Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight the work of probation. I put on record—as I know my shadow would and I know she would—our gratitude to all those who work in our probation service. Over the long term, since 2021 we have put an extra £155 million a year into the probation service, and 4,000 more staff in training. She will have also seen the recent announcement made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor in respect of the probation reset to enable probation officers to focus their time on where it makes the greatest difference and has the greatest impact.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

T9. We know that our prisons are extremely full, for the entirely understandable reasons that the Lord Chancellor has set out, but that often means that they cannot do the job of rehabilitation that we would all like them to. Will the Minister look again at the proposals I put forward with the Centre for Social Justice for a tough new sentence called the intensive control and rehabilitation order, to be served in the community but under strict conditions including GPS tags and compulsory courses to reduce the likelihood of reoffending?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Gareth Bacon)]

I can confirm to my hon. Friend that officials have reviewed and considered ICROs, which involve the use of electronic monitoring, curfew arrangements and rehabilitative requirements targeted towards offenders who would otherwise be in custody. In June last year, we began a pilot of a scheme similar to the one he proposes, involving intense supervision courts, which divert offenders with complex needs away from short custodial sentences and provide them with wrap-around, multi-agency support to target the root causes of their offending behaviour.

End of Custody Supervised Licence: Extension

Rob Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady knows that I have a huge amount of respect for her, but even by Lib Dem standards that was stretching the bounds of credibility a little, not least because, as she will be aware, we have built two new prisons. We also have one in construction and two that have completed planning, and one that is subject to a planning appeal. As for the secure school, she should look forward to its opening in a matter of days.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend expand a little on the great improvements being made to increase capacity? Will he tell us a little more about the progress on ensuring that more foreign national offenders are removed to their own countries? Will he expand a little, as this seems to be badly understood by Opposition Members from all parties, on quite how much of a prison building programme the Government have? Will he say something on the number of prisons and the number of spaces that that will create, and on the consequent prospects for the rehabilitation of offenders and, in time, having fewer victims of crime?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that and I pay tribute to his work in the justice system not only in this House, but prior to his being a Member of it. I believe—I will, of course, correct this if I am slightly out—that about 16,000 FNOs have now been removed. It is timely that as I say that, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary appears in the Chamber, so that I can pay tribute to him and his Department for their work on delivering that. On prison places, I set out to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) the progress on the six new prisons. Alongside that, we have built a vast number of rapid deployment cells and new house blocks, so we are expanding our prison capacity rapidly. As I say, that stands in stark contrast to the failure to deliver on the Titan prison places by the Labour party.

Prisons and Probation: Foreign National Offenders

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

That is a fair question. It is always worth remembering that more than 90% of cases are disposed of in the magistrates court, where we are getting through a very significant number. He makes a fair point about the Crown court, because we are prosecuting 32% more rape offences than before, so the plea rate is lower, because—guess what?—people do not plead guilty to rape in the way that they might plead guilty to handling stolen goods, for example. So we address that by putting additional money into the system, with £141 million going into legal aid, and by ensuring that section 28 is used, with pre-recorded video evidence and so on. We make no apology for the fact that we have to let the system take its course on these appalling crimes and we will do everything we can to increase resources so that people—victims and witnesses—get the justice they deserve.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I very much support the carefully considered moves announced today by my right hon. and learned Friend, which reflect the reality of the pressures on our prison estate and on our excellent prison officers, following the extraordinary impact of covid. I especially welcome the additional steps he has announced to remove more foreign national offenders. He spoke of a reset in probation, so will he set out in a little more detail how he hopes it will reduce reoffending and so cut crime? What we all want to see, of course, is fewer victims of crime.

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Probation is critical and I have made a point since coming into this role of speaking not only to senior probation officers, important though they are, but to probation officers on the frontline. That has been an incredibly instructive experience. One I spoke to in Luton and Dunstable told me that the measures we have taken to roll out 12 weeks’ guaranteed accommodation were the most significant steps that any Government had taken in the 30 years he had been a probation officer. The reset I referred to will follow evidence, not emotion. In other words, it will allow probation officers to calibrate and prioritise their resource to those parts of the licence period where reoffending is most likely to take place. That is common sense and it follows the evidence. Ultimately, measures such as that are why reoffending has gone down from 31% to 25%, thus saving a number of people from being victims of crime in the first place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

Again, I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but I am afraid that what she is suggesting does not entirely reflect the facts. If we compare the figures for 2023 and 2022 for band 3 to 5 prison officers, we see that there are over 1,400 more now, which is an increase of 6.7%. In HMPPS, sick rates are down in the past year, when just over 12,500 people joined and 7,500 left—again, that reflects an increase. We are investing in our prison officers and increasing their number, and that is being reflected in retention. I pay tribute to them for the work they do; we should be talking them up, not down.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I am encouraged by my right hon. Friend’s comments about the number of additional prison officers recruited. I have seen many of them and the fantastic work they do, both at HMP Aylesbury and across the prison estate. Will he say a little more about how we can ensure that we retain them once they have been trained and they go on to the wings? This is an incredibly important career—it is key to reducing reoffending—and prison officers deserve credit and the support of everybody in this House.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. He is absolutely right about the importance of not just recruiting new prison officers, but retaining experienced ones in our prisons. That is why the pay deal done last year with HMPPS staff was hugely important, in recognising the important work that prison officers do day in, day out. It is also reflected in the fact that the leaving rate for prison officers is down in 2023 from where it was in 2022. However, there is more to do and we will continue to do it.

Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill

Rob Butler Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on introducing this Bill and raising what I consider to be a legitimate and well-founded concern about joint enterprise. She explained that joint enterprise is a legal doctrine that applies where persons assist or encourage another to commit a crime—what many people would think of as aiding and abetting, and where the offender is known as an accessory. Common law developed by the courts over many years has resulted in that somewhat archaic language of “aid and abet” shifting to “assist or encourage”, a simple example being where somebody acts as a lookout or a getaway driver for a burglar. In general, that is an important aspect of our law, and one with which I agree.

The concern expressed by the hon. Lady primarily relates to cases of murder, where one person unlawfully takes the life of another with premeditation. Murder is the most heinous of crimes—let us be absolutely clear about that—so it is right that those involved in such a despicable act are properly punished, and it is entirely appropriate that the law recognises that a person does not necessarily have to have wielded the lethal weapon or dealt the fatal blow in order to have an element of responsibility for an unlawful and premeditated killing.

It is not difficult to see that an absolute obligation to identify unequivocally the particular individual in a group who directly and personally caused the death of a victim could, would and has led to no person being convicted. The prospect of two or more people blaming each other in the knowledge that none would be found guilty and thus sentenced is no figment of the imagination, and would be an appalling failing of the justice system. The concept of shared responsibility for as serious an offence as murder is therefore, I believe, an important one in our justice system, and the principle of joint enterprise is itself a sound one.

However, beyond that starting point is a great deal of nuance. The facts around crimes, even those as horrific as murder, are not always black and white. For that reason, I believe the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside is right to bring attention to this subject. I agree with much of what she said in her speech, and I do so partly as a result of my experience in the criminal justice system prior to coming to this place. During the course of many years variously as a magistrate, a member of the Youth Justice Board, a non-executive director of what was then Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and a member of the Sentencing Council, I encountered numerous people who had been either accused or convicted of offences under joint enterprise. Usually that was right, but sometimes it was not—and on occasion it was blatantly wrong.

As has already been mentioned, right hon. and hon. Members will be very familiar with the ability of television drama to highlight miscarriages of justice, for example through ITV’s excellent recent series, “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”. As we have heard, 10 years ago we saw another powerful drama, Jimmy McGovern’s “Common”, which was inspired by the real case of a young man sentenced under joint enterprise. It is a powerful piece of television, highlighting the difficulties surrounding the legal doctrine of common purpose.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside for reminding us of that drama when she showed an abridged version of it at a meeting she held earlier this week in Parliament with the campaign group JENGbA, which has been widely referred to already—many members of the group are in the Gallery today. Numerous of them have relatives serving lengthy prison sentences under joint enterprise, and I was grateful that she gave me the opportunity to speak briefly to those families at that event.

As we have heard, Dr Felicity Gerry KC, the lead barrister in a high-profile appeal case, has set out a number of scenarios in which someone could be convicted under joint enterprise despite having limited or no involvement in the crime. The hon. Lady went through a very full list, but I think it is worth mentioning just two or three of them to highlight why there is a legitimate concern here.

Although anonymized, these examples are all based on real-life cases. They include a boy cycling to and from an incident, who had no contact with the victim; autistic children who find it difficult to assess what others will do; children who are exploited to sell drugs and are caught up in the actions of others, and even a woman looking for her shoes during a violent disorder. All those scenarios describe circumstances in which people can be convicted of serious offences despite making no significant contribution themselves to that crime. It is the question of the degree of involvement that this Bill seeks to address.

It is important to acknowledge that concern over the application of the doctrine of joint enterprise has been recognised. As we have heard, in 2016 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of R v. Jogee that the law on joint enterprise had taken what was described as a “wrong turn” for more than 30 years. The result was that only those who intended to commit or assist a crime, rather than those who might have foreseen it, could be properly convicted. However, research by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies suggests that the judgment has had little to no effect on joint enterprise charges or convictions, and furthermore that appeals that were anticipated as a result of that judgment have not been allowed.

Consequently, in and of itself, the 2016 Supreme Court judgment has not addressed a number of the fundamental concerns about joint enterprise. That is why I believe the proposal in the Bill warrants detailed consideration by the Government, even if they cannot, for good reason, accept the Bill itself today. The word “significant”, which the hon. Lady seeks to introduce, carries a meaning that is widely understood in court and that a judge could adequately describe to a jury. It is not an extremely high threshold. The word proposed is not, for example, “substantial”, and the concept of a “significant contribution” will depend on the individual circumstances of the offence.

I contend that it would be perfectly feasible for lawyers for both prosecution and defence to put arguments to a jury so that the jury, properly instructed by the judge, could determine whether or not there had indeed been a significant contribution to the offence by the defendant. I would point out that the word “significant” features throughout sentencing guidelines used by all courts in England and Wales. Indeed, it is used in the sentencing guideline for murder, where considerations that judges should take into account include, for example, whether there has been a significant degree of provocation or a history of significant violence or abuse towards the offender by the victim.

I know that the Government have some justifiable concerns about the term “significant” in this legislation that need to be thought through and fully addressed. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside may consider pausing the progress of her Bill to enable that full consideration and to allow for joint enterprise legislation that will definitely work in the way that she rightly intends.

I reiterate that I am not suggesting that the entire concept of joint enterprise is wrong. I agree with the Lord Chancellor, who said last October that abolishing it

“would mean that a lot of people who have helped or encouraged the commission of offences get away—in some cases, with murder.”—[Official Report, 16 October 2023; Vol. 738, c. 72.]

But I fear that the balance is not right at present. I acknowledge that the Crown Prosecution Service publishes extensive guidance on its website, which outlines when the Crown would seek to push for a joint enterprise conviction, but it is clearly not working perfectly.

I also acknowledge some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I agree absolutely that deterrence is important, and I join him in praising those who work in their communities to dissuade people, children in particular, from becoming embroiled in crime. He is also right to highlight other miscarriages of justice, where people who should have been prosecuted have not been. That is not tenable either, but two wrongs do not make a right and two injustices do not cancel each other out.

Joint enterprise is an important and valuable concept, but at the moment its application is undermining that value and carries the risk of diminishing confidence in our justice system. I repeat my congratulations to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside on drawing attention to this topic. While I accept that the Government may have good reason for not supporting the Bill today, I hope that the Minister will commit to considering a review of how joint enterprise is applied.

Sentencing Bill

Rob Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

For the public, there are probably two things that matter most when an offence is committed against them: whether the criminal is caught and, if they are, what sentence they get. Thanks to the Government’s substantial investment in policing, we now have almost 21,000 more police officers than in 2019, with close to 800 of those in my local force, Thames Valley. It is of course relatively easy to see the impact of those extra officers, but perhaps less straightforward to appreciate changes in sentencing policy. The Bill adds some welcome clarity to sentences, especially for the most serious crimes, which will help to increase confidence in sentencing.

I should point out that prior to my election to this place I spent 12 years as a magistrate. In that time, I sentenced many offenders, imposing everything from a discharge to a custodial sentence. I also had the privilege of serving for approximately 18 months on the Sentencing Council. Those experiences taught me one crucial thing: sentencing is an art, not a science. It is imperative that all the facts and circumstances of every case are considered in their own right. That can be done only by the judge or magistrates who have heard the details of the individual case, and about not only the impact of the crime on its victims, but the reasons why the offence was committed and the background of the offender, not as an excuse for their criminal behaviour but to try to prevent a repeat of that behaviour.

As the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), outlined, there are five purposes of sentencing, which are set down in statute. I fear that too often we focus only on the first of those: punishment. Although that must absolutely be a very significant element of a sentence, I suggest that it cannot, in a civilised society, be the only one. I believe that in order for us to see less crime and far fewer victims, reform and rehabilitation are crucial. There will be some cases in which that is almost impossible, but in the majority of cases there is hope—there is the prospect of an offender turning their life around, living a life free of crime and making a positive contribution to society.

I was also previously a member of the independent monitoring board at HMP/YOI Feltham, a member of the Youth Justice Board and a non-executive director of what was then Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. What all that means is that I have been into many, many prisons over the past 18 years. In every single one of them, I have been impressed by the brilliant staff and the amazing efforts that they make day in, day out, both to protect the public and to reform the lives of their inmates. But I have also been acutely aware that, quite simply, prisons are often not the ideal place to achieve rehabilitation. There are many reasons for that, but among them is the fact that there is often a shortage of appropriate staff to provide training and new skills, or simply that a programme that an individual prisoner needs is not available in their particular prison. That is especially the case with short custodial sentences.

For those reasons, I welcome the Bill’s shift to a presumption to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months or less. Let us be absolutely clear: a suspended sentence is still a punishment. It will invariably contain conditions and requirements. It is simply inaccurate for the tabloid newspapers to claim, as they so often do, that someone has walked free from court with a suspended sentence, as if there had been absolutely no consequences for the crime. That simply is not the case.

Let us also remember that any suspended sentence can be activated. The offender can be sent to prison immediately if they commit a further offence while serving their suspended sentence or, indeed, if they breach the conditions or the requirements attached to the suspended sentence order. There is, then, the absolute safeguard that, where necessary, somebody can be sent into custody. In fact, I worry slightly about whether the ability to do that might ultimately end up undermining the intent of the Bill. If we find that, in fact, an awful lot of suspended sentences are activated, Ministers may at that point need to think about how to address that problem.

I am pleased to see that the Bill extends the use of home detention curfew for those serving sentences of four years or more. In my very short time as a Minister in the Ministry of Justice, I asked officials to look into that. I am glad that it has been followed through and is now in the Bill, because HDC can be incredibly useful in easing the transition from custody to life back in the community. The simple reality is that the longer somebody has spent in prison, the more they need that period of transition, so the extension of eligibility is sensible.

I should also point out that it will, of course, be necessary to ensure that the probation service is properly resourced to support the additional offenders who will be serving their sentences in the community. Probation staff do an outstanding job, as I have seen for myself on many occasions. We must make sure that there are enough of them and that they have all they need to do an effective job in helping to reduce crime.

Although the increased emphasis on suspended sentences and an expansion of HDC are welcome steps, we could be even more innovative in our approach to sentencing. For example, we could use technology much better, with far more comprehensive use of GPS tags for the right offenders. I worked with the Centre for Social Justice to devise a new sentence called the intensive control and rehabilitation order, and I invite Ministers to peruse that at some point.

I have a couple of concerns about one or two aspects of the Bill, particularly the impact on young adults of the decision to make whole-life orders the starting point for certain offences. It is now widely accepted, including by the Ministry of Justice, that maturity is a process that continues until at least the early 20s. That has not yet been completely reflected in the criminal justice system and we need to do more work on it, especially on sentencing.

That aside, I believe there is much to welcome in the Bill. It clearly demonstrates that the Conservative Government are determined to tackle crime and provide the most appropriate sentences for offenders. I look forward to its rapid passage on to the statute book.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman makes a simple but incredibly important point. We want to follow the evidence so that we protect the public. We will do so, on the one hand, by locking up the most serious offenders for longer and taking them out of circulation, and, on the other, by cutting offending. Fewer crimes mean a better protected public. That is the approach that we will take.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Yesterday, I met former prisoner LJ Flanders who, while serving his sentence, devised a fitness regime that can be conducted in a cell with no special gym equipment. With the support of Bucks Association for the Care of Offenders, he has just run a two-week training programme in HMP Aylesbury to train other prisoners to provide coaching and mentoring of a similar style. Will my right hon. Friend please encourage everybody in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, particularly governors, to facilitate such courses to reduce reoffending?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who knows about what he speaks. I pay tribute to him for his work in the criminal justice system. He highlights an example that sounds extremely interesting. I would be happy to meet him to hear more about it and to see where we can take things from there.

Prison Capacity

Rob Butler Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I remember when IPPs came in; they were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I was a barrister at the time and I remember that under the legislation we were required effectively to apply for them and that judges were required to hand them down. There has been an understanding, in the intervening 20 years, that they have not operated as they should. They have created a sense of total despair, hopelessness and, most importantly of all, injustice.

How we deal with this issue is difficult in circumstances where the Parole Board has judged that people remain a danger to society. That is the issue. There is no easy solution where we say simply, “Let people out”, because we know in doing so that they could commit crimes and harm our fellow citizens. So we cannot do that, but what we will do is take every step, including providing additional psychological support so that individuals can prepare for parole hearings, and we will look at the issue of licences. We will not compromise on public safety, but we will do everything we can to scrub out the stain of those misguided sentences.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

The success of our prisons is not about having the highest possible number of prisoners in them; it is surely about prison rehabilitating offenders so that there are fewer victims of crime in the future. I strongly welcome the measures that the Lord Chancellor has announced today, especially on not putting people in prison who do not need to be in prison. Does he agree that we can cut crime substantially with much more effective use of technology, including the GPS tags that he mentioned, creating almost a virtual prison? That will be justice for the digital age under this party rather than for the Victorian era, which the Labour party seems to prefer.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend speaks clearly and persuasively, with the benefit of great experience as a magistrate. In my experience, magistrates courts overwhelmingly want to ensure, of course, that the punishment fits the crime, but they also want to ensure that the individual is taken away from the path of crime and ultimately rehabilitated. So of course my hon. Friend is right. Other countries have used technology very effectively. Where there are lessons to learn, we should learn them, but we will not compromise on ensuring that there is punishment. We can just deliver punishment with technology even more effectively.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

We are seeing progress. It is a combined approach of drug recovery wings and incentivised subsidised free living, and ensuring that security is able to stop drugs getting into prison through things like x-ray body scanners, which we have deployed in many prisons.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

It is perhaps unfortunate that many members of the public and much of the media only take an interest in prisons when there is an escape, but that is, thankfully, very rare. Will my right hon. Friend join me in hoping to now see a calm and measured public debate about the role of prisons, not least working out ways to improve rehabilitation, which ultimately protects the public.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. He has a long history with this issue since before he reached this House. It is, ultimately, all about rehabilitation, reducing reoffending and helping to keep the public safe.

Victims and Prisoners Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Rob Butler Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Edward Argar]

As I have set out, the clause is not designed in any way to restrict the powers of individual advocates, but to set guidance on the way a number of different advocates will conduct their roles in different circumstances to provide that consistency. Given that we are about to conclude part 2, I will take the opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have campaigned hard on these matters from both parties, but most importantly to those families of victims and the survivors of these horrific events.

I am pleased that we are making progress on this matter, and I will continue to work with the Opposition and particularly the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood over the coming months to see whether we can close any gaps. We are all determined to do our best to get the issue right, so I put on the record my gratitude to all those people and my officials, who have been working on this for some time. It is not an easy area of law to work in, and it is also a traumatic area to work in given the circumstances, which they and others will have read about. I put on the record my gratitude to them, the right hon. Lady, the families, the survivors and all those who have campaigned.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I echo the Minister’s comments, particularly those referring to his officials and the traumatic incidents that have been involved. As I stated when we were taking evidence, I was at the University of Sheffield at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. A friend of mine died in that disaster, and another was seriously injured. I have chosen today on repeated occasions not to intervene, but I thank the Minister, the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and the shadow Front Benchers for their tone and co-operation, which will be a comfort to anybody who has been involved in any way.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Given his personal experience and connection, this will not have been easy for him, and I am grateful for not only his words, but his service on the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 31 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 32

Public protection decisions: life prisoners