Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Fourth sitting)

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

This is about a young person’s future life. They may well have done the most horrible and tragic things, but even those people deserve an opportunity to prove that they can do better. This amendment would help to achieve that.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I rise in support of amendments 37, 45 and 46, standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North. I want to cover some general principles in what is my first opportunity to speak in this Bill Committee. Like the Government, we are committed to keeping the public safe and we share the desire to ensure that attacks such as those at Fishmongers’ Hall and in Streatham never happen again—attacks where convicted but released terrorists were able to kill and maim innocent people.

We recognise the importance of adequate and appropriate punishment in sentencing, but punishment and sentencing must go alongside rehabilitation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham said on Second Reading:

“We must not lose faith in the power of redemption—the ability of people to renounce the darkest chapters of their lives and move towards the light.”—[Official Report, 9 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 213.].

For that, those offenders need an effective deradicalisation programme tailored to their motivation and circumstances, and they need hope—hope that before too long they can rejoin their family; that they can get meaningful work. They could even steer others away from the path they took before. I point out that programmes have operated in prisons in Northern Ireland with convicted paramilitaries on both sides of the troubles. In the later years of the troubles, those men became beacons of peace and reconciliation, educating young people towards positive paths.

Some contributions on Second Reading sometimes felt like support for a policy that almost veered on “Lock ’em up and throw away the key”. However, as many submissions and expert witnesses to this Committee have said, removing hope from these offenders and the opportunity to prove they are safe does not make the rest of us safer. I might add, even locking up people indefinitely, as the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford said earlier, does not protect us anyway. It does not prevent them from radicalising others. It spawns martyrs, not to mention the cost to the public purse of incarcerating prisoners for ever longer periods. As we heard this morning from the Prison Officers Association, there is also the danger to prison officers of attacks from angry men who have no hope of release in the foreseeable future.

I fear that some aspects of the Bill are born from a reaction to the terrorist atrocities in the last seven months and have been brought in without due research into what might work to further reduce the risk of attack from radicalised individuals, whether they are of a Daesh/ISIS persuasion, from the far right or, as a number of terrorists in the UK still are, rogue Irish paramilitaries.

The Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham attacks were both committed by offenders who had been released automatically halfway through their sentence with no involvement of the Parole Board. Of course, with Labour support, the Government have now brought in the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020, which ends the automatic early release of terrorist offenders and ensures that any release before the end of a sentence is dependent on a thorough risk assessment by the Parole Board. I am therefore not quite sure why the Government want to take the Parole Board out of sentencing now, without any adequate alternative provision being put in place.

Before I make some specific remarks, Dave, the father of Jack Merritt, who was killed in the Fishmongers’ Hall attack, wrote poignantly about how his son would have perceived the political reaction to his death, because of course Jack Merritt worked in the criminal justice system on the rehabilitation of offenders. Dave wrote:

“What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens. That door opens up a world where we do not lock up and throw away the key. Where we do not give indeterminate sentences, or convict people on joint enterprise. Where we do not slash prison budgets, and where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge. Where we do not consistently undermine our public services, the lifeline of our nation. Jack believed in the inherent goodness of humanity, and felt a deep social responsibility to protect that.”

As I said, I support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South—

[Alex Cunningham]

Stockton North!

[Ruth Cadbury]

My apologies.

Amendments 37, 45 and 46 relate to under-21s. I wish that they went a little older, possibly to 25, because they consider the issue of maturity. I declare a certain interest because for many years I was a trustee and, latterly, the chair of the Barrow Cadbury Trust, which initiated and funded the Transition to Adulthood Alliance about 15 years ago. Over a number of years, the alliance worked with a number of non-governmental organisations, the Ministry of Justice, Ministers, Opposition Members and so on to the point where maturity has now been introduced into sentencing practice and several other areas of the criminal justice system. I fear that we are going to lose that in this Bill.

When considering maturity, it is really important that we work on the basis of all the research that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North mentioned and use that research to reduce the risk of serious harm to members of the public and to enhance the rehabilitation of the offender. The Committee has heard powerful evidence, particularly this morning, about the different motivations that people have for becoming terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, such as political, religious or psychiatric.

Sentences and rehabilitation must take account of the different motivations of different offenders. As we heard this morning, we probably also need to have tailored support, which needs to come into the pre-sentencing reports. One of the amendments says that the court must also take account of reports from local authority officers who have worked with the offender prior to the point of considering sentencing.

[Alex Cunningham]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comprehensive speech. She talks about resources and specialised facilities. The evidence we heard from some people in earlier sittings suggests that the system is not fit for purpose. Would she welcome from the Minister, as I would, a statement about how the Government will ensure proper provision for rehabilitation in our prison system?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As others have said, it would have been better if there had been proper risk assessments of a number of aspects of the Bill, because many clauses do not seem to be evidence-based. We know that we have funding problems within the prison system. We know that we have, as we heard this morning, disjoints between various elements of the course through the system for offenders. There is an awful lot of work to do, and there are a number of respects in which I do not feel that the Bill is fit for purpose. It would have been better if it had been based on proper evidence of what works to reduce the threat to the public and improve rehabilitation.

Children have long been treated differently in sentencing considerations, and the amendments would enable particular considerations for young adults, particularly of their maturity. Mr Hall, the independent reviewer, was concerned that, unless these considerations are taken into account, we risk locking people up for too long, building bitterness and a refusal to engage in the prison system, and actually, on eventual release, potentially a greater risk. He considered that longer and more punitive sentences do not in themselves ensure that people are less dangerous on release, and that while extending sentences for serious offenders may, of course, keep them out of our harm’s way for a temporary period, we do not want them to leave prison more dangerous than when they entered.

Early release provides prisoners with the incentive to behave and show that they are capable of reform. We heard powerful evidence that prison staff are at increased risk of harm where hope is lost. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North said, many studies show that young terrorist offenders are much more likely to reform than older offenders, yet the Bill treats a young adult who has just turned 18 the same as an older offender. Are the Secretary of State and the Minister concerned that the Bill effectively gives up on those offenders?

We need to look at the evidence, not the tabloids. We need a flexible response that is offender-based, and it must be tailored. If we really want to enable rehabilitation and reduce the harm to the public, I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment.

[Chris Philp]

I will speak to the amendments relating to younger offenders. There are a couple of things to be clear about first of all. For the sake of absolute clarity, offenders who are under the age of 18 are not subject to the 14-year minimum prison sentence. Only offenders over the age of 18 are subject to those provisions. The amendments relate to offenders aged between 18 and 21, so we are discussing a very specific cohort.

I agree and concur with many points that the shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth made about rehabilitation, and about the increased opportunity for rehabilitation for younger people. It is of course the case that younger people are more open to change—particularly as their brains mature—than older people, and it is right that we try to work with them to achieve that. I would not dispute that as a general principle, but clause 4 as drafted applies to an extremely small subsection of those offenders aged between 18 and 21. It by no means applies to the generality of offenders, including terrorist offenders, aged 18 to 21. It applies to that narrow subsection who have committed a serious terrorist offence, as we have discussed already, but it also requires a finding by the judge, following a pre-sentence report—something the shadow Minister referred to in his amendment and in his speech—of dangerousness. What a finding of dangerousness means in law is that there is a significant risk of the offender causing serious harm by committing further serious terrorism or other specified offences.

There are already two hurdles to jump: a serious terrorist offence, followed by a finding of dangerousness based on a pre-sentence report. However, there is also a third hurdle that must be jumped before a younger offender aged 18 to 21 would fall into the scope of this clause, which is that, at the time of committing the offence. they were aware, or should have been aware, that their offence was very likely to result in or contribute to multiple deaths. That is a well-established test dating back to section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000. We are talking about an extremely small subsection of offenders aged 18 to 21 and a very small subsection even of terrorist offenders—those who meet all three of those criteria.