Prisons and Courts Bill

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will take some interventions in a minute, once I have made a bit of progress.

While there is much we can do and are doing operationally, part 1 of the Bill addresses areas that require primary legislation. First, the Bill enshrines in law the purpose of prison. It sets out that prisons must aim to do four things. First, they must protect the public. Holding prisoners securely is a core job of prisons —protecting the public from the risk that offenders pose. Prisons must do all they can to prevent security failures.

Secondly, prisons must reform and rehabilitate offenders. They must give them the opportunities to allow them to turn their back on crime. That means tackling drug and alcohol addiction; tackling mental health issues; and giving offenders opportunities to work and get training and apprenticeships while they are in prison, to improve their English and maths, and to maintain their family ties.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

May I say how much I welcome this Bill, which seems to me to be going in exactly the right direction in terms of reforming prisons? However, my right hon. Friend will be aware that, ultimately, the ability to deliver these programmes will be intimately dependent on reducing prison overcrowding, because without that, as we have seen on many occasions, the programmes, however good, founder as the prisons come under strain. Will she keep that in mind, and is there anything she can tell the House in the course of Second Reading about the strategy she might have in mind to try to address that issue?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. We have held the prison population stable for the last six years, and there are some areas, such as sex offences, where we have seen sentences rise, and I think that that is right, because those are serious crimes and they were not receiving the level of punishment that we would expect. However, as I have said before—I made this point in a speech a few weeks ago—there is more we can do to prevent people from committing crimes that lead to custody, by tackling issues earlier on, whether that is drug addiction, alcohol misuse or not being in education or training. I look forward to saying more about that in due course.

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[Mr Grieve]

I assume, therefore, that this is intended to be justiciable, and that if the Secretary of State were not to respond within the time suggested the Government would be reviewable in court.

[Elizabeth Truss]

It will be enforceable through the inspectorate, which will be given specific powers to ensure that that happens.

The Bill will place the prisons and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing, giving him greater authority and statutory powers to investigate deaths in custody. The Bill supports our efforts to stop drug use and crime enabled by illegal mobile phones. It enables phone network operators to disrupt unlawful use of mobile phones in custody.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

If the hon. Gentleman is asking me whether I am content with the current situation, no, I am not. We need to reform the family justice system. We need to help people to get an earlier resolution of their issues. We need to get better at helping families, and I am a big fan of the family, drugs and alcohol courts and the work that they do in supporting parents. That is why the Minister for Courts and Justice and I will bring forward a Green Paper on family justice that will look at the system in a holistic way to see how we can do things better within the family justice system. There are certainly areas where improvement needs to be made.

Banning the ability of alleged abusers to be able to cross-examine their victims in court is an important step. This was done in the Crown courts in the 1990s, and we are only now catching up with it in the family courts. It is very important to give family courts the priority in the system that they deserve, so that we can deal with these difficult issues in people’s lives as sensitively as possible.

This Bill will also make sure that victims and witnesses in the criminal courts receive the support they deserve. It will extend the use of video links from virtual hearings, which will have multiple benefits. First, it will allow victims to be eligible to take part in cases without having to meet their alleged attacker face to face. In future, about 180,000 victims and witnesses a year will be eligible to give evidence remotely from a convenient location or in advance of a hearing. The Bill will enable more bail hearings to take place through video link and away from the courtroom, saving time and money. It will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall process by allowing a number of decisions to be made outside the traditional courtroom, and it will save people time spent in travelling to court: it will save about 112,000 journeys from prisons to courts each year.

[Mr Grieve]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. I support the thrust and intention of the Bill. Normally a victim is the first witness for the prosecution, but is there not a risk that the question that someone may wish to ask the witness will be changed by the evidence that precedes the giving of that evidence by the witness? We shall have to have a system to deal with that if a fair trial process is to be maintained.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. and learned Friend has made the important point that a fair trial is at the heart of our justice system. We already have rules committees, and we are establishing a new online rules committee which will be managed by the judiciary. They will look at the issues in detail to ensure that a fair trial is always paramount.

The Bill will enable screens to be installed in courts across England and Wales to allow the public to observe virtual hearings from court buildings anywhere in the country. Lists of all open cases will be published online, and results will be made available digitally. That will ensure that justice is done and seen to be done.

The Bill will streamline the pre-trial process, and will make changes in the way in which cases are allocated in the Crown and magistrates courts. Defendants will be able to indicate a plea online in all cases, allowing the courts to make administrative decisions without the need for a hearing. We are also stripping out nearly 30,000 unnecessary first hearings for the most serious offences in the magistrates courts each year.

The Bill will abolish local justice areas, simplifying the structure of our magistrates courts and removing the bureaucracy and geographical constraints that cause inefficiencies and delays. It will allow those who are charged with some of the most straightforward, non-imprisonable offences to resolve their cases entirely online. For example, a commuter charged with failure to produce a ticket can log on to a website, have all the options clearly explained, and accept a conviction and pay a set penalty instantly online without waiting for a magistrate to process the case.

West London Coroner’s Court

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered standards of service at West London Coroner’s Court.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to see so many colleagues here who have been so vocal on this important issue for their constituents and mine. Two years ago tomorrow, my father died unexpectedly. It was a devastating experience for my family, as death is for every family, but the seamless service from the local council and the coroner made the whole experience just that bit more bearable. Although the registration process itself was clinical, because it was efficient it did not compound our distress as a family. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the experiences of many bereaved relatives of those living in Kingston, Richmond, Hounslow, Ealing, Hillingdon, and Hammersmith and Fulham, which are the boroughs that comprise the jurisdiction of West London coroner’s court.

Since I was elected in May, I have received numerous complaints about the standards of service at West London coroner’s court and about the senior coroner there. Those complaints come not only from bereaved constituents, but from the council itself and, indeed, from our local newspaper, the Surrey Comet. The complaints include: long delays in issuing death certificates; inordinate delays in bringing on inquests; a telephone service that is never answered when relatives call for advice; crass errors on death certificates, such as getting the age or sex of the deceased wrong; and general rudeness to boot.

It is important to note at the outset—I note your guidance, Sir Roger—that I do not intend to criticise the senior coroner personally, because I know that there is a complaint against him by a number of councils, and that that is under investigation. I would not want to impede that investigation, but there are three issues that I would like to consider in some detail: delays, burials for certain faiths, and deprivation of liberty safeguards.

West London coroner’s court has one of the worst records for delays in the country. It takes almost double the national average time to process inquests. The delays are a shocking abrogation of the state’s responsibility to bereaved families, including those in my constituency. The estimated average time taken to process an inquest in England in 2014 was 28 weeks—a figure that has been effectively stable over the past five years. However, in west London and in inner south London, the average time taken to process an inquest is 50 to 53 weeks. The figure of 53 weeks is the worst in the country. In West London coroner’s court, the figure is 50 weeks—the second worst in the country.

In my borough, Kingston upon Thames, the target for registering a death is five days from the date of death, or seven days in a case where a post mortem is required. In 2013-14—the period during which the coroner was appointed, as he was appointed in November 2013—Kingston was meeting that target in 70% of cases. In this year, 2015-16, if we continue on the current trajectory, Kingston Council will meet its target in only 11% of cases, and that is because of delays at West London coroner’s court.

In terms of post mortems, prior to the appointment of the current senior coroner in November 2013, the waiting time in Kingston from a death to a post mortem was two to five days, yet between June and September 2015, the average waiting time was four to six weeks. I understand that the situation has since improved somewhat. Those statistics speak for themselves and do not need labouring, so I will return to the bereaved families who are at the heart of the debate.

For most people, an inquest is a new and somewhat unsettling experience at a very vulnerable time in their life. In most cases, bereaved relatives simply want to bury their dead as soon as possible. In a small number of cases, they want answers or an inquest is required by law, but in all cases, they want to have the system explained to them, and to be kept informed of the reason for and the length of any delays.

Ronke Phillips from “ITV News London” has done a lot of work exposing the problems at West London coroner’s court. In October, ITV London brought a number of families affected by services at West London coroner’s court to Parliament to speak to their MPs, a number of whom are here today. The accounts those families gave of the distress they had been caused were quite moving. There were unexplained delays, no updates, and a telephone service that was never answered and turned out not to be manned at all.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend’s flow, but I do not want to take up the House’s time by making a speech. He highlights some of the issues very well. My constituent, Mrs Doreen Garcia, had what was essentially a completely straightforward issue in relation to her husband’s death. She needed to get a death certificate because it was essential for the administration of the estate, yet she had to wait more than a year for an inquest that, in the end, was a hearing on the papers because of the complete inefficiency of West London coroner’s court.

[James Berry]

That experience is by no means unique. In terms of the telephone service, when I called up on behalf of a constituent very early on in my role as a new MP, I had to wait on the telephone for more than 45 minutes, and then it became clear that the call was never going to be answered. Frankly, that plumbs the depth of poor service for bereaved families. As I understand it, the senior coroner’s position is that he inherited a backlog from his predecessor in 2013. Be that as it may, he has not cleared that backlog since November 2013, and has compounded the situation with an ill-conceived staff reorganisation and shocking failures to communicate with bereaved families.

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[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Lady speaks from a privileged position, because in her profession before she entered this place she obviously had closer dealings with the coroner’s office than many of us do. The fact that she says that certainly adds weight to the point, and I am even more concerned given that she makes those comments.

[Mr Grieve]

The case that I cited was unusual, because, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, my constituency does not fall within the area of the coroner in question. I was therefore particularly startled to receive the information from my constituent about the difficulties she was having with that coroner’s court, because it is so completely at variance with my experience of the other coroner’s courts that I have had to deal with. I would be most interested to know what is so particular about west London as to cause these immense problems, if indeed they are outside the coroner’s hands.

[Stephen Pound]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman also speaks from a position of great authority. It is not for me to say; I hope that the Minister, when she responds to the debate, will indicate some way in which we can ventilate these issues further. I do not believe that west London is unique; I do not believe that it has more problems than, for example, east London. What I think we are talking about here is a structural failure. There is a failure of leadership, without a doubt. The problem is that we have a failing structure, and the leadership required to take the matter forward is absent.

I am conscious of your strictures, Sir Roger, and I want to allow other people to speak. I will simply close by again congratulating the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton on securing this debate and expressing my sympathy to him. I add that the finest tribute in remembrance of his father will be if we, today and in this place, can improve the situation not only for individuals here today but for all our constituents now and in the future. Quite frankly, anything else would be wholly and utterly unacceptable.

Human Rights Act

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), whom I congratulate on securing the debate.

I will not repeat points made by the right hon. Gentleman, particularly his survey of the benefits of incorporating the European convention into our own law through the Human Rights Act. I will concentrate on what I understand the broad thrust of the Government’s proposals to be, because only by doing that can one start a proper analysis of whether benefits might flow from the proposals that outweigh some of the costs—particularly the costs he identified of problems relating to the devolved institutions and Governments—that are undoubtedly present.

It is worth bearing in mind, of course, that there was talk before we created the Human Rights Act of a British Bill of Rights, which was much trawled over by the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats during the early 1990s. The project was not pursued because there was a realisation, as time went by, that it was a highly controversial proposal that inevitably sought to bring into one place all sorts of suggestions about rights that might be included in it. Indeed, it is noticeable that as a result of the renewal of this debate, prompted by the Government’s approach, lots of interesting papers are being produced on the possibility of having a Bill of Rights—I was reading one the other day by Geoffrey Robertson QC—not all of which are likely to commend themselves to the Secretary of State for Justice, because of their content.

It was because of that realisation that the then Labour Government in 1998 adopted what was in many ways a very conservative—with a small “c”—proposal in respect of simply bringing about incorporation and preserving the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, tweaking the text in one place to emphasise that, where there was competition between freedom of expression and anything else, freedom of expression should be given a high priority; but otherwise simply allowing the law, through the convention’s incorporation, to be interpreted in our courts. I have to say that I entirely agree with what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said. While there are areas where I have criticisms—I think they are well known—broadly speaking, I think the Act has conferred huge benefits on this country in terms of the accessibility of rights.

It is right that the proposals remain opaque. I do not criticise the Government for that; in so far as they are going away from the proposals published in October, that seems to show a high level of common sense. The question then still arises: what benefits will we get from having a Bill of Rights? I accept that if we wish to have a Bill of Rights that includes rights not protected by the European convention on human rights, such as the right to trial by jury or some practices that might be different in different parts of the United Kingdom, there might be some merit in it; but as long as we remain adherent to the convention, the wriggle room for the Government regarding the convention and its text will be extremely limited—so limited that the ideas prevalent in the Daily Mail that the Bill of Rights would lead to some seismic change in the diminution of rights is simply misleading. We are on dangerous ground indeed if we start to peddle that as a notion to those who seem to be infuriated by the existing rights we have at present.

I was greatly reassured by the Prime Minister’s comments that he had no intention of pulling out of the convention. It would be so contrary to every Conservative philosophical principle of building an international regime for the rule of law and the promotion of rights that I cannot conceive of any mainstream political party embarking on such a course. I was delighted when he confirmed that recently, and I think the Minister may be able to confirm it again this afternoon.

Where does that leave us? The answer is that it leaves us embarking on a project that I am happy to help the Minister with, but one that I think will prove in reality to be extremely difficult, for the reasons given by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, and that, at the end of the day, will deliver extremely limited benefits—indeed, so limited that I begin to wonder whether the project is worth pursuing at all.

With those thoughts in mind—I keep them general at the moment—I simply wish to assure the Minister that I am more than happy to continue to engage with him and others from the Department in which he serves on this issue. I have all sorts of ideas that I am happy to put forward, but it is important that we get some idea at the outset of what we are trying to achieve. Without that, we are in serious danger of taking a wrong turn.

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[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I welcome the Minister to his place in what is the Justice Department’s first debate in Westminster Hall.

At the risk of offending both sides, may I suggest that we need to be a bit less theological? I have much sympathy for the points made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) in opening the debate, and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who is a distinguished lawyer. However, I suspect that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

There were human rights protections before the Human Rights Act came into force. The United Kingdom was a signatory to the European convention, and it is worth observing that although Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in his subsequent career, was not noted for being on the liberal wing of the Conservative party, he none the less thought that the convention was a good and desirable thing. There were protections in the convention that the British courts took account of. It is fair to say that there were also sometimes practical issues about access and implementation, and we should not lose sight of that. The thought, therefore, that the Human Rights Act is a sort of holy grail is probably misleading, and we should not be afraid to think of looking at it again and reforming it. Equally, we should not assume that the convention is a permanent intrusion on the rights of British courts, because that would be wrong too. Let us try to find a way through the middle.

I serve on the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly and legal affairs committee. Perhaps rather horrifyingly to some people, I also serve on a committee that appoints the judges to the European Court—the idea that a committee of politicians appoints judges may seem odd to us, and that is perhaps an issue we have to look at. The quality of the current Court is, frankly, variable: we have some very good people, and we have some people whose independence does not come from the tradition that we are used to, if I can put it that way. On the other hand, the United Kingdom generally does not have an issue in terms of being at variance with the Strasbourg Court—we have one of the highest rates of compliance with its judgments—so, again, a bit of perspective might be required.

It is perhaps ironic that the Human Rights Act did not seek to create a binding precedent, but the approach taken by our domestic judiciary has frequently got fairly close to that. That is not an issue that withdrawal from the convention, of itself, would address, so we have to be realistic about what can be achieved. In any event, Strasbourg judgments would be regarded as being at least of persuasive value in arguments before our Supreme Court. Simply repealing the Act will not, therefore, make some of the controversy go away, and we have to be realistic about what can be achieved.

On the other hand, bizarre consequences sometimes stem from the Act’s operation, and we perhaps need to look carefully at that. I do not take the view that that would be a signal that we have turned our back on human rights. Britain’s compliance with the convention is rather better than, for example, Russia’s—I do not think we have invaded any of our neighbours recently—so let us put our disagreements with the convention into a bit of perspective.

I hope the Minister will give us a little more assistance on how we go forward. We are committed to a consultation, which is right. In fairness, the Government have committed themselves to a much more significant consultation than that which happened before the Human Rights Act. I would like to know more details of the consultation’s timetable and what form the consultation will take.

[Mr Grieve]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is one thing we need to look at? In the past, where we have found difficulties, we have legislated in separate legislation—we did that with the Immigration Act 2014. Changing the text of the Human Rights Act may not be the best course of action. If there are areas of difficulty, we can see whether there is separate legislation that is still compatible with the convention that we can introduce.

[Robert Neill]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a very fair point. I hope the Government will include that as part of the consultation. Some of the things that cause offence to many of our constituents might be remedied more easily in a more appropriate fashion. That is an important point.

The Government are committed to basing a British Bill of Rights on the convention, but we need a little more detail about what “basing” means. For example, are there any rights in the convention that it would not be proposed to include in the Bill? That is critical, because people would be concerned about a diminution of protections. On the other hand, are there areas where the current protections might be enhanced? We need that spelled out at an early stage.

What is the timetable? What is the proposed scope and level of detail of the prelegislative scrutiny? The Justice Committee, which I chair, will be most anxious to be involved in that scrutiny, but other parts of the House will also rightly have to have an input. We also need carefully to address the impact across the whole United Kingdom, because the United Kingdom was a signatory to the convention, and the Human Rights Act was a United Kingdom piece of legislation. It is important that we reflect on all those matters.

I am not perhaps as pessimistic about the prospects for constructive change as my right hon. and learned Friend. Perhaps that is because I am a West Ham supporter, so optimism must come naturally to me—something that you, as a Sheffield Wednesday supporter, will understand very well, Mr Betts.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate on the future of the Human Rights Act.

I listened with great interest to all the contributions. I shall touch on a few of them, such as that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who gave a powerful speech about some of the risks involved in this enterprise. I detected that he is perhaps not quite as sympathetic to the concept of a Bill of Rights as he was when he was shadow Justice Secretary, but I was heartened to hear that he was offering creative solutions along the way.

[Mr Grieve]

The Minister is quite right. In 2009 I worked on a paper with him as my chief of staff about the possibility of a Bill of Rights. As was rightly said, such a Bill of Rights is perfectly possible, but it will not solve the problems or issues that have been the driving force behind the Government’s current project unless we intend to decouple ourselves from the European convention, which, mercifully, I understand not to be our policy. There is the conundrum that my hon. Friend will have to grapple with.

[Mr Raab]

I thought I had detected a slight revival of my right hon. and learned Friend’s former enthusiasm, but perhaps I was too optimistic.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for his contribution. He always speaks powerfully on these issues—I have listened to him speaking on human rights since I joined this House. He took us back to Magna Carta and its modern-day relevance.