Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady has made a very important point. I will not bore the House with war stories, but I remember defending a young woman—17 years old. She had been abused by her boyfriend, who had put pressure on her to hold a MAC-10 firearm. The police, of course, then arrested her, and she was at risk of a mandatory minimum sentence of three years, although she had been put under all that pressure by her boyfriend. The courts do have discretion to take personal circumstances into account, and in that case, when the court found that there had been exceptional circumstances, it was not bound to impose the mandatory minimum sentence. It is always worth recalling that in a fair society, before independent courts, there is an opportunity for important points of mitigation to be advanced. The hon. Lady also made a point about grooming, and I now want to turn to the issue of protecting children in that regard.

In April, the Prime Minister and the former Home Secretary announced a package of measures to tackle child sexual exploitation, grooming and abuse, so that our law would keep pace with criminals’ latest warped ingenuity. We are introducing a statutory aggravating factor at sentencing for grooming behaviour in connection with sexual offences committed against under-18s in order to tackle those involved in grooming gangs. There is also a new child sexual exploitation police taskforce—that means analysts in every police region—and a new complex and organised child abuse database. Tackling organised exploitation programmes have also been rolled out, bringing together force-level, regional and national data and intelligence.

The Criminal Justice Bill also takes the fight to criminals. Articles used in serious crime, such as templates for 3D-printed firearm components and pill presses, will be prohibited. The Government have secured from the police agreement to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry, and the Bill creates a power to enter premises without a warrant to seize stolen goods such as mobile phones. The operation of serious crime prevention orders will be strengthened to make it easier for police and other law enforcement agencies to place restrictions on offenders or suspected offenders and prevent them from participating in further crime.

The Bill brings further action on the scourge that is knife crime: that includes creating a power to seize, retain and destroy bladed articles found on private property that are likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence, increasing the maximum penalty for the sale of prohibited weapons and for selling knives to those under 18, and the creation of a criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with the intent to use it in unlawful violence. To increase public confidence in policing, the Bill provides for a duty of candour for policing, and gives chief officers the right to appeal against the result of misconduct boards to police appeals tribunals.

Let me turn briefly to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which will enshrine the principles of the victims code in law, and provide greater oversight and transparency in respect of how victims are treated, with criminal justice inspectorates undertaking joint inspections on victims issues when directed to do so. As one who grappled with the old victims code under the Labour Government, when the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was in power, I should point out that that was a pale imitation of what exists now. The code that was in place under Labour failed to give victims a right to review or the right to make a victim personal statement, it only applied to victims of particularly serious crime, and it failed to give any rights to close relatives.

Our victims code dramatically strengthens the rights of victims. It will be easier for victims of crime to make complaints against a public body by removing the need to go through an MP. It creates a duty for the police to ensure that requests for third-party personal records from complainants are proportionate and necessary. This measure will apply to victims only. There will be an independent public advocate for the victims of major incidents, who will help bereaved families and the injured in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale disaster.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

rose—

[Alex Chalk]

I will give certainly way to the right hon. Lady in a moment, but not before paying tribute to her and, indeed, the Hillsborough families and others for campaigning for this measure.

[Maria Eagle]

I know that the Lord Chancellor has taken an interest in the public advocate proposals, but does he agree that they need to be strengthened in order to be effective, and that his proposals, as they currently stand, are nowhere near good enough to do the job that I, and others, hope they can do?

[Alex Chalk]

I have been very grateful to the right hon. Lady for the care and attention that she has given to this sensitive area over many months and years. We will continue to work with her so that this can be the best possible advocate. It is important to note, however, that whatever we provide will be a massive step forward. We do of course want to get it right, and I commit myself to working closely with the right hon. Lady in order to do so.

Finally, the Parole Board will be required to include members with a background in law enforcement in order to help parole panels make better decisions when assessing risk.

The legislation laid out in the Gracious Speech is an ambitious, long-term vision for our country. It builds on our record over the last 13 years to make our country safer than ever. It is a programme rooted in evidence; a programme that responds to the anger and distress that we all feel about crime, and that does so with measures that actually drive it down. We will ensure that the most dangerous offenders spend longer in prison to protect the British people from harm, and to protect women and girls in particular. We will equip the police with powers to fight the latest criminal trends that blight our communities, and we will ensure that law enforcement has the confidence of the public while pulling every lever to reduce offending, because that is what keeps the British people safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

We cannot discuss confidence in the criminal justice system and policing without tackling the long and balefully negative influence of the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, which, although it was more than 34 years ago, has hugely impacted how the police and public authorities are seen across Merseyside and beyond. The impact is widespread and intergenerational, and more needs to be done to tackle it.

I had hoped that we would see a Hillsborough law in the legislative programme, to learn the lessons of the tragedy in which 97 people were unlawfully killed by the gross negligence of the police responsible for keeping them safe. To date, none of the South Yorkshire police responsible for the disaster, or for the subsequent cover-up and campaign of vilification, has been held to account, and now none probably ever will be, while the families of the dead and survivors have endured decades of wrongly being blamed for what happened and feeling that they have to defend the reputations of their loved ones from the ongoing ignorant attacks spawned by South Yorkshire police’s deliberate campaign to shift the blame from themselves.

It is particularly difficult for families to feel frozen in time, forever being dragged back to their darkest days as they have to keep repeating to ignorant people what really happened: the findings of unlawful killing at the second inquests, and the findings of the Hillsborough independent panel—the truth of Hillsborough, in other words. Yet the police campaign, aided by some newspapers, was so powerful and has been so enduring that we still hear tragedy chanting at football matches, blaming Liverpool fans for what happened.

One of the biggest comforts that the families of those who died and survivors who still suffer to this day could have is the assurance that Parliament has taken steps to prevent such problems from occurring in the aftermath of such tragedies, yet we have not done so. That is why I have introduced my Public Advocate Bill, repeatedly blocked by the Government, since 2016. That is why I support the more general call for a Hillsborough law to try to prevent what happened after Hillsborough from ever again affecting victims and families who are caught up in public disasters through no fault of their own then find themselves treated with indifference or hostility by public authorities, and their feelings ignored.

There have been disasters since Hillsborough, and there will be more, although we must hope to keep them to a minimum. The Hillsborough law aims to rebalance the scales of justice towards families bereaved by public disasters and towards survivors. First, it would establish a public advocate, independent of Government and able to act at the behest of families affected after major incidents to give them a say, and to use the learning from the Hillsborough independent panel process on the huge power of transparency to stop things going wrong as they did after Hillsborough. Secondly, it would place a statutory duty of candour on public servants, not just the police, although I welcome the fact that the Government will legislate for a duty of candour on the police. That can only help to make things better, but by itself it will not be enough to prevent the recurrence of an event such as Hillsborough. Thirdly, the law would ensure proper participation of bereaved families at inquest through publicly funded legal representation, and ensure equality of arms by ending the limitless use of public authorities’ budgets to defend their reputations on those occasions, no matter what the circumstances. Fourthly, it will make Bishop James Jones’s charter for families bereaved through public tragedy, which has been voluntarily signed by some, legally binding on all public bodies.

The Government have recognised for years that there are things that need to be changed, but I am afraid they have been lamentably slow in doing anything about them. Bishop James Jones’s report, which the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) asked for when she was Prime Minister, was published in 2017. More than six years later there has been no response to it. I find that quite shocking. I have been pressing the Government to respond for all that time and there is no conceivable reason for them not to have done so—at least since May 2021, when the last of the criminal trials collapsed. It is now two and a half years since then and there is still no response. I cannot understand what has held them up. The fact that the response has not been published is an insult to Bishop James and the work he did, and it is trying the patience of families and survivors who have already had to wait too long. I keep hearing that there will be a response soon, and I really hope that is true, but I am not holding my breath.

The Victims and Prisoner Bill carried over from the previous Session does contain a proposal for a public advocate, which I have welcomed. However, the Lord Chancellor knows my view is that his proposal is not sufficient to make the public advocate useful in preventing things from going wrong in future in the aftermath of disasters. It will simply be a signposting service for those families who are caught up. A signposting service is all well and good, and it is welcome, but unfortunately it is not going far enough. There is a real opportunity to make sure that families caught up in future public disasters do not have to suffer the same experience as the Hillsborough families, but his public advocate has neither the independence nor the powers required to shift the dial in favour of families or to torpedo cover-ups, which is the whole point. Furthermore, it is to be directed solely by the Secretary of State, which will not give it proper independence.

When the Bill comes back for its remaining stages in this place, which I hope will be before Christmas, I will keep trying to make positive changes to improve it, because otherwise it will be an opportunity spurned. I hope that Government Ministers on the Front Bench will give thought to improving the current proposals because, if they are enacted as they stand, they simply will not be enough to make real use of the lessons to be learned from Hillsborough.