different times, and maximising the effectiveness of the resource we put into creating those facilities must be a sensible way forward. If the secure college model works, I do not rule out having women’s units on site as well, but that does not mean we mix them. At Peterborough prison, a women’s prison and a male prison adjoin and share many of the same facilities, although the two sides do not mix. It is about making the best use of our resources to deliver the highest quality educational skills outcomes to a group of young people who will not get on in life unless we help them develop those skills. That is the whole purpose of what we are trying to do.

This is a different kind of institution. A few people are saying, “This is just the biggest children’s prison in Europe”, but that is complete nonsense. This is much more akin to a school or college with a fence around it on a site that can deliver quality education and a mix of skills development, in a way that will genuinely help take young people—while we have them under our control—through a period of skill building of the kind they desperately need. That will be a whole lot better than having young offenders institutions with big iron bars and 12 hours in the classroom. This is a new approach that I think can make a real difference.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I apologise to the Lord Chancellor for missing the first part of his speech. I welcome his approach and it is important to provide more education within a secure setting. I have raised with him in the past the concerns that I and the Home Affairs Committee have had about the number of young people who acquire the drug habit while in prison or at a young offenders institution. Does he intend to ensure that there will be lessons to get people off drugs when they attend the institutions he has described? That would be a positive step to stop reoffending.

[Chris Grayling]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we already make intense efforts across our detention estate—for young people and others alike—to try to get people off drugs and prevent them from coming into those facilities. He will also know that it is a constant battle because there are people out there making a determined effort to get those drugs in. This is not a problem that simply affects this country; it exists in most other major industrialised nations and elsewhere. We will continue to do everything we can to combat it, and in this institution I want to see treatment available for those who have a problem, but also a real effort to ensure a drug-free environment.

Part 3 introduces a suite of provisions to reduce the burden of court costs on taxpayers by making criminals pay towards the cost of their court cases, streamlining the way magistrates deal with low-level offences and modernising the law on the work of juries. As we work to bring down the costs of the justice system and deliver better value for money, I am clear that it is not fair to continue to ask UK taxpayers to fund a criminal court system, or to ask law-abiding members of the public to pay increased fees in the civil courts, without offenders being expected to make a greater contribution. The provisions will allow us to recover from offenders the cost of criminal courts and make a contribution to the day-to-day running of court services. This is not a novel concept: courts can already order offenders to make payments to victims and victim services, and to pay fines and prosecution costs. There is currently no power, however, to make offenders pay directly towards the cost of the court proceedings that convict them.

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[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Lady certainly did bring cases against the previous Government, but the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and I discovered to our surprise when we went into that Department in 2010 that the practice of the previous Government was to guarantee to pay the costs of the pressure group from day one. We got a call from one pressure group saying, “We are going to bring a judicial review. Can we assume that the usual arrangements will apply and you will pay the costs?”, to which the answer was, “Well, actually, no.” It was a strange way for the previous Government to do business.

As I said, protective costs orders will still be available for cases of genuine public interest, but my fear is, and my experience has been all too often, that cases are brought for public relations and campaigning reasons in a way that leaves the taxpayer guaranteed to pick up the bill. I do not think that is fair on the taxpayer.

[Keith Vaz]

The Government have taken away the right of appeal in a number of immigration cases, and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is sitting by the Justice Secretary’s side, was very vocal in the campaign against the abolition of the right of appeal in immigration cases. There has been a huge increase in the number of judicial reviews in immigration cases. Is it fair that we should cut off every single judicial route, enabling people to have nowhere to go if they want to challenge decisions?

[Chris Grayling]

We assess carefully each immigration case that comes before the Border Agency and there is then the opportunity to challenge in the courts, but just how many times are we going to give people the right to appeal? There have been many cases, and indeed occasions when our judges have said, “This is not good enough”, where the case has simply been brought as a delaying tactic to stop people being asked to leave the UK—that is in nobody’s interest.

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[Sadiq Khan]

If we did a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who were saved the misery of being the victims of crime as crime went down by 43%, and of the additional cost of having extra police officers, which led to a record decrease in crime, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that there was value for money.

[Keith Vaz]

As my right hon. Friend knows, there is a large number of foreign national prisoners in the prison estate, costing the taxpayer, as he says, an enormous amount of money. What we need is not legislation but a focus on trying to get them removed to their country of origin. Making sure that that is done would be a better use of the Government’s time than building more prisons.

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[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. Having been a Minister in both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, I recognise that Ministers face the challenge of having an imperative to ensure public safety, and an imperative to drive value for money and ensure that contracts are written in such a way as to provide best value for the taxpayer. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity to decentralise and to be more open about the potential use of technology to innovate in the justice system.

The second lesson about the use of electronic tagging in criminal justice and the provision very sensibly set out in the Bill is that technology is not necessarily our enemy or the enemy of justice. In debates in this place and outside, technological advance is too often seen as some kind of enemy of justice and of the public. In fact, the advent of technology has been responsible for incredibly important strides in the delivery of a justice system that works for the public.

The same debates apply to electronic monitoring as apply to the use of CCTV, the development of the DNA database or other things raising civil liberties questions that must be addressed. For instance, how far is it appropriate to go in restricting the civil liberties of those to whom such sentences are handed down, even though they are convicted criminals? We must remember that they have been convicted, and that the alternative is a custodial sentence or, if they are not to be released, a continuing term in custody. Far from posing any kind of threat to civil liberties, such technology presents a real opportunity to protect the public. We should sometimes accept that the use of technology in the criminal justice system can be the public’s friend and can help to ensure that the interests of justice are served.

[Keith Vaz]

I agree about the use of technology, but, as the saga of G4S and Serco has demonstrated, in handing over contracts to private sector companies, sometimes we trust them too much. Those companies were overbilling the Government. We have to monitor such contracts, ensure that there are benchmarks and be very careful when we hand over public money.

[Nick Herbert]

As ever, I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is an issue of accountability. We must ensure that contracts are written properly. The behaviour of some companies has been appalling and they should be held to account. There were also problems with the earlier trials of satellite tracking technology and there have been problems with use of simpler electronic monitoring. However, the technology can be made to work effectively and those who deliver the contracts can be held properly to account.

The potential benefits to public safety and, as we have heard, to criminals, who may find that they are no longer constantly approached by the police as a suspect in other investigations because it can quickly be established that they were nowhere near the scene of the crime, are too great to dismiss. We have an opportunity to introduce curfewing and semi-custodial sentences into our criminal justice system in a way that was not possible before. We can make the effective supervision of offenders outside a custodial environment a reality and we should embrace that.

I welcome the changes that the Justice Secretary is proposing to out-of-court disposals in the Bill. Many Government Members and observers of the criminal justice system have long been concerned that the growth of out-of-court disposals has led to problems. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary produced an important report on this matter a number of years ago, in which it identified the repeated use of certain out-of-court disposals and their inappropriate use for serious offences as a cause for concern. I commend the Justice Secretary for acting on that and making sensible changes to simple cautions in the Bill to ensure that they are not used inappropriately. Again, we can debate the nature of the proposals, but the direction of travel is exactly right.

The growth of administrative justice—for that is what it is—has a place. The previous Government described it as a programme of summary justice, but it is a programme of administrative justice whereby, without recourse to any kind of court, disposals are handed out on the spot. Although it has a place, we must ensure that it does not get out of hand.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) mentioned, the use of administrative disposals peaked in 2007, driven by the unwise target to bring offences to justice. There was a famous case close to my constituency in which a police officer found a corpse hanging from a tree. In the pocket of the corpse was a penknife. The police officer attempted to record the offence of possession of an offensive weapon. It was very unlikely that the corpse would have used the knife in a dangerous manner. That was due to the target culture that drove the growth of administrative disposals. That culture has fallen away, but the proportion of disposals that are out-of-court disposals is still twice as high as it was a decade ago. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is important that such disposals are used appropriately.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) who served as a distinguished Minister in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. It is still a puzzle to me why he is not in the Government, because I know they could use his considerable skills. He obviously enjoys being on the Back Benches more, even though we miss his appearances before the Home Affairs Committee.

I was fascinated by the exchange between the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), but the House did not get to know what happened at the end of those discussions, and whether Hexham magistrates court is still open. Did the hon. Member for Hexham win his battle? He is my next-door neighbour in Norman Shaw North, and I need to know whether he wins such battles with the Government.

[Guy Opperman]

Despite 20 years of advocacy and despite what I felt was a very strong case, my youthful appearance in this House, and a vigorous campaign, the fact that the magistracy was not able to survive in the rural town of Hexham for the first time in 500 years was sadly a fact in the end. To be fair, the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that the system is working relatively well with an urban core, but the Ministry of Justice—which is, of course, not at all a bureaucratic or difficult organisation to get control of—should be aware that although it is working, we do need a rural element in the magistracy going forward.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that long explanation. I am surprised that he lost the battle, but I know he will continue with it.

When I was the sole Justice Minister in the Ministry of Justice—then the Lord Chancellor’s Department—I felt that the work load was quite high. We now have four Commons Ministers representing the Ministry of Justice, and of course it has taken on new responsibilities. I congratulate the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) on his appointment. I think this is his first Second Reading debate; I do not know whether he will be winding up—

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)]

indicated dissent.

[Keith Vaz]

Then I admire his patience in sitting through the entire debate and I wish him well in his ministerial career. I am not sure whether, had he got to the Ministry of Justice before the Bill was signed off, he might have opposed some of these points.

I will start by raising a few concerns. I agree with the shadow Lord Chancellor that there are some good parts of the Bill, and I hope that we can make it better between now and it becoming law, should the House decide to support it. I have about five points to make, the first of which concerns judicial review. The previous Labour Government were embarrassed on a number of occasions when they lost judicial review challenges, and I believe it is extremely important that that remains an avenue of choice for those who feel that the justice system does not provide them with the kinds of solutions they need to their problems.

In particular, I am thinking about those who face difficult immigration cases, who have seen the right of appeal taken from them—not by the Ministry of Justice but by the Home Office—and who now face only the prospect of applications for judicial review to bring their cases to the attention of those who make such decisions. I agree that there are many frivolous cases, and many people go forward and make judicial review applications, sometimes for the sheer hell of it. It is right that citizens should use this power carefully, but once we take away the right of appeal in immigration cases, we leave people with no choice other than to apply for judicial review. That is why we have seen an increase in judicial review over the past few years.

[David T. C. Davies]

Have the Government had to consider this matter because with the encouragement of various—dare I say it?—left-wing non-governmental organisations, people who clearly had no right whatsoever to be in this country were able to put in one appeal after another and be legally funded all the way through? Is it not about time the taxpayer had a bit of representation as well?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman served on the Home Affairs Committee and therefore knows how the Home Office deals with such cases. If we were satisfied that decision making was robust and that entry clearance officers and those who reviewed their decisions always made the right decision, we would not need a right of appeal. As he knows, however, having sat through the Committee’s deliberations, 50% of appeals on immigration cases are won by the applicant. That does not mean that judges are cleverer than entry clearance officers, but it does mean that decisions have not been looked at carefully enough. If we take away that right of appeal, all people will have is the ability to challenge in the courts. Of course I do not believe it right for people to play the system and have multiple appeals, but if we take away the last vestige by which they can challenge decisions, we will leave them with absolutely no choice.

As I said, the previous Government suffered because they tried to stop citizens marrying foreign citizens in our courts. They were taken to court and judicially reviewed, and the court said, “You cannot do this”. Spouses had to go back and make applications, but the previous Government—as successive Governments have done—lost a number of such applications. I think we should look carefully at this issue. On its own it may not seem like a bad idea, but if we take away the right of appeal in immigration cases, as section 11 of the Immigration Bill does, that will create a number of problems. After all, 32% of deportation decisions and 49% of entry clearance applications were successfully appealed last year. We must look carefully at the issue.

[Guy Opperman]

I served on the Immigration Public Bill Committee and the overwhelming view was that, yes, the Home Office needs to get better—with respect, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, it is getting better at reviewing under the appellant procedures—but the fundamental point is that it cannot be right for there to be in excess of a dozen, and potentially up to 15 or 16, separate rights of appeal. The state, in the form of the Home Office and the Government, is right to review the number of times an appellant can go through the appellant process.

[Keith Vaz]

I have no objection to that. I agree with the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) that we do not want multiple applications, but we should at least give people the chance of one application. It is not the case that they get legal aid right the way through. Many of my constituents come to me wanting to go to judicial review. I tell them that their best course of action is to leave the country and make an application from abroad. They will go through a better system and obtain a quicker result than they would by constantly staying here and going through the courts again and again.

[Guy Opperman]

With great respect, the implication of the last comment is that there is no right of appeal whatever in an immigration case. I am sure that that is not what the right hon. Gentleman meant to say.

[Keith Vaz]

The right of appeal will be taken away by clause 11 of the Immigration Bill. An application can, of course, be made in certain circumstances, but my understanding is that that Bill will reduce dramatically the occasions on which the Government can be judicially reviewed. We heard that from the Lord Chancellor earlier. He was quite delighted and thought it was a very good idea. I prefer that these decisions are taken by judges rather than by civil servants.

The hon. Gentleman has been a Parliamentary Private Secretary for the past four years, so of course he welcomes the improvements made by the Government. That period is too long and he too should be serving in the Government and I hope I have not damned his career by saying that. He has spent enough time dealing with civil servants. If he thought they were the most perfect creatures on this earth, we might as well hand over everything to them, let the officials decide and not give people the right to go to court. All I say is this: let us be cautious. The Government should look at this in the round and be sure that people have some avenues left to challenge decisions.

On new technology, I agree with the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, the former Home Office Minister. When he was in the Home Office, he led the campaign for new technology. He is a Twitter person. On one occasion, he tweeted to ask me to go to the airport to meet him, as I had done with other members of the Select Committee—I agreed to do so, but he would not tell me his flight number—so I know that he likes new technology. The fact is that we need to be careful about allowing Ministers and officials to make decisions on new technology that they do not understand. He will remember the e-Borders project, which has so far cost the taxpayer £750 million. It was agreed without benchmarks and the litigation is still going on—it is still costing the taxpayer huge amounts of money. We should have new technology and we should pursue this programme, but we need to be very careful and very cautious not to hand everything over to those who come to us and say that they know everything. That is what happened under the previous Government in relation to G4S and Serco, and that has continued under this Government. As we now know, G4S overcharged the Government by £24.1 million. We will need a more extensive use of tagging, but if the tagging companies are not monitored, the contracts will not be properly dealt with and properly monitored. I hope that, in making better use of technology, we ensure that we have the accountability that the right hon. Gentleman and I have been talking about.

On the creation of a secure college, my worry is that we need to be very clear on what powers those who run the college will have. It sounds like a very good idea and we want to make sure that people spend more time in training. However, of the 16 deaths of children in custody since 2000, all occurred in youth offenders institutions and secure training centres. We need to learn the lessons of the deaths of those young people before we set up new institutions that are not capable of proper scrutiny. The Bill will allow a secure college custody officer to use reasonable force to ensure good order and discipline. It is important that we look at training and do not have any unfortunate incidents that result in the death or injury to young people in custody.

Drugs are a big problem, as we have discovered in Home Affairs Committee inquiries. Many young offenders acquire a drug habit when they are in institutions. I will give another plug to the book, which I have on my desk, by the hon. Member for Hexham. I am sure that all Ministers in the Ministry of Justice have read it. I am sure that the new Minister will have had in his briefing a copy of the book on rehabilitation written by the hon. Member for Hexham. If he has not read it, I will make sure that he gets a copy, because the hon. Gentleman is my next-door neighbour. There is very sensible stuff in the book, including the fact that people pick up the habit of taking drugs when they are in prison. That is why we believe there should be mandatory testing.

[Guy Opperman]

rose—

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[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is going to tell us which bookshops his book is available in.

[Guy Opperman]

The book, “Doing Time” is actually still available. Amazingly, there are a few copies left. I hasten to add, Madam Deputy Speaker, that all proceeds go to charity.

The serious point is this: the right hon. Gentleman, who served in the previous Government with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), will recall that in 2008, when he was the police and justice Minister, he was asked a specific question. I cannot, off the top of my head, quote Hansard, but he indicated that evidence from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice showed that 20% of all people who took drugs in prison acquired the habit for the first time in prison.

[Keith Vaz]

That is a stunning figure, one that has probably remained the same, or even increased, in the past few years. That is why we suggest there should be mandatory testing in prison and after people leave prison. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) does not like that idea. Whenever I raise it at Justice questions, he is never enthusiastic about it and thinks his system is better, but such testing would be a good thing.

I hope the new secure college will run sufficient courses. We will not write the curriculum right now, but let us ensure that as well as providing the basic education for young people that they so desperately need—another theme in the book by the hon. Member for Hexham—we teach them the dangers of drugs and try to get them off drugs.

I am a little concerned about the punitive elements in paragraph 2 of schedule 15, amending the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The figures show that 72% of male and 70% female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more related mental health disorders. It may not be appropriate for them to be punished in a similar way to others. We must try to identify those who have a mental illness and end up in the criminal justice system and remain in it for years. In September, the Select Committee will undertake an inquiry into how the police deal—I say to the Chair of the Justice Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), that we are not treading on his toes—with offenders with mental health disorders and see how that feeds into the rest of the criminal justice system. The figures are very worrying. We want to be tough and to punish people, but we need to remember that there are reasons why we perhaps should not send people to prison.

The Director of Public Prosecutions announced this morning that she would deploy six specialist lawyers abroad—in Dubai and in one or two other places—in an attempt to seize more assets from criminals linked to British cases. I welcome that announcement, because I think that we need to strengthen the way in which we investigate and then charge those who move their assets abroad. According to the National Audit Office, 80% of the £920 million owed by convicted millionaire criminals is yet to be repaid. My mathematics is not perfect, but I think that 80% of £920 million is nearly £850 million. Is that right, Madam Deputy Speaker? You seem to think that it is about right; you have probably been helping your son with his maths. Anyway, it is a huge amount of money.

We try to challenge the Mr Bigs, and the Mrs Bigs. They go through the criminal justice system, we fine them huge amounts of money, and then we find that about £150 million less than £1 billion has still not been collected. The Bill does not deal with that situation. I hope that, if it believes in joined-up government, the Ministry of Justice will look carefully at the DPP’s statement, and that amendments will be tabled in Committee to ensure that when judges fine billionaires and multi-millionaires, those people pay up. At present they simply go through the system, come out of prison and then disappear, and we suffer because our justice system has allowed them to get away with it.

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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.