Domestic Abuse Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin). I echo all hon. Members who rightly said that, following what we might describe as the rumbustiousness of previous days, today we have seen the Chamber at its best, with some amazing, moving and powerful speeches, not least that of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield).

I strongly the support the Bill, but I want to raise an aspect that is not covered by it, which is that of coercive control in a professional relationship, specifically the relationship between therapist and client. This relates to the traumatic case of a constituent of mine. Her daughter was one of a group of young women—all from very affluent backgrounds, not coincidentally, because they were targeted as such—who in 2008 attended an art school in Italy, where they came into contact with a self-appointed therapist or, as she called herself, life coach.

The therapist practised dream therapy and professed to specialise in personal development. Over the course of the next year, the therapist saw up to a dozen of those women for regular therapy sessions. By early 2014, only three women were still seeing the therapist, one of whom was my constituent’s daughter. By that time, two of the women had broken off all contact with their friends and families, and had rejected their inheritances. The reason was that the therapist had used a tactic known as false memory placement. She placed into the minds of those girls, those impressionable young women, false memories of being abused by their own mothers. That has been proven and substantiated since, but when the case came to the Crown Prosecution Service, it had to conclude that legislation did not cover that specific outrage.

The current legislation refers to abuse in a domestic setting, and this is the Domestic Abuse Bill—I entirely understand that; nevertheless, in the case of my constituent, there was a crime—call it what one might, but it was theft, the theft of love. The love between mother and daughter was indoctrinated out, being replaced by false hate based on false memories. This is a terrible story, which previously received quite some media coverage, but I will not name anyone because parts of it are still ongoing.

The key thing is that, for me, it would be preferable if the definition of A and B in the Bill was confined not just to family members, partners or ex-partners, but to other types of relationship where coercion and control can happen. I can tell the House that I am aware from other parliamentarians that this problem is not restricted to the case I have mentioned. There have been other cases. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has tried to bring forward a Bill connected with the qualifications of therapists. Previously, Lord Garnier tried to amend the Bill so that it could be a crime to use coercion and control in a professional setting. That is certainly what I would like to see.

I do appreciate the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—she is doing brilliant things—has previously seen me about that case. I understand that the desire in the Home Office is to focus on the domestic context, but the fact is that the incident has had profound domestic ramifications, as hon. Members can quite imagine. The good news is that my constituent’s daughter did eventually get in contact and has returned, but there are many ongoing implications of the case.

As I say, I know from other parliamentarians, including Lord Deben, that there are many other cases like that one. I hope that, in the course of the Bill’s passage, we can look at the specific, relatively niche cases in which the crime of coercion and the use of certain psychiatric tools can emerge but that would not be covered by the Bill as it is currently drafted. I hope to be able to explore that at a later stage, if at all possible.

Justice

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from Topical Questions to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on Tuesday 12 March 2019.

[James Cartlidge]

Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline what plans he has to increase support for rape crisis centres?

Oral Answers to Questions

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

If the hon. Gentleman cares about criminal justice co-operation, as I am sure he does—I certainly do—then there is a course of action available to him later today to ensure that we can have further criminal justice co-operation, and that is voting for the Government’s deal.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

11. What steps the Government are taking to tackle violence in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

In order to tackle violence in prisons, we first have to make sure that drugs and weapons are not getting into prisons. We need more prison officers, which is why we are pleased that we now have 4,700 more prison officers in place. We also need to invest much more in staff training and support. In the end, the key to reducing violence is good relationships between prison officers and prisoners.

[James Cartlidge]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Clearly, preventing violence in prisons is a priority, so, to that end, will he update us on what plans he has to increase searches of cells and wings?

[Rory Stewart]

This is absolutely central. Getting on top of cell searching—making sure that we understand what is in a cell, what should not be in a cell, getting the mobile phones and getting the drugs—is vital to having the baseline for a safe prison, so we are investing in more dog teams, in more mobile phone detection equipment and in dedicated search teams across the estate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

My Department will continue to argue the case for spending our money sensibly and getting the best deal for justice.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline what plans he has to increase support for rape crisis centres?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)]

I pay tribute to Fern Champion, who has been incredibly courageous in speaking out recently about this hugely important issue. We provide funding for 89 rape support centres. From April, we will increase funding by 10% for them all, with a 30% increase in London, and move to a three-year funding settlement.[Official Report, 21 March 2019, Vol. 656, c. 12MC.]

Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]

James Cartlidge Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

These people will be performing judicial tasks and functions and so will need to be appropriately qualified, which is why we have tabled the amendments.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is my understanding that these are mainly interlocutory functions, not actual judgments or significant judicial functions.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

No, as we understand it, although it is envisaged that some of these tasks will be procedural, others will be very important to people whose rights are affected. We might think, for example, that requests for adjournments are straightforward, but they are not. As practitioners and former practitioners will know, they can be complicated, because when a judge decides whether to grant one, they take into consideration a host of things, so it is important that the person be appropriately qualified.

We accept that the procedure rule committee will be able to iron out some of the questions about what are judicial and what are administrative functions, but the main thing is that these people will be carrying out judicial functions and deciding some difficult issues, and it is only appropriate that they be qualified and appropriately experienced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I hope I shall make a better stab at my speech than I did of being a Teller earlier.

I rise to oppose these amendments, tempted though I am by the way in which they were proposed by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), whom I respect as a fellow lawyer. However, I do have to say that she seeks to go further than is appropriate and seeks to put a needless restriction on the ability of the procedure committee in particular to come to the appropriate balance. I have very great respect for the views of both the Law Society and the Bar Council—I say that with reference to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a non-practising barrister and a consultant to a law firm—but ultimately the scheme envisaged by the Government is a right and balanced one, and reflects in particular the views of the senior judiciary, which I think is important because ultimately it is the judges who are best placed to decide the appropriate level of delegation. They are the people who work day to day with these staff; they see day to day the nature of the boxwork—as it is sometimes called—and the other things that come in.

For these reasons, when the matter was debated in the other place, both Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the recently retired Lord Chief Justice, to whom I have already referred, and Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, recently retired president of the Supreme Court, counselled against an undue restriction on the operation of the civil procedure rule committee, already a well established body of the kind the Opposition seek to bring in. I think they also broadly supported the overall thrust of the Bill.

The hon. Lady referred to austerity. That is not the objective of this Bill; there has been a long-standing proposal to modernise the civil justice system. She referred to the work done by Lord Justice Briggs, for whom I have the greatest respect. The Bill is a logical follow-on from the Briggs report, and it is necessary if we are to achieve modernisation and make the courts more accessible for litigants. This is an entirely sensible Bill; that is why the judiciary has pushed for these sorts of proposals, and why Lord Thomas said that he “warmly” welcomed it. It will save some £6 million; he regards that as a realistic figure. That is important in the context of the available resources for the courts system. We all accept that the courts are under pressure, and this is a sensible way forward that does not impede the basic requirements of access to justice or fairness.

Lord Thomas said two further things that we should bear in mind. He spoke about the developments in civil procedures; the rule committee has been an important part of that over the last 15 to 20 years, so it is not as though the committee were unused to dealing with these matters. The committees bring together representatives of the legal profession. As a former practitioner, I agree with his description of that committee as

“a highly representative body with many representatives of the legal profession. Certainly, the committee will always try to reach a view by consensus—when I was a member of it for more than six years there never was a division; we always managed to agree.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 June 2018; Vol. 791, c. 2039.]

Most experienced practitioners will be aware of that. I think we can say the same of the criminal procedure rule committee; these are very well established bodies, and judges do not forget that they are judges when they are there.

It is a little unworthy, I say with respect, to suggest that the judiciary—we have talked about the senior judiciary chairing these bodies—would acquiesce in an inappropriate level of delegation for a purely financial consideration. They would be going against their judicial oaths. I do not think for one second that the hon. Lady really means to say that they would do that. The amendments would, however, put needless constraint on the committee’s work. That is why I quoted before and quote again Lord Thomas’s observation:

“Experience has shown that detailed restrictions on procedure are a very real fetter on the administration of justice”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 June 2018; Vol. 791, c. 2039.]

In the other place, he gave a number of examples that I need not give here showing why that could be counterproductive.

It is also worth considering the speech of Lord Neuberger. He pointed out the following:

“There are two protected factors: one is that nothing can be done without it being in the rules, and the second is that the Lord Chief Justice needs to give his or her authorisation to the person who makes the decision.” .”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 July 2018; Vol. 792, c. 887.]

Those are important safeguards.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend speaks with great expertise. What he is saying goes back to the point raised earlier about the possibility of the functions that are delegated having legal significance. Presumably if that was the case, they would not be delegated to start with.

[Robert Neill]

That is precisely right. It is inconceivable that any Lord Chief Justice would give his or her consent to a delegation that was inappropriate or would put the interests of justice at risk. I never sat as a deputy district judge—they used to be called deputy registrars in my day, so long ago was it—in civil matters, but I have many friends who do, and a great deal of what is called boxwork, with which at least some on the Treasury Bench will be familiar, was of a very administrative kind. We expect the district judges in a busy county court to deal with that, whereas it seems perfectly reasonable for many of these matters, which are often of a very interlocutory nature, to be dealt with by an experienced member of court staff who has been in the service for many years. We are not talking about the ultimate determination of the case in any of these matters. That is why Lord Neuberger referred to that safeguard or protection, and the protection that that would be laid before Parliament.

Lord Neuberger made another important observation on the attempt, as it seems to me, to fetter the discretion of the committee. He posed a rhetorical question, as perhaps senior judges and other lawyers tend to do:

“Whether it is right to provide in such clear terms, and such uncompromising general terms, for the circumstances and requirements for”

appeals—which is what he was talking about—seems to him to be questionable. He was making this point:

“Having chaired the Civil Procedure Rule Committee for three years, I can say, as has been quoted in relation to its criminal equivalent by my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas, that considerable care is given to ensure that all the requirements of justice are met. It is very rare, if ever, that I can remember a decision being arrived at which was not arrived at by consensus.”

These questions are considered, not only by the judiciary but by practitioners, including members of the solicitors’ profession and members of the Bar. Plaintiffs’ and defendants’ interests are represented on these committees, as are both ends of the profession—solicitors and barristers—and all levels of the judiciary, from the High Court bench through the circuit bench to the district bench. This is a broad-based body and, as Lord Neuberger said, these

“details should be worked out…by the rule committee”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 July 2018; Vol. 792, c. 890 to 891.]

I think that that is a forceful argument for leaving the proposals as the Government intended.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

I am happy to come on to the three reasons why amendments 2 to 4 cannot be accepted. First, the amendments are not necessary. The functions are already being carried out, and carried out well, by those with lesser qualifications than those sought by the hon. Member for Bolton South East. The qualification requirements for legal advisers in the magistrates court and family court are currently set out in regulations made by the Lord Chancellor, as they have been since 1979, and amendments 2 and 3 would raise the qualifications bar significantly higher than the current regulations and would rule out a large proportion of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service staff from giving legal advice in future.

[James Cartlidge]

There are many people in the Chamber with huge legal expertise. All I can claim is spending my year off as a junior outdoor clerk, for which the only qualifications needed were a ponytail and a cockney accent, as far as I could see. From my short experience I discovered the huge number of staff who make up our courts and keep them ticking along. They might be administrative functions, but we should not be afraid of reforming our courts to give those people greater roles that help them to make more of their career.

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Not only is it important to ensure that the qualifications match the role, but these reforms will ensure good career progression for competent and organised staff. Similarly, in relation to amendment 4, it is already the case that some staff can exercise judicial functions in almost every jurisdiction except the Crown court. The range of functions they can carry out varies enormously, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) pointed out earlier, from legally qualified legal advisers in the county court setting aside default judgments to non-legally qualified caseworkers in the lower tribunal dealing with postponement requests and issuing strikeout warnings.

Accepting amendment 4 would rule out a large proportion of those staff, who are already exercising judicial functions and who may have been doing either or both for a number of years. Such a loss of expertise would be particularly damaging and would impact on the service that Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service can provide. The hon. Member for Bolton South East suggested that introducing authorised staff was damaging to justice, but I did not hear any examples of inappropriate action by any of our current staff who do not currently have those qualifications and who are already carrying out these roles.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Thanks to a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), which we have been proud to support, new technology is available that should not force governors to have to come up with a bespoke solution prison by prison, but will allow us nationally to have much better technology to identify these phones, listen to them and ultimately seize them.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the role of employment and education in reducing rates of reoffending.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)]

Prison education is key to achieving better outcomes for offenders and has been proven to reduce reoffending by approximately 9% and increase P45 employment by 1.8%. We are empowering governors, who will be given the budget and controls to tailor education provision in their prisons, to both better engage their prisoners and meet their specific learning and employment needs. On 17 September, we launched a new innovative commissioning portal, which will give governors direct access to a huge range of learning and skills providers, including local educators and employers.

[James Cartlidge]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Does he agree that in some cases, self-employment—for example, as a sole trader—may be appropriate? Can he set out whether those new support measures will include mentoring for offenders who want to start a business when they leave prison?

HMP Birmingham

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Altcourse Prison is a G4S prison; it is run by the same company that is being criticised in Birmingham. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, that prison—as I saw directly—has incredibly good education facilities and workshops, and it had a good inspection report. It is showing how to run a safe, clean and orderly regime that is genuinely changing lives, and how to do so through the private sector.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

May I pay tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend is handling this very difficult and sensitive matter? The tendering process is critical wherever the private sector is involved in the provision of public services. Will he ensure that anyone bidding in any future tenders for prisons, including this one, will have to show that they have the capacity to avoid losing control of the prisons in their charge?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a fundamental challenge, and of course it is central to anything that happens when the Government work with the private sector. We must make sure that the tender process ensures that the people bidding for any of these contracts have the credibility, legitimacy and capacity to run the contracts effectively.

Criminal Legal Aid

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes an important point eloquently. For many of the barristers I have spoken to, this really is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Before I touch on the precise concerns that have been raised about the new scheme, I will briefly look at the wider context that has caused this issue to be so controversial. As I have said, in many ways this issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back in the justice sector. Our justice system is at tipping point. The deep crisis unleashed by drastic cuts could soon become an emergency. In some areas, it already has.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about cuts. Does he accept that, had Labour won the 2010 general election, it too would have made substantial cuts to the Ministry of Justice budget based on its own manifesto promises?

[Richard Burgon]

Things have moved on since the 2010 general election.

Since 2010, the budget of the Ministry of Justice has fallen by 40% in the deepest cuts of any Department. A further £600 million—around 10% of the MOJ’s budget—is to be cut in the next two years. It is a system that has already been cut to the bone. The crisis in our prisons is driven by staff and budget cuts, as has been well documented. It has been less well documented that 100 or so courts have been sold off for little more than the price of the average UK house, having negative impacts on victims and witnesses. What has also not been discussed as much as it should have been is the fact that youth offending team budgets have been decimated, with central Government funding halved over the past few years, or the fact that probation privatisation is failing despite hundreds of millions of pounds more recently going into bailing out these failing private companies. But it does not stop there, because on top of this, there are big reductions in police numbers and big reductions in the Crown Prosecution Service budgets. In 2016, the Public Accounts Committee told Members of Parliament that the criminal justice system was at breaking point. After years of cuts, the system is clearly now broken. Let us be clear: an underfunded system risks yet more victims being denied justice and risks yet more miscarriages of justice.

Today we are discussing cuts related to legal aid. Our democracy and the rule of law, despite the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) advocating people being banned from not going to work, depends on people being able to defend their rights. Our welfare state, created in the aftermath of the second world war, was about defending people’s basic human rights. It was about guaranteeing every citizen access to the human rights of education and healthcare but also of access to justice. In civil cases, when people cannot access justice, the consequences are grave.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

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

[Tom Pursglove]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I am not suggesting for a second that such incidents will not be repeated. We try to mitigate and manage risk, but there is always a chance that something like this could happen again. As I have said, what is happening in the high-security estate is a rare occurrence. Of course, as I have also said, the level of violence in our prisons is too high, but dealing with the issues that have led to the current situation—drones, drugs and illegal mobile phones—will take time. We are investing in staff and our intelligence network; we are working on drone detection equipment; and we are working on mobile-phone blockers, but there is no silver bullet to deal with the issue in our prisons, and doing so will take time.

No one here is saying that this will not happen again. We must all be frank with ourselves: prisons are difficult places with some very difficult people to manage, and because of the particular set of circumstances that we face, it will take time to resolve the situation.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Of course it is of concern that an event like this should take place at a high-security prison. However, if there is one conclusion we can draw, surely it is that the method of dealing with such events that is available to the Minister through the Tornado team is effective when tested, which, in itself, should give the public some reassurance.

[Mr Gyimah]

That is an excellent point. The Tornado teams are the bravest of the brave. As we saw last night, they deal with some of the most difficult situations, and the fact that they can be mobilised relatively quickly to arrive at a prison and offer support to its frontline staff is testimony to their effectiveness and professionalism. Of course we would prefer not to have to deploy them, but when there are problems and a need to protect the public and prison officers and maintain stability and order in our prisons, they are second to none.