Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois]

In fairness, the strongest representations have come from our coalition partners, as my right hon. Friend may be aware. However, I have also met representatives of many organisations and groups who have quite simply emerged from the street; they have either lived near, been involved in or had their lives touched by knife crime. My right hon. Friend might be interested in what I have to say about that later.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

On the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), I should say that I did do some analysis of court sentences in city centres and more provincial courts. For offences such as this, sentences are likely to be much tougher in provincial courts than in city centre courts. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is probably because the offences are much less likely to come up in provincial courts and are therefore more shocking, and because judges in city centres become immune to the importance of the offences because they happen so often?

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). He is a good man. I cannot think of anything that I agree with him about, although I am sure that we would find something if we struggled long enough, but he is a good man who argues his corner very effectively. I guess that this is a subject on which he has been particularly effective in arguing his corner.

My sole purpose here in Westminster Hall today is to try to give people the facts, which often appear to be lost in these debates. People can make of the facts what they will, but it is important that we have the facts because there is no excuse for people being misinformed. Rather than the report on older prisoners, which I will leave for another day, I shall concentrate on the report on women offenders. I have been studying this subject closely for quite some time, and it is important that the House knows the background.

I take a close interest in justice issues and sentencing. I spend a lot of time on them, visiting prisons, and so on. I used to attend Justice questions month in, month out, to be told time and again how terribly and unfairly women were treated in the criminal justice system and how so many of them who were in prison should not be there. From questions and speeches that I listened to, this problem seemed to be particular to women. So effective was this constant—week in, week out, month in, month out—lobbying in the House that I became rather agitated by it.

I believe passionately in equality, in the sense that people should be treated the same, across the piece. I believe that, whether determining people’s pay or opportunities, or in this case the way people are sentenced when they commit a crime, everybody, including the courts, should be gender-blind, colour-blind, religion-blind and sexual orientation-blind. People should be treated equally, irrespective of any of those things. I believe in that passionately.

When I was steamrollered with all the information in Justice questions and debates about how terribly women were treated in the criminal justice system and how unfairly they were treated by the courts, I was so irritated that I decided that something should be done. I decided that it was terribly unfair if women were treated so badly by the criminal justice system, so I looked into it in greater detail. The Minister will confirm that, as will all his predecessors. I praise the Minister, because I probably bombard him with parliamentary questions, seeking out lots of information and the statistics on all these things. I must put on the record that, to my mind, the Ministry of Justice is probably the best Department for providing relevant information. Far too many Departments will say that it is too difficult or expensive to find information. The Ministry of Justice never does that; in my experience, it always provides the information that is required.

There are reams of statistics and information out there, so there is no excuse for anybody to be misinformed, yet it appears to me that many of my colleagues in Parliament go no further than reading briefings from the Howard League for Penal Reform or perhaps, at a push, sometimes, from the Prison Reform Trust. Those organisations have their own, perfectly legitimate, reasons for producing figures and statistics in a particular way. They have an agenda: they do not like people being sent to prison; they particularly do not like women being sent to prison. I do not blame them for trying to influence policy along the lines that they feel are right when the door is left open to them. What is not acceptable is the misuse of figures in the House of Commons when we are debating serious information, so I want to try to redress that balance today. I have tried to do it in the past and I will continue to do it in future.

Today, I feel that I have been making some headway, because the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd seemed to concede—the first time I have heard it conceded—that, yes, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. That tends not to have been heard before. Listening to questions and debates in Parliament, people would be forgiven for thinking that that was not so. I am pleased that that at least has been acknowledged. The right hon. Gentleman set out why he thinks there are good reasons to treat women differently in the criminal justice system and not to send them to prison as often as men. To me, that is a perfectly legitimate point for him to pursue. I do not necessarily agree with it, although I may agree with him on certain points. I am pleased that we are at least starting to have that kind of honesty in the debate, with people saying that, yes, men are treated more harshly by the courts when being sentenced, but there is a reason for that. I believe that I am making at least some progress in this debate. I hope to make further progress later today.

The fact is that, at any time in recent history, about 5% of the prison population has been female. In 1900, according to the Library, 17% of the prison population were women, but since the 1950s onwards, it has hovered around 5%. Therefore 95% of the prison population is male. That might surprise many, given the focus on female offenders. What might be a bigger shock to people, if they follow these debates as I do, is that, according to the Library, in the past 10 years the female prison population has decreased by 3%, whereas the male prison population has increased by 24% over the same period. People could be forgiven for not realising that when they see all the reports and all the focus on the number of women being sent to prison, when men being sent to prison is never covered in the same way. With all the reports, action plans, working groups, campaign groups, strategies and special interest groups, who would have guessed that those were the facts about the numbers of men and women in prison and the trend over the past 10 years?

The confusion arises because so many myths surround the debate about female offenders. I have mentioned some of these points before. The premise of the Justice Committee’s report seems to have missed the point about the reality of the situation. In fact, in recommendation 7, the Committee rather bizarrely states:

“We welcome NOMS’ intention to accelerate work on the specific needs of women, but we are extremely disappointed that over six years after the Corston Report there is still not sufficient evidence about what those needs are, or how best to address them.”

This whole debate and report seems to have been compiled on the basis that it is accepted that women offenders are a special case, that they have special needs and that something must be done to reduce the female prison population. This view is not based on any evidence that I have seen and this section of the report seems to suggest that no such evidence has been seen by the Committee, either.

[Nick de Bois]

I do not often take issue with my hon. Friend, which probably comes as no comfort to some Committee members, but he is concentrating on the numbers of people going to prison. Should we not be talking about whether measures that make it less likely for any offender—in our report, women offenders—to reoffend must be the greater prize than competing about numbers of people in prison?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I will come on to that in a second, but the point is that surely that applies equally to male offenders, yet there is not the same focus on what matters to male prisoners and what will reduce male reoffending as there is on what would reduce female prisoners’ reoffending. That is bizarre, given that women make up only 5% of the prison population. If my hon. Friend is so concerned about reducing reoffending and reducing the crime rate per se, one would have thought, given the sheer weight of numbers, that he and his Committee, and the Minister and the ministerial team at the Ministry of Justice, would think it more important to get to grips with male offending and reoffending, but that is not what we hear.

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend is, of course, well aware that we are concentrating on one specific issue that the Committee looked at. Of course, we have equally looked at the effectiveness of transforming rehabilitation and the great prize that we will win from that by bringing down reoffending. Is my hon. Friend really saying that, although he wants justice to be blind, it should also be stupid? If there are special points of difference, surely we should examine those, even if they are based on sex.

[Philip Davies]

I do not accept my hon. Friend’s premise that not sending women to prison—I will come on to why in a second—will make the kind of difference that he thinks it will. I want to examine the types of people who are in prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

One would have thought that, if the Select Committee was just considering the evidence, it would have wanted to focus on why the problem appears to be getting worse for male prisoners when it is getting better for female prisoners. Perhaps that would be a worthwhile thing to consider, but it appears that the Select Committee has glossed over that fact in its obsession with appealing to the politically correct lobby that wants to make out that women are treated far worse in prison than men.

One of the myths that I want to address is the idea that women are very likely to be sent to prison. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd gives the impression that many women should not be in prison, for reasons that apply only to women. He says there is a unique problem for women, and I want to nail that myth once and for all—I suspect that I will not, but I will give it my best shot.

Going back to my starting point, which is that I was appalled by what I was hearing about how women are treated so badly by the courts, I asked the House of Commons Library to provide the evidence that a higher proportion of women are being sent to prison. Not only could the Library not provide that evidence, but it confirmed that the exact opposite is true. I repeat that, for every single category of offence, a man up before the courts is more likely than a woman to be sent to prison. For violence against the person, for example, 35% of men and 16% of women are sent to prison; for burglary, 45% of men and just 26% of women are sent to prison; for robbery, 61% of men are sent to prison and 37% of women. It applies in every single category of offence: men are more likely than women to be sent to prison.

A Ministry of Justice publication called “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System,” which is produced to ensure that there is no sex discrimination in the system, states:

“Of sentenced first-time offenders…a greater percentage of males were sentenced to immediate custody than females (29% compared with 17%), which has been the case in each year since 2005.”

[Nick de Bois]

In all my hon. Friend’s bedtime reading of the report’s 150-odd pages, did he see that on page 7 the Committee does state that women are less likely than men to be sentenced to custody? It is there in black and white, so I am not sure what we are arguing over.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Friday 9th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I entirely support the Bill and its intention, and hope very much that it will make progress today and subsequently become law. However, while my constituents, like many other commuters, have suffered all the train delays that we have talked about, it is also the case that the treasure of Forty Hall has been ransacked far too often. I hope that the Minister will assure me that the Bill in its current form covers theft from the roofs of such properties.

[Philip Davies]

We all want to ensure that the Bill covers such thefts, but I fear that it does not. If accepted, my amendments 135 and 16 would make it clear beyond any doubt that they were covered. If we are building up people’s hopes, it is in all our interests to make the position clear in the Bill. I am not suggesting the replacement of any definitions; I merely wish to ensure that everything is covered.

Although I think that the word “used” would be more appropriate than the word “old” in clause 18, amendment 135 adds the word “used” rather than deleting the word “old”. I have a feeling that those who drafted the Bill intended the clause to contain the word “used” rather than the word “old”, but the fact is people might well take advantage of the technicality, and that would disappoint me just as much as it would disappoint my hon. Friend.

Clause 18 lists the metals that are not to be treated as scrap metal. Amendment 138 inserts the further metals listed in the original Bill, minus one, namely rhodium. Reducing the number of metals covered by the Bill surely reduces its scope. The 1964 Act contained the same exclusions as the original Bill, so I am not entirely sure what has changed.

Although 135 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I signed it because, although I am sure all his amendments are good, I thought this one was particularly good. Clause 18 enables the Secretary of State to change the definition of scrap metal by order. It seems to me that the definition could change all the time as a result. People could be caught by the definition of a scrap metal dealer one day, no longer caught by it the next day, and caught by it again the day after that, which is not an entirely satisfactory state of affairs. Given that the whole Bill is about scrap metal and scrap metal dealers, a proper definition is surely not too much to ask. We do not want to have to keep revisiting the definition.

If the Government and my hon. Friend are willing to accept my earlier amendments specifying exactly what is meant by scrap metal, we can safely get rid of this part of the Bill, which is what my hon. Friend’s amendment would do. As things stand, there could be some controversy. It seems to me that the Bill in its current form would allow someone to continue to operate a business under the name “Stolen War Memorials R Us” outside Parliament, because it does not make clear what the definition of scrap metal includes. Time is pressing, but let me particularly commend the amendments relating to that definition. We want everyone outside this place to know exactly what the Bill covers, and to ensure that there are no loopholes. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

rose—

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

rose—

Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I do not accept that, because we have ended up with a system whereby people go to university because they have been put on a conveyor belt to university by the state, which has encouraged people to go down that route. Many people go to university who are not best served by doing so, and who would be far better served by vocational education. We seem to be obsessed with education in this country. One of the places where one can learn an awful lot is at work. I learned more in my years at Asda than I ever did at university or school. Rather than spending three years at university, many people would be better served by getting three years’ work under their belt and learning the skills that are learned in the workplace.

I object to the idea that everybody should be on the conveyor belt of university, because I do not believe everybody is best served by it. That is demonstrated by the fact that I believe 20% to 25%—I am sure the Minister will know the figures better—drop out of their university courses. They have clearly gone to university and discovered the hard way that it was not the best thing for them. How many more stay on their degree course while probably realising in their heart of hearts that it is not right for them? They are stuck on a conveyor belt, when better alternatives for them exist.

It is a mistake to think that going to university is a panacea for everybody. For some people it is absolutely the right thing to do, and we should allow those people to go to university irrespective of their background and where they have been educated. We should say to others, who are not best suited to university, that that is no disgrace at all. We should raise the value of vocational qualifications and careers and allow people to pursue what they are good at. Everybody is good at something, and we need to find out what people are good at and allow them to develop in it. That does not always mean that they have to go to university to develop their expertise.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that even if people choose to go into business to pursue their ambitions, there is now a suggestion that we should select directors based on their sex rather than merit? Does he agree that we should put an end to such creeping social engineering?

Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Friday 22nd October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

There may be an element of truth in what my hon. Friend says. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington tried to describe the Bill as a simple and non-contentious piece of legislation that, really, nobody could possibly quibble with, and it was helpful to him in presenting that case not to take any interventions, so that none of the flaws in the Bill could be exploited.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Perhaps the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) regarded his view—and his view alone—as substantive and sufficient grounds to go along with the Bill. I think we have demonstrated that that is not necessarily so wise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is, as ever, on the ball. He has just demonstrated to the House how knowledgeable he is on these matters and he rightly says that there are different cases. Either case makes the point, but I am sure that the House will be happy to benefit from his expertise on both if the need should arise and there is any further confusion. I believe I am right in saying—he will correct me if I am wrong—that in the case of Network Rail v. RMT the dispute was largely over safety. So far as I can tell, the case was not about an employment matter, because the signallers were not subject to any proposals for staff redundancies—it is not as if their jobs were being threatened—and the RMT was complaining about a safety issue.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington gave the impression, to me at least, that these cases were clear-cut victories for the unions in terms of their recommendation for a strike and that there should be no impediment to that democratic process being applied. I have to take issue with that initial premise, because the result of the ballot in the case of Network Rail v. RMT was that 3,199 votes were cast, 1,705 of which were in favour of strike action and 1,481 of which were against, with 13 spoiled papers. Therefore, the majority was just 224. I do not know whether or not my hon. Friends would say the same, but I was not originally given the impression of that margin of victory in the speech made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. He seemed to imply that there had been an overwhelming vote for strike action.

Before we get on to the niceties of why the unions fell foul of the law and why it is right that they fell foul of the law, as it stands, we must take into account—I think that the law should take this into account—the effect of strike action, if it were to go ahead, on the employer, on the economy and on the general public. That should be a factor in determining whether an injunction is granted. If it is going to have a disproportionate effect, we would want the judiciary to be risk-adverse in deciding whether to grant an injunction.

According to Network Rail, the cost of the strike action would have totalled about £20 million. That is a substantial amount of money and it was perfectly right that a judge should insist that everything was done rightly and properly, all above board, before action with such a financial impact on a business—on the taxpayer, I might add—was proceeded with. In the court papers, Network Rail claimed—the RMT did not dispute this, so we can safely say that we are on firm ground—that the strike action would have had the effect of preventing 80% of all rail services in the UK from running. That would have had not only a devastating effect on Network Rail as an industry but a massive effect on many employers, businesses and people who rely on getting about by rail to fulfil their daily duties.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington might think that the RMT had a perfectly legitimate complaint against Network Rail that Network Rail was being irresponsible. That might or might not be true, but I am not entirely sure what grudge the RMT has against businesses, commuters and shoppers up and down the country, who would have been negatively affected by that action. I am not entirely sure why they should be penalised for any actions by Network Rail that the hon. Gentleman disagrees with, but that is the impact that the strike action would have had. The RMT union did not dispute that in the court case. It is perfectly proper that a judge should consider the impact on other people when bearing in mind whether to grant an injunction. Network Rail made it clear that a strike would have caused immense damage to the economy, to businesses that depend on rail for freight or transport, to commuting workers and to a great many individual rail users.

[Nick de Bois]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. In effect, we have a situation in which every cause will have an effect. My hon. Friend outlines admirably the fact that in this case, if the processes are not followed and a strike subsequently takes place, many people outside the immediate target of the strike action are affected. They have no recourse. They have nowhere to go. When I was running my company, we were in the unfortunate position of having to make a small number of redundancies. We had to go through—and rightly so—a strict but nevertheless somewhat burdensome process and, as a result of a minor technical error, there was the right for redress for those involved. It strikes me that in this situation, the process should be adhered to as strictly as possible because there is no form of redress for those outside the immediate consequences of the action. Does he agree?

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I know that he is a great advocate for rail commuters in his constituency—he has even had Westminster Hall debates on the problems that his commuters face. He is a great champion for his constituents and I agree with him. This is a very interesting point. If the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington wants to make it easier to have strike action, perhaps, as a quid pro quo, he might consider what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) says and introduce into his Bill a provision that some statutory consultation must take place with all affected parties before any strike action, so that people can understand the full consequences of that action. It might well be that when a union decides that it wants to go out on strike because of a grievance with a particular employer, it does not take into consideration the wider impact it will have on innocent third parties who are no part of the dispute at all. My hon. Friend makes a very good point—perhaps that is an anomaly that should be addressed in legislation. I hope that the Minister was listening carefully to his intervention, because he is in a far better position to do something about that than I am. It is certainly worth considering.

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Debate between Nick de Bois and Philip Davies

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am rather nervous about contributing to the debate, following my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who expertly filleted the Bill in a way that I could not possibly do. I shall not spend a great deal of time adding to their comments, but I shall make a few brief points

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset is right to say that the Bill is disagreeable, but I do not doubt the intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who wishes to do what he sees as in the best interests of his local area and other parts of London. I hope he listened carefully to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for North East Somerset and that he will reflect on them at length. Both speeches made it abundantly clear why the Bill should be unacceptable to anybody with a Conservative philosophy. It strikes at the heart of the values that Conservatives should believe in.

I have no doubt that Opposition Members will think that many of the provisions are marvellous. The Bill represents the state running riot. It is a charter for bossy local authorities. That is what brought many of those on the Opposition Benches into politics in the first place. Surely, as Conservatives, we should protect the public from bossy local authorities and over-zealous bureaucrats. We have all seen in our own lives that the moment local authority staff put on their car park warden’s jacket, they think they have become something akin to Hitler, and take great pleasure in ordering everybody about and telling people what to do. We should be guarding against that, not expanding their powers and giving them a charter to go even further.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, the first part of the Bill, which deals with penalty charges and gives local authority bureaucrats powers that we would normally reserve for the police, is deeply disturbing. We should not countenance such a proposal. We saw such freedoms undermined during the 13 years of the previous Government. The last thing we want under the new coalition Government, particularly a coalition that incorporates the word “liberal”, is to go further, giving the state more power over individuals to impinge on personal freedoms. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset so ably said, the right of officials to demand people’s names and addresses is something that we might have expected to see in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, not in a free country. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green will think about that again.

I agree with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset about street furniture on the highway. Presumably local authorities will agree to let businesses have street furniture on the highway because they think it is a good thing for their local residents. If so, why do they not let those businesses get on with it? Why would they want to take money off businesses that are trying to provide a service that the local authority presumably thinks is a good one, which is why they gave them the permission in the first place?

One of my major problems with the Bill is that it is intended to damage small businesses. Such bureaucracy is meat and drink to large businesses. I used to work for a large multinational company. Although we may occasionally have been irritated by the volume of regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy, we could afford to employ teams of people to deal with it. We could afford to put up with the extra costs sometimes incurred. Many small businesses, which are struggling enough, especially in the current economic climate, do not have the financial capability to deal with the powers that the Bill would give local authorities.

The Bill reflects the mindset that running a small business is a licence to print money, that everybody who has a small business must have millions of pounds in the bank, that they are unscrupulously ripping off their customers in order to make an unhealthy profit, and that it is the duty of the local authority to get some of that nasty wealth off them. What sort of Conservative would want to promote a Bill with such an attitude behind it?

The only way businesses make money is by looking after their customers and giving them a good service. Anybody who does not do so does not have a business for very long. Businesses are some of the most acutely aware organisations when it comes to social responsibility and contributing to local communities. Local businesses often have a better record of making a positive contribution to their local community than do many local authorities, which are given power after power by such Bills. We should be deeply suspicious of attempts to give local authorities more powers to trample all over small businesses—the many people who are trying their best to earn a living and to put back into this country the entrepreneurial spirit that we have lost.

I cannot really add a great deal to the Scores on the Doors scheme, because my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made it abundantly clear that it is an absolutely ludicrous provision. When even the Scores on the Doors people themselves claim that their ratings cannot be relied on as a decent guide to the food hygiene of premises, why on earth should we make it mandatory for customers to see such information and for businesses to display something in which the people who promote it do not have confidence?

If the voluntary scheme works well, and that seems to be the consensus, why on earth would we want to make it statutory? Why not just allow the voluntary scheme to flourish? As I said in a brief intervention on my hon. Friend, if a star scheme is so important to customers, and if it is the be-all and end-all of the information that they want in order to judge a premises, any business that does not display it basically invites people to walk past and go somewhere else. The market will sort those things out. If the scheme is so important to customers, all premises will want to display it anyway. That is what the free market is about. Surely my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green understands the principle of the free market and how it works. He should want it to flourish, rather than having such little faith in it. That is what we have seen for the past 13 years, with a Labour Government and the mess that that got us into.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Unfortunately, I do not know my hon. Friend’s constituency well, but in my constituency, where there is a tremendous number of takeaway shops and licensed restaurants, we have tried to encourage some responsible behaviour, because many customers have been leaving areas that one sometimes has to tread through with great care. The voluntary approach has not quite worked, so does my hon. Friend not accept that, where it has not worked so well, some legislation should be introduced to encourage a better neighbourhood and environment?

[Philip Davies]

No, I absolutely do not, because I do not want unnecessary regulation. My hon. Friend’s point of view is that the voluntary scheme has not worked, but his colleagues have not expressed that view. Even if it has not worked, however, I reiterate the point that if such information is so important to customers, they will presumably give their trade only to premises that already display it. If they do not like the fact that it is not displayed, they do not have to go to such places; they can go somewhere else. That is how the free market operates, and it is the free market that I believe in. I am sorry that my hon. Friend has such little faith in the free market and the principles upon which it works.