Judicial Scorecards

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone; I thank Mr Speaker for granting me permission to hold this debate this morning; and I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), to his seat, from which he will listen to and respond to this debate on an issue that I want to raise not only on my own behalf but most importantly on behalf of my constituents.

That issue is what I have called judicial scorecards. The idea is that each judge and magistrate should be presented with an annual report of those people who have appeared before them and who have been sentenced by them, including details of any reoffending that has taken place since sentencing. Every year, each judge and magistrate would be given a simple and straightforward report that would detail the names of the defendants who have appeared before them, the crimes of which those defendants were accused and the sentence that was imposed, compared with the sentence that could have been imposed under the maximum terms set out in the relevant legislation. The report would also include details of any subsequent reoffending, not only for the crime for which the defendants appeared before the judge or magistrate but for other crimes that the defendants may have committed.

There is a fundamental gap in our criminal justice system. Judges and magistrates do their best, but as far as I can tell they never actually know what happens to those defendants whom they sentence. Judges and magistrates arrive at their sentencing decision, having taken into account the guidelines produced by the Sentencing Council; using their best opinion, they arrive at a decision as to what is the most appropriate sentence and that sentence is then imposed; but they never know subsequently whether or not that sentence was effective.

The same is true for police officers. I declare an interest as a special constable with the British Transport police. I often talk to police officers about the arrests they have made and I ask, “Oh, what happened to Joe Smith, whom you arrested for fare evasion?”, or, “What happened to Joe Bloggs, whom you arrested for burglary?” The officer will reply, “Oh, I don’t know.” I ask, “Do you have any idea what sentence he was awarded?” They reply, “No, I don’t know. My job was done. I arrested the offender and he was presented before the courts, or otherwise.” It is a great shame that police officers do not know that information; they are not informed about what happens to the people they arrest. The same is true for the judiciary, regarding the people they sentence.

Our criminal justice system would be improved if judges and magistrates knew more about what happened to the people they sentence. At one level, that is a very human thing. We are dealing with individuals who have broken the law and the judges and magistrates are doing their best to impose the correct sentence, but unless they are updated on whether or not that sentence was effective there will continue to be a big gap in our criminal justice system.

Mr Bone, you will know that 10% of criminals commit 50% of the crime in this country. You, I, the Minister and everyone in this House, as well as all of our constituents, are really concerned about the high reoffending rates in this country. When I asked the Minister about reoffending on 11 January, he provided some very helpful statistics to the House. I asked him:

“What the reoffending rates were for those sentenced to jail terms of (a) one year, (b) five years and (c) 10 years in the latest period for which figures are available”.

He helpfully replied:

“In 2008, the rate of reconviction within one year for adults discharged from custody after a sentence of less than a year was 61.1%; it was 31.0% for those given sentences of one to five years; 17.5% for offenders given sentences of five to 10 years, and 6.4% for 10 years or more.”

I then asked:

“Does the Minister agree that…the longer prisoners spend in prison the greater the chance of ensuring their effective rehabilitation before being released?”

He replied:

“We have to ensure that longer sentences are given to recidivist offenders and that we effectively rehabilitate people and break the cycle of crime through the proposals that we have presented in the Green Paper to drive that number down.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 147.]

I absolutely agree with that—we have to get those reoffending rates down. The Minister and I are in complete agreement that when 10% of criminals are committing 50% of the crime, those recidivist offenders must receive longer sentences, and yet, as we all know, the problem, again and again, is that those recidivist offenders are not being given the stiff sentences early enough in their criminal careers to deter them from a life of crime. Part of the reason why I am so enthusiastic about the idea of judicial scorecards is that they would help to alert judges and magistrates at an early stage in a criminal’s career that the criminal was not being given a sentence that was stiff enough.

I raised the proposal for judicial scorecards on the Floor of the House with the Minister’s boss, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, on 28 June. I asked him:

“If he will take steps to ensure that judges and magistrates are informed of incidents of reoffending of each offender they have sentenced”.

He replied:

“We have begun work to improve access to local criminal justice statistics. For example, criminal justice and sentencing statistics are now broken down to court level and are available online. In terms of individuals, pre-sentence reports provide the court with details of a defendant’s offending history and compliance with any previous sentences.”

I then said:

“Although it is important to have judicial independence, surely it is not beyond the wit of the Department that each judge and each magistrate should be given an annual report card on the effectiveness of their sentencing decisions. If they have given out a string of sentences and the convicts have reoffended regularly, that judge or magistrate will know that something is wrong with their approach.”

He replied:

“As I said, we have begun work, and that is certainly an interesting suggestion. A massive amount of data would be involved in providing every judge and magistrate with full information about everybody they had ever sentenced”. —[Official Report, 28 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 738.]

I was pleased that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice saw this idea of judicial scorecards as an “interesting” approach, but it sounds to me from his responses in June that the Ministry of Justice is already making some progress towards them. If statistics are being

“broken down to court level and are available online”,

we are going in the right direction, and I do not believe that it would necessarily involve a massive amount of data to tie up an offender’s criminal history with the judge or magistrate before whom they appeared. It would help to make the criminal justice system far more effective. At the end of the day, what my constituents want is judges and magistrates to award sentences that are effective in preventing reoffending. Introducing more transparency into the system to reveal whether judges and magistrates are awarding such sentences would assist the judges and magistrate themselves, and help to improve the effectiveness of our criminal justice system.

In the exchange on the Floor of the House that I mentioned earlier, another Member asked:

“There is considerable evidence that judges do not know enough about what happens once they sentence prisoners and those sentences have been disposed of. Will the Justice Secretary do what he can to increase the experience obtained by judges of those disposals and will he ask the Sentencing Council to advise, with a particular focus on what works in preventing offending and reoffending?”

The Justice Secretary replied:

“The Sentencing Council is already under a duty to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice”.—[Official Report, 28 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 738.]

It seems to me, however, that that duty to provide information about the effectiveness of sentencing practice is not specific enough to the individual judges and magistrates making the decisions. We do not have that far to go from the collection of statistics at a court level to doing it on an individual level for each judge and magistrate.

That is not to criticise judges and magistrates; it is to help them. We know that every time we stand up and speak in this place, and every time we vote, information is recorded for every member of the public to access online, to see whether we are turning up and representing constituents’ concerns. Every time a premier league footballer kicks a ball, the data are recorded and a scorecard is produced of his effectiveness throughout the season. I believe that the information is there in the court process, and it could be distilled in a simplified way in an annual report card, helping to inform judges and magistrates about whether they are making the right decisions.

Evidence about this sort of thing was presented to the Select Committee on Justice in 2009-10, and included in its January 2010 report entitled “Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment”. Michael Marcus, a circuit court judge from Portland, Oregon, presented evidence to the Committee about how this sort of approach can help the judicial system to be more effective because of the awarding of correct sentences. With yesterday’s welcome announcement from the Ministry of Justice about the introduction of television into courts, it seems that the Department is receptive to making our criminal justice system more transparent.

The Justice Minister will know, as will you, Mr Bone, that many of our constituents do not have the confidence they ought to have in our criminal justice system, because some of the sentencing decisions are not consistent. We have the recent example of the riots in London and other metropolitan areas in August, when the clerks to the magistrates seemed to be saying, “You don’t have to adhere to the guidelines that have been issued by the Sentencing Council; make the riots a special case.” My constituents would say, “The stiff sentences awarded to rioters should be the same as the stiff sentences awarded to everyone, not just in August 2011 but all the time.” There should be consistency in sentencing, and the judicial scorecard approach would help.

It comes down to the number of people we sentence to prison terms, and I think that my constituents’ view is that not enough criminals go to jail. There seems to be a myth in this country that we have too many people in prison, but I contest that that is absolutely not the case. If we look at the percentage of prisoners per 100,000 people, we are pretty near the global average, but if we look at the number of prisoners in relation to the number of crimes committed we do not have the highest prison population in the western world; we have the lowest. On that measure, compared with the United States, Canada, Australia and the EU as a whole, the UK has the lowest prison population of all. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we have about 13 prisoners, compared with about 15 in Canada and Australia, considerably more than 20 for the EU as a whole, and a whopping 166 in the United States. The country with the lowest prison rate—the UK—has the highest crime rate. Is that a coincidence? I do not think so.

We have more than 10,000 crimes for every 100,000 people. The country with the highest prison rate —the United States—has the lowest crime rate, with about 4,500 crimes for every 100,000 people. Canada, which is the country with the second lowest prison rate, has the second highest crime rate. The EU as a whole has the second highest prison rate and the second lowest crime rate. In my view, those are not coincidences.

The purpose of today’s debate is to be helpful to Her Majesty’s Government. I have come here with a constructive suggestion to make our judicial system more transparent. I thank judges and magistrates for the work that they do on behalf of us all, but they need assistance in the form of information about how effective their well-meaning sentencing decisions are. My constituents would like to see stiffer justice; they would like to see recidivist offenders put behind bars for longer, not only as a punishment but to aid their rehabilitation. I know that the Justice Minister is very sympathetic to that view because he has said so to the House. A judicial scorecard system need not be complex; it could be very simple and straightforward. Presenting each judge and each magistrate with an annual report about the effectiveness of their sentencing decisions would be a good thing for the criminal justice system in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we want to make greater progress and that is why we have set out provisions in the sentencing Bill on, for example, conditional cautions, which will be available as an alternative disposal to remove foreign national prisoners in some circumstances if they agree not to return for a period of time. The question of whether foreign national prisoners could serve their sentences abroad relies on the consent of other countries. We are attempting to negotiate more agreements, but even if we no longer need the consent of the offender, we cannot remove them without the consent of the country that receives them.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

3. If he will take steps to ensure that judges and magistrates are informed of incidents of reoffending of each offender they have sentenced.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

We have begun work to improve access to local criminal justice statistics. For example, criminal justice and sentencing statistics are now broken down to court level and are available online. In terms of individuals, pre-sentence reports provide the court with details of a defendant’s offending history and compliance with any previous sentences.

[Mr Hollobone]

That is not quite what I am after. Although it is important to have judicial independence, surely it is not beyond the wit of the Department that each judge and each magistrate should be given an annual report card on the effectiveness of their sentencing decisions. If they have given out a string of sentences and the convicts have reoffended regularly, that judge or magistrate will know that something is wrong with their approach.

[Mr Clarke]

As I said, we have begun work, and that is certainly an interesting suggestion. A massive amount of data would be involved in providing every judge and magistrate with full information about everybody they had ever sentenced, but I agree that we should consider the feasibility of doing so. I gather that someone in Seattle advocates that and has given interesting evidence to the Select Committee on Justice.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad to say that there is an agreement on the transfer of prisoners within the European Union—[Interruption.] Yes, it was negotiated by the previous Government and it will come into force in November this year. Off the top of my head, only two countries, Ireland and Poland, have derogated from it and are delaying implementation. I look forward to the proper transfer of prisoners to all the other countries. It means that British criminals will be brought to our prisons to complete their sentences and that foreign prisoners will be returned elsewhere. We will see who benefits. It is obviously very sensible from every point of view.

We constantly consider with the UK Border Agency the quicker removal of prisoners who are due for deportation. I concede to the UKBA that deportation is not always as simple in individual cases as it is made to sound. It is difficult to get some countries to accept former prisoners, and it is, of course, difficult to get some people to go to other countries. Sometimes, their very identity or nationality is the subject of constant dispute.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Should not judges and magistrates be made aware of the success or otherwise of their individual sentencing decisions, by being kept informed of the reoffending rates of the offenders whom they send down?

[Mr Clarke]

There is a lot of work going on about the transparency of justice and the publication of local figures. We all need to know more detail about what is being done at local level and what the consequences are of the administration of justice in our localities. I am sure that all the best magistrates would welcome some feedback and more information about what is happening as a result of their sentencing policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

16. What the reoffending rates were for those sentenced to jail terms of (a) one year, (b) five years and (c) 10 years in the latest period for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

In 2008, the rate of reconviction within one year for adults discharged from custody after a sentence of less than a year was 61.1%; it was 31.0% for those given sentences of one to five years, 17.5% for offenders given sentences of five to 10 years, and 6.4% for 10 years or more. The Government’s Green Paper on rehabilitation and sentencing sets out our proposals to punish and rehabilitate offenders.

[Mr Hollobone]

Does the Minister agree that the figures suggest that prison actually works, and that the longer prisoners spend in prison the greater the chance of ensuring their effective rehabilitation before being released?

[Mr Blunt]

That is why we have to address the appalling reoffending rates of those people sentenced to short terms in prison. There were 60,000 of those in the past year, and I am afraid that the option of sending them all to prison for 10 years does not exist, so we have to make a success of rehabilitation. We have to ensure that longer sentences are given to recidivist offenders and that we effectively rehabilitate people and break the cycle of crime through the proposals that we have presented in the Green Paper to drive that number down.

Courts Service Estate

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. Clearly, things were not all bad in Wales. We wanted to do a full consultation, as the previous Government had been closing courts in dribs and drabs—a court here and a court there. One of them was operating as a pizza shop, and another had had the roof burned off for three years before we came in and closed it. This Government are consulting fully and putting forward a strategic plan across local areas where people can take a strategic view on a national basis.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Residents in the borough of Kettering will be pleased that the Minister has listened to the vigorous local campaign and decided to save Kettering magistrates court. What were the main factors behind his very welcome decision?

[Mr Djanogly]

The court will remain open because of concerns raised about the capacity of the receiving court at Northampton in light of the decision to close Daventry and Towcester magistrates courts.

Sentencing (Green Paper)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh. I thank Mr Speaker for being kind enough to grant me a debate on the Green Paper entitled “Breaking the cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders”.

Crime and the punishment of criminals is important for my constituents. Although I appreciate the Government’s good intentions, I am not sure that the Green Paper hits the appropriate nails on the head. Importantly, it says some constructive and helpful things. For example, it says that prisons should become places of hard work and industry and that community sentences should punish offenders and make them pay back to society and the taxpayer. It wants offenders to make a greater financial reparation to victims and the taxpayer, and victims to engage with the criminal justice system on their own terms. It would also like offenders to get off drugs for good and to pay their way in prison, and to prevent young people from offending.

Although the Green Paper contains laudable aims, the mood music behind it does not hit the right notes for my constituents, who believe that there is a proper place in society for prison and that prison works. Prison did not work as effectively as it might under the previous Government, largely because far too many prisoners lived in overcrowded conditions and far too many sentences were too short. Basically, my constituents are of the view that prison works when it is managed properly.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I welcome this opportunity to say what my constituents think, which is, of course, that they want law and order. They recognise that the prison system is there to deal with the worst offenders. Surely it is right that we tackle reoffending, which is one of the key thrusts of the Green Paper. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the Secretary of State for Justice has outlined a strategy that is consistent with that objective?

[Mr Hollobone]

No, I do not agree with my hon. Friend. Yes, it is right that reoffending rates are far too high and that we face a real problem in tackling them. None the less, when prison works effectively, it reduces reoffending rates, and I shall come back to that later.

[Neil Carmichael]

We have twice as many people in prison as the French. Do you think that we are twice as naughty or that our system is not quite good enough?

[Neil Carmichael]

My apologies.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that intervention. I have some statistics that I shall use later about how we do not have enough people in prison in this country, which relates to the point that my hon. Friend has just made.

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

Does my hon. Friend not agree that we have to look at overall sentencing in three respects—punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence? Given what the previous 13 years have left us, I completely agree with him—criminals have had it far too easy in prison. The Government’s payback proposals will ensure that prisoners go out and work. When a compensation order is passed in court, they will no longer be able to say, “We haven’t got the money; we are on welfare.” The Secretary of State’s proposal will ensure that they have to work, earn their keep and pay back the money. That must be a good thing.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is right about that, but prisoners need to work more in prison. On page 9 of the Green Paper, I am pleased to see the coalition Government say:

“Prisoners will increasingly face the tough discipline of regular working hours. This has been lacking in prison regimes for too long.”

I say, “Hear, hear” to that.

[Neil Carmichael]

The Secretary of State for Justice has indicated that that is one of his intentions. I have also taken him to Stroud where we looked at a payback scheme, which was highly effective. He spoke to people there and he got the impression, as we all did, that the scheme was definitely working. Does my hon. Friend agree that that type of scheme should be pursued?

[Mr Hollobone]

It should be pursued, yes, but not for persistent and prolific offenders. Far too many nasty people commit all sorts of horrible crimes and never find themselves in prison. On page 6 of the Green Paper, the coalition Government say:

“Recent evidence suggests there is a group of around 16,000 active offenders at any one time, who each have over 75 previous convictions”.

The document goes on:

“On average they have been to prison 14 times, usually for less than 12 months, with nine community sentences and 10 fines.”

Prison works but only when people are sent to prison for an appropriate amount of time. It is clear to all of us that short prison sentences do not work. My solution is to send these very nasty 16,000 people to prison for longer so that they can be rehabilitated before being let out into the community.

[Rehman Chishti]

With regard to short sentences, is it not the case that a prisoner who is on six months will do three months and be transferred from one prison to another and then another? Therefore, there is no effective rehabilitation within the system. If the prisoner stays in one prison, he will have management and structure rather than being pushed from one prison to another. Does my hon. Friend not agree that that must be changed?

[Mr Hollobone]

That is an excellent point with which I entirely agree.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that there is a danger in just looking at statistics, in that we do not know or understand the level of criminality that lies behind them? If we look at the figures and then the length of sentences, we can see that they refer to prolific, but low-level offenders. The Green Paper seeks to address the situation of those criminals who are not the serious criminals—serious criminals will continue to be sent to prison for a long time. This is about short-term sentences of under 18 months. That is why I commend the Green Paper—or I will do in due course—to the House and to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Hollobone]

I disagree with my hon. Friend. I understand that we are not talking about serious offences. None the less, it is very serious to my constituents that someone can be convicted 75 times. That person is very nasty and is committing lots of very low-level crimes and they deserve to spend a long time in prison.

[Anna Soubry]

Let us take that example. That could be someone who is, for example, committing shop thefts on a regular basis. The maximum sentence for something such as that would be around 12 months at the most, or 18 months if they were very unfortunate. This is a persistent but very low-level offender. Clearly, in the example that my hon. Friend puts forward, prison is not working, because the person keeps on committing crimes and keeps on going back to prison. It is to end that revolving door that we are doing the things that have been laid out in the Green Paper. That person is not necessarily a nasty person; they are not violent otherwise they would go away for a lot longer. Those who steal from shops are exactly the sort of people we are addressing.

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be shorter.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am sorry, but that person is a nasty person. Just because someone is not violent does not mean that they are not nasty. I contend that the reason that they are reoffending is that they never serve their sentence in full. Even if someone is sentenced to 18 months for shoplifting, no one in this country will ever serve such a sentence. They might be sentenced to that, but the chances are that they will be out reoffending within six months. My contention is that such people need to be in jail for at least a year to enable proper rehabilitation to take place.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend is spot on in terms of what went on from April 2007 to April 2010 when some 80,000 prisoners were let out on early release. That was absolutely shocking. When a sentence is passed, we must ensure that it is fully complied with.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The previous Government made an almighty mess of this. Even though I disagree with the main thrust of this Green Paper, I commend the coalition Government for taking an organised and proactive interest in trying to address this issue sensibly, which the previous Government did not do.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has been extremely generous in giving way. The fact that four Members have already contributed to this debate from the Back Benches shows how important the issue is. Prison officers came to my surgery and said, “What we need, Mr Bone, is not these short sentences of a year. We put them on community service for a couple of occasions, but when they come back the third time, we should put them away for five years so that they can get the proper training and education that they need in prison.” What would my hon. Friend say to that?

[Mr Hollobone]

I would say that my hon. Friend is spot on. He has provided me with a helpful link to the next part of my speech which is about the length of sentences. In 2006, the Home Office report “Re-offending of adults” concluded that

“re-offending rates are lower among offenders discharged from a custodial sentence of at least a year (49 per cent.) than among those discharged from a shorter custodial sentence (70 per cent.)...This suggests that custodial sentences of at least a year are more effective in reducing re-offending.”

It is worth repeating those figures; prisoners with sentences of up to one year had a reoffending rate of 70%, while in the case of prisoners with sentences of more than two years the reoffending rate dropped to 49%. The report also showed that for people who had spent more than four years in prison, the reoffending rate was merely 35%. Looking at those figures, my constituents would say, “Well, that says to us that we need to put these nasty people behind bars for longer, so that they can be rehabilitated properly before being released and being at large again”.

I also want to address this myth that we have too many people in prison in this country. In terms of absolute numbers, yes, we have a relatively high prison population, but we are a relatively highly populated country. If we look at the number of prisoners that we have for every 100,000 people, we are nearer the average but still quite high. However, the only meaningful measure of the size of the prison population is how many prisoners there are in relation to the number of crimes committed. On that measure, I would suggest that the evidence is startling—we do not have the highest prison population in the western world, but the lowest. Compared with the US, Canada, Australia and the EU as a whole, the UK has the lowest prison population of all. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we have approximately 13 prisoners, compared with approximately 15 in Canada and Australia, well over 20 for the EU as a whole and a whopping 166 in the US.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that sentencing and the number of people in prison should be determined by the sentences rather than the ability of the Government to house those prisoners, and that it is the responsibility of Government to ensure that suitable premises are available if sentences are passed?

[Mr Hollobone]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Frankly, it is a national scandal that we do not have enough prison capacity. When we have troops living in tents in theatre in Afghanistan receiving money per meal that is less than the money per meal provided for a prisoner in a UK jail, it is a disgrace that we are not making better use of the redundant military facilities that we have in this country to house a bigger prison population. With a bit of imagination and, frankly, some political backbone, we could achieve a lot more.

[Mr Bone]

That is the very point that I wanted to address today. My constituency neighbours my hon. Friend’s and it contains Her Majesty’s Prison Wellingborough, which now appears to be under threat of closure. HMP Wellingborough is under market testing. However, the market testing has been abandoned or put back. HMP Wellingborough has gone from being a rather poor prison to being the best category C prison in the east midlands. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should not be considering closing that type of prison?

[Mr Hollobone]

I agree with my hon. Friend. However, prison conditions are far too luxurious. I think that it is 1,500 prisoners who have Sky TV in their cells. I have lots of constituents in Kettering who cannot afford Sky TV. It is a scandal that prisoners receive a bigger allowance for their daily meals than our troops in Afghanistan. In many cases, prison accommodation is too comfortable.

On the other hand, I accept that when a prison is overcrowded it makes rehabilitation more difficult and it is appropriate that we have the right number of cells for the prisoners whom we need to house. However, there must be a limit on the quality of the accommodation on which we are currently spending lots of money.

The other point that I wanted to draw to the House’s attention is the fact that the country with the lowest prison rate—the UK—has the highest crime rate. Is that a coincidence? I do not think so. We have more than 10,000 crimes for every 100,000 people. The country with the highest prison rate, which is the US, has the lowest crime rate; it has about 4,500 crimes for every 100,000 people. Canada, which is the country with the second lowest prison rate, has the second highest crime rate. The EU has the second highest prison rate and the second lowest crime rate. That is not a coincidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has done a lot of very good work in this House in highlighting these statistics, which I think blow apart this namby-pamby approach to having soft community sentences to tackle the behaviour of some very nasty people.

[Rehman Chishti]

I wanted to make a point with regard to community penalties. I have been at the criminal Bar and prosecuted and defended many cases. Is it not the case that the Green Paper should be welcomed, because community penalties will be tied in with greater use of curfew orders? We should give offenders hard work during the day, make sure that it is done and that it is hard work, but we must also ensure that their liberty on Friday and Saturday nights is completely curtailed, so that rather than have them committing crimes, going out until the early hours and making a nuisance of themselves, we should make greater use of curfew orders, which is what this Green Paper is all about.

[Mr Hollobone]

I agree with my hon. Friend that if we must have these community penalties, they need to be tough and unpleasant. Frankly, the gangs that I have seen taking part in these sort of activities have not been that disciplined, were not working that hard and I very much doubt the utility of the work that they were doing.

[Neil Carmichael]

Does my hon. Friend not recognise that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice has said that there is a place for prison, people should go to prison and that, if they have committed a serious crime, they should go to prison for a long time? We need to get this issue into perspective, because we are actually talking about reducing the prison population by 3,000 and not, as my hon. Friend suggested, about simply having a namby-pamby approach to prisons.

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, but my contention is that there are some unpleasant people out there who will commit crime unless they are prevented from doing so by being put in prison. When half the crimes committed in this country are being committed by 10% of the offenders, those 10% of offenders do not need to be out there doing good works on the street; they need to be behind bars so that they cannot reoffend.

The concluding part of my remarks is that although I recognise the good intentions of the Ministry of Justice in trying to reduce reoffending—I do not doubt the Ministry’s efforts in that regard—the obvious thing to do to reduce prison numbers is sort out the 11,500 foreign national prisoners in our jails. The number of such prisoners doubled under the previous Government.

I have raised this issue time and time again on the Floor of the House and frankly we are not getting very far. One of the countries that has a high number of its nationals as prisoners in our country is Nigeria. When I last looked at the figures, I saw that there were something like 752 Nigerian nationals in prison in our country. Effectively, we are paying £30 million a year for incarcerating those individuals. The Nigerian National Assembly has been looking at this issue since 2007. Why are we not hauling in the Nigerian ambassador or speaking to the Nigerian President to get this arrangement sorted out, because sending 752 Nigerians back to Nigeria would go a long way to freeing up the 3,000 prison places that my hon. Friend the Minister wants to find?

[Rehman Chishti]

I fully endorse what my hon. Friend has said with regard to foreign nationals. Linked to that point, what must change is the procedure that is applied to removal orders and the time that it takes for somebody to be removed from this country. At the moment, there is a disjointed approach and that must change, so that once someone has been through the courts, their removal must be swift.

[Mr Hollobone]

As usual, my hon. Friend is quite right. However, now we have the Prime Minister launching a campaign on the front page of the Daily Mail to say that repatriating foreign national prisoners is one of his top priorities. Please can we have a joined-up approach across this Government—across the Ministry of Justice, the Foreign Office and the Home Office—to ensure that we actually get these people back to their own countries? Then we will create the space in prison that we need to rehabilitate people properly, reduce the overall prison population if need be and stop people reoffending.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

One day I will convert the hon. Gentleman. With great respect, I think that he has been a great leader in his community in tackling the problem of drugs in Bassetlaw, and it is partly down to his efforts that it has been tackled in that part of Nottinghamshire much more forcefully than ever before. We are going to send repeat offenders to prison; no one is going to stop punishing people who keep offending. It is not a key part of the legal system in north Nottinghamshire that we should keep redundant courts, although we are still consulting on the two courts in his constituency. The foresight that he has shown on the problems of drugs will not be frustrated by our attempts to improve yet further the drug rehabilitation programmes that young people get in his constituency. This is not all about money, and that has not actually been the way he has approached this issue in the past few years either.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Last year, more than 20,000 offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions, and more than 2,500 offenders with more than 50 prosecutions or cautions, avoided a jail sentence. Will my right hon. and learned Friend’s proposals not simply make that matter worse?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not think that they will make any difference, really—[Interruption.] No, do not start misquoting me. If the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) cannot find anything that I have said to disagree with, I hope that he will not start misquoting me in order to find something. I would need to work through those 2,000 cases, and my first question would be to ask what the further offence was that they were up for. I am sure it was not parking. People who have previously committed a crime are not always sent to prison again, and the first thing we have to ask is how serious is the matter for which they are before the courts again. I hate to cast doubt on my hon. Friend’s statistics, but a lot of the statistics used across this whole field as the basis for these arguments are hopelessly unreliable. We are not reducing punishment for serious crime, and we are not letting anybody out of prison. We are using prison as a punishment, and trying to prevent the kind of people that he has described from reoffending over and over again, because that is in the public interest.

Public Disorder (NUS Rally)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I repeat that there is no excuse for resorting to violence, intimidation or attacks on property. There are plenty of means—including through access to this place, lobbying Members of Parliament—for people to make their views known.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

As well as criminal prosecutions, will my right hon. Friend encourage universities, colleges of higher education and, in some cases, employers, to take appropriate disciplinary measures?

[Nick Herbert]

I think we need to draw a distinction between those who were marching peacefully and the small minority who were clearly engaged in criminal acts. They must be brought before the courts in the proper manner, after which action can be taken by the relevant academic authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

Absolutely. The Government support legal aid very much. As far as we are concerned, however, it is a question of directing that legal aid to those who need it most, and that will form the core component of the review whose findings will come out later this autumn.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

14. If he will establish how many foreign national prisoners held in UK prisons wish to serve out custodial sentences in their country of origin rather than in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Since 1 January this year, 97 applications for transfer have been received from prisoners wishing to serve their custodial sentence in their country of origin. The Prison Service has in place procedures—principally on induction—to ensure that prisoners are aware of the possibility of transfer and of how to submit an application. In addition, prisoners are advised, during interviews with immigration staff, of the possibility of being repatriated. Relevant prisoners are advised in writing of any new prisoner transfer agreement that comes into effect.

[Mr Hollobone]

May I urge my hon. Friend to place in the Library the details of the countries to which those 97 prisoners wished to return? I also urge him and his ministerial colleagues to do far more to encourage foreign national prisoners to go back to where they came from, because taxpayers in this country are fed up with paying for their board and lodging.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Lady identifies the challenge we face. We as a nation have to increase our capacity to deliver education and all the other services that are required to assist in rehabilitating offenders. That is why we are going to effect a rehabilitation revolution which will involve that great army of people out there who want to help us and who have so far found our current structures very difficult to engage with. Moving to output-based measures will enable us to use the capacity of all those people who want to help us in the incredibly important work of rehabilitating offenders much more effectively than we have done to date.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

12. What recent discussions he has had with (a) the UK Border Agency and (b) foreign Governments on the compulsory transfer of foreign national prisoners to detention in their country of origin.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Ministry of Justice officials have been in regular contact with their colleagues at UKBA to identify suitable prisoners for transfer under the additional protocol to the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons. A number of cases are currently being pursued. Discussions between officials of member states of the European Union on the implementation of the EU prisoner transfer agreement took place in April.

[Mr Hollobone]

We currently have the pleasure and privilege of paying for the board and lodging of 752 Nigerians in British jails at a time when we are giving that country £132 million a year in development aid. Her Majesty’s Government have been negotiating with the Nigerian Government on the compulsory transfer of those prisoners since 2007. Could we urge them to get a move on?

[Nick Herbert]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern about this and note the ten-minute Bill he recently introduced. The Government believe that wherever possible foreign national prisoners should serve their sentences in their own country. Negotiations on a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement with Nigeria will be concluded as soon as changes to Nigerian domestic legislation have been made.