Criminal Legal Aid

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) Regulations 2018 (S.I., 2018, No. 220), dated 20 February 2018, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 February, be revoked.

The gravest consequences for anyone accused of a serious crime in our criminal justice system is that their liberty is taken away from them. When that is at stake, no one should be left unrepresented in a court. When that is at stake, we have a duty, as a society, to guarantee the future of effective legal representation. Failing to do so creates the real risk of injustices. This motion today is about the threats posed to our justice system and specifically to criminal defence by the Government’s changes to the payments for the criminal legal aid system. These changes are why around 100 chambers are now, in effect, striking, taking co-ordinated industrial action, and refusing more publicly funded work. The serious consequences of this action are clear for all to see. As the BBC reported on 4 April:

“A murder case at the Old Bailey has become one of the first to be affected by a strike by barristers.”

On 9 April WalesOnline explained:

“A woman accused of murdering Swansea pensioner John Williams has appeared in Crown Court without legal representation because of a barristers’ strike.”

There are many other examples.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman must recognise that the Bar was strongly in favour when this was consulted on, with statements such as

“the bar council and the young barristers committee welcome new proposals published today”,

and

“as circuit leaders over the period of the negotiations it is our shared view that we should support the implementation of the scheme”.

The Criminal Bar Association was in favour. So what exactly is the hon. Gentleman talking about?

[Richard Burgon]

Well, this is not the CBA’s scheme and it does have serious concerns about aspects of this provision. Tonight is an opportunity for the Government to think again and make some sensible concessions on the most controversial aspects. If everyone was happy with the measures, the criminal barristers would not have voted by 90% to take strike action.

We have a responsibility to contribute to resolving this situation by encouraging negotiation and facilitating a solution before there is further escalation. That means that the Government should withdraw these controversial changes, go back to the drawing board and come up with a scheme that attracts widespread support, rather than provoking a backlash.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Given the importance of what the hon. Gentleman said in his opening remarks about the right of representation in court—a very serious procedure indeed—does he not agree that barristers withdrawing their services in strike protest is not serving justice at all, and that there should be another way for them to seek redress? Will he take this opportunity to condemn the strike?

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[Richard Burgon]

I will not be taking this opportunity to condemn our barristers because I do not condemn our barristers. The hon. Gentleman may wish to ask whether we support the action. Yes, we support it. We deeply regret the fact that the Government have pushed the barristers into this position. We want the Government to take this opportunity to think again and listen to people who have been backed into a corner.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this action is the cumulative effect of years and years of assault on honest, hard-working lawyers who represent clients? These people are not at the top of the profession in terms of their income or their futures; they are people who are committed to individuals in very difficult situations, and it is the Government who have let them down.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes an important point eloquently. For many of the barristers I have spoken to, this really is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Before I touch on the precise concerns that have been raised about the new scheme, I will briefly look at the wider context that has caused this issue to be so controversial. As I have said, in many ways this issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back in the justice sector. Our justice system is at tipping point. The deep crisis unleashed by drastic cuts could soon become an emergency. In some areas, it already has.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about cuts. Does he accept that, had Labour won the 2010 general election, it too would have made substantial cuts to the Ministry of Justice budget based on its own manifesto promises?

[Richard Burgon]

Things have moved on since the 2010 general election.

Since 2010, the budget of the Ministry of Justice has fallen by 40% in the deepest cuts of any Department. A further £600 million—around 10% of the MOJ’s budget—is to be cut in the next two years. It is a system that has already been cut to the bone. The crisis in our prisons is driven by staff and budget cuts, as has been well documented. It has been less well documented that 100 or so courts have been sold off for little more than the price of the average UK house, having negative impacts on victims and witnesses. What has also not been discussed as much as it should have been is the fact that youth offending team budgets have been decimated, with central Government funding halved over the past few years, or the fact that probation privatisation is failing despite hundreds of millions of pounds more recently going into bailing out these failing private companies. But it does not stop there, because on top of this, there are big reductions in police numbers and big reductions in the Crown Prosecution Service budgets. In 2016, the Public Accounts Committee told Members of Parliament that the criminal justice system was at breaking point. After years of cuts, the system is clearly now broken. Let us be clear: an underfunded system risks yet more victims being denied justice and risks yet more miscarriages of justice.

Today we are discussing cuts related to legal aid. Our democracy and the rule of law, despite the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) advocating people being banned from not going to work, depends on people being able to defend their rights. Our welfare state, created in the aftermath of the second world war, was about defending people’s basic human rights. It was about guaranteeing every citizen access to the human rights of education and healthcare but also of access to justice. In civil cases, when people cannot access justice, the consequences are grave.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the basic fundamentals of our society is equality before the law, and that without access to legal aid, very many people are being denied equality before the law?

[Richard Burgon]

If people do not have access to justice—access to legal representation—and are not equal before the law, then basically some of our hard-won rights are not worth the paper they are written on. My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

As I said, in civil cases, when people cannot access legal aid, the consequences are grave. To illustrate that idea, let us look at what has happened in recent days and recent weeks. A migrant, or perhaps someone who was thought to look like a migrant, is not able to get legal advice after the Government slashed access. Without legal help, as I said, the rights that we have—often rights hard won by social justice campaigners across the decades—are simply not worth the paper they are written on.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. My constituent Caitriona McLaughlin works in the particular area of migrants and justice. With the Bar refusing to take new work at the new rates, she says that more and more people will suffer miscarriages of justice because of this statutory instrument. Does he agree with her?

[Richard Burgon]

I do agree. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point from his constituent’s experience. That is why I have been forced to bring this motion before the House to revoke the statutory instrument.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I will make some progress if that is okay.

The crisis in legal aid goes much wider than the civil sector, with criminal cases affected too. As I said, that has the gravest of consequences. We now have more people representing themselves, even in the most serious of criminal cases—those tried at the Crown court. I want to draw the House’s attention to Ministry of Justice research published last week. The summary paper —only a summary—was published only after dogged pressure from journalists like Emily Dugan. It highlights judges’ concerns about people representing themselves, referring to

“unrepresented defendants not understanding how to present evidence about their case at hearings, how to prepare defence statements, or how to ask questions in court.”

The obvious result of this is that some judges and prosecutors felt that those who appeared in court without a lawyer were more likely to be found guilty. The legal system should not be skewed towards wealthier people. Everybody who wants it should have access to proper legal representation if charged with a criminal offence. Justice should be blind. It should also not be based on the depth of people’s pockets. We now have criminal barristers forced to take co-ordinated action in refusing to take up legal aid work because of changes to the Government’s funding scheme.

Labour Members are proud to have submitted this motion to annul the legislation changing the scheme through which criminal defence advocates are paid for carrying out publicly funded work in the Crown court—the so-called advocates graduated fee scheme. The motion has now won the backing of over 130 Members of Parliament. We welcome the fact that, albeit belatedly, time was given for a parliamentary vote to annul this legislation.



I hope that Conservative Members who understand and respect our legal system and the importance to justice of proper access to criminal defence will not vote along party lines tonight. I hope they will help to forge a consensus that helps the Government to rethink this flawed scheme.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

When these negotiations were in process, Bar circuit leaders said:

“As the Circuit Leaders over the period of the negotiations, it is our shared view that we should support the implementation of this proposed scheme.”

Does the hon. Gentleman not think it is important to listen to those who are working in our criminal courts day after day?

[Richard Burgon]

It is not the Criminal Bar Association’s scheme. The CBA has serious concerns about the controversial aspects of the scheme. If the scheme were fine, 90% of criminal barristers would not have voted to take this action. It is clear that something has gone wrong and that the Government have backed these barristers into a corner rather than forging the consensus we need.

The Government’s scheme fundamentally changes the way in which criminal defence advocates are paid for carrying out publicly funded work in the Crown court. The new fee system means that the vast majority of cases will now receive a flat fee for a case, so that a case with 250 pages pays the same as a case with 5,000 pages. A rape case with a single complainant and defendant will have the same fee as a rape case involving multiple victims and multiple defendants. That disincentivises lawyers from undertaking complex cases, which often require weeks of preparation.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. The main losers in this are senior-level junior practitioners, who prepare and research complex cases. There is no fee for looking at prosecution disclosure, which means there is a greater chance of miscarriages of justice. Is this not completely misconceived in the way it has been put together? As he says, it will simply lead to cases either not being taken or not being prepared to the standard that they should be.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. We cannot tolerate a situation where either the guilty walk free or the innocent go to prison.

The scheme fails to recognise the growing work required to deal with the increasing amount of evidential and unused material. Advocates are expected to consider that material without specific payments, however much additional material is served. That is especially worrying, given the fact that a series of trials, including rape trials, have recently collapsed because of failings in the disclosure of evidence.

Despite Government promises of cost neutrality, the CBA says that the scheme amounts to a £2 million cut, and no future-proofing is built into it, resulting in a year-on-year inflationary cut. The new scheme does not address the damage caused to the system by substantial real-terms cuts to legal aid rates over recent years of 40%. As a result of these reductions, there are pressing concerns about the ability to retain younger barristers and recruit the next generation into criminal defence work. After two decades without any sort of basic cost-of-living pay rise, criminal law is no longer an attractive career option for young solicitors or young barristers entering the system saddled with debt, and others are leaving because of the increasingly unreasonable demands made on them to do more and more for less and less.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On the issue of recruitment, is he not particularly concerned that if the Bar is to reflect the whole of society and is to draw more widely on people from less privileged backgrounds, black and minority ethnic backgrounds and so forth, it is essential that a career at the Bar is seen to provide a reasonable income?

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are running the risk, with the path we have been taking in recent years in the justice sector, of the death knell being sounded on social mobility in the legal professions.

These changes also threaten the insufficient but none the less hard-won progress made on diversity and, as my hon. Friend says, social mobility. That has profound consequences, not just for people hoping for a career in the law but for public trust, as the judicial professions and institutions cease to reflect the communities they are there to serve. As Lady Justice Hallett has explained,

“cuts to legal aid and the publicly-funded criminal justice system will set back the cause of improving diversity on the bench.”

Criminal solicitors face similar problems with their fee scheme—the litigators graduated fee scheme. They have not received any fee increase since 1998, and the number of firms in England and Wales registered for criminal defence work has recently fallen from 1,600 to 1,200. The profession is in crisis, with an ageing demographic profile. In fact, new Law Society data paint a very bleak picture indeed of “advice deserts”, where the remaining criminal solicitors will retire and no younger solicitors are coming in to take their place. That is hardly surprising when Young Legal Aid Lawyers figures show that 53% of survey respondents earn less than £25,000 per year, and those figures relate to people qualified for up to 10 years.

[Ian C. Lucas]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the combination of the closure of courts and the reduction in the number of solicitors firms in market towns across the country is having a massive impact on these towns, and Conservative Members just do not seem to believe in a Britain that supports its local towns?

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[Richard Burgon]

That is a very important point. The whole swathe of court closures that have occurred have really done damage to the principle of justice accessible to all and delivered locally, so that point is very important.

The Law Society has issued judicial review proceedings against the Government in relation to further cuts to solicitors’ fees for Crown court work, and that crisis is not one that will go away. The issue for barristers will not be settled if the Government vote against our motion and carry on regardless. I understand that there is a presumption that barristers are all highly paid and some will want to paint this as being about more money going to the wealthy, but the CBA briefing points out that average pre-tax pay is about £28,000. Barristers are self-employed and the headline figures often exclude expenses, including the costs of office space, travel, staff, insurance, pension and sick pay, which the CBA estimates account for about half of a barrister’s turnover.

To draw my remarks to a conclusion, I want to cite an anecdote published by one criminal defence lawyer:

“Today I helped a colleague out by prosecuting the sentencing hearing in one of his cases, in a court 94 miles away from my home. The fee for that hearing is £60. £10 of that goes straight to my chambers as rent. I spent £33 on petrol and £6.30 on parking. The CPS do pay some travel—I think I’ll get £23.50 for this. Therefore, I come out with £34. The offence, by the way, was an assault on a baby. It was a 2pm hearing, so I left home at 10 and got home at 5. During those 7 hours, apart from the 10 mins I spent eating my packed lunch, I was either driving, getting ready for the hearing, in court, or explaining the outcome (a prison sentence) to the baby’s family. I don’t wish to sound ungrateful for my £34. I just can’t help but feel a little undervalued. I’ve been at the criminal Bar for 9 years. The government decides how much to pay me, and I think they take advantage of me, my skills, and my sense of public duty. #TheLawIsBroken”.

I hope you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, if, when the hon. Member for North Dorset, who has left the Chamber, invites me to condemn people such as that barrister, I do not do so. I hope you will forgive me if, when the hon. Gentleman who has left says that this person should be forced to go to work, I say that I do not agree with such a cruel and detached analysis.

The Government will say that they sought consensus on these issues, and that the Ministry of Justice has worked with the CBA and the Bar Council, although there are different accounts of those talks. The truth of the matter is that the Government have failed, as hundreds of barristers are now taking direct action. They have failed, as there is press speculation of further barrister action if they press on with this scheme tonight, with walkouts and returns not being done, which would send our courts into chaos. The Government have failed, as people in our justice system are being affected. Whatever one makes of it, the Government’s approach has not created consensus; it has created a backlash. When they are in a hole, the Government should stop digging.

The Criminal Bar Association has made a formal request for the Ministry of Justice to delay, withdraw, amend or reconsider the implementation of this statutory instrument. The Government should listen to the CBA, not deny that there is a problem. They should put the new scheme on hold and set about fixing it. To do that, they should do the right thing in tonight’s vote. I commend the motion to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Thousands of key court staff were axed, but the Government are now spending tens of millions of pounds more on contracting agency staff. More than 100 courts were sold off, each raising not much more than the average house price. Now the Secretary of State has appointed someone with a slash-and-burn record as the new chair of the HMCTS board, telling the press that Tim Parker’s

“expertise will be vital as we deliver our reform and modernisation of the courts”.

To allay concerns that Mr Parker has been appointed for his toughness on cuts, can the Minister outline the specific expertise that Mr Parker has in working in our court system?

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a number of points that I would like to refute, but I will mainly concentrate on two. It is important that where successful people in business put themselves forward for public service, we should welcome them and not put off experienced people from taking up important posts. Mr Parker has been successful in the businesses that he operated and has operated them appropriately, and we welcome him to his post. The hon. Gentleman also talks about cuts to our system. I would like to make it clear that the Ministry of Justice is proposing an extensive reform programme, which will put £1 billion into our courts service.

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[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that. One of the best ways in which we can reduce reoffending is by increasing employment, which is why we have the New Futures Network coming in. I am keen to focus on ensuring that we provide employment opportunities to prisoners as much as possible.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Windrush scandal is one of the cruellest examples of unaccountable state power targeting the vulnerable, defenceless and innocent that I can remember. Senior figures describe our immigration law as complex and unintelligible to everyone but working specialists, so I was disappointed to hear the Home Secretary say yesterday that people affected by the Windrush scandal will have “no need for lawyers”. I am sure that the Justice Secretary will understand why those words will not do, so will he guarantee today that all those who have been put into this kind of situation will have access to the necessary legal advice to help them when they need it most?

[Mr Gauke]

The Home Secretary set out a comprehensive plan yesterday for how we will make the process much easier for those who have been affected. For example, those who have retired to another country will be able to obtain British citizenship much more easily to allow them to come here without great difficulties involving visas and so on. The Home Secretary also set out how we are going to put in place arrangements to ensure that there is compensation for those who deserve it.

[Richard Burgon]

The Government’s reckless approach to our justice system means that criminal barristers have now been forced into co-ordinated action and are refusing to take up legal aid work due to changes to the advocates’ graduated fee scheme. Against all convention, the Government have denied parliamentary time to debate that properly. The Criminal Bar Association made a formal request that the Ministry of Justice delay, withdraw, amend or reconsider the implementation of the statutory instrument. If the Government will not listen to the views of parliamentarians, will they at least listen to barristers, put the new scheme on hold and set about fixing it?

[Mr Gauke]

On parliamentary time, my understanding is that we are waiting for information from the Labour party. On the substance of the issue, let us remember that reforms to the AGFS were worked out with the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association. The reforms are necessary to ensure that legal aid funds are distributed in an appropriate way, and that is why the reforms are being made.

Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement on today’s High Court decision.

Today’s unprecedented ruling, made possible by the Human Rights Act, clearly highlights the deep flaws in the initial Parole Board decision. That initial decision clearly caused anguish for the victims—those whose cases have been dealt with—and also for those who have not yet had justice. In addition, there has been deep concern among women and the public more widely. The head of the Parole Board has decided to stand down, but what is needed is real change in the way that the Parole Board functions.

The current legal restrictions on the Parole Board mean that we do not know why the initial decision was taken. That led to a rumour about where Worboys would be released, and even a rumour about his being released without a tag. That is not good for victims, and it is not good for public confidence. It cannot be right that women victims had to go to judicial review before the reasons for the release of John Worboys became available. We also remember the Government making the victims go to the Supreme Court to secure compensation following police failings.

Judges in the judicial review said that too much secrecy about Parole Board decisions under rule 25 of Parole Board proceedings prevents any reasons from being given for decisions made by the board. Therefore, as has been mentioned, the Worboys’ case underlines once and for all that there is a need for the Government to take urgent action and urgent measures to guarantee greater transparency in Parole Board decisions. Given that the public are entitled to be informed about court judgments, they must also be entitled to be informed about the clear reasons behind Parole Board decisions.

Of course, this is not about undermining the independence of the Parole Board, and we on the Labour Benches will defend the independence of our judiciary. It is right that action is being taken to improve transparency. Is the Secretary of State’s review also looking at guaranteeing not only that the public are informed about the reasons behind decisions, but that they are clear about the mechanism to challenge those decisions? Will the Secretary of State commit today to concluding his review of the Parole Board by the summer? We have seen other reviews by the Secretary of State’s Department—on the victims’ law and other issues—slip after initial announcements. Will he reassure the House that that will certainly not happen in this case?

A lawyer for the victims of John Worboys has said that the Ministry of Justice was responsible for preparing the dossier of evidence on which the Parole Board made its decision to release. Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why information about the so-called rape kit used by John Worboys and the sentencing remarks of the judge in the criminal trial of John Worboys were not included in this dossier? Why did the dossier contain nothing about the new information that came to light during the proceedings brought by victims against the Metropolitan police?

The failures in the Worboys case go much wider than the rules governing the Parole Board. It is clear from today’s ruling that judicial review is a key tool enabling every citizen to challenge unjust or unlawful decisions by the state or other public bodies, and we have to be clear about the importance of the role of the Human Rights Act. Deep cuts to legal aid have undermined the ability of many to pursue judicial review. Personally, I do not think that it is right that victims of people such as John Worboys have to crowdfund to pursue justice. Justice cannot depend on the depths of people’s pockets. Will the Government today commit to using their review of legal aid to look again at how it can support judicial reviews?

Will the Secretary of State give us more information about why he chose not to proceed with his own judicial review? To be blunt, does he regret his decision to pursue a cheap headline and brief the weekend newspapers in advance before properly checking whether he should pursue the judicial review? It is not just me asking this question; it has been reported that the Secretary of State’s Conservative colleagues are asking it too, to the extent that the Prime Minister has been moved today to confirm that she still has full confidence in him. The Secretary of State has tried to defend his decision not to pursue a judicial review, although he has not yet made the case properly. Given that, will he accept responsibility for the failings in the dossier presented by the Ministry of Justice?

There have been widespread failings in this case from the very outset. In 2009, John Worboys was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, but the police have also linked him to about 100 other cases. Many of the victims have raised concerns—and my office has been contacted by other victims—about police failings in the handling of the case. Others have raised concerns about the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute. Of course, we have also seen many complaints about the Parole Board and about the failures of the victim contact scheme properly to notify victims of the parole hearing.

It is clear that we need a thorough examination of the handling of this case, from the very first attack reported to the police by a victim right through to the Parole Board hearings. Given that this is the third occasion that I ask, will the Secretary of State agree to an end-to-end review into this matter—from start to finish? The victims and the public deserve no less.

[Mr Gauke]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding transparency. I am pleased that there is cross-party consensus on the need for increased transparency of Parole Board decisions. That should not undermine Parole Board independence, which is important. I hope to move swiftly to change systems in order to ensure that the reasons that the Parole Board has reached a decision become available to the victims. I hope that that will be in place shortly.

The hon. Gentleman touched on the licence conditions. In a way, this is not necessarily as much of an issue as it was. It had been determined that Worboys would be electronically tagged and excluded from London. That may or may not be an issue in the future, depending on future Parole Board decisions.

On the dossier that was provided by the National Probation Service—and, therefore, my Department—for the hearing that occurred on 8 November last year, it is the case that there may well have been information that should have been included in the dossier and that was not provided, but it is worth pointing out that it is the responsibility of the Parole Board to satisfy itself that an offender is no longer a risk to the public. The judgment of Sir Brian Leveson was that the Parole Board failed to probe that evidence sufficiently, as it should have done. I reiterate that the National Probation Service opposed the release of John Worboys.

I made no secret of the fact that I was considering whether to take a judicial review, and I set out in my earlier remarks the reasons why I did not bring that forward. The reality was that the victims were in a better position than me to bring a successful case. It is important that we ensure that when the Parole Board reaches a conclusion that meets certain criteria, there is an ability for it to look again and examine whether the relevant panel has performed its duties as it should have done. Sadly, that is not what happened in this particular case, and that is the issue that we need to fix for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

One hundred per cent.—we will be working very closely with prison officers for exactly that reason. As the hon. Lady points out, we must get the numbers right. Those 2,500 extra prison officers will be vital in order to get the 1:6 ratio needed for rehabilitation.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I have listened carefully this morning to the Secretary of State talking about high-security prisons. Ministers talk of finally starting to address the crisis that they made by axing so many prison officers, yet over a third of high-security prisons have actually seen a fall in the number of prison officers since the Department’s so-called recruitment drive began. Will the Minister guarantee that these high-security prisons will have more staff by the next Justice questions?

[Rory Stewart]

One of the challenges around the high-security estate, particularly in places such as London, has been the employment opportunities. We have put new incentives in place—a signing-on bonus and a retention bonus—to recruit people in London. I am not in a position to guarantee the employment market exactly, but we are making a lot of progress—for example, in recruitment to the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but nearly one in four prisons has seen prison officer numbers fall since the Government’s recruitment drive began. Moving on, we have another problem of very experienced officers leaving the service, creating a dangerous cocktail of inexperienced officers and experienced prisoners. In the last year alone, 1,000 prison officers with more than five years’ experience each have left the service. That is the equivalent of more than 5,000 years of experience in the Prison Service lost in the last year alone. Will the Minister guarantee that there will be more prison officers will five years’ experience at the end of the year than there are now?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman’s fundamental point is right: we need experienced prison officers. It is very difficult working in a prison. We can bring in huge numbers of new junior staff, but it will be difficult to get the kind of results we need unless they have experience. We therefore have a plan whereby we have targeted the prisons that are losing the most experienced officers and we are understanding why that is happening. We are both working with the staff and putting in place financial incentives to retain experienced staff.

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[Mr Gauke]

Since 2010 we have removed more than 40,000 foreign national offenders from our prisons, immigration removal centres and the community. A range of removal mechanisms exist that enable foreign offenders to be returned to their home countries, and we are working closely with the Department for Exiting the European Union and the Home Office as we consider our future criminal justice arrangements with the EU, with the aim of carrying on our close working relationship.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

In a formal statement, the previous Secretary of State for Justice said that the Grenfell inquiry would

“get to the truth and see justice done”.

For that to be the case, Grenfell survivors and the bereaved families must have full confidence in it, so to tackle the obvious current lack of trust, does the Minister agree with survivors and bereaved families who are calling for a broad inquiry panel, as there was in the watershed inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence?

[Mr Gauke]

I believe that the processes have been set up, that the inquiry led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick is the right approach and that the focus should be on ensuring that the inquiry can make progress rather than trying in any way to undermine it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am happy to meet my right hon. Friend. I am not in a position to comment on that particular case, but I am of course willing to engage with him.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his post. Victims must be at the heart of our justice system, but we have seen failings in enabling victims to give their impact statements in the Worboys case. We have seen the police failing victims, and victims are asking why there were no further prosecutions. In fact, victims feel let down throughout the process. I ask the Secretary of State once again to support victims, and to help to restore their faith and that of the wider public in our justice system. Will he agree today to an independent end-to-end review of the whole handling of this case?

[Mr Gauke]

As I announced to the House on Friday, Dame Glenys Stacey has agreed to undertake a fact-finding review of what happened with regard to victims in the Worboys case. It is important that we get to the bottom of precisely what happened and whether processes were followed. I am aware of conflicting evidence on that point, so it is important that we pursue it. I quite understand why the hon. Gentleman suggests an end-to-end review, and indeed there are questions that need to be considered about what happened in 2008-09 and so on. As I have said before, at the moment I want to focus on the immediate questions in front of us in terms of support for victims and the Parole Board process.

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[Rory Stewart]

It is certainly true that there are challenges with older buildings, as we see with this place, but it is possible to keep them going—Westminster Hall was built in 1080. Stafford prison, which was built in the late 18th century, is a clean and decent prison. We will look carefully at the fabric, and in some cases there is reason to build a new wing. But in Liverpool prison we can make a huge difference simply with £2.5 million for new windows and for refurbishing individual cells.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The inspectors described the conditions at HMP Liverpool as the worst they have seen, citing rat infestations and filthy conditions. Prison maintenance at Liverpool was outsourced to Amey. This shows that the problems with outsourcing go way beyond Carillion, which mismanaged maintenance at 50 different prisons. Will the Secretary of State commit to a review looking at bringing prison maintenance back in house, in Liverpool and at all prisons, as Labour has pledged to do?

[Rory Stewart]

We will look carefully at the maintenance issues in Liverpool, but sadly the problems are not only to do with Amey; they are also to do with relationships between management and the contractors and how prisoners were, or were not, used to clean the estate. We have made a huge amount of difference in just the past five weeks by changing not the Amey contract but the management approach and the focus on cleanliness.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the Minister for his answer on Amey and contractors, but it is hard to have faith that he will address the problems at Liverpool or, in fact, any prison, because it has recently come to light that his Government handed £40 million to Carillion in 2017, even after the then prisons Minister had expressed concerns in Parliament about Carillion’s performance in prisons. Will not poor maintenance in Liverpool continue to contribute to inhumane conditions while responsibility is left in the hands of private contractors who, in reality, put profit first?

[Rory Stewart]

We do not believe that this is fundamentally an ideological fight between the private and public sectors. Most of those people working for Carillion—70% of them—were public servants just three years ago, and most of those people working for Amey were public servants in the prison service. Most of the problems have been solved through basic management and leadership. There has been a deep clean, the yard units have been increased from five to 18, and the conditions have improved rapidly. In the end, a lot of this is about management, not a private/public debate.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his post, and I thank him for advance sight of the statement.

Our criminal justice system must always have the interests of the victims of crime at its heart. It is all too clear that victims of the vile crimes committed by John Worboys feel that this process has failed to do so, and such failings risk undermining public trust in our wider justice system. Many women—both the victims and others more widely—will be very anxious indeed about Mr Worboys being freed. The current legal restrictions on the Parole Board mean that we do not know why this decision was taken.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today. With respect, however, we do not need to debate whether there is a case for greater transparency. The Worboys case has underlined once and for all that there is a need for greater transparency, and the chair of the Parole Board has already called for this. Will the new Secretary of State for Justice therefore guarantee that his review will be about how to achieve greater transparency, and not about whether this is needed?

The failures go much wider than the rules governing the Parole Board. In fact, this whole matter has been dogged by failures from the outset. In 2009, John Worboys was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, but the police have also linked Worboys to about 100 other cases. The public are asking questions about the failings in the police’s handling of the case, about why there were no further prosecutions and about failures of the victim contact scheme to notify victims of the parole hearing properly. The Worboys case raises so many serious questions that anything less than an independent end-to-end review into the handling of the case—from first reporting to the police of an attack right through to the Parole Board hearing—would let down the victims and the wider public.

The previous Secretary of State did not take up my request to undertake such an inquiry, but the new Secretary of State can bring a fresh perspective to all of this. He has the opportunity to reassure the victims and the wider public by going further than his predecessor and agreeing to an independent end-to-end review. That would be the right thing to do, and if he does so, I will congratulate him. I therefore ask the Secretary of State: will he agree to this proposal today?

There are also questions about whether wider problems in the justice system, a sector now subjected to the greatest cuts of any Department, have had an impact on this specific case. The failure to allow women victims the opportunity to participate in the parole hearing through written and oral statements, or to notify them of the hearings properly, was a real breach of their rights. The National Probation Service manages the victim contact scheme, and I would say that the House is all too familiar with the deep problems caused to probation by the chaotic reforms undertaken by the Secretary of State’s Government.

Does the Secretary of State believe that the changes to probation services have left the victim contact scheme more effective or less effective? Will he spell out today what his Department is doing to ensure that the scheme is functioning as it should and that we do not see a repeat of the failings witnessed last week? At the very least, will he consider amending the scheme so that victims opt out, rather than opt in to the system? Likewise, what is the Government’s assessment of the effectiveness of the current sex offender treatment programmes in prison? Last year, the Ministry of Justice found that its core programme actually increased reoffending among sex offenders. Does he know whether John Worboys was on one of the core programmes that were subsequently withdrawn? Will the Secretary of State take the opportunity to clarify what the current procedure is for prioritising which imprisonment for public protection cases are dealt with most pressingly? Are those on the shortest tariffs dealt with first?

Finally, I am pleased that the Government are now focusing on victims’ rights. However, in 2014, the High Court found that the Metropolitan police had breached the rights of victims of Worboys under the Human Rights Act 1998 by failing properly to investigate many of the crimes Worboys was linked to. That decision was later upheld by the Court of Appeal. I think that many will be surprised and disappointed that the Government—through the current Home Secretary and her predecessor, who is now the Prime Minister—backed taking Worboys’ victims to the Supreme Court last year. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to express regret for treating the victims in that way?

[Mr Gauke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He makes the case for transparency, as did Nick Hardwick, and I completely see and, indeed, sympathise with the argument being made. This case does demonstrate the need for us to look at the issue of transparency again, and it is important that we do so in some detail. I say to the House that I start off on the basis that more transparency is needed, as this case has demonstrated.



The hon. Gentleman asked me about an end-to-end review. It is right that we focus on how we can make this system more transparent to provide reassurance to the public that it is working in the way that it should. That should be a priority, as should victim support. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the basis of the system should be not opting in but opting out. That is something that the review will be able to consider.

We must be sensitive to the fact that, whereas some victims of crime will be keen to be fully informed at every stage, others simply may not want to hear the name of that criminal again. Different people will have different views about how they want to be treated, and we need to find a system that accommodates both approaches.

I was also asked about prioritising cases. Clearly, there is a need to look at cases in which the tariff has been completed. They will be higher priority than cases in which the tariff still has some years to run. That is what happens in practice.

The hon. Gentleman raised the Supreme Court case. The matter is sub judice and I cannot comment further on it, but I reassure him and the House that we need a system that has the confidence of victims. That is what we all want to ensure.

Prison Reform and Safety

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I would like to begin by congratulating the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the other members of the Committee on all their work and on securing today’s debate. I previously served on the Committee, and it was a most valuable experience.

The Committee has repeatedly shone a spotlight on the ongoing crisis affecting much of our justice system, and its work will become even more important over the coming months, given that the Ministry of Justice budget is set to be cut by another £800 million—by 40% over the decade to 2020—making the MOJ the most cut of any Department.

Turning to today’s topic, our prisons have received vast media coverage over the past year—nearly always for the wrong reasons. The word “crisis” has been used time after time as a descriptor, but it is no longer sufficient. We have warned of crisis for five years—unfortunately, crisis is the new norm. The staff holding the service together are expected to do crisis management. The truth is that our prisons are now moving beyond crisis and are approaching emergency.

Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, with whom I had the pleasure of undertaking a prison visit, described the situation in his scathing annual report:

“Last year I reported that too many of our prisons had become unacceptably violent and dangerous places. The situation has not improved—in fact, it has become worse.”

He went on to warn that not one young offender institute was deemed safe, describing the “speed of decline” as “staggering”. He described a Dickensian prison system with people

“locked up for as much as 23 hours a day”,

which is

“compounded by staffing levels…that are…too low to keep order”

or to

“run a decent regime that allows prisoners to be let out of their cells to get to training and education”.

I would argue that it is the Government’s policy of slashing hundreds of millions from the Prison Service budget that has driven us into the emergency room.

Perhaps the starkest example of the prisons emergency is what the Justice Committee, in its sixth report of the 2015-16 Session, described as

“the ongoing and rapid deterioration in prison safety”.

It was right to do so. It is a stain on our nation that self-harm and suicides are at record levels and that assaults are up by almost 80% on 2010. Every day, 74 people are attacked in our prisons—one every 20 minutes, morning, noon and night, every single day of the year. The consequences of this violence are dire. With prisoners locked near permanently in their cells to maintain safety, it is almost irrelevant whether education, training or mental health services are improved. Locked in their cells for that amount of time, they remain inaccessible, at a great cost to wider society. This violence is closely connected to another theme addressed by the Select Committee—empowering governors and prison reforms. The Government talk of a reform agenda delivering a modern prison estate fit for the 21st century and of governors self-managing their education budgets to help prisoners, but none of that will bear fruit until the epidemic of violence is tackled.

The central cause of the prisons emergency has been the loss of staff. Conservative Justice Secretaries have cut the number of frontline prison officers by almost 7,000 since 2010. New psychoactive substances, drones and phones are all serious problems in our prisons. As the POA says, staffing shortages drive the wave of violence. I welcome the fact that the Government now acknowledge the damage done by thousands of prison officer cuts and have begun to try to reverse their own cuts, but the staffing picture is not, I am afraid, as rosy as the Government seek to portray it. Despite 1,200 extra officers recruited over the past year, one in four of our prisons has still had a fall in officer numbers in the past 12 months. That includes staffing cuts at 25% of the prisons labelled as being of concern. In high-security prisons, it is even worse: half those prisons have fewer officers than they had a year ago. For all the talk of empowering governors, the number of governor-grade staff has been cut by over one third and continues to fall.

Staffing cannot be permanently resolved separately from pay. The insulting 1.7% recent pay offer was yet another real-terms pay cut—a cut of £980 per year for the average prison officer. Falling pay is one of the reasons there is an exodus of experienced officers, who are now leaving at three times the rate back in 2010. The Government’s policies are creating a dangerous cocktail of experienced prisoners and inexperienced prison staff.

The motion addresses the wider restructuring of the prisons system. The Government have destabilised the prisons system through an erratic reform policy that veered first this way and then that way, while prisons were being stripped of valuable resources, both human and financial. This has not been helped by the constant chopping and changing of those at the top. I have been shadow Justice Secretary for just over 18 months, and I have already dealt with three Justice Secretaries, each with their own specific vision. One of the current Secretary of State’s first tasks was to toss aside the Prisons and Courts Bill and the creation of a statutory purpose for prisons. That was especially regrettable as it had the support of virtually the whole House. Although the Government have scrapped the Bill, one thing remains the same: their answer to the deep problems in the prison service is yet more reform. I am a bit sceptical.

Concerns about how reform is being undertaken were especially well expressed by the president of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, who decried the fact that governors have seen nothing tangible coming out of the MOJ to ease the burden to date. The PGA complains of the MOJ’s prison reform programme draining resources, with expensive policy teams in Whitehall, operational experts taken out of prisons and put into the MOJ, and competing structures that sometimes undermine accountability. In short, if real powers rest in new Whitehall teams, budgets are cut and central contracts restrict freedom of decision, governors are not in charge in the way that they should be.

Despite talk of greater autonomy, prison governors are still suffering the lack of control that arose from outsourcing key prison services to the private sector. The hiving off of facilities management and repairs has undermined basic decency in prisons. When prisoners are remarking that it is easier to get drugs than clean clothing, or when prisoners go for long periods without properly functioning showers or with a broken cell window, this does nothing to build the necessary institutional trust. It also makes reforming lives much harder. Labour has not only ruled out any more private prisons but committed to a review, working with prison governors, to identify the private maintenance and repair contracts that can be brought back in house over time, saving the state money and improving prison conditions. I heard the Chair of the Justice Committee call for an urgent review of these same contracts in Justice questions on Tuesday. Labour Members fully support his call.

The motion rightly points to our historically high prison population. Prison must act as a deterrent and, yes, as a punishment. Often prison is a fitting sanction, especially while a convicted person is a danger to the public, and a significant minority of people may never be safe to release. However, most people will one day leave prison, so it must also rehabilitate, but too often it is failing to do so. We now have 10,000 more prisoners in jails than we have proper places for. Rehabilitation cannot take place in overcrowded prisons. Armley Prison, in my home city of Leeds, holds nearly twice the number of prisoners that it was built to accommodate, and that is not an exception: the latest figures show that almost seven in 10 of our prisons are overcrowded.

As we have heard, such warehousing of people without any support or access to rehabilitation means that when they leave prison they are likely to be in the same position as when they entered—or perhaps even worse: drug-dependent, homeless and without the skills to get secure work. Their stay in prison will be too short to tackle their problems. In fact, they may come out of prison more likely to commit crime. I have been struck by the fact that nearly every time I meet a prison governor, they tell me that we are jailing too many people. They ask me why we are using vast resources to send someone to prison for a few weeks. They are frustrated at seeing the same people over and again. When people at the frontline raise such matters, we must all take them very seriously.

The evidence underlines the fact that, for far too many, prison is not working. Six in 10 adults released from prison after a sentence of less than 12 months, which over half of all prisoners receive, commit another offence within a year. The cost of reoffending has now hit £15 billion. As a society, we need to be asking if we should have jailed 8,000 women last year when the overwhelming majority committed a non-violent offence, with half in prison for theft. If prison is about rehabilitation as well as punishment, what is the point of seven in 10 women serving 12 weeks or less in jail? With a woman’s prison place costing £47,000 a year, alternatives could free up valuable resources to invest in women’s centres and community solutions, and to make prison work for those who really should be there.

We need to tackle the discrimination that means there is a greater disproportionality in the number of black people in our prisons than in the prisons of the United States of America. It wastes lives as well as valuable public funds. Too many prisoners, as we have heard, are suffering from mental health issues and need intensive medical treatment, not incarceration. Perhaps most immediately, we need to tackle the cases of the imprisonment for public protection prisoners. We need to debate all three issues separately in this Chamber on another occasion.

In conclusion, we have a huge amount to do to turn our prisons around and make them places where lives are transformed, so that—this is our main objective—our communities become safer places to live. After nearly a decade of failed policies that have cut our prison service to the bone, that cannot and will not be done overnight, but the ongoing scrutiny of the Justice Committee will play a valuable role in helping to make our prisons work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point in his usual punchy way, but I have already detailed the support for early legal help and set out some of the support for litigants in person. The fact is that we provide £1.6 billion in legal aid. If we look at Council of Europe comparisons—I know that we cannot compare like with like exactly—we see that we are providing more legal aid per capita than any other Council of Europe country.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

We have heard from the Law Society and the president of the Supreme Court on early legal help, which Labour’s manifesto also backs. My hon. Friends have asked questions about this and the Minister has said that the evidence is not there. I want to help the Minister, so will he show today that he is not driven purely by ideology and agree to a simple thing: to commission independent research into the savings that can come from early legal help to inform the Government’s legal aid review before it reports back next summer? Will he do it?

[Dominic Raab]

We have got the review in place. We will take a wide range of advice and set up expert panels to ensure that we get the proper and best advice. The hon. Gentleman should feel free to contribute. However, his proposals would add £400 million to the cost, and he needs to explain where the money would come from because it does not just grow on trees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

Prison officers certainly are working under very challenging conditions, not least because of how organised crime is promoting traffic in new psychoactive substances across prison walls, but we believe that not just the increase in numbers but the shift, in forthcoming months, to the new offender management model, under which each officer will take responsibility for about half a dozen named offenders, will contribute to increased morale.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

One in four prisons have seen a reduction in the number of prison officers over the past year, including a quarter of prisons the Government label as being of concern, so given their so-called recruitment drive, will the Secretary of State guarantee today that no prison, apart from those planned for closure, will have fewer staff at the end of the year than they did at the beginning?

[Mr Lidington]

As I said in response to the last question, the new offender management model, which we are implementing throughout the system, will reduce the pressure on individual prison officers. Where a particular prison has greater than average difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, we will continue to put in extra resource and support to help them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Dominic Raab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a range of robust community sentence options, which can include the whole range from unpaid work and curfews to rehab programmes and treatment for mental health and substances misuse problems. We are working with the judges and magistrates, and with the national probation service, to make sure community sentences are as operationally strong as they can be and can command public confidence.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I have repeatedly asked the Secretary of State how many staff have been axed since probation was privatised, and I have repeatedly been refused an answer. It is now being reported in the press that there was a 20% cut in the number of probation staff in the privatised community rehabilitation companies between 2015 and 2016. Can he confirm that CRC staff have been cut by a fifth?

[Mr Lidington]

It is for individual community rehabilitation companies to take decisions about the staffing and what kind of staff they need to deliver on their contractual obligations to the Government. The Government’s responsibility is for staff in the national probation service, and we are recruiting additional staff to it.

Sentencing

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter today and I thank the Justice Secretary for sharing his statement with me in the past hour.

This matter has been given greater prominence over the past decade due to rulings that found the UK to be in breach of its international human rights obligations. As the House is aware, prisoners serving a custodial sentence do not have any right to vote in any elections. As the Secretary of State said, this blanket ban is set out in the Representation of the People Act 1983. Since 2005, however, the blanket ban has been ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights in the Hirst case.

Subsequent rulings since the 2005 decision have offered further clarity on what is required by law. I note especially the October 2015 ruling of the European Court of Justice that depriving certain prisoners convicted for very serious crimes, such as murder, of the right to vote was not an unlawful breach of the right of EU citizens. Likewise, in 2013, the UK Supreme Court dismissed appeals that prisoners serving life sentences for murder should be able to vote. I think most of the House would feel that that is sensible.

The question remains, however, of how we meet our obligations in relation to the ruling against a blanket ban. This House has been grappling with this issue since 2005. Following the Hirst judgment in 2005, the Labour Government began a consultation on the question of prisoner voting. The Ministry of Justice published a consultation paper in 2009 indicating that some limited enfranchisement of prisoners ought to occur, but made it clear that a final decision on the scope of the franchise must be made by Parliament.

Shortly after the 2010 general election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government announced that offenders sentenced to less than four years in custody would have the right to vote in UK Westminster Parliament and European Parliament elections, except when the judge considered it inappropriate when making the sentence. Soon after, in 2011, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee published a report stating that while the current ban on prisoner voting may be “morally justifiable”, it was a breach of international law.

As a nation, we pride ourselves on our adherence to the rule of law. I believe we also take pride in being a nation that abides by its commitments. Our respect for the rule of law is something that has led to our legal system being so well regarded around the world that our legal services are exported internationally and contribute vastly to the UK economy. Today is an opportunity to discuss exactly how we will meet our commitments following the 2005 ruling.

I hope the slowness the Government have shown in responding to this issue does not set a precedent for taking over a decade to address our international obligations to uphold human rights. I think we should be clear that if we are signed up to the European convention on human rights, we are bound by its judgment and by those human rights laws. What this debate should be about is not whether we should meet our duties under international human rights law—that is non-negotiable and it is disappointing that some Members have suggested that we should ignore such law—but how we meet our duties and requirements.

Specifically, today’s discussion is about whether the Government’s proposals meet that threshold and satisfy our international obligations to uphold human rights. I hear Government Members saying, “Of course they do,” but we need reassurance, because the Secretary of State said that prisoners sentenced to less than one year in jail who are let out on day release will be allowed to return home to vote. We need to know what discussions with lawyers and assurances he has had to make sure that his proposal brings us into line with human rights law. The last thing this House wants is the right hon. Gentleman having to return to the House at some point to explain that, unfortunately, these measures have not satisfied the test and do not fulfil our international obligations and commitments. I am sure the Government do not want that, and nor do we.

As hon. Members have pointed out, including at this week’s Justice questions, this measure is about rehabilitation. I am therefore disappointed that the statutory duty on prisons to rehabilitate offenders and thereby reduce the number of victims and make society safer was dropped when the Prisons and Courts Bill fell. I hope that will be considered again in due course.

[Mr Lidington]

I think I gathered amid that response that the Opposition spokesman offers no specific criticisms of the proposals I have outlined today. I can give him a clear assurance that we have taken the best advice possible. We believe that this set of proposals complies with our international legal obligations following the Hirst judgment. Obviously, it will have to be considered by the Committee of Ministers at the forthcoming meeting.

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that it is a bit rich for him to chide me about the pace at which this matter has been addressed. He acknowledged in his response that it took the Labour Government, under whose watch the Hirst case was heard and decided, four years even to get round to publishing the answers to their own consultation paper. In my years of service in this place, I have not seen Labour Home Secretaries or Justice Secretaries rushing to the Dispatch Box to announce that they had the answer and the Government would now publish proposals.

I hope that there will be broad agreement among the parties to support the general approach that I have outlined. Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the European Court of Human Rights has on more than one occasion made it clear that, regardless of the specific circumstances of the Hirst judgment, there is no requirement to enfranchise all prisoners; I hope that that message has by now been conveyed to the Leader of the Opposition. Indeed, many members of the Council of Europe—established, mature democracies like ours—maintain a strict bar against serious offenders voting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

It is true that short-term sentences appear to have the least effect in reduced reoffending, but the comparison with them is with alternative community sentences, which are available for that similar type of crime. Those community sentences work best when they link up with services such as drug and alcohol treatment programmes sometimes provided by other authorities in the community.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I think the whole House will agree that community sentences function only when magistrates have trust in the people supervising them. Last year, thousands of community sentences were served in London alone. Will the Secretary of State therefore commit today to an urgent independent review of the performance of the London company responsible for supervising many of these community sentences in London, following the revelations in last week’s “Panorama” investigation that the London CRC—community rehabilitation company—had failed to act on 15,000 missed appointments over 16 months?

[Mr Lidington]

Of course, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the company responsible has denied some of the claims that were made in the “Panorama” programme. None the less, it is quite clear that missed appointments are a serious matter. We expect the London CRC, like other CRCs, to take appropriate action. I believe that in the independent inspectorate of probation we have precisely the kind of independent body that he has called for. It is currently looking again at London and we look forward to its next report.

[Richard Burgon]

I hear the Secretary of State’s reassurances about the delivery of community sentences by the so-called CRCs, but for us to be absolutely sure about this, I argue that we need to know the advice that the Minister has had about the failure of the CRCs. The “Panorama” documentary revealed an in-house MOJ paper warning of the risks of handing much of the supervision of community sentences to the private sector through the privatisation of probation. Will the Secretary of State make that memo public, so that we and the House can ensure that those flaws are being tackled?

[Mr Lidington]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to a document that was produced some years ago. It is important now that in addressing the underperformance of some areas of the probation service, we act on the recommendations from the independent probation inspectorate and seek, through the contractual mechanism, to drive up standards to where the public would expect them to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Governors cite the outsourcing of facilities management, maintenance and repairs as something that undermines their ability to manage important elements within their prisons. Labour has announced a review, working with prison governors, to identify private service contracts that can be brought back in-house to save the taxpayer money and, at the same time, improve prison conditions. Will the Government also commit to review those contracts?

[Mr Lidington]

As I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), as existing contracts expire, we shall seek new opportunities to devolve powers to governors and to clusters of prisons. Along with Prison Service headquarters, they will then have to strike the appropriate balance between the local provisioning of services and the need to secure the best value for taxpayers’ money.