Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Member makes a really important point on both how we ensure that there is not racial disparity in those who enter the criminal justice system and how we divert people away from it. She will be pleased to know that over £220 million has been invested in early intervention, including £200 million in the youth endowment fund to support those most at risk of being drawn into crime.

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

The Minister will be well aware that although the number of young people coming into contact with the system has reduced, very often they present much more complex and challenging cases, not least because of the data recently published by the Youth Justice Board showing a large number of pre-existing problems that are there before they come into contact with the system. Given that, does she accept that it is necessary not just to continue the existing measures of diversion, but to pull those together into a much broader, overarching strategy for young people and children in the justice system—not just up to the age of 18, as is the case at the moment, but, given the evidence we have on maturity, beyond that, perhaps into the early 20s or even to 25, as evidence that the Justice Committee has strongly supports?

[Lucy Frazer]

As usual, my hon. Friend the Chair of the Justice Committee makes a number of important points. He is right to identify that the people coming into custody, because there are fewer of them, have committed more serious crimes—often violent crimes—and are very complex to deal with. He is right to point out the importance of the transition between youth custody and adult custody, and that is something we are looking at very closely. The Youth Custody Service is currently looking at improving the transition in prison from youth to adult custody, and at the feasibility of introducing an integrated healthcare model for young adults based on the system that is currently operated in the youth custody estate.

Lammy Review

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

In a moment; let me just finish the point.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about going further. We have required police and crime commissioners, for example, to report on the number of BAME victims they are supporting through support services. We have set up the race and ethnicity board. We have committed to publish the victims strategy. We have done all these things, even though they were not in the Lammy review, because we recognise that when it comes to cracking down on racism in the criminal justice system, we have to go further still.

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

I do not doubt the Minister’s commitment to this personally, or his personal good faith in this matter, and I am sure that no one does, but it is fair to say that the detailed report in February 2020 that he refers to also recognises a particularly intractable issue with the youth justice system, and some of the figures on that have been mentioned. Can he help me specifically on what the timeframe is for moving towards the implementation and achievement of those shared overarching aims and objectives for the three principal agencies in the criminal justice system, which were identified in the February 2020 report? There is a lot of good work set out individually, but in evidence the Justice Committee heard a concern that we need to pull these things together, with a specific action plan for delivery.

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee, and I recall that in March 2019 his Committee conducted an inquiry into this. One of the most important themes that came from the Lammy review was the adoption of the principle “Explain or change”—in other words, explain why there are these discrepancies, or do something about it, to put it in plain English. One of the key tools to enable that change to happen is publishing data. Data is one of the most powerful tools in all this. One of the things that encourages me is that, because we have now published the data on ethnicity facts and figures, we can pick a certain minority, see the data on homelessness, for example, or on the kind of accommodation people are in, and put that alongside criminal justice data to see how the outcomes are going.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Robert Neill Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Rosie, and to follow the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham).

I listened with great care to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). I have great respect for the sincerity with which she expresses her views. I have to say that I profoundly disagree with the fundamental basis of her analysis, but I do not mean that with any disrespect to her or others who take a different view. This is not a Bill on which we should be judgmental, any more than we should be judgmental in relation to divorce itself. The Bill is, to my mind, a sensible one. It reflects reality, which is often painful—painful not least for the parties and for their families. As I said on Second Reading, I start from the proposition—it also informs my approach to these amendments—that nobody gets married setting out to get divorced. Divorce arises only as a result of a great deal of hardship, heartache and heart searching.

In my experience, as a constituency MP and lawyer—I did not predominantly practise family law as a lawyer, although I did a bit at one time, and I have many friends who continue to do it at every level—divorce is not undertaken lightly, any more than any relationship breakdown is undertaken lightly. When it happens, however, it is better that it should be done with the minimum of conflict and the minimum of confrontation. Over the years, we have made reforms to the law of divorce to try to make it closer to the reality of the society in which we live, because, ultimately, that is what law has to serve. In this regard, I support the Bill for attempting, and succeeding in large measure, to do that. So although I understand that the amendments are well intentioned, I cannot support them.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend will, of course, understand from the personal experience of his constituents and from other experience that he has enjoyed that the acrimony he described is often about the dispersal of assets and the custody of children. It is not about the process of divorce; it is about the business of divorce. The custody of children and the agreement about assets will continue regardless of the process. Acrimony is a feature of the human condition, not a legal process.

[Sir Robert Neill]

The only part that I agree with my right hon. Friend about is the fact that acrimony can be a feature of the human condition. I am afraid that I have to profoundly disagree with the rest of his analysis. I regret to have to say that a divorce process that entrenches confrontation absolutely has the reverse effect to that which he suggests. The reality is that the acrimony, sadly, has arisen in the course of the breakdown, which, all too often, may have been a long time coming and may have happened for a number of reasons, which cannot be laid necessarily always at the door of one party or the other. But the law, as it stands, does not fit that reality fairly and sensibly. Whatever its intention, it actually makes matters worse, so I do have to part company with my right hon. Friend on that.

There is much to be said— I will take it out of turn but I think it relates to the principle of this—for the various amendments that relate to improving the attempts to support marriage and conciliation. I understand that and hope the Minister will have more to say about what more we can do in that regard. The truth is that, by the time we get to the issuing of the proceedings for divorce, the horse has bolted. We should do more to prevent that from happening and help couples when they run into difficulties at the beginning, but that is not what this Bill is changing.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Do I detect from what my hon. Friend has said that he is supportive of new clause 1 and amendment 7, which are, in fact, identical in terms of marriage and relationship support? That has always been a feature of this aspect. It was part of the Family Law Act 1996. Is he supportive of what those two amendments are trying to do?

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am supportive of the objective, but I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on whether those are the best means of achieving it in the context of the Bill. I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says about the objective, and he and I share views on a number of issues. I would prefer to see the Bill pass cleanly and then to work constructively with the Government to find means of giving that sort of support, because there are other methods that I think could be used to do that. However, I take on board the importance of the point he makes.

Against that background, it is important that we seek to minimise conflict and that we face the fact that, however much we might wish it were otherwise, a bond that is no longer meaningful to a couple is not best served by forcing them together. That is neither socially desirable nor just; nor is it Christian or ethical in terms of any faith.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend used the phrase “the horse has bolted” in reference to the time the petition is initiated. In fact, in recent years tens of thousands of petitions have been abandoned after being lodged at court; the marriages have remained intact. Is not that something we should celebrate and encourage?

[Sir Robert Neill]

I think it rather depends on the grounds on which the petition is abandoned. If someone was coerced into abandoning a petition, I would not regard it as something to celebrate, to be perfectly frank, as that would be allowing a coercive party to win. That may not be the case in most instances, but that is a reality as well. The evidence also shows that about 10% of petitions do not proceed to their final conclusion, but that is very often because of procedural reasons, and sometimes because of no co-operation on the part of the respondent. With respect, I am not sure that that is the best argument.

Unfortunately, and as has been pointed out, amendment 1 appears simply to delay dealing with an issue that needs to be resolved. It is merely reinserting and increasing the time period. The longer the period goes on, the greater is the likelihood of conflict and hardship, and the greater is the risk that the stronger partner—whether financially or emotionally—in a relationship that has not always been happy and who may have verged on being coercive or been outright coercive, will have all the cards in their hands. The longer it goes on, the more they can push back against the person who is seeking to leave an unhappy relationship and genuinely move their life on. I do not believe the amendment would have the effect my hon. Friend seeks of making the divorce process easier or better.

[Naz Shah]

The hon. Gentleman is making very valid points, which I agree with. Does he agree with me that, especially where domestic violence is involved, that partner has the power to prolong cases for up to two years —in some cases, five years—which has a negative impact on both the abused partner and on the children?

[Sir Robert Neill]

Unfortunately, that is also true. I think most of us will have seen that in our surgeries.

It is also worth saying that the pilot information meetings held under the Family Law Act 1996, which was passed but never brought into force, indicated very strongly that, by this stage, very often people have made a decision and want to move on. In reality, there may be another family, or a new relationship has started. People should not be forced to point a finger of blame. A law that requires that is doing no social or ethical good.

Amendment 3, in effect, restates and retains the fault- based approach. That is opposed by Resolution—an admirable body—and not supported by the Marriage Foundation either. I simply do not think that professionals believe that anything is gained by this approach.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman has reiterated that certain professionals will not gain out of this, but is not the unfortunate fact that some professionals in the legal field will set themselves up as the expert in finding the loophole, the expert in the quickie divorce, the person who can get people over the hurdles even faster? As we have seen in other fields, there will be some unscrupulous individuals who market themselves on that basis. That is a problem that the Bill introduces.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I do not think the Bill adds to that problem at all. If it exists, it can exist in any profession and can be dealt with by proper regulation. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, that the current situation makes that problem worse, because people have to go through what is rightly described by the research from the University of Exeter as a legal farce—a legal ritual of saying, “What is the minimum form of words that your client will accept that will meet the legal test to enable us to get divorced?” That is the sort of thing that can be taken advantage of and it is where the unscrupulous will come in. Removing fault removes the ability for the unscrupulous person to play upon fault, be they a purported adviser or a party to the divorce. Maintaining that approach and resisting these amendments, however well intended, is important and I urge the Government to do so.

It is important to look at the international comparisons. In England, a disproportionate amount of reliance is placed upon fault as the grounds for divorce. There are other grounds for divorce, but because it is complicated at the moment some 60% of divorces in England are based upon allegations of adultery. By that stage, people have split up and are often living apart. There is the business of having to point the finger about who did what. My old pupil master, whom I believe I mentioned on Second Reading, was around when we still had to go through the charade of getting an affidavit from a chambermaid or the receptionist in a hotel to prove divorce. It was a demeaning business and thank God we got rid of that. Maintaining a fault system, which, as I say, entrenches conflict, does us no credit as far as that is concerned.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is only one ground for divorce, which is irretrievable breakdown, and there are five areas where one can adduce evidence of that irretrievable breakdown? Should we not be concentrating on that one issue: irretrievable breakdown?

[Sir Robert Neill]

It seems to me that that is precisely what the Bill is seeking to do. The problem is the requirement to prove the following facts to support that because, inevitably, that evidential requirement elides into the grounds, and the conflict created by the need to prove one or other of those facts is the difficulty. So I think that the Bill is moving in the direction that my hon. Friend, with his own experience in the law, will probably wish us to go.

[Fiona Bruce]

So now we are substituting the requirement to prove a fact with someone merely being able to state their opinion and that being accepted as fact. Does my hon. Friend think that is right?

[Sir Robert Neill]

If the ground is made out that the marriage has irretrievably broken down, I think most people would say that there is no merit in seeking to go beyond that. I know it is suggested that there ought to be some finding of fault on the record. This is not a criminal process and I do not think that helps anyone. Ultimately, the court process is not there even to assist someone in a measure of trauma, I have to be blunt about that. That is not what the court process is there for. By all means, help people when their relationships get into trouble and do more than we already do. I would not support the Opposition’s amendment in the form in which it currently appears, but I hope the Minister will have more to say about what can be done to make access to legal advice more readily available to people when their relationships start to fall apart and when divorce looms. Legal aid was withdrawn from divorce overall. I understand the financial reasons behind that and I understand the argument that, if we move to a system where we do not have the level of confrontation, it may not be necessary in many cases, given the other changes—the online portal and other matters—to go down the route of requiring lawyers at every stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill]

That is an interesting point and I would like to see what the Government can come up to deal with that, but I am not convinced that it needs to be in the Bill. I do, though, think that the Government need to look at it, not least because under the existing legislation that is retained there is, very properly, the ability to take conduct into account when dealing with financial matters. To me, that is where conduct ought to be relevant, rather than in proving the fact of an irretrievable breakdown. That is the way I would look at it.

I know that the Minister is particularly alert to these matters, and I hope he will want to think about how we can have greater access to early legal advice for people. Legal aid may be one route for that, but there may be other means that we can use to supplement it. One of the things that was said when we withdrew legal aid from family cases was that many more will go to mediation; that never happened, and the reality is that that is because lawyers are normally the gateway to mediation. Unless someone has some form of legal assistance to go to a lawyer in the first place, they are not going to end up moving into mediation, which is where we want people to be. That is where I am in agreement with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), but I hope that there is another means of achieving what he is looking for in a proportionate way.

I hope I have set out why I think Members will resist the amendments—not because they are not serious issues, nor because every one of us does not want to try get the Bill into the best possible condition, but because they would muddy the waters of the Bill and, in fact, would undermine it in a number of important respects by adding back in much of the confrontational process, and they would cause delay when delay is many people’s biggest concern. In particular, some of the technicalities of the amendments would actually strengthen the arm of the spouse who wants to exert influence on the petitioner either not to proceed with the divorce or, even worse, to settle for an unsatisfactory financial arrangement or an unsatisfactory arrangement for the children.

I do not see how, whatever their intention, amendments that have the practical result of strengthening the hand of the party who is putting pressure on someone at a time like that are in the public interest. For those reasons, I hope very much that the House will not accept the amendments but will take on board some of the legitimate points made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and by the shadow Minister, which I think would chime with many people throughout the House, about how best we give people support at such a difficult period in anyone’s life.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

First, I associate myself with the comments from my colleague and good friend on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), who gave us a clear outline of where the Labour party and the Opposition are on the amendments that have been tabled.

I rise to speak in particular to new clause 9 and to ask the Ministers to consider the financial status of children. I also associate myself with the comments from Members from all parties about the importance of supporting people with marriage, because it is obviously an issue for people to access support.

New clause 9 speaks to the conversation that we appear to want to have as a House. We should talk about marriage, and we should talk about how marriage and divorce are seen in public policy making, because there are ramifications, and there are ramifications that go far beyond the straightforward question of whether and how people can get married.

I wish to start with a wonderful quote that struck me very strongly:

“People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.”

Those words were said by a gentleman who had a 50-year marriage: the great actor Paul Newman. Many of us are aware of Paul Newman’s marriage to Joanne Newman, which was celebrated throughout Hollywood—perhaps an area to which the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) would not look for marriage guidance, and I probably agree with her about that. Nevertheless, when we think about our role as parliamentarians in law, it is worth reflecting that even Paul Newman was married to somebody else when he met Joanne Newman and had three children.

The reality is that sometimes relationships do not work out, and sometimes people choose not to use marriage as a way of cementing their relationship. In the 21st century, it is right that, when we look at legislating on marriage and divorce, we ask ourselves what the consequences of any changes we might make will be for people’s real lives. It is right that we never lose sight of what really matters here, which is the people we represent and their families and day-to-day lives, and what the consequences would be. Indeed, it was Nietzsche who said that it was

“not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

An environment is created when we say that we are either standing up for or detracting from marriage, because forcing people to stay unhappy or, as some are suggesting with this Bill, making divorce easier and therefore traducing the concept of marriage, misses out something fundamental about this legislation and about how we treat marriage within the legislative process. That is where new clause 9 is coming from.

New clause 9 seeks to take up the test that the hon. Member for Congleton set out in her amendments. She suggested that people will marry less and cohabit more and that somehow, therefore, we need to act against that. My point in tabling this new clause, with the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, who feels strongly about this too, is that we can lose sight of what really matters here and, in particular, lose sight of the consequences for children. I would wager that the hon. Member for Congleton and I may have differences of opinion on many things, but we would agree that children should matter and that we should never legislate in this place without thinking through the consequences for children.

The challenge here, and the reason why I tabled new clause 9, is that the way in which marriage it is portrayed in our legislative process, in particular how it is explicitly referenced when it comes to benefits, has consequences. It has very real consequences for the destitution of children. I agree with the hon. Member for Congleton that marriage breakdown is hard on children, but imagine a child who loses a parent and how awful that must be for that child. The trouble here is the way in which we think about marriage has consequences for children who are already facing the trauma of having lost a parent.

I hope that new clause 9 is actually a relatively straightforward piece of work, because there is a hangover from the Beveridge report, which sought to support widows, particularly widowed women who lost their husbands and, therefore, were having to look after children after losing the family income. The challenge for this piece of legislation, because I know Dame Rosie would say, “Well, this is a separate issue,” is that when we change the way in which we talk about marriage—or when we change the way in which we talk about divorce, because this will affect the children of divorced parents, too—the knock-on consequences may have severe financial effects for children. If we do not give them a voice in this process, we miss a trick. New clause 9 asks us to do precisely that.

Although the hon. Member for Congleton and I may have different views on marriage, we would find common cause in saying, “Well, actually, we should look and see whether this is going to affect that group of children,” because right now we know that the way the law is cast does affect those children. It affects thousands of people in this country who are already facing the trauma of losing a family member, whether through terminal illness or through sudden death, and who suddenly find that they are not entitled to support because of the marital status of their parents,

The widows legislation was in the Beveridge report, and it was updated in 2001 to take in fathers—some hon. Members will be pleased to hear that, and I would agree that we should not discriminate between fathers and mothers. Having worked on this issue for a number of years, with some fantastic organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group, the Grieving Parents Support Network, and Widowed & Young, I have heard some horrific stories about families and the impact of the changes upon them.

Crucially, this is based on national insurance contributions. That is why when we change access to marriage or change the rules around divorce, it has a knock-on effect on this particular piece of welfare policy. There are few other areas of policy that I can see that have such an explicit connection to marriage and divorce. The benefit is specifically not available—this is written into law—to partners who were not married or who were divorced. In earlier incarnations, it was also not eligible to parents whose partner was in prison— I am not quite sure why that was—or if the parent marries or cohabits. It was changed again in 2017 to the bereavement support allowance, and it was altered to shorten the amount of time that a family might be eligible to it, not to recognise the families who may miss out.

However, those are the very families about which I am sure the hon. Member for Congleton would say, “Well, actually, they should be getting married, and what we should be doing is having legislation that encourages and promotes marriage.” The challenge that I have here is that unless we recognise that people may choose for their own private reasons not to marry or may be in the process of getting married, we hit those families when we change the law on marriage and divorce. We are talking about a not inconsequential sum of money. Over the course of 18 months it adds up to £10,000, so we can see immediately that for families who lose a parent and a breadwinner, whether through terminal illness, which might have already caused problems for their finances, or through sudden death, the loss of £10,000 on top of the loss of a partner is a huge cataclysmic shock to them and their family. The reality is that in modern Britain one in five parents are raising children who cannot claim this benefit if their partner dies. That is about 2,000 families a year, which is about 3,500 children in total.

Some 49% of cohabiting couples believe that being in a cohabiting relationship gives them legal rights, which obviously is incorrect. The Bill will reinforce some of those challenges. Crucially, that number rises if they have children: 55% of cohabiting couples believe erroneously that, were the worst happen, they would still have the same right as if they had been married to that support which they have, after all, paid for with their national insurance contributions. I think that is why the Government have lost several court cases on this issue, yet we have not seen any progress being made. I believe we have not seen any progress being made because of the idea, to which the Bill speaks, that somehow we must cement marriage to the exclusion of all other concerns within our public policy-making process.

In August 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that denying the widowed parent’s allowance to unmarried parents was incompatible with human rights legislation. In February this year, the High Court ruled that denying the new bereavement support allowance to bereaved parents was also incompatible. Every day that we delay resolving this situation, recognising that how we talk about and legislate on marriage has practical implications for families who face the trauma of losing a parent, there are more children in this position. Indeed, in the current circumstances where people cannot have marriages unless in extreme circumstances—it is only recently that we have seen that—we face the vision of families losing someone to this awful virus and then discovering that they are in a financial crisis moment because they cannot get the support that they reasonably thought they were entitled to, because their family member had paid their national insurance contribution.

Other countries, which have strong feelings and strong legislation on marriage and divorce, have treated the matter differently. Other member states of the Council of Europe and Canada either pay a survivor’s pension direct to the partner or pay what is called an orphan’s pension to the child. They explicitly say, “However strongly we may feel that we want to promote marriage and however strongly we may feel that divorce in itself should not be something that the state is propagating, we do not punish the child for the decisions of the parent. We do not push the child into financial destitution. Whenever we change the law on marriage or divorce, we seek to put the child at the heart of the decisions we make.” If the Minister wishes, he can read the stories of women like Laura Rudd or Joanna Niemeyer from my community in my constituency, or the examples raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, about the human consequences of talking about marriage and divorce to the exclusion of all concerned, for children who may have to deal with the aftermath.

If my new clause is about anything, it is about understanding the true effect of everything that we are doing. The Minister may say to me, “Well, it would not just cover bereavement support payments.” That is true. We would probably have to look at the married couple’s allowance, which is our previous attempt to promote, encourage and sustain the concept of marriage. I am very mindful that that is not claimed by the vast majority of people who are entitled to it. This is a small change to protect bereaved families. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people: a few thousand people every year could be covered by it. If only 1.7 million of the 4.2 million families who are entitled to the married couple’s allowance claim it—one question the review could consider is whether the ways in which the Minister is changing access to marriage and divorce might affect that—then the £20 million we estimate it would cost to put this right could come from that budget and we would not be asking little children who face the loss of a parent to deal with a double financial blow because their parents were not married. After all, when their parents are alive we recognise their relationship in the tax credit system. It is a hangover from a previous era in how we dealt with benefits and marriage. It is right, when we are looking at legislation on marriage, to ask whether there will be a further consequence.

I ask the Minister—I recognise that he may say the Bill is not the right place for this debate—not to forget those children in this debate.

Will he go to the Department for Work and Pensions and say, “It’s been two years since the courts said that this was a human rights breach. That’s thousands more children who have been left out and left in destitution, who have missed out on that money, which their families need at a crucial, vulnerable time”? Whether their parents would choose not to get married because the law is changed to make it easier to get divorced, or whether that would not make any difference, they deserve to be heard in this place, they deserve an answer, and they deserve our support. It is never right to tell a child that the sins of the father should be prosecuted on them, and yet by default the way we treat marriage in public policy will do that to these children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill]

It is pleasure to see the Lord Chancellor in his place. I am sorry if the queue—or perhaps short legs—meant that I arrived just as he was getting to his feet. I did not get the chance earlier, but I pay tribute to the work of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who dealt with the Committee stage with great skill and commitment.

I welcome the Bill because, as I said on Second Reading, I am a one nation, mainstream Conservative who believes that it is as well to legislate for the world as it is rather than the world as it should be. That is what we have done with this Bill. Ultimately, a law that does not reflect the way people live their lives falls into disrepute. We are avoiding that situation with this legislation. I know that that is genuinely painful for a number of Members in this House, but it is also genuinely painful for anyone to go through the matter of divorce.

I was glad that my right hon. and learned Friend gave the indication that he did to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), because he raised an important point about how we deal with assisting people through this most difficult of situations. I know of my hon. Friend’s good faith in this matter and that he will pursue that; many people have much sympathy with that point.

I wish to say one other thing. We will rightly remove the question of the need to prove fault and the contention and antagonism that that causes. I hope that we can now concentrate on the question of financial orders and children, and that we make sure that that can be done as expeditiously as possible. The other thing that could perhaps remove antagonism in the process is access to early legal advice.

I have always taken the view, as the Lord Chancellor knows, that we perhaps took too much out of legal aid funding in some areas; the removal of legal aid support for early advice in matrimonial matters was, I think, an error, and it does no harm to admit that. The Justice Committee has called in a number of reports for it to be reinstated. I accept that this Bill is not the vehicle for it, but I hope that, when the Lord Chancellor has discussions with the Chancellor and others, he will bear in mind that that would be a sensible, humane and civilised thing to do. In practical terms, it will be much better if mediation can be used to resolve many of those matters once the process of divorce is dealt with in a much less stringent manner, and it has been demonstrated clearly in evidence to our Select Committee that the best gateway to mediation and a much more collaborative approach to achieving resolution is through early access to a lawyer, because the lawyers are the gatekeepers of the mediation process. Money spent on that would, I submit, be money well spent both in terms of savings of court time and burdens on social services when having to resolve confrontational custody and child-related applications, and in terms of society as a whole. It would also be the decent thing to do. With those comments and with the knowledge that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor will take them on board, I commend the Bill the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I appreciate that, as the number of young people in the secure estate has reduced, the cohort has become often more difficult to deal with. None the less, during its current inquiry the Select Committee has heard compelling evidence that violence remains too high. One of the concerns about Cookham Wood, which the Minister referred to, is the shortage and regular redeployment of staff—the churn and the inability to build relationships. Will the Minister look again at the need for a serious approach—a proper strategy for staffing in all our prisons but especially in the secure estate, where the building of relationships is particularly important.

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee recognises an important point. We are ensuring at the moment that we do not send young people to custody unless they have committed the most serious crimes. As a result, more than 50% of the youth in our estate have committed violent crimes. That leaves us with a challenging cohort. We want to provide more bespoke, individual support with early interventions for those in our care. As my hon. Friend will know, we are committed to establishing secure schools, which would expand our focus on education and individual support.

We have increased staffing in the youth estate by 27% and we are professionalising that service with a new foundation degree to ensure that those who work in our youth custody services deliver the right support.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am sure the right hon. Lady will understand that it would be a little invidious of me to go into individual cases, but she will know from her long experience of this issue, and control orders previously, that TPIMs and control orders are complex and resource-intensive mechanisms that require a high degree of planning and continued monitoring, so decisions made to apply for them are never entered into lightly. By returning the position on the standard of proof to the one that existed some years ago, the Bill creates a more flexible means of monitoring, rather than a system that does, and did, require a higher standard of proof. It is not my wish or the wish of the Government to see an overdependence on TPIMs to the exclusion of other types of disposal.

It is still very much the Government’s view that prosecution and conviction is absolutely our priority, but experience has shown that the judicious use of this type of measure is not only lawful and proportionate but necessary when we cannot meet the high standard of proof that the right hon. Lady knows exists in criminal prosecution. It is my view that although TPIMs have never been the complete solution to the problem, they are an invaluable additional tool that the security services and all of us need when it comes to managing this complex problem. The right hon. Lady will be reassured that according to the latest published figures the number of TPIMs in force is currently five. I do not believe that the changes we bring in will act as any incentive or artificial stimulus to a sudden change in the way that the measures are used.

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I dwell at length on the point made the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. I have noticed, certainly from my time as a Law Officer, that from the middle part of this decade we saw a welcome increase in the number of prosecutions, particularly of returning foreign fighters. That showed that where we put the resources and the will into investigation we can make the prosecutorial system work well. Maintaining that focus, but then adapting, refining and modernising the system as we are doing in this Bill, strikes the right balance in terms of the need to protect the public and to adhere to those principles of liberty, the individual and the rule of law that all of us in this House share.

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

rose—

[Robert Buckland]

I will give way to the Chairman of the Justice Committee.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I have a lot of sympathy with the point that my right hon. and learned Friend makes about the value that TPIMs can have as part of the armoury, so to speak, in dealing with these matters. May I draw him back to the point about the change in the burden of proof? The increase in the burden of proof to the current standard was specifically in response to a recommendation from the then independent reviewer, Lord Anderson. The current independent reviewer, Mr Hall QC, has made no such recommendation to reduce the burden proof, as is proposed here. That is a striking difference. What we are trying to get to is this: what is it that triggers this change in the burden of proof without some evidence, either by way of recommendation or some hard fact to demonstrate it?

[Robert Buckland]

I absolutely accept and understand the motivation behind my hon. Friend’s intervention, and he makes such a recommendation not just as Chair of the Select Committee, but as a guardian of the principles of the rule of law, which, after all, is what we, as a nation, are trying to defend against those who would kill, shoot and bomb their way into power and influence. He can be reassured that this—if you like—reversion to the previous standard of proof is all about making sure that we have as agile a tool as possible, bearing in mind the rapidly changing nature of the terrorist threat that we face. It is vital that we make sure that, when applications for TPIMs are made, they can be done not only in such a way that there is clearly an evidential basis and those grounds exist, but in a way that means they can be effective and as rapidly implemented as possible. The focus of the TPIM and the number of people on it will change, adapt and evolve according to the constant and the changing nature of the threats.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to follow the speeches by both Front Benchers, who were serious and thoughtful, and rightly so. Any criminal justice Bill is important, and any Bill touching on sentencing powers is particularly important. The really difficult balance between public protection and rehabilitation—not just for the sake of the individual but for the sake of the broader societal good—is perhaps one of the most difficult with which sentencers, judges, lawyers, Ministers, prison governors and parliamentarians, who make the rules, have to grapple. If ever there was an area where we ought to seek to achieve maximum consensus, it is one as important as this, particularly given that it deals with sentencing and rehabilitation in relation to such grave and serious threats.



I remember as a young barrister talking to the late James Crespi, who survived the bombing of the Old Bailey. I remember, when I lived in Canary Wharf, my newsagent and his assistant being killed by the Canary Wharf bomb. This is something that has affected many of our lives, but the insidious nature of the radicalisation of politicised Islam has brought a new dimension to it.

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He allows me to say that I, too, lost a very dear friend—James Adams—in the bombings in July 2005. I will never forget James. He was a great Conservative and debating partner at school. That is why I, like the hon. Gentleman, take these issues so seriously.

[Sir Robert Neill]

That is very generous—characteristically so—of the right hon. Gentleman. This is something that, as he rightly observes, has nothing to do with party. Any of us who has lived in any of our great cities has lived with the reality of that risk from time to time. That is why, to return to my point, we must try to get the detail right as well as the broad thrust.

There is much in the Bill that I support, and I shall certainly support it on Second Reading. I think we all accept that, precisely because of the particular nature of Islamist terrorism, the threat of which we now have to confront—the way it seems to warp an ideology even more particularly and more deep-rootedly than many other political motivations—it requires particular care in its handling.

There is no doubt—we have seen it in some of the cases that have been referred to, and it is well established by those who have researched these matters—that those who have been attracted to that ideology frequently present as particularly manipulative and are sometimes adept, as the Lord Chancellor has observed in previous debates, at hiding their motivations for a considerable time. It is therefore is all the harder for the authorities to make an assessment about when it is safe for them to be released, so it is not at all unreasonable that we should have particular types of regimes for sentencing, rehabilitation and release to deal with the particular types of threat that can arise from this particular class of offending.

That said, there are legitimate concerns, which must be raised, about whether we are still getting this right. I do not think any Government have ever got it wholly right. We always have to learn as we go along, as greater awareness and understanding become apparent. That is no criticism of anyone in this context.

I agree with the point that the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) made about the work of Ian Acheson. Mr Acheson’s report was most important and significant and, I think, extremely valuable. He gave compelling evidence to the Justice Committee at the time he brought it out. I have always regarded it as a matter of regret that that report was not more fully implemented. Much of it was, but I still think that there may be bits that we ought to look at.

[Robert Buckland]

I am extremely grateful to the Chair of the Justice Committee for giving way. He is helping to develop the debate in an extremely productive way. I can assure him that I have engaged regularly with Ian Acheson, whose work I respect hugely. Eight of those 11 recommendations were carried out. There was one in particular, with regard to Friday prayers, that we did not think was necessary. However, things have moved on considerably in the four years since that important report. I speak with the benefit of having been into some of these institutions, of engaging weekly with members of JEXU and of getting frontline information that gives me a higher degree of confidence that there is indeed a plan, a strategy and an approach that is yielding benefits. There is more to do, but there is far more out there than perhaps is fully appreciated.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for that intervention. I know that he takes this immensely seriously on a personal level as well as an official level. We ought to be prepared to engage with all expertise in this field. He is right to keep things under review, and I hope that he will continue to use the expertise of Mr Acheson and others who worked with him on that report to inform our best practice.

I visited a young offenders institution where a young girl who had been suborned into this dreadful ideology was being held on remand. She was no doubt going to receive a very substantial sentence, such was the gravity of the matters in which she had become involved, but because of her age, it was inevitable that at some point she would have to be released. Having a means of doing that safely is profoundly important, but I accept also that it is profoundly difficult because it is well established that the pre-indicators that we find in relation to general criminality are often not available to be picked up in this type of case. So I totally understand where the Government are coming from in that regard. That is why, as I said, I do not have a problem with the basic thrust of the changes to the regime that the Bill proposes.

The other point, which has been picked up in the debate by Members on both sides of the House and in interventions, is that the whole purpose of our standing up against terrorism, from whatever source it comes, is to protect our basic values as a society, which are underpinned, perhaps more fundamentally than almost anything else, by a commitment to the rule of law. Anything that seeks to drive us away from that, or inadvertently causes us to move away from that, ironically serves in its own insidious way to assist the terrorist cause rather than our own. I do not think for one second that any Government—none of the Governments who have had to confront this going back to the time I was talking about when I was a young man—have ever sought to do that deliberately.

We have to be particularly alert to that risk, and that is why I hope that when we look at the detail of the Bill we will take on board the need to ensure that we continue safeguards in this regard. That is one reason why it was a good thing that we appointed an independent reviewer of terrorism in the first place. I am a great believer in independent inspectorates, be they of the Prison Service, probation, the Crown Prosecution Service or education services. The same applies to the desirability of having a robust independent reviewer, and we have always had those in the shape of distinguished lawyers. That is why I have a concern about the burden of proof in relation to terrorism prevention and investigation measures. The initial changes were driven, as has been pointed out and I said in my intervention, in response to specific recommendations from the independent reviewer.

The current independent reviewer, Mr Jonathan Hall, QC, supports and endorses a number of changes that the Bill makes, and I think that is powerful evidence in the Lord Chancellor’s favour in relation to many elements of the Bill. But that actually makes it all the more striking that the change to the burden of proof in relation to TPIMs does not arise from anything that the independent reviewer has sought, or anything that the independent reviewer has advocated. His silence on that point, as opposed to other areas where I would suggest that he has given valuable external support to the Government’s position, is therefore striking, and that is why we must be particularly careful about how we deal with this matter. It is a little bit like putting the other side to proof, if I can put it that way.

There may well be a good reason for that, and I am sure that the Lord Chancellor would not reinforce the proposal unless he genuinely believed there was, but I think we have to be able to set a reason before the public as well. I accept that there are pressures in terms of resource and the amount of time it takes to bring forward one of these measures. I accept, too, that the Lord Chancellor observes that it is therefore not done lightly. That is all perfectly fair, but if we are going to make that change—after all, I was a junior member of the coalition Government who made the change in the opposite direction, away from control orders, as has already been observed—we ought always to be able to do it on the basis of the clearest evidence. With every respect, I am not quite sure that we have yet got the clarity of evidence that I would like to see to satisfy me on that point.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for his indulgence. I was talking about the need for flexibility. That is why we are making the change. I served on the Committee that considered the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill in 2011, and I followed the developments in the law very carefully, but it is right that we act on the advice and support of the security services and all those involved in the monitoring of offenders, and it is because of that need for flexibility that we judge it right to make the change now. I hope that that is clear.

[Sir Robert Neill]

The Lord Chancellor makes the point very clearly, and I fully understand that, but I do just juxtapose it with the observation by Mr Hall, QC, in his note dated 2 June, in which he says:

“In these circumstances it is not clear why there is any need to change the law in the manner proposed. Steps to reduce the resource burden of obtaining TPIMs are already in hand. The courts have not found that the current approach is wrong.”

There may be an argument for flexibility, but we cannot say that it comes from the independent reviewer, so I wonder where it does come from.

[Mr Lammy]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when the Secretary of State talks about flexibility, it would be helpful if there were some evidence, given that the cases that have been discussed—Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham—certainly do not relate to the TPIM regime? Perhaps the Secretary of State might want to consider whether he ought to ask those who engage with these things to provide some of that evidence, at the very least on Privy Council terms.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I take on board what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I know that the Secretary of State will as well. We all want to get this right for the sake of the national good. Flexibility and agility are perfectly legitimate considerations, but it is not unreasonable for us to have some sense of whence they come if we are going to make the case for doing something that would go against the run of our normal approach to the rule of law and safeguards. That is sometimes necessary for the greater national good, but we ought to have a pretty clear basis for doing it.

[Crispin Blunt]

Does my hon. Friend share my anxiety that the resource issue—the difficulty of setting TPIMs up in the first place—combined with the roll-over factor in the Bill means that the default position on a reduced balance of proof will simply be that the two-year TPIM will be replaced constantly? That will become the default position based on the difficulty of producing resources to effect a proper prosecution, which is the standard we want to achieve.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend, who has much experience in these matters, makes a very good point.

Ultimately, most of us who believe in the rule of law will always prefer to see prosecution and conviction as the best possible means of dealing with this issue. It is not always possible, but we still need to have important safeguards in whatever regime there is. I am sure the Government recognise that, but we really do need to get it right, for everybody’s sake. I hope that the Lord Chancellor will reflect on how best to make the case for this and to justify what is, on the face of it, a change that may well have much merit—one wants to give the benefit of the doubt—but that could perhaps do with a little more amplification as the Bill progresses.

The other matter that I hope that the Lord Chancellor might bear in mind as the Bill goes forward is the need for some form or other of proper judicial scrutiny of these matters. I recognise that there are plenty of safeguards in the regime that is proposed in the Bill. However, Mr Hall makes another interesting point in one of his notes: that there has been a rather troubling development of the opting out of judicial review by some suspects subject to TPIM orders. That provision was intended to ensure that there was some oversight. It is up to them whether they do that. They may not do it necessarily for the very best of motives, given the rather warped ideological nature of what drives them, but it does ironically remove a means by which best practice can be brought in hand.

That is why Mr Hall suggests that a solution would be for the Secretary of State to seek the High Court’s permission for any extension beyond a two-year length of the TPIM, in the same way that he currently does when the TPIM is first made. It would be perfectly proper to make that longer TPIM, and I can quite conceive of many circumstances when it is, but perhaps the modest requirement of an application to the Court would not be onerous in the circumstances but would put in a sensible safeguard for all such cases.

If we go beyond the two-year length of a TPIM, perhaps we should also be looking at thinking again, at some point, about what is the burden of proof. The greater the level of restriction, as the Law Society has observed in one of its briefings, perhaps the greater the burden of proof that should be required. For example, if there is a set of conditions that includes relocation, is it perhaps reasonable to expect a greater degree of care to be taken on the burden of proof in a matter of that kind, as with other matters?

Those are matters of important detail. I am sure that they need not detain the progress of this Bill on Second Reading, but they are not, I submit, something that we should lose sight of.

Finally, on polygraphs, I accept that they have been used in relation to the release of sexual offenders, but the science on them is still very uncertain. There remain concerns among lawyers and other practitioners as to their dependability in all circumstances, which is why, after all, they are not used as evidence in criminal cases for understandable reasons. I would be worried if we became over-reliant on polygraphs without some sort of proper check and balance. When they were brought in, certainly in England and Wales, in relation to sexual offenders, they had been piloted first. It will not be possible to pilot them in this case, so is there not a strong case for post-legislative scrutiny? That is the view of the independent reviewer in his note, and it seems to fit with good practice in terms of legislation as well.

Those are my points, which I hope will be taken in a constructive spirit by the Government. As someone who supports the Bill, I want to get it right. We probably do not want to have to revisit burdens of proof and mechanisms any more than we need to in future. It must be in everybody’s interests to get it right this time and make it stick for as long as this awful threat persists. I will certainly support the Bill on Second Reading, but I hope that we can have constructive engagement on the detail as we go forward.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I could not put it better myself, and the hon. Gentleman makes his point with characteristic force.

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

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Robert Buckland]

I give way to the Chairman of the Justice Committee.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor, and I support the Bill. Is it not an important argument, which I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) will take on board, that it is clear from research by practitioners and academics that the requirement to allege fault does nothing to protect the institution of marriage or alter the divorce rate or the breakdown rate? That is exactly why it is right to look through the right end of the telescope, not the wrong one.

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend will recall his Court of Appeal appearances, where the tribunal might have said, “Mr Neill, that’s your best point. You needn’t go any further.” He makes an important point on the issue of blame; it does not help anybody when it comes to these issues.

The clear purpose of the Bill is to reduce conflict, because conflict does not help when it comes to the legal end of a marriage. That can only be to the advantage of divorcing couples and their children, because children’s best interests are most clearly served by the reduction of conflict and the co-operation of divorcing parents who work together to ensure that they co-parent effectively. The Bill will help couples to focus on a more constructive way of collaborating in making future arrangements that are best for their family—in essence, looking forward rather than backward.

--- Later in debate ---

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

This is an important Bill and I support it, because I am a practising Anglican and because I take marriage seriously. If I thought it undermined marriage, I would not support it, but I genuinely do not think it does. I do not believe that anyone embarks upon a marriage intending it to break up—I did not with my first marriage, but it did. As my wife and I were both people of faith, that created heartbreak for us, as it would create concern for many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have concerns about the Bill, but the sad reality is that divorce often comes at the end of a lengthy period of breakdown and is not, of itself, the catalyst.

It behoves those of us who wish to have a civilised justice system to make it possible for that sad reality to be dealt with in as civilised, compassionate, swift, and humane way as possible, not least if there happen to be children from the marriage, or where one of the parties might be vulnerable, financially or in other ways.

The requirement to prove fault as one of the facts to show irretrievable breakdown unhappily does not help that process—hence my intervention on the Lord Chancellor —and regrettably it imports, at the very beginning, a degree of antagonism into a legal process. Indeed, it goes further than that, as Sir James Munby, a distinguished former president of the Family Division observed, because it almost encourages people to be intellectually dishonest and to game the system. It cannot be right that all too often—I say this having spoken to many practitioners in the field—the first discussions between the two parties’ solicitors will be along the lines of, “What is the minimum allegation that my client can make against your client, that will meet the test but will not cause undue offence?” That is a pretty painful, and rather sad and dishonest process for people to have to go through, and it detracts from what ought to be the real point of saying, “Can we make sure that the parties are left in the best possible position, either financially or in terms of the children?” Removing that degree of antagonism, delay, and cost seems to me a civilised thing to do.

It is neither humane nor particularly Christian to trap people in an unhappy marriage, particularly if one of the parties is unable to move out of the matrimonial home and that prolongs matters. I therefore welcome the Bill, and it is significant that it is supported by Resolution, which represents 6,500 family law practitioners. The Bill is also supported by every senior member of the judiciary with experience in the family field, and it chimes with my experience as a young barrister, when I did some family work before moving on to other spheres of activity.

Finally in support of the reasons for the Bill, I say this. If there is to be protection, it is important that the Lord Chancellor retains the protection in paragraph 10 of the schedule for the financially vulnerable claimant, given that under the Bill, conduct can be taken to the courts when assessing the appropriate measures to take. The right place for any conduct to be considered is when working out arrangements thereafter; we should not be creating an antagonistic start to recognising the breakdown of the marriage, yet that has happened. If conduct is relevant—often it is not—let us consider it in the right place, and that is what the Bill does.

Finally, I will pray in aid someone whom I quoted in an earlier debate on a Bill almost exactly like this one during the previous Parliament. That Bill was not opposed at Second Reading, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will reflect before opposing this Bill tonight. Sir Paul Coleridge, chairman of the Marriage Foundation, and a former High Court judge of the Family Division, practised family law throughout the whole of his career—again, he happens to be a practising Christian. His conclusion was that the current situation is an intolerable block on people’s ability to move on with their lives. Waiting for the five or two-year period of consent does not reflect the fact that if there has been a lengthy breakdown, people may already have met other partners or be hoping to have new families and move on. Indeed, he went further than that and said that we now have a system that drives people to lie to the court if they are not prepared to wait for two years or longer. That is wrong—we cannot have a justice system that encourages that. Sir Paul Coleridge said:

“An intelligent process to end unsustainable marriage is good for the reinvigoration of the most important social arrangement yet devised for mankind.”

That is a broad and humane view, and I endorse it in the House.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th April 2020 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), and to see the Lord Chancellor be supported, albeit at some distance on the Front Bench, by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk), who is the Minister responsible for the Ministry of Justice victims strategy. He is a former member of the Justice Committee, and we are delighted to see him on the Treasury Bench.

This is an important Bill that deals with a real and pressing social evil. The Lord Chancellor was right to bring it forward as swiftly as he has, and I welcome the tone of his remarks. May I concentrate in particular on the provisions that relate to legal proceedings and court procedures, starting with part 5? The prohibition on cross-examination by litigants in person in family cases is to be welcomed as a very important advance. It is something for which lawyers and the judiciary involved in family cases have been calling for a considerable time, and it is good to see it in the Bill. What I hope Ministers will take away is the detail of how we actually make that work in practice.

The first point that I hope the Government will take on board is that those advocates who are appointed to carry out that often sensitive and difficult cross-examination in often very sensitive and fraught cases must be properly remunerated in order to be prepared for that work. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor will know, one of the first things that we were taught at Bar school was that the key to good cross-examination is preparation. To do that, the lawyers have to be appointed in a timely fashion. They must be paid properly to ensure that they are of adequate experience and seniority to deal with these matters, and they must have time to access the material and be rewarded for doing so.

One issue in the family jurisdiction is that there is not the extent of disclosure that we see in criminal cases and therefore preparatory work may be harder in those cases. Perhaps we need to look therefore at what stage those advocates are appointed to carry out that work. It seems to me that, in order to have the ability to cross-examine properly, it may well be necessary for them to be able to read all of the papers in the case. They probably also need the ability to seek a conference in order to get from the person on whose behalf they are appointed the necessary detail to do justice in the case. That cannot be done on the cheap. I am sure the Government will not want to do that, but it is important that that is not missed out, as both the Bar Council and the Law Society have pointed out. It may also be important, as the professional bodies have pointed out, to consider extending that to instructions to carry out examination-in-chief as well. The example that is given is where an alleged perpetrator of abuse seeks to call a child in the family as a relevant witness to some of the proceedings before the court. It seems to me that the same risks of intimidation would be transferred under those circumstances.

It is also important to consider the nature of the proceedings. It may well be that the allegation of abuse relates to one part of the family proceedings, but the coercive behaviour would have an impact on that perpetrator cross-examining the victim under any part of the proceedings. If someone has a history of coercive control over another, it would be just as difficult for the victim to be cross-examined by them about financial provisions as it would in relation to the actual incidents of assault and abuse, or in relation to custody. I hope that we will be generous in carrying out the legal support that is made available. I hope, too, that we will recognise the need to use the review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to look at the re-introduction, as soon as possible, of early legal advice in these matters, so that the necessary issues are flagged up at the earliest opportunity.

I am glad to see that the Lord Chancellor is proposing to bring forward the report of the specialist panel. I hope that he will do that as soon as possible, not least because there has been concern that provision around special measures has never been as consistent or as advanced in the family jurisdiction as it has been in criminal courts. That is not because I think family practitioners and judges do not want it, but because the infrastructure has not been there. I hope that that will give us an opportunity to address that.

I am pleased that the Lord Chancellor is proposing to pilot the domestic abuse protection orders and prevention notices rather than going in immediately. We do need to see how those will integrate—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am sorry, Sir Bob, your five minutes are up. Thank you for your contribution. I call Yvette Cooper.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I believe that the declaration that I make on the front of the Bill speaks for itself—

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

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Robert Buckland]

Well, I have not finished developing the point yet, but I will of course give way to my eager hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee, in time.

This is a Bill on which I have made the following statement:

“In my view the provisions of the…Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”

I take the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). I am not going to anticipate litigation in domestic courts or in Strasbourg, but I will repeat for the benefit of the record that it is my firm view that this Bill does not engage the provisions of article 7 of the European convention on human rights, because it relates to the way in which the sentence is administered, not a change in the nature of the penalty itself. I am grateful to him for allowing me to say that at this point.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way, because this is an important point. Will he confirm that, in coming to that conclusion and making that certification, he has taken the advice of senior Treasury counsel, and also that the case law has made it quite clear that the administration of a sentence is not part of the penalty? Finally, will he confirm that even were there to be successful litigation—which I do not believe will be the case—it would result only in a declaration of incompatibility, and could not strike down primary legislation?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right to remind the House that there is no power to strike down the primary legislation. I am afraid that I will not indulge him in a direct answer as to the nature of advice that may or may not have been tendered, and he knows the reasons why. However, I reassure him that all the proper mechanisms have been employed and engaged in the preparation of the Bill, and that on the basis of all the information received, I was able—with high certainty—to make the declaration on the frontispiece.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend will be glad to know that not only has it been taken into account, but I have read it. It is a 2013 authority from the Strasbourg Court that relates to a particular set of circumstances involving the Kingdom of Spain. There have been subsequent cases both before that court and, indeed, domestically. In summary, we are satisfied, on the basis of all the information we have, that the provisions of article 7 are not engaged in this respect.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My right hon. and learned Friend is making a most compelling case for this legislation. For the sake of completeness, I am sure he will also have read and taken into account the subsequent cases in the Strasbourg Court of Abedin in the United Kingdom in 2016 and of the Supreme Court in Docherty in 2017—both subsequent to del Río Prada—which it seems to me support the Government’s contention.

[Robert Buckland]

I say to my hon. Friend, as I am sure he has heard many times in court, that his submissions find great force with the Government and we are persuaded by them.

--- Later in debate ---

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

The speeches from both Front Benchers have been very thoughtful and that matches the significance of this debate. My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor made a very compelling case for this legislation. It is not the type of legislation that the House should undertake lightly, but protecting the public must ultimately trump all other considerations. It is always right that we should protect the public in a way that is commensurate with the rule of law. I believe that the Government and the Lord Chancellor have managed to achieve that balance and I am glad that the official Opposition recognise that, too. That is a fundamental duty for all of us, and reconciling the two is a considerable achievement, given the pressures we are under at this time.

The reason that I think it is necessary to move in this way has been well set out. I speak as somebody who represents a London constituency: many of my constituents work in and around the places where we have seen so many atrocities. That brings home to us profoundly the catastrophic risk that can come when an individual is released. Even though the index offence that caused them to go to prison may not have led to a very long sentence, the nature—I am sorry to say—of the type of terrorism that we see now, often based on perverted ideologies and the deep-seated hatred that that breeds, gives us the need to be particularly careful and cautious about all forms of release going forward. The automatic point of release will be moved to two thirds—in fact, that will no longer be automatic but will, in all cases, be considered by the Parole Board, and that is a worthwhile and important aspect of the Bill.

[Sir William Cash]

I am listening with great interest to everything that my hon. Friend says, as ever. Does he think that the question over the Bill is that it will have a limited effect, whereas the problems that we face have a much longer-term consequence? Does he believe, therefore, that we ought to have a more rigorous analysis in future—this is only emergency legislation—to make sure that human life in this country takes priority over the interpretation of law?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill]

I certainly agree that we need a more detailed analysis of the best approach to a threat that continues to change and develop. My hon. Friend is right about that, and it is right that this is a discrete, emergency measure to deal with a specific and urgent problem. We certainly need to look at the way in which we deal with sentencing, the treatment of such individuals and the protection of the public in that context—that is absolutely right. I happen to believe, lest it be hinted otherwise, that that is perfectly capable of being achieved within our continuing adherence to the European convention on human rights and that a series of British court decisions would tend to support that, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right on the broader thrust that there is more work to do in this field. I got the sense that the Government and the Lord Chancellor recognise that, too.

It is right that we should consider the necessity of the Bill. I would have thought that that had been well laid out now. That is one of the principles of the rule of law. Lord Bingham famously set out a number of principles. One should not act in haste unless there is a compelling reason, but the reality of blood being shed on the streets of this country seems a compelling reason to me. The fact that people have been released and then have swiftly, and frequently, seized articles and used them to catastrophic effect seems to make this legislation both necessary and proportionate, so I hope that the House will have no hesitation in supporting it.

One issue that seems to have raised some concern, particularly in legal circles, is whether there is any risk of retrospectivity. I do not seek to see retrospective legislation, and for the reasons that the Lord Chancellor set out I do not believe that that is the case. When I was in practice at the Bar, it was very clear that the prospect of whether early release might occur was not a consideration that any judge should take into account in passing sentence. The principle was, and always has been, that the sentence passed should be commensurate with the gravity and seriousness of the offence and any other legitimate mitigating or aggravating circumstances that the Crown or the defence can put forward. Whether there may or may not be early release thereafter was never regarded as a consideration affecting the penalty.

That is important for the argument that the Bill retrospectively increases the penalty, which I think is a misguided argument in these circumstances. It was often said that the prospect of early release in effect ameliorates the penalty that was passed, rather than anything else. There is a string of authority in both the UK and Strasbourg courts to the effect that the total duration of the penalty is that which is laid down by the court at the time. That is the bit that cannot be changed retrospectively and the legislation does not seek to do that.

[Sir John Hayes]

From his long experience of these things, my hon. Friend is making a cogent argument about the character of penalties. He might want to go further. The problem with the assumption about automatic early release is that it is injurious to the very principle that he set out. Early release has always been part of judicial considerations but on the basis of an assessment of risk, merit and worthiness. Automatic early release runs against those principles.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I understand that point and we can debate it in broader terms when the larger piece of sentencing legislation is introduced, as I understand it will be later in the Session. The purpose of this legislation is effectively to deal with that—as well as moving the release point from half-way to two thirds, the Bill automatically states that there must be consideration by the Parole Board. It is very important that the Parole Board has the resource and expertise to carry out the additional and heavy burden that it must take on. There have been good reforms of the Parole Board since the Worboys case, for example, and in the last Parliament the Justice Committee looked at this and urged changes to the way in which parole operated, which have been acted on. There is movement in the right direction but we must be ever vigilant in making sure that the Parole Board has the resource, which may include more specialist resource.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am very interested in my hon. Friend’s lucid speech and particularly in the fact that he says the sentence imposed by judges is meant to reflect the gravity of the crime. It does explain why so many victims feel short-changed when people are let out early. When we come to consider the larger question of sentencing, would it not make more sense to have judges impose sentences that people will actually serve and to extend them if people misbehave in jail, rather than reducing them if they behave?

[Sir Robert Neill]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We will want to look at a number of issues when we debate the sentencing Bill. However, I say by way of caution that when we start extending the sentence—the penalty—we run the risk of falling foul of the principle against retrospectivity. With respect, I say to him that that is not something I would wish to see. That is different from remission of the sentence for earned good behaviour, which is the traditional system that we grew up with. There is an important distinction to be drawn.

[Dr Lewis]

The point about extending the sentence is that it would be extended because of the commission of a further offence while the person was in prison, and that would not be retrospectivity.

[Sir Robert Neill]

That is an interesting point, but, with respect to my right hon. Friend, it is a wholly different consideration. There has been much debate on this point. The Select Committee has looked at it and urged that for certain offences, such as assaults on prison officers, there is often a compelling case, as a matter of public policy, for that to be charged as an additional offence, rather than be dealt with under the prison disciplinary rules, as is frequently the case. I am with him on that, but perhaps that is as far as we should take it today.

I have one final point about retrospectivity. Some learned commentators have raised concerns on the basis of the European Court decision in the case of Del Río Prada, but that case at most raises a tangential or speculative concern that there might be retrospectivity. The briefing from the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law—I have a lot of respect for that centre, so it is right that I address it—says that arguably this could be regarded as falling foul of the principles; it does not come down hard and fast in that regard. The decision came after a particularly convoluted history of changes within the Spanish judicial system, which is utterly different from what we are doing. Subsequently, there have been decisions by the Strasbourg Court, in the case of the application of Abedin against the United Kingdom, and by the Supreme Court in the UK, in the case of Doherty, where the line of reasoning was much more consistent with the traditional stance we have taken ever since the House of Lords decision in the case of Uttley, which was that the changes to remission and early release provisions were part of the administration or execution of a sentence, not part of the penalty. That seems such a well-established principle that we ought to have confidence that we can act upon it in this case.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

I wholeheartedly concur with my hon. Friend’s analysis, but I just wanted to add one point. The Del Río Prada case touched on how concurrent sentences were calculated, which is wholly different from the matter before the House today.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In legal parlance, I would say that is the most material consideration in distinguishing between those cases and the ones we are dealing with here. I hope that, having considered all those points, the House will be reassured on retrospectivity.

As other hon. Members have observed, it is important to recognise that this is a specific piece of legislation dealing with a specific and discrete problem; it does not mean we should not act urgently to deal with the broader issue of how we deal with this type of terrorism, which has developed in recent years; how we contain those who are deeply radicalised in prison; and how we prevent further radicalisation in prison—there is some concern that the Streatham attacker might still have been receiving radicalisation material while in prison. We need to look urgently at that and at the threat, which many of us have come across, of hard-line terrorist prisoners seeking to further radicalise more vulnerable inmates within the prison estate. That is an issue that Mr Acheson, who has been referred to favourably by many in this debate, addressed. I am glad to hear the Lord Chancellor has been in touch with Mr Acheson.

I share the view of the shadow Minister that Mr Acheson has a good deal more to give to this discussion. Things have moved on since his 2016 report, and he was a most compelling witness when he appeared before the Justice Committee in a previous Parliament, so it might be that we would like the benefit of his views again. I hope the Government will engage directly with him to see how, within the new context, we can continue to take on that and other expertise.

It is also right that we build upon the good work being done by the chaplaincy service in the form of the specialist imams. We have not perhaps given enough credit to the work of prison chaplaincy generally and of the specialist imams, who have a very difficult task to fulfil but do it most admirably. That is the impression I have got from those I have met. What more can we do to give them greater professional—pastoral, if you like—practical and professional support? This is an important area. I hope the Minister will confirm that we intend to continue that work and say what we can do to make sure that the many terrorist prisoners being held in high-security prisons like Belmarsh, near me in south-east London, are being held in a way that does not pose any further threat to staff, in terms of attacks—an issue that Mr Acheson dealt with—or any threat, either physically or in terms of further corruption, to other more vulnerable inmates with whom they might be serving.

In conclusion, this is an important Bill, and I hope the House will speed it through, but there is much more work to do. I will finish, though the Lord Chancellor is not now in the Chamber, by concurring with the shadow Minister on one final point: I, too, have been frustrated, as Chairman of the Select Committee, at the revolving door of Secretaries of State and Ministers who have appeared before us over the years, and I very much hope that the Lord Chancellor will stay in office very successfully and for many years. His handling of this delicate matter, including yesterday, has given him as good a claim as anyone to his office—and I, too, hope that that has not done too much damage to his career.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

Of course, the Government and Parliament think carefully about retrospection and rightly take a circumspect view. Several changes to sentencing have been made over the past five or 10 years, including the introduction of extended determinate sentences, whereby release at two thirds of the way through a sentence is a matter for the Parole Board following an assessment of dangerousness by the sentencing judge. Sentences for offenders of particular concern were extended a short time ago to include terrorist offenders who do not have an EDS or life sentence, and SOPCs include a Parole Board assessment at the halfway point. A great deal has been done in the past few years in this area, but the two recent cases, including, of course, the one in Streatham just a week and a half ago, underline the need to go even further than before, which is why this Bill is before the House today.

The number of offenders affected is small. As the Lord Chancellor said in his excellent introduction, only 50 offenders are involved, because all the rest are covered by other sentencing types. Even a small number of offenders, however, can cause a high level of harm, as we have seen, which is why it is important that we go further with today’s Bill. The next such offender is due for release by the end of the month, and that is why we are acting so quickly to ensure that legislation is in place prior to that release.

I thank Members from across the House, including the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), and the SNP spokesman, for the constructive and supportive tone of their speeches. This is a good example of Parliament working in a cross-party way in the national interest, and I am grateful for the approach they have taken today.

Some of the questions raised today touch on wider issues in this area, one of which is the question of resources, raised by the hon. Member for Torfaen in his opening speech. I confirm to the House once again that another £90 million will be spent on counter-terrorism policing next year, bringing the budget to £900 million. That very significant increase in resources was announced just a short time ago.

We clearly need to do more on the prison estate. Between 2017-18 and 2019-20, the prisons budget has increased from £2.55 billion to £2.9 billion, a 15% increase, and over the last three years there has been a welcome increase in the number of prison officers serving in our prison estate from 18,003 to 22,536.

Of course, we are also investing in the quality of the prison estate. The next financial year, which starts shortly, will see an extra £156 million invested in the prison estate’s physical condition, in addition to a £2.5 billion programme to build 10,000 additional prison places over and above the 3,500 currently under construction at Glen Parva, Wellingborough and Stocken.

[Sir Robert Neill]

The Minister is making a good speech, and I recognise the various measures the Government are taking to invest in the prison estate and in staffing. On the point made by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), does the Minister also recognise the importance of a comprehensive policy to ensure the retention of experienced prison staff, as well as the recruitment of others, because they have particular skills and knowledge that are valuable in this field?

[Chris Philp]

The Chair of the Justice Committee makes a good point. It is important to retain experience in the prison officer establishment. Prison staff have long expertise and long experience, and the Prisons Minister, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), is acutely aware of the importance of retention.

Many hon. and right hon. Members, including the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), have drawn attention to the importance of a comprehensive deradicalisation programme in prisons—the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) also made that point in his excellent speech. We are acutely conscious of the importance of that and of the need to do more. We have the theological and ideological intervention programme, the healthy identities programme and the deradicalisation programme in place, and I am sure there is more that needs to be done in those areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) touched on that in his speech, and I know the Prisons Minister would like shortly to take up his offer of a meeting to discuss exactly these issues.

Of course, it is equally important to make sure these offenders are properly monitored after release, whether on licence or otherwise. The TPIM regime was strengthened in 2015, and we always have multi-agency public protection arrangements where necessary. As we saw, those arrangements were effective in the case of Sudesh Amman. After he began his behaviour, it was a matter of seconds before the police were able to intervene, which is an example of MAPPA working well in practice.

In the few minutes remaining to me, I will address the question of retrospection, touched on by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). It is our very firm belief, based on legal advice, that these measures do not contravene article 7. They do not constitute a retrospective change of the penalty, because the penalty is the total sentence. The penalty is the sentence handed down by the judge at the point of sentencing and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) elaborated, a wide body of case law says that changing the early release point does not change the penalty. In fact, early release ameliorates the penalty—it reduces the penalty—so changing the early release point does not add to it. The Uttley case makes that clear, as do other cases that have come before the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

I do not think the Del Río Prada case, in which the Kingdom of Spain was a respondent, is directly germane because it concerns the calculation of concurrent sentences and a change in how concurrent sentences are handled, which is obviously not the matter before the House today. The Government are clear that the Bill does not contravene article 7 and does not constitute a retrospective change to the penalty; it simply constitutes a change to how the sentence is administered.

Let me touch briefly on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), which I suspect we may debate more fully in Committee shortly. We do not believe that a “notwithstanding” clause is necessary, because we do not believe article 7 is contravened by this legislation—we can debate this more. We are also not wholly convinced that a “notwithstanding” clause would derogate our treaty obligations under the ECHR.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a short Bill—it consists of just three clauses—but its importance cannot be underestimated. It responds directly to real-life issues that we know have caused, and continue to cause, immense distress to the families of victims of serious crimes.

Despite its full and proper title, this is a Bill that we have all come to know as Helen’s law. Helen’s mother, Marie McCourt, has long campaigned for this change to the law. I want to take the opportunity—and I am sure that the whole House will want to join me—to pay tribute to her bravery, her determination and her tenacity. It is in large part thanks to her that we have reached this point at all.

Let me tell the House something about the case with which we are dealing. Helen McCourt was a 22-year-old insurance clerk from the village of Billinge, near St Helens in Merseyside. On the evening of 9 February 1988, just over 32 years ago, Helen disappeared while on her way home from work. The following year, Ian Simms was convicted of her murder and ordered to serve a minimum of 16 years in prison as part of his mandatory life sentence, but he has never revealed where Helen’s body is, and, despite extensive searches, her remains have never been found, which has compounded the misery and the grief of the McCourt family.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs McCourt and her family on several occasions, often in the company of the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn). Their dignity in the face of such unimaginable distress is something quite astonishing. All they want is the opportunity to lay their dear daughter to rest.

We have all lost people who are dear to us. We all know the closure and comfort that can arise from laying a loved one to rest. When we take into account the horrific circumstances of Helen’s death, a proper burial and an opportunity to say goodbye must take on a wholly different dynamic for the McCourt family and others in their position. The campaign has resulted in this legislation. We have responded to the issues raised by it to identify a solution that works within the existing sentencing, release and Parole Board framework to ensure that a failure on the part of a prisoner to disclose such vital information is rightly and properly taken into account as part of the risk assessment of the prisoner before any release. It is the least we can do to support the victims of such horrendous crime, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—who is present in the Chamber to lend her consistent support to victims, their families and those who have suffered as a result of criminality—for the close partnership working that we have in Government to deal with this important agenda.

I shall now deal with the clauses in the Bill. Clause 1 will amend the release provisions that apply to life sentences for murder and manslaughter in order to place a statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider a non-disclosure of information about a victim’s remains when making a public protection decision—that is, a decision to release—about such a prisoner. In order for the Bill’s provisions to apply, the Parole Board must not know the location of a victim’s remains, and the board must believe that the prisoner has information about this that he or she has not disclosed to it. This is the essence of the prisoner’s non-disclosure, and it is this that must be taken into account by the board when assessing whether a prisoner can safely be released on licence.

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

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that the Bill is morally necessary and the right thing to do. Does he agree that this is really no more than an extension by analogy of the way in which remorse will be taken into account in sentencing, in that those who admit guilt and give full assistance to the police are regarded as more likely to have accepted their guilt? That is true in relation to the approach of the Parole Board too, and this is therefore just a simple extension of the fact that someone who has done their best to accept what they did, even in the most awful of crimes, may be less of a threat to the public in the future than somebody who makes a blanket and wilful denial and is therefore likely to be much less reformed and much less safe to let loose.

[Robert Buckland]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend speaks with much experience as a counsel who has prosecuted and defended in cases involving serious offences. He is absolutely right to remind us that it is the function of sentencing either to reflect remorse and give credit for a plea of guilty, which is a mitigating factor, or to reflect an aggravating factor such as the complete non-co-operation that we sometimes see from offenders in this position. Indeed, he knows that that is properly reflected in the sentencing guidelines where applicable, and that in offences of this nature, the court uses schedule 21 as a starting point when it comes to the gradations of seriousness in the offence of murder. This allows judges to move up, as well as down, from that starting point.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a fair point. Is not that reinforced by the fact that the sentencing judge in the Vanessa George case specifically referred to the gravity—“indecency”, I think his phrase was—of her non-disclosure? Is it not only logical that the Parole Board should be able to take equal regard when considering release?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Indeed, that was an aggravating factor that was specifically taken into account by the sentencing judge.

I was drawing a comparison with clause 1. As with clause 1, the provision is already standard Parole Board practice in that panels routinely take such circumstances into account as part of their decision making, but I believe that the issue of non-disclosure of vital information is of such importance—and causes such distress to families and victims—that it must be addressed in statute.

This is a narrow Bill, but it has wide implications. It ensures that a failure or refusal to disclose specific information on the whereabouts of a victim’s body or the identity of child victims of indecent images is always taken into account by the Parole Board. A murder such as that of Helen McCourt and the depraved crimes of Vanessa George are not things that people can easily move on from, but the ability to lay a loved one to rest or to find out for certain whether children were abused may offer the families and young victims themselves an opportunity to find at least some closure and to address the long-lasting effects of such horrific crimes. I very much hope that the Bill will attract support on both sides of the House and can enter the statute book as soon as possible. The acute distress that such cases cause cannot and should not be overlooked.

Streatham Incident

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It will be obvious that a great many people wish to take part in this statement. For the benefit of new Members and others, let me say that a statement is not an occasion for making a speech. I must insist on brief questions. Each Member has the chance to ask one question, not to give a preamble and then ask an “Oh, and also” question. We must have just one question, otherwise we will not get through everyone and those who are not called could be angry with those who have been called and taken too long.

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

I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s approach to this, because most of us recognise that the exceptional nature of this threat may require exceptional measures. However, can he help us as to precisely which rehabilitation measures the perpetrator of this attack was subject to while in prison? Will he consider again the remaining aspects of the Acheson review regarding much more assertive management of these particularly complex and dangerous prisoners within the system, from the start of their sentence?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice. It would perhaps be wrong of me to go into specific detail as to the regimen that applied in prison to this offender. I would make the general observation that the terrorist cohort is complex and difficult to assess, and if there is not engagement by individuals with the programmes on offer, the assessment of risk becomes a much more complicated exercise. I simply say that bearing in mind the exceptional nature of the terrorist cohort, exceptional approaches are needed.