Foreign National Offenders
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for securing this afternoon’s debate. I know he has raised the issue before. The debate has raised a number of issues that I will try to tackle in turn. I welcome an opportunity to highlight the Government’s approach and the progress we are making.
Let me say at the outset that the House should be in no doubt that the Government are absolutely committed to increasing the number of foreign national offenders removed from our prisons. Any foreign national who comes to our country and abuses our hospitality by breaking the law should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. Increasing removals is one of our top priorities. When I was appointed, the Prime Minister certainly made it clear to me that it was a key priority for the Department. All FNOs sentenced to custody are referred to the Home Office at the earliest opportunity to be considered for deportation.
My hon. Friend asked for an update on the numbers. Overall, since 2010 we have removed more than 33,000 foreign offenders from prisons, immigration removal centres and the community. In 2015-16, we removed 5,810 FNOs, which was the highest number since records began. That represents good progress, but there is certainly a lot more that can be done, and I am ambitious to do more. My hon. Friend asked for clarification. FNOs make up 12% of the overall prison population, with 4,180 EU nationals in prisons and immigration removal centres. He went through a list of his top 10. Without going into too much detail, I can confirm that Poland holds the highest number of offenders. Ireland is second and Romania is third.
The primary responsibility for the removal of FNOs sits with the Home Office. It is the Home Office that can remove someone from this country. The Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service support that work by setting the policy and administering the removal schemes. As I am sure everyone present will recognise, the removal of an FNO requires a co-ordinated and sustained approach across Whitehall. My hon. Friend alluded to that. My Department works closely with the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. Only last week I met ministerial colleagues from those Departments to agree a programme of work to increase FNO removals.
Mr Hollobone
We have got oodles of time to explore the nitty-gritty of the issue. My understanding is that it is regularly on the agenda of the National Security Council. Can the Minister confirm that? Can he confirm how often the NSC meets to discuss the issue? Can he confirm that he is able to attend those meetings to press the case, given that the Prime Minister said to him that it is one of her top priorities?
Mr Gyimah
I can confirm that I have met the Minister for Immigration twice in the past two months. He has the levers to remove people. I met him only this week. We have widened the meeting to include Ministers from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. We have got an ambitious programme and clear actions to take forward. We have agreed to meet as often as possible to give the issue the ministerial attention it deserves. In addition, we are making sure that when other Government Ministers meet Ministers in countries with which we have a concern about foreign nationals, this issue is included as a top priority in their briefing pack to raise with and get feedback from Ministers of those Governments, so that we can act on that.
Simon Danczuk
Will the Minister do all that he can to ensure that Shabir Ahmed is deported to a prison in Pakistan?
Mr Gyimah
I am certainly willing to look at that case. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot make a decision here about who gets deported and under what terms; we have to look at the case very carefully. If he writes to me, I am willing to look at that with the Immigration Minister and the Home Office.
Lady Hermon
I intervene with reference to dissident republicans. Terrorism is not an issue that is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly; it is a responsibility for this Government, thank goodness. I would like the Minister to reply to my earlier question. How many dissident republicans—who wage a violent campaign and who have murdered, bombed and shot people in Northern Ireland and elsewhere—have requested to return to prisons in the Republic of Ireland? Since they want a united Ireland, surely one can understand that they would wish to go back to prison in the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for her very forcefully put question. I do not have those data to hand, but if they are available—I look to my officials—I will be happy to write to her with the detail.
There is a huge amount of activity under way on each stage of the FNO process, from the point of arrest to appearance in court, being given a prison sentence and removal back to the home country. For example, the Government have introduced clauses in the Policing and Crime Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, that will strengthen police powers with regard to early identification of nationality and will require anyone appearing in court to state their nationality. Those provisions are designed to help to speed up early identification of FNOs and so assist with their quick removal from the UK.
Mr Gyimah
I believe that is included in the process that I have outlined. In other initiatives, my Department is currently working on proposals to introduce a new fast-track appeals process that will apply to all detained foreign offenders. That process will make sure that appeals are determined as efficiently as possible, so that foreign offenders may be removed from the UK more quickly.
We have also strengthened our ability to deport foreign offenders through new powers introduced by the Immigration Act 2014, which contains a discretionary power allowing us to deport first—the FNO can appeal later. That means that foreign offenders cannot delay their removal with frivolous appeals and are instead required to appeal from abroad, but only if the Home Secretary certifies that removal pending the outcome of any appeal would not risk serious irreversible harm following their return. More than 4,100 foreign offenders have been deported under that new provision since it came into force in July 2014, with many more going through the system.
In terms of wider cross-governmental work, which I have touched on, I am determined that we make extensive use of the influence and worldwide reach of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering so articulately focused on, so that we can bring our relationships to bear in discussions, to make sure that we fast-track the process.
Mr Hollobone
I want to ask the Minister two things. How many foreign national offenders have we sent back to EU countries under the EU prisoner transfer directive and how many compulsory transfer agreements do we have with other non-EU countries?
Mr Gyimah
If my hon. Friend bears with me, I will come to those facts in my speech. Wider cross-governmental work means that there is a focus on countries in which DFID operates and for which we hold large numbers of FNOs in our prisons, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia.
I am sure hon. Members will appreciate that the barriers to returning FNOs to their countries of nationality are both varied and complex. That is why the action we take must be tailored to each specific country. To that end, I am working closely with my ministerial colleagues, with work ranging from Ministers pressing the issue with foreign Governments every time they travel overseas, to supporting other countries with our aid spending in order to increase FNO removals from our prisons.
The early removal scheme is our principal mechanism for removing FNOs from our prisons, especially those on shorter sentences. Under the scheme, offenders are returned to their home countries and are barred from entering the UK, potentially for life. In 2015-16, we removed more than 2,000 prisoners via that scheme. That is around 95% of early removals from prison. It is worth highlighting that although that number of removals is very welcome, I am working with the Home Office—I see the Immigration Minister has just walked in, which shows how closely he takes an interest in this important matter—to improve the removal mechanism still further and ensure that it is working as effectively as it possibly can. We have more than 100 prisoner transfer agreements with countries and territories around the world.
Mr Hollobone
How many compulsory transfer agreements do we have? My understanding is that something like 95% of those removals are voluntary. In other words, they require the permission of the prisoner himself.
Mr Gyimah
I am about to make a point about the compulsory and voluntary nature of removals. Where an agreement is in place, prisoners can be transferred on a voluntary basis or on a compulsory basis, meaning that their consent is not required. Most of the agreements we have are necessarily voluntary—which is the point my hon. Friend touched on—due to the standard of prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners in many parts of the world.
Our approach is that we will seek to secure compulsory transfer agreements wherever possible. We have one in place with EU member states, as well as with a number of other countries, such as Albania, the home country of one of the top nationality groups in our prisons. It is worth saying that we are working closely with Albania in particular to improve our prisoner transfer agreement in order to remove more FNOs from our prisons. For that reason, the Minister for Courts and Justice, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), recently met the Albanian Justice Minister to reinforce the importance of returning FNOs as quickly as possible. In terms of compulsory agreements, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering asked about, we currently have compulsory agreements in place with Somalia, Libya, Rwanda, Albania, Nigeria and the EU. That is the factual answer to his question.
The most recent published statistics, from June this year, show that we have transferred 102 prisoners back to their home countries since the EU PTA came into force. We continue to see increasing numbers of transfers as member states become more familiar with the processes. I am determined to maintain that progress and build on it. The number of transfers should of course be seen within the wider context of our work to remove FNOs. The early removal scheme is only one mechanism. It is the most successful one, and 2,000 people were transferred under that scheme last year.
We are working across Government to consider options for securing transfers of EU nationals once we leave the European Union. That is one of the key Brexit priorities for the Ministry of Justice and we have made that very clear to the Department for Exiting the EU in terms of our negotiating position. Although it would not be appropriate for me to provide a running commentary, I hope that what I have said underscores how important the issue is for the Department. I am particularly focused on returning FNOs to those member states for which we hold large numbers in our prisons, such as Poland, Romania and Lithuania in particular.
It is worth bearing in mind that there are also, of course, British nationals detained in prisons overseas—the current figure is roughly 2,046. We are thinking of savings, but in that context there would be a bit of going backwards and forwards.
The time available for today’s debate only allows for an overview of the numerous initiatives and policies under way. I am willing and available to meet with hon. Members who want to look at our processes in more detail and contribute to them. Wherever possible, we will always look to remove those who have broken our laws and will continue to work with Governments across Europe and the world to increase the number of prisoners removed. Be in no doubt that the Government are absolutely committed to reducing the number of foreign national offenders in our prisons, which is why each year we are increasing the numbers of people removed.
Question put and agreed to.
Prison Officer Safety
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing tonight’s debate. I start by joining him in saying that our prison officers are indeed brave, but the work they do—important work that keeps the public safe, but also helps to turn around offenders—often goes unnoticed, and it is worth putting on record that we do value them immensely.
I am determined to improve prison safety for our prison officers and for prisoners themselves. Recent events, including incidents at HMP Bedford and HMP Pentonville, emphasise how important it is that we act now on prison safety and security. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, prisoners at HMP Portland have displayed significant levels of violence against staff, so I would like to echo his concerns, and I reassure him that the Government are taking decisive action to tackle this serious problem—to stabilise it in the short term and to overhaul the system to deliver reforms of longer-term benefit.
I thank my hon. Friend for his support in the House yesterday in condemning the actions of the Prison Officers Association and stressing that strike action was neither constructive for prison officers nor safe for prisoners. I welcome the POA’s decision to stop its unlawful industrial action and the fact that prison officers have returned to work. That incident does not, of course, diminish the principle that underpinned the POA’s action: that prison officer safety is a key challenge and concern.
A point was raised about the lessons we can learn from Northern Ireland. I welcome that point, and I will take it on board. The Department is determined to learn lessons wherever it can to deal with the different challenges across the prison system, be it safety, security or turning prisoners around, but also extremism. So I welcome that point, and I would like to engage directly with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) to take the issue forward.
The levels of violence our prison system has seen over the past five years are unacceptable. There were over 23,000 assaults in the year to June 2016, and over 3,000 of those were against staff. Rising violence against the very officers who devote their lives to public safety must be tackled as a matter of urgency, and that is what the Government are doing.
As we set out in our new “Prison Safety and Reform” White Paper, the Government will be investing over £100 million to recruit an additional 2,500 staff across the estate by the end of 2018. Prison officers do a vital job. I want them to benefit from the improvements we are making on the frontline and to safety to change prisoners’ lives for the better.
We recognise the challenge faced in recruiting an extra 2,500 staff, so we are launching a number of initiatives, including a new apprenticeship programme to recruit more people. We are about to launch an “Army officer to prison officer” recruitment programme, and we also have a programme to encourage the brightest and best graduates to become prison officers.
Of course, those things will take time, but we are making serious and significant progress, including with the 400 extra officers that we have pledged to recruit by March 2017 for our most challenging prisons. We are on track to deliver and meet that target.
Increased staff numbers will give prison officers more time, as my hon. Friend has said, to turn around the lives of prisoners and ensure that they turn against criminality and violence in increasing numbers. Nearly half of all offenders who leave prison go on to commit crime within a year. Investment will provide the capacity for prison officers to play a dedicated officer role, engaging with about six prisoners on a one-to-one basis. They will build constructive relationships with prisoners, listening to their frustration, defusing tension and ultimately reducing the level of violence.
Staffing is only one component of the challenge that we face in our prisons, where there is a game-changing situation involving drugs, phones and drones. The rise in the use and trade of psychoactive substances has been a game changer for the Prison Service. Along with phones, their use and trade drives a destructive cycle of bribery, debt, violence and self-harm. Assaults against staff have increased in that context, so it is essential that we get those issues under control, in tandem with new staffing approaches.
Richard Drax
What can we do physically to stop those drugs getting into prisons? Apparently the situation is endemic across the country. We cannot search people—I do not think that we have the machines to identify the drugs—so how do we stop them?
Mr Gyimah
That is a very good question. The initial challenge posed by the new psychoactive substances—otherwise known as legal highs—was that there was no test that could detect them. It was, therefore, very easy for people not only to get them into prison, but to make them up from a number of components. We now have a test that can identify the drugs so we have introduced mandatory drug testing, but we are also going further to tackle the criminality that drives the smuggling of the drugs into prisons. We will invest £3 million in a new, prison-wide intelligence and search capability that will allow us not only to gather intelligence across the system about which criminal gangs are behind the drugs and trying to get them into our prisons, but to stop them.
Tackling the use of mobile phones is also vital, because, while some prisoners want access to them in order to contact friends and family, a vast number of prisoners use them for criminal purposes, including arranging a time for drugs to come in and telling someone where to send the drone. Dealing with the illicit smuggling of mobile phones into our prisons is absolutely key. Like drones, it is a technological problem, and I believe that technology is the way to deal with it. That is why we are working with the mobile network operators to find a way to prevent mobile phones from working in our prisons, and with drone manufacturers to create no-fly zones across our prison estate.
My hon. Friend specifically mentioned violence against staff. Alongside measures on drones, drugs and phones, it is essential that we increase staff confidence in the prison system. That starts with achieving swift justice when assaults occur. My hon. Friend and I share that concern. We are rolling out body-worn cameras across the estate in order to give staff added confidence, while also supporting bringing timely and effective trials for prisoners when necessary. We will work with other parts of the criminal justice system, including the National Crime Agency and the police, to improve the evidence-collection process, to ensure a “right first time” culture. By clamping down on staff assaults, we will help to break the vicious cycle of violence committed by some of our most challenging prisoners.
My hon. Friend mentioned the retirement age of prison officers, which ties into yesterday’s action. The Government are actively engaged with the Prison Officers Association in negotiations around pay, pensions, the retirement age, retention and health and safety. That is why we were surprised by the action of the POA yesterday. We have an outstanding offer to the POA as of last Friday, and the POA is yet to respond to it. I believe that by coming back to the negotiating table, we will be able to discuss these issues to secure the safety of officers and to ensure that the jobs in their profession are as well rewarded as they obviously should be.
The Secretary of State and I have made it clear over recent weeks that we are taking decisive and urgent action to improve prison safety. The safety and security measures in our White Paper will work alongside key measures such as the £1.3 billion that we are investing to regenerate the old Victorian estate and reforms to empower prison governors. We have a genuine commitment to alleviating violence against our staff, which we cannot ignore in the current context.
My hon. Friend mentioned prison management, and I believe that our reform programme will really help in that context by empowering governors and giving them control over their budgets. That will enable them to make decisions about the employment, education and training of prisoners. It will also enable them to deploy staff in a way that best allows them to deliver a prison regime that not only provides safety and security, but turns prisoners around. Prison governors will be real managers and leaders of their shop. At the moment, too much comes from Whitehall. We want to give prison governors responsibility and freedom, with, obviously, the right accountability framework. With that, we will see the change in management culture that my hon. Friend pointed to.
My hon. Friend mentioned the prison population, which comes up in numerous debates. Prison has to be the last resort for anyone who has committed a crime. Our job is to make sure that where people have committed an offence and are sentenced, there is capacity in the system for our prisons to deliver on the orders of the court. I do not believe that the way to deal with the prison population issue is to let prisoners out arbitrarily, especially considering the impact that that would have on victims and families. I believe that the best way to deal with the population in the long term is to cut reoffending. By reducing reoffending, we will reduce the prison population.
I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that the Government are pressing forward with these measures at great speed and intensity, because, like him, we value the admirable work that our prison officers do. We want them to benefit from the improvements we are making, both on the frontline and to safety and security, which will ultimately help them to change prisoners’ lives for the better.
Prison safety is an integral part of the health of the system in which prison officers operate. As I have said, we encourage the POA to come back to the negotiating table so that we can work together to tackle the safety challenges that concern us all.
Question put and agreed to.
Animal Cruelty: Sentencing
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I thank you, Mr Hollobone, for your efficient chairing of proceedings today. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) on securing today’s debate on animal cruelty and the skilful way in which she is handling her private Member’s Bill. She is airing the issues here in advance of the Bill being brought before the House. As the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), rightly put it, this issue should go beyond party politics. I understand the strength of feeling about offences against animals and why people feel anger towards those who commit such crimes.
So far as the Government are concerned, this matter sits between the Ministry of Justice and DEFRA. I assure the hon. Member for Redcar that the Government take animal welfare seriously. I know that the topic is of widespread concern to many. I also appreciate the concerns about those who carry out appalling acts of cruelty on defenceless animals and the wider implications of the links between animal and human abuse. The research carried out by Teesside University has been mentioned, and I assure Members that we will look at it closely.
Northern Ireland and Scotland have also been mentioned in the debate. The question was asked why, if Northern Ireland can increase the maximum penalty for animal cruelty to five years, England and Wales cannot. Penalties are devolved to Northern Ireland. Each jurisdiction decides the appropriate maximum sentence for each offence, but we will look at the experience of Northern Ireland and Scotland and the impact the changes have specifically on offending behaviour. That is what we want to look at. We want to ensure that increasing the maximum sentence has an impact on offending behaviour.
Neil Parish
While it may be DEFRA that deals with animal welfare, it is the justice system that deals with sentencing. It is up to our courts to decide the length of sentence, but a maximum sentence of only six months gives the court very little flexibility. If we increased that maximum sentence dramatically, the courts would have much more flexibility in dealing with cases.
Mr Gyimah
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will come on to the six-month point in a second, but on the five-year point, a maximum five-year sentence would be the equivalent of a sentence for gross bodily harm of a human being. Those are serious offences, and we do not have to stand back. The penalties need to work across the board. In other words, if we increase the penalty to five years in line with GBH, we will have to look at sentencing across the board. That is something the Government need to do to ensure consistency in the criminal law, which is important. As far as Scotland is concerned, again this is a devolved matter.
As is often said, however, prevention is better than cure. To that end, some animal welfare organisations help educate youngsters in animal welfare. I should mention the role of the RSPCA, as other Members have. It does great work in schools. Blue Cross, too, works in schools with children to help them become informed, responsible and active citizens. It is interesting to note from my research for the debate that the RSPCA has been campaigning for and enforcing animal welfare legislation for nearly 200 years. In that time the organisation has built huge expertise in animal welfare. It of course not only prosecutes people, but provides advice to owners about how to look after their animals properly. The Government recognise that tremendous effort, and it is to the credit of the RSPCA that it has improved the lives of many animals.
I am, however, aware of horrible cases, some of which have been mentioned today, specifically the one involving the Frankish brothers and their pet bulldog. I hope that Members appreciate that I am unable to respond specifically on the details of that case, but many people consider the penalty to have been too lenient. On that point, I would pick up on another issue that was raised: how we deal with unduly lenient sentencing. The Attorney General refers some sentences he considers unduly lenient to the Court of Appeal to reconsider. Those are summary-only offences and so animal cruelty is not currently within that scheme. That includes assault on humans and common assault, which are also not within the scheme. The Government are considering the scope of the scheme and how to implement our 2015 Conservative manifesto commitment to expand it.
On sentencing, we should remember that it is a matter for our independent courts. The court is best placed to decide on the appropriate penalty for an offence because it is in possession of the full facts of the case, many of which might not be reported in the newspapers. When deciding what sentence to impose within the maximum limits available, the courts are required to take account of all the circumstances of an offender, as well as mitigating and aggravating factors.
On maximum penalties, it is worth stressing that while sentencing is a matter for the courts, setting the framework that the courts work within is a matter for Parliament, as we all know as legislators. The maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal was set by Parliament to cover the most serious imaginable behaviours for that specific offence. It was only last year that the maximum fine for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal was raised from £20,000 to an unlimited fine, although I note the point made by the hon. Member for Redcar that in imposing that fine, the courts often means-test it to make sure that it is payable. I am aware of that nuance.
Ian Paisley
Is the Minister saying that as a rule of thumb a sentence against animal cruelty must be lower than a sentence imposed for human cruelty?
Mr Gyimah
Not at all. On the contrary, what I was saying is that any change in sentencing in one part of the law has to be made consistent across the entire criminal justice system. If there were a sentence of five years, we would need to look at other offences of a similar nature that have a five-year sentence to make sure that there is consistency. My point is about consistency in criminal law rather than about distinguishing between one form of cruelty and another.
The Government recognise that maximum penalties should be set to allow the courts to respond appropriately to the full range of cases that they are likely to face—my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton made that point. It is worth looking at some data. In 2015, 614 people were sentenced for the offence of causing, permitting or failing to prevent unnecessary suffering to an animal. The average custodial sentence was nearly three and a half months. If judges are not going up to the maximum six months, there is a question whether the issue is with the maximum sentence length or the courts are finding the current sentencing powers inadequate or restrictive in dealing with those cases. We have to look at that.
The maximum penalty for animal cruelty offences is under review. I assure the hon. Member for Redcar that we are also looking at that very closely in the context of broader criminal law. We do not want to create anomalies with other criminal offences. It is worth bearing in mind that the offence of common assault also has a maximum penalty of six months. In other words, if we were going to make a change here, we would have to look at the area of common assault as well.
It would be contrary to our system of justice simply to impose the maximum penalty, regardless of the circumstances, for any offence. Making all sentences the same would remove the courts’ ability to single out and highlight the more serious cases with more serious sentences. In short, prescribing sentences in that way could lead to injustices that we would want to avoid.
The sentencing guidelines for animal cruelty offences are issued by the independent Sentencing Council, as the House is aware. The council has recently consulted on revised guidelines for sentencing in the magistrates courts, which includes animal cruelty offences. The revised guidelines are designed to highlight the aggravating factors that are particular to those offences. That will assist magistrates in identifying the most serious cases that will in turn deserve longer sentences. Throughout the development of the guidelines, the council worked closely with the RSPCA and is now reviewing consultation responses and developing definitive new guidelines, which it intends to implement in May next year.
A point was made about a register for animal abusers, to prevent them from obtaining animals in the first place. DEFRA has no plans to introduce an animal abusers register. I do not consider it appropriate or necessarily proportionate, because we would then expect pet vendors and animal rehoming centres to check the details of all prospective animal owners. That would be quite an onerous approach.
Angela Smith
I think that issue is worthy of further investigation. The Minister may find that animal welfare charities and rehoming centres would welcome such an initiative and would not find it an unnecessary burden.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for that point. I have tried to stress that the Government are in listening mode on a number of proposals, but that is why there is not a register—we see that it is actually quite difficult in practice to check everyone who wants to rehome an animal. The point that was made about going on Gumtree and buying a pet is relevant here, and we will look at that as well.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. I want to allow Anna Turley time to sum up the debate. The Minister can take the intervention if he wants, but we are running out of time.
Mr Gyimah
I will bring my comments to a swift conclusion. I welcome this important debate and appreciate that there are concerns about those who carry out appalling acts of cruelty on defenceless animals. The Ministry of Justice is working with DEFRA with respect to animal cruelty offences, including animal fighting. As I have said, we will keep the maximum penalties for those offences under review. That includes monitoring sentencing trends, looking at the impact on offending behaviour in Northern Ireland and Scotland and identifying whether any evidence emerges that the courts may be finding their sentencing powers inadequate.
Finally, although I have focused on the justice issues, I understand that the hon. Member for Redcar will be meeting Lord Gardiner, the DEFRA Minister responsible for animal welfare. I hope that reinforces the fact that both the Ministry of Justice and DEFRA are addressing the issue of animal cruelty with the seriousness it deserves.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
G4S has not operated court custody suites in England and Wales since 2011.
Fiona Mactaggart
Very vulnerable people are held in custody suites, and many have committed suicide. That translates into the presence of such people in prisons, where, as the Secretary of State has just acknowledged, there have been more deaths in custody than there have been for many years. More women are killing themselves than at any time since the Corston report. When we know what has gone wrong from the reports of coroners’ courts or the Corston report, which have given us real advice on what ought to happen, why is it not happening? Has the Minister read those coroners’ reports?
Mr Gyimah
All deaths in custody are a tragedy. They are fully investigated by the independent prisons and probation ombudsman and are subject to coroners’ inquests. As the Secretary of State pointed out, a number of women in prison have been victims of crime themselves and are incredibly vulnerable members of society. As well as modernising the women’s prison estate, we are looking into diversion tactics to ensure that those women do not end up in the criminal justice system in the first place.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Which country in the world has the fewest deaths in custody, and what lessons are we learning from that country?
Mr Gyimah
I am afraid I cannot name the country with the fewest deaths in custody, but what I can say is that we in this country work to create decent and humane prisons, and we are a signatory to the relevant United Nations protocols. As the Secretary of State has rightly pointed out, the rise in the number of deaths in custody is too high, and for that reason we shall shortly be publishing a safety and reform plan in our White Paper.
Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
We know that getting prisoners into employment is key to reducing reoffending. While there are some excellent initiatives in the Prison Service, there is still no coherent system that links work inside with education and training, and employment opportunities on the outside. That is why I will be bringing forward a plan, early in the new year, to boost offender employment.
Maggie Throup
Despite undergoing training in prison, some offenders are still struggling to secure employment on their release, as highlighted recently by one of my constituents. What more is being done, and can be done, to ensure that the qualifications undertaken by inmates while in prison are both relevant and acceptable to potential employers?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend describes a situation that is all too familiar in our Prison Service where prisoners undertake courses in prison that bear no relation to the outside world or the ability to get a job. In our White Paper, which will be published shortly, we will be saying how we can improve that education system—we have already accepted the reforms announced by Dame Sally Coates in her review—and how we can help governors work with prisoners in the local labour market to boost employment for inmates.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
There is a well-established link between unemployment and reoffending, and we are now five years on from the Government’s rehabilitation revolution. Will the Minister let us know whether the latest reoffending statistics show an increase or a decrease in reoffending rates?
Mr Gyimah
It is still the case, as it has been for decades in the UK, that roughly a third of people who leave our prison system reoffend. The hon. Lady mentions the Government’s record. I do not recollect the last Labour Government ever talking about rehabilitation and reform in our prisons. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will introduce plans that will give governors real power on the frontline, so that they can act as the ringmasters working locally to deliver real reform.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Will the Minister agree to visit Jobs, Friends & Houses, which not only gets ex-offenders into construction jobs, but helps to find them somewhere to live, gets them off drugs and provides them with a supportive group of friends. That is such a good project; I am hoping to set it up in Bedfordshire as well.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend the former Minister mentions an excellent scheme that I definitely support, along with a number of other schemes that are going on in the Prison Service and with some great employers such as Timpson’s, Greggs and Halfords. In our employment strategy, we will make sure that that works throughout the system, rather than having a few bright spots here and there.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
An important follow-on to that is the impediment that insurance premiums caused for employers who wished to engage somebody who had left prison. The former Minister, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), was seized of the issue and pursuing good work in that regard. Will the Minister give an update on the progress with insurers and continue the hon. Gentleman’s good work?
Mr Gyimah
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are a number of barriers for employers in taking ex-offenders—some around trust, some around stigma—and some real hard issues such as insurance. We will be looking at all those issues and reducing those barriers, so that employers are incentivised to take on ex-offenders. Interestingly, those who do so, such as Timpson’s, say that some of their most loyal employees are those who have come out of the prison system. We want that to continue.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Mr Gyimah
The issue is not just autistic offenders. We know that many people in the youth justice system, as well as in the prison population as a whole, have special educational needs and low levels of literacy. A key step that the Government have taken is moving the relevant education budgets from the Department for Education to the Ministry of Justice. We will be delegating those budgets to prison governors, so that they can spend appropriately on the needs of each prisoner to help them to get the right education so they can get employment.
Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I have had no such discussions on this issue. Prisons are a devolved matter and responsibility for HMP Maghaberry lies with the Northern Ireland Department of Justice.
Danny Kinahan
I was hoping that we would not hear about devolved matters now that we are all pulling together more as a Union. This is a vital matter and we must move on. Will the Minister discuss with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Justice Minister how we achieve a level playing field, change the present system and, more importantly, make sure that there are no on-the-run letters in the system?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman refers to on-the-run letters, which is a vital issue. This is normally an issue for the Northern Ireland Office, and as the previous Secretary of State for Northern Ireland set out in her statement to the Commons in 2014, the so-called on-the-run administrative scheme established by the previous Labour Government is at an end.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I am aware that Lord Lexden has tabled amendments seeking to extend to Northern Ireland the provisions tabled by Lord Sharkey in respect of England and Wales on this issue. Northern Ireland has legislative powers over matters relating to justice and policing. This is a devolved matter.
Tom Elliott
Given the unique equality legislation in Northern Ireland, does the Minister see a problem in any attempt to introduce such a measure in the Province?
Mr Gyimah
If legislation is to be introduced extending the Turing pardon and a disregard process to Northern Ireland, that is a decision for the Northern Ireland Assembly to take. Were the provisions to be extended to Northern Ireland, a legislative consent motion would, by convention, be required.
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
A very pithy question. The new threat from drones is a game-changer, not just for prisons but for other parts of the Government. That is why I am working with Ministers across the Government to engage with drone manufacturers to find a solution to this problem. I am keeping a close eye on what is happening internationally, particularly in Holland, where eagles are used to stop drones. I am sure that we will find a solution in the UK that will take off.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
Mr Gyimah
The Government are intent on delivering on their historic manifesto commitment to grant a pardon to all those convicted under archaic gay laws. The Scottish Government have announced their plans, but I note that, even in those plans, they are talking about a disregard process in just the same way as the UK Government. Our disregard process will ensure that people who are guilty of crimes that are still a crime do not accidentally get pardoned. That is absolutely right: to have an appropriate safeguard, we do not right a wrong by creating another injustice.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Recognising the significant flexibility recently given to the governor of Ranby prison in employment and rehabilitation matters, may I propose that the Prisons Minister and I conduct a joint visit to maximise local and national support for that reform?
Mr Speaker
We learn a lot more about the opinions of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on a vast miscellany of matters—of that he can rest assured.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
How many of the inquest reports on self-inflicted deaths in custody has the Minister read, and what actions has he taken as a result of the recommendations of inquests that have caused real distress to families?
Mr Gyimah
Every death in custody is a tragic event. As the Minister with responsibility for prisons—I have been in the role for four months—I take every one of them seriously. I look at all the reports and I sign many of the responses to those reports where, for example, the independent monitoring board is involved. We have plans to make sure that we deliver on them.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that we need bold reform to cut reoffending and that that must mean giving prison governors the powers and the accountability to innovate, especially when it comes to skills training and drugs rehabilitation in the prisons that they run?
Mr Speaker
Finally, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, Mr Robert Neill.
Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kevin Foster
Ultimately, though, we are debating the criminal records. The Bill refers to a blanket pardon, but it only takes effect in terms of someone getting their name off the criminal records, via an application, and the Government’s idea is that their name is got off the criminal records and then they get a formal pardon. That is the fundamental difference. I accept that this could be addressed in Committee. However, after a couple of hours’ debate we all agree with the sentiment and the principle; we are dancing around on a pin.
Mr Gyimah
The key difference is that the Government want some safeguards around the pardon for the living. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) spoke about some people with great moral fibre, but the Government want to protect against the situation where, if there is a blanket pardon, someone who had not been pardoned could go around saying that they had. What does one say to the victims of that person if it was non-consensual sex in that case?
Kevin Foster
With respect to the Minister, anyone could go around making a claim that they had been pardoned for an offence; it is the position in the criminal records that makes the key difference.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who delivered a powerful speech in favour of the Bill. I also want to thank particularly, in the warmest terms, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) for introducing it. Unlike him, I was not born in the 1960s, although my parents were, and I reflect on how much our society has changed during their lifetimes and mine. In particular, I reflect on how much the law of the land has changed just in my own lifetime, and on the record of successive Governments. We have seen the abolition of section 28 in England and Wales and section 2A in Scotland, the legalisation of equal marriage, the introduction of protection in respect of goods and services, and the ability of LGBT people to serve in the armed forces. So many changes in the law of the land brought about by this place have led to a change in our country, and our country is a better place for it, which is why I strongly support the Bill.
I welcome the fact that we are having a debate with a Conservative Government about how we should make this change in the law, rather than whether we should make it. I shall return to that point later in my short speech, but I am pleased that the Government have already taken some steps in the House of Lords. I urge them to go further this afternoon, through the Bill and through proper scrutiny in the House of Commons.
Alan Turing has an important part to play in our country’s history, but he also has an important part to play in our country’s future. Through great initiatives like LGBT history month, and through the work of science and history teachers in schools up and down the country, young people growing up in Britain today learn of the extraordinary acts of bravery and intelligence that took place at Bletchley Park, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South. It is very likely that, had it not been for Alan Turing, we would not have succeeded in turning back the tide of Nazism as it swept across Europe. We would not have been successful in defeating the Nazis in the sea and in the air. It was because of the Enigma code-breaking work that took place at Bletchley Park that the allies were able to secure such a powerful advantage over the Nazis when all seemed lost on the continent of Europe.
That story is powerful not just because of the extraordinary role that Alan Turing played in a decisive moment in British history, but because, only a few years later, this hero of our country was tried before our courts, was chemically castrated, and was forced to take his own life. Young people growing up in schools today do not only learn about the enormous heroism of Alan Turing; they also learn about the extraordinary treachery of the Government of the day and the courts that allowed it to happen. That lesson and that experience cause them to reflect on what it means to be a decent human being, to reflect with horror on Britain’s past, and to aspire to a better future. As a former head of education at Stonewall, I know how powerful the work of teachers and schools is, not just in enabling young people to learn about changes in the law, but in bringing about changes in hearts and minds.
LGBT young people growing up in Britain today face a very different pressure from the pressure faced by Alan Turing and his generation. Unlike Alan Turing’s generation, they are not threatened by the letter of the law. None the less, just like Alan Turing’s generation, they feel threatened by bigotry in the streets, in the workplace, in the classroom and in the home. That is why we need to think very carefully about the message that we will send through the law today.
The pressure that LGBT people continue to face to remain in the closet because of fear of discrimination or violence in this country today has led to an appalling situation. More than one in five gay men currently experience moderate to severe anxiety or depression, and a third of lesbian and bisexual women have thought of taking their own lives. Shockingly, according to research by Stonewall, more than 50% of LGBT young people in our schools have self-harmed, and about one in four have attempted suicide. Those are young people growing up in our country today. In any other context—in the context of the general population, for example—there would be outrage in the House and throughout the country over such figures relating to suicide and self-harm, yet these are real statistics affecting young people in our country today. They have reached epidemic proportions, and this is a national crisis. The Government need to look carefully at what they can do to tackle the mental health crisis that still affects LGBT people in Britain today.
The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) spoke powerfully about symbols, and about the power of the Bill to be an important symbol for the kind of country we want to be. I urge the Minister to think carefully about the kind of symbol that the House would be presenting today if the Bill, with all the welcome publicity it has generated, were either talked out or defeated. It would send a message that there are still people in this House and across the country who are not content to see equality for LGBT people and who look back on the progress made by this Parliament not with pride and optimism for the future but with regret and pessimism about their ability to defeat what Martin Luther King called the arc of social progress that “bends towards justice”. The Minister clearly has some technical problems with the Bill as it has been presented, but that is exactly why he should urge his colleagues to vote in favour of its Second Reading, so that those issues can be ironed out in Committee. If the Bill is defeated today, people across the country will not hear the news that the Minister had some technical concerns with it; they will see the news that the Conservative Government conspired to defeat this important measure.
Mr Gyimah
It is important to make it absolutely clear that the Government are not dragging their heels and are not hesitant on this important issue. We want to right this historic wrong as fairly and quickly as possible. That is why we have tabled an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill.
Wes Streeting
I am absolutely delighted to hear that, and I will be happy to talk further with the Minister about how we can iron out the problems in the Bill as we march into the Aye Lobby together this afternoon.
We can look back with enormous pride at what has been achieved, but we must not assume that the progress we have made cannot be undone. I am sure that I am not the only person in the House this afternoon who is deeply concerned that in recent weeks and months we have seen a huge rise in hate crime across the United Kingdom, including homophobic hate crime. We are seeing the rise of far-right extremism across Europe, and the US presidential election has shown that being absolutely fine with sexual harassment is no bar to holding the highest office. People who strongly support liberal democracy have become complacent about defending it and ensuring its ongoing success. The Bill represents an important moment in that context, and it should be supported.
I want to end by quoting the words of Roger Lockyer, who is 88 years old and one of the men who had to endure a lifetime of experiences that someone of my age has thankfully not had to experience. Speaking about the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire’s Bill and about those members of his generation who were convicted, he said:
“They may have been legally convicted, but they were unjustly convicted.”
This pardon is not about forgiveness for something that people did wrong. It will send a powerful message that they should never have been convicted in the first place, that those laws should never have existed and that those people should never have been prosecuted when they had done absolutely nothing wrong. The Bill is about confronting our country’s past and facing the future with confidence. That is why I will be voting for it this afternoon.
Craig Williams
I listened closely to the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I hope the Minister, too, was listening.
Craig Williams
I see my hon. Friend is about to prove that he was indeed listening.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) made a passionate speech. On a point of clarification, section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, to which he referred and which made soliciting and importuning a crime, was repealed in 2004. However, soliciting still remains a crime.
Craig Williams
I will leave that there.
The Liberal Democrat amendment that the Government accepted yesterday brings justice to the issue at pace, with checks and balances.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is fair to say that we have had an extensive debate with many excellent speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) picked out four of them and I agree with all those choices. I particularly enjoyed the entertaining, moving and informative speech of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I am sure the whole House enjoyed it, too.
I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) on winning the private Members’ Bill ballot. Some Members who have been in the House for many more years than he has have entered many times without enjoying the same success. Without wanting to sour that genuine note of congratulation, it was noted that the Bill was published very late in the day.
Mr Gyimah
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way so early in his speech. A number of questions have been asked about a blanket pardon for the living, including, “Why don’t the Government just go ahead and do it?” I understand that there might be a closure motion, so I want to put it on the record that the crime was gross indecency and that many other crimes were prosecuted at a much higher level. Therefore, we could be granting a pardon to people who are ostensibly guilty of gross indecency, but some elements of that are still crimes today and go far beyond the scope of the Bill. That is why the Government propose a disregard process for the living followed by a statutory pardon.
Mr Nuttall
I do not think that intervention calls for a response from me. The Minister wanted to place that comment on the record and has done so.
To finish the remark I was making, I hope that, when the time comes, the House accepts, as the Government have, the Procedure Committee’s recommendation that
“the deadline for printing a Bill… be brought forward to the Wednesday of the week prior to the day of the second reading.”
The hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) reminded us of the irony that the first ever private Member’s Bill brought by a member of the Scottish National party extends only to England and Wales. That will not be lost on anyone. It is a smart move by the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire because it sends a signal—the Bill is all about sending signals—that everything in his constituency is fantastic. There must be no problems in East Dunbartonshire that require a legislative solution. Thousands of people will be rushing to live there.
It is worth considering that the situation in Scotland is different from that in England and Wales. As we know, criminal law operates on a different basis there. Dr Jeffrey Meek, a lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, published an article on 23 February last year on the “Queer Scotland” website, which specialises in articles on the history and culture of the lesbian and gay community in Scotland. The article was entitled “The 49,000: ‘Pardons & Homosexual Offences’, a Scottish Perspective”. The 49,000 figure is an estimate of the number of men prosecuted for gross indecency and other historical crimes. Dr Meek wrote:
“Unlike what occurred in England there were relatively few successful prosecutions for private consensual sex between adult males north of the border during the 20th century; indeed it was a policy of successive Lords Advocate in Scotland not to prosecute private, consensual sex between men.”
Does that mean that no men were prosecuted on account of their being gay? As Dr Meek pointed out in his article:
“The main focus of the law was upon men who engaged in sex in public spaces: in ‘cottages’, tenement closes, parks; and men who sold sex on the streets of Scotland’s urban centres. This was not the result of ‘liberal thinking’ but was chiefly the result of evidential requirements under Scots Law.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I thank the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) for bringing this important issue to the House. I also thank Stonewall and other groups that have campaigned vigorously on LGBT issues over the years, and to which we owe a lot of credit for the progress that has been made.
There have been some fantastic speeches today. I will not go through all of them, but I would like to single out the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). As he said, it is not usual for Yorkshiremen to admit they have made mistakes, but it is even less usual for politicians to admit that. He very graciously came out of the closet in favour of same-sex marriage in his speech.
Hannah Bardell
In saying those words, does the Minister not recognise that, in years to come, he may well reflect on the words he is about to say and that he is perhaps about to get it wrong?
Mr Gyimah
I have done a number of these private Members’ Bills on Fridays, and it is very unusual to be doing one where the choice before the House is not the private Member’s Bill or no Bill at all, but the private Member’s Bill or a legislative vehicle—the Police and Crime Bill—that will help us achieve our aims much faster so that we can deliver justice. However, there is also an important point. It is not for nothing that they say, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Intentions are not good enough when it comes to making law; we have to think through the unintended consequences of law, and that is what the Government’s approach tries to do.
Philip Davies
Perhaps the Minister would also like to make the point that if 100 MPs out of 650 had turned up to support the Bill, it would have got its Second Reading without any trouble at all. The problem is that it does not have the support of 100 MPs.
Wes Streeting
Because we have had so many contributions, time is short. The last time I was here for a private Member’s Bill with the Minister, he—entirely inadvertently, I am sure—talked it out. He still has over 20 minutes to address the issues. Can he commit to concluding his remarks so that we can have a vote on the Second Reading? Otherwise, it will not be his friends who are blamed for talking the Bill out. His words will ring hollow if he is the one who talks it out.
Mr Gyimah
I can commit to setting out the Government’s case clearly and comprehensively. As I said, the choice before us is not this Bill or no action at all.
I was proud to announce yesterday the introduction of legislation posthumously to pardon thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences. Not enough has been said of what was a big and momentous step by the Government yesterday. Many contributions today have glossed over that fact and tried to present the issue as one on which the Government have taken no action at all. This issue has been a big challenge for 50 years. Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967. Yesterday’s announcement was one of the biggest steps that has been taken since then, and it has been taken by this Government.
The issue was brought home to me when my office received a phone call from a lady whose stepbrother was convicted under these archaic anti-gay laws. She was so delighted that their shared mother, who was close to 100, has lived to see her stepbrother pardoned. That is a momentous step. To those who are making out—they are tweeting at the moment—that, somehow, the Government are not being progressive in this area, I say that the truth is that the Government are not dragging their feet or being hesitant in taking action. The Government’s legislative vehicle will deliver what we all want, which is to right this historic wrong quicker than any other method. By using a Government vehicle, we protect these measures from filibustering and from the vagaries of parliamentary time, and ensure that they get on to the statute book.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
Will the Minister give way?
Mr Gyimah
If you want me to finish, you might as well allow me to get through my speech.
In 2012, we introduced changes to the law to clear anyone still living and previously convicted of these now-abolished offences under the Home Office disregard process. Disregarding is a powerful tool in changing lives, as it removes any mention of a criminal offence. However, our announcement means that we will go one step further and introduce a new statutory pardon for those who have successfully had offences deleted through the disregard process.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
The number of convictions compared with the number of people who have taken up the offer of disregards is very low. Do the Government have any plans to publicise the disregard programme so that more people could take up that option?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point.
In the Government’s scheme, the living do not get a blanket pardon but apply for a disregard process. At the start of this debate, I offered to work with the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire, MOJ officials and the Home Office to make sure that the disregard process is as effective as it can be. In addressing this, we need to think not only about those who were unjustly convicted of a crime but potential victims. Not having a disregard process and offering a blanket pardon means that we do not take into account the needs of potential victims.
Mike Weir
I do not quite understand the Minister’s point. It is possible that someone who is now deceased and gets an automatic pardon is in exactly the same position as someone who is still alive, and there could be a potential victim there, so why is he making this strange distinction between the two?
Mr Gyimah
It is a very important point, and the answer is very simple. Someone who is living who received the blanket pardon could volunteer in a school where they committed something that is still an offence—for example, sex with a minor—so there is a bigger onus on us to get this right.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. I remind the Minister that when he says “you”, he is referring to the Chair. In these sorts of heated debates, things can get quite direct. It is important to remember that rule, especially when it gets a bit heated.
Mr Gyimah
That is very good advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would not want to drag you into this debate.
The Government will pardon those who tragically died before they ever saw this injustice tackled. In response to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who made a very passionate speech, it is a matter of deep regret that so many men went to their graves without the pardon they so rightly deserved. That is why we are so determined as a Government to deliver justice, as I have said, by the most swift and fair means possible. The Government will support Lord Sharkey’s amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 through the Policing and Crime Bill. Lord Sharkey is a Liberal Democrat peer. He is no stooge of the Government—the days of coalition are long over—and, like many Members here, including the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire, he has been campaigning for this measure for a very long time. I am pleased that he will be taking forward the Government’s measures on this.
I am also pleased that the measures have been widely welcomed. Nick Duffy, the editor of “PinkNews”, said:
“There is a whole discussion around semantics but the bigger issue, I think, is that men who are alive today now have the option to finally have it, on paper, that they didn’t do anything wrong, that these laws were a mistake and never should have been. It sends a message within our country that these laws were totally wrong, that we regret them, and that they should never have been on the books”.
David Isaac, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has said of the Government’s approach:
“This is an important day for all those that have had criminal convictions through old unjust laws. Many people have campaigned for gay men to be pardoned after being prosecuted for being who they are and I applaud the government for fulfilling their commitment.”
Those are quotes from independent people who have been campaigning for these measures for a long time, and they recognise that the steps the Government are taking will deliver justice in a fast and fair way.
Joanna Cherry
The Minister said earlier that his objection to the Bill was that it gave out a blanket pardon that might cover unlawful conduct. May I give him comfort by telling him that that is not the case? Clause 1 states:
“Nothing in this Act is to be interpreted as pardoning, disregarding or in any other way affecting cautions, convictions, sentences or any other consequences of convictions or cautions for conduct or behaviour that is unlawful on the date that the Act comes into force.”
How could it be clearer? In addition, clause 2(4) states that the conditions for a pardon are that the other person must have consented and that they must not have been under the age of 16. Those provisions answer the Minister’s concerns. Will he have the decency to admit that the Government are wrong about this, and that the Bill tackles the issues that he is raising?
Mr Gyimah
Let me develop my argument. How do we differentiate between those whom the Bill covers and those who fall outside its scope?
I want to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who said that he was delighted to be debating with a Conservative Government the “how” and not the “what” of this issue. The Conservative party has a proud record of trying to redress the inequality that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people face. A Conservative Justice Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), paved the way with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, and a Conservative-led Government delivered the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which enabled couples to marry regardless of sex and gender. I voted for same-sex marriage. Around the time of the debate on that Bill, people wrote to me to say, “These couples are the same, but let us treat them differently when it comes to marriage,” but as someone from an ethnic minority, I knew that we could not say that people were equal but treat them differently. That is why I was delighted to vote for that piece of legislation.
The Conservative party has a proud record of more out MPs than all other parties put together. We know that there is more to do, and I reject the implication that by supporting Lord Sharkey’s amendment, we are somehow shirking the huge amount that there is to do. We are delivering on our manifesto commitment by backing that prominent amendment, which will right this historic injustice against gay and bisexual men. Many people have said in the debate that we need to send out a signal. When I looked at the newspapers and the other news yesterday, it was clear that the signal was sent by the Government’s support for the amendment. I am sure that the reverberations will continue for months to come, because the Government will not only have delivered on their commitment but gone as far as possible to right this historic injustice. I was delighted when the Leader of the Opposition described this as a great victory for all who have campaigned to right this wrong.
I know that for the SNP, answering the clarion call of “better together” is not something that comes naturally, but I hope that they will withdraw the Bill and support our amendment. We all want the same thing—to resolve an injustice that for too long has been left unchallenged. When the Lords amendment comes to this House the SNP will be able to contribute to the debate on it.
We are all here in part because of the world-famous story of the war-time hero and Enigma code breaker Alan Turing, which resulted in the Conservative manifesto pledge to introduce legislation to right these historical wrongs. Turing, who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency, was posthumously pardoned by Her Majesty the Queen in 2013.
The posthumous pardon of Alan Turing addresses his 1952 conviction for gross indecency, which resulted in him being chemically castrated. Turing was arrested following an affair with a 19-year-old from Manchester. His conviction, a sad indictment of the attitudes prevailing at the time, resulted in his losing his security clearance. As a result he was no longer able to continue the valuable code-breaking work that had he had begun at Bletchley Park during world war two and that had been vital to the allies. His pardon was granted under the royal prerogative of mercy after a request by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell, who was then Justice Secretary, following a high-profile campaign supported by more than 37,000 people, including Stephen Hawking.
As has been said, we know that Alan Turing is just one of the estimated 49,000 people who were unjustly convicted under those laws. Those unjust convictions are a matter of the deepest regret. They were for criminal offences as the law stood at the time. I am delighted that we will be delivering on our manifesto commitment to pardon those men and right those wrongs. The legislation the Government have announced will do two things to address the historical injustices faced by gay and bisexual men. In the case of deceased persons, it will provide for a blanket posthumous pardon to be given to those individuals who were convicted of consensual gay sexual offences that would not be offences today; those are primarily offences under the Sexual Offences Act 1956. As Lord Sharkey has said,
“a pardon is probably the best way of acknowledging the real harm done by the unjust and cruel homophobic laws, which thankfully we’ve now repealed.”
In the case of those individuals who are still living, it will provide that all who are successful in obtaining a disregard—I will explain the disregard process in a little more detail in a moment—will be granted a pardon, so that they get both a disregard, to expunge their record, and a pardon. That will apply to previous and future disregards.
Under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, individuals can apply to the Home Secretary to have their historical convictions for gay sex offences—primarily those under sections 12 and 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956—deleted. Officials check police national computer records and then local police and court records, to ascertain whether the offences were consensual, were with a person aged 16 or over and did not involve activity that is currently an offence. A successful applicant will be treated in all circumstances as though the offence had never occurred and need not disclose it for any purpose. Official records relating to the conviction that are held by prescribed organisations will be deleted or, where appropriate, annotated to that effect. The existence of those convictions or cautions may have prevented individuals from taking up certain opportunities in their lives or made them uneasy about going into certain professions or volunteering, because the information would have been revealed in a criminal records check.
Mr Gyimah
I need to press on.
Although it is right that the state enables the vulnerable to be protected from those who pose a risk, it is not right that someone remains affected by a conviction for something that is no longer illegal. The process for the disregard, which has not been discussed in enough detail in this debate, is simple and not bureaucratic. Applicants complete a two-page form giving basic information such as their name and address and the details of the offence to be disregarded. The applicant also supplies photocopies of proof of address and identity. These can be sent by post or email.
Nothing else is required and the process is free of charge. The outcome of a disregard is a significant step for the individual, who may have had to live with that offence on their record for years.
Mr Gyimah
I want to press on.
When a person is successful in obtaining a disregard for a conviction or a caution, that offence is to be treated for all purposes in law as if the person has not committed the offence, been convicted or sentenced or even cautioned. Perhaps this will be of most use to individuals when applying for work or when volunteering for roles that require a criminal records check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. This is incredibly important, because under the disregard process, the offences will quite simply no longer appear on the disclosure, and can have no effect on the person’s chances of obtaining work or the opportunity to volunteer. Any previous barriers will have been removed and the person is no longer affected by the disclosure.
Craig Whittaker
To clarify a point, when the age of consent was much higher than today, as it was in 1967, how does the Minister envisage putting checks and balances in place on a blanket pardon where under-age sex has taken place under the age of 16, which is illegal today but is the same charge as when the age of consent was 21?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend continues to make a very persuasive case. Yes, we all want a pardon; yes, we all want to right the wrongs of the past, but we cannot do that without the safeguards being inappropriate in cases where people are still living and there are consequences today. To do that would, I believe, be irresponsible on the part of the Government.
Mike Weir
In my earlier intervention, the Minister said that his concern was that someone getting a blanket pardon who was still alive could then get a job as a volunteer with children. However, the Bill specifically says that anyone who is still alive and wants the offence expunged from the record has to go through a second procedure. Surely anyone applying for such a job would have go through a criminal records check, which would show up what was still on the record. I do not see where the difference lies.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman makes my point about why a disregard step is essential in this process—[Interruption.] May I respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point? The disregard process means that there will not be a situation where someone has been ostensibly pardoned but the criminal record has not been expunged. The disregard process ensures that the criminal record is expunged and the person gets a statutory pardon. I am sure that Members will agree that such a process provides a meaningful avenue for individuals convicted or cautioned for sexual activity that is no longer regarded as an offence.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady has had her time. The process allows people to move on with their lives in a meaningful way.
A disregard is a much more powerful and useful remedy for someone living than just a pardon. We recognise the force of the symbol of being pardoned, which is why we propose to pardon all of those who are living and were convicted of relevant offences once they have received a disregard. I would urge any individuals who believe that they are eligible for the disregard process to apply through the Home Office to have their records properly assessed. I hope that today’s debate has helped to raise the profile of this process so that those who are not aware can take steps to secure the justice that they deserve.
Of course, I support the intentions behind the Bill; the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire and I share the same objectives. The proposed blanket pardon would not provide for robust checks to ensure that only those who clearly meet the criteria can claim to be pardoned. It could lead in some cases to people claiming to be cleared of offences that are still crimes—including sex with a minor and non-consensual sexual activity. Under the disregard process, for example, the Home Office has rejected several applications where the activity was non-consensual and others where the other party was under 16 years old. Those offences were captured under offences such as “gross indecency” at the time, but are still crimes today. It is important that a pardon for the living takes place only after due process to verify—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Enough. Let the Minister finish his speech.
Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill
Sam Gyimah ExcerptsFriday 21st October 2016
(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill 2016-17 View all Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Nicolson
I think a heterosexual has just come out of the closet.
Our very gayness has made Westminster the gayest Parliament in the world. [Interruption.] I am just looking at the gentleman in the wig and wondering how he is reacting. [Interruption.] He’s left, in fact.
I will never forget the men in the documentary I presented for the BBC, and their ruined lives—lives scarred by a bitter sense of injustice. When I came top of the ballot, I saw a golden opportunity. Society has moved on. We are now horrified by the inequalities of the past. We cringe when we read the homophobic rantings of some of our predecessors in this place. We believe that gay service personnel should serve, that being gay should be no bar to a career in the diplomatic service or any other service, that gay couples should be able to share a bed in a hotel, that gay kids should not be harassed and bullied at school, that chief constables should not send out officers to flirt with and entrap citizens, and that the age of consent should be equal. Looking across the House, I know that there is consensus about that in this place just as there is in society.
We do not want any of these prejudices for our future. But what about those living with unfair convictions from our past—how do we address their grievances and the injustices that they suffered? I detailed some of the cases that I covered for my documentary, and I am sure that all of us, as diligent MPs, have had mail from people who have found themselves in these circumstances. What about the men of 21 who had a boyfriend of 20 and as a result found themselves arrested, tried and convicted for under-age sex—just think about what it means to have that on your record—with a man who was perhaps only a few months younger than they were? These are people who were in a consensual relationship with a contemporary. That contemporary was old enough to serve in the military, drive a car and have a child of four legally, but was regarded by the homophobic laws of the time as a 20-year-old child unable to give consent. Those 21-year-olds have then had to endure, perhaps for decades, an unfair criminal conviction for under-age sex that may have blighted their lives.
Stonewall, the extraordinary gay rights organisation that has led the national debate on gay law reform, had a solution: the Turing Bill, named after the wartime code-breaking hero Alan Turing. Mr Turing may have been hailed by Churchill, but that did not prevent him from being charged as a homosexual and being chemically castrated. He committed suicide as a result. In his honour, Stonewall wants all gay men living with convictions for crimes that are no longer on the statute book to be pardoned. I could not think of a more noble Bill to pilot through Parliament. With old friends from all parts of the House, I felt that the Bill would attract all-party support, which indeed it has; I thank those who have supported it.
When I was approached by the Tory Whips and asked whether I would take on the Bill I was delighted to do so. The Conservative Whips asked me for a meeting and promised that if I took up the Turing Bill there would be—and I quote them exactly—
“no tricks and no games from our side.”
I felt as if I was in an episode of “House of Cards”. The right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), a principled long-term campaigner for law reform, was the Justice Secretary at the time. He promised me the full support of the Justice Department.
I have worked closely with Stonewall on the Bill. Let me tell the House what the Bill does and does not do. It provides a blanket pardon for any gay man convicted of a crime that is no longer a crime. The meaning of that is patently obvious. If the crime for which someone was convicted is still a crime, by definition they are not pardoned. Let no one be confused about that.
The aim of this simple measure is, I hope, obvious. The pardon confers no immediate advantage except this: it will, I hope, bring closure to those men who have had to thole monstrous, unfair criminal convictions for decades. They may have had to hide their conviction from family or friends; it may have prevented them from applying for a job. With my Turing Bill they get a pardon and so belated justice and the knowledge that society has acknowledged that a great wrong was committed against them.
I believe that the vast majority of gay men with convictions will be satisfied with this anonymous, private triumph, but there may be some who want something more—who feel that they should not be offered a pardon for something that was never wrong in the first place. For those men I offer an additional option, should they choose it: they will be able to have their name expunged from the records. However—and this is important, as many Members have raised the point with me—the records are often imprecise. Often there were “catch-all” arrests where the police did not specify the detail. So where the records are imprecise and where it is unclear whether the under-age party was 20, 19, 18, 17, 16—or, crucially 15 or younger—the onus will be on the applicant to prove the age of his partner at the time of the arrest.
As a result, some men might not be able to have their records expunged because they are unable to provide the necessary proof, even though their then partner was over today’s age of consent—and I recognise that that will be deeply frustrating for them. However, this provision absolutely satisfies the concerns raised that we must be rigorous in ensuring that only those who have convictions for crimes not now on the statute book benefit from these measures. All the legal advice I have taken leaves me satisfied that this Bill absolutely addresses that concern and is as watertight as it is possible to be under the circumstances.
Stonewall believes that only small numbers of men will avail themselves of this provision—the second provision of my Bill. Many of the men affected are old, and these matters are far in their past and perhaps a secret. The requirements I am imposing would be time-consuming and perhaps distressing for them to satisfy. I believe and Stonewall believes that they will be satisfied with my automatic pardon. They will not seek to have the details expunged manually from their record.
If you will forgive me, Mr Speaker, I want to come back to the
“no tricks and no games”
promise. SNP Members may not be planning to stay in this House for very long, but other Members are passionate about Westminster and want Westminster to succeed, so surely nothing we do procedurally should bring this House into disrepute, when we know that certain words such as “filibuster” shock and horrify ordinary members of the public who think such things are appalling.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene so early in the debate, and I congratulate him on all he is doing to raise in public the profile of this very important issue. The real question that we need to answer today is how we can deliver justice in the quickest, fairest way to those who have suffered the humiliation of conviction under archaic laws. Yesterday, the Government announced that we would answer this question with a legislative vehicle that will provide a pardon for those people within a few months. This delivers on a manifesto commitment, but it also has cross-party support. The amendment will be brought forward by a Liberal Democrat peer, and the Labour leader, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), yesterday called the move “a great victory” for all who have campaigned to right this wrong.
As well as honouring the dead, this would—[Interruption.] I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman heard me out. As well as honouring the dead, the hon. Gentleman seeks a pardon for the living. We have developed a way to do that without giving any perception that the pardon covers perpetrators of sex with a minor or non-consensual sex.
What I would like to do today is to make a full and open offer to the hon. Gentleman to work with officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office and with Stonewall to give real effect to this pardon for the dead and the living as fairly and quickly as possible. I therefore ask him to withdraw the Bill and support the amendment that has cross-party support in this House and in the other place to resolve an injustice that has been left unchallenged for too long.
John Nicolson
I thank the Minister for that, and I accepted the Government’s offer back in June. We have had plenty of time to chat about it. I have to say that standing up to propose an offer of co-operation on the very morning of my debate might be regarded as leaving it somewhat late for a further private chat. The Minister shakes his head to say that that was not his offer and that he did not know anything about it, but I can assure him that I have been talking to members of the Government on and off since June.
Yesterday, the Government—the Minister has just said it—accepted an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill in the House of Lords and claimed that it was the Turing Bill. It is not, even though some rather obliging news outlets have trumpeted their claim after reading the press releases. I will leave it to Members to decide whether it is fair to attempt to hijack my Bill some 36 hours before its Second Reading in this place.
The private Member’s Bill process is, after all, intended to allow those of us not in government to seek to leave a legacy of legislation that we believe is good, kind and worth while. I believe that this Bill is kind. The amendment accepted by the Government would, if I understand it correctly, grant an automatic pardon to the deceased, yet the Minister says he is very concerned that the Bill’s provisions would be misused because some people who have behaved improperly would get under the radar and get pardons that they were not entitled to. If he thinks it is hard to enforce that for the living, imagine how much harder it is, by his own logic, to enforce it for the dead. There is an intellectual incoherence here. The Minister can shake his head, but there is an intellectual incoherence at the heart of what the Government are proposing, and I fear that they have not really thought it through.
I know that because I have been told in the course of introducing the Bill that I would get Government support; then that I would not get it; then that I would get Government support again; and then that I might get it. I am afraid that the Conservative Government have been all over the place on this. I was very keen to avoid this becoming a party political issue. At no point have I gone to the press or given interviews in which I have referred to the Bill as an SNP measure. In fact, as the Minister knows, it is an English measure. For those who criticise the SNP and say that we are overly concerned with the constitution and Scottish issues, here is something that tackles an English injustice.
John Nicolson
No, I will not.
I was keen to promote this Bill on a cross-party basis, and the large number of signatories from both the Conservative party and the Labour party who wanted to support my Bill rather proves the point.
John Nicolson
My humble apologies for saying “England only”. No one finds that more annoying than the Scots, so I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon for that. He will know, of course, that the Scottish Government have been a long-term champion of gay rights. The country has become famous for the progress it has made on this issue. I remember a time when we were told by opponents of devolution that we should not have a Scottish Parliament because we relied on Westminster to keep us liberal. That was an old argument that I remember from the 1970s: we needed English and Welsh MPs to keep us on the right side of liberal law reform, otherwise we would be a religious puppet state —a sort of Presbyterian Iran. I like to think that the progress we have made since Holyrood came into being has rather shown that we have a good record on this issue.
To address the hon. Gentleman’s point, I have had discussions with Scottish Ministers. There is, of course, widespread welcome in Scotland for this legislation, and it is my belief that Holyrood would enact something very similar in due course.
John Nicolson
No, I will not.
Let us focus exactly on what it is that the amendment that the Minister mentioned does. The amendment accepted by the Government would grant an automatic pardon to the deceased. Of course that is great, and my Bill makes the same provision, but I have to ask the House: should we not prioritise the living over the dead?
I wonder whether Members spotted an elderly gentleman who toured the TV and radio studios yesterday. He is a 93-year-old who feels immensely strongly—[Interruption.] No, no one on the Labour Benches. This was somebody different who toured the TV studios talking about the injustice that he feels about his criminal convictions. He hash-tagged himself “the oldest gay in the village” on Twitter. He is 93, and he says that he is determined to live to 100 to see justice served, because he has lived with a sense of injustice for all these years.
John Nicolson
I am going to make progress.
How odd would it look for the elderly to be told that they must wait until they die for the automatic pardon that the Government now seem to be proposing? Let us finish the law reform that we have started by recognising that the victims of society’s prejudices are still hurting, and are still alive. They deserve the peace that the Bill would bring. [Applause]
Craig Whittaker
The hon. Gentleman makes my point eloquently. The law relating to prostitution is so ambiguous that it is easy to see how people can be charged with offences that we consider ridiculous nowadays.
Whether or not one is morally opposed to some of these acts is not the issue. A progressive Government, in a modern-day democracy, will continue to consider all the issues and debate them openly. As a Conservative, I am proud that some progressive laws have been introduced under successive Conservative Governments. The decriminalisation of homosexuality is one example: it was Churchill’s Government who commissioned the Wolfenden report in the late l950s. That was by no means a turning point in history, but it was the start of a lengthy process to put right a great wrong.
It would be easy to argue—as I am sure many of my colleagues will—that a crime is a crime, and that that was the law of the land at the time. So why are we considering pardons for laws that our forefathers thought were apt for the time? Why should we feel guilty on behalf of past law-makers who, like us, made laws and passed legislation that fitted the mood and the times of that particular day? Why should there be a pardon for gay and bisexual men when there are so many other historical moral issues that could easily be subjected to the same argument?
For me, the answer has to be the police. We all know that, historically, we have seen our police forces operate in a way that has sometimes not been totally honest, open or above board. We need only recall what happened at Hillsborough, not to mention the cases of abuse that have been swept under the carpet. Even today, many Members still come across cases in respect of which we cannot help questioning the ethos of our local police forces, knowing full well what has gone on historically. When it comes to criminal convictions for homosexuality, it does not take too long to trawl the internet and see what was common practice on the part of local police forces in years gone by.
In 1958, a public lavatory used for cottaging in Bolton—not a million miles from my constituency—was well known to police and magistrates, but there had not been a conviction for 30 years. However, there would be intermittent trawls through the address books of suspected homosexuals, with the result that up to 20 men at a time would appear in the dock, accused of being a “homosexual ring”, although many of them might never have met each other before. In one case, there had been no public sex, no under-age sex and no multiple sex, yet the men were all dragged to court, and a 21-year-old who was considered to be the ringleader was sentenced to 21 months in jail. Interestingly, an issue of the Bolton News contained five letters in support of the convicted men and none against them. The deputy editor was visited by the local police, who wanted to know whether he really believed that this was what the people of Bolton thought about the enforcement of the law.
In the mid-1950s, there was the atmosphere of a witch-hunt—probably not unrelated to what was happening in America with McCarthy—and there were consequent opportunities for blackmail. A chap called Leo Abse, who eventually piloted the Sexual Offences Act 1967 through this very Parliament, recalled that, when he was a lawyer in Cardiff, all his fees from criminals suddenly started coming from the account of one man. He investigated, and found that the man was “a poor vicar”. The criminals were bleeding him dry through blackmail.
Members of Parliament on both sides of the House began to demand action, and one or two newspapers ran leaders. Then there was another high-profile case, in which the police were called to deal with one matter and ended up prosecuting for another. Edward Montagu, later Lord Beaulieu, contacted the police over a stolen camera, and ended up in prison for a year for gross indecency. Two of his friends, Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood, got 18 months. Their trial in 1954 probably influenced the decision of the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, to establish the Wolfenden committee to consider whether a change in the law was necessary.
Should men like those be pardoned? Of course they should. The police and magistrates clearly abused their powers to instil fear and practise entrapment. The question for us today, however, is whether we should support the Bill or wait for the Government amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill. This Bill proposes a blanket pardon for the living without the need to go through what is known as the disregard process. The Government amendment is exactly the same, but would mean that the living would have to go through the disregard process.
Mr Gyimah
We already prioritise the living, notwithstanding what was said by the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson). They can go through the disregard process and be given a statutory pardon at the end of it. What is important is the safeguard that prevents someone who has had sex with a minor from receiving a blanket pardon and then, for example, going to work in a school.
Craig Whittaker
I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification. He has taken two paragraphs out of my speech. One reason why I cannot support this private Member’s Bill is that, despite what the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) claims, I do not believe that it is watertight. People could claim to have been cleared of certain offences when in fact those offences are still crimes. Such offences include having sex with a minor and non-consensual sexual activity.
Nick Herbert
The hon. Lady anticipates what I am about to say. I was explaining that I believe it is important that this House sends the right signal with a general pardon because of the effect on the living, because of those to whom an injustice has been done, because of the way in which young people in particular may anticipate how they will be treated, and because of the signal we might therefore send globally about the importance of standing up for human rights.
Mr Gyimah
The amendment that will be tabled by Lord Sharkey is not just a few lines in a Bill. Lord Sharkey is one of the most prominent campaigners on this issue: he has been campaigning for a long time, and yesterday’s announcement has already garnered global headlines and will continue to do so when the amendment is passed.
Nick Herbert
I had said I hoped to complete my remarks by 11 o’clock, but I can now see that that is not going to be possible, because what I want to say about the position of the Government and my hon. Friend the Minister is important, and it is important that we get a resolution to this matter. Whatever the history of the last few days, it seems to me—this was the point I was trying to make at the beginning of my speech—that there is broad agreement on the necessity of this measure, the value of it and the importance of proceeding. Indeed, there is a Conservative manifesto commitment to do so. After I resume my speech—as I hope I will be able to, Mr Deputy Speaker—I would like to explain why I therefore believe the Bill should be allowed a Second Reading.
Proceedings interrupted (Standing Order No. 11(4)).
Prison Safety
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. I am grateful for his support for all our work on the Justice Committee, because although justice and prison matters are devolved to Scotland, we can learn lessons from each other about how things work across the whole of the United Kingdom. We do have to break that vicious circle. Resource is important, and to be fair, when our report was published, the Government did put in extra resource, which is welcome and to be commended. We are now saying that we have to see the detail of how we can monitor the use of that resource, so that it is used to the very best advantage. That is the most important thing that we need to be saying as we go forward.
I know many Members wish to speak, so I will conclude. I am glad that there is going to be a prison safety and reform plan in the autumn, and I gather that legislation is likely to be brought forward. I understand that the shape of it is not always possible to commit to greatly in advance, but it is really important that we maintain the pledge made in the Queen’s Speech that prison reform would be a key part of the Government’s agenda. I hope the Minister will bear that in mind. I am not going to press him now to say what the shape of the legislation will be, but he could give us commitments to provide more details following the Government response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I thank the Chairman of the Justice Committee for giving way to me so early in the debate. I assure the Select Committee that prison reform, which was a key plank of the Queen’s Speech for this Session, remains so. That commitment still exists.
Robert Neill
I am grateful to the Minister for a considered, and therefore authoritative, intervention. That is appreciated, and I think it will be welcomed by everybody on the Committee and everybody in the sector. I promise the Minister that the Committee will continue to work constructively with him and his colleagues in delivering that; it is an important message, for all the reasons that I have set out.
The Minister provides an appropriate point for me to bring my remarks to a conclusion. I hope we will soon have an idea of what shape the legislation is going to take. Are we going to continue along the route of governor autonomy? Will we progress down the route of reform prisons? Are there alternative routes?
In particular, we urge the Minister to do some things that would not require primary legislation, such as working on earned incentives and privileges regimes, and making appropriate use of the release on temporary licence scheme. Those things could be delivered fairly quickly and could be consistent with the thrust of the forthcoming legislation. I apologise if I have taken some time outlining the Justice Committee’s report, but we regard this as an important issue. I commend the report to the House and look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the Chairman of the Justice Committee¸ my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), on securing this important and necessary debate.
I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the debate, although I am filled with slight trepidation, given the number of lawyers in the Chamber, who clearly know the criminal justice system inside out. We also have two former prisons Ministers, no less. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), whom I observed closely, showed a great deal of passion and dedication to the job. His shoes will be difficult for me to fill—both literally and metaphorically.
John Howell
I would like to reassure the Minister that I am not a lawyer either, so I fully share his concerns.
Mr Gyimah
It is encouraging to know I am not the only minority here.
The comments made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) were music to my ears—I am referring not to his comments about early release and so on, but to his recognition that the new ministerial team is in transition. It is worth stating up front that it is eight and a half weeks since the new ministerial team came to post, and in two or three months’ time we will be having a very different debate. We are committed to coming forward with a new plan, and I am confident that its contents will be as strong, if not stronger, than the Select Committee expects on the issues that have been outlined.
I would go as far as to say that the Secretary of State should be commended for not doing what is very easy to do in a new job: seek a couple of headline-grabbing announcements that are not based on evidence. The Secretary of State is determined to look at the evidence and come up with a plan that addresses the need for safety in our prisons and also focuses on reform.
Jo Stevens
As all this was set out in the Queen’s Speech many months ago, can the Minister explain why work now needs to be done so that he can announce his plans in two to three months’ time?
Mr Gyimah
The Queen’s Speech was seminal, as has been mentioned, in that it made reform of prisons part of social reform. That reform would give governors freedom in rehabilitation but, as the statistics that have been referred to ad nauseam show, safety and security in our prisons is also a challenge. We need a strategy that deals with both those aspects of the programme. Safety and security were not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is bringing forward a plan that brings those two things together.
On the issue of reform, let me be clear that the Secretary of State and I are absolutely committed to reforming our prison system, as set out in the Queen’s Speech. I am determined to ensure that our prisons are places of safety and reform, where offenders can get off drugs, improve their education and get the skills they need so they are less likely to offend. Our prison system needs to be fit for today’s demands. The improved physical environment, which will be safer, will have better rehabilitative services and will empower governors to focus on delivering better outcomes within their prisons.
Today, a number of comments have been made about the urgency of the task ahead. I assure the House that we do not underestimate the severity of the challenge, and the Ministers tasked with such a huge responsibility feel its fierce urgency. As hon. Members know, we are investing £1.3 billion to reform and modernise the prison estate to make it more efficient, safer and focused on supporting prisoner rehabilitation. Given our commitment to swap old Victorian prisons for new ones, therefore, the great thing is that the money is available. When the Secretary of State comes out with her plan—I will come on to some of the detail in my speech—we will see how that is to be achieved.
We want to see prisons run by governors capable of providing outstanding leadership. It has been mentioned that many governors do not feel that they have the freedom to deal with challenges on the ground, and I want to see governors who have the freedom, ability, time and resources to manage safety and security risks, while rehabilitating offenders.
Our goal is to see frontline staff working in decent, ordered and well organised prisons that treat prisoners with humanity and ensure that those staff are able to spend time helping offenders to develop their potential. We want a system that is better able to identify the emerging factors and threats that will impact on prisons, a system that can address them proactively. This is a particularly important point. We have referred to drugs and to drones, and such threats, including mobile phones, will continue to evolve. In the plan that we will present, we want to address not only the challenges of today, but the emerging threats on the horizon.
Improving outcomes for prisoners is better for us all, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) so eloquently put it. Reducing offenders’ reoffending means fewer victims and less crime. The Secretary of State has already assured the House that we will be setting out the Government’s plans for prison safety and reform this autumn. Since becoming Justice Secretary, she has been clear that she wants to continue prison reform at pace.
Safety, too, is crucial in our prisons. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), in a forensic speech, highlighted the safety statistics and how terrible they are. Safe, decent and secure prisons are a fundamental part of our reform ambitions, and I am of course acutely aware of our existing problems.
Anyone who has been prisons Minister knows that we get daily incident reports and, no matter what the time of day, we are woken up if a serious incident that Ministers need to be aware of happens. Prisons Ministers and Secretaries of State live with what is happening in our prisons day in, day out—we cannot ignore it. I am sure that hon. Members agree that the rising levels of violence against prisoners and staff, and self-harm and self-inflicted deaths, are not acceptable and require our immediate and urgent attention.
Mr Hanson
I will try, forensically, to tie the Minister down to something. In his response, he mentioned that we have had a net increase of 300 prison officers since January, on recruitment of 3,300. Given the fall of 7,000 since 2010, what is the number that he expects to recruit—net—in the next one, two and three years so as to return to some level of increased staffing?
Mr Gyimah
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question but he will be disappointed with my answer: I will not make a firm commitment on staffing numbers in this debate.
I will also make a general point: no one factor is driving the changes in our prisons. Staffing is one aspect of that, yes, but there are a number of safety issues across the estate, and we are still seeing the violence in prisons, with different cohorts, regimes and staffing, levels so we should be cautious not to suggest that somehow staffing is the problem. For example, dealing with the scourge of mobile phones in our prisons has a technological answer; it is not a staffing issue. To deal with the problem of violence comprehensively, we need to look at all the different issues driving it.
Even in the debate today, a number of reasons for the rise in violence have been posited. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley talked about the tariff structure and fixed-term recalls, and some people have mentioned staffing or mental health. What that highlights is that if we are to solve the problem, we need to look fundamentally at what is going on in our prisons. We cannot underestimate the scale of the challenge, and I cannot overstate the Government’s absolute commitment to deal with it.
Alex Chalk
What does the Minister say in response to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies): that incentives for good behaviour among the prisoner population are insufficient? Does the Minister think that that is part of the issue?
Mr Gyimah
I will come on to the incentive structure in a moment, but I will deal first with the point about staffing.
Any discussion of staffing should acknowledge the brave and invaluable work that prison officers, staff, volunteers and governors do every day. I am determined to see that they, just as much as those in their care, are safe and properly supported. The recruitment and retention of staff in prisons is a high priority and, as I have said, part of the necessary response to the problems. For example, at prisons in the south-east that have presented persistent challenges, we have launched targeted recruitment campaigns to attract and retain the right people. We are ensuring that prison officers have the skills necessary to deal with such issues, which is why training for our prison officers has been increased from six to 10 weeks. We are also examining additional ways to retain high-quality and experienced staff.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made an important point about the task required of prison officers today—it is about not just numbers or training but what the job is. That is an important point, because we do not want prison officers simply to be turnkeys, locking people up and letting them out. We want them to have a key worker role, building closer and more professional relationships with prisoners. As my hon. Friend knows, that is very much part of the offender management model that we are looking to roll out across the prison estate.
I turn to some of the key threats that have been highlighted in the debate. The House is aware that the dynamic within prisons has changed, contributing to the rises we have seen in levels of violence, self-harm and self-inflicted deaths. In fact, what we see in prisons is a magnification of what we see in society more broadly—in particular, the proliferation of psychoactive substances, and the evolution of technology such as metal-free phones and drones, which enables drugs to be brought within our prison walls.
The Chairman of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, mentioned the £10 million investment to deal with prison safety issues secured under the previous Secretary of State. That has been distributed to the prisons that are experiencing the worst levels of violence. Over the coming weeks and months, we will provide more information on how that is working for our prison system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury put very well the point that psychoactive substances are having a serious and significant impact on the safe running of our prisons. That view is commonly held, and many in the Chamber are aware of it, as is the chief inspector, Peter Clarke. For the communities inside prisons, however, such substances have dramatically changed the dynamic. There is the impact on an individual’s behaviour as a result of taking the drugs, and the impact on driving an illicit prison economy. The power of drugs such as spice and mamba cannot be overestimated. They are dangerous, mind-altering drugs that fuel unpredictable and violent behaviour.
What have we done? The varying ways in which substances can be smuggled into prisons—as tobacco, or even sprayed in liquid form on to paper—contribute to the challenge our professional staff face in keeping such harmful and damaging drugs out. We are, however, taking decisive action to tackle that ever growing threat, and we have introduced new legislation to combat the use of drugs and psychoactive substances in prisons.
The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 has made these drugs illegal, and we have introduced new criminal offences for the supply and possession of psychoactive substances. In addition, the Serious Crime Act 2015 introduced a new offence of throwing anything into a prison. As a result, those who smuggle packages over prison walls, including of psychoactive substances, can face sentences of up to two years.
Jo Stevens
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. Does he think that if there were more staff in our prisons, some of the problems that he has just talked about, such as the smuggling of drugs—of any type, not necessarily just psychoactive substances—mobile phones and other contraband into prisons would be reduced?
Mr Gyimah
I have acknowledged that staffing is part of the response that is needed, but let me take one of the hon. Lady’s examples: mobile phones. The best way to deal with mobile phones is to ensure that they cannot work in prisons. I have with me a prop. This book—“Gavin & Stacey”—was sent to a prisoner. I did not realise that there was such a book.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Minister, I am not sure that that is appropriate.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Minister, do you want to read into the record what that item is? If you do not, Hansard cannot report it, so do you want to explain what you have just shown us?
Mr Gyimah
Ms Vaz, I have just shown hon. Members an example of a mobile phone that is designed to avoid electronic detection and is easy to conceal and smuggle into a prison. That demonstrates the lengths to which people will go to get such things into prisons and how lucrative the market is. I was not aware of that until I got this job. In response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), the way to deal with such things is not necessarily just through staffing; we also need a technological solution. That is why I say that staffing is part of the answer but not the only answer.
To take the hon. Lady’s other example, drugs, we are trialling tests for psychoactive substances in 34 prisons. That is particularly important due to the ever changing nature of those drugs. Having an appropriate test allows us to be one step ahead of the game. In addition, we have trained more than 300 dogs to detect such drugs. That is another way in which we can respond to the threats in our prison system.
I have mentioned mobile phones. Technology is a problem, and technology is therefore the answer. We are trying to deal with that problem broadly by working closely with mobile network operators—that initiative was started by the previous prisons Minister and Secretary of State. I want those operators, which are responsible businesses with considerable expertise in this area, to support us in developing solutions to deal with the use of illicit phones in prisons, and I will be meeting them to drive that work forward. However, we are not standing idle and waiting for that long-term solution. We are introducing measures to block mobile phone signals, and new legislation introduced this summer means that mobile phone operators can now block individual handsets. Our work with mobile network operators will allow us to stop any handset operating within a prison.
We do not stop there. We are also concerned about social media—both people outside prisons posting things for prisoners on social media sites and prisoners accessing sites such as Facebook and Instagram. We are already engaging with social media companies to ensure that they act responsibly and work with us to remove material recorded on illicit mobile phones.
Not much time has been spent discussing drones during this debate, but they pose a serious emerging threat that we recognise must be tackled. As I mentioned, prisoners will go to astounding lengths to get mobile phones. We need to do more, and we are exploring what new technologies might offer us against that threat.
Robert Neill
The Minister mentions drones, and I agree with him about technological changes. Will he bear in mind that when we have visited prisons—particularly the older prisons in the estate, such as Wandsworth—one simple thing that we have been told could be done is for the repair of windows to be sped up? Very frequently, drones are thrown through broken windows on to wings, and greater rigour in inspection and repair would be a fairly cheap win in dealing with that problem.
Mr Gyimah
The Chairman of the Justice Committee is once again spot on. I am particularly concerned about the rate of repairs in our prisons. Carillion is one company that has a contract and receives public funds to perform such work, and I have not been impressed by what I have heard about its response speed. I will meet its management to ensure that it delivers what we expect.
We are taking several other operational measures. They are not glamorous or exciting—not all of them will grab headlines—but they show how gritty we have to be to address the problem of safety in our prisons. We are making operational improvements, such as rolling out body-worn cameras. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire is right that we should be driven by the evidence, which suggests that having cameras does not on its own necessarily solve the problem. Some prisoners say that cameras, on their own, could actually escalate situations, so they should be used with the five-minute intervention system. We are piloting a new case management programme for violent prisoners; updating assessment, care in custody and teamwork—the care planning process for prisoners at risk of suicide or self-harm, which the right hon. Member for Delyn was particularly concerned about—and creating a violence reduction taskforce to support and advise establishments with high rates of violence. We are also trialling a body scanner in Wandsworth prison, as has been mentioned.
Work and education in our prisons are also key; they are valuable in addressing reoffending, and I am committed to that. Today, we announced the transfer from the Department for Education to the Ministry of Justice of responsibility for education and training provision for those subject to adult detention in England. For anyone who was in any doubt that we are committed to reform, that is one piece of proof that we are committed and determined to proceed at pace. That so-called business of government transfer will enable us to give prison governors more power for delivering education in prisons.
Jo Stevens
Does the Minister agree that for someone who is locked up in their cell for 23 hours a day because of staff shortages, getting out to do education is difficult, if not impossible?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady makes absolutely the right point. We want prisoners to have time out of their cells to engage in work, education and training. I want us to have a mature debate, so let us not try to say that staffing is the only response to the challenges in our prisons. I have acknowledged that it must be part of our response, but we need a comprehensive response.
Richard Arkless
I must admit to being concerned by the phrase “part of”. Of course staffing is part of the problem, but that could mean that it is 1% or 99% of the problem. The key thing is how big a part of the problem staff numbers are, and I think the Justice Committee would agree that it is the critical part. People cannot be rehabilitated, because staff are not available to conduct that rehabilitation. The Minister can give prisons all the new education powers, but if there are no staff to teach people, that simply will not happen. Will the Minister reassure us that he considers staffing to be critical, not just part of the problem?
Mr Gyimah
We in the Ministry of Justice must ensure that we are in a position to deliver the orders of the courts. That means ensuring that there are not only sufficient prison places but adequate staffing. Of course, we cannot run a prison system without adequate staffing, but we face complex challenges and threats in our prison system and there is no simple answer.
Mr Gyimah
We will work with prison governors—I have had meetings with the Prison Governors Association—and the Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers to determine what is the right number to enable staff to do their jobs.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned Wormwood Scrubs. I was there and met the governor, Steve Bradford, on 30 August. I discussed particular challenges with him, as well as the excellent work he is doing to improve the regime. I was encouraged that he is committed to reform and to ensuring a safe and secure environment. There are a number of issues that any governor will say we need to address if we are to do that.
The nature of political debate is that we want to simplify things to one issue and deal with that. The situation is quite complex and more nuanced than that.
Andy Slaughter
I appreciate the Minister visiting Wormwood Scrubs, and I think everyone in the prison is working to try to turn it around. Will he agree to look again at the staffing reductions planned for next month, which can only harm the attempt to improve the situation?
Mr Gyimah
I, as well as NOMS, am in constant contact with the governor, to work with him to do what is appropriate and what works in order for the prison to function as well as it should.
More broadly on education reform, the recommendations made by Dame Sally Coates have been mentioned. We remain committed to improving prison education and supporting offenders into meaningful employment. We want to learn from the good practice that already exists in our system, such as the recently reported efforts at HMP Swaleside, where there is an ambition to change how education is delivered in prison. The prison’s A-wing is being redeveloped to create an education academy, with the hope that inspiring prisoners to learn will empower them and stop them reoffending.
A number of steps have already been taken to get prison reform under way. Six reform prisons went live on 1 July. The four executive governors, who have been unshackled, took control of their budgets and are now empowered to run their prisons as they see fit, which includes delivering bespoke services and having the option to move away from central contracts and policies.
I have seen for myself what is going on at HMP Coldingley. Contrary to some of the pictures that have been painted, every offender has a job in one of the impressive workshops at that industrious jail, and the governor, Nick Pascoe, is working closely with the community and with rehabilitation companies to help former prisoners even once they have left his care. HMP Wandsworth, which was also mentioned in the debate, is piloting a new “recruit in a day” scheme, which will radically speed up the process of getting new officers into the prison. In addition, HMP High Down has introduced a “recommend a friend” scheme to incentivise current officers to promote available roles to friends and family.
I will turn to a number of points raised in the debate before I bring my speech to a close. One was about our confidence in being able to deliver the estates programme. The Secretary of State will roll out the details, but, to provide assurance, we have closed 15 prisons in the past 10 years. There have also been two partial closures and two re-roles to immigration and removal centres. The Department has got quite good at ensuring that we can close down old prisons and open new ones, such as HMP Berwyn—new for old. As I said, the Secretary of State will set out the detail shortly, because that is a Government commitment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made a number of points, one of which I will tackle: offenders being released halfway through their sentence. If someone has been sentenced to 10 years, they are eligible for release at five, which is a particular concern of his. I remind the House that, even in those instances, that person remains under licence, so the system still has a hold over them, and if they were to reoffend they would go back to prison. If someone were sentenced to five years, served five years and then left, we would not have any hold over them at all. I want to put that to him as a point of clarification and to add nuance to the point I made earlier.
Philip Davies
The Minister is giving the impression that if someone is sent to prison for 10 years and are released after five, if they commit another offence they will go back to prison for the remaining five years. If that were the case, some of us may not feel so strongly about it. However, as he well knows, they do not; they go back in for a fixed-term recall of 28 days, which is pathetic. There is not the great deterrence that he suggests.
Mr Gyimah
If they commit another offence, they will not only go in for a period of time but serve the sentence for the new crime they have committed. My hon. Friend suggested that somehow we are managing the prison population to an arbitrary figure, which is simply not the case. Our job, as I said, is to deliver the orders of the court.
On rehabilitation, on which I would say my hon. Friend has quite an exotic view, if we are to be a country that works for everyone, we have to fix prisons. That is particularly important.
Philip Davies
I will give the Minister the same test I gave the shadow Minister. Is he telling me that he thinks it is absolutely right for a prisoner to have to be released by law halfway through their sentence, irrespective of how badly they have behaved in prison and whether they remain a danger to society? As a Conservative Minister, does he think that is right?
Mr Gyimah
What is right is that, before any prisoner is released, there is a careful assessment of the risk they pose to society. That risk assessment is the most important thing—obviously within the confines of the sentence handed down to them by the courts.
Improving safety and reform are two sides of the same coin. We want to empower governors to tackle the challenges they face and support them to run regimes in which they can facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders in a modernised estate. However, if we are to do that, first and foremost prisons need to be safe, decent and secure places to live and work. The ministerial team understands that, and the Government are aware of it.
I am grateful to the Justice Committee for its scrutiny and its report. If there are any points that I have not covered in my speech, I will be happy to deal with them afterwards. I look forward to scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead and to discussing detailed plans to ensure that our prisons are safe and secure places.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
The Minister has been on his feet for 32 minutes, so that was a comprehensive reply. I call Sir Robert Neill to wind up.
Dangerous Driving: Penalties
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) on securing this debate and the passion with which she made the case on the tragic death of James Gilbey. Securing justice for victims and relatives in cases of death by dangerous driving is a priority for the Government.
My hon. Friend rightly made the point that a death caused by bad driving that could have been avoided is heartbreaking. I cannot begin imagine the pain that James’s family and friends have suffered. I understand that the Justice Secretary will be meeting my hon. friend later today to discuss this horrific case. I offer my personal and deepest condolences to the Gilbey family.
The absence of an Opposition spokesperson in this debate notwithstanding, I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will be aware of several tragic cases of road deaths in their constituencies. I hope that Members will appreciate that I will not be able to respond to all the related cases that have been raised over several years, but I shall try to respond specifically to the points that my hon. Friend made today.
As my hon. Friend said, James Gilbey was crossing the road when he was hit by a speeding motorist who was racing another car. Both drivers fled the scene. Within a few days, the driver of the vehicle that hit James handed himself in to the police. The driver of the second car was arrested later. Both were convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and sentenced to eight years in prison on 24 March. They were also banned from driving for 10 years.
In the time I have remaining, I shall try to deal with the issues that my hon. friend has raised about this case and driving offences more generally. Quite rightly and understandably, my hon. Friend made the point that the worst cases should be dealt with as manslaughter. I understand why, in many cases, causing death by driving is thought to be equivalent to attacking someone with a weapon—my hon. Friend gave the example of someone driving at 90 mph in a residential area. Under the existing law, the Crown Prosecution Service can, and will, charge a person with manslaughter when the evidence supports that charge, it is in the public interest to do so and there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction.
Successful prosecutions have secured manslaughter convictions in driving cases, but it is worth making the general point that having everything classified as manslaughter does not necessarily guarantee a conviction. One can imagine a case in which a barrister played to the jury, asked for lower offences to be considered, and asked the jury to put themselves in the offender’s shoes. Classifying cases as manslaughter does not necessarily mean that more convictions will be secured; in fact, the reverse could be true. On top of that, a conviction would not necessarily lead to the expected sentence, because there is no mandatory minimum—it is up to the judge to decide.
Claire Perry
Would the Minister or his Department be able to tell us how many of these cases have been tried as manslaughter cases? I accept what he is saying; indeed, that is why some of the lesser offences were introduced, because there seemed to be a perception that it was harder to convict someone for causing manslaughter by motor vehicle than for other offences. However, dealing with that situation is surely a function of guidance to judges. If it is possible to start with a manslaughter charge and then have a barrister argue that, for whatever reason, the case did not fit the definition of manslaughter, then the next point could of course be to have the defendant tried for causing death by dangerous driving.
Nevertheless, if we consider the definition of unlawful manslaughter—we are not saying that these people deliberately targeted James; we are talking about people who behaved so recklessly or illegally, by breaking the speed limit, that James’s death resulted—surely that should be a starting point that the judge could consider? It seems perverse that people argue that just because a judge could not make a manslaughter charge stick, we should not start with that charge.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I hope that I can get for her the information on the number of convictions for manslaughter shortly. However, for a manslaughter charge to be made, the prosecution needs to prove that there was some element of intent or recklessness regarding the death or injuries that were caused, or that the standard of driving was grossly negligent; in other words, exactly the situation that she is describing. However, in many driving cases, the offending behaviour—while highly irresponsible—does not necessarily include the state of mind required for a manslaughter charge to be made. That is why we have specific offences of causing death by careless or dangerous driving.
What amounts to dangerous driving is determined not by considering the driver’s state of mind or intentions, which in the context of driving are often difficult to ascertain, but by examining the nature of the driving. So what does the law do? The law sets out an objective test designed to compare the driving of the defendant in the specific circumstances of the case against what would be expected of a notional careful and competent driver. In general terms, if the court considers that the driving being considered falls far below that standard, and that it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that that manner of driving was dangerous, then the court will find it to have been dangerous driving.
Claire Perry
Again, I know that it is always dangerous to argue, based on the specific details of a case, for a general change in the law, but how could it not be that gentlemen knowingly racing their cars at speeds of up to 90 mph through a 40 mph residential zone were not falling so far below the minimum acceptable standard of driving and that there was a serious chance of causing serious injury or death, particularly when they were approaching a pedestrian crossing? I understand that the law, in the current level 1, pays particular attention to vulnerable road users such as James, who was crossing a pelican crossing on the night he was killed.
I do not expect the Minister to rewrite the law during the debate, but it seems to me that it is very difficult to explain to Major Gilbey and Mrs Gilbey, and indeed to everybody out there, why this specific case was not a perfect example of gross negligence manslaughter. If we put a consideration of manslaughter in the sentencing code, we would give courts more opportunity to charge people with manslaughter, with the backstop of level 1 death by dangerous driving, which would establish a very strong deterrent to drivers who consider breaking the law in this way.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. By the way, regarding her previous point about conviction figures, I will examine the statistics and write to her about them. I will not stand here and defend someone in a case where, judging from how things have been described, it does not seem that the punishment has fitted the crime. Obviously, it is not for me to consider such cases; that is for judges to do. However, I will come on to talk about what I think is the remedy for such cases.
Our law needs to reflect that although the harm caused in homicide cases and fatal driving offences is the same—in all of these cases, someone has died—the offender’s culpability for a death may be significantly different; hence the distinction between the two types of case. However, my hon. Friend is asking a different question, which is about the specific case of James Gilbey and why the defendants in that case could not be tried for manslaughter. Shortly, I will say how we can consider such cases.
The second point that my hon. Friend raised was about sentencing and sentencing guidelines. Once someone has been charged and convicted, the sentence that they receive is, of course, a matter for our independent courts. A court decides on the sentence, having considered all the details about the case and the offender; a court is best placed to decide on a just and proportionate sentence.
In deciding what sentence should be given, the courts are also required to follow—unless it would lead to an injustice—sentencing guidelines. The duty on the courts to follow guidelines, and if the guidelines are not followed to say why, leads to greater transparency regarding the level of sentence likely to be imposed and increased consistency in sentencing practice.
To reassure my hon. Friend, I will point out that the independent Sentencing Council, which is responsible for keeping such guidelines under review, currently has in its work plan a review of the guidelines for motoring offences involving death or serious injury. A new draft guideline will be subject to full public consultation in due course.
Liz McInnes
Talking about guidelines, I wrote to the Attorney General about the lenient sentence that my constituent’s killer was given and I was told that the judge was acting within guidelines. Also, it is often said that 14 years is the maximum sentence that can be imposed in these cases, but I have not heard of any such case in which anyone has been given more than eight years. Will the Minister explain why judges are acting within guidelines but seem to set a ceiling of eight years for sentences?
Mr Gyimah
The key point here is that these guidelines are being reviewed currently, to establish why, as the hon. Lady hon. Friend contends, judges have not given sentences of more than eight years in these cases. It could be based on the evidence in a case, as the judge saw it, but all these things need to be reviewed. I will come on to talk about a remedy, because there are many different cases involving this issue and many different suggestions from people as to how we should deal with it.
For example, my hon. Friend asked why there was a reduction in sentence for an early guilty plea. That is an interesting point; applying such reductions to sentences is a long-standing practice that applies to all offences, and it has a number of benefits. A reduction in sentence is appropriate because a guilty plea removes the need for a trial, which in turn enables justice to be delivered more quickly; it reduces the gap between charging and sentencing; and, in the case of an early plea, it saves victims and witnesses from being concerned about having to give evidence.
The sentencing guidelines provide a sliding scale of reductions, depending on the point at which the guilty plea is made. The maximum reduction for a guilty plea that is made at the first reasonable opportunity is a third of the sentence that will be imposed; the recommended reduction falls to 10% when the offender pleads guilty on the day of the trial. Also, where the case against the offender is overwhelming, the guidelines provide for discretion on the part of the judge to give a lower reduction.
My hon. Friend also made another point in this context about early release when she expressed concern that the offenders in this case will be released on licence at the halfway point in their sentence. As she will know, release on licence before the end of a sentence is not new; the current arrangements are set out in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. As a general point, when someone is released on licence there is still a hold over them; if they commit the offence again during their licence period, they will go back to prison to serve the remainder of the original sentence, in addition to the sentence that is imposed for the new offence.
In most driving cases, however, a standard determinate sentence will be imposed by the court and the 2003 Act provides that such prisoners must be released automatically on licence as soon as they have served half of their sentence. Once the offender is out on licence, then—as I have already hinted—they are subject to conditions and liable to be recalled to serve the remainder of their original sentence if they break those conditions. These arrangements apply to all determinate sentences imposed for any offence—for example, they apply to sentences for assault or theft. Consequently, any change for driving offences could result in anomalies arising for driving offences compared with other offences.
That said, different arrangements are in place for offenders serving indeterminate sentences or extended determinate sentences, and for offenders who are of particular concern. It is right that we concentrate our limited resources on ensuring that those offenders who pose a particular and ongoing risk to the public are not released before it is safe to do so, which is the rationale for the current situation.
However, my hon. Friend obviously wants a change in the current situation—she does not want to be told what the current situation is—and I am sure that it is the same for the Gilbey family and the many other families who feel that they are serving a life sentence while the perpetrators of crime get off.
As I said at the outset, there can be nothing more tragic than the loss of a loved one, especially when that loss was avoidable. As the Prime Minister made clear last week, there are deep concerns about the law on dangerous driving and about the sentencing powers currently available to the courts. For too long, these concerns have not been acted upon, so today I reaffirm this Government’s commitment to consult on the penalties for dangerous driving offences.
That consultation will begin before the end of the year. Blameless victims and their families must have total confidence in our criminal justice system. To those people, our message is clear: this Government are committed to making sure that the sentences for those who kill or seriously injure other people on our roads fit the crime. I look forward to setting out our plans later this year.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
The illicit use of mobile phones in prison undermines security, order and control, and has been linked to many forms of criminality. The Government are determined to take action to stop it.
David Warburton
The connection between technology and radicalisation by the dissemination of extremism in prisons is one of the most critical challenges we face. Will my hon. Friend continue to do everything possible to ensure that prisoners, who already face difficulties re-engaging with society, do not have that difficult task made impossible by those who would use technology such as mobile phones to spread extremist poison?
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
There have been reports from Swansea prison of people throwing mobile phones over the wall, which provides anonymity that allows prisoners to indulge in all sorts of criminal activity. What is the Minister doing about that sort of thing?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Every governor I have spoken to in the last six weeks has mentioned the growing problem of illegal mobile phones in prison. I believe that technology is vital to detecting and blocking such phones. That is why, in addition to the range of technologies that have already been deployed across the prison estate, we have held a high-level meeting with mobile network operators and asked them to use their expertise to develop new technological solutions to deny mobile phone signals in prisons. As responsible businesses, I expect those operators to co-operate fully.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
We will always have prison places to fulfil the orders of the courts. Those convicted of sexual offences are just one cohort of a range we manage daily across the estate. In doing so, we will make sure that estate capacity is realigned to meet the demand for places, including for those convicted of sexual offences.
Maria Caulfield
Her Majesty’s prison Lewes in my constituency has seen a huge surge in prisoners either on remand or serving a sentence for sexual offences. This is putting massive pressure not just on staffing but on space and resources. What specific help can the Minister give HMP Lewes?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. Those at HMP Lewes who are charged with sexual offences are generally held in separate units that provide suitable accommodation for their offending behaviours. Perhaps I can reassure her that the prison received £153,000 of the Government’s £12 million fund for safety, and that it plans to spend that on staff, focusing on safety and on violence reduction. There is a recruitment drive going on at the moment. Staff are being vetted and a number of staff will be starting imminently.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Surely the Minister understands that, whether it is prisoners who have been tried and convicted for crimes of a sexual nature or prisoners with mental health and other problems, it is the quality of the management of our prisons that must give us all great concern. When my Select Committee looked at education in prisons, we kept coming back to the fact that the culture of the prison comes from the top and is supported by well trained and well educated prison officers.
Mr Gyimah
On this rare occasion, I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman—the quality of leadership in a prison makes a huge difference to the regime. It makes a huge difference to how staff are inspired and to the rehabilitation of offenders. That is why Government Members are arguing for prison reform to empower governors, give them control of budgets and enable them to get local resources to meet the needs of offenders.
David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
Most offenders arrive in prison with very low levels of educational attainment, very high levels of substance misuse and a very poor employment history. I believe that the purpose of modern prisons is to keep the public safe and to tackle each of those issues, so that prisoners have the foundations to secure and hold down a job on release.
David Mackintosh
I thank my hon. Friend, but I have recently visited prisoners from my constituency who told me that offenders do not have access immediately on their release to national insurance numbers, bank accounts or unemployment benefits. Will the Minister let me know what steps the Government are taking to improve this situation?
Mr Gyimah
I agree with my hon. Friend that if “through the gate services”, as we call them, are to work and to stop reoffending, national insurance numbers, bank accounts and so forth need to be in place. There is a series of programmes in place to tackle this problem, including an offender banking programme, which opens about 5,000 new bank accounts every year.
Tom Pursglove
The Minister has rightly identified the fact that research shows that employment after custody greatly reduces the chances of reoffending, so what work is his Department doing with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that offenders not only find work after they leave prison, but stay in work?
Mr Gyimah
As my hon. Friend has rightly identified, tackling the challenge—and it is a challenge—of getting prisoners work when they leave requires a concerted effort across government and locally across the community. Every prisoner has the opportunity to meet a DWP work coach before release, and the work coach’s role is to guide them towards employment. Work coaches can also ensure that prisoners know their national insurance numbers and get the other services they need to be able to make an appropriate transition into the community.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Many prisoners are already on short-term sentences of under nine months and are often in prison for very short periods. Will the Minister give us some advice on how governors will be judged on placing such prisoners into employment when the challenges are very difficult?
Mr Gyimah
Since being appointed to this job, I have met a number of governors, and most of them tell us that they want to be empowered to match resources to the needs of prisoners in their prisons, working with local employers and the whole community. That is what governors want, but this is not the responsibility of governors alone. If we want prisoners to be able to go out and find work, businesses have a role, the community has a role and we all have a role. If prisoners can leave, get jobs and restart their lives for the better, we all benefit.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
More than 60% of young people within the justice system have a communications disability, and more than a third of young offenders have speaking and listening skills at the level expected of an 11-year-old. With these skills being fundamental to the ability to hold down a job, will the Minister update us on what assessment the Government have made of speech and language support needs and of how well those needs are being met?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady is obviously right that many prisoners arrive at prison with huge learning difficulties and disadvantages. That is well documented. We need individual programmes tailored to the needs of the prisoner, and the way to do that, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, is to empower governors to work with probation companies and rehabilitation organisations to deliver those programmes.
Mr Speaker
I gently say to the Minister that I wrote a little report on this matter in 2008, a copy of which I dare say he will find either on the internet or in the House of Commons Library, if it is of interest to him.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Some of the problems in society are magnified in our prisons. As the Prime Minister said, if we are going to have a country that works for everyone, prison reform is very much a part of that, including on literacy, training, work in prisons and employment opportunities when people are released.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
Colin Pitchfork was convicted of raping and murdering two young girls in the 1980s. Will the Minister please assure me and the public of their safety, given that Mr Pitchfork is being moved to an open prison?
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend will be aware that the transfer of prisoners from one prison to another is based on a careful assessment of the risks involved. I am sure that that will have taken place in this case, but I would be happy to discuss the matter with him in more detail if he wants to do so.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Does the Secretary of State accept that the Human Rights Act 1998 is an indispensable part of the Good Friday agreement and that, whatever the plans are for elsewhere, the Government, as a co-guarantor of the agreement, are obligated to retain the Act in Northern Ireland?
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
Over the summer I visited the job club at North Sea Camp prison in my constituency, which was set up at the behest of prisoners there. Does the Minister agree that some of the best examples of rehabilitation are to be found in category D prisons? Will he come and see that prison so that we can learn about what really good rehabilitation can do for prisoners’ life chances across the wider prison estate?
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Half an hour ago, the Secretary of State said that when the Human Rights Act is repealed it will be replaced with a new British Bill of Rights that will include additional human rights. What additional human rights will there be?
Police (Surrey)
Sam Gyimah Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Raab
I thank my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. Oxford Economics considers the issue of flow in some detail. I commend the report to the Minister if he wants to examine the detail of what we are discussing.
Other elements, such as our proximity to high population areas, have also been proven relevant to levels of crime but are not factored into the funding formula, which measures only population levels within the county. Those shortcomings are mitigated by the damping arrangements. It is therefore unfair to remove or revise one without considering the other.
Surrey police do an outstanding job, which is reflected in the public’s 90% confidence rating. Today’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, “Policing in Austerity: One Year On”, breaks down the situation by individual forces, showing the progress that the Surrey police have made in dealing with austerity.
Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that we should recognise the achievements of Surrey police in maintaining the same level of service to the public in Surrey, despite reductions of about £7 million in their budget so far, and that further cuts could risk public safety?
Mr Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The key issue is sustainability. It cannot be right that those who perform best in terms of delivering cost efficiencies while adding further front-line officers should be penalised and find themselves victims of their own success.
Surrey has achieved those net satisfaction ratings despite having faced challenging conditions for a number of years. It is important to put the issue in context; it is not all about austerity under the coalition. Surrey did not share in Labour’s “land of milk and honey” spending spree. While real-terms spending on the police increased nationally by 19% between 1997 and 2010, funding for Surrey police was cut by 39% in real terms. Measured by central funding per person, Surrey got the worst deal of all 43 police forces in England and Wales.
Faced with that legacy, Surrey police responded positively. In July 2010, the Audit Commission and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary praised Surrey police for their efficiency in work force deployment, the way they centralised cross-cutting functions such as human resources and their rigorous and robust approach to achieving cost savings.
Surrey police followed that up with their policing plan for 2011-14, which rationalised the police estate. That, of course, involved a difficult set of decisions that had to be conveyed, sold and communicated locally. It is a very tangible thing to replace police stations or sell off old estate to make way for new hubs. That was difficult. Surrey police also reformed their procurement practices; it is widely accepted that they were in the vanguard in doing so. They cut middle management, which is also difficult, as it creates morale issues in a force. It was not an easy decision, but they took it. Through the net savings, they focused on putting officers into the areas of greatest need, including neighbourhood policing and serious crime investigations, precisely the areas that the public, and I as their MP, want to be priorities for investment.
Over and above all those savings, Surrey police’s rigorous approach and financial discipline allowed the force to reinvest in an extra 200 police constables. That would be extraordinary given the financial straits everyone is in, but it is particularly so for Surrey, given the legacy that it inherited.
Despite the dire financial legacy left by the last Government, Surrey was the only force in England and Wales able to increase officer numbers between September 2010 and September 2011. As the Audit Commission, HMIC and the Home Office have commented, Surrey police are a model of how to get a financial house in order. They did so proactively, before the financial crisis compelled the wider belt-tightening now under way. They did not wait for the waves to hit; they were on the front foot. Like other forces, they are now halfway through a 20% real-terms cut in central Government funding. Surrey police have dealt with all those challenges while improving their record against several key indicators of performance, such as serious crime detection.
However, Surrey has reached its limits. If the damping mechanism is removed, the force stands to lose, in total—there are two components—£4 million in funding, the equivalent of losing 83 police constables. That would be a serious blow to the force and a kick in the teeth, not only to the force, which has taken such steps to be a model of cost-efficiency, but to the people of Surrey, who pay such high levels of tax, too little of which returns as investment in local public services.
Our police need to be properly funded to deal with the wide range of challenges that they face daily. There is a perception of Surrey as a leafy backwater with no crime, challenges or deprivation, whose sleepy towns and villages are the last place where crime or antisocial behaviour is a real issue; but as my colleagues who have spoken, and others, know, that is a myth. The reality is, as has been said time and again, that Surrey is a county force grappling with metropolitan issues.