Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Philip Hollobone(1 year, 4 months ago)
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The Solicitor General
In terms of access to justice for victims, I mentioned the victim transformation programme, which is vital in supporting victims. It will transform how the CPS communicates with victims and ensure that those with specific needs have enhanced support.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The victims’ right to review makes it easier for victims to seek a review of a CPS decision not to bring charges. Will the Minister congratulate CPS East Midlands on having the victims’ right to review prominent on the front page of its website? Is he satisfied that the scheme is being rolled out satisfactorily across the country?
The Solicitor General
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. He will be pleased to know that on the law tour, the Attorney General and I saw CPS East Midlands for ourselves, and he is right. It is also right to acknowledge that the vast majority of cases are performed correctly and accurately. Of those that are not, it is right to say that 243 decisions were found to be incorrect and were reviewed last year.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill
Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Philip Hollobone(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hollobone
I will happily give way, but I just want to finish this particular point. The other crucial aspect of the Bill, which might not now be as explicitly mentioned in it as it might be after we have had a go at it in Committee, is that in my view and that of my constituents, if foreign national offenders are sent back to their country of origin they should be banned from returning to this country. Their personal details—their name, date of birth, fingerprints and all the rest of it—should be with our Border Force so that if they ever attempt to gain re-entry into this country they are stopped from doing so.
Mr Hollobone
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving us a specific and individual example of how rotten the system has become. How has it come to pass that in Britain in 2016 we are unable to deport a Congolese rapist? It should be one of the first duties of Government to keep our country and our citizens safe, and we need to send back to their country of origin people who believe they can get away with such horrendous crimes in our country. My hon. Friend has given us an individual and specific example of why we need to change the system.
Michael Tomlinson
I do not apologise for coming back to the issue of cost, as it is first and foremost in the minds of my constituents. We have heard a variety of different figures cited today, so perhaps we can explore the issue a little further. Has my hon. Friend considered that with 10,000 fewer prisoners we could have fewer prisons, so the costs that we have heard cited could in fact be higher still?
Mr Hollobone
That is a very intelligent observation from my hon. Friend, and I congratulate him on being in the Chamber to listen to today’s proceedings. I know that he represents his constituents with great assiduity. Obviously the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think we now have two prisons devoted wholly and specifically to housing foreign national offenders. Clearly, if we did not have any foreign national offenders in our prisons that would be two prisons we could either not have or free up to imprison our own offenders. That would be a cost saving—we are talking about a potential sum of £1 billion—but some of us in the Chamber today would see the saving of that cost as an opportunity to implement a proper penal policy for our domestic offenders. We believe that if an offender is caught, convicted and sentenced to a term of four or five years, or whatever it is, they should then serve that amount of time in prison. We are constantly told that we cannot afford to do that, but here we are presenting the Government with £1 billion of savings that would enable us to implement a far more realistic and effective criminal justice policy.
Mr Hollobone
Interventions of such quality will, I hope, earn my hon. Friend a place on the Bill Committee. We could put a robust clause in the Bill specifically to deal with burglars and burglaries. He is right—for some reason, the seriousness of burglary has gone down the Home Office’s agenda.
The same is true of the breaking of shop windows in our high streets. I remember 20 years ago speaking to my local police commander, who said, “Philip, it’s an absolute rule of mine that we will not accept shop windows being broken in high streets, and we are going to clamp down on this really hard.” I think most hon. Members would say that shop windows are broken regularly in their high streets, perhaps even monthly. That shows that when we do not keep pursuing such problems vigorously, the seriousness with which they are taken declines.
That is a concern for our constituents, who are frightened about burglaries. Even if nobody is injured in a burglary, somebody’s home is tainted permanently by the intrusion and the theft of articles. Particularly for elderly people, that can often lead to a deterioration in health, and ultimately, in some cases, the old person sadly dies, not directly at the hands of the burglar but as result of the trauma of having been a victim of burglary. My hon. Friend speaks for his constituents and the country in highlighting that issue.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. I want to correct a potential misapprehension. My direction of travel for reducing the prison population of foreign national offenders holds true for the prison population as a whole. There may be a divergence of views here. I believe we should have a vigorous justice system, and I believe that the Bill is right about foreign national offenders, but I also believe that this should be the direction of travel for our entire prison population. I may have caused a misapprehension about that earlier. We can have both a vigorous justice system and a smaller prisoner population overall. This point of view may get me off the Bill Committee, but it is one that I hold firmly.
Michael Tomlinson
I may be pre-empting my hon. Friend, but could I encourage him to look in due course at the term “qualifying offence”, because there are some important provisions relating to whether that involves a term of imprisonment, as in the Bill, or whether a foreign offender would have to be in prison to qualify? Perhaps there are some interesting points there to develop. Will my hon. Friend come back to that in due course?
Mr Hollobone
It is okay: my hon. Friend is back on the Committee. He has made an extremely good point, which I hope he can repeat in Committee. My hon. Friend is quite right: we need to define what a qualifying offence is.
Clause 1(1) says that
“the Secretary of State must make provision in regulations for any foreign national convicted in any court of law of a qualifying offence to be excluded from the United Kingdom.”
Subsection (4) of the clause—there are, of course, only two clauses—then defines a qualifying offence as meaning
“any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”
That is important.
Mr Hollobone
In fairness, Mr Speaker, it is not actually my Bill. The Bill is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough. However, I do have the privilege of being one of the sponsors, and I am pleased to be one of them.
Michael Tomlinson
Perhaps my hon. Friend could tease out a little more the meaning of “qualifying offence”. As drafted, the definition is very wide and would cover even the most minor offences. For example, small, petty shoplifting has a maximum term of imprisonment of seven years and would, therefore, be caught by subsection (1). [Interruption.] I hear a “Hear, hear”, but, on the other hand, this is a very petty offence. Is it really the intention of the Bill to cover such an offence?
Mr Hollobone
I can see that the Bill Committee will be extremely interesting. I appreciate my hon. Friend’s point. I would take the view—I think other members of the Committee, although perhaps not all, would too—that a foreign national in this country who shoplifts should be removed forthwith and never be allowed to darken our shores again.
Mr Hollobone
Yes, I support that. A stronger legal system in these countries would help to facilitate the return of their nationals imprisoned in this country.
Michael Tomlinson
Clause 1(1) in fact refers to
“any foreign national convicted in any court of law”.
I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) may need to introduce a new Bill if we are to seek savings in translation services, because costs will inevitably be racked up in court proceedings to ensure that a foreign national is convicted so that they qualify under clause 1(1).
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend is right in part, but my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is of course talking about translation services as a whole. The longer a foreign national offender stays in this country, the greater the demand for translation services they will inevitably trigger during their incarceration. They may learn English while they are in prison, but it might not be the sort of English we want to encourage them to learn.
Mr Hollobone
He has personal experience of being shoplifted, not being a shoplifter. The point that he makes is absolutely right, and it is an issue that the Committee could explore. Opinions will differ in Committee, but I share his view that shoplifting should be taken seriously. Unless criminal behaviour is nipped in the bud, it tends to get worse. If a foreign national thinks it is acceptable to shoplift in this country, I think most of my constituents would say, “That is not acceptable. Go and do it in your own country.”
Michael Tomlinson
My point was not that shoplifting is trivial, but that it is trivial in comparison to other aspects of theft. It is a question of scale. I want to clarify that, because I would hate people to think that my personal view was that shoplifting is trivial. It is not: all crimes are serious, but there is a scale and it is well known that, among thefts, shoplifting is towards the bottom end of the scale.
Mr Hollobone
I suspect that my hon. Friend brings some legal experience to his advice to this House, for which we are all very grateful. That is why he will be such a valuable member of the Committee.
I just want to reach the end of my list before ending my speech and encouraging others to take part. There are two important countries at the bottom of the top 10 list of shame: Somalia has 430 and Nigeria is at No. 10 with 385. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford takes a lot of interest in Nigeria. If he wants to say some nice things about Nigerians, I am happy to give way.