Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

18. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Greater Manchester intensive alternative to custody project in reducing reoffending and the use of short-term prison sentences.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

We are currently considering the feasibility of an evaluation of intensive alternative to custody projects by comparing reoffending rates with those for similar offenders receiving custodial sentences.

[Paul Goggins]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. As he knows, the Manchester project is aimed at 18 to 25-year-olds who would otherwise go to prison. Those offenders have a reoffending rate of 18%, whereas the rate for offenders of a similar age who go to prison, which costs 10 times more, is 58%. Will he bear that evidence in mind and, as a Minister who believes in payment by results, make sure that funding goes to such projects as a priority?

[Nick Herbert]

I accept the force of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments and I have visited those responsible for running the scheme in Manchester as he knows—indeed, I think it was at his instigation. It is important that we evaluate these projects properly, and our general position is that we want to have more punitive community sentences, which are effective and combine rehabilitation with a punitive element. If possible, we want such schemes to be mainstreamed so that they can be taken beyond their pilots.

Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

There is a discretionary element in the current system so that a very bad criminal record can be taken into account. At least one mass murderer did not get compensation for an injury in prison. My answer to the question is no, he certainly should not get compensation. We are going much further; it is simply not right for someone one week to commit a crime against another member of the public, and the next week to say that the taxpayer must compensate him because somebody has committed a crime against him. There may be exceptions to that on the fringes, but we must go much further even in the straightforward case that my hon. Friend describes.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I commend the Secretary of State for his statement, but what does he propose to do in cases—including a recent one in my constituency, to which I drew his attention—when an offender commits a serious offence and receives a community sentence, but then, via Facebook or other social media, claims to have got away with it, adding insult to injury for the victim? Will he consider a power of recall to the court so that such offenders can be held to account?

[Mr Clarke]

I will consider it. Such situations are extremely irritating, and in extreme cases could be contempt of court, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, no one has ever found a way to deal with them. There always will be cases when some miscreant leaves court and celebrates too vigorously the fact that he has not lost his liberty or in some other way. If he starts adding insult to the court or his victims, something should be done to find a way of dealing with him under the rules of contempt of court.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I ask the Secretary of State to face the House? We all want to be the beneficiaries of his eloquence.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

What action does the Justice Secretary intend to take against offenders who receive a community sentence instead of a prison sentence and then use social media to boast that they have “got away with it”? I am thinking in particular of comments posted on Facebook yesterday by Ryan Girdlestone, who mocked the court within minutes of receiving a restraining order for his part in a vicious attack on my constituent, Bernard O’Donnell, a man in his 80th year. Is that not sheer contempt for the court, and should he not be held to account?

[Mr Clarke]

I think that we had both better take legal advice on whether such behaviour amounts to contempt of court, but one of the things we are addressing is how we can make community sentences more effective. They have to contain an element of genuine punishment in most cases, and also of course be rehabilitative, but such an example is very offensive to victims and to the general public. Community sentences as a whole, however, have a very good record of improving the reoffending rate and deterring some people from wanting to commit crime again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am delighted to hear of that excellent performance in Cambridgeshire. That is evidence of the good practice now flowing from freeing probation officers from the highly prescriptive target setting and performance management that led to that 24% figure. That is what happens when 60 pages of national standards are reduced to three, and professionals are supported with decent guidance and allowed to get on with doing the job to the best of their ability in the public interest.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Ministers have already acknowledged that probation officers will have to spend more time monitoring dangerous offenders on licence in the community as a result of introducing the new extended determinate sentence. What estimates has the Minister made of the additional costs of this extra supervision?

[Mr Blunt]

It will be some time before prisoners are being released from the sentence framework that we have just introduced, because those sentences apply to people who receive sentences of more than six years’ imprisonment, and the extended sentences will be many years ahead, so we have not yet done a detailed assessment.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a former barrister and a former criminal prosecutor, who has worked on several murder trials.

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that I am not soft on crime, but I support the Government in their reform of this untenable, shocking and wrong system. With great respect to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), he should hang his head in shame for being party to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, both of which were useless pieces of legislation that introduced something that the Prison Reform Trust, the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, the Nuffield Foundation and the criminal justice joint inspectorate described as

“one of the least carefully planned and implemented pieces of legislation in the history of British sentencing.”

The flip-flops of the shadow Justice Secretary would put a kangaroo to shame. It is entirely right to reform a system that was underfunded, worked poorly and is manifestly wrong in the circumstances of a 21st-century country. I will speak only briefly but I remind the right hon. Member for Blackburn of the comments in the House of Lords on the 2003 and 2008 Acts, when the Lords addressed IPPs in the cases of the Crown v. James and the Crown v. Lee. In a decision that effectively lambasted the then Secretary of State, Lord Hope of Craighead said:

“There is no doubt that the Secretary of State failed deplorably in the public law duty…He failed to provide the systems and resources that prisoners serving those sentences needed to demonstrate to the Parole Board by the time of the expiry of their tariff periods…that it was no longer necessary for the protection of the public that they should remain in detention.”

I could go on to quote from the judgments of Lord Carswell and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, but I shall pause there.

I have made it clear that I am not soft on crime, as others have suggested. The debate has sadly been too short, but the new clause should certainly be supported by the House.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I share the concerns expressed by hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House, but I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for the meeting he and his ministerial colleague held with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and I. I am also grateful for the Lord Chancellor’s assurance earlier that he would still be thinking hard about the provisions as they go from this place to the House of Lords.

I want again to assert briefly that the Northern Ireland experience was instructive, and if the Lord Chancellor was prepared to reflect on it, it would strengthen the flawed prospectus he has given us. The experience in Northern Ireland was based on a tragic case involving Trevor Hamilton, who murdered Attracta Harron when she was on her way home from mass in December 2003. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) remembers the case well because he dealt with the issues too. Hamilton had been released at the halfway point of a seven-year sentence for rape, indecent assault and threats to kill. The public were outraged that such a dangerous individual could be released with no control whatever by the public authorities.

The framework in Northern Ireland is based on two key principles. The first is absolute judicial discretion, with no presumptions about previous offences, such as there were in the 2003 Act—so complete judicial discretion. Secondly, judges have to go through a very clear process. Does the offence justify a life sentence? If it does, that is what the offender gets. If it does not, the judge must consider an extended sentence, which can give some degree of control over the release date, but the offender must eventually be released at the end of the extended custodial period. If that is not sufficient for public protection, only then can the judge give an indeterminate sentence.

The result is instructive. The Northern Ireland Justice Minister, David Ford, has sent us a report, for which I commend him—the report should be put in the Library. There has been no significant change in the number of life sentence prisoners. There have been 68 extended sentences and eight indeterminate sentences in three and a half years. That system is in control and it offers the public protection.

There are real risks with what the Lord Chancellor is proposing. If he is right and judges suddenly start to impose more life sentences, he will simply have replaced one problem with what he described as the original problem. He will have replaced indeterminate sentences with life sentences, which will bring all the issues relating to resources and parole that he faces currently. The most serious thing is that under his proposals all dangerous offenders not given a life sentence will have a definite date for release, which is a risk too far for this or any Government to take. It will leave a gap, bridged in Northern Ireland by the indeterminate sentence not as a first or a second option but as a complementary third option.

I am glad that the Lord Chancellor is listening. I hope he heeds that lesson and that when he takes his legislation to the other place he will make further amendments.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am in favour of the Government’s decision to scrap IPP sentences in this instance. Liberty, among others, has said that IPPs could be a back-door measure to introduce life sentences for a huge range of offences. They were intended to be given only sparingly but of course they have been used far more frequently than expected. In March 2011, there were 6,550 IPP prisoners, half of whom served 240 days beyond their tariff, at a cost to the Exchequer of about £68 million. That is quite apart from the whole question of whether they were being held unlawfully, which worries many of us.

As it stands, the IPP regime has been a costly mistake. Furthermore, the indefinite legal limbo created by IPP sentences has in many instances undermined rehabilitation, leaving prisoners and their families uncertain when, if ever, release will be granted. Like the Lord Chancellor, I wonder why those sentences have not been challenged in the courts. I have campaigned on the matter for a long time. In February, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill seeking the abolition of IPP sentences, so I am pleased about the Government’s decision.

New clause 32 would mean that prisoners serving an extended sentence of at least four years in custody, who have a prior conviction for one in a list of serious offences, will be required to serve two thirds of their sentence, instead of being considered for release at the halfway point. I argued for such a provision when I introduced my Bill, so I am pleased that it has been introduced. However, like the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), I have concerns about new clause 34. I have grave concerns about interference in individual parole decisions. That proposal must be looked at in the other place. We do not have time to debate it properly today and I am sure that many Members, whatever their views, would have appreciated a sensible timetable.

Justice and Security Green Paper

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am still seeking brevity, an object lesson in which I know will be provided by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins).

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful, Mr Speaker, and I, too, welcome the Green Paper. It is perfectly clear that the balance on disclosure has tipped too far in sensitive cases, and that results in Ministers being constrained in their ability to fulfil their ultimate obligation, which is to protect the public. Given the complexity of the situation, may I ask specifically what plans the Secretary of State has to consult the judiciary?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Indeed. Ministers have talked about the matter and considered it carefully, and I leave it to my hon. Friend to give an authoritative reply in his winding-up speech.

I hope that I have already indicated that the mess that we have inherited requires a bold, sustained and principled effort, not salami slicing and half-measures. The Bill is one part of the balanced package of reforms that is needed. Unusually, I made a full statement to the House last week on the subject, and it was debated for one and a half hours, so I do not propose to repeat in depth what I said then. Let me turn to the inevitable controversy that any measures on criminal sentencing are bound to provoke. It is a natural part of contemporary political debate to simplify the subject and to make extremes out of it all. I am resigned to the fact that on law and order issues above all there is a tendency to polarise, and to frame reforms as either dry and tough, or wet, soft and liberal. The truth is somewhere in between. The aim of the measures I proposed was to consult on a balanced package, and it remains so.

The measures address the weaknesses that we inherited. For serious crime, the public must have confidence in the system of effective punishment and just retribution, so my reforms include, for example, introducing a 40-hour working week across the prison estate to introduce productive hard work into prisons in place of enforced idleness.

The Bill toughens community sentences by allowing courts to curfew offenders for longer—16 hours a day for up to 12 months—and to ban them from going abroad. As I signalled last week, we intend to introduce measures to clarify householders’ rights of defence and to consult on criminalising squatting.

The Bill creates a new offence of possessing a knife to threaten or endanger a person, with a prison sentence of at least six months for over-18s to send a clear message to those who possess a knife to threaten others.

We are conducting a review with the intention of replacing the discredited sentence whereby people are locked up for an undetermined and indefinite time—the so-called imprisonment for public protection—with a tough determinate sentencing regime. I propose to deliver a system that offers better reparation to victims. The Bill will replace and augment the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996, which the previous Government never implemented—it was a Conservative measure. This will allow us to deduct wages from prisoners so that instead of their just being a drain on the system we can deduct money to help to pay for services for the victims of crime. The Bill places a positive obligation on courts to make offenders pay compensation directly to victims.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor mentions the review of indeterminate sentences. My concern is that he will reach the wrong conclusion. When he conducts his review will he look at experience in Northern Ireland, where extended and indeterminate sentences have been available since 2008 but where, crucially, the assessment of danger is left in the hands of judges? It is a smaller system, but in the three years since its introduction there have been only 63 extended sentences and seven indeterminate sentences. Public safety has been combined with manageable numbers: will he look at that experience?

[Mr Clarke]

We are having a review, so I will look at that. Legislation was enacted in 2003, in the belief that a few hundred people might be affected. It commenced in 2005. The previous Government, of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member, tried to reform it in 2008, because it was already out of control. I proposed further reforms in the Green Paper, and a very large number of people in the criminal justice system said that the legislation should be repealed. Last week, I quoted David Thomas, the author of “Thomas on Sentencing”, who described the whole thing as an unmitigated disaster. I will look into the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion to see whether some aspects of the Northern Irish system might be appropriate.

After punishment and reparation comes rehabilitation to reduce reoffending, which is at the core of our process of reform. Sentences must be punitive and reformative. The Bill will help to ensure that more offenders with drugs, alcohol or mental health problems are addressed and receive treatment at the earliest opportunity.This complicates our efforts—

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I do, and I can reinforce my hon. Friend’s point with a remarkable statistic showing how the last Government were falling down in that respect. Some 29% of all sentences for indictable offences in 2010 were given to offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions—up from 17% in 2000. We need a more intelligent and sensible system of sentencing, and I agree that a proper degree of judicial discretion is an important part of the system.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that in October last year, Citizens Advice in Manchester signed a three-year contract with the Legal Services Commission for the provision of community legal services, which involves four new advice centres, one of which is in my constituency. On the strength of that, Citizens Advice entered into a series of leasing and employment obligations. Will he cut through the increasing uncertainty and confirm this afternoon that that contract will be honoured in full?

[Mr Djanogly]

That is, of course, a matter for the Legal Services Commission, with which the contract was agreed—but about 50% of CABs have legal aid contracts, which last for different periods. The proposals will work through over the period of the contracts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I believe that justice is best dispensed through a network of courts that is efficient and well-utilised, and that provides the facilities that are expected of a modern courts system, particularly for victims and witnesses. I confirm that there are no current plans for further rationalisation.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Will the Justice Secretary take this opportunity to update the House on his policy on the office of chief coroner?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

We are considering our policy in the light of the debate and the result in the House of Lords. I have been discussing the matter with various interest groups, various Members of another place, and one or two Members of this House. Some of the lobbyists attribute to the chief coroner powers to tackle all kinds of failings in the system that the legislation never gave him or her. We could deliver some of the substantial changes that need to be made to the coroner system rather more quickly by distributing the functions elsewhere, rather than by creating unnecessarily a whole new office. I am considering the arguments. We ought to concentrate on what outcomes we are trying to produce, rather than argue about structures and new institutions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

3. Which bodies he has consulted in the preparation of guidance on the implementation of the Bribery Act 2010.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

6. When he plans to implement the Bribery Act 2010; and if he will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I am at present working on the guidance to commercial organisations to make it practical and useful for legitimate business and trade. It will be published once I am confident that it addresses the legitimate concerns of all those who took part in the consultation process and who have made representations to me. The publication of the guidance will be followed by a three-month notice period before full implementation of the Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Along with the United States and others, we are one of the leading countries in pressing for a drive against corruption in the world, because corruption is bad for all business, including British business when it tries to export to other countries. Because of the debate that is taking place about the Act, I have had to reassure my American colleagues that we are not falling behind and that we will implement the Act. It is very important that we put ourselves where we should be—in the forefront of stamping out corruption not only in the developing world but in international trade generally.

[Paul Goggins]

May I encourage the Secretary of State to get on and implement the Act as soon as possible? Will he provide an assurance this afternoon that when the guidance is published, there will be no loophole for joint ventures or subsidiaries that would enable British companies to turn a blind eye to corruption?

[Mr Clarke]

I give that assurance, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I am trying to get on with it. I believe it is possible to satisfy those who think we should give a lead in helping to stamp out corruption in international trade and other aspects of international relationships, and at the same time satisfy honest businesses that do not want unnecessary costs and burdens put upon them. They want the situation explained clearly to them so that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) said, ordinary hospitality cannot possibly be affected by the Act.