King’s Speech

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I gladly follow the noble Lord, Lord Browne. I could have made exactly the same speech that he has just made when we came into government in 2010. I spent quite a time as shadow Prisons Minister studying the state of our prisons in the period from 2005 to 2008, and I wrote a paper called Prisons for a Purpose. I suggest the noble Lord reads it; he will find a lot of what he has just said in it.

Before reading the Henley report into the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s conduct in the Andrew Malkinson case, I had intended to speak about prisons and indeterminate sentences for public protection. But I will now concentrate on the CCRC and rely on other noble Lords to say what needs to be said on those subjects —save to say that I reject the new Lord Chancellor’s assertion that the current state of our prisons is all the fault of the last Conservative Government. As I indicated to the noble Lord so politely, the Blair-Brown Government still have plenty to answer for, and the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, knows that as well as I do because he was the Minister for Prisons for part of that period. That said, I genuinely welcome him to your Lordships’ House. I shadowed him in the other place when he was Minister for Prisons and he was an honest and hard-working opponent for whom I have and had the greatest of respect. I know that he will bring his skill and determination to his work in the Home Office.

I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, the former chairman of the Prison Reform Trust, of which, as I said in earlier business, I am a trustee. He has spent his adult life and fortune thinking constructively about caring for the welfare of prisoners and former prisoners. I congratulate him on his appointment and the Prime Minister on making that appointment. I also congratulate him on his fine maiden speech this afternoon. I urge him to achieve direct access to the Prime Minister on prisons policy, as he must be seen to be speaking with the direct authority of the Prime Minister. Without it, he could well be lost in the quagmire that is Whitehall. For far too long, under Conservative and Labour Governments alike, prisons policy has been delegated to Ministers without adequate political power—as a job to fill, rather than a central part of the conduct of good government. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, needs no welcome, but I congratulate him on his appointment within the Government.

The Henley report opens to urgent public examination a state of affairs that those in charge of the CCRC should be ashamed of. It should lead them to consider their positions. In 2023, the Court of Appeal quashed Andrew Malkinson’s rape conviction. In 2004, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, and he spent 17 years in prison before he was released, with a further three on probation. Throughout that time, he steadfastly maintained his innocence, but it took 20 years and two Court of Appeal hearings for his conviction to be overturned. He made three applications to the CCRC in 2009, 2018 and 2021 to refer his case to the Court of Appeal. The first two were refused, and the third resulted in a successful appeal hearing in July 2023.

From 2021 to 2022, the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, and I co-chaired the Westminster Commission on Miscarriages of Justice. We were set up to review the work of the CCRC after 25 years of operation. It can refer a case to the Court of Appeal if it considers that there is a real possibility that the court will quash the conviction or reduce the sentence in the case. It receives over 1,000 applications every year.

Our report was written in ignorance of the Malkinson case and before the 2023 Court of Appeal decision. We recommended that the roles of the chair and commissioners should be strengthened and that the processes for their appointments should be reviewed. We also found that the CCRC was underfunded, a problem exacerbated by the financial restrictions on the public provision of advice and representation for applicants. But one has only to read the 2024 Henley report on the Malkinson case to see that, even without the hideous facts of that case, we reached very similar conclusions.

We urge that the test for the CCRC should be altered to something less predictable. It should refer a case if it considers that the conviction rate may be unsafe, that the sentence may be manifestly excessive or wrong in law, or that it is in the interests of justice to make a referral. That would encourage a more independent mindset. The CCRC is presently too deferential to the Court of Appeal. It needs bold and determined leadership. It is my experience, having read the Henley report, that it is simply not getting it.

After the 2023 Court of Appeal decision, I publicly criticised the chair of the CCRC, not least because she said nothing in public to recognise what had happened to Mr Malkinson or to atone for the CCRC’s failures. I met her so that she could explain her position, but I came away from that meeting even more convinced that the CCRC needed new leadership. Had the Westminster commission known in 2022 what Mr Henley now tells us, we would have been less kind.

Having read the Henley report, it is now my view—in this I agree with the new Justice Secretary—that the CCRC unquestionably needs new leadership. If the chair and the chief executive will not resign immediately, they should be replaced. The CCRC cannot move forward with them in post. We need a full-time executive chair, with at least the standing of a High Court judge, and full-time salaried commissioners rather than the current part-timers. It needs better and better-resourced case managers. The CCRC, as presently organised and managed, is moribund.