Bilderberg Conference

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Perhaps my hon. Friend was not here when I started answering this question and said that this is the first time I have ever risen in the House of Commons to answer questions on behalf of a private organisation for which the British Government have absolutely no responsibility.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I know I cannot be described as a rising star, so should I not presume that my invitation was lost in the post? Can the Minister say whether or not, either formally or informally, he took the opportunity while at the conference to discuss his campaign to keep the UK within the European Union, and which members of the EU were there?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that I do not think I am being too indiscreet when I say that the subject of the future of the European Union and Britain’s participation in it did come up from time to time over the weekend. People from many countries have quite a strong interest in that subject, so it was discussed, but under Chatham House rules, and I can assure him that no conclusions of any kind were reached.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am somewhat astonished by the reaction of some Opposition Members. We are following the policy first laid out in the Offender Management Act 2007. The probation trusts have now all been set up and we are introducing principles to bring some competition and diversity of provider. There are very good people who can provide some aspects of the probation service. We believe that that will both enhance the quality of the service and achieve better value for money and better outcomes. Plenty of people in the probation service welcome our proposals; indeed, some are surprised by their modesty.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

At a recent multi-agency public protection arrangements, or MAPPA, meeting that I sat in on, a probation officer reported that his client was having problems meeting a curfew of 7 o’clock at night. When the officer was asked what he was doing to deal with the curfew’s being breached, he said that he had changed the curfew to 9 o’clock to aid compliance. Will the Secretary of State tell me what he is going to do to stop such outrages, which make a complete mockery of the probation system and the criminal justice system?

[Mr Clarke]

I cannot comment on an individual case, although I am sure that my hon. Friend did when he had the pleasure of listening to that exchange. We are seeking to make both the probation service and community sentences more effective, by which I mean more punitive when necessary but also more effective in controlling the behaviour of the offender.

We have taken powers to extend the hours of curfew. We intend to make more use of tagging to enforce curfews, among other things. We are testing more effective equipment and consulting on how best to use tags and modern technology effectively.

Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am not yet familiar with the full facts of the case, so I certainly shall not comment. There is also a matter of principle. The custom is growing that Ministers conduct a running commentary on sentences in individual cases as they proceed. I do not think that that is wise. I believe in the separation of powers. The right hon. Gentleman is a senior and respected Member of the House, but my understanding is that those people will be sentenced next week. I will check. When the sentence is actually imposed, we have a system whereby the Attorney-General can put in an appeal on the ground of leniency and ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider it. I will inquire more closely during the course of the debate, as the right hon. Gentleman is obviously concerned.

Public confidence would not be well served if individual judges gave widely varying sentences in similar cases. We have one body of law as determined by Parliament, and the punishment should fit the crime. Parliament imposing the law is the guardian of public opinion. We are answerable to the general public and the maximum tariffs set by the House have to be taken as a guide by judges in all cases.

Different cases should attract different punishments. The question is how to ensure that our independent judiciary can make judgments that fit the facts of the case but are also consistent with each other: how to balance, on the one hand, the imperative of judicial freedom—such that they have the latitude to sentence according to circumstance—with, on the other hand, the need for a consistent approach across the system and in all our courts.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend rightly focuses on public confidence. What assessment has he made of the current state of public confidence in sentencing? Does he have a view about the poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft and carried out by Populus, which shows that more than 80% of the public, more than 80% of the police and more than 80% of victims think that sentencing is too lenient at the moment?

[Mr Clarke]

That has always been the case, certainly in my lifetime, and I suspect it always will be. I always wonder why that is the consistent public attitude. I shall not launch into criticism of the press, but I think it is because of the way these things are always presented to the public. The newsworthy cases are those where the newspaper decides to give a short version of the case and rouses the indignation of its readers by the apparent leniency of the sentence. Much though I respect opinion polls, particularly those obtained by Lord Ashcroft, the fact is that most citizens never go to a court of law. Most people, if we ask them, do not know what sort of sentences are imposed by the court. If all they read about are individual sensational cases, which a particular editor is trying to present as scandalous because of a lenient sentence, it tends to form public attitudes.

I shall not go further, but when we read a newspaper, we should not believe we are hearing all the facts of the case. The judge has probably heard hours of evidence from both sides, but what we read are two or three snappy lines summarising what is supposed to have happened in the opinion of the journalist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Burglary rates dropped in recent years because we had an economic boom, and I think that there is a serious danger that they will go up again—they are going up at the moment—if we do not get out of our present economic difficulties quickly. Better policing also counts. In my opinion, the police have become much better at targeting suspected offenders and arresting the people causing most of the crime. Of course prison is the right place for serious offenders, so the sentences that the hon. Gentleman describes sound quite light to me for persistent burglars, and everyone gets a rest while they are sent to prison. As I said when agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), while such people are in prison, given that they will be released one day, we should make more intelligent use of prisons to try to ensure that we reform those people so that they are less likely to reoffend.

[Philip Davies]

The Secretary of State seems to be arguing that sending people to prison for longer would not help to reduce reoffending, but his Department’s own figures indicate that the longer they spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. If he is not sure about that, I can tell him that the reoffending rate for people who spend less than 12 months in prison is 61%; for those who spend 12 months to two years in prison, it is 36%; for those who spend two to four years in prison, it is 28%; and for those who spend more than four years in prison, it is 17.6%. It is clear that the longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend.

[Mr Clarke]

There is another debate to be had on that, which my hon. Friend will no doubt press for. If people are sent to prison for less than 12 months, we really do nothing whatsoever for them there. They are locked up, released at the end of their sentence and given no support when they leave, and there are staggering levels of reoffending. One thing that has always been done, by the previous Government and every Government, is that the more serious offenders are kept in prison for longer and more effort is made to try to keep an eye on them when they get out. That is a very brief summary of that debate. Once we start swapping statistics in this way, we could argue practically anything, particularly as most criminal statistics have been remarkably unreliable in recent years—I hope that they are now being improved. My hon. Friend’s view is not quite the same as mine, but I respect it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I think my hon. Friend is very good friends with Ministry of Justice Front Benchers and I suggest that he ask them some parliamentary questions, because those are the answers they have given. To be as helpful as possible, I will furnish him with the parliamentary answer that shows that people with 100 previous convictions behind them are still more likely not to be sent to prison than to be sent to prison. He might wish to take this up with his hon. Friends on the Front Bench.

I was shocked to receive a parliamentary answer showing the number of people who were given cautions for indictable offences, which are the most serious category of criminal offence and include murder, wounding with intent, abducting children and arson. That answer showed that 22 rapists, 24 people convicted of arson and 140 people convicted of unlawful intercourse with a girl under 16 have been given a caution. Bearing in mind the fact that cautions are given on admission of guilt, how on earth can we have a situation in which those people are not being sent to prison and are merely handed a caution? The Government are completely out of step with public opinion, particularly those highlighted in the Populus poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft, which showed that 80% of the public said that sentencing was too soft and that 70% called for life imprisonment to be made much harder.

There is this wrong idea that community sentences are far more effective at reducing reoffending and are also cheaper, but I want to point out that a Home Office survey found that the number of crimes committed per offender in the year before they were sent to prison averaged out at 140—or 257 for those on drugs. The typical cost calculated for those crimes was £2,000 each, which works out at £280,000 a year, in comparison with an estimated cost of £38,000 for a prison place, so perhaps we ought to think about what is most cost-effective.

In 2008, offenders who had completed a community sentence went on to commit a further 250,000 crimes in the 21 months following their sentence, 1,500 of which were serious offences including murder, rape and robbery. As I mentioned to the Secretary of State earlier this week, in 2008-09 some 6,600 people whom the probation service deemed to be high risk or very high risk were serving community sentences.

Then there is the myth that prison does not work. The reoffending rates for people serving short-term sentences is higher than any of us would like, but I have been to lots of prisons in the past 12 months, probably about a dozen—I even visited one in Denmark to see what they do there—and I argue that prison does work. It could probably work better but it does work. As I made clear in my earlier intervention, the longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. If prison itself was the problem, the longer people stayed there the more likely they would be to reoffend, but the opposite is true. I have given the figures: for people who spend less than 12 months in prison, the reoffending rate is 61%; for those spending 12 months to two years in prison it is 36%; for those spending two to four years in prison it is 28%; and for those spending four years or more in prison it is 17.6%.

Professor Ken Pease has used Home Office statistics to show that 13,892 offences resulting in conviction could have been prevented if offenders serving short sentences had been kept in prison for an extra month. That suggests an argument for sending people to prison for longer, rather than for not sending them to prison at all. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State complained, rightly, about the previous Government’s early-release programme that let people out of prison 16 days early, but the solution should not be not sending them to prison at all, which is what he seems to be advocating now.

When people are in prison we must try to rehabilitate them, but I do not understand why rehabilitation has to occur in the community. I have been arguing about this for quite a while with my Front-Bench colleagues. I should like a system modelled on the TBS programme that has been operating in Holland for many years. It treats prisoners with a personality disorder, of whom there are a large number in our prisons, and has achieved low reoffending rates. People are treated in prison, which is much easier because they do not have so many distractions—they cannot go off and do other things. In prison, they can be given proper targeted support, which is much harder when they are out of prison.

I very much support the Secretary of State’s promoting a stronger work ethic in prison. When I go round prisons, I am appalled by the lack of work ethic. Many prisoners are from families that have never worked; they are often the third generation who have never worked. Surely, one of the things we can do for them in prison is to get them into a proper disciplined routine so that they get up at a certain time in the morning and carry out tasks that get them into a work ethic. My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to do that.

A study by Frances Simon in 1999 followed 178 prisoners until five months after their release. She found that 75% of those who had not sought regular work reoffended compared with only 28% of those who were actively looking for work and 15% of those in regular employment. That shows that even the discipline of going out and looking for a job can make a big difference to reoffending rates. Prison has to be the prime place where some of those people are given the discipline of a work ethic.

I think the Government are making a huge mistake about indeterminate sentences for public protection. Earlier today, my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) cast doubt on Ministry of Justice figures, but I trust my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. According to those figures, by the end of the 2010 calendar year, 206 people serving indeterminate sentences had been released from prison. Of those, only 11 had reoffended—a rate of about 5%, from my quick calculation. The criminal justice system as a whole would give its right arm for a reoffending rate of 5%.

If the Government are so obsessed with reoffending—the Secretary of State has said that he is—why on earth do they want to give up the part of the criminal justice system that probably has the lowest reoffending rate? It goes to show that the Secretary of State is not really preoccupied with the reoffending rate; he is preoccupied with reducing the number of people he sends to prison. That cannot be the right course of action and it is certainly not something that my constituents want.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I am sorry to intervene just after my hon. Friend and I were warmly agreeing on the need to get a working environment in prisons. I can tell him that I had an excellent meeting this morning at the CBI, with leading figures from British business and the Prison Service, and we are making progress. On that we are totally agreed. With great respect, the figures my hon. Friend uses for IPPs are, unlike some of his other statistics, not very reliable. A tiny number of people have been released from IPPs, so to make a comparison between the very small sample he cites and the very large numbers he was using earlier is ever so slightly misleading. Most people imprisoned under IPPs have not been released and do not know when they will be released. There is an enormous backlog of cases for the Parole Board, which is wondering what to do with them.

[Philip Davies]

The figures my right hon. and learned Friend dismissed are the ones supplied by his Department. All I can do is give the figures as they are. They indicate that of the 206 people who have been released having served an IPP sentence, only 11 have reoffended. It is up to hon. Members to draw their own conclusion from those figures. The principle that we should not release people from prison until it is safe to do so strikes me and my constituents as a rather good one to have in the criminal justice system. His suggestion that we should release people from prison regardless of whether it is safe to do so seems rather bizarre.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am not sure whether that is right, but I shall check. What my hon. Friend may have noticed is that this year we cut some other services’ budgets more sharply than we cut that of the probation service, but that is because the previous Government had been cutting the probation service budget pretty sharply, once they finally woke up to the fact that we were in a credit crunch and a financial crisis. They hit the probation service first.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

In the last year for which I have figures for the Department, 6,600 criminals deemed high or very high risk by the probation service were serving community sentences. Does my right hon. and learned Friend think public safety would be better improved if some—or, indeed, most—of those people were in prison?

Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

In the consultation document we address vulnerable witnesses, who often include children, particularly those whose evidence involves fairly traumatic events. There are arrangements now, of course: it is no longer necessarily the case that such children are exposed to open court. A certain amount of judicial discretion must be left, but in suitable cases video evidence and so on are now obtained. I hope that the consultation document will enable us to see what more can be done to ensure, first, that justice is done, but justice is best done when witnesses give evidence in the most suitable and justifiable circumstances. One cannot shield an adult from cross-examination, but one can certainly shield someone as vulnerable as a child of the kind that the hon. Lady described.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is fair to say that the Secretary of State and I have not always seen eye to eye on criminal justice matters, so it is a rare treat to be able to congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his proposals for preventing criminals from accessing the criminal injuries compensation scheme. What assessment has he made of whether the proposal will meet the requirement of the Human Rights Act 1998, or indeed his beloved European convention on human rights? If it falls foul of them, what does he propose to do at that stage?

[Mr Clarke]

It is a rare treat for me as well to find myself agreeing with my hon. Friend. Who knows where it might lead? It might not lead to instant agreement on the Human Rights Act, but I see no jeopardy to the proposals in the consultation paper from any claims under the Act. I look forward to continuing to have interesting debates with him about the subject on other occasions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

According to figures from the Department, 10% of all crimes are committed by people on bail and 20% of burglaries are committed by people on bail. When the provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill come into effect, which will make it harder for courts to remand people in custody, what estimate has the Department made of the number of crimes that will be committed by people on bail then?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The changes we are making are to get rid of the anomaly whereby bail can be refused to someone who is charged with an offence in circumstances where it is quite obvious that they are not going to be sent to prison, even if they are found guilty. It is a reform that should have been made a long time ago. Serious offences are sometimes committed by people on bail, and we have committed ourselves to introducing a right of appeal when someone is given bail in the Crown court. There have been bad cases where serious offences have been committed. We hope to introduce an amendment in the other place that would allow the Crown Prosecution Service to challenge the granting of bail in the Crown court when a potentially dangerous prisoner is involved.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I do not claim rank for Mr Godwin, but I quoted what he has said on behalf of ACPO. Of course there are always dissenting views—I have never presented any proposal on anything that has had 100% approval—but the overwhelming majority of responses from those involved in the criminal justice system suggested that IPP sentences should be repealed. Those are not people who wish to be soft on crime, but they believe that IPP sentences have not worked as intended, as we have already heard in today’s exchanges, and need to be replaced. To reassure policemen, such as the one that the hon. Gentleman mentions, that a tough new regime will give them protection, I will spell out elements of the new regime.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Is not the fact of the matter that indeterminate sentences have a very low reoffending rate, and that most members of the public rather like the idea that people are not released from prison until it is safe? What will my right hon. and learned Friend do to ensure that people who are released go through all the necessary treatment and programmes to address their offending behaviour before they are released?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend’s last point is perfectly fair, and I am about to make some points that should reassure the great bulk of the public. Of course we must have in place a very effective method of dealing with all those who commit the worst sexual and violent offences. No one is suggesting that we do not need an effective regime for that.

For the very serious offenders, the ones who are among the worst of the likely inhabitants of Her Majesty’s prisons, there will be a new mandatory life sentence. That will apply in cases in which the offender has committed, on two consecutive occasions, two very serious sexual or violent offences, when each of which has been serious enough to merit a determinate sentence of 10 years or more.

I was criticised from the left in another place, and probably will be here, for introducing a new mandatory life sentence. We have only one at the moment, which is for murder, and everybody accepts it. As I have said, however, the new mandatory sentence is mainly intended to reassure those who, like my hon. Friend, are worried that the worst offenders might occasionally get out. We are talking about very serious offenders, most of whom would get a life sentence anyway if they had committed two offences meriting determinate sentences of 10 years or more. I do not think that many such people would avoid a life sentence, but as hon. Members can see, a life sentence in the new clause is subject to a caveat—the offender will receive a mandatory sentence unless their circumstances or the circumstances of the offence

“make it unjust to do so”.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Only 15% of CAB funding comes from my Department, and about 50% of CABs receive no legal aid funding at all. However, I agree with the hon. Lady about the value of good CABs. Their quality varies, but the best are very good. I am anxious for us to do what we can to strengthen CABs, as are my colleagues in other Departments: we are considering what we can do to help them across Government. I am doing my best, and we will settle on some support eventually. It will not be as much as the CABs want, but I think that we will be able to help.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on listening to the consultation and rowing back on some of the more damaging proposals. There is clearly much in the statement—although by no means all—that we can support. I understand, however, that the Government are proposing to make breaching suspended prison sentences punishable by a fine. Will my right hon. and learned Friend take this opportunity to make clear that only one punishment should be available to anyone who breaches a suspended prison sentence, namely being sent to prison?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful for the kind remarks with which my hon. Friend began his question. It seems that he agrees with a fair number of the judiciary on the proposal for a discount for early guilty pleas, and I hope that he is equally in line with the judiciary on such matters as the abolition of indeterminate sentences. We shall all begin to make some worthwhile progress on the whole field if we collaborate.

Those who breach suspended sentences are normally punished by having to serve the suspended sentence on top of any other sentence that has been imposed. However, all such cases require a little more flexibility. All that we are adding is the possibility of flexibility in some cases. Adding a fine might be preferable to making the total sentence far too long: it might be best to find some other way of dealing with an offender.

Parliament is, of course, entitled to specify sentences, but if we do that in too much detail we will fail to deliver justice, because we will not leave enough leeway and enough options for the judges and magistrates who sit and hear about all the facts of a particular case and all the circumstances of the offender.

Sentencing

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was very generous in giving way and we all appreciated that, but there will be no Back-Bench speeches if I give way too frequently. I will give way in a second.

Let me get one thing out of the way first. I have always believed, along with every sensible person, that Britain needs a criminal justice system that is effective in properly punishing offenders for their wrongdoing and in protecting the public from further crime. When I took office as Justice Secretary it seemed to me perfectly obvious that that had to be the first priority for all my policies. That is self-obvious; it is a platitude. The Government’s policy, and my first duty, is to punish crime and have an effective system for protecting the public from further crime. The problem that I face, which causes the reforms, is the fact that I inherited a system that was not effective in protecting against offenders’ committing further crime or even in punishing offenders. So that is at the forefront of where we are going.

Without going over all the exchanges that we have just had, let me explain briefly what we have taken over, which causes the need for the proposed reform. Our prisons are pretty nasty, unpleasant places, far from the holiday camps they are sometimes made out to be. The people in most of them pass their days in a state of enforced idleness, quite a few of them making some tougher friends than they have had in the past, and not facing up to what they have done. That is not what I think of as a satisfactory and effective punishment. But a bigger scandal still is our system’s failure to protect the public from future crime committed by offenders after completion of their time inside. Reoffending rates in this country, as we have taken over the system now, are straightforwardly dreadful.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has made much of the fact that short-term prison sentences lead to higher rates of reoffending than longer-term prison sentences. Given that his proposals now are to give people a 50% discount on their original sentence, plus they will be let out 50% of the way through their time in prison, and given that short sentences do not work, as he says, why is he so determined to make long prison sentences into short prison sentences?

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is clutching at straws. The Secretary of State made it clear that as a result of the proposal fewer people would be in prison. That is the whole purpose of the measure. My hon. Friend ought to reflect on the fact that this is an arbitrary proposal, because there is absolutely no evidence suggesting that more people will plead guilty as a result. If that does not happen, will the Secretary of State return to the House in a few months suggesting a three-quarters discount for pleading guilty in order to get a few more convictions? Where will it end? Why not scrap prison sentences altogether? This is a slippery slope. It is ludicrous and not based in evidence.

Most people think that punishment is not heavy enough. It has been estimated that between 2007 and 2009, criminals on probation have been responsible for 121 murders and 44 cases of manslaughter, along with 103 rapes and 80 kidnappings. In total, they were responsible for more than 1,000 serious violent or sexual offences in the two years from April 2006, while almost 400 more suspects are awaiting trial. Most people looking at these figures would conclude that too few, not too many, people were being sent to prison, and most would conclude that people are not being sent to prison for long enough, not that they should be let out even earlier.

As we have heard, a senior judge, Lord Justice Thomas, warned that as a result of these proposals, a rapist facing five years in prison could get off with a sentence halved to just 30 months by pleading guilty earlier. However, because of what the previous Government did, which the Secretary of State appears to support, that offender would then be released after only 15 months behind bars. Fifteen months for a five-year sentence! That is what is happening under a Conservative-led Government.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The example given by my hon. Friend is fanciful, because the average sentence for rape is eight years. Sentences will vary but in the end the judge will decide what justice and the seriousness of the offence justify. Needless public alarm is caused because the public find it difficult to know what the sentences are. If it reassures my hon. Friend, however, I can say that I would regard someone being released from the prison part of their sentence after 15 months as quite inadequate in a case of rape.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Graham Evans. He is not here. Mr Davies.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Has the Secretary of State read the research commissioned by Lord Ashcroft and conducted by Populus called “Crime, Punishment & The People—Public opinion and the criminal justice debate”? If he has read the report, which I commend to him, will he confirm that its findings, which will make sobering reading for him, will be part of the proposals on sentencing?

[Mr Clarke]

I shall look at the report to see whether it is the source of my hon. Friend’s views on the subject of crime and punishment, which he frequently gives, and then I will try to find some counter-reading to recommend to him. I will try to study it if I get the chance.

The purpose of sentencing in this country is to punish offenders effectively and proportionately for what they have done. The purpose that I intend to add to that more clearly is to try to reduce the number who simply offend again and come back into the system. If we cut reoffending, it will mean fewer crimes and fewer victims, and we will make a positive contribution instead of recycling the same old people through the same old not very well functioning system.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

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

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

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

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

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

[Mr Clarke]

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

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Philip Davies

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

One of the failings of the last Government was to take a popular subject from the popular press and make rather shallow partisan points out of it. Sentencing in individual cases is not a matter for Ministers, and should not be a matter for sensational comment to the newspapers by Ministers with the frequency that it was. We have to ensure that justice is done, particularly to the victims of crime, and that justice is carried out in such a way as to reduce the risk of reoffending. We have made our approach to crime perfectly clear: we must punish the guilty. Prison is the right place for serious criminals—they will not commit more crimes while inside—but we also strive to avoid reoffending. The case that the right hon. Lady mentions was obviously a serious case for the victim, but newspaper cuttings from Salford are not the source of future criminal justice reform.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to acknowledge that very few people are sentenced to prison for a first offence? The vast majority of people who serve short-term prison sentences do so only because they have been given community sentence after community sentence, all of which have failed. The last thing to do with those people is to give them another community sentence, only for it to fail once again.

[Mr Clarke]

It is very pleasant to say that I largely agree with my hon. Friend. He has probably been upset by reports that I am minded to abolish short prison sentences. Actually, I have always expressed precisely the opposite opinion. It has never been my view that we should abolish all short prison sentences. Indeed, I have rather shared his opinion that with the kind of irritating recidivist offender who is causing a lot of damage, if they offend over and over again there is quite often no alternative to a short prison sentence. There are too many such offenders, and although there are cases in which we can avoid the use of short prison sentences, if we do that we must have a very effective alternative.