All 3 Laura Trott contributions to the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill 2019-21

Read Bill Ministerial Extracts

Tue 9th Jun 2020
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill
Commons Chamber

2nd reading & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & 2nd reading
Thu 25th Jun 2020
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (First sitting)
Public Bill Committees

Committee stage: 1st sitting & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thu 25th Jun 2020
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Second sitting)
Public Bill Committees

Committee stage: 2nd sitting & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill Debate

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Department: Ministry of Justice

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Laura Trott Excerpts
2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
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This is a very good and important Bill. I would like to single out one aspect in particular.

I have long-standing concerns, which I have spoken about before in the House, about the use of standard determinate sentences for serious crimes. The idea that terrorists would be let out of prison automatically, with no Parole Board involvement, is unacceptable. I am pleased that that has been rectified by this Bill and that terrorist offenders will no longer be eligible for SDS. I urge the Government to take a similar approach to other serious crimes, such as rape, and I hope it will be included in the forthcoming sentencing review.

I want to raise two other points. First, there is a risk to keeping terrorists in prison for longer—namely, that they radicalise other prisoners. This is clearly a lesser risk than having them out on the street, but none the less it is one that we must be cognisant of and manage. The Bill’s impact assessment recognises the risk of offenders radicalising others during their stays in custody but suggests that the containment practices currently in place will minimise that risk. Those containment practices stem in part from an excellent review carried out by Ian Acheson in 2016, which recommended containment of known extremists in dedicated specialist units. Those specialist units have now been created, and I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that they have the capacity for the increased number of terrorist offenders who may be incarcerated for longer as a result of this Bill. It is critical that we do not allow the increased time that terrorists spend in prison to be used by them as a means of turning it into a training ground for new recruits. It would be helpful to fully understand the measures that Ministers will put in place to ensure that that does not happen.

My second point, which has been raised frequently today, is about rehabilitation in general. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) spoke movingly at the beginning of the debate about the dedication of Saskia and Jack to rehabilitation. To support this Bill is not to throw away the belief in rehabilitation but to emphasise the need for it while the terrorists are in prison. I was pleased to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice refer in his opening remarks to the increased sentence maximising the time that authorities have to work with offenders. It will be critical—and this is very important to all supporters of this Bill—to use that time productively, to make sure that the people in prison are being worked on, talked to and spoken through this process so that we rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated, and do not let back on to the streets those who cannot. I think that is at the heart of what this Bill is trying to achieve, and it is what every Conservative Member who supports it wants.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (First sitting) Debate

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Department: Home Office

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (First sitting)

Laura Trott Excerpts
Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Public Bill Committees
Read Full debate Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill 2019-21 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 June 2020 - (25 Jun 2020)
None Portrait The Chair
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We have three Members still to ask questions, so we need to be very brief.

Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
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Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I have a clarification question, following the Minister’s questions about TPIMs. You said that there is a gap between the two, which can be managed. Can you give us more detail on how that will be done without the powers present through TPIMs?

Jonathan Hall: This is the covert world. I will slightly fudge my answer, because this is more of a technical thing—you might want to ask the next witness. Obviously, the police and MI5 have ways of monitoring and managing people, even if they are not subject to a TPIM. It is something that the authorities have to wrestle with. Some people who have been convicted are on licence, which gives you a way to manage their risk. Some people are on TPIMs. Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of people who are neither on a TPIM nor on licence, and who the authorities have to measure. They have real expertise in dealing with it. It is slightly sensitive to go into details. Your question is probably one for the next witness.

Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott
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Q Would it not be better if those individuals were on TPIMs?

Jonathan Hall: It would be easier for the police.

None Portrait The Chair
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Thank you very much. Rob Butler.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Second sitting) Debate

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Department: Home Office

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Second sitting)

Laura Trott Excerpts
Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Public Bill Committees
Read Full debate Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill 2019-21 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 June 2020 - (25 Jun 2020)
None Portrait The Chair
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Order. I think I am going to ask you to let me move on, Mr Clancy, because a few other people are indicating that time is moving on. Is there anyone else waiting to come in? No. In that case, I call Laura Trott.

Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
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Q Thank you, Mr McCabe. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I was pleased to see in your evidence the point that an increased sentence offers an increased opportunity for greater rehabilitation while someone is in prison. Do you have any views on what form that rehabilitation should take?

Michael Clancy: I am not a penologist. Therefore, I would rather leave that to experts in rehabilitation theory than make up some layman’s version of it, if you do not mind.

None Portrait The Chair
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Minister, I think you wanted to make another point.

--- Later in debate ---
Ruth Cadbury Portrait Ruth Cadbury
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Q My last question was about non-English speakers.

Professor Grubin: We do test with interpreters, and they seem to work just as well. Again, it does take training for the examiner to know how to work with an interpreter, and the interpreter needs training as well. Certainly, security services in other countries use it with interpreters quite regularly.

Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott
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Q Professor, you talked about a failure rate of up to 20%. What drives that failure rate? Is it the fact that people are tricking the test or that the examiner is making a mistake? What are the drivers behind that 20%?

Professor Grubin: There is a range of reasons that people can give either false positives or false negatives. Apologies for not looking at you while I am answering. Sometimes it is because the test hasn’t been set out properly, the examinee hasn’t been prepared properly in the pre-test interview or the questions haven’t been formulated well, and so on.

The examinee may have some other experience that is close enough to the way the question is being asked to cause that sort of response. For example, there was a very good study carried out in Israel. I won’t go through all the details of it, but they were able to debrief afterwards as we were with police officers who were applying for promotion. There were two false positives. The ground troops knew that these two people had been telling the truth, but they were said to be lying. One of them had said that he had previously made an insurance claim in Israel. At that time, the insurance companies in Israel would test people making insurance claims to see if they were honest or not. He said that he was being honest, but he was told that he was lying. He couldn’t get that out of his mind during the test. That causes the cognitive processing we were talking about, and it made him respond in that way.

The other person was more interesting. The experiment itself was about a test that the examinees could cheat on. You would know if they cheated or not. The second police officer said that he cheated when he took the test, but there was something wrong when he took it and the examiners had him do the test a second time. When he did it the second time, he said, “I don’t think I had better cheat again,” so he did it honestly. When he was asked if he had cheated on the test the second time, he said that he was thinking about having cheated the first time, which is why he reacted as he did.

There are other reasons as well, but it is hard to explain without going into the details about how polygraph testing works. Basically, you are comparing the relevant questions that you are interested in with so-called comparison questions. If those comparison questions are not evocative enough to elicit a response when a person is telling the truth to the relevant question, or vice versa, when they are too hot and the person is much more concerned about that question than about the relevant one, you can also get mistakes on the test.

The final reason is that sometimes we just don’t know; it just happens.

Laura Trott Portrait Laura Trott
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Q I have a quick follow up to that. In terms of the formulation of questions, with the sex offender work that has been done so far, how has that worked most effectively? What lessons can be learned from that when we think about applying it in terrorism offenses?

Professor Grubin: It is very similar. In sex offender testing, the majority of questions relate to their licence conditions and they are asked specifically about those conditions. You have to remember in a polygraph test and a screening test you get, at most, three relevant questions, so if they have 15 licence conditions you are only going to be able to test three of them. You can ask about all of them during the pre-test interview and, of course, the examinee won’t know which ones he will be asked on the test, which is why you get disclosures.

By and large, they are about licence conditions, and I would think that with this group that is what they would be. The things you would be interested in are undisclosed internet devices, have they been in contact with certain individuals, have they travelled to certain places and those sorts of question. The sex offenders are also asked about fantasies, but I am not sure that you would be particularly interested in that with this group.

Alex Cunningham Portrait Alex Cunningham
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Q My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth talked about people with disabilities in relation to polygraph testing. You said that the success rate goes down to about 60%. Is that a fair success rate to be used as part of the evidence for a recall to prison?

Professor Grubin: Either I have either misunderstood you or you have misunderstood me. Were you referring to intellectual disability?