Prison and Probation Services (England and Wales)
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
In the response to the Green Paper, “Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders”, I set out a vision for a transformed justice system that will focus on public protection and cutting crime. An important part of delivering the changes I am committed to is ensuring that the services we provide are focused on delivering the best possible outcomes and the greatest value for money.
Competition between providers of our services can help us to meet these challenges as the previous Government recognised when they made contestability a feature of offender services when setting up the National Offender Management Service in 2004. The “Competition Strategy for Offender Services”, which I have published today, sets out how we will change the way we use competition to meet these aims. My approach is based on ensuring an effective balance between making services more efficient while reforming them so that they provide better outcomes for the public. In doing so, we will draw on a wide range of expertise from the private and voluntary sector, which will work in partnership with a strong public sector.
For offender services, I intend to employ the principle that competition will apply at some stage to all those services not currently bound to public sector delivery by statute. This will mean the benefits of competition can be felt much more widely, contrasting with the previous approach of only using competition when procuring new services or as a way of managing poor performance.
Underpinning this approach will be our commitment to apply more widely the principles of payment by results to services which reduce reoffending. By paying some or all of a contract value on the basis of the reduced reoffending levels achieved, we can focus service providers’ efforts on what works. This will ensure that money spent on rehabilitation is spent effectively. We intend to run a number of pilot exercises and competition will be a key mechanism in deciding which models we adopt.
In practice, this will mean taking a different approach for both custodial and non-custodial services. The use of competition in custodial services is now well established, as most recently demonstrated by the successful outcome of the competition for four prisons which I announced in March this year.
To ensure that we build on this strong record I am announcing today my intention to launch competitions for the management of a further nine prisons in the autumn. These are Lindholme, Moorland, Hatfield and The Wolds in Yorkshire, Acklington and Castington in Northumberland, Durham, Onley in Northamptonshire and Coldingley in Surrey. The Wolds is a prison run by G4S that has come to the end of its current contract; the other eight prisons are public sector establishments being competed for the first time. The public sector will have the opportunity to compete in all of these prison competitions.
These prisons have been selected by the National Offender Management Service to balance our need to increase efficiency and to make real the policy intent of the Green Paper.
Looking to the future, there is a need to consider the future shape of probation services in England and Wales to improve justice outcomes and to make the justice system more efficient and effective. I have asked my officials to explore the possible options for service improvements and different models of delivering offender services within the community. I will set out my preferred approach in the autumn. Alongside this, and supporting it, I will set out in detail my competition strategy for non-custodial services, which will also encompass the recently launched competition for community payback services, the competition for electronic monitoring contracts I am announcing today, and payment-by-results pilots in the community.
A further important element of our drive for greater efficiency is to ensure we have a modern, fit-for-purpose prison estate which can deliver high-quality, cost-effective and secure regimes. With the prison population not growing at the rate predicted by the last Government, we have an opportunity to close some of our more inefficient places.
I am therefore announcing the closure of HMPs Latchmere House and Brockhill. This will see a reduction of 377 prison spaces. This is part of an overall programme which includes a further 2,500 new prison places becoming available over the next 12 months. This will ensure that our operational capacity continues to handle the projected prison population in a way which meets the need both for greater efficiency and ability to support a strengthened focus on protection of the public and rehabilitation.
The closure of these places will provide estimated cost savings of £4.9 million this year and an on-going annual saving of £11.4 million. We also anticipate capital receipts from sale of the land at Latchmere House, which is in a prime location. We will transfer resettlement provision from that establishment to HMP Brixton to maintain our focus on reducing reoffending. We expect to be able to absorb staff displaced by this process elsewhere in the system and to avoid the use of compulsory redundancies.
The public have a right to expect continuing improvement in the quality and efficiency of public services, without compromising public safety. The competition strategy and adjustments to the prison estate I have outlined today will help ensure that this is the case.
Copies of the “Offender Services Competition Strategy” have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses. The document is also available online, at www.justice.gov.uk/publications/corporate-reports/moj/oscs.htm.
Public Bodies Reform
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Today I have laid before Parliament a public consultation document; “Consultation on reforms proposed in the Public Bodies Bill—Reforming the public bodies of the Ministry of Justice”.
The consultation details our reform proposals in relation to those Ministry of Justice bodies included in the Public Bodies Bill, which is currently before this House. While clause 10 of the Bill requires consultation of certain specified groups, I have decided that this should be a public consultation to ensure details of my Department’s proposals are available to as many interested parties as possible.
Reducing the number and costs of public bodies is a key Government commitment and the proposals in this consultation build on previous announcements relating to public bodies reform. All Ministry of Justice public bodies have been reviewed over the last year. We have considered whether particular bodies and their associated functions are still needed and assessed our public bodies against agreed criteria for reform. These criteria were intended to increase Government accountability; eliminate duplication of activity and discontinue activities that no longer need to take place.
I am confident that the proposed reforms set out in the consultation document will address these aims and enable the Ministry of Justice to make a significant contribution to the Government’s reform of public bodies.
I will carefully consider the consultation responses before bringing forward any order in relation to any of the Ministry of Justice bodies in the Bill.
Rights and Protection of Victims
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 10610/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to the Draft Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, No. 10613/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to the Draft Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters, No. 10612/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to a Commission Communication–strengthening victims’ rights in the EU and the unnumbered Explanatory Memorandum dated 16 May 2011 relating to a Council Resolution on a Roadmap for strengthening the rights and protection of victims, in particular in criminal proceedings; and welcomes the opportunity to consider views on whether the UK should opt in to the draft Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims and the Draft Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters.
I thank the European Scrutiny Committee for calling the debate. The Government are currently actively considering in detail the European Commission’s proposals on victims, and in particular whether the United Kingdom should opt into the proposed directive on victims and regulation on protection orders. There has already been some scrutiny of the protection order regulation, but it is useful to have this opportunity to hear Members’ views on the proposals on the Floor of the House, to inform our decisions.
The Government are obviously committed to supporting the victims of crime. One of the main objects of the criminal justice system, as well as punishing those guilty of serious criminal offences, is offering protection and support to the victims of crime. We welcome the priority that the European Commission is giving the matter and the further impetus provided by the Hungarian Government, who will hold the presidency of the European Union for the second half of this year. There was a Budapest declaration setting out their intention, supported by the Council of the European Union, to deal with various matters concerning the victims of crime in the course of their presidency.
I am glad to say that this country is seen by the Commission as an example of best practice on supporting victims. The Government hope to strengthen what we do, but there is no doubt that we are well ahead of the vast majority of members of the European Union in what we do now.
The thing that the House should particularly have regard to is that our own citizens are increasingly travelling and working across the EU. If a British citizen is unfortunate enough to fall victim to crime in another member state, I do not think that they always get the level of support that they would expect in similar circumstances in the United Kingdom. The Government see one of the main attractions of this package of work as, among other things, helping our citizens to get the full support that they ought to have in a modern and civilised state when they are victims of crime. We want to ensure that British citizens are provided with the information, support and protection that they rightly expect to receive when they fall victim to crime in any EU member state.
My officials have been working with the Commission to share our experiences of supporting victims, and to consider how the existing EU framework agreement on the subject might be improved. The Commission, I am glad to say, has taken on board many of our suggestions in its recent proposals. I am especially pleased that the proposed directive takes into account the particular role of victims in our common law system. We encounter drafting problems at least in quite a lot of proposals in this field, because, like the Irish, Cypriots and Maltese, we tend to have a common law system, whereas the rest of Europe does not. It is necessary to ensure that the procedural differences and the practices of different countries are respected in such proposals.
The Government are committed to targeting resources towards those victims who need them the most. We continue to develop our own proposals on victims—we hope to come forward with some in the autumn—but meanwhile, we will continue to work with our European partners to ensure that any EU action on victims supports our approach. We are particularly trying to ensure that any requirements imposed upon or accepted by member states are proportionate to the needs of victims and properly targeted on those with the most important needs.
I wait to hear whether there are any objections in principle to the objectives being pursued by the Commission and the Hungarian presidency, and the vast majority of the member states on the European Council—as far as I am aware, that means all member states on the Council—but I think they are unlikely. It is plainly desirable that we consider spreading best practice across the Union when it comes to protecting victims of any nationality who have the misfortune to fall prey to crime in any of our countries. However, I look forward to hearing the views of right hon. and hon. Members on any particular aspects of the package of proposals before us to which they want to draw the House’s and the Government’s attention.
Mike Weatherley
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I am afraid that he is sadly mistaken, for various reasons that I shall come to. I agree that the EU quite often meddles unnecessarily, but occasionally some standardisation across Europe is welcome, and this is one of those situations.
I mentioned that our system of victim support is better than those of other countries around Europe, but this position is by no means assured. After all, it has been eroded in several key areas. One is the example of funding for Victim Support—a charity that provides an invaluable service to victims of crime. Its funding has been cut, which is a great shame. Also, over a number of years, we have seen certain crimes such as shoplifting downgraded. Indeed, the Sentencing Commission does not formally recognise the vulnerability of shop workers as particular victims of crime, despite last year being a record period for crimes committed in shops, ranging from shoplifting to murders in the process of robbery. The Government could also do more to support the private sector in schemes such as Facewatch, piloted in London by the Metropolitan police and now spreading across the UK.
Victims of crime currently have the right to receive a basic level of service for each criminal justice agency under the code of practice for victims of crime. Everything that victims are entitled to under the code is pretty basic and the sort of thing that one would assume victims would receive automatically. The Government, however, have already removed the duty on local criminal justice boards to report their compliance with the victims code, which means no one is monitoring compliance with the code or holding agencies to account when they fail to comply with it. There is a danger that the Government will seek to downgrade the code or abolish it altogether. That would mean that a victim of crime would have no statutory right to a decent level of service from the criminal justice system. Abolishing or downgrading the code would be a serious retrograde step that would turn the clock back on victims’ rights.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I would like to give my hon. Friend an assurance on that in case I forget to reply to his point later. We realise that the code needs modernising, but we do not have the faintest intention of repealing or abolishing it. I can give my hon. Friend that assurance straight away—before some rumour is accidentally set flying.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
It is a long time since I have taken part in a debate on the Floor of the House on any European subject that was completely free of any controversy. [Interruption.] Certain Members were not here. We all congratulate the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stafford, on selecting the measure for debate, because we all agree on the great importance of giving better protection to victims of crime, not only in this country but across the European Union.
Mr Clarke
I will not weigh up the issue of whether Stafford has lost or gained, or whether Stone has benefited or been deprived, but I enjoyed the debates on the Maastricht treaty. We were not quite as close on that occasion as we are on the directive.
This is an extremely important subject, and there is general agreement that the framework agreement of 2001 is not adequate and should be improved, which is the objective of the Commission’s documents. The proposals have received extremely widespread support, and were movingly supported by Members whose constituents had been adversely affected. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) cited the case of Mr and Mrs Dunne, and a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) was murdered in Spain. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) discussed difficulties that he had encountered. As I said at the beginning of our debate, we are trying to raise European standards on the issue because many British citizens go abroad and their families would benefit if minimum standards—and we hope very adequate standards—were in place throughout all member countries.
It was claimed that that could be achieved by bilateral agreements with other member states. With respect, I do not think that that is practicable. The notion that bilateral agreements have to be negotiated with 26 EU member states, where the tradition of supporting victims is variable and in some cases far below that in the UK, is not the best way to proceed. I was urged by other speakers to support the Commission and the Hungarian presidency’s Budapest declaration to see what we can do to strengthen support for everyone.
Reference was made to the work of Louise Casey, the victims commissioner, who shares the views of my hon. Friends and of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby about the importance of considering the problems experienced by bereaved families. Victim Support, the biggest organisation in the field of victim support, supports the proposed directive, and it has urged the Government to take a constructive approach to it. It was said that its funding had been cut, but we have responded to the opinions expressed by the victims commissioner. We need to make sure that specialist, targeted support is available for vulnerable victims. Many hon. Members have been victims of crime—probably, almost everyone—but people do not always need counselling and support afterwards. Bereaved families, however, are a particular concern of Louise Casey, who has produced a report on the subject. We have given extra support to specialist services for bereaved families and victims of rape and sexual assault. More targeted support is required. We have a code of practice in this country that also needs to be revised and improved in the light of experience, and everybody is pressing in the same direction on that.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) was pretty supportive of the proposals before us. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), he talked particularly about protection orders. The idea of mutual recognition of protection orders throughout the European Union is very valuable. These orders are usually given when someone is being harassed, often by a husband, partner or spouse with a history of domestic violence. If we do not have mutual recognition of the orders, the consequence is that every time anybody travels in Europe, they are obliged to try to get a fresh court order in the area where they are then living and give evidence again about the same experiences. Where possible, we should support this move. We have already opted into the criminal law directive on the subject, and we will do so on the civil order once we have scrutinised it to make sure that the two will work together and that particular burdens are not put on us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone talked about the possible resource and administrative implications for this country. I do not see any insuperable problems in the proposals, but we will obviously have to scrutinise them in detail because we cannot accept unnecessary extra resources or administrative burdens being demanded of us. That is highly unlikely because we are so far ahead in the field compared with most other member states, but we will bear that concern in mind.
Mr Clarke
Compensation for victims has been established here for very many years. We would like to see good standards established throughout the European Union because British subjects are victims of crime when they travel and should be entitled to compensation. We have to get the balance right between the proportionality that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South talked about and the excessive burdens that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone warned against. That is the kind of thing that we can do in the detailed negotiations that will undoubtedly have to take place before the directive can be applied.
I welcome this debate. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South raised, as he was quite entitled to, all kinds of aspects of victim support of a wholly domestic nature to which we will pay attention, as we are hoping to modernise our own code. I assure right hon. and hon. Members that we work very closely with the victims commissioner in this whole field and greatly value the contribution that she makes as an advocate of the victim’s cause. I also assure Members that decisions on opt-ins are guided, in the end, by what we regard as in the interests of British citizens and the national interest within the European Union. However, I take on board the feeling in the House that increased co-operation in this respect is plainly desirable as a benefit to all those Europeans who travel frequently throughout the Union. We will certainly take on board the views expressed by Members who have taken part in the debate when we take our decisions on all these subjects.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 10610/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to the Draft Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, No. 10613/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to the Draft Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters, No. 10612/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to a Commission Communication–strengthening victims’ rights in the EU and the unnumbered Explanatory Memorandum dated 16 May 2011 relating to a Council Resolution on a Roadmap for strengthening the rights and protection of victims, in particular in criminal proceedings; and welcomes the opportunity to consider views on whether the UK should opt in to the draft Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims and the Draft Regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I have today published an updated policy on the use of the executive override under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the veto”) as it relates to information that engages the principle of collective responsibility under section 35(1) of the Freedom of Information Act.
The policy sets out the Government’s view that the veto should only be considered in exceptional circumstances and following the provision of a collective view by the Cabinet—a commitment which is consistent with the undertakings made to this House by the previous Administration during the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill. The policy has been updated to set out who would fulfil the role of “accountable person” for papers of this or previous Administrations.
Copies of the updated policy have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office. It will also be published online, at www.justice.gov.uk.
Detainee Inquiry
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Government and the detainee inquiry have agreed the terms of reference and protocol for the inquiry’s work, which are being published today on the inquiry’s website at www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk, along with some frequently asked questions and answers about the inquiry and its preparatory phase to date.
As the Prime Minister said in announcing the detainee inquiry on 6 July 2010, the purpose of this inquiry is to examine whether, and if so to what extent, the UK Government and their intelligence agencies were involved in improper treatment, or rendition, of detainees held by other countries in counter-terrorism operations overseas, or were aware of improper treatment, or rendition, of detainees held by other countries in counter-terrorism operations in which the UK was involved. The primary focus is the aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001 and particularly cases involving the detention at Guantanamo Bay of UK nationals and former lawful UK residents.
The inquiry will also consider the evolution of the Government’s response to developing knowledge of the changing practices of other countries towards detainees in counter-terrorism operations in this period. This will include how the response was implemented in Departments and the security and intelligence agencies. The Prime Minister has asked the inquiry to report to him within one year of commencing. The inquiry will identify any lessons to be learned and make recommendations for the future, to which the Government have undertaken to publish a formal response.
The Government hope that the inquiry will be able to start as soon as it is possible to do so. However, as the Prime Minister made clear in his public letter of 6 July 2010 to the right hon. Sir Peter Gibson, the inquiry chair, this depends on the end of related criminal processes, the timing of which is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Government are grateful to the inquiry for the important preparatory work it has done to date and which it will continue to do. The inquiry is a vital part of the set of measures announced by the Prime Minister that aim to draw a firm line under the serious questions that have been raised about the United Kingdom’s actions. We want to understand properly what happened and to learn any necessary lessons. We look forward to the detainee inquiry being able to get under way formally in due course and will make a further statement to the House when in a position to do so.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I shall try to observe your strictures, Mr Deputy Speaker, but this is a very large piece of legislation; I shall probably have to restrict the number of times I give way to interventions.
I am determined to reform the justice system in this country. Keeping the public safe, ensuring that those who break the law face the consequences and providing swift, cost-effective access to justice are fundamental responsibilities of the state towards its citizens. Yet the last 13 years of government have left us a system whose cost and scale have exploded and whose failings can no longer be tolerated.
In the area of criminal justice, more than 20 new Acts of Parliament, thousands of new criminal offences and a huge increase in the prison population cannot mask very deep flaws in the system. Briefly, our sentencing framework is a mess of byzantine complexity that even trained lawyers and judges—never mind the general public—find confusing.
Our punishments do not work. Community sentences are weak, asking little of offenders, and prisons have become so crowded that there is no space for governors to enforce regimes of meaningful work or reparation. Far too many prisoners are left idle in their cells, often on drugs. For that model, the taxpayer has the privilege of paying out an extraordinary sum—£44,000 per prison place per year. I have just been assured that the Ritz is even more expensive, so I slightly exaggerated, but £44,000 per prison place per year is enough to pay the salaries of two newly qualified nurses or teachers.
Mr Straw
I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor. We have heard about this alleged litany of failures. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary, crime was at a post-war peak on both the measures that the Prime Minister used to discuss crime at questions earlier today. Since then, burglaries have dropped by 70%, thefts by 50%, and crime overall by 50%. Is the fact that the Lord Chancellor never, ever refers to the outcomes of our record due to the fact that that happened mainly under us or the fact that the process started under his successor, Michael Howard?
Mr Clarke
The idea that I set off a crime wave when I was Home Secretary is a charge that I will answer on some other occasion, frankly. As far as the decline in crime is concerned, the biggest decline has been in theft because car manufacturers made cars more secure. The courts used to be full of taking and driving away offences, but are no longer because it is more difficult to take the cars.
The fall in burglary coincided with an economic boom—one of the consequences that came from it. The 20-plus Bills that the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors brought before the House—more than one criminal justice Bill a year—and the countless changes in sentences filled up the prisons, but in my opinion had no provable, demonstrable effect at all on the levels of crime in this country.
Mr Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman is an ex-Front Bencher. I will give way to him later, but I should observe the strictures of Mr Deputy Speaker, although I enjoy debating with the right hon. Gentleman. I should move on a little further into my speech.
As the right hon. Gentleman has heard me say before, reoffending rates are a national scandal; that is why the system is failing. Half of offenders—49%—have been reconvicted, in part because the system is not tackling the underlying causes of their criminality such as drug abuse, poor mental health and inadequate skills. The consequence of that failure is new victims of crime every day. Despite improvement, victims and witnesses too often still get treated as an afterthought, not a central concern of justice. That is why we need intelligent, radical reform of the criminal justice system to protect and serve the needs of law-abiding members of society.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Lord Chancellor give way?
Mr Clarke
I will later, but let me deal with what we are having to tackle in civil justice. The sad truth is that it, too, has serious weaknesses. Courts should be accessible and efficient, but generally turned to as a place of last resort, not a first choice. But we have a litigious society and far too many cases go down the court route unnecessarily. Last year, more than three quarters of claims in the civil system set down to proceed to trial were settled before the trial took place. Many of those cases might have been resolved earlier, with different approaches aimed at simpler dispute resolution. Ordinary citizens find the law an expensive, daunting nightmare, not a public service.
Mr Clarke
I will in a second. Courts are slow and burdened by high costs and bureaucratic processes and procedures. For example, the average length of a public family law case in 1989 was 12 weeks; by 2010, it stood at 53 weeks, with similar cases taking four times as long as they used to.
Chris Leslie
I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor. Many victims of crime will be shocked at his proposals to limit the freedom of judges to remand a defendant in custody. Why is he limiting and fettering the ability of judges to put those defendants on remand?
Mr Clarke
I was going to argue this later; I will try to avoid repeating myself. I cannot understand why people are so incensed that people who are not going to be sent to prison might not be kept in prison awaiting trial. Every year, 16,000 people are refused bail, kept in prison, convicted and immediately given bail. A quarter of all the people kept in custody are released when they come up for trial. I shall come back to the matter, although I shall try to avoid repeating the same arguments. It seems to me that unless one is trying to fill up the prisons with people, that is one of the more obvious steps we can take. If they are not going to justify imprisonment when they get to trial, it seems to me pointless to refuse them bail, except in the case of domestic violence cases, where we have agreed to make an exception because we cannot grant bail to someone who is going back to live with the alleged victim of the domestic violence.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
The Secretary of State will be aware that many people are remanded on bail because they refuse to turn up to court, causing the taxpayer all sorts of expense. Can he assure us that even if the crime committed is not one that would normally result in a jail sentence, people who consistently refuse to turn up to court will be remanded in custody?
Mr Clarke
No, I am sorry. I respect the right hon. Gentleman, but I must move on.
I have said that ordinary citizens find the civil law a rather nightmarish experience when they resort to it. Thanks to the present scope of legal aid and the way in which the no-win, no-fee system operates, many people and, in particular, many small businesses live in fear of legal action. I accept that access to justice for the protection of fundamental rights is vital for a democratic society—something on which I will not compromise. However, our current legal aid system can encourage people to bring their problems before the courts when the basic problem is not a legal one and would be better dealt with in other ways. The scope of legal aid has expanded too far. It cannot be right, for example, that the taxpayer is forced to pay for legal advice to foreign students whose visa applications are turned down. There are many other examples.
Our legal aid system also faces a completely unignorable problem of affordability. I have listened to arguments in the media today challenging that, but we have by far the most expensive system in the world, after Northern Ireland, where I am sure the same problem will be tackled. It costs £39 per head of population in this country, each year, compared with £8 in, for example, New Zealand, which has a similar system of law. In any circumstances our system would need reform; in the country’s current financial crisis reform is imperative.
I have some advice for Labour Members. I do not usually give gratuitous advice, but I think the Labour party is facing one of the problems that we faced in 1997. It should find the courage to admit that it made some mistakes and left some things in a mess. It has been acknowledged by my opposite number, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), that, on Labour’s watch:
“Playing tough in order not to look soft made it harder to focus on what is effective”—
wise words. I thought, when we set off on this process of consultation, I had the widespread support of many Opposition Members. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reflect on the way in which he started his consideration before he gets on with the rest of the debate.
In fact, when Labour was in office, its strategy for our prisons and our courts was legislative incontinence combined with kneejerk populism. On prisons, the Labour Government made the mistake of being unable to make proper provision for the demand for places that they stimulated. Overcrowding devoured the very budgets that should have been used productively to cut reoffending and improve public safety in a lasting way. What was the final result that we all remember? They had to reduce the release point from two thirds to halfway through the sentence. They then had to resort to the financial chicanery of keeping the cost of building prisons off the balance sheet—the so-called Carter prisons. Finally—the ultimate absurdity—they had to let out 80,000 prisoners early, before the end of their sentence, to offset the cost of the allegedly tougher sentences that they had imposed. That is why we need reform now—to reverse that nonsense.
On wider justice matters, the Labour Government proved little better at getting a grip. They had 30 consultations on legal aid from 2006; they did not act decisively, put the system on a sustainable footing or address the litigiousness to which its excessively widely available funding contributed.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
My right hon. and learned Friend has had a consultation, to which I hope he has listened, particularly in respect of criminal negligence affecting children with multiple injuries that may have resulted from birth. It is not clear to me yet that the Government have found a way of ensuring that that very deserving and small group of people will have access to justice and to the settlements that they need.
Mr Clarke
We have addressed clinical negligence, a large part of which is now conducted on a no-win, no-fee basis. That is the way we should proceed. Clinical negligence cases of the kind to which the right hon. Gentleman refers are especially expensive and it is quite difficult to decide whether to proceed with them, so we are making special arrangements, particularly for the expensive medical reports that have to be obtained before a case can properly be decided on. We are making arrangements to make the insurance reimbursable in those cases. I would also like to see a system developed by the NHS litigation authority and the best of the practitioners to exchange expert medical reports at a very early stage, so that we can avoid unnecessary litigation about whether a tragic disaster to a newborn baby was actually a natural tragedy or the result of negligence, and so that such cases need not drag on for the many years that they can take to go through the courts. I accept that that is a special case, and we considered it carefully during the consultation. We made quite a lot of changes during the consultation, some of which were referred to dramatically in outside comment.
Nicky Morgan
I hear what the Secretary of State says about the failure of the last Government to tackle the burgeoning legal aid system. Did they not also fail to tackle the complexity of other departmental work that our citizens advice bureaux, which do such valuable work, help with—for example, Department for Work and Pensions forms? The Government’s response hints at a review of some of the other parts of legal aid which will inevitably have to be cut. Will the Secretary of State give more detail about that review and about whether the burden will be shared across Departments?
Mr Clarke
Yes, I will. I try to avoid jumping from subject to subject, because it is such an enormous Bill, but I promise my hon. Friend that I shall return to the whole question of alternative forms of advice and the CABs, and make an announcement at a later stage in the proceedings on the Bill.
Bridget Phillipson
Another aspect of the changes to legal aid is the removal of legal aid from women applying for indefinite leave to remain under the domestic violence rule. In an answer to a parliamentary question, the Minister for Immigration reported that only 710 women were granted that, so we are not talking about a considerable number, but they are very vulnerable individuals. Will the Secretary of State think again on that aspect of his proposals?
Mr Clarke
Indeed. Ministers have talked about the matter and considered it carefully, and I leave it to my hon. Friend to give an authoritative reply in his winding-up speech.
I hope that I have already indicated that the mess that we have inherited requires a bold, sustained and principled effort, not salami slicing and half-measures. The Bill is one part of the balanced package of reforms that is needed. Unusually, I made a full statement to the House last week on the subject, and it was debated for one and a half hours, so I do not propose to repeat in depth what I said then. Let me turn to the inevitable controversy that any measures on criminal sentencing are bound to provoke. It is a natural part of contemporary political debate to simplify the subject and to make extremes out of it all. I am resigned to the fact that on law and order issues above all there is a tendency to polarise, and to frame reforms as either dry and tough, or wet, soft and liberal. The truth is somewhere in between. The aim of the measures I proposed was to consult on a balanced package, and it remains so.
The measures address the weaknesses that we inherited. For serious crime, the public must have confidence in the system of effective punishment and just retribution, so my reforms include, for example, introducing a 40-hour working week across the prison estate to introduce productive hard work into prisons in place of enforced idleness.
The Bill toughens community sentences by allowing courts to curfew offenders for longer—16 hours a day for up to 12 months—and to ban them from going abroad. As I signalled last week, we intend to introduce measures to clarify householders’ rights of defence and to consult on criminalising squatting.
The Bill creates a new offence of possessing a knife to threaten or endanger a person, with a prison sentence of at least six months for over-18s to send a clear message to those who possess a knife to threaten others.
We are conducting a review with the intention of replacing the discredited sentence whereby people are locked up for an undetermined and indefinite time—the so-called imprisonment for public protection—with a tough determinate sentencing regime. I propose to deliver a system that offers better reparation to victims. The Bill will replace and augment the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996, which the previous Government never implemented—it was a Conservative measure. This will allow us to deduct wages from prisoners so that instead of their just being a drain on the system we can deduct money to help to pay for services for the victims of crime. The Bill places a positive obligation on courts to make offenders pay compensation directly to victims.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor mentions the review of indeterminate sentences. My concern is that he will reach the wrong conclusion. When he conducts his review will he look at experience in Northern Ireland, where extended and indeterminate sentences have been available since 2008 but where, crucially, the assessment of danger is left in the hands of judges? It is a smaller system, but in the three years since its introduction there have been only 63 extended sentences and seven indeterminate sentences. Public safety has been combined with manageable numbers: will he look at that experience?
Mr Clarke
We are having a review, so I will look at that. Legislation was enacted in 2003, in the belief that a few hundred people might be affected. It commenced in 2005. The previous Government, of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member, tried to reform it in 2008, because it was already out of control. I proposed further reforms in the Green Paper, and a very large number of people in the criminal justice system said that the legislation should be repealed. Last week, I quoted David Thomas, the author of “Thomas on Sentencing”, who described the whole thing as an unmitigated disaster. I will look into the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion to see whether some aspects of the Northern Irish system might be appropriate.
After punishment and reparation comes rehabilitation to reduce reoffending, which is at the core of our process of reform. Sentences must be punitive and reformative. The Bill will help to ensure that more offenders with drugs, alcohol or mental health problems are addressed and receive treatment at the earliest opportunity.This complicates our efforts—
Mr Clarke
Complements—it might do both, but I hope it will complement our efforts to tackle drugs in prison.
Drugs are widely available in prisons, but we shall start by introducing drug-free wings. My single most radical proposal on rehabilitation is a non-legislative change to introduce a fundamental shift in how we approach the issue by paying by results to unlock private capital, benefit from the innovation of the voluntary sector and get the whole system pulling in the same direction. We will pay providers a return on their ethical investment for what works in the public interest: turning criminals into ex-criminals should be an object of the system.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am interested in the Secretary of State’s comments on the number of people in our prisons who, unfortunately, suffer from mental illness and need support and treatment, which is often inadequate. Will he recognise the greater problem: that many people who need support with mental illness or who are experiencing mental health crises do not get it, and there are insufficient resources and insufficient understanding among the police and others that the real cause of minor offences often is mental illness and nothing else. We need a more sympathetic, supportive and therapeutic approach to dealing with these poor, unfortunate people.
Mr Clarke
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health agrees with the hon. Gentleman and me. My ministerial team and my right hon. Friend’s ministerial team have been holding discussions. My right hon. Friend has a strategy for trying to improve mental health services to the population as a whole. As part of that we are addressing what can be done to help the mentally ill who find themselves in prison. Some of them should be diverted from the criminal justice system altogether; some can be better treated in secure accommodation in the national health service; and many can be treated better than they are at present when being incarcerated in prison is not suitable. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend and I share his concern.
Underpinning punishment, reparation and rehabilitation is what might be called system reform—simplification, restoration of discretion to judges and the relief of unnecessary pressures on the system. At the same time we must take a more robust approach to costs in the system, including that of prison. We have already shown that through competition it is possible to get prison costs down while improving service quality. Key measures in the Bill include reforming the use of remand. I dealt with this a moment ago. I have told the House that preventing reoffending is the central idea of my reforms. One of the main barriers to doing things in the past few years has been the fact that the prisons have been clogged up, sometimes with people who do not need to be there at all. I will not repeat the arguments that I made a moment ago that give rise to the part of the Bill that restricts the power of courts to remand those who have no reasonable prospect of receiving a custodial sentence, with the exception that I have already described of cases of domestic violence.
Mr Straw
In answer to the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) the Secretary of State said that where a defendant failed to return to court on time, the court would still be able to remand him in custody so that he could get to court. The Secretary of State clearly spoke in error, because if he looks at page 166 of his own Bill he will see that paragraph (5) to schedule 10 makes it absolutely clear that even where a defendant has failed to surrender to bail and has been arrested he cannot be detained in custody to appear in court unless there is a real prospect of his subsequently being sentenced to imprisonment. How will the public be made safer or witnesses protected by that?
Mr Clarke
I will address the extent to which we retain discretion, as determined under the bail Acts, according to which bail is granted or refused. In 2010, more than 16,000 people were in custody but were released when they appeared for trial and either pleaded guilty or were convicted. Continuing a system whereby people are refused bail when everyone knows that they will not be imprisoned if convicted is a very wasteful use of a very expensive place in our prison system.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
Someone who breaches bail commits a criminal offence and can therefore, and usually does, receive a custodial sentence, especially if they did not attend court when they should have.
Mr Clarke
I am grateful. My hon. Friend has been in practice much more recently than the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) or I have. We will doubtless continue to study this after the debate.
The sentencing reforms are balanced. Again, I shall quote the words of my shadow, the right hon. Member for Tooting, who when I first published them in the Green Paper described them as
“a perfectly sensible vision for a sentencing policy”,
and they will in my view achieve a very significant transformation.
That brings me to the rest of the Bill covering legal aid and provision on litigation and funding. No Government look to tackle legal aid lightly, but the system as it stands is obviously unaffordable. Labour had 30 goes at fixing it between 2006 and the end of their period in office and we have sought to go back and think about what the taxpayer should pay for by way of litigation from first principles. Our priority is cases where people’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home or where their children may be taken into care. After our reforms, legal aid will routinely be available in 25 areas, including for criminal cases, for most judicial review proceedings, for private family law cases involving domestic violence, child abuse and child abduction, for community care, for debt where the home is at immediate risk, for mental health cases and for cases concerning special educational needs. We modified our original proposals in response to consultation, listening carefully to the thousands of responses that we received.
Legal aid will no longer be routinely available in 13 areas, including most private family law cases, clinical negligence cases, non-discrimination employment cases, immigration cases, some debt and housing issues, some education cases and welfare benefits cases.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
How does the Lord Chancellor square what he is saying with what Baroness Hale of the Supreme Court has said about this being a ludicrous Bill and how these provisions will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, particularly people from ethnic minorities?
Mr Clarke
I have always had a high regard for Baroness Hale, who is a very distinguished lawyer, and I have heard of her opinions. I shall have to study them and perhaps even meet her to discuss them, because I am surprised by her response. Where we started from was ensuring that we did not damage access to justice for vulnerable people in matters of such importance that society as a whole would want to be sure that they were protected. Either she has misunderstood the effect of our proposals or why we are doing it. We have to get back to spending an affordable amount of money on paying for things that the taxpayer should actually pay for to defend the vulnerable. We all start as lawyers, let alone as citizens, with a slight bias in favour of legal aid because everyone is used to it, but the scale of legal aid has expanded, its scope is too wide and it needs to be reformed.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for saying that legal aid will be available to defend the vulnerable. I declare an interest as one who has been a duty solicitor in the police station. I would like him to consult carefully about the practical implementation of proposals to limit legal aid for advice and assistance in police stations, given that his officials no doubt bear the scars of previous implementations that became bureaucratic nightmares. Losing the benefit of the informed legal advice that one needs in the police station can lead to inefficient justice.
Mr Clarke
We will look at that and consider it carefully as we proceed. At the moment, the Bill replicates a provision taken from an earlier Bill by the Labour party. It appears to give a power to take away the right to legal aid. It appears to give a power to take away access to legal advice in the police station. The last Government legislated to do that but never did it. We have no current intentions of doing it. We will consider the issue and no doubt my hon. Friend or others will return to it in Committee. I realise that there has been some concern.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
At the annual general meeting of Liberty earlier this month, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said that the Government should reconsider their plans to remove certain categories of social welfare law, at least for a period while Government reforms elsewhere in the system—such as welfare reforms—create increased demand for advice. Will the Lord Chancellor accept that excellent advice from his right hon. Friend and protect those categories of legal aid, at least during a transition period?
Mr Clarke
We have consulted very carefully on legal aid, on both parts. We have made quite significant changes to what we originally proposed. On welfare benefits, we are still of the opinion that the welfare system was not intended to provide a source of litigation where legal advice was required to take an appeal in the last resort to a tribunal. That was not intended to be a legalistic activity but to try to apply what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security is trying to make more comprehensible by dealing with the rules of entitlement to social security in a sensible fashion. I do not think it is a promising area for legal advice.
Joan Ruddock
I was present at Lady Hale’s lecture and wrote down what she said:
“Courts should be and are a last resort but they should be a last resort which is accessible to all––rich and poor alike.”
Let me tell the Lord Chancellor this now: my constituents are people who need advice on immigration, on welfare and on housing and whose very lives can be wrecked by the fact that they cannot get legal assistance. Where am I to send them? How are they to get justice with the provisions in his Bill on legal aid and on no win, no fee?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. May I remind the House how many Members wish to contribute? Our mission should be to limit our interventions.
Mr Clarke
I have already said that access to justice is fundamental, but the fact is that the taxpayer’s money cannot be used to give access to justice to large numbers of people in large areas of law where the ordinary citizen would not contemplate litigating because the ordinary citizen on an ordinary income would not think that they could afford to embark on it. That is why we consulted very carefully. We concentrated on vulnerable people and on those areas that were of such importance that society as a whole would plainly feel that there was a need to finance people of limited means so that they could have access to justice. I ask the right hon. Lady to judge all our proposals on that basis. Lady Hale seemed to think that we were abolishing other access on the basis that people were using it too much. That is not the reason. But we do have a system that is four times as expensive as that of New Zealand. We have to concentrate the mind and decide what it is justified to expect the taxpayer to pay for.
Mr Clarke
I shall follow your helpful steer, Mr Deputy Speaker, and make progress. I realise that these are important matters, but I could find myself giving way to everyone in the Chamber.
Few of these are easy choices, but they often involve disputes about financial issues rather than life and liberty. It is sensible to give such things as financial disputes a lower relative priority. It is sensible, too, to address areas that the public consider unreasonable. For example, we are cutting out legal aid for squatting. Following representations from the Judges Council, we are ending legal aid for some repeat judicial reviews on immigration and asylum cases that have already had a hearing and where repeated review is being used only to obstruct and delay proceedings.
Across some of these areas, reformed no win, no fee arrangements will be available, but our broader ambition is that people will be encouraged to use alternative, less adversarial means of resolving many of these important problems. For private family law cases, the Government are increasing spending on mediation and legal advice in support of mediation by two thirds, or £10 million, to a total of £25 million a year. Mediation has a high success rate––about 75%––in resolving most of the family disputes that go before it.
We have made no blanket funding exclusions. The Bill establishes an exceptional funding scheme for exceptional cases, administered by a statutory office holder free of ministerial control. That will provide funding for an excluded case where in the particular circumstances the failure to provide support would be likely to result in breach of the individual’s right to legal aid under the Human Rights Act 1998 or European law.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Clarke
Let me deal with this important point, because I have heard widespread concern, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), about the future of not-for-profit advice centres. I agree that they do important work in providing quality, worthwhile advice of the kind required by very many people who should not need adversarial lawyers. Legal aid represents only one of several income streams for many organisations, with 85% of citizens advice bureaux funding coming from other sources. Half of all bureaux get no legal aid funds at all. This issue needs to be, and has been, considered on a cross-Government, interdepartmental basis. We are working with the sector and across Government to ensure that the Government reforms help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the advice services available to the public, and we will provide up to £20 million of additional funding in this financial year to help achieve that. We are also, of course, mindful of the impact of reforms beyond this financial year and will continue to consider the issues arising from that.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Clarke
Not at the moment; I shall carry on a little further.
In addition to the changes to the scope of legal aid, the Bill includes wider reform provisions, as some reform of the situation that we inherited is urgently and obviously needed. I do not believe the public understand a system that can pay out millions of pounds from taxpayer-provided central funds to compensate acquitted companies and wealthy people for their legal costs, whether that involves the £21 million paid to the firms in the Hatfield rail crash case, the £18 million paid to a number of pharmaceutical firms accused of price fixing, or the hundreds of thousands of pounds that have on occasion gone to celebrities accused of affray, assault and other crimes.
Part 2 of the Bill therefore establishes that defendants who decline legal aid and pay privately in the higher criminal courts will no longer be able to recover the costs of an expensive private lawyer if acquitted. In the magistrates’ courts, the sums recoverable will be limited to legal aid rates. Firms will be expected to insure against criminal prosecutions, and will no longer be able to recover costs from the taxpayer.
The Bill is therefore about delivering reform across the justice system, and we have tried to think about that in a joined-up way. Let us consider problems often affecting women—about which Lady Hale was concerned when she spoke the other day. For victims of crime, I have recently announced funding for 15 rape crisis centres on a more secure long-term basis than in the past and funding for four new centres. For women using the justice system, in our legal aid reforms we are prioritising those cases where there is greatest risk of harm, retaining legal aid for cases involving domestic violence, child abuse and child abduction, and we have broadened the range of evidence accepted.
In private family law, the taxpayer is increasing funding for mediation and legal advice in support of mediation. More broadly on family cases, part 2 of the Bill extends the powers for courts to require one party to pay towards the other’s legal bills in some cases where resources are not equal. For example, when a couple have parted and the man remains very prosperous whereas the woman is almost penniless and is seeking some remedy, the court will have the power to require one party to pay towards the other’s costs. In public family law, the taxpayer will still be providing more than £400 million for family legal aid.
For female offenders in the criminal justice system, we have not replaced—and I have never proposed replacing—short-term prison sentences with community sentences, but if we can increase confidence that community sentences will be meaningfully punitive, they could make the justice system more sensible in some situations, such as in ensuring that there are decent non-penal options for offenders with caring responsibilities where their being sent to prison would cause chaos for innocent children in their families. In dealing with women prisoners and offenders, we are, in fact, proceeding on a very similar basis to the previous Government.
My vision is a legal system that is substantially reformed. In addition to implementing changes to legal aid and the Jackson proposals on no win, no fee, my Department is developing and supporting work to improve civil legal processes, criminal justice efficiency and family justice. It is a measure of the challenge before us that the Bill, which on any measure is a huge Leviathan of a piece of proposed legislation, is only part of the overall reforms we need to deliver. The changes we are making are, of course, financially necessary, but they will also make the system more sensible and civilised.
I never shrink from robust debate about improvement to important and sensitive public services, and changes in the criminal law have always excited an extraordinary level of controversy, and they always will. If we get this right, however, the prize is a justice system that properly contributes to a safer, fairer society, and a justice system that is user-friendly, that works, that does not deny access to justice and that has less daunting waste, with costs under control. I would, in fact, have liked to introduce such a major reforming Bill 20 years ago, if I had stayed long enough at the Home Office. I now have the opportunity to do so, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I usually take all interventions, but today I shall try to observe your recent stricture on that, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I know that many colleagues wish to discuss the Bill.
The Government’s approach to criminal justice is in tatters. We have a hotch-potch that does nothing to win the confidence of victims, of people in the justice system or of the public at large. This Bill is controversial as much for what is absent as for what has found its way in. Key policy areas that were consulted on are absent and others are to be the subject of further review, while there are some clauses on issues that were not consulted on at all. The Lord Chancellor knows as well as I do that within weeks, if not days, of this Bill moving to Committee, there will be a flood of new amendments and new clauses. After 13 months, three Green Papers and three consultations, there is no excuse.
Last week, the Prime Minister unveiled the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s legislation in his absence. A number of eye-catching proposals were announced on squatting, self-defence and knife crime. The favourable coverage they received was precisely the Prime Minister’s aim. Suddenly, because of the Prime Minister’s last-minute intervention, the Bill was spun as being tough on crime. Even the words “punishment of offenders” found their way into the name of the Bill, but we must be clear from the start: the clause on knife crime is still a Conservative broken promise. It is not what the party promised in its manifesto. The new offence of aggravated knife possession carries a mandatory six-month sentence, but applies to a much narrower category of cases of those caught carrying a knife. The offence of aggravated knife possession is using a knife to threaten someone, and that is already a crime; the sentencing guidelines already recommend a minimum sentence of six months. It is not even properly mandatory. A court will not have to hand down the sentence; it will be up to the judge to decide, given the circumstances of the case or the offender. Knife crime is a persistent and worrying concern, and it impacts in particular on young people and the disadvantaged. It is unclear how this hollow proposal will help communities blighted by knife crime.
Two other headline grabbers—squatting and self-defence against burglars—are not even in the Bill, but as the Justice Secretary has admitted today, the provisions on self-defence will not be a new law; they are just a reiteration of the existing law. This is yet another chapter in a rather depressing story that has been repeated since May 2010: a string of broken promises on criminal justice. Before the election, there was a commitment to match Labour’s prison building programme. Instead, spend has been slashed to almost zero. The Tories promised minimum and maximum sentencing, but that has now also been ditched, and the electorate were promised that those caught carrying a knife would face the presumption of jail, yet what we have been presented with is entirely different.
Let me also give an accurate account of our record. The Justice Secretary inherited levels of crime that were 43% lower than in 1997; crime went down under Labour. He inherited a system with a greater focus on diversion for those with mental health problems and drug dependencies. He inherited a capital programme upgrading and expanding our prison estate. He inherited innovative payment-by-results schemes, including the one he now boasts about in Peterborough. Reoffending, particularly among young people, fell under Labour, thanks to investment in effective intervention programmes now threatened by his Government. This Bill risks all that progress.
That has generated an impressive coalition opposed to the plans, from the judiciary, victims groups, legal organisations, charities that act on behalf of some of the most vulnerable in society, and some of the Justice Secretary’s own party’s Back Benchers—but not, I note, from the Liberal Democrat Benches. Briefing note after briefing note from organisations as diverse as Scope and Justice demonstrate that the Prime Minister’s perceived rescue of the justice Bill is fooling no one.
I support penal reforms, but these are the wrong reforms: carelessly thought out, badly framed, confusingly argued, weakly handled and grossly under-resourced from the start. It will be communities around the country that suffer.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I am glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman is in favour of penal reform, but he has not, so far as I am aware, made a single suggestion on that. Will he give us one or two examples of the liberal reforms that he has in mind?
Sadiq Khan
The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware of our progress in relation to mental health, following the Bradley report, which he has now agreed to follow with a reduced budget. He will also be aware of the work done by Corston on diverting women away from prison, and of payment by results. He knows that he has under-resourced the work that we began, and he is putting our strategy at risk.
Shambolic, last-minute changes to the Bill have left a £140 million black hole in the Justice Secretary’s plans. The Prime Minister has said that that money will need to be found within the Ministry of Justice budget, and the Justice Secretary admitted this morning that he is not sure where he will find it. The House needs to know the exact details. The progress of the Bill depends on knowing where that money will come from, and what implications that might have on other spend.
Why do we have this problem? We have it because the Justice Secretary simply failed to argue his corner with the Treasury. He boasted that he did not wish to be involved in a “macho contest” with Cabinet colleagues over who could have the smallest budget cut. The figures are testimony to that: his budget cut of 23% is one of the biggest in Whitehall. As a result, that is how he justifies his ill-thought-out policies. Cuts to prison, probation and the legal aid budget all stem from his lackadaisical attitude towards the Treasury. He needs to realise that he is no longer the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the Lord Chancellor. His justice policy is retrofitted around his prison population reduction target, which is in turn driven by the 23% budget cuts. Our justice system deserves a better advocate.
Sir Alan Beith
I must conclude, so I shall give way only to the Secretary of State.
Mr Clarke
The reason why we did not deal with that part of Jackson was because the Legal Services Board had taken it on itself to review the future of referral fees. We now have its report and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), and I are considering referral fees. I take on board what my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) have been saying.
Sir Alan Beith
I am grateful to the Secretary of State. I know no one who agrees with the Legal Services Board’s conclusions, but I hope that the matter will be considered urgently to see whether the Bill can be used to complete the process of dealing with what is undoubtedly a scandal, which puts up costs for our constituents.
The Bill is part of a necessary process of reform in both sentencing and legal aid, but it needs a great deal of work before it leaves this House and a great deal of monitoring when it comes into force.
Mr Straw
No, of course I will not. The explanatory memorandum makes exactly the same point.
Let me address the issue of indeterminate sentences for public protection. I entirely endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has said from the Front Bench. The Secretary of State made one of his sweeping statements, saying that those sentences have been discredited. No, they have not. Who has discredited them? He has, because he has been forced to save money on indeterminate public protection sentences having had to surrender the 50% cut in the bail discount, as he well knows. IPPs have worked.
The Secretary of State comprehensively failed to answer the hon. Member for Shipley yesterday, when the hon. Gentleman said that the reoffending rate for IPPs has been spectacularly successful—of the 1,449 people released, only 11 have reoffended. The Secretary of State laughs, but what we are dealing with here is the most serious offenders who, under the law, are expected to show that they would go straight, if they were released. He is laughing, but the laugh will be on the other side of the Conservatives’ faces when and if his measures go forward and people are released before it is safe for them to be released and they commit further offences. He will be the person to blame for that.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman is referring to the 200 people who have been released, but more than 6,000 of them are still in prison with no idea when or if they are going to be released. Their reoffending rate is, I agree, very low, but that is not a justification for the system. The vast majority of respondents to our consultation regard it as something of a disgrace that the measure has been put on to the statute book and is working in this way.
Mrs Grant
The problem is that not all cases can be mediated, and the difficult ones—the ones that we are dealing with—usually end up in court anyway.
The plans have telephone advice as an alternative to a trusted and recommended solicitor, but the law is complicated. The law can be an ass, and it is not easy to understand. Having tried to explain maintenance pending suit or some other aspect of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 to a frightened and vulnerable litigant, I can tell hon. Members that it makes clients feel frustrated and confused and leaves solicitors feeling quite inadequate.
The plans badly impact on women, especially in the categories of family, education and housing law. Some 75% of domestic violence victims are women, 90% of single parents are women, and 97% of those who are eligible for child maintenance are women. Women are more likely to be in non-unionised jobs, and men are more likely to be financially better off and able to pay privately.
Over the years, my firm has looked after about 14,000 clients in south London, Surrey and west Kent. The family profile that I describe is, sadly, not unusual. One mother presented with some learning difficulties and a history of self-harm and drug abuse, but says that she is now clean. She has three children, all girls, with three different fathers. The father of the eldest daughter sought a residence order and a contact order. Mother and daughter were resistant in view of the father’s history of bullying and drunkenness. There were no previous injunction orders, but many police call-outs. All the girls were having problems at school, and the middle daughter had been diagnosed with ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The school had threatened suspension due to disruptive behaviour. The mother was on income support and was being chased by loan sharks due to debt. She was feeling suicidal and was on antidepressants. All the children were on the child protection register.
When I took instructions from that lady, judging by her physical appearance and demeanour, I thought that she was about 50. It was only when I asked her for her date of birth that I realised that she was just 25 years old. Under the current plans, that highly vulnerable woman would not be entitled to help with residence and contact applications, debt problems or her children’s educational difficulties. That is what family life is like for many in our country. Those are the people who rely on the family courts and legal aid to resolve their problems. Tragically, the children growing up in such families are watching and learning bad behaviour, have absent boundaries, and are breeding future generations of victims and perpetrators. It is a vicious circle.
Legal aid cost £500 million in 1982. The cost is £2 billion today. I make no case for ring-fencing from the cuts, and I see a genuine need for reform.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I have a high regard for my hon. Friend’s expertise on the issue, which greatly exceeds mine as a result of her practice. The case that she makes is moving, but surely such things do not lend themselves to litigation. Our argument is not that we will leave such people with no support at all, but that legal advice and litigation are not the best way of proceeding to resolve important social and family problems of the kind that she describes.
Mrs Grant
If matters such as residence and contact can be resolved without litigation, as they sometimes are, that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a woman in the situation that I have described and a man who has historically been difficult, drunken and abusive might not, regrettably, be able to sort things out.
We must accept that the past 50 years have created a social mess, caused largely by the demise of the family unit and stalling social mobility. We cannot pull the rug from under the feet of 500,000 people who have no genuine alternative. Civil liberty is about the freedom of our nation; civil legal aid is about protecting citizens. For some, civil legal aid is the only sword and shield in their armoury. We must therefore wear kid gloves when handling that delicate aspect of the public purse. For all the above reasons, I hope that further significant changes will be made to this important Bill in Committee and on Report.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I want to speak today about legal aid and social welfare law, not because I am an expert in either, but by drawing on my many years’ experience in education and my year as a new MP. Before that, however, I want to comment on today’s debate. As with many debates, some hon. Members have popped in, ranted a bit and left, but overall this afternoon I have sat through some of the most informed and thoughtful contributions that I have ever heard in the House. They have come from Members on both sides of the House and indicate the level of concern on both sides. It was a shame that the Lord Chancellor was not here for the contributions from his colleagues the hon. Members for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) and for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell).
New Independent Assessor of Compensation for Miscarriages of Justice
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I am pleased to announce the appointment of the right hon. Dame Janet Smith DBE as the new independent assessor of miscarriages of justice compensation under section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The assessor is appointed under schedule 12 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
The assessor’s role is to assess the amount of compensation to be paid under section 133 once Ministers have decided that the eligibility criteria are met. Neither Ministers nor civil servants play any role in the assessment of compensation and I am required by section 133 (4) to accept the award made by the assessor. The assessor plays no role in deciding whether an applicant is eligible under section 133.
Dame Janet, who retired as an Appeal Court judge in May, replaces Lord Brennan of Bibury QC who has held the position since 27 July 2001 and whose term of office comes to an end on 26 July 2011. Lord Brennan indicated that he did not wish to be appointed for a further term. Dame Janet will take up her appointment on 1 July, which will initially be for two years.
The assessor is an “office holder” rather than a public appointment so the appointment rules of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA) are not required to be followed.
However, in considering who should be appointed to the role, I consulted the Lord Chief Justice and he recommended Dame Janet. I was delighted to accept his recommendation.
Dame Janet is eminently qualified for the role. She has extensive experience of the assessment of damages in personal injury litigation. As a former lady justice of appeal she will continue the robust independence which her predecessors have brought to the role. As well as my full confidence, she will have the confidence of applicants and their representatives.
Finally, I am extremely grateful to Lord Brennan for the very high level of service he has provided over the past 10 years.
Ministerial Correction
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I refer to the debate following my oral statement on sentencing reform and legal aid, 21 June 2011, Official Report, column 165.
In my response to the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), regarding a reduction in foreign national prisoners at column 173, I gave an indicative comparative figure stating that there are now 1,000 fewer FNPs than when the previous Government left office.
I would like to correct the information I gave. As of 31 March 2011, there were 10,745 FNPs—622 fewer than on 31 March 2010, when there were 11,367 FNPs.
As I said in the debate, the Ministry of Justice continues to work with the UK Border Agency to remove FNPs at the earliest possible opportunity.
In my response to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), on the issue of legal aid funding for clinical negligence claims at column 174, I stated that 80% of clinical negligence cases are currently undertaken on a no win, no fee basis.
I would like to correct the information I gave. The precise data I now have, from the NHS Litigation Authority, show that in 2008-09 5,245 claims for clinical negligence were received by the NHSLA. Of the 3,993 clinical negligence cases where the type of funding was known, 1,821 (46% of cases where funding type was known) were funded by no win, no fee conditional fee agreements, 1,145 (29%) were funded by legal aid, 632 (16%) were self-funded, and 395 (10%) were funded by “before the event” legal expenses insurance. I understand from the NHSLA that the cases where funding type was not known are unlikely to be CFA-funded. Although the NHSLA covers clinical negligence cases against NHS bodies in England only, there is no reason to suggest that the breakdown of funding arrangements for all clinical negligence cases in England and Wales is significantly different.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
We have begun work to improve access to local criminal justice statistics. For example, criminal justice and sentencing statistics are now broken down to court level and are available online. In terms of individuals, pre-sentence reports provide the court with details of a defendant’s offending history and compliance with any previous sentences.
Mr Hollobone
That is not quite what I am after. Although it is important to have judicial independence, surely it is not beyond the wit of the Department that each judge and each magistrate should be given an annual report card on the effectiveness of their sentencing decisions. If they have given out a string of sentences and the convicts have reoffended regularly, that judge or magistrate will know that something is wrong with their approach.
Mr Clarke
As I said, we have begun work, and that is certainly an interesting suggestion. A massive amount of data would be involved in providing every judge and magistrate with full information about everybody they had ever sentenced, but I agree that we should consider the feasibility of doing so. I gather that someone in Seattle advocates that and has given interesting evidence to the Select Committee on Justice.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
There is considerable evidence that judges do not know enough about what happens once they sentence prisoners and those sentences have been disposed of. Will the Justice Secretary do what he can to increase the experience obtained by judges of those disposals and will he ask the Sentencing Council to advise, with a particular focus on what works in preventing offending and reoffending?
Mr Clarke
The Sentencing Council is already under a duty to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice and I am sure that it supplements that advice and information in every possible way. As I have said to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), we will certainly consider the feasibility of doing such a thing, as it would be valuable, but we are talking about a vast number of cases and not every judge will find it possible to find out exactly what happened in later years to everybody who appeared before him.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
4. What steps he plans to take to protect the public from persons convicted of violent offences.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
6. What progress has been made on the proposals in his Department’s rehabilitation revolution Green Paper.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Government published our response to the Green Paper last week and I made a statement to the House about it. We have also introduced the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to give effect to proposals that require primary legislation. We will debate the Second Reading of that Bill tomorrow.
Tony Baldry
We need to encourage charities and social enterprises to invest in helping offenders and ex-offenders with their rehabilitation. In addition to payment by results, could my right hon. and learned Friend consider introducing Lord Chancellor’s awards for those charities, non-governmental organisations and social enterprises that are among the best at helping to support rehabilitation and prevent reoffending?
Mr Clarke
We all wish to give support to the many people who, through voluntary or charitable activity, try to help society as a whole by tackling the reoffending and rehabilitation problems of ex-offenders, so I shall certainly consider my hon. Friend’s interesting suggestion. I would love to give Lord Chancellor’s awards to a large number of worthy people, but unfortunately, the financial crisis that the Government have inherited does not enable me to give an instant response to his idea.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Surely the Secretary of State has gone backwards. He has done a U-turn on early guilty pleas; he is reviewing his review on indeterminate imprisonment for public protection; and he has made massive cuts to probation services. I have had letters from probation services, and in Gloucestershire the cut is 7.9%, in West Yorkshire, it is 9.8%, and in Kent, it is a staggering 13.6% this year. How can we have a rehabilitation revolution if there are no community resources?
Mr Clarke
As the hon. Lady knows, we are debating the Bill tomorrow, which is enormous—I apologise for that—and has huge implications, but we are having to reform fundamentally a criminal justice system that does not help society as it should, because it does not cut reoffending. We are having to reform on a very wide scale a legal aid and civil justice system that encourages unnecessary litigation and is not particularly user-friendly. We have taken over a mess, and we are going in for massive reform of it. We may have changed quite a lot of proposals in light of consultation, but the underlying need for a balanced package of radical reform is certainly there, and we will tackle it.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
According to the Ministry of Justice, the number of people released from prison after serving an indeterminate sentence was 206 at the end of last year. The number who have reoffended since they were released is just 11—a reoffending rate of 5%. The Lord Chancellor says that what is most important to him in the criminal justice system is reoffending rates, so why on earth does he want to scrap the single part of the criminal justice system that is best at reducing reoffending?
Mr Clarke
About 200 people have been released, but 6,000 are in prison serving indeterminate sentences, and we are adding about 80 a month. They are released only when they can demonstrate to the Parole Board that they are a minimal risk to society—that is the present test—but in a prison cell they find it almost impossible to satisfy that test, so they are in a Catch-22 situation. We need long, determinate sentences for serious criminals; that is the way that the criminal justice system works. The experiment introduced by the previous Government has most undoubtedly failed; we will have one in 10 of the prison population serving indefinite sentences if we do not find a better alternative soon.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I welcome the thrust of the Green Paper, and ask the Lord Chancellor or his officials to meet User Voice, a group that consists of ex-offenders who are very keen to work with the Ministry of Justice, and to work with current offenders to stop them taking a path of crime?
Mr Clarke
I am sure that I can arrange for one of the team to have a meeting with that interesting organisation. A large number of ex-offenders—not too many, but some—do very valuable work in stopping other people making the mistakes that they made. The social impact bond financing the payment-by-results contract that we have with Peterborough prison is largely delivered by an organisation called St Giles Trust, which has an excellent record of using ex-offenders as mentors. Anything that we can do to encourage that, where there are suitable ex-offenders who really are able to give valuable advice, would certainly be welcomed.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
A national inquiry, “Community or Custody?”, commissioned by Make Justice Work, has highlighted the success that effective alternatives to custody can have in tackling reoffending and diverting petty criminals from a life of crime. Does the Secretary of State expect his proposals to lead to a reduction in the number of offenders serving short-term prison sentences for non-violent offences and a rise in the number of those involved in tough community sentence programmes?
Mr Clarke
We need the right sentence for the individual circumstances of each offender. I have never suggested that we get rid of all short-term sentences of imprisonment because sometimes magistrates and others have absolutely no alternative, but we are interested in strengthening community punishments and giving more confidence to magistrates and the public that those can have a genuine effect. We are proposing to strengthen the community payback scheme, which is unpaid work. Improving the extent to which tagging and curfews are available is one part of trying to make sure that, where they are likely to work, non-custodial community sentences are employed with some confidence by the courts concerned.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
7. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on group action litigation against multinational corporations of his proposals for reform to civil litigation.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
15. What recent representations he has received on the breach of court orders by those entitled to assert parliamentary privilege.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
We have received correspondence from a number of hon. Members on behalf of their constituents, raising issues relating to privacy and the use of anonymity injunctions and super-injunctions. In some instances this has included reference to statements made in Parliament concerning the identity of individuals who have obtained injunctions.
Stephen Phillips
I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for that answer. He will share my concerns, and those expressed by the Lord Chief Justice, at the recent breaches of court orders by Members of this House, and indeed Members of the other place. The rule of law and the separation of powers require that we observe the self-denying ordinances to which we are subject, so may I ask whether my right hon. and learned Friend intends to have any discussions with the Speakers of both Houses on the subject, and if so, what the nature of those discussions will be?
Mr Clarke
This is obviously a point of concern. I agree that essentially it should be a matter for both Houses of Parliament, and Members of both Houses, to address themselves. As a parliamentarian as well as a member of the Government, I defend absolutely the rules of parliamentary privilege, but we have to consider whether it is a proper use of parliamentary privilege to defy court orders. I hope that the matter will be urgently addressed, as we all have to come to some conclusions on it.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
16. What recent representations he has received on his proposal to reduce sentences for certain offences for offenders who enter an early guilty plea.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The proposal to increase to 50% the maximum sentence discount for a guilty plea at the first opportunity produced numerous responses when it was canvassed in the Green Paper “Breaking the Cycle”. The majority of those who commented were not in favour, including the judiciary, whose opposition was especially influential in persuading me that we should not proceed.
Bob Stewart
Can the Secretary of State assure the House that when a defendant pleads guilty at the last minute because he has been presented with overwhelming evidence against him, judges will still have discretion not to give him the maximum statutory sentencing discount of 33%?
Mr Clarke
I am glad to say that the guidelines have always said that, and it was never my intention to propose any change. The guidance on sentence reductions for guilty pleas recommends that a last-minute plea should attract no more than a 10% discount. It also says that where the prosecution case is overwhelming, even an early plea should receive less than the maximum, and recommends 20%. That is obviously a sensible rule. There is some discount because we are still saving the victim and witnesses the ordeal of going into the witness box, but the current one third, let alone 50%, is obviously far too generous for someone caught red-handed.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
If the Justice Secretary’s aim is to spare the victim, why does he not turn things round and insist on an additional sentence for offenders who waste court time in the face of overwhelming evidence and subject victims to further hurt by their behaviour in court?
Mr Clarke
It is simply a result of the culture of the last 50 years, at least, that this has always been described as a “discount” for a guilty plea. Most of the general public do not appreciate that a discount applies. If members of the public are asked whether a discount on the sentence should be given for someone who pleads guilty early, they say no. But if they are asked, “Should someone who puts the victim through the ordeal of the witness box get a longer sentence than someone who pleads guilty?” they answer yes. Because we could not find a resolution to the risk of some of the more serious offences attracting too short a period in custody, and judicial discretion could not be devised to cover that, we have now decided to stick with the long-standing process whereby a one-third discount is available for an early guilty plea.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
17. What steps he plans to take to reduce rates of reoffending.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
On Thursday the Government signalled their intention to lead by example by launching a new dispute resolution commitment. From now on, Government Departments and agencies are committed to using better, quicker and more efficient ways of resolving legal disputes, and to seeking alternatives to court action wherever possible. The commitment will save time, money and stress for those involved, and will reduce the number of cases unnecessarily clogging up the courts. This is an important part of our commitment to make the justice system radically more user-friendly and to cut down on the amount of expensive, painful and confrontational litigation in our society.
Mr Raab
I thank the Justice Secretary for that reply. Getting offenders clean of drugs is one of the best ways to get them to go straight on release. What progress has the Justice Secretary made in reducing the previous Government’s excessive reliance on methadone prescriptions, and increasing abstinence-based drug rehabilitation in our prisons?
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Last week the Prime Minister announced the Justice Secretary’s new law on self-defence. However, there is no mention of it in the Green Paper, the Government response or the 119-page Bill. Is the Justice Secretary aware that the Director of Public Prosecutions is on record as saying that the current guidelines, which permit people to use reasonable force to protect their property, work well? Will he spell out how his proposal differs from the current law?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
We intend to clarify the law on self-defence by amending the Bill at the earliest possible stage. We are finalising the drafting of that. Essentially, we are clarifying the law. It will still be based on a person’s undoubted right to use reasonable force when they choose to defend themselves or their home against any threat from an offender.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
T2. Although I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s policy to create drug-free wings in our prisons, does he agree with me, and my constituents, that the whole of our prison estate should be completely free of illegal drugs? Will he explain to my constituents how that can be achieved?
Mr Clarke
I would love to announce just such a policy. My hon. Friend probably shares my comparative amazement that drugs are so readily available in our prisons. The fact is that that is so endemic in the system that we have to start from where we are. We have a definite programme to introduce drug-free wings. As soon as we establish those successfully, a prime objective of the Government is to eliminate the presence of drugs and to establish proper rehabilitation of offenders that does not depend simply on maintenance and methadone.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
T5. To return to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), the Prime Minister said that there would be provisions on self-defence included in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, but the Bill as it stands is silent on the issue. Michael Wolkind QC, who represented Tony Martin, says that allowing householders to use any force that is not grossly disproportionate would amount to “state-sponsored revenge”. Can the Justice Secretary clarify how his legislation will differ from what is currently in place?
Mr Clarke
The Prime Minister was not advocating state-sponsored revenge, nor is anybody else. What we are doing is clarifying in statute the basis upon which people can use reasonable force to defend themselves in their property. [Interruption.] I am not quite sure what aspect of that Labour Members seek to oppose, but I think they will be reassured when they see the amendments that we propose to introduce.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
T4. What steps is my right hon. and learned Friend going to take to ensure that the Government send out the strongest possible message on knife crime?
Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab/ Co-op)
T7. The Youth Justice Board has support right across the political spectrum. Indeed, the House of Lords voted to retain it. I cannot understand why a Government who pride themselves on listening to the people cannot do a U-turn that, on this occasion, would be popular.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
T6. Last week I visited HMP Hewell in Worcestershire, where I met the restorative justice manager Clifford Grimason. He showed me the excellent work that has been done there with prisoners. Will the Secretary of State join me in commending HMP Hewell, and Cliff and his team, who have been working together with Conservative-controlled Redditch borough council on innovative schemes to help get prisoners ready to go out into the world of work?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I am sure that my hon. Friend’s description of that work is correct, and I readily commend the work that is being done there and in other places. The main feature of the reforms that I am introducing is the concentration on cutting reoffending, which means rehabilitating offenders. I try to avoid giving the impression that nobody is doing that already, but instead of looking to particular spectacular examples, I want to see that running through the whole system. To reduce crime we have to reduce the number of criminals who are going to offend again as soon as they are out of prison, which is an objective of reform that has been missed for many years.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
T9. In the light of the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment, which says that increased criminality, less social cohesion and increased costs are all likely to result from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, have the costs to other Government Departments been considered and costed? If so, what are they?
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
T8. I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State’s commitment to reducing reoffending rates. Does he agree that increasing the scope of judicial discretion, as outlined in the Bill, will go a long way to help to achieve that?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I do, and I can reinforce my hon. Friend’s point with a remarkable statistic showing how the last Government were falling down in that respect. Some 29% of all sentences for indictable offences in 2010 were given to offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions—up from 17% in 2000. We need a more intelligent and sensible system of sentencing, and I agree that a proper degree of judicial discretion is an important part of the system.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that in October last year, Citizens Advice in Manchester signed a three-year contract with the Legal Services Commission for the provision of community legal services, which involves four new advice centres, one of which is in my constituency. On the strength of that, Citizens Advice entered into a series of leasing and employment obligations. Will he cut through the increasing uncertainty and confirm this afternoon that that contract will be honoured in full?
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
Following the Milly Dowler trial, does the Secretary of State agree that measures need to be taken to protect the families of the victims of crime from intensive questioning in court? If a footballer can be afforded privacy from the public arena, cannot the father of a murdered child?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
It is obvious that members of the public generally were appalled by the experience through which that family were put as a result of that criminal trial going ahead and the nature of the defence. Such cases are exceedingly difficult, because any defendant has the right to put forward a defence, however distasteful or distressing that may be to the victims. That sometimes happens. The straightforward process of calling the victim a liar can be extremely offensive to someone who has suffered grievously at the hands of the accused.
The judge has a discretion to cut out all irrelevant and unnecessary lines of questioning. I have no reason to doubt that the judge considered his discretion in that case. The Crown Prosecution Service actually applied for an order to ban the reporting of the relevant pieces of the cross-examination. I respect the decision of the judge, who decided that the principle of open justice should prevail. It was therefore all reported. The newspapers made their own judgments on the extent to which they reported those incidents.
In that case, which was exceedingly distressing, there was never a question of an early guilty plea, but it is useful to remind ourselves of just what an ordeal it can be when victims and witnesses have to go to a court to face someone who is denying the crime.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is not an ordeal to listen to the Secretary of State—indeed, one might almost call it a leisure pursuit—but unfortunately, we have not the time on this occasion to do so uninterrupted.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does the Government’s U-turn on shorter sentences, which could have led to a reduction in the prison population, mean that in future under the coalition, any Minister caught in possession of an intelligent idea is likely to be doomed to a brief unhappy ministerial career?
Mr Clarke
I made a few slightly light-hearted remarks about U-turns last time—but the Government have a process of consultation, and this is another Catch-22 situation. If we modify our proposals we are accused of making a U-turn, and if we proceed with our proposals we are accused of being deaf.
We explored every possibility of encouraging more early guilty pleas. We still intend to make such proposals, and some of the legal aid reforms are designed to encourage early guilty pleas. Anything that can be done to get early guilty pleas saves a lot of people distress, and also saves a lot of wasted time and cost for the police, the CPS, the courts and the prisons.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
What message is sent to potential offenders and police officers—one of whom is my own brother—by the guidance of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, that even the most offensive language used against a police officer will not now result in an offence under public order provisions.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I want to ask about the drug-free wings that the Justice Secretary is introducing in prisons. Will prisoners be able to choose whether they enter a drug-free wing or a wing where drugs are rife?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
It might cost more to send a prisoner to prison than it does to put him in a room in the Ritz hotel, but there are limits to how much choice we give prisoners over the suitability of their accommodation. There will be a process of careful assessment. We wish to spread the provision of drug-free wings and eliminate drug dealing in prisons as rapidly as is practicable.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State consider, within a year of the legal aid proposals being implemented, assessing the ability of those on low incomes to access the courts, the availability of appropriately qualified lawyers prepared to undertake publicly funded work, and the sustainability of legal services provided by bodies such as Citizens Advice?
Youth Justice Board (Abolition)
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I am today announcing further detail on the Government’s plans for the future national governance of youth justice. It is my intention to abolish the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and to bring its key functions into the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the Minister responsible for civil society, the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), will be bringing forward a Government amendment to reintroduce the YJB to schedule 1 (the list of bodies to be abolished) of the Public Bodies Bill currently before this House.
The Youth Justice Board was set up in 1998 to oversee what was then a fractured and immature system. In the past 12 years the system has changed considerably. In response to a lack of cohesion and collaborative working, the YJB has overseen the national roll-out of youth offending teams and the establishment of a distinct secure estate for young people. These core elements of the youth justice system are now fully operational in the local delivery of youth justice. Given these significant improvements, I believe that we no longer require a separate body to provide oversight of the youth justice system.
Effective oversight can be better achieved by bringing this function closer to Ministers; and it is right that Ministers themselves—not unelected officials in arm’s length bodies (ALBs)—should be responsible for youth justice, which is a critical area of Government policy. It is Ministers who should lead and drive forward the work that will result in further reductions in the numbers of young people entering the youth justice system, the numbers of young people reoffending and the numbers of young people in custody. By bringing youth justice closer to Ministers, the new Youth Justice Division I am establishing will be a powerful impetus behind future improvement, will be able to influence policy across Government and will ensure that other Departments play their part in stopping young people from becoming involved in crime and reoffending. An ALB does not have the appropriate policy leverage within Government to effect such change.
The abolition of the YJB will not have an adverse impact on the delivery of youth justice on the ground. The Government intend to retain youth offending teams, which are well embedded in local structures. My Department will also continue to place young people separately to adult offenders in a dedicated secure estate that is driven by the needs of young people. There will be clear ministerial oversight of this.
It is my intention to carry out the main functions of the YJB within a newly created youth justice division in the MoJ. The Youth Justice Division will continue this Government’s focus on meeting the needs of children and young people in the youth justice system and will deliver the main functions of the YJB—overseeing the delivery of youth justice services, identifying and disseminating effective practice, commissioning a distinct secure estate and placing young people in custody.
The Youth Justice Division will be a dedicated part of the MoJ and will sit outside of the National Offender Management Service. It will ensure that the commissioning of the youth justice secure estate and the placement of young people in custody will continue to be driven by people who have a dedicated focus on the needs of young people. The structure will also ensure that youth justice work in the community—primarily conducted by youth offending teams—remains closely linked to work with young offenders in custody. This is at the heart of our ambitions for a “rehabilitation revolution”.
I can confirm that John Drew, the current chief executive of the YJB, has agreed to lead the transition of the YJB into the new Youth Justice Division structure and to continue to lead it beyond that. I am confident that he will ensure there is continuity between the YJB and the new Youth Justice Division. He will also help to ensure that the new organisation is embedded in the MoJ while retaining the experience and expertise of YJB staff.
My Department will also strengthen its focus on youth justice by establishing an advisory board of stakeholders and experts to advise on youth justice issues and to provide expert challenge and scrutiny. In addition, Dame Sue Street, a non-executive director of the MoJ who brings experience and knowledge of youth justice, will be taking an active interest in youth justice within MoJ, and will have a direct route into the Department through the permanent secretary and Secretary of State.
In making this decision I have taken into account the concerns expressed by some interested parties and noble Lords about the abolition of the YJB and our plans for the future governance of youth justice. My Department will consult on the YJB’s inclusion in the Bill over the summer, and I will pay close attention to the responses. My reform proposals are also subject to the progress of the Bill through Parliament, and the abolition of the YJB will require me to lay an order, subject to affirmative resolution process. This proposal has therefore already been widely discussed with stakeholders and will continue to be subject to consultation and to full and appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.