Detainee Inquiry
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
Given that somebody has been briefing in advance, which I give the assurance is certainly not me or anybody with my authority, it is already clear that people are drawing the conclusions that we would anticipate them drawing if they already happened to be on one side of the argument or another before we started, and that, I am afraid, will continue. The right hon. Lady makes an extremely important point, and Sir Peter makes it clear at least twice in the report he is publishing today that it is quite wrong, and indeed impossible, to make findings of fact, and certainly any findings concerning any individuals involved, before he has called evidence, called them before him if necessary, given them an opportunity to explain and completed these investigations. That is why this inquiry identifies issues, which the ISC will now consider and decide whether and how to pursue. It has not made any findings of fact. In this country it would be quite wrong to make findings of fact of any kind, or to draw adverse inferences against anybody, when nobody has given any evidence, nobody has been challenged, and nobody has been given a chance to give their own explanation of events.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) that the agencies do not have the power to withhold sensitive material from the ISC, of which I am a member? If they wish to do so, they have to appeal directly to the Prime Minister. In every other respect, they have to give us what we want to see. May I also remind the House that the ISC has been keen to get to grips with this matter, and that it actually started its own investigation, which had to be stayed when the Gibson inquiry was set up? Finally, may I give the House a personal assurance that, notwithstanding the context of trying to bring Libya back within the comity of nations, there are members of the ISC—one third of whom are senior Labour Members—who, far from endorsing any whitewash, would take a great deal of convincing that it was ever reasonable, proportionate or justifiable to supply people to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime?
Justice and Security Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
I encounter many people making bids for resources for their particular, extremely important, activities. My right hon. Friends at the Treasury are receiving a very large number of these bids all the time. I have had some experience of public spending, and I can tell the House that it is not wise to engage in negotiations across the Floor of the House—it is certainly not wise for a non-Treasury Minister to do so. For this purpose, in this debate, given those present, I think we can agree that it is the Government’s intention that this Committee should be properly resourced to do its job, which is why we are taking a power to supplement Parliament’s financing of the Committee. Obviously, the Government have the right to query and test the figures that are put to them, and there are ways in which this can eventually be negotiated.
Dr Lewis
I hope not to get bogged down. I wish to assist our Front-Bench team by pointing out that the Intelligence and Security Committee has eight staff, whereas the detainee inquiry, which looked at only one issue, had 14 staff and the Committee on Standards in Public Life has 12 staff. As the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) pointed out, the Government’s own impact assessment suggested that to do what is being required of us we would need a budget of £1.3 million, which compares with the existing budget of £750,000. At the moment only £850,000 is being offered, and if the gap is not bridged, this whole reform will be a waste of time.
Mr Clarke
I can say only that I, like my right hon. and hon. Friends, am fully aware of the Committee’s views on the amount of funding that it will require. Yet again, I take note of my hon. Friend’s points on the matter, but I repeat that there is not much point in my standing here carrying out a negotiation with him or any other member of the Committee about the figure we arrive at. As someone who has been at the Treasury, I think that the Government must combine providing the right resources, which are undoubtedly going to be more than the Committee has had in the past, with doing a bit of negotiating about what is the necessary cost. Report stage is not the place to resolve the final figure.
Similarly, the status and nature of the Committee will not be resolved finally by statute or by debate on the Floor of the House. A long discussion has been going on to make sure that the Committee has the right status and structure to do its job effectively, and I think we are very near to reaching a successful agreement between the Government, the Opposition, the House authorities in both Houses of Parliament and the current members of the Intelligence and Security Committee on what its status should be. I am told that we still have to have further discussions with the House of Commons Commission and the House Committee in the House of Lords, but I think everybody is becoming satisfied that we are resolving that matter. We are also resolving the question of the accommodation, which probably will have to be on the Government’s estate rather than the parliamentary estate, for security reasons. I will go into more details if hon. Members wish, but I realise that we still have quite a lot of the Bill to deal with. Unless hon. Members are particularly interested in knowing the precise current status of these discussions, I hope I may take it that the House is reasonably satisfied that all parties are going to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I assure the House that the Government have been anxious throughout to make this Committee powerful, properly resourced and as much of a parliamentary body—a body that is accountable and resembles the Select Committees of the House in every way possible—as it can be. I think that soon this will all be resolved.
I shall now deal with amendment (a), tabled by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), although she anticipated my reply. Government amendment 58 is required in order to give us the necessary authority to make the financial contributions that we are going to be arguing about. Amendment (a) seeks to oblige the Government—or at least expressly to empower them—to make an additional amount available for the payment of Committee members. That is not necessary, nor, in my opinion and that of the Government, is it wise to start putting the matter of the payment of members of Select Committees or parliamentary Committees into statute, or implicating the Government directly in that. The payment of members of this Committee, the Chairman of this Committee and members of Select Committees is a matter for the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—from every point of view, it is best left there. Where the Government have to initiate all this, it is a feature of all Governments, of all political complexions, that they can get very politically embarrassed on questions about the remuneration of any Member of either House. So a process that leaves the matter with IPSA and the House of Commons is preferable to the hon. Lady’s amendment.
Finally, I shall touch on the spirit of political debate we have had on the question of whether the Chairman should be elected, and again I must say that the Wright Committee produced a splendid report. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) first proposed this, but he is not able to be here because he is serving on his Banking Commission, as we all realise. We worked together, when we were in opposition, with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is now the Government Chief Whip, on a thing called the democracy taskforce, advocating the election of Chairman of Select Committees and producing proposals that were remarkably close to those of the Wright Committee. I certainly start on the same basis as my colleagues who have been drawn to this part of the debate, but we have heard all the arguments why, in this particular case, the proposal does not work. We are already making the whole thing approved by Parliament. No longer will the Prime Minister appoint the Chairman; the Chairman will be elected by those who know—or will know—him best: members of the ISC.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
The convention applies, and the jurisdiction of the Court extends, to 47 member states, where we want to entrench the principles of liberal democracy, and it is in all our interests that we do so. The aim of our proposed reforms is to strengthen the Court and enable it to concentrate on the most serious cases requiring adjudication at international level. At the moment the Court is not functioning well because it has 150,000 cases in arrears, it take years to get a hearing and it has to deal with cases that are trivial, repetitive or have been properly dealt with at national level.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I seem to remember promising the electorate that we would bring in a Bill of Rights that would enable us to disregard some of the more barmy decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Would the Secretary of State like to update us on our progress towards fulfilling that important commitment?
Mr Clarke
Different Conservative candidates put forward the campaign in different terms at the last election, and not for the first time, as you will know from your experience, Mr Speaker, and as I do from mine. As usual, I am sticking firmly to the policy of the Government of whom I am a serving member. The reasons we are reforming the Court were set out clearly in the terms of reference of the commission looking at the matter and in the Prime Minister’s speech to the Council of Europe, which I think coincide with my own views.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
That is a familiar subject, which I believe is being reviewed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The right of women to know whether their partner or intended husband has a long history of domestic violence sounds like a worthwhile cause. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend will be looking to the practical issues that would be involved in introducing an effective system.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In opposition, we often made reference to the terrible effect on victims of crime of the fact that they thought the perpetrators had been sentenced to a certain term of imprisonment only to find them being released half way through it. Will the Secretary of State update the House on what progress we have made towards honesty in sentencing?
Mr Clarke
These conventions got worse when our opponents were in office. I say that before the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) starts attacking me. I, too, have expressed views in the past about honesty in sentencing. What happens currently is that for most sentences, half the term is served in prison; beyond that, prisoners become eligible for release, but they are on licence and liable to recall for the full term of their sentence if they do not adhere to it. There are measures in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, currently in the other place, that address the penalties to be imposed for various offences. In place of indeterminate sentences for public protection, for example, we are going back to how sentences used to be so that people will have long determinate sentences, and will normally serve two thirds of it before they are released. That is at least a step in the right direction for my hon. Friend.
Sentencing
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
The point that I make is not the one that hair-splits the variations between different forms of sentence. All our reoffending rates are very bad. I have no intention of addressing the sentencing tariffs for any offence in this country. I have no proposals for reducing the overall powers of the courts to deal with any crime. What we are talking about is the difference between someone who pleads guilty, particularly at an early stage, and someone who makes the witnesses and the victims go through the crime. That is what I will address.
Ever since I published the proposals five months ago, although we have not faced any clear alternatives or views from the Opposition, I faced a debate about my apparent desire to let prisoners out and reduce the sentences. I have no such desire; nor do I use statistics to illustrate the need for that. What I am talking about—
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Clarke
Let me continue briefly. I want to get on to the quite small proposal in our overall reforms that this debate and the publicity of the past few days have focused on. Let me explain what the reoffending problem is, because that is at the core of the Government’s policy and my proposals.
Within a year of leaving jail, half of Her Majesty’s guests will have been reconvicted of further offences. For adults released from short-term sentences the figure is 60%. For young offenders leaving custody it rises to three-quarters. The same people cycle around the system endlessly, costing endless suffering to victims and, for those released from short sentences alone, costing between £7 billion and £10 billion a year to society. That is the key part of the penal system that is not working. I offer this analysis because it throws into sharp relief the record of the Labour politicians who are now criticising bits of our proposed reforms. What I have just described is part of the legacy of the previous Government.
Mr Clarke
Let me finish describing the legacy of the previous Government, then we will move to the more constructive matter of my reforms and I will give way to my hon. Friend.
I have not forgotten, and I am sure the public have not forgotten either, what 13 years of Labour government was like in this field, despite the attempts of the right hon. Member for Tooting to skate over some of it. We had 13 years of eye-catching initiatives, schemes, meddling and prescription that made a complete Horlicks of the criminal justice system. We had more than 20 Criminal Justice Acts. Thousands of new criminal offences were created. Senior judges complained that
“Hell is a fair description of the problem of statutory interpretation”
when talking of this stream of legislation. We had a 39% increase in the number of prisoners in our jails—it was not planned and it was not policy—with the cost to taxpayers rising by two thirds in real terms.
And what for? That was meant to be the embodiment of the policy of being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime—an attempt to give reality to an admittedly rather catchy slogan. What we got was a sentencing policy so chaotic and badly managed that, as my hon. Friends quite rightly keep emphasising, the previous Government had to let out early 80,000 criminals, who promptly went on to commit more than 1,000 crimes, including alleged murders and one rape. We had a system under which more than 1,000 foreign national offenders were released without being considered for deportation—the total number of foreign prisoners in our jails doubled during Labour’s period in office. We had a system under which offenders serving community sentences in practice usually completed only one or two days of unpaid work each week. Above all, as I keep emphasising, there was the national scandal throughout Labour’s period in office—not a new problem—that the exorbitantly high reoffending rates went completely ignored.
Why was that? A recent quote from the right hon. Member for Tooting is worth repeating, as he gave an extremely good description of what went wrong and what was driving Labour’s policy. Speaking to the Fabian Society about New Labour’s record on this subject just two months ago, he said that
“playing tough in order not to look soft made it harder to focus on what is effective”.
He gets a murmur of approval from the Conservative Back Benches, and certainly from those of us who had to witness the effect of that policy.
Let me move on to our proposed reforms, including the one to which the Opposition’s motion refers. What are the problems that we are now tackling and that our large package of reforms seeks to address? First, criminal trials are needlessly long, drawn out and expensive. The court experience is often deeply unpleasant and almost always uncomfortable for victims, witnesses, jurors and most people who have anything to do with it. As I have said, at least half of all crimes are committed by people who have already been through the criminal justice system. More than one in 10 adults in prison have never been in paid employment, almost a fifth of prisoners who have used heroin did so for the first time while in prison, and one in five appears to have mental health problems. If we wish to take this subject seriously and really want to protect society and the victims of crime, we must recognise that that is the context of today’s debate.
Mr Clarke
On Lord Bradley’s report and the problem of mentally ill people in prison, it seems plain from the hon. Lady’s intervention that she agrees with me. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I are working on ways to divert people from prisons, in proper cases and with proper protection of the public, to places where they can be more sensibly and suitably treated. In that respect the hon. Lady and I are in total rapport.
What I am suggesting about the system of guilty pleas, and the reason I have described the unpleasantness of going to court for most people who unwillingly go there as victims and witnesses, is that although most cases wind up with guilty pleas, more should do so and far too many such pleas are made ages after the event and at the last possible moment. I shall explain in a moment how we are addressing that problem, because the long-standing system we have at the moment is not working well enough.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
Let me just take our proposal on early guilty pleas. Let me get into that. I am sorry to be unkind to my hon. Friend, but I have to bear in mind the people trying to be called, otherwise there will be no BackBenchers’ debate, and as someone who was until recently a Back Bencher for many years, I always used to find it irritating when we had a short Opposition day debate.
Mr Clarke
An advantage the hon. Gentleman will have one day.
From the proposals of the right hon. Member for Tooting, I cannot quite see any difference in principle between the two sides of the debate. It is, and always has been, a well recognised and fundamental practice in this country that those who lie their way through a trial and are ultimately found guilty should face a greater punishment than those who own up early, take responsibility for their crime and commit to making amends. That has taken place for at least the past 40 years. I suspect that anybody here who does enough research will find that, for the past century, people who fought it out and braved it out got a longer sentence than those who put their hands up early and pleaded guilty.
What is the purpose of that practice? The public are sometimes startled when they hear that that is the practice, though it always—always—has been in the courts of this country. The purpose is, as we have already stressed, because of the situation of victims and witnesses, above all. No one should underestimate the relief that is felt by anybody who is a victim of crime and has complained to the police about it when they are told that the offender is going to admit to it, and that they, the victim, are not going to be put through an ordeal in court. The witnesses feel equally relieved. It is far, far worse when someone fights on, because often the victim finds that on public evidence and in a court of law they are being accused of lying, of bad behaviour, of promiscuity or of whatever it is that the defendant is trying to run. That is why the justice system of this country has always included the practice. It also saves an awful lot of police time, an awful lot of Crown Prosecution Service costs and everything else.
Mr Clarke
I will give way on that point, but I just say finally that it is a pity practising lawyers have always referred to the practice as the guilty plea “discount”, because that is not actually the best way of explaining it to a sensible member of the public. I give way to my hon. Friend at last.
Dr Lewis
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his generosity in giving way. He talks about what victims feel, and I always thought that victims felt very unhappy with the previous Government’s policy of letting many criminals out automatically halfway through their sentences. When in opposition we always used to talk about honesty in sentencing, so are we going to change that policy, or are people going to be let out automatically halfway through a sentence which has already been reduced by half as a result of the new measure under discussion?
Mr Clarke
Halfway through the sentence, people are released on licence, therefore they are liable to recall. If they reoffend, they are brought back; they are not free of their conviction for some time. We are going to address not just release on licence or supervision on licence, but what more can be done once people are out of immediate custody in order to increase the chances of their not reoffending. That is where we get into payment-by-results schemes, and that is why I already have a contract at Peterborough prison, which I inherited, and a new one at Doncaster prison, whereby we will pay more to providers who stop such people coming back when they leave prison. That is not for today, but it is a key part of our reforms, and I do not think that any Member opposes it.
Let me move on to what we are debating. We have the decades-long principle of offering for an early plea a reduction of up to one third on the sentence that a judge hands down. The previous Government made that clearer, because they calmly allowed the Sentencing Guidelines Council to spell out the one third, and it was actually made more binding on the courts in 2009. If anybody in the Opposition is against in principle the idea of what I say is unfortunately called a “discount” for a plea, why have they not mentioned it for the past 13 years? Why was the previous Government’s policy based on that principle and on the arguments that I have just raised? Why are we readdressing this?
Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Julian Lewis(14 years ago)
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Mr Clarke
I agree that the Government’s relationship with the United States and the close relationship between our intelligence services and those of the United States make a vital contribution to our protection of the security of this country and the lives of individuals here. That must not be jeopardised.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it would be wrong to infer from the fact that there is a confidentiality agreement about the substantial sums paid to these individuals that that confidentiality agreement was imposed at the behest of one side rather than the other?
Mr Clarke
The other side wanted confidentiality as well, I am assured. It is not at all unusual, when mediating an action of this kind, for both sides to agree that they wish to have confidentiality. My hon. Friend is quite right: there is no point in trying to read into this that either side has resiled. Anyone who has been involved in any kind of civil litigation on a less serious matter will know that, often, a party that has been busily protesting its side of the argument can be quite well advised to stop running up costs, to stop wasting management time, to make a reasonable offer and to get out of it. In this case, the considerations were much more important for the public interest. How much longer did we want man-hours in the intelligence services to be absorbed, and how many tens of millions were we prepared to spend on interminable litigation?