Disclosure of Youth Criminal Records

David Lammy Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically significant and thoughtful point. I can think of instances both from my constituency casebook and from childhood friends of mine who got into exactly that situation. That is not what the system was intended for. He is right that it is without doubt discriminatory in a number of regards.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is recalling childhood friends of his own, but will he also reflect on childhood today? There is a whole suite of crimes and temptations resulting from social media—let us think of sexting, where someone might get a criminal offence aged 15 or 16 for inappropriate behaviour with a girlfriend or whoever. Can it really be right that an employer, years later when the person is into their early 30s, should need or want that information? If the employer gets that information, what exactly are they expected to do about it? I am thinking of us, employing young people; do we really want to know that that happened 10 years ago?

[Robert Neill]

That is, again, an entirely fair and perceptive point, and it is quite true. One of the other issues that we have not yet touched on, but that I hope we will in the course of the debate, is the way that the system no longer reflects modern technology and the ability to Google to find out other things about people. None of that was there when this scheme was set in place. Surely the objective is to be proportionate and to be relevant, but that is not the case at the moment.

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[Robert Neill]

Low-paid and unsatisfactory jobs create burdens at every level, so the point is entirely true.

[Mr Lammy]

rose—

[Liz Saville Roberts]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

Let me just make one more point and then I will give way. I want to deal with the Government response to our report and then I will happily give way again.

Those were the guts, to put it inelegantly, of our recommendations. The Ban the Box approach should be extended to all public sector vacancies, with a view to that becoming in due course mandatory for all employers. That would be the right response. We pointed out also that the disclosure regime may well fall short of the UK’s obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child, which prioritises the best interests of the child and requires states parties to promote the establishment of penal laws and procedures “specifically applicable to children”. The broad-brush approach here does not seem to us to meet that test.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned Ban the Box in a positive light, and I am sure everyone in the Chamber would welcome it, but does he acknowledge that the problem with that initiative is, first, that it is voluntary and, secondly, that it is about the recruitment stage? The fundamental point about the work by the Select Committee and others who have raised this issue is that, beyond recruitment, there are questions about whether things should be disclosed to employers in the first place. It would be important for the Government not to lose that principle, which is rightly being raised by the hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee.

[Robert Neill]

That is true. We do not see Ban the Box as a silver bullet; there is no single silver bullet. It is a sensible initiative and one that has been started, but we see it as a base on which to build rather than a solution itself. However, it would not be too difficult for the Government to extend it eventually along the lines that the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am hugely grateful to the Justice Committee for this excellent work and the way in which the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) outlined the importance of this area.

My concern with criminal records arose from the review that I did for the Government on the disproportionality of black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals within the criminal justice system. When I began that work, I did not really understand the effect that our criminal records regime was having on disproportionality.

It is important to fully understand that while this is an issue for all young people, whatever their backgrounds in the criminal justice system, we also know—following work done by the Department for Work and Pensions over the past two decades and a range of other research—that we are unfortunately still living in a society where people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds have a penalty in the public sphere, in relation to employment. That penalty, unfortunately, is that there are still aspects of discrimination when ethnic minorities apply for employment, particularly for those who have a criminal record.

That is why this issue came under the purview of the report that I was asked to do by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, and that I was pleased to present to Theresa May when she took over as Prime Minister. It is important to emphasise that I conducted that review in a cross-party spirit, as did the advisers to the review. I am pleased that the issue of disproportionality in our criminal justice system remains an issue that concerns all political parties in this House. It is above the day to day of politics.

Reoffending is estimated to cost the taxpayer between £9.5 billion and £13 billion per year. A third of those on jobseeker’s allowance in our country have previous convictions. We note very sadly that recidivism rates among black men in our country are the highest in the system, with 45% going on to reoffend within two years. That is extremely concerning.

However, this issue really came across to me when I met the Trident team of police officers in the Metropolitan police, who deal with gang violence day to day. They were the ones who said to me, “Could you put this into your review? We are aware of a group of offenders who reach about 25 or 26 years old and want to move away from their criminal past but continue to reoffend because, as they grow up, they cannot get a job due to the regime that we have.” That testimony of police officers dealing with those young men day to day persuaded me that this cohort get trapped into a life of crime at the point at which they want to get out of it.

I therefore did some further research. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a quite well known child psychologist on Radio 4, Professor Peter Jones, Dr Aamodt and many others have now established that the brain continues developing well into a person’s 20s before it concludes—perhaps not concludes, because I hope we are all still learning. It is now understood that adulthood really kicks in somewhere between 25 and 30, so for all those reasons it is important to think about the age of maturity.

[Theresa Villiers]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is medical evidence that, up to the age of about 25, the brain’s development indicates that young men in particular are prone to an inappropriate attitude to risk? The research is clear about that, which reflects the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) with the criminal justice system. That is another reason that we should frame disclosure rules on youth criminal records differently from those related to offences committed later in life.

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[Mr Lammy]

Absolutely. Those of us with teenage children—I had a firm word with my 13-year-old son yesterday, who had got into trouble at school—know that the assessment of risk and risky behaviour is important.

[Alex Chalk]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, as is his wont, but we need to keep our feet on the ground. I understand the point when it comes to 13 and 14-year-olds, but does he agree that there has to be a cut-off point for any measure, which we traditionally think of as 18? I say that because the brain may still be developing in a 24-year-old, but it would not garner public confidence in the system, and might undermine it, if such people were able to have their serious conviction for violence, or whatever, filtered.

[Mr Lammy]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman and I will explain why. In my review, I talk about the German system, which makes an assessment of maturity and particularly focuses on the years between 18 and 21. He will probably recognise that in a previous era, and for some hon. Members present, the age of maturity in this country was 21; it fell down to 18. If we are to make evidence-based policy, it is important to keep that live, because of what the science suggests, although it may be that social media and other things are taking the age of maturity in the other direction.

Why does that become important? It was particularly important in my review because we should be very concerned that immature 18-year-olds are sitting in adult prisons with hardened criminals, being seriously groomed to commit more serious crimes. That is why, in Germany, they have gone in a different direction, and why I suggested that we could look harder at the psychological evidence for where the age of maturity lies.

To return squarely to the issue of criminal records, that is also why other regimes allow the young person, as they get into maturity—most often at the end of their 20s and the beginning of their 30s—to come back before a public official, such as a judge or a parole board, to make the case that they have been out of crime for several years, and that they have a wife and children, and have that record expunged or sealed. I recommended the Massachusetts system, because it allows the flexibility for responsible adults to make the judgment. For some young people, I am afraid that the judgment would be that it would not be sealed.

Let me be clear: a record is never sealed from the criminal justice system, the police or the courts. It is about whether it should be sealed from employers and where the burden is. If it is not to be sealed from employers, we must understand clearly that we are asking the taxpayer to pick up the bill. I repeat that one third of people on jobseeker’s allowance have committed criminal offences. That was my concern.

I ask the Government to reflect hard on the Taylor review, which looked at youth justice. The Government will be aware that he said:

“As a point of principle, I believe that rehabilitation periods for childhood offending should be far shorter than for adult offenders. My proposals”

are

“to replace existing court sentences with tailored Plans developed by Children’s Panels”.

He coined the phrase that our system is tougher than Texas—it is one of the toughest regimes in the world.

The Select Committee report is really about balance, where the judgment should lie and whether it is out of kilter. The Supreme Court decision could be interpreted narrowly by the Government, but from reading the report, the Committee’s mood suggests that it is an opportunity, notwithstanding all that is going on in Parliament, for the Government to take a broader view and to review our criminal records regime.

My view is that there should be a balance between a rules-based system, which is largely what we have, and which is clearly cheaper—that is effectively why we have it, because there is time and one makes a judgment about spent convictions and disclosure—and a system that is slightly more sophisticated and might cost slightly more. There is a question about who pays. In the Canadian jurisdiction, the individuals seeking to get their criminal records looked at again pay for the system. In my view, a parole board, a magistrate or a judge could make the assessment.

I remind hon. Members that a 12-year-old child convicted of shoplifting two items of make-up on the same day will have to disclose that for life to work as a traffic warden; a 14-year-old reported to the police for sending naked pictures of themselves to a classmate, about which the police take no further action, could have to disclose that for life to work as a teacher; a 16-year-old cautioned for having sex with a 15-year-old partner will have to disclose that for life to work as a vet; and a 17-year-old given a four-month custodial sentence for breaching an order will have to disclose that for a year and a half when seeking to work in most supermarkets. The question is whether that balance is right.

I urge the Government to reflect hard on what we see of the job market, the double penalty that exists for minorities, and why recidivism rates are so high—because people are effectively trapped in unemployment. I want to make the case clearly that we have to give our young people from urban communities hope. The challenge of getting employment when someone reaches the age of maturity is a fundamental part of that. I urge the Minister to think hard about this area.

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[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I will start by apologising profusely for not having been present at the beginning of the debate, and I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), whose speech I missed a great proportion of, and to the Minister. My day job is slightly fraught at the moment, and I was engaged in the Chamber when the debate started.

Were this debate about anything else, I would not have come, but I feel more passionately about this subject than about practically anything else in the criminal justice sphere, and I have campaigned on it for many years. It goes to the heart of what our criminal justice system is for: yes, it is about punishment, rehabilitation, and keeping the public safe. But is it really about ruining the lives of young people who come before it because they are silly, unwise and have not yet grown up, as the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said? Does ruining their lives serve any real, practical purpose for the rest of society? Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that it does not, and that we have the system out of kilter with the rest of the criminal justice system and with all notions of proportionality, so I really wanted to speak in this debate. I am going to go into the way the filtering system works—in some detail, I am afraid.

Of course, the criminal justice system needs to keep a record of what has happened and what crimes have been committed, but as far as I am concerned, unless there is a public safety element, nobody else needs to know. Criminal records are currently disclosed either by an individual—in person or on a declaration form—or via a check. The Disclosure and Barring Service issues official criminal record checks in England and Wales, and there are three levels of check: basic, standard and enhanced. There is a so-called filtering system that allows some spent criminal records to be filtered out, so that they will not be revealed in standard and enhanced checks. That system was supposed to allow the disclosure regime to operate in a more proportionate manner. However, it incorporates some significant exceptions, which means many offences are non-filterable.

Filtering operates in a mechanical fashion with no discretion, and there is no right of appeal. A single conviction can be filtered provided that it does not result in a custodial sentence, that it is not for a listed offence—that is, a serious offence—and that more than 11 years have elapsed since the conviction, or five and a half years if the person was under 18 when convicted. Single or multiple cautions for lesser offences can be filtered once six years have elapsed, or two years if the person was under 18—I hope you are still with me, Mr Walker; it is clear as mud, isn’t it? Convictions and cautions for listed offences and multiple convictions for lesser offences cannot be filtered, no matter how long ago they happened and regardless of the circumstances of the offence. Of course, many of the real injustices that Members have highlighted fall into those categories. In 2014-15, there were nearly 60,000 enhanced DBS checks in which cautions were disclosed, of which 8,500 related to under-18s.

Why does this matter? We have heard from many Members, including the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), that employers are very risk averse. They often assume that if there is a flag, they simply cannot hire, and we know that employers do not interview people who have ticked the box. As Lord Kerr has said,

“it is wholly unrealistic not to recognise that many employers, faced with a choice of candidates of roughly similar potential, would automatically rule out the one with a criminal record.”

A criminal record acquired as a youth is, in effect, a life sentence. Although a person can change and learn from their mistakes, their criminal record cannot. In the past five years, more than 1 million criminal records that relate to offences from more than 30 years ago, when the person involved was between 10 and 35, were disclosed through enhanced or standard DBS checks.

We have also heard from the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge that people do not apply for jobs, because they are embarrassed by their criminal records. We have no method of working out what effect that has had on people’s lives—we cannot prove a negative—but it is clear that, in many ways, it is affecting people’s employment possibilities. The DBS system anchors people to their past and serves as a second and continuing sentence. The system affects people with a criminal record more profoundly, and for longer, than elsewhere in Europe—or the world, as we have heard.

Our predecessor Committee held a private seminar with eight individuals who had been personally affected by the disclosure of criminal records. All had found that their employment prospects were adversely affected by their childhood criminal records, and they told us heartbreaking stories of repeated rejection before they succeeded in getting a job, frequently one that was well below their level of ability. It is not only employment that is affected by criminal record checks: most social housing providers ask about criminal convictions, and since 2011 have had the right to apply blanket bans. Croydon Council states that if a person has

“been involved in relevant criminal behaviour”

they

“will be disqualified from going on the housing register…Relevant criminal behaviour includes conviction of an arrestable offence in, but not restricted to, the locality of the dwelling.”

In addition to a criminal conviction, failure to prevent others from committing crime can be used as a reason to refuse housing. Bromford has said that

“where the unacceptable behaviour is committed by a member of the household other than the applicant or any person living with them”

it

“will rely on the failure of the applicant or person living with them to prevent or deter the unacceptable behaviour as a reason to treat this as unacceptable behaviour.”

University and college admissions are severely impacted. Although I am pleased to say that the criminal conviction box has now been removed from UCAS applications, many universities continue to ask all applicants for any criminal records, regardless of the course they are applying for. We have heard extensive evidence about how criminal records can affect insurance for cars, housing and travel, which can restrict self-employment opportunities. People with unspent convictions also pay disproportionately more for the insurance that they are able to obtain, and we have heard compelling evidence that it is often difficult for them to rent a house, as well. These young people are leaving the criminal justice system, and money and rehabilitation hours will have been spent on them. The last thing we want to do is cut off their opportunities to retrain, get a job, a house or a car, go on holiday or travel for work. We are ruining every aspect of their life, so it is important that we look at this issue holistically.

I was pleased that the right hon. Member for Tottenham was able to speak about his report—which I was intending to quote from extensively, but given that he has done so, I will skip that section of my speech. However, I will say that I was having an informal chat with a group of staffers recently, who were in their early 20s. As we would expect, they were well-spoken, well-educated young people who had had many opportunities in life and done well for themselves. I was talking about this subject, which I talk about quite often, and I asked them, “When you were a teenager, did you ever get into trouble with the police? Did you ever do something on the edge of what you should have been doing?” Every single one of the male staffers to whom I spoke recounted an episode that might have landed him in trouble with the police at the time he was involved in this slightly risk-taking and unwise behaviour. Had they been boys who were of a BAME background or were just less advantaged—less able to talk for themselves and less able to get their mum down to the police station to argue on their behalf—they all might have ended up in the criminal justice system, rather than just outside it.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue in the manner that she has. It is way more effective than I would be if I raised the same point. Does she know that there is a general statistic that child psychologists have found, which is that 70% of young people have committed a crime at some point? The vast majority were never arrested or caught. It is part of that journey to adulthood. Is she aware of this issue, which I have raised in the context of marijuana? Young people are sitting in a campus university as we speak, probably smoking a joint, and if you called the police, people would think you had gone mad. The same young people walking down Brixton High Road or in Salford will get arrested or a criminal record. That is the hon. Lady’s point.

[Victoria Prentis]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman. It is right that young people should be cut some slack generally, but it is not right that some people are cut greater slack than others. That is what I found very disturbing about his report. I was particularly disturbed by his section on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, where the numbers of people in the community as to the numbers in the criminal justice system are truly astonishing. I was also disturbed by the effects on black women in the criminal justice system. I encourage anyone interested in this area to read his report properly, because there are some burning injustices in how the system operates. Like him, I have two teenagers at home at the moment, and how they behave and the risks they take are always a worry. We really do not want silly behaviour to ruin the rest of their lives. I cannot commend his marvellous report highly enough.

I am concerned that over the years, those of us who have campaigned in this sphere have not had big enough asks. I remember getting very cross, when I was first elected to this place, when campaign groups said, “Let’s ask for convictions to not be in boxes or asked about after two years.” I thought, “God, that is two years of a young person’s life when they should be working, going to university, getting car insurance and all the rest of it.” Those are not years or time that they should have to wait. The period when a young person comes out of the criminal justice system is the most important time that we have as a society to set them right and help them into a useful and fulfilling life. We cannot slam them by making box-ticking get in the way of everything they do.

In the report, we made recommendations. One was on consistency with the aims of the youth justice system, and it is important that we view this as part of a holistic whole. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked passionately about the impact on employment. Clearly the Ban the Box campaign should be extended to all public sector vacancies. The Government should consider making it mandatory for all employers. Why do we have boxes? What are they for?

We made a recommendation on the impact on education, housing, insurance and travel, stating:

“We recommend that educational providers do not automatically use information about spent criminal records to deny access to courses…We urge providers to do everything they can to support students with childhood criminal records”.

Local government guidance for housing authorities should be amended as a matter of urgency. Guidance from the Association of British Insurers could easily be strengthened to leave insurers in absolutely no doubt that they must not expressly or implicitly request customers to disclose spent offences. With travel, we recommend that where there really are safety concerns, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should raise them with relevant Governments. If there are safety issues, that is different, but that is not the case in the vast majority of cases. The 2014 revisions on rehabilitation periods do not go nearly far enough. For some detention training orders and youth rehabilitation orders, the rehabilitation periods have increased to a completely disproportionate level.

The Committee concluded that the operation of the filtering system is wholly inappropriate for the records and should be radically revised. The Law Commission’s detailed and authoritative report on non-filterable offences is excellent and we endorse its conclusions. We discussed the potential advantage of allowing an application to have a record sealed, and I suspect the Chair of the Committee mentioned it at the beginning. I am sure the Minister will talk to us later about his plans for revising the filtration system. We hope that the recommendations of the right hon. Member for Tottenham in the Lammy review will be taken into account in the production of a new and more appropriate system.

Our final recommendations were about the disclosure of police intelligence and the discriminatory impact of the disclosure regime. I endorse those recommendations absolutely. I have trespassed a long time on this debate, and I thank you for your indulgence, Mr Walker, given I arrived late. This report is one of the best pieces of work that has been done by the Justice Committee. I very much hope that the recommendations are taken into account. Next week, I am going with a group of concerned colleagues who span the whole political spectrum to see the Home Secretary about this issue. I very much hope that the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office are able to work together at the pace of the faster, not the slower, of those two great Departments and that we will sort this out once and for all.

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[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

Let me begin by emphasising two guiding principles for the United Kingdom’s judiciary. The first is:

“It shall be the principal aim of the youth justice system to prevent offending by children and young persons.”

The second is:

“Every court in dealing with a child…shall have regard to the welfare of the child.”

I do not believe that a single hon. Member present would disagree with those principles.

The Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report acknowledges the over-representation of BAME and looked-after children. Since my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has superior knowledge, has already spoken about the incredibly important issue of the over-representation of BAME children in the youth justice system, I will focus on the issues that the Committee raised about discrimination against looked-after children in the judicial system. The sum of the Government’s response to the discrimination against those children is acknowledgment but nothing else. As for children with mental health issues or issues such as autism, they appear, sadly, to have been forgotten in the Government’s response, as they have been in the Government’s justice policy. I do not believe that that is acceptable.

Looked-after children in care are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They have been removed from their homes because life there is no longer beneficial or safe for them, and many have been abused physically or mentally—often both. It is difficult for adults to come to terms with abuse, but for children it can often be impossible to understand what has happened to them and how they feel. It is often those who are closest and most trusted by these children who commit these abuses. These young people deserve care and understanding, but unfortunately the current system of disclosure of youth criminal records does not deliver that.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising such an important point. I declare an interest as the father of a formerly looked-after child. Does my hon. Friend agree that the phrase “looked-after” is one of the biggest oxymorons in our language? Of all the cohorts of young people we have discussed this afternoon, none makes as great a case for changing the criminal records regime as those children, who have been let down the most often—not just by their original parents, but by the state.

[Ms Rimmer]

I agree absolutely. I feel very passionate about this. “Looked-after children” are the most abused and ignored in our society, and they continue to suffer throughout life.

The Criminal Justice Alliance told our Committee that children in care are far more often criminalised than those in family homes. In family homes, minor infringements and indiscretions are dealt with in the home, but children in care do not have such a readily available support system. The records system does not provide context for the young person’s actions, nor does it distinguish between severity of crimes. Just for Kids Law cited the case of a nine-year-old who had been physically abused and transferred to a care home, where he would frequently react badly and assault members of staff because of the high levels of abuse that he had suffered as a child. With help, he managed to do well at the home and when he was moved into foster care, but the charges of common assault against staff that he received during that traumatic time will follow him for years—a constant reminder of the abuse that he suffered and an additional barrier to flourishing as an adult, along with the many other barriers that looked-after children face. He is likely to face difficulties in work, education and social housing applications because of his record.

The impact that a caution can have in later life is often not explained to children. Convictions are often for offences that sound relatively serious, even when the behaviour is at a relatively low level. Just for Kids Law told us that children often focus on the fact that they are receiving a caution rather than on the category of offence. In some cases, for example, children have accepted cautions for non-filterable offences of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, whereas if their case had gone to court, it would have received greater scrutiny and they would have been far more likely to face a charge of common assault. Such cautions will limit people’s access to the job market, because a simple yes/no tick-box is often all the opportunity they will have to state their case in an application, and DBS checks will not provide the full context of their conviction. Barred from employment, many will find their options limited and may be pushed into reoffending in adulthood.

The issue extends to children with mental health issues or issues such as autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, who can struggle to understand what is being said to them or the ramifications of what they are agreeing to. Children with dyslexia may struggle even to read the documents placed in front of them. The director of CRB Problems gave us the example of a person who suffered from autism and entered the judicial system at a time when we did not provide the help or care that we do today and when support was hardly available at all. He received two convictions that cannot be filtered under current rules—a failure of our past system and a failure in how the disclosure of youth criminal records works today.

That example highlights a key problem with the disclosure of youth criminal records: it holds people prisoner to the understanding that we had in the past. People who might be treated with more compassion and understanding as a child today are held to a different standard as adults. I am not talking just about people charged five to 10 years ago, but about people who were charged as far back as the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. In those days, our understanding of the issues that children with mental health issues face was miles behind what it is today, as we know from the National Police Chiefs Council’s evidence on the policing of children and young people.

For all those reasons, it is important for the Government not just to acknowledge the findings and recommendations in the Justice Committee’s report on the disclosure of youth criminal records, but to act on them. I am sure that Ministers will stand up and argue that they have taken action, but I will pre-emptively respond by quoting from the written evidence submitted by the Greater Manchester Youth Justice University Partnership. Statement 3, on “The effects of reforms made in 2013 and 2014”, reads:

“Available evidence suggests that recent reforms have not had a significant impact.”

To put it plainly, we need to be doing far more.

I conclude by going back to the two guiding principles in our judicial system that I set out at the beginning of my speech: that the principal aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by children and young people, and that every court that deals with a child must have regard to the child’s welfare. Along with our report and with the many people and organisations that provided evidence, I argue that we are not meeting those two principles in how our youth disclosure system works, particularly for children with mental health issues and for children who are or have been looked after. Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I am not saying that to accuse the Government or score political points, but to implore the Government to work with us and other key organisations to deliver the reforms that are needed now, not in a few years’ time—reforms that would bring dramatic and meaningful change for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The additional 4,300 prison officers will help to ensure that we can do this. A particular area on which I have been keen to focus is the education and employment strategy, which will ensure that we provide those prisoners who are prepared to take responsibility with the opportunity to educate and prepare themselves for the world of work. I am very keen that we should continue to do that.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

We found out from the Secretary of State’s Department last week the alarming fact that 51% of our youth offenders now come from a black minority or ethnic background. That puts us in a worse position than the United States. Given that context in our prisons, will he revisit my review, and may I meet him urgently to discuss how we can accelerate progress?

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful for that question, and I would be happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman. I know he regularly meets the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), on this subject. I am also concerned about the proportion of BAME children in custody, which is something we take very seriously. My Department has introduced a dedicated team within the youth justice policy unit with a key focus on explaining or changing disproportionate outcomes for BAME children in the justice system.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

Although it is right that sentencing decisions should always rest with the judiciary and a custodial sentence should always be an option where the nature of the offence absolutely merits it, given the persuasive evidence that short custodial sentences are not the most effective way to secure rehabilitation and reduce reoffending, we will be looking at what more we can do to provide alternatives and to highlight that short custodial sentences should be used only as a last resort.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the new Minister to his position. May I recommend to him the Lammy review? In it he will see that there is tremendous concern that the youth prison population now is 43% from a black or ethnic minority background. Will he look closely at its recommendations and can I meet him soon?

[Edward Argar]

First, I commend the right hon. Gentleman for his work on that review, which is well known to this House and beyond. It is an excellent review, with an excellent report, which was one of the first documents I read upon my appointment. I considered all its 35 recommendations carefully and I am absolutely delighted to agree to meet him.

Joint Enterprise

David Lammy Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that where 14, 16 and 19-year-olds have gone to prison for significant periods of time when it is absolutely clear to the community that they have not committed murder, as happened in her community of Moss Side, it undermines the black community’s sense of justice, fewer people co-operate with the police, fewer people have faith in the justice system and it undermines all she is attempting to do?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I hope to give everybody 10 minutes. If Members intervene, the danger is that I will have to drop the time limit immediately.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this debate and on the way in which she has gone about representing her constituents, many of whom I met a few weeks ago, who are caught up in this terrible nightmare. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who has championed and taken up many of these issues consistently in this House over the past few years.

The doctrine of joint enterprise is a common law doctrine very much derived from judicial decisions, not legislation passed by Parliament. As has been said, it is now time for Parliament to reflect hard on where we have arrived at and on the fact that this debate is essentially about juveniles—people as young as 14 who are looking at spending significant stretches of their lives behind bars. This debate is about what we have come to describe as “gangs”. We do not use the word “gangs” when we are talking about the Bullingdon club; we do when we are talking about black youth in constituencies such as mine or white youth in constituencies such as Salford in north-west England.

That is why it is so important that we look hard at a doctrine that stretches back to 1846, when two cart drivers engaged in a race that killed a pedestrian. Throughout the 20th century, further court judgments clarified the joint enterprise doctrine in the case of murder. Even if there is no plan to murder and one party kills while carrying out a plan to do something else—for example, robbery—the other participants can still be found guilty. The use of that doctrine has been criticised by academics, by legal practitioners and by the Justice Committee. I want to associate myself with all those remarks and, in particular, with the fantastic work of JENGbA over the past few years.

Following the review that I did for the Government, it is important that we recognise that in black, and particularly Muslim, communities, there is tremendous concern about our judiciary. In those communities, the judiciary do not appear to be independent and justice is not perceived to be blind. That is why I was so disappointed that, when I proposed a target in my review, it was roundly rejected by our senior judiciary and by the Government, although a target is not prescriptive but merely a goal.

I am concerned that the independence that our judiciary say they have, and rightly have in our democracy, means that they are hugely detached from the communities that we are talking about. They do not have to defend their actions in Tottenham town hall or Manchester city hall. They are never present in those communities. They do not have the kinds of surgeries that we do. It is really important that they reflect hard on the common law tradition. In other jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, there has been progress on proximity and diversity in relation to the judiciary, but in this country we appear to be stuck. On this occasion, it is absolutely clear that the common law makes no common sense. That is why I referenced joint enterprise in relation to black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in my review.

The offence of joint enterprise has long been justified, by Ministers of both Conservative and Labour hue, on the basis that it sends a wider social message. I will not quote the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), a former Justice Secretary—hon. Members will recognise that I do not need to; they will know what his views would be—but let me quote Lord Falconer. He said of joint enterprise in 2010:

“The message that the law is sending out is that we are very willing to see people convicted if they are a part of gang violence—and that violence ends in somebody’s death. Is it unfair? Well, what you’ve got to decide is not ‘does the system lead to people being wrongly convicted?’ I think the real question is ‘do you want a law…as draconian as our law is, which says juries can convict even if you are quite a peripheral member of the gang which killed?’”

I want to say that the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer got it wrong, and the perception in the sort of communities we are talking about is that this is very wrong. Joint enterprise raises significant issues of miscarriages of justice, which must command the attention of this House and of our wider justice system.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I want to put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend for the work he has done with his review. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who represents a neighbouring constituency.

This issue has also touched the lives of my constituents. Yesterday, I spoke to Louise Otway, whose son was sentenced to 30 years under joint enterprise. I am concerned by two issues, as a former serving police officer in the Greater Manchester police and as a practising solicitor. My first concern is that, although the Supreme Court has said that the law has taken the wrong turn, nothing has been done to put that right, which is not acceptable. Secondly, as is becoming clear from listening to my hon. Friends, BME and working-class defendants are over-represented, with the use of gang narratives playing into the stereotyping and targeting of these groups. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential we have greater transparency, through the official statistics, about the make-up of joint enterprise defendants?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend’s point is exactly right. The issue is: what would happen if the principal’s intent was graver than the accessory’s? In all the cases that have been mentioned, that is absolutely the case. What would happen if the outcome of whatever act the principal carries out is far graver than the accessory was aware of? Getting into questions about the foresight and intent of a young adult is next to impossible, given all that we know in modern times about child psychology, so it is absolutely right that young people should not be convicted in those cases.

[Robert Neill]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case and perhaps I can offer him some support. As evidence to the Justice Committee has made clear, practitioners feel it would be of greater assistance to juries deciding on these issues if there were a statutory framework within which they could work. We have done that with the Theft Act 1968, which replaced out-of-date common law arrangements. Ironically, in the Jogee case, the trial judge of first instance was this country’s first black woman High Court judge, but she was obliged to follow the rules of precedent. Had there been a revision of them by statute, the situation might have been different.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is right. He makes the case that it is now for the House really to get thinking about these matters.

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, an accessory party can be liable under joint enterprise, even if they withdraw from a group before any crime is committed. Many hon. Members will think of the example of a group of students in a playground or a park, where someone talks about teaching someone a lesson—in fact, we might recall such an occasion from our own lives when we were younger—and one of those individuals thinks that teaching a lesson involves significant violence, assault or even something ending in murder, and just because the group had discussed teaching someone a lesson, someone else may end up in prison for murder.

We have been in the House when or know of times when Members have picked up the Mace—I am thinking of the former leader of the SNP and Lord Heseltine. If you picked up the Mace and an older Member thought it was coming towards them and died from a heart attack, you would be in serious trouble. However, if you had discussed it with your colleagues beforehand, they too would be in serious trouble. A whole political party—on that occasion, the SNP—might have been heading towards that. That shows how ridiculous this situation has become, and it is why we need an urgent review.

We are having this debate after politicians have said, “We have to crack down on gangs and that is why we are doing this.” But has it worked? Knife crime is rising: in England and Wales, there were 36,998 knife crime offences in the 12 months to the end of June. Hospital admissions as a result of knife crime and the use of sharp objects are rising. We have a real problem in London, which the Mayor of London is trying to deal with. Has this therefore had the effect that people suggested it would? It has not. It has not had that effect because it is not minors driving knife crime—it is serious organised criminals: gangsters and kingpins. They are driving the trafficking of cocaine and drugs, which is leading to the turf wars that are making some of the communities we represent more violent. The 14, 15 and 16-year-olds or those in their early-20s locked up for the offence of joint enterprise do not know anything about getting a tonne of cocaine from Bolivia or Colombia. We must go after the gangsters, but we are hearing very little about that.

The Ministry of Justice’s own research on joint enterprise convictions understands the psychology of young people. It understands the need of teenagers and juveniles to belong to a group. It understands that they have a predisposition towards risk, seeking excitement and reckless behaviour. It understands their inability to inhibit their impulses and the fact that they have less self-control. All of us in the House who are raising or have raised teenagers will recognise all those characteristics. Are we really going to throw young men—black and white—into prison because they are young?

I have two boys at home. They navigate the streets of north London on their way to school and one in particular goes through some high knife-crime areas. I am raising boys who would never ever take a knife out of the house and use it on anybody else—I am absolutely sure about that—but can I say, if something is going on in a park, that one of them might not drift towards the action? Hand on heart, as a father, I cannot say that. I do not ever want to have to visit one of my own children in prison. None of us should want ever to have to visit young people in prison. None of us should want that waste. None of us should want those criminal records. It is time that this House acted.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

David Lammy Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I rise to support new clause 3 and amendment 7. As mine is the second name attached to amendment 7, which was tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who is mainly responsible for it, I also incline to the view that it is slightly the better drafted, but I will support either proposal if one or both are put to the vote.

I might well succeed in being reasonably brief, because I agreed with every word of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I will not repeat what she said. A welcome note of cross-party consensus exists across a large part of the House, and it represents the cross-party consensus that is in favour of what is lazily called a soft Brexit and of having the best possible close relationship with the European Union after we leave.

The main issue in this debate seems to turn on what we mean by a “meaningful vote”, which relates to our discussion on the role of parliamentary sovereignty in a situation of this kind. I accept that today the Prime Minister—not for the first time—promised us a meaningful vote, but she later went on to qualify that slightly by talking about the need for statutory instruments to be brought forward during the period of the Bill, within the extraordinary powers that the Bill gives Ministers to enact, by regulation, even changes to British statute law. We have to be clear what a meaningful vote is, and the key is the timing. It is quite obvious that if the British Government are to be responsible to the British Parliament, the vote must take place before the Government have committed themselves to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other member states. Any other vote will not be meaningful.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way in just a second, but let me finish this point.

That means that a meaningful vote cannot take place until a detailed agreement has been arrived at about certainly the precise nature of our trading and economic relationships with the single market of the European Union, and actually quite a lot else besides, because we still have to embark on the security discussions, the policing discussions and the discussions about which agencies we are going to remain in and which agency rules we are going to comply with. This is, we all agree, a huge and complex agreement, and it is going to determine this country’s relationships with the rest of the continent of Europe and the wider world for generations to come. Can that happen before March 2019?

We face the genuine difficulty that it is quite obvious that we will not be remotely near to reaching that agreement by March 2019, and we have to think through what that actually means. The negotiators have been very optimistic in saying that they will have first a transition deal and then a deal by 2019. I am sure that they will try, but they have not a chance. I think that what they are actually saying—certainly the continental negotiators—is that they might be able to have some heads of agreement on the eventual destination by March 2019, which we can all carefully consider. They will certainly have to agree a transition deal of at least two years within which the rest of the process will have to be completed.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that everybody wants things to be speedy, because one of things that this country is suffering from most at the moment is the appalling uncertainty caused by the fact that we have taken a ridiculous length of time to reach three obvious conclusions on the three preliminary points that had to be determined as the basis of our withdrawal. At the moment, however, we do not quite know what the British Government are going to be seeking as their end goal in the negotiations that are about to start, because the British Government, within the Cabinet, have not yet been able to agree exactly what they are seeking.

If I may say this to my desperately paranoid Eurosceptic friends, it is not as if I am somehow trying in some surreptitious remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the fast progress of the United Kingdom towards our destination. The Government do not know what leave means. Nobody discussed what leave meant when we were having the referendum. Our overriding duty is not just to our political allegiances and so on; it is to provide this country with a good, responsible Government who face up to the problems of the real world and, accountable to Parliament, can produce the best new order that they can for the benefit of future generations.

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is demonstrating why he is Father of the House, so I hesitate to interrupt him, but on his point about having a meaningful vote prior to the Prime Minister of the day making the deal, does he agree, with his wealth of experience, that if we are to keep the country together, it is important that that Prime Minister has in the back of her head when trying to pull off that agreement, “I have to get this through my Parliament”?

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman makes one of the points that I was going to make. The most important effect of passing either new clause 3 or amendment 7 —there is actually more to this than a meaningful vote, if we consider the various stages—and achieving proper parliamentary accountability is that that would affect the tenor of the negotiations. Like every other Head of Government in the European Union, our Prime Minister would need to have at the back of her mind, “Can I deliver to the House of Commons what I am thinking of conceding?” Every other political leader in Europe will do that, because they will have to sell what they sign up to to their own Parliaments. If we do not have a meaningful vote, we will be the only member state whose negotiators are not under a legally or constitutionally binding commitment to sell the deal, because they will be able to make the deal and then come back to the House of Commons and the House of Lords and say, “This is it. What do you think of it?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke]

The Committee will know that, from my point of view, we cannot get out of the European Union fast enough. Time and again, I have said that we need to be ready on day one and be prepared for every eventuality, deal or no deal—or, should I say, regional deal or global deal—but we must remember why we are taking back control. It is because of the vision we have for our country and because of our values. Those values include the rule of law, natural justice and the sovereignty of Parliament. The rule of law exists to ensure that executive power is not abused, and that is why I object to clause 9. It is not right that a measure of this sort should be put through by any form of statutory instrument.

I welcome the fact that the Government are going to bring forward a withdrawal agreement and an implementation Bill, and nothing I have heard today has indicated to me any sense of urgency or any reason why a statutory instrument will need to be put through in a hurry. As far as I am concerned, I am prepared to stay up all night long to pass legislation to get us out of the European Union as soon as possible. For that reason, I urge the Government to withdraw clause 9, and I have to say that I will not be able to support it on stand part.

[Mr Lammy]

I am coming up to my 18th year in the House. During that time, we have had serious votes on going to war in Iraq and in Syria, and on different occasions, parliamentary sovereignty has asserted itself. On the war in Iraq, we thought we had the information, but it turned out that we did not, and we went to war. On Syria, despite some strong arguments to intervene, we chose not to. I also remember sitting through the night for the 90-day detention legislation under Tony Blair, and this House resisted the move to a 90-day detention period for those arrested for terrorism offences. Tonight, we are again being asked to make a very important decision that will affect the future of this country.

I might say that the sovereignty of this Parliament is why we are here in the first place, so I applaud the Government Members who are standing by their principles and remembering the importance of coming back to debate in this House. This is about timing. We may have had a discussion about what is meaningful, but I think we all know what is meaningless. It is meaningless to have a debate and a vote in this House after the decision is made. For all those reasons, I hope that we will return after the vote on amendment 7 and find that we really have given back sovereignty to the UK Parliament.

[Vicky Ford]

The Government have now made it clear that the House will have a final meaningful vote on the EU withdrawal agreement before the UK leaves, which is extraordinarily important because the last point in the process of withdrawal is actually the vote in the European Parliament. My former colleagues—the ones who are trying to help us get an amicable agreement in that Parliament—have told me that unless there is a full democratic process here, there will be people who try to scupper the deal in that last vote in the European Parliament. The rest of the world is watching how we legislate, and transparency is important.

I am new to British legislation, but I have heard it time and again from Members as diverse as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) that the powers in clause 9 are inappropriate, too strong and could mean that the Government are able to make material changes to legislation without a scrutiny process before we leave. I am therefore extremely pleased that the Minister made his announcement at the last minute. If he would like to, I would love him to intervene once more to ensure that everybody has heard exactly what he said.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

David Lammy Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

When children in the world are still subject to slave labour or trafficking, or are working as child soldiers, does my hon. Friend agree that the message being sent that the UK would simply do away with rights that we campaigned for, which led to the charter of fundamental rights, is an abhorrence? We need Ministers to come to the Dispatch Box and say that they have changed their mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

Would it not be great if we were having a proper debate about retaining Francovich protections, albeit possibly making an amendment? The hon. Lady may well have a case for increasing or decreasing the level of the damage thresholds in place, but that is not what we are debating; we are debating simply the deletion of this Francovich protection—that right to redress—from our laws and protections. I would be happy to discuss with her where that level should be set, as there is a debate to be had about that, but we are talking about the principle, yes or no, and whether this should be retained within this legislation.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend rightly suspects that the Government will say that removing the charter from the UK will not affect the substantive rights that individuals already benefit from in this country. Does he agree that the problem is that the Government do not go on to say what those substantive rights are? If we simply leave it to the common law, a future Parliament—it may not be this one—could determine that it is right to erode those rights. That is why it is important we stick with the charter.

[Mr Leslie]

We need to make sure that if we are transposing legislation, it is a true copy and paste, but that is not what has been proposed. I am not in favour necessarily of cutting off our relationship with the single market or the customs union. There are a lot of debates on the Brexit choices we have before us, but here we are dealing with a set of separate discussions about the rights that our citizens—our constituents—could have in a post-Brexit scenario, and we need a better justification in order to be convinced than that we should just throw these overboard at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie). If I may say so, I do not take the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) in her description of new clause 16. It seems to me that in tabling it for consideration by the Committee the hon. Gentleman has accurately sought to stimulate an extremely important debate on the consequences of getting rid of the charter.

I sometimes feel that there is perhaps a failure of some Members to look at what has been happening in our society and country over a 40-year period. On the whole, western democracies have tended in that time to develop the idea of rights. I know that for some Members that appears to be anathema—it makes them choke over the cornflakes—but it is a development that I have always welcomed and that, it seems to me, has delivered substantial benefits for all members of our society, particularly the most vulnerable.

In this country we have had a long debate about how we reconcile rights with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, in 1997 the Labour Government sought to craft—extremely ingeniously, I thought, which is why I was very supportive of it at the time—the legislation that would become the Human Rights Act in an effort to achieve that reconciliation. I think most people in this House would argue that that Act has worked very well by preserving parliamentary sovereignty for primary legislation, enabling secondary legislation to be struck down if incompatible and with the mechanism of a declaration of incompatibility when required.

The truth is that because of our membership of the European Union there are some things that many of us would regard as rights but which fall outside the scope of the Human Rights Act and the European convention, and those things have developed over the same period I mentioned as a result of our European Union membership. I appreciate that that leads to double choking over the cornflakes, because not only have those rights come from what some people might regard as a tainted source—although I am blowed if I can think why: it is just another international treaty—but on top of that is the fact that once in place the charter has no regard for our parliamentary sovereignty. It has the capacity to trump our domestic laws if there is an incompatibility between our domestically enacted laws and the principles of, or anything that has come from, the charter. That is part of the supremacy of EU law to which we have all been subject.

All that should not make us ignore the benefits that the charter of fundamental rights has conferred. Whatever we may think as we talk about parliamentary sovereignty, I venture the suggestion that if one goes out into the street and asks people whether they think that equality law, which is largely EU-derived, has been of value to this country, most people would give a resounding note of approval. I am sure they would do the same with respect to the recent Benkharbouche case in relation to the disapplication of the State Immunity Act 1978 for the purposes of enabling an employment case to be brought against an embassy that had mistreated one of its employees. Of course, as has been cited, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has availed himself of the provisions of the charter and the rights that the EU has conferred in relation to questions of data privacy and the way data is handled.

[Mr Lammy]

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman also aware of the simple rights that many of us will have used on behalf of a parent, such as the right to wheelchair accessibility at our airports? There are also rights that came up in the course of the youth justice review I did for the Government, to do with making courts child-friendly so that, for example, they do not intimidate a young woman having to relay a terrible case of sexual assault. Such rights did not exist in British law but now exist as a result of the charter. For that reason, we ought to give due respect to our European friends for giving us the charter.

[Mr Grieve]

I place great respect on the fact that, for all the faults I can sometimes identify, when the European Union was established its founding fathers wished it to be based on principles not only of the rule of law, but of a vision of human society of which I have no difficulty approving.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am certainly keen to learn from best practice not just in the United States but in other jurisdictions around the world. What was striking about some of last week’s figures was that they showed that offenders who underwent drug or alcohol treatment in this country showed a 33% reduction in the number of offences they committed in the following two years. That is a lesson we can learn from.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

May I recommend to the Minister my proposal of deferred prosecutions, which also gets to the community responses that can reduce recidivism? That is among the recommendations I made in the review that the Government asked for.

[Mr Lidington]

I reiterate to the right hon. Gentleman the Government’s appreciation for the work that he put into the review. We shall be responding in detail to his recommendations, including the one that he mentioned.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

David Lammy Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. Let me start by saying that it is possible for parties to work together to find consensus and bipartisan moments. I see the Secretary of State for Justice in his seat; we have been working together on the review his predecessors asked me to do on the over-representation of black and ethnic minority people in the criminal justice system, and I am grateful for his support and that of his civil servants over the last 18 months.

I wish that I could be speaking in a spirit of co-operation on this subject, but when I think about the Prime Minister taking the position she did and talking about bringing the country back together, I think how far we are from that. Those who wanted to leave talked about giving the British people control—taking back control. Why, then, are we producing a Bill that will, effectively, give that control to the Government of the day, to make decisions behind closed doors, and not to this Parliament, which represents the democratic will of the people? If the Government are genuine about bringing the country back together, surely they allow serious time for reflection, debate and serious amendments to a Bill of this magnitude. Surely they should also come to this House with a degree of humility, having recognised that their proposition at the general election failed spectacularly, and that the context today is very different from the context three or four months ago. None of that has happened.

Then we look at the beginning of the negotiations. We hear a lot about the bill the EU is asking us to pay, but I have to say to those who campaigned to leave, and who are adamant that we should leave, that we are taking 12% of the EU budget out by exiting. We are asking others to pick up that bill. Of course there is a serious bill to pay, and of course it will take months to negotiate it.

We have heard so much from the Secretaries of State for Brexit and for International Trade about how easy this will be. When they go to negotiate with Donald Trump, who is one of the most protectionist Presidents the United States has seen, he will surely want access to our pharmaceuticals and will demand access to our agriculture. It will not be easy; it will take months and years to reach that trade deal. As for those who spend so much time on free movement of people and immigration, when we go to negotiate with the Indians, will they not demand visas for people to come to this country?

I worry, as I am sure hon. Members will understand, about what we have unleashed in this country, about the increase in race hate, and about the nastiness that surrounds this debate. No party is the font of all ideas, but I worry hugely about how the Conservative party has moved to the right to pick up ground ceded by the UK Independence party—[Interruption.] I do. We are in times in which the Anglo-American world is looking inward, in which we are moving back from human rights and in which we are waving goodbye to battles that we fought in decades gone by. This is not the time for this House to spend months and years wrangling about exiting a European Union that has given us so much.

For all those reasons, with very little to be gained—and when the articulation of what is to be gained has been so poor in the past four months—how could we possibly be about to set off on this path? In a constituency such as mine, where people are struggling to make ends meet and the economy is very fragile, as sure as night follows day, as we exit a customs union that the British Retail Consortium—

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lammy]

I will.

[Anna Soubry]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns. I share his views, and would have campaigned with him to remain, but the simple truth is that the majority of those who voted—52%—voted to leave the European Union. On that basis, we must begin the process of doing so and must see it through, even if he and I do not agree with it.

[Mr Lammy]

I hesitate, because the right hon. Lady and I have agreed on much, particularly free movement. Her bark has been loud, particularly on the “Today” programme, but her actions in the days that followed those contributions have been far less loud.

[Anna Soubry]

Would the right hon. Gentleman like to take that back? Things such as getting a White Paper, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said she would not give—that is what people like me achieve. The real opposition to much of this comes from those on the Government Benches, not on his.

[Mr Lammy]

I am not sure that the right hon. Lady really wants me to respond.

The point is whether we can get beyond the partisan. I represent a constituency where many people are struggling. Our economy is likely to take a real hit as a result of this move. Trade deals are an aberration and are some years in the future. If we exit under World Trade Organisation rules, we are in for huge rises in tariffs, consumer prices and, potentially, inflation. For that reason alone, in the best interests of my constituents and many people across the country who do not have the privileges of most people in this House, I shall absolutely vote against the Bill.

When we talk about the will of the people, let us remember the 48% who voted against this. Let us think about what they deserve: a Bill that does not grab powers from them; a Bill through which we have ample time to discuss all these issues; and a Department that actually understands the position of the 27 European countries, and faces up to the fact that we are going to have to pay. They do not want to be told that this is going to be easy—that the whole of the European Union cannot wait to do a deal with us. That is not what they recognise. For that reason, it is important that this House does not let this Bill go forward.