Probation Service

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend has answered the last intervention. What happened with the Work programme was that the big boys cherry-picked those who were easy to get into work, and those who were not had more chance of succeeding with Jobcentre Plus. He is right to remind the House that the probation service works with people who have done poorly outside prison. They might have problems with mental health, alcohol and drug-dependency, or with numeracy and literacy. Those are the people our professional probation service works with who will not be cherry-picked by the big boys that the Justice Secretary wants to give the contracts to.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend has talked about the importance of partnership working and its success lying in agencies working together effectively. Does he agree that the Government’s proposals go against the grain of everything we know and could not only create artificial divides between public and private providers but freeze out voluntary sector providers who have great and important areas of expertise—for example, in working with women offenders?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend has paraphrased what the chief inspector of probation, the probation trusts and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations have said, which I will come to shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm how many women’s centres he expects to close as a result of funding cuts?

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, the hon. Lady will have to be patient and will have to see what we have to say about provision for women across the board. It is right that we do this in a holistic way, as I am sure she would agree, and that we present proposals that have been properly thought through and properly costed, so that we can explain how we think it is best to provide custody and rehabilitation for all female offenders.

Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He is right to cite the Shannon Trust. Its Toe by Toe project is an extremely good example of what we are discussing. We will help it in any way we can. I hope that he will hear a little more about that over the rest of the summer. The important changes we have made to the incentives and earned privileges scheme go beyond simply what we may take away from prisoners; they are also about the incentives we give them to help other prisoners. In order to reach the enhanced level of the scheme, a prisoner will have to help someone else in prison. That is a good opportunity for more mentoring and more learning coaching of the type he describes.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

How supportive is the Minister of creative agencies getting into prisons to help improve language and literacy, and is he aware of any barriers they might have experienced to running workshops in prisons?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am certainly in favour of anything that can be demonstrated to assist in reducing reoffending, but there is another test that needs to be applied: a public acceptability test. The public have certain expectations of what should and should not happen in prison, so we need to apply that filter, but I am certainly interested in imaginative ideas that will help to drive down reoffending rates.

Legal Aid Reform

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The £4 million cost savings are very likely to be eaten up not only by the cost of using the complaints and ombudsman systems but because of the impact inside prisons if prisoners are unable effectively to have their case made.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on the needs of prisoners. Does she agree that another cause for great concern is that prisoners will often go through this process when they have exhausted other routes and had unsatisfactory outcomes? Without adequate investment in the prison complaints system, there will be even greater miscarriages of justice.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

What kinds of situations are we talking about when we say that prisoners need representation? It is about issues such as segregation and categorisation. It is about mothers separated from their babies who need to make the case to be with them in mother and baby units. It is about prisoners who need to access programmes that will be a prerequisite of their being considered for parole. It is about cases of bullying or discrimination, or cases where people are denied access to health treatments that they ought to get. These are really important entitlements that we must ensure that we protect for all people. We should not deny them to people simply because they are in prison serving a sentence for a criminal offence.

If we fail to deal with these cases adequately, we will, as my hon. Friends have said, drive up costs both outside and within the prison system. We will have more people in higher category prisons for longer. We will have more problems caused by failing to address their underlying health and well-being needs, and that will play out in continuing disruptive and difficult behaviour inside prison and on release. I invite the Minister, who is a very thoughtful Minister, to take account of the much broader context in which these apparently cost-effective measures will impact inside our prisons.

I particularly ask the Minister to comment on youth offenders, who are the most vulnerable group in our prisons and in our penal system. Are they too to be hit by this lack of access to legal representation? They, of all prisoners, will be especially poorly equipped to represent themselves. I hope that the Minister will at least be able to give us some assurances on young offenders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), as I agreed with so much of what he said, particularly the need to save within the system but not in this way and certainly not at this speed. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the House on this important topic, which has caused great concern across the country and about which I have received an unprecedented number of representations, from constituents, barristers, solicitors and charities. Not least, I note that the Government’s own Treasury counsel have expressed opposition, as have Crown Court justices. This is a major issue of concern for all of us and all our constituents.

Access to justice must not be determined by the ability to pay. That is one of the most important safeguards we have in a state that believes in liberty and fairness. Labour has supported finding savings in the legal aid budget, but not in this way. We support people who can afford it paying their own legal fees. We support the use of the frozen assets of criminals to fund their legal costs. We also agree on the need to address the problems of very high-cost cases, not to mention the need to root out inefficiency in our courts and wider justice system—we would all like to see that done.

The problem is that the core of the Government’s proposals are likely to have consequences that go against the grain of so much that we are proud of in our system. We surely cannot go through a process of reform that leads us to a system that puts quantity ahead of quality, and risks leading to an increase in miscarriages of justice. The Government’s reforms will replace the current model whereby the Ministry of Justice purchases legal aid services from 1,400 local providers with a model involving just 400 larger providers. The fee structure will be changed so that lawyers’ fees are paid regardless of whether there is a guilty or not guilty plea.

I wish to raise a number of concerns, the first of which is about choice, which has been mentioned by so many hon. Members. Choice is vital to ensuring that people have trust in the person representing them. Under these proposals, defendants who want to change their provider will have to apply to a court and then it will be the Legal Aid Agency that will determine which other provider services their need. On quality, the tendering process will be skewed to the lowest-cost provider; lowest cost will trump quality. If it is hard for someone to change their solicitor, what is the incentive to firms to ensure that they provide the best quality to the vulnerable? There is a great concern that the state—the prosecutor—will also be picking someone’s defence. No doubt, that will again lead to concerns about conflicts of interest and miscarriages of justice.

I also wish to raise the issue of the impact the proposals will have on black and minority ethnic firms, which form a large proportion of solicitors, particularly in London. Some statistics show—the Society of Asian Lawyers has done some excellent work on this issue—that four years ago 4,000 firms of solicitors were able to offer legal assistance to those in the criminal justice system in London, and 40% of those firms were owned by Asian and black lawyers. Changes over the past few years have reduced the figure to 1,600, with a disproportionate number of the firms that have closed having been run by those from ethnic minorities.

It is not only Members who are raising concerns; research undertaken by the Legal Services Commission, as was, talked about the importance of BME firms. It said:

“The presence of such firms, positioned as they often are in the heart of the communities that they serve, provides reassurance to these communities, giving voice to their grievances and serving to boost social cohesion and confidence.”

Under the Government’s proposals, where BME firms secure a contract there is no obvious way in which BME defendants will be able to be allocated those providers should they so choose.

Legal aid is vital in ensuring that, after due process, those who are guilty are found guilty and the innocent are able to clear their names. We must ensure choice in access to legal representation and ensure that that choice is available to everybody, regardless of wealth or income. We must ensure that we do all we can to protect the British justice system, in which we all have great pride.

Protecting Children Online

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

While we are all patting ourselves on the back and saying that there is widespread agreement—and there clearly is widespread agreement—we should also bear it in mind that there is a considerable campaign against the taking of steps in this direction. It has not really been represented in the House today, but it is clear from earlier debates, and from communications that we have all received, that there is another point of view which is very different. There are people who want a degree of freedom in society that can actually be damaging, and we must be prepared to have a proper debate about that as well.

The issue of freedom is very important in the history of events such as the women’s movement, but there has often been a confusion between freedom in a fairly abstract sense—for instance, the sexual liberation of the 1960s—and the effect that some material can have on, in particular, those who are vulnerable. Much of what appears on the internet and elsewhere is damaging because of the way in which it portrays women, the way in which it portrays relationships between men and women, and the way in which it allows people to see a version of human relations that is deeply damaging.

People sometimes say that such material will not be harmful to many people, but it probably will be. It is interesting that the same argument is never advanced about advertising. People do not advertise because they think that advertising does not work; they advertise because they think that advertisements influence us, and indeed we are all clearly influenced by them. We have all found ourselves going into a shop and buying something that we may not have meant to buy because we saw or heard an advertisement for it, and thought “That sounds like a good idea.” I am not suggesting that someone who stumbles across pornography, online or anywhere else, is bound to turn into a violent person, but there will be some people whose attitudes, particularly their attitudes to what is acceptable between men and women, will be affected by it.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the availability of images on the internet. There are more child abuse images circulating on the internet now than ever before. As a result of freedom of information requests by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, about 26 million images were seized in two years by five local forces. Does my hon. Friend agree that the availability of such material is leading to a potential normalisation of it, and that that is one of the most important problems that we must tackle in the interests of our children today?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree that we should take that problem very seriously, and should take action to deal with it.

This is not only about protecting children, although that is extremely important. It is also about protecting older young people, and about protecting adults and, hopefully, changing their views. I think that if certain types of behaviour are normalised and become commonplace, they will eventually be seen as broadly acceptable, and the relationships that are portrayed between men and women will be considered not unacceptable, but something that women themselves are almost expected to accept.

I think that it is important to deal with this. I thought that it was important many years ago when groups were campaigning about, for example, pornography in magazines, but this type of pornography is pervasive in a way that even that was not. Going to buy a magazine in a shop was a more difficult transaction for many people than what we now see happening in our homes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that the digitisation of the whole criminal justice process, not just in the courts but including the police, is absolutely essential to ensuring not only that we continue to provide proper justice but that we do so more speedily and efficiently. A huge amount of work is going on inside the Department, and announcements will be made.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Ministry of Justice estimates that approximately 60% to 90% of young offenders have communication needs. What is it doing to increase speech and language therapy services in young offenders institutions?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that that is a significant problem among young offenders both inside and outside custody. She may know that the comprehensive health assessment tool is currently used to identify those problems as early as we can, so that we can do something about them. As she knows, we believe that it is important to have a greater focus on education for all young offenders in how we structure the secure custodial estate for young offenders, and we are looking at that carefully having just closed a consultation on it.

Metropolitan Police Service

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point based on her own constituency experience. I suspect that, as I do, she feels that the cut in the number of PCSOs is noticed in her borough, as it certainly is in mine, and I suspect that it is also felt more widely across London.

By comparison with 2010, when Members last faced the people to ask for their support, there will be considerably fewer sergeants in London by 2015. Some estimates suggest that 1,300 sergeants will be axed. Inspectors and chief inspectors are also going, and superintendents’ numbers are likewise being cut. In short, the positions occupied by experienced police officers are being axed. The Mayor’s plan describes those positions as “supervisory grades”. In truth, those roles, and crucially the experience and skill mix of the senior staff occupying them, are fundamental to the effective pursuit of the criminal, the passage of the accused through the legal process and the sensitive support of the victim.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the experience of those officers who have had many years in the police is vital for the coaching and support of officers who are new to the service? I have noticed in my own constituency the difference that that coaching and support has made, particularly in areas of Feltham and Heston that suffered a large number of burglaries before Christmas. The advice that those more experienced officers were able to give to PCSOs who were on the front line was vital.

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point about the value that experienced police officers bring to the coaching of new recruits. It is worth noting in passing that the Mayor’s plan envisages specialist crime squads at borough level—such as local burglary, town centre or robbery squads—essentially being raided for staff, who will then be redeployed. So we sense that, as my hon. Friend suggests, a huge amount of vital experience is set to be lost to the Met when it is still needed.

It would be good to hear from the Minister what discussions he has had with the Mayor and the Association of Chief Police Officers staff in the Metropolitan police about how the cuts that I have described will also impact on national efforts to confront organised crime, or how cuts in the positions occupied by experienced police officers and the movement of staff from specialist units will impact, for example, on the work of Operation Trident. It certainly prompts the question how cuts in the Met will impact on its ability to support the UK Border Agency in its efforts to track down, arrest and deport illegal immigrants.

Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

I know that my hon. Friend cares deeply about Alana House and its future in his Reading constituency. He has already discussed the matter with me on a number of occasions. The National Offender Management Service has funded women’s community facilities successfully for a number of years and Alana House has been provided with funding of £111,000 for 2012-13. From 2013-14, probation trusts will commission these very important services for women. They are required to provide gender-specific services and if those services are not sufficiently robust they will be challenged. It is too early to say what that will mean for Alana House, but I can tell my hon. Friend that I would be happy to visit the facility.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Corston report highlighted the need for women’s centres to work with women offenders and those at risk of offending. What is the Government’s current policy on continuing to provide support to such services?

[Mrs Grant]

As I said, that funding will continue. The National Offender Management Service has funded women’s services very successfully for many years. The funding for women’s services will continue at the same level, but from 2013-14 probation trusts will commission these vital services.

Church of England (Women Bishops)

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

The answer, of course, is yes, but the Measure made very generous provision for opponents of women priests and bishops; it would have allowed them to continue to have their own bishop. Supporters of the Measure believe that the concessions were pretty generous, and I do not think that they will become any more generous in the weeks and months to come.

That is why I say to the bishops that there comes a time in any organisation, whether it be a political party or a Church, when it is no longer sustainable or possible to move at the pace of the slowest, which in this case means not moving at all. The overwhelming majority of Anglicans do not want more delay. They believe that the opponents of women bishops will never be reconciled. If some of the opponents decide to leave for Rome or to set up their own conservative evangelical sect, so be it. Similar threats were made over women’s ordination. In the event, far fewer people left the Church of England than was predicted, and as time has gone on, more and more parishes that originally decided that they did not want women priests have come to accept and celebrate them.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is vital that the Church of England considers its trajectory and progress, bearing in mind that women bishops are already part of the international Anglican community in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States and elsewhere?

[Mr Bradshaw]

Yes. I shall mention some of the provinces of the Church of England that already have women bishops when I come on to one of the possible solutions to the impasse.

I was talking about people coming in and out of the Church. For every one person who may leave the Church of England over women bishops, there will be many more who stay or come back; there are also people who, at the moment, shrug and say, “Why should I take a second look at an institution that treats women like this?”, but who will take that second look if women are fully celebrated in the Church. In the discussions that we often have about the importance of Church unity, we very rarely talk about those who have already left or been driven out of the Church, or who have not come in, including members of my extended family and my circle of friends—I am sure that the same applies to many hon. Members—because of the failure of the Church to make progress more quickly.

Having announced on the eve of this debate that they will have another go in July, the Bishops need to be sure that they will win. The process must be concluded quickly—in months, not years. If they are not sure that they can deliver, they should ask Parliament for help. Since the Synod vote, many of us will have been contacted by priests and lay members of the Church, appealing to Parliament to act. A priest from Lancaster wrote to me, saying, “Please, please, please, help.” She went on to ask us to remove the Church’s exemption from equality laws, describing it as

“deeply offensive to most women priests.”

Sentencing (Female Offenders)

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this debate to the House today.

One of the starkest examples of how politically correct this country has become is the issue of women in the justice system and, more specifically for this debate, women in prisons and in courts. About 5% of the prison population at any one time in recent history has been female. The other 95% has been male, yet much time, effort, concentration and brow-beating has taken place over the very small number of women in prison. There are countless groups and organisations calling for the number to be reduced. Far too many politicians—male as well as female—are willing to trot out politically correct nonsense on the subject, repeating facts that do not bear any scrutiny at all, and there are far too many calls for something to be done about a problem that, by anybody’s standards, is hard to see exists based on the actual evidence.

Let us imagine that the male population in prison represented just 5% of the total and that women made up the remaining 95%. Would there be an outcry on behalf of the men at the expense of the women? Of course not. There is absolutely no chance on earth that that would happen, so why is there all this concern over 5% of the prison population? How can normally thoughtful, intelligent people have taken such leave of their senses over the issue? The answer is simple. It is all about being politically correct, and not many people in public life like to challenge it, but I do, Mrs Osborne, and today I want to take the opportunity to scotch some myths about all types of sentencing for women. I want to bust five particular myths.

There is an old political maxim that if someone tells a lie often enough, people will believe that it is true. I can only conclude that has happened in this case. I heard the lie that women are more likely to be sent to prison than men and that they are treated much more harshly by the courts, and I was taken in by it. I presumed it was true, because I had heard it so often, and I thought it was an absolute outrage. I was so outraged by the inequality in sentencing that I decided to do some research into it. As many people know, I spend a lot of time researching matters to do with prisons, sentencing and justice, and I wanted to get to the bottom of why women were being treated so badly.

Imagine my surprise when, having looked at all the evidence, I found it was not the case that women are treated more harshly by the courts. The unequivocal evidence is that the courts treat women far more favourably than men when it comes to sentencing. I want to expose five myths today.

The first myth is simple: women are very likely to be sent to prison and are more likely than men to be given a custodial sentence. That is simply untrue. Everyone I have spoken to who is involved with the justice system confirms anecdotally that it is not the case, but let us not just take their word for it. Let us look at the facts. I asked the Library to provide evidence that more women than men were being sent to prison, as I had been told. Not only did it not provide that information, but it confirmed that the exact opposite is true. The Library stated:

“The published statistics show that a higher proportion of men are given a sentence of immediate custody than women, irrespective of age of offender (juveniles, young adults or adult) and type of court (magistrates or Crown). This has been the case in each year between 1999 and 2009...For each offence group, a higher proportion of males are sentenced to custody than females...In 2009 58% of male offenders who entered a guilty plea for an indictable offence were given an immediate custodial sentence compared to only 34% of women.”

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the information he received from the Library also looked at statistics by type of offence?

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely. It looked at every category of offence. For every single category, women are less likely than men to be sent to prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and he is right. Not only are women less likely to be sent to prison than men, and more likely to be sentenced to a lesser term than their male counterparts, but they are also more likely to serve less of the sentence they are given in prison. In its offender management statistics, the Ministry of Justice says:

“Those discharged from determinate sentences in the quarter ending December 2011 had served 53 per cent of their sentence in custody (including time on remand). On average, males served a greater proportion of their sentence in custody – 53 per cent compared to 48 per cent for females in the quarter ending December 2011. This gender difference is consistent over time, and partly reflects the higher proportion of females who are released on Home Detention Curfew”.

[Seema Malhotra]

To what extent are family circumstances, especially circumstances of children, taken into account in sentencing? Every year, 18,000 children see their mothers go to prison and only 5% of those children stay in their homes during that sentence. There are also statistics to suggest that a third of women in prison are lone parents, and it is more likely that their children will lose their homes or be placed in care as a consequence of their mothers’ custody.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is right. That is a fact that is given in the courts, which is why women are less likely to be sent to prison than men. That was a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made earlier. Let me emphasise my point with a case from earlier this year. Rebecca Bernard, who had 51 previous convictions for crimes including violence and threatening behaviour, led an all-girl gang that brought terror to her town. She has been the subject of two antisocial behaviour orders for making the lives of her elderly neighbours a misery. When this 23-year-old attacked two innocent men in a night club with a champagne bottle, it was thought that a custodial sentence was inevitable. However, she walked free from court after a judge decided that she was a good mother to her three young children. Bernard had smashed a bottle over one victim’s head and then stabbed the other in the arm with its jagged neck. A court heard that she had launched the attack because she believed wrongly that the men were laughing at her. Quite clearly, those factors are taken into account by the courts, which explains why someone such as Bernard, who clearly should have been sent to prison, and who, if she had been a male, would definitely have been sent to prison, was not sent to prison. That is the explanation. I am perfectly content for the hon. Lady to say that that should be the case, but at least let us argue from the facts, because then we will be acknowledging that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women.