Debates between Robert Buckland and Alex Chalk during the 2019 Parliament

Tue 11th Feb 2020
Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill
Commons Chamber

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & 2nd reading

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Buckland and Alex Chalk
Tuesday 26th March 2024

(1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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That is not a fair characterisation. The capacity in our estate is much greater than when we inherited it—that is point one. Point two is that we have kick-started the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era: £4 billion has been allocated, and we have opened His Majesty’s Prison Fosse Way and HMP Five Wells. HMP Millsike will open next year; we have planning permission for Gartree and Grendon Springhill, and we also have more spaces—rapid deployment cells and so on—coming on at Liverpool, Birmingham and Norwich. We believe that those who commit the most appalling crimes should be locked up for longer. As I say, it was wrong that, in 2010, rapists would be automatically released at the halfway mark. We are the Government who are putting that right.

Robert Buckland Portrait Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
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I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for building on the work that he and I did together to ensure that the most dangerous and serious offenders spend longer behind bars. The consultation on sentencing in cases of murder concluded a few weeks ago. When can we reasonably expect a response on that sensitive and important issue?

Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that it is a sensitive issue. As he knows from practice, those who commit the offence of murder outside, using a knife that is brought to the scene, can expect a starting point of 25 years. However, as the Gould and Devey families have made so powerfully clear, where the crime takes place inside the home, there are very difficult sentencing decisions for judges. The consultation has ended, and I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who has spoken to a number of people about it, as indeed have I. We will respond in the coming weeks, but this matter requires careful thought. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for his work on it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Buckland and Alex Chalk
Tuesday 9th January 2024

(3 months, 2 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Robert Buckland Portrait Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
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In a perfect world, the victims of the Horizon IT scandal would have their cases individually assessed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Court of Appeal, but we are not in a perfect world. The scale of the miscarriage of justice is enormous, and there are hundreds of victims who understandably do not want to come forward because they have lost faith in the process. Will my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor now consider the exceptional and unique step of legislating to quash the convictions?

Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who speaks with such authority. The circumstances are truly exceptional. When I was a Back Bencher, I went on the record as saying that Horizon is the most serious miscarriage of justice since the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six. But the clue is that there were four in the Guildford case and six in the Birmingham case; we are talking about hundreds of people. The situation is truly exceptional and unprecedented, and it will need an appropriate resolution.

Prison Capacity

Debate between Robert Buckland and Alex Chalk
Monday 16th October 2023

(6 months, 2 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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First, I make it very clear to the hon. Lady and her constituent that we will not take steps that put the British people at risk. The Parole Board will have to make an assessment, in the normal way, on whether a person is safe to be released. If they are considered safe for release, the question is then about the duration of the licence period that remains. IPP effectively continues to hang over them. I am looking at that particular area at the moment, but I want to be clear that it is a sensitive area. We are trying to unwind a very ill-starred policy, but we have to do so in a way that ultimately keeps the British people safe.

Robert Buckland Portrait Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
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I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for his statement. In so many ways, it echoes and builds on the work we did together in the Department.

I emphasise the importance of building a technologically sound, innovative and direct alternative to short-term prison sentences, which I think this statement presages. We need to get on with that work, because short-term sentences have to be a last resort, as they clearly do not help to cut crime. What more can my right hon. and learned Friend do to redouble efforts to ensure that the prison building programme that started when I was in office is delivered on time, and that we overcome some of the constant barriers of planning permission and other administrative obstacles?

Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk
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l pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend. I talked about tough decisions being made in the white heat of the pandemic, and he is the one who said that we will not get rid of the jury system on our watch. My goodness, he was right to say that. It was a tough call, but it was manifestly the right one.

Lest we forget, Five Wells and Fosse Way have opened and HMP Millsike is currently under construction, going alongside Garth, Gartree, Grendon/Spring Hill and other prisons. My right hon. and learned Friend is right that there has been an issue with planning. I have said that, with an additional £30 million, we will identify further sites in 2024 and get the planning permission well in advance, because we cannot have a situation in which these critical building programmes are held up by the planning process. We are changing to a new approach, and we are putting on the afterburners to make sure those prisons get built.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Alex Chalk
2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020

(4 years, 2 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Robert Buckland Portrait Robert Buckland
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My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, like me has much experience in the criminal justice system. He will know that deciding whether remorse is real or feigned is sometimes a difficult judgment for a court to make. He makes his point very well.

I think it is right for me to deal at this stage with the concept of whether we should have gone further and introduced a rule of “no body, no release”. Tempting though that might be—and I listened carefully to the arguments—there is a danger that if we proceed too far along that path, we could inadvertently create an artificial incentive for people to mislead the authorities and to feign co-operation or remorse. Of course, in another context, we see the dangers that are inherent in what I have described as superficial compliance with the authorities. There is a fine balance to be maintained, but I think that the Bill as presented maintains it in a way that is clear, that increases public confidence in the system and that makes it abundantly plain to those who are charged with the responsibility of assessing risk that, in the view of this House, this issue is of particular public interest and public importance when it comes to the assessment that is to be made.

I was dealing with the essence of the non-disclosure, and I would add that the Parole Board must in particular take account of what, in its view, are the reasons for the non-disclosure. This subjective approach will allow the board to distinguish between circumstances in which, for example, the non-disclosure is due to a prisoner’s mental illness, and cases in which a prisoner makes a deliberate decision not to say where a victim’s remains are located. This subjective approach is fundamental to the proper functioning of the Bill. It ensures that the non-disclosure and the reasons for it—in other words, the failure by the prisoner to say what they did with the victim’s remains—are fully taken into account by the board when it comes to decision making. It is then for the Parole Board, as an independent body, to decide what bearing such information has on the risk that a prisoner may present and whether that risk can be managed safely in their community. It reflects the established practice of the Parole Board, as included in its guidance to panel members in 2017, but it goes a step further in placing a legal duty to take a non-disclosure into account. This, as I have already mentioned, is part of our intention to provide a greater degree of reassurance to victims’ families by formally setting out the guidance in law.

I turn now to the second part of the Bill, which deals with the non-disclosure of different types of information by offenders. This has been prompted by the horrific case of Vanessa George. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) in his place. Vanessa George was recently released by the Parole Board after serving 10 years in prison, following conviction for multiple counts of sexual abuse against children at the Plymouth nursery where she worked. She also photographed the abuse of those children in her care and sent the images to other paedophiles. This was a horrific case, which those of us who had young children at the time, me included, remember all too graphically. Vanessa George’s crimes have caused widespread revulsion. Her abuse of the trust placed in her by the families of the children she was meant to care for and protect is shocking. Their pain has been compounded by the fact that the children she photographed cannot be identified from the images, and that she has refused to disclose their identities to the authorities. All the families involved have been left in a truly terrible limbo, not knowing whether their child has been a victim.

Again, we are seeking to respond by stipulating in law that such appalling circumstances must be fully taken into account by the Parole Board when making any decisions on the release of such an offender. Clause 2 of the Bill will amend the release provisions that apply to an extended determinate sentence that has been imposed for the offence of taking or making indecent photographs of children and, as in clause 1, we will place a statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider the non-disclosure of information about the identity of a child or children featured in such images when the board makes a public protection decision, including one to release the prisoner. The provision will apply when the Parole Board does not know the identity of the child or children in such an image but believes that the prisoner is in a position to disclose it and has chosen not to do so. It is this non-disclosure and the reasons for it, in the view of the Parole Board, that must be taken into account before any release decision is made.

Alex Chalk Portrait Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
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I heartily applaud the Government for taking this important step. Does the Secretary of State agree that we also need to reassure people that when such an individual comes to be sentenced in the first place, if they have not at that stage disclosed where the body is or the identity of the victims of their crime, the judge should be able to take that into account in setting the minimum period that they should serve? In other words, will my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that the impact does not simply crystallise at the point of release?