Richard Holden
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Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
I have the dubious extra background in this area of being one of the only people here, I imagine, who has been on RUI in recent years. I was on it for quite a significant period of time. I fully support the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) and pay tribute to him for bringing forward this important topic, which for too long has been ignored. As he made clear in his speech, it was not the intention of the Home Secretary at the time to have a situation in which these cases drag on and on.
I have two main points to make about RUI: it has no conditions and no limit. No conditions is harmful to victims, by allowing the guilty to prey on them consistently, and no limit is harmful to the innocent, by keeping them stuck in a process without end. The only people who benefit from the system as it stands are the guilty, because they are free to continue to offend, and those who make malicious complaints, as it allows the destruction that they have caused for the innocent to continue with no end in sight.
I will pick up on a couple of points that hon. Members have made. First of all, a very fair point was made on electronic evidence. That is something that has come in over the past few years, and police have to wade through very substantial amounts of it, so there is some truth in the suggestion that they might need more time for that. I welcome the review that the Government are undertaking to look at that. Secondly, I think there is an element of Parkinson’s law in this failure—maybe a bastardised version—in that, because there is a lack of urgency due to a lack of bail conditions, police can string out investigations, so that justice for victims and the innocent is also delayed.
I will also pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) about legal aid. Having to find the money in advance if the person has a household income of more than £37,000 a year—basically, every household with two people working full-time on the minimum wage or more—and having to wait potentially years to get that money back if they are found innocent in court, is a huge financial pressure. People do not have tens of thousands of pounds of savings lying around, waiting for the justice system to slowly creak into action, so anything that can speed up the process is also important. That was a point very well made. I look forward to the Government’s review, which I will be contributing to. I will happily work cross party on this matter with any other interested hon. Members in future.