Criminal Justice System

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. The subject of the debate is victims and their treatment in the criminal justice system.

There is increasing satisfaction with our police force. My own force in Greater Manchester claims that independent surveys show an 85% satisfaction level with what it is doing. Nevertheless, the fact that there is a 15% gap indicates that things go wrong. Many Members of Parliament are here for this debate. When things go wrong, victims feel abandoned by the system, and most MPs’ caseloads testify to that.

I recently conducted a survey across Greater Manchester. Surveys can be partial, and the people who respond will have a strong motive to respond. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction level was quite high. A quarter of the people who responded felt that they had not been treated well by the police or the criminal justice system. That is a worrying figure.

I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael)—joint signature on the application for this debate—for his work on behalf of victims in his years as a Home Office Minister. He was part of moving the whole agenda forward.

I want to talk about a few cases that have affected constituents. A woman living on her own found a mallet on her garden fence with a threatening and menacing note. When she contacted the police, they said they would send somebody round, as they should in a case such as that. However, the police officer did not turn up on time. When I intervened, the police turned up, but a single woman who is threatened should not require the intervention of a Member of Parliament to get the police to respond.

One of my daughters—I was with her at the time—had a dog that was attacked by another dog. A dog-on-dog attack does not make the national news, but had that dog attacked a child it would have been a much more serious event. The police took the matter seriously, but two months after its having been reported they have not come back to my daughter with an update. Not coming back is probably the single most common complaint that my constituents raise with me.

There are problems elsewhere in the criminal justice system. One of my constituents had to wait for nearly two years before her case, which involved violence from a neighbouring family against her and her family, came to court. The housing association would not move either the complainant family or those who were being complained about until the matter had gone to court. For two years, this family lived with pressure from their neighbours while they waited for the Crown Prosecution Service to take the matter to court.

I had another case of a constituent whose ex-partner was in prison for beating her very badly. While in prison, he threatened to kill her. She was told through other sources that he was due for imminent release, but the probation service would not give me or her any details about the timing of his release, which left her feeling extremely vulnerable in respect of a person who had already made threats to her well-being.

More generally, the courts themselves come in for criticism. We recently heard of Peter Bowers, a High Court judge in Teesside, who described a burglar as needing courage to burgle; many people feel that it might need courage to lie in bed listening to a burglar invading their house. Most of us do not feel that that is an acceptable way of describing a burglar. There is dissatisfaction, therefore, with the way in which the courts deal with cases, from the relatively serious to the most serious.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

The daughter of a family in my constituency, Charlotte Whitby—they have allowed me to name her—was killed getting off a school bus. The family could not understand two things: first, the lack of prosecutions across the United Kingdom; and secondly, much more importantly, the lenient sentencing, which the hon. Gentleman is alluding to. I do not think anyone in this House would disagree that there is a problem, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will dwell on the point that people are getting away with murder—literally.

[Tony Lloyd]

Killing somebody in the workplace or with a vehicle, if I am not in danger of trivialising it, would be an extremely intelligent way to go about despatching another human being. The horrible reality in cases such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituent’s is that there is now a family who will grieve for ever and who feel that there is no justice in the system. I have enormous sympathy for him and particularly for his constituent.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. On the courts and the criminal justice system, does he accept that some good systems are used in the criminal justice system to have the views of victims accounted for? For example, the victim impact statement must be taken before judges prior to sentences being passed.

[Tony Lloyd]

Yes, and that is fine. I totally agree with victim impact statements. The only problem is that they are not compulsory and not always requested. We know that victims sometimes complain that they are under pressure to produce a statement that does not reflect what they really feel to be the impact. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that that is the direction of travel that we have to take, but I think we have to go a lot further. I will certainly make that point later.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, recently made some caustic statements about his own stewardship of policing and of policing more generally. He was highly critical in saying that burglary is often not dealt with as severely as he felt it should be. He asked himself whether he had always dealt with it properly in his policing career.

It is certainly right to point out that many people think burglary is a very serious crime. Sir Paul Stephenson described it as invasive. He is right; it is invasive of people’s privacy and people’s lifestyles. Astonishingly, such an invasion of personal property and lifestyle sees more than half of those convicted receiving non-custodial sentences. Those non-custodial sentences are also relevant to a crime, which, in Greater Manchester, has a clear-up rate of less than 17%. Only one in six crimes is cleared up, and that does not necessarily include coming to court. Of those convicted, fewer than half receive a custodial sentence. We then wonder what signal that sends out to the wider community—to those who do not want to be burgled and those who want to burgle. There is a real issue.

I recently had an interesting conversation with somebody who has long experience of sentencing. He told me that he faces a regular dilemma. He works on the basis that non-custodial sentences are worth while; they can definitely perform a valuable part of the process. Nevertheless, if he feels that non-custodial sentences are not sufficient to offer proper restitution to the victim or do not offer any element of proper and legitimate punishment, he finds himself imposing custodial sentences in cases in which he would sometimes prefer not to. That is something we need to look at. If we are going to have a range of sentencing, we need to make sure that there is sufficient severity in the whole system. We need to look at sentencing as well.

Let me turn to those crimes that, although serious, have not received full-hearted emphasis throughout the criminal justice system. I refer in the most serious areas to sexual violence, rape, the sexual exploitation of children, domestic violence and even bullying and antisocial behaviour. Let me cite, as an example, the recent case of David Askew in Greater Manchester. Although he probably died of natural causes, there is almost no doubt in everyone’s mind that those natural causes were brought on by a consistent campaign of bullying that he had received from local youths, but no one took it seriously. With hindsight, people have said that had the various agencies—the social services, the children’s services and the police—shared the information base about the bullying, it would have triggered some sort of response. At no point, however, did it trigger a response, which left David Askew to spend years of his life in a degree of misery that he should not have had to put up with. It is wrong to say that bullying is not very serious; it is serious, as is antisocial behaviour. We must see antisocial behaviour as being central to the type of society in which we live. We cannot have no-go areas in which antisocial behaviour is accepted as legitimate.

It is also worth reflecting on the comparison between the celebrated cases of sexual exploitation of children in Rochdale and the situation of Jimmy Savile. I want to place it on the record that, although the English Defence League took it on itself to protest enormously about the situation in Rochdale—it is right that there should have been real concern there—it has not protested in the same way about Jimmy Savile. Sexual exploitation is about not the ethnicity or the cultural background of those involved but criminal behaviour, and criminal behaviour, whether by the Jimmy Saviles of this world or by Rochdale taxi drivers, is something that we must prosecute and pursue.

In all those cases, the culture of the criminal justice system is such that it did not take seriously the position of victims. The young women in Rochdale were described as from a council estate. I cannot accept that there is a council estate definition of acceptable crime versus those who live elsewhere. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) will want to speak more on that issue.

We have to change the culture with respect to sexual exploitation, especially of children, domestic violence, sexual violence and even stalking, because they cause real misery, destroy lives and, in the end, can lead to the most serious of crimes, up to and including murder. The culture that says that such crimes do not matter or that allows them to slip through has got to change, whether that happens through the police, the Crown Prosecution Service or the local authorities.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and I fully endorse what he is saying, especially on domestic violence and child sexual exploitation. On sentencing, which he has touched on, constituents of mine, John and Penny Clough, set up the Justice for Jane campaign following the brutal murder of their daughter, Jane Clough, who was a nurse. She was murdered in a hospital car park by her former partner and rapist Jonathan Vass, who was released on bail by a judge. One of the things that they found most hurtful was the fact that he was only sentenced as a murderer; he was never sentenced as a rapist and a murderer. Those cases were left to lie on file. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in praising the efforts of John and Penny in talking to Keir Starmer and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that severe charges such as rape are not simply left on a shelf and that people such as Vass are not able to cover their crimes by murdering the only witness?

[Tony Lloyd]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. John and Penny have persuaded Keir Starmer that no longer should things simply lie on file. What is clear is that there was a case to be tried. It would have gone to trial had the subsequent murder not taken place. It is distressing for the family. I can understand that not only as a father but as a citizen.

On stalking, half the people who are stalked will have been stalked for more than 18 months before anything is done about it, so many events in their lives will cause them both fear and misery. In the worst cases, stalking has led to much more serious offences, such as rape and murder. We also know that the probability of someone being brought to prosecution for stalking is still phenomenally low. Even in the event of prosecution, only about 2.2% of those involved in this serious crime end up with a jail sentence. Again, we must change the culture that allows that to take place.

There are examples of extremely good police performance. I had a meeting recently with women who had been victims of, or involved with, domestic violence. One person, who was the victim of a violent attack by her ex-partner, said that she wanted to place it on the record that her own experience of the police, the refuge that gave her shelter, the Crown Prosecution Service and other services had been good. In the same meeting, another woman told me that when she lay on the floor waiting for an ambulance to be called, she heard police officers joking with her partner, which simply should not happen in this day and age. Our police need specialist training for domestic violence and stalking, but it is not unreasonable to say that it should be there for all. Whoever polices or prosecutes domestic violence must treat that crime as something that matters, and the criminal justice system must help to resolve the problems.

Let me move on because I am conscious of the number of Members who wish to speak. The Minister will recall the debate a few weeks ago on criminal injuries compensation. I am sure that she will tell us that the Government are funding victim services in whatever way. None the less, there is still great anxiety about the criminal injuries compensation scheme and what will happen to it. I hope today that she will take the chance to clarify the Government’s intentions on the matter. There is massive interest outside in what is happening. There is massive interest, too, in Parliament. I do not say this as a warning, but I hope that she has been able to tell her colleagues in Government that her own experience in that debate was a little unfair on her but was not unfair in the spirit of what she inherited from her predecessors. We need some clarification that we will have a robust criminal injuries compensation system that survives any proposed changes.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on calling this enormously important debate. May I underline the importance of the point that he has just made? I have never seen so many people queuing to get in to observe a debate in Westminster Hall as I have today. It shows the level of public anxiety. Following the Government’s wise decision to withdraw the statutory instrument, does he agree that when they bring back some proposals to the House they need to advertise them within both Houses, so that all Members can make their voices heard about how unacceptable the proposed cuts in criminal injuries compensation are?

[Tony Lloyd]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Let me add one extra thing. It would be desirable if any such debate were heard on the Floor of the House and not simply in a Committee Room, so that the full House can be persuaded of the merits of any changes and can vote accordingly. That would be in the interests of people up and down the length and breadth of this land.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and the Minister on taking up her new post. She and I worked on the Justice Committee together. I am sure that she is aware that the Government’s proposals on criminal injuries compensation would mean that more than half of victims would get nothing and almost 90% of others would get very little. If the coalition is really serious about victims, it should scrap the proposals and carry on with the current scheme.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am bound to agree, because I spoke in the debate on the scheme some weeks ago when it struck me as perverse that we talk about things such as permanent scarring or permanent speech impediments being minor. Many people listening to the debate would conclude that their view of what is minor is not consistent with the changes that the Government are proposing. It is important that we establish that point.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. I want to add to his comments about the concern that so many people outside this place feel about the Government’s plans for the criminal injuries compensation scheme. I want to ask him about a particular point in the plans that we saw before and about the fears that people have regarding any new plans. The Government intended to withdraw compensation from anyone attacked by a dog. In my constituency, I meet many constituents who have been attacked by a dog; we suffered the death of a child in my constituency because of a dangerous dog. Last year alone, we saw a 5% increase in the number of people being hospitalised because of dangerous dog attacks: just under 6,500 people were admitted to hospital last year, of whom one in six was a child. Does my hon. Friend share my view that if the Government again bring forward a proposal in this area, after all the concerns that have been raised, people should still continue to receive compensation if they are attacked by a dog?

[Tony Lloyd]

My hon. Friend is right. Dog attacks are clearly a major concern for groups such as people who work for the Royal Mail. Like the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, the Communication Workers Union has campaigned strongly on the issue.

As I said earlier, I was present when my daughter’s dog was attacked recently. In that particular case, I actually had to attack the dog. It struck me at the time that it was a rather unpleasant dog, and if it had attacked me, I might have suffered a little, but if it had attacked a child, the child might have suffered considerably. Compensation is a really serious issue.

I want to make a few other points. As we consider what we can do for victims, I would be grateful to the Minister if she could look at the role of Victim Support. Most of us who have experience of its work know that it provides an enormously valuable service. It deals with more than 1 million victims of crime every year, of whom some 80,000 are victims of violent crime and some 8,000 are victims of sexual assault. It also trains some 7,000 people each year.

There is a genuine concern at the moment among those who work for Victim Support, both nationally and in my own area, about the changes that the Government are making to funding. Perhaps I should declare an interest at this stage, as a candidate for the role of police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester. The Minister may be surprised to know that although the transfer to police commissioners will go ahead, there is concern among people from all parties who are standing to be police and crime commissioners about whether the transfer will be fully funded, with full transfer of Victim Support moneys, so that there is no loss of its services. It is important that we have clarity about that issue, because any loss of funding would not only be unfair to those who become commissioners but—much more importantly—it would be unfair to victims if those services were no longer there. We need some clarification about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd]

I seem to have been speaking for 50 minutes, according to the clock. It may feel to others that it has been at least that long.

In conclusion, I simply say that we need to change the culture around victim support and put victims at the centre of the criminal justice process. There are some specific points I would like to make to the Minister that I hope she will pick up. Victims who come to see me as an MP and those who speak for them, such as Victim Support, say they want to be treated seriously in the process. They want to be kept in touch with what is going on. They want promises made to them kept; for example, people turning up when they say they will and coming back to them when they say they will.

Victims also want to be involved in the process of the management of the offender. Many victims are more inclined than the general public to support restorative justice processes, as long as they are explained properly. However, they want to be properly consulted. Victims understand that restorative justice can work, but they do not like others pressing them to agree to restorative justice when it is not appropriate; rather, it should simply be an available option. Having agreed to the restorative justice process, victims particularly do not like finding out that the criminal has been through the same process on more than one occasion. That says to them that there is no restoration; it is merely a way of avoiding the justice process. Victims do not want the police to use cautions as a way of avoiding the criminal justice process. It is important to register those points. There are sometimes good reasons for police cautions, but they should be used when appropriate and not simply as a way to avoid the bureaucracy of the court and to save police time. That is not why they were designed.

There are some specifics on which the Minister and her Department can help victims. The first is to clarify the funding for Victim Support, as I said. The second is to clarify the position of the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The third would be to make a clear statement about victim and witness statements in court—particularly victim statements—to provide certainty for victims that the statements will be voluntary and properly elucidated on behalf of the victim, and that they will be used by the court to make sense of the damage done to the victim by the criminal and the crime.

I support the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) in her plea through her recent ten-minute rule Bill. A code for victims has to be one with proper backing, not just a form of words. We have had victims’ codes in the past and, frankly, if they are only codes they are ignored. We need certainty that the victim is given the same rights as the offender in the criminal justice system.

I am grateful, in what will be one of my last contributions in this great Parliament of ours, to have the privilege to raise the position of victims, who matter so much because crime is still prevalent. We need to change the culture around victims. We can do it, but we need the different agencies to proceed with a sense of urgency.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—