Civil Liability Bill

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I have today published a written submission outlining the Government’s analysis of how the English votes for English laws principle in accordance with the application of Standing Order 83L relates to the Government amendment tabled for Commons Report stage of the Civil Liability Bill.

The Department’s assessment is that the amendment does not change the territorial application of the Bill. The analysis holds if the Government amendment is accepted.

I have deposited a copy of the submission in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS1018]

Prison Education and Employment Strategy

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) for making a powerful speech and for securing a debate on such an important subject. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), both of whom have been strong supporters of the entire project of engaging with prisoners and offender reform in many debates in Westminster Hall and in the Chamber.

In essence, we are dealing with a classic issue of public policy—something where the objective or target really is a big prize. If we can get prisoners into education, and through education into employment, they are less likely to offend and there will be fewer victims. The public will be safer, and the prisoners’ lives will be turned around. The problem is that it is also a classic issue of public policy because it is easy to talk about but difficult to do much about.

The problem with this debate is that at almost any time in the past 175 years, Ministers would have stood up and talked about prison reform. Despite 175 years of Ministers talking about prison reform and about investing in education in prisons, we are still in a situation where only 20% of prisoners get a job on release—that has been pretty static for decades. About one fifth of the people coming into prison have a job and about one fifth of the people leaving prison have a job.

What is the answer to this problem? Clearly, it is not a question of silver bullets. In 1898, Herbert Gladstone stood up and gave a great speech in the House. In language that I cannot hope to emulate, he said that prison

“discipline and treatment should be more effectually designed to maintain, stimulate, or awaken the higher susceptibilities of prisoners, to develop their moral instincts, to train them in orderly and industrial habits, and, whenever possible, to turn them out of prison better men and women, both physically and morally, than when they came in.”—[Official Report, 24 March 1898; Vol. 55, c. 858.]

That is over 120 years ago—it is very difficult to disagree with the basic expression of what we have been trying to do in this country for a very long time.

What are the problems? The first problem was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North: many prisoners come from very difficult backgrounds. As we have heard, perhaps a quarter of them come out of care. Nearly a third of prisoners have serious alcohol addiction issues, and another third have serious drug addiction issues. Perhaps half of prisoners have a reading age of under 11 and a significant number have a reading age of under 6. Nearly 40% of our prisoners have been excluded from school at one time or another.

To fast-forward from the rhetoric around education to the reality, one needs to imagine oneself in Pentonville—I was there today. Imagine a small classroom in midsummer. It is very hot and five men are sitting there with a single teacher. These are people who have never found it easy to go to school. They have never found it easy to listen to a teacher. Those five men will be at very different educational levels. One will be unable to read and write, and another one will be bored because he is in prison for theft but he can already read and write and does not understand why he is in the class. There will be a general sense that everyone is rotating through—on an average day at Pentonville, 45 to 50 new prisoners turn up and a similar number are released. It is very difficult to deal with that.

Solving the problem is not a question of making grand statements about the human soul—Mr Gladstone made much better statements about that in 1898 than I am able to make today. It is about understanding exactly what is going wrong in that prisoner’s journey, step by step. The first thing is to recognise the type of prison that that prisoner is in. Is it a reception prison that they are coming into for a short period, straight out of the courts from remand? If it is a prison where they are likely to spend six months, 12 months or two years of their life, a very different kind of education provision can be delivered.

Secondly, are the kind of qualifications offered in prison A the same as the qualifications offered in prisons B, C and D? A prisoner could move to four prisons in the course of their career. Too often, as a prisoner follows that course, they pursue a City & Guilds qualification in prison A, but it is not available in prison B. Even more fundamentally, the core common curriculum might not be available, so they might not be able to study English, maths and information and communications technology. In addition, governors frequently do not feel genuinely empowered to control the prisoner’s life. They do not feel that they have the leverage or flexibility to say to the education provider, “What really matters in this area is bricklaying,” or, “We have a real shortage of people in scaffolding. I want you to provide scaffolding training.” They do not feel they would get rewarded or promoted for that.

We are trying to deal with those kinds of practical issues in the education and employment strategy. The first thing we did was introduce a common core curriculum, which will ensure that, right the way through the prison service, every single prison, regardless of where it is, which part of the country it is in and how long the prisoner is there, will deliver the core curriculum of English, maths, ICT and English as a foreign language for people who do not speak English.

Secondly, we are ensuring that the qualifications in prisons are the same. A lot of this sounds pretty simple, but the complex and strange world of Government procurement means that we have ended up having a series of conversations about dynamic purchasing systems. We have ended up with 12 preferred suppliers for the core common curriculum and 300 suppliers for the additional work. We have 17 core groups bidding in, with a selected shortlist of five for each area.

What does that mean? Imagine that you are the prisons group director for Yorkshire, Mr Betts. You get your six prisons together and you have five people on a shortlist—it could include Milton Keynes college or Novus. Eighty per cent. of the score is based on your judgment, with your prison governors, of which will provide the best quality of education, and the other 20% is based on the cost of the provision.

[Rachel Maclean]

I welcome what the Minister is saying. It is heartening to hear how much progress has been made. Will he enlighten us about the role of volunteers who go into prisons and offer their time freely because they believe in the cause of helping prisoners to rebuild their lives? For example, my son is an English literature student and he went to a nearby prison and taught prisoners Shakespeare. He said it was the most profound experience he had ever had. The feedback was that the prisoners got something out of it too. Clearly, there is a vast spectrum of that sort of activity. I very much hope that what he did does not crowd out the kind of activity that the Minister is describing. Will he enlighten us about that?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. To put this in context, if you were the Yorkshire prison group director, Mr Betts, you would get your governors together to look at your list of five. You would choose the supplier that you think will provide the best quality for your core common curriculum, and then you would adjust for your area. How do you do that? Humber, which is a training prison, is currently offering coding, upholstery and design services to other prisons. Lindholme—again in Yorkshire—will be focusing on construction skills. Then, as my hon. Friend pointed out, you need to be open to bolting on to that the incredible education offerings of other types of volunteers. I taught Shakespeare in prisons when I was an undergraduate, so I can relate to what my hon. Friend’s son has been doing. The governor needs to provide space for those voluntary organisations to come into the prison, and they need to get the regime right for the core common prison day so they can get the prisoners into the classroom.

[Jim Shannon]

In the Minister’s response to the intervention of the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), he referred to the educational quality of the providers he is looking at. Everything he said is right, but some prisoners need daily living skills, budgeting skills and how-to-live skills. How do we incorporate those sorts of skills into the very basics of their lives?

[Rory Stewart]

The core of the answer is that we must give governors the freedom to adjust to the prisoners. They must take responsibility for that. One of the big changes in this framework is that we have taken power out of the centre and given it to governors so they can do exactly that. How are governors doing that? Increasingly, numeracy, literacy and budgeting skills are taught through the upholstery, carpentry and construction courses. The best way to get people to learn those things is often to focus on the practical vocational skills, and attach life skills to them.

In Yorkshire—I want to pursue this example a bit further—the New Futures Network gets people with the prisons group director to connect directly to employers. It reaches out to employers’ boards and ensures that employers understand what is on offer in the prison. I pay tribute not just to Paul Foweather, the prisons group director in Yorkshire, but to organisations such as Tempus Novo. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch asked about voluntary organisations. Tempus Novo is a charity run by two terrific ex-prison officers who have spent 25 years working on the landings. They left as band 4 officers—not governing-grade officers—and set up that organisation. They walk with employers into the prison, introduce them to the prisoners, reassure them about what is involved in employing offenders, and go into the workplace with the offender for the first interview. If any problems emerge in the workplace, Tempus Novo follows them up.

In the end, education and employment for prisoners is not about big ideas or fancy strategies. It is about doing 50 or 60 things well and looking carefully at the quality of what we are delivering. It is about speaking to prison governors and prisoners and saying, “What is going wrong with the curriculum? How many hours a day are you able to spend in the classroom? Is the fan working in the classroom? Are the teachers actually turning up? Is the qualification you got of any use in the outside world? Yes, you are beginning to go on an apprenticeship scheme, but are you able to connect it to the Government system? Yes, you are learning how to abseil, but are you getting the health and safety support to be able to turn that into being a window cleaner on a high-altitude building? What are we doing with release on temporary licence”—that is a question from my hon. Friend—“to make sure we give people the chance to spend time in an employer’s workplace before they leave prison formally?” Changing that is about changing a dozen small rules. We must ensure there is not a statutory lie-down period in each new prison, so that if a person is released on temporary licence in one prison and moves to another prison, they do not suddenly have to sit back in the prison and lose touch with their workplace.

If we get all those things right—it will be hard yards—we can make a difference. At the moment, only 20% of prisoners who leave prison get a job. If we can get it up to 25% or 30%, it would be fantastic and would change nearly 40 years of stagnation. Those do not sound like big numbers, but nearly 200,000 people circle through our criminal justice system every year. Every one of those people we get into a job is 7% less likely to reoffend. That translates not just into tens of thousands of families with an income and somebody at home with a job, but into thousands fewer crimes and thousands fewer victims of crime. It leads to a society that is healthier and safer.

At the core of this is our belief in the capacity for humans to change, and in our incredibly hard-working prison officers, governors and prisons group directors who are driving through this change. Employers such as Timpson take a huge risk, but they put a lot of energy into understanding prisoners, their needs and the skills they need to stand eight hours a day on the shop floor dealing with customers. If we get all those things right, we can be proud not just of our criminal justice system and our education strategy but of our society.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

4. If he will take steps to return all probation services to the public sector.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

We do not believe this is an ideological divide between the private and public sectors. We are looking at the relationship between the community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, in terms of their geographical spread and how they work together. However, we are finding across the country that having the public sector focus on the highest risk prisoners and the private sector and other, non-profit actors focusing on delivering for the lowest risk offenders is delivering innovation, from Cumbria right the way down to London.

[Alex Cunningham]

In the Committee on the Bill that created the service we have today, many weeks were spent trying to convince the Government that their privatisation experiment with the probation service would fail, and it has. The exception might be the only not-for-profit public sector CRC, which covers the Tees Valley, part of which I represent. It has been singled out in Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation reports as delivering best practice. What will the Minister do to ensure that the Tees Valley CRC is not subsumed into another privatised contract, to learn from it, and to return the probation service to the public sector?

[Rory Stewart]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s local CRC, which is a good example of how CRCs can work. Durham CRC is a good example of the local authority and the previous probation trust working together. It has met 85% of its targets and is a well-performing CRC. There are also good examples to be followed elsewhere in the country, including in Cumbria, where the CRC is working with rural communities, and in London, where the CRC has improved dramatically and done some very good work with Grenfell survivors. I certainly pay tribute to the work done in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that one key to aiding the rehabilitation of offenders is to ensure that probation officers have manageable case loads, so that they can give sufficient time and energy to each case?

[Rory Stewart]

A manageable case load is of course absolutely central, as is the flexibility to make sure that when a probation officer has a high-risk offender—a criminal who is more challenging to deal with—they have smaller numbers of offenders to deal with and can adjust their case load according to the risk posed by the individual and the complexity of the case.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

What assessment has the Minister made of NHS and non-NHS-provided drug-curing services? The drug problems seem to be getting worse, rather than better, in so many of our prisons.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a serious issue, not only in England but in the devolved Administrations such as Scotland, where I saw very high levels of methadone prescription. I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady to discuss the subject in more detail.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

What assurances can the Minister provide that the services provided by community rehabilitation companies are robustly monitored?

[Rory Stewart]

The best guarantee that these companies are performing is the action of Parliament and of the chief inspector of probation, to whom I pay tribute for her series of hard-hitting reports, most recently on domestic violence. As the Secretary of State has pointed out, we have seen a 2% reduction in reoffending. That has been driven by these companies and is to be welcomed, but there is of course much more to be done to protect the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

8. What steps the Government are taking to prevent the use of mobile phones in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

There are basically four ways in which we can detect mobile telephones coming into prisons: we can get them at the gate, coming over the wall, in use on the landings and in the cells. We are addressing it in all those ways. We are increasing searching at the gates. We are putting up grilles and netting to stop phones coming over the walls. We are putting dedicated search teams into cells, and we are using equipment to detect phones in use.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. He obviously is aware that illegal mobile phones in cells are currently being used for drug trafficking, intimidating witnesses and other criminal activity. Can he make it 100% crystal clear that under no circumstances will he or the Secretary of State ever go down the route of allowing prisoners to have legal mobiles in their cells?

[Rory Stewart]

We are absolutely clear that a mobile telephone, and particularly a smartphone, in a prison is a form of weapon. It allows a prisoner to jump the prison walls, effectively; they can transfer money, record videos and intimidate witnesses. We are encouraging prisoners to continue to use regulated landlines in prisons to contact their families. We are investing in in-cell telephony, because keeping family relationships will reduce reoffending by 37%, but a mobile telephone is a weapon, and we will find them and remove them.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that answer. The Justice Committee was told at a recent session that prison governors do not have sufficient flexibility to purchase the equipment they need—particularly the right scanning equipment—and that if they had more flexibility over their budgets, they might be able to invest in that equipment or other things that they feel their prison needs. What is the Minister’s response to that?

[Rory Stewart]

Thanks to a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), which we have been proud to support, new technology is available that should not force governors to have to come up with a bespoke solution prison by prison, but will allow us nationally to have much better technology to identify these phones, listen to them and ultimately seize them.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the role of employment and education in reducing rates of reoffending.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

13. What recent estimate he has made of the proportion of people convicted of burglary offences for the first time who received custodial sentences; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Burglary is a particularly disgusting crime, especially domestic burglary—it is not just the loss of someone’s possessions, but the terrible intrusion on their privacy and the humiliation of having someone in their home. The majority of first-time offenders do receive a conviction—73% of domestic burglars receive a prison sentence.

[Mr Robertson]

I thank the Minister for that response and particularly welcome his condemnation of burglary, which, as he rightly says, is a very serious offence. I therefore urge him to ensure that the sentence fits the crime, so that potential reoffenders are deterred from doing it again.

[Rory Stewart]

The maximum sentence for aggravated burglary is currently a life sentence. The maximum sentence for burglary is 14 years. The sentence length given by judges, and reflected by the Sentencing Council, has increased over the past 10 years. That is as it should be, because domestic burglary is a particularly disgusting and uncivilised crime, and society should be making a symbolic statement against it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

T6. What progress has been made towards introducing a presumption against short-term prison sentences, which will both help to support victims and reduce reoffending?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

As the Secretary of State has made clear, we feel very strongly that we should look and act on the evidence that a short-term prison sentence is more likely to lead to reoffending than a community sentence, and that therefore, in a sense, it endangers the public. The point of a sentence of any kind must be primarily to prevent offending happening in the future. For that reason, we will look very carefully at emphasising community sentences.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It defies belief that a spouse convicted of attempting to murder their partner can have any financial claim on their assets as part of a divorce settlement. Does the Minister agree with that principle and will she meet me to look into changing the law to ensure that there is no financial entitlement in all but the most exceptional of those cases?

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

People in Chelmsford are concerned about levels of violence in the prison, and they want to know that prison officers are safe. Will pepper spray help?

[Rory Stewart]

This morning, we announced that officers will be able to carry pepper spray on their belts. This is to be used as a last resort, in the same way as a baton would be. It means that if, for example, a prisoner was in the process of stamping on another prisoner’s head, an officer could intervene safely from a distance to resolve the incident and potentially save lives. It is only one measure, along with a dozen other measures that we have to take to improve safety in prisons, but it is an important measure to protect the people who protect us.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/ Co-op)]

T3. Over the conference recess, the inspectorate of probation published a report on the Merseyside community rehabilitation company. The report observes that the approach to reviewing risk of harm is limited, putting vulnerable people in danger. Have Ministers read the report, and what will the Department be doing to ensure that vulnerable people in Liverpool are given the protection that they need?

[Rory Stewart]

We take the report very seriously, as we take all reports, including the recent report on domestic violence. It is absolutely right to say that we need to improve the risk assessment, the programme plans and the frequency of meeting. We are doing a consultation at the moment, to which we invite the hon. Lady to make a submission, on exactly what we can do to tighten up procedures for the CRCs. They have reduced reoffending by 2%, but there is much more that we can do on the quality of delivery.[Official Report, 22 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 3MC.]

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

Given that, yet again, the recruitment round of High Court judges has fallen short, and given that many distinguished retired judges are kept busy as arbitrators and wish to continue working, is it not time to look again at whether the arbitrary judicial retirement age of 70 is out of line with modern practice?

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

T5. Given the criticisms contained in the report produced recently by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation, what assurances can the Minister give that all community rehabilitation companies’ contracts will stipulate that the probation officer qualification is absolutely necessary for the safe supervision of cases in which domestic violence is a factor?

[Rory Stewart]

As I have said, we have looked very seriously at the inspectorate’s domestic violence report. It is worth bearing in mind that this has been a problem in many probation services across the world, and that it was, in fact, a problem before the CRCs were introduced. We are looking closely at the question of qualification during the current consultation, which will run for a further six months.[Official Report, 22 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 4MC.]

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I know that the Lord Chancellor takes the role of the rule of law in this country very seriously, but can he reassure me that the Government will always stand up for it, and would resist—and certainly would not stand up and clap—any suggestions that it should be broken?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Last month prison officers took unprecedented action by staging a day of protest outside prisons, including HM Prison Liverpool in Walton. Has the Minister spoken to the Prison Officers Association since then, and what has changed since its members took their unprecedented action?

[Rory Stewart]

That action was very regrettable. As the hon. Gentleman knows, prison officers are not entitled to strike legally, because it endangers prisoners and other prison officers. I met the chairman of the POA on the morning of the action—two hours later—and we had a number of discussions, which focused particularly on safety. We believe that working constructively, and not engaging in illegal strike action, is much better for prisons and prison officers.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

If the Minister is sincere when he insists that the decision to build new private prisons is not ideological but based on evidence, why is he trying to bury the evidence by refusing to release the official report on public-versus-private procurement for the two new prisons, despite freedom of information requests from the Prison Officers Association and parliamentary questions that remain unanswered?

[Rory Stewart]

If it is okay, I would like to meet the hon. Lady to understand in more detail exactly which request is being discussed. I am very happy to talk about it in person.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Given the very lucrative public contracts given to Atos and Capita, and the fact that they are clearly failing—71% of assessments for personal independence payments are overturned in the upper courts—what discussions has the Justice Secretary had with his counterpart in the Department for Work and Pensions about the imposition of a fining system? Atos and Capita are not only blocking up the courts, but treating disabled people appallingly.

Bedford Prison

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the Government’s plans for HMP Bedford.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

May I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this urgent question? We spoke briefly on the telephone yesterday. I know that he is a champion of the interests of the people of Bedford and Bedford prison, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss this in more detail.

I begin by setting the broader context of what is happening at Bedford prison and will then talk more specifically about what we need to do to resolve the serious issues in Bedford prison.

A number of local prisons with significant challenges have come before the House in the past six months, of which Bedford is the latest. I want to clarify a number of things before I focus specifically on the issues at Bedford. The first is that some of these issues are fundamental to any prison. Prisons are challenging places to run at the best of times. By definition, the people inside a prison do not want to be there, and we are now facing a cohort of people in prison who have multiple needs. Nearly half the people in prison have a reading age of under 11, and nearly 30% have a reading age of under six. Very large numbers are coming to prison directly out of care at the moment, and only 18% of people coming into prison had a job beforehand.

There is also a rising tide of violence in prisons. I am pleased that Royal Assent has today been given to the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). The Bill clarifies that this is not just an issue in prisons. Assaults against police officers have risen to an all-time high, and assaults on ambulance workers have risen to a very disturbing level. It would have been almost inconceivable 30 years ago for someone to get into an ambulance and assault the paramedic who was trying to treat them. It was almost unheard of 30 years ago for prisoners to assault prison officers, yet last year there were more than 9,000 such assaults.

With your permission, Mr Speaker, in relation to Bedford prison, I will return to the question of how we address violence in prisons and how the new legislation brought in by the hon. Member for Rhondda, which we on this side of the House are proud to support, will help to address some of the issues.

The second thing I want to put on record is that although there are many challenges in prisons, there have been improvements. It is worth remembering in this difficult atmosphere that some things are getting better. The situation relating to escapes and security is much better than at any time in the past. Similarly, while any suicide is a tragedy, because of our understanding of the drivers of suicide and the evidence that we gather, the measures that we are taking are beginning to work. The suicide rate is now considerably lower than it was a year ago, two years ago or indeed in the historical past, because we are beginning to address that issue. We also have a much better idea about how to deal with some of the underlying issues around reoffending. Our first night reception centres are much stronger, as are the family links that we are able to promote. More prisoners are now actively in work or education than before, and the education strategy ensures that the education they receive is much more relevant to the workplace.

Nevertheless, as the hon. Member for Bedford and the chief inspector have pointed out, there are three very significant challenges in Bedford. The first is a big problem around decency and conditions in Bedford. The second is a problem around drugs in Bedford. The third is a problem around violence, particularly assaults against prison officers in Bedford. How do we deal with this? Bearing in mind that there are underlying problems in all local prisons and that the problems we are talking about—decency, drugs and violence—are familiar from inspections in other places, what is it that gives me some hope that we can turn this around? Do we have a plan to turn this around?

The answer is that there are prisons out there in the country—local prisons with similar problems to Bedford—that are already showing that we can tackle these issues. Hull is a good example, as is Preston. There has also been a significant improvement in tackling exactly these kinds of issues in Leeds over the past three months. In Bedford, we put the prison into special measures some months ago, and we are now beginning to see some key improvements. We are seeing improvements in the physical infrastructure, more investment is going into windows, the mental health provision is better than it was, areas such as the showers and the segregation unit are better than they were, and we are now bringing in a more experienced management team.

However, that still leaves those three fundamental problems to be dealt with. How do we deal with them? Addressing the issue of drugs is first a question of technology. We have done a lot to understand the criminal networks through gathering intelligence on how the drugs are getting in, but there is much more we can do to get the right scanners in place to investigate the drugs being carried in in people’s bodies, and to spend money on the scanners to investigate drugs being put in the post that is getting into the prison.

Decency is fundamentally a question of spending money, which is why we are putting an extra £40 million into addressing basic issues, such as windows. That is not just about producing decent living conditions for prisoners—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is always a pleasure to listen to the mellifluous tones of the Minister of State. I simply advise him that, in delivering his disquisition thus far, he has exceeded his allotted time by only 100%, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman is approaching his peroration.

[Rory Stewart]

My apologies for taking up so much of the House’s time on this issue. To return in my final minute to the serious issues that we are dealing with today, this is about decency, drugs and violence. Dealing with violence fundamentally has to be about having the right training and support for the prison officers on the landing. They need the right legitimate authority to challenge acts of violence. They need training and equipment—body-worn cameras and CCTV—to do that. They need the law that has been introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda. Above all, however, prison officers need management support, standing with them day in, day out, to challenge the acts of violence, to take the action to punish them and to do so in a calm, legitimate fashion. Only by restoring order and control will we be able to address the many other issues, including education, rehabilitation, decency and drugs, that we need to deal with to protect the public.

[Mohammad Yasin]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for his phone call yesterday and his answer today. I have been raising concerns with his Government about levels of violence in HMP Bedford since my election. In May, it was placed in special measures, and officers fear serious assault every day. The situation is getting worse, not better. Will the Minister explain what the Government are doing differently this time to resolve the systemic failures at the prison?

Bedford prison is designed to hold 300 men, but at the last count it was holding more than 420. How can any prison operate safely with such overcrowding? Will the Government take urgent steps to reduce pressure on the system? The prison building itself is not fit for purpose, and I have been to see it for myself. The cells are cramped, I could smell drugs, and the building is very old. How can we expect to rehabilitate serial offenders if we cannot provide them with even basic facilities and dignity? The consequences of not getting things right are far reaching for society.

The people who live around Bedford prison are affected, and our emergency services are frequently tied up on long call-outs. Reoffending levels are high. Prison officers fear for their lives at work and are leaving the profession in droves. The Minister told us that he is putting in new managers, but how will that solve the recruitment and retention crisis among frontline prison officers? Will the Minister commit to an action plan that will make Bedford prison safe, bring in experienced officers, vastly improve facilities and properly invest our penal system before we have another riot on our hands?

[Rory Stewart]

Bearing in mind your warning, Mr Speaker, I will try to deal with those four quite different questions briefly, but they are serious questions that are worth spending a little time on. The question about numbers is a good one. During the previous Labour Government, the number of people in prison rose from about 40,000 to nearly 80,000—the prison population nearly doubled—so we inherited a prison estate with an enormous number of prisoners. That involves a serious conversation right across the House about the number of people we wish to put in prison, and that goes beyond this question about Bedford. However, we will undertake to look carefully at the population of Bedford prison and at the ratio between prison officers and prisoners, and we will come back within 28 days to the chief inspector of prisons with an answer laying out a plan.

The second question is on the building at Bedford, which of course dates from the early 1800s, as the hon. Gentleman said. Although we have a new wing in place, a lot of the physical infrastructure is very difficult, which is unfortunately true not only of Bedford. A third of the current prison estate was built before 1900—these are Victorian prisons—which is why we will be spending the money to create 10,000 new prison places with modern accommodation. There is a very clear relationship between old buildings and this type of problem, and only new investment and new builds will solve it.

On recruitment and retention, Bedford has, as the hon. Gentleman knows, quite a challenging job market. Wages have been rising, employment figures are quite high and Bedford is relatively close to the commuter belt, which means we have had some struggle recruiting and retaining.

We now have 3,500 more prison officers in place than we had in 2015. We need to invest more in training them, and we need to invest more in making sure they stay.

The hon. Gentleman’s final point returns to the question of violence. We do not want to fool the House. Turning around violence in prisons like Bedford will be a long, hard road, and that violence has deep roots. Part of this is about historical staffing numbers, and a lot of it is about new attitudes in society—the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, addresses the assaults—and a lot of it is about new types of drugs.

There is no magic wand, but investing in making sure that we reduce the number of drugs coming in, making sure we have decent living conditions and, above all, building up experienced staff with the right management to challenge that violence on the landings day in and day out, hour in and hour out, is the only way that we will make these prisons safer.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

This report is particularly damning, and it is the fourth such report in recent times. It talks of men who are locked up for 23 hours a day without food or lavatory paper.

I accept that the Minister is doing his level best to sort out the situation, and I wholeheartedly support his reforms, including those to increase the number of prison officers and to work hard on rehabilitation, but if we are to continue incarcerating this number of people, we simply have to ask the Treasury for more money so that we can do it safely. Does he agree?

[Rory Stewart]

We are definitely putting in more investment, and we need to put in more investment. That is why we are spending £40 million on additional improvements in the existing infrastructure, and that is why we will spend well over £1 billion on building new prisons, but the urgent problem we face will not be addressed overnight by new prisons. These prisons will take serious time to build, and the problem will have to be addressed on the landings and outside the cells by legislative measures such as the Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, by body-worn cameras, by CCTV, by training and, above all, by management and support for staff.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The chief inspector of prisons has spoken of the continual and unchecked decline in standards at the prison over the past nine years. He also said that, at times, it felt like the prisoners were in control. This is the prison with the highest rate of assaults in the country. Some 77% of prison officers at HMP Bedford have less than one year’s service.

That is the reality, so I am disappointed that, in his seven minutes, the Minister said a lot but avoided the specific question at hand on HMP Bedford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) for his tireless work on exposing the failings at the prison. As we have heard, this is the fourth jail in just 12 months to be issued an urgent notification. Formally, the Minister has to publish a plan of action for the prison within 28 days, but we need answers today.

The Government’s recent solution to the widespread failure at HMP Birmingham was to increase prison staff and reduce prisoner numbers there. Will the Minister commit today to a similar increase in staff and reduction in prisoner numbers at Bedford? There was a riot at Bedford in November 2016. What have the Government done since to improve the situation, bearing in mind what the chief inspector of prisons has said?

Whose fault is it that in the latest annual performance figures, HMP Bedford is still labelled as a prison of serious concern? It remains one of the most overcrowded prisons in the country—40% over capacity. What has the Minister done, and what have the Government done, to tackle overcrowding there since the 2016 riot?

More widely, what plans do the Government have to end overcrowding across the prison estate, given that over half of prisons are overcrowded? The proportion, by the way—people on the Government Benches will not like to hear this—is even higher in private prisons. Finally, if more staff and fewer prisoners was the answer to HMP Birmingham’s problems, will the Minister commit today to an emergency plan, with new Treasury funds, to end overcrowding and end understaffing across the prison estate?

[Rory Stewart]

Essentially, the hon. Gentleman posed three questions. The first is whether we recognised the problems in Bedford following the 2016 riot. We certainly did. The riot in 2016 was very disturbing, and since then we put the prison into special measures. So we absolutely agree with the criticisms made by the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), and by the shadow Secretary of State, and indeed by the inspector. That is why we put Bedford prison into special measures; that is why we anticipated this inspection report.

The second question was, how many of these urgent notifications are coming? Fundamentally, as I laid out at the beginning of my speech, this is a problem that exists in many of our local prisons. It is not an issue that specifically exists in cat D prisons, or in the high security estate, or particularly in the female estate. This is an issue in prisons such as Bedford, Exeter, Nottingham and Liverpool, and, as we discovered, Birmingham.

What is the solution? The shadow Secretary of State asks whether the question is a private/public question. It is not an ideological question. Two of the best local prisons currently in the country, Forest Bank and Thameside, are private prisons. Bedford is, of course, a public prison. He asked whether we would look at the ratio between prison officers and prisoners, and rightly pointed out that in Birmingham, as in other prisons, when we face these kinds of problems, often we temporarily reduce prisoner numbers and bring in additional prison officers. I can undertake that that is something we will be examining during the 28 days we have; we will prepare a plan and come forward with an answer for the chief inspector. It is a very reasonable proposal, and it is one we will consider very carefully.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

During my all-too-brief time working with my hon. Friend, he clearly recognised and was up-front about the real difficulties in the prison estate. Will he take the opportunity to tell the House the ambition he has for improvement, specifically work to be done in the 10 target jails, such as Hull, Nottingham—also under urgent notification—and Wormwood Scrubs?

[Rory Stewart]

We have chosen 10 of our most challenged local prisons in order to prove that we can turn them around. One of the problems over the last few years is that we are developing a situation in which people are beginning to feel that there is no solution to these prisons. I believe very strongly that these prisons can be turned around. That is why I have said repeatedly that if I do not succeed in turning round the 10 prisons for this pilot, I will resign. Why is it that I am confident that we can turn these 10 prisons around? Because the fundamental problems in these prisons are relatively straightforward. They are problems of decency, they are problems of drugs, they are problems of support and management on the wings. I believe that we have demonstrated in the best of our local prisons that with the right support and the right investment we can do that, and that is what we propose to do in those 10 local prisons, and what I would expect the House to judge me on doing over the next 12 months.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

What we see today, yet again, is the horrendous impact of austerity cuts on the state of prisons. Prison staffing levels are down by almost one third since 2010, and that contrasts, by the way, with a 14% increase in Scotland over the same period. So we join the calls for significant new resources for new prison officers, for increased staff retention and for equipment and training in the forthcoming Budget.

Specifically on overcrowding, the prisons Minister has spoken about keeping a close watch on how the presumption against short sentences is working in Scotland, but surely he must see that placing people for a few months in institutions like Bedford or Birmingham is utterly counter-productive. He has explained exactly the complex needs that prisons just cannot address, particularly in a short period of time. So instead of watching, surely the time is now for acting on short sentences.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question. Connected to the question of crowding in prisons is the question of how many people are sentenced. The two are clearly related. The Scottish Government have led on the question that the hon. Gentleman now raises: what is the point of sending someone to prison with a three-month sentence? What does that achieve? In effect, it means that somebody is in prison for less than six weeks. Is that really a length of time that allows them to take any kind of punishment and that will deter anybody? Above all, is it enough time to rehabilitate someone—to really turn their life around so that they do not reoffend? The evidence suggests that very short sentences are in fact likely to lead to more reoffending than a community sentence. It is an issue that we need to look at very carefully.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

In May 2016, the inspectorate of prisons rated Bedford as “not sufficiently good” on the four healthy prison tests. Since then, there has been a prison improvement plan, the prison has been put into special measures, and there has been a comprehensive action plan, yet when the inspectorate went back this September, Bedford’s rating on three of those healthy prison tests fell to 1, or “poor”, while its rating for resettlement remained at “not sufficiently good”. Am I wrong to say that that seems to suggest that the people running Bedford prison are simply not up to the job?

[Rory Stewart]

The question is absolutely right. In 2016, when the previous inspection report was published, Bedford prison was already in trouble. It then got significantly worse. There was a riot at the end of 2016, and it is extremely difficult to recover from a riot. When a riot happens in a prison, it takes a long time for that prison to stabilise again. We put the prison into special measures, and that is a long, hard road. I have talked about some of the improvements that we have made to mental health provision and some of the support around key workers. We have now increased staffing numbers dramatically compared with where we were in 2016, and we are bringing in a new management team, but it takes time to turn around deep-rooted problems of this sort. I believe that the green shoots are there, but sadly we are not going to see them overnight. That is why I am determined that we put in more investment now.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a very long time since I was the shadow prisons Minister and visited a lot of prisons, including Bedford, but is it not a fact that we cannot make excuses? When a prison is in a situation like the one Bedford is in, there is something wrong with the prison’s culture, and if there is something wrong with the culture, it is to do with the quality of the management. Should we not look into that? When I was Chair of the Education Select Committee, we visited prisons and looked at prison education, and we learned a lot by going to Scandinavia, where they have similar challenges but handle them better.

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely correct. First, it is a fact that there are some very, very good, very dedicated prison officers who are doing a very good job, and it is worth paying tribute to them.

One challenge that we face is that we have a lot of new prison officers, partly because we have been doing a recruitment drive—we have 3,500 more officers than we had two and a half years ago. A lot of these people have not developed the five or 10 years’ experience on the wings that are really needed to learn how to exercise legitimate authority. What can we do about that? We can improve the training courses, with a particular focus on violence before the officers arrive in the prisons; we need much more mentoring, with experienced officers alongside new officers; and we need to make sure that people own the wings again—that a particular designated officer is responsible for a particular wing. In the end, though, it is absolutely right that in some prisons—unfortunately, this is the case in Bedford—with some of the less experienced staff, they are backing off the prisoners. They do not have the confidence, experience and training. That is what we need to build up to get the right form of legitimate authority.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

In general, the use of body cameras by police forces has produced very positive results. Will my hon. Friend update the House on what progress is being made in rolling them out across the prison estate?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

The Prison Officers Association confirms our view, which is that body-worn cameras have made a real difference. One of the things that we need to do is make sure that when people are issued with them, they use them. Being able to record an assault on a body-worn camera allows the evidence to be gathered and the prosecution to happen, and it makes it less likely that a person is assaulted. That is also true of our investment in CCTV and it is true of the pilots that we have done with PAVA—pelargonic acid vanillylamide—spray. Also related is the private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), which received Royal Assent today and will double the maximum sentence for assaults on prison officers. We cannot tolerate assaults on prison officers, because we should protect them when they protect us.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

In answer to a question from the Scottish National party spokesman, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), the Minister set out all of the problems associated with short-term prison sentences but did not go on to say what the Government were going to do about tackling the issue. May I now encourage him to do so in relation not only to that issue, but to community sentencing as an alternative to the overcrowding that we now see?

[Rory Stewart]

Something as serious as changing our entire sentencing policy would require primary legislation and a lot of discussion in the House. What we are beginning to air here though is that we hear very clearly what the right hon. Gentleman is saying and what has been done in Scotland. We are looking at the matter very closely. I will be up in Scotland again talking with members of the criminal justice fraternity there to learn from these lessons. What actions we take and how English law differs from Scottish law will be the key in this.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It would be almost unthinkable for us to look at delivering any other public service using facilities that are, in so many cases, from the Victorian era. Will the Minister update the House on what plans there are to look at moving away from having a prison system that is still rooted in the Victorian era as HMP Bedford is?

[Rory Stewart]

Victorian prisons can be unbelievably unsuitable. They can be unsanitary, incredibly noisy and very disturbing for people in them. We have problems that come simply from living in unsanitary conditions. What we are doing about that is to create 10,000 new prison places, with a new design of prison, better accommodation and more secure facilities. We will start with prisons at Wellingborough and Glen Parva, which will be the first two of six new prisons that we will be building to provide 10,000 additional places.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The Minister said in his opening remarks that more prisoners were in work programmes than ever before, but the letter to the Secretary of State from the Chief Inspector of Prisons stated that HMP Bedford

“lacked a culture of work or learning.”

Classes and workshops had only a handful of attendees, and nearly 40% of prisoners were found to be locked up during the working day. Those who were unlocked were found to be doing nothing constructive, and Ofsted rated the provision of activities inadequate. What urgent steps will the Minister take to reform rehabilitation in our prisons so that prisoners are engaged in meaningful activity and reoffending rates are tackled?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Lady has put her finger on the issue here. These things are all connected. The reason why people do not get into education or work in Bedford is directly connected with the drugs and the violence. Unless we can create a calm, orderly, stable environment where prison officers and prisoners feel safe, all the other stuff that we want to do around rehabilitation simply is not possible. People end up being locked up for too many hours in their cells. They are not moved safely to the classrooms. The teachers do not feel safe and we cannot deliver the educational provision. That is why we have to start with the basics. It begins with addressing decency, drugs and violence and the other stuff then must follow on.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

With reoffending costing society £15 billion, does the Minister agree that the debate should be about the modern prison estate and whether its purpose should be to rehabilitate, train and reduce those reoffending rates?

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely true. The big change in prisons over the past 20 years—and this has been a cross-party change brought about by Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments—is a huge shift towards a focus on rehabilitation. Above all, the purpose of prison needs to be about ensuring that when somebody leaves prison, they are much less likely to reoffend, otherwise, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, we see reoffending costs of £15 billion. More than that, it is the daily—day in, day out—misery that is inflicted on the public and indeed on the individuals themselves by being caught in a cycle of violence and crime.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is one thing to change the law—I am very grateful for the Minister’s help in achieving that today—but quite another to ensure that the law is implemented. If we really are to protect not only other emergency workers, but, in particular, prison officers, do we not need to make sure that the police and the prosecuting authorities take this new law seriously? Is there anything that we can do on a cross-party basis to make sure that that happens?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A lot of focus to date has been on assaults on police officers, and it is unacceptable that members of the public are spitting at police officers. Nevertheless, prosecutions have been brought for spitting at police officers, but that is almost unheard of in the case of prison officers. Sadly, in many prisons, a culture has emerged of people almost taking that for granted and it does not seem to me that enough priority is given to investigating assaults and other crimes in prison. The police, who are under a lot of pressure with many other things to do, must be encouraged to get into the prisons, gather the evidence and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute people who assault prison officers. If that does not happen, we will never get the calm, orderly environment that we require.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

HMP Gartree is in my constituency and HMP Glen Parva is just outside it. Those who work there are good people doing a difficult job on our behalf. What more can the Minister do to drive down violence against staff and get the menace of drugs out of prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

Drugs can get into prison only by being flown, thrown, dragged or carried there. A secure environment with the right standards, the right checks on mail and the right bars and grilles should therefore be able to reduce significantly the number of drugs that get into a prison.

On protecting and supporting prison officers, we owe them the trials around pepper spray, the body cameras and the CCTV cameras, but above all, the staffing numbers to get the key worker schemes in place so that they can develop the relationships with individual prisoners. Prison officers also need support from their managers, particularly band 4 and band 5 managers, day in, day out, to ensure that if they are assaulted, we respond calmly and professionally and bring back order and control.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the fourth prison in the urgent notification process. In the past, the response has tended to involve three things: change the leaders, put more staff in, reduce the number of prisoners. All those are sensible, but they have an impact on the rest of the estate: there are only so many leaders, new staff and places to which to move prisoners. How many more times can the Minister respond in that way before it has an impact on the whole Prison Service?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question and challenge. This is about prioritisation. As I said, many local prisons suffer from significant problems and we currently have more than a dozen in special measures. It is no coincidence that the prisons that we put in special measures are likely to be those that go on to receive an urgent notification from the inspectors. We and the inspectors absolutely agree on where those problems are—we can see them. The issue is to which of those prisons we prioritise resources. Those moves—reducing the number of prisoners, bringing in extra staff and getting extra support—are absolutely necessary, but we need to target them at the places where the need is greatest.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that we must continue to punish those who commit the most serious crimes by removing their liberty, but that prisons must be places of safety and reform?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend has put his finger on the key question. Prison serves three fundamental purposes and we need to keep them all simultaneously. People must be punished for committing crimes. As a society, a civilisation and a nation, we must indicate that crime is unacceptable and deserves punishment. Secondly, people must be deterred from committing crime, and seeing a serious sentence imposed is an important part of changing behaviour. However, thirdly and fundamentally, people who come into prison must have their lives changed. That is fundamental for them, the prison officers who look after them and ultimately the public, whose safety and security depend on changing the lives of offenders and preventing them from offending again.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Like all hon. Members, I was pleased to hear this morning that Royal Assent had been given to the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). That has moved the debate forward significantly, and I note with interest the steps that the Minister set out for what more can be done. Does he believe that there are any examples from around the world that we could learn from?

[Rory Stewart]

We can always learn from examples around the world. We have discussed some of the lessons we can learn from Scotland. There are certainly lessons we can learn from Scandinavia. Indeed, there are even some lessons—this will surprise the House—that we can learn from the United States.

Fundamentally, our emergency workers are the most courageous examples of our society. They run into fires; they run into people who are shooting them; they literally save our lives as ambulance workers and other professionals. They must not be assaulted. That is why it is absolutely welcome that today Royal Assent has been given to a Bill that says that anybody who assaults an emergency worker will immediately receive a much tougher sentence. They protect us; we should protect them.

Civil Liability Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Vulnerable road users will be excluded from the Bill and from secondary measures on the small claims court limit. A vulnerable road user is anybody who is neither driving a motor vehicle nor a passenger in one; in other words, the definition includes pedestrians, horse riders, motorcyclists or anyone else on the road who is not in a motor vehicle.

[Gloria De Piero]

I thank the Minister for putting that on the record.

We absolutely agree that there is a need to act against insurance cheats; no one supports fraudsters. The amendment would not affect the pursuit of those who are claiming fraudulently. By accepting this amendment, the Government can still hit their target. Through this amendment, we simply want to protect those who are injured in the course of their work through no fault of their own. Before it is suggested that this somehow drives a coach and horses through the Government’s intentions, we are not talking about huge numbers of cases.

Thompsons Solicitors deals with workers’ injuries day in and day out. The majority of its work is for the trade unions. Just 16% of its case load consists of injuries from road traffic accidents, and of that number whiplash cases comprise less than 20% of the total. Once we eliminate the large number of these claims that are not work-related, we are left with a tiny percentage of claims related to whiplash that people have suffered in the course of their work.

I have seen no complaint of fraud levelled by the Government against workers nor any suggestion that they are anything to do with the compensation culture of which there has been so much talk, although notably Lord Young said in his report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, that in any case that view was a perception and not a reality. The Association of British Insurers, which has been very active around this Bill, has produced no examples of fraudulent claims by workers.

This amendment is an opportunity for the Government to exempt employers’ liability claims from the Bill and at the same time exclude them from the small claims limit. If the Government refuse to exempt workers, are they saying that any whiplash claim is evidence of fraud, whoever it is made by? If so, why have they not banned all whiplash claims? If they refuse to exempt workers, are they saying that the police officer, the paramedic, the school bus driver or the firefighter who suffers whiplash while working hard for our communities is scamming it?

Given that the Government have exempted vulnerable road users—horse riders, pedestrians and cyclists—from both the Bill and the associated small claims changes, what is their justification for not exempting workers? Are they saying that vulnerable road users are worthy of more protection than workers? Perhaps the justification is that the cyclist, the pedestrian and the horse rider do not take out motor insurance for their road use, but neither does the professional driver. If the justification for the exemption of vulnerable road users is that they are uniquely exposed, surely the professional driver is, too? For instance, there is the police officer in a high-speed chase or the HGV driver who is on the road for eight hours a day. The reality is that the Government have exempted vulnerable road users because including them would be politically untenable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gloria De Piero]

It would be grotesque nonsense for a cyclist or a pedestrian injured through no fault of their own to find themselves subject to a tariff and a £2,000, let alone a £1,000, small claims limit when the target is whiplash and, in turn, apparently fraud. The same applies to workers. What on earth have they to do with whiplash for the purposes of fraud? If the Government will not move on this point, the only conclusion one can draw is that there is one rule for the small number of those wealthy enough to own a horse and another for the tens of thousands who drive for a living, many of them not in well-paid jobs—say, the paramedic or the refuse collector—who run the risk of whiplash when going about their jobs.

It is deeply disappointing that the Government are sneaking through crucial parts of their changes via a statutory instrument in order to avoid this sort of scrutiny. I wish to make perfectly clear today where the Opposition stands on workers for the entire package of measures. Workers, like vulnerable road users, should be excluded from both the Bill and the small claims increases.

[Rory Stewart]

It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Thank you again for the serious involvement that has gone into the debate. It has been a real privilege, as somebody who is not a legal specialist, to see how many well informed and distinguished colleagues we have on both sides of the House contributing to these interesting questions of definition.

Many of the amendments we are dealing with today reflect the work of the House of Lords and, in fact, of Opposition Members of the House of Lords—Labour Members, Liberal Democrat Members and Cross Benchers—who introduced many of the clauses into this Bill, which were not originally there and which we are now discussing. With your permission, Mr Chair, I will move quickly through amendments 8 and 9 and new clause 9 and then discuss why we feel clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

The definition of whiplash, which is dealt with in amendment 8, was placed in the Bill after extensive debate pushed by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords. In the initial version of this Bill, we had not sought to define whiplash. The DPRRC argued carefully and at great length that it felt strongly that it was inappropriate to have legislation of this sort if a definition was not in the Bill. The Committee felt it was not appropriate for any individual, whether a Minister or a chief medical officer, to make this definition on their own. It should be made by Parliament as a whole and it should be made fully explicit.

After a great deal of debate in the House of Lords, we conceded this point. The clause was inserted and everybody—Cross Benchers, Opposition Members of the House of Lords—nodded the amendment through. It was then inserted. The reasons for this are both those brought forward by the DPRRC and, I would add, to assuage some of the concerns put forward by the Opposition. Clause 2 also allows for a review of the definition by the chief medical officer, along with others, every three years to make sure it remains in touch with medical science and medical expertise. The definition is in the Bill and not purely provided by medical experts because, as the House of Lords argued, this is a medico-legal definition. In other words, it is not simply a question for medical specialists; it relates to the operation of law and the way in which the law of tort would operate.

The final reason for which I ask that amendment 8 be withdrawn is that I am afraid it refers only to the chief medical officer for England, whereas, of course, the legislation applies to England and Wales. That is why we feel strongly that clause 2, which refers to the chief medical officer for England and the chief medical officer for Wales and, indeed, the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Society in consulting on the definition of whiplash every three years, is the appropriate way to proceed. On that basis, I respectfully ask that amendment 8 be withdrawn.

It is easy to understand why amendment 9 was tabled and that the Opposition would be concerned. Again, we would respectfully argue that the key point is that the injury has occurred and not why the individual is in the car. The question of why they are in the car would be a distinction without a difference. There are many pressing reasons why somebody might be in a car. I, like many Members here, represent a rural area. Somebody might be in a motor car, for example, because they were having to drive their child urgently to a hospital. They might be in a motor car for any number of reasons that left them with little choice but to be in the car. It would seem invidious to distinguish between them and somebody else who is in the car for the purpose of employment, purely on the basis of the injury. The key is the injury and the fact that the third party who is liable for that injury is held liable.

[Jo Stevens]

The Minister mentioned choice. The fact is that if somebody is driving in the course of their employment, they do not have a choice because they are doing so on the instruction of their employer. Does the Minister accept that his argument on choice is not relevant when talking about an employer liability claim?

[Rory Stewart]

The argument I am trying to make is that, in many ways, travelling in a motor car in a rural area is, in effect, not a choice. If you were heavily pregnant and had to get to a hospital, you would have to get into that motor car. You would have no more choice than an individual who was in a car for employment purposes. In my constituency, very sadly, there are simply not the public transport links. People are obliged to be in a motor car, whether or not they are travelling in the course of their employment. Were they to suffer a whiplash injury, travelling in a rural area through no choice of their own, because they were suffering some kind of emergency or they were having to respond, it would seem invidious that they would receive different treatment from an individual who is, for example, driving a postal van.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. Before I call the Minister, I remind hon. and right hon. Members that interventions should be short and to the point. We can be relatively relaxed, but not too relaxed.

[Rory Stewart]

Thank you very much, Mr Stringer. Those two arguments were based on the question of frequency of travel and probability of an accident. Again, the key point in any form of injury claim is the nature of the injury and the liability of the third party that caused it, not the reason someone is in a car. It would be difficult to argue that somebody who travels in the course of their employment is necessarily travelling more frequently than somebody who is not. Somebody in a rural area might, for example, be commuting 5 miles to work in the morning and 5 miles back in the evening. A farmer in my constituency could be travelling between one field and another. There is no necessary reason to feel that they would be travelling more frequently than, for example, a parent taking their child to school in exactly the same area.

Arguments based on frequency or probability of impact should not be relevant. A more fundamental reason is that, in the end, the law is about the injury and the obligation that the third party who caused the injury owes to the injured person, regardless of how frequently that individual is in a car or why they are in a car in the first place. To be blunt, they could simply have gone to the car to get something from it, and could not be driving anywhere, and be struck and suffer whiplash. They would be entitled to exactly the same compensation as an individual driving that car.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the numbers applicable to amendment 9 would be negligible because most of the claims would be against a third party, not the employer?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, I agree, but the key point is the injury, not why someone is in the car. This is a distinction without a difference.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

The Minister mentioned children. I am conscious that children are not regarded as vulnerable road users. They would still need to go to court and have infant settlements made in their name. What consideration has been given to children who are injured in an accident through no fault of their own, obviously, and who have to go to court for a settlement?

[Rory Stewart]

In this regard, it is correct that the age of the individual within the motor car is not relevant within the law in assessing the injury, except in so far as the injury is specific to the age of the individual.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

The Minister makes an excellent point about rural areas. Many of my constituents have to travel for at least two hours to visit a GP or a hospital. The point I make is about the frequency of travel. I used to work for Royal Mail, driving for eight hours a day. My driving skill was much higher then than currently. Surely, such a person is less likely to have an accident because they are on the road more?

[Rory Stewart]

The key point, which goes against both Government and Opposition Members, is not the likelihood of having an accident. That should not affect the level of compensation that someone receives. That should be relative to one thing only: the nature of the injury and the prognosis. It should not be relative to why someone is in the car, how well or how frequently they drive or why they are driving. On that basis, I politely ask that amendment 9 be withdrawn.

New clause 9 reiterates some of the arguments in amendment 9; in other words, it focuses on the question of people injured during the course of their employment. However, it also references vulnerable road users. I have attempted to argue the relevance of someone driving a vehicle in the course of their employment in our discussion on amendment 9. On vulnerable road users, we respectfully request that new clause 9 be withdrawn for the reason I gave in my intervention on the hon. Member for Ashfield—vulnerable road users are already exempted by the Bill, so new clause 9 will be otiose.

On that basis, I respectfully ask that clause 1 stand part. This was a good and serious reform introduced with strong cross-party support by the House of Lords, driven by the DPRRC, which provides a much more accountable, transparent and predictable definition of whiplash to guide the legislation. We owe the Lords a huge debt of gratitude for that. We ask, on the basis that Members of the House of Lords from the Labour party, the Lib Dems, the Cross Benches and the Conservative party all agreed to it, that clause 1 stand part of the Bill.

[Gloria De Piero]

I have listened to the Government’s arguments, but do not accept them. The Bill’s objective is to reduce fraud. I have not heard anybody suggest that workers injured in the course of their employment are scammers. However, I have heard from Labour Back Benchers that workers drive all day and do not have a choice about whether to drive. I will divide the Committee on the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. Minister, as you will have noticed, we have strayed into a stand part debate, so I do not intend to have a separate one. If the Minister wishes to say anything in response, now is the time.

[Rory Stewart]

I shall focus narrowly on amendments 10 and 11, which focus on the question of reducing the period from two years to 12 months. Perhaps when we move on to amendments 12 to 15, we can talk a little more about the Judicial College guidelines and the question of tariffs.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge questioned where the word “minor” came from, which is important. It comes from the Judicial College guidelines. The idea that injuries under two years rather than under one year should be separated reflects the process within the Judicial College guidelines and its definition of what constitutes a minor injury. Clearly, that is a legal definition; in no way does the Judicial College intend to suggest that somebody suffering two years of injury is not suffering considerable pain, distress and loss of amenity. It is simply used to make a distinction between an injury that passes over time and an injury that is catastrophic and lasts throughout one’s life. In no way is it intended to denigrate the experience during the two years.

We feel strongly that it is important for the Bill to remain consistent with the definitions within the Judicial College guidelines. In the absence of that, there would be the first problem of imposing a very unfair pressure, which could inflate, on GPs to push through the one-year barrier, but there is a more fundamental problem. Were we to accept the amendments, they would not only take about 11% of cases out, but mean that the provisions on the requirement for a pre-medical offer would then be removed for the one to two-year period. We would suddenly end up with people able to proceed without medical reports for the one to two-year period, which would undermine a lot of the purpose of the Bill.

[Ruth George]

Surely it is up to insurance companies whether they choose to make pre-medical offers. It is entirely in their hands whether to do so. Whether or not it can be done is for the applicant but the decision is in the hands of the insurance companies; it should not be in the hands of legislation.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Lady puts her finger exactly on the current situation. Currently, the decision is in the hands of the insurance companies. The argument in the legislation is to take that decision away from the insurance companies; it will prohibit them from making an offer without a medical report. That was supported by the Opposition as well as the Government, and that is exactly the intention of the legislation. That is another reason why we will resist amendments 10 and 11.

[Gloria De Piero]

Does the Minister accept that, although the small claims limit has remained at £1,000, the way that was calculated changed in 1999?

[The Chair]

Order. Can I just say to the hon. Lady that the Minister had sat down? It is appropriate to intervene when the Minister is on his feet. If the Minister wishes to make a statement in response, I will take it.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a good challenge. It is not, respectfully, relevant to amendments 10 and 11, but relates to the question of something that will be done by the Procedure Committee, if it were to proceed through secondary legislation—a proposal to raise the limit from £1,000 to £2,000. The hon. Lady is correct that in 1999, changes were made to how the £1,000 limit was calculated, which adds an extra level of complication.

There is also a debate between us on whether CPI or RPI should be used to move that initial 1991 definition and, if so, to what amount. Should the hon. Lady wish to proceed, that is appropriate—not for this amendment or the Bill, but for subsequent measures.

[Gloria De Piero]

We do not intend to divide on this but we will raise these issues again on Report and Third Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George]

As someone who has suffered whiplash, I can speak about the amount of pain and suffering it causes and its impact on a victim’s life. As my hon. Friend said, those things can vary from person to person and from accident to accident, but an injury to the ligaments at the bottom of one’s neck, which carry the head all day long, can have a profound effect on someone’s being able to lift anything at all.

At the time of my injury, I found it very difficult to lift my young baby. When I did so, I was in considerable pain for a long time thereafter, and the problem has continued. I am no longer able to lift very much because it gives me a severe migraine. That is the issue we are considering for people with whiplash.

[Rory Stewart]

If an injury continued, with migraines more than two years after the incident had occurred, it would not be classified as a minor one under the Bill and would not be subject to the tariffs. It would go through the normal court procedures, via a fast track, and the award would be made by judges.

[Ruth George]

Absolutely, but what I was going to say was that my injury was then exacerbated by physio. It might have cleared up within two years—I had hoped that it would and for most people it does—but it takes a long time and a lot of suffering to get to that point.

For the vast majority of people who suffer whiplash, and particularly when it is of longer duration where there is significant medical evidence—MRI scans and extended x-rays—the Bill, as the Minister said, will prevent pre-medical offers from being made. There will have to be medical reports showing what has been happening to someone’s neck and the impact on them.

It does not make sense that we are considering introducing a one-size-fits-all tariff at a very low rate that takes no account whatever of the amount of pain and suffering, only its duration. It takes no account of the impact on the victim’s life, including on their work and home life. If someone is a carer, works in a nursery or has another manual job, the impact on them will be far greater than on someone with a similar injury who does not have to perform such tasks.

[Rory Stewart]

This is an important and serious issue, so I wish to clarify something that I am sure all hon. Members on both sides of the House already understand. The legislation purely relates to general damages, which cover pain and loss of amenity. All the examples that were given, such as loss of earnings or being unable to perform a particular job because of whiplash, would be covered by special damages and are not affected by the legislation.

If an individual had an injury that prevented them from going to work, that loss of earnings would be covered under a separate special damages claim. The legislation relates purely to the subjective judgment on the pain experienced—not the physio costs or the loss of earnings. That is all unaffected by the legislation.

[Ruth George]

Those of us who have worked in the trade union movement will know that compensation for loss of earnings does not always equate to the amount that somebody loses and the impact on their job. Many employers have schemes whereby anyone who is off sick for more than a certain number of days is unable to return, or suffers some other detriment. With many schemes, people have to survive on sick pay. Even if the difference comes to a significant amount, it takes a long time for that to come through. That feeds into the impact not just on somebody’s work, but on their life. The judiciary can take account of that when they set an award, but this tariff takes no account of the amount of pain and suffering—only the duration—or of the impact on a person’s life at the time of the injury.

[Ruth George]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I was dismayed by the huge cuts in 2012 to the criminal injuries compensation scheme, but the amount for whiplash remained at £1,000. Even this Government, who were looking to remove a vast proportion of the costs of the criminal injuries compensation scheme, did not seek to change the tariff for whiplash, because they accepted that £1,000 for a 13-week injury was a fair amount of compensation, even under the criminal injuries scheme paid for by the Government.

However, the Government are now proposing that insurance companies that receive far more than the amount of tariffs per year from many motorists should have to pay out less, and that for a six-month injury someone would receive perhaps £450. For many motorists an insurance premium for six months is more than £450, begging the question: what will they pay insurance for? Where is the value for money, and where is the fairness to victims of accidents in today’s proposals?

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the hon. Members for Ashfield and for High Peak for their powerful speeches. Before I move on to amendments 12 to 15 and Government new clause 4, I will clarify some points raised by the hon. Member for High Peak.

Many things are covered by insurance besides the ability to get compensation for whiplash. It would be absurd if the entire purpose of an insurance scheme was simply to give someone an annual pay-out for whiplash, and they paid £450 for that insurance when such claims were capped at £450. The hon. Member for High Peak is right that that would be an absurd system, but insurance covers many things besides whiplash claims. In fact, we are trying to move to a world in which the majority of someone’s insurance would cover things other than their whiplash claim.

This goes to the heart of the discussion so far, and to a point made by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge. Fundamentally, the number of road traffic accidents has decreased by 30% since 2005. At the same time, cars have become considerably safer: headrests and other forms of restraints have made it much safer to be in a motor car than it was in 2005. During that same period, whiplash claims have increased by 40%. Whether we define these as fraudulent or simply exaggerated, there is no doubt of the trend. There are fewer road traffic accidents and cars are safer, yet whiplash claims are going up.

[David Hanson]

We heard a number times in the Justice Committee, when taking evidence from the Minister’s colleague, Lord Keen, the question of the word “fraudulent”. Can the Minister quantify for this Committee how many fraudulent claims he expects there to be on an annual basis?

[Rory Stewart]

The answer is that judging fraud in whiplash is almost impossible except statistically through the measures that I have used, because for minor whiplash claims of the sort that are covered in the tariff—not the type of whiplash injury that the hon. Member for High Peak experienced—there is no way of proving whether an injury has occurred. That is why The New England Journal of Medicine has done research on this.

There has been interesting research on what happens if someone sits in a motor vehicle with a simulated accident and a curtain behind them, so that they are unable to tell whether the accident has occurred or not. It shows that 20% of people experienced whiplash without the collision actually occurring. This is clearly a complex medico-social phenomenon. The polite way of putting it is that there is an asymmetry of information. It is close to impossible for an insurance company to prove that an individual did not experience whiplash, particularly at the three-month rate.

[David Hanson]

Could the record show, Mr Stringer, that the Minister, like his colleague in the House of Lords, could not indicate how many claims per annum are fraudulent?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

I am very happy for the record to say exactly that, provided we explain why that is the case. The nature of this injury is such that it is impossible to know, in most cases, whether the individual is making a fraudulent claim. In the case of the kind of injury experienced by the hon. Member for High Peak—a much more serious injury—it is possible to detect things through MRI scans, but for the majority of injuries that we will be talking about in the three-month to six-month period, no physical evidence can be adduced one way or the other.

In the end, the qualified GP has to sit down and reach some kind of judgment, through discussion with the individual and gathering the evidence of injury, that the balance of probabilities holds that the individual is experiencing subjective pain, but it is impossible to prove that through the kinds of medical evidence that one would adduce in a normal medical case.

[Ruth George]

An MRI scan will identify where there is soft-tissue injury. At any stage, the point is whether it is worth going for an MRI scan. By reducing the tariff to such a small amount, GPs in many instances, particularly up to 12 months, may well deduce that it is not worth referring a patient for an MRI scan to produce that medical evidence. The tariffs proposed will reduce the amount of medical evidence produced and may well increase the number of fraudulent claims, because there will be less requirement for medical evidence such as an MRI scan.

[Rory Stewart]

Many whiplash injuries are not detectable on an MRI scan. Many people are currently receiving compensation for whiplash and have experienced whiplash injury, which cannot be caught on an MRI scan. The GPs who will be asked to decide whether someone has had a whiplash injury will not be holding them to the standards of an MRI scan. Were they to do so, we believe that the number of whiplash injuries would decrease very dramatically. Nothing like 550,000 injuries a year would be recorded on an MRI scan, particularly in the three-month to six-month period.

[Jo Stevens]

I practiced in this area for nearly 30 years. Every day, I saw the impact of motor accidents and soft-tissue injuries on young and old people from all sorts of backgrounds. What the Minister is saying is absolute nonsense. GPs are able to determine whether someone has suffered an injury—they have been doing so for many years and will continue to do so for many years. This is simply an excuse to increase insurance companies’ profits.

[Rory Stewart]

There is a fundamental issue—we may get on to it later in the debate—about the different understanding of insurance companies on opposite sides of the House. Two arguments are put forward. The hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), for example, suggested in his speech in the House that the insurance industry worked on a binary basis—that the objective of the insurance industry was simply to increase the premiums as much as possible to sky-high levels, and reduce payouts.

We would argue, as does the Competition and Markets Authority, that there is a third crucial factor—competition—in understanding the impact of the legislation. What prevents premiums endlessly going up and an insurance companies never paying out is that people simply would not go to that insurance company and would go elsewhere. The insurance markets were very carefully studied by the Financial Services Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority. They are confident that 80% of the associated savings in costs will be passed on to consumers through the mechanism of competition and agencies advertising to get customers.

One way in which we seek to demonstrate that point publicly is through inserting an amendment to get the insurance companies to come forward with clear information on the amount of money they have received and the amount they have paid out. We can then have an open debate in Parliament to discover which of us is right—whether the Competition and Markets Authority is right or whether, as the hon. Member for High Peak and the hon. Member for Jarrow argue, it is a purely binary process.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Is the Minister aware that the insurance companies settle the vast majority of whiplash claims without going to court and pay up without even trying to fight the claims? If the Minister is correct that the claims are hard to detect, why are the insurance companies not fighting more of them and taking people to court?

[Rory Stewart]

The answer is exactly for that reason. Because they are so hard to detect, they are almost impossible to fight, and therefore insurance companies have historically made that decision. They often do not even get a medical report because it hardly seems worth while to do so. When somebody comes forward with a whiplash claim, the procedure has often been to settle without going to court in order to reduce the legal fees and the associated costs, exactly because it is incredibly difficult.

Whiplash claims are extremely controversial medically. A lot of articles are written about this—I quoted the New England Journal of Medicine in the House, which is particularly stark. Cassidy’s article argues very strongly that the absence of compensation for pain and loss of amenity is associated with a much improved prognosis and reduced duration in the whiplash injury itself. In other words, the New England Journal of Medicine points to the fact that this is not purely a medical phenomenon. It has social and legal dimensions, of which compensation is a part.

[Gloria De Piero]

Is the Minister familiar with the quote from the head of the City of London police insurance fraud enforcement department? He said in the Insurance Post:

“It would be wrong to say that I believe there is a compensation culture or an insurance fraud culture in general.”

Another expert denied?

[Rory Stewart]

Such arguments would be more powerful if Opposition Members could explain why the number of whiplash claims has gone up by 40% since 2005, when the number of motor vehicle accidents has declined by 30% and cars have got much safer? A lot of things have been introduced in cars since 2005. Nearly 85% now have the safety features specifically designed to reduce whiplash that only 15% had in 2005. There are fewer accidents and much better protection around the individual.

[Ruth George]

Will the Minister give way? Does he want an answer?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. Let me just articulate the question and the hon. Lady can perhaps answer it exactly. Why has the number of road traffic accidents reduced dramatically—cars have got safer so people are much less likely to experience injury, and there are fewer accidents—yet the number of claims has gone up by 40%? Why is she confident that the operation of claims management companies is not associated with the extraordinary increase in whiplash claims? Presumably, we have all received calls from claims management companies. An average of 600,000 claims are made a year—almost one in 100 citizens in the United Kingdom make a whiplash claim. How can that be possible when the number of road traffic accidents is reducing?

[Ruth George]

The Minister makes an excellent argument for regulating claims management companies properly. He has made no argument for blaming and making innocent victims of road traffic accidents. On Second Reading, we heard that many people are phoned by claims management companies. In many instances, their details are given out by the insurance companies to whom they make an honest claim. The insurance companies, which are linked to those claims management companies, give those details. If the Minister wants to act on the problem of whiplash, he should look at those claims management companies and their tactics of cold calling, as the Bill does in banning pre-medical offers, and end the links between insurance companies and claims management companies, rather than making innocent victims suffer.

[Rory Stewart]

With permission, I will proceed. There is still no answer to why the number of claims has risen, particularly when the number of road traffic accidents has dropped. The hon. Lady suggested that she would answer the question but did not. I look forward to someone answering that question, but I would like to make progress.

[David Hanson]

In Committee, it is normal to take interventions. As a Minister I never refused an intervention in Committee. I hope the Minister will accept this intervention. He mentioned the increase in claims being made. How many of those claims does he expect are fraudulent? That is the key. If they are not fraudulent, they are genuine claims, whether they are through a claims management company or from an individual.

[Rory Stewart]

The statistics suggest very strongly that what happened to an individual in a motor car in 2005 would, on average, have been much more severe than what happens to an individual in a motor car in 2018. A 30% reduction in the number of road traffic accidents, combined with the improvement in safety procedures, would suggest that an individual having a motor vehicle accident today would be considerably less likely to suffer whiplash than would have been the case in 2005. Therefore, the fact that the number of claims has increased by 40% is a very peculiar anomaly that requires explanation, which nobody has produced so far. Will somebody please explain why the number of claims has increased by 40% when there has been no physiological change in the human body since 2005 and motor cars have, if anything, got safer?

[David Hanson]

The Minister still has not answered the question. How many of those additional claims does he suggest are fraudulent? If a claims management company takes forward a claim, there might be issues about the claims management company but, ultimately, if the claim is not correct it will not be approved. Therefore, how many of those extra claims are fraudulent? He needs to tell the Committee.

[Rory Stewart]

In 2016, there were 7,572 confirmed fraudulent motor claims and 58,576 suspected claims, resulting in 66,147 detected motor fraud claims. However, my point goes much wider. Because of the asymmetry of information and because it is impossible to prove whether the injury has occurred—particularly at the three to six-month period—it is impossible to put a precise number on it. We can be confident, through the soaring inflation in the number of these claims, that many are exaggerated, to put it mildly, even though we cannot prove the exact number beyond the 66,147 that are actually fraudulent.

[Craig Tracey]

I spent 20-odd years on the frontline dealing with these types of claims and acting on behalf of the client rather than the insurance company. For genuinely injured people, we found that financial compensation was a minor consideration in the overall claim. They wanted to feel better and get put right. Is it not right that insurance companies should focus on rehabilitation, treatment and proper diagnosis rather than worrying so much about value?

[Rory Stewart]

I absolutely agree. It is very important to keep reminding the House that we are focusing on general damages, not special damages. In other words, we are focusing on what ultimately must be a difficult, subjective judgment about the level of pain that an individual experiences, and not loss of earnings or other forms of treatment.

[Robert Courts]

I repeat my declaration that I practised in this area until I was elected two years ago, and I remain a door tenant at my chambers. Having practised in this area for more than 10 years, I too have experience. Does the Minister accept that there is a danger that the Committee is confusing two issues? According to the guidance notes, the manifesto gave a commitment to

“reduce insurance costs for ordinary motorists by tackling the continuing high number and cost of whiplash claims.”

This is not solely about fraud. It is also about perfectly genuine claims where the costs have become very expensive. Are the Government seeking to provide redress for those who have been injured, but to do so in a cost-proportionate manner?

[Rory Stewart]

Fundamental to decisions that the Ministry of Justice has to make under any Government is the need to think seriously about balancing different types of interest—in this case the interests of the claimant, the third party and the taxpayer, as well as those of road users and people who take out motor insurance. It is therefore appropriate for us to question the overall cost of the system, and—particularly for motorists in rural areas—the fact that the premium could be as much as £35 a year extra, and considerably more for a young driver, because of the hundreds of thousands of people each year who make whiplash claims.

[Gloria De Piero]

Insurers have never mentioned fraud as a material risk in their financial report. If it were such a serious concern, would they not be required to report it to the Financial Reporting Council?

[Rory Stewart]

The question of what constitutes a material risk in a financial report is driven primarily by the financial stability of the company, so the question of whether fraud is defined in that way relates purely to the cost of the fraud. The question is a financial one, not one of honesty.

Amendments 12, 13, 14 and 15 relate to the Judicial College guidelines. This debate has had quite a long consultation period—it has been going on for more than three years. We are grateful to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and many others, including the Law Society, who have fed in to this consultation, and we have arrived at a compromise. The Opposition were extremely uncomfortable with the initial proposals, and we have made a lot of concessions—that is why I will be asking hon. Members to withdraw their amendments.

The initial proposals by the Chancellor of Exchequer in his Budget speech were to remove general damages entirely, and for no compensation to be offered for pain, suffering and loss of amenity. There was also a proposal to have no judicial involvement whatsoever in setting levels of compensation, and the third element of controversy was about whether it was appropriate to have tariffs at all.

We have made significant concessions on the first two points—in the House of Lords for the second proposal, and before that stage for the first proposal. Under pressure from many people, including Opposition Members, we have accepted that there should be general damages, and that principle has been reinserted. Secondly—this is why I will ask for support for clause 4—we will push ahead with the proposal that the Lord Chief Justice should be consulted on the level of the tariffs. That brings in the judiciary so that it will not be done purely by the Lord Chancellor, which brings us to the question of whether there should be tariffs at all.

A tariff system is relatively unusual in English common law although, as the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate pointed out, an equivalent exists for criminal injury compensation cases, which creates some paradoxes and contradictions. At the moment, someone who suffers a criminal injury could receive a different level of compensation than if they suffer exactly the same injury without a criminal act. The same is true if someone in a motor vehicle suffers from a terrorist attack. The Government could give someone considerably more compensation if they are the victim of a terrorist attack than if they suffer the injury in a different way.

However, tariffs are not unusual: they have been introduced very successfully in Italy, France and many other European jurisdictions. Under the proposals in the Bill, there will be judicial discretion on the tariffs. That is judicial discretion that we have consulted on closely and will return to under later amendments. It is in line with what the European Court of Justice believes should be the appropriate degree of judicial flexibility when applied to a tariff system.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Let us assume for a moment that we accept that the tariff system is the right one. Does the Minister not agree that the inconsistencies are just unacceptable and that there needs to be a review of the levels that have been set out, because there seems to be no rhyme or reason to them? Can he explain to me how the levels have been arrived at? I cannot see where they have come from.

[Rory Stewart]

This goes to the heart of the concerns that the judiciary raised when the first criminal injury compensation schemes were introduced and, indeed, when compensation for a terrorist act was introduced. As the hon. Gentleman suggests, it is perfectly legitimate to question whether, within the tradition of tort in the English common law, it is appropriate to distinguish between an injury suffered at the hands of a criminal or a terrorist and an injury simply suffered at the hands of another third party who is liable, but that is a much deeper philosophical jurisprudential debate than I think we can proceed with here. With that, I respectfully request that the amendments be withdrawn or not pressed and I ask the Committee to support Government amendment 4.

[Gloria De Piero]

I am afraid that I am going to disappoint the Minister. We feel so strongly, because we are led by the independent experts, by the Select Committee on Justice and by some people in the Minister’s own party, whom I quoted earlier, that we believe that the Committee needs to divide on amendments 12 to 16.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Gloria De Piero]

This amendment would allow judges to increase the amount of damages payable where they determine the tariff amount to be insufficient compensation, rather than capping judges’ ability to increase compensation awards to a percentage specified by the Lord Chancellor, as the Bill currently does. Once again, I want to point out the long-standing tradition of trusting judges, rather than having politicians interfere with the discretion of the courts—a tradition that the Government are inexplicably undermining with this Bill.

Clause 5(3) states that if the court thinks there should be an uplift from the tariff because of the severity of the injury, the amount by which the court can increase the payment is limited according to a cap set by the Lord Chancellor. Not only are the courts being fettered by a tariff, but when they consider the tariff to be inappropriate, they will get their judicial wings clipped again. This reduces judges to little more than errand boys for the Lord Chancellor.

Many Lord Chancellors these days are not lawyers. They will rely on the advice of their officials, who need not have legal training either. If the Tories do not trust the judges, who do they trust? What are they scared of? What evidence do they have that judges will behave badly and award huge sums? What court cases can they point to in which that has happened? I can find none at all, and nor can the experts whom my team and I have consulted.

I suspect the insurers fear that without a cap, every tariff award will be taken to court, where judges will apply an uplift and blow up their tariff. If that is what they fear, it suggests that they secretly accept that the proposed tariffs are too low. Perhaps the reason for all these restrictions—all these fetters on what a judge can decide for themselves—is that the Government and the insurance industry are running scared that judges will, indeed, rebel against them. Not because judges are intrinsically rebellious—far from it, some would say; they are conservative with a big and a small c—but because they have a duty to be impartial and deliver justice, and the Government’s proposed tariff does not even remotely do that. Amendment 18 would restore judges’ lost autonomy.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her speech. This amendment relates to the fundamental question of the tariff system and the relationship between the judiciary and the tariff system. Clause 5 provides a pragmatic compromise between a strict tariff system and judicial discretion by allowing the judges to lift that tariff in exceptional circumstances. However, as the European Court of Justice accepted in the arguments made in the Italian case, there needs to be a limit. If there were no limit to judges’ discretion, the tariff system would become unworkable.

In so far as we disagree about whether there should be a tariff system in the first place, I completely understand where Opposition Committee members are coming from. However, given that the fundamental cornerstone of the Bill is that there should be a tariff, we need to strike a pragmatic compromise between the tariff and giving some discretion to judges. Therefore, we propose that the Lord Chancellor will set a percentage of discretion for judges to uplift the tariff. We also propose that he will consult the Lord Chief Justice on the appropriate level of discretion. We will look carefully at the rulings of the European Court of Justice and the decisions that it has made in other countries where tariffs exist to arrive at that figure.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The tariffs range from £235 to £3,910, which are incredibly small amounts in the great scheme of things. To try to fetter the judges’ discretion on such small amounts, for exceptional circumstances that have yet to be defined, is to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We just accepted an amendment to the effect that the Lord Chancellor must consult the Lord Chief Justice. Does the Minister not think that it would be better to use that mechanism, rather than “exceptional circumstances”, to set the tariffs?

[Rory Stewart]

We certainly will move to introduce an amendment exactly in relation the hon. Gentleman’s question—he has campaigned well on this, as have other hon. Members—setting out that we should consult the Lord Chief Justice on the level of tariffs as well as on the percentage uplift for judicial discretion. Those are two important concessions that I hope will reassure the Opposition.

[David Hanson]

Before the Minister sits down, can he give some further detail about how he intends to consult the Lord Chief Justice on making the regulations? How much notice will he give the Lord Chief Justice? Will the Lord Chief Justice’s comments be public? Will they be published so that other hon. Members can see them prior to any decision being taken? What happens if the Lord Chief Justice disagrees with the Government’s suggestions? Could the Minister give some outline of those circumstances?

[Rory Stewart]

As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, clause 5(5) merely states:

“The Lord Chancellor must consult the Lord Chief Justice before making regulations under this section.”

We intend that to be done in an accountable, responsible, transparent and predictable fashion that would give the Lord Chief Justice a serious amount of time to consider and respond, but, ultimately, it is a consultation and the power of decision rests with the Lord Chancellor, as is implied in the legislation.

[David Hanson]

Will the Lord Chief Justice’s comments on the consultation be public? Will other people apart from those two parties be able to see both their comments?

[Rory Stewart]

That remains to be determined by regulations introduced by the Lord Chancellor and is not included in the Bill.

[Jo Stevens]

Why not take the pragmatic approach and just leave it to the judges to decide? They are the experts. Why should a politician influence what is happening?

[Rory Stewart]

The answer goes to the core of the entire legislation. The proposed tariff recognises that what we are dealing with—or at least, what we believe we are dealing with—in relation to whiplash, with the peculiar anomalies since 2005 and the increase in whiplash claims, is not exclusively medical or legal, but has strong social and political dimensions in terms of insurance premiums and the cost to the public purse, which is why quite a lot of part 2 of the Bill deals with the NHS. The introduction of the tariffs is designed precisely to reduce the amount paid out in the specific case of general damages for minor whiplash injuries. Simply to stick with the judicial college guidelines would obviate the entire purpose of the Bill and undermine the medical, legal, social and political arguments that underlie the legislation.

[Ellie Reeves]

Under the proposals, an uplift would be allowed only if the whiplash injury was exceptionally severe or the circumstances were exceptional. Does that not hugely undermine the principle of judicial discretion and take away judges’ ability to assess cases and make appropriate awards for damages? The threshold in these proposals has to be far too high.

[Rory Stewart]

Clearly, a system of the sort we propose, which is modelled on the existing tariff systems in places such as France and Italy, is designed to set in law, through the actions of an accountable Minister, the level of the tariff. The argument is absolutely right. As the hon. Lady suggests, that will remove discretion from judges except in exceptional circumstances. The reasons for that are to do with our policy objective of dealing with the whiplash claim culture. Our intention is to reduce the damages paid for minor whiplash injuries, which are defined in the Judicial College guidelines as those that last less than two years. That will result in general damage payments lower than those currently awarded by judges. However, in exceptional circumstances, judges will be able to increase the award.

[Gloria De Piero]

What is the fear here? Is it that judges will make awards above the tariff set?

[Rory Stewart]

The Judicial College guidelines are simply a historical record of awards by the courts. It is a fact that those awards to date have been higher than the awards we propose in the tariff. The policy intention is to reduce the general damages paid, particularly for people at the three-to-six-month level. As we get closer to the two-year level, awards under the tariff come closer to the Judicial College guidelines, but at the lower end, as was suggested, there is a disagreement between the Government and the current practice of judges about the appropriate award for pain, suffering and loss of amenity.

There has been a lot of discussion about experts, but right hon. and hon. Members must remember that we are discussing general damages, not money for loss of earnings or to pay for physiotherapy. We are discussing a judgment of exactly how many pounds and pence someone should receive for a whiplash injury—for the subjective experience of pain in their neck or shoulder. It is difficult to argue that there is particular expertise on the question of the subjective experience of pain. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate suggested, it is impossible for anyone—whether they are a Minister, a judge or a doctor—to suggest that the money that is paid can remove the pain. The pain remains. Money paid in general damages is intended simply as an acknowledgement of the existence of pain, suffering or loss of amenity. It cannot, as would be the case with special damages, remove the pain itself. On that basis, I politely request that the amendments be withdrawn and the clause be accepted.

[Gloria De Piero]

We do not accept the Minister’s arguments, so will divide the Committee.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

We therefore propose—this effectively happens now in a fast track case, where the defendant fights on liability and the case falls out of the fast track—that the claimant should get help to fight on. The costs will be fixed, as they are now in the fast track, but at least the claimant will have someone to hold their hand who is on their side. Perhaps the Government think that injured people, possibly claiming sums that exceed their monthly pay cheque, should be left on their own, assess quantum on their own and fight well-funded insurers on their own.

[Rory Stewart]

I very strongly support the basic principles and philosophy of amendments 19 to 21. I have huge respect for MedCo—right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that it is a non-profit portal designed to select at random an expert witness in order to testify in whiplash injury claims. I can reassure them that the intention is for MedCo to be the appropriate channel through which advice is sought.

The only reason we have not put MedCo on the face of the Bill is to provide for the eventuality that, in 20 or 30 years’ time, an entity other than Medico might exist— as hon. Members will see in clause 6(4), we are specifying the form of evidence, the person, the accreditation and the regulations. That was on the advice of counsel, which has had strong experience over the last century, that defining a non-profit on the face of the Bill could cause massive challenges if something unforeseen happens to it. We absolutely agree that MedCo is the appropriate body to use at the moment. All the arguments made by the Opposition are accepted, but on counsel advice, we respectfully advise that it would be better to allow flexibility rather than defining MedCo on the face of the Bill, and therefore ask them to withdraw those amendments.

New clause 3 argues for an individual to be able to reclaim their legal costs while pursuing their whiplash claim. This is a fundamental point of debate and disagreement, and goes against the fundamental principle of the small claims court, the idea of which is that an individual should be a litigant in person and not in a position to recover their legal costs. The argument made is that, under the level proposed—which in the case of certain kinds of damages is £10,000, in relation to whiplash would be £5,000 and in relation to personal injury could be as much as £2,000—we believe that the nature of the claims, particularly with a medical report in place, should be relatively straightforward. We have made some concessions about the online portal and the roll-out, all of which, we think, makes it inappropriate to ask for the reclaim of legal costs.

[Ellie Reeves]

Are we not going to be in exactly the same situation we were with employment tribunal fees? For people pursuing claims, fees, whether they are court fees, legal fees or medical costs, will put people off pursuing claims and therefore undermine their access to justice. The Government were called out on this by the Supreme Court regarding employment tribunal fees and we seem to be going back down the same route.

[Rory Stewart]

This will be entirely different. The disagreement is only about whether one can employ a lawyer and recover the cost of the lawyer. The individual will be able to recover from the insurer the medical costs on the report they got—for example if they spent £140 going through the MedCo portal. The small claims court cost of registering the claim would also be recoverable. However, in the vast majority of cases at the moment—we consider that this will be true in the future—cases do not go to court at all. In the vast majority of cases, a claimant will get a medical certificate, follow the path of the online portal and the settlement will come without them having to proceed to court.

[Jo Stevens]

The Minister’s impact assessment, which I referred to on Second Reading, explicitly states that the measure will affect the number of people who will bring cases, and that the number of cases will go down. Will he comment on that please?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. The Government’s contention is that some of the cases currently being brought forward are fraudulent or exaggerated claims motivated by a desire to get a payout when either an injury has not been experienced or the injury experienced was considerably less than claimed in court. We believe that, by reducing the level of tariffs that paid out and by removing the industry of lawyers whose costs can currently be reclaimed through the process, it will be less likely that an individual who has not suffered an injury will go through the inconvenience of seeking a medical report, and less likely that they will proceed to the small claims court or go through the online portal to receive payment for an injury that did not occur. They would not be supported and encouraged by the legal profession or, more likely, claims management companies in proceeding down that path.

[Jo Stevens]

Will the Minister clarify? Is he saying that, although his impact assessment states that the number of cases will go down, the measure will apply only to fraudulent cases? Is he saying that no genuine victim of injury will not pursue a claim because they are not able to recover their costs?

[Rory Stewart]

The impact assessment, which is based on an enormous amount of expert evidence and discussion, boils down to a pretty straightforward assumption about human behaviour. Under the proposed new system, if someone has a car crash and injures themselves, they will proceed to their insurance company, register the fact that they have genuinely injured themselves, be directed towards MedCo, which would provide a report, go to the online portal and, in an effective, efficient and transparent fashion, proceed towards a predictable tariff based on their medical reports. If the medical reports say that the prognosis is six months, a fixed tariff would be paid out.

The experts’ contention is that, if someone has a car crash and genuinely nothing happens to them, it would be unlikely, in the absence of a claims management company encouraging them to do so, that they will tell the insurance company that they have a whiplash injury, or be coached to mislead a doctor in the MedCo process to get some kind of report suggesting they have a whiplash injury. Therefore, somebody who either did not experience an injury or experienced an injury so minor that they were not interested in pursuing compensation would not proceed. We believe that, under the current system, the practice of some claims management companies is to encourage people who either have not experienced an injury or have experienced a considerably more minor injury to make a fraudulent or exaggerated claim. We believe that those claims will be not entirely excluded but reduced.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Does the Minister accept that there has to be a hearing to settle children’s claims, and that infant settlements require representation? Children often sue their parents if there has been a road traffic accident that is no fault of their own. Will he consider exempting them from the scope of the Bill? They require solicitors, because there has to be a hearing for there to be a settlement.

[Rory Stewart]

Perhaps we can return to that very interesting point on Report. It has not been raised in any of the amendments tabled so far, but I would be very interested to see an amendment tabled and to discuss the matter outside this Committee.

On the basis of the arguments I have made about MedCo, I respectfully request that the Opposition withdraw amendments 19, 20 and 21.

[Gloria De Piero]

Will the Minister say a bit more about the advice he has received from counsel and about why he will not accept the amendments?

[Rory Stewart]

It is pretty straightforward. MedCo is a non-profit organisation set up relatively recently as a portal funded by the insurance industry. We intend the Bill, like any law we pass, to have sustainability and resilience. Potentially, it will last 50 or 100 years. It is very difficult, looking forward over that period, to be confident that the exact portal or organisation by which doctors qualify to provide an assessment of whiplash will be called MedCo—it may be called something else. The measure provides the flexibility, through regulations from the Lord Chancellor, to define the form of evidence, the person, the accreditation and the regulation necessary to proceed. We think it would give a hostage to fortune to put the brand name of a specific non-profit on the face of the Bill. On that basis, I request that amendments 19, 20 and 21, and new clause 3, be withdrawn.

Civil Liability Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point; it is one I had not thought of and I am grateful to him for bringing that to the Committee’s attention. If this saving is going to be made, it would be sensible to say whether it is made early on, because downstream, as my hon. Friend indicated, there will no doubt be a tapering.

To be honest with the Committee, the Minister is only proposing new clause 2 because he got done over in the other place by Members of the House of Lords and could not get the Bill through the House of Lords without this new clause. He got done over in the other place because the Justice Committee unanimously called for

“the Financial Conduct Authority to monitor the extent to which any premium reductions can be attributed to these measures and report back to us after 12 months.”

I go back to the all-party Justice Committee, chaired by a Conservative MP, with a Conservative majority, which said in its report on this Bill that there should be a report within 12 months. We have been helpfully reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown why we suggested that at the time: because we wanted to see the impact within 12 months.

On the amendment tabled by Lord Sharkey in the House of Lords, Lord Keen, the Minister dealing with this in the other place, said on Report:

“the Government are not unsympathetic to the underlying intention of Amendment 46, as tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. The point is that having made a firm commitment, insurers should be accountable for meeting it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 June 2018; Vol. 791, c. 1632.]

That is what this Minister’s colleague said in the House of Lords, and I do not disagree with it. I only say to the Minister that April 2024 seems a tad far in the future to secure the proposals that he is putting to the Committee today.

The Minister needs to say firmly to the Committee what he anticipates the savings to be now, how he will monitor what the insurance companies are making—not just now, but in the next five years—and how he will hold the insurance companies to account. How will he ensure that, whatever date we end up with—be it 1 April 2024 or, if the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield is accepted, as I hope it will be, an earlier date—they meet their obligations and give the money back to the people who are funding it in the first place?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for bringing proposing the amendments and new clauses.

Effectively, as the right hon. Member for Delyn has pointed out, new clause 2 was introduced with a lot of influence from the House of Lords—it was driven by Opposition Members of the House of Lords to meet exactly the concerns raised by right hon. and hon. Members. Therefore, I am tempted to argue in my brief argument that amendment 17 and new clause 6 are, in fact, unnecessary. The noble Lords did a good job in new clause 2 of addressing many of the concerns raised in the debate, which is why the Government are keen to ask for the Committee’s support.

At the heart of this, the Committee will discover, is a fundamental disagreement about the nature of markets, which will be difficult to resolve simply through legislation. There are profoundly different views on both sides of the House about what exactly is going on in a market. Again and again, all the arguments—from the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn) right the way through to the eloquent speech by the right hon. Member for Delyn—rest on the fundamental assumption that every company, insurance or otherwise, in the country is simply involved in trying to charge their consumers as much as possible and provide as few services as possible, and that there is nothing to prevent their doing that.

Of course, what prevents companies from doing that ought to be competition. It does not matter whether that is the insurance industry or, to take a more straightforward question, why Tesco’s does not charge £50 for a loaf of bread and try to produce one slice. In the end, the decision on what premiums are charged will be driven by competition between different insurance companies. All the arguments, whether in relation to these or other amendments, are based on that fundamental misunderstanding. The Labour party is again effectively pushing for a prices and incomes policy. They are trying to get the Government to fix the prices of premiums and control the prices that insurance companies charge because they simply do not trust the Competition and Markets Authority, the FCA, the insurance industry or any other business to pass on savings to consumers.

[David Hanson]

With respect to the Minister, in this case the Labour party is just asking for confirmation of what the Government want to do. They said that they want to save £1.3 billion, and in November 2015 said that they would give back £50 as premiums. That figure has changed. All I am asking is this: what is their estimate of the figure today? The Minister should be able to give an estimate because he has done so on two previous occasions—in an assessment of the Bill’s financial implications in the Conservative party manifesto, and in the Chancellor’s statement to the House of Commons.

[Rory Stewart]

Unfortunately, something is being missed in the way the right hon. Gentleman is framing his arguments. He is suggesting that there is a fixed, stable situation—the Chancellor of the Exchequer offered £50, nothing changed, and now it is £35. If that were true, it would indeed be a disgrace, but the reality is that, following the negotiations that took place in the consultation and in the House of Lords, the savings that the insurance companies will realise and will be in a position to pass on to the man or woman paying the premium have been considerably reduced.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman might be interested in listening to the answer rather than talking to somebody else. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke, he of course suggested that all general damages would be entirely removed. His proposal was that there would be no general damages at all. It is therefore perfectly reasonable. If no general damages at all were paid, the insurance company’s savings would be considerably larger, and the savings passed on to the consumer might indeed have been £50.

Due to the very good work that the Opposition and the noble Lords put in, there have been a number of compromises to the Bill, which mean that the savings passed on to the insurers, and from the insurers in the form of premiums, will be considerably reduced. One of those compromises is that, whereas in the past there were going to be no general damages paid to anybody getting a whiplash injury of under two years, there is now a tariff for money to be paid out. As it gets closer to two years, the tariffs paid out will be much closer to the existing Judicial College guidelines, so the savings will be considerably less.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

We have been here before with the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Act 2018, in which the Government fixed the energy price cap and said that the big energy companies would give money back to the consumers, even though the money is not as high as we expected. Then it was £100, and now it is about £70. Why does the Minister not want to do that with insurance companies?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question. The hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Delyn are essentially asking the same question. Indeed, that is what this whole debate is about. The question is about the extent to which the Government wish to interfere in the market to fix prices. As the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate suggested, a very, very unusual and unprecedented decision was made about the energy companies following a suggestion originally made by the Labour party that we should get involved in fixing prices. That is something about which, from a policy point of view, we generally disagree with Labour because—this deep ideological division between our two parties goes back nearly 100 years—we are a party that fundamentally trusts the market.

The Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority argue that the insurance companies are operating in a highly competitive market. The reason why we did not initially suggest that we need to introduce anything equivalent to new clause 2 is precisely that we believe that the market is operating well, and that the savings passed on to the insurance companies will be passed on to the consumers, as happens in every other aspect of the market. I have not yet heard a strong argument from the Opposition about why they believe that not to be the case. Logically, Opposition Members can be making only one argument: they must somehow be implying that the insurance companies are operating in an illegal cartel.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

I give way to hear why the Opposition believe that is not the case.

[Jo Stevens]

The Minister has said that the Opposition want to fix the market and prices. He also mentioned trust, which is exactly what this is about, because we have been in this situation before. Previously, insurers promised to return savings to consumers and did not. Why is it different this time? Why does the Minister think we can take insurers at their word this time when they have not returned savings previously?

[Rory Stewart]

Recent evidence on the cost of motor premiums shows that, after the implementation of the last set of reforms, there was a flattening off in the increase in the insurance premiums that was lower than inflation. The reason we believe this mechanism works—this was all part of the evidence put forward by the Competition and Markets Authority—is that it is a very mobile market. Currently, 72% of policyholders have switched their motor insurance provider—it is not a static market where people do not move between providers, which gives a very strong incentive to compete on the premiums. Fifty per cent. of insurance customers are going to comparison websites to compare the premium prices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gloria De Piero]

Does the Minister accept that, since the changes made in 2012, insurance companies have saved £11 billion?

[Rory Stewart]

I am not in a position to accept or reject that figure—I am not familiar with that figure and I am not clear how it has been arrived at. I am happy to look at that in more detail before Report stage of the Bill.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

The Minister mentioned the reforms of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, but is it not right that, in the two years following those reforms, insurers passed on £1.1 billion of savings, and that average premiums dropped by £50?

[Rory Stewart]

Again, the Competition and Markets Authority is our best guide. Its job is to look very closely at the operations of its industry. It believes that this is a very competitive industry, which is why it is confident that the reforms introduced led to savings that were passed on to customers and why it believes that the current reforms will lead to the same. If that does not happen, it would be interesting to hear Labour Members’ theories about why competition is not operating in this market and why they believe there is a cartel. If that is the argument they wish to make, they will be assisted and not impeded by the Government new clause, which will enable them to gather the information with the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority in order to make precisely that case.

[Jo Stevens]

Perhaps I can help the Minister on the figure that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield mentioned—the £11 billion of savings after the 2012 changes. That is an Association of British Insurers figure. That figure was saved in claims costs over six years, according to its evidence, but premiums are now higher than ever.

[Rory Stewart]

I will return to the fundamental disagreement between right hon. and hon. Members. We can all agree that there were significant savings to the insurance industry. We can all agree that some of those savings were passed on to customers and that premiums ceased to rise at the rate at which they had been. There is some disagreement between the two sides of the House about whether enough of those savings were passed on—we argue that the industry passed on sufficient savings—and whether premiums went up more than they should. However, without Government new clause 2, the evidence or information will not be available to people in order to make such arguments.

It is not enough to produce a general figure, saying, “Here is £11 billion, and this is how much was passed on in premiums.” That is why the new clause has no less than 11 subsections that detail the kind of data that would need to be extracted from the insurance industry by the date recommended in order to prove that case. I was asked why reporting would not be done annually. The answer, of course, is that a claim can be brought any time within three years of an accident. The date takes into account that the law is due to come into effect in 2020. We add three years to that for the claim, and then time for the data and evidence gathering in order to report in 2024.

[David Hanson]

If the Bill comes into effect in 2020 and we add three years, that is 2023. However, new clause 2(7) says:

“Before the end of a period of one year beginning with 1 April 2024”.

That means that the report may not be done until the end of March or April 2025. It may be published by the Government after that, and then there will be discussion. Therefore, even on the Minister’s timetable, we are talking about three years past the 2023 deadline that he indicated to the Committee a moment ago. He should reflect on that and table an amendment to his new clause on Report that brings forward the proposed date considerably.

[Rory Stewart]

The reason why I respectfully request that the Government amendments are supported and the Opposition amendments are withdrawn is that pushing for one-year rather than three-year reviews and attempting to price fix the result would leave the opposition amendments open to judicial review and create an enormous, unnecessary burden on the market. Our contention is that the market already operates—we have the Competition and Markets Authority to argue that that is the case—and, by introducing our new clause, we will be able to demonstrate that over time. It is a very serious thing.

I remain confident that, if insurance companies are compelled to produce such a degree of detail and information to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Treasury, they will pass on those savings to consumers because, were they not to, they would be taking a considerable legal risk. The industry initially resisted this move, and understands that it is a serious obligation.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

As the Minister said, the insurance companies have said that they will pass savings on to consumers, and the Government have been actively engaged in trying to ensure that all insurance companies sign up to a pledge to reduce premiums, which in itself is a way of fixing the market. However, if it will take insurance companies seven years from now to produce the information, from what date will premiums be reduced? When will consumers see payback from the policy?

[Rory Stewart]

We would expect, because of the nature of competition, for premiums to begin to reduce soon—almost immediately—as insurance companies anticipate the nature of the changes and move to drop premiums to compete with each other and attract new customers. In fact, following legislation in 2012, premiums dropped from £442 in 2012 to £388 in 2015.

[Ruth George]

If the Minister expects premiums to drop so soon, why can the Government not report to the House on those premiums dropping?

[Rory Stewart]

The premiums dropping will be assessed and published in the normal fashion. The requirement in new clause 2 is much more complex. The new clause requires a prodigious amount of information about all forms of income streams, the number of claims and the number of premium holders so the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority can develop a sophisticated and detailed picture in order accurately to address the concerns of Opposition Members that, over the period—particularly the three-year period that will be affected by the introduction of the Bill—insurance companies will not pass on savings to consumers. We believe they will, which is why we are comfortable pushing for this unprecedented step of gathering that information to demonstrate that the market works.

On that basis, I politely request that the Opposition withdraw their amendments and support Government new clause 2, which after all was brought together by Opposition Members of the House of Lords and others, and which achieves exactly the objectives that the Opposition have set out.

[Gloria De Piero]

The Minister talked a lot about where the Committee disagrees, but there are things we can all accept as fact—the facts that insurance profits are up massively and that these changes will save insurance companies £1.3 billion, for instance—and we all want premiums to come down. We believe only amendment 17 and new clause 6 will deliver that, so we seek to divide the Committee.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

Let us be clear what we are talking about with the discount rate: damages for people who have suffered catastrophic, life-changing injuries. The lump sum they receive is to last them their entire life and is to pay for urgent treatments, care, support, adaptations—a whole host of things. We need to be very careful how we deal with this, as very small variations in the discount rate can have serious impacts.

As an example, I have been advised by a leading law firm that it settled a claim in 2015 for a client in her 30s who suffered cardiac arrest and irreparable brain damage due to negligence. She was awarded £9.95 million when the discount rate was 2.5%. That award was to pay for extensive medical treatments, childcare and live-in carers for the rest of her life. Had the claim been settled in 2017, when the discount rate was changed to -0.75%, it would have resulted in a settlement of £20 million.

Such cases are relatively few in number, but when they do occur, we must make sure that they are dealt with as precisely as possible, without leaving such large fluctuations to chance. We would all agree that the time between the setting of the two discount rates was far too long. I very much support a shorter period of time for that to take place. Someone who receives such a lump sum would surely choose to invest it in as low risk a manner as possible—they would not want any risk if possible—because it has to last them their entire life. The discount rate should be set on the basis that the investment will be very low risk.

In setting the discount rate, the Lord Chancellor is given wide-ranging discretion. That opens up potential for other factors to influence the Lord Chancellor, which could adversely impact the compensation received by someone who has suffered catastrophic injuries. We need to be clear about the reasons why the Lord Chancellor will be setting the rate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned, the Justice Committee recommended setting up an independent panel of experts to advise the Lord Chancellor on setting the rate. It also recommended that the panel’s advice be published in full. The Bill has removed that transparency. I have grave concerns about the reasons for that and how the rate will be set. We need to know how the rate has been set. When the Bank of England sets interest rates, it has a panel of experts and it gives reasons why. A similar system should apply here.

I support the amendments and new clause. It would be right and proper for the power to be taken away from the Lord Chancellor and for the rate to be set by an independent panel of experts, at regular periods.

[Rory Stewart]

I have enormous sympathy for the amendments, in particular the arguments on amendments 24, 22 and 23. As the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge and the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate have clarified, we are dealing here with people who have suffered catastrophic, life-changing injuries and we have a very particular responsibility, particularly since some of those people can be immensely vulnerable. They can include children who have catastrophic, life-changing injuries. We all have an obligation to ensure that the principle of 100% compensation is met.

The discount rate can seem a slightly technical mathematical formula. It is there to try to hedge effectively against inflation and the expected rate of investment returns in setting an award. As the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate pointed out, a shift in the discount rate could mean a difference between an award of £10 million and an award of £20 million—a very significant difference.

In setting the discount rate, our first obligation has to be to the very vulnerable individuals who have suffered a catastrophic or life-changing injury. We need to ensure that they are able to make an investment that does not carry substantial risk. We cannot guarantee everything because inflation and markets can move. Insofar as we can do so in advance, we should attempt to arrive at a rate that fairly reflects the likelihood of their getting the compensation that it was anticipated they would receive from the judge. That means that we should not aim to chase a median rate. We should aim to chase a rate on the basis of advice from the Government Actuary and later from the expert panel, to determine the fair rate of return.

In that case, why are the Government challenging amendments 24, 22 and 23? The answer is that amendments 22 and 23 reflect the original position of the Government on the Bill, so we are slightly going round in circles. We had originally suggested in the version of the Bill that we presented to the House of Lords that the Lord Chancellor should consult the expert panel before setting the rate. Under pressure from Opposition Members in the House of Lords, in particular Lord Sharkey, the Lords pushed us into a position where we agreed that, instead of an expert panel, it should be the Government Actuary, working with the Lord Chancellor, who set the first rate.

The argument made by the Lib Dem peer and backed by others, including Lord Beecham, was that the problems for the NHS caused by the discount rate are so extreme and the costs on the public purse so extreme, that the first change in the discount rate should happen relatively rapidly, on the advice of the Government Actuary. Were we now to reject that amendment, which we accepted after long negotiation in the House of Lords, we would have to go back to the drawing board and set up the expert panel again, leading to a very significant delay, which would impose costs on the NHS.

We are in the ironic position that the Opposition are now proposing as amendments the original Government position, which the Opposition struck down in the House of Lords. We are slightly in danger of going round in circles. We are where we are and, given the problems of time, I suggest that the pragmatic compromise is that the Government Actuary, who is an independent individual with enormous expertise, works with the Lord Chancellor on the first setting or the rate, and that for subsequent settings of the rate, the expert panel comes in, as the House of Lords recommended.

That brings us to the lengthy amendment 24, which the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge introduced with great eloquence. That essentially argues that the rate should be set by the expert panel alone and not by the Lord Chancellor. We disagree fundamentally with that because the expert panel and the Government Actuary would argue that it is not their position to set the rate. It is their position to provide actuarial advice on different investment decisions that could be made, the likely rates of inflation and the likely rates of return.

Ultimately, a Minister accountable to Parliament should set that rate, because they have to balance some very different issues: our obligation towards vulnerable people who have suffered catastrophic life-changing injuries and our obligation on the costs to the national health service, which run into billions of pounds, and balancing these different public goods.

It simply would not be fair to expect an actuary to make those kinds of political and social decisions. It is entirely appropriate to expect actuarial experts to provide the expert advice on what the range of options would be, and to reassure individuals that the Lord Chancellor is not likely to make a decision that would have a significant negative impact. It is only necessary to look at what the Lord Chancellor did two years ago in setting the rate of -0.75%. If it had been the case that the Lord Chancellor was fundamentally driven by Treasury calculations and was not interested in defending the vulnerable individual, they would not have moved the rate from 2.5% to -0.75%, effectively doubling the compensation paid. The Lord Chancellor, in setting this rate, on the advice of the expert panel, will be acting as the Lord Chancellor, not as the Secretary of State for Justice.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The Minister said there was a big change when a previous Lord Chancellor set the rate at -0.75%. I wonder what advice and from whom she received in setting that rate. Clearly, she would have had some advice, rather than plucking that figure out of the air. I wonder what the situation is now.

[Rory Stewart]

At the moment, the advice received would be from actuaries. Ultimately, we commission the Government Actuary’s Department voluntarily to provide the best advice on what the rate should be. It then arrives at a gilt rate, which drove us towards -0.75%. The Bill puts the role of the Government Actuary into law, so it is no longer voluntary but compulsory. It will be obligatory for the Lord Chancellor to consult, and in future there will be a broader expert panel around the Government Actuary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gloria De Piero]

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

New clause 1 deals with one of the most important effects of this package of measures. It says that the whiplash small claims limit can increase only in line with inflation based on the consumer prices index. It specifies that the limit can increase only when inflation has increased the existing rate by £500 since it was last set.

The Government have been disingenuous in trying to sneak through these changes to the small claims track limit by using delegated legislation, which restricts the proper scrutiny that such significant changes deserve. With the new clause, we ask the Government to do the right thing and to put it on the face of the Bill, enshrining the terms that a plethora of experts agree on: the use of CPI over the retail prices index when it, and using 1999 as a start date for any recalculation of the limit for a small claims track.

The White Book that I showed the Minister shows that there was a 20% increase in the small claims limit in 1999 when special damages were removed from the calculation of the limit. Lord Justice Jackson, in his “Review of Civil Litigation Costs: Final Report” said that the only reason to increase the personal injury small claims limit would be to

“reflect inflation since 1999. As series of small rises in the limit would be confusing for practitioners and judges alike.”

He made it crystal clear that the limit should remain at £1,000 until inflation warrants an increase to £1,500.

The Government admitted to me this morning that there is a difference of opinion in their own ranks about which of these years should be the benchmark. We say again that they must listen to the Lord Justice Jackson and the Justice Committee chaired by one of their own, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who agrees with him. We should state on the face of the Bill that 1999 must be the start date for any recalculation of the small claims limit, not 1991. The Government accepted all the key recommendations in the Jackson report save the recommendation that there should be an increase in the small claims limit to £1,500 only when inflation justifies it.

To turn to another aspect—the Government have admitted that it has caused a dispute among Ministers—I want to make the case, as I have done before, that CPI and not the RPI is the correct measure to apply for inflation. It seems that the Government use RPI when it suits and use CPI when it suits. CPI is what we use for the pensions and benefits paid to injured workers while they are pursuing justice for that injury through the claim. Even the Chief Secretary to the Treasury agrees with me. When asked at the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee whether she agreed that RPI was an inadequate measure, she said:

“We certainly agree that it is not the preferred measure of inflation. CPI is a much better measure of inflation… we agree that it is not the preferred method, and we are seeking to move away from RPI”.

Why are we moving towards it here? The Government say they wish to apply RPI to the small claims limit because RPI is applied to updating damages—the same damages that they are taking an axe to with the new tariff.

Perhaps some in the Conservative party are persuaded, like me, that CPI is the best option, because of yet another expert who has lined up to say so. On 30 January 2018, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said:

“At the moment, we have RPI, which most would acknowledge has known errors. We have CPI, which is what virtually everyone recognises and is in our remit.”

It is perfectly clear that we need to enshrine CPI as the key measure on the face of the Bill. The amount of £1,000 from 1999 would now be worth either £1,440 if CPI is applied, or £1,620 if RPI is applied. Lord Jackson said that it should not go up to £2,000, as the Government suggests, until inflation warrants it.

I trust the Minister will not be as dismissive as Lord Keen was when he said in his evidence to the Justice Committee:

“We do not feel that there is a material difference between setting it at £1,700 today and seeing it drop behind inflation next year, and setting it at £2,000 without the need to review it again for a number of years.”

Try telling the nurse, the caretaker or the bus driver that there is no material difference between £1,700 and £2,000. For those on real wages, that has a real impact.

[Rory Stewart]

Relatively rapidly, I would say that we have five types of disagreement with the amendments. Broadly speaking, those are political, philosophical, economic, financial and constitutional. The political disagreement is that the amendment would go to the heart of the Bill. The entire concept of the Bill is to try to effect a change in the current practice and process around whiplash claims by moving the claim limit to £5,000. That is part of the entire package—the tariffs and small claims limits are related to that.

Philosophically and fundamentally, we are not arguing that the shift to £5,000 is fundamentally a question of inflation. There are many other reasons why the small claims limit has been moved in the past. Indeed, in relation to some types of claim, as you will be aware Sir Henry, as one of our learned friends, some of the claims have been moved to £10,000, which goes a long way beyond inflation.

Largely, the driver of whether or not something is on a small claims track is to do with the nature of the claim, not the nature of inflation. However, if we worked on the narrow question of inflation, the Judicial College guidelines are currently on RPI as opposed to CPI. I respect the arguments that the hon. Member for Ashfield made but that is not the fundamental argument the Government are making.

The amendment would have curious financial implications. It would create a strange syncopated rhythm, whereby movements in CPI are not necessarily reflected in the triennial review except in £500 increments which, over time, mathematically will lead to peculiar results.

The fundamental reason we oppose the amendment is the final argument I mentioned, which is constitutional. This is business for the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, as it always has been, and it is not suitable to put in the Bill. On the basis of those political, philosophical, economic, financial and constitutional arguments, I respectfully request that the amendments be withdrawn.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I want to make a few brief comments. I entirely understand the force of the comments made. As someone who started his practice in the small claims court before progressing to other courts, I have seen how they work. I have a couple of pertinent points—the Minister alluded to the first. For some very complicated cases, particularly commercial ones, there are already limits of £10,000. As other Members who have practised will realise, the fact that someone is in a small claims court and not represented does not mean that they are completely unassisted. The district judges who hear those claims are solicitors or barristers and are extremely competent and experienced in their own right. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that they will be able to hear those claims, which will have justice as their case is heard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Reeves]

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

To understand the importance of new clause 4, we must understand the significance of the use of periodical payments to compensate those who have been injured through negligence, often catastrophically, with little or no capacity for work and with considerable care costs.

More often than not, successful claimants are paid a lump sum, which is intended to compensate them for the rest of their life. However, the benefits of periodical payments, rather than a lump sum, are threefold. First, periodical payments are index-linked so they go up in accordance with rising costs of living or care. Secondly, in such cases, there are often arguments about life expectancy. If the court accepts that a victim of a catastrophic injury is likely to live until 42 but medical advances mean that they actually live until 80, a lump sum will run out many years earlier. With periodical payments, the injured person is compensated every year for the rest of their life. Thirdly, receiving an annual periodical payment rather than a lump sum means that injured people do not have to make difficult investment decisions and, equally, it removes the risk that they will spend the money all at once.

The setting of the discount rate is highly relevant to periodical payments. When the rate stood at 2.5%, it was far more attractive for defendants to pay a lump sum that was discounted by 2.5% than to pay index-linked annual payments. That meant that in all but the most serious cases, periodical payments often met huge resistance from defendants. A rate that assumes a much lower level of investment risk by injured people may well result in an increase in the use of periodical payments, particularly in cases not at the most catastrophic level where resistance from defendants has been greatest. The benefits to the injured person are clear, and the benefits to the state of not having to pick up the bill for care or housing, if and when the money runs out, are obvious.

On Second Reading, the Minister said that he welcomed the use of periodical payments. Can he tell us the percentage of personal injury claims in which they are used? It is my understanding that the figures are astoundingly low, often due to resistance from defendant insurers. New clause 4 makes it incumbent on the Civil Justice Council, with its expert knowledge, to review the impact of part 2 and the discount rate on the prevalence of periodical payments being awarded. If we agree that periodical payments are a good thing, surely we can agree that their use must be monitored so that appropriate and evidence-based action can be taken where necessary. This would benefit injured people and the Treasury alike.

[Rory Stewart]

Once again, I want to take this opportunity to praise the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge. The arguments for PPO are very strong. It is absolutely correct that the ideal thing is to give someone a PPO. The problem at the moment with receiving a large sum with a discount rate is that one could end up overcompensated or undercompensated. Overcompensation means a huge cost to the NHS and the taxpayer. Undercompensation can be catastrophic for one’s lifetime care costs. Rather than taking a lump sum, the PPO ensures that one gets the amount of money required to look after one’s costs. Therefore, we agree with the nature of this argument.

The disagreements with this amendment are technical. The 18-month period from Royal Assent is too short to take real effect. Regarding the basic question the hon. Lady has raised—whether the Civil Justice Council should look at the use of PPOs and the impact of discount rates on PPOs—we have written directly to the Master of the Rolls to request that the Civil Justice Council look at the use of PPOs. We remain open to doing that again, once the new review of discount rate is introduced.

It is absolutely right that we should encourage more uptake and challenge the insurance companies, which have said publicly that they want more use of PPOs, to ensure that more PPOs are given out. That is the best way to protect an injured person. There are some narrow cases where it is not appropriate—somebody may not have sufficient insurance or the financial weight to deliver a PPO—but when it is paid out, it ought to be paid and that is why we are grateful that, for example, the NHS continues to use the PPOs in the case of catastrophically injured children. I request that the hon. Lady withdraw the amendment.

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the Minister for that response and, to some extent, his assurances. However, given that the Bill seeks to make big changes, if we are committed to periodical payments and their use, there should be a mechanism for review built into the legislation. I shall press the new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gloria De Piero]

The Government have refused to allow the small claims changes, which will have a fundamental impact on access to justice for hundreds and thousands of injured people every year, into the Bill. New clause 7 is designed to ensure that vulnerable road users are exempted as the Minister has promised. New clause 8 would do little more than reflect the recommendations of Lord Justice Jackson in his civil justice review. The Minister agreed this morning that there had been a change to the small claims limit in 1999. New clause 8 says that 1999 is the date from which any change to the small claims limit should be calculated and that the increase should be by no more than £500 at any one time. As I have said, that reflects the recommendations of Lord Justice Jackson.

There is a difference between us on the appropriate level of inflation. We say CPI—the consumer prices index. There is absolute logic in that because that is the inflation rate applied by the Government to benefits paid to injured people. It is also, of course, the rate that the Governor of the Bank of England recommends.

[Rory Stewart]

Given that we are coming towards the end of the proceedings, I again pay tribute to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for the quality of debate. It has been quite testing personally: a lot of very learned friends have asked a lot of fundamental questions, ranging from inflation rates to the good challenges from my friend the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), who keeps me on my toes. I thank them very much for their various contributions.

With the final group of amendments, we come to questions that relate to some of the debates that we have had already, in different forms. This in effect is a subset of the arguments made on new clause 1. As right hon. and hon. Members will remember, new clause 1 involved an argument that the reductions should be made in relation to all personal injury claims. These proposals take the same arguments and apply them to two subsets of people who are injured: vulnerable road users and people injured in the course of employment. On both those things, there are some differences between us, again, on the correct level at which to set the rate, but there are also some important concessions that are worth bearing in mind. They were made in the House of Lords and in the subsequent process.

In relation, first, to people injured in the course of employment, personal injury claims that are not as a result of whiplash, we have listened very carefully to right hon. and hon. Members. They will remember that in the initial consultations there were suggestions about raising the limit to £10,000 or £5,000. The agreement has been that for non-whiplash-related injuries, it is kept at £2,000.

There is some discussion about whether it is correct to see that in terms of CPI or RPI—the retail prices index—but broadly speaking, it is not very significantly different from the rates that were set in the 1990s when inflation was applied, although there is some disagreement between the two sides of the House, to the extent of a few hundred pounds, on the extent of headroom put on top of inflation. There could be a broader argument, which was raised earlier, about the fundamental principle that compensation should be paid for the injury rather than on the basis of why somebody was present on the scene, whether in the course of employment or another activity. However, that goes beyond the scope of the amendment.

The real concession has been made in relation to vulnerable road users, which I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House will welcome. We listened carefully to representations made primarily not by people who own horses—although I remind hon. Members that there are more than a million horses in the United Kingdom, so it is not quite as much of a minority pursuit as some might like—but by cyclists, who led a strong campaign arguing that they are particularly vulnerable on the roads. They are: they are not encased in a sheet of metal. We accept that the same argument also applies in spades to pedestrians—as a proud pedestrian, I feel that very strongly—and to people on motorcycles, who are not encased in metal either.

We are delighted to confirm that vulnerable road users will be excluded in respect of the small claims limit and the Bill. On that basis, with many thanks to everybody for their prodigious and learned contributions, I politely ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Gloria De Piero]

I will disquiet the Minister one more time and press the new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

Short title

[Rory Stewart]

I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 14, page 16, line 6, leave out subsection (2).

This amendment removes the privilege amendment inserted by the Lords.

The amendment is procedural. It is a privilege amendment that changes subsection (2) of the short title. The House of Lords has said that nothing in the Act shall impose any charge on the people or on the public funds. Bringing it to the House of Commons means the Ministry of Justice should be liable for any charges to the funds. The House of Commons is able to take on the terms of the fund. This is a normal procedural amendment for when something comes from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, so we ask that Government amendment 7 is accepted.

Amendment 7 agreed to.

Clause 14, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill, as amended, to be reported.

HMP Birmingham

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on his Government’s plans for HMP Birmingham.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I would like to begin by paying tribute to the work of the chief inspector, in particular in relation to Birmingham, and indeed his entire inspection team.

The situation in HMP Birmingham was simply unacceptable. It was shocking in terms of the levels of violence, in terms of the response to those levels of violence, in terms of the drugs, and in terms of basic decency. The situation in Birmingham has of course been of considerable concern for some time; for that reason I visited personally in the week before the inspector issued the report. The Secretary of State for Justice, the Lord Chancellor, also made a personal visit to Birmingham, and the chief executive of the Prison Service also visited Birmingham.

The reason for this is that over the last few weeks and months we have been increasingly concerned about G4S’s inability to turn around the situation. The steps we took were initially to issue a notice to improve, followed by a second notice to improve. I then held meetings with G4S in London at which it replaced its governor—who had been in place for 18 months—and brought in a new governor. It then brought in a new team; we came up with a new action plan and a new team was brought in by the Ministry to work alongside it.

Notwithstanding all the steps that Birmingham and G4S took over those months, the conclusion that we reluctantly reached in the week before the inspector published his urgent notification was that G4S would not be able on its own to turn around the significant problems of Birmingham. Therefore the decision was made to take the unprecedented step of the Government stepping in and taking over control. That means in effect three things. First, we have brought in a highly experienced governor from the public sector, Mr Paul Newton, who has taken over as the governor of the prison. Secondly, we have reduced the number of prisoners in Birmingham prison by 300, which has allowed us to take key cells out of operation and renovate them. Thirdly, we have brought in an additional 32 highly experienced public sector prison staff in order to support the team on the ground.

All of this will be done with no cost to the taxpayer, and I want to take this opportunity also to say that, notwithstanding the very significant problems at Birmingham, there are dedicated, serious professional staff on the ground who have been facing a very difficult situation. There have been real challenges around drugs and leadership. We are confident that, with Paul Newton and the new team and the reduction in numbers, we can stabilise that prison, address the drugs and the violence, and turn it around and restore the confidence to the team.

I anticipate that this could rapidly become a debate over the merits or otherwise of privatisation, and I am expecting that the shadow Secretary of State will almost certainly go in that direction. For what it is worth, we on this side of the House do not believe that this is primarily an ideological battle. The situation in Birmingham has been serious for some time. It was a Labour Secretary of State for Justice who initially decided to proceed with the privatisation of Birmingham in 2010, although it was a Conservative Secretary of State who finally let the contract. The company concerned, G4S, has clearly significantly failed in Birmingham, but at the same time, as hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) can confirm, it is running an impressive prison in Parc and at Altcourse in Liverpool, which is performing well particularly in education and work, while Parc is doing well on family services. The BBC has just produced a very positive report on its performance at Oakwood as well.

So this is not primarily about the difference between the public and the private sectors. Sadly, there have been significant challenges also within the public sector, at Nottingham prison, at Liverpool and at Exeter most recently. Indeed the chief inspector of prisons himself underlined that this is not primarily about public against private, but is about basic issues primarily around drugs, violence and management. We will be focusing on those three things above all through this step-in, and, as I have said, at no cost to the taxpayer.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for his reply. It is clear from the damning report on HMP Birmingham, as well as from the failings in the probation system, that the costly privatisation experiment in our justice system should be ended. Costs aside, one of the great failings of privatisation is that we in this House struggle to hold mega-corporations such as G4S to account. They use the cloak of commercial confidentiality until it is all too late, and then they need rescuing by the state. Despite that, I hope that we will get some straight answers to straight questions today.

Will the Ministry of Justice be imposing a financial penalty on G4S for its failures at HMP Birmingham? What additional funding will be provided to HMP Birmingham to remedy the current failings? Will any public funding be used to do that? If so, will this come from the current MOJ budget? Thirty additional officers are to be sent to Birmingham Prison. Will the Minister commit to giving all other failing prisons—including public prisons—the same percentage increase in staffing above current levels?

Why did the Government decide that HMP Birmingham would not be permanently returned to the public sector? Will the Minister today commit to an independent commission to look at the merits of doing so before handing the prison back to G4S? Will the Government now halt their plans to build new private prisons? If not, will the Minister at least rule out G4S bidding for them? And will the Government now commit to a wider independent review of the involvement of private companies in the justice system?

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for Justice for his questions. They are serious questions, and this was a serious failing in that prison. I shall try to answer them one by one. The financial cost to G4S of us stepping in will be very considerable. G4S already estimates that it is losing on this contract. It is to a great extent paid according to the number of prison places. Specifically, therefore, the removal of 300 prisoners from that prison will impose a direct financial penalty on G4S, which will be covered by G4S itself. I can also confirm that the entire cost of this step-in will be covered not by the taxpayer but by G4S, because we will withhold the payment we would normally make in line with the contract with G4S to cover those costs.

The shadow Secretary of State also asked whether we would put exactly 32 officers into the other challenged prisons. We are not in a position to specify the exact numbers, but the broad approach that we would take to Birmingham is the same as the approach that we would take to the other public sector prisons. That approach involves focusing first on the inflow of drugs into those prisons, through the use of intelligence disruption for organised criminal groups as well as through the use of scanners. We are putting nearly £6 million-worth of investment into drug interdiction and scanners.

Secondly, our approach involves focusing on basic decency, and nearly £30 million-worth of extra investment is going into living conditions in our prisons. Thirdly, there is a focus on education, and the Secretary of State’s education and employment strategy is central to this, giving prisoners purposeful activity within the prison walls and ensuring that they get jobs on release, thereby reducing reoffending and protecting the public.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, we are focusing on supporting our hard-working prison officers with the right training in leadership and management skills. They are doing an incredibly tough job outside prison doors. They are facing unprecedented levels of challenges with the new psychoactive substances coming in, and we really need to support them. We are doing that through the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) which will double the sentences for people who assault prison officers and other emergency workers. We are also doing it through additional training for prison officers before they go on the wings and supporting them through training as they continue.

The shadow Secretary of State asked about an independent commission. Respectfully, I would argue that we already understand very well what happened at Birmingham Prison, without the need for an additional independent report. The independent monitoring board has produced a full report on Birmingham Prison. The chief inspector of prisons has also produced a full report, and we have looked closely at Birmingham Prison over the past few weeks and months. Unfortunately, the story at Birmingham Prison is a relatively familiar one. It is about drugs, about violence and about management and training. There is no great secret there. The question of G4S bidding for future prison contracts is a hypothetical one, and no such contracts will be let for a number of years. However, we will of course, in accordance with all our rules, look seriously at the past record and performance of the companies involved, including G4S, before considering it for a tender.

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

The Minister and the Secretary of State are to be commended on their prompt action. The Minister should be commended on his swift involvement, and I thank him for contacting me, as the Chair of the Justice Committee, so quickly. Does he agree that no pattern emerges in the evidence to show that there is any distinction between the problems that arise in our prisons that relates to the public or private nature of their ownership and management? Two patterns do emerge, however. One is a consistent history of failure in our old Victorian local prisons, be they run by the public or private sector, and the second is a persistent failure by the Prison Service, whether acting directly or through contract, to act upon the recommendations of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons—a litany that has been picked up by the chief inspector. What are the Government going to do to address those two clear patterns of failure?

[Rory Stewart]

I will take those two matters separately. As for responding to the inspector’s recommendations, we have changed—the Secretary of State for Justice has driven this through—how our management systems work to put the inspector’s recommendations and reports at the heart of the way we set objectives for the Prison Service. We had our own independent assessment under the previous system, but we expect the House to see that how we manage prisons much more closely reflects inspection reports in the future.

On the question of old Victorian buildings, there clearly is a pattern, but it is not an absolute pattern. There are old buildings, such as Stafford, that are well run, good prisons, and there are new prisons, such as Nottingham, that have managed to get themselves into trouble despite the new buildings. However, generally speaking, running an old Victorian prison adds to the problems, and we should ensure that our investment in 10,000 new places endeavours to remove the worst-affected prisons from our system.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is clear that prisons in England and Wales are suffering from excessive budget pressures, inconsistent policy and a lack of direction. The Minister recently visited the prisons system in Scotland, and while prison staffing levels in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have fallen by around a third since 2010, in Scotland they have increased by 14%, and we have minimised cuts to our justice system, resulting in a 43-year crime low. Overcrowding has been addressed by the Scottish Government’s successful presumption against short-term custodial sentences, which has been increased today to 12 months in the Scottish Government’s programme for government. Having visited Scotland recently, will the Minister tell the House what lessons from the experience of successful prison reform in Scotland does he intend to apply to the system in England and Wales?

[Rory Stewart]

I genuinely pay tribute to some of the things that are happening in Scotland in relation to prisons, and I was privileged to visit HMP Perth, which is a good example of a busy, challenged local prison that is being run well. Prison officers in Scotland would also say that there have been significant cuts to their numbers since the early 2000s, and they, too, have had to make serious efficiency savings, which they have done well, and they are running good prisons.

We are watching closely what is happening on short sentences in Scotland. Like the Scottish Government, our priority is to protect the public, but the evidence on what could be done to reduce reoffending by not overusing short prison sentences inappropriately is a good lesson from Scotland, from which we wish to learn.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Prisoners who are at leisure to consume and trade Spice would benefit from penal servitude with hard labour. Will the Minister bring it back?

[Rory Stewart]

No.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will first provide some information about my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). The prison is in her constituency, but she is unfortunately in a meeting and I am unsure whether she has received notice of this urgent question, so I apologise on her behalf that she is not here.

My question to the Minister is simple. He has made a huge commitment to clean up our prisons, but the real issues are with staff, training, and allowing drugs and other things into prisons. Tackling all that will require resources, so how will he ensure that it happens?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is about staff. We now have 3,000 more prison officers than we had when we made the announcement, and having more staff will make a difference. The next stage is getting the training right, particularly the training for the band 5 and band 4 uniformed staff who are out there on the landings day in, day out. It is about getting the staff college right for governors, and it is also about making sure that, in places like our Newbold Revel training college, we have the right support for our prison officers. It is an amazing profession, but it needs support and training.

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I agree with the Minister that this is not a debate about privatised versus publicly run prisons; obviously it is about how we work to ensure that we do not have such trouble again. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice, said about the need to carry on the vision of reinvigorating the prison estate.

I also echo the Minister’s comments about education. The great opportunity in our prisons is to work with prisoners and to use, for example, culture and sport to give them opportunities. Prisons are often dealing with people who have mental health issues and, sometimes, a lack of education, and it has been shown that the arts and sport can do a great deal to help rehabilitate prisoners, as opposed to, say, penal servitude.

[Rory Stewart]

My right hon. Friend encourages me to reflect on our sport strategy, which is coming through. Broadly speaking, there is also the key point about how education changes lives. By changing lives and helping people to get employment when they leave prison, education reduces reoffending and protects the public. Stabilising our prisons and delivering high-quality education in prisons is good not just for prisoners but for the rest of society.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

A month ago my constituent was beaten within an inch of his life at HMP Birmingham not once but twice, and not in a dark corner but in the full glare of a video that was then posted on social media. The chaos over which G4S presided at HMP Birmingham was dark, dangerous and violent. It is very hard to square a future in which this prison is returned to G4S with the level of investment and staffing that is needed to ensure it is a safe prison. Will the Minister reflect again on what the shadow Secretary of State said about the need for an independent commission to stand as a gateway, a test, before any decision is made to put this prison back into the private sector that so desperately failed the people of Birmingham?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very shocking, very immediate illustration of just how horrifying what was happening at Birmingham was. The right hon. Gentleman is right that, when something like that happens, not only should we take back control from G4S but we should think very seriously before returning the prison to it. That is why, for exactly the reasons he raises, we are giving the House the assurance that we will be taking over for a minimum of six months—that is a minimum of six months —and we will be very tough and clear in the decisions we reach at the end of those six months on whether we believe the prison is stable enough to be handed back to G4S.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

Following on from the previous question, does my hon. Friend agree that this debate is not about public or private management of prisons but is, in fact, about when it is appropriate for the Government to step in when prisons are failing? If I may say so, this debate is also about when it is appropriate for a Minister to take responsibility for the Prison Service, as I was pleased to read over the summer that he is willing to do.

[Rory Stewart]

Without getting dragged into an ideological discussion about public versus private, hopefully both sides of the House can agree that, if we are to have privatised systems, the best way for them to operate is by having the right degree of Government regulation and intervention when things go wrong. Whether we are talking about water, utilities or, indeed, prisons, we cannot have a system in which the Government do not have a clear grip. I hope stepping in at Birmingham demonstrates that the Government are prepared to do that when we reach this situation.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

The Minister has rightly decided to solve the shocking problems at HMP Birmingham by reducing its prison population and increasing staff numbers. I congratulate him on this radical policy and on the huge brain power that must have gone into this ingenious solution. When will the rest of Britain’s crisis prisons benefit from more staff and reduced overcrowding?

[Rory Stewart]

The rebuke is taken; of course it is true that, as with any institution, it is easier to run this with more staff and fewer people. But the answer in practice is that we take this remedy to stabilise a prison that has reached a situation that Birmingham has reached. Once the prison is stabilised and functioning well, it is possible to run it with the full population. We can see that being done at Altcourse and Thameside, and at a busy, challenged local prison such as HMP Hull at the moment. But it is necessary to take these steps at Birmingham, and the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that it does not take a massive brain to work out that this is the first thing we need to do.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

How will the Minister ensure that the new governor has both the powers and the support to carry out the reform of the prison?

[Rory Stewart]

Again, this is a good challenge. It comes down to reasserting, in every way, both here in the House and through the management chain, that the governor is in charge, that we will give them the resources to get behind them and that we will support them in what they are doing. It is absolutely right to say that only with a properly empowered governor are we going to achieve that change.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The Minister suggested during the summer that if he does not achieve a reduction in drugs in prisons by next year he will resign. The letter to the Secretary of State from the chief inspector of prisons stated that the conditions at HMP Birmingham were among the worst that inspectors had ever seen, with many prisoners under the influence of drugs. In April, five prisoners died within the space of seven weeks—that was widely reported. Why did Ministers not intervene then in a prison that was clearly falling apart and not fit for purpose?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a good challenge. Birmingham was challenged, and we were focused on that situation. That is why we had put in notices to improve, why we had negotiated to bring in a new governor and why we had put in a new team. A judgment had to be made as to the point at which we decided that G4S did not have the capacity to turn things around on its own and we had to step in. I think we were correct in taking a number of steps before we formally stepped in, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right to challenge whether we could have done this a little earlier or a little later. That, in the end, was the judgment call we had to make.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

How many prisons have triggered urgent notifications since the system was introduced at the end of last year? How does that number break down between privately managed prisons and those run by the public sector?

[Rory Stewart]

The inspector has clarified that so far this year the prisons that have triggered urgent notification have been Exeter and Nottingham, and that he would have triggered a UN on Liverpool. Birmingham is the fourth, so the answer is: three out of the four since the beginning of this year have been from the public sector.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has already made reference to the situation at Nottingham Prison, in my constituency. For at least the past year, it has been going through considerable challenges, not only with deaths in custody, but with endemic psychoactive substance misuse. Will he explain and put a timeline on the interventions that he is making and on when we will be able to see some improvements in performance?

[Rory Stewart]

The situation at Nottingham Prison has been very concerning, with deaths at the prison of particular concern. We now have a new governor; a very highly respected, professional governor has come in. Tom Wheatley, the previous governor, is moving on to another role. We would expect to see the beginning of a turnaround there within the next six months, with the things to look at in particular being the statistics on drugs and violence.

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

Paul Newton is an excellent governor. He was transferred from Swaleside prison, in my constituency—a prison that has its own problems. What assurances can the Minister give me that the transfer of Mr Newton will not be detrimental to my local prison?

[Rory Stewart]

We have to be cognisant of that, but the Prison Service is a large system. We have more than 20,000 prison officers, so although moving 32 staff will challenge some of the prisons from which they are removed, this should be accommodated within our prisons system. We have a lot of other talented governors, and we remain confident that the need in Birmingham is greater than that at Swaleside. We will make sure that Paul Newton is replaced with a highly effective governor.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

How on earth did G4S’s management of HMP Birmingham lose control of the prison so dramatically? What is the Minister going to do about the poor level of retention of experienced officers, with the number of those leaving their jobs having doubled in the past two years?

[Rory Stewart]

The fundamental factor that triggered the change at Birmingham was that in December 2016 one of the prison officers managed to lose their keys, which led to nearly 200 prisoners being unlocked and a riot in the prison. G4S had been improving the prison over the previous three years, but that event really knocked the bottom out of it. It had a devastating effect on morale, and as the hon. Lady implied, it led to a lot of experienced staff leaving the prison. Looking back over that period, we can see that, although the chief inspector of prisons and the Government had hoped that things were beginning to improve during 2017, that turned out in the end to be a false promise, and we are still recovering from the blow of that December 2016 event.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I have huge confidence in my hon. Friend the Minister, but I do not have confidence that the prison officers that the Government employ will stay on. The facts speak for themselves. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); many of my local prison officers, along with, I am sure, many across the prison estate, are concerned that the proper discipline, protection and all the other things are not in place to look after them. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that he will look into the matter and make sure that if, for example, a prison officer is assaulted, the assaulter is jailed for a much longer period?

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely the right challenge. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has introduced a private Member’s Bill that will double the maximum sentence available for assaulting prison officers. But it is not enough just to double the maximum sentence. We need to make sure that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service work together to bring prosecutions forward. There are still today too many incidents of prison officers being assaulted. They are hard-working, serious and professional public servants with a very challenging working life. We owe them a duty of care, and we must prosecute people who assault them.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Of course I fully agree with the points that have just been made, but I wish to ask about brain injury in Birmingham Prison. The work that has been done in Leeds Prison shows that there is a very high incidence of traumatic brain injury in the prison population, and the work done in a pilot in Cardiff Prison shows that we can make dramatic differences to reoffending if we screen everybody who comes on to the secure estate and provide full neuro-rehabilitation to those who require it. Will that be available in Her Majesty’s prison in Birmingham?

[Rory Stewart]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work on this issue. In fact, I would like to offer to sit down with him immediately to discuss the findings he mentioned and how we can apply them to Birmingham Prison.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Like Birmingham Prison, the prison in Chelmsford has some ancient Victorian wings and the staff numbers had become very low, but those numbers have now increased. Does my hon. Friend agree that new staff need support in the form of training, ongoing mentoring and tutoring? Will he ensure that they get that support?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has made seven visits to Chelmsford Prison and has worked closely with the acting governor there on the steps that are being taken to turn it around. [Interruption.] I hasten to add that she made those visits as a visitor. The key point that she raises is the one on mentoring, particularly the role that more experienced prison officers at band 4 can play in providing the day-to-day model for and partnership with the staff on the ground, to teach them the jail craft that is essential for everybody’s safety, and ultimately for turning around lives.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is clear that drugs have played a significant role in the problems in Birmingham; similarly, drugs have played a significant role in the challenges in Nottingham Prison, and I suspect across the prison estate. What is the Minister’s latest assessment of the use of body scanners, and what is the latest legal advice he has been given about how widely they can be used?

[Rory Stewart]

There have been historical challenges with the use of body scanners. We have now gone through the legal advice very carefully, and I am clear that they can be and ought to be used much more frequently, so we have invested almost £6 million in additional scanning. That will allow us to detect, as we already do at Belmarsh, drugs carried by people inside their body, as well as drugs carried on their person. That will go along with the new scanners that we are bringing in to detect mail infused with Spice and all the work that we are doing to combat drones and other ways of getting drugs into prison. Protective security measures must work alongside demand reduction and therapy, but without protective security we cannot get on top of the drugs epidemic.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Violent offences are committed in prison. If drugs are peddled in prison, appropriate punishment needs to be meted out to those who are responsible and the ringleaders removed. If the Minister will not bring back hard labour, will he at least look at the punishment regime so that prison officers and inmates who obey the rules can regard prison as a safe place to be, because at the moment it sounds to me as though the Government are losing control?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very good challenge. There are two fundamental issues. One is the nature of the punishment that we impose. Somebody who is dealing drugs in prison is committing a criminal offence, so we would expect that person to proceed to court and receive extra days, or extra years, of sentence for importing drugs into a prison—that should be a consecutive, not concurrent, sentence. The second and most important issue is consistency. We need to ensure that any punishments that are inflicted are predictable and consistent, and we need not only to do that with drugs, but to challenge low-level disruptive behaviour consistently if we are to turn around the culture in our most troubled prisons.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Given that the Minister has accepted that, in the short-term at least, increasing the number of staff and cutting the number of prisoners is a way to stabilise the situation, will he make sure that if he does hand this prison back to G4S, which I do not think he should do, it does not then immediately cut the staffing levels again, because that is how it makes its money?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good point. If the prison is stabilised as a result of this action, we need to make sure that the plan that takes it forward respects those ratios and that, if those ratios are reduced, it is done on an evidence base. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point to the danger of doing that suddenly after the takeover.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

The Minister has reduced the number of prisoners at HMP Birmingham. Will he look seriously at reducing the number of prisoners right across the prison estate and relentlessly focus on rehabilitation? For victims and for those serving sentences of under 12 months, prison is not working.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for his question. It is of course true that we have evidence that shows clearly that there is a higher incidence of reoffending by people on short prison sentences than by people who serve community sentences. That is why the example from the Government of Scotland is very relevant. The best way to protect the public is by reducing reoffending. Putting people unnecessarily into prison in a way that damages them, does not change their lives and leads to reoffending when they leave is not in the prisoners’ interests, is not in the public purse’s interest and, ultimately, is not in the interests of public safety.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that tackling the problems in prison is important, but that it is very important to reduce the number of those ending up in prison? Recent data shows that two thirds of all young offenders have speech, language and communication disorders. Surely, if we can focus more on that in the early years, we can reduce the number of young people ever finding their way to prison.

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely right. A lot of people who are offending and ending up in prison come from very difficult backgrounds. We have a situation at the moment in our prisons where nearly half our prisoners have been excluded from school at some time compared with only 2% of the general population. We have a situation where almost 40% of the people in prison currently have a reading age of under 11 and a very significant number have a reading age of under six. Addressing those problems in early years is vital if we are to reduce offending.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Birmingham is one of the four most violent prisons in England and Wales, and all those prisons are privately operated. Does the Minister agree that, logically, this level of violence is a consequence of running prisons for profit where costs are cut to the bone to maximise returns for shareholders?

[Rory Stewart]

I say very respectfully that the chief inspector of prisons argues that the steepest increase in violence has taken place at Exeter Prison, which, sadly, is a public sector prison. Yes, it is true that we have very significant problems in Birmingham, which is a private prison, but we also have significant problems in Exeter, which is a public prison. The driver of this issue is not public against private; it is drugs, violence and, ultimately, the management leadership culture and the support for the staff on the ground. These problems can happen whatever the particular model.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I understand that Altcourse Prison, to which the Minister referred, was inspected in November 2017. In the report published in March this year, the chief inspector of prisons described an excellent staff culture and said that almost all interactions between staff and inmates were positive. Does this show that the private sector does have a role to play in running prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

Altcourse Prison is a G4S prison; it is run by the same company that is being criticised in Birmingham. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, that prison—as I saw directly—has incredibly good education facilities and workshops, and it had a good inspection report. It is showing how to run a safe, clean and orderly regime that is genuinely changing lives, and how to do so through the private sector.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

May I pay tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend is handling this very difficult and sensitive matter? The tendering process is critical wherever the private sector is involved in the provision of public services. Will he ensure that anyone bidding in any future tenders for prisons, including this one, will have to show that they have the capacity to avoid losing control of the prisons in their charge?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a fundamental challenge, and of course it is central to anything that happens when the Government work with the private sector. We must make sure that the tender process ensures that the people bidding for any of these contracts have the credibility, legitimacy and capacity to run the contracts effectively.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Rory Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I will address my speech to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I agree with Government Members that the insurance industry plays a valuable role. It has two main purposes: to ensure that innocent victims are compensated for their suffering and its impact on their lives and that perpetrators are appropriately penalised with higher premiums. Unfortunately, the measures in the Bill will do nothing to effect either of those main aims of the insurance industry, but they will impact heavily on innocent victims and ensure that perpetrators do not pay the costs of their actions.

I agree that we need to combat the problem of claims management companies, as we have heard from Members on both sides of the House. However, as the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) set out lucidly, claims management companies are fed information by insurance companies, to enable them to target the victims of accidents. Since that was banned directly, they have been doing it indirectly. Insurance companies are not only feeding claims management companies information to enable them to do that but are profiting from it, and they are now briefing Members that it is a problem with claims management companies.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

This may be a naive question, but it seems as though two different arguments are being made by Opposition Members. There was a suggestion from the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn) that the direction of the insurance companies is to try to stop anybody claiming. The hon. Lady seems to be arguing that the insurance companies are also fuelling these claims. Can she explain that paradox? How can they can be involved in both at the same time, and how does that work for them financially?

[Ruth George]

I cannot answer for other Opposition Back Benchers. I am speaking as an individual Back-Bench MP with experience of the insurance industry, and the hon. Member for Croydon South set out clearly similar experiences.

Along with Government Members, I have met the Association of British Insurers, but I suspect that it was a slightly less happy conversation, and I will certainly read less of its briefings in my speech. I challenged the ABI on the information coming to claims management companies from insurance companies. It agreed that that was happening and said that the Government could look to stop it. When insurance companies are putting information out to solicitors’ firms, they could ban those firms contacting claims management companies to farm out the information.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a sincere question. The suggestion made by the hon. Member for Jarrow and a number of others is that the entire profit model of the insurance companies is based on charging big premiums and trying to minimise the number of claims, and that that is how they make money. The suggestion is that the entire Bill is driven by the insurance industry trying to stop anybody making claims. At the same time, perfectly reasonably, you are making the argument that the insurance companies are trying to support claims. How do they—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Having brought to the attention of the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) that she must not use the word “you”, I hope the Minister will follow suit.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It has been a great privilege to be able to sit through this debate with an extraordinary number of Members, many of whom have very direct experience as lawyers in the claimant industry or connections to the insurance industry. It has therefore been a very well-informed debate.

Our proposals in this Bill are serious, but to some extent matters of housekeeping. They follow a lengthy and extensive consultation over a number of years, and they attempt essentially to do three things: first, to try to improve the administration of justice in certain key, but relatively limited, ways; secondly, to address some issues around public morality and honesty; and, thirdly, to make sure we guard resources whether in the interests of people paying motor premiums or those who are supporting the NHS.

A number of objections have been made by Members across the Chamber and seven of them have stood out. Four of those I would respectfully and politely disagree with, but three have some real heft and we will take them into account in proceeding with this Bill.

The first of those objections, from the hon. Members for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) and for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), largely focused on the questions of damage in the workplace and to people with non-whiplash-related injuries. This is not strictly relevant to this Bill, which deals with whiplash-related injuries. The change in terms of non-whiplash-related injuries is proposed to be from £1,000 to £2,000, roughly in line with RPI since it was set in 1991, and dealing with roughly the same category of cases that were intended when the legislation was first introduced in 1991.

The second issue that has been raised by some hon. Members is that there is no evidence. This will be somewhat depressing for the people who have conducted an extremely extensive consultation, which has taken evidence not only from the insurance industry, as has been suggested, but from the Department for Work and Pensions, from claimant lawyers, from the Medical Reporting Organisation and from a large public consultation.

Thirdly, the hon. Member for Jarrow and, to a certain extent, the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) and for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) suggested that very few fraudulent whiplash claims were being made. This is a difficult issue to pursue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) eloquently pointed out, because of the asymmetry of the information. In other words, it is extremely difficult to prove that someone has a whiplash claim because it is, by its very nature, a concealed injury. Nevertheless, the statistics—in particular, those raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng)—show that the number of traffic accidents has decreased by a third while the number of claims has gone up by 40%. At the same time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) pointed out, cars have become considerably safer. All this suggests that something is going on in relation to these claims.

The fourth objection, raised by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), related to access to justice. The suggestion was that it was inappropriate to say that people should proceed to a small claims court for claims of under £5,000. The vast majority of existing claims do not proceed to court at all. The district judges who are ruling on these claims are used to dealing with claims of up to £10,000.

The three more serious objections are those that we are addressing. One of them is the idea that the insurance industry will not pass on the savings to motorists in the form of premium savings. As the Secretary of State has indicated, we will therefore be introducing an amendment, which will be with the House shortly and will be available in Committee and on Report, to address this exact concern, which was expressed by the hon. Members for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and for Jarrow, and by my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), as well as by the hon. Members for High Peak (Ruth George) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) .

The second serious concern was about vulnerable road users, and it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and by the hon. Members for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). There, too, we will be introducing changes to ensure that vulnerable road users are excluded from the scope of the Bill and from the raise in the limit. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South and others raised concerns around periodic payment orders. The Secretary of State has written to the Master of the Rolls to ensure that PPOs are introduced more frequently, in order to ensure that vulnerable people suffering problems around lifetime care costs are genuinely able to get regular, sustainable and reliable payments out of the insurance industry to sustain them.

[Chris Philp]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rory Stewart]

Very briefly, because I have been told to stop in three minutes.

[Chris Philp]

What does the Minister think of the idea that we might tweak the system so that periodic payment orders became the default setting unless a judge agreed that there was a good reason to do otherwise and make a lump sum payment?

[Rory Stewart]

I am very happy to take that issue offline with my hon. Friend. There is a lot to be said for PPOs.

In essence, there are three fundamental arguments that we would make in favour of the Bill. The first is that we need to ensure that the administration of justice is proportionate and sustainable. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has pointed out, the fact that nearly 40% of the costs are currently being absorbed by legal fees is a serious issue. Secondly, we need to ensure that the system is straightforward. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) pointed out, the introduction of the portal will ensure that the administration becomes more straightforward. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South has pointed out that the introduction of fixed tariffs, on the French model, will make the administration of justice more predictable.

The question of fraud and morality is also at the centre of these changes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said, fraud does happen, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) has pointed out that it can often be extremely flagrant. My hon. Friends the Members for Spelthorne and for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) said that even if we cannot prove every case of fraud, it is at least true that claims are becoming more exaggerated. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North also pointed out, that can have medical consequences. To quote the polite words of the New England Journal of Medicine:

“The elimination of compensation for pain and suffering is associated with a decreased incidence and improved prognosis of whiplash injury.”

That was the point made by my hon. Friend about the situation in Greece.

The fundamental point is that the Government have a responsibility to balance the administration of justice and honesty with the broader social costs. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) pointed out, insurance premiums have been rising, and we need to take them into account. As my hon. Friends the Members for South Norfolk and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), premiums are rising in rural areas in particular. Again, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire pointed out, the cost of over £1 billion to the NHS that will be addressed through this legislation is one that is borne by every taxpayer and is causing increasing concern among medical professionals.

This is a serious piece of legislation that addresses various focused points. It comes at the end of an extensive consultation, during which we have made several concessions to address the concerns expressed across the House. During the House of Lords’ consideration of the Bill, we introduced new definitions for whiplash, we involved the Lord Chief Justices in the process, and we adjusted some of the timings for the discount rate. Through this legislation we believe that we can contribute towards a more honest and proportional system that takes into account the significant social costs of exaggerated claims. Through a more simple, predictable, effective and rapid administration of justice, we can protect a range of social and economic interests while balancing the rights of road users, claimants, defendants and, ultimately, citizens as taxpayers.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

CIVIL LIABILITY BILL [LORDS] (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A (7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Civil Liability Bill [Lords]:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 9 October.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Jeremy Quin.)

Question agreed to.

CIVIL LIABILITY BILL [LORDS] (MONEY)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Civil Liability Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Lord Chancellor.—(Jeremy Quin.)

Question agreed to.

[Mr Speaker]

In the thitherto unimaginable scenario that Members do not wish to listen to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), they can leave the Chamber quickly and quietly, so that the rest of us can enjoy her mellifluous tones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

18. What steps the Government are taking to tackle the use of drones over prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Reducing the use of drones in prisons means four things: we must tackle the criminal gangs that organise the drones; we must tackle the people who fly them over the wall; we must ensure that we have electronic jamming equipment in place; and we need physical security in the forms of nets and grilles to prevent the prisoners from accessing those drones.

[Johnny Mercer]

I know that my hon. Friend likes nothing more than donning his budgie smugglers and sitting in the back garden on a Sunday afternoon. Drones can be a menace in that regard. Will he confirm exactly what he is doing in some of the measures that he is putting in place to combat drones in prison?

[Mr Speaker]

That sounds a very rum business to me.

[Rory Stewart]

You are right, Mr Speaker; it does sound a pretty rum business. The serious point about drones is that, rather than flying over my back garden in Penrith and The Border, they are bringing illicit substances into prisons. Of the four methods I emphasised, the key way of dealing with that—the one that is the most important of all—is physical security. If we have the right nets and grilles, it is simply impossible for the prisoner to put their hand out of the window and take the drugs off the drones. Of the four methods, perimeter security is probably the most important.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank the Minister for taking the issue suitably seriously. Is he aware of a particular issue in a number of prisons, including Wayland prison in Norfolk, where the drone flyers have been acting with impunity and have become ever more brazen in their conduct? Will the Minister tell the House how far he has got in implementing the measures he has mentioned? Is there not now an argument for a specific new offence of flying drones in that way?

[Rory Stewart]

We have made a lot of progress on the issue. In prisons such as Liverpool, where the new grilles are coming in, and Chelmsford, where we have the new protective equipment in place, we can see that it is more and more difficult to get a drone into a prison. When the nets are working and the grilles are up, it is difficult to do. There are other things we can do, too. One central thing is intelligence operations to identify organised criminal gangs. We are introducing sentences—in a recent case someone who flew a drone into a prison received a seven-year sentence.

[Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)]

It is estimated that more than 200 kg of drugs were smuggled into prisons in England and Wales in 2016. What proportion of that 200 kg does the Minister estimate was delivered by drones? What else is happening to stop the use of other methods of delivering drugs into prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

The payload of a drone is relatively limited. The amount of weight that it can carry tends to be 1 kg or 2 kg at the maximum. Therefore the majority of drugs that come into prison are almost certainly going over the wall by other means—thrown over or posted over impregnated in paper—or carried in by people coming into the prison. That is why we are investing much more now in different types of scanners to pick up any human bringing drugs into prison and are also ensuring that we have the perimeter security in place for the throwovers.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to prevent the smuggling of mobile phones into prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It is central that we also tackle mobile telephones. The reason is that if we do not, crimes can be committed by people within prison reaching outside the prison walls, both bringing illicit substances into the prison and terrorising their victims outside.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) for the private Member’s Bill that she effectively took through on Friday. That is going to make it much more difficult for people to use mobile phones in prisons, by working with the mobile telephone companies.

[Scott Mann]

I was in the Chamber to see the progress of my hon. Friend’s Bill on Friday. It is an exceptionally well put together Bill. What discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport about the implementation? When are we likely to see some progress?

[Rory Stewart]

I have met the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and we have looked at two areas. We have looked at devices that can be used within the prison walls. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) pointed out in his speech on Friday, and in his question today, there is much more that we can now do by working with the mobile telephone companies to identify the exact frequencies and strengths of transmissions, to locate the mobile phones, prevent their use and analyse the traffic data.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

24. Diolch yn fawr iawn. I rise as co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. Management at HMP Berwyn has made much of the use of digital technology as part of its innovative regime, but in recent days, prison officers there have lost teeth through being head-butted, have been injured, pushed down stairs and had excrement and urine thrown over them. I am told that violence against staff goes effectively unpunished, with prisoners spending only a few hours in segregation. Senior management lost a vote of confidence by prison officers last week. Given the Secretary of State’s announcement today, what will the Minister do to safeguard prison officers at Wrexham?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very serious point and a very serious challenge. I will be following up this allegation with the governor. The governor has generally done a very good job in Berwyn, and the report that the hon. Lady raises is very disturbing. We must be clear that we have to support our prison officers. We are doing that through supporting a private Member’s Bill to double the sentence for assaults, and investing in body-worn cameras and trials of PAVA spray. But unless we have decent safety regimes, it is almost impossible to do other forms of rehabilitation. We need to learn from the prisons that are doing best in reducing violence. I pay tribute, for example, to Wandsworth, which has made a lot of progress over the past 12 months.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

9. What steps the Government is taking to improve the management of female offenders in the criminal justice system.

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[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

13. What recent assessment his Department has made of trends in recruitment and retention rates for the probation service in Oxfordshire.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

We have a series of challenges in relation to retention in Oxfordshire, some of which will be familiar to the hon. Lady. They are partly about the fact that people can get jobs in London, with London weighting, and they are partly to do with general problems around employment. We are, however, addressing them through a new recruitment campaign that is much more locally targeted, and I am pleased to say that we have managed to increase the number of applications from 500 to 5,000.

[Layla Moran]

I thank the Minister for his well-prepared answer, but the fact is that the probation service in Oxfordshire is at breaking point. That is also to do with sky-rocketing workloads, the high cost of living and paltry pay rises since 2009. One officer told me that they are being forced to cut corners and feel they

“can no longer actively reduce reoffending or keep the public safe.”

How can we guarantee that these measures will actually work? Is it not time to consider a housing allowance?

[Rory Stewart]

We have been in discussion with the Treasury, and we got clearance this week to begin discussions with the unions on the question of pay. Of course pay matters, but we have also learned real lessons about recruitment. As I say, ensuring that we are not simply doing national recruitment campaigns but are specifically targeting Oxford markets and working in the relevant universities is really beginning to get results. We are filling places much more rapidly, and by the spring of next year, we should be fully staffed.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

15. What steps the Government are taking to protect prison officers from violent behaviour.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Reducing violent behaviour in prison is absolutely vital, particularly for our prison officers, who are doing unbelievably difficult and challenging jobs and turning around people’s lives. We are addressing this through body-worn cameras and better use of CCTV, and we are ensuring—in supporting the private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—that we are doubling the minimum sentences for assaults against prison officers.

[Tom Pursglove]

When the new prison in neighbouring Wellingborough is open, it may create many new jobs for my constituents in Corby and east Northamptonshire. To encourage more people to apply for and then stay in prison officer roles, what thought are the Government giving to further deterrents and sanctions for violent prisoners?

[Rory Stewart]

My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor laid out in a speech this morning the incentives and earned privileges schemes that he will be pushing for, which are exactly intended to incentivise good behaviour and make sure we turn around people’s lives. On the subject of my hon. Friend’s constituents, and indeed those of any Member, I want to re-emphasise that being a prison officer is one of the most honourable roles in public service and does an extraordinary amount for public safety. It is a challenging, fulfilling and tough job, and we would encourage more people to apply for that role.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the effect on access to justice for people injured at work of his Department’s plans to raise the limit for non-road traffic accident-related personal injury claims on the small claims track.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

On non-road traffic accident-related personal injuries, the decision has been made to increase the small claims limit from £1,000, where it was set in 1991, to £2,000 in line with retail prices index inflation. This is in line with what happens in many other European countries—in Norway, for example—in taking lawyers out of the smallest claims.

[Dan Carden]

In the light of the Supreme Court ruling on the Unison employment tribunal case, will the Minister think again? Increasing the small claims limit would remove the ability of many people injured in the workplace to pursue claims against their employees. The Minister will know from the Justice Committee’s report that litigation is the main driver for maintaining health and safety in the workplace.

[Rory Stewart]

The important thing to understand about the small claims process is that the shift from £1,000 to £2,000 is simply to ensure that the original 1991 legislation keeps up with inflation—the RPI increase—in line with the Judicial College guidelines. This is not about people with catastrophic, life-changing injuries, but about people with injuries below the £2,000 level. We are making sure that the small claims process is fair, transparent and easy for the public to access without expensive lawyers.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

In its report on the small claims limit increases, the Justice Committee noted the

“compelling evidence of the obstacles that would be faced”,

and concluded that the changes would

“represent an unacceptable barrier to access to justice.”

Will the Minister listen and think again before pursuing another attack on workers?

[Rory Stewart]

I am always prepared to meet the hon. Lady and to listen. I emphasise again that this is simply a change in line with RPI. The small claims limit was set at £1,000 in 1991. The proposal is now to move it to £2,000, which is simply in line with the retail prices index, so that we have the same fair policy today that we had in 1991.

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[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

T9. Do Ministers agree that the Sentencing Council has shown great leadership in acting swiftly to address the growing threat of fentanyl and other synthetic opioid drugs by issuing guidance last month? Will the Minister continue to work with me to raise awareness of this deadly drug?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his campaigning on this issue. As right hon. and hon. Members are aware, fentanyl is an incredibly dangerous drug, because even in minuscule quantities, it can do more damage than heroin and cocaine. We have had nearly 240 deaths in Britain and the United States has had up to 20,000 deaths in a year from fentanyl, so the recent actions from the Sentencing Council and the Crown Prosecution Service to clarify how noxious this substance is are welcomed, and I repeat my tribute to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

T3. While I understand why the Government are spending £7 million on installing in-cell telephones in prisons as part of a drive to improve rehabilitation, will the Government also look at whether there should perhaps be additional funding for the healthcare system within the court system? Ministers will be aware that Tony Fitzsimons, the chair of the Lay Observers National Council, has highlighted concerns that people are not getting the care that they need in courts. I am happy to write to the Minister about this issue.

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[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

T5. Research by the Howard League shows that Her Majesty’s Prison Lincoln’s population is currently 138% more than its certified normal accommodation capacity. I hear about this at first hand because a close relative of mine is a senior prison officer. What measures does the Minister have in place to address prison overcrowding and the dangerous conditions that it creates both for prisoners and staff?

[Rory Stewart]

First, my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor announced this morning an additional £16 million to invest in decency—that is, bringing cells back into operation that have been taken out and making sure that the basic fabric is repaired. However, the most important thing is the building of 10,000 new prison places, beginning with Wellingborough and Glen Parva and moving on, to provide exactly the decent conditions that the hon. Lady raises in her question.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

On Friday, we had an important debate in this House about telephony in prisons. On the back of that debate, will the Minister set out what more we are doing to tackle drugs in prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

Tackling drugs in prisons involves dealing with how the drugs get into the prison—either over the wall or on a person—the demand in the prison and the way that we search people within the walls. All these things need to be done simultaneously—supply, demand and searching—and the key to this is training, training, training.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

T7. Following the question from the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), campaigners supporting missing people and their families are concerned, despite assurances that a timetable for implementation of the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act 2017 would be set out before the summer. Will the Minister give the families the assurance of a specific timetable for the implementation of this vital Act and clarify when the rules of court will be published?

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[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

T10. In the light of the tragic hit-and-run accident in Coventry some time ago, in which two children were killed and a family devastated, are there any plans to review the law and sentencing in that area?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. We remain very committed to this. We have undertaken extensive consultation on extending the maximum sentences for causing death by dangerous driving, and we are looking at those for causing death by careless driving. We intend to introduce legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

In the light of the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), when is the Secretary of State going to reply to my letter asking when longer sentences for causing death by dangerous driving will be introduced into legislation, as was promised in October last year?

[Rory Stewart]

I refer to my previous answer. This is a priority for the Government, but we need to find the right legislative instrument for doing it. Be in no doubt—it will happen.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Pursuant to the Minister’s response about the issue, raising the small claims limit for employers’ liability will affect about 40% of claimants, many of whose employers claim that those individuals contributed to their own accidents through negligence. How are they supposed to stand up, unrepresented, to their employer and their insurance company?

[Rory Stewart]

The entire purpose of the small claims court is to make sure that minor injuries—in this case, the claims limit was set in 1991 at less than £1,000 and will rise to £2,000—are dealt with without lawyers. The same thing happens in most of our European partner countries. Norway is a very good example of a model in which exactly such cases are taken through without lawyers, up to a much higher value than would be the case here.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), wants to close the magistrates court in Cambridge. What assessment has she made of suggested ways to keep a magistrates court in Cambridge, and when will she make a decision?

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Rory Stewart Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 6th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point: this is about not just voice calls, but data. The case studies that I am mentioning illustrate that the use of mobile phones in prisons is not a harmless activity that we perhaps frown upon, but to some degree, can turn a blind eye to. In fact, what we are seeing is the organisation of very serious criminal activity being facilitated by mobile phones. A moment ago, I mentioned an escape involving machine gun-toting masked men.

A second example is that of Imran Bashir, who was incarcerated in HMP Garth in Lancashire. He was using a mobile phone in that prison to co-ordinate a widespread heroin-smuggling and heroin-dealing network, bringing untold misery probably to hundreds of people who were buying and taking heroin. He was running this criminal enterprise via a series of conference calls, which he had organised and was participating in using his mobile phone. My hon. Friend mentioned the use of internet and data. This man was using conference call facilities to organise his criminal network. Had measures such as those in the Bill been in place, it would have been impossible for him to do that.

A third example is that of convicted armed robber Craig Hickinbottom, aged 65. He was serving a prison sentence but was using a mobile phone that was in his possession to run a very well-organised smuggling network, which was bringing prohibited items into not just his prison, but several prisons in Scotland and the north-west. He was only uncovered when cameras on the prison perimeter, which were being used to film wildlife—that might have been an elaborate cover by the authorities—spotted drones flying over the prison walls carrying prohibited material, some of which was suspended on fishing line.

The subsequent investigation revealed that Craig Hickinbottom had been co-ordinating a vast smuggling network over many prisons. More than £1 million-worth of banned material had been smuggled in, including drugs, mobile phones, SIM cards, offensive weapons, a screwdriver—I assume that it was intended to be used as a weapon—a Freeview box and a remote control. He was eventually convicted and given a new prison sentence. All that nefarious activity was facilitated by his having a mobile phone.

The prohibition of mobile phones in prison is no minor matter. I have given just three examples of extraordinarily serious criminal activity being organised and orchestrated using mobile phones. Taking mobile phones out of our prisons will prevent that serious criminal activity. The Bill therefore has my complete support.

I have two questions, either for my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes or for the Minister—if he does not intend to make a speech, I will happily take an intervention. My first question relates to clause 1(2), which states:

“The Secretary of State may authorise a public communications provider to interfere with wireless telegraphy.”

The word “authorise” indicates that a provider can be permitted to do that, but can they be compelled? Can the Secretary of State actually require a provider to jam the signal or in some other way prevent mobile communications? The Secretary of State may authorise it, but what if the provider declines to act? Does the word “authorise” give the Secretary of State enough power? Should it not be replaced with “compel”? I see that the Minister is tempted to intervene, but he is indicating—with extraordinarily dextrous hand signals—that he will return to that point in due course.

My second question does not relate directly to the legislation, but it touches on it. The Bill relates to public communications providers, but is it possible to install equipment in prisons to allow the signal to be jammed independently of the providers? Could the Prison Service bring a portable device into a prison in order to jam the signal?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

The answer is yes. We absolutely can take our own devices into prisons in order to do that independently of a mobile phone company.

[Chris Philp]

I am delighted to hear that. Could the Minister elaborate further by commenting on how frequently that is done?

[Rory Stewart]

There are some technological limitations, because the mobile phone company transmits at different frequencies and at different powers. If we were to prevent the use of mobile phones through our own device, we would have to anticipate the frequency and the nature of the transmission. That is what we have done in the past, but it is not always technologically adequate, and that is the reason for the Bill.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the Minister for that thorough answer. I look forward to hearing his comments in due course on whether the word “compel” might be more appropriate than “authorise”.

I strongly support the removal of mobile phones from our prison estate and therefore support the Bill. I strongly encourage the Minister to step up the level of physical searches in prisons. Hopefully he will comment on that too. It is a pleasure to support the Bill, and an even greater pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes.

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[Rory Stewart]

rose—

[Scott Mann]

Or I could give way to the Minister on that.

[Rory Stewart]

I am happy to talk about the technology in very general terms, as I will do in my speech, but the whole point of the Bill is to try to interfere with criminal activity. We must therefore keep a lot of the technology classified. Otherwise, we will not prevent, intercept or gather the traffic data in the way we want.

[Scott Mann]

I fully understand that clarification. As a member of the all-party parliamentary tech group, I always like to know how things work.

I was interested to hear how drones are being used to drop mobile phones over prison walls. Some drones can actually be flown using a mobile phone, so some prisoners might be using mobile phones to fly in drones carrying drugs. The implication of having more mobile phones in prison is that more illicit activity can take place.

Following what my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) said, the harshest thing I can do, as far as my children are concerned, is take away their mobile phones, because they feel lost, as if they have been cut off from society. When it comes to rehabilitation, we must try to remove prisoners from criminal activity, in much the same way as we do when trying to get people clean from drugs; we take them away from their environment and put them somewhere separate, where they generally respond much better. If people have committed crimes, they should have that impingement placed on them. The use of that technology should be denied them.

I think that the purpose of the Bill—I did not serve on the Public Bill Committee, so I stand to be corrected on this—is to strengthen safety and security in prisons, through the authorisation of interference of public communications. In 2016 the Government published plans for reforming the prison system, including the measures in the Bill. The “Prison Safety and Reform” White Paper set out the Government’s plans to deliver a mix of operational changes and to underpin the legal changes required.

Our prisons face significant security challenges. In 2016, approximately 13,000 mobile phones and 7,000 SIM cards were found in prisons—an incredible number. That was an increase of 7,000 mobile phones from 2013. As I explained earlier, there has been a rise in the number of drones being used to fly contraband over prison walls. It is just incredible. I welcome the announcement that the Government are going to invest £2 million in handheld and portable detection equipment in order to find mobile phones in prisons.

The Bill creates powers allowing the Secretary of State to authorise public communications providers to interfere with wireless signals. Almost half of all prisoners are reconvicted within one year of release. It strikes me that prisoners are much more likely to reoffend if they have access to mobile phones. These measures will therefore hopefully reduce reoffending. More than 150 mobile phones were cut off since the introduction of the Telecommunications Restriction Orders (Custodial Institutions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 and the Serious Crime Act in 2015, which is to be welcomed.

The purpose of the Bill is to help people not to reoffend, but it is also to help prison officers to do their job effectively. I therefore welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes has introduced the Bill and wish it safe passage.

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[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I thank all Members who have spoken today, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) for promoting this important Bill. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) who introduced the Bill in its original version, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) who brought forward the 2012 version.

This has been an astonishing tour d’horizon, and powerful speeches by an extraordinary number of hon. and right hon. Members have touched on fundamental issues concerning the purpose of prison. Members have mentioned the rehabilitative aspects of prison, as well as incapacitation, retribution and deterrence, but we must begin by thinking about the device of a mobile phone itself. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) powerfully pointed out, this device is not simply a telephone, and when considering this Bill we must consider its relationship to prison in general.

Prison is designed to isolate somebody from the public, and in contemporary society prison is effectively a punishment of segregation or isolation which includes the breaking of communication. The difference between being in a prison cell, as intended by the prison’s administration, and being in a cell with this device in one’s hand, is absolute. In a cell, someone without such a device can expect to be controlled by the regime in terms of access to media and communications. With a device in their hand, however, their entire life becomes different—they are no longer quite a prisoner; they are someone who can begin to become an active, involved individual who can reach out well beyond the walls of their cell. Relatively rapidly in the short time available, let me talk through what that actually means and how that feels in a prison.

Having such a device effectively means that someone can set an alarm, wake up, and use a torch to communicate with the drone outside their prison cell. They can use their device to pilot the drone to their window, and having had their drugs delivered, they can sit back and go on Skype or Facebook, or make a WhatsApp video call with their partner outside prison. They can sit back, watch a movie, go on Facebook, and fall asleep. When they wake up in the morning they can use the device for their personal fitness training, or begin trading shares and make a little money.

As their morning starts, perhaps after breakfast, they can begin to use their device more actively to run their criminal gang outside the prison walls—that is the moment at which they pick up their mobile telephone to call a business rival, intimidate a witness, or organise the importation of drugs or weapons into the country. Having done that, the device then becomes a weapon within the prison itself. It allows someone to go to another prisoner and say, “You owe me £35 for the drugs that I dealt you last week”, or to calculate a 50% interest payment, or the interest payment attributed to a particular cell. The device allows someone to take a photograph of an individual and send it to their partner. If an individual will not pay, the device allows someone to feed them Spice and, as happened recently, put them in a washing machine, video them, and load an image of them going round and round on social media.

This device can also be used for research—it permits someone to get online, find out what the man sharing their cell has been convicted for, discover something about the business they used to run or the assets they might possess, and establish their address and where their partner is located. The device allows someone to undermine the prison regime, or take a photograph of their prison officer and share it with a friend outside the prison walls, so that they can follow the prison officer home. This device allows someone to research the entire family background of their prison officer, and when they have finished doing that—perhaps in the evening when they are locked up again—they can begin using the device actively to commit crime.

Someone could use their device to hack into other people’s websites, or to access the dark web and start trading weapons or slaves on line. This device might then allow them to begin going on social media. They might not wish to, but they could retweet an ISIS video on this device. They could use this device, through social media, to simultaneously organise disturbances across 30 or 40 prisons at the same time, and time when those disturbances took place. Above all, what they would be doing through their continual use of this device, going on Facebook and Twitter, is continually humiliating and offending their victims. They have been locked away as a sex offender or a violent offender, and their victim is suddenly finding that they are on Twitter or Facebook sharing their views on the world, talking to their friends and generally behaving as though they are not in prison.

That therefore brings us from the device to the purpose of the Bill. This is where the contributions by hon. and right hon. Members have been so important. The first point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), which is what we have to begin with, is that this device undermines the effective functions of a prison. It undermines the authority of the prison officers. It undermines their ability to use incentives and the earning of privileges in order to control the behaviour of a prisoner. Basically, it means that a prison is less safe and less functioning, and is unable to perform its functions.

It was clear from nearly the dozen speeches we heard today that there were four quite different concepts of prison. Roughly speaking, my hon. Friends the Members for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) focused on the rehabilitative aspects of a prison. My hon. Friends the Members for Croydon South (Chris Philp) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) focused on the function of prison in terms of incapacitation. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) focused on the importance of retribution within prison. My hon. Friends the Members for Havant (Alan Mak) and for Dudley South (Mike Wood) focused on deterrence.

I am simplifying—the speeches touched on many different aspects of the use of a prison—but by focusing on those four quite different purposes of a prison we can bring into clear focus the different ways in which this powerful device or weapon in the hands of a prisoner can be used to undermine the purpose of a prison. If we were to focus, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin and Harpenden, for Banbury and for Cheadle do, on the question of rehabilitation, then suddenly the telephone can seem a rather attractive way of containing the prisoner’s ability to communicate with broader society.

The argument that might be made—I would not be making it—is that this device is what prevents a prisoner suddenly dropping off the edge of a cliff when they leave prison and re-enter society. A prisoner who has been locked up for 15 years without access to this device and without access to social media has very little idea of the society outside the prison walls. A prisoner who has access to this device is able to continue family contact, is able to keep up with the world, is able to educate themselves, is able to take German lessons, is able to go on Wikipedia. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury explained in her speech, there is a sense—my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden touched on this as well—that there is not a great gap between the kind of use that many prisoners are putting this device to and the kind of use that we ourselves, our families and our children are putting these devices to in everyday life.

But—this is where the speech by the hon. Member for Croydon South is so important—this device flagrantly challenges the fundamental principle of prison, which is that of incapacitation. In the example of Craig Hickinbottom, in the example of escapes being organised from prison, this device leaps over the prison walls. The prison walls no longer become a method of incapacitating a prisoner, but instead become a fluid substance through which the prisoner can continue to intimidate society, run a criminal gang and operate, in effect, as though they were not incarcerated at all.

This touches on the question raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Brentwood and Ongar and for North Cornwall when they talked about the retributive function of prison. If the point of prison is to ensure that the criminal is punished for the historical crime they committed, the question is this: is it adequate retribution to allow somebody to sit in a prison cell with this device? What do we mean by that? Clearly central to the question of punishment is the question of the deprivation of liberty, which involves the deprivation of communication. In so far as we are unable to punish a prisoner in other ways, and many of the other ways in which people were traditionally punished have been removed, an individual is now sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. In other words, the idea is that the individual goes to prison and the punishment is that deprivation of liberty. However, as hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, the possession of this device could potentially undermine the fundamental principle of that punishment by giving a prisoner a range of liberties—the ability to speak to their family at a moment’s notice, the ability to go online, the ability to stream videos and music, and the ability to continue to live the life of an active citizen from within the prison walls—which is not consistent with the judge’s intention.

That brings me to the fourth purpose of prison, emphasised by my hon. Friends the Members for Havant and for Dudley South, which is, of course, deterrence. On the surface, the issues around deterrence and incapacitation would appear to be the same issue, but they are not. The question of retribution, in particular, involves the judge accurately calibrating the punishment to fit the historical crime. The question in relation to the mobile telephone is the extent to which the deprivation of the mobile telephone is in proportion to the exact crime that the individual has committed.

The question of deterrence is quite different. It relates to the notion of an exemplary sentence—in other words, deterrence relates not to the past and to the historical crime committed by the individual, but to the future and wider society. The question then is: does this mobile telephone and its possession represent for broader society something that would be expected by the potential criminal, and the deprivation of which would dissuade them from committing that criminal act?

Superficially, all the questions around mobile telephones seem as though they are just questions of technology, but they are not just that—they go to the fundamental purpose of prison. Again, it might superficially seem that we can just say, “Prison exists for all these things. It exists to incapacitate, deter, rehabilitate and to take retribution,” but this is not true in reality. If we look at the debates that happen within criminal justice, we are unable to resolve these fundamental issues, and the reason is that the principles, or assumptions, from which these things are derived are in conflict with each other. They can be in conflict in different ways.

It has been a great privilege to hear from so many learned Friends today—indeed, I would be delighted to take interventions from any of them—and they have managed to put their finger on deep philosophical distinctions.

[Jeremy Quin]

I would not describe myself as “learned”, either in fact or by courtesy. My hon. Friend is making a very powerful and interesting speech about the philosophy of prisons. It occurred to me, listening to him, how profoundly things have changed over the last 30 or 40 years. If we compare and contrast what an offender might have done in society 20, 30 or 40 years ago with the situation now, we see how markedly things have changed. I am thinking about people’s personal lives—their access to films, the internet and the way they conduct themselves. If we compare how people conduct their social lives now with 30 years ago, when social life was more community-based, it is clear that things have changed greatly, and that needs to be reflected in the prison sentences and jails.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The questions around the telephone is what we expect in society as a whole and the relationship of a prison to what happens in broader society. What we see in our prisons is that in fact they ultimately mirror broader society. What was acceptable in the 19th century is not acceptable today. For example, in Pentonville prison 175 years ago solitary confinement meant total silence and the use of masks for 23 hours a day. Slopping out, which happened as recently as the 1980s—in other words, the fact that prisoners did not have lavatories in their cells—has ceased to be acceptable. Our views on whether prisoners should have showers in their cells might change in 20 or 30 years’ time.

Our views on how a mobile telephone relates to normal life will also change. Will a mobile phone begin to feel so fundamentally interwoven with our social life, our communications and the way we live in a 21st-century society that to be deprived of it will feel quite different in 20 years’ time from how it feels today, or how it might have felt 20 years ago?

Therefore, in trying to work out how to frame legislation and how to treat prisoners, we have to deal with social change at a range of different levels; we have to deal with changes in culture and society over time; and we have to deal with clashes of values between individuals that cannot be reconciled.

The interesting point raised by my learned friends who focused on the question of retribution in justice goes to the fundamental question of what we are entitled to do to an individual.

[Alan Mak]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we experience not only cultural change, but technological change? One of the strengths of the Bill is that it sets out a framework that will help to future-proof the statute book with regard to technological change.

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely right. Indeed, the very existence of the Bill shows how quickly technology is changing. We began in 2007 simply by making it illegal to have a mobile telephone in prison—it carries a maximum sentence of two years. One would have thought that there would therefore be no problem with simply jamming the signal in prisons to prevent the use of mobile telephones, because having one was illegal. What on earth is the problem with putting in place the technology to stop that? What we discovered, of course, is that that presents a huge range of philosophical, legal and technological challenges. That explains why we had another Bill in 2012 and, thanks to the very good work of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, another Bill now in 2018.

Those challenges are quite significant. Let me deal first with the philosophical challenge. Article 8 of the European convention on human rights allows for a right to privacy. The 2012 legislation began to give the Secretary of State the authority to deal with the question of the right to privacy, and also to deal with the unanticipated consequences, which have been raised by various hon. Members, of the blocking technology affecting the lives of people outside the prison walls. Even that is not sufficient, because there is then a series of changing regulations relating to Ofcom, for example.

The 2012 legislation tried to deal with the gap between what can be authorised to a Crown servant—in this case the governor of a public prison—and what instructions can be given to the director of a private prison, such as one run by G4S, Serco or Sodexo. That was resolved in 2012, but what happened then—this point has been raised already—is that we are simply walking around a prison with various devices. What devices can be used in a prison? Before this legislation, we could wander around a prison with a metal detector, which can pick up the metal in a mobile telephone. We could wander around with a wand that picks up the microwave signals from a phone, but the phone might be very small and hidden almost anywhere in a messy cell. What we were unable to do, except with the co-operation of the mobile telephone company, is operate from the mast.

Under the previous legislation, we were forced effectively to jam the signal by transmitting on the same frequency that the mobile telephone company transmits. The company moves from 3G to 4G and the signal changes. Let us imagine that there are three masts from three companies surrounding a prison, all of which are transmitting on different frequencies. Those frequencies change over time, as do their strengths. The prison will find itself trying to transmit on a frequency, and when the frequency changes they miss it. They find the frequency again and they transmit at a certain strength, but then the signal strength increases against them. As they increase the signal strength, they increase the likelihood that they will take out mobile telephone communications from the surrounding houses. That would be a real risk in Brixton, for example.

We are dealing all the time with technological change. The speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Horsham, for Erewash, for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Witney (Robert Courts) were particularly powerful in dealing with the ways in which that technological change drives this legislation, necessitates this legislation, and will challenge this legislation.

[Alex Burghart]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. May I raise a practical point? I imagine that people living or working near prisons may fear that this change will reduce the quality of the signals in their houses or businesses. What reassurances can my hon. Friend give?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a fundamental question, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend has asked it. It is, in fact, addressed both in the 2012 Act and in the schedule to the Bill. In the schedule, new subsection (4A) provides for the Secretary of State, in authorising the mobile telephone company—the mobile network operator—also to place an obligation on that operator not to interfere with the communications of individuals outside the prison walls, and to require the operator to take remedial action if any such interference should take place. That is a very good challenge.

My hon. Friends the Members for Torbay and for Witney also raised other issues, such as encryption and the potential setting up of a wi-fi network within the prison walls. That is not always easy. I assure Members that whenever we try to put wi-fi into a prison, we find that 150-year-old Victorian walls make it almost impossible to get a signal into it. On the other hand, criminals can often be extraordinarily entrepreneurial and ingenious in getting around problems that may defeat our engineers.

At the core of this, however, is not simply a question of technology. Let us return to the question of the four purposes of prison, and let us return in particular to the question of retribution. The key idea of retribution in relation to the mobile telephone is the idea that you are punishing a criminal for a crime that he committed in the past. As was suggested by a number of learned Members, that is a fundamental philosophical principle relating to the nature of the rights of that individual.

As Immanuel Kant pointed out, the individual should, as a matter of rational logic and a categorical imperative, be treated only as an end in himself, not as a means to an end. In other words, we should not be punishing individual A in order to change the behaviour of individual B. We should not even be punishing individual A in order to change the future behaviour of individual A. As Kant argues, the retributive punishment should be directed only towards the historical action of the individual, and should relate only to that historical crime. Kant is therefore arguing that neither deterrence, which is punishing individual A in order to affect the behaviour of individual B, nor rehabilitation, which is punishing individual A in order to affect the future behaviour of individual A, is a valid form of punishment.

Those Members who advanced utilitarian arguments were making a completely different set of points. Their arguments were, in fact, arguments about society more broadly. They were suggesting that what matters is not the historical action committed by the individual, but society as a whole, and the future consequences. They might well argue that what matters is not what the individual did in the past—that has happened, and there is no point in crying over spilt milk—but how we change society in the future. How do we ensure, through the punishment that we inflict on this individual, that this individual does not go on and reoffend? How do we ensure, through the punishment that we inflict on this individual, that others are deterred from committing a crime?

In that fundamental clash between a Kantian deontological world view focused on the rights of the individual and the dignity of the individual, and a consequentialist or utilitarian argument in which the individual may suffer for the greater happiness of the greater number, we have something that cannot be resolved in this Chamber, because such fundamental values and principles are beyond the ability of this Chamber to resolve. All we can try to do—through the media, through civil society, through Parliament, through legislation—is listen to these types of debate, understand them and articulate them, but we can never fully resolve them. That is why this legislation needs to be able to contain a powerful and enormous element of flexibility. As technology changes and this device—this mobile telephone that I am now holding up—becomes more powerful, as the ways in which 4G or 5G technology emerge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Alan Mak) points out, and as social attitudes towards punishment, crime and indeed social attitudes towards mobile telephones change, we need legislation that can keep up with that change. A day may come when some elements of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury, where she emphasised the centrality and normalcy of this phone in our everyday family lives and especially in the lives of our children, may begin to predominate over the kinds of argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South.

[Jeremy Quin]

It has been said that one does hear Kant in the Chamber occasionally, but rarely so eruditely expressed; it is wonderful to hear the Minister’s philosophical discussion. He talked about the centrality of mobile phones; the centrality a lot of us were concerned about was the direct use of the mobile phone to direct criminal networks and criminal gangs on the other side of prison walls. On the strict practicalities of the use of mobile phones, will the Minister reassure me that this Bill will help prevent that very real problem?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes; in essence the point about the mobile telephone is that we need to understand it not as a telephone. It is of course a communications device and as such, particularly in telephonic communication, it can be used to control criminal gangs, but we must also take on board its full use, and understand that it is also a recording device, a way of accessing the internet, and a wallet in which money is contained and through which money can be transferred, and that it therefore can be used to intimidate people—to intimidate witnesses—to run criminal gangs and do all sorts of things right through to piloting a drone through a window. Once we understand that, we begin to understand that this device is a weapon, not a communications device, and what follows from that are all the things Members have raised in terms of criminality: the importing of illicit substances, the accessing of illicit entertainment, the making of illicit money, the running of illicit gangs, the extortion of money, the undermining of a prison regime, the committing of crime, its use for terrorism and for promoting disturbances, and create victims through social media.

All of which brings me finally back to the legislation itself. On the surface, this Bill seems very straightforward, and in fact of course, as Members have pointed out, the core of this legislation sits at proposed new subsection (2A) to the Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012:

“The Secretary of State may authorise a public communications provider to interfere with wireless telegraphy.”

The key point here is that it is addressed to the public communications provider rather than, as is the case in the 2012 legislation, to the governor of a prison or the director of a private prison.

[Chris Philp]

I touched in my speech on a question about this proposed provision, asking whether the word “authorise” confers adequate power on a Minister or Secretary of State: if they authorise someone to do something, they may not follow that authorisation—they may ignore him. Should that word therefore be changed to “compel” or “require” in order to give the Secretary of State the power he or she needs?

[Rory Stewart]

That is an interesting question, and the answer is that, as currently drafted, this word “authorise” means exactly that: it is giving legal permission. The anxiety of the mobile telephone companies would be that without that authorisation, were they to conduct these operations they would be in breach of Ofcom regulations and ultimately in breach of article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998. Under this legislation therefore, all we are doing is saying to a willing mobile telephone company that, should it voluntarily wish to work with us, this gives it the authority to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South has raised an interesting point, however. What would happen if the mobile telephone company were to turn round and refuse to comply? To some extent that is hypothetical, because we have not yet encountered a mobile telephone provider that is not prepared to work with us on this, for a range of reasons. The mobile telephone companies’ relationship with Ofcom and the Government is complex, deep and interlinked, and they generally wish to retain the goodwill of the Government. It is also true that in some cases we would have a commercial contract with a mobile telephone company to undertake this work, so it would have a financial interest in working with us. Hypothetically, however, it remains the case that under this legislation, a mobile telephone company would be able to refuse to provide the service. We do not believe that it would do so, but my hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that, theoretically, it could do so under this legislation.

[Alex Burghart]

Has my hon. Friend’s Department received assurances from the major providers that they are happy with the legislation as it stands and that they intend to work with the Government in the future?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, the Department works closely with the major providers and our understanding at the moment is that they are all willing to work with us in line with this legislation.

I shall move towards a conclusion, and I shall try to end within the next three minutes. I want to move quickly through the Bill, and to clarify matters for hon. Members before they vote on it. In proposed new subsection (2B), “preventing the use” and “detecting or investigating the use” are the key purposes to which this authorisation can be put. In other words, the point of this is to ensure that we can prevent someone from using their mobile telephone, that we can find their mobile telephone, and that we can work out what they are doing with it.

Proposed new subsection (2C) will probably trouble, confuse, amuse and perplex a number of Members. It states that an authorisation may be given in relation to

“one or more relevant institutions…one or more kinds of relevant institution…or relevant institutions”.

Even a very learned and distinguished colleague such as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury might struggle to work out why on earth we are distinguishing between those three categories. Perhaps she would like to intervene on me at this point. The answer is that parliamentary counsel is trying to provide for the possibility of our giving authorisation to, for example, two prisons in the adult male estate, such as Brixton and Wandsworth, or to two kinds of prison, let us say a young offenders institution such as Feltham and an adult male institution such as Brixton. Alternatively, we might wish to give a more general authorisation to all institutions of the relevant kind—for example, all the young offender institutions in the country or all the adult male institutions in the country. This is a perfect time for my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury to intervene on me.

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank the Minister for giving way, but he certainly does not need my help or that of more learned colleagues. The point he is making is an important one, which is that the current legislation is clunky and difficult for governors and Ministers to use, and that this legislation will make things much easier and more effective.

[Rory Stewart]

That is an enormous relief.

[Chris Philp]

The Minister has mentioned the word “authorise” again. I heard his clarification earlier. As the Bill is drafted, the mobile phone companies would not be absolutely required to comply, but can he confirm that it is the expectation and the intention of the Government—and, I think, of this House—that when the Government ask a public communications provider to interfere with wireless telegraphy in a prison, it will comply with that request, and that the Government and the House would take a dim view if any public communications provider did not comply with such a request?

[Rory Stewart]

Without wishing to sound like Mr Speaker, I think my hon. Friend has made his point with great force and clarity, and I am sure that anyone listening to the debate will have taken on board his message very clearly.

In conclusion, I should like to thank hon. and right hon. Members for their patience. This has been a relatively long debate, and we have touched in extreme and excruciating detail on the philosophical foundations of the legislation, as well as on the technological applications of mobile telephones. It has been a really worthwhile debate. Having spoken at some length, I want to finish with a short moment of sincerity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, in particular, and also other right hon. and hon. Members for their often intelligent, interesting and illuminating contributions. The Bill matters: it goes to the heart of how prisons are run, what they exist for, how we punish someone and what a prisoner can do from within a prison’s walls to intimidate prison officers and other prisoners, profit themselves and organise crime in broader society.

Giving Government the power to ensure that these illegal acts, currently punishable by a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison, can be prevented with the latest technology and the consent of mobile telephone operators, which will allow us to pinpoint the devices, block them and follow their traffic, will be an extraordinary contribution to reducing drugs, violence and disorder in prisons, making them safer and more decent, and ultimately protecting the broader public.