Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend puts the case very eloquently, and it is a privilege to be able to stand at this Dispatch Box and announce these changes in the House. He has been a tireless campaigner on this issue, and this change is a great credit to him, to Tony and to his adopted family, with their incredible care and their advocacy on these issues. I think all of them can be hugely proud of the work they have done to bring about this change. I am sure the House will agree, especially in the light of more recent appalling cases, that the courts should, where necessary, have the fullest range of sentencing powers available to deal appropriately with those who abuse children.

Lords amendments 121 and 122 extend the disregards and pardons scheme relating to historical convictions for same-sex sexual activity. The disregards scheme, introduced by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, enables men with historical cautions and convictions for certain gay sex offences to apply to the Secretary of State to have their cautions and convictions disregarded. If successful, the applicant is treated in all circumstances as if the offence had never occurred, and also receives an automatic pardon. The Government accept that the scope of the current scheme is too narrow, as it is largely confined to the now repealed offences of buggery and gross indecency between men, and excludes other repealed offences that may also have been used to criminalise same-sex sexual activity. Lords amendment 121 will therefore extend the scheme to enable individuals convicted of same-sex sexual activity under any repealed or abolished offence to apply to have that caution or conviction disregarded. Lords amendment 122 ensures that pardons provisions will reflect the extension. Taken together, these amendments will help put right the wrongs of the past when people were unjustly criminalised simply on the basis of their sexuality.

In their lordships’ House, there was significant debate on the issue of imprisonment for public protection. Lords amendment 101 will put the Secretary of State’s policy of automatic referral of applications to terminate the IPP licence on to a statutory footing. This would enable all eligible IPP offenders to be referred to the parole board for consideration of a licence termination at the appropriate time.

Lords amendments 61 to 69 deliver the Government’s commitment, made in our action plan for animal welfare, to crack down further on illegal hare coursing. They do this by broadening the circumstances in which the police can investigate and bring charges for hare coursing-related activity, and by increasing the powers of the courts for dealing with this activity on conviction. In bringing forward these amendments, the Government have acted swiftly and decisively in response to the widespread concern about the impact of hare coursing expressed by hon. Members. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), who raised this issue eloquently in Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) for his private Member’s Bill on this subject. They have both been assiduous champions of this issue on behalf of their rural communities.

Let me turn to the two amendments in this group on which we have tabled motions to disagree. Lords amendment 58 seeks to confer certain police powers on the national food crime unit of the Food Standards Agency. We agree that food crime is a serious issue, costing billions of pounds each year, and it is right that the FSA should be empowered to respond accordingly, improve resilience and reduce the burden on police forces, but this is not the way to legislate on this issue. We are dealing here with the intrusive powers of the state. As such, we need to ensure that any exercise of PACE powers—powers under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—by the FSA would be necessary, proportionate and legitimate, with suitable governance and accountability arrangements in place. Amendment 58 puts the cart before the horse. That said, we are committed to working with the FSA, its sponsor the Department for Health and Social Care, and other partners to frame legislation that is fit for purpose.

Finally, Lords amendment 107 would allow local authorities to establish and maintain secure academies, either alone or in consortia. The parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, made it clear in the other place that it would be legally possible for a local authority to set up an entity capable of entering into academy arrangements directly with the Secretary of State, and that is not prevented by the Academies Act 2010—so there is no legal bar, rendering the amendment unnecessary. Government policy is that academy trusts are not local authority influenced companies, and our position on secure schools is to mirror the procedures of academies. However, to repeat the commitment that Lord Wolfson made in the other place, my Department will assess in detail the potential role of local authorities in running this new form of provision, before we invite applications to run any future secure schools.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but looking into something is not the same as giving a clear commitment, here and now, that local authorities can run those secure academies.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am always grateful to the hon. Lady for her interventions, and I repeat my point: we do not believe there is a barrier, but as I say, we will review the matter in the way I have set out to the House. We of course recognise that local authorities have a long established role in children’s social care and the provision of secure accommodation for children and young people. In particular, the secure children’s home legal framework may present a more straightforward route to the expansion of local authority involvement in the provision of secure accommodation than does the 16-to-19 academies framework. I reiterate: there is no legal bar, and as such the amendment must be unnecessary. Fortunately, there is much agreement on this group of amendments in the House, and I will pick up on points raised during the debate when I wind it up.

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Finally, I turn to Lords amendments 105 to 107, which relate to the running of secure academies and would provide in legislation that a secure academy could be run by a local authority. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, who raised the issue in Committee, and Lord German, who tabled the amendments in the other place. The Government have so far resisted amendments that would clarify the position of local authorities on running secure academies, but I hope that the Minister will shift his position today.

[Sarah Champion]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is illogical that the Government will not make the simple concessions for which the Opposition are asking to clarify the situation in favour of local authorities?

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Local authorities have a tremendous amount of experience in caring for vulnerable children with a high level of need in a secure environment. As she said in Committee:

“It makes no sense to exclude this knowledge and learning from the provisions in the Bill.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 15 June 2021; c. 567.]

Indeed, the failures of secure training centres that we have seen should encourage the Government to widen the pool of expertise as much as possible when moving to this new model of child detention. Charlie Taylor stated in his 2016 report:

“Children who are incarcerated must receive the highest quality education from outstanding professionals to repair the damage caused by a lack of engagement and patchy attendance.”

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[Sir Robert Neill]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate. This area of the Bill raises a number of important criminal justice matters, and I am grateful to the Minister for his very open approach to engaging with me and others around it. I have much sympathy with both him and the shadow Minister, in observing that there are sensible things that I hope we will broadly agree upon on most of this. I hope that I can make one or two observations on how we might take things forward once we have passed the legislation.

I have made my point in relation to the manslaughter of emergency workers, and I do not seek to repeat it, save to say that the Justice Committee has looked at the law of homicide and I think that we are in danger of missing an opportunity there. That does not mean that what is proposed is wrong, but we should be more ambitious than that, because many other common-law jurisdictions have reformed their law of manslaughter in a way that makes it more comprehensible to a jury. I looked with particular care at, for example, the judge’s directions in the PC Harper case and others. Even with the most impeccable directions it is not easy to follow now, against the factual background that we often have. We ought to be prepared to look at evidence from other common-law jurisdictions going forward.

There was an argument, of course, that the victim being an emergency worker is always an aggravating factor, but I understand the point about putting it on the statute book, given the particular value and weight that we place upon the service that these emergency workers have done. Similarly, I welcome the provision for aggravation in relation to assaults upon public service workers. I visited one of the local Co-op stores in my constituency and met some of my constituents who have been assaulted and threatened pretty appallingly by people. They do a great job for the public, and I think that we are right to give them a measure of protection too. I welcome the Government moving on that.

I will just turn to two other matters, one of which concerns IPP—imprisonment for public protection—sentences. The Minister knows that the Justice Committee is currently drawing up a report on this issue. We heard most compelling evidence on this situation, which Lord Brown, a former senior law Lord, described as an enduring blot on the British justice system. I paraphrase his words—that may not be exact—but that was the essence of it. I welcome what the Government are doing. It is a step in the right direction, but we need to ensure that those who are capable of being released safely are processed through the system much more quickly. That has been a blot on our system for too long. Resources have not been made available and all too often the provision to do the courses that were necessary for them to meet the trigger levels for release were not available. The danger was—we heard very powerful evidence on this from clinical psychologists and others—that sometimes the failure of the system to deal with the underlying issues which caused them to be subject to a IPP in the first place had now made them more dangerous to release, because they got to a degree of institutionalisation which makes it harder for them to be reformed. We need to be very alert to that.

[Sarah Champion]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for starting the inquiry. One piece of written evidence received is from one of my constituents, who is suffering under an IPP with no hope of getting out and no understanding of why he is stuck there. I fully accept and agree with what he is saying. The impact that this is having on people’s mental health, the lifelong torture that these people are being put under, is just totally unacceptable. Of course one should serve one’s time, but I cannot even imagine what having an indefinite time ahead must do to someone’s psyche.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. We heard very compelling testimony on precisely those points. That is not to say that some people who are serving IPP sentences have not committed very serious offences and that some of them, because of their background, do not present a very real threat to the public. It may well be that in certain cases it will be a very long time before they are capable of being released, if ever, but there are many others who fall below that threshold who are trapped unfairly in the system, and who ought to be capable of being looked at afresh, processed and released safely into the community, but we have not yet managed to do that. The Government’s amendment holds the feet of the Parole Board to the fire on that, which is good so far as it goes.

The other point I want to make is that we heard compelling evidence from Lord Blunkett, the originator of the IPP sentences, who accepted that it had not worked out as he had intended. That was powerful and very humbling testimony. There was also very powerful testimony from Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the former Lord Chief Justice, who has taken up this cause. He made the point that what we are doing so far is helpful. Improving the ability of people to access courses and gain the threshold for release is helpful and that is what the Government are, through their amendment, seeking to do. The need to review every case, rather than leaving them in limbo, is really important so we do not get drift.

However, there are two things we are not yet doing. We are not tackling the issue of needless recall. Recall is an important tool to have while we have a licence, but there is a real concern that in many cases the trigger for the recall bears no proportion to either the index offence which had caused the original sentence or the amount of time that might then be spent inside thereafter. In some cases, there was a real concern that recall was triggered for comparatively administrative breaches of the licence, rather than substantive ones linked to reoffending or increasing risk. I urge Ministers, when the Parole Board looks at each case as it will now be obliged to do under the legislation, to ensure that we do not have, frankly, risk-averse recalls. It is always a terrible balance to strike and I am very conscious of the burden on the Parole Board and probation officers in doing that, but we ought to ensure it is not done on a tick-box basis just to make sure we have protected ourselves against criticism—almost a back-covering exercise, I hate to say.

There is a temptation for that in the current arrangements, but we can do better than that and I hope we will. We ought to be assessing whether the breach suggests there is an ongoing risk of reoffending or a danger to the public. That ought to be the test.

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Finally, on secure training centres, I understand what the Minister said about not seeking to single out one type of provision. Equally, however, I hope that he will know—the evidence to the Justice Committee has been clear—that we have a successful mixed economy, in effect, in the provision of custody, and I support that. We have privately and publicly run prisons in the adult establishment and privately and publicly run provision in the youth estate. There is no reason why we cannot have the same thing in relation to these provisions. I do not think anyone is asking for special highlighting of this, but local authorities have expertise—I speak as a former councillor—and I hope that the Minister will just say, “We don’t rule anything out. All those with expertise are welcome to bid and to apply.”

[Sarah Champion]

I want to start with a positive and then I will move on. I begin by welcoming Lords amendment 98, Tony’s law, which increases the maximum sentences for causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to suffer serious injury or death. That change to the law follows the tireless campaigning by the parents of Tony Hudgell. As a baby, Tony suffered such serious physical abuse by his birth parents that both of his legs had to be amputated and he nearly lost his life. The sentences for cases such as Tony’s must reflect the lifelong trauma and harm that was inflicted on him.

I campaigned for that change last year, following in the wake of Tony’s parents’ MP, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), and I thank the Minister for listening to me, the hon. Member and to Tony’s family and others who have campaigned for the change in the law. It is so necessary and I am so grateful that that has now been adopted.

And now for the less positive part. I have to speak to Lords amendment 107, which is designed to ensure that local authorities can run secure 16 to 19 academies, either alone or in consortiums. I worked with Article 39 and the National Association for Youth Justice to table an amendment on this in the Bill Committee. I was delighted when peers voted in favour of this vital amendment in the other place, as tabled by Lord German and Lord Marks, and I ask the Minister to please keep it in place. As he knows, I have a huge amount of respect for him because he is very fair and because he listens, but as I said, local authorities are also clear that they need a very strong signal from him that they are eligible. This is not me, but the local authorities asking for that clarity. As I said, I find it illogical that he will not accept this amendment.

In December 2016, the Government committed to phasing out child prisons, young offender institutions and secure training centres and replacing them with a network of secure children’s homes and secure schools—now renamed secure 16 to 19 academies. I welcome that progress, because it is very clear that secure training centres were not fit for purpose, as the Youth Justice Board has conceded. However, when the Government looked for an organisation to run the first secure school, they barred local authorities from the tendering process. That decision was heavily criticised by many organisations that specialise on these issues. I find it illogical.

Excluding local authorities risks repeating the serious mistakes of the past, when private providers were contracted to operate secure training centres despite having no prior experience of looking after vulnerable children. There is clear, tragic evidence of what that can lead to. Two children, Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood, tragically died following restraint in secure training centres run by the private firms G4S and Serco, respectively, in 2004; the High Court later found that an unlawful restraint regime had persisted in the centres for at least a decade. In a 2016 BBC “Panorama” documentary, staff were filmed verbally and physically assaulting children at the Medway secure training centre, managed by G4S. One manager boasted of stabbing a child’s leg and arm with a fork; another recounted deliberately winding up a child so that he could physically assault him. No child deserves to suffer such abuse, no matter their past or present behaviour.

Local authorities are best placed to run secure 16-to-19 academies because they have experience of education, secure schools and, of course, the local social services that manage and support vulnerable young people. As I keep saying, it is entirely illogical to prevent local authorities from carrying out this work: it makes it harder to integrate services for children while they are in custody and when they return to the community.

The Minister has already argued, as Ministers in previous debates have, that nothing in the law prevents local authorities from running secure 16-to-19 academies. However, as Lord German said in the other place:

“At present, local authorities are excluded simply because there is a view that anything called an ‘academy’ in England cannot be run by a local authority, which seems to create an absolute block to the opportunity for everyone in these institutions to have the best opportunities for life and education.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 November 2021; Vol. 816, c. 271.]

It must be clearly stated in the law that local authorities can establish and maintain 16-to-19 academies. I believe—I look to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on the Front Bench—that the Opposition will divide the House on the amendment; that is how strongly we feel about it. If Government Members vote against it, what will the chilling effect on local authorities be?

The Minister could accept the amendment this evening without pressing it to a vote. It would then be very clear to local authorities that they are eligible to apply to run 16-to-19 academies. I plead with the Minister to do so, because his actions tonight will make the difference for local authorities thinking that they can apply to run such schemes. It must be really clearly stated in the law and in this debate that local authorities can establish and maintain such academies. I urge the Minister and his MPs to support the amendment to avoid another generation of children not getting the best wraparound services they all deserve.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

May I say how pleased I am to see the Government bringing forward proposals to stamp out illegal hare coursing? It is an issue that I and many other rural MPs have campaigned on for the best part of a decade, not least as a result of the extreme violence shown by coursers in Cambridgeshire and many other rural parts of the country to those who try to stop them—farmers, local people and even police. The coursers show disregard for property rights and cause huge amounts of damage to crops and hedges.

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[Tom Pursglove]

Yes, I am always keen that the Department is as timely as possible in engaging with my hon. Friend’s excellent Committee. We are always grateful for the tireless, thorough and considered work that he and colleagues do.

Let me turn to the issue of Harper’s law. Again, I was very grateful to Members from across the House, including the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), for their clear, full-throated support for these changes. I was able to address one of the technical issues to provide clarity for the House earlier, and I just wish to provide further clarity, as I promised I would, on whether volunteers can be emergency workers under Harper’s law. The answer is yes, it applies to emergency workers who are engaged to supply emergency services in a voluntary capacity as well as to paid employees. It uses exactly the same definition as in the 2018 Act, and I hope that that helps to put the technical aspects of this provision on the record for the House’s benefit.

Lords amendment 107 covers the issue of secure schools. I am always conscious that I do not want to disappoint the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). We have always had a very constructive working relationship on a whole host of issues, including on the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill, which I know she will be delighted completed its Commons consideration on Friday. None the less, on this occasion, I am afraid that I cannot deliver precisely on what she wishes to see. However, I reiterate the point that, before we invite applications for any future secure schools, the Ministry of Justice will assess in detail the potential role of local authorities in running this new form of provision. The Department for Education remains committed to moving towards a school system where every school has the benefits of being part of a family of schools in a strong multi-academy trust. The DFE will set out its plans in a schools White Paper to be published in the coming months.

[Sarah Champion]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tom Pursglove]

I will give the hon. Lady another opportunity.

[Sarah Champion]

Round 5, Minister.

Will the Minister please clarify what the objection is to making it very clear that local authorities can apply to run and maintain 16 to 19 academies? Moreover, is he able to explain why they were prevented from doing so in the first round of tendering?

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Lady is persistent in these matters. All I can do, I am afraid, is simply refer her back to the comments that I have already made during the course of this debate. I will happily take away—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is chuntering from a sedentary position. I am not sure whether she was here for the duration of this debate. We have covered this matter in some detail. I will gladly take away a copy of Hansard and study the points that she has raised in the course of this debate. If there is any further detail that I am able to provide, I will happily do so.