Criminal Law

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), who both made important points about the need to safeguard the interests of victims. In relation to the measure itself, I think most of us recognise that the objective is an entirely laudable and proper one. It is right that there is confidence in the sentencing process for the general public, and it is right that those who commit the most serious offences should receive condign and appropriate punishment, so I do not have a problem with supporting this measure.

There is no great magic in two thirds, as opposed to a half. What this measure does is to take the situation back to where it was when I started in practice at the Bar before 2003, and that was certainly the feeling among professionals at the time, when it was changed from two thirds to a half. That was largely done as a matter of presentation, because it enabled the then Labour Government to suggest that they were reducing the number of prisoners. What we have failed to do for many decades is to actually invest in prisons, so I hope that, at the same time as we make sure that we have proper levels of sentencing for those who commit serious offences, we will invest in our prison estate, which—as the Justice Committee has pointed out in several reports—suffers from grave overcrowding and, in many cases, from a serious degradation in the physical fabric of the buildings, and for that reason is often not able to deliver the rehabilitative work that we all wish to see. As Lord Garnier said in the other House when this was debated, it is not the magic of two thirds as opposed to a half that is important; it is what we do with people when they are in prison.

The other thing that we need to tackle—and I know the Government are determined to do this—is to ensure we get down our stubbornly high rates of reoffending. Our rates of reoffending are markedly worse than many of our near neighbours’ rates. I do not think that is because the British population are inherently more inclined to commit crime than those of the Netherlands or Scandinavia; it is because we have not historically made enough, perhaps nuanced, use of imprisonment to turn lives around.

I recognise that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), when he was Lord Chancellor, started an ambitious scheme to make sure that purposeful activity, rehabilitation, re-education and changing lives around were key parts of our prison strategy. I know that the current Lord Chancellor shares that view, and I hope that we will see the rest of the package of justice measures advance that side of the equation too, so that we get that balance right, which includes tough sentences where they are warranted and which the public has confidence in; good, positive, constructive work with prisoners while they are inside to make them less likely to offend when they are released; and robust alternatives to custody for those who do not perhaps present a physical threat, but have often got into criminality because of drug addiction, mental health issues and a raft of other matters that are better tackled much earlier, by early intervention.

I hope that we will not lose the opportunity to have greater transparency and simplicity in sentencing, which has become complicated even for judges, as I know from experience. Of course there is a Law Commission enabling measure in the other place, under the special Law Commission procedure, to lay the ground for a codification of sentencing. That will be a welcome step and something that the Justice Committee has urged the Government to do. I hope the Minister will be able to take that on board too.