Prisons and Courts Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Philip Davies

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Lady, who follows these issues closely, makes a very fair and reasonable point. That is a significant factor.

I practised as a criminal lawyer for the better part of 30 years. I both prosecuted and defended, so I have had no compunction about sending away people who have committed serious crimes. Equally, when I defended people and when I looked at some of those whom I prosecuted during that career, I saw some who were dangerous, unpleasant and, frankly, in some cases downright evil. They deserved to go to prison, and some of them deserved to go to prison for a very long time.

There were others who were weak and stupid, and some who were greedy. Sometimes—particularly for those who were greedy—that, too, deserved punishment, and prison was an apposite and appropriate punishment. There were also those who were weak or vulnerable, or who found themselves in situations where they were easily coerced. There were people who had made a series of errors in their lives, and others who suffered from physical or mental illnesses or from real social pressures around them.

We have to be much more discriminating and sophisticated in how we deal with defendants in our justice system. Prison does not always work. It works for some people, but not for everybody all the time, and we need to be brave enough to say that in political debate. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), the former Solicitor General, rightly says, the public are much more alert to and realistic about that, and much more willing to buy that argument. We simply need to have the courage to make it.

[Philip Davies]

I do not know where my hon. Friends go out of an evening or during the day, but I am not sure that lawyers’ dinner parties accurately reflect public opinion at large. Does my hon. Friend accept—it is a fact—that since Michael Howard started the trend of sending more people to prison, the crime rate has fallen? What does my hon. Friend make of that direct correlation?

[Robert Neill]

To be blunt, I rather suspect that I met a broader cross-section of society in practice as a criminal lawyer than one would meet in the average bookmaker’s. We must be prepared to stand up and challenge stereotypes, wherever they come from on the political spectrum.

We diminish the value of prison if we adopt a knee-jerk approach and say that locking people up and throwing away the key is the best solution in all circumstances. It is the best solution for the dangerous. I had no compunction about saying that those in the Brinks-Mat trial, in which I was involved, deserved to go to prison for a very long time. One was later convicted of a very serious murder, and I thought that they should stay in prison for a very long time indeed. Equally, those who commit crimes to feed drug habits are not served by lengthy prison sentences. More to the point, the public are not served in the long run either.

The real difficulty that we face is that we incarcerate more people per 100,000 of population than virtually any of our western European comparators. That is more than Spain—and more than France, which has demographic, sociological and economic problems and indicators very similar to ours; it is a good comparator, in many respects. We incarcerate more than 140 people per 100,000 of population, while France incarcerates about 98. Our rate of incarceration is practically double that of Germany, a country that is also very similar to us in many other respects. That cannot be because of some greater inherent criminality on the part of the British people. It is simply that we do not have a sufficiently sophisticated suite of alternatives to custody to provide robust and publicly credible options, so sentencers often feel obliged to fall back on custody more than they do elsewhere.

The other point to bear in mind is that Germany and the Netherlands, in particular, do a better job of rehabilitating those who are in custody. We know that because their reoffending rates are much lower. I think the Government recognise, as do all other commentators, that short sentences very seldom have a positive effect. The Government are to be commended for saying that not only do we need to look at prison reform, in terms of what happens in prisons, but we need to look at what happens when people come through the gate; at the support that they get within the community; and at what diversionary activities can be established early on when people—particularly young people—come into contact with the criminal justice system, to make sure that they proceed no further down that path. It is an holistic approach, and the Government are right in that regard.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is being typically gracious and kind in giving way. Notwithstanding the point that he made, the fact of the matter is that for every 1,000 crimes committed in this country, only about 19 people are sent to prison. That is one of the lowest ratios of any country. Perhaps he can tell us in which countries the ratio of people who are sent to prison per 1,000 crimes committed is lower? That is the best measure of how many criminals we send to prison—not proportion of the population. We send very few criminals to prison per 1,000 crimes committed.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend perhaps neglects to say that the reporting arrangements are very different in other countries, particularly when dealing with younger people in the criminal justice system. The different diversion work done in those countries does not allow for that kind of correlation.

I am not just talking about Europe. A number of states in the United States—we do not always think of them, particularly in current circumstances, as beacons of social progressiveness—are more effective than we are at rehabilitation, meaningful community penalties and reducing recidivism. Some of that work, I might add, has been carried out on the watch of Republican governors. There is often a value-for-money case for imprisoning fewer people, as well as a social outcomes case. We ought to be prepared to make the case for prison reform as an important objective of any Government.

To return to the thrust of my argument, the Bill is an important step in achieving such reform. Of course, there is a lot more that we need to work on which is not in the Bill. The statutory purpose of the Bill is a good one. I understand the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) about what, specifically, should go in it, but I think that its overarching purpose is correct. The balance between the safety of the public and the inmate on the one hand, and reform, rehabilitation and improvement on the other, is the right set of principles to have.

New duties on the Secretary of State are important. I suspect that they probably are justiciable; none the less, it is important to have proper accountability mechanisms. The new power for the chief inspector of prisons—the right to a response to his reports—is especially important. The current chief inspector, Peter Clarke, is an excellent appointment. I had the privilege of shadowing his team while they carried out a prison inspection—it happened to be at the prison local to my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, in Norwich—and I saw how thorough and professional they were.

As my right hon. Friend and the prisons Minister know, and as we in the Select Committee know, one of the chief inspector’s great frustrations is the fact that in some cases, the bulk of his recommendations—not just a few, but sometimes an overwhelming majority—are not taken on board. It is important he can make sure that they are taken on board, and that a proper reason is given if they are not. Too often, his recommendations are repeatedly ignored by the same serial-offender prisons. This is an important legal step, which underpins progress.

The point has already been made about the prisons and probation ombudsman, and I agree with it entirely. These are important and welcome measures, as far as the prisons dimension is concerned, as are those to do with new psychoactive substances and interference with mobile phones. They are all important steps forward.

In the rest of the Bill, the modernisation of court proceedings is important and valuable. As the Bill progresses, I hope that the Government will bear in mind some of the caveats raised by practitioners, such as the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Criminal Bar Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, to avoid unintended consequences. When dealing with things that might give rise to a conviction online, it is important for people to have the resources necessary to make an informed decision in relation to the plea, the means of election and so forth. Having such access will be important. This could be a very useful tool, and I know that the judiciary believes that it can be a good tool, but it is important to have informed decisions, and making guilty pleas online is an obvious example. Similarly, there is often a good case for having virtual hearings, but we need to make sure it does not drift into being the default position. We would obviously not have that for a trial, but we can think of other forms of interlocutory proceedings in which physical presence is appropriate, and we must make sure that we do not have too much of a broadbrush approach. However, the principle is good, and I have no problem with it.

On the whole question of dealing with the abuse of litigants in person in family cases—chapter 8 of the explanatory notes—I think the case is accepted across the piece. Such a system has worked well in the criminal jurisdiction for many years. When we set up in regulations the system of how this will work, I hope there will not be an attempt to over-complicate or over-engineer it. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to take the criminal system and, as far as possible, lift it across with adjustments, which seems the sensible way to do it. Practitioners have made the point that when advocates are asked to take on such a role—in effect, on behalf of the court—they often take on a heavy burden. The instructions can be detailed and complex, and in my experience of such cases they frequently change depending on the nature of the person being dealt with, so the task is not easy. I therefore hope that rates of remuneration will not be any worse than in the criminal jurisdiction, because it is important to get good people to undertake this work.

Judicial appointments, which are important, have been mentioned. It is also important to bear in mind that leadership roles should be recognised, given the difficulty we have at the moment in recruiting proper High Court judges.

Moving on to part 5 on the whole question of whiplash—I will finish on this point—I do not think we can pretend that there is not an issue. The Select Committee has already heard evidence on this, and we will want to take more. Nobody can reasonably pretend that there is not an issue about whiplash, although there are disputes about whether the evidence base is strong, as was apparent in our hearings. I am glad that the Government have taken the step of moving to a system of tariffs, rather than having an outright prohibition on general damages. However, we will need to consider the devil in the detail in relation to the definition of whiplash in clause 61 and its subsections. At the moment, there is an ouster of the tariff system for breach of statutory duty, but, as practitioners have raised with me, one can of course envisage a number of circumstances in which it is possible to plead both negligence and a breach of statutory duty as alternatives. It might be self-defeating if we get an industry of people always seeking to put in an alternative head of claim to take it immediately out of the pure negligence category. Some careful drafting may be needed to look at the practical effects as far as that is concerned. Above all, we must not allow this to cause us to take our eye off the ball of the abuse by claims management companies. Good work is already being done by the Ministry and the Information Commissioner’s Office, but a lot of the problems stem from the work of the claims management companies, and it is important to look at that.

On that basis, I wish the Bill well. It is an important and valuable Bill. I am sure we will have lively and constructive debates, and I hope that I and other members of the Select Committee will, as appropriate, endeavour to assist the Government in making a good Bill better. I wish it well in its passage through the House.

Prison Safety

Debate between Robert Neill and Philip Davies

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but he is looking at it from a perspective different from mine. My view is that we should not manage the prison population to fit an arbitrary figure that we have decided is the limit that we will allow in prison; we should imprison the people who should be in prison, and it is the Government’s job to build the capacity in the prison system to cope with those people. That is the bit on which the Government need to get a grip.

I was going to come to this later but, as we are on the subject, I will deal with it now. One area on which I happen to disagree with the Chairman of the Select Committee, although it pains me to do so, is the size of the prison population. We have to address the myth that has been perpetuated that the UK has a very high prison population. The fact of the matter is that we do not, and I will explain why. Yes, the absolute number of more than 80,000 represents a high prison population, but the UK is a very highly populated country so of course we have a high prison population. That is a meaningless measure.

If we look at the number of people in our prisons as a proportion of the population as a whole, we are not at the top of the table by any means, but I concede that we are above average. We are in the highest quartile but, again, it is a meaningless measure. The only meaningful measure of prison population is the proportion of criminals that we send to prison. In other words, for every 1,000 offences committed in the UK how many people go to prison? That is the most meaningful measure of whether we send a lot of people, or not many people, to prison. Comparing those figures with the figures for other countries across the world shows that we have a very low prison population. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we send some 18 people to prison. I challenge anyone to name four or five countries that send fewer people to prison, because they will be hard pressed to do so.

Our prison population is very low, so we have to end the myth that has been built up by these prison reform groups, which frankly just do not like anybody being sent to prison. We have to address the myth that has built up over the years that we have a high prison population. We send very few people to prison. Everyone knows that it is difficult to be sent to prison in the UK. People get community sentence after community sentence—the only people sent to prison are either very persistent offenders or very serious offenders. Courts bend over backwards not to send people to prison. We have to nail that myth.

Contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said in his opening remarks, I do not think that public opinion is that we should have fewer people in prison. I do not think public opinion has moved an awfully long way. Clearly, my hon. Friend is much more expert than I about public opinion in Bromley and Chislehurst, and I bow to his superior knowledge, but I invite him to come up to Shipley. He can knock on the door of any 100 houses he wants to ask people, “Do you want to see more criminals or fewer criminals in prison?” I suspect that a number in the high 90s would say that they would like to see more criminals in prison, not fewer. I accept that Bromley and Chislehurst may differ, but I am here to represent Shipley.

[Robert Neill]

I respect my hon. Friend’s point, but I want to put my point to him in a different way. I suspect that both his constituents and mine would like to see fewer victims of crime and fewer crimes being committed, so they also might like to see people in prison being more effectively rehabilitated so that they reoffended less. Does he accept that overcrowding in our prisons prevents rehabilitation? Reducing such overcrowding would be in his constituents’ interest.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with one part of what my hon. Friend says, which is that we should be doing our best to rehabilitate people while they are in prison. I do not see how anyone could possibly disagree with that. What I do not accept is that we should have fewer people in prison. I want more people in prison.

The Minister and I were discussing this not too long ago, and we observed that the UK prison population has increased quite substantially over the past 20 or 30 years. Lo and behold, what has also happened in the UK over the past 20 or 30 years is that the crime rate has gone down. Members here might want to try to pretend that those two things are alien to each other, but I contend that one follows from the other.

To be honest, it is not rocket science. It is blindingly obvious, certainly to most of my constituents, that the more criminals there are in prison, the fewer criminals there are out on the streets committing crimes. It is obvious that the more criminals we lock up, the less crime we will have. I accept that we want people to be rehabilitated while they are in prison, but I do not accept that the answer is to send fewer people to prison in the first place. In my opinion, it is too hard to be sent to prison and most people are not sent to prison for long enough.

The idea that short sentences do not work is another myth. The reoffending rate for people on short sentences is 60-odd per cent. Virtually every single person in prison on a short sentence has had community sentence after community sentence. The reoffending rate for that cohort while they were on a community sentence was 100%, which is why they ended up in prison in the first place, so a 60-odd per cent. reoffending rate for the cohort on short sentences is actually a rather good record compared with the alternative. We do our prisons a disservice. The longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. That point is made clear by all the Government statistics.

Prison safety is also undermined by fixed-term recall, which is little known. We have a system in the UK whereby people are released halfway through their sentence. If a prisoner reoffends, most people would expect them to go to prison to serve the remainder of their original sentence, but I am afraid not. The last Labour Government did for that, too. They introduced fixed-term recall, whereby people are sent back to prison not to serve the remainder of their sentence but to serve 28 days. Again, people have no incentive to behave themselves when they go back because they know they will be out in 28 days, come what may—that is the whole principle of fixed-term recall.

There is no incentive in our sanctions for these people to behave themselves when they go back into prison, and there are lots of them—I think there were some 7,000 people on fixed-term recall last year. In fact, many of them make a point of going back into prison just to see how their illicit operations have been doing while they have been out. They know that they will get only 28 days if they commit another offence, which gives them enough time to see what is going on before they are back out again. The whole thing is an absolute scandal. These are the things that the Minister needs to get a grip on if he is to do anything about prison safety.

Drugs are clearly a massive issue in our prisons, and the number of people who take drugs for the first time in prison astounds me. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to address drugs in prisons. They have to be much more robust on that, too.

Members will know that I have an interest in the comparative treatment of men and women in prisons. More women than men, per 100 of the prison population, have been punished for disciplinary offences while in prison. There were 130 adjudications per 100 women prisoners, compared with 106 adjudications per 100 men prisoners, according to the Ministry of Justice’s publication “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2011”. We have a massive problem with violence by women offenders in our prisons. This is not a men- only problem.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is radicalisation in our prisons, which is a massive cause for concern. I put in a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Justice a year ago asking which prisons had reported instances of or concerns about religious radicalisation in the last year. The MOJ’s reply did not tell me which prisons had had such reports; it told me which prisons had not, because there were so few of them. When I totted them up, there were only seven prisons in the whole UK that had not reported instances of or concerns about radicalisation. If we are to do something about prison safety, tackling radicalisation in our prisons must be a top priority for the Government. It is a massive area of concern. We cannot let political correctness be an excuse for inaction; we must get to grips with that particular problem.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn about prison officers. We clearly need more of them in our prisons. To me, that is blindingly obvious. They do a valiant job of trying to keep order in our prisons in difficult circumstances; we cannot keep cutting their numbers, as has been done in recent years, and expect there to be no consequences. We must invest in our prison officers.

In summary, I look at the issue from a different point of view from the Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. He said that he did not think the public wanted more public spending on prisons. I disagree; I think that our constituents do want it. They want less public spending on things like international aid and more spending on locking up criminals in our prisons. I genuinely think that that is the public mood. They do not think that too many people are being sent to prison; they think that it is too easy for people to get out of prison, or not to be sent there in the first place. We should be wary of getting out of touch with public opinion on this issue.

There are many areas that the Minister can attend to in order to improve prison safety while also improving public confidence in the criminal justice system. He must not be seduced by the bleeding-heart liberals whose basic agenda is that they want fewer and fewer people in prison because they do not believe in sending people there. He must be robust and stick up for public opinion a bit more, ensuring that criminals are in prison and that they serve the sentences handed down by the courts, preferably in full.

The Minister certainly should not allow them to be released halfway through their sentences when they are still a danger to the public and have behaved badly in our prisons. That is not fair to the public, and it is not fair to the prison officers who have to deal with such people and see them released halfway through their sentences, much to their disgust. I welcome the Minister to his position, and I trust he will tackle some of those issues and not be seduced by the bleeding-heart liberals.