Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Tom Pursglove Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to this catastrophe in our prisons. It is appalling that our prison officers have to face that on an almost daily basis. We in this country and in this House should be ashamed of that. We should be ashamed that the people who commit those assaults on prison officers are not properly punished for doing so. When the last Labour Government introduced the law that automatically released every prisoner halfway through their sentence, it was a scandal. You were here then, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you probably recall that the then Conservative Opposition were apoplectic, as they should have been, about the Labour Government introducing automatic release for people who were halfway through their prison sentence.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), the then shadow Justice Secretary, made that particularly clear on Second Reading of the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. He said:

“We have said that there should be a policy of honesty in sentencing. The fight against crime depends on integrity in the criminal justice system and on courts that deliver swift, effective justice, with punishments appropriate to the crime and the criminal. In the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Government introduced automatic release on licence halfway through the sentence for all determinate sentences of longer than 12 months. Combined with the early release scheme, this means that an offender sentenced to a year in jail is usually out after little more than five months. The policy amounts to a deliberate dishonesty. It damages the trust that victims and wider society place in the courts, and it encourages criminals to hold the system in contempt.”

If this were our Bill, we would introduce provisions to restore honesty in sentencing…We would ensure that convicted criminals served the full sentence handed down to them by the judge.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 79.]

That was magnificent, but since we got into government, there has been absolutely nothing.

We are still presiding over a system in which people who are sent to prison are automatically released halfway through their sentence, irrespective of whether they have assaulted a prison officer or not, of whether they have misbehaved in prison or not, and of whether they are still a threat to the public or not. They have to be released halfway through the sentence and that is an absolute disgrace. It defies belief that we in this House can sit here and allow that to continue. If any Member believes our constituents think that is an acceptable state of affairs, they are in cloud cuckoo land. People need to get out more if they think that that is what the public expect from the criminal justice system—it is an absolute scandal. We should be ashamed of the fact that the House is not doing anything about it. It is a recipe for disaster if early release is not linked to behaviour in our prisons, and it is wrong in principle to let everyone out early, regardless of their behaviour or concerns about their likely reoffending.

Perhaps the Government are not with me on that, despite having stood for this belief in the past, but my proposals would mean that prisoners who assaulted a prison officer would not be eligible for automatic release. That would be a minor consolation prize to offset the joke of our sentencing regime, and it would link release back to behaviour in prison in a small way.

To build on the point made by the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), I should point out that the House of Commons Library stated last year:

“There were 6,430 assaults on prison staff, 761 of which were serious. This was an 82% rise on the number of assaults on prison staff in 2006 and was a 40% increase from 2015.”

Even more worryingly, the Ministry of Justice’s most recent figures show:

“There were 7,828 assaults on staff, up 22% from the previous year. Serious assaults on staff reached 787 in the 12 months to September 2017, up 3% on the previous period. Assaults on staff in the latest quarter increased by 11%”,

as the hon. Gentleman said. According to the Ministry of Justice, in June 2017, there were 43,403 staff in Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service. Not all of them will have even come into contact with prisoners, and 8,758 were in the national probation service, but even taking the staffing figure at its highest, we still see a staggeringly high rate of assaults. The numbers have massively increased in the past 10 years, which coincides with people being automatically released halfway through their sentence irrespective of how badly they behave in prison. Someone does not need to be a rocket scientist to realise that if a criminal sees that they can get away with such behaviour yet still be released halfway through their sentence, it is not surprising that lots of people behave badly in prison.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend see this through the prism of the fact that consideration for early release should be seen as a privilege and that, if someone abuses it, the bottom line is that they should lose it?

--- Later in debate ---

This House is united in saying, as has been said by many hon. Members, that we need to protect those who protect us. It is positive that so many colleagues are here this morning, as was demonstrated by the number who voted on the procedural motion earlier, to ensure that the Bill goes through. I hope that it goes through with my hon. Friend’s amendments.

[Tom Pursglove]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who brings an awful lot of experience to the debate from his time employed in the fire service. I was interested to hear what he had to say.

I, too, put on the record my thanks and appreciation to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He is an effective and tenacious campaigner in this House and has pursued this issue with great vigour, alongside the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). They have done their constituents and the country proud by bringing the Bill forward and getting it to this stage, and by working constructively with Ministers to get it right and reach agreement.

I was delighted to serve on the Bill Committee, where we managed to get through the Bill reasonably rapidly, because there is such support for it across the House. I will not repeat the points that I made on Second Reading, even though they are relevant to the amendments we are considering.

I would argue that a number of the points my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made about his amendments—and I have heard all the scholarly and learned arguments that have been made by esteemed colleagues—were underpinned by quite a big dollop of common sense. I welcome much of the sentiment he has expressed through his amendments.

I would certainly support extending more opportunities and powers to magistrates, because that is something we have pledged to do as a Government. Not only is it right to empower magistrates and dispense justice as close to the people as possible; it is a cost-effective way of delivering justice and of doing so speedily. In Northamptonshire, we have had issues over the past few years with the streamlining of the magistrates bench. I therefore think that magistrates in Corby and east Northamptonshire would be very pleased to have additional opportunities and powers extended to them, so that they can uphold justice in our community effectively.

I know that all Members of the House have significant concerns about assaults, particularly on prison officers. This is a pressing issue. A very close family friend of mine is a prison officer, and he and his family are very concerned about this issue. I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to make the point that, whatever one thinks about the rights and wrongs of early release, it must be seen through the prism of early release being a privilege, not a right. I think that if someone assaults a prison officer, they should lose that privilege. It is as simple as that. My hon. Friend made the case for that robustly. I think the case speaks for itself, because there is no starker deterrent for a prisoner than knowing that if they do it, there will be consequences. That should be the bottom line.

If the public were polled on that proposition, I know what the numbers would look like. Opinion polls can be taken with a pinch of salt, but the vast majority of people in this country would think that that was right and proper. We should send the clear message that assaults on prison officers will not be tolerated. Finally, it is my view that it is right to be really clear about sexual assault. It is right to amend the Bill along the lines that the hon. Member for Rhondda has set out. It should be an aggravating factor, and amendment 3 would deliver that.

I made a point on Second Reading that relates to these amendments and new clauses and which was about the racial or verbal abuse of, for example, a police officer within a home. There is nothing that can be done about that at the moment, which worries me greatly. A dedicated officer in Corby, Candy Liverpool, was verbally abused in somebody’s house, but nothing could be done about it. I am grateful to the Policing Minister for the interest that he has shown in the issue. He is willing to consider where the law could be tightened up to deal with that, which is the right thing to do. I would be interested to hear whether he will touch on that in his summing up to let us know how he is getting on.

In conclusion, it is important that this House sends a message, it is important that those who are prosecuting take the necessary steps, and it is right that the law takes such matters seriously. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) said, that is not the end of the story, and we must continue to keep matters under review. We have to send a clear signal not just from this House, but as a society that we will not tolerate the abuse of the people who are ultimately trying to keep us safe.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and, indeed, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). He and I are members of a cross-party group on the IRA-Libyan terrorist issue, which I became my involved in because I have a constituent whose sister was a WPC who was murdered in the Harrods bombing many years ago, and I am always struck by the thought of anyone who is cut down in the line of duty after being called out. The crimes that relate to new clause 2, which is what I will address, are far less serious than that, but the principle is that we should support those who are serving us on the frontline and are attacked, abused, spat at or assaulted in the process. Like everyone else, I the support the Bill’s principle. This is the first time I have spoken on it, and I commend the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his efforts and thank the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). Indeed, when I met representatives of the Suffolk Police Federation, they specifically wanted me to pass on my best wishes to her for the “Protect the Protectors” campaign.

This debate is timely for me, and the reason why I wanted to refer to the clauses that relate specifically to the constabulary is that, while we are concerned about assaults on anybody and on all emergency staff, Suffolk has seen a great spike in assaults on police officers of late. In fact, the number of incidents increased from 193 in 2016 to 281 in 2017, and there has been a 265% increase over the past few years. Assaults with injury reported to Suffolk constabulary’s health and safety department involving broken bones, cuts, deep lacerations and black eyes more than tripled from 34 in 2014 to 124 last year. Those significant increases have caused a great deal of concern in the county and in my constituency.

I said that this debate is timely, and the headline in today’s East Anglian Daily Times is “Concern over sharp rise in violent crime”. We have seen a 29% increase in violent crime in Suffolk. We are talking about assaults on police officers, and I have been worried by an obvious, at least anecdotally, increase in violent crime, which has now been confirmed by the statistics. There were many ram raids in my constituency over the winter, particularly targeting Co-ops and other similar village shops. We had two ram raids on cashpoints in the same week in the historic village of Lavenham, and people are unsettled because many such attacks have occurred in the rural villages of my constituency. I mention that to add some context, because it seems to me that we may be entering more violent times.

The amendments and new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) are effectively deterrents. In any policy that is seeking to tighten up sentencing, deterrents should be the priority. We do not want to prosecute people for offences; we want to deter people from carrying them out in the first place. Suffolk Police Federation told me that it wants the Bill to contain greater deterrents, so that the message sent out is not just that we quite rightly condemn such attacks, but that if people commit such offences, they will suffer the appropriate penalty and will not get off lightly for serious offences.

It comes down to causality. We talk about deterrence because if criminals think they can get away with it, they will continue to carry out these offences. I have looked at this issue to try to understand why we are seeing more offences—we do not yet have any academic studies or other expertise—and I asked local police whether there is a link with the growth in county lines: the drugs traffic coming out of London that is starting to hit rural areas. As hon. Members know, when the drugs trade becomes more competitive it becomes more violent. As drug gangs fight for territory, they tend to mark their territory with the greater use of force and a battle for who is, to be blunt, scarier. We have to increase deterrence in response.

Inspector Danny Cooper, who is in charge of Sudbury police, told me he cannot say for certain whether there is a link with the growth in county lines, although the most recent assault of a police officer in Sudbury, two days ago, was by a drug dealer. What assessment have Ministers made of the causes of what is happening? Is it linked to the drugs trade? Is it because of an increase in intoxication?

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about alcohol. The East Anglian Daily Times ran a story about the spate of police assaults over the Christmas period in Suffolk, with eight police officers being injured. One of the most serious incidents followed a robbery, and when the officer concerned was asked why he thought there were more assaults on officers, he said that intoxication was certainly one of the key factors. We know more people drink during the Christmas period.

When we talk about crime, I always want to try to understand the trends. Obviously there are people who make political points, which may be valid, about funding, police numbers and so on, although I cannot help but feel that, when crime was falling sharply some years ago, police numbers were also falling. We have to try to understand why that was the case.

When I was first elected, I asked the then deputy chief constable what was responsible for the trend. Obviously we would like to take great political credit, but he pointed to certain societal trends, such as fewer people going out to pubs after the crash. There was therefore less violence and disorder at clubs and nightspots, and more crimes arising in the home and online, and so on, as people were spending more time at home.

My priority is to find out why this is happening so we can try to deal with it. I support the Bill, and I have only one modest concern. We heard earlier about the great dinner party conversation of our scholarly and learned friends. I am proud to sit with many people who have real-world experience they can bring to bear in adding value to these debates. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said that we need to understand that there are other offences that cover serious crimes against emergency service workers. We have to be sure that the message we send is not purely a gesture but is meaningful in law and adds to the array of punishments and tools that can be used so that we tighten up the available punishments and send a message of deterrence.

I do not say that politically. Our police and crime commissioner is coming to Westminster next week to meet Suffolk MPs. He is doing all he can and is going to increase his precept to provide more resources to the frontline, but these are worrying times in Suffolk and there is no point beating round the bush. We are seeing an increase in violent crime and we are seeing more assaults on police officers. I want to understand why, then I want to see the Government take effective action. If they need stronger legislation and stronger sentencing, I will be one of the first to support them. In principle, I support this Bill and I congratulate all the hon. Members who have helped its passage.