Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill

Stephen Pound Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have to say that from my own limited experience and from speaking to those who continue to practise, no area of law is perhaps more sensitive or more emotionally draining—not just for the parties, but for the practitioners who seek to advise them and the judiciary who sit on these cases—than family work. It is inevitably stressful and we ought to have a system that reduces stress, rather than makes it greater.

The evidence from other comparators also shows that the Bill is an advantage to the overall social objective and that some concerns are not justified. It is suggested that the Bill imports into law a concept of unilateral no-fault divorce. That is not strictly correct. It is currently the case that after two years of separation with consent or five years without consent, divorce can be granted without any allegation of misconduct. The truth is, as I will refer to later and as Sir Paul Coleridge, the chairman of the Marriage Foundation and a former High Court judge of the family division himself observed, that that does not keep up to date with the way people now change and move on with their lives. It certainly does not reflect my experience, and the experience of most people, that the divorce petition comes at the end of the breakdown of a relationship, not the beginning. Time and again, I have seen that with people who come to my surgery, with court cases I have been involved in or observed, and, as most of us have, with friends and acquaintances—people we know—where it has been the end of a sad and painful process that ultimately leads to the conclusion that the marriage is no longer sustainable and they want to move on. We ought to help them to be able to do that. My experience has certainly been that divorce is not undertaken lightly and I think the Secretary of State is right to recognise that.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the sacrament of marriage is made stronger or weaker by the passing of the Bill?

[Robert Neill]

As an Anglo-Catholic, I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the sacrament strongly, but I do not believe, in societal terms, that it makes very much difference. In truth, many marriages are not in entered into in a religious context. The weight that is placed on the sacrament, even with those of faith, may vary. Perhaps it should not, but I think that is the reality. For those for whom it is important, it will be a difficult personal decision, as it has been for friends of mine for whom the end of their marriage was very difficult indeed. None the less, they thought it was appropriate to recognise what had happened and to make a break. It is a profound point for those of faith, but I do not think it is an argument against the Bill, as I think the hon. Gentleman agrees.

We also have to bear in mind the suggestion that there might be manipulation of a vulnerable party. I take that seriously and it has been raised by a couple of constituents of mine who think carefully and closely about these matters. However, my experience and all the evidence seem to suggest that the greatest risk of manipulation and pressure being put on a vulnerable party is during the period when the marriage has broken down and people have to wait perhaps for two or five years, especially if, as hon. Members have observed, they are obliged for financial or childcare reasons—or a mixture of both—to continue to live under the same roof. That is the point at which the vulnerable party is often most at risk.

It is perhaps significant that the study, “Finding Fault?”, points out that, at the moment, the system is to some degree “manipulated” by fault being used as a ground to speed up divorce. It is not that the marriage has not broken down, but that it is quicker for someone to get divorced if they allege fault than if they wait two or five years. That can have perverse consequences: people have to say hurtful things against the party with whom they are still living and attempting to bring up their children, so that they can speed up the divorce that they both know is inevitable. I cannot see how that benefits society or, for those of us to whom this is important, a Christian ethos for that family.

Courts IT System

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My right hon. Friend has a great deal of expertise in this subject area and I am always happy to meet her and to speak with her. She talked about back-ups, and I should say that it is because we have recently invested in the courts service that we had wi-fi back-up. The issue was in relation to the server, but because we have invested in wi-fi in courts up and down the country, many staff could continue to work during this incident.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the criminal Bar; I am a big supporter of the independent criminal Bar, as I am of solicitor advocates, who play a vital role in the delivery of justice, which is why we have recently given them £23 million more for the advocates’ graduated fee scheme. We are investing in encouraging them and hope that they continue to do their work.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the CBA; I work closely with the CBA and have met its representatives on several occasions recently, and I also work closely with the Bar Council. I want to continue to work closely with them as we move forward.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

As we must do this, may I declare a personal, rather than a pecuniary, interest? I have been married to a senior member of the west London magistracy for many, many years. Mrs Pound is incandescent with fury, because those on her particular bench find it impossible to operate within the common platform. The iPads with which they have been issued are useless, and many defence barristers and solicitors are having to print out copies of the documentation before they come to court. Will the Minister accept that it is our unpaid magistracy who have been making this system work despite the IT nightmare? Will she take this opportunity, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, to pay tribute to and thank the magistrates for making a broken system work?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am honoured that we have so many well-connected Members of Parliament present in the House to share with us their personal knowledge of the justice system. I thank the hon. Gentleman’s wife for all the work she does. I do indeed recognise the significant contribution that the magistracy makes. I was pleased to go to the Magistrates Association annual conference late last year. Magistrates do indeed make a significant contribution to our criminal justice system.

[Mr Speaker]

I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman will present a copy of the Official Report, when it appears tomorrow, to Mrs Pound, or Maggie, as I think she is known.

[Stephen Pound]

Very good, Sir!

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

The listing team in Chelmsford administers the calendars and diaries for all Essex and Suffolk magistrates and county courts—that is more than 30 different courts sitting every day—so when the computer systems have been down it has been an administrative nightmare. I am glad to hear that nine out of 10 computers are back up and running and that we expect full service back tomorrow. Will my hon. and learned Friend confirm that this incident was not because of a cyber-attack and that there has been no loss of data, and will she let us know what is being done to make sure that this situation does not recur?

Legal Aid: Birmingham Pub Bombings

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) for a forensic trot-through of the problem that we face. I will not cover the same ground, but I associate myself with everything he said in laying out exactly how long we have been to-ing and fro-ing on this issue.

I feel as if I am on a merry-go-round. I have been on it for only about four or five years, from just before I was elected. I meet with the families regularly. They are in their 40th year of dealing with this issue, and I feel tired of having to bring it up once again. We have won this argument before, and we have been here before. They were refused legal aid at the inquest stage and there was a lot of hullabaloo from many of the same people who are in the Chamber today, from both parties. We won that argument, yet here we are again.

For me, the fundamental problem is inequality of arms. These people are ordinary citizens. It is not okay for the public bodies involved, whether they be police forces, Government Departments, or in this instance the coroner, to have a resource that is simply not available to the party that represents the victims. Not a single one of the families of the 21 people murdered on that night wishes to be in this position. They do not want to be any trouble and to have to constantly make these arguments. They wish, more than any of us, that we were not standing here having this debate. They wish that in a way that most of us in this place will never understand, although unfortunately some Members of the House do have personal experience in that regard. The fact that we are here again, with ordinary citizens feeling as though they were begging the state to allow them to be represented, is a source of deep sadness. I feel a bit tired by this constant battle, although having met the families I know that they are battle-weary but fairly tough.

I want to go over some of the reasons why legal aid, at this stage, has been refused, most recently to my constituent Margaret, who was the mother of one of the victims. Just to big up the women who come from my bit of the world, hon. Members will never meet a woman as tough, steely and certain as this woman. She makes me look like a wallflower.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Good God.

[Jess Phillips]

Yes—you can imagine. As her MP, I know what it is like to sometimes have to disappoint her. The fact is that as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield outlined, the most recent round of legal aid has been endorsed by the coroner as the only fair way for justice to be served in the appeal process.

The reason given to the families for legal aid not being granted is that, despite the eligibility of one applicant, the other families cumulatively have sufficient resources to fund the legal action. I know these families. They are not rich people. They are ordinary people who live in ordinary houses. They are all extraordinary people in their own way, and in what they have been fighting, but they are not like the people we meet in this building. They are not people with thousands and thousands of pounds in the bank. They are ordinary people who perhaps own ordinary houses.

Are we saying, as the state, that if someone—a normal Joe or Jill—wants to seek justice, they will probably have to sell their house? That if someone’s family is murdered, in order for them to go through the process of getting justice we will take away all their assets? My constituent will also be judged on the assets of her children—we are going to strip away those assets because they want to go through the process. What they want is justice. Taking away their assets is not an acceptable standard for any of us here; I am certain that Government Members do not feel that it is. I wish that I could hold up photos of these people’s homes, so that hon. Members could see what ordinary lives they lead. They are ordinary Brummies.

[Jess Phillips]

It certainly is not. I remember giving the figures on the day when the threshold for inheritance tax was raised to £375,000, when I stood up and told the Minister that, in my constituency, eight people would benefit from that, and they had to be dead. My husband said that that Budget day was a great day to be dead. That gives a bit of an idea of the property prices in the area that I represent and live in.

The second issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield raised was the idea that because the families have previously been successful in raising funds themselves, they could probably lean back on that. To be clear, are we saying that if families, victims or anyone else wants to seek justice, the state currently feels that it should fall to those who can shake a tin best, or perhaps run a fun run? We could dress up as—I don’t know—victims, and do the London Marathon, and see how many people wanted to give us some cash so that we could find out some of the answers that the families have waited decades for. Even for those who do not know the families and do not have personal involvement, that cannot be a standard for our justice system. Crowdfunding and who can write the best tagline on a website and bleed the most hearts should not be the most likely way for people to access justice, going up against a state actor that is paid for by the same people’s taxes—we are the same people.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend will be aware that on 6 November 2014, Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, addressed this issue. His ruling, which we signed up to and support, was:

“It is clear that budgetary cuts should not be used as an excuse to hamper the work of those working for justice.”

We as a nation support that. Should we not extend that to this horrendous case?

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more. There are probably endless quotes from the bishop who did the inquiry into the Hillsborough situation, and we will almost certainly face the exact same arguments when the Grenfell disaster eventually comes before inquiries, courts and inquests. This is not just about the families in Birmingham; it is about a standard of justice. It is a David and Goliath situation, where David is the one paying for Goliath. That cannot be right, yet these families, having already lost family members, are having to do the heavy lifting for the rest of us to have a better system. For that, on behalf of anybody who has ever gone up against a state actor, we owe a debt of gratitude to families such as the Justice for the 21 families and the Hillsborough families, who are doing this on behalf of all of us to make justice better and fairer.

I worry that the Legal Aid Agency is using its powers to make decisions on whether it grants funding based on the merits of a case, and is deciding that it has authority on those merits. A High Court judge has agreed that the review should take place. It is perfectly reasonable that the coroner feels they have the right to appeal against that decision—that is absolutely fine—but it is not acceptable for the Legal Aid Agency to decide on the merits of that case. Are we saying that in the very complicated hierarchy of justice that these ordinary people have had to learn—they could probably sit legal degrees with ease now, these ordinary people with ordinary jobs, who did not know anything about this—the Legal Aid Agency now sits above a High Court judge in deciding which cases have merit? I hope the Minister can answer that question, because I am confused. She is learned; I am not learned—nobody gets to be learned just from being street smart, unfortunately. If only there was a degree in that.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend would be a professor emeritus.

[Jess Phillips]

I would be an emeritus professor in street smarts.

I feel that the Legal Aid Agency or the Government will eventually renege on this point. I associate myself with all the requests made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield, but we have had to go around the hamster wheel again to ask whether, if the Legal Aid Agency is not the route for families, justice can be served through extra funding that the Government allocate from elsewhere.

Joint Enterprise

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I take it from his words and from the emotion behind them that the door to the Justice Committee is now open and that at some future stage it will consider this matter, because I think that is one of the loci from which we can seek to bring an end to this horrendous, disproportionate nightmare, which is a stain on British jurisprudence. In this appalling situation, 40 seconds can lead to 12 years in prison, and somebody who just happens to be within a group of people can find themselves facing the best part of their young life locked away for something they could not stop, even if they wanted to.

It is often said that the House is at its worst when we all agree unanimously, but I think that this is the exception to that rule. Tribute has already been paid to JENGbA, Charlotte Henry, Gloria Morrison and all the other campaigners. I would like to think that even without JENGbA’s informed and passionate prodding, people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) would have brought the matter forward, because this is a stain on the British legal system. The Prime Minister has referred to burning injustice. Well, this injustice is burning so strongly and brightly that the smoke is almost choking us, and we cannot see the sense and sanity of the law for the obfuscation that has come from this ridiculous piece of law.

This law was originally introduced to deal with duelling. I appreciate that duelling used to be a pastime of Members of this House, but how can a provision on aiding, assisting or encouraging—or even for parasitic accessory liability—a couple of people duelling in Hyde Park a couple hundred years ago somehow lead to my constituent Alex Henry, a man with a four-year-old child whom he has hardly seen, facing 12 years in prison for what happened in 40 seconds when he was with a group of young men? How on earth can we move from that piece of medieval law to the present situation in which people are suffering?

I suggest that the reason something happened in this area of jurisprudence in the 1990s comes down to one word. It has already been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, who I must forgive for destroying my stereotype of stern, unbending Conservatism, because he has shown himself to be humane, decent and informed on this, for which I pay him full tribute. The word he used was “gang”. In the 1990s, there was an assumption that groups of young people—and young black people—were a threat and that they were somehow out to destroy society: they were corrosive, their music was unbearable, their accents incomprehensible, their clothes unforgivable and their activities incomprehensible to most people. I like to think that those in the senior echelons of the law are well versed in street culture, but on this occasion I think they saw gangs as a threat. They somehow transposed groups to gangs. This piece of draconian, lead-like law was brought in to crush a threat that did not actually exist. Yes, of course there is street crime and violence, but it is not confined to one group of people. Young people such as Kenneth Alexander and dear Alex Henry, who were simply out with friends, now face the life that is ahead of them because of how the law works.

There are few tasks more melancholy that visiting a constituent in prison, and one of the frustrations is the inability to do much more than sympathise and show that they are not forgotten. I think that JENGbA’s work is so crucial because it shows that these people have not been forgotten. Would it be inconvenient for the judicial system to review thousands of cases? Damn right it will be inconvenient, but I will take a bit of inconvenience over 12 years in prison for hundreds of people, seeing their lives frittered away, living in the place where sunlight comes with stripes. As far as I am concerned, they have the right to call upon the judicial system and, if necessary, to be inconvenient.

When Alex’s sister first contacted me about this case, I could scarcely believe it. I had known the family. He had lived a couple of streets away from me—later he became an economic migrant and moved down to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), but I still think of him as a Hanwell man. I wrote to the then Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). This is what he wrote in reply, in June 2014:

“In my view, the law on joint enterprise serves a useful purpose for bringing people to justice when they have been involved in the commission of an offence. I do not share the view that the law penalises innocent bystanders and no longer serves a valid purpose. We have no plans to review or amend the law at the moment.”

I am sorry, but this law does not serve a useful purpose: it penalises the wrong people, it brings the law into disrepute, it punishes wholly disproportionately, it destroys families, it wrecks individual lives and, above all, it disengages a whole group of people from the legal process, because when they see a system go so wrong, how can they possibly have any confidence in it? I have no argument today with the right hon. Member for Ashford, but I think that he was wrong. I think that his letter was based on a brief that probably came from somebody wearing a wig. As far as I am concerned, this law has to be changed.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend generously gives the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) the benefit of the doubt, but clearly he was reading from a brief and he has been proven wrong, because the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the courts were wrong.

[Stephen Pound]

Absolutely. The Supreme Court ruled that the law had been interpreted incorrectly, but that is only half of it. Interpreting the law incorrectly is one thing, but righting the wrong is what has to happen now.

[Robert Neill]

rose—

[Stephen Pound]

When it comes to righting wrongs, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate case, and I agree with him that righting this wrong in the way the law has been applied is important. Does he agree that there is a distinction between the concept of joint enterprise and how it has been applied? For example, if he and I jointly agreed to commit a burglary, the application of joint enterprise in those circumstances would be perfectly reasonable. The problem is the extension to groups of young people when one of them commits acts of violence and when it is suggested that foresight can be equated with intent. That is taking the doctrine beyond a sensible application.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Gentleman has indicated a way forward. He knows the case of Craig and Bentley, which I remember very well indeed. Let us not forget that one of them was hanged in a joint enterprise. Is it not a salutary thought that if the present law on joint enterprise had been applied when we had the death penalty, 20 young men would have been hanged. Can you imagine? If everybody in a group of people where somebody dies was said to be guilty, as with Craig and Bentley, would they then all have been hanged? The mere thought of that is so horrific—so disgusting—that it surely brings into sharp relief the insanity of this legislation and the idea that this great blanket of culpability is cast over a whole group of people. This law is nonsensical. It is cruel; it is brutal; it is outdated; and it has to go.

Amazingly, this is the first time that we have debated this subject on the Floor of the House. I hope that today will be the beginning of a process that leads to people like Alex Henry seeing daylight, and his child and his family, again. When I last saw Alex—I have visited him a couple of times—he was keeping his head down and keeping his nose clean. He was working in the kitchen. He actually had kind words for the staff at HMP Whitemoor, but the hope was going out of his eyes. You could actually see him looking at that long, long stretch ahead of him.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) mentioned, Alex is a man on the autism spectrum. In his appeal, evidence was submitted on his behalf by none less than Professor Baron-Cohen. One cannot get a higher authority than that. Was that opinion accepted? Clearly not, because my constituent is still in prison. He is a young, autistic man who, for 40 seconds of his life, did not stop something happening. He did not do anything wrong; he did not stop it happening. Can it really be right in this day and age that the law we are all sworn to uphold—that we are a part of as part of the establishment of this country—is having that impact on people, disproportionately on young black men, and disproportionately on the innocent?

I profoundly hope that this debate is one of those occasions when something really good comes from this place—where we put down a marker to say, yes, we thank JENGbA for all its work, but even without JENGbA, in our own heart of hearts, in our own knowledge and analysis of the situation, we realise that this stinks. It is wrong—dangerously, destructively, corrosively wrong. We have to do something about it. Let today be the day that we consign the present interpretation of joint enterprise to the dustbin, move forward and bring the law back into repute—take it away from ill-repute. I hope that Kenneth Alexander and Alex Henry can then take their rightful places in society where we want them to be. May they be here in the House of Commons, in the Gallery or wherever, rather than behind bars at the nation’s expense. We cannot go on like this.

Prisons

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I think the whole House will sympathise with and support the right hon. Lady’s comments on the morale of prison officers. When the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) and I were prison officers together in Dartmoor prison, it was evident to us that prison officers felt that they were out of sight and out of mind. They felt that nobody had any interest in their work until something went catastrophically wrong. Does she agree that it would be an excellent idea for right hon. and hon. Members not just to contact the Prison Officers Association, but occasionally to visit prisons to show that we do care and that they are not out of sight nor out of mind?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am delighted to hear that he is a former prison officer. Perhaps he could be a shining beacon of the scheme to bring former prison officers into service.

[Stephen Pound]

I am so reluctant to disabuse and disappoint the right hon. Lady, but the hon. Member for Aldershot and I were only temporarily in Dartmoor as part of a television programme called “At the Sharp End”.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I thank Mr Mackay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). He, like me, is one of a number of exes in the Chamber who have had responsibility for the prison service; we know how difficult it is to deal with these issues in the post of Secretary of State or prisons Minister.

The right hon. Gentleman made extremely important points about who we imprison, how we use imprisonment and how we use alternative sentences. Those points should be listened to. However, even he will recognise that there are many challenges in the current system. Judging from the current Secretary of State’s contribution, she knows that as well, as does the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who moved the motion. I speak today as a member of the Justice Committee, supported by the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), in the absence of our Chair, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I want to set out some of the challenges as we on the Justice Committee see them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) told us some of the statistics, and the situation is extremely challenging. We have had six major incidents. We have also had an escape—such occurrences have been unusual over the past 13 to 14 years. Sadly, we have the very high level of 107 self- inflicted deaths, which is an increase of 13% over the previous year, and I expect that number to rise still further in the figures that will be announced tomorrow.

[Stephen Pound]

I do not want to interrupt my right hon. Friend’s flow, but he will be aware, as we all are, that on 16 December last year, Jenny Swift tragically killed herself in HMP Doncaster. The position of transgender prisoners is one that has agonising implications, and we simply have to recognise that. Does he agree that we need to do more for transgender prisoners in view of the horrendous record of self-harm and suicide that has afflicted them?

[Mr Hanson]

I agree. I think the first question at yesterday’s Justice questions was about that very issue and the Secretary of State indicated that it is a priority for the Government. We do have a number of vulnerable people in prison, and the situation regarding those self-inflicted deaths, as well as the homicides that have occurred, is extremely difficult. As we have heard, there has been a 26% increase in reported incidents of self-harm and we have a massive 35% increase in hospital attendances. We also, sadly, have a massive 34% increase in the number of assaults on prison officers. There are also increases in attacks with bladed weapons, spitting and the use of blunt instruments, which means that the situation is very challenging.

I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has to some extent made a U-turn on the staffing cuts put in place by her predecessors. She will know that it is a real challenge to achieve an increase of 4,000 posts over the next two years to get a net increase of 2,500 officers. I know that the Committee welcomes that on the whole, but we have seen a 26% cut in staffing numbers since 2010, so we will not be anywhere near getting back to the number of prisoner officers who were in post in May 2010. The Secretary of State needs to look at how we will achieve that.

That is not the only concern we have today, however, and, in the absence of the Chair, I want to highlight some of the things that we in the Justice Committee are currently considering. I hope that the prisons Minister will respond to these key issues. As a Labour MP, I would like to be in a position to be able to implement policies now, but Labour Members will not be able to do that for some years, so we need to offer strong scrutiny to what the Government are doing. That is the key thing for the Justice Committee in the next few weeks and months.

We have now established a prisons sub-committee to look at a range of issues to do with governor empowerment and the challenges faced by the Minister. I am pleased to share a role on that sub-committee with the hon. Member for Banbury. However, we are still a little short of some of the detail about the Government’s programme. It would be helpful for the Minister and the Government, not only in the winding-up speech but in the forthcoming debates, to look at putting the meat on the current extent of their activities so that we can judge what will be taking place in whatever time they have left in office.

We can talk about what the Opposition’s alternative policy would be, but the election could be almost three and a half years away, and the Government have a key role to play before then. We have heard today that governor empowerment will take place in April—just over two months’ time. One third of prison governors will be given greater power and autonomy, but I am genuinely not yet clear about how that will work in practice, what the benchmarks will be, how Ministers will monitor those governors, what the outcomes will be for those governors, and what freedoms they will have to make a difference. I am not sure that the speed of bringing in those changes has yet been thought through by the Government. As the Minister will know, six reform prisons were piloted only in the last six months, and we do not yet know the outcomes of those reforms. It is incumbent on the Minister to indicate the current outcomes for those six reform prisons.

I am not clear about the accountability either. I used to have the prisons Minister’s job, so I know that when something goes wrong in a prison, it will end up on the prisons Minister’s desk, and almost certainly on the front of the Daily Mail or The Sun. I am not clear about how accountability will work in relation to prison governors, so I would like some clarity today from the Minister about what a decision in a prison 200 miles from his office in the Ministry of Justice will mean for accountability when it ultimately lands on his desk.

I want some clarity today about what the commissioning process will be for prison governors. Do they have the skills and training to be able to commission services for employment, health or procurement? Those things have previously been done centrally. I am not sure whether all that local commissioning will mean that we lose some of the Ministry’s economies of scale.

In a fractured, localised system, what is the role of the MOJ when setting out directions? I am not sure how governors will recruit local prison officers. I would welcome some clarification, on behalf of our Committee, as to whether terms and conditions of service, training and delivery will be devolved. Those issues go to the heart of the Government amendment, and to the heart of the work of the sub-committee, which will be looking at them on a cross-party basis in the near future.

I am not sure whether there is discretion. When we heard evidence from Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust last week, he said that this would

“unleash competition between governors, prisons and probation and between prison, probation and the police. It is a competitive environment. There are pros and cons to that, but it is likely to drive up cost overall.”

We need some real vision and clarity from Ministers, not on the direction of travel—we know what that is—but on what the bones of that travel will be.

It is also important that we have an indication of what the performance measurements and league tables will look like. Ultimately, as the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East have said, we are caring for people through the gate. Most prisoners will leave prison and return to society, and our duty as the state is to ensure that they return in a way that does not lead them to reoffend, and that they contribute positively to society. We need more facts and more direction from the Government.

HMP Birmingham

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have recounted the events of the day as far as we are aware of them, but there will be a full investigation that will make all those facts clear.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is a noted thespian and I know he will therefore greatly enjoy the warm acclamation he receives when he now rises again from his seat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Pound]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.

[Stephen Pound]

No one could seriously attempt to deny that there is something rotten in the prison estate in this country at the present time. However, I would like to give the Government credit for finally considering the issue of post-release employment. Many inmates believe that, when you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. The Secretary of State has on her Benches probably the greatest expert in Parliament on that particular subject. Would she consider seconding the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson), to her Department—he might not thank me for my suggestion —to produce a report to the House in, say, six months’ time on what the Government are doing on post-release employment? The issue really is that crucial.

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is vital to ensure that people have a job to go to when they leave custody. I am already working closely with that Minister’s “family” on this, and the prisons Minister will publish a report on the issue next year. We are examining plans to ensure that governors are held accountable for their effectiveness in getting offenders from their prisons into work.

West London Coroner’s Court

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I echo the feelings of everyone here today in thanking the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), and I express our sympathy for his personal loss. He understands, as do many of us, but perhaps not to the same degree, how much pain can be caused by even casual incompetence. Just under 18 months ago, a very talented and beautiful 14-year-old girl in my constituency, a neighbour of mine, died. I will not refer to the case directly, but we now know that the case papers were left on a train—I can scarcely imagine the pain and agony caused to that family, who suffered again.

Like all Members here, I have a catalogue of complaints about the operation of the coroner’s office, and they tend to fall into two categories. One is the most basic administrative errors. A constituent of mine, Roniel Mulchan, died on 28 November last year. His mother had some very basic and simple questions to ask of the coroner. We wrote in February 2015, in March and in June—no answers did we receive.

I hear from the hon. Gentleman that the telephone system has improved, and I would like to say that to my constituent Sally McMahon, whose mother died very recently, God rest her soul. My constituent tried to ring the coroner’s office and was told that it shut at 4 o’clock —this was at 3.20 pm. I rang on 10 December and received the same message at 3 o’clock in the afternoon saying, “We are only open until 4 o’clock.” That is casual incompetence of a degree that piles Pelion on Ossa when it comes to the suffering of individuals.

In another particularly unpleasant case, the absence of information was so awful that I wrote to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office in July 2015 on behalf of Dr Batten, whose relative, a constituent of mine, had died. The complaint started with the typical waiting for 45 minutes, rudeness and that sort of stuff, which could almost be discounted. However, as part of the response I received from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office—my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) is familiar with this, as I am sure the Minister is, but I had previously been unaware—I learned:

“The Coroner’s Office is not run directly by the Coroner, staff and resources are provided by the Local Authority for the area and the Police service. Therefore, if you wish to further your complaint about your experience with the Coroner’s Office…you may wish to contact the Police Service and the Local Authority”.

Sir Roger, you are a distinguished Member of Parliament and you have probably dealt with more casework than anybody else in the room. When you receive a letter such as that, I am sure your reaction is precisely the same as mine, which is, “How on earth can we operate a system where the buck is passed with such dizzying speed that it is more like an ice hockey puck, and it cannot be slowed down in court?”

However, in many ways the most unpleasant, the most egregious and the most disturbing case that I know of relates to the daughter—the child daughter—of my constituent, Mr Seefat Sadat. His daughter died on 17 April 2013. After six months, he came to see me to ask why the inquest had not yet taken place, and I wrote, and I wrote, and I rang, and I wrote, and I wrote again. I then contacted the then Minister, the right hon. Simon Hughes, and received a response from the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) in April 2015. Two years after this child’s death, the inquest had not taken place, and we were told that there were various reasons for that. The right hon. Gentleman—I place no blame whatever at his step—said that the West London senior coroner, who has been referred to obliquely today, telephoned my constituent, as he says,

“on or around 1 April”—

he cannot be sure—

“explaining the problems within his area that have caused this long delay and that he now expects the inquest to take place in June”,

And saying that the coroner was going to reallocate the case on Morwa Sadat’s death. The right hon. Gentleman then went on to point out some structural difficulties and problems within the system.

That simply is not good enough—it is not good enough. We are talking about people who are in agony, who are grieving and who are in pain, and they are hanging on the telephone. They are being fed nonsense, and a child’s death remains unexamined for two years—two years—and I have to bring in Ministers in the coalition Government and even Ministers in the present Government. Fortunately, thanks be to God, it has now been resolved.

How on earth can we say to our constituents, “Trust the system, trust the coroner’s office”, when we have this constant, almost ceaseless, list or catalogue of incompetence? Even when the incompetence is almost casual incompetence, the reverberations it causes throughout a family are so awful.

[Dr Mathias]

I have had experience of very similar situations, and what is distressing for us as MPs is that people’s grieving process is unnecessarily extended and made worse, so there are not just administrative consequences.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Lady speaks from a privileged position, because in her profession before she entered this place she obviously had closer dealings with the coroner’s office than many of us do. The fact that she says that certainly adds weight to the point, and I am even more concerned given that she makes those comments.

[Mr Grieve]

The case that I cited was unusual, because, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, my constituency does not fall within the area of the coroner in question. I was therefore particularly startled to receive the information from my constituent about the difficulties she was having with that coroner’s court, because it is so completely at variance with my experience of the other coroner’s courts that I have had to deal with. I would be most interested to know what is so particular about west London as to cause these immense problems, if indeed they are outside the coroner’s hands.

[Stephen Pound]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman also speaks from a position of great authority. It is not for me to say; I hope that the Minister, when she responds to the debate, will indicate some way in which we can ventilate these issues further. I do not believe that west London is unique; I do not believe that it has more problems than, for example, east London. What I think we are talking about here is a structural failure. There is a failure of leadership, without a doubt. The problem is that we have a failing structure, and the leadership required to take the matter forward is absent.

I am conscious of your strictures, Sir Roger, and I want to allow other people to speak. I will simply close by again congratulating the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton on securing this debate and expressing my sympathy to him. I add that the finest tribute in remembrance of his father will be if we, today and in this place, can improve the situation not only for individuals here today but for all our constituents now and in the future. Quite frankly, anything else would be wholly and utterly unacceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

I was not aware of that as I am from the north-east and I do not watch the local news when I am down here. What my hon. Friend says gives a good indication of the lack of care and sensitivity that has been experienced by families who have to access the service at such a devastating time. It seems odd to me that councils and the Met provide admin staff support, but do not have responsibility for the overall service. That confuses families at a time when they should not be expected to find their way through some web of the civil service.

I will not speak for too much longer, because I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to explain what she intends to do to put that right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) has indicated, the council has called for the JCIO to investigate.

[Stephen Pound]

I want to put something seriously on the record, bearing in mind what my hon. Friend has just said, before the Minister responds. The debate is more in sorrow than in anger. It is not an attack on the Government in any way, shape or form. We are absolutely united here. The tone struck by my hon. Friend is exactly the right one. We are not seeking to blame the Government, but we are looking for some hope from the Government on how this situation can be resolved with the greatest expediency.

[Jenny Chapman]

That is exactly right. I know the Minister will care deeply about this and will want to respond and put this matter right as quickly as she possibly can.

The JCIO will let us know in January whether it intends to conduct a full investigation into matters in west London. I sincerely hope that it agrees to do that, and I hope that it is done in a timely fashion so that families who are currently experiencing delays can have their cases heard as quickly as possible, and so that the wider community can have confidence in the service. That is something the Minister will care deeply about and want to put right. I will stop now so that she has as much time as possible to let us know exactly what she intends to do.

Transpeople (Prisons)

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I committed myself to providing the information on numbers in answer to an earlier question, but I assure my hon. Friend that decency is at the heart of everything that we do. We are reviewing this issue with outside stakeholders, and if we need to think again about our provision and the way in which we deal with these issues, we will consider doing so.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Along with, I think, everyone else in the House, I am grateful to the Minister for his sober, sympathetic and serious response. Does he agree that the finest memorial to Vicky Thompson—the finest tribute to her memory—would be for us to ensure that no one else has to die such a lonely death? Does he also agree that, while the number of prison officers may be an absolute figure, we need not just prison officers but specialist helpers? We need mental health advisers and medical support. We cannot simply go to prison officers and say, “We want you to do more”; we must give them more, to prevent such an horrendous tragedy from occurring again.

[Andrew Selous]

I agree with every word of what the hon. Gentleman has said. We are very well supported by mental health experts in prisons, and he is right to mention the work done by, for instance, psychologists, and indeed by a range of healthcare professionals. They are integral to the prison team, whose members work hand in glove with them, and they will be at the heart of issues such as this in the future.

Corporate Economic Crime

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of prosecuting corporate economic crime.

It is hardly necessary for me to point out what a pleasure it is to serve under your auspices, Mr Stringer, and I am sure that I speak for every person in the room when I say that it is marvellous to be here on this crisp autumnal morning. As the fog lifts from our city, I intend to cut through some of the fog around Government policy on the prosecution of economic crime. I have every confidence that the Minister will be able to illuminate this dark part of the legislative process. I called this debate to focus on economic crime and on whether our law enforcement agencies and related prosecuting authorities have the necessary tools to prosecute such crimes.

All current indicators seem to show that economic crime, such as fraud, tax evasion or bribery, are on the rise. City traders, previously perceived as paragons of virtue, are being convicted of rigging key bank lending rates, and some of our biggest banks and institutions are under investigation, challenging the very fabric of our society. This debate is clearly timely and important and comes at a point when the Government are sending out, if I may say, extremely mixed signals about their approach to holding individuals and companies to account for wrongdoing. It gives me no pleasure to say that they appear to have U-turned on a key manifesto pledge. It is widely accepted that a major issue in corporate economic crime in this country is how we can hold companies to account for their actions, and in particular make corporate wrongdoing a criminal offence. The UK’s corporate criminal liability framework is widely considered to be inadequate and lags far behind that of the US.

The Government have made some promising signals about finally getting to grips with the matter, with the Attorney General promising in September 2014 to introduce a corporate liability offence, a promise repeated—may I say, carved in stone?—in the Conservative’s manifesto. Yet, having heard nothing since the election, we learned just over a month ago that the Government no longer see any need for such an offence, even claiming that no such economic crimes go unpunished, which is a slightly Panglossian perspective that I hope to challenge in the next few paragraphs of my speech. Given what we know about economic crime, the impact that it has on businesses and the difficulties that law enforcement agencies face in prosecuting individuals and companies for such crimes, the decision is extremely disappointing. I hope that when the Minister has listened to the many concerns raised in the debate, he will be able to reassure hon. Members that he will look again at the proposals.

It is always a good idea to define what one is talking about. In response to the fairly reasonable question, “What is economic crime?” I turn, as sadly do so many people in the Labour party nowadays, to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Its economic crime survey defines economic crime as

“the intentional use of deceit to deprive another of money, property or a legal right.”

That includes money laundering, bribery, tax evasion and fraud, and such acts can be committed by employees of companies. The financial services industry, according to a recent Treasury risk assessment, is seen as being at most risk of harbouring money-laundering activities. I will return later to how we can prosecute or deter such activities, but one way is to hold companies liable if they have not adequately prevented such activities, and to make it an offence to have not prevented economic crime. For those present who sat through the debates on the Bribery Act 2010, this will be familiar territory.

The Government announced in late September that they were no longer pursuing proposals to introduce a corporate liability offence, on the basis that such an offence is unnecessary. That came to light in a fairly roundabout way following a written question from the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies),who is a prominent member of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption, requesting an update, to which the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), replied:

“The UK has corporate criminal liability and commercial organisations can be, and are, prosecuted for wrongdoing. The UK Anti-Corruption Plan tasked the Ministry of Justice to examine the case for a new offence of a corporate failure to prevent economic crime and the rules on establishing corporate criminal liability more widely. Ministers have decided not to carry out further work at this stage as there have been no prosecutions under the model Bribery Act offence and there is little evidence of corporate economic wrongdoing going unpunished.”

That prompts the question whether there is any evidence of economic crime going unpunished, and how prevalent economic crime is. The figures speak for themselves. KPMG’s twice-yearly fraud barometer—riveting reading that I recommend to all Members—reports that fraudulent activity in the UK totalled £385 million in the first half of 2015, which is up 22% on last year. The Government’s National Fraud Authority—a marvellous title—has reported a £52 billion-a-year loss to the UK economy from fraud. Indeed, the Attorney General himself has identified the growing threat of economic crime in this country. In a 2014 speech announcing his intention of pursuing the case for a new corporate liability offence, he observed that

“in the modern global economy, economic crime is more pervasive than ever before…the evolving nature of economic crime means we need to continue to find and develop new ways to expose and combat it.”

More high-profile cases of economic crime are being alleged or prosecuted. This summer saw the first prosecution of a UBS City trader following the LIBOR scandal. Tom Hayes was found guilty of rigging global LIBOR interest rates and sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud in a case brought by the Serious Fraud Office. Two more British traders are also standing trial in New York for their alleged role in a scheme to rig LIBOR. That followed the extraordinary revelations in February that the Swiss private banking arm of HSBC, which is headquartered in London, had helped over 100,000 wealthy individuals to evade and dodge tax all over the world. HSBC has admitted to that. In spite of all that, the number of defendants prosecuted by the SFO and City of London police—as I presume everybody knows, as well as investigating crime, it is often the lead agency in such matters—has fallen by a fifth since 2011, from 11,261 then to 9,343 last year. According to the Financial Times, the fall in prosecutions has been largely put down to both a lack of resources, given the significant spending cuts of the past five years, and the fact that agencies are ill-equipped to pursue and prosecute white-collar crimes.

How do we make sure our law enforcement agencies are properly equipped to ensure that those who commit economic crimes are held accountable, punished and ultimately deterred? The answer many turn to is some form of corporate liability offence, which essentially makes it a crime if a company fails to prevent acts of economic crime, such as fraud and bribery. However, with one exception, such an offence does not exist in the UK. Instead, current UK corporate liability law is based on the identification principle. Again, this will be familiar territory to those who remember the passage of the 2010 Act. To prove that a company is guilty of an economic crime, the prosecutor must show that a person who is the directing or controlling mind of the company intended to commit, or had knowledge of, the criminal act. That requires identifying somebody at the most senior level in a company as being responsible. In the modern, globalised world in which we live, where companies span numerous national borders and jurisdictions, that is no small task; it is virtually impossible. Many believe that it sets the bar far too high for prosecutors to prove corporate liability. There is one exception: bribery, in which that burden of proof is essentially reversed.

Thanks to section 7 of the 2010 Act, which the previous Labour Government introduced, commercial organisations can be held liable if they are found to have failed to prevent bribery by their employees; unsurprisingly, that is known as the “failure to prevent” principle. As such, companies are required by law to prove that they have carried out adequate procedures to prevent acts of bribery by their employees. That acts as their statutory defence. Many see section 7 as a model that could be used to hold corporates criminally liable for all kinds of economic crime, not just bribery. The director of the SFO, David Green, has made it clear on a number of occasions that he would support such a move. In 2013, he said:

“A more sensible and just approach might be that embodied in Section 1 of the Bribery Act 2010. This creates the offence of a commercial organisation ‘failing to prevent’ bribery by its employees, with a statutory ‘adequate procedures’ defence. Extending this approach, a Corporate, or certain types of Corporate (such as banks and companies listed on stock exchange) could be liable for failing to prevent certain types of criminal offence by their employees subject to a statutory defence.”

Until recently, that view was echoed by the Attorney General, who said a little more than a year ago, in his first major speech in the role:

“Government officials are considering proposals for the creation of an offence of a corporate failure to prevent economic crime, modelled on the Bribery Act section 7 offence.”

That promising start from the Attorney General did not last, and the Government have now decided that no such offence is required, despite the fact that the leading prosecuting authority for white-collar crime, the SFO, clearly favours such an offence.

What people had to say about that decision can help us to understand how important many see a new corporate liability offence as being to strengthening the ability of law enforcement agencies to prosecute white-collar crime. Robert Amaee, a former head of anti-corruption at the SFO, said:

“This retraction by the government is unlikely to be welcomed by the prosecutors who have been calling for an extension of the law on corporate criminal liability. I expect that there will be renewed enthusiasm for revisiting this topic once the SFO has shown that it can bring successful prosecutions under the existing failing to prevent bribery offence.”

Alan Sheeley, head of civil fraud and asset recovery at Pinsent Masons, said:

“The new criminal offence of failure to prevent bribery might not have resulted in any dedicated prosecutions as yet, but its impact on the attitudes and policies of businesses of all sizes has been staggering. I would have expected the potential legislation of failing to prevent economic crime to have the same impact if and when implemented. Frankly, this seems like a wasted opportunity by the UK government to target economic crime and, at the same time, reinforce the role of the UK as a leader in tackling economic crime in global financial markets and businesses.”

The Conservative manifesto, a document that I study with great interest and care when I have difficulty getting to sleep at night, states:

“We are also making it a crime if companies fail to put in place measures to stop economic crime, such as tax evasion, in their organisations and making sure that the penalties are large enough to punish and deter.”

Without commenting on the rest of the Conservative manifesto, that was a sensible proposal that seemed to be supported universally. It is therefore disappointing that the Government have seemingly performed a screeching handbrake turn.

Only the month before last, the Treasury published its long-anticipated “UK national risk assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing activities”. We need only look at the report’s conclusions to understand the importance of equipping law enforcement agencies, and of ensuring that prosecuting authorities have the tools in the armoury to prevent and punish economic crime. The report stated:

“The size and complexity of the UK financial sector mean it is more exposed to criminality than financial sectors in many other countries, including abuse enabled by professional enablers in the legal and accountancy sector...The UK’s response is well developed, but more needs to be done to ensure it is commensurate with our status as a well regulated global financial centre.”

I speak as a London MP, and about 60% of the offences we are discussing take place in my city. More clearly needs to be done; that is the key.

A criminal offence of failing to prevent economic crime would enable agencies and authorities to do more; as we have heard from the director of the SFO, it would clearly help him and his teams to do more. In our increasingly interconnected, digital world, economic crime is arguably more prevalent than ever before, as the Attorney General has conceded. The tools at our disposal and the resources available to our agencies and authorities must evolve to keep pace with developments.

I hope that the Minister can today say proudly that the option of introducing a criminal offence for failing to prevent economic crime is still on the Government’s agenda and that they intend to propose one in due course. I hope the Minister will be able to provide that reassurance today, because given the events of 2007-08 and everything that followed, the public have a right to expect that those who defraud, launder money or commit other white-collar crimes are brought to justice.

In common with many Members of Parliament, I have a fantasy. My fantasy—don’t worry, Minister—relates to the marvellous “The Comic Strip Presents” television series. “The Strike” showed how Hollywood would imagine the miners’ strike. Al Pacino played Arthur Scargill, and Jennifer Saunders played Meryl Streep. At one stage a young Arthur Scargill entered the Chamber of the House of Commons and made an impassioned speech in favour of the mineworkers, whereupon the Speaker, who was apparently Leader of the Opposition and Head of Government at the same time, said, “You have convinced me, Sir. We will throw out all our existing policies on pit closures and reverse everything. We will do precisely what you, young Scargill, have asked for.”

I would not put myself in the place of Al Pacino or Arthur Scargill, but how wonderful it would be if the Minister said, “Having considered the matter, I will break free from the shackles of this Government and from the rigid centralism that permeates the Conservative party. I accept that a point has been made and that we need to do something. We will act; we will overturn the previous policy U-turn, and we will revert to the noble words in the Conservative party manifesto. We will introduce that crime.” The nation would be happy; the City might not be utterly delighted in the first instance, but it would be delighted as our reputation improved; and, above all, the SFO and decent people who care for the probity of our financial services in these islands would look to the Minister and thank him, were he to make that statement today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend makes an important point when she talks about existing legislation but an absence of will. When deferred prosecution agreements were introduced, as part of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, we could have gone the way of the United States, which uses them with great skill and effectiveness, but for some reason not a single DPA has been signed off in this country. Does she agree that that is an example of where the legislation exists, but the will demonstrably does not?

[Kate Osamor]

That is a fantastic point, and I totally agree.

I end by urging the Government both to honour their manifesto pledge to tackle economic crime and to reassess their rejection of extending the Bribery Act to cover all kinds of economic crime.

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure for me, too, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) for introducing the debate. I also thank the hon. Members for Neath (Christina Rees), for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for their thoughtful and insightful contributions.

The debate is predicated on the widely held public view that the bankers seem to have got away with it over the last five, six or seven years. Whether that is correct or not, it is certainly the widely held public perception. The urgings from the Opposition and the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge seemed to indicate that they were inclined to address that widely held view. I welcome that, and it is right that the issue is addressed. As we have heard from Opposition Members, corporate economic crime has increased over the last few years, and there is a question about whether both the means and the inclination and the will to tackle it exist.

I speak on behalf of the Scottish National party, of course, and section 7 of the Bribery Act applies only to England and Wales, not to Scotland. Most of the prosecutions that could be brought by the Serious Fraud Office or another entity relate to subjects—financial crime and financial regulation—that are reserved functions. However, Scotland has a long and well established criminal court system, which could bring charges for individual crimes to bear on individual directors, but as we have heard, those tools may not be up to the job. The SNP would be very interested, to say the least, in Government proposals on this point, but we recognise that there are difficulties. We, too, live in a jurisdiction where the prevalent public perception is that the bankers have got away with it. My constituents, like people across Scotland, are demanding that something be done.

I should declare a slight interest as a former practising lawyer, qualified on both sides of the border. Having come to this debate fairly recently, one difficulty I would point to is the difference between holding a company, as opposed to an individual, criminally liable. I am not saying that we could not get around that problem in law, but it strikes me, as a legally qualified person, that there are difficulties involved in bringing an entity into the realms of criminal liability. However, if the Government come up with proposals to get round that, I would certainly look at them.

The message to the Government from the SNP and Scotland is that if they do consider giving Scotland more tools to address these reserved issues, they should carefully consider the provisions that already exist in Scots law and make sure that the principles of Scots law are not set aside. It is in that spirit of co-operation that I come to the debate, and I am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say. We welcome moves to tackle this issue, but we are cautious about how they can be achieved.

When it comes to how the bankers have apparently got away with it, the message I hear from my constituents and from people across Scotland is really about actions and consequences. Over the last five to eight years, many ordinary people have, they would argue, suffered enormous consequences as a result of the actions of others. The public’s view in Scotland—I suppose this is replicated across the rest of the UK—is that there are people in the financial services industry who are earning huge sums and have suffered no consequences as a result of their actions or the actions of the company they are employed by. On the face of it, that needs to be addressed. We in Scotland are very interested to hear what the Minister has to say about what seems to be a substantial tide of opinion. Of course, we recognise that there are difficulties, which need to be addressed in any proposals.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Gentleman brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the matter, which is welcome. In the context of what he was saying about perceptions, is he aware that in the summer BIS consulted the business community about whether to water down Labour’s Bribery Act guidance to businesses? That surely sends completely the wrong signal to business. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when there is consultation on whether even a measure as modest yet effective as the Bribery Act 2010 is potentially dilutable—if there is such a word—it sends an appalling signal?

[Richard Arkless]

Yes, wholeheartedly. The public perception is real and tangible, and in my view it is entirely based in fact. The Government’s reluctance to continue on the road, and the suggestion that the 2010 Act, which does not apply to Scotland, might even be watered down, sends entirely the wrong message. If we can convince the public that we are serious about the issue, the trust in financial services that has evaporated in the past five to 10 years can, I hope, be restored. The reason Parliament thought it right to bail out the banks was their intrinsic role in the economy, and that has not changed; however, the public need to have confidence in the financial services sector. For the time being, they do not have such confidence, and I will be interested to see what the Government will propose.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) on securing this important debate on prosecuting corporate economic crime, and on his argument, which he put forward with his customary elegance. The debate is timely, in the light of recent announcements by Ministers. I congratulate all the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, who made powerful contributions and set out strongly the arguments that the Government should listen to. Each of them made important points, to which I shall refer. I do not mean to diminish the Minister’s presence when I say that I am disappointed that neither of the Law Officers could attend the debate. I hope that is not a sign of Government obfuscation on these important issues.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), I am not here to bash bankers. The City of London is the world’s second-largest financial centre and a major contributor to the UK economy. Its success is clearly founded on the professionalism and integrity—for the most part—of those who work in the sector. That is why we cannot allow its reputation to be undermined by the actions of the minority who engage in fraud, corruption and market manipulation. Yet despite the events of 2007 and 2008, and all that has followed—parliamentary commissions, Select Committee inquiries and the setting up of new regulators—economic or white-collar crime remains a serious problem in the UK. We need only look at the horrifying spectre of LIBOR rate rigging to be reminded of why the Government cannot rest on their laurels in this matter; yet the ability of our law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to tackle such pernicious crimes remains limited.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North pointed out, the Government gave some promising signals. They announced the introduction of a senior managers regime to hold named executives to account for their actions, and they pledged to introduce a new corporate offence of failure to prevent economic crime. It is disappointing that that was not, as my hon. Friend pointed out, etched in stone, but it was in the manifesto for all to see. Both proposals were seen as vital to prevent the repetition of the failings of the past and bring the UK regime into the 21st century. However, in both cases, the Government have backtracked.

What do we know about the reasons for the Government’s change of heart about the corporate liability offence? According to a response to a written question to the Ministry of Justice,

“there is little evidence of corporate economic wrongdoing going unpunished”,

despite the fact that according to the Financial Conduct Authority banks have paid an estimated £1.8 billion in compensation for mis-selling financial products such as interest rate swaps and have already set aside an additional £27 billion to compensate for payment protection insurance mis-selling. That is not to mention the £4.4 billion lost each year to tax evasion, according to the latest estimates from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, or the countless banks and financial institutions that are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for various types of misconduct, but have not yet been prosecuted. Why have the Government concluded that no action is required? I hope that the Minister can enlighten us.

Some recent disclosures are cause for concern. Last month, the Treasury published the national risk assessment, the first comprehensive assessment of the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing—both from within the UK and flowing through it. It is the first assessment of its kind and has been highly anticipated since the Government committed themselves to producing it, in their 2014 anti-corruption plan. The Government’s assessment of the risks posed by elements in the financial sector is clear:

“The size and complexity of the UK financial sector mean it is more exposed to criminality than financial sectors in many other countries, including abuse enabled by professional enablers in the legal and accountancy sector”.

Nevertheless, the report notes that the UK has “significant intelligence gaps” with respect to money laundering, despite what is judged to be a serious threat from, for example, the legal, banking and accountancy sectors. The conclusions are not encouraging:

“The UK’s response is well developed, but more needs to be done to ensure it is commensurate with our status as a well regulated global financial centre.”

The message is clear: far more needs to be done. I would therefore welcome reassurance from the Minister that something is being done. The aim must be to ensure that the appropriate measures are in place to deter behaviour that facilitates or contributes to the committing of economic crime. That would not only encourage good practice and the right corporate culture, but mean that wrongdoers were held accountable, which would be a deterrent. There is widespread concern that the UK’s current corporate liability regime is not up to the job. That is the view of the Law Commission and the OECD’s working group on bribery, both of which have produced seminal work on the subject. Both concluded that the current regime does not allow the UK to hold corporations and key persons within them to account effectively for their part in economic crimes.

In its extensive work on the UK’s corporate liability measures, the Law Commission described the present regime as

“an inappropriate and ineffective method of establishing criminal liability of corporations”.

It also noted the unfairness inherent in the identification doctrine, explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North, which makes it far easier to prosecute smaller companies, where the “directing mind” is more easily determined, than large corporations with much more diffuse chains of command.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend raises a point that has given me pause for thought. Does she agree that there is such a thing as a corporate culture in certain companies—I think that there is ample evidence of such behaviour—and that if, often, the culture is not in the interest of probity or the wider public, it is difficult to identify the person of whom an example should be made? If the culture is allowed to fester and permeate, inevitably it spreads. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an issue of identifying an individual, pour encourager les autres at the very least?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that goes to the heart of the argument. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon argued cogently that, ultimately, we need a better way of establishing responsibility for the actions of a company and those who serve within it. It is not enough for those at the top to wash their hands of responsibility for the actions of the officers and employees who operate, act and work under the company’s name.

There needs to be much greater clarity about the legal framework. Many bodies, including the Law Commission, have called for that. What is even more key is that the Government seem to share that view. In a consultation undertaken in July 2015 on the introduction of a new corporate offence of failure to prevent tax evasion, the Government concluded:

“Under the existing law it can be extremely difficult to hold the corporations to account for the criminal actions of their agents”.

That observation has been made by the Government and Ministers on several occasions, as well as by my hon. Friends in their contributions today.

The Law Commission, the OECD working group and the director of the Serious Fraud Office point to section 7 of Labour’s Bribery Act as a potential solution. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North set out in his speech, section 7 of the Bribery Act makes it an offence to fail to prevent bribery. It places the onus on companies to prove that they have put in place adequate procedures to prevent bribery and is widely seen as a far more effective way of holding companies and the individuals within them to account, which is why many want to see that model extended to other types of economic crime.

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and anticipates my next point. First, I want to clarify exactly where the Government seem to be on this issue.

The Government’s recent announcement has caused much confusion among those who care about this issue, because it seems to be very much at odds with what they have been saying and the messages and signals they have been sending out. In his first speech as Attorney General over a year ago, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) suggested that he was considering the section 7 proposal. We then discovered, in an answer to a written parliamentary question, that it had been dropped. We need clarity from the Minister today about exactly why that decision was made and what the Government will do to ensure that our concerns are addressed if they are not proceeding with that proposal.

The director of the Serious Fraud Office, David Green, has made clear his support for the expansion of section 7 of the Bribery Act. He has described how useful it would be to better facilitate the use of deferred prosecution agreements. My hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) set out eloquently how deferred prosecution agreements work and their potential importance in dealing with some of the issues that have been highlighted. It is no secret that the Serious Fraud Office director favours the use of DPAs, which are currently more widely used in the United States. To clarify, they provide for a corporation to avoid prosecution by entering into an agreement with a number of conditions attached, which may include paying a financial penalty, paying compensation or co-operating with future prosecutions of individuals. In doing so, they avoid prosecution. The aim is to hold key individuals to account, to secure significant financial penalties from companies that have committed wrongdoing and, ultimately, to prevent future wrongdoing by encouraging or mandating reforms within those companies.

Deferred prosecution agreements are not without their critics, but they have been widely used in the US for the past 20 years or so and brought in some $4.2 billion to the Department of Justice in 2014 alone. One key problem with importing the use of DPAs to the UK is that they are intended to be a carrot, while the stick is the prospect of prosecution for corporate economic offences.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend is giving us a masterclass, and it is greatly appreciated. I am sure that she, like me, felt her heart leap when the American authorities started to act against FIFA using their Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Does she agree that we can learn much, for once, from the American example and the action they took against the appalling, utterly corrupt situation regarding FIFA? I am not remotely comparing any British business to FIFA—it would be hard to find anything outside the Augean stables or the seventh circle of hell that compared to that organisation. The Americans seem able to achieve things that we cannot. Is that because of the quality of the excellent US Attorney General and her staff, or should we be learning from the American legislation?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We should not shy away from learning lessons from any jurisdiction that manages to control risk, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon highlighted, and to hold companies to account where wrongdoing has occurred. Where there are lessons to be learned from the US, we should learn them and do what we can to implement them within our own system. We could then hold ourselves up as a beacon for other countries and hold our heads high as a well-regulated, world-leading financial centre. That has to be our aim in all of this.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Neath pointed out, without the fear of corporate economic crime being prosecuted, there is little incentive for companies to enter deferred prosecution agreements and no incentive for companies to co-operate with the SFO to change their practices as mandated under a DPA. Unlike in the US, which has far stronger vicarious liability laws, there are still far too few corporate prosecutions in the UK under the current identification principle. No matter how much we may wish to learn from the United States—if that is what we see as the right way forward—without a strengthened corporate liability regime, we will be hampered in our efforts to implement such changes.

Finally, I turn to another area that shows concerning signs of backtracking by the Government and in which we would otherwise have seen individuals in companies held accountable for their own and others’ actions. In its 2013 report on the banking sector and how to prevent the failings that led to the 2008 crash, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards similarly recognised the difficulty in identifying individuals and holding them to account. One of its key recommendations was to introduce a senior managers regime to hold named executives personally responsible for key risks in the bank. That issue was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon, who made a powerful speech about encouraging better and more responsible management within companies to change bad practice where it is found. The commission recommended that the regime place a burden of proof on those named executives, who would have to show the regulator that they had done all they reasonably could to prevent failings or misconduct if they were to avoid sanction.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

I am grateful for your advice, Mr Stringer, and it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. At the outset, I should say on behalf of the Solicitor General that he is caught up in the Immigration Bill Committee, and although I understand the chagrin about that of the shadow Justice Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), my hon. and learned Friend is attending to important business there.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) for securing the debate and for delivering a tenacious, eloquent speech in his usual fashion. He made some excellent points. I fear that he may have rather lost me at Arthur Scargill, even if other Opposition Members were rather more enthused, but none the less, he made some very important points. I also formally recognise the important contributions from the hon. Members for Neath (Christina Rees), for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) and from the shadow Justice Minister.

I think that we all agree that the prosecution of corporate economic crime is vital and can be complex. We have heard about some of the challenges this morning and there are others, but there are opportunities, too, and we should be mindful of seizing them as best we can. One issue has been the identification principle, which applies in many instances of economic crime and sets a clear bar that must be met before a corporate can be found criminally liable. Technical challenges around the disclosure of material, for example, can also be very significant, not least given the huge volumes of material that need to be sifted and potentially disclosed in many of these cases.

Much has been made of section 7 of the Bribery Act, which makes it an offence for corporates to fail to prevent bribery in certain circumstances. As important as that provision and model is, I did rather feel that hon. Members have pinned a huge amount of confidence—I would not say blind faith—in a model and provision which has not yet secured any convictions, although I appreciate that it was authored under a previous Government. To be clear—I am not saying that the hon. Member for Neath was suggesting this—I do not think that anyone seriously blames the Government for failing to enforce that. Prosecutions in this country are rightly independent from Government interference and we want to see full use made of the measure. I just say—the hon. Member for Ealing North will perhaps want to address this point—that Opposition Members have pinned rather a lot on a measure that has not yet delivered a prosecution, much as we wish it will in the near future.

[Stephen Pound]

I entirely agree with the Minister’s point, but there has, in fact, been one self-referred case under section 7 of the Bribery Act. It took place in Scotland and I am not entirely sure how the jurisdiction applies, but it was a self-referred case using precisely that template.

[Mr Raab]

I am grateful for that intervention. I stand better informed than I was before, but obviously I cannot comment on individual prosecutions or cases until they are in a position to conclude.

Much has been made of the Conservative manifesto commitment, rather caricaturing the nature of what was very clearly stated and ignoring the fact that we are specifically further considering legislation relating to tax evasion. As hon. Members will know, but this is an opportunity to remind them, the consultation on that closed on 8 October. I am sure that further announcements will be made in due course.

The shadow Justice Minister made some of her most powerful points on deferred prosecution agreements, which were introduced in the last Parliament and represent a significant opportunity for prosecutors to take action. I think that they rather refute the suggestion that this Government have been either lax or demonstrating inertia in trying to develop the tools we need to deliver convictions and accountability in this area.

It is also worth saying that, as a basic principle, we should try to exercise existing law enforcement powers to the full before we go back to Parliament and ask for more. I fear that it was rather the epitaph of the previous Labour Government to legislate hyperactively and leave the statute book littered with offences that were not really ever used in practice, so I make no apology for saying that we really ought to be crafting criminal legislation on the statute book that will deliver convictions in practice.

The hon. Member for Aberavon, who unfortunately is no longer in his place, made an interesting speech. He widened the debate to talk about systemic risk, which is an important point, and expressed some of the concerns about the 2007-08 financial crisis that are understandably still feeding calls for further action to be taken now. In that context, I highlight the action that has been taken on the banks by the coalition Government and this Conservative Government in relation to capital ratios, the bank levy and regulating to ensure proper separation between the investment and retail arms of banks. He was absolutely right to make that point, but the whole system of regulation on systemic risk looks fundamentally different today from when the Labour Government left office in 2010.

Going back to the identification principle, we have heard that the law on corporate and criminal liability has that very much at its heart. The identification principle means that a corporate is criminally liable only if a person who is its controlling mind and will is criminally liable. In most cases, there will be liability only if a director is criminally liable. Hon. Members made perfectly reasonable points about that and about the related difficulties and challenges. Many other assertions were made about the state of the current law, such as that the evidential threshold is too high and that it makes it easier to prosecute smaller businesses than larger corporates and particularly difficult to prosecute large and complex multinational corporations. Those are all valid points, rather inherent, though, in trying to regulate and enforce offences in this sector. We certainly do not want small businesses to be hammered while the big ones get off scot-free. That is absolutely the wrong approach and one that we are mindful of the need to avoid.

Other points made about the current state of the law are that it can result in corporates escaping prosecution where there is criminal wrongdoing on behalf of a corporate and the corporate benefits; it does not do enough to deter economic crime in the UK or to promote good corporate governance; and it puts UK prosecutors at a disadvantage compared with some law enforcement agencies overseas where the attribution of corporate criminal liability does not have such a high threshold. The hon. Member for Ealing North made the point about the United States very well. Some have called for a much broader vicarious liability for companies, closer to the US model.

I recognise the point that a different approach, combined with the DPAs introduced in 2013, could have a powerful impact. We need to consider the criminal legal basis along with the prosecutorial tools. That combination is the key to getting more convictions and plea bargains under the DPA arrangements. Notwithstanding the common desire for accountability and convictions, we need to take half a step back and acknowledge the need to be careful to guard the basic principles of justice that we all, at least notionally and rhetorically, hold dear—the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof—and ensure that we have a focused, targeted law enforcement system.

The Bribery Act 2010 contains the much-discussed new offence of failure to prevent bribery by a person associated with the company, which allows prosecutions of corporates for failure to prevent bribery in cases in which the identification principle threshold could not be reached. There have been suggestions for further change by extending the Bribery Act model to other areas. Under that legislation, a commercial organisation is guilty of an offence if a person associated with it bribes another person while intending either to obtain or retain business for the organisation, or to obtain or retain an advantage in the conduct of its business. The legislation sets out that it is a defence for the organisation to prove that it had in place adequate procedures designed to prevent people from undertaking such conduct. That is the balance struck.

The legislation relates specifically to bribery—a very serious economic crime—and is designed to encourage more responsible corporate behaviour. Extending section 7 as some have suggested could criminalise commercial organisations that fail to prevent other types of economic crime, including fraud and tax evasion; I am sure that hon. Members can think of other examples. Some people have urged the Government to go even further and advocated a more dramatic change, calling for legislation to create an offence of vicarious liability. That would be far more like the US model.

As I think was mentioned, the Government published last December the “UK Anti-Corruption Plan”, which included the commitment to consider the case for a new offence of a corporate failing to prevent economic crime. Much has been made of the statement made on 28 September by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), that we will not be carrying out further work on this specific point at least at this time. It is important to understand the reasons for that. Again, they have been rather caricatured, although not intentionally; I would not say that.

The reasons for not taking the work forward at this stage are as follows. First, the UK has corporate criminal liability and commercial organisations can be and are being prosecuted for wrongdoing. Secondly, as I have mentioned, there have been no prosecutions under the Bribery Act offence, so it is not as though we have a huge amount of concrete practice to learn from—in fairness, that point was also made by the hon. Member for Neath. Thirdly, as a result of that and the information and evidence that we get as we look at whether the case is made for new offences, there is little concrete and specific evidence of the wider corporate economic wrongdoing that we should now target that is currently not unlawful and could reasonably be caught by a proposed new offence. If hon. Members want to tell me about a specific area and tailored offence, I will be all ears.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Pound]

Inevitably, this has been an interesting debate; it could not have been otherwise. I hope that the Minister will not consider me ungracious if I say that he has offered hon. Members thin gruel rather than a great Damascene conversion. To get the silly stuff out of the way first, I must just say that it was Peter Richardson playing Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill, just as it was Dawn French playing Meryl Streep playing Mrs Scargill.

I think I know where the Government are coming from. On one hand, they are trying to create a thriving, vibrant business and economic sector, which continues to be as successful as it already is and becomes even more so. On the other hand, they do not want to over-legislate in any way that would restrict that sector. That goes back to what Adam Smith wrote about the actions of business people when they gather together. The 18th century has been characterised as oligarchy tempered by riot, which is the inevitable logic of a completely unregulated financial sector.

I say to the Minister that there is a real problem of perception. Everybody thought that the days written about in books such as Michael Lewis’s “Liar’s Poker”, which was written in the late ’80s about Salomon Brothers, “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “Barbarians at the Gate” had gone. We thought that the macho, only-wimps-eat-lunch days of the City had gone. Particularly given the wise and thoughtful words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, about his time as a City trader, many of us hoped that a different ethical standard was emerging from the City. Sadly, though, the evidence tends to suggest otherwise.

I entirely understand why any pro-business Government —to be honest, a Government that is not pro-business is not worthy of being called a Government—would want to provide succour and support to an incredibly successful sector, which is one of the most important in our economy. However, I gently say to the Minister that the public are not with him. They simply do not see it that way. They see an unregulated financial sector in which individuals go unpunished for wrongdoing. Individuals in the sector make vast, obscene, eye-watering amounts of money. Yes, the odd knighthood may be stripped away, but that is as nothing compared with the sort of punishment meted out to some poor woman who forgets to pay her TV licence and gets hauled up and banged in chokey. The problem of perception is that individuals in the financial sector seem to be getting away with it.

If only we could have an entirely ethical City, we would all be happy. We have not got one, however, so there has to be regulation. Should that be light touch and suggestive legislation in absentia of the sort that the Minister has referred to, or should it be the slightly more rigid and structured legislation that the country is ready for? When the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tried to consult this summer on whether the Bribery Act should be watered down, it sent out a desperately wrong signal.

I do not count an enormous number of people in the City as my personal friends, but I know quite a few and I do not think that they want to exist in this wild west, free-booting, cowboy economy in which there are no rules and regulations, and anything goes. I think that they want the support of some sort of regulation, because it is good for image, good for business and good for the country. Ultimately, we have to have an ethical economic sector in this country. There is no alternative. I deeply regret that the Minister has not given us that pathway and that signpost.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think we have probably got the thrust of it. It is a learning curve for new Members. It was a learning curve for me.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I do not remember that!

[Mr Speaker]

What, that I ever learnt? [Laughter.] Topical questions are supposed to be a little shorter.