Sentencing

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was very generous in giving way and we all appreciated that, but there will be no Back-Bench speeches if I give way too frequently. I will give way in a second.

Let me get one thing out of the way first. I have always believed, along with every sensible person, that Britain needs a criminal justice system that is effective in properly punishing offenders for their wrongdoing and in protecting the public from further crime. When I took office as Justice Secretary it seemed to me perfectly obvious that that had to be the first priority for all my policies. That is self-obvious; it is a platitude. The Government’s policy, and my first duty, is to punish crime and have an effective system for protecting the public from further crime. The problem that I face, which causes the reforms, is the fact that I inherited a system that was not effective in protecting against offenders’ committing further crime or even in punishing offenders. So that is at the forefront of where we are going.

Without going over all the exchanges that we have just had, let me explain briefly what we have taken over, which causes the need for the proposed reform. Our prisons are pretty nasty, unpleasant places, far from the holiday camps they are sometimes made out to be. The people in most of them pass their days in a state of enforced idleness, quite a few of them making some tougher friends than they have had in the past, and not facing up to what they have done. That is not what I think of as a satisfactory and effective punishment. But a bigger scandal still is our system’s failure to protect the public from future crime committed by offenders after completion of their time inside. Reoffending rates in this country, as we have taken over the system now, are straightforwardly dreadful.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has made much of the fact that short-term prison sentences lead to higher rates of reoffending than longer-term prison sentences. Given that his proposals now are to give people a 50% discount on their original sentence, plus they will be let out 50% of the way through their time in prison, and given that short sentences do not work, as he says, why is he so determined to make long prison sentences into short prison sentences?

[Mr Clarke]

The point that I make is not the one that hair-splits the variations between different forms of sentence. All our reoffending rates are very bad. I have no intention of addressing the sentencing tariffs for any offence in this country. I have no proposals for reducing the overall powers of the courts to deal with any crime. What we are talking about is the difference between someone who pleads guilty, particularly at an early stage, and someone who makes the witnesses and the victims go through the crime. That is what I will address.

Ever since I published the proposals five months ago, although we have not faced any clear alternatives or views from the Opposition, I faced a debate about my apparent desire to let prisoners out and reduce the sentences. I have no such desire; nor do I use statistics to illustrate the need for that. What I am talking about—

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Although I am speaking in favour of this Opposition day motion, I think it is the height of hypocrisy for the Labour party to lead the charge on crime, given that it presided over the automatic release of people halfway through their sentences, which created many unnecessary victims of crime. As we have heard from my hon. Friends today, the Labour party released 18 days early almost 80,000 prisoners who between them went on to carry out an additional 1,512 offences, including three murders, rapes and assaults, while they should have still been in prison. One convict, originally jailed for battering a woman to death, was released, only to lure a 10-year-old boy back to a flat, where he threatened to slash his throat with a craft knife before raping him. That is not what I call being tough on crime, despite what the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) would like us to believe.

I would like to clarify that, no doubt contrary to popular opinion, as a Government Member I do not particularly enjoy voting in favour of Opposition day motions. However, the Justice Secretary’s recent proposals are simply unacceptable to the majority of my constituents and the British public as a whole.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I can assure my hon. Friend that they are also unacceptable to the people of Brigg and Goole. Is not the record of the previous Government which he described exactly why we entered the election promising tougher sentences, to end the early release scheme and to be more honest with the public about our plans?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. It is astonishing that some of our hon. Friends, who were happy to enter the election promising to send more criminals to prison, and to put in place longer sentences and honesty in sentences, are now advocating sending fewer people to prison for a shorter time. I did not tell that to my constituents when I stood in the election.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Forgive me, I am not learned or a lawyer, but we have not suggested that fewer people would go to prison, have we? We have suggested that prison sentences could be cut by up to 50%, but that it would be for the judges to decide. It would not necessarily be 50%.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is clutching at straws. The Secretary of State made it clear that as a result of the proposal fewer people would be in prison. That is the whole purpose of the measure. My hon. Friend ought to reflect on the fact that this is an arbitrary proposal, because there is absolutely no evidence suggesting that more people will plead guilty as a result. If that does not happen, will the Secretary of State return to the House in a few months suggesting a three-quarters discount for pleading guilty in order to get a few more convictions? Where will it end? Why not scrap prison sentences altogether? This is a slippery slope. It is ludicrous and not based in evidence.

Most people think that punishment is not heavy enough. It has been estimated that between 2007 and 2009, criminals on probation have been responsible for 121 murders and 44 cases of manslaughter, along with 103 rapes and 80 kidnappings. In total, they were responsible for more than 1,000 serious violent or sexual offences in the two years from April 2006, while almost 400 more suspects are awaiting trial. Most people looking at these figures would conclude that too few, not too many, people were being sent to prison, and most would conclude that people are not being sent to prison for long enough, not that they should be let out even earlier.

As we have heard, a senior judge, Lord Justice Thomas, warned that as a result of these proposals, a rapist facing five years in prison could get off with a sentence halved to just 30 months by pleading guilty earlier. However, because of what the previous Government did, which the Secretary of State appears to support, that offender would then be released after only 15 months behind bars. Fifteen months for a five-year sentence! That is what is happening under a Conservative-led Government.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The example given by my hon. Friend is fanciful, because the average sentence for rape is eight years. Sentences will vary but in the end the judge will decide what justice and the seriousness of the offence justify. Needless public alarm is caused because the public find it difficult to know what the sentences are. If it reassures my hon. Friend, however, I can say that I would regard someone being released from the prison part of their sentence after 15 months as quite inadequate in a case of rape.

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[Philip Davies]

The Secretary of State and I differ. He seems to think it perfectly reasonable for somebody to get eight years in prison and serve only two, but I think that it is unacceptable. [Hon. Members: “He didn’t say that.”] I am disappointed he thinks that somebody who is given an eight-year sentence should be given a 50% discount for an early plea, reducing the sentence to four years, and so be released after two. [Hon. Members: “No, he didn’t say that.”] That means two years for an eight-year sentence, which to me and most people is totally unacceptable.

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, there is not time.

That is what the Secretary of State is proposing. That is what happened to Gabrielle Browne, who sparked the debate when she questioned the Secretary of State—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will be heard. Members will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate in due course. This is quite unacceptable when he is speaking.

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Gabrielle Browne was attacked by an African immigrant, Mohammed Kendeh, who had just been let out of prison four months into a one-year sentence. He had sexually assaulted five other women in the same park a year before, but was spared jail for those offences. Non-custodial sentences do not appear to work in such cases. Similarly, in a recent case in west Yorkshire a serial rapist was freed from jail early only to commit another sickening attack. He had subjected a string of women to terrifying rapes and sexual assaults as far back as 1984, but served only eight years of a 14-year sentence for raping an 18-year-old woman. Upon his release, he carried out a further rape on a 24-year-old as she left a nightclub.

We will get more and more such cases, with people serving more and more derisory prison sentences, then let out to create more and more unnecessary victims of crime. When people with no offending history are caught for crimes and have to wait to be convicted, it is understandable that it should take time to bring them to justice. However, it is unforgivable for people in government to preside over a system that lets people out of prison earlier than necessary, in order for them to go on and commit more crimes and create more victims of crime. We need to review the current situation, in which people are released from prison early.

People keep telling me that Scandinavian countries are marvellous when it comes to these things, so I went to Denmark to see at first hand what they did. One thing that never seems to come out is that in Denmark, people are not automatically released halfway through their sentences. They are released only if they behave well; and in fact, 30% of prisoners in Danish prisons serve their full sentences because they are not deemed safe to release from prison early. Those are the things that the Secretary of State should be looking at, not trying to have people serve lower sentences in the first place. Indeed, it is his proposals that are causing the British public to lose confidence in the British criminal justice system and in this place.

Last week I asked the Secretary of State to read some research commissioned by Lord Ashcroft into the opinion of the public, victims of crime and police officers. Some 80% of those polled thought that sentences were too lenient. Similarly, when asked whether they expected the new coalition Government to be tougher on crime than the last Labour Government, 50% of those polled said that they expected them to be tougher, while 9% said less tough. When asked their views now that they had seen the Secretary of State in action for a year, only 13% thought that the Government were tougher, while 23% thought that they were less tough.

These proposals have to go. I very much fear that if the Secretary of State does not listen to the widespread opposition to these plans, then for us to restore our reputation as a party of law and order, he will have to go as well.

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[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

We have about 4,000 women in British prisons. A small fraction of them need to be locked up; the vast majority do not. Most of these women are serving very short-term sentences, with 64% serving less than six months. Those serving short sentences are not subject to any supervision on release, and their prison sentences are too short to provide proper rehabilitation. The result is a vicious circle of family breakdown, chaos, reoffending and huge cost to the taxpayer.

Women in prison are a highly vulnerable group, and they commit crime because of this vulnerability and because of earlier failures to protect and support. More than half have suffered domestic violence, and a third have suffered sexual assault. Up to 80% have mental health problems. Many of them self-harm, and many have attempted suicide. More than half have alcohol problems, and 27% have drug problems. When a woman goes to prison, her children suffer too, with homes being repossessed and children ending up in care. Some women are pregnant when they go to prison, and the sight of babies and toddlers spending their earliest moments in a situation that is the complete opposite of a family home is an affront to my senses as a mother, a family lawyer and a politician. When a man goes to prison, a woman is usually there for him when he gets out. When a woman goes to prison, the man is often nowhere to be seen.

The Government’s plans to reform the criminal justice system set out in the Green Paper helpfully recognise that women offenders have a different profile of risk and need. I was encouraged recently by the response of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), to my parliamentary question on the effectiveness of short-term prison sentences for women. He said:

“Short-term sentences for men have proven pretty ineffective, and I think that short-term sentences for women are even more ineffective…We support the conclusions of the Corston report…we are committed to reducing the number of women in prison, and a network of women-only community provision is being developed to support robust community sentences.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 163.]

Those community offender projects for women, to which the Minister referred, provide a genuine alternative to custody. They are run by charities that work in partnership with the police, the prisons, the probation service and health and social services, and they provide wrap-around support for the woman. They help her to stabilise her life. They find her somewhere to live and ensure that she is safe. They start to deal with mental health and addiction problems, and they allow magistrates to sentence a woman to community penalties with confidence. Early evaluations of the projects look very good, in terms of reducing costs and the rate of reoffending. Those projects have been funded by the Ministry of Justice, and I hope that such funding will be continued, notwithstanding the difficult financial climate.

[Philip Davies]

The answer to a parliamentary question that I asked revealed that, for every age group and for every offence, women are already far less likely than men to be given to a custodial sentence. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to stop women going to prison is for them not to commit those crimes in the first place?

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but this is why we are looking at robust community alternatives to prison.

It would be a missed opportunity if these projects were not expanded, and an absolutely travesty if they were cut. We need a strong message from the Government that prison is not the right place for women who pose no threat to the public. I accept that the public and the judges need to feel more confident about community sentences, and their scepticism must certainly be dealt with. Community sentences are not fluffy options. They are intensive interventions that absolutely challenge a woman to change her life. They will also enable her to see that her future could look very different from her past.