Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 2—Assaults on police constables (No. 2)—

“In section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996, leave out from ‘offence’ to end of subsection (1) and insert—

‘and liable—

(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine, or to both;

(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 24 months, or to a fine, or to both.’”

This new clause would make assaults specifically on police constables carry greater penalties than are currently available to match the new offence and also to ensure that Crown courts have greater powers of sentence for the offence than magistrates’ courts.

New clause 4—Assaults in prison—

“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 5—Assaults in prison (No. 2)—

“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—

‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 6—Assaults in prison (No. 3)—

“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—

‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.

New clause 8—Assaults in prison (No. 5)—

“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.

New clause 9—Assaults in prison (No. 6)—

“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 10—Assaults in prison (No. 7)—

“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—

‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 11—Assaults in prison (No. 8)—

“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—

‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.

New clause 13—Assaults in prison (No. 10)—

“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.

New clause 14—Assaults in prison (No. 11)—

“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 15—Assaults in prison (No. 12)—

“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—

‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.

New clause 16—Assaults in prison (No. 13)—

“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—

‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.

New clause 18—Assaults in prison (No. 15)—

“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—

‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”

This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted a prison during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.

Amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after “battery” insert “including spitting”.

This makes explicit that this section applies to incidents of assault or battery that are spitting.

Amendment 9, page 1, line 10, leave out “12” and insert “24”.

This amendment would increase the sentence for the new offence from 12 to 24 months in Crown courts to allow for longer sentences and to ensure Crown courts have greater powers of sentence for the offence than magistrates’ courts.

Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 2, line 39, at end insert—

“(aa) an offence under section 3 (sexual assault) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003”.

This causes the fact that the victim was an emergency worker to be an aggravating factor in cases of sexual assault.

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted to support the Bill today—a Bill that I have supported from the outset. I am pleased to be one of its sponsors. May I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on getting his Bill to this point and on using his customary charm to do so? I also congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who has played an invaluable role in supporting the hon. Gentleman in getting the Bill to where it is today. As we all know, she is a doughty supporter of the police, and I know that they appreciate her support greatly. While I am at it, may I thank the Minister, who has played a crucial role in ensuring that the Bill has got to this stage? We are all very grateful for the constructive way in which Ministers have engaged with the process.

My amendments begin with new clauses 1 and 2. I have quite a few to go through, but I will rattle through them as quickly as possible. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Well, everything is relative. I will also ensure that I do my amendments justice.

New clause 1 would make assaults on police constables carry the same penalty as the new offence in the Bill, not just the six months currently available to the courts. New clause 2, which I will discuss together with new clause 1, would make assaults on police constables carry a greater penalty than the new offence and ensure that Crown courts had greater powers of sentencing for the offence than magistrates courts. The two new clauses are alternatives—people may consider which one they think would do the job. I would be perfectly content with either.

In an ideal world, I would like to see the highest sentences possible given for offences against the police. Assaulting a police officer is currently a summary only offence that cannot usually be dealt with by the Crown court, and certainly no more than a six-month sentence can be given. I appreciate that assaults against police officers can be charged as other non-police offences of violence, but that is another story. It is relevant to the new clauses, but not something I want to dwell on. I believe that if we have an offence of assault against a police officer, it should attract a robust sentence, because in reality a lot of assaults against the police will be charged in this way.

I have been helpfully informed by the West Yorkshire Police Federation of the number of such assaults in West Yorkshire. Perhaps, in passing, I might praise Nick Smart from the West Yorkshire Police Federation, who does a fantastic job of representing the interests of his members. He is absolutely first class and has done a brilliant job in helping with this Bill. He gave me the Home Office figures that had been collated for April 2016 to March 2017, which showed that there were 1,240 recorded assaults on West Yorkshire police officers in one year. Those figures are not deemed 100% accurate, but they certainly give an idea of the number of assaults going on. The West Yorkshire police figures, based on recorded crime, show that there were 1,729 recorded assaults on police officers from April 2017 to March 2018.

I am sure everybody would appreciate that those are very high figures. They mean that nearly five West Yorkshire police officers are assaulted every day. To me, that is completely and utterly unacceptable, and it is one reason why the Bill is so worthy and important.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about recorded cases, but does he accept that in their normal line of duty, there is an acceptance that police officers are roughed up and pushed around? Much of that is not even taken into account.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The official figures and the recorded figures are likely to be the tip of an iceberg. Many instances will go unreported and unrecorded. Even though the figures are extremely high, they almost certainly understate the issue.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Are the five assaults a day generally carried out by five separate people or by the same people? If the Bill comes into law and the people committing the offences are imprisoned, will that be a relatively small number of frequent offenders or a large number of people who have done it once?

[Philip Davies]

As always, my hon. Friend raises a very good point. I hope later to deal with part of that issue, because there are persistent offenders who assault police officers time and time again. Even when they are found to have done it time and time again, the sentences that are imposed can be derisory. If there is more robust sentencing, it is blindingly obvious that the more criminals there are behind bars, the fewer criminals there are out on the streets committing crimes. That would certainly apply here. The more of these characters we can send to prison, the less chance there will be of police officers being assaulted. My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point.

New clause 1 mirrors the Bill with 12-month sentencing powers in magistrates courts and Crown courts. Of course, magistrates do not yet have 12-month sentencing powers for one offence. In reality, they would be left with just the six months they have now. I hope that one day that will change so that magistrates can sentence people to up to 12 months for all the offences we are talking about today.

I say to the Minister that we have promised magistrates for many years that we will increase their sentencing powers to 12 months. The law has been passed; it just has not been brought into effect. The Government have promised magistrates those extra powers for many years, and the Select Committee on Justice has reported on that and said that it should be done straight away. It would certainly help in relation to this Bill. I hope the Minister will reflect on the fact that we need to give magistrates those additional sentencing powers, not least because it is much cheaper to prosecute offences in the magistrates court than to take them to the Crown court.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I seek a small clarification. When the hon. Gentleman says that “we” have promised magistrates an extension of their sentencing powers for some time, does he mean we the Conservative party, we the Conservative Government, we the coalition Government or we collectively as a Parliament?

[Philip Davies]

All of the above. Labour introduced this power in legislation, but did not enforce it. The Conservative party has promised it in manifestos and still has not delivered. The previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised it to the Magistrates Association personally and still did not deliver it. I hope that at some point somebody, whichever side of the House they are on, keeps the promise they have made to magistrates, because both parties are guilty of promising something and not delivering it.

New clause 2 would—

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to new clause 2, I want to raise a query about new clause 1. My reading of the Bill, particularly clause 3, is that it would cover an assault on a police officer. Does he not believe that prosecutors would look to charge under this Bill? Why is it necessary to amend the old legislation if the Bill will be available to a prosecutor in an appropriate case?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Because the Police Act 1996 will still be on the statute book, so it will still be possible for people to be prosecuted under that Act. All that I am asking for is a common-sense new clause to even up the law. If we got this Bill, which says that the sentence should be up to 12 months, in statute, why on earth would we keep in law an Act that says that the maximum sentence for assaulting a police officer is six months? It makes no sense at all. My new clause would simply ensure that the law is tidied up. It is an inevitable consequence of passing this Bill, and I would hope that it is not particularly controversial, because it is simply about ensuring that the law is sensible. Otherwise we would have two separate laws, both supposedly dealing with the same thing and carrying different maximum sentences, which is the sort of thing that brings the law into disrepute.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I just want to clarify something. When my hon. Friend talks about an under-charging issue, does he mean that, in the example of an officer’s finger being severed, a more serious charge could have been brought—grievous bodily harm, I would imagine—that would have attracted a much higher sentence? Therefore, it may not be primary legislation that needs to be changed, but simply the charging practices of the Crown Prosecution Service.

[Philip Davies]

That is all very well in theory, and I am pretty sure that that would do the trick in an academic dissertation, but the problem is what we see in the real world time and again. I would be astonished if any Member could not think of an example of a criminal who had committed a serious offence being under-charged and prosecuted for a lesser offence. The reasons for that are numerous, but the biggest one is as follows.

This country supposedly does not have the American system of plea bargaining, but we do in reality. No matter how much the criminal justice system would deny it, we do have that system. The CPS will say that it is going to charge somebody with a serious offence, and the person will say, “I am going to plead not guilty to that.” The defence solicitor or barrister will no doubt then say, “I’ll tell you what, if you charge them with a lesser offence, my client will plead guilty.” So to avoid a trial or to save time or whatever, the CPS, which often feels overstretched, will say, “Oh, go on then. We will charge them for the lesser offence. It will not be the actual offence that they committed, but it will get them a criminal record and get us a guilty plea. It will tidy up our figures, and we will be able to say that we have brought somebody to justice.” The CPS will then consider that a great success. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the victim of the crime, who presumably is barely even considered in this box-ticking, target-driven agenda, sees the person who committed the offence against them being given a derisory sentence. That is what we see time after time. Anybody who thinks that we do not is not living in the real world, because it happens on a daily basis in the criminal justice system.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) is right that the responsibility clearly lies with the CPS to charge people appropriately for the offence they have committed—nobody disagrees with that principle—we know that that does not happen in practice. Therefore, even if the CPS does what it seems to do on a regular basis and charges people for a lesser offence, it is beholden upon us to ensure that the judge or magistrate has an appropriate sentence to give out when the most egregious cases come before the courts. In the example that I just gave, a police officer actually lost a finger but the defendant was charged with assaulting a police officer, and we cannot let it stand that the sentence can be just six months, or even just 12 months.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In that example, my hon. Friend shines a light on the potential issue here. Under the circumstances that he has indicated, there is no doubt that the defendant should be charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. If, under my hon. Friend’s new clause, a defendant is charged with the maximum penalty of 12 months and pleads guilty, they will be entitled to a third off the sentence and would serve only half. In any event, the penalty would therefore be far less than he desires. The real issue here is whether the proper charging decision is made, because that is what makes the material difference to the sentence. This is about the difference between whether someone spends two months or three months in custody.

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend seems to be agreeing with amendment 9 and that he thinks that the sentence in the Bill should be more than 12 months, perhaps 24 months. I will take that as support, but I am unsure whether I have accurately deciphered what he was trying to say. However, he is right that the CPS should charge people for the appropriate offence, but the point is that it does not, and I can assure the House that things will be the same after this Bill comes into effect. The CPS will still prosecute people for offences that it knows will get a conviction. When someone goes before the courts for a particular offence, we must ensure that the judge or magistrate has the appropriate sentencing powers to make sure that justice is done properly and is seen to be done properly. At the moment, however, that is not the case.

I wish that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) was right. I wish that the utopia he describes, in which the CPS accurately prosecutes people for the serious offences that they have committed every single time, was the reality. If that were the case, there would probably be no need for this Bill, but the fact is that the CPS does not do that. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. My hon. Friend has much more expertise in the criminal justice system than me—[Interruption.] On the right side of it, obviously. I respect my hon. Friend’s opinion, but debates in this House on justice issues can often resemble a lawyer’s dinner party. Things can be very interesting, but most people in the real world do not really give a stuff about that. They want to know about what is happening on the ground, rather than what the legal profession would like us to think is happening, which are two very different things.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says about the reality of the prosecution system and how it operates on the ground, but this Bill is about a little more than just the legal mechanisms we want the Crown Prosecution Service to follow. It is about the signal we send out. It is about trying to change the culture. Right now, we have a situation in this country in which many people think it is okay to engage in this behaviour. Yes, we need to change the technicalities of the law, but we must send out a stronger signal on what is acceptable in society. There must be a change in culture, as well as in practice.

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure I agree. To be perfectly frank, I get rather tired of people passing legislation on Fridays just to send a signal. We could send a signal just by saying something, but we are in the business here of passing law. It would be a rather wasted opportunity if all we achieve today is sending a signal from this House that assaulting police officers and other emergency workers is a terrible thing. I do not want us just to send a signal; I want to see people who are guilty of these offences spend longer in prison. That is what I want to see: not a signal but a real, tangible difference. I am not sure that sending a signal will do the job. We will have achieved something when some of these terrible people end up with longer prison sentences, and that is what my amendments are designed to do.

In the case of the woman who caused a police officer to lose her finger, the maximum sentence on a guilty plea, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham intimated, is actually four months, even given the number of offences of assaulting other police officers. Of course, a maximum of only half the sentence would be served. So, actually, two months in prison is the maximum that person could face for assaulting numerous police officers, leading one of them to lose their finger. In this country we should be ashamed that that is the maximum sentence a court can impose on that person. In my opinion, and for many people in this country, that is a sick joke.

Again, as my hon. Friend said, two years is probably too little, but two years is certainly better than six months. Should the Crown Prosecution Service do what it does day in, day out and undercharge people, surely we must all agree that giving the courts the opportunity to sentence a person to two years in prison is better than the current situation. The purpose of my new clauses is to make sure we can guarantee that, by whichever route a person ends up in court for this offence, a more appropriate sentence can be handed out.

Another more recent example of why the amendments could be helpful is the case of Leroy Parry, who was convicted this week of biting a police officer. He was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison, despite having six previous convictions for assaulting police officers among his 42 previous offences. The police officer, who apparently needed blood tests and antibiotics after being bitten, said that the level of violence exhibited by Parry was the worst he had seen in more than 14 years in the police force.

Increasing the sentencing options for this offence would ensure that magistrates and judges can take the offence more seriously, and much bigger sentences could then quite rightly be handed down by the courts. We would no longer be tying the hands of magistrates and judges, who I am sure also feel frustrated when they cannot pass the sentence they would want to pass. It would mean the seriousness of Parliament to ensure higher sentences for those who assault the police would be recognised, and hopefully sentences, overall, would be higher as a consequence.

This is necessary because the figures are incredible. I asked several years ago how many previous convictions for assaulting a police officer someone had managed to rack up without being sent to prison for doing it again, and the answer showed that, in one year, a person with 36 previous convictions for assaulting a police officer had assaulted at least one more officer and still avoided being sent to prison altogether. By anyone’s standards, surely that is completely unbelievable and completely unacceptable. That is what we should aim to tackle with this Bill.

Such sentences do nothing to help the police, do nothing to deter criminals and do nothing to make our streets safer. If one of my amendments were to be accepted, it would at least assist in increasing the likely consequences of assaulting a police officer, which would hopefully deter some people or, at the very least, keep the culprits off our streets for longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

Yes, my hon. Friend is an expert.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I made exactly this point on Second Reading and in Committee. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have not been able to find a single other offence in which the sentence in a magistrates court is exactly the same as the sentence in the Crown court, and I hope to develop that point in due course if I am given the opportunity to make a speech.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As I said, he is an expert in this field. The fact that someone with his expertise cannot think of another offence that carries the same penalty in both courts says a great deal, so why would we do it in this Bill?

I hope the Minister is making profuse notes, because I feel I am scoring some runs here. I do not think many people would disagree if he were to say he is prepared to accept these new clauses. I do not think there would be many Divisions on them. That raises a question: if he will not do that, why does he think that this offence should be unique in the criminal justice system by carrying the same penalty in both the magistrates court and the Crown court, and why does he not believe that the Crown court should have powers for harsher sentencing, which happens, as we have just heard, in respect of every other offence we can think of? I hope the Minister will reflect on that during the debate and perhaps give us a positive response. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said he mentioned this on Second Reading and the hon. Member for Rhondda said he hoped we would come back to this point on Report, so my amendment seeks to make sure that we do that.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I am interested in this fascinating speech. Perhaps to prefigure some of the arguments that will be made from the Dispatch Box, let me say that one issue about increasing the sentence to 24 months is that we would, in effect, be saying that somebody who assaults an emergency worker or police officer receives not twice but four times the maximum sentence that would be received were the attack to be on an “ordinary” victim. Is there not a question of proportionality in terms of the relationship between the equality of citizens in general and their right to be protected as victims, and the special status of a uniformed officer, if it is suggested that an increment of four is better than that of two?

[Philip Davies]

The Minister makes a reasonable point, but he is working on the basis that the existing general sentencing for assault is right and should be the benchmark by which we judge everything else. My argument is that most people would consider that maximum sentence to be derisory, so we would at least be making this one appropriate. If the Minister wants to follow through on his point, he could then increase the maximum sentence for assaults on everybody else. He would be happy, because the approach would be proportionate, and I would be happy because we would have some tougher sentences on the statute book—everyone would be a winner. I hope that he is moving in the right direction. If we passed my new clauses and amendment today and then changed the other sentences, I would be doing cartwheels.

I shall discuss new clauses 4 to 6, 8 to 11, 13 to 16 and 18 together—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can sense the disappointment in the Chamber; can you, Madam Deputy Speaker?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Just for clarification, no, I cannot sense the disappointment. The hon. Gentleman has just made a very wise statement and he has the House with him.

[Philip Davies]

As usual, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I have said until I am blue in the face, I would like all sentences handed down by the courts to be served in full. At the very least, however, offenders should not automatically be released halfway through their sentence. That was a scandal—

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I understand why the hon. Gentleman has tabled these measures, and particularly new clause 4, because figures released yesterday show that prisoners attacked officers 2,327 times in the last quarter of 2017 alone. A guard is being hit every hour in our prisons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to this catastrophe in our prisons. It is appalling that our prison officers have to face that on an almost daily basis. We in this country and in this House should be ashamed of that. We should be ashamed that the people who commit those assaults on prison officers are not properly punished for doing so. When the last Labour Government introduced the law that automatically released every prisoner halfway through their sentence, it was a scandal. You were here then, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you probably recall that the then Conservative Opposition were apoplectic, as they should have been, about the Labour Government introducing automatic release for people who were halfway through their prison sentence.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), the then shadow Justice Secretary, made that particularly clear on Second Reading of the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. He said:

“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. Combined with the early release scheme, this means that an offender sentenced to a year in jail is usually out after little more than five months. The policy amounts to a deliberate dishonesty. It damages the trust that victims and wider society place in the courts, and it encourages criminals to hold the system in contempt.”

If this were our Bill, we would introduce provisions to restore honesty in sentencing…We would ensure that convicted criminals served the full sentence handed down to them by the judge.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 79.]

That was magnificent, but since we got into government, there has been absolutely nothing.

We are still presiding over a system in which people who are sent to prison are automatically released halfway through their sentence, irrespective of whether they have assaulted a prison officer or not, of whether they have misbehaved in prison or not, and of whether they are still a threat to the public or not. They have to be released halfway through the sentence and that is an absolute disgrace. It defies belief that we in this House can sit here and allow that to continue. If any Member believes our constituents think that is an acceptable state of affairs, they are in cloud cuckoo land. People need to get out more if they think that that is what the public expect from the criminal justice system—it is an absolute scandal. We should be ashamed of the fact that the House is not doing anything about it. It is a recipe for disaster if early release is not linked to behaviour in our prisons, and it is wrong in principle to let everyone out early, regardless of their behaviour or concerns about their likely reoffending.

Perhaps the Government are not with me on that, despite having stood for this belief in the past, but my proposals would mean that prisoners who assaulted a prison officer would not be eligible for automatic release. That would be a minor consolation prize to offset the joke of our sentencing regime, and it would link release back to behaviour in prison in a small way.

To build on the point made by the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), I should point out that the House of Commons Library stated last year:

“There were 6,430 assaults on prison staff, 761 of which were serious. This was an 82% rise on the number of assaults on prison staff in 2006 and was a 40% increase from 2015.”

Even more worryingly, the Ministry of Justice’s most recent figures show:

“There were 7,828 assaults on staff, up 22% from the previous year. Serious assaults on staff reached 787 in the 12 months to September 2017, up 3% on the previous period. Assaults on staff in the latest quarter increased by 11%”,

as the hon. Gentleman said. According to the Ministry of Justice, in June 2017, there were 43,403 staff in Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service. Not all of them will have even come into contact with prisoners, and 8,758 were in the national probation service, but even taking the staffing figure at its highest, we still see a staggeringly high rate of assaults. The numbers have massively increased in the past 10 years, which coincides with people being automatically released halfway through their sentence irrespective of how badly they behave in prison. Someone does not need to be a rocket scientist to realise that if a criminal sees that they can get away with such behaviour yet still be released halfway through their sentence, it is not surprising that lots of people behave badly in prison.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend see this through the prism of the fact that consideration for early release should be seen as a privilege and that, if someone abuses it, the bottom line is that they should lose it?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. I am perhaps a bit more hardline—[Hon. Members: “No!”] When I was at school, those who behaved would be let out on time, but those who misbehaved would be kept in for longer. It seems to me that our prison system should reflect that. We should expect prisoners to behave well in prison. Those who do should serve the sentence handed out by the courts, but those who misbehave should serve longer. That is what I would like to see and, I think, what most of the public would like to see.

I certainly take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). If we are to allow people to be released early, that should be conditional on good behaviour in prison, rather than the automatic right that it is at the moment. That automatic right—the figures and the correlation are perfectly clear—is part of the reason behind the increasing number of assaults on prison officers, because there is no consequence for the prisoner.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I know that my hon. Friend thinks that I am a bit of a lefty on many things, so he might be surprised to hear that I have a great deal of sympathy with many of his points, particularly his last one. Long Lartin Prison is in my constituency. When we say that we want to be tough on prisoners, we are really saying not that we need to be unreasonably tough, but that we are treating them how they should expect to be treated in the light of their behaviour. My hon. Friend is making some valid points.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend; this is a red letter day.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

The one issue that the hon. Gentleman missed out is the lack of prison officers. As the POA will tell him, the numbers are insufficient and they are going down because of the problems in our jails. We need to recruit more prison officers.

[Philip Davies]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you would rightly start to pull me up if I were to go down the rabbit hole that the hon. Gentleman is trying to take me down, as that would not be relevant, particularly to these measures. However, I think that everybody has accepted that there is a shortage of prison officers. To be fair to the Government, they have done a pretty good job of recruiting quite a lot of additional officers over a fairly short timescale. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I would say that his point is one with which everyone agrees, which is why the Government have done something to increase the numbers. Whether or not that is enough is a different question, but we should give the Government credit where it is due.

There are 21 assaults on prison staff each and every day, two of which are serious. Prison officers have a hard and dangerous job, and I am sick of hearing about the pathetic additions to sentences for prisoners who assault them. Members might be as shocked as I was to learn that, in 2015, the average number of extra days given to prisoners who assaulted prison staff was 16— absolutely ridiculous! I believe that if someone assaults a prison officer, they should immediately lose their right to automatic release. Let the message go out that the Government are on the side of prison officers, and that those who assault them can expect to be properly punished, not just given the derisory slap on the wrist that they are given at the moment.

I have spoken to the Minister about this, so I know that he is passionate about protecting our prison officers. If he wants to do something tangible to stop assaults on prison officers, he should accept my proposal, because that will make the biggest single difference to reduce the number of such assaults. It would make an enormous difference if criminals knew that they would no longer be allowed automatic early release.

My new clauses in this group relate to three categories of people. The first set—new clauses 4 to 6 and 8—relates to prisoners assaulting all emergency workers, as defined in the Bill. The second set—new clauses 9 to 11 and 13—relates to all prison officers and those acting in a similar capacity in prisons. The third, which is new clauses 14 to 16 and 18, relates just to prison officers. The measures were designed to give the House the maximum range to choose from so that we could select the most appropriate route. The provisions would stop prisoners from being released automatically or early from various types of prison sentences if they assaulted a relevant person during their sentences.

I think that new clauses 4 to 6 and 8, which cover all emergency workers, fit best with the Bill because, of course, prisoners can come into contact with health professionals and other emergency workers, such as police officers investigating subsequent offences. It seems to me that an assault on those people should also be covered. If Members feel that only assaults on prison staff should be covered, however, they can pick alternative new clauses, and if they think that only assaults on prison officers should be covered, new clauses 14 to 16 and 18 are available.

Any of those approaches would be better than the status quo. They would mean that prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months in prison could not be released automatically after six months or less if they had perpetrated an assault while in prison against any of the people I have mentioned. Prisoners serving fixed-term sentences of more than 12 months would also not be eligible for automatic release following an assault. Finally, the proposals would stop those who assault a relevant person from being eligible for early release.

In an ideal world, this would all be happening anyway—it would just be a matter of common sense—but I fear that common sense was thrown out of our criminal justice system an awfully long time ago. I understand that those serving life sentences and indeterminate sentences for public protection will already have any assaults and the like considered by the Parole Board before their release. I certainly hope that assaults are treated as a good reason not to release anybody, and that they would be a bar to people being released as early as would otherwise be the case. Otherwise, Parole Board hearings would be a farce, although some might argue that many already are.

If somebody has assaulted a person inside prison, they are perfectly capable of doing so outside prison, which is another thing that the Parole Board must bear in mind before release, and another reason why we should not automatically release such people early. At a time when assaults seem to be on the increase, we need much tougher action to protect those who come into contact with prisoners. Prisoners are clearly in prison for a reason. It is quite hard to be sent to prison these days, so those who are there, especially if they are serving long sentences, either have already committed a significant crime, or are repeat offenders. That is the only way to get incarcerated these days. If such people thought that they would have to serve their full sentence, rather than just a derisory extra 16 days in prison, they might well think twice about assaulting those who work in prisons to look after them and keep order. Anything that would reduce the number of assaults would surely be welcomed, and this would be a very effective deterrent.

I do not intend to speak to the two amendments in the group that were tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, as I am sure that he will do an excellent job of doing so, but I have added my name to them. They relate to spitting and sexual assault. I think we can all agree that spitting is absolutely disgusting and incredible dangerous, particularly to the emergency workers who face it. I appreciate that spitting already constitutes an assault, but I certainly see no harm in highlighting it separately, as the hon. Gentleman has. The West Yorkshire police federation says that spitting affected 21% of all police officers in the latest year, so the Minister should not underestimate how big a problem it is. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that sexual assault should be covered by the Bill—it would be perverse if it was not. Any assault, including sexual assault, should not be tolerated at all, and making this an aggravating factor is a welcome move. I hope that the Government will accept both the hon. Gentleman’s amendments.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I thought that I was going to follow him a little earlier, not least because he told me on the phone the other night that he was going to speak for 15 minutes, but we have loved every minute of it and inflation—[Interruption.] Yes, we were given a rather longer sentence than we anticipated. He is in favour of longer sentences—and paragraphs, clearly.

I will not go into the whole meaning of the Bill, as we are here today to discuss specific amendments. We are, after all, on Report. Before I go any further, I want to pay tribute to a significant number of Members on both sides of the House, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). I feel as if I am carrying the baton over the next stage, because this Bill very much started with her, so I want to pay tribute to her. In fact, there are Members in all parties in the House who support the legislation in broad terms. I hope that, by the end of today, we will have a Bill that is eminently suitable to go to the House of Lords and to be on statute book by the end of this year, preferably by the autumn so that the courts can start taking these matters more seriously. I will pay much fuller tribute later to the Ministers concerned depending on how they behave this morning. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Shipley for referring to my charm earlier; I am not sure whether he entirely carried the whole House at that point.

I want to speak to two amendments in my name. Amendment 2 adds the words, “including spitting” as a way of helping to define the concept of common assault or battery, which is in clause 1. There are three different types of spitting to which the law might refer. The first is at or on a person. The second is at or on property, such as on clothing. This matter has often come before the courts, but the outcomes of such cases tend not to be very satisfactory. None the less, there are instances where spitting on property could constitute criminal damage. The third category is spitting in the street, which was, until 1990, an offence carrying a £5 fine. Incidentally, the local authority in Waltham Forest and one other in, I think, Enfield now have £80 fines for spitting in the street—this is not spitting at anybody, but just spitting in the street. Interestingly, at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities were very keen to try to prevent this as a matter of good manners, and I think that we would all agree that it would be good to stop that here. However, that is not what this amendment is about. This is about spitting at a person.

It is interesting that the deliberate act of spitting at someone, for instance at a football match, is deemed a threat of further violence, demeaning the sport, and bringing the sport into disrepute. FIFA, for instance, counts it as violent behaviour, which can lead to a player being sent off. The Football Association in the UK expressly includes it as a sending-off offence. Indeed, the West Ham player, Arthur Masuaku, has only just finished a six-month ban for spitting. If Members watch the incident in that match, they will see that it was particularly disgusting and despicable. I think that every supporter of football would agree that the ban was wholly appropriate.

Section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 includes the statutory reference to common assault or battery, but it has no specific definition of what constitutes common assault. It is an old common law offence, which has been brought into statute law. In one sense, that is good, because it means that the courts can take cognisance of precedence and that they can look at a whole variety of different issues, but it does also mean that while the vast majority of people in this country would presume that deliberately spitting at another person constitutes assault, and there might have been some other physical element, which might be battery, it does not expressly say so in law.

By introducing a new offence of common assault or battery on an emergency worker, including all the emergency workers who are later defined in the Bill, we have effectively tried to bring that concept of common assault or battery from the Criminal Justice Act to apply to all spitting at emergency workers. The problem is that, as the statute does not expressly define spitting as being part of the offence of common assault or battery, there is anxiety in some circles that prosecuting authorities do not take the matter very seriously.

The truth is that there is a growing incidence of spitting at emergency workers. The West Midlands police, for instance, reported that in just one year—2016—there were 231 cases of police officers being spat at. Some of the instances are quite horrific. A few years ago, I was supporting legislation to ban foxhunting. There was a fundraising dinner in Cardiff for the Labour party, and many people who opposed foxhunting decided to come and protest outside. When they saw me arrive, from about 300 yards away, they decided to chase me down the street. The police bundled me into the back of a blacked-out van to protect me, and they locked the door. The slightly unfortunate thing was that they forgot that I was in the van and, four hours later, I was not able to get back out of the van. It felt as if I had been given a longer sentence than many others.

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[Michael Tomlinson]

If she is not going to make a speech, I am very disappointed. I look forward to her further interventions and certainly to her further work in the area of justice, because she speaks powerfully for it and is absolutely right in this case.

There are other examples of sentences in the Crown court where there is no penalty of imprisonment, but those fall into a different category. They are generally regulatory offences—exciting offences such as Town and Country Planning Act offences and the like, which get lawyers very excited and passionate, but perhaps no one else. In my research I could find no other equivalent, so it is worth pausing and reflecting on the fact that the Bill breaks new ground in that respect. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham came up with one other example of where there is a sentence of two years—he will probably dwell on that in greater length and with greater expertise than I ever could—in relation to contempt of court and the like, but again, that is slightly different.

We are breaking new ground in the Bill by having the same sentence for the magistrates court and the Crown court. However, in case anyone has not been following closely, I add that clause 1(4) clarifies that until section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is brought into force, the sentence will be six months rather than 12 months in the magistrates court. I am sure that that is part of the reason for the difference in sentences.

That brings me neatly on to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) made and to new clause 3 and amendment 11. I welcome the opportunity to touch briefly on both. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and I disagree fundamentally on many things about criminal justice and the criminal justice system, but he is right to say that there should be honesty in sentencing—we probably believe that for equal and opposite reasons, to be clear. He is also right to point out that the sections of the 2003 Act that would give magistrates this sentencing power have not been commenced.

One of two things should happen. Either we in this place should say that we want magistrates courts still to have the power to give sentences of six months and no more, or we should say that it is absolutely right to extend magistrates’ sentencing powers from six months to 12 months. If that is the position—from the earlier exchange, I think that respective Governments have held that view—we should get on and do it. I know that some Members in the Chamber who have sat or currently sit on the Justice Committee have looked at that issue, and I want to hear from them in greater detail. New clause 3 is also attractive for that reason, because it draws attention once again to the fact that the law supposedly passed in 2003 is not yet on the statute book. If we think it is the right thing to do, we should get on and do it.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems rather bizarre and pointless for the Government to agree to a piece of legislation that gives magistrates the power to send someone to prison for 12 months for a particular offence and then not give magistrates the power to send someone to prison for 12 months?

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[Robert Courts]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you rightly said, had I simply said what I intended to say—that we all owe a debt of gratitude to our emergency workers in the police, the ambulance service and everywhere else, and that it is important that they have the full weight of the law behind them—without preannouncing it, I would perhaps have finished that part of my speech by now.

As others have pointed out, there are some anomalies in the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said, its sentencing provisions are unusual. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), I have prosecuted these offences and others like it, and it is strange to have the same sentence on indictment as for summary offences. Broadly put, anyone charged with an either-way offence can choose between a summary trial, which is quicker and relatively straightforward and carries the prospect of a lesser sentence, and a jury trial in a Crown court, which takes longer, with the trade-off being that if they are convicted, they face the prospect of a greater sentence. There is therefore an important tactical consideration for those who advise clients and defendants but, strangely, the Bill entirely removes that.

As I understand the Bill, it contains little to compel anybody to opt for trial on summary jurisdiction—everybody would go for trial by jury. That is fine, in that trial by jury is the gold standard—we are rightly proud of trial by jury in this country—but the difficulty is that there is a big backlog of such cases. The vast majority of cases in this country are dealt with on summary jurisdiction, and if we encourage people to opt for trial by jury, we will simply increase the backlog. I therefore have some difficulty with how the Bill is phrased.

I understand the reasons behind new clause 1, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and the basis for the Government’s opposition, as I understand it, to his new clauses generally—it would be disproportionate to increase the maximum sentence on indictment by so much—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said, we ought to consider this anomaly, because it militates against the tactical concern that any lawyer will have when advising a client. There would be nothing to lose by going for a trial on indictment in front of a jury, which seems strange. It is also anomalous to have a 12-month sentence in a magistrates court, when, absent section 154 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 being brought into force, most other offences brought before a magistrates court carry a six-month sentence. That is odd. As I say, I support the Bill, so I take nothing away from what it seeks to achieve, but those points ought to be made quite clear.

It is important that we are clear about what we are seeking to do in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham made an excellent point that I would like to emphasise. There is a danger of legislating for the sake of doing something. We have had innumerable criminal justice Acts over the last few years. For those of us who have practised in the magistrates and Crown courts, it can be very difficult to keep up to date with the latest criminal justice sentencing Acts, in particular, and with the guidelines, which keep changing. There is a danger that in seeking to address a wrong, we legislate to do so, rather than simply insisting that the correct charging decisions are made, which is the point that my hon. Friend made. I understand the point about how we do that, which the hon. Member for Halifax made. There is no quick, easy answer. It is partly a matter of criminal justice guidelines being toughened in appropriate circumstances, and partly of the CPS working with its lawyers and training them to ensure that the correct decisions are made. It would be peculiar if, in the example given, when a police officer’s finger was bitten off, that was not charged as a GBH offence, which it clearly is.

[Philip Davies]

It was not.

[Robert Courts]

I am not familiar with the background of the case. Perhaps there was a good reason; perhaps there was not. I simply make the point that we need to be careful not to complicate the statute book by introducing offences that cover every precise situation, rather than simply using the more serious offences that already exist. Such a point was also well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham with regard to the Sexual Offences Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) in getting this Bill to Report stage. Having taken a private Member’s Bill through the House myself, I know that, even when the wind is fairly behind it, it is still quite a challenge to make sure that one gets something that can enjoy wider support.

It has been interesting to listen to the thoughtful speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and for Witney (Robert Courts), who applied their usual level of legal analysis to the Bill and helped to shape my understanding of some of the amendments.

It was particularly interesting, though, to sit through the, as always, robust speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who brought his own sense of common sense to this debate and to his new clauses and amendments. Sadly, however, I will have to express queries and concerns about one or two of his proposals. I will be interested to hear what the Minister says in response to them.

In my intervention on my hon. Friend on his new clause 1, I said that this Bill creates a new offence that we would expect prosecutors to look to in prosecuting common assault on emergency services workers. I accept that the thrust of the new clause is the idea of having different sentencing regimes for an older offence dating from 1996 as opposed to the new offence created by the Bill. I am not persuaded that it is the best idea to alter the old piece of legislation as well, because that gets us into a debate about whether we should be reviewing or removing certain provisions. It would be more useful to see what happens when the new offence comes in. We would rightly expect prosecutors to see the intention of Parliament in passing this specific new offence that covers assaults on emergency workers and look to use it rather than the old one. I would be tempted to look to see whether the old offence becomes redundant in future. Rightly, prosecutors will look to give the courts the sentencing powers available for this offence and consider the fact that Parliament has passed a new and more up-to-date piece of legislation. I was not persuaded by the arguments on new clause 1, but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments.

[Philip Davies]

We have heard from some of our learned colleagues about how the Crown Prosecution Service sometimes makes mistakes when charging people. Would it not be absurd if it were to charge somebody under the wrong offence—the old offence of 1996 and not this one—and when it went before the court, the court could not give the person the appropriate sentence that this House thinks they should get because it will be working to an old piece of legislation? Surely it would make sense to even up the sentence for both, and then whichever offence they were charged with, the judge or the magistrate could do the job.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his, as always, interesting intervention. I think it would make sense to see how the new law works out in practice. It would be quite bizarre if we saw a trend towards charging under the old offence rather than the new one. This is not about removing the ability to charge more serious offences. We need to be clear that this is about giving prosecutors an additional tool to deal with these issues. It is not about removing other offences. If someone attempts to murder a police offer, they clearly should be charged with attempted murder. If someone commits a serious assault on a police officer, they should be charged with ABH or GBH. This is about covering those who behave in a completely unacceptable manner towards an emergency services worker but do not trigger those types of offence, and we must be clear that Parliament’s intent is not for this to become a catch-all offence.

Perhaps in future there will be an appropriate time for a review. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will, as always, dutifully pursue the statistics on the use of this new offence, to ensure that prosecutors and courts have the powers to deal with those involved.

I sympathise with the call to up the sentence to a maximum of two years. I was interested to hear the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole on that point, and particularly on the issue of either-way offences. Normally, trial on indictment in the Crown court carries a higher penalty than a summary trial in the magistrates court.

The only thing I did not find particularly persuasive was the reference my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made to the proposed five-year sentence for animal cruelty. It is worth saying that that is the only charge available if someone has exhibited violence to an animal. We think of cases where animals have literally been tortured to death. At the moment, the effective maximum is about six months in jail, whereas this is not a catch-all offence. We are looking for more serious offences to sit alongside less serious ones.

I know from my experience last year of supporting Bills on that issue that my hon. Friend is a very strong supporter of appropriate sentences for animal cruelty. A sick thug who tortures a living creature to death should not be walking out of a court a free person; they should be heading down to the cells for a significant period of imprisonment. I just feel it appropriate to be clear that our intention is not for this to become a catch-all for a range of offences. For animal cruelty, that is the offence someone is charged with, and the court then reflects the seriousness of that offence in the sentencing.

[Philip Davies]

indicated assent.

[Kevin Foster]

I see my hon. Friend nodding his head.

New clause 3 suggests a review after two years. I am interested to hear from the Minister what proposals the Government have to monitor this new offence and its use once it comes into effect. I am rarely persuaded that putting a requirement for a specific review into legislation is the best thing to do, not least given the abilities of Members of the House to question Ministers, have debates, look for information and commission research from the Library. I am interested to hear how the Government propose to deal with that.

On new clauses 4 to 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I am probably more of the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan); there is a debate to be had around the early release scheme. I certainly sympathise with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) that this should not be seen as a right, but should be based on the fact that someone has behaved appropriately. Similarly, if someone comes out of prison on licence, it should be a licence on their behaviour, and if they breach the terms of that licence, the remainder of their sentence awaits them back in prison.

The one slight concern I have is what supervision and requirements there are of people after they are released, having gone back to complete their full sentence or having completed their full sentence in prison. That was highlighted to me recently in a case in my constituency where someone had been released from jail on licence and had then breached the terms of that licence. They were recalled to prison to complete their sentence, and once they had done so, probation had no role on release. There is very little restriction on what they do, unless they are on the sex offenders register, which has certain restrictions. Likewise, some of the support mechanisms and things that are available to those on licence are, ironically, not available to those who have been required to complete their whole sentence.

[Philip Davies]

It was very lucky that the person concerned went back to serve their whole sentence, because we now have fixed-term recalls, as my hon. Friend will know. Usually, when someone commits an offence when they have been released halfway through the sentence, they do not serve the remainder of their sentence; they serve only 28 days or sometimes 14 days of the sentence. Not only are they being automatically released halfway through, but if they breach the terms of their licence, they go back in for only 14 or 28 days. The whole thing is a scandal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many people who do things on behalf of the public in their daily lives are entitled to protection, but not all of them are covered by the Bill. There is a more fundamental point that relates particularly to sexual assault. We want to make it absolutely clear that what really matters in such circumstances is the brutal, undignified nature of that assault on anyone, regardless of their profession. That is why we have to get the balance right in sentencing.

This brings me to new clauses 4 to 18, which relate to assaults on prison officers. As a Justice Minister, I have strong empathy with the intention behind the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. Prison officers operate in an environment that the public are rarely allowed into. They have a dangerous and stressful job—I will touch on that a little more in my closing speech—and are entitled to a much higher degree of protection, but too often they do not receive it. We therefore think it absolutely right for them to be included among the emergency workers and for the maximum penalty for an assault on a prison officer to be increased from six months to 12 months. Beyond that, we want to do more to protect prison officers, including through the use of protective equipment and the devices they carry. We want to encourage the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to bring more prosecutions for assaults on prison officers. However, for two reasons, we do not think that this particular ingenious proposal—that someone assaulting a prison officer should have to serve twice the length of the sentence currently set out under the Criminal Justice Act 2003—represents an appropriate response.

The first reason, which is philosophical, is that if an individual has been put in prison for their original offence, they should be punished for that offence, with a subsequent offence judged and punished separately. For example, if an individual has been put in jail for 12 years for the importation of a class A drug, their punishment has been designed to fit that crime. If they then assault a prison officer, they need to be punished for assaulting a prison officer. Their initial crime of importing class A drugs should not be used to punish them for assaulting a prison officer.

The second reason, which is practical rather than philosophical, is that under the new clauses, someone who has been put in jail for 12 years would automatically get a further six years in jail if they assaulted a prison officer. However, someone who had been put in jail for six months would, under my hon. Friend’s proposals, get a further three months in jail, yet the assault that those two individuals had committed would be exactly the same.

[Philip Davies]

I think that the Minister might have slightly misunderstood my proposal, or perhaps he is not doing it justice. Much as I would like people to serve the whole of the rest of their sentence in full, that is not the actual proposal. I propose that they should not get automatic release halfway through their sentence, but it does not necessarily follow that they would have to serve their whole sentence. They just would not be automatically released halfway through their sentence, so they would have to spend a bit longer in prison, but that length of time would be determined by the Parole Board. I am not proposing that they would have to serve the whole of the remainder of their sentence, as the Minister seems to suggest.

[Rory Stewart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. Nevertheless, the fundamental point remains that the individual committing an assault should be punished for that common assault. They should be prosecuted, judged and sentenced in accordance with that assault. They should not be punished for that crime by the extension of a sentence designed for a separate crime.

That brings me back to the question of widening the scope of the Bill to take account of sexual assault, as is proposed in amendment 3. We have resisted such an amendment in the past because of our concern to have an emphasis on the sexual assault and the equality of all victims of sexual assault, regardless of the functions they were undertaking. However, having listened carefully to the arguments advanced, in particular by the hon. Members for Rhondda and for Halifax, both today and over the preceding weeks, we as a Government are now convinced that it would be correct to insert sexual assault into the parts of the Bill that deal with cases in which an offence against an emergency worker would be an aggravating factor, especially given the astonishing increase in the number of sexual assaults on emergency workers. As the hon. Member for Rhondda pointed out, between a third and half of all emergency workers currently appear to be reporting such assaults. On those grounds, while respectfully requesting Members not to press the other amendments and new clauses, the Government are willing to accept amendment 3.

Let me end by paying a huge tribute to everyone who has spoken today for the statement that they have made to a wider culture, as public representatives—representatives of us as a Parliament, us as the public, and us as the state.

[Philip Davies]

This very good debate has featured a great deal of expertise, which I have welcomed.

I am delighted that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) persuaded the Minister of his case in relation to sexual assault. He also spoke about spitting, as did the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). When my dad—remarkably, unbelievably—became the elected Mayor of Doncaster, he introduced a penalty for spitting, and I should like to think that more local authorities would do the same. I am sorry that we could not persuade the Minister on that issue, but an acceptance rate of 50% for the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda is certainly better than my track record. The rule is, I think, that those who want the Government to agree to something should come at it from a left-wing perspective, as that usually gives them a better chance of success than the approach of coming from a more conservative perspective. That is something I have learned over many years.

I was grateful for the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) about the sentencing powers of magistrates, and for what he said about our breaking new ground and the possibility that, as I argued, the Crown courts should be given bigger sentencing options. I commend the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for her support for my new clauses: she proved herself, again, to be a doughty supporter of police officers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) made an excellent speech, although he let himself down somewhat by saying that we in the UK send lots of people to prison, which is a myth that is constantly propagated by the liberal elite. Just for the record, the fact is that for every 1,000 crimes committed in this country, we send 17 people to prison. That is one of the lowest ratios anywhere in the world. I challenge my hon. Friends to find any country that sends fewer than 17 people per 1,000 crimes committed to prison. They will struggle to find many, although there are some— [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) is part of the liberal metropolitan elite. I repeat the fact—it came from the House of Commons Library, so I am sure she will not deny it— that for every 1,000 crimes committed, we send 17 people to prison. That is a fact. My hon. Friend may think that the proportion is too high; I rather think that it is too low.

[Gareth Johnson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, because I think we want to press on.

I was also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who made the same point about the sentencing powers of Crown courts and magistrates. The Minister did not really explain why we are giving them the same powers.

[Rory Stewart]

I will answer that point very briefly. The process-led point that is being made about the difference between the magistrates and Crown courts is concealing the bigger issue, which is that we do not believe the sentence in respect of emergency workers should be quadruple that in respect of other citizens. It is the quadrupling rather than doubling that leads us to reject that argument.

[Philip Davies]

I do the Minister a disservice—he did make that point and I apologise.

As well as talking about spitting, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse mentioned the fire service. I was pleased that he did, because that allows us not only to thank him for the service he gave for many years in the fire service, but to highlight the number of assaults that firefighters face, which he rightly spoke about. That number is massively on the increase in West Yorkshire, which is appalling. His contribution allows us to highlight the fact that firefighters are included in this legislation, and rightly so.

I was heartened by the support I received from my colleagues, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey), for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster), on my point about automatic early release, even if they did not all think that we should deal with it here and now in the Bill. I fear that the Minister has been slightly got at regarding this point either by his officials at the Ministry of Justice—they never want to send anyone to prison from what I can see, and certainly do not want any more people in prison—or by the Treasury. I cannot work out which, and perhaps it is both, but I hope, in all seriousness, that he will look at the issue again.

The Minister ought to be able to detect that there is widespread support in the House for not allowing people who assault prison officers to get automatic early release. If he will not do something about it as a Government Minister, I will certainly do what I did when the Prisons and Courts Bill was passing through the House before the last election and table an amendment to that effect. The Labour party kindly indicated that it would have supported that amendment, but we never got to it because of the election. The SNP kindly said that they would support that amendment to protect prison officers. I suspect that if the Government do not act on this, they will find themselves defeated if any such amendment is tabled to future legislation. I hope they will reflect on the strength of feeling that has been shown on both sides of the House to say that people should not be released from prison early if they assault prison officers. I hope he will go away and look at that issue again.

Finally, on new clause 1, which I am formally obliged to either press or withdraw, I am disappointed that the Minister has decided to leave on the statute book two pieces of law that have the same effect but carry two different sentences. He says there is no need for the new clause, but there is certainly no reason not to make the change to put both pieces of legislation in line and tidy up the law. I am sorry that he resisted such a modest proposal. Like other Members, however, I do not want to do anything to undermine the chances of the Bill getting through. It is a fantastic piece of legislation that I support wholeheartedly. With those reservations, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 2

Aggravating factor

Amendment made: 3, page 2, line 39, at end insert—

“(aa) an offence under section 3 (sexual assault) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003”.—(Chris Bryant.)

This causes the fact that the victim was an emergency worker to be an aggravating factor in cases of sexual assault.



Clause 4

Taking of samples under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984

[Chris Bryant]

I beg to move amendment 4, page 4, line 23, leave out clause 4.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I will be brief, because I think we all want the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) to be able to speak to her Bill. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on bringing forward this Bill and on the way he has gone about achieving success with it. I must say in passing that if anyone is thinking of bringing forward a private Member’s Bill, I would advise them to go and speak to the hon. Gentleman, because he has produced a perfect template for how such a Bill should be brought forward in such a way as to ensure that we have a good piece of legislation on the statute book, rather than simply producing a good idea that ends up being bad legislation. This has been a first-class example of that.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) deserves equal praise, because she has shown that she is a doughty supporter of all the emergency services but particularly of the police, not just in word but in deed, and I know how much they appreciate that. I also want to thank the two Ministers, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). They might not have gone as far as I would have liked—they seldom do—but without their constructive approach to the Bill, we would not be here today. We should not underestimate the role that they have played in ensuring that that has happened. I should also like to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). He does an awful lot of work in ensuring that Bills such as these get to this stage. He usually works under the radar and he does not get the credit he deserves, but I know that he does an awful lot to ensure that these Bills get through.

Our emergency services are incredibly important to all of us. They put themselves in harm’s way every single day, and we are all troubled by the rising tide of assaults that they face as they carry out their jobs. This legislation sends a signal that we support them, but it does more than that. I will celebrate every time a criminal who assaults an emergency worker gets a longer prison sentence as a result of this Bill. That is the reality of how this legislation will benefit people. It will ensure a longer prison sentence for those criminals who deserve to go to prison for longer, and that is a great outcome. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda on the way in which he has brought about this legislation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

The hon. Lady points to something with which I would agree. It would be appropriate if the number of women in that position in our society was greater. I am supporting International Women’s Day by visiting HMP Bronzefield on Thursday evening. I cannot commit to a timetable—the hon. Lady knows that—but I will certainly take away her suggestion.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

5. If he will extend the range of offences that can be appealed for being unduly lenient.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

As the House will be aware, a major change in the law was brought in in 1988 to allow victims to be able to challenge unduly lenient sentences. At the moment, that applies to the most serious indictable offences, but the Government have recently extended it to a range of terrorist offences.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but as he well knows the Government have promised for quite some time—including in our manifesto—to extend it to a further range of offences. When will the Government pull their finger out and extend the number of cases that can be appealed for being unduly lenient, as we have been promising for quite some time?

[Rory Stewart]

As I have already said in my answer, the most serious offences—murder and so on—are already covered by the unduly lenient sentence scheme. We have extended it twice in the past few years, but we are talking very closely to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General about looking at other opportunities to extend the scheme.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The review will need to consider exactly those points and seek to address the concerns arising from this case, which the hon. Lady has summarised.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

For many years, I have conducted a rather lonely campaign in this House against soft sentencing in the criminal justice system, and I suppose that I should be grateful that so many of those who have decried me over the years are now leaping on to the same crusade. May I urge the Secretary of State not to think that the case of Worboys is unique, but to look at soft sentencing across the board, not least the ridiculous situation that we still have on the statute book whereby people given a determinate sentence by law have to be released halfway through their sentence, no matter how badly they behave in prison and no matter how much of a threat they still pose to the public? Will he deal with that nonsense in the criminal justice system, as well as this particular one?

[Mr Gauke]

As always, my hon. Friend has made his case in a forthright manner, and his consistency is very evident. I dare say that today is not the last occasion on which he and I will debate this subject. I think we all agree that the public must have confidence in our criminal justice system and our sentencing policy.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not concede that there was a meaningful vote on 23 June 2016, when people voted to leave the European Union? The problem with the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is that it could be, and no doubt is designed to be, used to try to overturn and frustrate that meaningful vote. [Interruption.] My right hon. and learned Friend laughs, but it is a shame he does not have the courage of his convictions to admit that that is what his game is. If people in this House use that amendment for those purposes, the backlash from the British public will be like none seen before, and he should beware of that consequence.

[Chris Bryant]

Plenty of Members have plenty of courage about their convictions and have demonstrated it effectively in recent weeks. I do not think the hon. Gentleman should be deriding others because they have chosen to take a different direction. I am not sure whether he has been here for the whole debate—he might have missed a few minutes or indeed most of the hours. He is right that I am a remainer and I would prefer the country to remain in the EU—I admit that openly—but my constituents voted to leave and the country voted to leave, and we are going to leave. But we have to make sure we take the whole country with us, and we will not do that by a parliamentary process that gives far too much power to the Government and does not allow for proper scrutiny in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I agree. As I have said before, I also believe that there is a significant degree of agreement among all parties in this House, and probably in the House of Lords as well, about what the final agreement should look like. If the Government abandoned the strategy that they have so far adopted and decided to search for that consensus—“We’re going to try to get 650 MPs through the Division Lobby in favour of the final deal”—they would stand a better chance of getting the best deal for Parliament.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Philip Davies]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

No. The hon. Gentleman can point and hail as many cabs as he wants, but I am not going to give way to him again because others wish to speak.

All too often, the Government have urged us to accept clause 9 and the related measures on the basis of trust alone. As has already been said, it is just too difficult to see how we can put that trust in their hands. For a start, they have systematically ignored resolutions of the House over the past seven years; they have regularly refused to allow annulment debates on statutory instruments so that they could be meaningful—they have refused to do that even when they have guaranteed at the Dispatch Box that they were going to do so; and they have insisted on having majorities on all Committees. I fear that if we allow the Government to have excessive powers, they will tend to use every single one of those powers. The truth is that they seem to want a carte blanche.

I wish the Government welcomed the role of Parliament in this process, but I just do not detect that. The devil will be in the detail. The Government cannot just bamboozle the people with verbiage that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever: “Brexit means Brexit”, “a red, white and blue Brexit”, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, and all the rest of it. It is a denigration of the English language, let alone anything else.

What we actually need is a Bill, with words in it that have legal effect, because, in the end, this is an existential matter for Parliament. Are we really a sovereign Parliament if we surrender our power to the Government? Not really. Are we really a representative democracy if MPs are denied a truly meaningful role in the process? Not really. Are we really a United Kingdom Parliament if we carry only 52% of the country with us? Not really.

Sentencing

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I would have thought that the act of depriving someone of his or her liberty when they are sentenced to custody by definition deprives them of some absolutely vital civic rights. What we have announced today is a sensible and constructive way forward that we believe complies with the requirements on us under international law, and the Hirst judgment in particular, but does so in a way that respects the view repeatedly come to by this House.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State knows that I think giving the vote to any prisoners is idiotic, unjustifiable and about as popular with the general public as finding a rattlesnake in a lucky dip. As he has made great play of the rule of law, he must know that the European Court of Human Rights went way beyond what is in the convention when it made this ruling, so he might want to remind it of the obligations under the rule of the law, which are to stick to what is in the convention. It seems from his statement that he is putting the rulings of unelected, unaccountable pseudo-judges, many of whom are not even proper judges in their own country, above the views of the British public and the British Parliament. Will he at least have the courtesy to put this to a vote of this House, to make sure that what he proposes has the consent of the British Parliament?

[Mr Lidington]

We are not proposing any change in the law, as I have already said. The commitment to stay within the European convention on human rights, which includes the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, was in the party manifesto on which both my hon. Friend and I stood earlier this year. I do, however, agree with him that it is important to look for ways in which to respect and enlarge the margin of appreciation allowed to individual member states in interpreting the duties under the convention in the light of their national constitutional and legal traditions. We made a significant step forward when the UK held the chair of the Council of Europe and with the Brighton declaration negotiated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). In taking the Brighton declaration forward and seeking to implement protocol 15, I would hope that we can count on the support of my hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

These are not in fact new powers; they have been in use across the country for many years. They apply to arrests relating to debt and community penalty breaches, and they must follow the issue of a warrant of arrest from the criminal courts. Any use of these powers is overseen by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Following the triumph of the Conservative manifesto at the election, may I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on finding another half-baked and unpopular policy to put before the electorate: giving prisoners the vote? Will he acknowledge that nobody is taking the vote away from prisoners—they are taking it away from themselves? If voting is so important to them, perhaps they should not commit the crimes that lead to them being sent to prison in the first place. I urge him to reject this ridiculous policy, which goes down like a lead balloon with the electorate.

[Mr Lidington]

The Government are preparing their position ahead of the December meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. We will announce any changes in our position to Parliament in the usual way.

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

That is a very interesting question. As a former Minister, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that it is not for the Minister to pronounce on sentencing policy at the Dispatch Box. Of course, we want to reduce the prison population, but one of the best ways to do that is to reduce reoffending rates and to end the conveyor belt into crime by intervening before people end up in custody. That is more effective than arbitrarily letting people out of prison.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

If the Minister wants a zero-tolerance approach, may I suggest he change the law so that anybody involved in riots in prisons or assaults or attacks on prison officers is no longer eligible for early release but has to serve the full sentence handed down by the courts? That would give prison officers some of the support they deserve and would perhaps act as a deterrent to these appalling kinds of behaviour.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend has asked this question of me a number of times. He will be aware that a prisoner who is a perpetrator of a crime in prison will be prosecuted for that specific crime and, if convicted, will serve that sentence, and that has certainly happened in the case of the perpetrators of the Birmingham riots last year. That is a fair and just way to deal with this kind of situation.

Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 19, leave out subsection (4):

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 2, in clause 2, page 2, line 17, at end insert—

‘(2A) Before hearing an application for a guardianship order the court may require the applicant to take such further steps by way of advertisement or otherwise as the court thinks proper for the purpose of tracing the missing person.”.

Amendment 3, in clause 3, page 2, line 27, leave out “90 days”’ and insert “6 months”.

Amendment 4, in clause 7, page 5, line 18, leave out “4 years” and insert “2 years”.

[Philip Davies]

Let me set out from the start that these are probing amendments and I do not intend to push any of them to a Division. By anyone’s admission, this is quite a meaty Bill, running to 25 clauses, but we have had no scrutiny of it in the Chamber. It received its Second Reading on the nod, without any debate whatsoever, and here we are, with time pressing on, and we have had no opportunity before now to debate any of its provisions. I therefore tabled some probing amendments to tease out from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) why some of the Bill’s provisions—the timescales, for example—are as they are.

Amendment 1 would remove subsection (4), which states:

“A person who is detained, whether in a prison or another place, is to be treated for the purposes of this Act as absent from his or her usual place of residence and usual day-to-day activities.”

I want to tease out from my hon. Friend the reasoning behind the subsection, because there was no scrutiny of it on Second Reading.

In passing, I should say that we are discussing the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill, and a Missing Persons Guardianship Bill is going through the House of Lords. I am not sure whether that Bill’s provisions are different from this Bill’s, but perhaps Members in the other place are trying to achieve the same thing.

In 2014, the Government held a consultation entitled “Guardianship of the property and affairs of missing persons” in which, as far as I could see, the issue addressed by subsection (4) was not mentioned once. Furthermore, I checked the reasoning behind the inclusion of the subsection with the House of Commons Library, but the staff there confirmed that they had not been able to find out anything about its background. They could not explain why it was in the Bill, beyond its inclusion as an example.

After speaking to Library staff at further length, they said:

“The Bill defines a missing person as someone who is absent from their usual place of residence or their usual day-to-day activities. The reason for being absent may be because the person is detained. However, in addition, as in other cases, the first or second condition set out in subsections (2) or (3) must also be met. In most cases, the first condition is likely to be relevant—that is, that the person’s whereabouts are not known, or not known with sufficient precision to enable contact to be made.”

That was the Library’s explanation of why the subsection might be in the Bill but, given that the staff there were not entirely clear about it, I thought it important to table an amendment so that we could hear my hon. Friend explain it at first hand. That is why I see it as a probing amendment.

Amendment 2 would insert into clause 2:

“Before hearing an application for a guardianship order the court may require the applicant to take such further steps by way of advertisement or otherwise as the court thinks proper for the purpose of tracing the missing person.”

That would ensure that all reasonable steps had been taken to try to locate the missing person.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

On reflection, does my hon. Friend agree that the court probably has that power anyway? Someone seeking to obtain an order must surely have to show the court that they have taken all reasonable steps to discover where the missing person is..

[Philip Davies]

I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton will be able to confirm that, which is why I described the amendment as a probing one. I want it to be clear, on the record, that that is the case, because it was not entirely clear from looking through the Bill. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) is right—I am sure he is—but, as I said, it is a probing amendment so that we can get it confirmed on the record.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a valid point, but as far as I understand it good systems are already in place to determine whether a person is missing and all that side of it. There is, however, no system for looking after their estate or anything that they own if they are declared missing. The Bill is about helping the people left at home to deal with the property or the estate, or, indeed, to deal with the hardship that they might be facing because they cannot access funds or money, or get into the house and all those sorts of things. It therefore seems eminently straightforward and sensible.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. She is referring to the principle of the Bill, which I absolutely support. I do not intend to do anything to stop the Bill proceeding—that is not the point. The point I am making is that we are looking at the detail, and I want to ensure that we get it right. All hon. Members support the principle of the Bill. I do not want to scupper or affect the principle—she and I are as one on that. The purpose of the amendments is to ensure that we are happy that the details are right, because it is quite a chunky piece of legislation that deserves such scrutiny.

Amendment 2 is based on a requirement in the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993—I do not know whether I need to refer hon. Members to my registered interest as a landlord, but I have now done so—section 26 of which addresses applications when the relevant landlord cannot be found.

Similar legislation elsewhere in the world contains similar requirements before a guardian can be appointed, including in three Australian states—New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory—which set out a process under which an individual can seek to be appointed to manage the affairs of a person who is missing. There is a similar provision in Canadian law. That is the purpose behind the amendment. I want to ensure that we are happy that we have the detail right.

As hon. Members can see, amendment 3 would increase the amount of time from 90 days to six months for which an individual must be missing before a guardian can be appointed. This was specifically designed as a probing amendment, because it was the only way I could think of to tease out from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton why he set 90 days as the limit. The only way I could think of doing that was to propose an alternative. My alternative is six months, and I wonder whether 90 days is too short a time.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s scrutiny of this important legislation. He mentioned other territories around the world that use such legislation—New South Wales, Victoria and British Colombia—all of which use that 90-day period. It is therefore a sensible starting point.

[Philip Davies]

I have read the consultation, to which there were 40 responses, of which eight commented on the proposal that applications should be made only after 90 days. Some of the responses said that 90 days was too long—I accept that—but practical points on timing were made, including by the Finance and Leasing Association, which had concerns about the 90 days. The consultation response therefore states:

“We accept that the 90 day period may create problems in some cases, but are also conscious that over-hasty applications may result in unnecessary expenses being incurred.”

The period is 90 days and not 60 or 100, so I am seeking the rationale for 90 days. My hon. Friend was helpful in his intervention and has made it clear why he has gone for 90 days, and I am grateful to him for that.

As hon. Members can see, amendment 4 would reduce the maximum period of guardianship from four years to two years. Clause 7 sets out the period of guardianship and requests that the period for which the guardian is appointed be stated in the court order. The maximum possible is four years, and I propose to halve it. Again, I am trying to tease out from my hon. Friend why he believes four years is right, and why the period should not be longer or shorter. I can see the attractions of making it longer to avoid people having to go back time and again, given the cost of doing that. I was not sure whether the primary purpose was to avoid that or there was another rationale as to why four years was the appropriate time.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My concern arises from the same issue, and it is what happens when a missing person is found. That does not automatically negate the guardianship, as I would have hoped that it would, and is an argument for saying that the guardianship should be for a shorter period. Otherwise, as soon as somebody is found, the guardian will have to apply to the court to end the guardianship before they can again be treated as a normal person.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is why I proposed a shorter period rather than a longer one.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I think that my hon. Friend has inadvertently misled the House. As I read the Bill, the term of four years is a maximum, and the court has power to make an order for any length of time up to four years.

[Philip Davies]

Yes, that is right. If I did mislead the House, I certainly did not intend to. I thought I had made it clear that it was a maximum of four years, but if I did not, I apologise to my right hon. Friend and to the House. He is right: it is a maximum, and it does not need to be exactly that. However, that does not necessarily overcome the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that a decision for four years could be made in good faith and is then superseded, possibly causing an issue.

Again, I pray in aid the consultation on these matters. It received a range of views on the appropriate duration of guardianship appointments. Two respondents said they agreed with the proposed maximum term of four years, while there were suggestions from four other respondents, including for a shorter period of just one or two years, with one proposal of eight years. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton is saying that we should split the difference and go for four years, and that is the consensus—I do not know. As I said, there are examples in other countries. In Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, the administrator or manager is appointed initially for up to two years, which can be extended for a further two years. I wonder whether that might have been a more sensible way of going about it. It is the same in Irish law, with an initial two years that can be extended for a further two years. That might be better than a straight four years right from the word go.

My amendments are in no way seeking to cause any problems for the Bill; they are simply to give it some scrutiny that up to this point it has not had, as I am sure my hon. Friend will be the first to concede. Legislation does deserve some scrutiny, particularly when it is as meaty as this. I look forward to his and the Minister’s response to the issues I have raised and their explanations for some of the details in the Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I am keen for this Bill to progress.

Amendment 1 relates to the definition of when a person is missing for the purposes of the Bill. The amendment would remove clause 1(4), which relates to the absence of the missing person. Without that subsection, it would be unclear whether, for the purposes of the Bill, the person detained in prison or otherwise would be treated as being

“absent from his or her usual place of residence and usual day-to-day activities.”

Amendment 2 addresses a different aspect of the question of whether a person is missing for the purposes of the Bill. First, the Bill already provides in clause 20(1) that the application must be advertised in accordance with the rules of the court. The subsection provides that

“notice of the application and any other information specified by rules of court”

must be sent

“to the persons specified by rules of court”.

Secondly, the procedure for hearing the application will be governed by rules of court. Those rules have not yet been written, but they will specify the information that needs to be provided to the court with the application. That is likely to include a requirement that the application is supported by evidence of the various issues on which the court must be satisfied before it can make a guardianship order in accordance with the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

In summary, the four-year period is a maximum, and even when it is applied, it can be cut down if circumstances so require. A two-year maximum could be unduly restrictive and result in unnecessary expense for those affected. In the light of that explanation, I hope that my hon. Friend will withdraw his amendment.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to the Minister for his explanation. We have not yet heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), the promoter of this Bill, on whether he endorsed the Minister’s points.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. The Minister laid out his responses in a very comprehensive fashion. I have nothing significant to add. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) talked about the other Bill in the House of Lords. That Bill would not be required if this Bill passes through this House today. He mentioned removing clause 1(4). This deals with a situation in which somebody is detained as a hostage or something similar. Terry Waite springs to mind, as he was could not be contacted for five years.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that addition to the Minister’s explanation. I absolutely accept the points that have been made. It is important that we had them put on the record, and that we teased out from the Government why they set the rules as they have. I am sure that that will be useful for people to know. Therefore, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Third Reading

Prisons and Courts Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is correct. As well as making sure that these commercial courts cover all the regions of our country, we need to make sure that there is mutual enforcement of judgments elsewhere. We have a commitment to do that as a Government; it is something that I have agreed with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, and it is a priority for the Government’s negotiations.

This Bill introduces a new online court which will enable people to resolve civil claims of up to £25,000 simply and easily online. These online services will increase access to justice. It will reform procedures so that people can make witness statements rather than statutory declarations in relation to certain traffic and air quality offences in the county court. It means that people will not have to go into court to go through this process. The Bill will also streamline the use of “attachment of earnings” orders, giving the High Court the same power as the county court to make attachment of earnings orders in relation to judgment debts, and on the basis of a fixed deduction scheme.

We also want our excellent judiciary and magistrates to be better supported in the work they do. This Bill will allow judges in all our courts and tribunals to make greater and more effective use of authorised court staff, to assist them with tasks such as dealing with routine applications or ensuring compliance with court directions. This will allow our judiciary to prioritise their time and expertise on the matters where they are needed most. 

The Bill will bring the legislative framework for the employment tribunal system into closer alignment with that of the wider tribunals system. It will confer responsibility for making procedural rules to the Tribunal Procedure Committee. Employment judges will be able to delegate routine tasks to appropriately trained or qualified staff. Overall, these reforms will benefit tribunal users, whose cases will be resolved more quickly and proportionately.

We have the most highly regarded judiciary in the world; they are a beacon of independence, expertise and commitment to the rule of law. The Lord Chief Justice and I are working closely together to make sure that we have the strongest possible role for judges and magistrates in a transformed and modern justice system. We are putting in place reforms that recognise magistrates as an integral part of this judicial family. The judiciary is an important part of our constitution and its continued independence is vital for the rule of law. We must continue to uphold the very high standards and to select its members purely on merit. That means ensuring that people want to apply, feel valued and have good working conditions. I value the work that the judiciary does, from the magistrates and tribunals to the High Court and the Supreme Court. As Lord Chancellor, I am determined to support them in all they do.

Part 4 takes forward measures to ensure that our judiciary have the support and opportunities they need for a fulfilling and successful career. This Bill will strengthen leadership structures in the judiciary, supporting our wider work to provide clear career progression for judges, and ensuring that the widest possible range of talent comes into our judiciary. It will make it easier for the judiciary to deploy judges more flexibly, allowing judges to gain experience of different types of cases and helping with their career progression. The Bill will also enable the Judicial Appointments Commission to assist with selection exercises in other parts of the world, sharing the leading expertise within the commission.

Part 5 tackles the rampant compensation culture that has developed around whiplash claims—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Just before my right hon. Friend moves on, may I ask her a question about magistrates? She rightly values the work that they do, so when can we expect the Government to allow them to send people to prison for 12 months, rather than six? This Government have been promising to do that for quite some time.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his dogged support for magistrates; he is absolutely right about the fantastic work that they do. I am looking into this issue, and I would be happy to discuss it with him further.

Part 5 tackles the rampant compensation culture that has developed around whiplash claims. The number of road traffic accident personal injury claims is over 50% higher than it was 10 years ago, despite there being fewer accidents and safer cars on our roads. The Bill will enable us to introduce a transparent tariff system of fixed proportionate compensation for whiplash claims with an injury duration of up to two years, and to ensure that all claims will be supported by good quality medical evidence provided by accredited experts.

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[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I start by echoing the Justice Secretary’s comments about the young prison officer Ryan Goodenough, who was attacked in Oakhill secure training centre last week. I pay tribute to all our prison officers, who do such a good job in such difficult circumstances.

I thank the Secretary of State for telephoning me the evening before the Bill’s publication to discuss its contents, and the Minister for Courts and Justice for meeting me last week to discuss the Bill in further detail. Even though I have been in this place for only a limited time, I understand that that is a custom more often honoured in the breach than observance, so I was pleased that they contacted me in a courteous and informative way. I also thank the House of Commons Library for its thorough and clear briefing, which has assisted me and my staff, and doubtless many other Members and their staff, too.

We are discussing a Bill to amend the procedures in our prisons and courts. The Bill has been trailed since the Queen’s Speech last May—back in the days when the former right hon. Member for Witney was Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) was Justice Secretary, and the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) could not find the time to edit a daily newspaper. Much has changed since then—we have waited a long time for this Bill.

We are not opposed to the Bill. Indeed, we welcome and support much of its content. However, when we disagree with provisions or believe that the Government should go further, we will pursue amendments in Committee. The Bill comes at a time of dual crises: a dangerous and declining prison estate; and thousands of people being priced out of access to justice. I will set out the reasons for those crises and what the Bill must offer to make a real difference.

It has been the Secretary of State’s misfortune to inherit a brief that has been dominated from day one by the crisis in our prisons. That crisis is not of the Secretary of State’s making, but it was created by the Conservative Government’s cuts agenda. The relevant statistics are often cited in this place, but they are worth repeating. There is overcrowding in 68% of our prisons, with more than 84,000 people for approximately 77,000 places. In the 12 months to September 2016, there were more than 25,000 prisoner assault incidents, which represented a 31% increase on the figure for September 2015. Assaults on prison staff reached 6,430, which was an increase of 82% since 2006 and a 40% increase on the year before. There were more than 37,750 incidents of self-harm, which was an increase of 61% compared with September 2006 and a national increase of 23% on the previous year. In the 12 months to December 2016, there were 354 deaths of prisoners in custody, 34% of which were self-inflicted. This Government’s decision to cut 7,000 frontline prison officers no doubt contributed in large part to the crisis, but that was allied with the disastrous decision to part-privatise our probation service, meaning that the effective rehabilitation of offenders has become all but extinct under successive Conservative Governments.

[Philip Davies]

I, too, want to support and help to protect our prison officers. I intend to table an amendment whereby a prisoner who assaults a prison officer should no longer be automatically released halfway through their sentence. That would have a big impact on the Prison Officers Association—it would welcome that support—and it might deter some of the violence in prisons. If I table such an amendment, will the hon. Gentleman show his backing for prison officers by supporting it?

[Richard Burgon]

In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and others will look at ways of ensuring that we put the safety of our prison officers first, and on a par with the safety of police officers. Overcrowding, violence and failure to reform are all challenges that the Bill must confront and surmount.

The Bill sets out proposals to modernise the way in which our courts and tribunals operate, which is welcome. I can testify from my decade as an employment tribunal lawyer that when Dickens complained in “Bleak House” about the turgid pace with which courts dealt with cases, he could have been speaking for our age, too. However, technology has begun to appear in courtrooms, from which it was previously glaringly absent.

It is vital that such innovations do not come at the expense of access to justice, because in recent years, when the Conservatives have released documents with the word “transforming” in the title, that has usually been shorthand for cutting, diminishing and failing—think of “Transforming Legal Aid” and “Transforming Rehabilitation.” “Transforming our Justice System,” which is one of the papers that has influenced this Bill, must not result in the same.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, was certainly correct when he said last year:

“Our system of justice has become unaffordable to most.”

I was glad that the Secretary of State praised Lord Thomas in her speech, but I would welcome it if she went beyond praising him and agreed with his analysis of the barriers to access to justice.

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[Robert Neill]

The hon. Lady, who follows these issues closely, makes a very fair and reasonable point. That is a significant factor.

I practised as a criminal lawyer for the better part of 30 years. I both prosecuted and defended, so I have had no compunction about sending away people who have committed serious crimes. Equally, when I defended people and when I looked at some of those whom I prosecuted during that career, I saw some who were dangerous, unpleasant and, frankly, in some cases downright evil. They deserved to go to prison, and some of them deserved to go to prison for a very long time.

There were others who were weak and stupid, and some who were greedy. Sometimes—particularly for those who were greedy—that, too, deserved punishment, and prison was an apposite and appropriate punishment. There were also those who were weak or vulnerable, or who found themselves in situations where they were easily coerced. There were people who had made a series of errors in their lives, and others who suffered from physical or mental illnesses or from real social pressures around them.

We have to be much more discriminating and sophisticated in how we deal with defendants in our justice system. Prison does not always work. It works for some people, but not for everybody all the time, and we need to be brave enough to say that in political debate. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), the former Solicitor General, rightly says, the public are much more alert to and realistic about that, and much more willing to buy that argument. We simply need to have the courage to make it.

[Philip Davies]

I do not know where my hon. Friends go out of an evening or during the day, but I am not sure that lawyers’ dinner parties accurately reflect public opinion at large. Does my hon. Friend accept—it is a fact—that since Michael Howard started the trend of sending more people to prison, the crime rate has fallen? What does my hon. Friend make of that direct correlation?

[Robert Neill]

To be blunt, I rather suspect that I met a broader cross-section of society in practice as a criminal lawyer than one would meet in the average bookmaker’s. We must be prepared to stand up and challenge stereotypes, wherever they come from on the political spectrum.

We diminish the value of prison if we adopt a knee-jerk approach and say that locking people up and throwing away the key is the best solution in all circumstances. It is the best solution for the dangerous. I had no compunction about saying that those in the Brinks-Mat trial, in which I was involved, deserved to go to prison for a very long time. One was later convicted of a very serious murder, and I thought that they should stay in prison for a very long time indeed. Equally, those who commit crimes to feed drug habits are not served by lengthy prison sentences. More to the point, the public are not served in the long run either.

The real difficulty that we face is that we incarcerate more people per 100,000 of population than virtually any of our western European comparators. That is more than Spain—and more than France, which has demographic, sociological and economic problems and indicators very similar to ours; it is a good comparator, in many respects. We incarcerate more than 140 people per 100,000 of population, while France incarcerates about 98. Our rate of incarceration is practically double that of Germany, a country that is also very similar to us in many other respects. That cannot be because of some greater inherent criminality on the part of the British people. It is simply that we do not have a sufficiently sophisticated suite of alternatives to custody to provide robust and publicly credible options, so sentencers often feel obliged to fall back on custody more than they do elsewhere.

The other point to bear in mind is that Germany and the Netherlands, in particular, do a better job of rehabilitating those who are in custody. We know that because their reoffending rates are much lower. I think the Government recognise, as do all other commentators, that short sentences very seldom have a positive effect. The Government are to be commended for saying that not only do we need to look at prison reform, in terms of what happens in prisons, but we need to look at what happens when people come through the gate; at the support that they get within the community; and at what diversionary activities can be established early on when people—particularly young people—come into contact with the criminal justice system, to make sure that they proceed no further down that path. It is an holistic approach, and the Government are right in that regard.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is being typically gracious and kind in giving way. Notwithstanding the point that he made, the fact of the matter is that for every 1,000 crimes committed in this country, only about 19 people are sent to prison. That is one of the lowest ratios of any country. Perhaps he can tell us in which countries the ratio of people who are sent to prison per 1,000 crimes committed is lower? That is the best measure of how many criminals we send to prison—not proportion of the population. We send very few criminals to prison per 1,000 crimes committed.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend perhaps neglects to say that the reporting arrangements are very different in other countries, particularly when dealing with younger people in the criminal justice system. The different diversion work done in those countries does not allow for that kind of correlation.

I am not just talking about Europe. A number of states in the United States—we do not always think of them, particularly in current circumstances, as beacons of social progressiveness—are more effective than we are at rehabilitation, meaningful community penalties and reducing recidivism. Some of that work, I might add, has been carried out on the watch of Republican governors. There is often a value-for-money case for imprisoning fewer people, as well as a social outcomes case. We ought to be prepared to make the case for prison reform as an important objective of any Government.

To return to the thrust of my argument, the Bill is an important step in achieving such reform. Of course, there is a lot more that we need to work on which is not in the Bill. The statutory purpose of the Bill is a good one. I understand the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) about what, specifically, should go in it, but I think that its overarching purpose is correct. The balance between the safety of the public and the inmate on the one hand, and reform, rehabilitation and improvement on the other, is the right set of principles to have.

New duties on the Secretary of State are important. I suspect that they probably are justiciable; none the less, it is important to have proper accountability mechanisms. The new power for the chief inspector of prisons—the right to a response to his reports—is especially important. The current chief inspector, Peter Clarke, is an excellent appointment. I had the privilege of shadowing his team while they carried out a prison inspection—it happened to be at the prison local to my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, in Norwich—and I saw how thorough and professional they were.

As my right hon. Friend and the prisons Minister know, and as we in the Select Committee know, one of the chief inspector’s great frustrations is the fact that in some cases, the bulk of his recommendations—not just a few, but sometimes an overwhelming majority—are not taken on board. It is important he can make sure that they are taken on board, and that a proper reason is given if they are not. Too often, his recommendations are repeatedly ignored by the same serial-offender prisons. This is an important legal step, which underpins progress.

The point has already been made about the prisons and probation ombudsman, and I agree with it entirely. These are important and welcome measures, as far as the prisons dimension is concerned, as are those to do with new psychoactive substances and interference with mobile phones. They are all important steps forward.

In the rest of the Bill, the modernisation of court proceedings is important and valuable. As the Bill progresses, I hope that the Government will bear in mind some of the caveats raised by practitioners, such as the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Criminal Bar Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, to avoid unintended consequences. When dealing with things that might give rise to a conviction online, it is important for people to have the resources necessary to make an informed decision in relation to the plea, the means of election and so forth. Having such access will be important. This could be a very useful tool, and I know that the judiciary believes that it can be a good tool, but it is important to have informed decisions, and making guilty pleas online is an obvious example. Similarly, there is often a good case for having virtual hearings, but we need to make sure it does not drift into being the default position. We would obviously not have that for a trial, but we can think of other forms of interlocutory proceedings in which physical presence is appropriate, and we must make sure that we do not have too much of a broadbrush approach. However, the principle is good, and I have no problem with it.

On the whole question of dealing with the abuse of litigants in person in family cases—chapter 8 of the explanatory notes—I think the case is accepted across the piece. Such a system has worked well in the criminal jurisdiction for many years. When we set up in regulations the system of how this will work, I hope there will not be an attempt to over-complicate or over-engineer it. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to take the criminal system and, as far as possible, lift it across with adjustments, which seems the sensible way to do it. Practitioners have made the point that when advocates are asked to take on such a role—in effect, on behalf of the court—they often take on a heavy burden. The instructions can be detailed and complex, and in my experience of such cases they frequently change depending on the nature of the person being dealt with, so the task is not easy. I therefore hope that rates of remuneration will not be any worse than in the criminal jurisdiction, because it is important to get good people to undertake this work.

Judicial appointments, which are important, have been mentioned. It is also important to bear in mind that leadership roles should be recognised, given the difficulty we have at the moment in recruiting proper High Court judges.

Moving on to part 5 on the whole question of whiplash—I will finish on this point—I do not think we can pretend that there is not an issue. The Select Committee has already heard evidence on this, and we will want to take more. Nobody can reasonably pretend that there is not an issue about whiplash, although there are disputes about whether the evidence base is strong, as was apparent in our hearings. I am glad that the Government have taken the step of moving to a system of tariffs, rather than having an outright prohibition on general damages. However, we will need to consider the devil in the detail in relation to the definition of whiplash in clause 61 and its subsections. At the moment, there is an ouster of the tariff system for breach of statutory duty, but, as practitioners have raised with me, one can of course envisage a number of circumstances in which it is possible to plead both negligence and a breach of statutory duty as alternatives. It might be self-defeating if we get an industry of people always seeking to put in an alternative head of claim to take it immediately out of the pure negligence category. Some careful drafting may be needed to look at the practical effects as far as that is concerned. Above all, we must not allow this to cause us to take our eye off the ball of the abuse by claims management companies. Good work is already being done by the Ministry and the Information Commissioner’s Office, but a lot of the problems stem from the work of the claims management companies, and it is important to look at that.

On that basis, I wish the Bill well. It is an important and valuable Bill. I am sure we will have lively and constructive debates, and I hope that I and other members of the Select Committee will, as appropriate, endeavour to assist the Government in making a good Bill better. I wish it well in its passage through the House.

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[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham), whose speech was very articulate. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate ahead of serving on the Bill Committee over the next few weeks.

With the Government’s White Paper, which was published in November last year, and the Bill before us today, I welcome many of steps being undertaken to get to grips with the challenges in our prisons and the justice system more widely. Greater scrutiny and more transparent allocation of responsibility are positive steps but, as others have already said, the Bill will succeed only once we have comprehensively got to grips with overcrowding and safety in our prisons. Without an effective, functioning prison system with reform at its very core, the wider justice system simply fails to function. When he appeared before the Justice Committee back in November, the Minister for prisons and probation admitted that all the numbers relating to prison violence, self-harm and deaths in custody are pointing in the wrong direction. I shall therefore use my role as constructively as possible to make sure that the Bill goes far enough and fast enough in improving those numbers.

In part because of several high-profile incidents, Members will be well aware of the prevalence of overcrowding in prisons, which is so commonplace that it sadly now seems to have become institutionalised in the justice system. When they gave evidence to the Justice Committee, both the Minister and the chief executive officer of the National Offender Management Service were in agreement that overcrowding has been a sustained problem for the past decade. The prison population rose from 43,000 in 1993 to just over 84,000 in 2016. Despite this increase, the number of uniformed prison officers tasked with managing and caring for those in prisons has decreased. Following the closure of 18 prisons since 2010, the prison estate has seen a reduction of around 6,000 places, at a time when the prison population is increasing. Although there are plans for new prisons and extensions at existing sites, at this rate such measures will not alleviate overcrowding in this Parliament or the next.

Overcrowding is a problem in 69% of prisons—that is 80 out of 116 establishments. My nearest prison, HMP Leeds in Armley, is one of the most overcrowded in the country. The Prison Reform Trust found that although it was built to accommodate 669 men, as of October 2016 it held 1,145, meaning that it is populated at 171% of its intended capacity. What is the impact of overcrowding on the conditions inside prisons? We have already heard statistics from the House of Commons Library, which reveal that, in the 12 months to September 2016, the number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults increased by 31% on the previous year, with just over 25,000 recorded incidents. There were nearly 38,000 incidents of self-harm, which is an increase of 61% compared with 2006. In the 12 months to December 2016, there were 354 deaths in custody, 34% of which were self-inflicted and 1% the consequence of homicide.

A report by the Prison Officers Association revealed that there are more than 42 incidents of violence in prison establishments every day. Given, as the Minister said, that all the numbers by which we measure the effectiveness and safety of our prisons are pointing in the wrong direction, it is perhaps surprising that we have seen a reduction of 7,000 prison officers since 2010. I appreciate that the Government have closed 18 prisons in that time, but the prison population has still increased. In fact, it peaked at an all-time high in 2011. By any analysis of prisoner to prison officer ratios, the number of officers will surely be found to be inadequate to meet the challenges, and I support the call from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) to look at how we can introduce ratios into the Bill.

I welcome the decision announced in the White Paper to recruit 2,500 more prison officers, and I am glad that the Secretary of State was able to tell us more about that recruitment process, and that 400 more prison officers have been recruited for the 10 most challenging prisons, but I hope that the Minister can go further in outlining what the next steps will be in recruiting for the remaining 2,100 posts.

Michael Spurr, chief executive officer of the National Offender Management Service, confirmed to the Justice Committee in November that the rate for new prison officers leaving within their first year is 13.5%, and has been as high as 16% in the past three years. I would be interested to know whether the Secretary of State has factored in that retention rate when recruiting those new officers. If 13.5% of the 400 already recruited leave within their first year, we will need to find 54 additional officers. I have set out the context not simply to make the case for sufficient prison capacity to meet demand, but to make the case for my amendments on prison officer safety, which is an area in which this Bill could go much further.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham talked about how two officers were left to cover a wing of more than 150 prisoners. Members can appreciate that sense of being outnumbered when they think about the reality of those figures. What needs to change to make sure that prison officers do not leave in their first year, are safe at work and are staying in post until retirement? Colleagues will be aware that, since having had an eye-opening experience while shadowing a lone police officer in my constituency last year, I have been campaigning for greater protections for emergency service workers, and prison officers are no less deserving of those same protections.

A report by the Prison Officers Association revealed that eight staff members are assaulted every day and that, in 2010, there were 24 sexual assaults against prison staff. That is just unacceptable. Section 8 of the Prison Act 1952 says:

“Every prison officer while acting as such shall have all the powers, authority, protection and privileges of a police constable.”

In the event that a prison officer is assaulted, and where the evidence affords, the prosecutor has a choice between pursuing common assault charges, under section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, or assault police charges under section 89 of the Police Act 1996. Assault police is a summary only offence and as such carries a maximum of 24 weeks custodial sentence, with community resolution orders and fines the most common outcome. I will not share the details now, but I can recommend the report “Prison Violence—How serious does it have to get”, which is published by the Prison Officers Association, for harrowing testimonies from prison officers, complete with photos of their injuries. It is well worth a read if anyone is in any doubt about the need for having the toughest possible deterrents in place to protect prison officers.

[Philip Davies]

I commend the hon. Lady for all her work on this matter and also with regard to police officers. It is very much appreciated by them. She says that the number of assaults on prison officers is going up, but is she also aware that the number of extra days given for the assault of a prison officer by a prisoner is going down? The average number of extra days given for a prisoner assaulting a prison officer was 20 five years ago, and it is just 16 now. Does she agree that that is completely inadequate punishment for a prisoner assaulting a prison officer?

[Holly Lynch]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I wonder whether the pressures of overcrowding are starting to reflect in those sentences handed out in prisons, which do not then serve as a proper deterrent. I would be more than willing to consider that point and others when we debate the Bill in Committee.

This is why I am calling on the Government to consider making it an aggravating factor to assault a prison officer under existing common assault, grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm and malicious wounding charges. That would give the judiciary much greater flexibility when considering sentencing. Sentencing must be about effective deterrent. It is about not exacerbating the existing conditions in prison, but ensuring that there is a real incentive not to assault officers.

There is also the practice of “potting”, where urine and faeces are thrown at a prison officer as a means of assaulting them—it seems to be female prison officers who are singled out for this treatment—and it is simply horrific. Those acts must be followed up and charges brought against every individual who engages in that activity. It is no wonder that there is a 13.5% drop-out rate in the first year when that is what we ask our prison officers to face every day they go to work.

The second part of my campaign relates to spitting. As well as being horrible, spitting blood and saliva at another human being can pose a very real risk of transmitting a range of infectious diseases, some with life-changing or even lethal consequences. In presenting my ten-minute rule Bill, which addressed that very issue, I shared with MPs the story of Arina Koltsova, a police officer in Ukraine who died after contracting tuberculosis from an offender who spat at her while she was trying to arrest him. At the moment, if a prison officer or any other emergency service worker is spat at, they can take a blood sample from an individual only if they give their permission. Needless to say, in most cases in prisons, prisoners are deliberately seeking to inflict the maximum distress on a prison officer, and so decline to provide a sample. This then leaves the prison officer or staff member with no choice other than to take anti-viral treatments and face a six-month wait.

To address this issue, I have looked to laws in Australia where refusal to provide a blood sample can result in a fine of 12,000 Australian dollars and a custodial sentence. Adding such a measure to the Bill would mean that to refuse to provide a blood sample would in itself be a crime, punishable by a fine or an additional custodial sentence. If a prison officer has already had to endure being spat at or bitten, this measure would hopefully save them having to endure a six-month ordeal waiting to see whether the consequences are much more serious. I hope to demonstrate the merit of these amendments in Committee and hope that the Government will work with me on these measures.

On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who cannot be in the Chamber today, I wish to raise his commitment to Helen’s law, which would deny parole to those convicted of murder who refuse to reveal the location of their victim’s remains. He will be seeking to build support for that change and amend the Bill to that effect, and I will be supporting him in doing so.

I have been particularly animated about the closure of both the magistrates court and the county and family court in my constituency. I am grateful to the Minister for Courts and Justice for keeping me informed about this Bill. He knows that I am particularly passionate about the provision of justice.

Last week, having attended the briefing on the sweeping reforms to access to justice, I can see that there is a lot to be optimistic about. When starting from a position of what is best practice for supporting vulnerable victims and witnesses through the justice system and when giving evidence, I accept that our old-fashioned court buildings and outdated systems are just not up to the job. However, having accepted some of the reasoning for the closure of the courts—to facilitate this revolution in access to justice which promised to make justice more available than ever before—what happened in Halifax was that the courts closed, and people now have to travel much further than ever before to attend old-fashioned court buildings and use outdated systems. With a six-year roll-out on the measures that we are all looking forward to seeing, my experience in Halifax is that there has been a massive step backwards in justice provision in the intervening years. I have engaged with this process, accepted that there were inefficiencies across the two courts, and even lobbied to merge them, which would have returned a cost saving for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service.

I visited Kent police’s excellent video-enabled justice system, and bought the Government’s arguments, but, through no lack of trying, I have failed to get HMCTS to engage with me on how technology can be used to the benefit of my constituents and to deliver a justice system that is indeed fit for purpose. I am really grateful that the chief executive of HMCTS, Susan Acland-Hood, has offered to meet me to discuss this matter further, following similar pleas that I made at that briefing hosted by the Minister for Courts and Justice last week. I genuinely hope that we can get a video hub in place to mitigate some of the impact of the court closures in Halifax.

I genuinely welcome the move to introduce modern technology into the justice system, so that vulnerable victims can record their evidence just once to save potentially painful and unnecessary repetition; so that we can cut down the time spent by police officers in court; and so that justice can be accessed on an iPad in a front room. Such changes would be fantastic. I will use my time in Committee to outline examples of where court closures have left a void, which this Government have failed to bridge, and work towards practical measures for delivering a better service as soon as possible.

I look forward to examining and debating the Bill in more detail in Committee. I welcome many of the measures. While the situation remains so pressing—I would go so far as to say pretty desperate—in some of our prisons, the pressure to get this right and quickly weighs on us all. I intend to work constructively to firm up the Bill as it relates to prison officer safety. Given the recruitment and retention pressures they face, I hope that the Government will be receptive.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson).

I have been disappointed to hear prison being disparaged so much in this debate, as prison is actually a pretty successful place. According to the Ministry of Justice’s own figures, the longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. The Ministry’s latest figures, released in November 2016, show that although 60% of those released from a sentence of less than 12 months go on to reoffend, only 37% of those who serve a sentence of between 12 months and four years, 24.7% of those who serve a sentence of four to 10 years, 15.6% of those who serve a sentence of 10 years or more, and 11.4% of those sent on an indeterminate sentence go on to reoffend after release. Prison is clearly not the problem because the longer people spend in there, the less likely they are to reoffend. Perhaps the problem is that they are not spending long enough in prison. That seems to be the lesson from those figures.

[Kit Malthouse]

I have some sympathy with part of what my hon. Friend says, but does he accept that those statistics ignore the nature of the offence? For instance, quite a lot of people are serving very long sentences for murders—crimes of passion—that they may have committed only once in their life and are unlikely to go on to commit again, whether they go to prison or not.

[Philip Davies]

The problem with that is the example of those who serve less than 12 months. If my hon. Friend looks at the figures, he will find that it is very difficult to be sent to prison for a first offence and a short sentence. People who are eventually given short prison sentences have been given community sentence after community sentence, which have not worked. The reason that these people end up in prison on a short sentence is that the courts eventually say, “We have no other option but to send you to prison because every other intervention we’ve tried has failed.” The reoffending rate for the cohort of people who end up in prison after community sentences was 100%. The fact that they have a reoffending rate of 60% when they leave prison is a greater triumph than was shown by community sentences for that cohort of people who end up in prison.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I do not have time to give way to my hon. Friend again.

The Bill contains provisions to toughen up the current position on the use of mobile phones. I am sick to death of seeing pictures of smiling criminals from within prison cells, surrounded by all kinds of creature comforts and ill-gotten gains courtesy of the use of mobile phones in prison. More concerning is the use of phones to intimidate or threaten victims, or to ensure the continuation of crimes, so I welcome the steps the Government are taking to deal with that scourge.

I have some concerns about extending the use of video links in certain cases, and I am certainly not comfortable with people using video equipment in all kinds of venues that are not courts. I shall listen to the points made by those promoting such technology, but sometimes, in the interests of justice, saving a few pennies should not be the overriding factor. We need to be very careful that, in trying to protect victims, we do not affect the scales of justice and end up with a situation where it is difficult for defendants to have a fair trial. Having a fair trial should be paramount, just as it is essential to deal appropriately with those found guilty. I am not overly keen on the sound of the online conviction process, so I will be listening with interest to the types of offences it might cover. The Magistrates Association also has concerns about this, and I hope they are considered carefully.

I am concerned about the abolition of the local justice areas, which organise magistrates and their work within geographical locations. I understand that some work can be done in different areas, but there is something to be said for the argument that justice should be dispensed locally. I hope we do not end up with a situation whereby all kinds of cases are being heard randomly all over the country for no good reason.

I have a bit of concern about judicial appointments and the drive for diversity. Surely we should just be interested in recruiting the best people. It should be irrelevant whether they are men or women, black or white, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight. Who cares about any of those things? We want the best person for the job, irrespective of their gender or race. Surely that is what equality means in this day and age—not just giving somebody a job out of tokenism because they happen to tick a particular quota box. Let us stick to appointing people on merit alone, and ignore every other irrelevant factor about them.

In my brief contribution, I want to focus on what is missing from the Bill, which is more important than what is in it. I would like the whole sentence given by the courts to be served. People should certainly should not be automatically released halfway through their prison sentence, as is the case at the moment. That was a scandal when it was introduced. The Conservative party was apoplectic when the last Labour Government introduced it, but we now seem to think that it is wonderful to release people automatically halfway through their sentence, irrespective of how badly they behave in prison. I will certainly table an amendment at a later stage in the passage of the Bill to ensure that any prisoner who assaults a prison officer cannot be released automatically halfway through their prison sentence. We must have some proper punishments for assaulting prison officers. The least that prison officers deserve is that kind of support.

One reason for the breakdown of order in prisons is that prisoners know that no matter how badly they behave, they will be released halfway through their sentence. All that is given for assaults on prison officers is extra days. As I indicated in my intervention on the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who has done a great job and should be commended greatly for all her work on defending prison officers and police officers, the average number of extra days given to a prisoner for assaulting a prison officer was 20 days in 2010 and 16 days last year. That is completely and utterly unacceptable. I am sure that the Prison Officers Association would welcome the Government saying that if a prisoner assaults a prison officer, their opportunity for automatic early release halfway through their sentence will end, and that their position will be judged on whether they are safe to be released out into the public.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I presume that the sentences should, at the very least, be the equivalent of the sentence for someone who does that outside prison.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what I consider to be his support for my amendment. I only need the support of the Opposition and about eight more on our side and we should be in business. I will put my hon. Friend’s name down as a likely supporter.

The Library briefing paper confirms:

“There were 6,430 assaults on prison staff, 761 of which were serious. This was an 82% rise on the number of assaults on prison staff in 2006 and was a 40% increase from 2015.”

Prison officers have a very hard and, at times, dangerous job. I am sick of hearing about the pathetic additions to sentences for prisoners who assault them. I hope the Government will deal with that in the remaining stages of the Bill.

I would also like to see an amendment to limit the use of fixed-term recalls. When prisoners are released early, they do not even go back to serve the remainder of their sentence when they are convicted of a further crime. They just go back into prison for 28 days, for what I would consider a mini-break. They can usually keep an eye on their criminal activities knowing that they will be back in prison for only 28 days. I hope the Government will deal with that.

I would recommend giving consideration to making judges accountable for their decisions, particularly when they do not hand down custodial sentences that are perfectly justifiable and possibly even expected, and particularly when the offender goes on to reoffend. I do not need to say now what the consequences of collecting such information should be, but it should be clear to many that where a judge consistently allows offenders to avoid prison, and those offenders go on to make others suffer as a result of their continuing crime spree, there should be accountability and consequences for that judge.

I would like to table an amendment to allow magistrates to sentence people to prison for up to 12 months for one offence, instead of the current six-month limit. We already have the law in place to do that, and it just needs a commencement date. That is something the Government have been promising for years, but they still have not got round to doing anything about it. When the Minister winds up, perhaps he can tell us when he intends to activate this part of Government policy.

I would like to recommend increasing the age limit for magistrates and judges to 75, and I will table an amendment to that effect. As of 1 December 2016, the Government increased the age limit for jurors to 75, and I cannot really see any difference between being a juror and determining someone’s guilt or innocence in a serious criminal trial, and, for example, sitting as a member of a bench of magistrates. Surely, the same rationale applies to both.

I am not a fan of release on temporary licence, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. If prisoners serve only half their sentence, the least they can do is actually serve that half in prison, rather than being released in advance of the half for which they are automatically released. It is ludicrous to count time out of prison as time in prison, and I am considering tabling amendments to cover some instances of release on temporary licence.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am not going to give way, because my time is almost up, and I want other people to have the chance to speak.

I want to place on record my continued interest in seeing male and female offenders treated equally by the courts, not only for sentencing purposes but in all aspects of the criminal justice system. It is increasingly accepted that women are treated more leniently than men. For every single category of offence, a man is more likely than a woman to be sent to prison. In the interests of equality, this matter needs to be looked at. However, we should look after women in the criminal justice system by abolishing sharia councils, which discriminate against them terribly, although the Government sit idly by and allow that to continue, which is an absolute disgrace.

Finally, on a more positive note, I am delighted to support the Secretary of State when she said in a speech last month that:

“the wrong way to address the problem would be to shorten sentences or to release offenders earlier. That would be reckless and endanger the public. And it would restrict the freedom of the independent judiciary to choose the most appropriate sentence for each offender.”

I could not agree more. She is certainly on the right lines. If she sticks to that kind of principle, she will be doing okay. I hope to be able to support the Bill by strengthening it in its remaining stages.

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[Richard Arkless]

I reciprocate the hon. Lady’s views on our friendship, for various reasons. I would of course be delighted if the Chair of the Select Committee agreed to visit Parc prison, and I would be even more delighted if the hon. Member for Shipley was with us so that I could take photographs of his ever-changing complexion as he saw the progressive benefits.

[Philip Davies]

I have visited lots of prisons, and the hon. Gentleman might be surprised to hear that one of my favourite visits was to Grendon prison in the Speaker’s constituency. It is a therapeutic prison, and I was most impressed on my visit there. One of the things I learned was that all the things about being in prison that we would find terrible, most prisoners find easy, and most things that we would find easy, most prisoners find difficult. That taught me—I hope others will take this on board—that we should look at prisons through the eyes of the prisoners, not from our particular perspectives on what might work and does not work in a prison.

[Richard Arkless]

When I hear interventions of that nature, I sometimes feel that the hon. Gentleman has cultivated an unfair reputation. As I said when I talked about his speech, he made some pragmatic points, and if there are elements of enlightenment about his thought process, I will of course welcome that, as we do on these Benches.

I am conscious that we want to hear from the Opposition spokesman and from the Minister, but I have one or two final points to make. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston touched on prisoner numbers. Scotland is not immune to having an inordinately high prison population. We do not hide from that fact, but we are committed to challenging the basis on which it arises and to examining the effectiveness of short sentences. We have had a presumption against short sentences and we are consulting on that further. We will be led by the evidence.

I was delighted to hear the Chairman of the Justice Committee, almost at the close of his remarks, very lightly touch on short sentences. Perhaps he and I can work in Committee on that matter, because the cycle of violence and reoffending is not assisted in any way, shape or form by young people going in and out prison for one, two or three months at a time. It does not achieve anything. Effective community payback orders, where those young people are in touch with the community, face the consequences of what has happened and deal with the other aspects of their behaviour would be a much more efficient process.

I am very conscious of the time. I will not touch on the other two or three parts of the Bill, because I am very keen to hear the Front-Bench speakers sum up the debate. I wish the Ministers and the Lord Chancellor well. If it is her ambition to be known as a great prison reformer, then this is a decent start. If she is determined to tackle the public perception myth, then I wish her all the very best in that endeavour.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I refer at the outset to my relevant entry in the register as a non-practising barrister at Civitas Law.

I thank Members from all parts of the House for the quality of this debate on Second Reading. There is much in the Prisons and Courts Bill that the Opposition can support, not least the very welcome prohibition in the family courts of cross-examination of victims by alleged perpetrators—something that was raised in an urgent question only a couple of months ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle).

We welcome modernisation and innovation, but we will seek to amend this Bill in Committee to embed the principles of justice and fairness and to ensure that innovations come with safeguards and appropriate statutory reviews. Indeed, our approach to this Bill of holding the Government to account and of not giving them a blank cheque was summed up in the contributions of my hon. Friends on the Opposition Benches. I commend the work that is done by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) in her chairing of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. She spoke very movingly about the problem of suicides in our prisons.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for her campaign for protections for emergency workers, including for our prison officers, and for speaking up for local justice in Halifax—Halifax could have no finer voice speaking up for it than that of my hon. Friend.

I am grateful too to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) who spoke very movingly about mental health in our prisons—something that has come up in a number of contributions this afternoon—and the excessive number of women in custody in 2017. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) who drew on his extensive experience. In particular, he highlighted the issue of prisoners in prisons far too far away from home.

I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) for her contribution. It was great to hear about Her Majesty’s Prison Parc and the charter mark that it has received. I am grateful, too, to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) who made a number of very useful and important interventions as the debate progressed.

With regard to the success of this Bill, it is difficult at times not to draw the conclusion that factors outside it will be at least as important, if not more important, than what is inside it. We are all in favour of rehabilitation and reducing the reoffending rate. The 2,500 extra prisoner officers are welcome, but they do not compensate for the 6,500 jobs that have been lost since 2010.

We are in favour of modernisation of our courts system, but the cuts to legal aid have meant that there are far more litigants in person within our courts system. Similarly, there are measures on employment tribunals in this Bill, but they do nothing to take away the ideological vandalism of the employment tribunal fees that were introduced in 2013. We welcome online courts, but they should not be at the expense of local justice; they should be a complement to it. In relation to the measures on small claims, I never thought that I would find myself at this Dispatch Box agreeing with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), but he was entirely right when he said that if we want to tackle fraudulent claims, the way to do it is not to penalise everybody who brings legitimate claims.

We will judge the Bill on whether it will actually deliver. Prisons are its centrepiece, and we know of the problems of violence, overcrowding, drugs and the shortage of prison officers, which the Government have to tackle. The Lord Chancellor, in her opening remarks, talked about turning the situation around, but I remind Conservative Members that their party has been in power for seven years.

I have a confession to make: I have been reading the memoirs of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). I was interested in what he says about his time as Justice Secretary. He says that when the Conservatives came into power in coalition in 2010, he consulted the Conservative party website to find what its justice policy was, but was somewhat disappointed to find that it was based on

“trying to respond to the various campaigns in the tabloid press”.

He added:

“Thereafter I did not consult my party’s website again.”

That is probably good advice for the Ministers on the Treasury Bench tonight. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said of his successor:

“When Chris Grayling took over from me as Justice Secretary, he was not at all interested in reforming the prison system in a liberal direction, nor in reducing the prison population.”

[Philip Davies]

Hear, hear!

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will come to the hon. Member for Shipley later. The right hon. and learned Gentleman continued:

“Inevitably, therefore, he had to return to seek more savings from the legal aid system. He revived the disastrous proposals for criminal legal aid, which dragged him into prolonged and unsuccessful controversy during much of his term of office”.

I entirely agree that the criminal legal aid changes were disastrous. Those cuts have produced a false economy, because of the proliferation of litigants in person in our courts. That, in turn, puts the success of measures such as live and virtual courts at risk, because one of the risks in that situation is that the person appearing in court is not able to follow or understand the hearing. That might be a challenge in a virtual court with a lawyer present; it is an even greater challenge where there are litigants in person. The Government have to be clear and careful that virtual courts are managed properly and do not end up costing more money than they save.

Similarly, I place on record a note of caution about the idea of online guilty pleas. Although I can see an argument in favour for very simple offences, such as motoring offences that are readily understood, the defendant must know and understand their right to legal advice and understand too their right to challenge the charge. An online plea removes the opportunity that sometimes comes later in prosecutions before the courts when different charges are ultimately pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Nor must online guilty pleas be the thin end of the wedge to extend them to far more complex offences. Finally on online courts, we must never lose sight of the fact that we must have a criminal justice system that is open and visible to the public.

Nowhere is the problem of what is not in the Bill summed up more clearly than in the iniquitous employment tribunal fees, which with issue fee and hearing fee can reach £1,200. If someone has been subjected to discrimination or unfair dismissal, such a fee will be extremely hard to find. Early in the debate, Members discussed the effect that the fees have had, but I will quote the report of the Select Committee on Justice. Incidentally, I commend the work of its Chair, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who makes such an important contribution to our debates on justice matters. After the introduction of the fees in July 3013, there was

“an undisputed and precipitate drop in the number of cases brought, approaching 70%”.

The Minister made a point about conciliation when intervening on my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). Well, let me quote the Justice Committee:

“We heard a considerable amount of evidence that, far from encouraging early conciliation and resolution of disputes, employment tribunal fees were having precisely the opposite effect, because there was no incentive for an employer to settle in cases where the claimant might have difficulty raising the fee.”

Therein lies the crux of the problem.

I heard many erudite contributions from the Government Benches, but the one that will really reverberate on employment tribunal fees is the one made by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who, when my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East talked about the need to abolish these fees, said that that would encourage something for nothing. Let me say quite openly that someone who has suffered discrimination at work or been subject to an unfair dismissal does not seek something for nothing. They seek access to justice and to assert their legal rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I have not got much time, I am afraid.

I think the right hon. and learned Lady made the point that we might want to see whether there was a solution in secondary legislation, as well as in primary legislation, that might address some of the important points she raised. Of course, the prison rules are secondary legislation, and they already contain a lot of detail about the way in which prisoners should be treated. So it is possible to look at those issues, and I will certainly do that.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned the Prison Reform Trust and its suggestion that we should add fairness and decency to the statutory purpose. It is right that those are important considerations in running prisons, but we need to remember that there is already an interlacing of legal obligations that apply in prisons. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, with her background in the Joint Committee on Human Rights, mentioned that there are basic human rights—articles 2, 3 and 8—that apply to the way in which prisoners are treated. There is health and safety legislation. There is the duty of care that comes through the law of tort. So it would be wrong to think that there is not protection already, but this is certainly something we can examine further in Committee. I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North, who has done so much as the rapporteur for the JCHR on the issue of deaths in prison.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and others asked what happens if a prison does not meet the purpose set out in law. The purpose of prisons is in the Bill, and it is underpinned by the inspectorate’s duty to inspect against the purpose and the aims. It is also protected by the Secretary of State having to respond. I would not say that it is impossible that a case could be mounted for judicial review—to even say that is to press the case too far—but I think it would only be in a case where an individual prison totally ignored or disregarded the purpose, or something of that sort, that it would be grounded. Possibly, these things could also be considered as a factor in another case, where other aspects were being raised.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) asked about the update on HMIP’s protocol with the MOJ, and I pay tribute to his experience in this area. Earlier this year, a draft protocol was shared with the Justice Committee and other bodies. The final protocol will be available very shortly, and I can promise that it will be there before the Committee stage. [Interruption.] Very shortly—imminently.

I could say a lot about family engagement, and the Farmer review looks very much at it. It is well understood that maintaining family relationships is a key element in trying to set prisoners on the straight and narrow and that it is very important in rehabilitation.

The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) asked about the time limits for responding to inspection reports. Action will be taken from day one of an urgent notification by the chief inspector, so immediate energy will be brought to bear. Twenty-eight days is the appropriate period in a really urgent case of that sort. On the Law Society’s concerns about safeguards for online conviction, defenders must opt in to the new procedure, and proper warnings will be available making it clear that if a defendant wants to challenge the case in any way—for example, if they want to argue that time to pay is needed for a financial penalty or that the penalty should be lower because of means or circumstances—then all these things will be made clear. The Bill also provides that in the event of a mistake made, for whatever reason, it will be possible to set aside the conviction or the sentence in order to have the matter dealt with in the traditional way. I am sure that we will discuss this more in Committee, but certainly the idea is to have those protections in place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon asked about successful prosecutions of fraud cases in relation to whiplash. The insurance industry data show that in 2015 there were 70,000 cases of insurance fraud worth £800 million. The City of London police insurance fraud enforcement department has secured over 200 prosecutions in the past four years, resulting in over 100 years’ worth of jail time for insurance fraudsters. A lot of action is being taken on this.

On whiplash more generally, the Government note that over a 10-year period when we have seen the number of road traffic accidents falling and car safety improving, we have had a more than 50% increase in the number of whiplash-related cases. These cases are obviously exaggerated to some extent, and perhaps fraudulent. No Government could ignore these sorts of statistics and not take action. We have not taken extreme options but gone for moderate options such as a tariff of damages for the very minor cases. The tariff does not apply in a serious case of whiplash where the damages would be substantial—it is for cases where the pain and suffering lasts less than two years and is of a minor nature. Against that background, such a tariff is surely a reasonable approach. If there is any element of exceptionality in these cases, then there is a provision to uplift. We say that this approach is proportionate to the scale of the problem.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) talked about violence against prison officers. I do not totally agree with him about this. I think that if there genuinely is violence against a hard-working and dedicated prison officer—he has been assaulted and it is an offence—we should go further than my hon. Friend suggests. I think that the perpetrator should be prosecuted in court for that violent offence, that he should face swift justice, and that the court should give the full penalty that is right for the offence. I would not say that it is a question of him serving his full time for the original offence, but that he should serve the full time for a serious offence of attacking a prison officer. I take a slightly different view from my hon. Friend on that.

[Philip Davies]

Can the Minister explain why, with all the assaults on prison officers at the moment, the average amount of extra time that prisoners spend in prison for assaulting a prison officer is 16 days, which is, quite frankly, pathetic and insulting?

Prisons

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making that important point. In Justice questions yesterday, the Minister with responsibility for prisons, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), said that he was in discussions with the Department for Exiting the European Union about the matter. We need to hear more about the progress of those discussions.

The Justice Secretary frequently points to the emergence of new psychoactive substances as a major factor in the current crisis. Does she know that in Scotland, where prison policy has been stable for some years and where staffing has remained constant, violence has not rocketed as it has across the rest of the prison estate? Scotland has NPS issues, too, but it did not axe staff in vast numbers.

Our prisons are overcrowded. Armley prison, in my city of Leeds, holds nearly twice the number of prisoners that it was built to house. Wandsworth, Swansea, Brixton and Leicester are not far behind; they are all full to capacity with another 50% on top.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

This will be the final time that I give way, if that is okay.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he knows that I hold him in very high esteem. Lady Chakrabarti, the shadow Attorney General, said recently that she wanted half the prisoners in the UK prison estate to be released immediately. Is that Labour’s official party policy? My constituents would be very interested to know.

[Richard Burgon]

I am certainly not aware of any such policy announcement being made. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are making some strange gesticulations. It is not Labour policy to release half the prisoners. Why on earth would that be the case?

We need a lasting way to manage the prison population. In November 2016, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, appeared before the Justice Committee. Not surprisingly, he was questioned on the prisons crisis, and he offered a view on what could be done:

“The prison population is very, very high at the moment. Whether it will continue to rise is always difficult to tell, but there are worries that it will. I am not sure that at the end of the day we can’t dispose of more by really tough—and I do mean tough—community penalties.”

Prison has always been seen as a punishment. A person breaks the social contract that governs much of our relations with one another, and they may be imprisoned. Members from across the House rightly see prison as a fitting sanction, and it must be right that when a convicted person is a danger to the public, they are kept away from the public until such time as they no longer pose a threat. A significant minority may never be safe to release. But we must ask whether prison is the right place for some of those who offend. We should always reflect on that, because if we do not, we find ourselves in the position that the Government are in now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

In any case, we are setting up a parliamentary scheme so that we can work more closely with prison officers and give them the kudos they deserve, because they do an incredibly important job, often behind walls. As part of the reform programme, I want to see prisons reaching out more into the local community and working with local employers. As the shadow Secretary of State said, ultimately, the vast majority of people in prison will one day be on the outside and be part of the local community, so we need to work on that.

While we are putting in place the long and medium-term measures to get additional staff in to reform our prisons, we are taking immediate action to improve security and stability across the estate. That includes extra CCTV, the deployment of national resources and regular taskforce meetings chaired by the prisons Minister. He holds regular meetings with the Prison Service to monitor prisons for risk factors, and that allows us to react quickly to emerging problems and provide immediate support to governors, on anything from transferring difficult prisoners to speeding up the repair of damaged facilities.

Hon. Friends have talked about psychoactive substances, which have been a game changer in the prisons system, as the prisons and probation ombudsman has acknowledged. In September, we rolled out to all prisons new mandatory drug tests for psychoactive drugs, and we have increased the number of search dogs and trained them to detect drugs such as Spice and Mamba. We are also working with mobile phone operators on new solutions, being trialled in three prisons, to combat illicit phones, and we have specific powers to block phones too.

[Philip Davies]

I am disappointed that my right hon. Friend has not mentioned the impact on the behaviour of prisoners of automatic release halfway through sentence. If someone is sent to prison for six years but knows that by law they will be released after three, irrespective of how badly they behave in prison, surely their behaviour in prison will be worse than if they know they might have to do the full term if they do not behave. Is she not going to address that issue?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Clearly, if people do not behave, they will receive additional days. That is an important part of the levers that governors have in reforming offenders.

I was talking about security issues. We are also working to deal with drones, rolling out body-worn cameras across the estate and dealing with organised crime gangs through a new national intelligence unit.

Hon. Members have also talked about mental health. We are investing in specialist mental health training for prison officers to help to reduce the worrying levels of self-harm and suicide in our prisons. The early days in custody are particularly critical to mental health and keeping people safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I want to confine my remarks to the subject of fixed-term recalls, which I wish were much more widely understood by the public and in this House. They represent one of the biggest outrages of our prison system, and yet hardly anyone knows anything about them. Most people believe that if someone is let out of prison early—whether halfway through their sentence, a quarter of the way through the sentence on a home detention curfew, or at some other point before they actually should be let out—and they reoffend or breach their licence conditions, they should at least go back to prison to serve the rest of their original sentence. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. In reality, the overwhelming majority of the public believe that offenders should serve the whole of the sentence that they were given by the courts in the first place. In a survey carried out by Lord Ashcroft, 82% of those asked thought that prisoners should serve the full prison sentence handed down by the court. That, for many, is not rocket science; it is just common sense.

Fixed-term recalls were introduced to reduce the pressure on prison places in 2008, and many people do not know about what is going on. A fixed-term recall is when the offender breaches their licence or reoffends and is returned to prison not for the rest of their prison term—not even for most of it—but for a mere 28 days. When fixed-term recalls were introduced, they excluded certain offenders. However, when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was Lord Chancellor, he relaxed the rules by way of a change to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 in a bid to reduce the prison population still further. As of 3 December 2012, fixed-term recalls were made available to previously denied prisoners: offenders serving a sentence for certain violent or sexual offences, those subject to a home detention curfew and, most shockingly, those who had previously been given a fixed-term recall for breaching their licence in the same sentence. Now, I do not think that many people out in the country know that, but I certainly know that many people will not like it.

Fixed-term recalls do not happen just occasionally. They were given to 42% of all offenders who were recalled in both 2013 and 2014 and to 28% in 2015. That is an awful lot of people going back to prison for only 28 days instead of the rest of their sentence. Those 28-day recalls relate to sentences of one year or more, so we are talking about the most serious of offenders. Recalls of 14 days apply to shorter sentences, but they are a much more recent concept.

The more I investigated 28-day fixed-term recalls, and as more figures have been released, more disturbing things have become clear. In 2014, 7,486 prisoners were recalled for just 28 days. Of those, 3,166 had been charged with a further offence. That means that 3,166 people were charged with a further offence when they should have been in prison in the first place and then escaped serving the rest of their original sentence despite committing this further offence. The vast majority had 15 or more previous convictions. Burglary is the most common original offence for which a fixed-term recall is given for a breach or a further offence. Over half of all those given this pathetic slap on the wrist were people who had committed a very serious crime. They were also given to people convicted of manslaughter, attempted homicide, wounding, rape and robbery.

Perhaps the icing on the cake in this whole sorry state of affairs is that, in 2015, 816 offenders were allowed more than one fixed-term recall on the same original sentence for another breach or offence. In just three years, 3,327 of the most serious offenders in our prisons were released from prison, breached their licence, were returned to prison for 28 days, released again, were returned to prison for just 28 days for a further breach of licence and then released again. That is a complete failure of policy and is completely indefensible. I raised fixed-term recalls in Justice questions yesterday, and the Minister’s reply about risk was very interesting, but this is a sad joke. As far as I am concerned, these people should not have been released early in the first place but, having been released, there should be no other option but for them to be returned to prison for breaching their licence, especially for reoffending, for the remainder of their original sentence at the very least.

Finally, the weak response to reoffending is becoming so well-known in the criminal community that some people are taking the chance of getting recalled knowing that the punishment is pathetic. It is like a 28-day, all-inclusive mini-break. Worse still, some prisoners who have been released deliberately try to get themselves back into prison to give themselves enough time to see how their criminal operation in prison is carrying on while they are out, knowing that they will only be there for 28 days. That has been confirmed in research by Manchester Metropolitan University, which stated that prisoners had reported being able to earn £3,000 in just 28 days by bringing in drugs. One prisoner said that

“everyone keeps going and coming back in on these recalls with more drugs.”

This is an absolute farce. The criminals are laughing all the way to the bank while nothing is being done to stop this nonsense. When will the Minister get a grip and end this fraud on the public?

[Several hon. Members rose—]