Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Henley Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Henley]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the Crime and Courts Bill represents the next stage of our reform of the justice system. Last Session, we legislated to strengthen public accountability of local policing by introducing directly elected police and crime commissioners and by bringing forward reforms to reduce reoffending and put the legal aid system on a sustainable path. However, we need to do more to protect the public and to improve further the efficiency, responsiveness and transparency of the justice system. This Bill is directed to those ends.

Part 1 will establish the National Crime Agency. Organised crime costs this country between £20 billion and £40 billion a year. It manifests itself in street corner drug dealing, in the trafficking of men and women forced into modern-day bonded servitude or prostitution, in the online sharing of horrific images of sexually abused children and in cyber-enabled scams that deprive people of their life savings. With some 7,000 organised crime groups operating in this country, we need a more effective response if we are to tackle the human misery they inflict.

The question—why do we need a new agency when the Serious Organised Crime Agency has only been operating for six years?—has quite rightly been posed. I pay tribute to all those working in SOCA. They have had many successes and have earned a high reputation in their dealings with overseas law enforcement agencies, but the threat posed by serious and organised crime is changing and our response needs to adapt and evolve if we are to counter the threat effectively.

The National Crime Agency will have a wider remit to tackle serious and organised crime at the borders, fight fraud and cybercrime and protect children from sexual exploitation. For the first time, the agency will produce a single, authoritative intelligence picture on organised criminal gangs and their activities that will provide the basis for a co-ordinated national response.

Working in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, the National Crime Agency will prioritise resources and ensure a joined-up approach to the activities undertaken at the local, national and international level to disrupt organised crime gangs and bring their members to justice.

The National Crime Agency’s relationship with police forces and others will be based on a partnership, with the mutual exchanges of information and the provision of two-way operational support. Importantly, however, the Bill provides that the director-general should, in exceptional circumstances, be able to direct police forces in England and Wales to undertake a specific task, for example to take action against a particular criminal gang based in the force area.

I fully expect that this power will be rarely used, but it is a necessary back-stop to underpin the strategic policing requirement that supports chief officers and police and crime commissioners in effectively balancing local and national priorities.

In addition to its core crime reduction and criminal intelligence functions, Clause 2 enables the Home Secretary to confer counterterrorism functions on the National Crime Agency. With the creation of this powerful new crime-fighting agency, it is sensible that we build in flexibility to confer on the NCA counterterrorism functions if, in the future, there is a compelling case for doing so. This is not the time for a review of counterterrorism policing. For the present, we need to focus on delivering a safe and secure Olympics and on firmly establishing the National Crime Agency in fact as well as in law. I recognise that any decision in this area should be subject to particularly careful consultation and scrutiny, and that is why we have made this order-making power subject to the super-affirmative procedure.

The National Crime Agency will be headed by a director-general, operationally independent but accountable to the Home Secretary and, through her, to Parliament. The director-general will first and foremost be an operational crime-fighter, and for that reason the Bill provides a mechanism for the director-general to be vested with operational powers.

Given the breadth of the agency’s remit, including its central role in leading the operational response to serious immigration crime and preventing the importation of drugs and firearms, the director-general and NCA officers will in appropriate cases need to be able to exercise the full suite of powers of a police, immigration and customs officer. In all cases, this will be subject to proper training.

As a law enforcement organisation operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it is essential that the agency remains operationally effective at all times. We cannot be faced with a situation in which public safety is put at risk by operational NCA officers taking industrial action. NCA officers who are designated with operational powers will therefore be precluded from taking strike action in the same way as police officers are. Our preference is that we can reach a voluntary no-strike agreement with the NCA staff and their representatives, and in that event the statutory no-strike provisions can be put into abeyance.

The provisions in Part 2 will further our reforms of the courts and tribunals system so that it is more responsive to the needs of users, more transparent to the public in how it operates, more representative of the communities it services and more efficient and effective in its use of resources.

Responsiveness to users is the driving force behind the creation of the single county court and the single family court. The current structure of 170 geographically and legally separate county courts, some dealing only with routine civil cases while others also handle more complex areas of the civil law, is both confusing to litigants and an inefficient use of resources. There is a similar confusing set of arrangements for dealing with family proceedings, with different types of cases being dealt with in the High Court, county courts and magistrates’ courts.

County court users will be able to issue their claim at the court that best meets their needs. That may still be their local court, but equally it could be the nearest to where they work or where waiting times are significantly shorter. It will enable the court estate and the available judicial resources to be utilised more efficiently to facilitate the quicker resolution of cases across the board.

Similarly, the creation of the single family court will make it easier for users to navigate their way through the system, and enable cases to be allocated to the appropriate level of judiciary without the need to transfer proceedings to a different level of court, thereby reducing costs and delays.

Our proposals to introduce greater flexibility in the deployment of members of the judiciary seek to secure a similar outcome in improved efficiency. The deployment of the judiciary is properly a matter for the Lord Chief Justice and the senior president of tribunals. The Bill does not change that, but it affords them greater flexibility by expanding the list of judicial office holders who are capable of sitting in each court or tribunal. Such flexibility will enable the available pool of judges to be used to best effect, thereby further contributing to the quicker resolution of cases.

Our judiciary has a worldwide reputation for integrity and independence. This, in no small measure, is down to the process by which judges are appointed. That process was the subject of significant overhaul with the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act and the creation of the Judicial Appointments Commission. Those reforms have led to increased public confidence in the appointments process by making it more independent and transparent, but after six years of operation it is right that we take stock of the new regime to see where we can make further improvements.

One such area relates to judicial diversity. Progress has undoubtedly been made over the past decade. Ten years ago, little over 10% of judges were women and around 2% were from a black or other minority ethnic background. Today those figures are 22% and 5% respectively. That is welcome progress, but we need to do better to ensure that the judiciary fully reflects the communities that it serves.

Of course, further legislation on its own is not the answer, but there are some useful measures that we can and should take to promote greater diversity. In particular, the Bill will facilitate greater opportunities for part-time working at the most senior levels of the judiciary by providing for the statutory limits on the number of High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court judges to be expressed in full-time equivalents. We are also providing, where two candidates are equally meritorious, that it will be possible to select the candidate from an underrepresented group.

We are also taking the opportunity to achieve a better balance between executive, judicial and independent responsibilities in the appointments process. The Lord Chancellor has a legitimate role to play in ensuring the efficiency, effectiveness and integrity of the appointments process as a whole. This does not mean that the Lord Chancellor needs to have a hand in all judicial appointments. Accordingly, the Bill transfers to the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals the Lord Chancellor’s responsibilities for the appointment of some judges below the High Court.

However, when it comes to the appointments of the president of the Supreme Court and the Lord Chief Justice, we believe it is right that the Lord Chancellor should have a meaningful role in the process, given that the holders of both these offices have a significant influence on the administration of justice. We do not consider that this change will politicise these appointments. They will continue to be made solely on merit, and the Lord Chancellor will be one among five or more on a selection panel. Furthermore, where he sits on the panel, the Lord Chancellor will lose his current right to reject the panel’s recommendation.

Fines are the most common form of sentence imposed in the criminal courts, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all sentences. As with other non-custodial sentences, the public must have confidence in this form of disposal. Significant improvements have been made in the enforcement of fines in recent years, but we need to do more. This is why the Bill provides that, where an offender defaults on the payment of a fine, the additional collection costs fall to the offender rather than to the taxpayer, thereby providing an added incentive to offenders to pay their fines on time.

As I have indicated, it is vital that the law-abiding public should have confidence in all non-custodial sentences. While there are some good examples of effective community sentences that reduce reoffending, all too often such sentences fail to command public confidence as a punishment. That is why we are consulting on proposals to improve the effectiveness of community disposals, including ways of ensuring that there is a clear punitive element in every community order. The current consultation runs to 22 June. Subject to the outcome of that consultation, I give notice to the House that the Government will bring forward amendments to the Bill in Committee as part of the next stage of our sentencing reforms.

Lastly, this part also contains an important provision that will help to increase public understanding of the justice system. Most members of the public have no direct personal experience of what goes on inside a courtroom. Their perceptions will be derived from TV dramas that more often than not give a distorted view of reality. Allowing the broadcasting of judicial proceedings will help to demystify the workings of the justice system and increase public confidence. Of course, there is a balance to be struck between increased transparency and the safeguarding of the proper administration of justice. To this end, we want to start by allowing the broadcasting of advocates’ arguments and judgments in the Court of Appeal before extending this to sentencing remarks in the Crown Court. However, I can assure the House that there is no question of victims, witnesses, defendants or jurors being filmed.

Part 3 of this Bill makes two changes to the immigration appeals system. First, we are removing the full right of appeal against the refusal of a visa to visit family members in the United Kingdom. No other category of visit visa attracts a full right of appeal, and in the Government’s view it is a disproportionate use of taxpayers’ money. Moreover, the family visit visa appeal right no longer serves its intended purpose. It is very expensive to administer, costing around £29 million a year, and has lengthy processing times, taking up to eight months to conclude an appeal. In many cases appeals are successful because new evidence has been submitted by the applicant. If an applicant has new evidence in support of a visa application, we believe that the proper course is to submit a fresh application and not to seek a new decision through the appeals system.

Part 3 also removes the in-country right of appeal in cases where existing leave has been cancelled in line with a decision to exclude a person from the United Kingdom on the grounds that their presence is not conducive to the public good. A decision to exclude a person on such grounds is taken personally by the Home Secretary on the basis that their presence in this country presents a risk to national security or public safety. It is anomalous that in such cases the excluded person should be able to enter, and remain in, this country pending the outcome of an appeal against the cancellation of their leave. The current arrangements undermine the intended effect of the exclusion decision, and the Bill will rectify this. We are not removing this appeal right, but in future it will be exercisable from outside the country.

Finally, Clause 27 introduces a new, specific offence of drug driving. Figures for 2010 identified impairment by drugs as a contributory factor in nearly 1,100 road casualties, including some 50 deaths. We also know from studies that the extent of the road casualty problem is a lot greater than these reported statistics suggest. We need to do more to tackle this scourge and to protect road users. There is already an offence of driving while being unfit through drugs, but there are few convictions because of the requirement to prove impairment. The new offence is modelled on the analogous drink-driving offence, where it is not necessary to prove impairment but simply that the driver had a concentration of alcohol in his or her body above the prescribed limit.

A person will be guilty of the new drug-driving offence if found to have in his or her body a concentration of a specified controlled drug in excess of the specified limit for that drug. The maximum penalty will be the same as for the analogous drink-driving offence: namely, in the case of a person driving or attempting to drive a vehicle, six months’ imprisonment or a £5,000 fine, or both, and disqualification from driving for at least 12 months. The new offence will, we believe, make a significant contribution to road safety and is one that has been widely welcomed by road safety campaigners. The objectives underpinning this Bill are, I think, ones that the whole House can support. The provisions themselves are equally deserving of your Lordships’ support, and I commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.