Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
4. What assessment his Department has made of the potential effects on other Government Departments of his planned reductions to legal aid for social welfare law.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The impact assessment published alongside the Government’s response to consultation lays out the best estimates of the costs and benefits of the legal aid reforms. Ultimately, costs to other Departments will be driven by behavioural responses to the changes, and these are very difficult to predict with any real accuracy.
Julie Elliott
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Is it his Government’s view that it is acceptable for a whole swathe of the population to have no access to justice in the area of social welfare law?
Mr Clarke
We are not denying access to justice for anybody, but obviously a huge swathe of the population find it expensive to obtain justice and we have to ask ourselves for which people the taxpayer should pay for access to justice. We have concentrated on the most important issues, in which there is a general public interest in having people represented. It is wrong to represent changes in the way we pay lawyers and the amount that we pay as if we are somehow barring people from access to their legal rights.
Graeme Morrice
Does the Lord Chancellor not feel that the cut in the civil legal aid budget, which will clearly have a detrimental impact on the citizens advice bureau and law centre network, will hinder the notion of the big society?
Mr Clarke
Legal aid is not the principal source of public funding support for citizens advice bureaux, and legal aid changes will not take effect until 2013. Those and other voluntary bodies are taking a big hit from the reduction of local authority and other grants. For that reason, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has already announced £27 million of continued funding for citizens advice bureaux, and we have set up a transitional fund for the voluntary sector to manage the transition to a tighter funding environment. We have £20 million set aside this year to support voluntary bodies through their present difficulties, which are mainly because of local government cuts.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to the extra funding for welfare and benefits advice, but will my right hon. and learned Friend update us on what progress he has made with the Cabinet Office about the allocation of those funds?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend has rightly been chasing me on this subject, and with her I have approached the Cabinet Office. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, hopes to make an announcement shortly about the distribution of the money. As the sort of people we are talking about need the general advice offered by such voluntary bodies, I very much hope that he will soon make an announcement on behalf of the Government.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Is it not clear that what most people will need with these changes is well-supported advice services, a user-friendly tribunal system, and Government Departments that give people what they are entitled to in the first place?
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Last week the Secretary of State confirmed that he was taking legal aid away from brain-damaged children and disabled people unlawfully denied benefits. In answer to questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), the Minister with responsibility for legal aid, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), admitted that the Department of Health pays up to £183 an hour for legal advice, Work and Pensions pays £201 an hour and Communities and Local Government pays £288 an hour. Some of those well-paid Government lawyers will be up against our unrepresented constituents, especially on appeal. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that that is fair?
Mr Clarke
Most of those do not get legal aid now, and most personal injury cases are not brought using legal aid. They are brought using no win, no fee arrangements. As the hon. Gentleman knows, in the new proposals for how no win, no fee ought to work, we have made special arrangements for particularly difficult cases and the insurance of the costs of medical reports.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
2. What steps he is taking to ensure the provision of adequate legal advice in young offender institutions.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
5. What steps his Department is taking to provide support for victims; and if he will make a statement.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
In the current financial year the Ministry of Justice is providing funding of approximately £50 million to voluntary sector organisations that support victims of crime. Before Christmas we intend to launch a consultation on proposals that will ensure that victims of crime are supported in the best way possible.
Sajid Javid
Too many victims of crime in my constituency feel that their rights are put behind those of criminals. Will my right hon. and learned Friend please share with me what measures he proposes to take to correct that sense of injustice?
Mr Clarke
Apart from continuing to give support to victims organisations, as I said, we are about to implement the Prisoners Earnings Act 1996, which will see up to £1 million taken from prisoners’ wages going into victims’ services. We have given Victim Support its three-year grant for the first time. It has never had such assured support—£38 million a year. We have honoured our coalition commitment to place rape support centres on a secure financial footing, giving them long-term funding, and we are about to open four more.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the most important thing for victims is the prevention of further offences and reoffending, since what victims want is to know that they are not going to become a victim a further time after a bad experience?
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Does the Secretary of State agree that restorative justice can be key in helping victims, both in their hearing an apology from the offender, and in some cases hearing an explanation as to why the crime was committed?
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Can the Lord Chancellor imagine a more needy victim than a child brain-damaged at birth whose parents are unable to sue for its financial security?
Mr Clarke
It is not true that they are unable to sue. We have a dispute about how much the lawyers should be paid in the event of a successful claim, which is an important matter, but I do not accept the assertion that none of these actions will be brought unless we leave the present no win, no fee arrangements completely untouched.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
On 12 October the Prime Minister announced that he had appointed Louise Casey to a new job. The Secretary of State has had at least a month to arrange for a new victims commissioner to take up his or her role. A month on, not only is no one in post, but the position has not been advertised and the Government have not said what plans they have. Victims charities and organisations and the Opposition have urged the Government to move swiftly, so who is it to be? Sadly, we have seen empty words on victims’ rights, and in this case we also have an empty post.
Mr Clarke
I am extremely grateful to Louise Casey for the work she did and the discussions I had with her while she was in office. I find the hon. Gentleman’s question amazing. The post of victims commissioner was created by Act of Parliament in 2004, but the previous Government failed to appoint anyone for five years and a fresh statute was introduced to revise the post in 2009. Louise Casey was appointed in early 2010. We are reconsidering—again—the basis on which we make the appointment, but to be accused of tardiness by someone who was in the last Parliament is positively farcical.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
6. What assessment he has made of the causes of reoffending. [R]
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
8. What estimate his Department has made of the future size of the prison population.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The latest projections of the prison population in England and Wales, published last week, modelled three scenarios. These track, as is the usual practice, the impact of three different sentencing trends on custodial convictions. By the end of June 2017, the prison population is projected to be 83,100 on the lower projection, 88,900 on the medium projection and 94,800 on the higher projection.
Nick Smith
The prison population is at a record high, and some 60% of the prison population have speech, language and communication needs. How will the Justice Secretary address communication disability as part of his rehabilitation revolution?
Mr Clarke
I am sorry, but I missed the second point. Is the point of the question communication disability? [Interruption.] Prison projections are very difficult to make, and that is why we have the equivalent of the fan-shaped projections that the Bank of England produces on inflation forecasts. It has always been the same with prison forecasts.
The future prison population will depend on all kinds of things beyond the control of the Government, but the prison estate is well placed to meet the demand. Eventually it will all depend on whether we have long and protracted youth unemployment, how far the recession has retracted, and how successful we are with our rehabilitation revolution, workplace reform, skills training, education reform and so on. The Prison Service is there to meet the demand, but we expect the demand to be reasonably stable.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is aware of the importance of the construction of the Featherstone 2 prison, which is currently being built in my constituency, but can he assure the House that he will do all he can to encourage G4S, the operator, to employ people locally, so that we have not just the disadvantages of a prison being built, but some of the advantages?
Mr Clarke
Featherstone 2 is one of two new prisons that we have coming on stream in 2012, and I am sure that it will provide a very valuable source of local employment when it opens, as it is quite a large prison. It will also, of course, contribute to our battle against crime and to the need to punish serious criminals.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I know the Justice Secretary does not like being reminded of this, and that is clearly why I am going to do so. He had a target to reduce the prison population by 3,000 by 2015, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) helped to remind the House, it is now 87,747, which is about 3,000 more than when the right hon. and learned Gentleman became Justice Secretary. As a consequence of this Government’s policies, which projection does he believe will be the case? Will the prison population in May 2015 be the same, more or less than it was in May 2010?
Mr Clarke
It is simply not the case that I have ever had a target for prisons, because as I have just explained it is not within the control of Ministers. That is why Ministers in the previous Government used to produce these various scenarios. I do not have a target. We make an estimate of the effect that legislative changes will have on the future prison population, and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that the House has just passed will, other things being equal, which they never are, reduce the prison population by about 2,600.
Sadiq Khan
We have a complacent Justice Secretary who, one third of the way through this Parliament, has no idea whether the prison population will go up, down or stay the same. He has cut our prison building programme, cut capital investment in prisons, he is cutting probation officers and cutting prison officer numbers. Is he surprised that the chief inspector of prisons has seen no evidence of a rehabilitation revolution and thinks that there should be a rocket up this Justice Secretary’s backside?
Mr Clarke
The future level of crime depends on a huge number of variables, which are not within the control of any Government or Minister. What one does is to make sure that one does not exacerbate any problems, and that one accommodates those who come in. I am trying to establish in prisons a more intelligent regime that will achieve some improvements in reoffending rates for those who have to be punished by going to prison. If any of my predecessors ever gave an exact forecast of the prison population, two or three out, that predecessor was in my opinion an idiot. I do remember, however, that the previous Government so miscalculated things that they had to let 80,000 people out of prison, short of their sentence, because prisons were bulging at the seams and they had nowhere to accommodate them.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
9. What steps he is taking to reduce the level of reoffending by people sentenced to one year or less.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to increase prison tariffs for people sentenced for carrying knives.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Sentencing guidelines provide that the starting point for an adult convicted of knife possession is a custodial sentence. Where immediate custody is given, the average sentence length increased between June 2010 and June 2011. We are creating new offences so that those who carry a knife in a public place or school, and go on to threaten and cause immediate risk of serious physical harm to another, can expect to face at least a minimum custodial sentence.
Andrew Griffiths
Constituents in Burton will applaud the statements just made about sentences for the type of crime that is covered today on the front page of the Burton Mail, in which a young man was frogmarched to a cash point and forced to hand over money at knifepoint. They want to see that kind of tough sentencing as a deterrent. Will the Secretary of State back the Burton Mail campaign to make Burton a knife-free zone and to prevent these kinds of activities happening again?
Mr Clarke
If the newspaper report is accurate, then whoever carried out that crime committed quite a number of criminal offences, most of which carry very serious penalties, so I hope that the local courts deal with it with appropriate seriousness, having obviously considered all the circumstances. We are sending out, we hope, a strong message that we will not tolerate the use of knives. Threatening with a knife and putting someone in fear of injury is a very serious matter. I wish my hon. Friend every success in working with his constituents to try to reduce the scourge of knife crime in Burton.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
12. What steps his Department is taking in respect of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences who have completed their minimum tariff.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Tariff-expired indeterminate sentence prisoners will be released from custody only if the independent Parole Board is satisfied that they may be safely managed in the community. We are seeking to identify further improvements to the progression of those prisoners through effective sentence planning, which will require the engagement of the offenders themselves.
Steve McCabe
As I understand it, under the Lord Chancellor’s proposals a judge will be required to hand down a mandatory life sentence the second time someone is convicted of using a nuclear weapon. Allowing for all the Lord Chancellor’s wisdom and guile, would it not be an awful lot smarter to hold someone indefinitely the first time they committed that offence?
Mr Clarke
Certainly, the Government take a serious view of the use of a nuclear weapon; I hope that not too much of that breaks out in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. We discussed these proposals in the House only last week, and we achieved the House’s approval for them. There is an indeterminate sentence called a life sentence, which is the best and most established form of indeterminate sentence. Having got rid of the failed indeterminate sentences for public protection, we expect that quite a lot of people will get life sentences who hitherto would have been given the rather unsatisfactory IPPs.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State consider the problem of pre-release of prisoners where insufficient preparation is made for training or, particularly, for somewhere to live or some kind of community support? That means, in turn, that they either stay longer in prison or are released into the community, where they are inadequately supervised and end up back in a whole regime of crime.
Mr Clarke
We are looking at that problem very seriously, and we hope to produce a substantial improvement on the present situation. In particular, I am working with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to try to ensure that offenders leaving prison can have instant access to the work programmes that we are developing for other people seeking work. Enabling people to get back into employment is one of the best ways of improving the chances that they will not offend again.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
13. What assessment he has made of the effects on reoffending rates of his policy of payment by results to companies.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I do not currently have any plans to meet the Magistrates Association to discuss the recruitment and retention of magistrates.
Tony Baldry
Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that lay magistrates are feeling a bit unloved at the moment? They feel somewhat squeezed between the police increasingly allocating non-court disposals at one end and deputy circuit judges doing rather more work at the other end, and there are court closures and bench mergers. There has been no recruitment to the Oxfordshire bench for several years now. What can he do to ensure that lay magistrates feel appreciated?
Mr Clarke
I will heed my hon. Friend’s warning, but I think we probably all agree that the lay magistracy is one of the distinctive strengths of our justice system. It certainly makes a very valuable contribution, and I am glad to say that it is a popular form of volunteering. We obviously have to appoint strictly on merit, but we recruit more than 1,000 new magistrates every year and magistrates dispose of about 95% of the criminal justice work that goes through our system. I will take on board his points, and I hope that we can encourage people in Oxfordshire to carry on the essential work that they are doing for the good of the community.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
16. What steps he is taking to increase the use of restorative justice.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Yesterday, the UK took over the chairmanship of the Council of Europe. Our key priority is reform of the European Court of Human Rights, for which there is widespread support. We are pressing for consensus among all 47 member states on a package of reforms that will make the Court more effective. The Court is struggling under a growing backlog of almost 160,000 cases, which is undermining its authority. The aim will be for the Court to concentrate on the most serious issues of alleged failure to comply with the convention by a member state. The primary duty of compliance with the convention in individual cases should rest with democratic Parliaments and national courts.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
One cannot help but notice the good mood that the Justice Secretary is in today, which I am sure has nothing to do with the spot of bother the Home Secretary is in. May I ask him a question on a similar issue—foreign prisoners? He will be aware that in 2007, the Labour Government negotiated with the EU a prisoner transfer agreement, which comes into force next month, which will mean that no prisoner consent is required, and that the other country must comply with a request for a transfer. The Prime Minister promised the repatriation of thousands of foreign prisoners by personally taking charge of negotiations with individual countries. We all know that he likes to keep his promises, so can the Justice Secretary tell us how many new prisoner transfer agreements have been successfully negotiated with individual countries in the past 18 months, and how many foreign prisoners does he expect to be repatriated this year?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
First, I want to put the right hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest: I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in her handling of the current problems, so it is just my usual bonhomie; there is no particular cause for it today. It is true that this important transfer of prisoners agreement is about to come into force, and it will make a difference to our problem with foreign prisoners, although, of course, there are derogations to some important countries, such as Poland and Ireland, where it will not come into effect for a few years. The right hon. Gentleman hits on a serious problem, though: we need to find a way of reducing the foreign prisoner population. At the moment, we have only one international bilateral agreement near to conclusion, but we are continuing to work on it, because foreign prisoners take up more than 10% of places in our prison system.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
T3. At Swaleside prison in my constituency, the Kainos Community programme has an 87% success rate in reducing reoffending by inmates taking part in the scheme. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge this success, and extend the scheme across the prison estate?
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
T4. Could I ask whether the Secretary of State will identify the amount of savings he will make in his planned reductions for legal aid in social welfare law and identify the amount of knock-on cuts to the Scottish budget through the Barnett formula? Could he confirm that, if there are cuts, the Scottish Parliament does not have to follow the savage cuts in welfare law legal aid?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
We debated all this last week. We are still spending £50 million on legal aid for welfare law, even as we have revised and cut it back, and cut out areas where, frankly, legal assistance is not necessary, appropriate or justified. Our proposals affect England and Wales only, and the provision of legal aid in Scotland is not a matter for me.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
T9. Do the Government agree that magistrates are a vital and integral part of the justice system, and that they must be supported and encouraged to play a part in neighbourhood justice?
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
T10. After the riots in the summer, courts such as Cannock magistrates court in my constituency sat late and ensured that the surge in work was dealt with smoothly and efficiently. These late-night sittings have been widely regarded as a huge success, not least by those magistrates who have full-time jobs that require them to work during office hours. What plans does the Secretary of State’s Department have to roll out these evening court sittings on a permanent basis?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
The work done after the riots is a tribute to the public spiritedness of all who sat on the bench—all the court staff, probation staff, police and duty defence solicitors. There was a widespread feeling that people should do their bit to restore order, and I am glad to say that the courts rose to the challenge. Normally, on an ordinary day, we do not have a shortage of court space, so there is no general need to have night or evening sittings. We can certainly improve the efficiency with which the more straightforward cases are dealt with. They can be brought on at an ordinary hour more quickly than they sometimes are now. We are working on that. It was a tribute to the court service and everybody who works in it that they all worked as well as they did.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
T7. I wrote to the Justice Secretary six weeks ago on behalf of my constituent Gary Thrall, but have not yet had an answer. May I ask him again to look at this case and at the fact that 16 months on from a vicious knife attack, Gary has yet to receive a final settlement from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority or to be advised of the likely time scale for the settlement, which is preventing the family from moving on?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
According to figures from the Department, 10% of all crimes are committed by people on bail and 20% of burglaries are committed by people on bail. When the provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill come into effect, which will make it harder for courts to remand people in custody, what estimate has the Department made of the number of crimes that will be committed by people on bail then?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
The changes we are making are to get rid of the anomaly whereby bail can be refused to someone who is charged with an offence in circumstances where it is quite obvious that they are not going to be sent to prison, even if they are found guilty. It is a reform that should have been made a long time ago. Serious offences are sometimes committed by people on bail, and we have committed ourselves to introducing a right of appeal when someone is given bail in the Crown court. There have been bad cases where serious offences have been committed. We hope to introduce an amendment in the other place that would allow the Crown Prosecution Service to challenge the granting of bail in the Crown court when a potentially dangerous prisoner is involved.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
T8. Constituents of mine with serious health conditions who have been turned down for employment and support allowance are still having to wait up to nine months for a tribunal appeal hearing. With more than 40% of them being successful on appeal, what is the Minister going to do to end this unacceptable wait?
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
The convictions of three world-class cricketers last week shows that even cricket is not immune from corruption. In his role as the Government’s anti-corruption chief, will the Secretary of State look into the problem of corruption in international sporting bodies such as FIFA, and see what Britain can do to drive corruption out of international sport? There has also been controversy involving the Olympics and Formula 1.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but the issue of corruption in sport is primarily the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. I know that he is working with his European Union opposite numbers on specific measures to tackle it, and I am following his progress very closely. The recent convictions show that there are problems that need to be tackled in the interests of everyone who believes in the value of sport—but honest sport—to a community.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The Government are committed to ensuring that women are not sent to prison in disproportionately high numbers. May we have an update on the Corston report?
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
The Money Advice Service has sacked 100 front-line staff in order to spend more money on publicity. Does the Secretary of State now regret removing nearly all debt advice from the scope of legal aid, and what cross-departmental discussions is he having about the future of such advice?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I am very sorry to hear what the hon. Lady has said, but I am not sure whether the issue is the responsibility of my Department; it may be the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. However, I will certainly check, because it is extremely important for advice to be available at what is a difficult time for many people. Advice on debt is, unfortunately, one of the things that many people require—not only foreign Governments, but a fair number of our own citizens.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
A few months ago, the Minister said that the backlog of appeals on social security matters would be resolved through the employment of more people. That was before the summer, but the waiting times seem to be as long as ever. Why is that?
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Slaughter
This is an important group of amendments to part 2 of the Bill, which deals with a complex and vital area of access to justice. Because there are only 20 minutes left to debate this group, and I want to be fair to the Minister and give him 10 minutes to reply, I shall speak quickly in the hope of getting through the main part of my argument. I should make it clear at the outset that I wish to press to a vote amendment 21, which would undo the destruction of conditional fee agreements that the Government are pushing through in the Bill. I also ask, with the leave of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the lead signatory to amendment 163, that we press that amendment to a vote.
Conditional fee agreements, also known as no win, no fee agreements, were brought in by a Conservative Government to preserve access to justice for those on moderate means at a time when vast areas were being removed from the scope of legal aid and eligibility criteria were being removed. The provisions were amended, with a remarkable lack of contention from the Conservative Opposition, in the Access to Justice Act 1999, to create their modern form.
The idea of contingency fee agreements was to create a viable market in legal services by introducing success fees paid by losing defendants—wrongdoers, in other words—to compensate lawyers for the cases that they lost, for which, of course, they received no fees. For lawyers, that form of payment by results meant not that they would take on spurious cases, but that they were allowed to take on cases that might be 75:25 or 50:50. That has created a system that works, for the main part, very well. It has created a viable market in legal services and permitted access to justice for millions since it was introduced.
What sort of people have availed themselves of contingency fee agreements? More than half of those who have used them have had an income below £25,000 a year and only 18% have had an income of more than £40,000 a year. Government Members carp on about footballers and models using them, but the average claimant is the average constituent.
How do the Government’s proposals work? First, winning claimants will lose. Victims will have to pay the costs of their insurance and their lawyer’s success fees from their damages—up to 25% of damages, aside from damages for future care, can be taken by the lawyer, and the insurance premium will take up even more of those damages, perhaps wiping them out altogether. To make up for part of those losses, the Government plan a 10% increase in damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity. Simple maths should be sufficient to show that that will not make up for all losses.
Losing claimants, including those bringing speculative and nuisance claims, will gain. They will benefit because it is unlikely that they will have to pay the costs of the winning defendant—that is part of the perverse, qualified one-way cost-shifting scheme that the Government intend to introduce when the Bill passes.
Losing defendants—wrongdoers, in other words—and their insurers will gain. Wrongdoers will benefit, because they do not have to pay the cost of after-the-event insurance or the victim’s lawyer’s success fees, thus limiting their liabilities and those of their insurers. Winning defendants will lose out. A winning defendant will no longer be able to reclaim the cost of their defence, thanks to qualified one-way cost shifting. To summarise, winners lose and losers win. That is simply wrong.
There was a time when the Conservative party worried about access to justice, but now it appears to be nothing more than the parliamentary wing of the insurance lobby, which according to an investigation by The Guardian has donated £4.9 million to the Tories since the Prime Minister became leader.
I have spent the past few months speaking to victims who have used contingency fee agreements to get justice. I have heard them tell me how our justice system helped them, and their fears that others who suffer in future will not get the help they need. A number of areas of law will be badly—
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Slaughter
I would love to give way to the Secretary of State, but I have very little time—[Interruption.] If I have time at the end I will do so.
A number of areas of law will be badly affected by this legislation, and I should like briefly to touch on a few of them—[Hon. Members: Give way!]
Mr Clarke
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman had to be bullied to give way to me, but there we are. I do not want him to exaggerate his case. No win, no fee was introduced by the Major Government and worked perfectly satisfactorily until the previous Government amended it. We are talking about how much winning lawyers are paid. The principles of access to justice and of no win, no fee are agreed on a bipartisan basis. They are not threatened at all by the Bill.
Mr Slaughter
I began my speech by informing the house how contingency fee agreements came about. Because the Secretary of State has merely repeated that, I will penalise the Minister by taking a minute off his time.
The Secretary of State believes that there are faults in the current system whereby lawyers are unjustly enriched—he may be right, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and I, and many other hon. Members, would probably agree with him—but let us cure those faults. Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
At the conclusion of many hours of copious debate on the Floor of the House and in Committee, I pay tribute to members of the Bill team from my Department, who have been working throughout on this marathon Bill, and to my two colleagues, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) who, I am glad to say, carried the burden of the day in Committee and most of it on Report as well. I am grateful to them all.
It is an enormous Bill representing a major reform of the criminal justice system and the justice system generally. It is overdue and the Government have made a good start on sorting out some of the problems facing the justice system. I shall mention briefly the legal aid reforms, which have been debated again today. They are extremely important. They make substantial savings and I acknowledge that we have had to make some difficult choices.
I am a lawyer and I have many friends who are practising lawyers. When I was given this post, I wondered whether I would retain any friends in the legal profession by the time we got to Christmas. I am glad to say that I have, but some difficult decisions have been taken at the expense of some members of the profession, who have already suffered reductions in their fees as a result of the previous Government’s changes, and have probably had a bigger reduction in their fee income, I concede, than almost any other group in the country. So let us acknowledge that there are people facing consequences as a result of what we have done, but it was much overdue.
We have, as we keep saying, the most expensive legal aid system in the world. It has gone far beyond what could be afforded. The previous Government made repeated attempts to reform it and kept consulting on reforms and making changes. Even then they found, by the end of their period of office, that real-terms spending on legal aid had gone up quite substantially, compared with when they took office.
What we have done is not just a cheese-paring exercise across the whole field of legal aid. We have gone back to first principles and asked what it is essential that the taxpayer pays for to assure access to justice on truly important matters for that section of society that must have access to justice in the public interest, so that we can all be assured that people get the protections that they are entitled to under our constitution. That is what we have debated, one by one.
I believe that the package that we have come up with will make substantial savings. As I was saying to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) a few moments ago, the idea that we are launching some assault on access to justice and depriving people of access to justice is nonsense. We are not affecting the right. There is no change in the Bill to any particular course of action. Legal aid is available, but it is available to the poorest people for those really essential matters that affect their life, liberty, home and so on, and we have got it back under control.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I know that the Secretary of State is aware of my concerns regarding the advice agencies that provide such vital support to the vulnerable, and I know that additional money has been provided for those agencies. May I press him to give us more detail about this so that we can be reassured that those advice agencies, such as my own in Hastings, will be able to continue their good work?
Mr Clarke
Those who can remember Second Reading will know that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon and I kept stressing that we accept the need to maintain the funding for many voluntary agencies, particularly citizens advice bureaux, which give not only legal advice, but general advice to people suffering from problems of debt, housing and so on, which we all know are bound to get worse in these rather difficult times. A total of £20 million has been allocated to these bodies this year and we are looking ahead at how to continue that support.
I should point out that our legal aid changes will not take effect for a couple of years, so none of those bodies has lost any legal aid funding at the moment. What we are doing is finding money to make up for reductions in grant to those bodies that are largely from local authorities. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) is about to announce how we will distribute the £20 million. I know that he is in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and expects to be able to make the announcement imminently so that we can get on with that.
I have left the debates on legal aid to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon because, as everyone has seen, he is a walking expert on the subject. There seemed to be no point in my taking part in debates on amendments and having to turn to him if a particularly difficult question was asked. However, I have been present throughout the debates and listening to how Labour Members have tackled the matter. They seem to have lost all touch with common sense. When in government they were reducing expenditure on legal aid, or trying to and failing. In their manifesto they committed to reducing spending on legal aid, stating:
“we will find greater savings in legal aid.”
As recently as January this year the leader of the Labour party said, in relation to reductions in legal aid:
“Labour has shown it is ready to make difficult cuts that we believe are necessary for the long term health of our economy.”
As far as we can work out, the various amendments tabled by the Labour party in the course of our debates on the Bill would add £245 million to the legal aid bill, compared with the Government’s proposals.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Evidently, some of the amendments we tabled were not reported to the Secretary of State, because we also tabled amendments intended to speed up the collection of fines, on which the Ministry does not have a good record.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Clarke
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman, but I must press on. Other Members wish to speak and I do not want to take up all the time.
I will turn to the sentencing provisions. We have gone through major reforms in sentencing that contain many common-sense measures, which have not been debated much but which are intended to simplify the system and give greater professional discretion in many cases. The biggest controversy has concerned the repeal of indeterminate sentences, which was accepted very readily by most Members yesterday. That is a much overdue reform. The introduction of indeterminate sentences never worked as people intended. It was a major mistake and a major blot on our justice system that would not have survived challenge in either the British courts or in Strasbourg if it had carried on much longer. We have put in place a system of long determinate sentences for the most serious criminals, which I think gives protection.
We have not debated the other difficult area, knife crime, over which there was some controversy. The Government are determined to get the message clearly across to the public that knife crime will not be tolerated. We wish to stop people believing that knife crime will not be punished properly in the criminal justice system. For that reason, we tabled proposals introducing a mandatory sentence of six months for adults who are guilty of threatening with a knife in circumstances where it might cause physical injury, which is a new offence we have created. That is in line with the six months already specified in the sentencing guidelines for that kind of offence, but it makes it clear that that sentence should normally be expected automatically for that offence, unless it would otherwise be unjust to do so.
Amendments were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and by the Opposition seeking to extend that proposal to juveniles. I am glad to say that, following discussions with my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield North and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes)—the latter is a Parliamentary Private Secretary and so cannot table amendments—we finally agreed, that as 30-odd Back Benchers supported the amendments, to introduce a mandatory offence for 16 and 17-year-olds. Again, that sounds rather formidable, because I am not very keen on mandatory sentences for juveniles, but the offence is very serious, and it is only for 16 and 17-year-olds and—
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Speaker
No. It is uncharacteristic of the right hon. Gentleman to be suffering from a persecution complex, and I hope that it will not be repeated. He is just unlucky today.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I was about to give way to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), but I have the highest regard for the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), whom I have known for years, and this is the first time that I have rebuffed him, so I will give way, as he insists. He is obviously getting worried about this.
Mr Tom Clarke
I recall the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s reference to the junior Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), and his walking intelligence and so on. All I have tried to do through my interventions is to secure what non-governmental organisations and aid agencies want to hear regarding amendments 150 and 151, and to find out the Government’s attitude to British and international firms that are involved in abuses overseas.
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend the Minister referred to the Trafigura case a moment ago, but we do not believe that our changes to the no win, no fee system will prevent access to justice. Only a few moments ago we heard my hon. Friend point out that, even in the Trafigura case, the millions of pounds paid to the lawyers far exceeded the millions of pounds paid to the claimants. The average citizen of the Ivory Coast got £1,000 out of the action that was brought. We are not stopping the actions; we are getting the costs in proportion to the claim. All those disputes about legal aid and no win, no fee are not about access to justice; they are about the profitability of the actions for lawyers.
I am a lawyer, and I have the highest respect for lawyers and no intention of offending the legal profession, but in the lobbying of this House and the upper House we have had an army of lawyers advancing behind a front of women and children—vulnerable claimants who they say would not be represented if they are not paid as much as they are now. I am afraid I do not believe that.
The fact is that we introduced no win, no fee. These actions were brought because my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Mackay insisted on introducing no win, no fee to this country, and the system worked from the time of the Major Government perfectly well. The previous Government were persuaded to make it more profitable by making the changes that they made, but the costs have got out of all proportion to the claim.
Let me turn to knife crime. There is a serious problem in Enfield, and I had discussions with my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield North and for Enfield, Southgate because of that serious problem with knife crime. It exists throughout the country, but it is localised and can be very bad.
Nick de Bois
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing this intervention. Does he agree that the important thing about the introduction of the measure to the Bill is that for the first time in youth sentencing services it is clear that, if a 16 or 17-year-old carries a knife and uses it in a threatening and endangering fashion, they will go to jail? Indeed, it sends a very strong message to the courts, so my constituents will rest a little easier when it is passed into law.
Mr Clarke
That is entirely true, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on his advocacy, but we should both point out that we are talking about the minimum sentence. When we look at the nature of the offence we have created, we find that it is a serious knife offence, and many people—adults and juveniles—will be sent away for longer than the minimum that we specify in the Bill. The minimum catches people who might not otherwise have got a custodial sentence. In really serious cases, juveniles should get more than a four-month detention and training order and adults should get more than a six-month sentence, but there will be a spread of seriousness among individual cases. What we have put forward is a mandatory minimum; in the case of juveniles, my hon. Friend and I agree that it is right that the special way in which the courts treat offenders who are under 18 should be applied. That is where we are.
Mr Clarke
I am sorry but I shall not give way because other people want to speak.
Let me conclude by going back to the Labour party. Obviously, I am familiar with our own proposals but I have been listening to what the Labour party has been putting forward, which tells us a lot about whether that party is ready for government. I have been facing the Labour movement for a very long time now—particularly the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, with whom I am familiar. I do not know what he thinks is happening to his party because the Opposition’s position on this has been pitched at a section of the tabloid press that I have never heard the Labour party aim at so far as they have been doing. I did not expect that from the shadow Justice Secretary. Let me quote from the BBC’s Politics Show on 31 October 2010—a year ago—when he said that he was “not going to say” that I am being
“soft on crime…because he is asking the right questions about rehabilitation rates”.
More recently, when he gave the Howard League lecture on 17 October 2011, he said:
“Reforming prisons to reduce re-offending ultimately means safer communities up and down the country”.
The Shadow Justice Secretary has made extraordinary proposals in relation to the Bill, the most preposterous of which were about knife crime. He tabled a new clause advocating mandatory sentences for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-olds. I never expected to see even the most reactionary of Labour Members—even the right hon. Members for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett)—putting forward such a proposition. We cannot estimate how many schoolchildren would have been caught by such measures, but our best estimate is that about 350 would have had to be sent away. We would have had to build secure children’s homes to hold them and all the special provisions under the Children Acts would have been set aside. That was not a serious contribution to the debate, and serious contributions are what we should make.
I think the Bill is balanced. As I have said, it has been attacked from the right and the left, and it will be scrutinised carefully in another place. I think we have started to redress some of the problems that the previous Government left behind. It is the inheritance of Tony Blair, a man whom I admire in many ways. By the time he had finished in office he was getting very keen on reforming public services such as health and education. In my modest opinion, he was very good on health and education by the time he finished, but he had no real interest in law and order and the criminal justice system.
Tony Blair shadowed me when I was Home Secretary and he produced a good soundbite but no policy. He produced the phrase,
“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,”
but he did not know what he meant. He had no real interest in the subject and all he did was encourage the right hon. Members for Blackburn and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough to produce populist stuff that filled the statute book with quite useless criminal justice legislation. This is serious reform to what was caused by that Government, and the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) who shadows me should look at his party’s record. He should not make things worse by going on proposing preposterous things, as he has done in this debate. I advise him to go away and reflect on the many hours he has spent here, to reflect on the wisdom of my hon. Friends the two Under-Secretaries and to do better next time.
Sadiq Khan
I have been in correspondence with the Justice Secretary and, to be fair, he responded to my letter. I am happy to allow him to intervene to put on the record the assurance that he gave me.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I was not here during the incident to which the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) referred, but I am sure that he was not swatted away. There was probably anxiety to finish the debate.
I am happy to repeat the undertaking that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) gave then and in Committee. We accept that in principle there is a good case for saying that there should be appeals against the allowing of bail in the Crown court. We are working on the details of that, and we propose to table amendments in the House of Lords to meet that point. There is no difference in this case, and I have already written to say what we are striving to do. We intend to table an amendment to meet the wishes of the right hon. Members for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and for Tooting, and some hon. Members on the Government Benches.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 31—Life sentence for second listed offence.
Government new clause 32—New extended sentences.
Government new clause 33—New extended sentences: release on licence etc.
Government new clause 34—Power to change test for release on licence of certain prisoners.
New clause 3—Determination of minimum term in relation to mandatory life sentence—
‘In Schedule 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003—
“(a) Substitute paragraph 5(2)(g) with—
“(g) a murder that is racially or religiously aggravated or aggravated by sexual orientation or disability,”
(b) Substitute paragraph 5A(10)(b) with—
“(b) the fact that the victim was at greater risk of harm because of age or disability,”.’.
Government new schedule 4—‘Life sentence for second listed offence etc: new Schedule 15B to Criminal Justice Act 2003 Offences listed for the purposes of sections 224A, 226A and 246A.
Government new schedule 5—‘Life sentence for second listed offence: consequential and transitory provision.
Government new schedule 6—‘New extended sentences: consequential and transitory provision.
Government new schedule 7—‘Release of new extended sentence prisoners: consequential provision.
Mr Clarke
The new clauses and schedules relate to the abolition of sentences of imprisonment for public protection, known as IPP sentences. They were introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and have been in operation since 2005. Since their introduction, there have been numerous problems with them. The Government’s policy is that they must be replaced, and we have brought forward proposals to do so. My proposals to replace them with tough determinate sentences have inevitably aroused criticism from both the right and the left—the story of my life, as I complained yesterday. We are replacing a regime that did not work as it was intended to with one that gives the public the fullest possible protection from serious, violent and sexual crime.
The sentences in their present form are unclear, inconsistent and have been used far more than was ever intended or contemplated by either the Government or Parliament when the sentence was first created. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who is in his place, was very much involved in their introduction. I have no idea exactly what his view is now, but I am sure that he never imagined that thousands of people would be detained in prison indefinitely under these sentences. The debates at the time contemplated only a few hundred people.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I shall be extremely brief, given the time. It would be helpful, following the Secretary of State’s meeting with me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), if he assured the House that reconsideration of the detail will take place in the House of Lords. There is no difference between those of us who accept that the original intention has not been followed through and those who think that the changes that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) introduced have not fully bitten as intended, but the propositions before us this afternoon do not meet the specific need that was identified back in the early 2000s by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, and which I carried into being.
Mr Clarke
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, and I will remember the need for extreme brevity. I am grateful for the discussion with the right hon. Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and I will follow up the account by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East of the experience in Northern Ireland. We all acknowledge that where we are is not where anyone intended us to be. That is why we are addressing how to deal with serious and violent offenders.
I am sure that the words of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough will be noted in the House of Lords. He speaks here with great authority. We will reflect on what is said by those who say that of course we have not got it quite right.
Mr Clarke
Normally I would give way, and if we had a full day of debate, I would have expected to give way to Members on both sides of the Chamber—[Interruption.] It is not my fault. Let me first finish explaining the general case. I will then try to give way as generously as I can. It would be quite possible to take so many interventions that they filled the remaining time, but I have no intention of doing so.
I remind the House that in June the Prime Minister announced that the Government intended to replace IPP sentences. He and I had agreed on that. We had originally proposed in our Green Paper greatly to restrict the number by raising the threshold above which IPP sentences were given. The sentencing parts of the Bill were received extremely well in public consultation because those who responded were largely those involved in the criminal justice system, but we received many representations saying that IPP sentences should abolished completely, which is why we have moved on.
Mr Clarke
I said that I would give way when I had finished my general points, and I will do so in a few moments.
I was referring not just to my opinion and that of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough. I shall remind the House of some of the people who have said similar things. Louise Casey, the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, whose appointment to deal with problem families has been welcomed, said that she was pleased there would be a review of indeterminate sentences as they
“often leave victims in a horrible situation of not knowing when a criminal may be released from prison”.
She welcomed the proposal that tougher determinate sentences will be sought instead. Tim Godwin—as we all know, he was acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner until recently, and is now deputy commissioner and the criminal justice lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers—said he welcomed the review of IPP sentences and its focus on robust alternatives that will ensure the public is protected from the most serious offenders, as it is a source of frustration for victims and their families as to what a sentence actually means.
I cannot resist adding that the shadow Justice Secretary has suddenly taken up an extraordinarily far right position on this issue at the last moment. I have looked up what position he took, or at least what position Liberty took when he was its chairman in 2002, when indeterminate sentences were first introduced. At that time Liberty, under his chairmanship, denounced IPP sentences as
“a convoluted sleight of hand”
which aids neither accessibility of law for transparency in the sentencing process. His successors at Liberty have not changed their mind. I said yesterday that tomorrow he would press an amendment that has mandatory sentences for 12-year-olds. Old Fabians must be spinning in their graves as the former chairman of the Fabian Society takes up a totally opportunist position.
What is wrong is that indeterminate sentences are unfair between prisoner and prisoner. The Parole Board has been given the task of trying to see whether a prisoner could prove that he is no longer a risk to the public. It is almost impossible for the prisoner to prove that, so it is something of a lottery and hardly any are released. We therefore face an impossible problem.
As I have said, IPP sentences are piling up, and they have been handed down at a rate of more than 800 a year even after the changes made in 2008. At the moment, more than 6,500 offenders are serving those sentences, of whom more than 3,000 have finished what the public regard as their sentence—the tariff for what they have done. If we do not do anything about it, the number of IPP sentences will pile up to 8,000 or 9,000 by 2015—10% of the entire prison population. Sometimes, their co-accused who committed the same crime and were given a determinate sentence were released long ago. That is unjust to the people in question and completely inconsistent with the policy of punishment, reform and rehabilitation, which has widespread support. Only Opposition Front Benchers are still in favour of a punishment that leaves a rather randomly selected group to languish indefinitely in prison, for their lifetime if necessary.
Derek Twigg
Has the Secretary of State been listening to police officers such as the one in my constituency who has written to me to say that IPP sentences are working? He gives the case of an individual who set fire to a house, causing danger to others, who clearly presented a serious risk to the public. That police officer states:
“IPPs are a very useful tool for the Courts and I respectfully suggest that they should be retained and any issues with how they are implemented be looked at instead.”
That is a police officer serving on the front line.
Mr Clarke
I do not claim rank for Mr Godwin, but I quoted what he has said on behalf of ACPO. Of course there are always dissenting views—I have never presented any proposal on anything that has had 100% approval—but the overwhelming majority of responses from those involved in the criminal justice system suggested that IPP sentences should be repealed. Those are not people who wish to be soft on crime, but they believe that IPP sentences have not worked as intended, as we have already heard in today’s exchanges, and need to be replaced. To reassure policemen, such as the one that the hon. Gentleman mentions, that a tough new regime will give them protection, I will spell out elements of the new regime.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Is not the fact of the matter that indeterminate sentences have a very low reoffending rate, and that most members of the public rather like the idea that people are not released from prison until it is safe? What will my right hon. and learned Friend do to ensure that people who are released go through all the necessary treatment and programmes to address their offending behaviour before they are released?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend’s last point is perfectly fair, and I am about to make some points that should reassure the great bulk of the public. Of course we must have in place a very effective method of dealing with all those who commit the worst sexual and violent offences. No one is suggesting that we do not need an effective regime for that.
For the very serious offenders, the ones who are among the worst of the likely inhabitants of Her Majesty’s prisons, there will be a new mandatory life sentence. That will apply in cases in which the offender has committed, on two consecutive occasions, two very serious sexual or violent offences, when each of which has been serious enough to merit a determinate sentence of 10 years or more.
I was criticised from the left in another place, and probably will be here, for introducing a new mandatory life sentence. We have only one at the moment, which is for murder, and everybody accepts it. As I have said, however, the new mandatory sentence is mainly intended to reassure those who, like my hon. Friend, are worried that the worst offenders might occasionally get out. We are talking about very serious offenders, most of whom would get a life sentence anyway if they had committed two offences meriting determinate sentences of 10 years or more. I do not think that many such people would avoid a life sentence, but as hon. Members can see, a life sentence in the new clause is subject to a caveat—the offender will receive a mandatory sentence unless their circumstances or the circumstances of the offence
“make it unjust to do so”.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain the practical difference between an offender who is given an IPP for, say, a minimum tariff of five years, who will then be released by the Parole Board on proof of meeting certain conditions, and someone who is given a discretionary life sentence with a tariff of five years who is released by the Parole Board on exactly the same conditions? What is the difference?
Mr Clarke
Well, there are differences in the regime, the sentence planning and so on, but not very many. I will go back to the point about the regime that we want to introduce for people with extended determinate sentences, but the right hon. Gentleman makes my point. What is wrong with saying that the courts should use the ordinary life sentence? They will use a life sentence when they judge that a case is so serious, and when future risk is so high, that it is the only proper sentence.
For other offenders, we are introducing a new extended determinate sentence. The offender will receive a custodial sentence plus a further long extended period of licence set by the court. Those will be quite long determinate sentences, and the offenders who receive them will serve at least two thirds of them. In serious cases, offenders must apply to the Parole Board for release, and the board may keep them inside until the end of the determinate sentence.
Mr Clarke
I shall just finish explaining this point and then answer questions.
The new sentence can be given for any sexual or violent offence, provided that the court thinks the offender presents a risk of causing serious harm through reoffending, and that the offence meets the four-year seriousness threshold that is currently in place for IPP sentences and extended sentences for public protection. The new sentence can also be given when the offender does not reach the four-year threshold, but has previously been convicted of an offence listed in proposed schedule 15B. I will cut out further detailed explanation, but that means that any offender who would previously have received an IPP will be eligible for the new sentence if he has not received either the mandatory life or the tougher, discretionary life sentence.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I very much agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend is trying to do, but he is writing what is the likely practice of the court into the statute book. He mentioned the Parole Board and new clause 34, which causes me concern. He appears to be giving to himself and the Executive the power to direct a court when dealing with existing IPP prisoners, because the Parole Board is regarded in law as a court, and he will give directions to it under new clause 34.
Mr Clarke
I shall come to the Parole Board before I conclude my remarks, but we are not taking away its power: nobody who previously had an IPP will be released, even at the two-thirds point, unless they have first satisfied the board.
The most obvious difference between life sentences, which will now be used more widely, and IPP sentences is that, in the case of life imprisonment, licences are for life and subject always to recall, whereas IPP sentences are not. However, as I said, criminals who complete an extended determinate sentence must then serve extended licence periods, during which time they will be closely monitored and returned to prison if necessary. The courts have the power to give up to an extra five years of licence for violent offenders and eight years for sexual offenders on top of their prison licence.
There are further protections. Some people believe—the Labour Front Bench team certainly affect to believe—that we are exposing people to risk by making this much overdue change. We are also introducing—not in the legislation, but I undertake to introduce them—compulsory intervention plans for dangerous offenders while they are in prison, so that they are supported to change their ways and not commit more crimes when they are eventually released. By the end of sentence, offenders should therefore have undergone interventions—made in a more certain and organised way than at present—to address their offending behaviour.
There is rightly concern that those currently serving IPP sentences should be supported in progressing through their sentences and achieving release on licence. However, we will be using our best efforts to improve the progression of these prisoners through sentence, including with improvements to assessment, sentence planning and delivery, and parole review processes. We continue to monitor outcomes to ensure further improvements in this area.
There are yet further protections available to the court. We do not believe that our proposed changes put the public at risk or weaken our risk-management regime. Most sexual or violent offenders sentenced to 12 months or more in custody will fall under the multi-agency public protection arrangements framework, which means that the relevant authorities will work together to co-ordinate assessments of risk and risk-management plans for the offender once they have been released on licence. Robust risk-management systems are now in place for a range of offenders. Court orders are also available to manage the risk of serious sexual and violent offenders who appear to present a risk at the end of their sentence. Violent offender orders and sex offending prevention orders place restrictions on these offenders, and if they breach those orders, they can be sent back to prison.
In the sentencing Green Paper, we raise the question of whether the Parole Board’s test for release in these cases is the right one, because only a tiny number of people ever emerge from prison at the moment—the rate is less than 5% a year—and we are acquiring people who are still in prison years after they finished the tariff that the judge imposed on them. This is a question that we will explore further. The amendments give the Secretary of State a power to change the release test used by the Parole Board, which is set in statute for IPP prisoners and for prisoners serving the new extended sentence. The power will be subject to the affirmative procedure. We will consult carefully and see what happens to the Parole Board and the courts once we have made the present form of sentence extinct for former prisoners.
The trouble now is that someone who has finished his tariff has to stay in prison unless he can persuade the Parole Board that it is safe to let him out. [Interruption.] That is it; that can be difficult, sitting in a prison cell, although we are going to produce some management plans. On the other hand, if we are keeping someone in beyond their tariff, it is certainly arguable that we should have some positive reason for fearing that there is a risk that he is going to offend when he leaves. We have to reflect—we will consult on this—on whether we have been giving the Parole Board an almost impossible task. It is no good pretending that it can come to a scientifically certain conclusion in each case. None of us would like to say, if we met a range of prisoners, which were now reformed and which would offend again. The Parole Board gets it wrong now: some of those it releases offend again, while some of those in prison are never going to offend again, if we can actually get them out. We will consult on whether the current release tests for IPP sentences and the new extended indeterminate sentence ensure effective public protection while allowing everyone to be satisfied—as far as they can ever be satisfied in this world—that the offenders can now be safely managed in the community.
Mr Straw
Some 40% of discretionary and mandatory lifers are post-tariff. They have to prove that it is safe to release them. Can the Secretary of State please explain what the difference is in substance between someone on a life sentence who has to satisfy the Parole Board that it is safe to release them and someone on an IPP?
Mr Clarke
It is not. What I think the right hon. Gentleman is saying—I will listen to him in a moment—is that he proposes to defend what is left of the last Government’s proposals, the author of which acknowledged quite early in my speech that they plainly needed to be changed. If I get the chance, I will listen to what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is trying to argue, but he seems to be reassuring us that life sentences fulfil that requirement for the very worst people—that they are looked at carefully before being let out again—and those people will be on licence for life: once they start going in for aberrant behaviour, they can be recalled to prison and punished once more.
Apart from the very outlying people on the right and the left, I hope that I have satisfied everybody. It is high time that we reformed indeterminate sentences. Personally, I am amazed that they have survived judicial review and challenge in the courts thus far, but if something was not done, they would not survive very much further, which would lead to unfortunate consequences if a court suddenly started ordering us to release such prisoners and decided that they were being held unlawfully. I have recently described them as a “stain on the system”. I said that at a private meeting in the House of Lords—although it soon found its way into the press—but it is my opinion. What we are putting in place is protection for the public: far more rational, certain, determinate sentences, which is much more in line with how we think the British system should behave.
I will, of course, be followed in this debate by the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). I have already expressed my amazement at his position, and I have found some other quotations from him in my time. I cannot understand how he can match up to his present position. For example, when we both started in July last year, his leader—the current Leader of the Opposition—said:
“I don’t think we should try to out-right the right on crime,”
and said that I was
“opening up an opportunity for us to redefine part of the debate about criminal justice.”
Only a few weeks ago, addressing the Howard League, the right hon. Member for Tooting said—in a lecture that I thought put him in a very convoluted position between his conscience and where he is at present—that
“our big challenge is to communicate that punishment and reform can and should go hand-in-hand…To deliver this calls for an honest debate”.
The right hon. Gentleman, the shadow Justice Secretary, is a radical lawyer from south London—he is more radical than I am—and he is trying to “out-right” me in what is an absurd and hopeless case. What we are putting in place is an altogether rational and sensible system.
Sadiq Khan
I thank the Justice Secretary.
“Public safety remains our primary concern and indeterminate sentences will always be appropriate for the most serious crimes”—
not my words, although I agree with them entirely, but those of this Government’s Green Paper, “Breaking the Cycle”, which was published in December 2010. How things have changed in just 11 months: instead of what was said then, at the last minute—and after interference from No. 10 Downing street—there was suddenly no mention of indeterminate sentences when the Bill was published in June, more than four months ago. At the last possible moment—at one minute to midnight—we are presented with new clauses that propose the total abolition of indeterminate sentences.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman seems to be using his time to complain about not having enough time. Before he develops any conspiracy theories, may I make my position clear? I have spoken out against indeterminate sentences in the House before. The Green Paper proposed to restrict them, and I explained why. The announcement in June was made after the most careful discussion with the Prime Minister. We both agreed it, and the idea that I have been forced into accepting the abolition of indeterminate sentences is complete nonsense. The consultation process encouraged me to believe that serious people in the justice system were prepared to go for total abolition, and I leapt at the opportunity, as should the right hon. Gentleman, as a former chairman of Justice and of the Fabian Society. I cannot imagine where he thinks he is taking the labour movement to.
Sadiq Khan
We now know that, when this Government review policy, it means that they abolish it. This is the same Justice Secretary who signed off the Green Paper last December.
Not for the first time, the Government will have to leave it to colleagues from all parties and none in the other place to perform the scrutiny that this Bill deserves. The Justice Secretary is presenting us today with a blueprint that will risk more crime, more victims, and more serious and dangerous offenders being out on the streets. It is as simple as that, and he knows it. No amount of smoke and mirrors can disguise the fact that, by abolishing indeterminate sentences, he is risking the safety of communities in each and every constituency.
“Many dangerous criminals will be released, including repeat offenders, regardless of the risk they pose to the public.”
Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), now the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, back in 2008, when he was commenting on the changes to indeterminate sentences that we made when we were in government. We made changes to them, but this Government are now proposing to abolish them altogether. What happened to the party that believed in law and order?
I spent a few minutes this morning finding recent cases in which judges had given an indeterminate sentence to a convicted offender to protect the public. I will not give the names of the offenders or the victims, as I do not want to cause the victims further distress. A South Wales police press release from September this year bears the heading “Indeterminate prison sentence for convicted rapist”.
It goes on:
“A Cynon Valley man described as a ‘dangerous individual’ has been given an indeterminate sentence for the rape of two women and wounding of another…D, who the judge described as a dangerous individual, will not be considered for parole for six years. D’s victims have released the following…statement: ‘Our lives will never be the same after the trauma D has put us through. We were physically, mentally, financially and emotionally abused and controlled by him. We are satisfied with the court’s decision to give him an indeterminate sentence and relieved that no-one else will suffer like we have.’”
In this October’s online version of the Birmingham Mail was the headline, “Teenager jailed for stab attacks on father and son in West Heath”. The article stated:
“A teenager has been given an indeterminate sentence for stabbing a father and son while they tried to protect a ‘petrified’ youngster who sought refuge in their Birmingham home…Judge William Davis QC said: ‘You stabbed both the householder and his son causing both of them significant injury. It is a very serious offence because two people were attacked on their own door step and one of them left perilously close to death.’ The judge said he believed J to be a ‘dangerous young man’. After sentencing”,
the victim said,
“I am extremely pleased the judge recognised the seriousness of the offence. It shows the public that carrying knives will not be accepted in society today.”
This month’s North-West Evening Mail contained the headline, “Caustic soda brute loses appeal against sentence”, and continued:
“A ‘dangerous and manipulative’ thug, who scarred a teenager for life by pouring caustic soda on her face, has been told by top judges he deserved his indefinite jail term…On Thursday G challenged his indefinite jail terms, with his lawyers also arguing the minimum five years he was ordered to serve before applying for parole was ‘excessive’. But his appeal was thrown out by judges sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, who described G as a ‘very dangerous man’ who should not be released from prison until the Parole Board considers it safe to do so…Sentencing him, the crown court judge said he was a ‘controlling, manipulative, emotionless and uncaring man’ who was a danger to women…The appeal judge”,
Mr Justice Spencer,
“said: ‘The judge was quite correct to conclude that the appellant should not be released until the Parole Board deems it safe for him to be released.’”
Mr Kenneth Clarke
Can the right hon. Gentleman think of any good reason why, given the remarks he has provided about the sentences, that the perpetrators would not have been given a life sentence? Normally, people like that would get a life sentence. Since there have been IPP sentences, some people have got them, but in the cases the right hon. Gentleman describes, judges will go back to the normal practice of giving a life sentence.
Sadiq Khan
They will not. The right hon. and learned Gentleman’s proposals require there to have been a first offence, and the schedule provides for sentences of 10 or more years. The person found guilty will have to have come back for a second offence and be found guilty of an offence that also requires a sentence of 10 or more years. In all these cases—the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows this—the Government will have taken away from the judge who has heard all the evidence and knows the facts of the case the power to give the IPP sentence.
Mr Clarke
There is no qualification for a life sentence. People can be sent down for a life sentence for their first offence if it is serious enough and demonstrates the danger posed to the public. We are not introducing any qualifications at all to the power to give life imprisonment.
Sadiq Khan
I could not have demolished the arguments better than the right hon. and learned Gentleman just has. He makes the exact point for me. Under the proposals we are presented with today, our judges will be stripped of the power to prevent the most serious criminals from being released and going on to be a danger to society. We can imagine a scenario—and an horrific one at that—of someone committing a serious and violent assault being caught, charged and found guilty. Under the Government’s new proposals, I accept that they might receive an extended determinate sentence and be eligible for release after two thirds of their sentence, should the Parole Board be satisfied. However, even if the Parole Board were not satisfied after two thirds of the sentence had elapsed, there would be nothing to prevent release at the end of the full sentence handed down by the judge. Dangerous individuals would be released at the end of their extended determinate sentence irrespective of whether they posed a risk to the public. Under the new proposals, judges will be able to do absolutely nothing about that. They will be powerless to deprive the offender further of his liberty in order to keep the public safe. I should be happy for the Justice Secretary to intervene on that point, but he apparently does not wish to do so.
Mr Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman clearly did not understand my question. He gave some dreadful descriptions of dreadful cases, featuring what—when the full circumstances are known—are clearly some of the worst examples of violence and sexual offences that could be found. The point is, however, that such people will receive life sentences, because such sentences are available to the court, and they will not be released until someone is satisfied that they are no longer as great a risk as they were. They will be subject to licence for the rest of their lives, and it will be possible to recall them if they start behaving in any sort of threatening way. The life sentence fills the gap that the right hon. Gentleman claims I am creating. We are not changing the position at all.
Sadiq Khan
I realise that the Justice Secretary has not practised law recently, but if a judge could deliver a life sentence for such offences now, he or she would do so. It is because judges have the power under the IPP sentence to deliver indeterminate sentences to protect the public that they deliver those sentences. I am afraid that the Justice Secretary is not right.
A critical weapon will be absent from a judge’s arsenal, preventing that judge from handing down the most appropriate sentence. The judge will simply not be able to sentence the offender with the condition that only when the authorities are satisfied that he is not a risk to society will he be released. I know that that will free up prison places and save the Government money, but taking risks with public safety is plain wrong, which is why we will oppose new clause 30.
Public safety will also be compromised by the proposed “two strikes and you’re out” sentences. That is a great media soundbite and a sure-fire way of making the Government seem tougher than they really are, and it is precisely the kind of thinking that lies behind the inclusion of the words “punishment of offenders” in the Bill, but policies relating to public safety cannot be determined by a public relations strategy.
We do not have to scratch very far beneath the surface to see that the Government’s plans are riddled with problems. Not only are they a rehash of failed Conservative policy from the 1990s, but they introduce a worrying amount of risk—risk that will undermine public safety. Through their “two strikes” policy, the Government absolve themselves totally of any responsibility to identify the serious, violent offenders who are most likely to reoffend. That should be done at the time when the first sentence is handed down for the commission of a heinous crime. It was for the purposes of precisely this scenario that the previous Government created indeterminate sentences, but this Government are making no effort to protect the public from those who are most likely to commit further serious and violent crime following their release. They will address the problem only once the offender has committed a second crime.
Kate Green
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and he has raised this issue in the House and with the Lord Chancellor before. Many disability organisations and the families of victims of such crimes have contacted him and me to express their very deep concerns. I am particularly indebted to the Disability Hate Crime network, to Katherine Quarmby, an independent journalist, and to the Royal Association for Disability Rights. I am also especially indebted to Christine Oliver, the sister of Keith Philpott, who was a learning disabled victim of murder, for taking the time to talk to me about her family’s experience in relation to my bringing the new clause before the House.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I am sorry to intervene but, for the benefit of the debate on the other subject, may I assure the hon. Lady on behalf of the Government that we agree with her and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard)? I am advised that the new clause is defective in its drafting—I can tell her why—and I can assure her that we will table amendments in the other House to give effect to what she is asking for. We also propose to cover the transgender issue. I think that will help us to get on with the debate.
Kate Green
I am extremely grateful to the Lord Chancellor, as will be the many disabled people and their families who have been in contact with me. I am delighted that a Government amendment will be brought forward in the other place and I shall not detain the House further.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
May I correct the right hon. Gentleman? The impact statement will show the Bill as amended. Other things being equal, with no changes in the crime level—which depends far more on how long a recession we have, the levels of youth unemployment, how successful we are in dealing with drugs and how far we get with prison reform—the Bill will reduce the prison population by 2,300. The measure we are now debating will have no effect on the prison population in the period to 2015. The reduction in the prison population is achieved by measures already discussed and approved in the Public Bill Committee.
Mr Straw
It would have been helpful to have the impact statement before the House today rather than tomorrow. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying—picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley—that no prisoner who cannot be released until he has proved that he is not a danger to the public will not be released in the future, what on earth are these convoluted changes for?
The original design of the legislation in 2003 was unsatisfactory because it led in some cases to tariffs that were ludicrously short—in one case, 27 days. That was never the intention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and it was causing a major problem. I, with the approval of the House, sought to change the law. It is worth Government Members remembering, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting pointed out, that we got no assistance whatever from the Conservative Opposition at the time. Their complaint was that we were going soft by introducing this change. It was absolutely extraordinary. I do not remember the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), now the Lord Chancellor, standing up either in the House or outside suggesting that there was an alternative. We made that change and, interestingly and wholly contrary to what was said, it has led to a stabilisation of the numbers on indeterminate public protection sentences. According to the Lord Chancellor’s statistical bulletin, in the most recent year the number of such sentences rose by only 3% over the previous year and the number of those receiving IPP sentences was 958 for the year ending March 2011, compared to one short of 1,000 for the year ending March 2010. The changes that were introduced are working.
Yes, it is right that we should look in more detail at the Northern Ireland experience to see what other changes can be made, but it is entirely wrong for the Secretary of State to try to set up a new system that will lead either to the release of dangerous people who are serious and persistent offenders, thousands of whom are in prison for violent offences and sexual offences—in the main—or make no difference at all.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I am in favour of the Government’s decision to scrap IPP sentences in this instance. Liberty, among others, has said that IPPs could be a back-door measure to introduce life sentences for a huge range of offences. They were intended to be given only sparingly but of course they have been used far more frequently than expected. In March 2011, there were 6,550 IPP prisoners, half of whom served 240 days beyond their tariff, at a cost to the Exchequer of about £68 million. That is quite apart from the whole question of whether they were being held unlawfully, which worries many of us.
As it stands, the IPP regime has been a costly mistake. Furthermore, the indefinite legal limbo created by IPP sentences has in many instances undermined rehabilitation, leaving prisoners and their families uncertain when, if ever, release will be granted. Like the Lord Chancellor, I wonder why those sentences have not been challenged in the courts. I have campaigned on the matter for a long time. In February, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill seeking the abolition of IPP sentences, so I am pleased about the Government’s decision.
New clause 32 would mean that prisoners serving an extended sentence of at least four years in custody, who have a prior conviction for one in a list of serious offences, will be required to serve two thirds of their sentence, instead of being considered for release at the halfway point. I argued for such a provision when I introduced my Bill, so I am pleased that it has been introduced. However, like the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), I have concerns about new clause 34. I have grave concerns about interference in individual parole decisions. That proposal must be looked at in the other place. We do not have time to debate it properly today and I am sure that many Members, whatever their views, would have appreciated a sensible timetable.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I shall correspond with the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). The new clause was tabled at my request so that we can contemplate changing the test for release by statutory instrument. I shall explore whether it gives rise to the problems described. I certainly have no intention at the moment of intervening in individual cases and making judgments about IPP prisoners.
Mr Llwyd
That is certainly reassuring, but had we had a decent amount of time to discuss the proposals we could have probed them earlier. There is also some confusion about new clause 33, which will no doubt be picked up in the other place.
I know that I have done nothing for my street credibility, and even less for the Lord Chancellor’s, but I believe that the IPP system has been brought into disrepute. It is only right that we do away with it, and to that extent I agree with what the Government seek to do.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I have been fascinated by the proceedings while I have been waiting to move the motion. I beg to move,
That, notwithstanding that such provisions could not have been proposed in Committee without an Instruction from the House, amendments may be proposed on Consideration of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to—
(a) provide for measures against the payment or receipt of referral fees in connection with the provision of legal services,
(b) create a new offence relating to squatting, and
(c) amend section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (reasonable force for purposes of self-defence etc).
The motion seeks to widen the scope of the Bill in order to provide for measures to be introduced on the payment of referral fees, on the creation of a new criminal offence relating to squatting and to amend the law that governs the use of reasonable force for the purposes of self defence.
I hope that this debate will be focused on the resolution and therefore be a short procedural debate. Obviously, there are points of substance to debate in the three areas that we are bringing into scope, but the obvious time to debate those issues is when we reach them in the course of your selection of amendments, Mr Speaker. We are all anxious to debate other measures in the Bill, for which we will have three full days on Report, so I think we should deal quickly with procedural matters and get on to the substance.
On sentencing, quite a lot will come tomorrow which I look forward to debating. I am being attacked from the right and from the left—that is the story of my life—but I regard all those attacks as entirely misconceived and I hope to answer them tomorrow. More importantly, today we have a lot of amendments on the Order Paper regarding legal aid and it is important that we get on to consider their merits on the Floor of the House in the light of debates in Committee. I hope, therefore, that the House will be satisfied if I merely explain why we are introducing measures on these three topics and bringing them to Floor of the House rather late in the day, on Report.
Referral fees are a familiar subject and have been discussed on the Floor several times in recent months. Since they were introduced—or since the ban on solicitors’ paying referral fees was lifted—in 2004, they have increased very rapidly and have contributed to an unwelcome increase in personal injury cases in our courts. They have tended to encourage the introduction of speculative claims and have certainly raised the cost of contesting litigation. The reason we have waited until Report to introduce amendments on the subject is that the proposals have been out to consultation for a few months and the consultation closed only recently. Even during the consultation we were under pressure from the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to do something about this issue; I entirely agreed with the points he made and the Government are now responding.
On squatting, the Prime Minister announced on 21 June that we were again about to consult briefly on the possibility of introducing a criminal offence of squatting in the Bill. The consultation closed on 5 October. Anyone who has suffered from the presence of squatters in their property knows the distress and misery they cause. We have restricted the new criminal offence to residential properties precisely to avoid opening up the wider debate that might have ensued on squatting and I am not aware of any strong reaction to what we are doing. Existing laws provide some safeguards for property owners, but our making squatting in residential buildings a criminal offence will provide rather greater protection in circumstances where the harm caused is most severe. Again, I am not aware of much objection in principle to those measures. Personally, I have always found it difficult to see the difference between taking somebody’s car and taking somebody’s home. There is a need for a criminal offence.
Finally, the Prime Minister also announced on 21 June that we would put beyond doubt that home owners and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties will not be prosecuted. We think that further action on self-defence is necessary to reassure members of the public that they are allowed to use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties against intruders or others.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
How will this law differ from the common law right to defend property and the existing law on self-defence under which one can use proportionate and reasonable violence to defend oneself?
Mr Clarke
I will address that when we reach the amendments in two days’ time—[Interruption.] Well, that is exactly where the Labour Government were two years ago. We are attempting to clarify the law and reassure people that the use of reasonable force is indeed legitimate in English law. The main thing it deals with is the fact that there is no duty to retreat when facing a dangerous or threatening attack, but we will discuss that when we come to that part of the Bill. If that was a fundamental change in the law, I would probably face objections to its introduction on Report. It is an attempt once more to build up public confidence in the perfectly reasonable right people have to use legitimate force when defending themselves and their property.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I happen to be sympathetic to all three things the Secretary of State is trying to do, but surely he must take account of the fact that the procedures of the House, which he is trying to bypass, provide that there should be a general discussion on the principle of doing something, followed by a detailed discussion in Committee of how it can be done and then an opportunity to make further amendments on Report if necessary. Does he not have to mount quite a strong case that that is unnecessary in these circumstances?
Mr Clarke
The case I am making is that there are essentially no surprises here, because Members have been perfectly well aware of the proposals for all three subjects. They have been debated widely and consulted on, and we are introducing them in a form that I do not think adds a great deal of controversy to the Bill. As we all know, the Bill is very large and included some very important elements. These three subjects are relevant to what we are trying to do to the justice system. The right to self-defence was in the coalition agreement when the Government were formed, so everyone knew that we would return to it, and the Prime Minister announced it again in June. Banning referral fees was in Lord Justice Jackson’s report on reform of civil litigation costs, which we are already acting on, as far as no win, no fee arrangements are concerned. We delayed making proposals on referral fees because we were waiting for the Legal Services Board to give its opinion following consultation. We have been consulting on squatting, as I have said. The inclusion of these subjects is hardly surprising. All three have been referred to and debated on the Floor of the House, so I hope that it will agree to extend the scope of the Bill.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I think that my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right and I do not agree with the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). There is plenty of time to debate this, it was well heralded and is not a great departure. I wish my right hon. and learned Friend well with it.
Mr Clarke
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I think that we should move on to the important debates on legal aid today. I hope that the House is genuinely satisfied that these are three sensible subjects that are closely related to reform of the justice system and will allow us to widen the scope of the Bill, as I propose.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am sorry to say to the Secretary of State that I wholly deplore the use of this procedural device, because we have a very good, established system in this House of three Readings, Committee and Report, with gaps in between so that people can consider the amendments that have been passed and consider whether other amendments should be tabled so that Opposition Members or Back Benchers can look at what the Government have proposed and suggest amendments of their own in good time. None of that is possible in this situation.
If the measures were for some emergency, I might understand why the Secretary of State had made such a suggestion, but he has suggested absolutely no emergency in relation to any of the three issues today. In fact, his argument, in so far as I can understand it, is that basically, “Nobody really cares about this stuff; it’s all agreed on by everybody”—[Interruption.] If he is seeking to intervene, I am happy to give way.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I share the hon. Gentleman’s sensitivities about the scope of a Bill being widened in the ordinary course of events, but I have already explained how all three things have been canvassed. There has been consultation—indeed, it stopped us introducing them at an earlier stage—and, as he well knows, the pressure on parliamentary time is such that quite a lot of rather worthwhile criminal justice reforms are not enacted for years because no one can find a slot in the legislative timetable for them—[Interruption.] There are details, and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who spoke a moment ago, raised a particular detailed point, which will be heard here, and then in the upper House, about exactly what limits there might be on residential property, but this is a sensible process and we should not be sticklers at the expense of worthwhile reform.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing me to intervene on his intervention, but his basic argument is, “This is just for the convenience of Government”—and for no other reason.
In relation to reasonable force, the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s argument, in so far as I could see it, was that basically, “It isn’t going to make the blindest bit of difference, so why not just let it go through?” When Ministers say, “We have to change the ordinary processes for the Government’s convenience, and we know we can do it because we have a majority—by definition, because we are the Government,” we almost always end up with bad legislation, as it is not sufficiently scrutinised. It certainly happened when we sat on the Government Benches, and I am absolutely certain that it will continue to happen now.
Chris Bryant
Precisely, and it is a bad idea to add to a Bill that is already pretty much a Christmas tree Bill a few more baubles at the last stage before it reaches Third Reading. It is a fundamental mistake and a bad way of proceeding, and I can tell from the body language of the Secretary of State and Lord High Chancellor that he is a little embarrassed about coming forward in this manner—
Chris Bryant
If Secretary of State is not embarrassed, as he now suggests, he has gone down in my estimation.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said that all these matters have been extensively debated, but it is one thing to debate a matter in its general application and principles but quite a different matter to look at the wording on the page when it actually comes to legislation.
As I understand the rules of this House, given that we have not yet carried the motion before us, no amendments to which the Government have referred can possibly yet have been tabled. So, they will be tabled tonight and appear on the Order Paper tomorrow, and consequently we will not be able to table amendments to those amendments until after that. I can see the Clerk saying “No, no, no”, so perhaps I have got that completely wrong—[Interruption.] He is nodding now, so I hope that hon. Members will feel free to ignore the last part of my speech and remember everything I said at the beginning of it, and that they will oppose this ludicrous process.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Programme) (No. 2)
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sadiq Khan
I underscore the important contribution from my right hon. Friend, who chairs the Home Affairs Committee. When we discuss knife crime on Wednesday, we will also discuss legal aid, litigation funding and costs, sentencing, bail, and release and recall of prisoners. The suggestion that we can have anything like the substantive debate that our constituents demand is folly.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
To assist the right hon. Gentleman in his preparation for the debate on knife crime, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee will recall that I was particularly hostile to mandatory sentences for young children. The Order Paper includes an amendment tabled by the official Opposition on mandatory six-month sentences for 12-year-olds and above. I do not think anything I said to the Select Committee should encourage the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) to think I will agree with him when we come to that subject.
Sadiq Khan
If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is so happy to have a debate, why is he so scared? Let us have proper time for the debate. Let us set aside time for it, and discuss the matter. Let us not have knives in the programme motion. Why is he running away? Let us have the debate, at any time, in any place—[Interruption.] We have no choice but to press the programme motion to a Division. It is important that the other place sees what happens in this Chamber. The Government claim that they want debate, but when it comes to important issues of huge significance to our constituents, what do they do? They run away.
Justice and Security Green Paper
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement. I have today laid before Parliament the justice and security Green Paper. The document is the culmination of more than one year of careful analysis and consideration on how to respond to a difficult challenge for any liberal democracy: addressing how sensitive material can be properly handled in the civil justice system and how the work of the security and intelligence agencies can be properly scrutinised and those bodies held accountable.
The problem is this: in recent years, there has been an increase in the number and diversity of judicial proceedings that examine national security-related actions. In many cases, the facts cannot be fully established without reference to sensitive material, but this material cannot be used in open court proceedings without risking serious damage to national security or international relations. Difficulties arise both in cases in which individuals are alleging Government wrongdoing and in cases in which the Government are seeking to take Executive action against individuals who pose a risk to the public. The consequence is a Catch-22 situation in which the courts may be prevented from reaching any fully informed judgment on the case because they cannot hear all the evidence in the case. They cannot hear all the evidence because it would do serious damage to national security if the evidence was available to all parties and the public. The Government are left with unsatisfactory choices: they could risk damage to national security by disclosing the material or summaries of it, or attempt to defend a case with often large amounts of relevant material excluded. If the material cannot safely be disclosed, the Government may be forced to settle cases, either by paying compensation or by withdrawing a case brought against an individual.
Further problems are posed by applications for the disclosure of sensitive material being sought for use in other legal proceedings, particularly those overseas. The material has sometimes been generated by foreign Governments and shared with the United Kingdom Government on the most confidential of bases. In these cases, disclosure would endanger crucial international partnerships and put at risk the sharing of information, which is critical to Britain’s national security.
These are issues of the utmost importance, which the previous Government faced just as much as the current one do. The work of the security and intelligence agencies, and the sensitive information that they and foreign partners produce, is essential to prevent terrorist attacks, disrupt serious crime networks and make the case for Executive actions such as deportations and asset freezing.
The current situation is clearly unsatisfactory for everyone: the Government are unable to defend their actions; claimants are left without clear judgments based on all the relevant information; and the public are left with no independent judgment by the court, because it has not been able to consider all the evidence. So the justice and security Green Paper contains a number of proposals to address these extremely difficult issues, and takes account of recent Supreme Court judgments. The Green Paper seeks views on a range of proposals including: extending the so-called closed material procedures, such as those used already in certain civil contexts, to all civil proceedings; clarifying the law on the requirement to provide a summary of the sensitive material heard in closed procedures to the other party when the procedures are utilised; enhancing the existing special advocate system to equip it to best serve the interests of the individual affected by the closed hearings; and ensuring that security issues are properly considered in cases seeking disclosure of material for use in other legal proceedings, including proceedings overseas.
The Green Paper has a further vital goal: reviewing the existing oversight arrangements for our security and intelligence agencies and the wider intelligence community. Allegations of misconduct undermine public confidence in the work of the security and intelligence agencies. It is essential that we have a strong system for overseeing their activities.
In recent years the context in which the agencies work has changed significantly, with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005. There have been revolutionary changes in the way that people communicate and use technology. Cyber-security is a major and growing issue, and the budgets and public profiles of the agencies have increased substantially. Given all these changes it is important to ensure that scrutiny of the agencies and the wider intelligence community is effective and credible in the eyes both of Parliament and the public.
The Green Paper makes proposals further to develop the status and remit of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The Intelligence and Security Committee—that is the existing Committee—has recommended a number of detailed reforms and these have formed the basis of several of the proposals in the Green Paper. Significant reforms that we are floating include changing its status to become a statutory Committee of Parliament, giving Parliament a greater say in ISC appointments and giving the ISC greater powers to require information from the security and intelligence agencies.
The document seeks views on the appropriate balance of arrangements across the overall system of oversight. The Government welcome scrutiny of their activities in every area, including national security. The Green Paper seeks ways to increase both judicial and other independent scrutiny of such matters to unprecedented levels without undermining protection of the public and whilst maintaining strong safeguards for the rights of individuals. Faced with difficult challenges, Governments are sometimes encouraged to suppose that they need to choose between security on one hand and the rule of law on the other, but that is a false choice. As I hope this Green Paper shows, we must have both. I commend this statement to the House.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
First, may I thank the Secretary of State for Justice for giving advance sight of his statement this morning and for the briefing that was provided last week? We are supportive of the attempts by the Government to find a solution to the challenging situations that are encountered in sensitive legal cases. At the outset, I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to our security and intelligence services for the difficult and challenging work they do in keeping our country and citizens safe.
As the Secretary of State said, the work of the security and intelligence agencies and the sensitive information that they and foreign partners produce is essential to prevent terrorist attacks, disrupt serious crime networks and make the case for Executive action such as deportations and asset-freezing. It is important that we support them with this difficult task, and finding a sensible way of handling intelligence material in judicial proceedings is one way in which we can do that. The starting point for all of us is, I hope, restating the principle of open justice, which is a central tenet of our justice system. However, we also recognise that there are occasions when the use of classified intelligence can prove to be a challenge to maintaining open justice. This is compounded by the fact that we are in a globalised environment where the sharing of intelligence between international allies is crucial to ensuring our national security and interest overseas.
I agree with much of what the Secretary of State has said about the challenges we face in this area. I hope that he has had a chance to read the excellent piece in The Independent today written by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary on the importance of strong oversight for strong national security. It recognises that changes are required to ensure that scrutiny of the agencies and the wider intelligence community is effective and credible in the eyes of both Parliament and the public.
We need, as a matter of urgency, to bolster the safeguards and scrutiny mechanisms concerning issues of security and intelligence. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is proposing measures to enhance the powers of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We support the publication of a Green Paper: it is right and proper to foster a debate on what are challenging issues and to encourage key stakeholders to contribute their thoughts.
That being said, I want to take this opportunity to ask a number of questions of the Secretary of State. First, who will decide which cases are treated in the way that he sets out in his Green Paper? How many cases does he believe will be dealt with in the manner suggested and what advice has he received from special advocates and from others involved in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission? How will the overall system be scrutinised? Who will undertake the role of overseeing the whole system? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman comment on the views of the intelligence and security agencies on these proposals? Are they supportive of what has been recommended in the Green Paper?
We are happy to work with the Government to increase both judicial and other independent scrutiny of the intelligence and security agencies without undermining the protection of the public and while maintaining strong safeguards for the rights of individuals.
Mr Clarke
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his extremely constructive response, which is important. As I said, these problems were just as acute for the previous Government as they are for the present one, and with the mounting number of actions being brought in this field, the situation is getting steadily worse. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Government hope to get cross-party agreement. This is a very green paper. We are genuinely open to suggestions as to how to tackle the issue.
It is very much in the national interest that we do that. As the right hon. Gentleman has just said, we intend to protect our system of open justice and at the same time to protect the security of our intelligence agencies and public safety. It is essential that we set aside the ordinary partisan debate and seek to produce a system whereby our public and our allies can be reassured that these matters will be handled sensitively in this country. People will share intelligence with us knowing that it will be used properly, will not be misused and will not be disclosed in areas where it would do damage. At the same time, the public will be able to find out more often the outcome of complaints and actions involving the security services, and have a judge take the matter to a conclusion. I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said.
I have indeed read the article in The Independent produced by the shadow Home Secretary. I have to say that she, too, was briefed on Privy Council terms, I think. I am used to that. I have been briefed on Privy Council terms quite frequently in the past by members of the previous Government and did not always leap out to the nearest newspaper in order to give a reaction to the briefing that I had just had, but of course in the spirit of bipartisanship that I have just proclaimed, I will take her views seriously. She is trying to find reasons for disagreeing with us on both sides of the argument, but sooner or later she will decide whether we are being too draconian and protective or too indifferent to individual liberties. I look forward to further instalments as, no doubt, does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
The first question that the shadow Justice Secretary asked is key. He asked who will decide that the closed material procedure is the right way to proceed in whatever civil action we are talking about. In the first case it will be put to the court by the Secretary of State, but the final decision will rest with the judge. That is absolutely key. The special advocate is quite entitled to challenge the fact that this evidence is being given under the closed procedure, and the judge will have to be satisfied that on what he or she knows of the claim, it is indeed reasonable to proceed on that basis and there is indeed a threat to national security. That is a considerable reassurance.
I do not know how many cases there will be. The present pattern is that the numbers of cases is steadily increasing. It is becoming fashionable, almost, to start challenging the courts in encounters of any kind with the intelligence agencies. I do not dismiss all these actions, but there are about 30 coming through the pipeline now, so it is urgent that we address the matter.
Accountability is like the ordinary accountability for the court process, but the ISC will no doubt play a part in seeing how the proposal is working and its impact on the Security Service. On the Intelligence and Security Committee’s views on its own reform, as I have already said, we have based many of our recommendations on what the Committee itself has said. It is my understanding—I may discover more clearly in a moment, if any of my right hon. Friends intervene—that the ISC is broadly supportive of where we are going. We are undoubtedly strengthening the Committee. It is being made a Committee of Parliament. It will be accountable to Parliament as well as to the Prime Minister, and it will have increased powers if our proposals gain favour in the course of the consultation.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I welcome the publication of the Green Paper because it is better to find a way of getting intelligence material into closed court proceedings than for the cases to remain unresolved. May I point out to the Secretary of State that if that is extended to inquests, it will strengthen the case for a chief coroner, which I have put to him? As someone who has served on the Intelligence and Security Committee for a long time, I believe very strongly that that Committee has to have access to operational information in order to do its job properly.
Mr Clarke
On the first point, we canvassed opinion on the prospect of it being extended to inquests. There will be a range of views on that, so this is a genuinely green part of the Green Paper. My view is that in cases where families are desperately anxious to have a proper inquiry and for someone to make some judgments about what caused the death of a family member, it is particularly unsatisfactory if the whole thing cannot be brought to some sort of conclusion because the proceedings are too open to members of the public so the evidence cannot be heard. We will therefore consult carefully on inquests. I am not sure that the legislation proposing that we have a chief coroner would have given him any powers to do much about such inquest cases, but no doubt that issue will be raised if we continue to debate whether we need a chief coroner.
We propose to improve the ISC’s powers to require information to be brought before it. There are of course difficulties and sensitivities relating to operational information, but those will no doubt be raised in response to the Green Paper and are touched on, rather carefully, in the document I have published today.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
On the strengthening of the ISC, I commend what the Secretary of State is proposing. It is 17 years since the ISC was established—a different time and in the shadow of the cold war—and, as he has pointed out, circumstances have changed, so the proposals must be right. On the main part of his statement, I congratulate him on finding what appear to be elegant solutions to the terrible dilemma that successive Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries have faced, as I know, where the pursuit of apparent openness has resulted in injustice being done to the intelligence and security agencies and the plaintiffs, and sometimes defendants, in these actions. Will he confirm that the model he is seeking to extend for criminal-related cases will build on the establishment, many years ago, of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission? He says that the matter is urgent, and I entirely agree, so when does he plan to conclude the consultation and introduce legislation?
Mr Clarke
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He will not be surprised to learn that, although I made the statement today, I have been working very closely with my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary, whose interests are crucially involved, as he well knows, having done both jobs. We propose to complete the consultation by January next year, by which time we expect to be able to come back with legislation for the House to consider. I hope that people will feed in their views, because the whole point is to try to carry as much consensus in the House as possible. Although we have not yet decided, we will perhaps introduce legislation next year.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
My right hon. and learned Friend will know well that much of the success of intelligence is based upon co-operation with other countries. Does he agree that one of the most difficult components in the balance we must strike is the need to ensure that we do not prejudice relations with other countries, such as those with whom we have a special intelligence relationship, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand?
Mr Clarke
Yes, and the ladies who made the tea. I compliment them all. I work very closely with colleagues and this is very much a Government Green Paper.
On co-operation, I agree entirely with my right hon. and learned Friend. We share information and work closely with reliable allies, with whom we are mutually very dependent, and apply the so-called control principle. It would clearly make things impossible if they feared that legal processes in the United Kingdom would mean that the confidentiality of information they share with us was likely to be compromised. It is of great importance to the security of this country that we do not compromise that principle.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the Green paper and the fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is working closely again with the Home Secretary on this and other issues, but I caution against extending the role of special advocates in any way. I do not know whether he was suggesting that, but there are criticisms of special advocates and the way they deal with information. I welcome the fact that the ISC is to be enhanced, but there have been occasions when the Home Affairs Committee has asked the head of MI5 to appear before us, only to be told that we must visit him. Will this now mean that he will appear before the Home Affairs Committee when we ask?
Mr Clarke
Special advocates are a key part of what we are proposing. Controlled material proceedings will involve the use of special advocates, but the Green paper touches on how to improve that use. There are serious problems relating to how much special advocates have to know about the evidence they will hear before they can take proper instructions from their clients and how far they can report back to their clients the gist of what has been said. At the moment that works quite well in immigration tribunals, on which this is based, but the Green Paper asks for suggestions on how the role of special advocates can be improved. They are an essential part of the process, but anything that helps us handle the difficulties in using them would be welcome.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
I warmly welcome the priority given to the protection of information provided by friendly foreign Governments, because, quite frankly, without that protection the provision of that intelligence would simply dry up, to the great detriment of this country. As Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, may I say how much the Committee welcomes the decision to follow its recommendation that it should become, for the first time, a Committee of Parliament and be given effective powers relating to the operation of the intelligence agencies and not simply relating to policy, procedure and administration, as laid down in the current legislation? That is very much to be welcomed because it will enable Parliament and the public to have confidence that there is genuine, independent and effective oversight of our intelligence agencies.
Mr Clarke
I am grateful for that authoritative response to the Green Paper. I think that it matters on both sides of the House that the ISC becomes a Committee of Parliament and, in a fuller sense, is accountable to Parliament as well as to the Prime Minister. We can build on the excellent work it has done since it was first established.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the Green paper and its proposals. Maintaining the confidence of our allies in sharing their information is absolutely key, but so is maintaining the British public’s confidence in our legal system. If closed proceedings are to be extended, there will be controversy about the role of special advocates, not only in the House, but more broadly among the public, so the proposals to strengthen their role are particularly important. We must ensure that we get that right so that the public, defendants and the whole system have confidence in a fair trial and at the same time protect and maintain the necessary secret intelligence we have. It is a difficult balance to strike, but I am sure that the Secretary of State is up to it.
Mr Clarke
The right hon. Lady is also a member of the ISC, so I am grateful for her support for our proposals. She is quite right to stress the need for public confidence generally. The present situation is wholly unsatisfactory. The Guantanamo Bay case, which we settled recently, showed exactly what can go wrong. I had to come to the House to announce that we had paid out a total of £20 million, together with costs, because we had ceased to defend the action. Everyone who was inclined to believe the detainees thought that there was secret information that would confirm everything they said, and everyone who was against the detainees thought that the security services had been crippled, that they could have defended themselves and that we were paying money to worthless people. Every conspiracy theory could flourish, depending on temperament, before we even started. That is no way to retain public confidence. In our view that definitely requires closed material procedures, which means that we must have special advocates, so we welcome views on how to improve the way in which they carry out that very difficult task.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The purpose of state secrecy is to protect the safety of citizens, not to cover up criminality or to avoid embarrassment. In the Binyam Mohamed case, which led to the Gibson inquiry, the very senior judges involved went to a great deal of trouble to balance the requirements of security and open justice, but, from what I understand of this Green Paper, I am concerned that had my right hon. and learned Friend’s proposals been in place a few years ago, what we learned from the Binyam Mohamed case would not have been put in the public domain, that we would not have had the Gibson inquiry and, indeed, that we would not have been able to resolve the issues arising from it. Other nations—Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Italy; all our major allies other than America—are able to be very robust about that. Why can we not be?
Mr Clarke
If my right hon. Friend will excuse me, I shall not comment on the Binyam Mohamed case in detail. The judges take one view and others take another, but the Green Paper addresses the problem. One would need the facility for closed material procedures, so the starting point would be a decision, confirmed by the judge, that in the interest of national security the case should take place in closed proceedings and, therefore, not be revealed afterwards. That is an altogether better way of resolving the issue than allowing an argument to break out between judges, the Security Service and everybody else afterwards about whether something has been revealed that should not have been. That was where we were in the case of Binyam Mohamed.
I cannot remember my right hon. Friend’s second point, but we have got the balance right. Members of the Intelligence and Security Committee have said that confidentiality vis-à-vis allies is absolutely crucial, and it is no good currying favour by trying to get behind that, because in fact the safety of people in this country would be endangered if we did not have the full and frank co-operation of allied countries providing us with their intelligence, just as we provide them with ours.
Mr Clarke
I have had some preliminary discussions with the judiciary, and I am quite sure that they will now respond quite fully to our Green Paper, but I agree that, as we are making very important changes to civil procedure, it is essential that we take on board their views. In the end, this House will decide, but it would be most unsatisfactory and be asking for a great deal of future trouble if we started trying to put in civil procedures that the judiciary thought unsatisfactory and, in case law, sought to modify. I have taken great trouble to consult the judiciary, and I will continue to do so. I think that that will be possible, because they are just as concerned as everybody else about national security and, certainly, about open justice, and they will help us to reach a conclusion.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
There will be nervousness at the use of special advocates in cases such as those of the Guantanamo detainees or in inquests. Does the Secretary of State agree that the most effective way of stopping such cases coming forward is to ensure that international law is observed, that torture is never condoned implicitly or explicitly and that our security services are more effectively monitored so that we can always be certain about the probity of their activities?
Mr Clarke
I certainly agree with all my right hon. Friend’s principles, and they are confirmed by the current Government: we are flatly against the use of torture; we do comply with international law; my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has published new guidelines for the security and intelligence services; and, as I have said, we certainly want them to be properly accountable.
No one has ever established malpractice in previous cases, and one thing we are seeking to do is to draw a line under all the past allegations. I have been settling cases and all the rest of it, but no one has ever made an adverse finding against the security services on any of those grounds. Having public confidence, we now want a process whereby we can sustain it.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be aware that certain judicial decisions on intelligence sharing have undermined the confidence of our close allies, particularly the United States, with a material effect on some areas in which they are willing to co-operate. Does he not share my concern that our close allies will be concerned to find that he now places on judges the burden of making those decisions? In reality and in our experience, judges look at the conduct of their own proceedings, rather than at national security.
Mr Clarke
There has been the one case, the Binyam Mohamed case, which we have touched on, but unsurprisingly no one here has touched on the growing number of cases under the so-called Norwich Pharmacal procedure, on which we make recommendations. It is important that we do not find that the interests of the particular parties lead to highly sensitive intelligence material just getting into the public domain. Having consulted the judiciary, and from my experience of them, I have to say that it is actually wrong to argue that they are indifferent to the needs of national security; they accept that we need clear reform of our processes. We had been waiting for some Supreme Court cases before we produced our final proposals in this Green Paper, and the judiciary think it is time for Parliament to make clear how the processes can be modified to enable them to protect justice and liberty on the one hand and national security on the other.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend please set out the position in respect of Northern Ireland? It is of course a part of the United Kingdom, and it bears the scars of conflict all too well, so will these measures be applicable in Northern Ireland?
Mr Clarke
It is very important that my hon. Friend raises this issue. We have indeed consulted the Northern Ireland Office. The issue applies to Northern Ireland, and these matters come up frequently in the Northern Ireland context. In the course of our consultation on the Green Paper, I expect that we will receive quite a lot of representations based on the experience there.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We clearly need some form of closed material procedure, if only to deal with the counter-intelligence threat, which is very strong at the moment, from countries such as Russia, but may I urge the Lord Chancellor to look at whether the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee could not, as is the case with the Public Accounts Committee, always be a member of the Opposition? The Member who currently holds the post could perfectly well have held it when we were in power, so would it not make greater sense for the Chair to be a member of the Opposition?
Mr Clarke
Well, we will look at that, because I stress that this is a Green Paper and we are seeking cross-party consensus, which, were we ever to go into opposition again, I trust we would maintain on such subjects. The shadow Home Secretary made the same point, and we will look at it, but the idea that the Chairman’s party allegiance is an important consideration is not immediately obvious to me. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman confirms that the current Chairman, who happens to be a Conservative MP, is a former Foreign Secretary and whom nobody criticises as Chairman, is the right person to be Chairman. A rule that the Chair switches party might be relevant to other Committees, but for this Committee it is not quite as necessary as it obviously is for a Select Committee.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I commend the Justice Secretary for drawing the politicised sting from the false battle between justice and security. Will he give us his early thoughts on the possibility of creating an inspector-general of the intelligence services in order to ensure that oversight is concentrated in a single body?
Mr Clarke
The idea is floated in the Green Paper, and it often comes up. We will obviously look at it, alongside all the other things we are looking at to make the security services more accountable, but it is a suggestion often made, it remains a live issue and we will consider it very carefully.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
One way we could make the new Committee effective would be to guarantee that its reports were debated in this Chamber. Will the Government commit to making time for such debates, or will they leave it to the Backbench Business Committee?
Mr Clarke
That is more a matter for the Leader of the House than for me, but I am just turning to some members of the Committee, and I note that its reports are debated here sometimes. If Members with a close interest in the subject do not consider the frequency of debate to be adequate, however, I suggest that they take it up with my right hon. Friend. I do not think that these particular measures touch upon the frequency of debate, but the Committee is to be made more accountable to Parliament. That is one of the underlying features of our reforms.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I am instinctively uncomfortable about keeping evidence secret from those in court cases, but I look forward to seeking the detailed safeguards in the Green Paper. The Secretary of State says that the measures are intended for civil cases, but what assurances can he give the House that he will not consider using similar processes for criminal cases, in which somebody’s liberty might be at risk?
Mr Clarke
There is no question of having this in criminal cases—it would be quite impossible. A person could not be convicted on the basis of evidence that he was not allowed to hear and that was withheld from the public. The position will be the same after this as it is now—if evidence is not possessed that can be used in open court, the prosecution has to be dropped and cannot proceed. I share my hon. Friend’s sensitivities about any part of civil proceedings being closed—particularly, for example, in inquests, as I said a moment ago. However, I have come to the conclusion that that is less unsatisfactory than a situation in which the case cannot be heard in civil proceedings, so both parties go away, both claiming they are still right, and nobody has been able to hear all the evidence and give a judgment that, although not everybody will always accept it, will be of considerable reassurance to the general public if someone has heard it all and come to a conclusion.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that it is vital that we have a common regime across the United Kingdom in dealing with the fight against terrorism? Given that, what talks will he have with the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to ensure not only that there is a consistent approach but that there are no loopholes?
Mr Clarke
I think that the issues are exactly the same, in relevant cases, in all parts of the United Kingdom. Obviously the situation in Northern Ireland is particularly relevant to all this, so we have already consulted in Northern Ireland with the Justice Minister and others, and we will continue to do so. We are hoping to resolve problems that have been big in Northern Ireland for a long time, and we could not possibly have different principles applying on either side of the Irish sea.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
Does my right hon. and learned Friend recognise that there remains a high level of dissatisfaction with the degree of parliamentary scrutiny covering issues in relation to, for instance, extraordinary rendition, which was investigated in Europe in an inquiry that I was associated with but which here in this House was dealt with only by an all-party committee? In those circumstances, does he think that the changes that he is proposing will enable the Intelligence and Security Committee to look into these matters more effectively?
Mr Clarke
Yes, indeed; I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I remind him that we are going to look into rendition and a lot of the other allegations once we get the Gibson inquiry under way. It is clear that that inquiry will go into all the things that have troubled my hon. Friend and other people for some years. Again, we try to do these things in parallel. We are trying to draw a line under the past and then make sure that practice in future attracts less criticism because there is less ground for it. We cannot start the Gibson inquiry until the police have completed their investigations, which are still ongoing; as soon as they have concluded them, the whole question of rendition, among other things, will be looked at by the inquiry.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Secretary of State rightly highlighted the importance of the growing cyber-threat. He is of course aware that the vast majority of targets of those threats are in areas such as finance, utilities and so on, which, historically, we have not regarded as places where security threats would occur. This now requires a much higher level of engagement from employees and people working in those sectors. Will he take steps to ensure that the industries where there are real threats are carried with us in this important regard?
Mr Clarke
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are investing in cyber-security. He is right to say that this is now an extremely important issue for many sectors of British industry, as well as for the Government, that complicates matters and gives rise to the need for more actions now. There are myriad circumstances in which national security may be compromised by certain material. Some of the simpler ones arise because the identity of informants might be revealed. In others, the existence of some particular technology of which the other side is blissfully unaware will be revealed if one starts putting in one’s intelligence material. It is just as important to national security that those who are not friends of this country should not always know the capacity of the intelligence services in these cases. That is why the growing problem of cyber-security is a particular reason for strengthening our procedures and strengthening their supervision by this House.
Right of Access to a Lawyer in Criminal Proceedings and Right to Communicate upon Arrest (Opt-in Decision on Draft EU Directive)
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Government have decided not to opt in at this stage to the directive on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and on the right to communicate upon arrest. The Government have taken this decision in accordance with the commitment in the coalition agreement, which states that we will approach legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system.
The Government agree that a European directive in this area is a good idea in principle. We believe that it could benefit UK nationals who become subject to the criminal justice systems of other member states. Such a directive could also build greater trust and confidence among the competent authorities of all EU member states who may be expected to accept and act upon decisions or judgments made in other member states. However, a number of provisions in the proposal, as published by the European Commission, go substantially beyond the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and would have an adverse impact on our ability to investigate and prosecute offences effectively and fairly. Given the extent of our concerns on the detail of this directive, we cannot at this stage be confident that all of them will be addressed in the process of negotiations.
Given the importance we attach to the principles of this directive, we intend to work very closely with our European partners to develop a text which takes greater account of the practical realities of the investigation and prosecution of crime and reflects the flexibility which member states need in order to meet the requirements of the ECHR in a way which is consistent with the nature of their justice systems. In the event our concerns about the initial draft of the directive are satisfactorily dealt with during the negotiations, we will give serious thought to whether we should apply to opt in to it once it has been adopted, as our protocol to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union allows. We will consult Parliament about any decision to apply to opt in to the final text.
Mutual Recognition of Protection Measures in Civil Matters
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Government have decided to opt in to the regulation on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters. The regulation meets the criteria set out in the coalition agreement with regard to EU justice and home affairs measures.
In accordance with the coalition agreement, the Government have said they will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system
The draft regulation will benefit vulnerable people in Britain who may now feel more confident to travel within the EU due to greater protection. The draft regulation provides a quick and efficient mechanism. It aims to avoid those needing protection having to go through time-consuming court procedures and giving evidence on the same matters in another member state in order to get the protection they need.
The draft regulation covers “civil matters” and follows on from the draft directive on the European protection order which covers “criminal matters” which the UK has also opted into. The two separate instruments are intended to complement each other so that as many protection orders as possible are covered despite the differences in member states’ systems.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
7. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on his proposed reform of access to justice for overseas victims of corporate harm.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Overseas victims of alleged corporate harm by UK international companies are, where appropriate, able to bring civil claims in the UK now, and that will continue to be the case following implementation of our reforms to civil litigation funding and costs. My officials and I are in contact with the Foreign and Colonial Office—[Laughter]—the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as and when necessary to discuss the impact of our proposed reforms to legal costs in this class of case in this country, the Commonwealth or the colonies.
Caroline Lucas
I thank the Secretary of State for that interesting reply. Notwithstanding his response, he will be aware that the United Nations Special Representative on Business and Human Rights has said that clauses 41 to 43 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will present a major barrier to justice for overseas victims of human rights abuses by UK multinationals, not least because of the significant increased cost burdens. Will he therefore withdraw those clauses from the Bill?
Mr Clarke
We are not changing the jurisdiction in this country, which certainly does entertain claims in personal injury cases and so on against multinational companies that have some footing in this country. All we are arguing about is how much is paid in legal costs. The reforms to the no win, no fee arrangements that we are proposing would ensure that the costs would be fairer, more balanced and not out of proportion to the claim. We are not making any change at all to the jurisdiction. Most of the cases against multinational companies are not human rights cases; they are personal injury cases. Many of those cases might be attracted here because our present system of rewarding lawyers is far more generous than can be found in any other jurisdiction in the world.
Katy Clark
The Secretary of State will be aware that the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also criticised the reforms, which would remove access to justice for the victims of corporate abuse overseas. Does he not recognise that the reforms could result in there being no disincentive to environmental and other abuse? Will he not look at this again?
Mr Clarke
As I suggested a moment ago, I regard it as just a little disingenuous—I hate to say that about UN agencies—to suggest that we are in any way undermining the jurisdiction here for dealing with racial discrimination or serious personal injury cases involving British companies. What we are talking about is how much the lawyers are paid by way of success fees and other costs. The Trafigura case was a classic scandalous personal injury case involving a British company and an incident in Côte d’Ivoire, in which £30 million in compensation was awarded by the British courts to the plaintiffs and £100 million was paid in legal costs to those who brought the action. All we are doing is going back to where no win, no fee used to be—in getting the costs and the claims back in proportion to each other.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
What we are talking about is whether such cases will get into court at all under the regime that the Government are proposing. It appears they will not listen to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on insolvency, or to Amnesty International, Oxfam or the United Nations on multinational cases. Now, Admiral, the leading specialist motor insurer, is saying that premiums will go up as a result of the proposals. Is it not time to think again, and to stop favouring insurance companies, crooks and multinationals over their victims?
Mr Clarke
If the hon. Gentleman wants to widen this argument, which is perfectly legitimate, to include a general proposition as well as multinational company cases, the questions must be: how much is proportionate to the claim when it comes to paying costs, and what effect does no win, no fee, since it was changed, have on the judgment on both sides? We do not want such cases to be such a high earner for the plaintiffs’ lawyers that they are prepared to bring more speculative cases, which is happening at the moment. Nor do we want pressure to be put on defendants who have a perfectly sound defence, forcing them to say, “We cannot defend ourselves, because it will cost us less to pay a nuisance fee by way of settlement.” Justice involves striking a balance between what the lawyers are paid and what the plaintiffs get by way of compensation.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
4. What assessment he has made of the proposal to allow a right of appeal of decisions by judges to grant bail following the death of Jane Clough and other cases.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
8. What decisions he has reached on implementing the recommendation of the review by Lord Justice Jackson to abolish referral fees.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
As the House was informed on Friday 9 September in a written ministerial statement, the Government have decided to ban referral fees in personal injury cases as recommended by Lord Justice Jackson. The ban complements our wider reforms to no win, no fee arrangements, which are being taken forward in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
Mr Straw
May I first express an unequivocal welcome for the announcement that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), made on Friday not only in respect of motor insurance but more widely about implementing this central plank of Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations? Since the Justice Secretary used the word “ban”, which I think is the correct word, may I ask him whether he accepts that, given the level of malpractice we see across the legal and paralegal industry, the ban will have to be backed by the criminal law?
Mr Clarke
First, may I say that I am glad that my old friend the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and I are in complete agreement on this subject? It is not the first time. He got in first, really, because I waited for the opinion of the Legal Services Board, which I have not followed but which I had to consider, and he rightly prompted a decision. People who agree with us include not only Lord Justice Jackson but my noble Friend Lord Young in his report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, the Law Society, the Bar Council and the Association of British Insurers. The main beneficiaries will be claimants who are genuinely referred to the best expert to act for them and the justice system in general. We are now considering the way in which to put this into practice, but it is likely to be in the form recommended.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Developing on that point, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we should consider not only criminal law but close liaison with professional bodies to ensure that strict disciplinary action is brought against individuals or bodies who seek to circumvent any ban by rebranding fees as other costs or, worse still, start an emerging black market in referrals?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend makes extremely sensible and welcome suggestions. We have not decided exactly what form the ban will take yet, so I will not predetermine its eventual form. As the professional bodies strongly support us, we look forward to their co-operation because they are in the best position of all to ensure that different types of abuse with the same bad consequences are not used to evade the ban.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
9. If he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the Human Rights Act 1998 in respect of the balance between fundamental liberties and obligations to society.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
We have established an independent commission to investigate the creation of a United Kingdom Bill of Rights. The commission is due to report no later than the end of next year and the Government look forward to receiving and considering its findings.
Mr Bain
I am grateful for that answer. Does the Secretary of State support Liberty’s campaign, entitled “Common Values”, that seeks to separate the myths from the truths of the Human Rights Act, which has, for example, protected the victims of rape from being cross-examined in court by their assailants? Is this not the right way to tackle what the Prime Minister recently called the misrepresentation of human rights?
Mr Clarke
The best way to answer that is to say that I agree with the campaign, with the hon. Gentleman and with the Prime Minister. A perfectly serious debate has taken place about human rights legislation and I look forward to the commission’s advice. A lot of the difficulty comes when human rights are invoked by officials in excuse for bad decisions or in all kinds of cases that have nothing to do with any human rights legislation. We would have an altogether more sensible debate if people understood the real problems and difficulties—and that they are not all problems and difficulties.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
For many, the perception of the application of human rights law is that the pendulum has swung too far away from responsibilities and duties. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the commission will present a good opportunity to extend the understanding that with rights go responsibilities?
Mr Clarke
I think the commission is a very helpful idea for getting some objective and balanced advice on the whole subject. Otherwise, I agree with my hon. Friend that there is no reason why human rights should interfere with the proper balance between the responsibilities and duties that one properly owes to society. Everybody in this country is in favour of basic human rights and everybody wants to have an orderly society. I think the commission will help to steer the debate in a more sensible direction.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to assure us that any review of the Human Rights Act will not include withdrawal from the European convention on human rights or the European Court of Human Rights? Will he recognise that both those institutions have done a great deal of good to improve the human rights of minorities and ordinary citizens across Europe and that the convention is worth staying in?
Mr Clarke
The convention was largely drafted by British lawyers led by Lord Kilmuir. Successive British Governments have adhered to the convention and have put great value on it and the Court. Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war, the convention has acquired new importance in making sure that we support advancing standards in eastern and central Europe. There is not the faintest chance of the present Government withdrawing from the convention on human rights, and we are waiting for the commission to give us—[Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Have a look at our coalition agreement. Indeed, it is not just the coalition agreement—we have agreed to have a fresh look at this through the commission and we are not prejudging its findings.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
11. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the size of the prison population; and if he will make a statement.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Since the summer of 2008, the prison population has been increasing much less quickly than had been the case for a number of years. The public disorder in early August has, however, resulted in a sharp rise in the number of prisoners in recent weeks, with the prison population reaching 86,842 on Friday 9 September. Despite this unprecedented rise, sufficient capacity has been maintained in the prison estate to accommodate the prison population effectively.
Stephen Pound
Like any decent, reasonable human being, I am grateful for that answer from the Secretary of State. Could I ask him to give credit to the prison officers who have participated in this expansion, and the people working within the prison estate? It cannot have been easy for them. An additional 500 operational usable places have appeared in the last few weeks. Where from?
Mr Clarke
First, I agree strongly with the praise that the hon. Gentleman gives to the prison officers. The system did respond—the criminal justice system responded very well to the totally unexpected pressure of the riots. Partly it proved that our criminal justice system does work well in such circumstances. Secondly, it was entirely because of the public-spiritedness and good will of prison officers, probation officers, policemen and court staff, all of whom responded to the events with horror, as did every decent member of society, and decided to put the public interest first.
We always carry a cushion in the prison estate, because we do not know what number of prisoners will come. I know the consequences, which some of my predecessors have encountered, of running out of places in the prisons, and for that reason, I am glad to say, we were able to cope—there is still sufficient capacity—and it is very important that we continue to do so.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Has the Secretary of State had time to consider the Make Justice Work report, “Community or Custody?” which sets out clearly how much more effective properly managed community sentences are than short-term prison sentences, and the potential for greater use of community sentences to push down the prison population?
Mr Clarke
We have to have all forms of punishment available, because no two cases are the same. What is likely to be most effective with one offender may not be with another. We do have to punish, and then we have to see what we can do to rehabilitate and prevent people from reoffending. But I quite agree: for some prisoners, the best effect from the public point of view—returning them to an honest life—can be achieved by non-custodial sentences, and the Government hope to make them more credible to magistrates and to strengthen them, so they can be used effectively in suitable cases.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has, on a number of occasions, said and written that he intends to reduce the prison population significantly over this Parliament. As he has confirmed, 16 months into the Parliament, the prison population is at a record high. It was also at a very high level before the riots. As he is aware, the prison estate is struggling to cope. Prison officers and probation officers are increasingly stretched, and prisoners are spending even longer times idling in their cells rather than engaged in productive activities such as work. In the light of that, is he still committed to reducing the prison population significantly, and if so, how will he do it in a way that puts public protection first?
Mr Clarke
I do not think I have ever said that. I have made it quite clear that the prison population responds to demand. I did not anticipate the riots, but we have to have a prison population that can cope with the judgment of judges and magistrates who send us a number of people who have to be dealt with and punished in that way. I have said that I expect to have a more stable system, but I cannot understand why everything possible was done under the last Government to push up the total number of prisoners but to let them all out earlier, so that the system looked tough but actually turned into something of a shambles. I am also hoping that prison can be made somewhat more effective, and that it might be better at putting people to work, getting them off drugs, tackling their mental health problems and getting fewer of them to go on to commit more crimes—
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Compensation for victims of terrorism overseas is being considered alongside the Government’s review of victims’ services and compensation in this country, at the conclusion of which we will publish a consultation document. We plan to make an announcement on the victims of terrorism overseas at the same time as we launch the consultation.
Gemma Doyle
I thank the Minister, but the families of the victims of overseas terrorism and the survivors were promised on 28 June that an announcement would be made “in the coming weeks”. Some two and a half months have now passed with no announcement. How much longer should the victims and their families expect to wait?
Mr Clarke
I have to confess that the hon. Lady has a valid point on the timing, but the fact is that it makes sense to consider the victim support that we give, the present criminal injuries compensation scheme and the support that the Foreign Office gives overseas alongside the proposed terrorism compensation scheme. This has always been a great difficulty over the years. We can all recall that, probably over the past 20 years, people’s aspirations to help victims here and abroad have run rather ahead of the arrangements made to finance them. I assure the hon. Lady that we are having to look at this again. I realise that we are slipping behind the timetable that we announced, but we will proceed as quickly as we can.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
15. What recent assessment he has made of the operation of the courts during the public disorder of August 2011.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The courts responded swiftly, fairly and properly during the recent public disorder and continue to process cases as soon as they are brought by the prosecution. Although it is too early to make a final assessment of the courts response to the disorder, my Department is reviewing all aspects of the response to find out whether opportunities for continued improvement in public service can be identified.
Bob Blackman
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that answer. One of the lessons of the riots was that those who were responsible were arrested, held on remand and processed through the courts and, if found guilty, began their sentences almost immediately, thus protecting the public and acting as a significant deterrent to others. Surely, that should be the norm, rather than the exception.
Mr Clarke
First, I have already praised the staff of all the services involved for the service that they delivered, and I think that we have all noticed that it was possible to handle certainly the straightforward cases much more quickly than we have become too used to regarding as the norm elsewhere. Obviously, we realise that we cannot expect such extraordinary efforts to be made all the time and in all normal circumstances, but efficiency can be improved. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice is taking a particular interest in improving the efficiency of the system and learning the best lessons that we can from our welcome experience of the riots.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It seems that in the immediate aftermath of the riots, in many cases, courts completely dispensed with asking for pre-sentence reports. One of the consequences was that parents of young children received custodial sentences, and no regard at all was paid to what would happen to those children. Does the Secretary of State agree that when parents are sentenced to custody, there ought to be automatic checks on what happens to the children?
Mr Clarke
My colleagues and I have just been checking with each other, and we all think—well, we all know—that pre-sentence reports were provided. One cannot proceed to swift justice without getting the necessary information about the circumstances of the client and their family. I am sure that pre-sentence reports were, in fact, required by courts, and they can certainly be obtained at adequate length in the time available if one is moving briskly. Of course, all the sentences are open to appeal, and the situation and the consequences can all be looked at in the normal way that always follows a sentence involving someone with family responsibilities.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
16. What plans he has to improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
I begin by making a topical statement, Mr Speaker, controlling my breathing carefully as I do. Last week, as well as announcing plans to allow cameras into courts, I outlined plans to open up the justice system by publishing unprecedented local data. We will publish data on court performance, sentencing and reoffending, and provide information on what happens next following a crime, alongside street-level crime data. That will allow people to see how the criminal justice system operates in their area. We will also encourage consistent publication of the names of offenders unlawfully at large; that will help in apprehending them and returning them to custody. Those measures will place the crime and justice sector at the forefront of the Government’s policy on transparency.
Bridget Phillipson
We have seen real success across Sunderland in reducing reoffending year on year. Of course, more needs to be done to tackle that, but it has been put at risk by cuts to the local probation trust. Does the Lord Chancellor think that reoffending rates will be higher or lower by the end of this Parliament?
Mr Clarke
Criminal statistics are more reliable than they used to be, but I still do not have total confidence in them, and I would certainly never make forecasts with them because crime trends are very difficult to predict. However, I am glad that success has been achieved in Sunderland on reoffending, which we propose to make the prime focus of our policy: punish offenders effectively and, at the same time, try to stop them offending again.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
T2. In Worcestershire, we have had persistent problems with Travellers who refuse to respect the law. My fellow MPs in the county have recently written to the Justice Secretary with some suggestions about that, and I know that he is considering them. Does he agree that we should help Travellers to preserve their way of life—their travelling way of life—by moving them on?
Mr Clarke
This is a difficult subject, and it certainly needs to be looked at all the time. I agree: my experience in my part of the world is that many Travellers do not travel as frequently as they are supposed to, and they are fond of occupying vacant land and building houses on it, while still describing themselves as Travellers. The subject is more complex than that, and if we can make any improvements to the law that protect the legitimate interests of society as a whole, we will certainly do so.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), defended the Government’s narrow definition of domestic violence in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill with these words:
“We are concerned that to include admission to a refuge in the criteria would be to rely on self-reporting…We are not persuaded that medical professionals would be best placed to assess whether domestic violence has occurred. Although they may witness injuries…nor would the fact of a police investigation without more evidence provide sufficient evidence”.––[Official Report, Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2011; c. 359-60.]
Women in this country will be appalled by those remarks. Would the Under-Secretary like to take them back, and also change his definition in the Bill?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
We intend to apply exactly the same policy in all sensible ways to the prison system generally as far as is practicable. We publish more figures all the time about reoffending rates and we will certainly be open about our success in extending the policy of providing more worthwhile working opportunities for prisoners, because getting them back into the habit of work is one way of getting them to live as responsible citizens in a normal society.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
T3. Using a restricted definition of domestic violence, as discussed a moment ago, will penalise victims of domestic violence, many of whom suffer for long periods before they begin to report incidents to the police. Will the Minister, given that he appears to be in some difficulty over this, consider meeting organisations working on domestic violence to work out how to make that definition work?
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
T5. There are 66 people in Bolton and more than 10,000 across the UK who are still driving with more than 12 points on their driving licence. Many are repeat offenders of the offences of speeding and driving without insurance and have more than 20 points. Is there a problem with the legislation or are judges being too lenient? Will the Secretary of State investigate?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I think the answer is that we will investigate. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the figures. They sound astonishing, so I look forward to her providing me with sufficient details for myself and my ministerial team to find out what lies behind them.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
T9. The building that formerly housed Wisbech magistrates court is owned by the Ministry of Justice and is in a prime site next to the historic port in Wisbech and a couple of yards from a conference centre. Will my hon. Friend the Minister meet me to discuss how we best use the site for regeneration so that it does not get locked in the stalemate that there has been with the police service locally?
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
T7. In the aftermath of the riots that so rocked the country last month, what lessons does the Justice Secretary think can be learned about the need to respond swiftly to public outrage at the actions of a lawless minority, balanced with the need to deliver justice?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
We obviously have to study the events closely, looking for any lessons we can learn from recent experience. More and more facts will come to light, upon which we can base firm conclusions. The question that the hon. Lady raises about the rapidity of the response in the early days to the first threats to public order and to citizens is not primarily for my Department, but I know that the Home Office is taking it extremely seriously. It is easy with hindsight to criticise operational decisions. What is important is looking to see how we can improve the response in the future.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Is it not bizarre that many Travellers originate in Ireland? The Irish Government changed their law, so now the Travellers have moved to England. In his review, will the Justice Secretary learn from how the Human Rights Act in Ireland does not prevent Travellers from being moved on?
Mr Clarke
I agree that there is a problem. Let us be clear. Travellers, like anybody else, are entitled to the protection of the law and are also subject to the law. We have to deal with Travellers on the basis of how they behave, not start going against them as a class. But we have to look at how the operation of the law at present is enabling people to lead a somewhat odd way of life which is totally at variance with that which is led by the rest of the population, and to seek to disregard laws to which everybody else is subject. I am not sure that the Human Rights Act and human rights legislation generally is terribly relevant, but if it gets drawn in, we will look and see what it can do to help with the case.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
T8. The Government cancelled the building of the Maghull prison after work had already started. Will the Lord Chancellor take this opportunity to tell my constituents what plans he has for the site, to allay their concerns about the Maghull prison site and nearby greenfield projects, which developers are eyeing up?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
It depends on what they have done for which they have to be punished. I do not think that prison is the right place for people who pose no risk to the public, but if they have done something heinous, they have to be punished in a way that the public regard as proportionate to the crime. We are paying considerable attention to the problem of women in prisons. There are too many. The combination of problems is sometimes quite specific, and in many cases there are multiple problems. Anything that can sensibly be done to improve the way we handle women prisoners, with proper regard to punishment and the protection of the public, we will do.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
T10. Further to the question raised by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), without legal aid or Government financial backing for the fee arrangements, how can we ensure that overseas victims of alleged human rights abuses by UK multinational companies get justice?
Mr Clarke
They have the jurisdiction. Britain entertains these personal injuries cases, these actions in tort, against multinational companies that have an adequate presence here in a perfectly open way, but it is still necessary for the costs of a case to be proportionate to the claim. We do not want people coming here and bringing their cases in British courts because the costs available to the lawyers greatly exceed those which could be attained by bringing similar cases in other jurisdictions.
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to do more to curb the compensation culture in this country and that one way of doing so would be to ensure that plaintiffs incur some form of financial risk in bringing their case so that they focus their minds on the merits of their case?
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State has stated his commitment to rehabilitation as a priority. Probation officers are key to this. They often need highly developed skills, particularly when working with violent offenders and sex offenders. Is he committed not only to maintaining levels of funding for probation officers, but increasing it in order to continue the downward trend in crime that continued under a Labour Government?
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Can the Secretary of State inform the House what efforts he is making to ensure that sentencing policy and practice is consistent across all parts of the United Kingdom for rioters, and that rioters in Rasharkin and Belfast who try to kill police officers and damage property will face the same swift, certain and good judgment faced by rioters in England?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I realise that our fellow citizens in Ulster have unfortunately had just as much experience of rioting as some of our British cities have. Among the many things that we must look at when we get the full facts about the very good response of our courts and criminal justice system to the recent English riots is how it compares with the experience in Northern Ireland. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there should be some general consistency of approach, with swift and firm justice, particularly when rioting is taking place, because it stops people imitating it and lessens the likelihood that the disorder will spread.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
On the subject of payment by results, what guarantee can Ministers give that small providers will win some contracts and that small and large providers will have to make information about their performance publicly available?
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I made some cautious remarks a little earlier about criminal justice statistics. There is a very small number of people on indeterminate sentences who have ever been released, and I am very glad that there has been a low level of reoffending.
We are committed to ending that system. We have 3,500 people who have finished their normal sentence—that is, the tariff—and are unable to satisfy the Parole Board that they can be released, but we are looking at all those cases to find the best possible way of ensuring that the bulk of them do not reoffend. Some of them always will, however, and we cannot avoid that.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
On the question of compensation for overseas terrorism, will the Secretary of State confirm that any scheme eventually brought in will apply from 18 January 2010, as originally proposed by the previous Labour Government?
UK Bill of Rights
Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Government established an independent commission to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights in March 2011, fulfilling a commitment made in our programme for government. The commission has been asked to explore a range of issues surrounding human rights law in the UK and also to provide interim advice on reform of the European Court of Human Rights ahead of our chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which begins in November 2011 and runs for six months.
I am today placing in the Library of the House copies of two letters received from Sir Leigh Lewis, the chair of the commission on a Bill of Rights, which have been sent jointly to the Deputy Prime Minister and myself. The first letter contains the interim advice which the commission was asked to provide to the Government on reform of the European Court of Human Rights, in advance of the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe. The second letter sets out a number of issues on which the commission has not yet reached conclusions, and which it intends to continue to consider as part of its work programme.
The Government welcome the commission’s interim advice on the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Our top priority when we take over the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe will be to deliver and build upon the ongoing reform process. It must focus on the most important cases and have proper regard to the judgment of national Parliaments and courts. It must operate more effectively and efficiently as a proper safeguard against human rights abuses. Our plans will be informed by the commission’s advice. The commission will continue to explore the case for a UK Bill of Rights, and we look forward to receiving its final report by the end of next year.