Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Sadiq Khan

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

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

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

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

[Sadiq Khan]

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

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Sadiq Khan

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.