Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

That question raises so many concerns about the Justice Secretary’s lack of knowledge that it is really worrying. Citizens should be able to challenge the decisions that are made by Ministers, including him and Labour Ministers. That might mean that the courts find that some Government decisions are wrong. For example, they might find against plans to expand Heathrow with a third runway. We have to accept that decisions made by the Executive should be able to be challenged by the judiciary. He should accept the important concept of the separation of powers. We provide checks and balances for the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature. We are not a country in which the Cabinet can do whatever it likes.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am slightly perturbed by what the right hon. Gentleman has said. These are not decisions that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has said the Government would take—he was talking about decisions that Parliament would take. What is essential in a democratic system is that the will of the people exercised through Parliament is sovereign, not judges who have been elected by nobody.

[Sadiq Khan]

I do not subscribe to the view that citizens have a role to play only once every five years. They have a role to play in an active democracy between elections as well. That is the difference between the hon. Gentleman’s majoritarian view and mine. The irony is that the Foreign Secretary gets it. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the Foreign Secretary in the statement on Ukraine and Syria, he would have heard what he had to say. It is a shame that the Justice Secretary and the hon. Gentleman did not listen to what the Foreign Secretary said about the importance of the rule of law.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am in a slightly unusual position this evening, in that I rise to support the Government on this Bill. It is a particular pleasure to be able to support them on matters relating to criminal justice and courts, because that was not always the case when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice’s predecessor, the Minister without Portfolio, was in place.

I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on reversing the trend that we saw under his predecessor, which seemed to go against every Conservative principle on law and order. He was trying to send as few criminals to prison as possible, culminating —as the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) made clear in his remarks, with which I agreed—in his treatment of indeterminate sentences for public protection. That was the particular low point of this Government in criminal justice matters. I suspect that, as the right hon. Gentleman hinted at in his speech, if the current Secretary of State had been in place all the way through this Government, indeterminate sentences would still be in place. I do not think that he would ever have got rid of them, and some of the measures in this Bill are trying to undo the damage that was done by getting rid of those sentences in the first place. I am delighted that he has had the courage to revisit some of the issues that his predecessor failed on.

I say that I support the Government, and I do; I support this Bill wholeheartedly. However, as we have heard from other speakers, when we have legislation as extensive as this Bill—it is quite a wide-ranging piece of legislation—there will always be areas where one thinks the Government could have gone further, areas where there are missed opportunities and areas where one might have a few reservations. I am no different from other hon. Members in all those respects. I hope not to take too long, but I will go through a few of the areas where I particularly support the Government, where there have been missed opportunities, and where I have reservations, many of which I hope can be dealt with in Committee or on Report, so that in the end we have a much better Bill.

On clauses 1 to 3, anything that toughens up sentencing for criminals, particularly dangerous criminals, will always have my full support, so I am very pleased that the maximum sentence for certain dangerous offences is being increased to life imprisonment. Terrorists are a great threat to our national security, and measures to prevent them from carrying out their terrible crimes certainly have my full support.

With regard to clauses 24 to 28, I see no real problems with single magistrates dealing with very simple matters that do not require a bench of three to deliberate over. Should anyone object to the measure, I note the safeguards that are in place. I am pleased that single magistrates will deal only with straightforward and minor offences, such as television licence evasion. That should not be a criminal offence anyway, because a licence should not be forced on people; paying for a subscription should be a matter of personal choice, but that is a debate for a different day. Single magistrates will also deal with things like road tax evasion cases.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman talks about road tax evasion; he is presumably aware that road tax was scrapped in the 1930s.

[Philip Davies]

I am not entirely sure what the hon. Gentleman is on about, but people do evade their road tax.

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[Robert Neill]

Their vehicle excise duty.

[Philip Davies]

Their vehicle excise duty. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has reinforced his reputation for concentrating on the things that are not important, and not concentrating on the things that are.

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I certainly will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again. We have wasted enough time on his nonsense; we will not waste any more on it. I have learned a lesson tonight: not to give way to him. Many people learned that lesson a long time ago, but in my naivety I had yet to learn it. I have learned it now.

I was making a point about single magistrates. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a reservation about the provision being extended to cover more than just the most basic and simple crimes. I share that concern. A system of single magistrates will never be appropriate for cases such as shoplifting, because magistrates have very different ideas about what should happen to offenders, particularly persistent offenders, in those types of cases. I hope that the power will not be extended. I sometimes worry that when a power is granted, it will be the thin end of the wedge and the power will be rapidly extended to other areas. I hope that will not be the case for this power. It will be introduced for very basic offences, and I hope it will stop there, and not be extended.

On clauses 37 to 39 and 40 to 48, I understand the concerns that have perhaps influenced the introduction of the new offences relating to jurors, especially given changes in technology. We already have the Contempt of Court Act 1981, so I am not entirely sure how necessary some of the measures are, but they may well be necessary.

I note the reasons given for increasing the maximum age of jurors from 70 to 75. I could not agree more with the rationale for that change, but I am tempted to table an amendment—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) mentioned this—to extend the change to magistrates and judges. I cannot see any difference between a juror of that age being able to determine the guilt or innocence of somebody in a serious criminal trial, and a member of a bench of magistrates or a judge of that age passing sentence. I do not really see why a person is capable of doing one of those things between the ages of 70 and 75, but not the others.

As the Ministry of Justice helpfully explained,

“According to the latest figures published by the Office for National Statistics, the healthy life expectancy of both men and women at age 65 is at least 10 years in England and Wales.

The existing age limit for jury service, which was set in 1988, does not reflect the current health of older people. Official figures show that healthy life expectancy of 65 year olds in England and Wales has risen since 2000.

We believe the selection of jurors should reflect that fact.”

If that is the case for jurors, presumably the case is exactly the same for magistrates and judges. There would be a cost saving if we extended the measure to magistrates, as they can claim for loss of earnings when they sit, and clearly magistrates who are aged 70 to 75 are less likely to be earning, or concerned with covering their loss of earnings, than those who are younger. Magistrates would still be subject to appraisals, so their competence would not be an issue. I have raised the issue of increasing the age limit before in this place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) once pointed out, it was ironic that the then Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), was past the retirement age for the magistrates of whom he was in charge. The amendment that I would like to see would rectify that anomaly.

I very much welcome the changes relating to judicial review. I hope that they mean that we will have less interference with decisions by judges who hear such cases. Parliament should set the law. Very often, as people will know, I do not particularly agree with Parliament’s decisions, but that is the price of democracy: sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. Parliament should set the laws of the land, and judges should implement the law as it stands. I do not like—we have seen this far too often in recent years—judges thinking that they should determine the law. If judges want to decide what the law is, they should give up being judges and put themselves up for election like everybody else. If they are not prepared to do that, they should accept the will of Parliament, whether they—or I—like it or not.

On clauses 29 to 31, I certainly understand the principle in the Bill that criminals should contribute to the costs of running courts. I note that the proposed criminal courts charge means that in future, somebody could be ordered in court to pay the following financial penalties: a fine; a victim surcharge; compensation; prosecution costs; and now this extra courts charge. The victim surcharge, which is basically a tax on offenders, has been a rather unhelpful development, particularly when it applies to people who are being sent to prison for long periods of time. When it was first introduced, for most offences, it was levied in cases where there was no victim. It seems bizarre that the victim surcharge was paid by offenders solely in cases where there was no victim. If the courts charge replaced the victim surcharge, that might make more sense. I certainly agree with the principle of making offenders pay; I just have reservations about how these things tend to work in practice.

[Kate Green]

I am slightly puzzled by what the hon. Gentleman says. My understanding was that the victim surcharge was applied on a case-by-case basis—

[Philip Davies]

indicated dissent.

[Kate Green]

I advise the hon. Gentleman that when I was a magistrate sitting on the bench, we applied the surcharge, as part of our sentencing decision, with regard to individual cases. Does he agree that there should be a pecking order when it comes to how payments are applied? We should put the victim surcharge and compensation payments to particular victims ahead of recompense for the cost of the court.

[Philip Davies]

I am all for making sure that the victim is at the head of the queue when it comes to payments, but the victim surcharge was specifically targeted by the previous Government at offences in which there were no victims. That is the fact of the matter, whether the hon. Lady recalls it that way or not.

I welcome the sentiment behind the changes to release on licence. I am pleased to see any proposals that mean that more of the sentence given by the court is served by offenders. In fact, I have long argued that the sentence given by the court should be served in full by offenders, and that people should not be released early for good behaviour—they should be kept in longer for bad behaviour. At the very least, offenders should not be released automatically halfway through their sentence. That was an absolute scandal that was introduced by the previous Government. I would like to see the Bill go further to rectify that, but I appreciate the point made by the Secretary of State that even though he cannot rectify it in full, he wants to make a start in doing so, and I support him in that.

According to research carried out by Lord Ashcroft, more than 80% of the public think that sentences should be served in full. I cannot improve on the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who spoke earlier today. On Second Reading of the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, he said, as shadow Secretary of State:

“We have said that there should be a policy of honesty in sentencing. The fight against crime depends on integrity in the criminal justice system and on courts that deliver swift, effective justice, with punishments appropriate to the crime and the criminal. In the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Government introduced automatic release on licence halfway through the sentence for all determinate sentences of longer than 12 months…If this were our Bill, we would introduce provisions to restore honesty in sentencing, in order to reassure victims and leave criminals in no doubt that justice is done.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 79.]

I think that many people went out and voted Conservative at the last general election on the basis that we would restore that honesty to sentencing. The provision is a small step in that direction, but a welcome one. I should like the Government to make clear their intention to remove early release altogether. I appreciate that coalition restraints often do not make such things possible, but I am bound to say that this does not go far enough.

I am pleased that, under clause 6 offenders could be ordered to be subject to compulsory electronic monitoring. I am a big fan of electronic monitoring, particularly monitoring that uses tracking technology, which I hope will have an effect both as a deterrent against future crime and as a means of convicting and punishing those who reoffend while on licence. Similarly, I welcome the changes to the recall of prisoners released on licence, but with some reservations, as the changes do not go nearly far enough. The fixed-term recall, in which the offender is returned to prison for breaching their licence for just 28 days—not, as most people would expect, the rest of the period of their original sentence—is a very bad law. It means not only that offenders are released early but that they are released extremely early again if they fail to abide by their licence conditions both the first time round and if they reoffend. That is outrageous, and the Government need to clamp down on it.

For life sentences, the proposed changes could be going in the right direction, but I still believe that life should mean life. I have highlighted that many times: in my view and that of most of the constituents I speak to there should be no release of a prisoner sent to prison for life. We would not have to deal with the issue of release after the recall of a life prisoner if we did not release life prisoners in first place. The issue of prisoners absconding or not returning to custody is something I have been concerned about for a while. As I mentioned earlier, anything that increases sentencing or toughens up the current position is something I shall happily support. The new offence created by the Bill and the increased penalties for the existing offence are changes that certainly have my support. I only wish we were not releasing people who went on to reoffend or breach their conditions.

Figures I obtained from parliamentary questions show the alarmingly high number of absconds and people not returned to custody after recall. The most persistent are murderers and attempted murderers. Not only my constituents but people up and down the country are asking why on earth we release so many of these murderers on licence.

Cautions were mentioned by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), and I agree with him. For some time, I have highlighted, along with him, the use of cautions for very serious offences. I am pleased that the Bill seeks to address the issue. It is worth repeating that a caution is given only when an individual accepts responsibility for the crime—they admit that they are guilty—so their use for serious indictable offences has naturally concerned me and many others. I welcome the curbing of the use of repeat cautions, which has always seemed bizarre to me. A person is given a warning for doing something, they do it again, and instead of being sent to court to face the music, some people are given yet another warning, and yet another warning, and even another warning after that. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, recent Ministry of Justice figures apparently showed that 62,000 offenders given a caution in the 12 months to March 2013 had already received a caution previously. The figures also showed that 8,800 criminals who were handed a caution last year had accepted at least one caution for the same offence previously. Perhaps more staggering is the fact that an offender in Northumbria had been given cautions on 50 occasions, and over 50% of persistent offenders do not receive immediate custody. This is an absolute scandal and makes a mockery of the criminal justice system, so I welcome these changes.

I will not detain the House on the issue of young offenders, but I would like some clarification that the proposals will apply equally to boys as well as girls. I would not want to support any proposal that treats them differently, particularly when they have committed the same offence.

I will certainly be tabling an amendment to extend the time limit for an appeal by the Attorney-General against an unduly lenient sentence. I am concerned that the strict 28-day deadline has been, and could be in future, missed in some serious cases. Victims and the public in general need to have confidence in the judicial system, and in the case of an unduly lenient sentence, if the deadline is missed simply because the victim was not made aware of it in time and so did not ask for it to be referred, that confidence could be undermined. I understand the desire to have these things treated quickly, so I would not be looking for an extremely lengthy extension of time. I pay tribute to Jean Taylor and the campaign group Families Fighting for Justice, who have done a lot of work campaigning on this issue. I hope that the Government will be responsive to an extension, perhaps to 90 days, for the most serious offence where people are in custody for a long time, but perhaps not long enough given the seriousness of the offence. I hope that the Government will look favourably upon such an amendment.

I would also like the Bill to end the ludicrous position where time spent on a tagged curfew is credited as if it was time spent on remand in prison. In 2008, on the subject of allowing a curfew whilst on bail to count as credit towards a prison sentence, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), speaking as the shadow Minister said:

“If someone has committed an offence that crosses the custody threshold—an offence that is serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence—it will cause a great deal of scepticism, undermine public confidence in the justice system and make the Government look increasingly ridiculous if the court is then required to say, ‘By the way, all the time that you have spent at home in bed is time that can be taken away from your custodial sentence.’”—[Official Report, 9 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 369.]

I agreed with his comments then and I still agree with them now. He was absolutely right to say that when the last Government introduced this ridiculous rule. I hope that the Government, even if they will not do it in this Bill, will seek the earliest opportunity to scrap that ridiculous state of affairs.

I would also like to have seen magistrates allowed to sentence people to prison for up to 12 months for one offence, instead of the current six-month limit. The Conservative party was committed to that at the last election and it is something that I certainly still support. Magistrates have the power to sentence offenders to prison for 12 months for two or more either-way offences and nobody seems concerned about that. There is a possibility that this measure may also cut the cost of our judicial system by allowing more cases to be dealt with in the cheaper magistrates courts compared with the more expensive Crown courts.

I would also like to see consideration given in the Bill to making judges accountable for their decisions, particularly where they do not hand down custodial sentences that would be perfectly justifiable and possibly even expected, and where the offender then goes on to re-offend. I do not think I need to say now what the consequences of the collection of this information should be, but it should be quite clear to many that there should be consequences for a judge who consistently allows offenders to avoid prison, if those offenders go on to make others suffer as a result of their continuing crime sprees. At the very least there should be some assessment of their ability to perform their role.

I talked about boy and girl offenders earlier and I would also like to place on record my continued interest in seeing male and female offenders treated in the same way, particularly when they are convicted of the same offences. That should apply not just for sentencing purposes but for all aspects of the criminal justice system. I am pleased that it is becoming increasingly accepted that women are treated far more leniently than men in the criminal justice system, and that needs to be addressed.

I would like the Bill to have included the principle of a sentencing escalator. The principle was proposed in a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). It is extremely popular with the public. Thanks to polling carried out by Lord Ashcroft, we know that it has the support of at least 67% of the British public. The British public clearly think, as I do, that if someone commits an offence and then does it again, the punishment on the second occasion should be more severe than the punishment on the first, and that the punishment on a third occasion should be more severe than the punishment on the second. I would like the Government to make progress on that.

Despite those omissions, on which I would like to see the Government make progress, either in this Bill or in future, the Bill can still be seen as a substantial step forward for the criminal justice system in this country, and the Government and the Secretary of State should be commended for that. Even when the Bill reaches the statute book—hopefully with some of the amendments I propose—I will still be here on the Back Benches urging the Government to go much further.

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[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate. For far too many years we have had a tradition of Governments—Conservative and Labour—trying to talk tough on crime and repeatedly aiming for the tabloid commentary, rather than dealing with the underlying causes of crime. That is why I am pleased that we are taking a different approach now, ensuring that we work on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending and initial offending, and tackling the causes of crime together with other Departments. That is an important process and it is good to have restorative justice and various things such as that in the proposals.

The mark of a good and functioning society is low prison numbers and low crime, not how many people we can fit into prison. In 1980, the prison population was 44,000. The then Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, described that as “dangerously high”, yet we saw numbers continue to rise year after year, helped of course by the previous Government’s 3,600 new criminal offences. We saw a huge 54% increase in the prison population under the previous Government, who wanted to increase capacity to 96,000—almost two and a half times the number described by Willie Whitelaw as “dangerously high”. That is deeply alarming.

It is not just me who thinks that the previous Government made a huge mistake. It is good to see the shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) back in his place. He has said:

“in office…it was a mistake to not focus more on the issue of reducing reoffending. We became hesitant in talking about rehabilitation and the merits of investment in bringing down re-offending rates. We got into the position whereby a focus on rehabilitation and reducing re-offending was seen as being soft on crime when in fact it is effective in reducing crime.”

He was right then—he clearly had not been previously—and it is good that this Government are acting on that, because it does make a huge difference. What we saw was a Government who jailed more people than anywhere else in Europe just to sound tough. We can take a better approach that will reduce crime, and that makes a big difference.

That applies to young people in particular. It is astonishing to look at the figures for young people. We have managed almost to halve the number of children serving custodial sentences, from 2,136 in May 2010 to 1,168 in December 2013. I am incredibly proud of that. In 2009, 600 children aged between 12 and 14 were locked up, some for summary offences. There may well be rare cases where somebody as young as 12 should be locked up, but they should be incredibly rare and I find it bizarre that hundreds of children suffered in that way. The Howard League for Penal Reform states:

“the refreshing approach of police forces across England and Wales to reduce the number of unnecessary child arrests, has allowed a renewed focus on crime prevention and alternatives to custody. Youth justice reinvestment pilots in Manchester and inner London boroughs have also shown how investment in diversion rather than criminal justice can yield benefits in terms of public safety.”

We can make the public safer and not lock children up.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huppert]

No. We heard enough from the hon. Gentleman in his rather long speech earlier. I know he disagrees with Churchill. He probably finds Churchill far too liberal for his own tastes, as he probably was when he criticised road tax.

What I do not want to see is children and young people languishing in detention and coming out and reoffending. That is absolutely not the right thing to do. It is not right for anybody—the Offender Rehabilitation Bill aims to help people with short sentences, which will help—but it is particularly the case for young people. I was pleased to hear the Justice Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister say that we will double the time that young offenders spend in education from 15 hours a week to 30 hours a week by 2015. That was a manifesto commitment we made in 2010—the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) very much remembers that—and something that we are delivering. It makes a difference. Education is a really important thing for these people, so that they can leave custody with skills and an education they can build on.

The secure college has to have an educational focus and that is what makes it good and worthwhile. By making it progressive rather than punitive, we will really engage with people, give them skills and help them to have a life later that does not involve going into crime. Many of these young people are vulnerable and damaged. We have to provide them with care and support in a safe and secure environment to help turn them back into citizens who will reintegrate into the community on release.

That is all very good, but I have some concerns that I will explore in Committee. Schedule 4 allows restraint to

“secure good order and discipline”.

That sounds worryingly Victorian. The courts have already said that that is not appropriate. I hope we can have clarity from the Government on what exactly is intended. I hope that that is not the intention of this Government.

Before I leave the subject of the number of people in prison, it is worth highlighting the changes in the female prison population, which has declined substantially. It was more than 4,000 when we came into office; it is now substantially below 4,000. That makes a big difference. Women’s prisons will become resettlement prisons, so that offenders serve their sentences as close to home as possible to maintain crucial family relationships, especially with children. There are times when women need to be punished in this way, but we need to help to ensure that afterwards they are able to engage better into society and do not suffer the problems that they could be left with.

I am concerned about the criminal courts charge. I heard what the Justice Secretary said, but I am still concerned that it will end up being unenforceable and skew the way our system works. Justice has made it clear that it is

“concerned that the imposition of a charge may have an unfair bearing on the exercise of a person’s right to plead not guilty, and therefore the presumption of innocence.”

How will it apply to appeals? Will people not be able to take advantage of their right of appeal because of concern about cost?

I was interested by what the Justice Secretary said about the £1.4 billion that was owed to the Courts and Tribunals Service. He talked a lot about dead people; I did not fully understand what he was saying. However, if another charge is added to the list, given that he said that that this would be the lowest priority, far less of it will be collected than the 80% that goes to the top priority. That seems obvious, because it will decay faster and faster.

The Justice Secretary said that if people did not reoffend, the charge would be written off. I should like to know more about how that would operate, but, again, far less would be collected. I am also very concerned about how the charge could be recovered without disproportionate enforcement costs, particularly in relation to the contractors involved. I am also worried about whether there is sufficient discretion in the process.

I am still concerned about tagging. I believe that there have still been no successful prosecutions for violations of tagging curfews when people have challenged the prosecutions and pleaded not guilty. Professor Ross Anderson of the University of Cambridge and others have been expert witnesses in cases that have been dropped on the basis of their evidence, because the tags have been proved not to be sufficiently reliable. I should have thought that there were better ways of spending money, especially given that the tags are not satisfactory.

I am very pleased that the Justice Secretary has given ground on judicial review. Many of us have been pressing him on that for some time, and I am glad that he has now taken some sensible steps. It is really important for ordinary people to be able to challenge the Government. We need transparency, and the Government are pushing for it; shielding the Government from legal challenge by clamping down on judicial review would run completely contrary to that. However, I am still concerned about the changes in relation to interveners. Third parties add important value and expertise to cases, at great cost to themselves and in the wider public interest. I did not think that the Justice Secretary addressed my concern about cases in which people intervene, as opposed to cases involving the “human shield” that he described. That is not the only kind of case involved.

Courts already have strong powers to control interveners. They accept only interventions that are in the public interest. Baroness Hale, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, has said:

“Once a matter is in court, the more important the subject, the more difficult the issues, the more help we”

—the judges—

“need to try and get the right answer… interventions are enormously helpful… . They usually supply arguments and authorities, rather than factual information, which the parties may not have supplied.”

Interveners play a very important role, but the Bill would require them to bear not just their own costs—which are not recouped, which I understand—but those of other parties whose involvement results from their intervention. The application of that could be incredibly broad. If someone intervened and that person’s intervention generated extra work to be done by someone else, the intervener would be billed for all of it. That would deter experts from giving useful and potentially instrumental evidence. We would shoot ourselves in the foot: court decisions would become worse, as the courts themselves have said.

The courts already have discretion to control who intervenes, how people intervene, and for how long they can intervene, and they can fine interveners whose interventions are unreasonable. That strikes me as a sensible balance. I think that the Bill goes too far in clamping down on interventions, and I hope that the Government will look at it more carefully. I understand that there may be cases in which intervention is inappropriate, but the Government must protect appropriate and important interventions,

There is much else that we shall need to consider in Committee, because the Bill contains a great deal of detailed material, but I think that the focus is right. I welcome much of what the Government are doing, but I think that they should concentrate even less on how many people can be locked up, and more on how much crime can be reduced.

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[Mr Slaughter]

Indeed, but the Lord Chancellor has at least managed to make both of them happy, and he should be praised for that, if for nothing else.

I want to make specific mention of the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who made robust defences of judicial review and of open justice. They correctly echoed the view expressed in the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s briefing that judicial review is

“used rarely by community groups in relation to planning decisions because it is costly and a significant and daunting undertaking.”

No one would imagine that, from what the Government have said today.

I shall take my cue from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd in dealing first with the most contentious and objectionable part of the Bill—part 4, which covers judicial review. What is it about this Lord Chancellor and judicial review that the mention of it makes him behave in an irrational and unreasonable way? He has taken to the columns of the Daily Mail to denounce one of our most important constitutional safeguards as

“a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners.”

It is unclear whether those left-wing campaigners include the Countryside Alliance, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, UKIP’s Stuart Wheeler and numerous Conservative councils, all of whom have initiated judicial reviews in recent times. However, the senior judiciary’s response to the Lord Chancellor’s consultation shot that particular fox when it stated that it had seen no

“evidence of inappropriate use of judicial review as a campaigning tool, and it is not the experience of the senior judiciary that this is a common problem.”

The Lord Chancellor has already taken bites out of judicial review by imposing additional fees and limiting the time for bringing a claim, in some cases to six weeks. He is also going to restrict the use of legal aid by statutory instrument, rather than through primary legislation. He would wish to hobble applicants more by restricting the recovery of costs until beyond the permission stage and allowing defendants to intervene at that stage with the prospect of recovering their costs. The Bill contains a variety of additional ways to discourage judicial review by increasing applicants’ costs or putting them at risk of paying defendants’ costs. Protective costs orders will not be abolished, but they will be available only in narrow circumstances and once permission is granted.

The worst aspects are in clauses 50 and 53, attacking both the raison d’être of judicial review to correct Executive error in decision making and the ability of third parties to intervene in the public interest and to assist the court. Already heavily criticised, the new test in clause 50 refuses permission where it is “highly likely” the outcome for the applicant

“would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred”.

This confuses unlawfulness with remedy. It will encourage bad decision making and it is likely to lead to a full trial of the issues at permission stage. Lord Pannick, in an article that has already been quoted today, has said that the clause will give the Government a

“get out of jail free card”,

and allow public bodies to

“avoid a hearing and judgment on the legality of their conduct.”

Under clause 53, third parties—often non-governmental organisations, charities and human rights organisations—that intervene in judicial reviews to clarify issues that often assist the court will now be severely discouraged from doing so by cost penalties. Yet Lady Justice Hale of the Supreme Court has said that

“interventions are enormously helpful…The most frequent are NGOs such as Liberty and Justice, whose commitment is usually to a principle rather than a person. They usually supply arguments and authorities, rather than factual information, which the parties may not have supplied.”

In aggregate, these proposals mean that only applicants of substantial means will be able to bring a claim or risk the costs of losing it. In a country without a written constitution, judicial review is one important way of holding the Executive to account. This Government want to insulate their bad decision making from legal challenge and place themselves outside the rule of law. They are strengthening Executive power and weakening a critical check on the power of the state. This Lord Chancellor, for misguided party political motives and as part of a sustained attack on access to justice, is undermining our civil liberties, and these changes should be against everything the Liberal Democrats stand for. Under this Government, seeking justice is getting harder and these proposals show them on the side of their corporate friends, not of individual citizens and communities. Politicians in power might find judicial review an awkward irritant, but that is precisely what it is intended to be. Combined with the cuts to legal aid, limitations on no win, no fee cases, and threats to the Human Rights Act and European convention, this proposal amounts to a sustained attack on the rights of individual citizens to hold those in power to account. As the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger puts it,

“one must be very careful about any proposals whose aim is to cut down the right to judicial review”.

He has also said:

“The courts have no more important function than that of protecting citizens from the abuses and excesses of the executive.”

We have serious concerns about other parts of the Bill. As they stand, the plans for secure colleges may prove damaging to thousands of young offenders in our criminal justice system. The Bill leaves a question mark over the future of secure children’s homes, which cater for the most vulnerable young people. Such homes typically house small numbers of children, provide intensive support and are staffed by highly qualified specialists in social care. The homes have good educational outcomes and are recognised as the preferred model of youth custody, but they look set to lose out to the Lord Chancellor’s new and untested pet project. It is untested according to the Government’s own impact assessment, but still £85 million is needed to build just one secure college.

The Justice Committee pointed out in its report last March that the average time in youth custody is only 79 days, so most young offenders would not be in a college long enough to improve their basic skills. What levels of training or qualification would the college staff have? Why will college custody officers be empowered to use “reasonable force” for the maintenance of “good order and discipline”? That may well be unlawful under the European convention on human rights, according to a Court of Appeal 2008 ruling and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which stated in 2007:

“Restraint or force can be used only when the child poses an imminent threat of injury to him or herself or others, and only when all other means of control have been exhausted. The use of restraint or force, including physical, mechanical and medical restraints, should be under close and direct control of a medical and/or psychological professional. It must never be used as a means of punishment.”

As regards part 3 of the Bill, we support the use of single justices, given that their jurisdiction will apply only to summary, non-imprisonable offences where an adult defendant pleads guilty. However, we object strongly to taking these cases out of the courtroom and into offices away from public view. Such an approach damages the principle of British justice that cases are heard and the results made known in public. This Government are too fond of secret courts, and even in minor cases the principle of open justice should be rarely departed from. We agree in principle that convicted criminals could contribute to the costs of trial, but the substantial amount of uncollected fines from criminals already totals more than £1 billion and it is likely that this proposal will just add to the total of uncollected moneys from criminals. We have no objection in principle to leapfrog appeals, for example, on issues of national importance, though they are most likely to be used by government trying to hurry the process up. The danger is that this simply overloads the Supreme Court and that the issues it has to deal with are insufficiently refined by earlier hearings.

It is a good idea to update the jury room process and the rules on reporting cases to accommodate the social media age. The Attorney-General is to be commended for taking a personal interest in the limitations on reporting and in discouraging jurors from using social media to research or publicise details of trials. However, the Government fail to provide any support to juries in explaining their roles and remit as part of any new offences, and it is not clear whether they have considered the full implications of the numbers of people using social media and the variety of methods available. We have no objection to raising the age of jury service to 75.

There are two glaring problems with part 1 of the Bill. It does not do what it says on the tin, which is to protect the public adequately from violent and dangerous offenders, but it does incur costs and prison resources that the Government do not have in place. I fear that the hon. Member for Shipley may have been slightly taken in by the rhetoric rather the actuality of what is in part 1. The changes to sentences for the most serious and violent criminals are a poor substitute for indeterminate sentences for public protection, which this Government abolished in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—[Interruption.] I do like to mention that, because it is the one thing that we both agree on.

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am afraid that the Government have been playing catch-up ever since IPPs were abolished, but none of what is proposed offers the same level of public protection. The Government’s own impact assessment states that the sentencing changes will require 1,050 additional prison places, but there are fewer than half that currently available. It also states that the costs of additional custody are not quantified. We noted with concern the Lord Chancellor’s inability to answer any of the questions about his Department’s budgets. Proposals in part 1 will also see a greater work load for the Parole Board, with an additional 1,100 Parole Board hearings a year, according to the Government’s impact assessment. However, no additional resources are being made available, at a time when Parole Board staff numbers have already been cut by nearly one in five.

We support the ban on the possession of extreme pornographic images depicting rape and other non-consensual sexual penetration. That is a welcome victory for campaign groups such as Rape Crisis South London and the End Violence Against Women Coalition. We support the restrictions on the use of simple cautions.

Criminal justice Bills have a reputation for being Christmas tree Bills, and this one is no different. It is a mixture of the minor and non-contentious with some major, damaging and poorly thought-out measures, such as those in part 4, which, if they survive here, will be butchered in the other place.

This is also quite a mean little Bill, reflecting the character of its author. It further limits the rights of the citizen against the state, and it scratches around to find some more savings because the Treasury has been overpromised. Desperate to impress the Prime Minister, this is the best that the Secretary of State could come up with. Much of it is unexceptional or unobjectionable. It is legislation for legislation’s sake, and is designed to fill an intellectual and actual void in the Government’s programme. It is irrelevant to the big issues being played out in our justice system. It reinforces the growing view in the country that it is time for this failing Lord Chancellor and this Government to move on.