Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

In the consultation document we address vulnerable witnesses, who often include children, particularly those whose evidence involves fairly traumatic events. There are arrangements now, of course: it is no longer necessarily the case that such children are exposed to open court. A certain amount of judicial discretion must be left, but in suitable cases video evidence and so on are now obtained. I hope that the consultation document will enable us to see what more can be done to ensure, first, that justice is done, but justice is best done when witnesses give evidence in the most suitable and justifiable circumstances. One cannot shield an adult from cross-examination, but one can certainly shield someone as vulnerable as a child of the kind that the hon. Lady described.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is fair to say that the Secretary of State and I have not always seen eye to eye on criminal justice matters, so it is a rare treat to be able to congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his proposals for preventing criminals from accessing the criminal injuries compensation scheme. What assessment has he made of whether the proposal will meet the requirement of the Human Rights Act 1998, or indeed his beloved European convention on human rights? If it falls foul of them, what does he propose to do at that stage?

[Mr Clarke]

It is a rare treat for me as well to find myself agreeing with my hon. Friend. Who knows where it might lead? It might not lead to instant agreement on the Human Rights Act, but I see no jeopardy to the proposals in the consultation paper from any claims under the Act. I look forward to continuing to have interesting debates with him about the subject on other occasions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I recognise the figure of 96,000 as the projected prison population that we inherited on coming into office. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, changes that this House has endorsed through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is now in another place, will have an effect on that. In the end, all these numbers are estimates because it is our job to incarcerate those sent into custody by the courts. We will continue to do that, despite the evident frustration of the Opposition that we appear to be managing it rather more satisfactorily than they did.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May I tell the Minister not to be ashamed of sending more criminals to prison? In fact, my constituents will judge him on the basis that more criminals are sent to prison, not on more criminals being released from prison.

[Mr Blunt]

I hope that my hon. Friend will ultimately judge us on the effect we have both on crime and reoffending figures. When people are in the justice system, the effect on them should be when they leave it they are less likely to offend than when they came in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I will, of course, investigate the case that the hon. Lady brings to my attention. I will get in touch with her directly.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

According to figures from the Department, 10% of all crimes are committed by people on bail and 20% of burglaries are committed by people on bail. When the provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill come into effect, which will make it harder for courts to remand people in custody, what estimate has the Department made of the number of crimes that will be committed by people on bail then?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The changes we are making are to get rid of the anomaly whereby bail can be refused to someone who is charged with an offence in circumstances where it is quite obvious that they are not going to be sent to prison, even if they are found guilty. It is a reform that should have been made a long time ago. Serious offences are sometimes committed by people on bail, and we have committed ourselves to introducing a right of appeal when someone is given bail in the Crown court. There have been bad cases where serious offences have been committed. We hope to introduce an amendment in the other place that would allow the Crown Prosecution Service to challenge the granting of bail in the Crown court when a potentially dangerous prisoner is involved.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I do not claim rank for Mr Godwin, but I quoted what he has said on behalf of ACPO. Of course there are always dissenting views—I have never presented any proposal on anything that has had 100% approval—but the overwhelming majority of responses from those involved in the criminal justice system suggested that IPP sentences should be repealed. Those are not people who wish to be soft on crime, but they believe that IPP sentences have not worked as intended, as we have already heard in today’s exchanges, and need to be replaced. To reassure policemen, such as the one that the hon. Gentleman mentions, that a tough new regime will give them protection, I will spell out elements of the new regime.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Is not the fact of the matter that indeterminate sentences have a very low reoffending rate, and that most members of the public rather like the idea that people are not released from prison until it is safe? What will my right hon. and learned Friend do to ensure that people who are released go through all the necessary treatment and programmes to address their offending behaviour before they are released?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend’s last point is perfectly fair, and I am about to make some points that should reassure the great bulk of the public. Of course we must have in place a very effective method of dealing with all those who commit the worst sexual and violent offences. No one is suggesting that we do not need an effective regime for that.

For the very serious offenders, the ones who are among the worst of the likely inhabitants of Her Majesty’s prisons, there will be a new mandatory life sentence. That will apply in cases in which the offender has committed, on two consecutive occasions, two very serious sexual or violent offences, when each of which has been serious enough to merit a determinate sentence of 10 years or more.

I was criticised from the left in another place, and probably will be here, for introducing a new mandatory life sentence. We have only one at the moment, which is for murder, and everybody accepts it. As I have said, however, the new mandatory sentence is mainly intended to reassure those who, like my hon. Friend, are worried that the worst offenders might occasionally get out. We are talking about very serious offenders, most of whom would get a life sentence anyway if they had committed two offences meriting determinate sentences of 10 years or more. I do not think that many such people would avoid a life sentence, but as hon. Members can see, a life sentence in the new clause is subject to a caveat—the offender will receive a mandatory sentence unless their circumstances or the circumstances of the offence

“make it unjust to do so”.

--- Later in debate ---

I urge the House to reject new clause 30. We should leave IPP sentences on the statute book so that judges can continue to give indeterminate sentences to protect the public in appropriate cases.

[Philip Davies]

Unlike the Front Benchers, I will try to keep my speech brief so as to allow other Members to contribute.

The Government are making a serious mistake by getting rid of indeterminate sentences, and I believe the decision will come back to bite them on the bottom. The vast majority of people serving indeterminate sentences have committed crimes such as manslaughter, other homicide and attempted homicide, other violence against the person, rape, other sexual offences, robbery and arson. Why on earth would we want a Government who think it is perfectly acceptable to let those people out of prison before they are deemed safe to be released out among the public?

[Sadiq Khan]

It is being done to save money.

[Philip Davies]

The shadow Secretary of State has hit the nail on the head. The Secretary of State started off in his post by saying that the most important thing for him was reducing reoffending. Well, we are talking about the crown jewel in the criminal justice system for dealing with reoffending. [Interruption.] I know that the Liberal Democrats do not believe that—they are soft on crime so I would not expect them to accept it. By the end of last year, 206 people who had served indeterminate sentences had been released from prison and 30% of them had committed more than 15 previous offences. Many of these people were not just dangerous offenders, but persistent offenders. How many of those 206 had committed another offence by the end of last year? The answer is just 11, or about 5%. The Secretary of State would give his right arm for reoffending rates of that order across the criminal justice system, so why on earth does someone who is supposedly committed to reducing the reoffending rate want to scrap the best-performing part of the criminal justice system on reoffending? This beggars belief. It comes back to the point that his real motive is not about reducing reoffending or protecting the public; it is about reducing the prison population. That is the only thing that he has ever been interested in, and this measure is all the proof we ever needed that that is his only motivation. It is absolutely appalling that a Government supposedly dominated by the Conservative party—the party of law and order—could be letting dangerous offenders out of prison before they are deemed safe to be released.

I wish to give a couple of examples of the people we are talking about from my local area of Bradford. Toffozul Ali was a convicted killer who was locked up indefinitely for a sudden and sustained knife attack in Bradford. Ali shook hands with his victim, Darren Jones, before stabbing him from behind, causing wounds to his arm, chest and knee. Ali already had a conviction for manslaughter for stabbing an Asian man to death when he was only 16, and he was branded a public danger and sentenced to an IPP. This Government seem to think it is fine that he can be released from prison before he is deemed safe to be released from prison—it is an absolute disgrace. Martin Ellerton was locked up indefinitely for stabbing his father to death, and he confessed to a six-year crime spree involving more than 630 offences of burglary and theft. These are the types of people we are talking about. The Secretary of State seems more concerned with their rights than with those of the people in places such as Shipley, who want to be protected from these people.

Stephen Ayre was a convicted killer who abducted and raped a 10-year-old boy in my constituency when he was unnecessarily released from prison. The father of that boy has gone through the trauma of that to call publicly for the Secretary of State to rethink his proposals on indeterminate sentences, saying:

“I would not wish what we’ve been through on anyone. The system failed my son six years ago. But Ken Clarke’s changes will only make things worse.”

I guarantee that people will be released from prison who otherwise would not have been and I guarantee that those people will go on to commit serious offences. What will the people who voted for this measure think about that, given that they will have created unnecessary victims of crime?

[Sadiq Khan]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the new proposals mean that it is possible for somebody to receive an extended determinate sentence, to go on no courses or programmes, to sit in their cell for the duration of the sentence and still be released at the end of their determinate sentence?

[Philip Davies]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the shadow Secretary of State says. The point is that, at the moment, these people are released only when they are deemed safe to be released. Under a determinate sentence—irrespective of whether or not people are safe to be released, whether or not they have gone through the programmes they need to go through to address their offending behaviour and whether or not they have behaved well in prison—they will be released back out to the public. That is an absolute disgrace, as is debating this issue in just 73 minutes, with 30 minutes for speeches by Back Benchers. I will give up at that point to make room for other people, but the Secretary of State should be ashamed of himself as this will measure create further unnecessary victims of crime.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I apologise for diverting the House to a rather different part of the debate, but my new clause 3, which I am pleased has support from Members across the House, is extremely important to a group of victims and their families—those for whom disability has been the motivation for murder or other violent crimes against disabled people. My new clause would apply the same minimum tariff in cases of murder in which disability has been a motivating factor as currently applies in similar cases with a sexual, racial or religious motivation. It would also shift the application of the aggravating feature of disability from being a matter of the victim being seen as vulnerable to a matter of the victim being at greater risk of harm, thereby firmly placing the obligation on the perpetrator.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is aware of it, but along with my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), I have met Mr and Mrs Clough. This was an appalling case in which a young mother was tragically killed. No one could have failed to be moved by what the parents said. They made a powerful case and I have said that the Government are considering my hon. Friend’s proposal, but Crown court judges are judges of some seniority and we need to assess the issues with care.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Ministry of Justice figures show that more than 10% of all crimes and almost 20% of burglaries are committed by people on bail. Is it not time that the Government clamped down on the courts giving people bail and tightened the rules? Is it not self-evident that the more people are remanded in custody, the fewer the crimes will be committed and the fewer victims there will be?

[Nick Herbert]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that many people who are remanded in custody and subsequently found either to be either guilty or not guilty would not have merited a custodial sentence. That is an issue that the House has to confront.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

The consultation will end on 5 October, and I will of course be looking at all the reports and responses to it, including the one from Crisis.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State was good enough to accept on Second Reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that people who served indeterminate sentences for public protection had a very low reoffending rate, despite the fact that 29% of them have more than 15 convictions. Given that people with indeterminate sentences are in prison for manslaughter, other homicide, rape, robbery, arson and other violent crimes, why does he want to let them out?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

In his closing peroration, the Lord Chancellor said that he wished he had been able to stay on as Home Secretary for longer than he did in the Administration in the early 1990s, so as to introduce a measure of this kind. I have to say to Conservative Members that they are very lucky he did not stay on for longer than the year he was there.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Straw]

I am glad to have the approbation of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on that.

When he was the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor was the last in line of a number of very complacent Home Secretaries who had allowed crime simply to rise and rise. It doubled under the Conservatives, as Michael Howard pointed out, and reached its peak under the current Lord Chancellor. Nothing that he did then, and nothing that he is proposing today, will do anything to make people safer or to cut crime. Indeed, I warn Conservative Members, for whom I have great affection, that in the coming months, if the Bill goes through, they will face—day after day, week after week—stories in the newspapers in which judges and magistrates complain publicly that defendant X or defendant Y should have been remanded in custody awaiting trial but that the courts no longer have any power on that.

I say to the Lord Chancellor, who has some experience of the criminal trial process, that the provisions in clause 73 and schedule 10 regarding restrictions on bail are wholly irrational and take no account whatever of the way in which courts and defendants operate. The court is not going to know whether it needs to send someone to prison until it has heard the full case and the mitigation. If Parliament lays down rules regarding the prospect of a sentence, how is the court to translate that into a real prospect of a prison sentence? What will happen in a case in which there is a low likelihood of a sentence on conviction and the defendant simply refuses to turn up in court? The Secretary of State was obviously completely unaware of the contents of paragraph 5 of schedule 10—I am glad that he is looking at it now—which makes it absolutely clear that even if the defendant fails to appear in court and is arrested, they cannot be remanded in custody unless the court has come to a prior decision that there is a real prospect of their getting a period of imprisonment at the end of the case. That is mad, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman must look at it again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend also accept that the current guidelines for addressing threatening behaviour with a knife state that a magistrates court should refer the case to a Crown court because the magistrates court is not considered to have sufficient powers to punish such people? A six-month penalty could easily become a maximum, rather than a minimum, sentence for the offence.

[Mr Burrowes]

My hon. Friend makes the point that the current guidance states that such people should receive a serious custodial penalty, and the clause tries to reaffirm that in statute, but we need to ensure that, notwithstanding the worthy intentions of the clause, we do not downgrade the simple possession offence; otherwise a clever lawyer might use it to put in an alternative plea of simple possession, which lends itself to a lesser, non-custodial penalty when compared with the aggravated offence. Ministers may want to pass a note to the Sentencing Council to make it clear that the current guidance on simple possession should remain intact.

I also recognise that there are retributive elements in the Bill. There is the important extension of curfews, which my hon. Friends will very much welcome, and we need to recognise that there are more tools in the box for dealing with matters on a community basis and retributively in order to ensure that liberty is restricted and for a longer period.

The second element of the justice system should be a proper restorative element—the basic requirement of justice to make amends as far as possible. Victims should be central to our justice system, and I hate it when people refer to a victimless crime. It greatly concerns me, because when I see what is happening in Enfield, in particular, and elsewhere, I do not see a victimless crime. That is why I welcome the clause that will ensure a positive and much stronger duty to order compensation for any loss or damage, for personal injury and, indeed, for bereavement or funeral payments.

We all know of cases in which people have waited months and months to hear about a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for funeral payments, and the Bill will give much greater access to, and opportunity for, compensation involving people who are victims of the most serious crimes. Similarly, there needs to be proper reparation and compensation for minor crimes.

Currently, the compensation order system is seriously underused. Only 18.1% of offenders in 2010 were ordered to pay compensation. That must change and, as a result of this Bill, it will, but I encourage Ministers to ensure that the duty on all courts extends to reparation, so that not just financial but other means of restorative justice are recognised.

Often, when the door is shut on the prisoner, the victim is shut out as well, so we need to ensure that when prisoners are inside they feel a proper sense of responsibility and do not forget that there is a victim. That is why we are implementing the Prisoner Earnings Act. It was enacted in 1996, and ironically we have had a plethora of legislation since, but that good piece of legislation, which Hartley Booth introduced, is now and quite properly going to be implemented.

The Act recognises that we are not going to accept the answer that I received from the Home Office, when I asked it why it was not going to introduce the legislation in 2007. The Home Office said, “We don’t think that prisoners will be able to find the work or work enough to make this viable.” We are not accepting that, because this Government have a much greater ambition.

We are not going to let prisoners sit idle in their cells; they will do proper work purposefully, and their earnings will go into a victims’ fund. The expectation is for £1 million: £1 million of ambition that the previous Government did not have; £1 million that will and should go into the hands of victims. We need to ensure proper enforcement, too, so that the current outstanding compensation payments of some £152 million reach the right people.

We need to ensure that there is retribution, restoration and rehabilitation. The rehabilitation revolution will go much further and deeper than simply this Bill, because it will ensure that we have payment by results. The right hon. Member for Blackburn talked about outcomes—from a previous Government who were all about process, targets and messaging. Well, we are into outcomes, but we are into proper outcomes, so we will have not just the Peterborough example, although that is welcome. Our ambitions are much greater than simply to introduce a social impact bond in Peterborough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Lord Chancellor’s statement last week bore the worst hallmarks of a Budget speech delivered by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown): all the good stuff was announced but all the catastrophes were laid out in the small print.

In his statement last week the Justice Secretary proclaimed that the best way to reduce crime is to reduce reoffending—a point to which many can, I am sure, subscribe—but his stance on indeterminate sentences shows beyond all doubt that, despite what he says, reoffending is not his main priority for the Bill or the criminal justice system. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) kindly mentioned the question I put to the Secretary of State yesterday. The reoffending rates among those released from prison on indeterminate sentences are among the lowest in the criminal justice system. If the Lord Chancellor’s priority is reoffending, why on earth does he want to get rid of one of the parts of the criminal justice system with the lowest rate of reoffending?

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend please understand this? When someone is subject to an IPP, they have no knowledge about when they will be released. Does he know that they can be released only when they are deemed no longer to be a risk to society? A relatively small number of people have been released and we can assume that they were released only because they were no longer deemed a risk to society. The reason for that is that they have been on the sort of courses that other people on IPPs have not had the benefit of. The lack of courses is the real problem.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I ask for shorter interventions, because many Members wish to speak and I want to try to get everyone in?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right that people are released only when it is safe to release them. My constituents think that it is rather a good thing that people are released from prison only when it is safe to let the out. I am all for that, unlike the Lord Chancellor.

The reason why the Lord Chancellor is not bothered about reoffending and indeterminate sentences is that he is not interested in reoffending at all. What then is his priority? It is the same as it has always been: simply reducing the number of criminals in prison. That is highlighted in the Bill’s explanatory notes, which state:

“The overall impact of the sentencing proposals will result in annual savings of approximately £80m in 2014/15, due to a reduction in the demand for prison places of 2,650”.

I invite all my hon. Friends to look back at what they promised their constituents at the general election in their personal manifestos and at what they said against their opponents at the hustings. Which of those who will vote for the Bill tonight said at the hustings that they were standing on a platform of reducing the number of criminals sent to prison by 2,650? I suspect that none of us said that, and I invite my hon. Friends to consider that when they decide how to vote tonight.

I am also concerned about the widely reported mandatory six-month sentence for thugs who use knives to threaten people. As I have already shown, this is a solution looking for a problem, because the sentencing guidelines already insist that such cases are sent to Crown court for a first offence because it is deemed that magistrates do not have sufficient sentencing powers.

It gets worse. On threatening with knives, clause 113 states:

“It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove good reason or lawful authority for having the article with him or her in the place…concerned.”

That is a reasonable defence for possession of a knife, but how is it a reasonable defence for using a knife threateningly just to be able to explain why one has the knife in the first place? Either that is a drafting error or it is complete nonsense. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us in his reply.

The provision is not mandatory anyway, because it is later stated that people do not have to be sent to prison if there are particular circumstances that relate to the offence or the offender that would make it unjust to send them there. So much for it being mandatory. It is a joke.

Clauses 56 and 57 are further examples of the Lord Chancellor’s aim of sending fewer people to prison. Clause 56(2)(a) removes the duty of the court to impose more onerous conditions once someone breaches a community order, or to resentence them to custody. It says that the court “may” do so instead of saying that it “must”, as currently applies.

Clause 56(2)(b) allows the court to impose a fine as a punishment for breaching a community order. That provision did not exist before. Clause 57 increases the length of sentence that can be suspended from a maximum of 51 weeks to two years and removes the need to attach any community requirements at all. If a criminal has committed an offence that deserves a custodial sentence of up to two years in prison, that is what they should get: a two-year sentence in prison. Furthermore, if someone is given a suspended sentence with no requirements, they will effectively not be punished at all.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, breaches of suspended sentences can now result in a fine, thanks to clause 58. Anybody who breaches their existing get-out-of-jail-free suspended sentence should go to one place only: immediate custody. Is it any wonder that the British public have no faith in sentencing? The criminal justice system can be effective only if the public have confidence in it.

The Bill also fails to extend a magistrate’s power of sentencing to up to 12 months, yet that was a firm manifesto commitment. Not only are we not implementing what was already in the law, we are repealing that part of the law in this Bill. We have already heard at length how schedule 10 removes the ability of the courts to remand somebody in custody, to try to make it harder for people to be remanded in custody so that they are instead granted bail. In the previous Parliament, the last Labour Government introduced the mechanism that time spent on bail on a tag could be knocked off a prison sentence in the same way as time spent on remand is knocked off a prison sentence. We were apoplectic with rage about that, and my hon. and learned Friend the current Solicitor-General said when we were in opposition that this proposal

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

I could not agree more. The only difference is that I still believe that this is wrong, whereas my Front-Bench colleagues have gone from thinking it was utterly ridiculous to formalising the policy as part of the Bill. Of course, the other measure to which we were wholly opposed in the previous Parliament was the automatic release of people halfway through their prison sentence, and that, too, is formalised in this Bill.

The British public are losing faith in the criminal justice system. One only has to look at the Populus polling carried out by Lord Ashcroft that showed that 80% of the public—80% of victims of crime, 80% of police officers—think that sentences for convicted offenders are already too lenient. When asked how they expected the new coalition Government would compare on crime with the last Labour Government, more than 50% of those polled said they expected them to be tougher. When asked their views a year after the coalition Government came to office, only 13% thought the Government had been tougher, whereas 23% thought they were less tough. That perception is a disaster for the Conservative brand, and this Bill will only further weaken our position.

All the above shows that this Bill is not the rehabilitation revolution or the reduced reoffending revolution we were promised; rather, it is a release revolution that will simply catapult more criminals out on to the streets to commit more crimes. I do not know if the Lord Chancellor is trying to break the world record for the number of manifesto pledges broken in one Bill, but if he is, he has made a good fist of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

As the hon. Lady knows, we are debating the Bill tomorrow, which is enormous—I apologise for that—and has huge implications, but we are having to reform fundamentally a criminal justice system that does not help society as it should, because it does not cut reoffending. We are having to reform on a very wide scale a legal aid and civil justice system that encourages unnecessary litigation and is not particularly user-friendly. We have taken over a mess, and we are going in for massive reform of it. We may have changed quite a lot of proposals in light of consultation, but the underlying need for a balanced package of radical reform is certainly there, and we will tackle it.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

According to the Ministry of Justice, the number of people released from prison after serving an indeterminate sentence was 206 at the end of last year. The number who have reoffended since they were released is just 11—a reoffending rate of 5%. The Lord Chancellor says that what is most important to him in the criminal justice system is reoffending rates, so why on earth does he want to scrap the single part of the criminal justice system that is best at reducing reoffending?

[Mr Clarke]

About 200 people have been released, but 6,000 are in prison serving indeterminate sentences, and we are adding about 80 a month. They are released only when they can demonstrate to the Parole Board that they are a minimal risk to society—that is the present test—but in a prison cell they find it almost impossible to satisfy that test, so they are in a Catch-22 situation. We need long, determinate sentences for serious criminals; that is the way that the criminal justice system works. The experiment introduced by the previous Government has most undoubtedly failed; we will have one in 10 of the prison population serving indefinite sentences if we do not find a better alternative soon.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Only 15% of CAB funding comes from my Department, and about 50% of CABs receive no legal aid funding at all. However, I agree with the hon. Lady about the value of good CABs. Their quality varies, but the best are very good. I am anxious for us to do what we can to strengthen CABs, as are my colleagues in other Departments: we are considering what we can do to help them across Government. I am doing my best, and we will settle on some support eventually. It will not be as much as the CABs want, but I think that we will be able to help.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on listening to the consultation and rowing back on some of the more damaging proposals. There is clearly much in the statement—although by no means all—that we can support. I understand, however, that the Government are proposing to make breaching suspended prison sentences punishable by a fine. Will my right hon. and learned Friend take this opportunity to make clear that only one punishment should be available to anyone who breaches a suspended prison sentence, namely being sent to prison?

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful for the kind remarks with which my hon. Friend began his question. It seems that he agrees with a fair number of the judiciary on the proposal for a discount for early guilty pleas, and I hope that he is equally in line with the judiciary on such matters as the abolition of indeterminate sentences. We shall all begin to make some worthwhile progress on the whole field if we collaborate.

Those who breach suspended sentences are normally punished by having to serve the suspended sentence on top of any other sentence that has been imposed. However, all such cases require a little more flexibility. All that we are adding is the possibility of flexibility in some cases. Adding a fine might be preferable to making the total sentence far too long: it might be best to find some other way of dealing with an offender.

Parliament is, of course, entitled to specify sentences, but if we do that in too much detail we will fail to deliver justice, because we will not leave enough leeway and enough options for the judges and magistrates who sit and hear about all the facts of a particular case and all the circumstances of the offender.

Victim Support

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I begin with an apology to you, Mr Scott, and to the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello). I may not be able to stay until the very end of the debate, because I have to meet some constituents. I apologise for that discourtesy. I will keep my remarks brief, because some excellent points have been made. I commend the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing this debate, which deserves as much time as possible, so that the Minister can address the points that have been made.

I want to focus on a few areas that may not have been brought out by the debate so far. One of the main areas that we should surely focus on is how we prevent people from being victims in the first place—how we prevent future victims of crime. Different things are important to victims: prevention from being one in the first place, and if someone is a victim of crime, they want the person responsible to be detected, punished properly for the crime that they have committed and not go on to commit further offences. I am worried that, on most, if not all those issues, the Government are in danger of heading in the wrong direction.

On preventing people from being the victims of crime, one of the things that I am most concerned about is what happens when people are released from prison before the end of their sentence. I might not be present to hear the Minister’s closing remarks, but I hope that he will be good enough to tell the Chamber how many people are victims of crimes committed by people let out early from prison before the end of the sentence that was actually handed down. We now know that people are, at the very most, released automatically halfway through their sentence and that some are even let out before that. It would be interesting for the public to know how many crimes are committed by people who have been released from prison at a time when most people would consider that they should still be in prison serving the full sentence handed down by the court.

It is perfectly reasonable that the police cannot prevent crimes when people who are unknown to them commit them for the first time. It seems, however, that our criminal justice system is creating so many unnecessary victims of crime by releasing people early from their prison sentence, only to see them go on to commit further offences. If we want to stop people being victims of crime, we should focus on that first.

What about the things that people want when they are the victims of the crime? Presumably, the first thing they want is for their crime to be detected by the police. Two of the best tools that the police have for detecting crimes are CCTV and the DNA database. An enormous number of crimes are solved by using CCTV footage, technology and the DNA database.

We have also heard recently that the Government are concerned about preventing victims from having to go through the trauma of giving evidence in court. That was supposedly the genesis of the idea to give people a 50% discount on their sentence if they pleaded guilty early. I say to the Minister that I do not believe that the reason for giving a 50% discount to people who plead guilty early had anything to do with trying to prevent victims from having to give evidence in court. It was simply a way of having fewer people sent to prison or fewer people in prison at any one time. That was the motivation. The view that it was a benefit to victims was a positive bit of spin to put on it.

If we want to prevent victims of crime from having to go through the trauma of giving evidence in court, one would have thought that the Government would be anxious to use the benefits of CCTV and DNA. CCTV gives an unbiased account of what happened for a court to see, devoid of anybody’s spin, recollection bias or mistake. Often, when CCTV is viewed by defendants and their solicitors, it leads to a change of plea from not guilty to guilty. That certainly happens when defendants were drunk or on drugs at the time of committing a crime. It not only saves courts time and money, but prevents witnesses from having to go through the trauma and stress of giving evidence in court. The Government, however, appear to be trying to make it as difficult as possible for the police to use CCTV. They are trying to introduce extra regulation for the use of CCTV. If the victim is our top priority, surely the Government will rethink that and make it easier for the police to use CCTV evidence.

CCTV actually prevented Richard Whelan’s girlfriend from having to testify against his murderer, Anthony Joseph, who brutally stabbed Richard on a bus while he was attempting to defend his girlfriend. The attack was caught on camera and Joseph was jailed.

DNA is also one of the main ways in which the police can find the perpetrator of a crime, yet the Government are hellbent on taking people off the DNA database, and that will presumably make it harder for crimes to be detected. In fact, there have been 150,000 cases in which a DNA sample has been taken from the crime scene but there has been no match on the DNA database. Obviously, if everybody was on a DNA database, all those crimes would be solved at a stroke. Will the Minister explain why the Government are going out of their way to try to make it as difficult as possible for the police to use such technology to find the perpetrators of crime in the first place? I am sure that victims of crime do not understand it, and neither do I.

What I want to know most of all is why so many repeat offenders are not sent to prison, because that is the one thing that creates more and more victims of crime. Last year, 3,000 burglars and 4,500 violent offenders with 15 or more previous convictions were not sent to prison. If somebody goes before a court with more than 100 previous convictions behind them, they are still likely not to be sent to prison. Those are the things that really irritate the victims of crime.

My final point is about the role of the Crown Prosecution Service. I think that the hon. Member for St Ives touched on the issue—he certainly implied it—of the CPS undercharging people by charging them for a lesser offence that they did not commit, rather than prosecuting them for the more serious crime that they did commit. That is one thing that particularly infuriates victims.

The calibre of the CPS is also an issue, and I will end with a tale of what I think is the most depressing day that I have ever spent, sitting in Bingley magistrates court watching the day’s proceedings. I saw CPS lawyers reading cases for the first time—they clearly had not read them beforehand—while the defence solicitor was briefed up to the nines. On one occasion, the CPS lawyer did not have the file in front of him and prosecuted the case from the file handed over to him by the defence solicitor. This is British justice in 2011. We should be ashamed of ourselves. If the victim of that crime had turned up, they would have been horrified to see what was going on. The Government really need to get a grip and put the victim—not the criminal, as happens now—at the heart of the justice system.

Sentencing

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

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

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

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

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

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

[Mr Clarke]

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

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

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

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

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

[Philip Davies]

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

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

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

[Philip Davies]

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

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

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

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

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

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, there is not time.

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

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

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

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Philip Davies]

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

[Mrs Grant]

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

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