Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that rape is an appalling crime. In 2010, the average custodial sentence for adult rape was six and a half years, and prison governors were required to release offenders at the halfway mark. Today, the average sentence is over 40% longer, and offenders serving more than four years must serve two thirds of that sentence behind bars. As I say, we are going further still.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

For all the positive words from the Secretary of State, the reality in our prisons is that people are being sent out, and the prison estate has not kept pace with the rhetoric that we hear from the Government. The Government are constantly sending criminals on to our streets because they do not have the prison facilities to house them. Is not the reality that we need fewer fine words and more action from the Government to keep our streets safe?

[Alex Chalk]

That is not a fair characterisation. The capacity in our estate is much greater than when we inherited it—that is point one. Point two is that we have kick-started the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era: £4 billion has been allocated, and we have opened His Majesty’s Prison Fosse Way and HMP Five Wells. HMP Millsike will open next year; we have planning permission for Gartree and Grendon Springhill, and we also have more spaces—rapid deployment cells and so on—coming on at Liverpool, Birmingham and Norwich. We believe that those who commit the most appalling crimes should be locked up for longer. As I say, it was wrong that, in 2010, rapists would be automatically released at the halfway mark. We are the Government who are putting that right.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

It is a privilege to open this debate and bring the Bill to the House for Report. This important Bill has been long called for by Members across the House, and in progressing it we are delivering on our manifesto. Its central mission, and indeed that of this Government, is to ensure that victims are not just spectators in a criminal justice system, but are treated as participants in it. Victims tell us that they want to be treated fairly, properly, and with dignity. They want clear, timely, accurate information, and the opportunity and help to make their voice heard. The Bill aims to do just that. It will amplify victims’ voices, ensure that they get the high-quality support they deserve, and make services more joined up better to support them. By putting the overarching principles of the victims code on a statutory footing, we will send a clear signal about the service that victims can expect. We will place a new duty on criminal justice agencies to promote awareness of the code so that victims are better informed. The Bill will also create an independent public advocate to speak up for those involved in major incidents such as the Grenfell or Hillsborough tragedies. It will deliver further safeguards to the parole system to protect the public.

Those are critical reforms, and in the spirit in which we conducted Committee and Second Reading, I take this opportunity to thank the Opposition and all Members for their constructive engagement. Although there may be areas on which we disagree, in some areas we were able to work constructively together. I particularly wish put on record my gratitude to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for her determination and engagement with a variety of amendments and issues, and for the depth of that engagement. Even where we were not able to agree, I am grateful for the tone and manner in which the debate has been conducted thus far.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Government are fond of saying that they are getting on with the people’s priorities, however much opinion polls may suggest the opposite. I agree entirely that all parties believe that the Bill is needed, and all parties want to get it on to the statute book. Does the Minister share my concern that the sheer weight of amendments proposed, and the widespread group of people who are saying that a number of people are being missed by this glorious once-in-a-Parliament opportunity, mean that the Government should be much more ambitious about ensuring that more victims get the support they need?

[Edward Argar]

It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that I do not share his characterisation of the Bill. We have sought to draw the definition of those entitled to support under the victims code as widely as possible, keeping it to those who are victims of crime, because that is the nature of the Bill, but not being specific in listing a range of different groups or categories of victims. That is precisely because we want the Bill to be inclusive, rather than inadvertently being too prescriptive and leaving people out, thereby excluding them from services. We have tried to be as broad based as possible in our definition and approach.

To return to that core definition, this is about victims of crime and of criminal acts. To conclude my comments about the tone of the debate, I am grateful to everyone, not just right hon. and hon. Members who have engaged with the Bill, but stakeholders across the criminal justice system, including many charities, campaigners and others. Again, although we may not have always reached the same conclusion, the level of their engagement, and its tone, has been phenomenal and much appreciated, and I think it makes for a better Bill. Indeed, some victims have bravely shared their experiences. It is not easy for someone to share their experience of crime with anyone they do not know, particularly in the context of a much debated Bill, so again, I am grateful to each and every one of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), to whom I pay tribute for her bravery in speaking to us about the horror that was visited on her. It defies belief.

I will focus later in my remarks on my new clauses 28 and 29, but first I will express support for new clause 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and new clause 27 in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). New clause 27 in particular has and deserves a great deal of support. Over the past few years, many of us have sat through seemingly endless debates that seem never to make the progress that the people affected by the infected blood scandal deserve. All I ask is that the Government implement the recommendations of the interim report. For an awful lot of people who have suffered far too much already, that does not seem an awful lot to ask.

I will not seek a Division on my new clauses 28 and 29, but I hope that the Government will take into account the issues that they address. They follow on from the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and concern the epidemic of violence against women and girls that we still face in this country. Our first Domestic Abuse Commissioner is doing a fantastic job, and I tabled my new clauses following a number of discussions with her. New clause 28 would make it easier for migrant women to make a complaint about domestic abuse without fear that their safety or future in this country is at risk.

We had a damning report earlier this year about the culture of sexism and misogyny in our largest and most high-profile police force, the Met. It is difficult for women to come forward. New clause 29 would create an obligation on those in specific roles in the police and criminal justice system to undergo mandatory training in respect of violence against women, to ensure that they understand it.

Those new clauses would not fix everything in the Bill—a Bill that I think everyone in the House largely welcomes—but they would be a big step towards filling some of the gaps and allowing women once again to trust the authorities on which they depend for their safety.

[Mr Perkins]

May I start by saying how disappointing it is that a Bill with so much potential to be a force for good should ultimately end in three-minute speeches by Members who have huge contributions to make? The timetabling really wants looking at. It lets victims down, because, as I said earlier, there is so much in the Bill that people who understand this sector have sought to add. The breadth of the amendments demonstrates powerfully how much more there is to be done.

I support many of the amendments, but given the time that we have, I will confine my remarks predominantly to amendments 4, 17 and 18, and to new clause 6, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and others, pertaining to the role that stalking advocates can play and the need for them to have recognised status in the Bill, as independent sexual violence and domestic violence advocates do.

On 18 June 2021, people in Chesterfield and right across the country were shocked and appalled by the murder of 23-year-old Gracie Spinks. That grief quickly turned to anger and despair when it became clear that she had been murdered by a man with whom she had previously worked, who had been stalking her and whom she had reported to the police. Following the internal investigations into how Derbyshire Constabulary had handled that case, it has subsequently taken on a stalking advocate to try to ensure that stalking victims are heard. Gracie’s family have launched the Gracie’s law campaign to call for all police forces to fund a stalking co-ordinator and stalking advocates. They also say that all officers should regularly have their training signed off and renewed, so that services become more consistent across the country.

The amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, which are supported by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, are important in this regard. They add the words “independent stalking advocates” to the list of specialist advocates that the Secretary of State must issue guidance about, alongside ISVAs and ISDAs, and define what a stalking advocate is. Those amendments are so important because, for many victims of stalking, it is often the case that the stalking falls some way short of the threshold for police intervention. Only by ensuring that a case has been looked at by a specialist officer can we make sure that intervention happens sooner, preventing it from reaching the tragic and appalling conclusion that it did in Gracie’s case. I cannot see any argument for including ISDAs and ISVAs on the face of the Bill, but not stalking advocates. Stalkers are often not known to the victim, and the threat they pose is different from that posed in a case of domestic violence.

Finally, new clause 6 is a very important clause, because we know there is an inconsistency of approach between different police forces, and stalking advocates cannot always get the funding they need.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the Government for failing to take sufficient action to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and girls and for presiding over a fall in the rape charge rate to a record low; and therefore calls on the Government to increase the number of specialist rape and serious sexual offences units, improve police training to secure better outcomes for victims, introduce effective national management and monitoring of domestic abuse and sexual offenders and urgently publish the perpetrator strategy in full.

Next week is International Women’s Day, a time when we celebrate women across the world. However, it is also a time when we highlight the discrimination, violence and abuse that too many women and girls face. It is a time when we look back on the progress that we have or have not made, and it is a time to look forward and set out our demands for freedom, justice and equality, including the basic right to have freedom from fear. And we should face the hard truth, because when it comes to violence against women and girls, and that basic entitlement to freedom from fear, that progress has been far too slow. We have even seen in some areas the clock being turned back.

I welcome the work that the Government have done on tackling violence against women and girls, and I welcome some of the policies they have set out, but the reason for calling this debate today is that it is not enough. We are not being determined enough. We are not going far enough. We are not going fast enough to ensure that women and girls in this country feel safe in the way that they are entitled to be. The Government are right to agree to have a violence against women and girls strategy. The “Enough.” communication campaign they launched this week is welcome. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which we worked with the Government on and contributed to, raising a whole series of further measures to be added, is welcome. There are policy proposals that Labour Members have put forward over many years which the Government have now accepted, most recently treating domestic and sexual abuse as a serious violent crime as part of the duty—if we are honest, it is shocking that it was ever disputed that it should be treated as a serious violent crime—and adding violence against women to the strategic policing priority. There are, therefore, many things we should have cross-party agreement on, but we should also just be really blunt and honest: worthwhile as those changes are, they really do not meet the scale of the challenge we face, and in too many areas things have been getting worse.

Mr Speaker, as you know, I have stood at this Dispatch Box before doing the job of shadow Home Secretary. That means it can sometimes feel a little bit like groundhog day. As shadow Home Secretary, a job with responsibility for holding the Government to account on policing, one cannot avoid noticing that police officers are certainly getting younger. It also means, however, that I have been talking about violence against women many times over the years. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) has been campaigning on violence against women and girls for very much longer than I have. Seven years ago, I warned that the police were becoming too overstretched to properly tackle serious crimes such as rape and domestic abuse. I warned then about the risk of falling prosecutions, more criminals being let off and more victims being let down. I wish I had been wrong, but it has got much worse than I could possibly have imagined since then.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way it has got worse is the huge escalation in waiting times to get to court? Many victims are waiting for such a long time to get into court that they end up walking away from the whole process, letting perpetrators get away with it. No strategy will tackle this issue unless the Government start to get on top of court delays.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That has an incredibly damaging impact on the prosecutions of rape and other sexual assaults in the criminal justice system. This has not just happened during the covid crisis—we should be really clear about that—because the delays have been getting worse and worse over many years. It is devastating for victims who may be desperate to get on with their lives. They can end up feeling hugely traumatised by the entire process of the rape being investigated and then being pursued through the criminal justice system. That is badly letting down the victims that the criminal justice system should be standing up for and ensuring justice for. My hon. Friend is right that those delays have got worse—getting worse by hundreds of days—but what it means is that a growing number of victims are dropping out now before it finally reaches prosecution. Some 40% of rape victims withdraw from prosecution because they just cannot bear it any more. That means the entire criminal justice system and this House, which ultimately must have oversight of the criminal justice system, is letting those victims down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse]

Once again, it is simply a matter of resources. Schools must be given extra resource to have specialists who guide young people into proper relationships. It will probably save us a lot of money if we get this right, but we need to spend the money in the first place.

To back this up, a 2021 Ofsted report highlighted just how early sexual harassment begins, to the point where it becomes “commonplace”. According to the report, 92% of girls said that sexist name calling happens a lot or sometimes; and 80% of girls—80%—reported being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves. These figures speak for themselves and say that we need urgent action.

It is hugely disappointing that the Government continue to rule out making misogyny a hate crime. Yes, we discussed this at the beginning of the week, but I need to repeat what I said just two days ago: we have to get to the root causes of violence against women and girls. We must send a powerful message that negative attitudes towards women that lead to hate and lead to offences—from harassment all the way to very serious sexual assault—are not acceptable, and that is what making misogyny a hate crime would do. Hate crime legislation, as we have established, does not add to an offence, but it has made a clear difference to crimes based on racial or religious hate. Why do women not deserve the same treatment? I still cannot understand why the Government are not supporting this. Making misogyny a hate crime is not a silver bullet, but existing hate crime legislation has made a clear difference. So let us get on with it and make misogyny a hate crime.

None of the steps that I have pointed to will make violence against women and girls stop overnight, but the time of inaction and making excuses is up—we owe it to all women and girls who suffer violence and harassment on a daily basis.2.48 pm

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am really pleased that the Labour party has chosen to use one of our precious Opposition day debates for this subject today. It is a matter of tremendous importance. There is obviously a huge amount on the parliamentary agenda at the moment, so it really sends a positive sign that the party has chosen to debate this today.

I want to speak a bit about why this matters so much to me. As Members of Parliament, we on occasion have things that influence small numbers of our constituents—maybe just one of them. Sometimes it might be something that matters to a reasonable number of our constituents. If we had a factory closure that affected 5% of our constituents, we would be racing to Parliament to speak about it, but here we have an issue that not only affects the 51% of our population who are women, but demeans all of us who live in a society where our sisters, our partners, our wives and our daughters experience this and are not safe to go about their lives.

When I speak with those who I know intimately enough to have this kind of conversation, it is remarkable to me how absolutely everyday it is for women to face some kind of sexual harassment. Almost every woman I know who I am in a position to know this about has had an experience of something reasonably serious in this epidemic of violence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) was right to say that we need to accept that we are talking about male violence against women and the extent to which it is culturally everyday and normalised.

This issue matters to me not just as a Member of Parliament representing all the women and girls in my constituency, but as a partner, a father, a brother and a friend of women who suffer from it. It also matters to me as a constituency Member of Parliament. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke about how we all have constituency casework trying to support women who have been victims of rape and victims of sexual and domestic violence. We recently had the appalling murder of Gracie Spinks in my constituency. Because of the ongoing police investigation, I am not able to go into detail about that at the moment, but Gracie was murdered by a man who had been stalking her. She had no relationship with him previously, but he had become obsessed with her, and that case has touched the hearts of every person in Chesterfield and led to a very passionate debate in Westminster Hall a few weeks ago.

The Government’s approach is failing at every level. The number of offences committed is shocking enough. The number that do not get reported is shocking enough. The number of reported offences that get inadequately investigated is shocking. The number of cases that have been investigated that get submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service is shocking. The number of cases that get referred to the CPS, but that wait so long to get into court that the victim removes their support for the trial is appalling, as is the number convicted. At every level, this is an absolute crisis and an epidemic that the Government and we all collectively are failing to address.

It is regrettable that the Home Secretary is not responding to this debate, because it would have sent a powerful message if she had come and said, “I am fronting up here. I am taking this seriously. I am not going to delegate this to my junior Minister. I will be the one to respond to this debate.” I put that on the record.

One of the important things that came across very strongly in the debate that we had about stalking was that, when it comes to sexual and domestic violence and stalking, there is such a responsibility on the victim of crime to prove that an offence has taken place, in a way that does not happen if we report to the police that we have been attacked and beaten up or that something has been stolen. In those cases, it is accepted there is a likelihood that the offence has taken place. When it comes to these kinds of offences against women, there is a huge burden of proof on the woman to prove that something has taken place.

I want to talk particularly about the important issue of stalking. The motion does not talk about stalking, but the matter is incredibly important to us in Chesterfield in the light of the Gracie Spinks murder. We need police forces across the country consistently to provide stalking advocacy services for victims and to ensure that every police officer recognises what stalking is all about and the impacts of that offence. Importantly, we have been talking about online violence against women, but often if the police investigate the online case, they will get the evidence they need to back up the stalking case.

Alongside all the pressures that this motion places on the Government, there is a need for us collectively to have a candid conversation about the culture of male violence and the culture, particularly among younger men and older boys, of watching porn and in particular the kind of porn, readily available on the internet, that normalises vicious sexual violence against women. The Government have been too quiet on that, and it needs to be said.

The motion

“condemns the Government for failing to take sufficient action”.

I do not think that anyone who has listened to the statistics that have been put out today can have any doubt that insufficient action has been taken. I welcome the positive tone we heard from the Minister, but we all need to be relentlessly saying to the Minister and the Government that the time for talk is over. We need to see a collective approach that addresses the manifold failures we have here so that more of our sisters, wives and daughters can live more peacefully in the future.

Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for seeking to assist his good friend the Secretary of State, but let me just say to him that all around the common law world—in Australia, in New Zealand, in the United States of America—there is a movement to increase the minimum sentences for rape. We in this party have looked closely at what has been done in those jurisdictions. I think in India the term has just increased to nine years because of the controversies around some rape cases there in the past few years, and in Australia it has increased to, I think, seven years. For that reason, it is our position that we should increase the minimum tariff.

I recognise that there is a legitimate debate around time served, and the Secretary of State has put his position in the Bill. I recognise also that, for heinous crimes, a whole life-sentence is appropriate. Indeed, we propose that in the Bill—someone who abducts, rapes and kidnaps a woman should serve a whole-life sentence. That is not currently in the Bill—we are proposing that. I will not refer to the controversial case before the courts at the moment, but the hon. Gentleman knows why we are proposing that. I say to him gently that this debate boils down to the value of a woman’s body and how seriously our party is taking it. That is why there is a serious legal disagreement between myself and the Secretary of State.

If we do not work cross-party on this, the Government will, in our view and in my view, be letting down victims of rape, domestic abuse, assault and violence once again. It is impossible to separate that failure of victims of violence against women and girls from the Government’s failures across the justice system as a whole. The backlog in the Crown courts is at an unprecedented level of more than 57,000 cases. It sat at 39,000 cases even before the pandemic began.

The backlog has been exacerbated by the pandemic, but it was created by the decision of this Conservative Government to close half of all courts in England and Wales between 2010 and 2019, allowing 27,000 fewer sitting days than in 2016. As the Secretary of State stares at the backlog figures, which worsen every month, does he now regret his Government closing the courts and telling those that stayed open to have so many days off?

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point. There is no way that a party that has presided over the court backlog that we have—which has a huge impact on victims, who are sat nervously waiting to see perpetrators in court and then hopefully in prison—can say that it is in any way serious about being tough on crime, is there?

[Mr Lammy]

It absolutely cannot say that it is tough on crime when victims of crime face watching their cases collapse. I recognise that this has been a very pressured time—it is a pandemic—and the Secretary of State has had to deal with a range of issues in our prisons, in our probation, in our police and in relation to our judiciary. I recognise that, but in the end, the justice system has to serve victims of crime, and palpably and honestly, on any objective measure, things have got worse for victims of crime in our courts, and we need to do something about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about the important early stages of an investigation and the particular problem, frankly, of disclosure. Disclosure is a vital part of our system—it ensures fairness—but for many, particularly young women, who are faced with having to give up their mobile phone, in which their lives are stored, it is a very difficult choice. It is almost Hobson’s choice: give up your phone. What substitute do you have? Suddenly it is gone for months. Your life is on your phone. They are these sorts of choices. Women should not be put in that position—it is just wrong—and we are going to do something about that. I will not open up all the details with regard to the rape review, but the House can see my concern about the early stages of an investigation.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham and other Members on both sides of the House rightly talk about the length of time that it takes from a complaint to the outcome of a trial. There is no doubt that while the court process is a part of it, it is by no means the whole part and, very often, the wait has been for many months—and sometimes years—prior to the bringing of the case into court. If a suspect is remanded in custody, of course, the courts continue to work very hard to get those cases dealt with. There are custody time limits. There was a temporary increase to those time limits that I, through the consent of this House, ordered last year, which has now come to an end. It related to the pandemic and, rightly, I ended that, as it is such a serious measure when it comes to deprivation of liberty. However, I assure right hon. and hon. Members that, in cases where custody time limits apply, the courts have been getting on with the cases in a timely and proper way.

The issue has been those complex cases that perhaps involve many defendants—perhaps defendants on bail—which have had to take their place behind custody cases and which I accept have been taking too long to come to court. I watch the numbers, as the right hon. Gentleman knows—I share some information with him, of course, on a proper basis—and I take into particular consideration the length of time that it takes. I truly will not be satisfied until I see a significant drop in the length of time that cases take from arraignment and charge, when they come into the justice system, to final outcomes. But it is right to say that, certainly in recent weeks, there have been some encouraging signs.

[Mr Perkins]

I wish the Secretary of State well with reducing wait times. That is what we all desperately want to see and that is why I am so pleased that we are having this debate. Will he therefore tell us what he considers will be a success in reducing those wait times and when he expects that we will see them come to an acceptable level?

[Robert Buckland]

I will judge success—never “mission accomplished”, but certainly success—when I see the number of cases that take six months or longer dropping to well below 20% of all cases. That is my personal benchmark. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a date when that will be achieved; what I can say is that there is now a sustained pattern in which the number of cases being dealt with in both Crown and magistrates courts is larger than the number of cases coming in. That, obviously, means one thing—a decline in the overall number.

The Courts Service’s latest published plan is to see the overall number of cases in the magistrates courts reduce back to pre-covid levels by the end of the year. Every sign that I have been seeing over the past few months suggests that that progress is sustained and sustainable. We should pay tribute to the magistrates, judges and all the court staff who are working so hard to make that real.

The pressures that we are under are all familiar to us in the House. I look around in this place and see so few people, and that reminds me of the challenge in courts. Imagine the difficulty of running a busy court where people are coming back and forth and covid coming into the middle of it all. The work done to make our courts safe, in accordance with guidelines from Public Health England and Public Health Wales, has been immense. We invested about £113 million in safety measures —from perspex screens right through to social distancing measures, plus the Nightingale courts programme, which is allowing us to create the sort of capacity needed to deal with the case load. Plus there is the commitment I made, to which the right hon. Member for Tottenham alluded, that there should be no upper limit on the number of sitting days that can be used by the Crown court.

In other words, the Government and I have clearly signalled to all involved in the system that all systems are go and only the inevitable constraints of the current covid pandemic and social distancing rules would hold back the sort of full-throttle progress that I would love to see. If we continue with the common endeavour of the vaccination programme—that race that it is so important to win—and continue to make progress, I am convinced that will be reflected in improved figures at our courts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Opposition days are incredibly precious for the Opposition. There are so many things that our party could have chosen to debate, but I am really pleased, and I believe that it is of fundamental importance, that we have chosen to table this motion. We need to press the Government to do so much more to address the record-breaking backlog, and the important part of the motion about violence against women and girls is also very welcome. I hope that the Government, in the spirit in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) introduced the motion, will encourage Government Members to support it, because if there is going to be cross-party consensus on this, it would be a really positive sign to see the Government supporting this motion.

As we have heard, more than 57,000 cases are awaiting court time. The measures that the Government have so far proposed are utterly inadequate to address the backlog. The chief executive of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has said that the Government need 200 Nightingale courts to fill the gap and remove the backlog, but the Government have just 25 up and running. It is not just the buildings that are needed; the Government’s cuts mean that the service employs 2,100 fewer people than it did when they came to power.

We have heard about the impact that this has on victims, but I want to ask right hon. and hon. Members to consider my constituent, who I will call Ms C and who is watching our debate. She has been a long-standing victim of serious violence from her former partner. Her ex-partner was recently jailed for the fifth time. The court heard that he is a heroin and crack cocaine addict who is also extremely violent. He has left my constituent with injuries so bad that her sight is permanently damaged. On other occasions, she has had other facial injuries, been concussed and had her head split open. On one occasion, he forced his way into her flat, and imprisoned her and held her during an appalling ordeal. Prior to his imprisonment, they lived on the same street, and alongside the violent attacks that she has experienced, he has often made verbally aggressive and intimidating threats towards her when she has left the flat or he has seen her walking down the street. He was also jailed because he was guilty of attacking a police officer, attacking a nurse at the royal hospital, attacking another police officer when the police were called to the hospital and smashing up my constituent’s flat.

The council wants to evict this man when he gets out of prison, but it has told Ms C that it is likely to be over a year before it will be able to get a court appearance. She is now facing the likelihood, after all these attacks, of this person coming back to live on the same street. That is the reality of what court backlogs mean. When we consider the motion today and think about the steps that the Government are taking, nothing is more important for my constituent, and thousands more like her, than making sure that we get rid of these backlogs. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Toby Perkins Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. I know that he, like me, is a doughty champion not only for the family, but the need to reduce conflict. I know that he makes his point passionately, but I would argue that the way in which this Bill is constructed makes the so-called quickie divorce a thing of the past. The minimum terms that we are talking about provide an equality of approach that will no longer discriminate in favour of those couples who perhaps have the means and the wherewithal to either separate and live separately or to employ the sort of lawyers who can, shall we say, get things done in a more expeditious way.

I stress to the right hon. Gentleman that the six-month term that has been naturally focused upon is a minimum. There will be divorces that take longer than that for reasons of complexity relating to each relationship. The point is that there will not be divorces that can take place in as quick a time as eight weeks, as is currently the case.

Reform of divorce law is supported not only by the lawyers, judges and mediators, but by the Marriage Foundation and, importantly, by evidence from academic research. It is evident that the law does not do what many people think it does. It cannot save a marriage that has broken down, nor can it determine who was responsible for that breakdown. Allegations made in a divorce petition by one spouse about the other’s conduct give no advantage in any linked proceedings about arrangements for children or financial provision for a spouse, yet the current law can perversely incentivise conflict. It requires an applicant for divorce or for the dissolution of a civil partnership to provide details to the court of the respondent’s unreasonable behaviour if their circumstances mean that they need to divorce before a two-year separation period. The incentive at the very start of the legal divorce process to attribute blame can only serve to antagonise parties at the most difficult time in their lives. Moreover, the court in practice has limited means by which to inquire into such alleged behaviour and must often accept what is said by one spouse at face value. This can be a source of real resentment for the other spouse.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on what he has said so far. This is an important Bill that we look forward to supporting. Does he agree that this legislation is needed all the more because of the huge backlog in the court system right now, and that, alongside the important measures that he is introducing, we really need some Government heft to support our legal system and clear away that backlog?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the caseload, which covid has exacerbated. He will be reassured to know that the senior judiciary and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service are working every day to expand the current capacity, to open more courts as we move away from the peak, and to look at alternative capacity in order to get as many cases running as possible and to deal with what must be an agonising wait for many families and victims. I would say—and I know that the hon. Gentleman would agree—that this Bill is not about the immediate crisis. It has been brought forward after long consideration, and has been dealt with very carefully in the other place. Indeed, it went through most of its stages in this House during the last Parliament, and represents an important milestone in the evolution of our approach to the sensitive and difficult subject of divorce.

I was talking about the perverse position whereby the current attribution of blame does not benefit anyone or serve society’s wider interests. Instead, it can create long-lasting and often bitter resentment at the outset, precisely at a time when couples need to work together to agree arrangements for their children and their finances. Furthermore, the simplistic allocation of blame to meet a legal threshold does not really reflect the reality that responsibility for a marriage breakdown may be shared. Marriages sadly end for a multitude of reasons. Existing law does not reflect that reality, and the truth is that we have stretched the law for a number of years in order to set out behaviour particulars sufficient to satisfy the court and obtain a divorce—a form described by the former president of the family division, Sir James Munby, as intellectual dishonesty.

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[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Perkins]

rose—

[Robert Buckland]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) first, but I will come back to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins).

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Perkins]

The Secretary of State is right about the conflict caused by the current system. Does he agree that the old adage is true, that it is a good man who can keep a wife happy, but it is an amazing man who can keep an ex-wife happy?

[Robert Buckland]

I could not put it better myself, and the hon. Gentleman makes his point with characteristic force.

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[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I very much enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who gave us all food for thought, and I welcome entirely the spirit in which this debate has taken place so far. I do not know whether I ought to declare an interest, because after 21 years of marriage, I am sadly in the process of going through a divorce.

The primary concern of everyone who has children and is going through such an unhappy incident is the impact that it will have on their children. I think that the current legislation does lead to unnecessary additional conflict and blame, so the Government are right to pursue this important legislation at a time when they are extremely busy.

In speaking in this debate, I am carrying on in the family way, because my great-grandfather, A. P. Herbert, was the original author of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. Some unkind remarks may be made to the Minister in Committee, but A. P. Herbert would have thought of that as a very easy ride, compared with what was said in 1937 when he brought that legislation through. The Secretary of State was right to stress that wanting to assist couples to split in as amicable and blame-free a fashion as possible does not in any way undermine what marriage is all about, or fail to recognise the crucial role that that institution plays in our society.

It is important to recognise what the current process does. It not only moves couples down the route of having to find blame and conflict, but includes the role of the court—the state—in deciding whether or not people should be married. The state does not consider that it has anything like the same level of responsibility for deciding whether a couple get married in the first place—if they meet at 4 o’clock and decide at 8 o’clock that night that they want to be married, the state considers that none of its business. So why, if a couple come to the conclusion that they should no longer be together, should the state consider that it is its business to investigate whether they are right?

I will leave it there, but I welcome what the Government and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said and the spirit in which this debate is taking place. I hope that we will all keep in mind the need to ensure that couples who sadly reach the conclusion that they must separate are able to do so in as amicable a fashion as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point about reducing reoffending. I hope that there can be a focus in the comprehensive spending review on what the evidence leads us to do in reducing reoffending and prioritising areas that are effective in bringing down crime. He hits the nail on the head.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

T5. I have been in communication with the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), about a constituent of mine who is facing an appalling situation with the Legal Aid Agency. The Legal Aid Agency applies a £100,000 disregard to eligibility for legal aid if someone is living in their main dwelling, but because my constituent is fleeing domestic violence and living in a women’s refuge, her property is considered to be her second home and she is being asked for the legal aid back. That cannot be the intention of the policy, but the Minister has not been able to do anything for my constituent. Will he urgently look into this and get us to a situation where people fleeing domestic violence are not penalised as a result of living in a refuge?

[Paul Maynard]

The hon. Gentleman wisely sent his communication to my parliamentary email, so I got to read it. That is a note to other Members around the House as to how to get my attention. I have already asked to speak to officials this afternoon and I hope to be in touch as soon as I can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that matter, and if any other colleagues wish to meet as well, I am sure they will do so.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

T4. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) for asking almost exactly the question that I was about to ask, because that gives me the opportunity to expand on the answer he was given. Will the Minister tell us a little more about whether the Government are minded to make Spice and Mamba—drugs that are causing huge problems in Nottingham Prison and many others—class A drugs? What other strategies do we have to reduce the amount of drugs in prisons?

[Rory Stewart]

The big legislative change that we are trying to introduce, and for which we would very much like to get cross-party support, is a provision to allow us to do proper testing on Spice—an endeavour that is in a private Member’s Bill that is currently trying to make its way through the House. As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, Spice is a real problem. It is provoking unbelievably aggressive behaviour and it is extremely bad for people’s health. We can search along the perimeter but yes, we also need to do more in the law.

Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I assure my hon. Friend that the victims’ costs will be paid from the public purse.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

My admiration for the courage of the victims knows no bounds, but they really should not have been put in the position of having to pursue this in this way. They have been let down by different sections of the Government, and what was missing from the statement was any sense of apology to those victims for the actions that they have been forced to take because various parts of the Department failed. The Secretary of State referred to the number of cases that the Parole Board have to consider, but this was not any old case; it was a very high-profile one, and there have been serious failings in decision making. Will he take this opportunity to apologise to the victims for the many failures that left them having to pursue justice because no one else would do it for them?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that this was no ordinary case. This case should have been dealt with much more effectively. At the Parole Board hearing, there should have been much greater probing and much greater testing of the case that Worboys made, and I deeply regret that that did not happen. I share the anger that he feels at the fact that victims therefore had to go through this process, and I am sorry that that happened.

Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the Government strongly believe that we need to create an environment in which young people can learn and be rehabilitated, so that they can play a more positive part in society. Our plans for secure schools—one in the north-west of England and one in the south-east of England—will build on that in the future.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Is overcrowding or understaffing the biggest problem in our youth justice system?

[Dr Lee]

No, it is not. [Interruption.] The problem is not overcrowding. There are some issues around staffing, which is why we have brought forward our plans on creating a new role for the youth justice officer. Those individuals are going to be attracted to work specifically with children. We are also developing the youth custody service as part of our plans around Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, because we believe that there should be a distinct service to deal with children in the criminal justice system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: extremism is a worry in our prisons. That is why we set up the new security and counter terrorism unit in the Ministry of Justice. That unit is progressing with implementing the recommendations of the Acheson review that the Department adopted last summer.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

T6. The Government sensibly introduced section 67 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 to allow the police to arrest paedophiles for sending sexual communications to children, rather than waiting until they actually meet. However, the power cannot be used until the commencement order is passed. It is two years since the Act became law. Will the Secretary of State say how much longer the police will have to wait until they can keep our children safe?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am looking at this to get on with it imminently.

Prisons

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

The prison system has never been perfect, but under a Labour Government there was not a prison crisis, and under this Conservative Government there is a prison crisis.

In Birmingham, it took 13 Tornado teams more than 12 hours to regain control. Some estimate the cost of the damage as £2 million. The Ministry was warned back in October that urgent action was required in the light of staff worries about personal safety, but it remains unclear whether it did anything at all. Last October, in an unprecedented intervention—

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as worried as I am that not only has there been the huge reduction in the number of prison officers, but there seems to be a deliberate strategy to get more experienced, more expensive prison officers to stand down—to retire—and to replace them with cheap apprentices and graduates? There is a real lack of experience in our prison sector as well as a dangerous lack of officer numbers.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes a vital point. We have a dangerous cocktail of experienced prisoners in prison, and experienced prison officers leaving prison. That is not good for safety and not good for the service.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I am absolutely determined to turn around our prisons. Unless our prisons are places of safety, they cannot be purposeful places where offenders can reform. That is why we have taken immediate action, as my hon. Friend says, to stabilise security in our prisons and to tackle the scourge of drugs, drones and phones. It is why we have secured additional funding of £100 million annually to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers to strengthen our frontline and invest in wider justice reforms.

[Toby Perkins]

It is good news that there is some additional money and that some more prison officers are coming into the service, but the Secretary of State is right to say that the scale of violence in our prisons is terrible. She and the Government must take responsibility for the lower number of prison officers that we now have. Will she tell the House how many prison officers are currently off work sick as a result of assaults received at work?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been clear that we need extra staff on the frontline. A number of issues have resulted in the situation that we now face, including the rise in the numbers of psychoactive substances, drones and phones. I have been clear that we need to address the issue of staffing, and we are determined to do so. We monitor the level of sickness in our prisons specifically to address that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Like many Members today, I wish to pay tribute to the people who work in the Prison Service. They take on an incredibly difficult task and we are very grateful to them. What they do was brought home to me when I took up what my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said, in advance of it being made a challenge, about visiting a prison. I visited Nottingham prison, and I encourage others to do the same. Any MP who is voting in this debate but who has not been around a prison are doing so from a position of ignorance.

There was much in the Secretary of State’s rhetoric that I support. We all agree with much of what she said about the issues and challenges facing the Prison Service, but her vision of what is going on and the policies of this Government bear little relationship to prison officers’ actual experience.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) criticised the motion. Although we recognise that, of course, there are many more aspects to prison than those contained in the motion, it seems to me that there is little to disagree with in it.

Four of my friends were recently employed at Moorland prison in Doncaster. Two have been recently retired on medical grounds and one is off sick at the moment. This debate rightly refers to the overall reduction in prison officers, but what is not so much focused on is the deliberate strategy of replacing experienced prison officers with cheap replacements and people right at the start of their career. That is an extremely dangerous policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) spoke about private prisons, but such practice is also happening in the Government estate.

One of my friends who worked at Moorland recently left the service. He was assaulted three times in a six-month period—once very seriously indeed. On the first occasion, he was encouraged to phone the staff welfare hotline. The third time he phoned it, he was told that he had used the hotline too many times and, although he had been seriously assaulted, he was not allowed to take time to get any support.

Another friend in the service needs knee surgery, but he has had to cancel the operation because he believes that if he takes time off to get his knee repaired he will be sacked on capability grounds. He specifically asked me why experienced prison officers should feel too intimidated to get the medical treatment they need.

Another friend who worked in the service for 25 years left last year. He said that when he started at Moorland there were 12 prison officers to a landing containing 90 prisoners; now, just three prison officers are there. He said that three prison officers are adequate when things are quiet and everything is going okay, but it leaves them with little capacity to engage with prisoners and carry out rehabilitation work, as they want. When a prisoner takes a phone call at 7.55 am, telling him that his wife has left him or that his children have been taken away by social services, he needs support. Prison officers have to step in and do an incredibly important job. When those resources are not there—whether it be for a moment of crisis in a prisoner’s life, to prevent fights, or simply to support prisoners and advise them on what courses to take on their path to rehabilitation—a vital chance is lost to help a prisoner back on to the right path.

Prison officers no longer feel that their role, which is incredibly important in our society, is as fulfilling as it once was, and that should concern us all. When prisoners start to think that no one is interested in them, we see the violent episodes that have taken place recently. Not enough is being done to prevent reoffending.

Experienced prison officers are crucial to the development of new staff. Managers in prisons now are much less experienced than once they were. What chance do the new £19,000 prison apprentices have if they are put into overcrowded prisons with disillusioned and inexperienced prison officers and if the mentoring that would once have been available for new staff is no longer there? Are we just setting them up to fail?

I support the motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but I go further and say that, unless the Government recognise why the riots are happening, stop their deliberate attempt to chuck experienced officers out of the system to save money, and implement their strategy to retain experienced staff and see them as central to the success of the recruitment of the new generation of prison officers, not only will the problems continue to escalate but our prisons and our society will pay a very heavy price for that failure in years to come.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call—Simon Hoare.

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[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), also a doctor, is dealing with this matter, and we will bring forward proposals later.

The former prisons Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), whom I always enjoy listening to, given his constructive approach, made several detailed and constructive points about governor empowerment, local recruitment and performance management. The Justice Select Committee has written asking for answers to some of these questions, and I will ensure that it gets a rapid response. In addition, I will offer a meeting to sit down with him and the prisons sub-committee to discuss the details of the White Paper.

On staffing, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talked eloquently about our plans in the White Paper.

[Toby Perkins]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), the Minister was unable to accept any responsibility for what has happened. He is right that staffing is not the only problem, but it is part of the problem. We are down 6,000 prison officers. Will he replace them?

[Mr Gyimah]

If the hon. Gentleman has been following the debate, he will know that we are down 6,000 prison officers but that we have also closed 18 prisons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) mentioned, in relation to drugs, this is a complex problem. The Government have committed to increasing the number of prison officers; today, the Opposition could not even match that. So I will take no lessons from them on what to do about staffing levels in our prisons.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) talked about attacks on prison officers. I completely agree with him. Prisoners who assault staff should feel the full force of the law—independent adjudicators can already impose additional days on prisoners. We are working with the Attorney General, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that offenders face swift justice and that we can provide better evidence to courts, and we are working with the judiciary to give them powers to impose consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences for these crimes. It is in order to help protect prison officers that we are rolling out body-worn cameras across the estate.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) mentioned foreign national offenders. As he will have heard at the meeting of the Justice Committee yesterday, a record number of offenders were deported to their own countries last year, but there is still much work to do. A ministerial taskforce made up of Ministers from the MOJ, the Home Office, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is looking at the levers in our relationships with these countries in order to deport people as quickly as possible.

In a debate called for by the Opposition, we have heard no positive alternative to the plans offered by the Government. I urge all Members to vote for a clear plan that the Government have put forward to deal with the challenging issues in our prisons that would also help us to turn people’s lives around.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.