Sentencing

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

We would all like to see prison population decline, but for the right reasons. We would like to see a continuation of the reduction in crime that took place when we were in government. I will not dwell on the devastating effects that the drastic cuts in the police budgets are likely to have on crime detection rates, as my hon. Friends will raise that issue in this evening’s second debate.

We all want to see a reduction in crime and Labour Members believe that crucial factors in reducing crime include ensuring good education opportunities for all our young people; ensuring job opportunities for all; ensuring that everyone, including those on the lowest wages, have enough to live on; providing proper mental health services in a fully funded public national health service; and tackling issues such as drug and alcohol addiction.

As was pointed out by members of the audience during last week’s “Question Time”—prison officers and prisoners alike—when people do end up in jail, it is important that proper help and support is provided to rehabilitate prisoners so that they can be reintegrated in society. However, that requires funding and space, which was one of the reasons for our plan to provide more prison places. Many electors thought that that was also the policy of the Conservative party, and they must feel badly let down, because they now understand that the Conservatives’ policy is simply to reduce sentences for violent crime. Some new prisons, such as the prison that we planned to build in north Wales, would also have enabled prisoners to remain closer to their communities, with important consequences in terms of family contact and increased chances of successful release.

Constituents of mine are horrified by the Government’s proposals. They are horrified by the idea that sentences could be reduced by 50% in the case of all offences in the event of early guilty pleas. They are horrified by the fact that those offences would include violent crimes such as rape, and by the fact that a convicted rapist could serve only 15 months in jail. As the Secretary of State will know, in 2003 Labour introduced the Sentencing Guidelines Council, the forerunner of the Sentencing Council, which came into being in 2010 and is charged with promoting a clear, fair and consistent approach to sentencing. It opposes the 50% reduction, believing that an offender’s decision to plead guilty should not be allowed to reduce a sentence by more than 35%. It has also said—this is for the information of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer)—that the reduction will not increase the tendency of defendants to plead guilty.

I am particularly concerned by the Government’s attitude to rapists and their victims. Last year they proposed anonymity for rape defendants, sending the message that such defendants needed more protection than others because their accuser was more likely to be lying. That was a disgraceful suggestion and proposal. It is hard enough for a woman to report a rape and undergo the dreadful ordeal of having to relive the experience in order to see justice done, without her being made to feel even more undermined because the defendant’s right to anonymity implies that she is lying. I am glad to report that following fierce opposition from Labour Members—led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—the proposal was dropped.

It was even more depressing to hear the Secretary of State’s rather flippant comments about rape last week. Particularly depressing was his comment about date rape. Date rape can involve deception, betrayal of trust, and drugging someone with no regard for the harmful effects that that can have: acts undertaken deliberately to violate the victim’s body. There is nothing glamorous about that. A rape in those circumstances is still a rape, a disgusting, despicable act. The rapist deliberately places his victim in circumstances that could be life-endangering, not only carrying out the rape but possibly even thinking, at the back of his mind, that the effects—or perceived effects—of memory loss may make the victim less likely to seek help very shortly after the crime, and that the victim may have considerable difficulty in describing events or being believed. It certainly does not help for the Secretary of State to imply that that is somehow a less serious kind of rape.

All rapes, and all violent crimes, must be taken very seriously, and their perpetrators must be punished properly. My constituents and I certainly do not want to see a 50% reduction in sentences in exchange for early guilty pleas by those who have committed violent crimes, and I sincerely hope that the Government will drop their plans as soon as possible.