Oral Answers to Questions

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I should point out that people on high incomes do not get legal aid. We need to change behaviour; there needs to be a less contentious approach to the law and early intervention, which means looking at new ideas such as mediation.

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

With regard to the outcomes of the reforms, particularly in family law cases, will the Minister clarify and confirm that in such cases, divorcing couples’ equity and assets will be taken into account when determining legal aid so that those who can pay do pay?

[Mr Djanogly]

In public family law, legal aid will remain. In private family law, legal aid will be removed, because we believe fundamentally that the taxpayer should not have to pay for a regular divorce, a contact application or splitting up family assets. People should go to mediation to sort out their problems among themselves—not at the cost of the taxpayer.

Legal Aid Reform

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on introducing this debate. She spoke with enormous clarity and mapped out the ways in which the cuts in legal aid will have an impact on our constituents. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) who made many points with which I agree, including a warning to beware labelling all lawyers as fat cats. Legal aid lawyers work extremely hard for relatively modest remuneration, and we should remember that.

I do not wish to repeat the key points that these cuts represent a false economy; that there are real dangers in taking whole areas out of the scope of legal aid because so many cases are complex, and cases such as debt and housing run into each other and cannot be separated out; or that there are limits to the value of phone advice. These are very important points, but I will not dwell on them further.

I want to make three further points. First, if there was ever a time to be scaling back on legal aid, particularly in civil and social welfare law, this is not it. We are seeing massive upheavals in public service delivery: in education, to which I will return; in housing, through the proposals in the Localism Bill, which will introduce short-term tenancies; in welfare, with £18 billion being taken out of the welfare budget through the cuts in housing benefit; in disability benefits; and, as mentioned, in rising unemployment and the broader economic context.

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

Does the hon. Lady not accept that the current cost of legal aid is unsustainable? We are spending £38 per head of population on legal aid, whereas in Australia it is £9, and in France £3. These reforms are therefore essential to get our economy back on track.

[Ms Buck]

There are so many points with which to respond to that intervention. We cannot compare systems between countries. It is not helpful because the legal systems and the delivery of legal aid support are so different. The Labour Front-Bench team are willing to discuss the legal aid budget, particularly in some aspects of criminal legal aid. There are areas in which savings can be made, but I am particularly concerned about civil and social welfare law.

My second point, which was made strongly during an earlier Westminster Hall debate, concerns the impact of these cuts—given the speed and depth at which they are being made—on the legal aid firms, law centres, citizens advice bureaux and other advice agencies. In many cases, they draw on legal aid for part of their funding. The removal of legal aid funding is like a game of Jenga: we start pulling out the sticks and the whole edifice is in danger of collapse. I think we will see a massive, unplanned spate of service closures across the country, and we will not be able to control where they happen. There will be advice deserts, and many of our constituents will struggle as a consequence.

I will provide an example of what I am talking about. This reform is being delivered at the same time as cuts in local authority spending. The London grant scheme is being repatriated to the boroughs without ring-fencing, which means that advice services in London are at the whim of local boroughs that are themselves under pressure. Therefore, the grant funding that should complement the Legal Services Commission funding is unlikely to be there. That will clearly impact severely on citizens advice bureaux and law centres. As has been said, politicians will regret taking this decision. I am already seeing—I am sure that other hon. Members are seeing it too—people coming to me for what should be a legal advice and representation service that in many cases we are not qualified, and certainly not resourced, to provide. I predict with absolute certainty that our surgeries will be flooded with more and more desperate and angry people who cannot get the proper representation they should.

Finally, I want to touch on the disproportionate impact on women, children, people with disabilities and people from black and minority communities. We know from the scope of the areas affected that these cuts will fall most heavily on them. We have heard about family law and asylum-seeking communities, particularly asylum-seeking children, who will be left at risk because of these cuts. However, I want to make a particular case for education and special educational needs. In my borough there is a particular problem of children without school places—350 were without a place before Christmas. Those children and their families need advice and representation, and the parents seeking to take action against their local authority for denying them a statement of special educational needs are a particularly vulnerable group. We know from the number of tribunals that succeed that 82% of parents’ appeals that reach tribunal are upheld. The removal of assistance from those parents, many of whom simply do not have the skills or resources to make their own case, will mean that their children will not get the education to which they are entitled.

I urge the Minister to rethink many aspects of the proposals, in particular the narrowness of the scope that is being applied to legal aid cases and the arbitrary way in which the services are being withdrawn.

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[Mr Bradshaw]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Indeed, I was about to make the point—gently, I hope—to the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) that it is not good enough for Government Members to excuse every cut that this Government are implementing by talking about the need for fiscal consolidation. There is a clear choice to be made about the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation, and there is growing evidence that the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation being pursued by this Government is not only damaging important services such as the CAB, but damaging our economic recovery. All hon. Members need to do—

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Mr Bradshaw]

No, sit down.

All hon. Members need to do is look across the Atlantic at the example of the United States under Barack Obama, who is pursuing a Keynesian economic policy, like the one that we advocate, where growth was 3.5% in the last quarter, as opposed to a 0.5% contraction here. So please, let us have no more lectures from Government Members about there being no alternative to these savage cuts.

For all the Government’s rhetoric about the big society, the CAB is the big society in action. It is staffed mainly by volunteers, helping everyone, and in particular the vulnerable, and saves the state millions of pounds in the process by ensuring that people in difficulty do not fall into crisis, the fallout from which the state then has to pick up. The Government’s proposed changes to legal aid and their impact on the work of CABs such as mine in Exeter will have a deeply damaging impact on the fabric of our communities and will cost us all far more in the long term. I therefore urge the Government to think again about this short-sighted and false economy.

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[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing the debate. Unlike her, I do not have any experience of giving legal advice or doing legal aid work, but I did benefit from the legal aid system many years ago when I successfully pursued maintenance payments for my daughter.

My reason for speaking in the debate is that I was alerted to the Government’s proposed reforms by a constituent of mine who practises as a solicitor in a well-respected law firm in Newcastle upon Tyne. She spelled out to me just how devastating the cuts would be for many of my most vulnerable constituents who need legal aid now or might need it in future. The Government claim that they want to be fair, but removing the right to help with legal costs from those who need it to obtain appropriate representation when they are making a legal challenge is overtly denying those very people a right to justice. Indeed, the chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Nicholas Green, QC, has described the cuts as a “shrinkage of justice”.

Like many MPs, I have been contacted by a number of organisations on this matter, each making a case for retaining the £350 million in the legal aid budget. They were all concerned about the range of areas being taken out of scope because of the huge cut in funds being made towards 2014. The Law Society has stated that

“the civil legal aid scope cuts, in social welfare law, appear to be targeted against areas of law, which are most relevant to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society”.

That is borne out by the information I have received from the director of the citizens advice bureaux that operate across the borough of North Tyneside, serving the constituencies of both North Tyneside and Tynemouth. He advised me that the cuts to legal aid are a double whammy, as the Government have just announced the end of North Tyneside CAB’s financial inclusion fund from April this year. So, with cuts to legal aid, North Tyneside’s CAB will lose two and a half debt specialist posts and one and a half benefit specialist posts, and the end of the financial inclusion fund means that a further four and a half posts will go.

Last year, our CAB handled more than 72,000 cases. Staff dealt with cases involving £25 million-worth of debt, not including mortgages, and managed to write off £4.5 million-worth of that debt for local people. Furthermore, with work carried out on benefits this year, the CAB in North Tyneside is projecting benefit gains of nearly £900,000. In the light of those figures, it is easy to imagine the hardship that will be caused by the loss of funding that to date has made such a difference to constituents, whose only avenue of help is the legal aid route.

[Rehman Chishti]

On page 5.5 of the 2010 Labour manifesto, on which the hon. Lady stood for election, her party committed to

“find greater savings in legal aid”.

How does she intend to satisfy that commitment if she does not support the changes that the Government are bringing in?

[Mrs Glindon]

Our Front-Bench team do not deny that certain efficiencies had to be made. In fact, as was said previously, they committed money to help during the recession.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on bringing forward this important topic for debate. For as long as I have worked in the community, legally aided lawyers and law centres have often been at the forefront of the fight for justice for marginalised groups who could not otherwise have made their voices heard. Those were often groups of people who were not necessarily getting help from their trade union, their councillors or their MP, because lawyers can often pinpoint issues, because of the cases coming to them, before they come to the attention of politicians. Because I know that so many legally aided lawyers and practitioners who work in citizens advice bureaux and law centres are often extraordinarily dedicated, I deprecate the tendency of Governments of all colours—my Government were just as bad—to talk about legal aid just in terms of the money going to lawyers. On the tendency to slide into talking about fat cat lawyers, I can say with confidence that, since the Carter reforms, nobody has made a fortune in legal aid law practice. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can hear hon. Members from both sides supporting me on that point.

[Rehman Chishti]

Prior to becoming a Member, I was a criminal barrister for a number of years, and, to confirm what the hon. Lady says, I must say that as a barrister at Crown court one would earn £40 for a mention and could be there all day. The idea that barristers or lawyers are fat cats is completely wrong, and I fully support what she says.

[Ms Abbott]

But sadly, when Governments of all colours consider legal aid, they seem to zero in on the lawyers and the money that they make, rather than the millions of people whom they help.

I repeat what Opposition Members have said about the potential of the reforms to undermine totally the law centre movement. Nobody who has seen people queuing outside their law centre for help could support any action by any Government which undermined that movement. I must add, however, that the legal aid reforms will also undermine the practice of many high street solicitors, who are often close to and help their community. A disproportionate number of them are black and minority ethnic solicitors, and I do not believe that the Government have fully considered how the reforms will undermine the structure for providing the legal advice, help and support on which communities rely.

Earlier, a Member said that one reason why people have recourse to lawyers is the inefficiency of the Department for Work and Pensions, to which I should add the inefficiencies of local councils and the immigration service and the inefficiencies and, sometimes, unfairness of education authorities. But what are we to do? We acknowledge the systemic inefficiencies in many parts of the public sector, but are we going to leave tens of thousands of people to suffer injustice and unfairness in order to save money in the short term on the legal aid budget?

I also want to address the limits of phone advice. Talking down a phone might be all well and good for people in wealthier areas, but in the inner city many people do not have English as their first language, and if English is their first language they might be inarticulate, afraid and inhibited. In 20 years as a Member, I have had to advise hundreds of thousands of people. Often, they come in and mumble about some issue or other, and only after carefully questioning them, looking them in the eye and showing them my sympathy do they tell me their real problem. If we submit such people to talking down a phone, we will find that their issues are completely lost. They will put the phone down, never having explained what they really wanted to talk about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I would hope to have the opportunity to do so, but I cannot promise to do so. I have yet to visit a substantial amount of the prison estate and a number of probation trusts, but I would certainly like the opportunity to visit. I suspect what is underlying the hon. Gentleman’s question is the funding issue. On funding for centres such as Chepstow House, what I can say at this stage is that we have identified funding to sustain those projects that have demonstrated effective performance and we will make an announcement shortly about what will replace the current funding arrangements.

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

With regard to imprisonment and reoffending, can the Minister tell the House how the National Offender Management Service is performing and what has happened to the C-NOMIS data system, which was supposed to assist it and cost £161 million prior to 2007?

[Mr Blunt]

The C-NOMIS information technology system was one of the greater disasters that surrounded the provision of IT under the previous Administration. Rescued out of that has been the P-NOMIS system, which does not deliver quite the co-ordination between probation services and the Prison Service that was intended of C-NOMIS. However, we will continue to work to ensure that we make the proper connections as far and as best we possibly can to ensure that IT properly supports our management of offenders.

Sentencing (Green Paper)

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[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.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[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.

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[Rehman Chishti]

Does the Minister agree that it is completely and utterly wrong that in the past 13 years we should have had more legislation than in the past 100 years? Does he also agree that we should make legislation only when it is necessary, rather than for the sake of it?

[Mr Djanogly]

I do. The figure of more than 3,000 new offences comes to mind. We had the situation in which a new offence was being created before the previous one had commenced.

We want to simplify the sentencing framework and make it more comprehensible for the public. We also want to enhance judicial discretion, to allow the judges and magistrates who hear the cases to make the most appropriate decisions on sentencing within the legal framework set by Parliament.

I accept that some people, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, want to see longer sentences, but we need to be proportionate. We could not accommodate the much longer sentences that he suggests without raising taxes to build more prisons.

Sentences have, however, got longer and longer over the past couple of decades, and for many years offenders have not spent their sentence in custody. We do not propose to make fundamental changes to determinate sentences. At present, offenders serving a determinate sentence spend half of their sentence in custody and half on licence in the community. If an offender breaches the condition of their licence, they may be returned to prison. We recognise—

Courts Service Estate

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

Replacement of the inadequate facilities at the Liverpool magistrates courts at Dale street and Victoria street is, and remains, a top-priority scheme for Her Majesty’s Courts Service.

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

I welcome the Minister’s statement. Will he confirm that millions of pounds are wasted each year by commuting prisoners to and from court, and that better use of technology could deal with PCMHs—plea and case management hearings—first appearances and mentions at the Crown court and the magistrates court?

[Mr Djanogly]

I am absolutely convinced by what my hon. Friend has to say. Millions of pounds are currently wasted by witnesses, lawyers and defendants all moving around the country. Many problems could be solved through the use of technology.

Police Funding

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is rightly concerned about that. I will be going to Birmingham in a week’s time at the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak to see how the CSR will affect visible policing.

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

In response to an earlier question about the functions of police officers, it has to be said that many were affected by the previous Government’s ill thought out, badly drafted legislation. For example, the short-term, knee-jerk reaction dispersal orders simply moved one problem to a different street in the same area, which I often saw as a cabinet member for safety in Medway. Of course we must consider the various functions of police officers, but in the past 10 years the police have been tied up with functions they should never have been dealing with.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One thing I hope we can avoid at all costs is the kind of knee-jerk reaction that he mentioned. I would hate the police service to be subject to the same kind of reorganisation that we have had in the NHS in the past 20 years under the previous Government and the one before that.

I do not intend to go on for long, because many right hon. and hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate. The Home Affairs Committee hopes to assist the Government in this difficult process—we want to approach the proposals in a comradely and constructive way. I am glad to see so many members of the Committee in the Chamber. Our longest-serving and most distinguished member, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) is here, as are my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. The hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) are members of the Committee, and sitting behind them on the Government Benches is a non-member, the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) is also in the Chamber. She was a member of the Committee but was poached within weeks of her appointment by the Minister to become his Parliamentary Private Secretary. I am sure she is doing a great job.

The Committee has decided to undertake a trilogy of reports on three different aspects of the proposals to assist the Government. It is rather like “The Lord of the Rings”. We have just published our report on police and crime commissioners. As the Minister knows, members of the Committee have different views on the desirability of police and crime commissioners, but I hope he found our report helpful. It outlined a number of issues that we feel could be of value to the country.

We were very concerned that the figures for the cost of police and crime commissioners came out only after we had published our report. Indeed, the proposals came out on the very day that we published our report. Perhaps we can improve our co-ordination. I am not saying that we should be like “Strictly Come Dancing”, but if the Government and the Committee communicated a little bit better, we might be able to see the proposals before we commence our reports, which would make what we say more valuable.

The second report was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, and we will look at the CSR in the light of the decisions that the Minister will make imminently about how much police forces will have as part of that second report on a reduction in police bureaucracy. There is common ground on both sides of the House about the need to reduce police bureaucracy. When my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) was the Minister with responsibility for the police, he also said that he wanted to cut red tape. In the 23 years I have been a Member of Parliament, Ministers have always said that they want to cut red tape, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we need to ensure that it actually is reduced. That is why I hope that Jan Berry will have her term as the police bureaucracy tsar renewed, so that rather than just writing a one-off report she can continue to monitor the situation.

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[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

It is my turn to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills)—the sequence is normally the other way around—and I am very pleased to do so.

I recognise that the Minister has a tough job on his hands. Although I do not agree with a number of his proposals, I accept that his instincts are to try to make the police more efficient and to achieve a better level of performance with the resources he has. His difficulty is that the Home Office did rather badly out of the recent settlement. It is evident that, while other Cabinet Ministers went to bat for their Departments and secured good deals, the Home Secretary did not achieve quite as much. We must now live with the consequences of that. I genuinely and sincerely fear that crime will rise and that we will have terrible difficulties in some of our major cities in trying to combat the particular types of crime that we have been able to bear down on so successfully in recent years.

I do not oppose the Minister’s ambitions to achieve efficiencies and use more modern methods. In fact, I agree that change is needed. I support the better use of IT and better procurement, and I believe there is a clear argument for the police shift system to be changed, which would release more officers. We argue about the statistics—the Minister is very keen to gloat about the 11% figure—but the reality is that the police shift system is part of the problem, and I am in favour of changing that.

I welcome civilianisation where it frees police to do policing jobs. However, such an approach means there can be no benefit from the mass sacking of civilians. That is the conundrum. If civilianisation is a good process because it frees police officers to carry out policing functions, it logically follows that the mass sacking of civilians will mean that police officers are taken off front-line functions and sent back to doing civilian tasks. The Minister will have to address that problem. It is likely—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made this point—that the initial response of police chiefs will be to sack civilian staff, which will impact on front-line policing. As they struggle to continue to make the budget match up, they will be forced to consider how to sack police officers. The easiest way to do that will be to apply regulation A19, which will mean that some of our more experienced and senior officers will have to go. We will have the double effect of losing civilian staff while officers are taken off the street to do their work and, simultaneously, losing senior and experienced officers.

As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), it seems that that will happen when there is also a freeze on recruitment and a freeze on pay. Those are not the conditions in which we can expect to get the best out of people, or motivate them to embrace change and improve performance; they are the conditions most likely to produce exactly the opposite effect.

I am particularly worried about the west midlands, because our gearing ratio means that we are highly dependent on grant. Earlier today, we met the Minister to discuss that very subject. If we experience a uniform cut in grant without any changes to the damping regime, we will lose out unfairly as a result of an exercise that means we must forgo money and resources, which will be transferred to other police areas. We will have to forgo those resources so that the council tax precept can be kept down elsewhere in the country.

That is a very good argument for what the Treasury want to achieve, and for what the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government might want to achieve. However, it is not an argument that someone who is worried about law and order and police resources should be too willing to embrace. Even at this stage, the Minister should consider whether he still has time to go back to his friends in the Treasury, explain the dilemma and see whether they can help him out of the hole that has been dug for him.

Project Paragon in the west midlands has shown that successful efficiency and reorganisation measures can be taken. However, such measures take time to deliver. Project Paragon cannot be turned on and off like a tap. If such things are to be done successfully, they need a long lead-in time. It takes a long time to deliver efficiencies. One of the by-products of such a change is that crime may rise during the reorganisation period, and there is some evidence in the west midlands to show that that is happening. I see that the Minister is nodding, because I think he also accepts that that is the case.

My concern about these very substantial front-loaded cuts is that such a reorganisation will occur far too fast in forces all over the country, at the very time when we are gearing up for major events, such as the Olympics. That is not something that we should be remotely complacent about. It screams out for re-examination, because the obvious dangers are right in front of us. We still have time to look into this issue, but if we delay too long, things will be upon us and our forces will be in chaos at the very time when demand for policing is at its highest.

I agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. My view is simple: law and order always has to be our No. 1 priority. I genuinely feel that the Government have got the balance wrong. I am delighted that they have selected areas of other budgets that they feel should be protected, but there are times when I would like to hear a more convincing case for those decisions. However, I am disappointed that so little emphasis seems to be placed on law and order. Yesterday we detected the dangerous cocktail of police numbers dropping, crime rising and the courts prevented from sending offenders to prison when that is exactly where they should be, along with a promise of community punishments, albeit without the resources to make them work. That is a recipe for problems.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Gentleman makes an assertion about allowing offenders to get away, but between 2007 and 2010, under the previous Government, some 80,000 prisoners were let out of prison early. Surely that was completely unacceptable, and if the hon. Gentleman’s previous comment is right, he should accept that that was wrong.

[Steve McCabe]

Actually, the reality is that under the Labour Government there was a huge rise in prison numbers. It is true that some people were allowed out one month early, but the Justice Secretary proposed yesterday that there should be a threshold in order to reduce the numbers who go to prison in the first place, which means that the courts will be hampered. Indeed, he went on to say that his preference was that people should serve half the sentence in prison and half in the community. I should tell the hon. Gentleman that his constituents will find that much less acceptable than the situation when we were in power. If he does not believe me, I would be happy to go with him to his constituency and talk to them about it, because from what my constituents tell me, I am pretty certain that I am right about that.

[Rehman Chishti]

The statement by the Secretary of State for Justice was quite clear: those who commit crime should be punished with the efficient force of the criminal justice system, and that includes going to prison. Can the hon. Gentleman show where in the Secretary of State’s statement it said that they should not be sent to prison?

[Steve McCabe]

I can show the hon. Gentleman where in the statement the Secretary of State gave the estimate for what he expected the reduction in the number of people going to prison to be. He stood at that Dispatch Box and said it, and everyone who was in the Chamber heard it—unless they have selective hearing.

I shall now return to what I was saying. There is a difficult balance. Perhaps the cuts are just too much, and the Home Office has got a particularly poor deal. I was surprised to discover, from the evidence that the permanent secretary to the Home Office gave to the Home Affairs Committee, that the Department has not carried out any research into the impact of the cuts on crime. That came from the very same permanent secretary who three years ago ordered a report on the potential impact of a recession on crime. It seems slightly strange that the man who feared then that a recession could lead to a rise in crime, and who said that we should investigate the potential outcomes, does not seem remotely troubled that a background of massive cuts and far too rapid reorganisation could have a similar effect. Perhaps it is just as well that he is planning to retire.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I realise the difficulties of a prison such a Brixton, with such a high proportion of its population being short-term prisoners. We cannot get rid of all short-term prison sentences. I have never believed that that was possible, because magistrates face people who have come before them frequently, and they have tried everything else. In such cases, there is absolutely no way of dealing with their recidivist behaviour other than to send them to prison, or sometimes back to prison yet again. I hope that some of the payment-by-results providers will be able to start providing rehabilitation for such people, for whom no provision is currently made once they are put out of the door.

As far as spending on the Prison Service is concerned, we are affected, as in every other service, by the financial constraints we are under. It is not true that it is not possible to make any savings in how we run the prison estate. Spending on the Prison Service will depend in large part on what burdens are imposed on the system in future years by the level of crime and sentencing patterns, because it is partly a demand-led service. I cannot simply give an undertaking that nothing will be changed. We intend to follow on from the last Government’s policy of using competition, among other things, to test costs and ensure that we have the most cost-effective way of providing the quality of service that we want to provide.

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

As someone who both prosecuted and defended in criminal courts before coming to this place, I wish to mention the possession of knives. Does the Secretary of State have an assessment of the effect of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, which increased the sentence from two years to four years? Does he agree that the best way to deal with knife crime is to deal with the gang culture that leads to the possession of knives?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I think the possession of knives is a scourge on society, particularly when it is associated with gang culture and all the other problems that it causes in many communities. I repeat, however, that judges and magistrates are in the best position to decide on the circumstances of a particular offence, the circumstances of the offender and the best way of imposing a penalty that protects the public.

We have to get away from the habit of the past few years of leaping in with a tariff that takes discretion away from the courts in each and every category of case. The tariff works in some cases but then, the next thing we know, the people who campaigned for it are campaigning like mad against some obvious injustice because it is inflexibly applied to some person who would be better dealt with in other ways.

Police (Public Trust)

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard]

There should be no special treatment for police officers; they are not above the law. They are subject to it, as we all are. Some officers forget that, and when they do, public trust ebbs away.

I am not convinced that internal anti-corruption units bring the conviction rates necessary to root out police corruption. I hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister will at least consider the feasibility of establishing a national and specialist anti-corruption unit by pooling existing resources that can be called on to investigate allegations of police corruption. The process by which anti-corruption investigations are triggered should also be reviewed. It should not be left to the discretion of chief officers alone to sanction such investigations.

Similarly, action is needed on race relations. Racism within the police or any workplace is completely unacceptable, but race should not be used by a small number of ethnic minority officers as a way to march chief constables down to the bank to hand over large amounts of taxpayers’ money in order to avoid damaging headlines about police forces. I have some sympathy for the comments of Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, on employment tribunals; many more police officers should exercise more resolve in taking on police officers who do not have a genuine employment grievance.

Although the vast majority of ethnic minority police officers undertake their duties professionally, with skill and courage, some constituents of mine fear that some look to their bank accounts before seeking to get on with their duties. White British officers are guilty of abusing the employment tribunal system as well, although their claims are mostly of a different nature. Where false claims are made, officers should be sacked, not promoted. For every spurious police employment tribunal claim, public trust in the police ebbs away.

Of course, many such issues can be minimised and mitigated by the more liberal application of a much needed attribute in some police forces: leadership. I hope that the Minister will consider how leadership might be revived in the police. Surely leadership is not only to be found hanging alongside a gold-framed MBA certificate on a senior officer’s wall.

We need a much improved way to recognise and reward leadership within the police, perhaps by introducing an officer entry qualification or new fast-track promotion for outstanding individuals. For example, the skills of ex-military personnel with experience of leading men and women should be recognised more fully. Others might come from other leadership backgrounds. I fear that bed-blocking by rank, most notably at sergeant rank, threatens to hold back a generation of proven and natural leaders within the police. The police service desperately needs such leaders, and the public want them.

I also hope for a review of the number of police agencies and quangos. It appears that scores of retiring senior police officers—usually they retire quite young—never actually retire. They have little time to spend their generous pensions and large lump-sum payoffs; instead, they leave the force to re-emerge in one of many police agencies or umbrella organisations, usually on higher pay than the Prime Minister.

Bonuses for police officers should stop. A rate of pay should be agreed, and senior officers should either apply for jobs based on that stated rate or take another career path or job. Doing the right thing, doing a good job and believing in their important public service role should be reward enough.

Far too many of my constituents agree that the police, like the BBC, are one of our last great unreformed national institutions, which is concerning. If policing by consent rather than by warrant card is to be re-established, perhaps where colleagues have witnessed a retreat in recent years, I hope that the police will embrace reform rather than rejecting or repelling it.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate on such an important issue. Although there are real concerns, the Kent police constabulary, for example, has a satisfaction rate of 87%, according to the Kent crime and victim survey. That clearly shows that, although there are legitimate concerns nationally, some police constabularies, such as that in Kent, are doing an excellent job.

[Mark Pritchard]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. He is right to highlight good practice and good police work when he sees it and so, too, are Members across all parties. Indeed, I hope that I have highlighted such things in trying to balance my speech.

Rights of Victims and Families

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend raises some pertinent points, and he is very experienced in this area, having spent 20 years working in the justice system.

To continue the list of differences, the perpetrator is provided with medical and professional psychiatric help, whereas victims and their families must go on a lengthy national health service waiting list just to see a counsellor. If a murderer dies in prison, his family will get up to £3,000 to bury the body, while victims get a tiny percentage of that and have to wait many months to be paid.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate on such an important and emotive topic. Judges currently have access to victim impact statements before passing sentences. Does that adequately reflect the impact on victims and their families in the judicial system?

[Esther McVey]

It goes some way, but many of the thousands of victims who have linked up across the country tell me that it does not go all the way. Again, more needs to be done.

All the differences that I have outlined are plain wrong. The inequality in the system is wrong and so, too, is the message that it sends to society and the local community where many of the victims and perpetrators live side by side in adjacent streets.

Criminal Bar (Public Funding)

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Westminster Hall

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

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes); as a young barrister it was always a pleasure to receive instructions from him in chambers. I must declare that for the past seven years I was a member of the junior Bar, practising first in London and then in-house for a firm in Kent before coming to this place.

The key point for me, having been through the system—practising, not going through the criminal justice system in another way—is that we have in our society a great belief in our liberty and freedom. The criminal justice system and the legal profession might not be perfect, but when one looks around the world one sees that it is one of the finest. It is the front-line professionals—those at the Bar, in-house barristers and High Court advocates—who ensure that people’s liberty is preserved. If there is any chance that people’s liberty may be put in danger, we must consider seriously, in terms of the whole concept of our society, how to preserve that liberty and freedom.

On the point about criminal legal aid and the criminal Bar, the people on the front line are those at the junior Bar. For a case in the magistrates court, it will be a member of the criminal Bar who will have to travel to the court, take instructions, give advice and, after that, pass the case on to the more experienced member, if so be, of Queen’s counsel.

It was a real pleasure to listen to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), and I fully agreed with his eloquent speech. If there are drastic cuts in legal aid, the junior members of the Bar will be most affected. Over the past 20 years, the Bar has worked hard to ensure that it is diverse, that it is not simply people with independent means who can come to the Bar, and that people from all different backgrounds are able to come to the Bar on merit. If there are drastic cuts, there will be an element of going back 20 years, and that cannot in any way, shape or form be right.

People often equate barristers with high earnings, but there is a key difference for members of the Bar: income tax is linked to earnings. They have to pay tax on their earnings, not their receipts. Legal aid is already at difficult levels; any further reduction would mean that if there was a delay in money coming in, those who could carry on in fair weather, and who have been there for a long time, would no longer be able to do so. The taxation system must take into account the fact that members of the Bar pay tax on earnings, not receipts.

It is accepted that the monitoring and regulation work of the Legal Services Commission over the past number of years has been absolutely awful. We hear stories—and facts, such as those that are set out in the report that I have here—of lawyers being overpaid by £25 million. When the person in the street hears that, they say, “Lawyers are paid a lot.” We must ensure proper regulation and monitoring of the current system, to see whether it is having an adverse effect on criminal justice, and to see how the current means-testing approach, brought in by the previous Government, is being applied.

I spoke to a practitioner on the front line—a solicitor in Kent—who said that there is a four-week delay in legal aid. Then, when the case goes to the Crown court, there could be a situation at a preliminary hearing, or a plea and case management hearing, where someone turns up without a representative, and the case has to be adjourned. Adjourning the case takes us back to a position where taxpayers’ money is wasted. We are far from having an efficient, well-run and proper system, but that is what must be put into practice.

We have at present a means-tested system that leads to scenarios in which people act either pro bono or under fixed-fee rates, and they may not be of the quality or have the expertise that the independent Bar can provide. Defendants may decide that they are better off just pleading guilty because, at the end of the day, they do not have the means. That goes against our fundamental principles. If someone is innocent, they should be able to fight their case all the way. We should go back to a position that this country can be proud of, in which innocent people have the means to fight for their freedom.

I know that other hon. Members wish to come into the debate. I was taught at the Bar that brevity is a virtue, not a vice, and I am very much going to apply that advice. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon discussed independent commissioning by the Bar, direct access, and regulatory caveats in respect of quality assurance. At this time, when there are difficulties, we must consider carefully how we can move forward and preserve the Bar’s independence. That is one of the best ways, at this difficult time, to move forward and preserve the Bar’s identity.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Before calling the last Back-Bench speaker, I would like to remind Members, especially the new Members here, that it is normal practice for the Chairman to be notified in advance that a Member wants to speak in a one-and-a-half-hour debate.