Constitution and Home Affairs

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech. It is a maiden speech that comes at last to me, having been selected as the candidate for South Swindon some six years ago. That means that in 2005 I was beaten by my predecessor, Anne Snelgrove, to whom I pay warm tribute today. She worked extremely hard for her constituency and for her constituents. It is interesting to note that many of the challenges that she raised in her maiden speech are the challenges that face Swindon today—on jobs, for example. In fact, the unemployment position in Swindon is now twice as bad as it was back in 2005. Town centre regeneration is another challenge; the recession has sadly put paid to many of the fine plans laid out for our town centre.

I do not want to start, however, on an unduly pessimistic note because, like the peal of 10 bells at Christ Church in Swindon, celebrated in the poetry of Sir John Betjeman, there is much to ring the praises about when it comes to the town I represent. This is the part of my speech that is entirely uncontroversial, because it is a known fact that Swindon is a cultural hub. We are the home of the National Trust and the base of English Heritage. We also have the museum of the Great Western railway—God’s wonderful railway, in other words—this year celebrating 175 years of its existence by Act of Parliament. We are home to the National Monuments Record office.

We have splendid country parks, including Lydiard park, the former ancestral home of the Bolingbroke family—a political family well known to this House and to the other place. It is now a delightful country park to the west and on the western fringes of my constituency. To the east, we have Coate Water country park, much loved by local residents, home of a miniature railway and, on the edge, home to the museum of the 19th century writer and naturalist, Richard Jefferies.

There is much to commend the constituency that I represent. It is town, suburb and country, lying as it does between the ancient Ridgeway path and its iron-age forts, and the iron road of the railway that meant so much to the development of Swindon in the 19th century. Bisecting my constituency through the middle is that 20th-century innovation, the M4. Make no mistake about it, Mr Deputy Speaker: Swindon is well and truly at the heart of our country.

Swindon’s communities, whether they be in the town centre or out in the suburban fringes, are all united by several concerns. One of those concerns is about the need to protect and preserve our green spaces, and to ensure that the development that we know will come to Swindon—it is a town that has grown over the years and reinvented itself to quite brilliant effect—is sustainable. I therefore welcome a change to the planning regime, so that my town can survive, thrive and prosper in the years ahead.

One issue that comes up time and time again with the people I now represent is their concern about the system of criminal justice in our country. It might sound like special pleading—I make no apology for that—but having spent most of my professional life working as a barrister in the criminal justice system, I think that I am allowed to make some observations about the gap between political rhetoric and the sad reality of what is happening in our system today. We have confused legislative hyperactivity with effectiveness. The sausage-factory approach that saw Criminal Justice Act after Criminal Justice Act has not resulted in a better system; in fact, it has made it a great deal worse. The law of unforeseen consequences means that the extra burden placed on the system is causing it to creak at the hinges.

The words of politicians in this House and other places sound particularly hollow to those at the chalk face trying to grapple with the reality. We have spent too much time concentrating on the consequences of offending, instead of looking at the means of preventing it in the first place. The rhetoric of being tough on crime so loved by a former Prime Minister misses the point. It is time for us to be smart on crime, by looking at the causes of that criminality and dealing with them, lest we reap the whirlwind of social problems and increased expenditure.

When there is no option, we must stop being spellbound by the complexity of things. Prison is there to perform three simple functions: to protect the public, to punish offenders and to offer the hope of rehabilitation. None of those important functions seems to have been properly valued, as the events of recent years bear out. It is a scandal that those who have to pass sentences in the Crown court and other places are influenced by pressures on prison numbers. It is simply unacceptable and literally a denial of justice.

If we are to deal most effectively with criminality in our country, we need to call criminal offences crime, move away from the unproductive and costly antisocial behaviour structure and all the rhetoric surrounding it, and remember that at the root of it all, it is crime prevention and early intervention, particularly in the lives of young people, that we will see reaping real rewards, when we come to look back at our time in office. My plea today is for effective action on crime—for a bit of cleverness, rather than the rhetoric of tabloid newspapers. I look forward to, I hope, playing my part in the debates on crime and other issues that are important to the constituents I represent in the years ahead.