Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am, of course, shocked to hear of the outrageous nature of the crime in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We have to make sure that all our sentencing proposals give the courts all the powers they need. It is a question of how to set out the severity of the appropriate sentences, at the same time leaving the court in the end to decide on the exact sentence, based on the circumstances of the case and the offender. Although the recent habit—particularly under the last Government, who produced 21 different criminal justice Bills—was to keep producing very elaborate rules, in my experience judges do not need to be told that an offence of the kind described by my hon. Friend deserves the full force of the law and the severe punishment that the public would undoubtedly expect for such a case.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is not the vote for prisoners a dyed-in-the-wool Lib Dem policy? Is that not the real reason why the Secretary of State will not stand up for us and tell the European Court that the ruling is simply unacceptable to the British people and the vast majority of our MPs?

[Mr Clarke]

It is not a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative policy, it is true, but it should be the policy of every responsible Member of the House to accept that we have to comply with a judgment of the European Court, because nobody is advocating withdrawing from the convention. The hon. Gentleman’s party accepted that. His party never repudiated the judgment; it always accepted that it was going to have to give votes to prisoners. It wasted five years and two consultation exercises, however, because it was incapable of taking a decision in advance of an election—or at all, as it happened.