Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I must apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for not being a lawyer but daring to participate in this debate. I hope he will forgive me. I must also apologise for not living in Oxfordshire or in a nine-bedroom mansion. I live in a two-bedroom ex-council flat; I hope that does not exclude me from this debate.

I represent the fourth most deprived Conservative-held seat in the country, and I hope that allows me to participate in the debate because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) has just pointed out, it is the poor who suffer most as a consequence of crime.

I should like to question some of the comforting nostrums that have been floating around the Chamber. Those who have read their New Statesman this morning might call it “reassurance” politics—saying things to make ourselves, rather than those we seek to represent, feel better. That is my primary concern. Language is crucial in this debate. We have to be judicious and proportionate in everything we say, but I sometimes fear that is rather difficult.

I also believe that victims have to have a crucial role in this process, not because I believe, as I fear some do, that victims will automatically demand the harshest judgment possible—far from it. We can all swap polling and survey evidence, but I want to highlight a survey I saw from 2009, which said that only 11% of the victims questioned felt that sending more offenders to prison would “do most” to reduce crime. That is not to say that people should not go to prison or that prison should not be unpleasant, but it does indicate that the comforting nostrum that all victims are slavering for the chance to see those who have caused them harm swing high simply is not the case.

I commend the Government for publishing more local, transparent data on sentencing. That is vital to improving not just transparency but public confidence in the system. I firmly believe that a transparent and consistent sentencing policy will be possible only if we start to reduce the prison population. Unlike some hon. Members here today, I do not believe we should seek to turn this nation into a gulag with as many people as possible crammed in.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend and I heard the interesting and often entertaining speech of our hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who mentioned the Netherlands. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) agree that if the Netherlands can close eight prisons because they do not have enough prisoners to fill them, and if their apparent crime rate and their apparent imprisonment rate are half of ours, on a population basis, we have a lot to learn from those who agree that we need to cut crime, cut the number of victims and cut the number of people in prison as well?