Gypsy and Traveller Planning

Debate between Mike Weatherley and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He speaks out on behalf of his constituents in Peterborough extremely well. On this issue, I am sure he has the pulse of not only his constituency but the nation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Witham said, Travellers are using the Human Rights Act 1998 in relation to access to local schools and as a way to get permission for their previously unauthorised developments. I am trying to say that we should look at the matter the other way round. What about the rights of the settled community in the village of Braybrooke, who are not sending their children to the local school?

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

After pressure from me and my constituency office, we have managed to persuade Brighton and Hove council to charge some long-term van dwellers at Medina house some rates to pay for the services they use. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a good way forward and that some councils could consider doing that to make these people integrate more into the community, or at least to get some return for the services they use?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention; he makes an extremely powerful point. As our mutual hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) said earlier, it is all very well for Travellers and others to jump up and down about their rights, but on the other side of the equation is their responsibilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) makes an excellent point. Everyone else pays their taxes in the normal way, so Travellers should also pay their fair due to society.

Sentencing (Green Paper)

Debate between Mike Weatherley and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I would say that my hon. Friend is spot on. He has provided me with a helpful link to the next part of my speech which is about the length of sentences. In 2006, the Home Office report “Re-offending of adults” concluded that

“re-offending rates are lower among offenders discharged from a custodial sentence of at least a year (49 per cent.) than among those discharged from a shorter custodial sentence (70 per cent.)...This suggests that custodial sentences of at least a year are more effective in reducing re-offending.”

It is worth repeating those figures; prisoners with sentences of up to one year had a reoffending rate of 70%, while in the case of prisoners with sentences of more than two years the reoffending rate dropped to 49%. The report also showed that for people who had spent more than four years in prison, the reoffending rate was merely 35%. Looking at those figures, my constituents would say, “Well, that says to us that we need to put these nasty people behind bars for longer, so that they can be rehabilitated properly before being released and being at large again”.

I also want to address this myth that we have too many people in prison in this country. In terms of absolute numbers, yes, we have a relatively high prison population, but we are a relatively highly populated country. If we look at the number of prisoners that we have for every 100,000 people, we are nearer the average but still quite high. However, the only meaningful measure of the size of the prison population is how many prisoners there are in relation to the number of crimes committed. On that measure, I would suggest that the evidence is startling—we do not have the highest prison population in the western world, but the lowest. Compared with the US, Canada, Australia and the EU as a whole, the UK has the lowest prison population of all. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we have approximately 13 prisoners, compared with approximately 15 in Canada and Australia, well over 20 for the EU as a whole and a whopping 166 in the US.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that sentencing and the number of people in prison should be determined by the sentences rather than the ability of the Government to house those prisoners, and that it is the responsibility of Government to ensure that suitable premises are available if sentences are passed?

[Mr Hollobone]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Frankly, it is a national scandal that we do not have enough prison capacity. When we have troops living in tents in theatre in Afghanistan receiving money per meal that is less than the money per meal provided for a prisoner in a UK jail, it is a disgrace that we are not making better use of the redundant military facilities that we have in this country to house a bigger prison population. With a bit of imagination and, frankly, some political backbone, we could achieve a lot more.