Safe Streets for All

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

It is a pleasure and an honour to wind up this day of debate on the Gracious Speech, with particular regard to keeping our streets safe. It is important to start my remarks by paying warm and deep tribute to all the dedicated public servants in the criminal justice system who have done so much to keep the wheels of justice turning. I think of the court staff in our Crown courts, our magistrates courts and, indeed, in our other jurisdictions who have worked tirelessly to make sure that, almost alone in the western world, we have kept our system going. We have been able to deal with a huge number of cases not just in person, but remotely. That is the result of investment in technology and in extra staff to assist the judiciary to carry out its important work. I also think of all those incredible public servants in our prison system—prison officers, probation officers and support staff—who went more than just an extra mile. It is almost difficult to explain some of the sacrifices that staff made during the height of the pandemic to make sure that they could safely do their job and save lives, which is what they did, in our prison system. I think the whole House will join me in paying warm tribute to them for the work that they have done, which has allowed us to recover and, indeed, to rebuild and to work in a better way to make sure that justice is delivered.

There were many excellent contributions in this debate. Members from all parts of the House made some thought-provoking points. I want to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn made about places of safety under the Mental Health Act 1983 is an important one, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I take very seriously. I will look at the issues that she raises with regard to that statutory operation. Through good operational practice, I know that more and more mental health trusts are working sensitively with patients to make sure that those provisions need not be triggered, but I will take up the matter further with her at her request.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, as he always does, including in his work on the Justice Committee, stood up eloquently and strongly for the victims of crime and for his constituents.

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster who, quite rightly and with some eloquence, talked about online harms and how the work that my colleagues in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are doing with regard to strengthening the law will make us a world leader in dealing with the sad menace of online child abuse, which is every bit as evil and pernicious and has as many victims as abuse does offline.

I was particularly interested in the contribution of the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), who spoke well about county lines. She made some powerful points about the fact that these lines stretch into our towns and smaller communities just as much as they do into our cities. She rightly acknowledged the work that the police are doing to disrupt and indeed to end quite a lot of this activity. I particularly agreed with her point about unaccompanied children and the abuse of children by those responsible for that organised crime. She will be glad to know that, increasingly, the police take a far more delicate and sensitive approach to the way in which children are safeguarded as a result of the abuse. In other words, not every child will be, or should be, a defendant. In fact, very often, the opposite should be the case. The work of protection and safeguarding is vital if we are to cut off the abuse and the grooming that goes on, which is every bit as pernicious as other types of grooming that we see in other types of criminal activity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) made, I think, one of the most important points in this debate: that family breakdown, sadly, remains a key driver of crime in many, many cases. Her support for the Government’s radical policies on early years intervention and development is warmly welcomed. The work being done by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), which is supported across Government, will yield real and generational change when it comes to our understanding of early years development and of how, sadly, in too many cases, the experiences of early years can be a predictor of, first, school exclusion and then later a descent into crime.

I think all of us in this House understand that those interventions need to be made, and doing it better will solve problems that all too often become problems my Department has to deal with. I cannot emphasise strongly enough that the Ministry of Justice cannot solve these problems alone; it is a cross-governmental and, indeed, cross-agency approach that will truly help to turn the tide when it comes to the drivers of crime.

I am proud to be part of a Government who get that, and through the criminal justice taskforce, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, we are working already to make the sort of interventions that can reduce reoffending. Indeed, such interventions—whether it be the £70 million in increased offender accommodation on release from custody, the £80 million in increased drug treatment support, or the roll-out of community sentence treatment requirements that I believe will give sentencers a much deeper and richer choice of sentences—will, I believe, make a difference in the long term.

I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham), who speaks so strongly for residents in his community in Lancashire. He taps in and understands their concerns, hopes and fears, and I believe that he represents them with passion and eloquence.

With the greatest of respect to Labour Members, some of the observations they made would have carried, in my submission, more conviction had they supported the Second Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. That was an opportunity for Labour Members to match their warm words with deeds. They failed to take that opportunity. They failed to support the balanced measures we are taking on sentencing and, indeed, the wider approach we are taking to improve the way in which the criminal justice system responds. It was a more than disappointing moment; it was in many ways a bewildering moment, because Labour Members at one time said that we were not going far enough, and then in the debate said that we were going too far. Now I really do not know where they are, or perhaps they do not know where they are. [Interruption.] Oh, I will come to the amendments when we come to debate the Bill in greater detail.

Let us remind ourselves of the key purposes of the Government’s approach to the reforms we are making. The first is to better protect the public whom we serve. That has to be at the heart of what we are doing, particularly in making sure that Labour’s policy of automatic early release is progressively ended. The second is to increase public confidence in our system of justice. Those of us who spend a lot of our time talking to residents on the doorstep and working with them will constantly be struck by the gulf that sometimes exists between those of us who are close to the system and those who feel there is a disconnection between what is happening in our criminal justice system and what is happening in our communities.

Why are these things important and why is this disconnection of great importance? Because I firmly believe, as do the Government, that safer communities are stabler ones, and that the more stable a community becomes, the more able it will be to grow and flourish economically, culturally, socially and, indeed, spiritually. That is what I regard as true levelling up, which is why the criminal justice policies of this Government are a crucial part of that agenda.

I am conscious of time, but I will make this observation. The Bill that we have brought back in this second Session is but the latest stage in a number of measures that we have taken in the last two years to improve the approach we take to criminal justice. In that time, two counter-terrorism Bills that strengthened sentencing for the most serious terrorists and improved the way in which we supervise them on licence have been enacted.

Last September, I published the sentencing White Paper. As a result of that, we ended automatic halfway release for serious violent and sexual offenders serving seven years or more. Indeed, we increased the range of sentences that are now referrable to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient. On top of that, we have committed £4 billion to making progress on the delivery of 18,000 additional prison places across England and Wales. That is vital, and it comes on top of an additional £315 million to improve the condition of our existing estate.

When it comes to supporting victims, I say this to the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy): we are taking action. Not only are we going to advance the victims law but we have published the revised victims code, which came into force last month and was supported by all parts of the sector. We have invested just under £151 million in victim and witness support services, including an extra £51 million to support rape and domestic abuse victims. Of course, the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 that this Government pushed for has been passed—with support, I accept, from all parts of the House.

The right hon. Gentleman sometimes reminds me of the bad prosecutor: he might have a few good points, but he over-eggs the pudding with a poorly presented case. With the greatest of respect to him, that is what happened tonight. I commend the Government’s programme on law and order to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(David T. C. Davies.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.