Prisons and Courts Bill

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Lord Garnier

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I do not have an argument with that at all. The argument for making our prisons work for the public as a whole, for the victims of crime and for prisoners is not just moral and political, but economic. We push hundreds of millions of pounds into the criminal justice and prison systems, and what do we do with that investment? We produce failure. If the prison system was a business or a factory, and if I, as the managing director of that business or factory, pushed millions and millions of pounds into the process, but the things that I produced broke or failed 65% of the time, I would get the sack or my investors would go elsewhere. That is the economic argument. It happens to be bolstered by a moral argument and a political argument that we need to do better on prisons, but I do not resile from the fact that the money that we spend on prisons is not well spent, because it does not produce a lower rate of reoffending, or teach people to read and write so that they can get jobs.

Some 95% or 98% of the 85,000 people currently in prison will come out. I have sat as a judge for 20-odd years. I have put plenty of people into prison for perfectly good reasons, but if they come out of prison still addicted to drugs, still mentally ill, still unable to read or write and still incapable of getting a job, and if they then reoffend because they have no other ambition but to do what they have always done, which is to commit crime, what I am sensibly doing with the public’s money? Not much. It seems to me that there should be a perfectly straightforward economic consensus. Forget whether I am a lily-livered liberal—[Interruption.] Of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I belong to the same political party and, although he is rather more expert than me, we both take an interest in racing.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend is making an important point, but to achieve a compromise between him and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), does he accept that if we were more successful at rehabilitating low-level offenders—I think that my right hon. and learned Friend is correct about that—it would leave more space for us to lock up more serious offenders for longer, thereby satisfying the public’s need for more severe sentences for very violent and serious crime?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I have sent plenty of people to prison, some of them for very long periods of time. I wish that we were able to make sure that those who do not need to go to prison, or who need to be sent to another place, such as a mental hospital, could be dealt with in a more sensible, productive, efficient and effective way. The argument is not about whether criminals are good people and whether we should love them dearly and hug hoodies; it is about doing what is best for all of us and ensuring that the money raised through taxes—the money spent on the health service and education—is properly devoted and directed towards getting these people better so that they do not do it again. Most people who have their house burgled want to ensure that the person responsible is caught, stopped and dealt with but, secondly, they want to be sure that that person does not do it again. If all we do is feed the conveyer belt, we achieve nothing but a waste of money.

The crux of the problem that we face with prisons—it is not a new problem—is overcrowding. I wrote a paper called “Prisons with a Purpose,” having visited 65 of the 140 or so prisons, young offenders institutions and secure training units when I was shadow Minister for prisons between 2005 and 2009. It was abundantly clear then, as I suspect it is now, that our prison estate was woefully overcrowded. We cannot sensibly rehabilitate or reform prisoners, adequately protect the public, prepare prisoners for life outside and maintain a safe and secure environment within our prisons unless we deal with the problems of overcrowding. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), the Minister for prisons, are fully aware of that. They have been inside prisons and know what is going on, and they have to deal with the arithmetic of how to spend the money in the most sensible way, subject to the demands of the Treasury.

The task of the Secretary of State and the Minister is a difficult one. The aims that the Secretary of State has written into the Bill are good, but in six months or a year—or a suitable time period after the Bill has been enacted—I do not simply want a report from the Secretary of State or the chief inspector of prisons, welcome though such reports are; I want real, practical advances. It is one thing to write things in the Bill; it is quite another to ensure that they happen.

Most centrally, we must address the hideous problem of overcrowding because with overcrowding we get churn. A person who is sentenced to prison at Canterbury Crown court is sent that night to Canterbury prison.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Lord Garnier

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

What an honour it is to be called before all these august Members!

In respect of amendments 11, 12, 13 and 10, I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) on manfully—or indeed womanfully—arguing what seems to be a lost cause; Conservative Members eloquently made the case that the proposals are nonsense.

Fundamentally, the hon. Gentleman is saying through his amendments that he does not trust a chief police officer to get right the architecture around volunteers used in their organisation. He is saying that a chief constable cannot be trusted to organise and train volunteers correctly—but if they cannot be trusted to do that relatively simple task, how can they be trusted to handle some of the risks that they face on a daily basis, even with their warranted force? As he considers these matters over the next couple of hours, I urge him to think about withdrawing his amendments and simply to vote against the Government’s amendments if he believes that to be right. His would be Heath Robinson legislation, as I said, and the House has a duty to keep things simple.

I am extremely supportive of new clause 1. As the hon. Gentleman said, the proliferation of knives, particularly these unpleasant zombie knives, has caused a huge problem, particularly in urban areas and especially in London. We have seen some tragic cases over the last two or three years. A while ago, as people will remember, there was some alarm about air rifles and air-powered weapons; as a result, the legislation on purchasing air rifles was changed so that they could not be bought other than face to face. Now, when someone buys an air rifle online, it has to be delivered by the firearms dealer, who has to verify, face to face on the doorstep, that the person is who they say they are and of the correct age, and that the weapon can be sold to them lawfully. Alternatively, there is a mutual network of firearms dealers operating in such a way that someone can buy from one and pick up from another, who will verify that person’s identity and age.

I am 6 feet 2 inches—nearly—and quite a big chap. I am much more frightened of zombie knives than of air rifles, so I urge the Government to look carefully at new clause 1. It would be a valuable addition to our armoury as we try to keep these weapons out of the hands of people who should not have them. Having said that, I do not think it would be a silver bullet—not much we do in the House is; many of these knives are bought on the dark web, where things are a little more amorphous, identities more difficult to find and things are often posted illegally. Many firearms are bought on the dark web and sent to the UK through the normal post, but the police are becoming quite sophisticated at picking them up, and the same could be true of knives. I therefore urge the Government to adopt the new clause.

I am similarly supportive of new clause 19, on flares at public events. They are not allowed at football matches any more, but elsewhere they often cause injury and terror—people, particularly children, are frightened of them—so it would be sensible to outlaw their use in those circumstances.

Finally, I will speak briefly—we are pressed for time—to new clause 17, which stands in my name. This is a probing amendment, as they say, and I have no intention, at this stage, of putting it to a vote, but I will give Members the back story because it might well appear in the other place.

Members might remember that three or four years ago City Hall ran a big campaign to get a disposal on to the books called “compulsory sobriety”, which manifested itself as alcohol abstinence monitoring orders made against people who have committed a crime where alcohol was a contributory factor. Essentially, an offender, rather than going to prison, which would mean losing their job and contact with their family, is sentenced to wear an alcohol-testing tag or bracelet that, for three, four or six months, tests their skin every 30 seconds to make sure they are not drinking. If they drink and the tag detects it, a signal is sent, the police apprehend them and they go back into the criminal justice system and might well get a custodial sentence. Effectively, the offender is in charge of their own custody.

These orders have been hugely successful in the United States. In South Dakota, where they started, there has been massive compliance and a drop in the number of people arrested for drink-driving and dying on the roads. I learned this morning that there has also been an increase in life span because there is less drinking. South Dakota is a big, flat state; there is not much to do except drink a lot and beat each other up, as in parts of this country. That was happening an awful lot, until these orders were introduced by the now famous prosecutor, Larry Long. They have changed the alcohol environment there entirely.

We managed to get the orders on the statute book here, and a pilot in Croydon over the last couple of years has resulted in a 93% compliance rate among offenders fitted with a tag and an extremely good reoffending rate—once someone has had three to six months off the booze, they do not tend to go back but instead learn the error of their ways. However, there is one aspect of the scheme in the states that we did not adopt but which they think is critical to its success: the ability to charge offenders for their own testing.

In the United States, when somebody is put on this disposal and they go to be tested, more often than not they appear twice a day at the police station, blow into a breathalyser and pay a buck, or a dollar, a test. Effectively, that is money that they would otherwise have spent on booze. From the point of view of the criminal justice system, that makes the scheme self-financing.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I can see that my hon. Friend is on to a good thing here. As someone who has not sentenced anyone to this type of order but has sentenced people to the drug testing orders under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, I would like to ask whether this should be a compulsory requirement. Is it that the police “must” or “may” charge? If it is the former, I think my hon. Friend will find that many people who fall into this sentencing remit will be so chaotic, at least to start with, that they will not have the finances to be able to reimburse the state for the charge.

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a valid point. However, these people are somehow financing an alcohol habit, so they are paying for alcohol. I think my right hon. and learned Friend would be surprised at the demographic of offenders. In the US, this was more often used for repeat drink-driving than anything else. In this country, repeat drink-driving is predominantly a crime of white, middle-aged, professional men; it is they who get done most for this offence. One hopes that they would indeed be able to afford to pay the cost.

My right hon. and learned Friend is, however, right that the proposal is that the police “may” charge. They do not have to. If a PCC believes it would be useful, they could apply to the Home Secretary to run a scheme on a charging basis and then decide on the charge. It might be 50p a day, a pound or £3—who knows? It will depend on the area and the level of offences committed.

Having this particular power adds two critical things to the scheme. First, one of the successes in the US is that the scheme gives offenders the notion that they are in control of their destiny. Every time they reach for a drink, they have to think about the consequences. That is why there is such high compliance—because people feel they are in control. At the same time, having to pay provides an even greater sense of ownership of the disposal. Offenders understand that this is a punishment; they understand that they have to take responsibility and finance the scheme themselves. It is essentially “the polluter pays”.

Secondly, although this disposal has been wildly successful in London and has spread to the rest of the capital, it took a lot of up-front Government funding to get the scheme out there. The Ministry of Justice had to put in £500,000 and the Mayor has done the same to get the facilities out and around town. If we want the disposal to spread so that other PCCs take it up, there needs to be a business case. Bluntly, I am a Conservative, and if there is a flow of income coming from this disposal to a PCC in a way no other disposal will allow, I believe PCCs would be more likely to use it and invest the money up front; they would know that the income would come in to finance it.

I realise that offenders paying for their own punishment would be a new departure for the British criminal justice system, but I think it could be useful given that alcohol abstinence monitoring orders are themselves a new departure. There may be some cultural difficulties. When I first proposed the disposal, I went to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who was then Lord Chancellor. His first response was to say, “Good grief, you can’t stop people from having a pint!” I explained that if these people break somebody’s jaw or cause a crash because they have been driving drunk, of course we can. If we put them in prison, we stop them drinking. This was just a way of doing that, I explained, without incarcerating people. It is much cheaper, much quicker and, if the Government are kind enough to think about this new clause—perhaps following it up in the other place—the disposal could be self-financing and help to save a huge amount of money.