Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]]

This is a significant and large Bill, and it warrants serious scrutiny. It therefore deserves better attention, I submit, than some of the hyperbole that has regrettably been thrown at it in the course of the earlier speeches of this debate. It is reasonable to examine a Bill carefully as it goes through Committee. I have scarcely ever known a Bill that is not improved by careful examination from the time when it is brought in. To vote against the Bill tomorrow does not seem to me to be a mark of a responsible Opposition, and it is regrettable that Labour and the Scottish National party have gone down that route, particularly when they can see that there is much to agree with. Many organisations in the criminal justice sphere including NACRO, the Centre for Justice organisation, the Magistrates Association and others have welcomed measures in the Bill.

We need a sense of proportion about these matters. For example, the reforms to public order legislation certainly need careful consideration, but changes to the law around public nuisance were recommended by the Law Commission as long ago as 2015. This measure puts that law on a statutory basis, as the Law Commission recommended, but uses, perfectly understandably, terms and phrases from the old common law arrangements, which are well understood and well defined by case law in the courts. The idea, therefore, that the Law Commission is somehow part of some authoritarian plot seems to me to be risible, and better arguments can be made than that.

Being near the M25, my constituency has unfortunately had repeated unauthorised incursions into both publicly owned and privately owned playing fields, sports grounds and others. Proportionality and fairness also mean that there should be swifter and better recompense than the current situation permits for those communities that see much-valued community assets put out of use by unauthorised encampments.

On the sentencing elements of the Bill, sentencing is always a difficult matter, both in individual cases and in terms of policy. It requires a careful balance. Overall, the Justice Secretary and his team who worked on this part of the Bill have got it right. It is right that we strengthen provision to protect the public from the most serious criminals, but it is also right that we give greater attention to the need to rehabilitate. Basically, many of those who end up in the criminal justice system and, indeed, in prison have chaotic lifestyles, sometimes mental health issues, educational issues, social problems and, frequently, weakness and stupidity. Getting those people out of a never-ending cycle of reoffending, as the White Paper says, on which this part of the Bill is based, is not just in their interests, but, overwhelmingly, in the interests of the public, too. I welcome the provisions to give a more agile and sophisticated suite of alternatives to custody. It is important that alternatives to custody are credible to the public, because sentencing has to be credible, but also that they do not waste time in comparatively short prison sentences where little rehabilitative work can be done, and which are hugely expensive. They have their place in just limited instances. Those changes, therefore, are very welcome.

Changes to the provisions regarding spent convictions are very important for rehabilitation. The Justice Committee has called for that in previous reports. Recognising a distinct approach to sentencing of younger offenders is, again, something that our Committee has repeatedly called for, and I welcome that, too. Equally, raising the threshold for remanding children into custody is very welcome and I would have thought overwhelmingly supported.

There is much to support in this Bill, including the provision for charities to set up secure schools, a much better improvement on our current provision. I very much hope that this Bill will get its Second Reading and that we can then examine the provisions in detail. The final thing that we have to be honest about is that justice does not come cheap. If we are to make these important and radical changes to sentencing policy, we must invest in them. If we are to have alternatives to custody, we must invest properly in those alternatives. They will bring both a social and an economic benefit in the long run, but we have to be honest and spell that out at the beginning.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Yvette Cooper.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

Again, I emphasise my appreciation for the work that Lissie Harper has done, along with the Police Federation, which has undoubtedly captured the imagination of the entire country in pressing for the change, which we all welcome. It was not an isolated incident, which is obviously agonising in itself. Although, thankfully, emergency workers are not often killed on duty, they are required to put themselves at particular risk when carrying out their duties and protecting the public. I think I speak for the whole House in expressing enormous thanks and appreciation to them for everything that they do on the frontline day in, day out to keep each and every one of us safe.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The Minister is absolutely right to pay tribute to Lissie Harper and to our emergency services. He also makes the point that these are not isolated incidents. Will he take on board the broader point that, although there is obviously great support for this piece of legislation, the area that has not been addressed is the difficulty that juries face in deciding whether the offence—the facts made out—is murder or manslaughter?

I hope that the Minister will revisit a missed opportunity, which is the definitions of homicide under our current law. The Law Commission and others have suggested that they ought to be revisited because they create some difficulty and uncertainty, particularly in the difficult area between the intention to kill or to commit grievous bodily harm and gross negligence at the top end. I hope that the Government will consider revisiting the Law Commission’s work on that, because other jurisdictions have different categories of homicide, rather than the perhaps now old-fashioned categories of murder and manslaughter. We might then find it easier for juries to more accurately reflect the culpability by their verdicts, which is what we want to achieve.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s observations. We touched on those matters when we spoke last week when we engaged in advance of these proceedings. I said to him that that was something that I would certainly be willing to take away and consider, and I am willing to do that. He advocates that the Law Commission looks at the issue of homicide in the round and, as I say, I am happy to reflect on and consider that matter in the fullness of time.

To return to the question of the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I am keen to provide the House with as much information as possible and to further clarify the position around it. If I understand his question correctly, it does apply to emergency workers who are off duty, but they must be acting as an emergency worker—off duty but still responding to an incident. I hope that that provides the House, in the correct terms, with the clarity that it is seeking on that point.

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[Ellie Reeves]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend speaks so passionately about this issue. It is absolutely right that those in secure academies are given the support that they need, and that they receive not just a good education but the very best that is available to them. To that end, we believe that local authorities must explicitly be brought into the fold when considering who will run these academies. Although we can argue about whether there is a legal bar, the fact is that having it explicitly in the Bill would put it beyond all doubt that local authorities could run these secure academies, and that education policy would not be a barrier to their doing so.

That is a small clarification, which the Government do not appear to oppose in practical terms, but it would send a signal to potential providers not only that local authorities are technically allowed to bid but that, given their wealth of experience in this area, their bids would be positively welcomed. The failures across the youth estate have been shocking, and the Government need to bring in providers with the necessary expertise and ethos to support children in secure settings, to help to address those failings. I hope that, for that reason, the Minister can today commit to their explicit inclusion as possible providers.

Although we are in agreement with the Government on the majority of the proposals in this group and welcome them, further clarification and action on some aspects are needed. Our support here does not detract from the very serious failings in other parts of the Bill, and the failure to make its focus the very real epidemic of violence against women. If the Government were fully serious about the issues facing our society, they would make that one of the main focuses of the Bill and drop the poorly thought-out draconian measures on protests and further police powers.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate. This area of the Bill raises a number of important criminal justice matters, and I am grateful to the Minister for his very open approach to engaging with me and others around it. I have much sympathy with both him and the shadow Minister, in observing that there are sensible things that I hope we will broadly agree upon on most of this. I hope that I can make one or two observations on how we might take things forward once we have passed the legislation.

I have made my point in relation to the manslaughter of emergency workers, and I do not seek to repeat it, save to say that the Justice Committee has looked at the law of homicide and I think that we are in danger of missing an opportunity there. That does not mean that what is proposed is wrong, but we should be more ambitious than that, because many other common-law jurisdictions have reformed their law of manslaughter in a way that makes it more comprehensible to a jury. I looked with particular care at, for example, the judge’s directions in the PC Harper case and others. Even with the most impeccable directions it is not easy to follow now, against the factual background that we often have. We ought to be prepared to look at evidence from other common-law jurisdictions going forward.

There was an argument, of course, that the victim being an emergency worker is always an aggravating factor, but I understand the point about putting it on the statute book, given the particular value and weight that we place upon the service that these emergency workers have done. Similarly, I welcome the provision for aggravation in relation to assaults upon public service workers. I visited one of the local Co-op stores in my constituency and met some of my constituents who have been assaulted and threatened pretty appallingly by people. They do a great job for the public, and I think that we are right to give them a measure of protection too. I welcome the Government moving on that.

I will just turn to two other matters, one of which concerns IPP—imprisonment for public protection—sentences. The Minister knows that the Justice Committee is currently drawing up a report on this issue. We heard most compelling evidence on this situation, which Lord Brown, a former senior law Lord, described as an enduring blot on the British justice system. I paraphrase his words—that may not be exact—but that was the essence of it. I welcome what the Government are doing. It is a step in the right direction, but we need to ensure that those who are capable of being released safely are processed through the system much more quickly. That has been a blot on our system for too long. Resources have not been made available and all too often the provision to do the courses that were necessary for them to meet the trigger levels for release were not available. The danger was—we heard very powerful evidence on this from clinical psychologists and others—that sometimes the failure of the system to deal with the underlying issues which caused them to be subject to a IPP in the first place had now made them more dangerous to release, because they got to a degree of institutionalisation which makes it harder for them to be reformed. We need to be very alert to that.

[Sarah Champion]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for starting the inquiry. One piece of written evidence received is from one of my constituents, who is suffering under an IPP with no hope of getting out and no understanding of why he is stuck there. I fully accept and agree with what he is saying. The impact that this is having on people’s mental health, the lifelong torture that these people are being put under, is just totally unacceptable. Of course one should serve one’s time, but I cannot even imagine what having an indefinite time ahead must do to someone’s psyche.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. We heard very compelling testimony on precisely those points. That is not to say that some people who are serving IPP sentences have not committed very serious offences and that some of them, because of their background, do not present a very real threat to the public. It may well be that in certain cases it will be a very long time before they are capable of being released, if ever, but there are many others who fall below that threshold who are trapped unfairly in the system, and who ought to be capable of being looked at afresh, processed and released safely into the community, but we have not yet managed to do that. The Government’s amendment holds the feet of the Parole Board to the fire on that, which is good so far as it goes.

The other point I want to make is that we heard compelling evidence from Lord Blunkett, the originator of the IPP sentences, who accepted that it had not worked out as he had intended. That was powerful and very humbling testimony. There was also very powerful testimony from Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the former Lord Chief Justice, who has taken up this cause. He made the point that what we are doing so far is helpful. Improving the ability of people to access courses and gain the threshold for release is helpful and that is what the Government are, through their amendment, seeking to do. The need to review every case, rather than leaving them in limbo, is really important so we do not get drift.

However, there are two things we are not yet doing. We are not tackling the issue of needless recall. Recall is an important tool to have while we have a licence, but there is a real concern that in many cases the trigger for the recall bears no proportion to either the index offence which had caused the original sentence or the amount of time that might then be spent inside thereafter. In some cases, there was a real concern that recall was triggered for comparatively administrative breaches of the licence, rather than substantive ones linked to reoffending or increasing risk. I urge Ministers, when the Parole Board looks at each case as it will now be obliged to do under the legislation, to ensure that we do not have, frankly, risk-averse recalls. It is always a terrible balance to strike and I am very conscious of the burden on the Parole Board and probation officers in doing that, but we ought to ensure it is not done on a tick-box basis just to make sure we have protected ourselves against criticism—almost a back-covering exercise, I hate to say.

There is a temptation for that in the current arrangements, but we can do better than that and I hope we will. We ought to be assessing whether the breach suggests there is an ongoing risk of reoffending or a danger to the public. That ought to be the test.

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[Tom Pursglove]

I thank Members from across the House for their many and varied contributions to the various amendments we are considering this evening. I wish to respond to a number of the points made.

First, let me respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on IPPs. I have heard his view that the amendment does not go far enough and does not take action to help IPP offenders who are still in prison. The number of IPP offenders in prison, having never been released, stood at 1,661 on 30 September 2021, which represents enormous progress when we compare it with the peak of 6,000 in 2012. The IPP action plan, produced and regularly refreshed by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, remains the best means of providing all those continuing to serve the IPP sentence with every opportunity to show they can be safely released by the Parole Board. The action plan sets out a series of measures designed to rehabilitate IPP prisoners, including through psychology-led reviews, and improved central and regional strategic oversight of IPP progression. There is clear evidence that these measures are working, and the number of IPP prisoners has decreased. IPP prisoners continue to be released in significant numbers and have a high chance of a positive outcome from Parole Board hearings. In 2020-21, more than two thirds of IPP Parole Board oral hearings resulted in a positive outcome, either a release or a progressive move to open prison.

Despite all that, I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend by saying that, as Ministers have said during the passage of this Bill, in this House and in the other place, we are mindful that the Justice Committee in this House is currently conducting an inquiry into IPP sentences, and we look forward to hearing the recommendations of his Committee and we will certainly consider them closely. I, along with my fellow Ministers, will continue to engage with IPP stakeholders in this House and elsewhere, and we will continue to give full consideration to any options recommended. I hope that that gives him the reassurance that he is looking for as to our intentions.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the Minister, as it does. I hope that he makes sure that we have a timely response; perhaps he can meet me once our Committee has reported.

[Tom Pursglove]

Yes, I am always keen that the Department is as timely as possible in engaging with my hon. Friend’s excellent Committee. We are always grateful for the tireless, thorough and considered work that he and colleagues do.

Let me turn to the issue of Harper’s law. Again, I was very grateful to Members from across the House, including the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), for their clear, full-throated support for these changes. I was able to address one of the technical issues to provide clarity for the House earlier, and I just wish to provide further clarity, as I promised I would, on whether volunteers can be emergency workers under Harper’s law. The answer is yes, it applies to emergency workers who are engaged to supply emergency services in a voluntary capacity as well as to paid employees. It uses exactly the same definition as in the 2018 Act, and I hope that that helps to put the technical aspects of this provision on the record for the House’s benefit.

Lords amendment 107 covers the issue of secure schools. I am always conscious that I do not want to disappoint the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). We have always had a very constructive working relationship on a whole host of issues, including on the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill, which I know she will be delighted completed its Commons consideration on Friday. None the less, on this occasion, I am afraid that I cannot deliver precisely on what she wishes to see. However, I reiterate the point that, before we invite applications for any future secure schools, the Ministry of Justice will assess in detail the potential role of local authorities in running this new form of provision. The Department for Education remains committed to moving towards a school system where every school has the benefits of being part of a family of schools in a strong multi-academy trust. The DFE will set out its plans in a schools White Paper to be published in the coming months.

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[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Lady is persistent in these matters. All I can do, I am afraid, is simply refer her back to the comments that I have already made during the course of this debate. I will happily take away—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is chuntering from a sedentary position. I am not sure whether she was here for the duration of this debate. We have covered this matter in some detail. I will gladly take away a copy of Hansard and study the points that she has raised in the course of this debate. If there is any further detail that I am able to provide, I will happily do so.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Are local authorities ruled in or ruled out?

[Tom Pursglove]

I refer to the point that I made earlier, which is that we believe there is no barrier.

Lords amendment 58 covers food standards. I hope that I can offer some comfort to the House. We are broadly supportive of the intention to confer such powers, which would be consistent with powers available to other bodies, but reject the amendment on the basis that there is further work to do before any legislative amendments are made. The current chairman of the Food Standards Agency, Susan Jebb, wrote to the Minister for Crime and Policing on 11 August 2021 expressing concern that the existing powers of the National Food Crime Unit were insufficient for their purposes. The Minister responded in October, expressing support for the request and indicated the Home Office’s intent to work with the NFCU to find a suitable legislative vehicle. In order to fully support any extension of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 powers to the NFCU, we would need reassurance that this is necessary, proportionate and legitimate and that suitable governance, accountability and oversight of investigations and complaints arrangements will be in place. There is also a lack of clarity over the necessary protocols when PACE powers would be exercised, which will need consideration with the NFCU before legislative amendments are made, but we will of course legislate at the next available opportunity.

I am also grateful to Members for their strong support for the hare coursing changes that the Government are introducing, particularly the observations made by my hon. Friends the Members for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), and by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara), who is my neighbour, from just over the border. This issue matters a great deal. We have listened carefully to a wide range of voices, telling us just that. Hare coursing is not a quaint country tradition. It involves horrible cruelty to a much loved wild animal. It is associated with illegal gambling and other criminality. It brings serious harm to the rural areas where it takes place. Subject to parliamentary approval, we intend to get the tougher sentences in place before the start of the next hare coursing season.

I conclude by again thanking Members from across the House for their thoughtful contributions to this debate and also Members in the other place for their thorough consideration of these matters and for the engagement that colleagues have provided throughout the Bill. As a Minister coming to this rather late in the day, may I also place on record my sincere appreciation to my hon. Friends the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) and for Croydon South (Chris Philp) as well as to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) for all their work in getting us to this stage.

Lords amendment 1 agreed to.

Lords amendment 58 disagreed to.

Clause 139

Secure 16 to 19 Academies

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 107.—(Tom Pursglove.)