Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

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

The Lord Chancellor will know that there is particular concern about the growth of the remand population in our prisons, which causes great disruption. He will also know that the senior presiding judge and others are taking innovative measures to list remand cases, but will the Lord Chancellor confirm that, to support that, there will be no financial cap on sitting days in the Crown courts?

[Alex Chalk]

As always, my hon. and learned Friend gets to the heart of the matter. Before the pandemic, around 9,000 people were in custody awaiting trial. The figure is now closer to 16,000, which plainly has an impact. It is because we did not get rid of jury trials, which was the right thing to do. I am grateful to the Lord Chief Justice and the senior presiding judge for considering remote hearings of bail applications, to ensure that more lawyers are able to do the cases. Having enough practitioners, as well as sitting days, is critical, and both will have my attention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments about the progress made on tackling reoffending, but he will be aware that it remains stubbornly high. We are in an unfortunate position: we imprison more people than most of our neighbours in Europe, but still have higher rates of reoffending. Does that not posit the fact that we need to make more intelligent use of prison, and of alternatives to custody, as parts of a joined-up system? Would he agree that the Sentencing Bill is particularly valuable in this regard, and can we hope for its swift return to the House?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his excellent point. He says something with which I passionately agree: strip out the emotion and follow the evidence. The evidence shows that there are tools available to this generation of politicians that were not necessarily available 10 or 15 years ago. I am talking not just about GPS tags, which we have doubled, but alcohol tags, with which there is a 97% compliance rate. The reoffending rate among those who live with the sword of Damocles hanging over them can be much lower than for those who spend a short time in custody.

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

Joshua Rozenberg KC has presented “Law in Action” on Radio 4 over the past 20 years, and it has frequently shed important light on areas of our justice system that need attention. Does the Secretary of State share my disappointment that today’s broadcast will be the programme’s last, because it has not been recommissioned? Will he also pay tribute to Joshua Rozenberg for his work?

[Alex Chalk]

I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for raising this point. Joshua Rozenberg has made a profound and important contribution to our country. Indeed, he is required reading, and I read him most days. I share my hon. and learned Friend’s profound regret, and I echo his sentiments. I think the whole House will wish Joshua Rozenberg well.

Prisons and Probation: Foreign National Offenders

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I commend the Secretary of State for his characteristically thoughtful and measured approach. Does he agree that it does no one any good service to try to reduce this issue to simplistic arguments? The truth is that dealing with prison capacity, where everyone has recognised for many years that there are real pressures, demands a careful set of checks and balances. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that those are in place? Does he also agree that we need to be honest with the public in saying that, however much we try, prison places are expensive and finite. Therefore, the system must make judicious and intelligent use of prison, which includes locking up those who are dangerous and having alternative ways of dealing with and punishing those who are not dangerous to the community. Is that not the objective?

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend makes an exceptional point. We have to proceed on the basis of evidence, not emotion. We choose to lock up the most dangerous offenders for longer, which is why those who murder in the context of sexual or sadistic behaviour should be in custody for the rest of their lives, because the threat to the population is so great. Where people can be reformed using technology, which was not available a long time ago, we should use that, not just because that works as a matter of common sense but because the data shows that it works.

On my hon. Friend’s specific point, anyone who looks at this issue calmly and in an adult way will see that there have been pressures in moments in history. There was one in 1997 and another in 2007, when Jack Straw had a terrible argument with Lord Falconer about the use of cells in Inner London Crown court. Those of us who have been in the system remember that. The key is whether to deal with that in a sensible, calibrated and proportionate way. We will take every step to look after the safety of the public, and we will not score political points in the process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

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

My right hon. and learned Friend will know that, only last week, the Court of Appeal criminal division, presided over by the Lady Chief Justice, quashed in bulk a number of Horizon appeals, on the basis of a half-hour hearing. When the cases get to court, the courts can deal with them swiftly.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that in framing any legislation, because of the constitutional implications, it is important that we bear in mind that the failures are the failure of a prosecutor to do their duty, or perhaps the failure of the state to come to the aid of victims, but they are not the failure of the courts, which always acted entirely properly on the material put before them by the parties at the time? It was a failure of the parties, not of the courts.

[Alex Chalk]

As always, my hon. Friend gets to the heart of it. This was a failure of the Post Office, which is an emanation of the state, and it is the duty of the state to put it right. The courts have approached this entirely properly. The Post Office failed to discharge the solemn obligations on any prosecutor to act fairly and to comply with their obligations under section 3 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 to disclose material that might reasonably be considered capable of undermining the case of the prosecution, or of assisting the case of the defence. When I was prosecuting, the first rule was that we did not seek a conviction at all costs, which is an important principle that the Post Office failed to appreciate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Precisely because legislating to overturn convictions would be so unprecedented, will my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor make sure that before such a step is taken, he is satisfied from conversations with the senior judiciary that the means of triaging and consolidating appeals that currently exist may not be capable of delivering justice within an acceptable timeframe?

[Alex Chalk]

That is precisely the point, and my hon. Friend has put his finger on it. Of course, we would not want to stray into the normal lane of the judiciary; we have huge respect for our independent judiciary, who do an exceptionally good job of ensuring that there is fairness on the facts before them. As I have said, the case is wholly unprecedented, and we will want to have exhausted all alternatives before taking radical action.

Hillsborough: Bishop James Jones Report

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those helpful and pertinent questions. Let me turn first to the issue of the police. Yes, it is one thing to set the culture, which, I think it is reasonable to point out, will now be woven into police training, but accountability matters, too. One thing that matters is that schedule 2 to the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020, which, of course, post-date the report, includes the following: police officers must be

“honest, act with integrity and...not compromise or abuse their position”,

and

“Police officers have a responsibility to give appropriate cooperation during investigations, inquiries and formal proceedings, participating openly and professionally in line with the expectations of a police officer when identified as a witness.”

Those standards are in the regulations. Their breach would provide a powerful case, as the hon. Gentleman may think, for dismissal or other suitable sanction.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about retrospectivity, plainly, if evidence comes to light about behaviour at the time, it can be considered in the normal way. I hope that he will be encouraged by knowing that the offence of misconduct in a public office is being considered by the Law Commission, with its usual and typical diligence, and we will respond in the new year. It is reasonable to observe that it has not operated as we might have liked, and is susceptible to reform. We are giving that very active attention.

On the media and irresponsible coverage, my goodness, the hon. Gentleman has a point. I think that there still needs to be a live conversation about whether things have gone far enough.

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

The delay in the report has been unacceptable, but it is absolutely no fault of my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor. I thank him for his statement, for its tone, which was characteristically generous-spirited, and for the work that he has done to expedite it.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it will be important to pick up on some of the learning from two Justice Committee reports on the coronial system and on pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Victims Bill? Does he agree that, to achieve the proper outcome of a legacy for the victims of Hillsborough, we should work to the position where it would be the norm for there to be proper legal representation for victims and bereaved families at inquests? That should be the norm rather than any form of exception.

Secondly, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the duty of candour should extend, in terms of legal representation by Government Departments, to the fullest and earliest possible disclosure of all relevant materials that are in the hands of Departments and their lawyers? Thirdly, does he agree that we should work with the excellent current Chief Coroner, whose predecessor gave powerful evidence to our Committee, to ensure that there is greater consistency in the standards and approach within the coronial system, which has not always been the case in the past? Does he agree that those are important matters, together with the assurance of equality of arms across the piece?

[Alex Chalk]

Those are very helpful points. First, I pay tribute to the Justice Committee for its work, particularly the work on coroners’ inquests. Indeed, in preparation for this statement, I went back and re-read some of the evidence given by the then Chief Coroner, Mark Lucraft, in which he talked about this important issue of equality of arms. He made the point—from his position as Chief Coroner, no less—that, yes, there are of course cases in which it is important to have legal representation. We have made enormous strides, as has been indicated. Equally, there will be those in which legal representation sometimes does not help terribly. That is why we have to proceed with care.

The key issue is equality of arms, as my hon. Friend rightly points out. The business about candour as regards early disclosure is critical. One important point that can sometimes be lost is that, lest we forget, under section 35 of the Inquiries Act 2005, it is possible for someone to be held criminally liable, on pain of a custodial sentence, if they fail to act with candour in terms of producing information to an inquiry. That, it seems to me, is an important sanction, and I hope that judges will not hesitate to use it in appropriate circumstances.

Prison Capacity

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I commend the Lord Chancellor on his thoughtful, considered and serious statement that deserves a thoughtful and considered response, which it has not entirely had. Does he agree that it is right and proper that we are frank with the British public that prison is an extremely expensive way of dealing with people, and that it should be reserved for those who are a threat to us, not simply those with whom we are perhaps justifiably angry or irritated?

Does the Lord Chancellor agree that it is right to take on board some of the recommendations of the Justice Committee’s report in relation to IPP prisoners—those sentenced to imprisonment for public protection? I welcome what has been said about remand, which we know is also important. As well as reducing the qualifying licence period, can he help us a little more on what else he will do to take on board the recommendations about IPP prisoners in the report? What is the timeframe for moving swiftly towards reducing the remand population?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my hon. Friend for his typically thoughtful and considered response. He is absolutely right that we have to make choices about what we do in respect of the custodial estate. We choose to ensure that the most dangerous people are locked away for longer, which is right, so that the punishment fits the crime and so that we protect the British people. This is not simply a political statement but a statement of evidence, and the evidence, not just in England and Wales but in the Netherlands and elsewhere, shows that short sentences are disproportionately associated with recidivism. Of course we should learn the lessons from that.

My hon. Friend rightly raises the issue of IPPs, which are a stain on the justice system. That point is made even by the person who came up with the idea. We will take steps, and I thank the Justice Committee for taking on this difficult issue and for coming up with some very sensible proposals. I will be announcing more, but the central point about licence length is critical. It seems to me that this 10-year licence length means that it is very hard for people on IPP to think they will ever be free.

HMPPS Update

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, for his courtesy in giving me notice of it, and for the characteristic thoroughness and care with which he has approached this matter. He is clearly going into the detail in a careful and measured fashion, which is the right approach. I also congratulate the shadow Secretary of State and welcome her to her post.

First, the Secretary of State has accepted the need for an independent element, and the Justice Committee has more than once referred to the need to avoid the Prison Service marking its own homework. Will he bear in mind in that regard the work that has already been done by His Majesty’s chief inspectors of prison and probation in relation to Wandsworth and other prisons? They have real expertise, and I hope he will avail himself of it.

Secondly, in relation to his wider inquiry into the prison situation, when on the face of it there has been a significant improvement in gate security, the failure of gate security on this occasion is all the more alarming. It is a matter of record that there is an issue with staffing at Wandsworth and with retaining experienced staff across the Prison Service. We have a large number of comparatively inexperienced staff. Evidence submitted to the Justice Committee’s inquiry on the prison workforce demonstrates concern over levels of training in some establishments. Will the Secretary of State make sure that those points are fully taken on board as part of a serious review of prison workforce on the back of this?

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to these matters. As I have indicated, the inquiry must take its course and the issue of staffing will no doubt be considered. Necessarily, we cannot go into a huge amount of detail, but what I can say is that in all prisons staff take on different roles. On the specific issue of staffing at the security end of the prison, the positions were staffed and the security posts were occupied. The question is whether protocols were applied, and indeed whether people did what was expected of them under those protocols. We need to get to the bottom of that urgently.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I am sure that the Lord Chancellor, as well as thanking the current Lord Chief Justice for his work, will welcome the appointment of Dame Sue Carr as the first woman Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and look forward to working with her, too. Does the Lord Chancellor agree that one of the real areas of concern and pressure on prisons is the growth in the remand population? In January, before he was appointed to office, the Justice Committee produced a report on remand, from which some recommendations were accepted and some were not. Will he revisit some of those recommendations and see what more we can do to bear down in particular on the growth in remand for people who after all have not yet been convicted?

[Alex Chalk]

Those are excellent points. Let me begin by joining my hon. Friend in welcoming Dame Sue Carr, whose appointment has been hugely welcomed across the political spectrum, across the legal sector and beyond. I also pay tribute to Lord Burnett. I think I speak on behalf of everyone in the House in saying that there is nothing but regard and respect for the contribution that he has made.

On remand, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It is worth reflecting that, compared with the pre-pandemic period, there are between 4,500 and 5,000 more of those people in custody. As he rightly pointed out, they have not been convicted of any crime. Technology, such as electronically monitored tags, can be of assistance. It is for the bench or the Crown Court judge to decide whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that, if released on bail, that person would commit further offences or fail to surrender, but I know that the courts will want to bear the technological options in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Will the Lord Chancellor confirm that it remains the Government’s intention to update and modernise our human rights law as necessary, but to do so while firmly remaining in adherence to the convention on human rights?

[Alex Chalk]

Yes, that is correct. Having carefully considered the Government’s legislative programme in the round, I can inform the House that we have decided not to proceed with the Bill of Rights, but the Government remain committed to a human rights framework that is up to date, fit for purpose and works for the British people. We have taken and are taking action to address specific issues with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention, including through the Illegal Migration Bill, the Victims and Prisoners Bill, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 and the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, the last of which addressed vexatious claims against veterans and the armed forces. It is right that we recalibrate and rebalance our constitution over time, and that process continues.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

2nd reading
Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

There is a very important distinction. When the Secretary of State considers those most serious cases, he will look at this issue of safety for the public. That is not whether, for example, the Parole Board has acted in such a way as to not be susceptible to judicial review; it is a much wider consideration so that the public can be satisfied not just that the Parole Board considered safety, but that the Secretary of State did, too, and that is an important second check. That matters, because in these most serious cases, public confidence is hanging on the single thread of the Parole Board. We want to make sure that an additional thread goes into that structure, so that the public recognise that there has been that second pair of eyes. Plainly, Ministers cannot over-politicise this process, which is why there must be an opportunity to have an independent review of the Secretary of State’s decision. That will allow us overall to have a much more vigorous and robust process that stands up for victims, but is also mindful of the rule of law.

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

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Alex Chalk]

Oh, here we go. Yes, of course I will.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am very grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, whom I warmly welcome to his place, for giving way. Can I just follow up the point made by my fellow Justice Committee member, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson)? There are passages in the Bill where, in carrying out that legitimate policy objective—I do not disagree with the Secretary of State on that legitimacy—in certain circumstances, as it is currently drafted, he may be asked to put his finding of fact and his opinion in the place of that of the parole board that actually heard the evidence. Could I therefore ask him to look very carefully at the evidence the Committee received—it is tagged to the Bill on the Order Paper—and find a more effective way to achieve his objective that is legally robust but fair, but does not place him and his successors in the very difficult position of trying to rehear facts at second hand, as opposed to taking the role of those who heard the initial evidence?

[Alex Chalk]

May I thank my hon. Friend, and say that I have read every word of that important evidence to the Committee? I thank him for the time he took to provide that additional scrutiny, which I found extremely helpful. He is absolutely right that the check and balance is a sensible one, but plainly it has to be operational. We have to be able to deliver it, and we have to be able to do so in a sufficiently timely fashion, ensuring that a decision is not offending against article 5 and so on, but also that all parties have certainty about what is actually going to happen. I hope he will be reassured by my saying that I am looking very closely at the operational aspects of this provision to ensure that it does what is intended, and provides that check and balance, while being deliverable and of course being consistent with the rule of law. If I may, I will now press on, because I know others want to speak.

Thirdly, we are already recruiting more ex-police officers to the Parole Board. Now we will ensure that individuals with law enforcement backgrounds can be included on panels considering the release of the most serious criminals. Their first-hand experience of assessing risk will bring additional expertise to parole hearings.

This Bill will also prohibit prisoners subject to a whole-life order from being able to marry or form a civil partnership in custody, subject to an exemption in truly exceptional circumstances. The rationale for this is simple. Those most dangerous and cruel criminals—the ones who have shattered lives and robbed others of their chance of happiness and a family life—should not be able to taunt victims and their families by enjoying that for themselves. It is simply unconscionable, yet as the law stands, prison governors cannot reject a prisoner’s application to marry unless it creates a security risk for the prison, however horrific their crime. Our changes will prevent whole-life prisoners from marrying or forming a civil partnership in prison or other places of detention. That is nothing less than basic fairness.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 26th May 2022 Commons Chamber

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

May I, on behalf of my fellow members of the Justice Committee, echo the welcome that has been given to the Prosecutor General for Ukraine?

The prosecution of serious fraud has had significant success and I am glad that the Solicitor General recognises that. I have written to him in relation to the Calvert-Smith report, as many of us believe that confidence in the system demands full publication. Will he commit to looking earnestly and carefully at the concerns about gaps in substantive criminal law which sometimes create greater challenges for prosecutors in corporate fraud cases, for example the test in relation to corporate liability in criminal cases and whether there is a case for a duty to prevent, as is the case in other common law jurisdictions?

[The Solicitor General]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an absolutely critical point. Yes, there are convictions taking place. We can talk about Glencore, Petrofac and others, but he is absolutely correct that we must consider whether the law is there to meet the changing circumstances. The point he makes about corporate criminal liability is one that we are looking at very closely, not least in light of the Law Commission’s conclusions. If there are gaps in the law, we will fill them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 10th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

At the 2019 spending review, the CPS received over £80 million. At this spending review, the Government awarded an additional 12% to boost the number of prosecutors and the capability. In addition, as I indicated, £400 million is to be allocated to the NECC and the NCA. That is over and above the funding that has gone into the taxpayer protection taskforce: £100 million and 1,200 staff. This Government are serious about cracking down on economic crime and we are delighted to support those efforts.

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

Might I say, Mr Speaker, that the Law Officers are entitled to perhaps a good half an hour of the House’s time as well?

The Solicitor General probably has more experience of prosecuting serious fraud hands on than anyone else in this House. From my own experience at the Bar, I know he is right when he says that fraud is not a victimless crime. Does he agree that we need a joined-up approach across Government to tackle this effectively, not just the excellent work that is being done to improve the Crime Prosecution Service’s results, but support from the Home Office to ensure that Action Fraud is not the black hole it is at the moment for many people who lose money in what are termed small-scale, lower-value frauds, but are massively important to them? At the other end of the scale, we need to look at tightening up our laws on corporate criminal responsibility, so we can catch the high-level fraudsters as well. We need approaches on all those fronts.

[The Solicitor General]

As so often, my hon. Friend speaks authoritatively. He is absolutely right that fraud shatters lives and can destroy people’s future in the process. He is right that we need to ensure that the most serious frauds are properly prosecuted—which is why the Serious Fraud Office has received additional funding in the spending review—but also that so-called lower-level crimes are properly resourced. That is why the special crime division of the CPS is doing important work, and why it is increasingly getting the resources it needs to ramp up its capability to take the fight to fraudsters.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. One of the other things that we have done is to increase funding for rape support centres by two thirds so that individuals know that they are not alone. The constant refrain from individuals will be, “I didn’t feel supported”, but it would be quite wrong for the message to go out suggesting that there is not that support. This is what victims said after a case recently in my county of Gloucestershire. Victim B said:

“I would just like to say how happy I am with the whole criminal justice system. The support offered is amazing.”

Victim C said:

“The support from the police and GRASAC (Gloucestershire’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre) has been amazing”.

That support is out there and we want to make sure it is there in ever greater quantities.

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

I welcome the Solicitor General to his place for his first departmental questions. He brings massive personal experience to cases of this kind and has prosecuted exactly these sorts of cases. Does he agree that there has been significant improvement in the treatment of victims, particularly after the revision of the Crown Prosecution Service legal guidance—for example, in the awareness of trauma and the impact that that has on victims—and in getting the right balance in dealing with digital evidence? Is it not important now that we maintain the capacity of the courts system to bring these cases to trial in the timeliest fashion in terms of judges, court availability and quality, experienced advocates to deal with these important prosecutions?

[The Solicitor General]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words. As always, he is absolutely right: we have to strike this important balance in respect of digital evidence to ensure that the evidence to put people behind bars is appropriately obtained without compromising the right to a fair trial. No one here wants to do that. He is absolutely correct about capacity as well. The Lord Chief Justice has made that point very powerfully and it is one to which we are acutely alive.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

Private international law, sometimes known as conflict of laws, comprises rules applied by courts and parties involved in legal disputes for dealing with cases raising cross-border issues. The rules generally apply in the context of civil law, including specialist areas such as commercial, insolvency and family law. PIL typically includes rules to establish whether a court has jurisdiction to hear a claim that has cross-border elements, which country’s law applies to such a claim, and whether a judgment of a foreign court should be recognised and enforced. However, it can also encompass rules on co-operation between courts and other public authorities in different countries involved in dealing with cross-border issues, such as service of documents, taking of evidence abroad or even establishing efficient procedures to assist with the resolution of cross-border disputes.

These agreements are important. They are the sort of thing that a member of the public, or a business trading across borders may not know they need until a difficulty or a disagreement arises. Without these agreements, cross-border legal disputes can become expensive and difficult to resolve. With them, the path to resolution is clearer and smoother.

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

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way so early on in his speech. As he will know, I have to chair the Justice Committee in a few moments, but may I thank him for stressing the importance of this not just for the big financial institutions and businesses of this country, but for individuals? Will he confirm that, in accepting the amendments, we have managed to achieve an improvement to the Bill through the very constructive approach for which he in particular has been responsible? Will he also confirm that, as well as the Bill, it is the Government’s firm intention to seek to join the Lugano convention on the enforcement of judgments and other international co-operation at the earliest possible date, so that we do not have any gap post the end of the implementation period, and to move on to the other international conventions—Hague and others?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the Chairman of the Justice Committee for his remarks and for the contribution he has made throughout the passage of the Bill. I am quite confident that we are in a better place because we have looked at it constructively. That is, in large part, because of the contributions he has made, together with others. Yes, this is about individuals as well as businesses, and yes, we want to use this as the vehicle to get into Lugano, which will be good for the rule of law, good for individuals, good for certainty and good for businesses.

I was making the point that these agreements mean the path to resolution is clearer and smoother. Just by way of a couple of examples, these agreements can help a family where relationships break down and one spouse moves abroad, and they can help to sort out arrangements for custody, access and maintenance in the best interests of the children. These agreements can provide a framework for a small business to seek redress when left out of pocket by a supplier based in another country.

Ministry of Justice: Legal Aid Spending

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), on securing the debate and on opening it in such a full, balanced and helpful way.

In preparing this speech, I looked back at previous debates, and what a joy it was to see that the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) secured a debate here in 2010. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) was there, as indeed was the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). There was a rather lovely moment when the hon. Member for Hammersmith paid tribute to the hon. Member for Westminster North’s

“unrivalled record in pursuing such matters”—[Official Report, 14 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 207WH.]

If she had an unrivalled record in 2010, it is even more unrivalled now. I genuinely congratulate her on the work she has done over so long in raising these issues.

I begin by emphasising some important points that have been made powerfully but bear emphasis. Legal aid stands as a pillar of our constitution and a bulwark of our freedoms. For a great many people, it operates out of sight; they may go through their entire lives without encountering it, and in that way it is not like the NHS or schools or policing. However, for those who do encounter it, its importance is immediately understood. Legal aid ensures that the guilty are convicted and the innocent walk free; that those facing conviction, punishment and disgrace on the accusation of the state will have those allegations properly tested. It is there to ensure that the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens, often created by this Parliament, are upheld. To paraphrase Lord Reid in the Unison case, legal aid ensures that statutes are not rendered a dead letter.

I echo the points that the hon. Lady for Westminster North made about practitioners. She referred to the good will, dedication and vocation of those who practise in legal aid work, and I cannot use any better words. She put it very well. They are not fat cats. I make the point, as I made in an earlier debate, that those who act in these cases, or indeed any cases, may very well not agree with their clients on the substance of what is being advanced, but they know that their first duty is to the court and their second duty is to their client. They must defend those interests and fight that case, within the law, without fear or favour. Those principles underpin why the Government spent £1.7 billion last year funding legal aid for those who need it. It is imperative that we properly protect this support and that it continues to be available in the future.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith asked me to concede that funding is less now than it was in 2012. That is a fact, so he is right about that. In fairness—I pay tribute to the entirely appropriate tone that the debate has been conducted in overall—in 2010 there was a sense that, whichever Government came into power, there were going to be some cuts. However, the question at this stage, as we take stock, is what legal aid should be required for and to what extent. That is a careful consideration that we intend to apply.

Over the past few months, the importance of the advice and legal sectors has been brought into sharp focus. My officials and I have been engaging extensively with various organisations across the advice sector throughout this period, and I know how challenging it has been for providers and their service users alike. I also know how many providers and practitioners across England and Wales have gone above and beyond to ensure that vulnerable people across society can continue to get the help they need.

As a Government, we have tried to support that work as best we can over this difficult period. I am delighted that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) pointed out, we were able to secure £5.4 million of emergency funding for the not-for-profit advice sector, to ensure that providers across England and Wales were able to adapt their operations and continue to provide their important services. In the early days of the pandemic, we understood that almost half the law centres in England and Wales were facing potential collapse, and I am extremely pleased that our funding helped to prevent that outcome. I do not suggest for a second that it solved all problems, but I hope it is fair to say that it was of some significant assistance.

I am also grateful for the close working relationships we have built with actors across the sector to ensure that funding can be utilised in the most effective way possible. Beyond the funding, we made a number of changes to support legal aid providers in the short term, including changing rules for payments on account and ensuring that providers can claim the same for remote hearings as they can for face-to-face hearings. In August we announced additional funding of up to £51 million for criminal defence lawyers through the criminal legal aid review.

Respectfully, and notwithstanding the point that can always properly be made that there needs to be more, £51 million is a significant sum. The point that I would gently make is that that was the first occasion when people were being paid for reviewing unused material. As practitioners in this room no doubt well understand, it is those hours spent between 10 o’clock at night and midnight reviewing the unused material that all too often discloses that critical point that allows them to advance in court the key issue that might lead to the acquittal of their client. That is now being remunerated in a way that it was not before.

I have very limited time, so let me try to deal with the issue of sustainability. Although I maintain that we have made some positive changes in the time available, I think everyone here would acknowledge that there is more to be done to ensure that the legal aid and advice sector thrives into the future. Many of us here will be well aware of the challenges faced by the sector, and we do not seek to suggest that they do not exist or to downplay them. The demands on providers, and indeed on the courts, are high and will likely remain high over the coming months as the covid-19 recovery gathers pace. Those impacts will no doubt be felt across society.

We are already doing important work in this space, and we want to go further in the coming months. As has been trailed, I recently launched our new legal support for litigants in person grant, which builds on the more than £9 billion that the MOJ has invested. There are some who would say, as did the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), who is no longer in his place, “Look, it’s not enough.” I understand why he says that, but we need to look forensically at what it is going to develop. The answer is that law does not stand still, just as the rest of the world does not stand still. There are other mechanisms by which legal advice and assistance can be delivered using technology, and we must be alive to that.

In some of the excellent conversations that I have had with law centres, they have started to recognise that maybe their catchment area of need is not simply the area around, say, North Kensington for North Kensington Law Centre or the area around Hammersmith for the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre—which, incidentally, I know fine well the hon. Member for Hammersmith has spent many years supporting. Is there scope for technology to widen that catchment area, to broaden access to justice?

We have also launched a new project considering the issues relating to the wider long-term sustainability of the civil legal aid system. I am only too well aware that many practitioners and stakeholders say that this is a long-standing issue, but now, of course, it has been made more pressing due to the current situation, and we are taking a broad look at the system. Some hon. Members have raised the point about fee levels, and that is fair. In addition to considering the fee levels, we will look at structural issues such as the delivery model for civil legal aid and will seek to improve the remote delivery of advice where appropriate, to ensure support is available for those in hard-to-reach places, learning both from what has worked well during the pandemic and what has worked less well.

I have only a minute left, sadly, and I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst time to speak. I could have talked about the means test review. I wanted to talk about CLAR, the accelerated areas, the courts estate, which is getting more money, and my principal passion, early legal support and advice. I am absolutely of the view that intervening early makes a huge difference.

Let me end by saying that covid-19 presents a great challenge to our way of life, perhaps unknown in the modern era outside wartime. Other priorities will likely dominate the headlines—jobs, schools, hospitals, debt—but in a nation of laws, legal aid is vital, now and in the future. Legal aid work will never provide the personal financial rewards for practitioners of a commercial or chancery practice, and nor should it, but we need a system that continues to attract lawyers of sufficient calibre, prioritises acute legal need, achieve redress and improves people’s lives. That is the platform for those priorities that I have set out today.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Even I can’t be that short.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee stage: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

But the point is that when we were in the European Union and the European Union had competence to enter into PIL agreements, those would be brought into effect in the United Kingdom via the doctrine of direct effect. What role did this Parliament have? None. We are seeking to introduce much more by way of parliamentary scrutiny—the points, respectfully, that the right hon. Gentleman did not advert to. First, there is the CRaG procedure, and secondly there is the affirmative procedure.

I am at pains to mention that because I talked just a few moments ago about the Israeli agreement and the United States agreement. How did those come into force? Not through the affirmative procedure, not even through the negative procedure, but through an Order in Council. In other words, normal hon. Members—mere mortals like most of the people in the Chamber—had no say at all; just Privy Counsellors. We therefore respectfully say that it does not lie in the mouth of the Opposition to raise these concerns.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) made the point powerfully that this precedent, which the Opposition understood when they were in government, recognises that there is an opportunity cost. If we start filling up the parliamentary timetable with such legislation, which everyone accepts is not controversial, there is less time and less space for schools, hospitals and transport, etc.

On the point about criminal offences, which was made powerfully by the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), this is an area where it is important to move cautiously. We will continue to reflect on the range of views expressed. I agree with him that an awful lot of offences are created by statutory instruments, but we need to take care, none the less.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful for the Minister’s observations in relation to criminal offences, and I will take him at his word as far as that is concerned. I know that he will want to take away, perhaps, how we deal with that proportionately.

The Minister refers to the value of the affirmative procedure, as is proposed. That, of course, is used when the PIL treaty first comes into force in our domestic law, but often these treaties or agreements can be modified as they go along. Can he help me with the concerns raised by the Bar Council and the Law Society about how the proposed scrutiny regime would deal with, for example, declarations that are attached to international agreements when we bring them into force? Such declarations can sometimes modify or limit their scope. Secondly, how will we deal with model laws, which are now often used in international trade negotiations?

[Alex Chalk]

If I may respectfully say so, that is an excellent point. That is one of the reasons why we seek to frame things this way, because one of the points my hon. Friend made most powerfully is that there are shortcomings in the Lugano convention. He talked about the Italian torpedo, but there are others, some of which Lord Mance referred to in the other place, for example.

How are we to be expected, in an agile and proportionate way, to address those changes, supposing they are negotiated, if we effectively have to have a new Act of Parliament each time? With respect, that would be wildly disproportionate. It would clog up this place unnecessarily, because there may be very good opportunities to improve those agreements and get them on to the statute book.

Let me deal with this business about Lugano, in amendments 1 to 4, 8 and 9, new clauses 1 and 2, new schedule 1, new schedule 3, new clause 5 and amendments (a) to (g). First, it is premature to put Lugano into the Bill while our application is outstanding, even if amendment 2 specifically includes reference to this being contingent on the UK’s accession. It is also inadequate—this is the point I was adverting to—as additional provisions will be required, mostly of a procedural or consequential nature, to properly implement to Lugano convention into domestic law.

For example, the civil procedure rules might need to be changed. What if Lugano is improved, as I indicated? What, also, if our application is unsuccessful? We may then need to move quickly. With whom will we want to move quickly? As my hon. Friend well knows, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland have published statements of support for our Lugano application, and that may be a route we would want to go down.

The most important point is that we have, and indeed should have, ambitions beyond Lugano. We must stay at the forefront of developments, whether the Singapore convention on mediation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) powerfully referred to, or the Hague convention on recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in civil or commercial matters, also known as Hague ’19.

I advert to the fact that the Bill properly complies with the devolution settlement. We take that extremely seriously. As the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) indicated, both the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly have passed legislative consent motions for the Bill, and the Welsh Government have agreed that an LCM is not required as PIL is almost entirely reserved. There is a small exclusion for Cafcass Cymru, but that is really it.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham spoke about the super-affirmative procedure, and I accept this amendment was submitted in the spirit of trying to be helpful. I entirely acknowledge that. These proposals are contained within paragraph 4 of new schedule 3, tabled by the Opposition, and there is a similar proposal in new schedule 2, although the SNP new schedule would introduce a super-affirmative scrutiny power only for Lugano. I respectfully make the point, and I appreciate that this is to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), but why would we need a super-affirmative scrutiny power for Lugano, which we have been operating for years? That is not very obvious to me.

The bar for the super-affirmative scrutiny procedure has always been high. Let us look at the context. Section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 provides for a super-affirmative procedure for regulations that deal with changes to reserved matters as set out in that Act. The Human Rights Act 1998 provides for such a procedure for remedial orders that deal with legislation that has been found to be incompatible—declarations of incompatibility. Under the Public Bodies Act 2011, a super-affirmative procedure is needed for orders that abolish, merge or change the constitutional funding arrangements. I dealt with those quickly, but the point is that super-affirmative procedure is reserved for matters of key constitutional importance. We must not forget that in the case we are discussing, we have the additional CRaG brake.

If we drill into the detail of super-affirmative procedure, it creates additional stages, but I query whether it results in improvements to the proposed regulations. Instead, it simply delays. It would also create a potential discrepancy between England and Wales and the devolved jurisdictions. One could easily imagine a situation whereby two litigants lived five miles either side of the border and the cases were dealt with differently, to the disadvantage of a litigant in England, because the Scottish Parliament had got on with it and simply brought an agreement into force. That would be unsatisfactory. I do not suggest that that is what the right hon. Member for Tottenham intends, but I fear it could be a consequence.

New clauses 1, 6 and 7 deal with laying the report. New clause 6 would require a report to be laid in Parliament before the UK ratifies an agreement. New clause 7 would require the Government to lay a report in Parliament for 10 House of Commons sitting days before a draft statutory instrument was laid. I accept the need for clear and detailed explanations, but it is not immediately obvious that new clause 7 would add anything to the current process. All SIs are already accompanied by an explanatory memorandum. I dug one out to prepare for the debate. It deals with the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982. It runs to 18 pages and is very detailed and helpful. Other than requiring the information 10 days earlier, I cannot see that new clause 7 would make a difference. We should not forget that an SI is typically laid several weeks before the House gets to debate it. None the less, I accept the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst made about the need to reach out to distinguished practitioners and jurists. It is right that we should do that, and I am keen for that happen.

I am very grateful for the consideration of the Bill in Committee. I share the desire to ensure that PIL agreements that we wish to join and domestically implement are appropriately scrutinised. All Governments must balance the need for scrutiny with the need to move in a timely manner to ensure that British citizens can enjoy the benefits of PIL agreements as soon as it is properly possible to provide for them. Those benefits are significant, and if the House gets the balance wrong, our citizens will be denied them by an unnecessarily labyrinthine process.

The proposed procedures provide for scrutiny of a delegated power using an affirmative SI together with the CRaG procedure to implement the agreements. That is a balanced and proportionate approach.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Before the Minister sits down—

[Alex Chalk]

Just in the nick of time.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Perhaps the Minister can help my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and me. I understand what the Minister is saying, and none of us wishes to create a labyrinthine process. Does he accept that it may be necessary to learn from experience with CRaG as we go forward? Are the Government closing their mind to the idea that we could seek refinements and improvements to the CRaG process as we operate it? The answer might help us.

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. There is no doubt that the CRaG process is evolving and maturing. Proper points have been made about the need to consider it and how it should evolve over time. I certainly do not want to shut my eyes or my ears to my hon. Friend’s proposals.

The Bill takes a balanced and proportionate approach. I therefore invite hon. Members to support the Government amendments and reject the remainder.

Lammy Review

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

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.

Court Closures: Access to Justice

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), my fellow Justice Committee member, and I congratulate him on securing this debate on a very important topic. I was happy to have been a supporter of his application for the debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us this opportunity.

Access to justice is a fundamental issue. It is not just a transaction issue between the parties to a case; it is fundamental to the running of a civilised society. It ought to be regarded as not just a transactional matter between individuals either, but as something that is the warp and woof of the checks and balances that make our society work. Therefore, the right to have access to justice is a fundamental civic right of every individual and it is important that we aim to produce a system that achieves that without unreasonable obstacles.

Of course, we are obliged to garner public funds with care and make sure they are spent wisely, but it is equally important that the state has an obligation to provide an accessible justice system as part of its duties to protect its citizens. Therefore, we perhaps need to take a step back and look at what we do in relation to courts and other justice issues in the context of that overarching principle.

The issue of court closures has been of real concern to Members in all parts of the House, and for legitimate reasons. I do not say that every court closure is an unreasonable step, and I do not say that every court that was in existence when I started at the Bar is viable now. I appeared in some pretty unsatisfactory old magistrates courts and county courts up and down the country, where there was no means of separating witnesses from defendants for example. In some cases there might have been victims of crime present, and the facilities for having a conference with a client in any sort of confidentiality were non-existent. I actually had a conference in a lavatory once in an old magistrates court in East Anglia because there was nowhere else where we could not be heard by either the prosecutor or prosecution witnesses. It was pouring with rain outside so that seemed to be the easiest way to do it—I did not charge any extra, not even a penny. Courts like that should not be in use.

So there are good examples of where it was right to have got rid of old and inappropriate stock, because people who go to court as witnesses and as parties to civil proceedings are entitled to a basic level of service. Therefore, some rationalisation is legitimate and sensible but it must be balanced against the need for proper accessibility and to maintain, particularly in criminal, but also in family and civil, proceedings, a sense of local justice. I will return to that.

The courts rationalisation programme is often seen as part of a broader programme of court modernisation and rationalisation. As I have said, I do not have a problem with the overall thrust of that programme, which was endorsed by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals. It is based upon sound principles. It stems from two significant reports by distinguished judges: Lord Briggs’s report into civil procedure, and the report of Lord Justice Leveson—Sir Brian Leveson—in relation to criminal procedure. May I say in passing that both of those judges have given very great service to our judiciary? Lord Briggs later went to the Supreme Court and Sir Brian Leveson retires tomorrow as president of the Queen’s Bench Division. I pay tribute to the work he did; he has been one of the exceptional criminal jurists and criminal judges and practitioners of our generation, and the country as a whole owes Sir Brian a very great debt for his public service.

So these were well-founded principles and they had good judicial input into their design. The problem is that, as many witnesses have told the Justice Committee in the course of inquiries into the programme and related topics, there is concern that the outworking of that programme places more emphasis than it should on costs and savings rather than on improving services for parties to the hearing and the court user.

The chairman of the Magistrates Association, Mr John Bache, gave evidence to our Committee only a few weeks ago to the effect that, of course, there is always a balance to be struck—we want both fairness and efficiency in a justice system; nobody wants only one or the other. However, he and his members are concerned that in some cases at present the balance tips too far towards efficiency at the cost of fairness, and that cannot be the right way around.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. In the course of this debate we have talked about convenience for defendants and witnesses, but ought we not also to consider convenience for magistrates? Magistrates give of their time to help in the community and perform an invaluable role, but if they have to travel huge distances that will inevitably provide a disincentive. The Government should be very alive to that in making these changes.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and as he will know the Committee, of which he was for a time a distinguished member and for whose work I am very grateful, recently published a report into the magistracy that deals with a number of challenges facing the magistracy. It is convenient that I refer to this point, given that 90-odd% of criminal cases are dealt with by magistrates, who, as he says, are unpaid—they are volunteers; they are the bedrock of the criminal justice system. The point of a magistrates system is that they are lay people—mini juries, in effect—delivering local justice. Defendants are thereby judged by one’s peers, not only in the sense of one’s status in society, but in the sense that they come broadly from the community from which they themselves come.

That has always been fundamental to our system in criminal work. The difficulty has been the number of pressures on the recruitment of magistrates, and one, which was identified to us by the Magistrates Association and other witnesses, is the effect of court closures. Where they become as drastic as they have in some cases, they act as a disincentive to magistrates to continue on the bench, as travel times are much longer than they were. They can also skewer recruitment patterns for new magistrates. A number of studies indicate that the drop-out rate for magistrates in rural areas, where courts often sit only in the county town, is more marked and that there is a tendency in areas where the court has moved to an urban centre for magistrates to be recruited predominantly from the surrounding town areas rather than the rural areas.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

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

As always, Sir Edward, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing an important debate on an important subject.

I am delighted to see the Minister in his place. He has had a long and distinguished career at the criminal Bar, so he will know, as well as any of us who have seen this type of sentencing in practice, that this is an unconscionable situation, which is the result of a policy in the past that was well intended but, frankly, an error. That error was corrected, but not corrected retrospectively, hence the decision reached by the High Court and the Supreme Court that they could not interfere with sentences that, at the time they were issued, had been lawfully given, as the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, said. However, that does not remove the political and moral conundrum that faces us.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), a fellow member of the Select Committee, very fairly points out, as we accept in our Select Committee report, “Prison population 2022”, that there will indeed be a number—perhaps a significant number, but I suspect not a majority—of IPP prisoners who are unlikely to be safe to be released in any significant period of time and perhaps never. I suspect they are a minority, but there will be some. Nobody has an issue with that, but certainty is important for them and for the victims of their grave crimes, so that they know that that will be the case.

[Alex Chalk]

In those circumstances, the defendants probably ought not to have been sentenced to an IPP in the first place, but to a life sentence. If that is the case, the correct thing is to put that right rather than continue with the fiction that they are on an IPP with a tariff that they have long since superseded.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. His experience at the criminal Bar leads him to the same conclusion as mine leads me to. Given that the situation is unacceptable for the reasons that have been highlighted by the right hon. Member for Delyn, and highlighted in detail by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), my fellow Select Committee member, it is unacceptable that we should leave a situation in which some people are in limbo.

One such case was illustrated in our Select Committee report in evidence from the sister of an IPP prisoner who died after a self-harm incident in prison. That individual

“often found himself in prisons that did not offer the specific type of rehabilitation he needed with no support or guidance on how to move to a prison that offered them. If there ever was a ray of hope with regards to this it was often lost owing to the lack of feedback on progress, the resource being changed or even closed down.”

That leads me to conclude, first, that we need to ensure that the prison regime offers proper rehabilitative and therapeutic offender management courses to those in a position to benefit from them. That requires a steady and stable regime within the prisons, which is not yet always the case in many institutions. Secondly, it implies a greater degree of monitoring of the specific needs of IPP prisoners to make sure that they are moved to establishments where courses are available. Thirdly, it means moving away from the current practice whereby IPP prisoners are very often not allowed to seek transfer to open institutions, which gives the Parole Board the difficulty of not having been able to test their behaviour and therefore the risk of reoffending in open conditions. The board has to take the difficult risk, in public perception terms, of either keeping those prisoners locked up perhaps needlessly or releasing them immediately without their having experienced open conditions. All that needs to be addressed.

The Parole Board gave evidence to us that certain mechanisms currently available to it could be made more use of. I urge the Minister to speak urgently to the chair of the Parole Board about speeding up, for example, the ability to prevent needless recall for technical reasons by, as has been pointed out, suspending the period of supervision after four years of good behaviour on licence—a specific and sensible proposal—and removing the cancellation of the licence after 10 years on licence. In many cases, that would be significantly more than the minimum term that they were sentenced to by quite a multiple. Those are sensible things that could be done.

Also, we have to grasp the nettle that, as Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd rightly said, Parliament needs to grasp. We must either make resources available so that proper rehabilitation can take place or change the test for release. That would certainly need to be consulted upon, but it is something we need to set out because it has been very highly set at the moment. And/or we could change the statutory provision, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said, so that people can be re-sentenced under the current sentencing practice and procedures to a determinate sentence. In the worst cases, that will no doubt be life, or sometimes significant and at other times less significant determinate sentences, but the IPP prisoners, their families and the victims of the offenders will know precisely what the regime is and what the rules are that relate to the release.

That ought not to be too difficult to achieve. I cannot think for one moment that there would be opposition to that in any quarter of this House, were the Government to seek to find a legislative opportunity to introduce that. I earnestly urge my hon. and learned Friend the Minister—I know he is a reformer at heart and recognises the need to move these matters on—to make the case as strongly as he can within Government to find the time to take the fairly modest steps that would rectify an injustice that is a needless blot upon our system.

Disclosure of Youth Criminal Records

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 28th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend; that is precisely the problem. The disclosure system is an immensely blunt instrument and forgets that, as well as being a punishment, any sensible criminal justice system must encourage reform and rehabilitation. Whatever the no doubt good intentions behind it, the way the system operates is counterproductive in that regard.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

For people who perhaps did not have the most advantaged background, let us suppose there is a fight in a school playground that leads to the police being called. That might lead to a conviction for actual bodily harm that is non-filterable. Yet, if they had been born in more affluent circumstances, I am quite sure the police would never have been called and that person would never have gone on to have their life blighted in the same way. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must ensure that this fact is not an impediment to social mobility?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically significant and thoughtful point. I can think of instances both from my constituency casebook and from childhood friends of mine who got into exactly that situation. That is not what the system was intended for. He is right that it is without doubt discriminatory in a number of regards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

We talked about extending the initiative to all public sector vacancies, and I can see the logic of making this a condition of public procurement more generally. It is an interesting point that the right hon. Lady fairly raises. Like her, I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response. These levers are within the Government’s gift and there would be no requirement for primary legislation or anything of that kind.

Against that background, we were disappointed in the Government’s response. It was not entirely negative, but it did seem to us to lack a degree of urgency. It cited the litigation on criminal records that was ongoing at that time in the Supreme Court as a reason not to go into too much detail on most of our important recommendations. There was almost a predictive text response of, “It would not be appropriate to consider these matters until there has been an authoritative judgment from the Supreme Court.” That has now changed, as I will come to.

I recognise and welcome the positives in the Government response. The Government accepted parts of the report, in particular the commitment to improving information and guidance and exploring options for promoting Ban the Box—one of those has been suggested by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—and there is willingness to work with the insurance industry to ensure that it operates more fairly in relation to spent convictions. I say to the Minister that that is all good, but we need more.

A concern for us was how policy is difficult to drive forward because it sits uneasily between the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. That is a classic case of a desirable change falling through the gap between two Departments. If we are committed to more cross-governmental working, more could and should be done.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I pay tribute to his leadership of the Select Committee. He has not touched so much on the conclusions in the report about people aged between 18 and 25. The report said that consideration should be given to extending the filtering to young people. My view is that that is a bridge too far and we should focus purely on under-18s, but does he want to say anything about whether he thinks we should look at a filtering system for young people in that category?

[Robert Neill]

As my hon. Friend will remember from his time on the Committee, that is linked to earlier work in relation to young adults in the criminal justice system. I made the point earlier that we now know from overwhelming evidence that maturity and desistance from crime tend to kick in, particularly among young males, at age 25 or so. That is where that suggestion comes from. I agree. Rome was not built in a day, and we have to operate the system in a way that maintains public confidence and the confidence of employers where there are legitimate grounds for caution. Let us be honest: sometimes there are, and there always will be. We put the point in the report as part of the broader context. I hope that when, in due course, we get time to debate important issues of domestic legislation, rather than having the groundhog approach that we seem to have on other matters at the moment, perhaps that more holistic approach to young offenders will be appropriate, but it is not a reason to hold back the specific recommendations that we make about younger people, which we suggest should be moved urgently.

The Supreme Court judgment was cited as a reason for the Government not wishing to commit themselves. I understand that, but the Supreme Court has given its judgment, so the Government can move forward with a clear conscience. That judgment was of course in the joined cases of P, G and W and Lorraine Gallagher, who, being overage, could be named in that context. All the cases challenged various aspects of the filtering regime and dealt with a number of the issues to which we have referred. They all involved people who had been convicted of or reprimanded for relatively minor offending, and the disclosure of their criminal records had created barriers to employment, or there was a reasonable expectation that they would do so in the future.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the multiple conviction rule and the serious offence rule, without a mechanism for refinement, were not

“in accordance with the law”

as required by paragraph 2 of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which protects the right to respect for private life, as they did not allow proportionality to be considered in any particular case. It is that bluntness and lack of proportionality that we think now need to be addressed urgently.

The Government, to our regret, appealed against that decision rather than acting on the Court of Appeal suggestions. They lost in the Supreme Court on the principal matters. The legal approach was somewhat different. They succeeded in one appeal but, broadly, the Supreme Court agreed that there should be a declaration of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act 1998 against the multiple convictions rule. We call upon the Government to deal with that declaration of incompatibility and reform the law accordingly to bring it into accordance with our convention obligations and, frankly, the requirements of the 1998 Act.

Similarly, the mandatory disclosure of childhood reprimands was upheld in the Supreme Court, but on different grounds. Lord Sumption, who gave the Supreme Court’s lead judgment, looked at the second part of the test for lawfulness under article 8(2) of the convention, on whether the measure is

“necessary in a democratic society”.

In other words, he looked at whether the measure is proportionate. It failed that test.

Lord Sumption found that the legislation involving strict, predefined categories could in principle be proportionate, and that most of these could pass the test. However, he went on to decide that two features of the regime were disproportionate: the blunt instrument effect of the multiple conviction rule, and allowing the disclosure of reprimands for serious offences when they were given to children. Those are two specific areas where it seems to us that there is no excuse at all for the Government not acting to fall into line with the judgment of the Court. We believe there is good reason for them going beyond that, too.

Since then, we have been in correspondence with the Government, drawing attention to these facts and the incompatibility, as we see it, of the Government’s current stance with the Supreme Court judgment. We urge the Government to deal with our outstanding recommendations and, in particular, to set out what steps are being taken to ensure that the DBS suspends the unlawful elements of the current regime without delay. We seek from the Government—perhaps the Minister can help us today—an update on how they now intend to address those elements of the regime to ensure that it fits the legal proportionality test in a meaningful and workable way.

The debate comes against that background. The Secretary of State replied, as always, in courteous terms, but mentioning the need to balance giving employers necessary information, which I concede, with respect to the individual’s right to private life. The Government said they will consider the Committee’s recommendations, but need to fully consider the implications of any change. They said that they are not able to respond formally at this time. When will they be able to respond formally? Lives are being damaged at the present time by this needless failure to comply.

That is why we are pressing for urgent action. The Government can deal with this very easily, it seems to us. They can use section 10 of the Human Rights Act to present to Parliament a remedial order to amend those parts of the disclosure regime that are incompatible with article 8 according to the Court’s judgments. Remedial orders to amend legislation and remove any incompatibilities can be statutory instruments. That does not, therefore, involve primary legislation and the time that that would involve. There is precedent for statutory instruments having been used on a number of occasions.

If the Government do not take that step, they cannot really expect anything other than further legal challenge, and I do not want to see the Government putting themselves in that position. I hope they will take those remedial orders to bring our law into compliance, and that they use the opportunity to make an urgent and comprehensive review of the whole regime, particularly the impacts on those who offend as young children or young adults. That is long-overdue for all the reasons that a number of right hon. and hon. Members gave in interventions. I hope that sets the scene and enables colleagues to participate and raise their points, which may even shorten things as the debate goes along.

Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th November 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor.

In this debate, there is a danger of allowing the ideal to become the enemy of the good and the deliverable. I rather share the regret of the shadow Minister that this is not a larger Bill. I was a great supporter of the Prisons and Courts Bill that was lost prior to the 2017 election, as were all Members on the Treasury Bench today. There were clauses in the Prisons and Courts Bill that I hope will be brought back soon, and the prevention of cross-examination of victims in domestic abuse cases is certainly one of them. It is important not only that that issue be resolved, but that the court-appointed advocates who undertake that work be properly remunerated, and I say that in the context of the ongoing review of legal aid. It will be necessary for those advocates to prepare the cross-examination with particular care, because such cases always require a particular degree of sensitivity.

Removing the ability of the complainant in person to cross-examine is right and proper, but proper means—proportionate with the equality of arms—must be put in place and properly funded to enable the trial to be conducted fairly. I understand the Lord Chancellor’s point that it may not be appropriate to put that in this Bill, but that is not a reason not to bring forward the fully thought through and worked out provisions at the earliest possible opportunity. That is a digression from this worthwhile Bill, which does a number of valuable things, some of which I will mention.

Reference has been made to the debates in the Lords. The Lord Chancellor was right to say that proceedings in the Lords were conducted in a particularly constructive and co-operative spirit. Maybe that was because of the very high percentage of lawyers participating in the debates in the other place. It was a civilised and careful consideration of the Bill, in which I think there was—with respect to the Opposition Front Bench—rather less attempt to politicise some of these provisions than we have heard this afternoon. Many of the measures in the Bill are important and technical reforms that require a statutory basis, and should be welcomed.

I noticed the discussion of changes to judicial titles during the debates in the other place. If I have a slight regret about this Bill, it is one that I share with the noble Lord Mackay of Clashfern about the abolition of the title of justices’ clerk. I can understand why that is proposed, but having practised in the criminal courts for 30-odd years, I have a certain affection for the title, as did Lord Mackay. But that change goes with this Bill, so maybe it is a price that has to be paid for modernity. Perhaps I am being uncharacteristically reactionary in regretting the disappearance of the title of stipendiary magistrate as well. I always thought that “Mr St John Harmsworth, stipendiary magistrate at Marlborough Street” had a greater ring to it than “Mr St John Harmsworth, district judge (magistrates courts)” might ever have done, but I suppose the change did give a certain degree of standardisation.

We have been talking about appropriate levels of qualification. There was a time when justices’ clerks did not have to be legally qualified. I do not say that was a good thing. I remember appearing quite often, as a very young barrister, at Billericay magistrates court in Essex in front of the last non-legally qualified justices’ clerk in the country. He had some sort of grandfathered rights that went back to a time when one could do 10 years as a justices’ clerk and that was regarded as giving one the qualification for appointment. [Interruption.] I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is much shocked by these things. We had to be terribly robust in those days. I remember that I managed to persuade that justices’ clerk to dismiss a case at half time on the basis that a rice flail was not an offensive weapon per se, because it might have had a legitimate use for flailing rice. Whether that was going to happen on Basildon high street, I am not sure.

We have moved on, and the justices’ clerks are much more professional now, and much more fully integrated, so despite my regret about the loss of the title, the new one does reflect more adequately the role that they now have as legal advisers to a very important part of our system—the lay judiciary. In fact, the Justice Committee heard evidence from representatives of the Magistrates Association today regarding the updating of our previous report on the magistracy. They can play a critical role in this. I think that they broadly welcome the attempts at modernisation of practice and procedure that this Bill will assist.

[Alex Chalk]

Like the Chairman of the Justice Committee, I welcome these measures to modernise the process. However, this should not be allowed to distract from what remains a fundamental problem, which is that there are not enough people coming into the judiciary. We need to ensure that they are properly incentivised to do so and rewarded for doing so, because the backlog of cases in the Court of Appeal and elsewhere will not be resolved by these measures alone. Does he agree?

[Robert Neill]

I totally agree. These are useful, practical measures on their own, but they are by no means a solution to the problem. In fact, they are but a very small part of the solution.

I am a bit concerned by some of the Law Society’s suggestions in briefings that some of the broader programme of courts reform is posited on making savings in judicial posts and appointments of about £37.5 million. I hope that the Lord Chancellor—or the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), when she responds to the debate—will be able to set our minds at rest on that. We can make savings by using staff qualified at the appropriate level in what one might term purely interlocutory or procedural matters, but all the decisions on issues of substance in any case—whatever the sum involved or whatever the nature of the charge, in a criminal case—have impacts on the individuals concerned, and they should, in my judgment, be taken only by properly qualified lawyers in an open court process. That is important.

We cannot allow the valuable nature of this Bill to take away from the fact that we need an injection of resource into the criminal justice system. We are seeing a shortfall in appointments to the High Court bench on a regular basis. A number of hon. Members have talked about the integrity of our justice system and the importance of its legal standing, and the quality of the judiciary is key to that. We also see difficulties in making sufficient appointments—full time, at any rate—to the circuit bench. It is easier with recorders, I grant, because they are able to sit part time, but there is a real issue there.

There is also a real issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham knows, about morale. I think that the Lord Chancellor and the Under-Secretary of State understand that and take it on board. I do not expect them to be able to wave a magic wand and solve everything overnight, but it is important to stress these things. Technical changes are useful as far as they go, but they cannot underpin what is essentially a people-based system.

Leaving the EU: Legal Services

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

That is entirely right. Some of the worst examples, before we developed the mutual enforceability of judgments, related to child abduction. In cases involving non-EU states, in which we are a third country, the parent here—frequently the mother—was at a significant legal disadvantage and did not have the protections that we have under the current arrangements, particularly the recast Brussels arrangements. I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that issue.

I want to make two other points very briefly. First, I support my hon. Friend’s point about English law. Those of us who have practised know that, because of the reputation of our system, it is almost the norm to find English law clauses in international contracts. We want that to continue, but it is concerning that the Bar Council and the Law Society have been reporting evidence—so far anecdotal, but strong—that the uncertainty and the risk of a crash-out arrangement without contractual continuity is leading some firms to advise their clients to have clauses excluding English law from contracts. It would be extremely troubling if that were to persist. The longer the uncertainty, the greater the risk.

Simmons & Simmons, a leading law firm, conducted a survey of clients in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands to look at what the courts in those countries might adopt if we were a third country and could not rely on the current arrangements. It reported that 88% of clients—people abroad buying British services—thought that the Government needed to make an early public statement to remove uncertainty, and 50% said that, without that, they would be inclined to move away from choosing English law or jurisdiction clauses. The situation is urgent, so I will back the withdrawal agreement because it will get us into a transitional arrangement, which will give continuity for that period. More importantly, contracts will run beyond the date on which we leave, and significant commercial litigation will almost certainly take more than two years to work its way through. I hope that those issues will also be taken on board.

Will the Minister consider a couple of suggestions by the City of London Corporation and TheCityUK, to which I am grateful, about failsafe devices—I do not like to use the word “backstop”, because it has certain controversial associations—that we could have in parallel with seeking to get the withdrawal agreement through and get into the transition period? It has been suggested that it would be reasonable to look at a means of copying the text of the Rome I and Rome II regulations into our own private international law. Those regulations, of course, determine the applicable law for contractual obligations. As well as seeking the transition, many lawyers think it would be advisable to copy those texts—in parallel, I suggest, as a belt and braces operation—which are much superior to anything that went before, into our law. It is also important that we consider re-signing The Hague convention as an independent party. That would be a failsafe, not my preferred objective, but we need to have those eventualities in mind. That would assist with certainty.

In her Mansion House speech, the Prime Minister talked about the Lugano convention. I think that most people would concede that Lugano, in its original form, is nothing like as good or effective as Brussels I and II in their recast form. They are the gold standard that my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon referred to. Will the Minister take away the idea that, to get us anything like as good as we have under Brussels, any Lugano would have to be a Lugano plus plus plus?

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, for giving way. The comments made in this debate bear a striking similarity to those made in the debate that followed the production of the Committee’s report. That just goes to stress the urgency of the situation. Law firms cannot wait forever to get a degree of certainty; the time for action is fast running out. Does he share my concerns about that?

[Robert Neill]

I agree that there is a danger of us becoming a legal version of groundhog day in these debates. I know that the Minister is absolutely committed to achieving continuity, but there is a real sense of frustration among practitioners because, although there are warm words, promises and statements of intent, and a Brexit law committee in which practitioners are involved is being set up, none the less, despite those strong wishes, the detail on future arrangements remains extremely scarce. If the Prime Minister succeeds in moving us on to the next stage, as I hope she does, it is absolutely critical that that detail is fleshed out at the earliest stage. I hope that we will take the opportunity of strengthening the political declaration that comes as part of the package with the withdrawal agreement, as the Prime Minister said today, so that it makes more reference to legal services in particular.

Future of Legal Aid

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I start by referring to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) for securing this debate on a very important topic.

I make no bones about approaching this debate with a rather personal stake. Before I came to this place, the whole of my working life had been as a barrister practising in the criminal courts, almost invariably publicly funded by legal aid to defend or by the Crown Prosecution Service or the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute. I hope I can recognise that this is not merely an academic matter. These things affect the lives of every one of our constituents and every Member of this House, regardless of party. I hope I will be able to approach the debate in that spirit.

It is a long history that we have to review. LASPO is just one step in the changes to legal aid that we have seen over the years. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) referred to the famous quote by Mr Justice Mathew, later Lord Justice Mathew. At the turn of the 20th century, he said that the courts of England are open to all like the Ritz hotel. I am sure the hon. Gentleman was not actually there at the time—I was not either—but it has become a stock phrase. The point, however, is that Mr Justice Mathew was being ironic; for those who did not have means, there was precious little access to the courts of England at that time.

After that period, we developed a system of legal aid over a number of years. I accept that I was to some degree a beneficiary of that system, but the system was necessary to ensure that justice was done. Thereafter, it may be argued—I think it was part of the rationale behind LASPO—that in some areas, the system did not work as efficiently as it might. I can think of rolled-up conspiracy trials that went on for about six months, where two barristers for each defendant would ask about one question a week. Frankly, that was not an expenditure that could be justified, and it was not targeting things in the right way.

The problem is that successive Governments seeking to reform—it is worth remembering that changes to legal aid did not begin with LASPO or the coalition Government; they were set in train initially, in some measure, during the Blair and Brown Governments—have run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In cutting down on some instances of needless expenditure that went beyond what was necessary to ensure justice, there is always a risk that the pendulum will go too far the other way. Having looked at the matter and tried as a lawyer to look at the evidence, I am sorry to say that I am driven to the conclusion that that is what has happened here.

The good news is that there is an opportunity to review things. It is a shame that it has taken so long, but we would all say, “Better late than never.” I know that the Minister is absolutely committed to ensuring proper, good-quality access for all who genuinely need it. I know her personal commitment to the Bar, the rule of law and our legal system and her personal experience of it, so I know she will approach this matter in the open-minded way she did when she was in practice herself. I urge her to look at the evidence. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith said, the evidence is pretty compelling that changes are needed. I do not expect her to say what those changes are going to be today, but I hope she will take away the message that the evidence does not purely come from pressure groups of self-interested lawyers. Nothing could be further from the case.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Does he agree that our international reputation is at stake? The legal sector is one of the most important in our economy. If we want to continue to be a country that has a global reputation, generating revenues for our economy in respect of international law, we need to ensure that we hold up equality of access to justice for all as a touchstone of our liberty.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He speaks with great experience from his time in practice in serious criminal matters and from his work on the Justice Committee, to which I pay warm tribute. We cannot disaggregate the justice system. As part of our post-Brexit strategy and our “Britain is GREAT” campaign, the Minister’s Department is rightly proclaiming the value of our legal system and legal services, which is real and profound. Their integrity depends on the whole system being properly resourced and funded. It is no good simply to say that we have the best means of commercial dispute resolution and arbitration in the world. It is not enough to say we have probably the best system of civil justice across the piece in the world. It is equally important that we can say the same about our criminal justice system, our family law system and our tribunals system. They are increasingly relevant and important to the whole system.

[Robert Neill]

With his experience, the hon. Gentleman makes an entirely valid point. The Justice Committee has looked at a number of those areas over the past two or three years or so, and we have looked at aspects of access to justice in all its forms. It is partly about legal aid, but there are other matters, too. I will concentrate on legal aid because that is the subject of the debate, but his point about other matters is entirely fairly and well made.

There is a clear case that in attempting to right what was perhaps extravagance in some limited areas, we may have inadvertently done injustice to potential claimants. We need to put that right. The first area that I would suggest to the Minister is important is funding advice, as has already been observed. The legal aid change was predicated—I was there at the time, as was the hon. Member for Hammersmith, and I was prepared to take this on face value—on the idea that it would be a good thing to move away from the comparatively adversarial approach to family cases to mediation and something much more collaborative. That has to be the right thing. The Minister’s Department is recognising that in another sense with the sensible proposals to reform the divorce laws to move away from a confrontational approach. The irony is that so far as legal advice and representation are concerned, those good intentions have not been followed through.

As has rightly been observed, early access to legal advice and a solicitor would point people in the direction of mediation. We can invest significant money in having much more public education so that people can assist themselves, but it may be just as cost-effective—I suspect it would be more cost-effective—to restore some measure of early advice in those family cases. Any good solicitor worth their salt will rightly advise their clients to adopt that course of mediation if it fits the circumstances of the case. Restoring the position there would be a sensible investment to save.

[Alex Chalk]

Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes the best advice that a lawyer can give at an early stage is, “For goodness’ sake, don’t litigate”? If that good advice is given at an early stage, we can have a reasonable expectation that the courts will be properly allocated to deal with those disputes that they should be dealing with.

[Robert Neill]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. What he says applies not only to family work, but to any form of civil litigation and, in truth, to criminal work, too. When I defended people, I regarded it as my first and principal duty to give them an honest assessment of their prospects of successfully defending a charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I agree that there was nothing malign in the intent. The changes were made at a time when the coalition Government were under considerable financial pressure because of the situation that we inherited. I have much sympathy with that, but to adopt the phrase of John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change I change my opinion—what do you do, sir?” The Government need to do that too, because the evidence has been built up, and it is powerful.

For a number of reasons, it was thought necessary to introduce the LASPO reforms at some speed. They were probably not fully worked through, there was no chance to do sufficient impact assessments, and they were not tested. Again, it was not for a malign reason. At the time, there was a compelling budget imperative to get on with it, but it created unintended consequences. As the Prime Minister has observed, we are getting to a stage where, thanks to the Government’s good economic stewardship, we might be able to loosen the purse strings a little in some areas. That gives us the chance to adopt that Keynesian approach and adjust our conclusions to the fresh evidence that has come before us.

Early advice is essential. We have talked about family work and its importance in the criminal system. Any lawyer will advise his client, if the evidence against him or her is overwhelming, of the advantageous discount in sentence for an early plea. Proper advice by specialist lawyers saves time and money, and saves witnesses in criminal cases from the trauma of having to go to court. We should not forget that either, as it is an important part of the system.

Early advice is also important in cases of housing and debt, and related matters. People have come to my surgery, in a comparatively prosperous part of suburban London, having been in effect served with an eviction notice because they did not understand the court papers. Bailiffs were literally coming to the door. We cannot expect people who often have multiple problems in their lives necessarily to be able to resolve such things on their own.

We can certainly make the civil justice system easier to navigate. The reforms to an online court, for example, and better means of entering pleadings and dealing with smaller-sized claims are all perfectly worthy and worth while. However, ultimately, even if a computer can process the pleadings efficiently and effectively, it cannot advise someone on whether there is merit in their claim, whether they have a defence to an action brought against them or how they might best compromise the matter so that they do not, for example, end up on the street or saddled with significant debt. All those things require the legal element, and I suggest that there would be a saving in reinstating some funding there.

I keep in touch with many friends and colleagues at the Bar who now sit on the bench. I sometimes reflect that my career took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. The truth is that anyone in the judiciary—whether from the High Court or, perhaps even more significantly, down to circuit judges and district judges, who shoulder the vast volume of the work, as well as magistrates—will say that the amount of time that is now taken up by litigants in person is placing a serious burden on the system. I go to my local county court and talk to the district judges and the county court judge. Exactly the same thing can be seen at the magistrates court, and I have no doubt that it is replicated across the country.

It is generally thought that a litigant in person will take about three times as long to deal with a case than lawyers would, if they were involved. The upshot is that we are saving cost at one end of the system but piling it on in another part. The net benefit to the public purse is nil—perhaps even negative.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend has been so generous. Does he agree that one of the pillars of our world-renowned legal system is the integrity, skill and impartiality of our judges? It is no secret that they feel quite put upon at the moment, not least on pensions and other matters. Their time is being taken up with extremely complex issues where it is harder for them to achieve justice. Does he not agree that we should take that extremely seriously, so that we continue to have a pipeline of the brightest and the best?

[Robert Neill]

That is right. We could probably have a debate on judicial recruitment and retention.

[Alex Chalk]

Put in for it.

[Robert Neill]

Perhaps we should, and perhaps I will encourage my hon. Friend to join me in doing so.

Litigants in person are a real pressure on the totality of the court system, because if courts are being clogged up by cases that are being slowly presented—where the judge has to hold the litigant by the hand to take them through steadily and ensure that there is no miscarriage of justice—that uses up the time of the court building and the court ushers. It puts pressure upon listing, and means delays in other cases coming on. There are more likely to be adjournments because people will not have prepared the bundles properly or got their evidence together. That is all wasted cost in the system, which some early investment would save.

Those are key areas where more could be done. We perhaps need to look, too, at some areas in relation to tribunals—an increasingly important area of jurisdiction. Not all tribunal cases, of course, need legal representation, but they increasingly deal with more complex matters and more complex areas of law and of fact where it makes sense, for exactly the same reasons, to have proper legal advice.

Joining those thoughts together, I commend to the House the Justice Committee’s reports on access to justice, and on courts and tribunal fees. Although fees are separate from the legal aid regime, the unintended consequence of some of those changes was remarkably similar in making access to justice for deserving—that is the key bit—claimants more difficult. Finally, we recently wrote a report on criminal legal aid. I will end on that—it may be the subject on which I have spent most of my life.

We cannot have a situation where it is extremely difficult to get high-quality young lawyers to go into criminal work. The integrity of our system, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) referred, is seen most visibly in the way in which we deal with criminal cases. If the state, no doubt for good reasons, thinks it necessary to bring charges against an individual to be tested in our courts, it is only right and proper that that individual, having had the resource and power of the state brought against them, has as a matter of equality of arms and basic fairness the ability to defend themselves. To do that properly, they must be able to access lawyers who are as good, as well trained, and as competent as those who prosecute.

To do that, we have to be prepared to remunerate people. We cannot have a situation where criminal barristers are worse off, as they are under some aspects of the advocates’ graduated fee scheme at the moment, if they take on a complex and demanding case—for example, a multi-handed rape—as opposed to a single-handed offence of the same kind, because the extra work is simply not reflected in the fee. Those are precisely the cases— I did many of them myself—where experienced and sensitive advocates on both sides are critical. We are in danger of damaging the supply chain, as far as that is concerned.

It also cannot be right that the system does not remunerate defence lawyers for looking at the unused material in cases. Some of the main cases where miscarriages of justice have occurred, as you will know, Sir Henry, from your experience in these matters, are where there has been a failure in disclosure. Usually it is, as is often the case here, a result of unintended error. Although I have come across one or two cases where I could not say that that was the case, things genuinely go wrong, and it must be possible, in terms of the fairness of a trial, for the defence lawyers to be able to look through the unused disclosed material to ensure that there is nothing that might be exculpatory to their client.

That is only right and proper, and prosecutions have collapsed in high-profile cases because that was not properly done. People have been saved by the integrity of members of the independent Bar, on both sides, who took the opportunity, even though they were not going to be paid for the hours, to go through the unused material and highlight matters that meant that the prosecution could not safely proceed. It seems only right and just that the solicitors and barristers who were on legal aid on those matters should be paid for doing that, because we want to ensure that it is done properly. Let us face it: as those cases highlighted, the sooner it is done the fewer wasted hearings and adjournments, which have bedevilled some of those high-profile cases, there will be. It is not only the right thing but the common-sense thing to do.

We also need to recognise that early advice from solicitors at the police station is critical in criminal cases. Striking evidence was given to the Justice Committee inquiry that the average age of a police station duty solicitor is 47. Young people are not coming into the role because it is simply not remunerated well enough.

That all leads me to the conclusion that Lord Kerr got it right in his Supreme Court judgment on the Unison case. His view, to which I am driven by the evidence, was that regrettably, however good the intentions, the current arrangements under LASPO have adopted too transactional an approach to justice. He said that litigation is not merely a private transaction between parties; it also involves a greater public good. In that case, which was about employment tribunals, it involved the exposure of bad working practices and improvements that might stem from it, but the principle applies to any type of litigation. There is a public good in access to the courts that goes beyond the right—itself important—of the parties themselves to have access to justice. It is a bigger thing—a point that takes us back to our commitment to the rule of law, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham referred to.

I therefore urge a Keynesian approach on the Minister. Keynes was not always wrong, and he was certainly right about this. If we believe in following the evidence, as we all do in any legal process, and if the evidence indicates that things have gone too far the other way and we have the chance to change them, there is no shame in admitting that. It would be honest politics, good government and entirely consistent with the spirit that the Minister and her ministerial colleagues seek to bring to our approach. Where we can put things right, it is better to accept the position, act on the evidence and ensure that we have a better basis for legal funding and access to justice.

Criminal Legal Aid

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

When it comes to the opposition to the changes to the graduated fee scheme, the Government are entitled to feel a little perplexed because the changes were discussed with the leadership of the Bar. Francis Fitzgibbon, QC, then chair of the CBA, said that

“the CBA believes that the new scheme is a great improvement on what has gone before, and we should at least give it a cautious welcome as a step in the right direction.”

Secondly, the aim of the changes, to rebalance public funding so it rewards the junior Bar more fairly, is unassailable. On that point, I will support the Government tonight.

It would be a great mistake to misread the message coming from the Bar, because my clear sense is that its protest is not really about the intricacies of these specific provisions. Instead, it reflects years of pent-up anguish and frustration about the state of the criminal defence profession and, indeed, a profound sense of foreboding for its future.

The Bar is in a fragile state and needs decisive support, but it does not lie in the mouth of the Labour Opposition to make criticisms about on that, because I know full well from having been a practitioner at the time that, at a time of rising budgets across the piece in health and education during the late 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century, Labour failed time after time to put more money into the Bar. In 2003, Tony Blair spoke of the “gravy train” of legal aid. In 2006, Lord Falconer referred to the legal aid bill as being “unsustainable”, and there were further plans to cut it in 2010. One has to consider those remarks with great care.

I wish to make some brief observations in the time available; I wanted to say a lot more but I shall confine myself to this. When considering the amount we spend on justice and legal aid, we should put it in context. Treasury Red Book figures show that total public sector spending for 2018-19 is expected to be £809 billion. The total Ministry of Justice budget is less than £7 billion. To put that in context, more is spent on welfare and pensions in two weeks than is spent on justice, and the amount spent on international aid—about £14 billion—is approximately double the entire justice budget. To put it another way, we spend more on the aid effort in Syria alone than we do on the entire legal aid budget in our country.

There are concerns about where this all heads. There will be difficulties with recruitment and retention, and we cannot have a situation where this is a just a job for posh kids with a private income. There is also a risk of injustice. If people are not available to do the work we require them to do, it will not just be a case of people being convicted when they should not be; there is a danger of people not being convicted if juries take matters into their own hands and decide that they want to deliver their own brand of justice.

I am not suggesting this is easy at all, but I want to make three simple points. First, if the criminal Bar falls over, the cost to the state will increase dramatically. The overheads involved in employing hundreds of barristers in a fully fledged public defender service will be extortionate and unaffordable. Secondly, the culture will change, and people will be far less likely to work after-hours and at the weekend. Thirdly, the sums of money required to secure the criminal Bar are modest. Barristers are not seeking wealth; they are seeking viability.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that last point about the motivation of barristers. Does he agree that one of the important qualities that the independent Bar brings, as indeed does an objective solicitor, is precisely that word—objectivity? The objectivity brought by a barrister has been seen in many cases, for example, those where disclosure failures have occurred, and in the willingness to root out what is absolutely necessary, fearlessly, on behalf of a client. That cannot be replicated.

[Alex Chalk]

That objectivity is vital. In the United States, they have dyed-in-the-wool prosecutors. I remember the case of Michael Jackson, with Tom “Mad Dog” Sneddon; all these people do is prosecute. One great value we have in this country is that people prosecute and defend. That level of objectivity is fantastic. It also means that people are incentivised to go the extra mile, because you are only as good as your last brief.

The criminal Bar is precious. This is not about sentiment. This is a flinty-eyed assessment of a real and pressing need. Once this matter is over tonight—I will vote with the Government, because the Opposition’s proposal is, with respect, misconceived—I urge the Government to look again at how the criminal Bar can be supported, as there is a pressing need.

Leaving the EU: Justice System

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 29th March 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Ninth Report of the Justice Committee, Session 2016-17, implications of Brexit for the justice system, HC 750, and the Government response, HC 651.

It is a pleasure, Ms Buck, to serve under your chairmanship.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this very important issue here in Westminster Hall, and I thank all members of the Select Committee on Justice—both past and present, and many of them are here today—for the input that they made to our report, which of course was initially produced in the 2016-17 Session.

We received the Government response to our report on 1 December last year. I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), in her place today. She has joined the Department since that date, so if I press a little harder on some things than on others, I am sure she will understand that they are not meant in any personal spirit. I think she also understands, from her own experience at the Bar, why there is a great need for more precision and more detail about what is going to happen.

I can perhaps encapsulate the Committee’s concerns following the Government’s response to our report by saying that the response is long on good intentions and on setting out an ambitious vision, but short on specifics and the details of how that ambitious vision will be achieved, and there is a concern that it may not be realistically achievable. The European Parliament’s response earlier this month indicates that it is by no means persuaded that all of the Government’s ambitious ideas for taking this matter forward will be achievable. We need what the Government have set out to be written—or rather painted—in the boldest red ink.

I suspect, given the tenor of the Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech and subsequent events, that we will be pragmatic about some of these issues—indeed, both sides will need to be pragmatic. Because the law depends above all upon certainty, we will have to come to decisions and pragmatic compromises sooner rather than later. My objective in today’s debate is to press the Government further on the need to be more precise and specific about exactly how we will deal with these matters, and also, perhaps, to inject a sense of urgency.

Of course, I ought to refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, although I do not practice law now. There is concern about the economic position of the English legal services sector post-Brexit. We had a debate about that yesterday in Westminster Hall, and I am grateful to the Minister for her response then. I am sure that we will want to discuss that matter further. I will not dwell on it in detail now, but it indicates how we need to be alert and on our guard if we wish to continue to protect the pre-eminence of our English legal system. It certainly enjoys international pre-eminence at the moment—it is the jurisdiction of choice for international commercial litigation and, of course, is regarded as a gold standard in independence, fairness and integrity. As I say, we have to be on our guard in case, post Brexit, other jurisdictions seek to compete with us—legitimately enough, from their point of view—because international commercial litigation, and particularly the variety of international contracts, is a competitive matter.

I notice that there is now an English language and English commercial law court being opened up in Paris. I must say that those of us who have practised in some of the Crown courts on the south-eastern circuit might have found the idea of a brief to go to Paris quite an attractive proposition by comparison to going, say, to Havering magistrates court. However, this is not an entirely jokey matter, because, as was indicated in the debate yesterday—I will not repeat all of my remarks from then—the English legal services sector is a very significant revenue earner for this country. I should say the British legal services sector, of course, as we should not forget Scotland in this regard. But there is a much broader issue here as well, which is encompassed in our report. A number of my hon. Friends want to talk about some of the specific matters in our report, so I will perhaps sketch over some of the broad outlines.

I have indicated our firm view that we need more detail, more precision and a greater sense of urgency. We must have assurance from the Government that legal issues are being entirely mainstreamed into the work of the Brexit negotiations. The Ministry of Justice has helpfully set up a legal services working group, but this is not just about legal services; it is also about the impact upon the judiciary and the operation of the courts, which, ultimately, are perhaps even more significant.

I know that the senior judiciary are extremely alive to this issue and are doing a lot of work on it themselves. However, I submit that, consistent with maintaining the judiciary’s independence, we need to find a means whereby the judiciary’s practical views and experience are genuinely fed in to those who are negotiating, for example, on our future relationship with the European Court of Justice and on how we deal with retained law, which I will come back to in a moment. I have to say that I am not yet convinced, whatever the good intentions and hard work of the Ministry of Justice, that that is fully feeding in to those who are negotiating for us through the Department for Exiting the European Union and in Brussels. The Government need to address that urgently. It seems to the Committee that we need clarity on those key issues of the position vis-à-vis the ECJ and retained law. There is still real concern about the effectiveness and adequacy of the provisions in clause 6 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

It is instructive, perhaps, to look at the evidence of the President of the Supreme Court, Baroness Hale of Richmond, given on 21 March, which is only about a week or so ago, to the Constitution Committee of the other place. In essence, the position is that at the moment, clause 6 gives what on the face of it would appear to be wide discretion in how the British courts will apply and have regard to European Community law once we have left. There is a perfectly understandable precedent, of course—it is perfectly well established that British courts will take into account relevant law from other jurisdictions when it is applicable to the facts and law of the case that they are considering.

However, there is a difficulty. There are phrases in the Bill stating, for example, that a tribunal “may have regard” to European Community law—there are those terms, “may” and “have regard”—but then there is a get-out clause stating that it

“need not have regard to anything done on or after exit day by the European Court, another EU entity or the EU but may do so if it considers it appropriate to do so.”

The President of the Supreme Court said that she found that drafting “very unhelpful”. If the President of the Supreme Court says that, the Government ought to sit up, take notice and do something about it.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a really powerful point. Is not the issue here that judges do not want to be dragged into the political arena? Although courts have shown themselves well able to look at other jurisdictions for a potential steer on how to interpret things, when it comes to the EU the process is so overlaid with politics that judges could find themselves accused of becoming, in the phrase that we have heard, “enemies of the people”. We should not be in that field, and judges deserve the protection of knowing exactly what they are required to interpret.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the importance of that point cannot be overstated. I am absolutely confident that the Minister gets that point entirely, because we saw utterly disgraceful attacks by some of the press upon the judiciary for carrying out their constitutional task. Those words should never have been said, and I am glad to say that the current Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor has made very clear his support for the independence of the judiciary and the respect with which that independence should be treated. I know that the Minister entirely shares that view.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is quite right. Broad wording on such a political topic lays the judges open to such things, because if they are obliged to act according to the clause that I mentioned—as they will be if it is passed in its current form—they will inevitably run the real risk of being accused of having taken, in effect, political decisions. That is why the President of the Supreme Court spoke in the way she did. She said:

“We don’t think ‘appropriate’ is the right sort of word to address to judges. We don’t do things because they are appropriate, we look at things because they are relevant and helpful. We do not want to be put in the position of appearing to make a political decision about what is and is not appropriate.”

That is exactly the point that my hon. Friend made so powerfully.

I know the clause is being debated in the other place, but as it stands it just does not give judges the protection to which they are legitimately entitled. I hope the Government will address that as a matter of urgency. That is not only the view of the current President of the Supreme Court; it has been echoed by her predecessor, Lord Neuberger, and by the previous Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. That is overwhelming and compelling evidence that there has to be movement on this point. It is time for the Government to do that. I suspect they would find good will across the House if they could find a means of properly addressing those concerns of the judiciary—one has to stress that those are their concerns.

The Attorney General said it was not the Government’s desire to put judges in that position. I entirely accept his good faith in that. He said:

“We will continue to work with them to provide the necessary clarity.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 389.]

That is good, but it has to be translated into legislation that is fit for purpose. We are not at that stage yet, and we need much more clarity. I hope that the Minister will be able to deal with that point and take it back to the Attorney General and those dealing with the Bill.

The issue of how we deal with the ECJ is important, but we also need to be realistic. If we want to continue some of the partnership arrangements we have, there will have to be dispute resolution processes. All the agreements will need an arbitral mechanism. I hope the Government will take on board the strong views of legal practitioners across the country that a desire to displace any role for the ECJ—as opposed to removing “direct jurisdiction”, to use the Prime Minister’s phrase, which is a different concept—may create more difficulties than is worthwhile. There are perhaps some limited areas, such as the interpretation of specific matters of financial services regulation and some matters of data regulation, where there might be sense in making a pragmatic compromise rather than having to set up a number of ad hoc arbitral mechanisms such as tribunals or whatever we might call them. That is a key and pressing issue.

There are other issues that concern the Committee on how we will deal with criminal justice and judicial co-operation. They have already been addressed at some length, and I know other colleagues will deal with them today. The point I stress is that the Prime Minister has already indicated her firm and resolute intention to have an ongoing agreement so that we can share in police and judicial co-operation and security co-operation. She is absolutely right to do that, and I support her in doing so, but we have to be realistic. If we are to benefit from such things as the European criminal records information exchange system, the work of Europol and the information exchange that is so critical to the pursuit of modern crime—whether that is terrorism or organised crime of other kinds—we have to have our data arrangements aligned. That must inevitably mean following the EU27’s data regulation and any jurisprudence that subsequently develops that touches on that. Otherwise, with the best will in the world, the police and security agencies in those EU27 countries, which include some of our most vital partners, will not be able to share information with us lawfully. We do not yet have clarity over how that will be dealt with, and we must have that swiftly.

There is also the issue of civil and family justice co-operation. I mentioned the importance of the civil sector, but we have to ensure that we have a firm arrangement for the mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments. That is certainly important for the commercial litigation sector, but it applies to all contractual arrangements. If someone has a contract, they want to be able to sue if it is breached. There needs to be a remedy that can realistically be enforced. We must have more clarity on that. As I have observed on more than one occasion, there are literally thousands of UK citizens—as it happens, most of them are mothers—who benefit from the ability to have maintenance payments enforced against former partners now living in other EU jurisdiction countries. It is unconscionable that those people, working hard under difficult circumstances, would lose the ability to have those payments enforced by a simple blanket mechanism. Warm words are not enough. That needs to be sorted out before we finally leave, whether that is in transition or the end state.

I hope that is a sufficient overview of some of our areas of concern and why we are pressing the Government on them. I look forward to the Minister’s response and the other contributions from colleagues on some of the other specific areas of this important debate, which I have no doubt the Justice Committee will return to in the coming weeks and months.

Leaving the EU: Legal Services

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. At the moment, the UK is the jurisdiction of choice for the majority of commercial law contracts, litigation that follows from them, and commercial law arbitration, but we cannot take that for granted. A number of English language commercial courts that apply UK law have already been established elsewhere in the world. As I understand it, another is proposed in Amsterdam, which would clearly have an impact once we leave the EU. Mutual recognition of judgments is one of the UK legal sector’s key asks, and he anticipated with great timeliness that I was about to move on to what the Law Society, the Bar Council, the City of London Corporation, TheCityUK and others in the sector are looking for from the Government to maintain the position of UK legal services once we leave the EU.

The legal services sector’s key priorities are as follows. First, EU27 legal providers should be permitted to provide services in the UK, and vice versa—UK legal providers should be able to provide services in the EU27—on the basis of mutual recognition of regulatory regimes. That would enable European lawyers based in London firms and UK lawyers based in the EU27 to continue to advise and represent their clients.

Secondly, the UK and the EU27 should continue automatic mutual recognition of legal qualifications gained before and during—and after, I submit—the UK’s exit from the EU. That ought to be part of the agreement we seek. Otherwise, we would be in the perverse position that an English lawyer who, like me, is also qualified in the Republic of Ireland—I am a member of the Irish Bar—was able to continue to practise in the EU27 using their Irish qualification but not their English qualification. That is why there has been a considerable increase in the number of English solicitors being admitted to the Law Society of Ireland and English barristers seeking to be called to the Irish Bar. It would be much more sensible to retain those people in the UK as part of a mutual deal with our EU partners.

Thirdly, as my hon. Friend said, it is critical that UK court judgments can continue to be enforced in the courts of the EU27. That obviously applies to commercial law, but it also impacts maintenance payments, for example. Let us say that the partner from whom a UK national is having difficulty getting support for their child is an EU national who is living back in the EU27. Maintenance payments, like a judgment in the largest commercial litigation, can currently be enforced in any EU27 court and implemented by the authorities of any EU27 member state by virtue of our membership of the EU. One regulation covers the whole lot. It is important that we seek to preserve that arrangement. It would be extremely complicated if we had to enter into arrangements with individual EU member states, so we must try to do it en bloc.

It is also to the benefit of the EU27 to have the judgments of their courts recognised and enforced in the UK. There would be mutual advantage to preserving that arrangement, and it is most important that that is done without any break in continuity. Contracts of all manners are being entered into that, in all likelihood, will run beyond the date on which we leave the European Union. It is essential that people can enter into such contracts with sufficient certainty that they will be enforceable throughout the transition period and in the end state after we leave.

It is suggested that, as well as seeking the broadest possible deal with the European Union on that, the UK should consider re-signing The Hague convention as an independent party. I suggest that the two are complementary—it is not either/or. We are currently a party to that convention by virtue of our membership of the EU, but that will no longer be the case once we leave. I ask the Minister to take on board the concern that, in the negotiations, we should seek a waiver from the EU to allow us to re-sign as an independent party prior to Brexit so that there is no delay in ratification.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and I entirely agree with him about The Hague convention, but does he agree that the great prize would be replicating the provisions of the recast Brussels I regulation, which derives from EU regulation 1215/2012? That is the gold standard. It is the best option, and The Hague convention is very much a fall-back provision.

Euratom Membership

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing this important and valuable debate. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) that Euratom brings great benefits to this country.

We should do all that is legally possible to maintain those benefits by whatever means it takes. We should not allow any thoughts of ideological purity to get in the way of achieving that. My judgment is that if we can legally remain within Euratom, we should do so. I understand the points that were well and eloquently made by my right hon. and hon. Friends who have suggested that legal advice goes against that, but it would not be the first time that Government legal advisers have been shown to be wrong and it would not be the first time that the Commission’s legal advice has been proved wrong.

[Alex Chalk]

If there is political will, any legal obstacle can be easily overcome.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is my next point.

Unless the Government seek clarity—there is a dispute among lawyers about the matter—the likelihood is that an interested party may itself seek to litigate and it would be much better if the Government seized the initiative and said that politically they wanted to stay in and would do whatever is necessary legally to achieve that objective. That would be altogether better. If they cannot achieve that, certainly an association agreement would be the next best thing and I suggest it should be the Swiss model because the small amount of jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is a minor price to pay for the benefits. I cannot believe that anyone would object to the very modest movement of skilled nuclear scientists who only benefit this country. Otherwise, we would be cutting off our economic and scientific nose to spite our political face and we should not do such a thing. That would be a good compromise, but we should stay in until such time as that is in place because we cannot have any risks in the interim.

Prison Safety

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

On deliverability of the ambitious and welcome programme, does my hon. Friend agree that a healthy and safe ratio between staff and prisoners is vital and that ultimately we must grasp the nettle? There must either be more prison officers or fewer prisoners to get the ratio back into equilibrium.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is right. There is no other solution but to grasp the nettle. Some will assert that we should increase the staff, and they have to grasp the nettle that that means more public spending. I do not think most of the public are in the mood for that, but I think the public mood towards prison reform has changed markedly in the last 20 years. It has changed during my time in the House. It was apparent in debates during the last Parliament that people are, rightly in my judgment, much more open-minded now about the need for prison reform. No one is beyond rehabilitation—that is an exaggeration: precious few people are.

I spent 25 years practising at the criminal Bar. I dealt with some very nasty people indeed and some dangerous people, some of whom needed to be locked up and kept away. I also dealt with some stupid people. [Interruption.] I leave aside members of my profession or even the judiciary, but I dealt with some people who were stupid and got themselves into trouble because of that. I dealt with people who did not have an education or skills and who made certain choices. They got their lives into a mess through drugs, alcohol and disrupted families. I suspect that they make up the majority. Whenever I visit the women’s estate and talk to women prisoners, I find that the vast majority of one kind or another have certain issues in their lives—often mental health problems and related issues.

We cannot treat this matter in a simplistic fashion. Simply saying, “Keep the numbers up and just produce more staff” makes no sense to my mind as a Conservative given the need to keep public spending under control, because we would be giving a demand-led blank cheque; it also makes no sense in terms of the ambitious agenda for social reform that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, the Minister and I believe in.

It seems to me that the answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), based on his own considerable experience as a practising barrister and his having seen exactly the same people, is yes, we must grasp that nettle. It is pretty obvious to my mind that the answer is a greater emphasis on rehabilitation, education and reform, and that is why getting safety right is all the more critical.

I think that all or almost all of us share the same objectives, but the question now is about willing and providing the means to achieve them, and that is what our report was about. I hope that the Minister will tell me that the Government response was a measure of work in progress. I quite understand that when a new ministerial team come in, they need to reflect, take stock, review priorities and consider, in the light of the circumstances that they have inherited, the shape that they want progress to take, but if he told me that, it would be further reassurance that the progress will be genuine and speedy. The Secretary of State talked about reform proceeding “at pace”. Can we have a bit more flesh on the bones of what is there? We ask that in a spirit of complete good will towards the Government’s intentions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

When I was a Minister, I was sometimes portrayed unfairly in the press, so I shall adopt a practical approach: let us see what happens. But I do think it important that we do not, any of us, send any signals that reform is less pressing or less important. Were that to be the case, it would be disappointing and, I think, an error. I am conscious of the clarification that the Secretary of State issued after her appearance before the Justice Committee, and I will take her at her word on that, but we need the measures that we talked about to be brought forward swiftly. If Brexit means Brexit, to adopt a phrase, pace means pace, but pace requires detail in order for there to be credibility in how things are delivered. That is the approach that I take—we want to be constructive and assist the Government on what I think is the right path, provided that it is followed through consistently.

I shall touch on just a few more matters before I finish so that other hon. Members can speak—this is a well-attended debate. First, I have referred to the matrices showing that everything is going in the wrong direction at the moment, such as on assaults, self-harming and deaths in custody. All those figures are going the wrong way. The data are set out well in a report that is readily available in the public domain, so I shall not cite a raft of figures, because I suspect that that would not add a great deal, but the trend is clear.

Secondly, despite genuine efforts by NOMS to recruit staff, the number of new staff coming in is significantly offset by the lack of retention. The problem is that we are very often losing some of the most experienced officers—some of the coolest heads. When there are difficulties to do with safety, such as dangerous situations arising on a wing, one wants to have experienced prison officers around to deal with it.

The fewer there are, the greater the risk that things will escalate rather than being brought back under control, so there is a direct link between retention and safety, which we highlight in our report. That is one thing that the Government need to do more to address. We are not convinced that NOMS has a deep-seated understanding of what causes that lack of retention, why recruitment is increasingly difficult and what underpins both those factors, so we need more flesh on the bones of that.

Let me deal briefly with some other matters. Steps have been taken—again, let us recognise that—on the possession of knives and new psychoactive substances in prison, but I am not sure that we are fully on top of that issue, either, particularly in relation to those new substances. The issue is one of technology: the ability to fly in substances and a raft of other things with drones is enormous.

Of course, that brings us back to the circular issue referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. If, as we have seen on our visits, people are locked up in their cells for 23 hours a day, and if there are illegal substances in prisons, prisoners’ ability to make use of them is all the greater given their close confinement and the growth of gang culture and peer pressure. The more that people are out of their cells and doing something purposeful, the better it is to combat the misuse of substances. That cannot be done sustainably with the current prison population, which is a very important issue.

The direction is right, but we need to be more vigorous and radical in tackling some of those important issues. That brings me back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell): we are disappointed about some of the detail in the Government response. We called for the Ministry and NOMS jointly to produce an action plan on prison safety, addressing the underlying factors behind violence, self-harm and suicide. We said that that plan should include preventive and punitive measures, because those two things have to be in the toolbox of any prison governor. We also wanted objectives and indices. The Secretary of State is right to commit to a prison safety and reform plan—that is good—but it is the missing detail that people need to see urgently.

We asked for quarterly reports on progress on the plan, rather than the six-monthly reports suggested in the Government response, not as a matter of caprice but because we wanted the reports to coincide with the publication of the quarterly safety in custody statistics. Otherwise, frankly, they are pretty meaningless. The whole point of transparency and scrutiny is to have the two sets of figures together so that we can compare and contrast. That is why I urge the Government to rethink their response on that matter. The information is collated, and there is no doubt that it is available—I am sure it is available to Ministers on a regular basis. There is no practical reason at all why it cannot be made available in the way we suggest in our report. It is not an expensive or a difficult ask, in other words.

We are also looking for specific information on incidents of disorder in prisons, including the deployment of the national tactical response group; a more comprehensive set of data about staffing; and performance ratings for individual prisons. We do not know yet whether the previous Secretary of State’s league table initiative will continue, but certainly we want performance ratings for prisons. I accept that it is not always easy to make complete comparisons, but on safety it is, actually. We can compare data on safety even if we cannot do so for rehabilitation in a particular prison, so there is no reason why those data cannot be available.

The same goes for data on the average number of hours each day that prisoners spend locked in their cells—I stress that in particular. I mentioned this earlier, but the amount of time that people spend locked up is entirely linked to safety levels. Boredom, the abuse of substances, the internet and a raft of other things, and the peer pressure of groups of people locked up together in a confined space for long periods all contribute directly to a deteriorating safety environment.

[Alex Chalk]

Is it not also the case that meaningful rehabilitation does not take place inside a prison cell? It is only when people are outside their cells and engaging in courses—be they on anger management, substance abuse or whatever—that they can truly come to terms with the problems that may, in some cases, be the reason why they got into prison in the first place.

EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

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

A few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) made a passionate and magnificent speech in support of our membership of the European Union. He and I have been on the same side on this matter for many years, and I endorse every word that he said.

Let me begin by referring, like the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), to matters that particularly affect my constituents. The largest employment sector in Bromley and Chislehurst, in Greater London, is its business and financial services sector. According to the Office for National Statistics business and employment survey, 32.4% of my constituents and their families work in that sector. It is critical to their local economy—and that is leaving aside all the jobs in the supply chain that result from the income that it provides. It is crucial to the London economy, which benefits the whole of the United Kingdom. Leaving the European Union would, without question, damage the interests of the financial services industry, in which Britain is a world leader. This is an issue in which I have taken some interest in my capacity as secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on wholesale financial markets and services.

We have a winner here, and we have an opportunity not just to make it survive, but to make it better and stronger in a reformed European Union. That is why, when I intervened on the Foreign Secretary’s speech, I wanted to stress the importance of the Prime Minister’s renegotiation achievements. There were two key achievements. First, there was the commitment that British financial firms based here in the UK, and therefore outside the eurozone—of which we will never be members: we will never be subject to its internal governance rules or their bail-outs—will none the less have the significant advantage of being able to trade freely within the eurozone and the rest of the single market. That puts us in a unique position which no other free trade agreement replicates.

If we add to that the commitment in that renegotiation to completion of the capital markets union, that gives us a double opportunity to push forward in this area, at which we excel. It would be lunacy to walk away from that opportunity. Of course the Prime Minister is right to say we could survive outside the EU; London and the financial services industry, and my constituents, would survive, but I believe there is a real risk that they would be impoverished and I see nothing patriotic in running the risk of impoverishing my constituents or the people of this country.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and makes an important point about patriotism. Does he agree that key to Britain’s national security is our economic security, and at a time when as a nation we are still borrowing as a nation more than the entire defence budget we need every single penny of public revenue to ensure our economy is strong, our finances are strong and our country is strong?

Prisons: Planning and Policies

Debate between Robert Neill and Alex Chalk

Thursday 15th October 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Ninth Report from the Justice Committee of Session 2014-15, on Prisons: planning and policies, HC 309, and the Government response, Cm 9129.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. This debate is a voyage of discovery for many of us, because very few of us were members of the Select Committee at the time the report was drawn up—[Interruption]—apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who will therefore carry the bulk of the burden on the report’s technical detail.

As well as welcoming you to the Chair, Mr Walker, this debate gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor as Chairman of the Committee, Sir Alan Beith. He was not only a very distinguished Committee Chairman, but a good friend to many of us, and I want to put on record how grateful I am for the support and wise advice that he has given me since I took over the chairmanship. I am sure that that will be recognised across the House.

This will not be a long debate. The report itself is not long, but it is important because it touches on key issues relating to prison policy. Interestingly, that has become topical once more with the very welcome comments from the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. I am very grateful to see the Minister for prisons in his place today, and I thank him for the courtesy that he has already shown to our Committee in responding to a number of inquiries that we have made of him.

In essence, I want to concentrate on two issues that the report highlights: first, the size of the prison population, and secondly, the sort of regime and purposeful behaviour that we ought to see in our prisons. It is worth bearing in mind that against the background to this report, the most up-to-date figures, as of 2 October this year—after the report was published—show that the prison population is now 85,973. That is one of the highest rates of incarceration in western Europe, and we ought to pause to think about why that is the case. We know, too, that the National Offender Management Service is operating at about 98% of its usable operational capacity, so things are pretty tight in our prison regime. NOMS is—properly, I think—going through a period of substantial change, with significant modernisation work, and the Department will have to take its share of the necessary savings that we have to make as part of the deficit reduction strategy.

A number of members of the current Committee and I had the chance to visit Holloway prison recently, and I want to pay tribute to the governor and her staff there. Despite the pressures on them, they are clearly doing a great deal to modernise, improve and upgrade their work, and they are getting very good results indeed. There are some very dedicated people in our Prison Service, and it is worth putting that on record.

That need for change, which is recognised at Holloway and right across the prison estate, has two aspects: first, the new-for-old policy, and secondly, the benchmarking scheme. The new-for-old scheme seeks to replace old and inefficient prisons with newer and more efficient establishments. Holloway is a good example of that. I remember, many years ago, as a young barrister, having to go to see clients in the old Holloway prison, which was a pretty dreadful establishment. The work that has been done with the modern building has made things much better. I think the last prison I had to visit was Chelmsford, and we are still dealing there with old establishments and old buildings. We only have to look at Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville to see that the nature of the estate constrains our professionals’ ability to do rehabilitative work. I think that we all very much welcome the Lord Chancellor’s comments and his commitment to look at finding the means to replace old estates with something new and fit for purpose. The report flags up that very important aspect of the work.

The benchmarking was described by Phil Wheatley, who was the former director of NOMS, as, in effect, finding what

“the most efficient way of doing everything”

is and then making sure that everybody does it. That is why a series of benchmarks were established—those of us who have been involved in local government will be familiar with the concept and approach.

The Committee agreed with both those matters in principle but raised a number of substantive concerns: first, the rising level of overcrowding; secondly, the fall in prison performance and the extent to which understaffing may be an issue; and thirdly, prisoner and staff safety in prisons. A linkage between all those matters is clear from the report.

Overcrowding is important. It is not adequate simply to say, “Overcrowding is merely about people sharing a cell.” It goes beyond that, as the Lord Chancellor rightly recognised in his recent comments. The current chief inspector of prisons has said that two problems stem from overcrowding. The first is the whole question of physical conditions. Prison is punishment in itself—the deprivation of liberty—and we have a duty to make sure that those who are deprived of their liberty, as a legitimate punishment, none the less have decent conditions in which to live. I know that the Minister is very committed to that, but we need to make sure that that is actually delivered in practice.

The second point is the impact that overcrowding has on access to purposeful activity, and my 25 years or so in practice at the Bar made me very conscious of that. All too often, I saw clients of mine on a merry-go-round, almost. They would go into prison and experience a lack of any purposeful activity while they were there, a lack of rehabilitation, and a lack of follow-up, and lo and behold, they were putting me in fees again perhaps two or three years later. That should not be the case. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) nor I, as lawyers, want to have repeat clients frankly. It is a failure of the system, but we see too much of that in the current circumstances. Overcrowding makes it harder to do the rehabilitative work that is so critical, as the Government recognise. Many prisons have to operate split regimes at the moment, where half the prisoners are locked up in the mornings while the other half engage in activity, then they swap. That constraint is needless and makes it harder to deliver what we want to do.

The figures on the current state of overcrowding have been rising steadily, as has always been conceded. There were some errors in the recording of that in 2013-14, but 24.1% overcrowding seems to be the accepted figure now for that year.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Is it not right to point out that certain exceptional areas of overcrowding can be concealed beneath that average figure? I think—I may be wrong—that, in particular, York and Swansea prisons have a dramatically higher level of overcrowding. To the greatest extent possible, we need to ensure that that is not concentrated too much in individual prisons.

[Robert Neill]

That is absolutely right. I remember going to Swansea some years ago, where there was overcrowding even then, and that continues to be the case. That variation is really not desirable. There is a raft of constraints, and that is why, again, the new-for-old policy is hugely important. HMP Thameside, for example, was almost specifically built with the intention that it should be crowded. It was almost designed on the basis of a lack of capacity—before this Government’s watch, I hasten to add. However, we do need to address some real issues in that regard.

The Government are right to say that there are constraints on reducing overcrowding, because this is a demand-driven activity. We rightly cannot seek to influence directly how the courts sentence individual offenders. There will come a time, inevitably, when it is necessary for judges to pass custodial sentences. I know, as does any practitioner, that they do not do that lightly but, at the end of the day, the Government have to provide the necessary capacity to deal with that sentencing regime. At the moment—the Minister may have more up-to-date figures than me—the National Audit Office puts the cost of eliminating overcrowding at about £900 million. I accept that it is not possible to afford that in the immediate term, but it is important to have a programme that, over time, through capital investment, will bring on the new estate that will make dealing with the issue much easier.

Overcrowding is going to be an issue, but we need to manage and deal with that. That is why the Committee was anxious to see more attention given to overcrowding than has perhaps been the case. I think that the current Secretary of State recognised that in several comments; he certainly did so in the evidence that he gave in the first session of the new Committee in this Parliament.

The recommendation was to develop a broad range of measures to reflect the realities of prison conditions. Frankly, the Government were not willing to take that recommendation on board. I hope that they will think about that. The measurement at the moment may not be realistic in terms of capturing the actuality on the ground. We need not be wedded to any particular formula. There is no magic about the way the measurement is done. It is a question of what the most efficient measure is. I hope simply that the Minister and his colleagues will reflect again on our recommendation, particularly in the light of the Government’s new commitment to rehabilitation. Perhaps that is something we can do, because it is important that we have a measure that is measurable. One piece of evidence that we were given in the previous Committee was that the current system of measurement makes it very hard to measure the improvements and the outputs and inputs.

The other matters on which we concentrated were benchmarking and staffing levels. The inspectorate of prisons uses a four-stage healthy prison test in relation to its benchmarking. The four key figures are safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement. I do not think that anyone would disagree with those. Sadly, there has been, according to the evidence that the Select Committee received, a fall in those standards in the past couple of years. Each year, the inspector of prisons makes their report and provides a percentage figure for the inspected adult prisons and young offenders institutes that have been rated as good or reasonably good. Regrettably, the percentage of prisons so rated has fallen on each of those criteria, particularly in the past year.

Our report, comparing the figures for 2013-14 with those for 2014-15, showed that there had been a number of falls, which it is worth putting on the record. In relation to prisons inspected, the safety rating had fallen from 69% to 42%. The respect rating had fallen from 67% to 58%. For purposeful activity, it had fallen from 61% to 42%, and for resettlement it had fallen from 75% to 53%. It is fair to say that there has been an updating in the latest annual report, which I think was not available to the Select Committee at the time. It now shows safety at 52%, respect at 64%, but very worryingly from my point of view, purposeful activity at 39% and then resettlement at 57%. The linkage between purposeful activity and resettlement is, many of us would suggest, very significant. Although there are improvements on some scores, there is clearly more work to do. The Minister may have to hand yet more up-to-date figures, which I am sure he will share with us.

There is some improvement, therefore, but it does leave, overall—on the information that we have—the proportion achieving good or reasonably good ratings at about 40%. That means that 60% of prisons are not getting into that proper category. That is obviously a matter of concern. I know that the Government share that concern; I am very conscious that the Government are not complacent about the issue, but it is important that we put it on the record and see what is proposed to deal with it to take it forward.

Let me deal in particular with rehabilitative outcomes. I referred to the visit to Holloway by the current Committee. A number of my hon. Friends were on that visit. We were particularly interested to see how the restrictions on release on temporary licence sometimes denied mothers the chance to engage with childcare on ROTL and opportunities to work in the community before release. That is not, I think, for want of will among the staff involved, but it seems that we are not yet there in getting that delivered on the ground. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what more can be done on that.

The previous Committee called witnesses to find out as best they could what might have caused the fall in standards. The suggestion was that there was an issue about the incentives and earned privileges scheme—that, of course, allows prisoners to access benefits in exchange for responsible behaviour—and about staffing levels. That was the view put by the witnesses. It has to be said in fairness that the Government took a converse view, saying that essentially this is a demand-led matter involving unexpected and more challenging prison population levels and a cultural increase in suicide rates, which I think is accepted and is a matter that we have to deal with. There is no simple, one-size-fits-all answer to all this, but it does warrant our continuing attention and concern.