Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement. On 12 May, we said in our programme for government that we would conduct a full assessment of rehabilitation and sentencing policy to pave the way for radical reforms to the criminal justice system. I have laid before Parliament today the Green Paper entitled “Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders.” This sets out our initial conclusions from this work, on which we will be consulting widely over the next 12 weeks.

Despite record spending we are not delivering what really matters. Society has a right to expect the criminal justice system to protect them. Prison will always be the right place for serious and dangerous offenders. Criminals should be properly punished. Prisons should be places of hard work and industry, and community sentences must be credible and robust. Criminals must also be reformed so that when they finish their sentence they do not simply return to their life of crime, creating more misery for victims.

The present criminal justice system falls short of what is required. Around half of offenders released from prison reoffend within a year. Reoffending rates for young offenders sentenced to custodial or community sentences are even worse. It is not acceptable that three quarters of offenders sentenced to youth custody reoffend within a year. If we do not stop offending by young people, the young offenders of today will become the prolific career criminals of tomorrow.

Solving these problems requires a radically different approach. Of course, criminals must face robust and demanding punishments. This means making them work hard both in prison and in the community. More prisoners will face the tough discipline of regular working hours. This has been lacking in most prison regimes for too long. Community sentences will be more credible, with more demanding work and greater use of tough curfew requirements. There will be greater reparation to victims through increased use of restorative justice and by implementing the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996. We will bring forward other changes to make sure that more offenders directly compensate the victims of crime.

But we will take a new approach to the reform of offenders. I regard prison first and foremost as a place of punishment where people lose their liberty as reparation for what they have done, but on top of that, prison cannot continue to be simply an expensive way of giving communities a break. We must give higher priority to ensuring that more prisoners go straight on release.

Offenders will face a tough and co-ordinated response from the police, probation and other services. It will mean that they must either address the problems that fuel their criminal activity or be caught and punished again. It will mean taking action to get offenders off drugs. It will mean reducing the abuse of alcohol. It will mean improving the treatment available to those suffering mental illness. It will mean getting more of them off benefits and into honest employment so that they can pay their own way.

We will bring forward a revolutionary shift in the way that rehabilitation is financed and delivered. We will begin by commissioning a range of providers to administer at least six new projects over the next two years. They will be paid for the results that they achieve. I intend to apply the principles of that approach across the whole system by the end of the Parliament. We will also test this payment-by-results approach with young offenders, and devolve more responsibility for preventing and tackling youth offending to local communities. We will introduce more competition across offender management services to drive up standards and deliver value for money for the taxpayer. We will increase discretion for public sector providers and front-line professionals.

The sentencing framework must provide courts with a range of options to punish and rehabilitate criminals and keep the public safe. The sentencing framework has developed in an ad hoc fashion recently, with over 20 Acts of Parliament changing sentencing in the past 10 years. This has left it overly complex, difficult to interpret and administer, and hard for the public to understand. We need to make better use of prison and community sentences to punish offenders and improve public safety, while ensuring that sentencing supports our aims of improved rehabilitation and increased reparation to victims and society. We will therefore simplify the sentencing framework in order to make it more comprehensible to the public and to enhance judicial independence. We will reform community orders to give providers more discretion, and we will encourage greater use of financial penalties and improve their collection.

We will bring forward reforms to the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection. This sentence has been much more widely used than was ever intended by Parliament since its introduction in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Indeed the last Government had already tried to change it once since its introduction. We will reserve IPP sentences for the most serious offenders and focus indefinite punishment on those who most clearly pose a very serious risk of future harm. Of course, prisoners who in future do not receive an IPP sentence will instead receive long determinate sentences. This will enable us to restore clarity in sentencing, plan rehabilitation and target punishment more effectively to protect the public.

Let me assure the House that public safety remains our first priority. We will continue to ensure that serious and dangerous offenders are managed effectively and their risk is reduced through appropriate use of prison and then through the multi-agency public protection arrangements. Let me also assure the House that we will also ensure effective responses to knife crime. Knife crime is wholly unacceptable. It causes misery for victims and is often connected to the kind of gang violence that can wreck whole communities. The Government’s position is clear. Any adult who commits a crime using a knife can expect to be sent to prison, and serious offenders can expect a long sentence. For juveniles, imprisonment is always available and will also be appropriate for serious offenders.

The Green Paper is an important change of direction in penal policy, which will put more emphasis on reducing reoffending without reducing the punishment of offenders. By reforming criminals and turning them away from a life of crime we will break the cycle. This should mean fewer crimes, fewer victims and safer communities. The Government will make a further statement to the House when they publish their response to the consultation. I commend the statement to the House.

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[Mr Speaker]

I do not want to be corny about it, but in this context I should surely be able to appeal from now on for shorter sentences—and preferably fewer of them.

[Mr Clarke]

I was about to congratulate the Opposition spokesman on his statesman-like performance in a difficult situation. He managed to go on for exactly the same length of time as I took to make my statement. I listened carefully, and he did not criticise a single proposal that I had made. He did not disagree at all. I should have realised that he would do that, because when he was asked, by Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian of 29 November, whether Ken Clarke had said anything that he disagreed with, he said, “No, he hasn’t.” He took eight minutes to give that reply today, but the conclusion was the same.

The right hon. Gentleman said that we had abandoned our whole manifesto and pre-election commitment. We are in a coalition Government and have inherited a financial crisis. The principal argument that we had when in opposition was about the rehabilitation revolution. I commend to the right hon. Gentleman the work done by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General on a pamphlet called “Prisons with a purpose”. In the manifesto, we said:

“We will never bring our crime rate down or start to reduce the costs of crime until we properly rehabilitate ex-prisoners.”

That remains the core proposal that we are putting forward, and I am glad to be able to build on it.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the reduction in the number of people in prison. Eighty-two thousand is not a target; I asked people to produce an estimate of what the whole package—there are a lot of things in the package—was likely to do to the prison population over the next few years, and their estimate, and it is only an estimate, is that that population will reduce by about 3,000. It would be quite something to stop the explosion of the prison population that has been going on in recent years. Reducing it by 3,000 is quite modest, but that is an estimate. We are aiming to do something to ease the pressure on the system—above all, to ease the pressure on victims—by rehabilitation and by tackling the root causes of crime.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about numbers. He tried to praise—he did his best—the record of the Government of whom he was a member. The real nadir of the publicity-seeking policies of the last Government came when they had succeeded in getting so many people sentenced to prison that they could not accommodate them. Eventually, they had to release 80,000 prisoners from jail, before they had finished their sentences, under an early-release scheme. That was a debacle of a policy that we will not repeat.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about this being against a background of a 23% reduction in my budget. Half of that, of course, is going to come from administration and a great bulk of it from legal aid savings, which he supports. Much less will come from the Prison Service and the probation service.

Does that comment mean that the right hon. Gentleman would spend more? I am waiting to hear what the Labour party says about the financial background to policy. Apparently, the reduction is too much. Will he consult the shadow Chancellor and let us know how much more a new Labour Government would spend on keeping up the prison population, keeping the criminal justice system as it is and continuing the failed policies of the last Government?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I remind the Lord Chancellor that Members from all three parties on the Justice Committee unanimously recommended a shift from expanding prison places to rehabilitation, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health provision and early intervention to stop young people from getting into crime. Would he not be failing to keep the public safe if he did not follow that recommendation?

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. A lot of people in all three parties welcome this shift of policy; it is not particularly me and my colleagues who believe it; It is quite obvious that it is a direction in which we should go. I look forward to having the assistance of the Select Committee and making sure that we get the details right and keep going in the right direction.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Why is the Secretary of State so unwilling even to utter the words that would acknowledge that, in the past 15 years—the last two years of his Government, from 1995, and through the 13 years of the previous Labour Government—crime fell by a record 50%? Why does he not acknowledge that and also accept that the cost-cutting led programme that he has announced today may put crime levels at risk?

[Mr Clarke]

Of course I acknowledge that crime fell during that period, as it did throughout most of the western world. I have always acknowledged that. Where we will not agree is on the simple cause and effect that the right hon. Gentleman puts forward. Let me quote from a source whom it would be unexpected for me to quote with total favour: Mr Newt Gingrich. A recent article he published in an American magazine about the situation in the state of South Carolina states:

“Often, in…fiscal crises, we hear that no area of state spending is exempt from budgetary review. But in reality, prison spending often is the proverbial sacred cow. That’s partly because voters…mistakenly believe reductions in the prison budget will lead to putting the ‘bad guys’ back on the street.”

This morning, I was put on Alastair Campbell’s blog. Newt Gingrich seems to agree with the direction we are taking, Alastair Campbell appears to believe that we are going in the right direction, and Members from all three parties, including the Chairman of the Select Committee, agree. The right hon. Gentleman is the representative of a failed past.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Last year, 3,000 burglars and 4,500 violent criminals with 15 or more previous convictions were not sent to jail, and people with more than 100 previous convictions who came before the courts were more likely not to be sent to jail. They reoffended not because they went to prison, but because they did not go to prison. How on earth can my right hon. and learned Friend accept the figures that his Department has issued and say that too many people are going to prison? Most people would look at those figures and conclude that too few people are going to prison.

[Mr Clarke]

A court has to look at the nature of the offence and the individual offender and give the right sentence. For serious criminals, that means going to prison; for recidivist offenders, that means going to prison; for others, it might be more appropriate for a strong community sentence to be made available. It is not possible to generalise in such a way. At the heart of what we are doing is ensuring that judges give the right punishment and that they give us a rest while people are in prison. The system is simply failing to prevent people reoffending. That is what the policy focus has to be and that is what will reduce crime if it is successful.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Perhaps the Secretary of State will remember that, back in 2001, there was something called the Halliday review of sentencing. In July of that year, I talked—much as the Secretary of State has done this afternoon—about avoiding reoffending. Does he acknowledge that a £40 million cut in the South Yorkshire police budget, more prisoners on the street, and more offenders reoffending because the police are not available to protect the public and the victims is not a charter for common sense? It is a charter for criminals to get on with the job that they have been doing and from which we have been trying to protect the public.

[Mr Clarke]

The budget for the Prison Service and the probation service in my Department increased by roughly 50% in real terms over the past seven years. The idea that the only approach to criminal justice policy—as with other policies—is simply to spend and borrow more and more is what got the previous Government into the sorry state in which they eventually collapsed. We must now do things more intelligently and sensibly, and address the problem of reoffending. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman was unsuccessful when he turned to that in 2001.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State talk specifically about the issue of foreign offenders in the prison system and what he proposes to do to free up prison places by a change of policy in that area?

[Mr Clarke]

The number of foreign prisoners in our prisons roughly doubled in the past 10 years, during the period of office of the previous Government who rather went backwards and forwards at various times about whether they were releasing people who might have been deported or keeping them here because they could not be deported. It is difficult to get large numbers out, but we are determined to make an effort to do it. We are looking at ways in which, in suitable cases, conditional cautioning could get people out of the country and diverted out of our criminal justice system altogether on the basis that they never come back. We are also looking at how we can encourage other countries to take back prisoners who are eligible for deportation to ensure that this extraordinary burden, which has grown in the past few years, is eased, because there are better things we can do in the whole system with the money we are spending on foreign prisoners.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased that the Justice Secretary intends to build on the success of the youth offending teams, which I introduced in 1998. Will he ensure that the youth courts, and indeed the courts generally, follow the central recommendations of the justice reinvestment report by focusing clearly on what works in reducing reoffending and incentivising those outside the criminal justice system who can help to bring down crime?

[Mr Clarke]

The answer is yes. One thing on which I totally agree with the right hon. Gentleman is that we have to concentrate our resources on what works. By that I mean, from the point of view of the potential victims and society at large, what gets down the level of crime committed by young offenders in particular.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I notice that my Conservative Secretary of State says: “Prison cannot continue to be simply an expensive way of giving communities a break.” I am sorry, but communities deserve a break—they deserve a break from being burgled. Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that on his watch, people who cause absolute misery by thieving from people’s homes, particularly those of elderly people, can expect to go to prison, where they deserve to be?

[Mr Clarke]

The answer to the last part of the question is obviously yes. Burglars should usually go to prison—nobody has ever suggested that they should not. I have read extraordinary suggestions that we are letting out burglars, robbers and all kinds of people. They are the core population of a prison and should remain so. The main purpose of prison is that it is the best form of punishment: it is a way of exacting some reparation from somebody for the crime they have committed. It also, of course, gives us a break from their offences while they are in prison. However, if we concentrate on that aspect of imprisonment, it is a very expensive way of giving people temporary relief from the crimes of those incarcerated. Prison should be producing people most of whom, on release, will not go back to a life of crime. Unfortunately, over a period of years, three quarters of them have eventually committted further crime. That is the failure and weakness in the system, and that is where the concentration now has to be.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Earlier, in Health questions, the Health Secretary confirmed that he has been working with the Justice Secretary on plans to divert mentally ill offenders from prison—something that I broadly welcome. When I pressed him on how much additional funding was being made available for this, he was unable to tell me, but referred me to this statement, so can the Justice Secretary tell me how much additional money will be made available?

[Mr Clarke]

This is about both our budgets, so I had better not pre-empt my discussions with my right hon. Friend. I hope that he gave a helpful response to the question, because the two of us, together with our Departments and our officials, are working very seriously on trying to improve the situation for mentally ill people who ought not to be in prison or ought to be better treated in prison. It is not an easy subject. The reason we have so many people in prison who obviously ought not to be there because they are suffering from mental illness is that it is difficult to devise services that will not only help them but improve their behaviour and make them less of a risk to the community at large. At this stage, we are consulting on it. However, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is a genuine commitment on the part of my right hon. Friend and me to ensure that the Department of Health, the NHS, the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service work together properly so that people are dealt with in a more suitable and civilised fashion. The main benefit one can give to the public regarding those whose main problem is mental illness is to help them to cope with the behavioural problems that are causing the crime.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Can the Secretary of State confirm by how much he expects the number of vulnerable women and women with babies in prison to reduce as a result of these very sensible proposals?

[Mr Clarke]

I will not go into another precise estimate, but we need to reduce the number of women in prison. The previous Government worked on that. It is important to realise that women who go to prison—many fewer do so than men—tend to have a particular combination of problems. Compared with men, a much higher proportion of women in prison have a history of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and a disordered life, in all kinds of ways. Focusing on that is likely to reduce the women prison population, and we will do that. Of course, as with men, there is a hard core of women who are hardened criminals or antisocial people, and they must be incarcerated for long sentences when they do something that deserves it.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I have no quarrel with the vision set out by the Secretary of State for Justice. It is in keeping with many recommendations made by the Home Affairs Committee over many years. I do have a quarrel with the detail, however. Last year, there were 4,600 hospital admissions as a result of knife crime. Will he confirm that it is still the policy of the Government that those who are caught carrying knives will be sent to jail?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman does not differ in principle. I do not think that Opposition Front Benchers do either; they certainly do not have an alternative to put forward. Knife crime is a very serious matter. We are clear that the use of a knife in crime is serious. Anybody who stabs somebody else will go to prison—they usually do and they always should. Anybody who uses a knife in a threatening way in the course of a crime should go to prison. Anybody who carries a knife in circumstances in which its imminent use is likely should go to prison.

However, we have to avoid absolute tariffs that set in statute what the punishment should be for every particular offence. That was a mistake made by the previous Government. To fill up more than 20 criminal justice Acts, they produced ever more complicated and prescriptive rules, which judges sometimes find incomprehensible and which sometimes are in danger of flying in the face of the obvious justice of an individual case or the long-term interests of society.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

The majority of the people I represented who were burglars were addicted to drugs or alcohol. Does the Secretary of State agree that residential rehabilitation is usually far more effective at stopping such people reoffending than long custodial sentences?

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. She has long experience, and much more recent experience than I have, of dealing with such problems in the courts. What we must do through, among other things, the payment-by-results approach and bringing in more private, independent and not-for-profit providers, working in co-operation and partnership with statutory providers, is find better ways of achieving better results in drug rehabilitation, the ending of alcohol abuse and the treatment of mental illness.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Following on from the previous question, will the Secretary of State confirm that he will lobby for drugs funding, not just in his Department and the Home Office, but in the Department of Health? Unless drug treatment programmes are funded, we will not be able to treat drug addicts and prevent them from moving into the criminal justice system.

[Mr Clarke]

I will. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary takes the lead in the Government in tackling drug problems and the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), is heavily involved too. We will use payment by results widely across the piece, not just with regard to offenders, to find out what works. We will put more emphasis on genuine rehabilitation, not just keeping people dependent on methadone for as long as happens in far too many cases in prison and in the community.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I welcome the reference to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 in the Green Paper “Breaking the Cycle”, although that reference did not make it into the statement. It follows on from the excellent report by Lord Falconer, “Breaking the Circle”, which unfortunately the Labour Government did not have the courage to do anything about. Will the Secretary of State assure me that this matter will be an important priority, particularly in ensuring that cautions become spent extremely quickly?

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[Mr Clarke]

I can confirm that we are proposing to reform that matter. We are consulting on it, so I look forward to having the hon. Gentleman’s representations on what level of offence should never be excluded from disclosure, how long it should take for cautions for other offences to be spent and what we should do about juvenile offences, which are sometimes held against people for far too long in what has become a law-abiding adult life. We will not duck the issue, we will reform the system and I look forward to hearing his views.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

HMP Brixton is in my constituency, and 80% of the prisoners there are on short-term sentences of less than four weeks. I will look at the Green Paper to see what it will do to address the fact that it is difficult to rehabilitate within that time frame. I was e-mailed last week by the prison’s independent monitoring board, which made it clear that there should be absolutely no cuts to the prison. What guarantee can the Secretary of State give me that the Green Paper will not be used to impose cuts on my local prison?

[Mr Clarke]

I realise the difficulties of a prison such a Brixton, with such a high proportion of its population being short-term prisoners. We cannot get rid of all short-term prison sentences. I have never believed that that was possible, because magistrates face people who have come before them frequently, and they have tried everything else. In such cases, there is absolutely no way of dealing with their recidivist behaviour other than to send them to prison, or sometimes back to prison yet again. I hope that some of the payment-by-results providers will be able to start providing rehabilitation for such people, for whom no provision is currently made once they are put out of the door.

As far as spending on the Prison Service is concerned, we are affected, as in every other service, by the financial constraints we are under. It is not true that it is not possible to make any savings in how we run the prison estate. Spending on the Prison Service will depend in large part on what burdens are imposed on the system in future years by the level of crime and sentencing patterns, because it is partly a demand-led service. I cannot simply give an undertaking that nothing will be changed. We intend to follow on from the last Government’s policy of using competition, among other things, to test costs and ensure that we have the most cost-effective way of providing the quality of service that we want to provide.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

As someone who both prosecuted and defended in criminal courts before coming to this place, I wish to mention the possession of knives. Does the Secretary of State have an assessment of the effect of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, which increased the sentence from two years to four years? Does he agree that the best way to deal with knife crime is to deal with the gang culture that leads to the possession of knives?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I think the possession of knives is a scourge on society, particularly when it is associated with gang culture and all the other problems that it causes in many communities. I repeat, however, that judges and magistrates are in the best position to decide on the circumstances of a particular offence, the circumstances of the offender and the best way of imposing a penalty that protects the public.

We have to get away from the habit of the past few years of leaping in with a tariff that takes discretion away from the courts in each and every category of case. The tariff works in some cases but then, the next thing we know, the people who campaigned for it are campaigning like mad against some obvious injustice because it is inflexibly applied to some person who would be better dealt with in other ways.

[Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

Earlier this year in my constituency, a driver who had been drinking crashed into a group of teenagers on the pavement, seriously and permanently injuring them. At the trial, the judge bitterly complained that he could give him only the maximum two-year sentence for dangerous driving. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman join me in supporting the Drive for Justice campaign to give judges more flexibility in sentencing dangerous drivers?

[Mr Clarke]

I shall have a word with my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, because that is a perfectly valid point that we will consider. There is, of course, a higher penalty for causing death by dangerous driving, but the hon. Gentleman describes someone who behaved equally reprehensibly but happens not to have killed any of the victims. As I am arguing for discretion, we will look at whether the constraint is too tight.

In the case of ordinary dangerous driving without any serious consequences, and although I deplore all dangerous driving, we cannot start imposing heavy prison sentences on everybody who might otherwise be a blameless citizen and then behaves in an absolutely reprehensible way when driving his car. Some cases, such as the one described, make the case for having a look at the two-year maximum.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I welcome the proposal in the Green Paper to expand the principle of restorative justice, but will my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that any moves to expand that approach will be victim-led rather than offender-led?

[Mr Clarke]

The answer to that is yes, I will. Restorative justice is proving to be remarkably successful, but I take my hon. Friend’s point that it does not work if victims are not in the leading role. We have ensured very high levels of victim satisfaction in most of our experience so far of steadily spreading restorative justice.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s road-to-Damascus conversion to rehabilitation. I made a note of some of the promises that he makes in the Green Paper, which include regular working hours, restorative justice, custody diversion, and drug, alcohol and mental health services. What bothers me is that if those things are to be effective, they cannot be done on the cheap. It is wrong of him to promise such investment in rehabilitation, because the 23% cut to the Ministry of Justice and cuts in probation mean that those promises are completely undeliverable.

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[Mr Clarke]

I make the point again: the hon. Lady does not appear to disagree with any of those proposals, but they were not priorities of the Labour party when it was in office. That is not where the money went. The Labour Government spent money on a colossal scale, but it did not go into the objectives that this Government now advocate.

Otherwise, to be fair, the hon. Lady makes a valid point. The House should understand that achieving the results that we want will take time. We are dealing with difficult problems, such as mentally ill prisoners, which are incapable of instant, overnight solution—[Interruption.] It is no good her making gestures about spending money, because simply spending money on mentally ill prisoners will not get us very far. We must spend money intelligently.

We are talking about a whole Parliament, but I emphasise that payment by results does not involve putting money up front. It avoids the danger of giving grants to this or that hopeful-sounding idea or project. Sadly, some of those projects do not work. Paying by results means that we will pay for what works. The projects that succeed will spread more rapidly.

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

The secure training centre in my constituency protects the community when young people are locked up there, and often teaches them to read. As that costs more than £100,000 a year, what will the Secretary of State do to ensure that those benefits carry over when those young people are released?

[Mr Clarke]

It costs about £170,000 a year to keep somebody in a young offenders institution. Those who think that the numbers being detained are inadequate might reflect upon that. I agree strongly with my hon. Friend that what matters is the rehabilitative supervision that is in place after detention, with the support to deal with whatever the young person’s problems are in addition to his bad behaviour. In that way, we ensure that we reduce to the absolute minimum the risk of his reoffending and getting back into the system.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the questions asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), can the Secretary of State confirm whether extra cash will be made available by either the Ministry of Justice or the Department of Health to support all the rehabilitation measures that he outlined today?

[Mr Clarke]

I realise that the hon. Lady is a new Member of the House—[Interruption.] If the Labour party cannot move on from reacting to every social problem by saying that there must be more public expenditure and borrowing—Labour Members think that if we demonstrate that, we are tackling the problem effectively—it has no role in the government of this country for many years to come.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s announcement that those who commit a crime using a knife can expect to be sent to prison. However, will he elaborate on another part of his statement? He mentioned having a sentencing framework that is comprehensible to the public, which I hope also applies to victims. I found during the general election that a number of my constituents do not understand why, when somebody is sentenced to six years, they automatically go home after three.

[Mr Clarke]

I have no anecdotal recollection of anybody who has stabbed somebody not going to prison. Actually, people who do not stab someone because they are stopped in time should go to prison too. A serious knife crime justifies a prison sentence, and I think that we can rely on judges to give serious prison sentences. They do not have to be told that the use of a knife in a crime deserves a serious sentence. However, if they want to be told, I and my hon. Friends will tell them.

Public understanding of the system is important. We will consider how sentences can be expressed in terms that the public understand. People do not understand that when someone is sentenced to a certain number of years in prison, they serve the first half in prison and the other half on licence, which means that they will be recalled to prison if they start falling down in their behaviour. There are many other aspects of our incomprehensible sentencing arrangements that are difficult to get across to the public. The rules given to judges for explaining sentences are a hopeless mess and need to be simplified, and I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to make it more transparent and clearly available to the public.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I remind the Secretary of State that I am always keen to hear his answers? I know that his natural courtesy inclines his head backwards, but I would like him to look at the House.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Instead of giving prisoners the vote, why does the Secretary of State not incorporate the withdrawal of that civic right in a prison sentence? If he does not do that, will people not think that he actually wants to give prisoners the vote?

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman was a Minister in the last Government for—I think—the past five years. For five years, the last Government accepted that they had to give some prisoners the vote. They consulted on it every now and then, but they did nothing. He should have come forward with his helpful suggestions when he was in office. We are about to produce our proposals on how to comply with the relevant judgment, but that will not involve giving all prisoners the vote. We will consider some of his points and then get on with it. The Government led by the previous Prime Minister were often incapable of taking a decision and getting on with anything.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State reassure my constituents and guarantee that dangerous criminals, such as paedophiles, will receive demanding and robust punishment in prison so that our streets are kept safe for our children?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes. It is sometimes difficult to debate law and order in this country. Occasionally, I have to listen to a kind of looney-tunes debate about whether I am starting by releasing murderers, rapists, burglars or paedophiles. I believe that serious criminals should be in prison. I have never met a sane person who wishes to disturb that. I believe in long and severe sentences for people guilty of such a serious crime as paedophilia.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

May I suggest that the Secretary of State visit, as I did recently, the Isis centre at Belmarsh prison, which is taking some innovative steps towards rehabilitating young offenders? With that in mind, I think that young offenders sometimes need custodial sentences to turn their lives around. Will he confirm therefore that judges will not have the discretion to give anything other than a custodial sentence to someone who uses a knife in a criminal act?

[Mr Clarke]

I think I can, although I do not think we need to put it in statute. I would be utterly astonished if a judge did not give a custodial sentence to anybody who used a knife in a criminal act. I approve of prison sentences in such cases, but I do not think we need to legislate on it. It is the nuances of far less serious cases that will get us into difficulty. However, if a person stabs somebody, they should go to prison, and I would be quite shocked if somebody did not go to prison in such circumstances.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

In September, I met an ex-prisoner who told me that a continual stream of custodial sentences was broken only when he swapped a life of crime for a life as a conscientious father. What measures can we consider to ensure that the families of offenders, and not just the offenders in isolation, are supported on the road to rehabilitation?

[Mr Clarke]

We would like to give professionals every possible encouragement to follow that advice. People who are criminal for a part of their lives and then stop often do so because family responsibilities and a secure family environment have taken them back into a more sensible and decent way of life. We intend to give the professionals more discretion in how they do that. The last Government were prone to setting targets, prescribing methods and setting down rules for community sentencing.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

It worked.

[Mr Clarke]

It did not work, despite what the right hon. Gentleman says. Over and over again, the professionals complained they spent half their lives in an office ticking boxes confirming that they had taken the prescribed course, rather than being able to tackle in an individual way the kind of problems my hon. Friend heard about when he met his constituent.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Let me begin by telling the Secretary of State that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and I may be new, but we are not daft. He said that prison could not be just an expensive way of giving communities a break. For victims of domestic violence, that break can be priceless or even life-saving. What reassurances can the Secretary of State give to victims about the criteria that he will use in deciding which IPP prisoners—those sentenced to imprisonment for public protection—who have completed their minimum tariffs will be released?

[Mr Clarke]

We are not just going to let IPP prisoners out—any of them. Release will be by the Parole Board. The Parole Board is currently experiencing considerable difficulty in evaluating whether prisoners can prove that they are a minimal risk when they are released, because it is very difficult to demonstrate that when the prisoner is in prison. We are going to readdress IPPs, to try to make them work as they were originally intended, for a comparatively small number of very dangerous offenders who pose a continuing risk, and look at the test that the Parole Board can apply. However, no one will be released until someone has assessed whether the level of risk is acceptable. It is impossible to guarantee no risk: there is nobody in prison about whom anybody could ever say, “This person is never going to be at risk of offending again.” I am afraid that, in the real world, there is nothing we can do about human nature. Quite a number of the people in prison will inevitably commit crimes when they come out, but the number who reoffend has to be reduced, the IPP ones have to handled very carefully, and the Parole Board has to be given a proper test to apply.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Further to the reply that the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), does he agree that if we are to restore the public’s trust in the criminal justice system, there must be honesty in sentencing and that convicted criminals should serve the full length of any sentence of imprisonment handed down by the court?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with honesty in sentencing—I have always supported that idea—and we will certainly be addressing the way in which it is explained by a judge in court, so that it is clear and comprehensible to the public. That includes explaining the term of imprisonment and the term of licence that follows—what is currently called “serving half the sentence”. The first half is in prison; the second half is subject to recall to prison, but it is served on licence out in the community. To turn the full term into imprisonment, which no one has ever done, would merely involve doubling the sentence for every prisoner. The financial objections to that are only the first ones that I would raise.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Surely the courts must always determine when a custodial sentence is required. The public will not understand what sounds like the Secretary of State saying that he or the Treasury is setting out to constrain that decision making.

[Mr Clarke]

With great respect, I am obviously being particularly obscure today, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman; indeed, I was saying precisely the opposite of what he described. We have spent the last 10 years or so believing that sections of statute—some of which read rather like local government circulars—are required in order to tell the judges what to do in individual cases, and that we should prescribe exactly what they do, according to some careful analysis. The judges complain like mad about the incomprehensibility of the legislation they are supposed to be applying. I firmly agree with the hon. Gentleman that, by and large, judges are in the best position to judge the appropriate way of dealing with each case and each offender, just as juries are the right people to decide guilt or innocence in serious cases. Parliament must stop trying to second-guess and introduce rules that we believe, with the best of intentions, cover all cases but which will not cover the absolutely amazing variety of circumstances that tend to accompany any particular category of crime.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on avoiding the siren calls of populism that I have been so disappointed to hear on both sides of the House today. Will he reassure me that when a prisoner is in prison, not only does he have a duty to make reparations but the state also has a duty, to offer him the opportunity of redemption, so that when he leaves that place of incarceration he has a chance to lead a useful and meaningful life—a life that is not reduced to one of stigmatisation or described, as I heard from the Opposition Benches, as that of a prisoner on the streets?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. We should give those who have the backbone to go straight, with help, a chance to do so because that will protect the public. Those who do not, and who commit crime again, will be punished again. It is just hopeless to suggest that giving extra emphasis to reforming criminals who want to be reformed is somehow weakening in the context of law and order; it is not. It would improve the protection of the public if we did it, and, as my hon. Friend says, it is a perfectly sensible way for a civilised state to behave.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Bassetlaw has the largest drug treatment programme in the country by far. We have reduced crime further by locking up repeat offenders. The Secretary of State is trying to get rid of the courts, he is getting rid of 300 front-line police officers, and now he is conducting this social experiment. Can my community, which is totally against this idea, please have an exemption? We could then compare and contrast the results to find out what works best.

[Mr Clarke]

One day I will convert the hon. Gentleman. With great respect, I think that he has been a great leader in his community in tackling the problem of drugs in Bassetlaw, and it is partly down to his efforts that it has been tackled in that part of Nottinghamshire much more forcefully than ever before. We are going to send repeat offenders to prison; no one is going to stop punishing people who keep offending. It is not a key part of the legal system in north Nottinghamshire that we should keep redundant courts, although we are still consulting on the two courts in his constituency. The foresight that he has shown on the problems of drugs will not be frustrated by our attempts to improve yet further the drug rehabilitation programmes that young people get in his constituency. This is not all about money, and that has not actually been the way he has approached this issue in the past few years either.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Last year, more than 20,000 offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions, and more than 2,500 offenders with more than 50 prosecutions or cautions, avoided a jail sentence. Will my right hon. and learned Friend’s proposals not simply make that matter worse?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not think that they will make any difference, really—[Interruption.] No, do not start misquoting me. If the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) cannot find anything that I have said to disagree with, I hope that he will not start misquoting me in order to find something. I would need to work through those 2,000 cases, and my first question would be to ask what the further offence was that they were up for. I am sure it was not parking. People who have previously committed a crime are not always sent to prison again, and the first thing we have to ask is how serious is the matter for which they are before the courts again. I hate to cast doubt on my hon. Friend’s statistics, but a lot of the statistics used across this whole field as the basis for these arguments are hopelessly unreliable. We are not reducing punishment for serious crime, and we are not letting anybody out of prison. We are using prison as a punishment, and trying to prevent the kind of people that he has described from reoffending over and over again, because that is in the public interest.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend will know that education is key to rehabilitation in prisons. What facilities are there for young people in prisons such as the Reading young offenders institution, where big central contracts have failed and more local provision is needed under the guidance of the governor of the prison?

[Mr Clarke]

We will of course continue to try to improve the level of education available to people, particularly in young offenders institutions. We are reviewing the educational service, and I agree that in many cases a more localised approach is likely to produce a better standard of education services than attempts to impose some kind of centralised system.

Departmental Expenditure Limits

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and The National Archives (TNA) total departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased as follows:

Total DEL for MoJ (Request for Resource 1, 2 and 3) is increased by £110,348,000 from £8,989,358,000 to £9,099,706,000 and the administration budget has increased by £5,084,000 from £411,146,000 to £416,230,000.

Total DEL for the TNA has remained unchanged.

Within the Total DEL change for MoJ (Request for Resource 1, 2 & 3), the impact on resource and capital are as set out in the following table:

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

1. How many prisoners who have completed their tariff remain in prison for the purpose of public protection.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

On 17 November 2010, 14,680 prisoners were serving an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection, or a life sentence in prisons or secure hospitals. Of those, 6,320 are held beyond their tariff expiry date, excluding offenders who have been recalled to custody following release.

[John Mann]

Those prisoners have been held in prison for good reasons and on good judgment. Does the Secretary of State intend, as is rumoured throughout prisons, to reduce the number of such offenders in prison? If so, how many sex offenders and violent criminals will be released back into our communities?

[Mr Clarke]

That rumour is probably on the hon. Gentleman’s website where I have seen that he is telling his constituents that I will release robbers, burglars, drug dealers and so on. Perhaps he will wait for the sentencing review, and stop living in a fantasy world. The indeterminate prison sentence has never worked as intended. The intention was that it would apply to a few hundred dangerous people who were not serving life sentences. The number is piling up, and more than 6,000 have gone beyond their tariff, but they will not simply be released. We will re-address the subject, and we will not release all the people he keeps telling his constituents we will release.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State look at the Prison Reform Trust’s report and specifically conduct a review of the social and financial costs and benefits of IPP sentences, and examine the available policy options set out by the trust?

[Mr Clarke]

We are taking a balanced look at the whole subject. The Prison Reform Trust takes quite the opposite view to that of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It believes that those sentences should be scrapped entirely. It is critical of the way they work, and it is clear that they are not working as intended, but the Government are hoping to take a balanced view. We must obviously protect the public against dangerous people and the risk of serious offences being committed on release. On the other hand, about 10% of the entire prison population will be serving IPP sentences by 2015 at the present rate of progress, and we cannot keep piling up an ever-mounting number of people who are likely never to be released.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that it is inherent in both life sentences and the concept of IPP sentences, which are widely supported throughout the Chamber, that many prisoners will be tariff-expired because the idea is that they are not released until it is judged that it is safe to do so? Does he also accept that although it is true that the precise construction of the clauses was inappropriate and led to some very short tariffs, since the changes that I introduced in 2008, the number of new IPP sentenced prisoners has dropped by 50% from about 1,500 to under 1,000 a year? Would it not be far better for public safety to let that work through instead of prematurely releasing such prisoners?

[Mr Clarke]

No, it has always been the case that some people are held indeterminately, and certainly those on life sentences. The purpose of IPP sentences was to have a sentence below a life sentence for dangerous people for whom life was not quite justified. The right hon. Gentleman will accept that such sentences never worked as intended, which is why, when he was Secretary of State, he introduced an Act of Parliament to try to correct some of the mistakes that had been made. We are now considering how the sentence works in practice, and we will introduce considered proposals in due course.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

2. What proposals he is considering to increase the level of efficiency in the administration of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What discussions he has had with the Deputy Prime Minister on the effects on prisons and prison staff of making arrangements for the implementation of voting rights for prisoners.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Ministers are considering how to implement the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, and when decisions have been taken, they will be announced to the House in the usual way.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that prison staff already have to deal with requests for further information about how voting rights will be implemented—not only from prisoners, but from local communities who have grave concerns about the matter. Will he meet a group of MPs for whom that is a particular concern, so that the needs of our constituents might be considered?

[Mr Clarke]

I will consider that request when we have announced our conclusions, which we will, to the House. The previous Government were incapable of taking a decision on the Hirst recommendation, which was made five years ago, and we are about to produce our proposals. I would point out that remand prisoners already vote, and always have voted; they vote by post, and it has never caused any difficulty. In the end, there is no suggestion that prisoners are going to be registered in the prison at which they are Her Majesty’s guests. Those that bother to get registered will be registered in constituencies scattered across the country. Of course I will consider the logistics if, after we have produced our proposals, it is apparent that any particular logistical problem will be posed.

[Mr Bain]

When the Secretary of State meets the Deputy Prime Minister, will he pass on the grave disquiet of the people of Glasgow that the 93 convicted sex offenders, 10 convicted murderers and 15 convicted attempted murderers in Barlinnie jail in my constituency have not been exempted from the Government’s review on the right to vote? The Secretary of State knows that neither the European Court of Human Rights nor case law from Strasbourg requires that such individuals should have the right to vote, so why do the Government not just do the right thing and rule it out?

[Mr Clarke]

There is no suggestion—and there never has been—that every prisoner is going to get the vote. It is not the Government’s consultation that is responsible, but a judgment given five years ago by the European Court of Human Rights—a Council of Europe institution —and we are now deciding how to implement it. I cannot anticipate the Government’s decision, which will be taken collectively by Ministers, but the idea that lots of murderers and rapists in Barlinnie prison are all going to be given the vote is, I suspect, rather fanciful.

[John Woodcock]

The Secretary of State must understand the grave concern about this measure from the public and, I hope, from both sides of the House. If the Secretary of State is clear that there is no suggestion that murderers and rapists will be given the vote, why will he not simply rule out at least those two categories right now?

[Mr Clarke]

The principal consideration is to take a decision and present it to the House. I am trying to shoot down some of the fanciful ideas that have been expressed. I understand the real concern about this: most of the House would have preferred not to change at all the existing ban on prisoners voting, but doing nothing—the previous Government’s position—and allowing solicitors to go running around prisons signing up prisoners to get compensation for having their civil liberties denied is piling up quite a bill. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Ministers will very soon resolve any uncertainty.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

But is there not a contradiction at the heart of the Government’s policy? Currently, all Members of Parliament represent all prisoners living in prisons within their constituency, yet the Secretary of State has said that they will be represented by Members of the constituencies where they were last registered. That contradiction needs to be resolved if representation of prisoners by prisoners is to be taken seriously.

[Mr Clarke]

I think there is some confusion in the House about the convention that applies, which both I and my hon. Friend should resolve—although it is not my responsibility to resolve it. I take the view that I represent my constituents when they are in prison wherever it is that they are imprisoned, but I know that other MPs take the view that they represent every resident of a prison in their constituency. Perhaps we should resolve the parliamentary conventions on this matter at the same time as we have a look at which prisoners might have voting rights.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

In considering the Government’s policy on this thorny issue, will the Secretary of State, if he has to abide by the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, restrict the right to vote to those prisoners at the lowest level of seriousness—for example, those dealt with by the magistrates courts for summary offences only?

[Mr Clarke]

This applies only to prisoners—obviously, people who have not been in prison do not lose their vote at all. We have to comply with the judgment of the Court. The problem is that this extremely annoying issue will become even more annoying to the public and everyone else if we simply do nothing and wait until some huge financial judgment is made against the taxpayer, which will turn the present public anger into fury. That is why we are going to bring forward considered proposals. At the moment, someone not sent to prison does not lose their vote—irrespective of what other punishment they receive in their summary trial.

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

The Hirst judgment says that article 3 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights obliges this House to give some prisoners the vote; as we have heard, it also gives rise to financial compensation to some prisoners who have been denied that right. Although I sympathise with my right hon. and learned Friend, does he accept that there is an intellectual case for, in time, bringing powers back to Westminster in this area by repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and withdrawing from the European convention of human rights?

[Mr Clarke]

There has been another British case today, which has clarified the situation slightly and has underlined the fact that the Government have discretion on how to comply with their obligations. In due course, obviously, we shall establish a commission on how best to give effect to our human rights obligations in this country, but that will not happen until at least next year.

The coalition Government do not intend to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, which was imposed by the victorious British on the rest of Europe after the war in order to establish British values across the countries that were recovering from fascism and was drafted largely by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who put what he thought were the best principles of British justice into it.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to increase the number of prison places.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

14. When he expects to publish his proposals on the future of sentencing policy.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

We intend to publish a Green Paper setting out proposals on sentencing and rehabilitation in December.

[Richard Harrington]

On a recent visit to the Hertfordshire probation trust in Watford, I was impressed by the efforts it has made and the success it has achieved in reducing reoffending rates. The staff told me, in particular, of their view that short-term prison sentences were detrimental to those efforts. Will the Secretary of State come to Watford to meet them, so that he can share those experiences?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful for that invitation; I have already received a letter. I shall do my best, although I am not quite sure when I will get to visit the probation trust. The Government are placing particular emphasis on rehabilitation and on reducing our quite appalling reoffending rates, as we have ever since my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice led for us on this matter in opposition. I accept that a great deal of good work is being done on the ground now and obviously we will have to build on it. I quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) about the ineffectiveness of some short sentences, because nothing whatever is done when people go out of the gate once they have finished their sentence, but I am quite clear that we cannot get rid of all short-term sentences. I have always believed that for a certain number of cases no alternative is reasonably practical for magistrates.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The crimes of child abduction, gross indecency with children, sexual activity with a child under 13, sexual assault of a female and sexual assault of a male have all attracted custodial sentences of six months or under in the past year. Will the Lord Chancellor give a commitment that under the sentencing review none of those crimes will be subject to community-based sentences, as he has proposed potentially in comments that he has made to date?

[Mr Clarke]

I have no idea why the heart of our sentencing reform is described by sections of the press and some Members of Parliament as just getting rid of all short-term sentences and replacing them with community sentences. I have no doubt that there is an important role for community sentences, and we must make them more credible, more punitive and more effective—some of them already are. The important thing is that every case should receive the right sentence based on the facts and the offender in order to protect the public. That will be the underlying aim of the entire sentencing review.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

15. What assessment he has made of the effects on the NHS of removing clinical negligence from the scope of legal aid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Following the conviction of Jon Venables on 23 July for possessing and distributing indecent images of children, I commissioned Sir David Omand to undertake an independent review into the management of Jon Venables from his release from local authority detention in June 2001 until his recall to custody on 24 February 2010. Today, I have placed a copy of Sir David’s report in the Library. Sir David has concluded that Jon Venables was effectively and properly supervised at an appropriate level and frequency of contact, having regard to the particular circumstances of his case. Sir David also concludes that no reasonable supervisory regime would have been expected to detect his use of the computer to download indecent images. The report contains a number of recommendations on the future management of this and similar cases that will be taken forward by the National Offender Management Service.

[Mrs Chapman]

Nineteen-year-old Scots Guardsman Andrew Gibson was killed in a Darlington nightclub. Yesterday, the Attorney-General said that he was unable to refer what many view as an excessively lenient sentence of just two and a half years to the Court of Appeal. Will the Secretary of State undertake to investigate the awarding of lenient sentences in which alcohol is an aggravating factor?

[Mr Clarke]

The Attorney-General has a power to exercise in these cases and he has to exercise it in his quasi-judicial role by making a proper judgment and not just reacting politically. I understand the hon. Lady’s concern about that case, but sentences are normally imposed by the court that has had the opportunity to hear all the evidence, facts and information about the accused person. The Attorney-General takes seriously his responsibility to step in where a mistake seems to have been made and ask a higher court to consider imposing a more serious sentence. I cannot claim to exercise any control over him in that regard; it is his difficult judgment to take in each case.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

T2. The Lord Chancellor will be only too aware that one of his key responsibilities is looking after the Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Alderney and Sark. Will he explain to the House why the Crown dependencies were yet again refused the right to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday this year? Will he address this issue to ensure that next year they can do so like other countries in the Commonwealth?

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend Lord McNally has the responsibility and the honour to lead on matters concerning Crown dependencies, which I assure my hon. Friend he takes very seriously. I keep discovering that he has made visits to the Crown dependencies to discuss these matters. I was quite unaware of this problem and I shall make inquiries of Lord McNally and those responsible for the ceremony about the background to this issue of laying a wreath on behalf of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State announced in the House last week—a day after ITN—that significant sums of money were to be paid to British residents and citizens who were detained at Guantanamo Bay, and he explained the factors behind the decision. Does he agree that there is an urgent need to resolve the claims of British victims of terrorist attacks overseas and will he commit today to such compensation being paid as a matter of urgency?

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman rightly expresses irritation about leaks to newspapers and the television, and I assure him that I share all that irritation. [Interruption.] If I were indulging in the kind of masterful spin-doctoring of the previous Administration, I would have trailed them better than occurred either in the newspapers or ITN. I made the statement when I did because I was told that ITN had carried the news the night before. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, if he helps me to find out where the information is coming from, I will take appropriate steps.

On compensation for victims of terrorism and crimes, we are having to review the criminal injuries compensation scheme. We are having to look at the prospects for the compensation for terrorism scheme. The fact is that we were left with a system of criminal injuries compensation that was not working. We have enormous liabilities piling up for which the previous Government had not made adequate funds available, so we have hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of arrears of claims.

[Sadiq Khan]

That is a different issue.

[Mr Clarke]

It is not a different issue. They are related issues and we will give our conclusions in due course.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. It is clearly inappropriate for convicted criminals to celebrate Christmas with raucous parties in prison. Is the Secretary of State certain that present Ministry of Justice guidance will prohibit such activity this Christmastime?

[Mr Clarke]

I hate to tell the hon. Lady that there are no good parties going on in prisons to which I can invite her over Christmas. The whole story about parties was faintly ridiculous. The announcement by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) did not mention parties and had very little to do with parties. Time was—I can remember from my youth—when a popular song began with

“The warden threw a party in the county jail,”

but we do not approve of that kind of thing nowadays.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Every suicide is a tragedy, but particularly in prisons it is more harrowing for the family, other prisoners and the prison staff. With that in mind, can one of the Ministers give an update on the programme of installing safer cells?

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

T7. It was as recently as 30 June, when the Government had had nearly two months to examine and find how unexpectedly bad the public finances were, that the Secretary of State said that he would explore “proposals to restore public trust through minimum/maximum sentencing”.Can he tell us what has changed since then?

[Mr Clarke]

Not much has changed. We are exploring proposals of all kinds. We are about to produce a Green Paper in December, and as is always the case—there is nothing new in this—people try to guess what might be in it. Some people make informed guesses, some make uninformed guesses and some get it right. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait until December to see our final judgments about how best to reform a sentencing system which is over-complicated, difficult for the judges to understand and ripe for reform, and which is completely failing to protect the public by getting reoffending rates down to a sensible level.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Recently, a group of Travellers was served with an eviction order from the site next to St Peter’s, a new school in my constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke, only for another group of Travellers to move in as soon as the site was vacated. Will the Minister look at the law in question to see whether it can be changed so that it is site-specific, rather than applying to individuals in certain cases?

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

T9. As part of the review that the Secretary of State is carrying out into implementing giving prisoners the right to vote, will he consider the issue as, in some ways, a positive opportunity to prepare them for reintegration into society? How is he approaching that?

[Mr Clarke]

Of course we would welcome prisoners preparing in any way for rehabilitation as honest citizens in society. I wait to see how many prisoners will actually take advantage of the opportunity when we decide the extent to which we have to go to comply with the Court judgment. It is conceivable that in some cases the vote would widen the mind of prisoners and prepare them for taking on the obligations of citizenship. I actually do not think, however, that we should take that too far.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The Government intend to amend the law on the prosecution of universal jurisdiction offences. Does the Lord Chancellor agree that it would be unseemly for decisions relating to those prosecutions to rest with the Law Officer who is also a politician, as would be the case for the Attorney-General?

[Mr Clarke]

The consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is what we are contemplating. The Government have committed themselves to that. This is a question of arrest; we are looking at citizen’s arrest. We want to keep the right of citizen’s arrest but we do not want it to be a publicity stunt based on inadequate evidence, so we are contemplating making it subject to the DPP’s consent. We are simply trying to find the legislative time to do it. The Government have committed to doing this as rapidly as possible.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Can the Justice Secretary tell us how many times he or his Ministers have spoken to the Scottish Justice Minister about prisoners voting rights?

[Mr Clarke]

I have written to Kenny MacAskill and I see him from time to time. I have not yet got a response, but I expect to be in close contact with the Scottish Government when we make any change, because I suspect that it will apply to the entire United Kingdom.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Last Friday, a 16-year-old boy in my constituency was horrifically beaten and stabbed outside his school in full view of his classmates. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we need to reserve the harshest penalties for those who viciously wield knives and to make sure that there is a strong deterrent against doing so? That young man lost his life as a result of that horrible crime.

[Mr Clarke]

I am, of course, shocked to hear of the outrageous nature of the crime in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We have to make sure that all our sentencing proposals give the courts all the powers they need. It is a question of how to set out the severity of the appropriate sentences, at the same time leaving the court in the end to decide on the exact sentence, based on the circumstances of the case and the offender. Although the recent habit—particularly under the last Government, who produced 21 different criminal justice Bills—was to keep producing very elaborate rules, in my experience judges do not need to be told that an offence of the kind described by my hon. Friend deserves the full force of the law and the severe punishment that the public would undoubtedly expect for such a case.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is not the vote for prisoners a dyed-in-the-wool Lib Dem policy? Is that not the real reason why the Secretary of State will not stand up for us and tell the European Court that the ruling is simply unacceptable to the British people and the vast majority of our MPs?

[Mr Clarke]

It is not a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative policy, it is true, but it should be the policy of every responsible Member of the House to accept that we have to comply with a judgment of the European Court, because nobody is advocating withdrawing from the convention. The hon. Gentleman’s party accepted that. His party never repudiated the judgment; it always accepted that it was going to have to give votes to prisoners. It wasted five years and two consultation exercises, however, because it was incapable of taking a decision in advance of an election—or at all, as it happened.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

On a less controversial subject, what scope is there for mediation in family law cases, and will such cases continue to qualify for legal aid?

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

On prisoner voting, will the Secretary of State have the grace to accept that before the election, given the implacable opposition from the whole of the Conservative party from top to bottom, with the then shadow Justice Secretary describing the proposal as “ludicrous”, and deep and profound concern on our Back Benches, it was not that one did not want to do something, but that there was no way in the world that such a measure would have passed through this House?

[Mr Clarke]

I am relieved to hear that the right hon. Gentleman, my predecessor, was so implacably determined to press on with this issue throughout his five years. He should perhaps have a word with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who could explain how committed he was. I am impressed that it was solely the opposition of Conservative Front Benchers that caused this five-year delay. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman was having difficulty with Downing street and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and others in coming to any decision about anything, or doing anything about it, before the general election. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is so much noise in the Chamber that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) could not hear me call him.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Can my right hon. and learned Friend take the time to remind the House which party was in power when the Human Rights Act 1998 was incorporated into British law, and, more pertinently, who was the Secretary of State responsible for it?

[Mr Clarke]

It was certainly the Blair Government who introduced the Human Rights Act. I regret to say that I cannot remember who the Secretary of State was, but it was probably the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Actually, he probably has more things to answer for than that, but that was certainly one of the things that he put on the statute book.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss setting up an employers liability insurance bureau to ensure that victims of asbestos-related diseases who cannot trace either employer or insurer are compensated? I am sure that if he will meet up with me, I can fill him in and persuade him why it is so important.

[Mr Clarke]

The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), will probably be in touch with the hon. Lady to deal with that suggestion. There are obviously very difficult issues involved in these asbestos claims—they troubled the previous Government, and there have been decisions for the courts. We will therefore consider her suggestion with interest; it has been made before, but we will consider it again and come back to her.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

The Government are rightly focused on getting more people who are out of work into work, but a particular group of concern is ex-offenders. Will the Government, as part of the big society, continue to support charitable organisations such as the Apex Trust, which does a wonderful job in getting those offenders back into work?

Serious Further Offence Review (Jon Venables)

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Following the recall to custody and subsequent conviction of Jon Venables for the possession of indecent images of children, I commissioned Sir David Omand GCB to undertake an independent review of the post-release period of the case, covering Jon Venables’ supervision from release on life licence in June 2001 until 24 February 2010, when he was recalled to custody.

The review has encompassed the general principles of a serious further offence (SFO) review but has also considered the wider lessons to be learnt for the future management of this and similar cases.

The terms of reference of the review were:

to review the supervision of the subject, from his release on life licence until his recall to custody, in order to establish whether he was effectively supervised, having regard to national standards and guidance and to the particular circumstances/challenges of his case;

in doing so, to consider the actions of his offender managers, their supervisors, the local police, the local MAPPA meetings and the role of the National Management Board; and

to establish whether everything was done which might reasonably have been expected of all agencies involved in supervising the subject to monitor his compliance with his licence conditions and to assess and manage any risk of harm which he presented.

Sir David Omand has completed the review and submitted his report to me.

I have placed in the Libraries of both Houses a copy of his report, which has been redacted in a few places to comply with the terms of the injunction amended in the High Court on 23 July 2010 (commonly known as the Butler-Sloss injunction), to take account of data protection and other confidentiality laws and to protect very sensitive operational policing information.

Sir David has concluded that Jon Venables was effectively and properly supervised at an appropriate level and frequency of contact, having regard to the particular circumstances of his case. Sir David also concludes that no reasonable supervisory regime would have been expected to detect his use of the computer to download indecent images.

I have accepted the review’s recommendations, which will be taken forward by officials in the National Offender Management Service. Officials will provide me with an update on the implementation of the recommendations in due course.

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

With permission Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement. On 6 July, the Prime Minister told the House that the legacy issues the Government had inherited around the treatment of detainees held by other countries needed to be addressed. Our reputation as a country that believes in human rights, justice, fairness and the rule of law otherwise risked being tarnished. There was also the risk of public confidence being eroded, with people doubting the ability of our security and intelligence agencies to protect us and questioning the rules under which they operate.

The Government are absolutely clear that national security and the protection of the rule of law go hand in hand. The Prime Minister has repeatedly made it clear that this coalition Government are unswerving in their opposition to torture or the ill-treatment of prisoners or detainees. We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf.

We recognise that our longer-term security interests require that we defend our values and the rule of law, and that any allegations that threaten those must be treated seriously. In tackling the challenges posed by those serious allegations, the Government’s overriding objective is to ensure that the security and intelligence agencies can focus on their vital task of protecting the security and interests of the UK, and that the serious allegations that threaten their reputation and that of our country are examined properly. The security of this nation is the first concern of any Government. The security and intelligence agencies play an invaluable part in ensuring our security, and the Government are determined that they are free to do the vital job that we need them to do.

In his statement, the Prime Minister said that a single, authoritative inquiry was required to investigate the serious allegations of the Government’s complicity in the mistreatment of detainees held by other countries. The right honourable Sir Peter Gibson was appointed to head that independent inquiry. However, the Prime Minister also made it clear that the inquiry could not begin while related police investigations were ongoing and while so many of the Guantanamo civil law suits brought against the Government remained unresolved. To help to pave the way for the inquiry to begin, the Government committed to entering into a process of mediation with those held by the United States in detention in Guantanamo Bay who had brought civil actions against the Government.

I can today inform the House that the Government have now agreed a mediated settlement of the civil damages claims brought by detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The details of that settlement have been made subject to a legally binding confidentiality agreement. They have been reported in confidence to the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of the House, to the National Audit Office, and, I think, to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Clarke]

Ah. No.

No admissions of culpability have been made in settling those cases and nor have any of the claimants withdrawn their allegations. This is a mediated settlement. Confidentiality is a very common feature of mediation processes, as in this case. Confidentiality was agreed by both parties, subject to the necessary parliamentary accountability and legal requirements. I hope that the House will understand that I am unable to comment further on the details of the settlement without breaching that confidentiality with the claimants.

The alternative to any payments made was protracted and extremely expensive litigation in an uncertain legal environment in which the Government could not be certain that we would be able to defend Departments and the security and intelligence agencies without compromising national security. The cost was estimated at approximately £30 million to £50 million over three to five years of litigation. In our view, there could have been no Gibson inquiry until that ligation was resolved.

The Government will make a further statement to the House when the relevant police processes have been completed and the inquiry is in a position to begin its work. The mediated settlement actually represents a significant step forward in delivering the Government’s plan for a resolution of those issues in the interests of both justice and national security. The settlement has the support of the heads of the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Whitehall Departments involved. The Security Service and the SIS are issuing a public statement to that effect today.

In his statement, the Prime Minister also announced plans for a Green Paper on the use of intelligence in judicial proceedings, which we hope to publish in the summer of 2011. It will examine mechanisms for the protection and disclosure of sensitive information in the full range of civil proceedings, inquests and inquiries. We will also consider complementary options to modernise and reform existing standing intelligence oversight mechanisms. The Government are engaging with relevant parliamentary bodies, key stakeholders and our international partners in developing these proposals further. Today’s announcement is a very important step forward, and we are closer now to getting the important Gibson inquiry into all these allegations finally under way.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the Justice Secretary for advance sight of his statement and for our meeting earlier today. I welcome his decision this morning to make this an oral statement to the House, rather than the written statement originally planned. I would also like to put it on the record at the outset that up until November 2004, I was a senior partner at a law firm that acted for a number of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Does the Secretary of State agree that statements as significant as this should be made first to the House before they appear in the media? Will he therefore join me in raising concern that this extremely important announcement was leaked to ITN’s “News at Ten” programme last night?

On the substance of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement, the House is united in its complete rejection of torture and mistreatment. That goes for the practice of and collusion or complicity in torture. It is illegal, it is internationally banned, and no Government should have anything to do with it. The Labour party has been, and will remain, completely opposed to Guantanamo Bay. We took action in government to remove all the British citizens and all but one resident from Guantanamo Bay, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) ensured that Britain’s Government were the first to get all their citizens out of there. What steps are this Government taking to secure the release of the one remaining resident still in Guantanamo Bay, Shaker Aamer? I note that the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who represents his family, is in her place.

Britain’s security services, under all Governments, are required to live up to the highest standards, while protecting our national security. They do an incredible job. Their work is rarely ever recognised, for obvious reasons of secrecy, but they save lives, and we should always remind ourselves of that. We should also place firmly on the record the human rights policy of our security services, and be proud of their stance. As John Sawers, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, said last month:

“If we know or believe action by us will lead to torture taking place, we’re required by UK and international law to avoid that action. It makes us strive all the harder to find different ways, consistent with human rights, to get the outcome we want.”

To sustain the excellent work of the intelligence agencies, and to ensure that these standards are met in practice, it is vital that whenever allegations are made they are fully investigated.

You will know, Mr Speaker, that the previous Government began the process of publishing the consolidated guidance given to our intelligence officers, which was a process finished by the current Government earlier this year. It was and remains our view that all measures possible should be taken to satisfy ourselves, the public and our allies that if any wrongdoing is alleged, it is fully investigated, that any evidence is gathered and passed on, and that it is dealt with to conclusion. That is why the previous Attorney-General referred two cases where concerns had been raised to the police for investigation, and that is why we look forward to the judge-led inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture now that the civil cases are settled.

Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that the police will be able to conclude their investigations before the judge-led inquiry begins? Obviously, the House has not been privy to the detail of the settlements and the negotiations, but he will know that there are legitimate questions about the settlements that the Government have come to that mean that these 16 cases will no longer be resolved individually in the courts. We understand that the Government have had to consider this in the light of the ruling by the Court of Appeal in May. Can he confirm to the House that the settlements reached will not pre-judge the inquiry or pass judgement on the actions of our security services in advance of a full investigation?

Will the confidentiality agreement prevent the Secretary of State from telling the House and the public the sums of money involved in these settlements? If so, will he reconsider and agree with us that there is a public interest in knowing the total sum involved in this settlement? Will he commit to scrutiny of the settlements by both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Public Accounts Committee? He said that the claimants would be able to give evidence to the Gibson inquiry. Can he tell the House what investigations within the scope of the inquiry will take place into the allegations in those specific cases? Will the inquiry pass judgment on each individual case? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether the scope of that inquiry has changed since the Prime Minister’s statement to the House in July?

Finally, can the right hon. and learned Gentleman also tell the House whether any other cases remain unsettled, and if so, what decision has been taken on their effect on the inquiry? It is important that the inquiry can be thorough and that its access to documents held by the Government should be as full as that enjoyed by the courts. Can he therefore confirm that the Gibson inquiry will have access to all the same information that has been or would be available to the courts? Everyone will appreciate the need to ensure that Britain’s security is not compromised, and that must be reflected in the way that the inquiry operates. However, as the allegations are comprehensively addressed, it is important that the public should have confidence in the process and its outcome. We say again: there is no place for the torture or mistreatment of detainees.

[Mr Clarke]

I, too, regret the leak. I am having a bad week for leaks. I made a statement yesterday that had been leaked by somebody at the weekend, and last night I was at dinner when I was told that ITV had details of this statement. It is early days in government to have them so frequently—but ’twas ever thus. I will do my best to ensure that there are no leaks of this kind in future.

We continue to press the Americans for Shaker Aamer’s release. We are trying to ensure his release, and we are in constant contact with them.

So far as the other questions are concerned, the determination of this Government, as soon as we took office, has been to try to draw a line under these cases and move on, in the light of the policy that the right hon. Gentleman supported, and on which all parts of the House agreed. This country is against torture. This country has a good, high-quality security and intelligence service. We wish to make it quite clear that it is not complicit—and must not be complicit—in the torture or ill-treatment of detainees, so the sooner we resolve these doubts and enable it to get on with its proper job of intelligence, the better. We were bogged down in litigation and complaints which were slowly going not exactly nowhere but could have taken years to resolve, because of all the difficulties with the admissibility of the evidence and the hearing of evidence in public.

For that reason, we have sought to draw a line under things. We published the guidance on treatment of detainees, as the right hon. Gentleman said, which is the first step that we took. We have now resolved these issues in a way that enables us to move on. We still have to wait for the police inquiry, to which he also referred. That is entirely a matter for the police, and no one—no Minister or anybody else—can intervene and start instructing the police on how to conduct such inquiries. We cannot get the Gibson inquiry under way until the police inquiries have been resolved. I do not know how long they will take—I hope that they will not take too long—but that is a matter for the police. If those inquiries lead to prosecutions, we will have to wait for the resolution of those prosecutions. If they lead to no prosecutions, we really will be clear to get on to the inquiry that lies beyond.

The settlement, which involves no concession of liability or withdrawal of allegations, does not prejudge the Gibson inquiry in any way. It will be entirely for Sir Peter and his colleagues to decide on the inquiry once its terms of reference have finally been settled. We see the inquiry as looking at the problem in general—that is, looking at the history and deciding whether there were problems and whether there are any lessons to learn, as well as making inquiries about how we might ensure that the standards that the whole House would want to uphold are put beyond doubt for the future. We have not altered the scope of the inquiry since the Prime Minister made his statement, and we expect it to have access to a wide range of information—indeed, all the information that it could reasonably expect. The problem with the courts is either that they cannot have access to a lot of the information because of all the security problems, or that they cannot share it with the complainants and the public. So far as I am aware, the settlements cover all the British residents and citizens from Guantanamo Bay who are making complaints. We are not aware of any other cases that could be raised on all fours with those.

The settlement has saved us money and, most importantly, time. It has stopped the intelligence service spending man-hours on sifting through evidence and coping with litigation, but it must remain confidential. It is legally confidential and could be reopened if either side broke that confidentiality, so I am afraid that I am unable to tell the right hon. Gentleman the precise sums involved, but the gain that has been achieved by mediating the claims is considerable and in the national interest.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

Having been a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee for the past five years, I have reached the uncomfortable conclusion that if there is not to be a total breakdown in the intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States, my right hon. and learned Friend has reached the right conclusion. However, does he agree that he must now find a way of conducting such litigation without compromising national security? Has he considered expanding the scope of the Green Paper from civil cases to criminal cases?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his sensible proposition. The same issues arise, and I will certainly bear his suggestion in mind. The problem crops up over and over again. We currently have an inquest into the highly important matter of the explosions on 7 July, which has decided to extend itself into an inquiry into the activities of the intelligence services in informing themselves about possible risks to security throughout the country. Wholly foreseeably, it has run crash into the problem of exactly what evidence is supposed to be adduced about that in public. I have no idea—it is for Lady Justice Hallett to resolve—how we move on in that particular case. The Green Paper will be difficult. It will be difficult to reach clear conclusions, but we wish to do so as quickly as possible and the purpose of the Green Paper is to address that problem so that we can be sure that justice is done without compromising national security. At the moment, there is a tendency for claimants, the security service and everyone else to get bogged down in interminable litigation and judicial review. That has to be resolved.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement and the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). Picking up on the remarks of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), may I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether it will be possible for Sir Peter Gibson, who has great judicial experience, to feed into the important work on the Green Paper on the use of intelligence in judicial proceedings?

[Mr Clarke]

Sir Peter Gibson has indeed been the Intelligence Services Commissioner, and still is, although he will probably have to give that up when he takes on this inquiry. If he wishes to give his views on this difficult question, I am sure that they will be welcome, because, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, he is a considerable expert on the subject.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Is it a reasonable assumption that the UK Government would not agree to a mediated settlement if there were no evidence whatever of UK involvement in any illegal act?

[Mr Clarke]

The settlement is not to be taken as an admission of liability, as it were. It was not in the interests of either party to get stuck into civil litigation with a wholly unforeseeable outcome. As I have said, it could have taken years and cost tens of millions of pounds. Its resolution was holding up the wish of the Prime Minister and the Government to get on with sorting out the allegations and having a proper inquiry into them. It has cost us quite a bit of money to mediate them, because the complainants were pressing their claims. The situation is obviously difficult and unusual, but it was right, in the public interest, to pay the money. The idea that we should carry on arguing for the next five or six years—it could have taken that long—and find ourselves in a pale reflection of the Saville inquiry running on and on would not have done anyone any good at all, so we paid the money so that we can move on. I think we have saved public money by not continuing to contest the claims.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I think there will be natural concern on both sides of the House about Government payments of compensation when culpability has not been admitted. It is, however, important to welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement today. I also welcome his repetition—word for word, if my memory serves me right—of the previous Government’s position on torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment. May I bring him back to the subject of the police inquiries and the Gibson inquiry? Like him, I hope for a speedy conclusion to the police inquiries so that the Gibson inquiry can get on with its work and bring some facts to a debate that often sadly lacks them. Would it be possible for Sir Peter Gibson and his team to start work now, even if their public and other work cannot get going yet? It would be a pity if the police inquiries were to drag on for many more months, delaying bringing clarity to this area.

[Mr Clarke]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s statement of this country’s values as far as torture and ill-treatment are concerned. I also share his impatience to see the Gibson inquiry get under way. The Government cannot, however, have the inquiry proceeding in parallel with either civil or criminal proceedings on part of the same subject. For that reason, we must make it clear straight away that both will have to be resolved before we can proceed. If Sir Peter were to start, and if there were a prosecution arising from the police inquiries, a criminal trial might be running in parallel to his inquiry. That would not be possible. We shall wait to see what the police decide, and the moment those matters are resolved, Sir Peter will be able to begin his work.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Without prejudicing any of the facts of this case, can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that any act of torture, or conspiracy to commit acts of torture, by any UK citizen anywhere in the world will be a criminal offence, and that, as a matter of public policy, any evidence obtained by torture will always be inadmissible in UK courts?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I can give a straightforward, positive answer to both those questions. Yes, that is undoubtedly the case, and my hon. Friend has accurately stated the position.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I thank the Justice Secretary for giving me advance notice of his statement. Given the need to preserve confidentiality in relation to the settlement, how long does he think that that confidentiality will be preserved, bearing in mind the two serious leaks from his Department this week?

[Mr Clarke]

Exactly the same thoughts have crossed my mind, but I am bound by the confidentiality agreement and I must hope that everyone will abide by their legal obligations. However, I share the hon. Gentleman’s uncertainty.

[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

Might it be appropriate for us to seek to recover the costs of the compensation payments from those individuals who are responsible, in particular the former Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has made tens of millions of pounds since leaving this House?

[Mr Clarke]

The costs have been incurred in civil litigation between the detainees and the Government, and we have settled the matter. I do not think that that would be proper—I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s suggestion, and I do not think that there is really the slightest claim against the previous Prime Minister.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that many people will find this settlement a bitter pill to swallow? Will he confirm that, if our intelligence relationship with the United States were to break down, which was a real possibility, it would imperil the lives of many, many citizens of this country?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that the Government’s relationship with the United States and the close relationship between our intelligence services and those of the United States make a vital contribution to our protection of the security of this country and the lives of individuals here. That must not be jeopardised.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that it would be wrong to infer from the fact that there is a confidentiality agreement about the substantial sums paid to these individuals that that confidentiality agreement was imposed at the behest of one side rather than the other?

[Mr Clarke]

The other side wanted confidentiality as well, I am assured. It is not at all unusual, when mediating an action of this kind, for both sides to agree that they wish to have confidentiality. My hon. Friend is quite right: there is no point in trying to read into this that either side has resiled. Anyone who has been involved in any kind of civil litigation on a less serious matter will know that, often, a party that has been busily protesting its side of the argument can be quite well advised to stop running up costs, to stop wasting management time, to make a reasonable offer and to get out of it. In this case, the considerations were much more important for the public interest. How much longer did we want man-hours in the intelligence services to be absorbed, and how many tens of millions were we prepared to spend on interminable litigation?

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Leaving aside the cheap political point made by the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) a moment ago, let me tell the Justice Secretary that I find it difficult to understand—as will many people—how compensation could be paid unless there was substantial substance to the allegations made by those who claim that they were transferred illegally and tortured abroad. Surely the clear lesson to be learned is that a state such as ours, based on the rule of law, must ensure that all its officials observe the rule of law, and must not be complicit in any way with agents abroad who carry out torture.

[Mr Clarke]

It is not unusual in many walks of life for a settlement to be reached with neither party making any concessions on their arguments, but both parties agreeing that the settlement constitutes a sensible way of reaching a compromise in the dispute without going further.

I entirely agree with the statement of principle in the second part of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Government are opposed to torture. Torture is a serious criminal offence. We are opposed to the ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners in any circumstances. We will not condone it, and we will not be complicit in it. Those are the essential values that we must defend, even when we face such dangers as we do now from terrorism in the world.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement. Further to his comments about Shaker Aamer, does he agree that if we are to achieve closure gradually over the next few years, it is important that Shaker Aamer is released to this country so that he can give evidence to the torture inquiry in person?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I do agree. I know that there are people who feel very strongly about the release of Shaker Aamer. We continue to be in contact with the United States, and we continue to hope that he will be released and returned to this country. I know that my hon. Friend has been arguing and campaigning for that for some time. I agree with her, and we are doing our best.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State comfortable with the fact that millions of pounds are being paid out during the week in which he is announcing big cuts in the legal aid budget? Should we not be ensuring that if those who receive the money themselves breach the confidentiality agreement, or their lawyers do, the money is taken back from them?

[Mr Clarke]

That might involve reopening the settlement, which I would not be willing to do. We must be careful about the confidentiality because, certainly in principle, the settlement could be reopened. I entirely understand that there are a large number of aspects of this with which everyone is uncomfortable, and which some people will strongly dislike. However, we must keep our eye on the ball, and decide what is truly in the national interest. What is truly in the national interest is allowing the intelligence services to get on with their job, allowing us to put the reputation of this country beyond doubt, and learning lessons that may have to be learned—we do not know yet—from anything that Sir Peter Gibson puts forward.

As for the legal aid proposals, we said that legal aid would still be available, on a means-tested basis, to anyone who wished to challenge the state by way of judicial review. Other claims would have to involve exceptional public interest.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. I am sorry that we did not do more to speak out against Guantanamo Bay and everything that it stands for. The creation of the term “enemy combatants” allowed the nation, indeed the world, to ignore the Geneva conventions.

My I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to turn to the issue of compensation for British victims of terrorism overseas? As he will know, those who were caught up in the 7/7 bombings were adequately supported and compensated, but as soon as such an event takes place abroad we see that there is no support whatsoever, whether it be in Bali, Mumbai or Sharm el Sheikh. That is simply wrong, and it needs to change.

[Mr Clarke]

I know of my hon. Friend’s continuing interest in this subject. As part of our policy considerations in the light of the public spending review, we are having to examine the criminal injuries compensation system and the proposed terrorist injury compensation system. We are having to decide how we should judge the Government’s responsibilities for compensating those who have been injured by crime, either at home—we have always compensated those people—or abroad: I know that my hon. Friend has been campaigning for that.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

A year ago, I wrote on behalf of the Home Affairs Committee to the previous Attorney-General, asking about the police inquiries, and I see that the Secretary of State is surrounded by Law Officers today. While not seeking to influence or instruct the police, which would be totally improper, surely it is in everyone’s interests that we know if there is a timetable. What is holding up this inquiry, which has gone on for several years?

[Mr Clarke]

If the police follow these exchanges, I am sure they will note the right hon. Gentleman’s impatience that we move on and get some resolution to inquiries, which I think have been going on for about 15 to 18 months. He knows, because he is as good a lawyer as anybody else involved in these discussions, that it would be quite improper for anyone to approach the police and put pressure on them to put in place a timetable or to press them one way or the other.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I welcome the Gibson inquiry, and I agree that what has been announced is necessary for the sake of our national security, but will my right hon. and learned Friend acknowledge the concern expressed by many people that a settlement has been paid using British taxpayers’ money for foreign nationals—non-British citizens—detained in a foreign country by a foreign Government?

[Mr Clarke]

The cases involve British nationals or British residents. Although there is one case where that is a slightly doubtful statement, it had already got under way before we came into office, and at some stage the jurisdiction had been accepted. Twelve cases are already before the court, and four would have come before the court if we had not proceeded as we have. We have not started compensating people at large for what happened in Guantanamo Bay. We have only dealt with British residents and British citizens.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Have I got this right? Is the Secretary of State paying out large sums of money—he will not tell us how much—to people who are giving no guarantees about not breaking confidentiality? Can it be true that he cannot say to the House that this matter has ended? Is he not buying time? This sounds like money for old rope. The other week, the Conservatives were giving prisoners votes; now they are giving them lottery millions. I think I have already discovered the soft underbelly of this Government.

[Mr Clarke]

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, no, he is not right: the confidentiality is binding on both sides. The people who brought the claims have bound themselves by confidentiality and so have the Government. That is a perfectly usual term of a mediated settlement of what was going to be a hugely expensive problem for the British taxpayer if it had not been resolved.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. As I understand it, the mediation is designed to address the potential cost of litigation arising from the Guantanamo cases and is estimated to be between £30 million and £50 million. The inquiry is also wider than that, and will deal with non-Guantanamo cases where individuals have been detained in other countries. What is the estimated cost of the potential litigation in those cases?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that the Gibson inquiry does have wide terms of reference, although these matters finally have to be settled. It is looking at the whole question of the ill treatment of detainees generally, although, of course, usually in cases where there is some British involvement, such as where our allies have been involved or where we have been engaged in theatre. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) takes a great interest in these allegations and as he cannot be present today he has been on the telephone to me, because he is very anxious that rendition should be included.

I cannot give an estimate of the cost, but we are anxious that there should be a reasonable time scale, and so is Sir Peter. We do not want this to go on for ever. The inquiry will take a general look at the position, and it will take such evidence as it feels fit and go as wide as is necessary to guide future British policy. Beyond that I cannot go, however, because in the end this will be a matter for Sir Peter and his two colleagues on the panel.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We know that the settlement was under £30 million because that is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said was the minimum cost of the alternative. I confess that I am not a lawyer—most British people are not lawyers—but I cannot understand why the Government, in making this settlement, took the view that they wanted to keep the sum of money involved a secret from the British people. Why was that the Government’s position in this case?

[Mr Clarke]

This was negotiated and the other side wanted confidentiality, and it was settled on the basis of confidentiality, subject to parliamentary accountability. I understand the hon. Gentleman, and, with great respect, I anticipated his questions, as they are going to occur to quite a lot of people. We could settle this on the basis of confidentiality and we have done so. We have notified the National Audit Office, I think that we offered a briefing to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and we have briefed the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, but it would be folly to break the legal confidentiality, which was part of the settlement, if the result is to jeopardise the settlement and put us back where we started.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I am sorry to strike a discordant note, but ordinary decent people out there are going to think that the world has gone mad. People making wild, unsubstantiated and baseless allegations of torture are getting more money than victims of terrorism here in London. If, as the Secretary of State says, it is the law that has forced him to do this, what people out there will want to hear from him are assurances that he will accelerate proposals to change the law and ensure that we never have any of this nonsense again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

It is the rule of law, I am afraid. The hon. Gentleman is prejudging the claims that were being fought out before the courts. The claims were for compensation for serious problems that these detainees had suffered—I have met these people. The argument was about the complicity of the British security services, which was not and is not admitted. The detainees were bringing a legal action. It might be that had this ever been fought to a conclusion, the court might have come to the hon. Gentleman’s conclusion that these claims were baseless, but we are never going to discover that now, because we have settled this. We did so as it was not worth discovering, because the bigger public interest was in making sure that we could put a line under all this, get back to having the reputation of our intelligence services restored and get Sir Peter Gibson to advise on how to make sure that that reputation remains intact in future.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that if these allegations were wild and unsubstantiated, as has just been suggested, the Government would not have been keen to settle these cases?

[Mr Clarke]

I think that in all forms of litigation it is wrong to start reading whether a settlement made with no admissions on one side and no withdrawal of allegations on the other indicates which side was winning—it does not necessarily do so. The fact is that these two sides were locked in litigation, which was going nowhere fast because of the very difficult legal problem of what evidence can be admitted and whether that evidence should be admitted publicly. If Members want, they can read into this that one side was admitting it or that the other side was producing frivolous claims and got away with murder. The court was entertaining these claims; 12 civil actions were under way. But I think everybody understands from the most extraordinary circumstances of this case that it was better to settle it than just to let it go on to see who eventually won. No one should read into this admissions of liability and no one should read into this that one side packed up its claims; we just agreed to come to a very sensible mediated settlement.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Can we demonstrate that we have learned the lesson of the damage done to our reputation by the protracted nature of these investigations by guaranteeing that when fresh allegations are made of bad behaviour, such as the 21 cases cited by The Guardian following freedom of information requests, those present and future allegations will be investigated swiftly and thoroughly?

[Mr Clarke]

That is why we need the Green Paper, in order to try to establish some rules on the admissibility of intelligence evidence or evidence that may be of relevance to national security. As I believe I said in answer to an earlier question, this issue is cropping up with ever more frequency and we need to resolve it. This is not just something that the Government or Parliament can simply declare we are going to do. We have to resolve this in a way that is compatible with the rule of law, with the judgments that British Courts are likely to come to and with the strong opinions held by the judiciary in this country in their role of defending our fundamental rights, the rule of law and the independence of the courts. We have to consider our international obligations. It will not be easy to produce a Green Paper, but that is the secret to getting back to resolving these matters at a decent pace. I entirely share the hon. Gentleman’s wish that we could do that, so that they can be sorted out pretty clearly, fairly and straightforwardly whenever they arise.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

You will know, Mr Speaker, that my former constituent Feroz Abbasi was held for many years in Guantanamo Bay in intolerable conditions without charge and was later freed. May I ask the Justice Secretary that if members of MI5 or MI6 are found to be complicit in torture, what penalties will they face?

[Mr Clarke]

That is speculative. I should make it clear that the allegations in these cases were not, so far as I am aware, that any member of the British security services had directly been involved in torture or ill treatment. They were argued to be complicit—that is, they had known that others were doing that and had somehow been complicit, which is not admitted by the security services. That was the issue. No one, I think, has been accused of torturing. It would be a very serious matter if anybody in the British intelligence services was ever found to have taken part in torture or the deliberate ill treatment of a detainee.

Legal Aid and Civil Cost Reform

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to announce today proposals for the reform of legal aid in England and Wales, and proposals for the reform of civil litigation funding and costs in England and Wales.

I have today laid before Parliament two documents, “Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales” and “Proposals for the Reform of Civil Litigation Funding and Costs in England and Wales”, which consult on these issues; copies will be available in the Vote Office and on the Ministry of Justice’s website. The changes will require primary legislation and, subject to consultation, I hope to include proposals in a Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.

I would like to apologise to the House, Mr Speaker, for the well-informed although not wholly accurate leaks of my proposals that appeared in the newspapers at the weekend, which caused me to bring forward this statement. I was hoping to abide by the convention of announcing this to Parliament, but it was obviously going to run for the week if I left it until Thursday to make the announcement.

Legal aid forms a vital part of a system of justice of which we are rightly proud. The Government strongly believe that access to justice is a hallmark of a civilised society. However, I believe that there is now a compelling case for going back to first principles in reforming legal aid. The current system bears very little resemblance to the one that was introduced in 1949. Legal aid has expanded, so much so that it is now one of the most expensive such systems in the world, costing the public purse more than £2 billion each year. It is now available for a very wide range of issues, including some that do not require any legal expertise to resolve. It cannot be right that the taxpayer is footing the bill for unnecessary court cases that would never have even reached the courtroom door, were it not for the fact that somebody else was paying.

The previous Government made many attempts to reform legal aid, conducting more than 30 consultations since 2006. However, successive changes have been of a piecemeal nature and have failed to address the underlying problems. I have gone back to basic principles to make choices about which issues are of sufficient priority to justify the use of public funds, subject to people’s means and the merits of the case. I have taken into account the importance of the issue at stake, the litigant’s ability to present their own case, the availability of alternative sources of funding and alternative routes to resolving the issue, as well as our domestic and international legal obligations.

My proposals have also been designed with the aim of achieving significant savings. No other Government in the world believe that the taxpayer should pay for so much legal aid and litigation as we do in the United Kingdom. We have made clear our commitment to reducing the fiscal deficit to encourage economic recovery. Last month’s spending review set out the scale of the challenge. My Department’s budget will be reduced by 23% over four years. Legal aid needs to make a substantial contribution to that reduction. I estimate that the proposals in the consultation paper, if implemented, will achieve savings of about £350 million in 2014-15.

I do not propose any changes to the scope of criminal legal aid. However, I propose to introduce a more targeted civil and family scheme that will discourage people from resorting to lawyers whenever they face a problem and instead encourage them to consider more suitable methods of dispute resolution. Legal aid will still routinely be available in civil and family cases where people’s life or liberty is at stake, or where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home. For example, I plan to retain legal aid for asylum cases, for debt and housing matters where someone’s home is at immediate risk and for mental health cases. It will still be provided where people face intervention from the state in their family affairs that may result in their children being taken into care, and for cases involving domestic violence or forced marriage. I also propose that legal aid should remain available for cases where people seek to hold the state to account by judicial review and for some cases involving discrimination that are currently in scope. Legal assistance to bereaved families in inquests, including for deaths of active service personnel, will also remain in scope.

However, prioritising those areas requires that we make clear choices about the availability of legal aid in other areas. Therefore, we propose to remove from the scope of the scheme issues that are not, generally speaking, of sufficient priority to justify funding at the taxpayer’s expense. I therefore propose to remove private family law cases, unless domestic violence, forced marriage or child abduction is involved. I will continue to provide funding for mediation, which can benefit those involved in family disputes by avoiding long, drawn-out and acrimonious court proceedings.

Other cases that I am proposing to remove from the scope of the civil legal aid scheme include clinical negligence, where, in many cases, alternative sources of funding are available, such as no win, no fee arrangements. The cases I am proposing to remove from scope also include education, employment, immigration, some debt and housing issues, and welfare benefits, except where there is a risk to anyone’s safety or liberty, or a risk of homelessness. In many of these, the issues are not necessarily of a legal nature, but require other forms of expert advice to resolve.

I recognise that there will be some cases, within the areas of law I propose to remove from scope, that international or domestic law will require to be funded by the taxpayer. I therefore propose a new exceptional funding scheme for excluded cases. I want to ensure that those who can pay for or contribute to their legal costs do so, so that we ensure continued access to public funding in those cases that really require it for those who have little or no funds of their own. On eligibility, therefore, I propose that all clients with £1,000 or more of disposable capital should make a minimum £100 contribution to their legal costs, and that the capital of any prospective legal aid clients is taken into account when considering eligibility.

I also looked at how best to reform the way in which we pay lawyers who provide legal aid services. I want to ensure that criminal cases are resolved quickly and cost effectively, and that legal aid fee structures support that aim. In the long term, I propose to fulfil the recommendation that Lord Carter of Coles made to the previous Administration to move towards a competitive market to replace the current system of administratively set fee rates. It will not be possible, however, to fulfil that aim in the short term. I am therefore proposing some more immediate changes to the current fee structure.

I propose to ensure that in Crown court cases that could realistically have been dealt with in the magistrates courts, a single fixed fee for a guilty plea will be paid based on fee rates in the magistrates court. I also propose that the same fee should be paid in respect of a guilty plea in the Crown court regardless of the stage at which the plea is entered, and to do more to contain the costs of very high-cost criminal cases. These proposals complement other reforms to the justice system that I will be bringing forward designed to encourage cases to be brought quickly and efficiently to justice, so sparing the victim the ordeal of giving evidence in court unnecessarily, and sparing the justice system significant but avoidable costs.

It is important to strike a balance between the need to ensure that legal aid provision is innovative, efficient and good value for taxpayers’ money on the one hand, and ensuring that people can continue to access legally aided services where necessary on the other. I believe that more can be done to strike the balance. I propose to reduce fees paid in civil and family cases by 10% across the board, and to make similar levels of reductions in rising experts’ fees. I also propose to extend telephone access to advice through the Community Legal Advice telephone helpline, which has a high rate of public satisfaction, to help people find the easiest and most effective ways to resolve problems.

I am also consulting on proposals to make better use of alternative sources of funding for legal aid. In particular, I would welcome views on making use of the higher rates of interest generated on money invested in a pooled account used by solicitors to hold their clients’ money, and on making use of a supplementary legal aid scheme. Lastly, I seek views on how to make the administration of legal aid less bureaucratic for solicitors and barristers doing legal aid work. I recognise that processes have become overly complex, and I want to do what I can to simplify these, while remaining consistent with the highest standards of accounting practice.

Furthermore, on 26 July, the Government announced their intention to consult on implementing Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations on the reform of civil litigation costs and funding arrangements. Sir Rupert Jackson’s independent and comprehensive report, published in January 2010, makes a clear case that the costs in civil cases in England and Wales have become too high, and he makes a broad range of recommendations for reducing those costs. I am convinced by Sir Rupert’s argument that achieving proportionate costs and promoting access to justice go hand in hand. I believe that the consultation proposals for the reform of civil litigation funding and costs presented today would help to rebalance access to justice with proportionate costs in civil cases.

In particular, Sir Rupert’s proposals would reform the operation of no win, no fee conditional fee agreements. CFAs are funding agreements under which lawyers are not paid if they lose, but may charge an uplift or a success fee of up to 100% on their base costs if they win. CFAs, as they currently operate, allow claims to be brought at no financial risk to individual claimants, but the other side of that coin is that CFAs impose substantial additional costs on defendants. The Government have already accepted the recommendations of my right hon. and noble Friend, Lord Young of Graffham's recent report on health and safety and the compensation culture, entitled “Common Sense, Common Safety”. His typically cogent report endorses Sir Rupert’s proposals.

The key proposal is to abolish recoverability of high success fees and the associated after-the-event insurance premiums in CFA cases. Under the current regime, defendants must pay those additional costs if they lose, and they may be substantial, as the success fee may be double the base legal costs. In addition, significant costs may arise from claimants’ purchase of after-the-event insurance. ATE insurance may be taken out by parties in such cases to insure against the risk of having to pay their opponent’s costs and their own disbursements if they lose. We are proposing that claimants should have to pay their lawyer’s success fee. They will, therefore, take an interest in controlling the costs being incurred on their behalf. That will also reduce the disproportionate costs burden on defendants.

We are also seeking views on implementing other recommendations by Sir Rupert, which are designed to balance the impact of these major changes, and in particular to assist claimants. The recommendations include a 10% increase in general damages to help the claimant to pay the success fee, and a mechanism of qualified one-way costs shifting. That would protect the vast majority of less well off claimants from having to pay a winning defendant’s costs and therefore reduce the need for ATE insurance.

We also propose to allow damages-based agreements or contingency fees in litigation before the courts. These are another form of no win, no fee agreement, under which lawyers may take a proportion of the claimants’ damages in fees. This would increase the funding options available to claimants.

Other proposals would further encourage parties to make and accept reasonable offers, and introduce a new test to ensure that overall costs are proportionate. We also propose to increase the modest costs that can be recovered by people who win their cases when they represent themselves without lawyers.

Taken together, my proposals complement the wider programme of reform that I will bring forward to move towards a straightforward justice system: one which is more responsive to public needs, which allows people to resolve their issues out of court using simpler, more informal remedies when appropriate, and which encourages more efficient resolution of contested cases when necessary. I commend this statement to the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for giving me advance sight of his statement, and I note his apology at the beginning of it. One must admire the mind-reading ability of senior journalists at The Sunday Telegraph and The Times. It was a huge discourtesy to the House, but it provided the advantage of 24 hours’ notice of a statement to be made on the Floor of the House. I am grateful to both Patrick Hennessy and Simon Coates for their ability to do just that.

The Green Papers on cutting legal aid and reducing civil costs are among the most important that the Government have published to date. Legal aid is one of the pillars of the welfare state, and was set up by the Labour Government after the second world war. It plays a crucial role in tackling social exclusion, especially in hard times such as now. It ensures that everyone may have access to justice, regardless of their means. Under successive Governments, the legal aid budget has grown to the point where it now stands at more than £2 billion. That is not sustainable, especially in the current economic context.

I have six questions for the Lord Chancellor. The previous Labour Government had moved to cap the legal aid budget, and to reduce it. We also planned to turn the Legal Services Commission into an Executive agency. Do the Government have any plans to introduce legislation to achieve that aim?

In recent years, we brought the principle of fixed fees into civil and family legal aid cases, introduced means testing into magistrates and Crown courts, and on the very day that the general election was called we signed off on cuts to advocates’ fees in the higher courts. We took these decisions because we recognised the need to reduce the legal aid budget. It is worth reminding the House that many of our actions were taken in the teeth of opposition, from both the legal profession and Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members. I am looking forward to hearing their contributions to this debate.

Let me be clear: had we been in government today, we, too, would have been announcing savings to the legal aid budget. That is a reality that we all have to acknowledge. The crucial questions are: where to make those savings, and how to spend the money that is left available. What equality impact assessment has the Lord Chancellor undertaken of the proposals? Our policy was—and is—to control the legal aid budget and get value for money for the taxpayer, while optimising services for people who need support the most. That is why we concentrated much of our investment on social welfare legal aid. Legal aid delivered has the power to change lives and save money. The housing possession court duty scheme, for example, saved thousands of people from repossession. It delivered a social and financial good. Are the Government committed to preserving that and similar schemes?

What balance do the Government intend to strike between civil and criminal cases? Can the Lord Chancellor explain why he is proposing more severe cuts in civil and family legal aid than in criminal legal aid? Can he say whether he agrees with the Attorney-General, who said that

“legal aid is no longer available for a large number of people who ought to be entitled to it”?

If so, in what areas does the Lord Chancellor intend to expand the provision of legal aid?

We will carefully consider the Green Paper on legal aid and the equally important paper on Lord Justice Jackson’s review of civil legal aid costs before we respond in further detail. I would note, however, that Sir Rupert Jackson argued against cutting the legal aid budget, and the Lord Chancellor has decided to ignore that view. In conclusion, the basic test that we will apply in both cases is whether the proposals will deliver a saving to the public purse while ensuring that no one is denied access to justice because of their means.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Mr Speaker, if I may, let me first respond to your comments. When I finalised the statement before coming here, I realised that it was far too long, but the fact is that the subject is complex and the leaks were quite detailed but not wholly accurate, so it was necessary to go through it with some care, for those outside this House as well as those within it. I am grateful for the fact that my shadow spokesman was given a little more warning of some of the statement.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on acknowledging that Labour would have been reducing the legal aid bill as well—I came well armed with quotations from him and all his colleagues about their intention to reduce the legal aid bill. Indeed, it featured in the Labour party’s manifesto at the election. It is starkly obvious that the England and Wales legal aid system has become far too expensive, and it is an obvious place to start tackling deficit problems, which has to be done on a logical basis. The Labour party had taken quite a lot of decisions and had made reductions, affecting criminal as well as civil legal aid, but the effect of what it did was largely to stabilise what had been the rapid growth of legal aid before that. Legal aid expenditure exploded in this county until about 1999. Thereafter, the Government wrestled with it, trying to bring it down, but they succeeded only in stabilising it. It is right to get legal aid expenditure back to something nearer to the norm in other democratic and common-law countries throughout the world, which we are far above at the moment.

We intend to go ahead with the last Government’s proposal to make an agency of Government to replace the Legal Services Commission. That will have to feature in our legislation when it comes. We have, obviously, done an equality assessment, to have a look at the impact on various sectors of the population. Apart from the fact that the decision will obviously have an impact on the legal profession, affecting both barristers and solicitors, more importantly, one has to look at what impact it will have on gender, ethnic minorities and the poor. It is inevitably the case, of course, that litigation, and legal aid in particular, tend to be focused on the disadvantaged groups in society. Some aspects of legal aid are more resourced by women, as well as men; nevertheless, we have to be mindful of that. We have done an equality assessment, and we believe that the impact of the changes is, on balance, justified by the public interest in ensuring that the taxpayer pays only where there is a public interest in having a dispute resolved.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the balance between civil legal aid and criminal legal aid and asked why, on this occasion at least, the scope of criminal aid is not affected. First, we already spend more on criminal than civil legal aid in this country. The reason we do so is that it is absolutely essential in the public interest to see that justice is done in every case. It is an unfortunate feature of our legal aid system—I accept it, and we always have accepted it—that we often wind up giving it to people who turn out to be rather unattractive.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Or criminals.

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, or criminals.

Before bringing the full severity of law to bear on a criminal, however, we have to make absolutely sure that he is indeed the guilty party and that he has been given every chance to claim and demonstrate his innocence to save us from making a mistake. As the liberty of the subject is at stake in all serious criminal cases, we really cannot cut back the scope of criminal legal aid.

I think the reason why we spend spectacularly more than other countries on legal advice and litigation is that we have extended the legal aid system in the past to practically every kind of civil and family issue. That is why, when it comes to cutting back the scope, the present package on which we are consulting concentrates on those areas.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The Justice Committee will look forward to an early session with the Lord Chancellor on the details of his proposals. Are not the issues around education, employment, debt and housing, which he says do not require special legal expertise, those on which people do need help, which they currently get through LSC contracts, citizens advice bureaux and neighbourhood law centres? From where else will they get that help in future?

[Mr Clarke]

In some cases, as with housing issues where a person’s home is at risk and they may lose possession, we will continue to make legal aid available. Any cases involving the risk of homelessness or loss of liberty will still be covered by legal aid. The right hon. Gentleman gave a list and I will not deal with them each in turn, but they are all addressed in other ways than through litigation. Employment issues go before a tribunal, for example, and those tribunals were originally designed precisely to avoid representation by lawyers and legalism. They were designed to be more straightforward and accessible forms of justice. Debt certainly requires advice, but much of it is not so much of a legal nature as of a practical nature—advising how to cope with negotiating with creditors and sort out the management of the debts incurred. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that citizens advice bureaux and other such organisations are a central source of this advice. We will have to consider how far we can continue to enable such organisations to step in and give a wider range of advice, which will be needed when we stop paying people to go to lawyers all the time, as we tend to on all these issues.

[Mr Straw]

May I endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said in every particular, including with respect to the commitment in our own manifesto to cut legal aid. The Lord Chancellor will understand that my right hon. Friend cannot endorse every particular of what is being put before the House at this stage, but he and I will, of course, examine the proposals with great care.

Let me ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman some specific questions about the proposals on criminal legal aid and guilty pleas. First, I have no argument with the principle, but is he certain that he will structure the payment systems to avoid giving any perverse incentive to lawyers, and therefore to defendants, not to continue to plead not guilty all the way through to the point of trial? That is a real danger.

Secondly, the right hon. and learned Gentleman says that where a case goes to the Crown court but it is judged that it should have been handled at the magistrates court, the fee will be paid only in respect of what would have been appropriate in the magistrates court. I understand that. Under the present legislation, however—I sought to change it, but the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the other place overturned my attempt—defendants have an absolute right in either-way cases to take their case to Crown court. Unless the Lord Chancellor introduces primary legislation to change that, we are left with the odd situation in which the Legal Services Commission says that a case should not have gone to the Crown court while the defendant says that he has an absolute right to that under statute.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have also been hanging on almost every word spoken by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for the last 13 years, but now I know what is meant by those who say that lawyers are paid by the word.

[Mr Clarke]

We are working on incentives to stop them from being paid by the word outside the House, Mr Speaker.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for what he said. We both know that any responsible Government who had won the last election—any parties that had taken office—would have cut the legal aid bill. I think we should all remind ourselves of that, because, as we know, all kinds of lobbies outside who are adversely affected will start coming to us and telling us that the whole spirit of British justice is being undermined by the threat to their particular activities. We simply have to do this, and I hope that we can achieve a fair consensus on the sensible way in which to proceed.

The question of cases in which people do not plead guilty early enough is very serious. I hope we will ensure that we remove perverse incentives from the system, if they exist. The sentencing proposals that I shall present will recommend further inducements to people to plead guilty at an early stage—not only in order to save money and prevent time from being wasted, but in order to prevent victims and witnesses from fearing that they will have to attend court and give evidence, when that is actually a waste of time because the defendant will plead guilty in the end.

As for the question of either-way cases and those who opt for jury trial, I am afraid that I am one of the many Members who do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we should address it. I have always been a firm defender of the principle that anyone has the right to opt for jury trial, and the House has resisted any attempt to erode that right in recent years. The last Government’s attempt to change the position was defeated in the House of Lords during the last Parliament, and my party was elected—as, indeed, were the Liberal Democrats—on the basis of a firm commitment to retaining it. It is not just that I do not want to throw myself on the spears; I genuinely agree with those who believe that we should not alter the current ability to opt for jury trial.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Following the decision to remove legal aid from clinical negligence cases, how will my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that the most vulnerable in such cases are protected, and are not exploited by ambulance-chasing lawyers?

[Mr Clarke]

At present, about half the total number of clinical negligence cases are brought on a no win, no fee basis, and about half are brought on legal aid. No doubt some are privately financed. No win, no fee is a perfectly suitable way of proceeding in clinical negligence cases. We have decided that that—as amended by Sir Rupert Jackson—is likely to be the way in which people will proceed in future. What we have done completes a process of steadily taking legal aid out of criminal injury claims, which has been going on for some years, and I commend it as a logical next step.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The last Government, of course, also cut legal aid. The issue is quality, and how we focus that legal aid.

This morning, by chance, I visited our old college, where I saw the portraits of former Lord Chancellors who had attended it. When the college puts up a portrait of the current Lord Chancellor—or he may even be entitled to a mini-statue in the grounds—how would he like the epitaph to read, in relation to legal aid?

[Mr Clarke]

The last Government made many changes to legal aid, which stopped the increase in spending throughout most of the past decade. I have tried to return to basic first principles, and to ask “What is legal aid for?” Let us now put in place a logical structure that is defensible and may last.

I have not the first idea what kind of statue or picture that the college that I share with the right hon. Gentleman might ever erect to me. I do not think that a mini-statue would do justice to my full stature, but I should be very flattered if anything at all were put up. However, I trust that the college will acknowledge that we have tried to create a logical and defensible system which can be afforded by a civilised democracy that needs a legal aid system.

I should probably experience more difficulty in persuading my legal friends and the legal institutions to which I belong of the wisdom of all this than in persuading my old college.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I welcome the continuing support for asylum cases under legal aid, but I welcome even more the curbs on immigration cases under legal aid. Given that over the period of the last Parliament some £400 million was spent on combined asylum and immigration cases, can the Lord Chancellor confirm whether these proposals will make substantial reductions in that expenditure, and if so, can he give an idea of how much will be saved?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, we certainly intend to confine legal aid in immigration cases to those where detention or liberty is an issue, or in respect of asylum to where there may be a duty to provide asylum to someone who has been facing persecution. Other than that, we will make considerable reductions in legal aid in immigration cases involving purely personal reasons, which can include someone who has come here on a student visa and wants to transfer to a different course. Many such cases will still be brought of course, but there is no reason why the British taxpayer should pay for legal aid. I hesitate to give an estimate off the cuff of how much we will save under that heading, and I should emphasise that all the estimates we are giving of how much we will save are, indeed, estimates, because successive Governments have found it very difficult to predict how much legal aid will actually cost. Much depends on demand in particular areas, which is often unpredictable and outside the control of the Government.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Legal aid plays a vital function in creating a level playing field between the powerful and the powerless, and, even at a lower level, it must continue to do that. There are none so powerless as children. Will the Secretary of State clarify how he believes that children’s interests should be protected, particularly in respect of special educational needs in what is an increasingly decentralised school system?

[Mr Clarke]

Serious issues arise for parents in educational cases, and, obviously, the interests of the children should be paramount, as they are in most other cases. The difficulty is that the problem to be resolved usually relies more on educational expertise than on the law, and too often we are financing people who argue about the process that has been followed to resolve problems, instead of finding the best way of resolving the merits of how best to teach the child, where the child should be taught, or what support the child should have. We believe it is simply not right for the taxpayer to help inject an element of what is really legalism into problems that should in the end be resolved taking into account the best interests of the child from an educational point of view. Some of these cases can be turned into enormous legal battles, which seem to me to be very far removed from the object of ensuring that a child is best educated in school.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

One group of people my constituents in Bury North would like to see excluded from the scope of criminal legal aid are Members of Parliament. Will the Lord Chancellor ensure that, in future, legal aid is not granted to any Member of Parliament accused of wrongdoing?

[Mr Clarke]

Considerable adverse comment was made about the unfortunate case of our recent colleagues who succeeded in obtaining legal aid for their defence because, I think, their case was listed in a Crown court that had not yet introduced means-testing. I can assure my hon. Friend that all Crown court cases that might involve legal aid will be subject to means-testing in future, and although MPs are not paid a king’s ransom, all are likely to have resources that will put them beyond the reach of full legal aid, which some of our colleagues recently obtained.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Taking into account the Lord Chancellor’s wish, stated this afternoon, to encourage more efficient resolution of contested cases, will he press the Legal Services Commission to negotiate a settlement with South Manchester law centre ahead of the scheduled judicial review next month, given that the LSC lost a judicial review to the Law Society at immense public expense on the same kinds of points? It is essential, both to my constituents and more widely, that the South Manchester law centre continues to be able to help people on low means.

[Mr Clarke]

I will inquire into the case that concerns the right hon. Gentleman, but I must point out that the Legal Services Commission is currently a totally independent body and is not subject to ministerial control. We propose to change its status and make it an agency, which would make it more directly accountable and would enable us to exercise more control over efficiency, but we would still proceed on the basis of having no ministerial involvement in individual applications for legal aid, as it would be quite wrong to seem to politicise individual cases. Nevertheless, I hope that the dispute is resolved rapidly and I shall make inquiries as to whether the speeding up of a resolution can be facilitated.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Following the question of the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), and the Secretary of State’s very positive response about the role of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, is the Secretary of State willing to meet me and representatives of NACAB to discuss how it can carry on its excellent work in the wider fields of welfare benefits, homelessness and debt relief?

[Mr Clarke]

I have been considering this issue with colleagues and I shall continue to do so because we are concerned, more widely, about the present financial crisis affecting all kinds of outside bodies such as voluntary organisations and charities in many fields. Not-for-profit bodies such as NACAB are very important in giving the kind of advice and help that we are concerned with, so we will continue to look for a solution to that problem. I certainly promise the hon. Gentleman a meeting with me or the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who has put a great deal of work into producing this package.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor will be aware that there is widespread understanding of his statement throughout the House, and his approach to this principled and rational discussion in no way undermines the continued, vital role for legal aid in our overall legal system. He must be aware of the correspondence that my office has had with his about certain law firms in Coventry that have carried out very good legal work on many good cases within the existing rules, but find it impossible to get paid for their work and are therefore opting out of the whole system of legal aid. Will he bear that issue in mind in the context of what he has said today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I realise that we have had such problems. The LSC’s accounting has been criticised and its performance has not always been what it might—hence the complaints of late payment. The commission seems to have been making great efforts to improve its performance, which we hope to maintain. Obviously, we hope that the transition to the new agency arrangements, as first proposed by the previous Government, will not interrupt that. We will continue to make sure that we do not face straightforward complaints about late payment for services that have been rendered.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

First, I declare an interest as a legal aid lawyer. Given your earlier comments, Mr Speaker, I hope that that will have no bearing on the length of this question. Will my right hon. and learned Friend measure the success of his proposals in relation not just to the amount of public money saved but to greater access to justice, because there is not always a need for a contested hearing?

[Mr Clarke]

I hope to, but I hesitate to claim that we are providing greater access to justice given that we are taking quite a few things out of the scope of legal aid assistance. However, I share my hon. Friend’s hope that we will encourage better resolution of disputes, of which there are plenty of examples. The president of the family division, Sir Nicholas Wall, has talked about how, in many family cases, long, adversarial conflict proves not to be the best way of resolving differences between parents and certainly is not in the children’s best interests. There are plenty of other areas in which I hope definite advantage in resolving disputes will come from our proposals.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Justice Secretary try to estimate the impact of the proposals on the very poorest in society, particularly in our city of Nottingham? I know of welfare advice centres and citizens advice bureaux that will be in serious jeopardy of closing because of the way that the rules he has announced are skewed towards hitting the very poorest in society when it comes to welfare advice and housing. Can he assure us that he is not abandoning the very poorest in society to a desert in which they are left with no advice and completely without representation?

[Mr Clarke]

I realise the need for such services and I know that citizens advice bureaux are a particularly valuable source of advice for his constituents and mine in our area of Nottingham. I should point out, however, that not every bureau provides legal advice or gets legal aid and that bureaux have been eligible for it only since 2000, and we have moved into a situation in which some have become rather dependent on it. I can only say that I shall consider the problem. Legal aid probably never was the best way of financing such organisations and my colleagues and I will have to discuss whether some necessary measure can be introduced to ensure that wider advice is available, particularly to the most vulnerable in society. We are all agreed that the taxpayer should be involved only when people cannot reasonably be expected to pay at least a modest sum to get some advice of their own.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Given the restrictions that will apply in relation to education funding, can we be clear that there will be no legal aid funding, in whatever way, for special educational needs provision or other forms of education work?

[Mr Clarke]

Not normally, unless in an exceptional case we are under a legal obligation to provide legal aid. Education cases include all kinds of things, such as litigation regarding exclusion of particular pupils, and whether someone has been granted a place at the school of their children’s preference and so on. All such disputes can be litigated. The special educational needs cases are the most difficult. I repeat what I said before: these are educational problems, and there should be a process of resolving them that does not involve going all the way through the courts. I heard that the Supreme Court was hearing a special educational needs case. Although I am sure it came to the right decision, I am not sure whether it was the best way to resolve the problems of how to educate a particular child with particular problems.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I acknowledge the rational and very thoughtful way in which the Secretary of State has approached this issue. As he seeks to deliver the aid, advice and mediation services as a network across the country, will he make sure that some sort of protection for the poor and vulnerable is in place so that they are not driven into the hands of exploitative private sector operators who will want to take their money for immigration advice and the like—advice that is often dud and costs far more than they can afford?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with the thoughts that underlie the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Let me make it clear that legal support for mediation remains important in the family field, and we believe that it is a much better way of proceeding. I will certainly bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman said about immigration advice. We have all known for many years that some of that advice, usually given by non-lawyers, to those having difficulties with the immigrations authorities is not very good and that the prices charged are rather unscrupulous. People are being taken advantage of by those who are affecting to help.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Has consideration been given in this review to the further savings that may be achieved by addressing the structure of aspects of the legal profession? In particular, the criminal Bar enjoys a near monopoly in some courts, but still constrains new entrants into the profession in a way that keeps rates higher than they might otherwise be?

[Mr Clarke]

That question was asked more frequently many years ago. The exclusive rights of audience in the higher courts were lost some years ago. There are now quite a lot of solicitor advocates. I am not sure whether the shadow spokesman, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), was a solicitor advocate, but he could have been if he had wanted to be. The profession is not as closed as it used to be. Changes are about to take place on new business structures for legal practice of all kinds, which will produce a considerable transformation in some areas of legal practice. We are in a far more competitive situation than we used to be.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

As a practising solicitor, I welcome this long-overdue full review of the legal aid system. Will my right hon. and learned Friend reassure the House that we will retain a key principle of the criminal justice system, which is that no one who faces the realistic prospect of imprisonment and who cannot themselves afford to pay will be refused legal assistance?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes is the best and most straightforward answer to that. My hon. Friend underlines an absolutely fundamental principle of justice in any civilised society, so the answer is an emphatic affirmative.

Prisons and Probation Ombudsman for England and Wales

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Stephen Shaw CBE stood down as prisons and probation ombudsman earlier this year to take up appointment as chief executive of the health professions adjudicator. Stephen was appointed as ombudsman in 1999.

The Ministry of Justice will shortly be advertising the vacancy and seeking applicants for the office of prisons and probation ombudsman. Although the post is not within the remit of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, the appointment will be made using a process which takes account of the commissioner’s code of practice as best practice. I will inform the House once I have selected my preferred candidate for the office.

Mental Capacity Act 2005

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I am today laying before Parliament the Government’s memorandum to the Justice Select Committee on post-legislative scrutiny of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The primary purpose of the Act was to empower and protect people who may lack capacity to make decisions for themselves and to enable people to be able to make provision for a time in the future when they may lack capacity. Implementation of the Act has ensured that these measures are in place.

Inquiries Act 2005

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I am today laying before Parliament the Government’s memorandum to the Justice Select Committee on post-legislative scrutiny of the Inquiries Act 2005.

The Inquiries Act 2005 introduced a comprehensive statutory framework for inquiries set up by Ministers to look into events that have caused or are capable of causing public concern. There are wide-ranging measures in the Act aimed at restoring public confidence in inquiries by making inquiry process swifter, more efficient and less costly while meeting public need for thorough and far-reaching investigation.

Right to Information (Criminal Proceedings)

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

The Government have decided to opt-in to the directive on the right to information in criminal proceedings. The directive meets the criteria set out in the coalition agreement with regard to EU justice and home affairs measures.

The draft directive will provide minimum standards for individuals subject to criminal proceedings. British citizens abroad will benefit under the directive from increased confidence in procedural standards across the European Union. It will also increase security at EU level by supporting existing provisions which help combat crime and promote the rule of law.

The Government will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system.