Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Following on from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), I fear that there is no such thing as a perfect piece of legislation. None the less, what we have produced today, albeit with some considerable speed, is a Bill entirely worthy of the support of the entire House. I hope that the other place will permit it to get on to the statute book as soon as possible. I just have one point of interest that I wish to raise with those with on the Front Bench. I am not sure whether a member of the Home Office team will be responding to the debate, but perhaps somebody could write to me when they have a moment.

Under clause 4, which deals with extraterritoriality, it is quite clear that there are companies providing telecommunications services that will have a place of business or somebody in this jurisdiction who will be able to accept service of an interception warrant and so come within the terms of the statute. My only concern—it is not a concern that will destroy the Bill in any way at all—is practical. There may well be some telecommunications providers external to this jurisdiction that do not have a place of business in this country and do not have someone on whom an interception warrant can be served. Therefore, they will, like so many other aspects of extraterritorial law, not be susceptible to this legislation.

I am assuming—I put this in the interrogative—that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will be having discussions, or has already had discussions, with her overseas counterparts to make sure that overseas jurisdictions will co-operate, if we ask them to, to ensure that those overseas companies comply with the terms of this legislation as a matter of comity, if for no other reason. It strikes me that there is a lacuna, perhaps a very small lacuna, which may not be capable of being dealt with, but which none the less needs to be thought about.

Child Abuse

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

On the way in which the review is being set up, yes, we have decided on a slightly different approach. The permanent secretary will be appointing a senior legal figure, as he has said. I felt that it was appropriate to ask for somebody to lead the inquiry who was involved in child protection matters and who was independent in a different way, working with the senior legal figure. Peter Wanless will be leading it, but a senior legal figure will be appointed, and the permanent secretary will make the announcement in due course.

On the 114 files that have not been found, that figure was first given in a parliamentary answer last October, and it was repeated in the very full letter that Mark Sedwill gave to the right hon. Gentleman. The investigator was unable to say what had happened to those files—that is precisely one of the problems. There is no evidence as to whether the files were destroyed or have been mislaid. Obviously, the new review will be able to go back over the work that the investigator did to see whether any further evidence can be adduced.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Having sadly had to deal with a number of historic child sex abuse cases in my time as a Law Officer, may I assure the Home Secretary that the victims of these hideous crimes suffer from them well into their adulthood and often into middle and old age, so the need to bring to justice those who have committed these terrible crimes is surely uncontroversial. Will the Home Secretary make sure that those who have evidence to give or allegations to make can do so in the most convenient form possible—that is, to one central police force which masterminds the national investigation—rather than having a whole host of police forces collecting the information and giving it to the Crown Prosecution Service? At the moment, there seems to be a drip-feed of insinuation, which is causing a lot of distress to innocent people. What we need to see is the guilty prosecuted and brought to justice, rather than the innocent having their reputations trashed.

[Mrs May]

I take very seriously the point made by my hon. and learned Friend. In a sense, we are dealing with two types of allegations. The first are allegations that may be made in cases relating to the information given to the Home Office in the 1980s. There are also allegations about activities at children’s homes in different parts of the country. I will reflect on my hon. and learned Friend’s comment about the appropriate way in which those allegations can be made and properly investigated. I also echo his other point, because I think we have all seen, in interviews given by people who are well into their middle age or older and who were abused as children, that this is not a matter that goes away. It is not something that can be forgotten. It lasts with people for the rest of their lives and we owe it to them to give them truth and justice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are learning the lessons of that terrible incident. As he knows, I have spoken to Bobby Turnbull several times about this matter, and I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that the strengthened guidance, with particular application to domestic violence, will be introduced within weeks, so that very direct lesson is being quickly learned.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend might know that a relatively small number of identifiable guns are used repeatedly in gangland drug dealing and other forms of violence. What steps is his Department taking to ensure that the police have the legal weapons available to them to crack down on these hirers and renters out of such weapons?

[Damian Green]

My hon. and learned Friend is right that the middlemen who provide the guns are often as guilty as those who fire them, which is why we are increasing the maximum penalty for the manufacture, sale or transfer of these guns. I hope that that will send a clear message that these types of middlemen are indeed as guilty as those who pull the trigger.

Abu Qatada (Deportation)

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The reason that large legal bills built up was the time the case took, because of the various stages of appeal that were available to Abu Qatada and the fact that the European Court moved the goalposts in the unprecedented decision that it took early last year. It was because of that that we had to undertake further discussions with the Jordanian Government about the assurances that could be achieved. And of course our own Special Appeals Immigration Commission last autumn decided that despite those further assurances and its view that the Jordanian Government would bend over backwards to make sure that Abu Qatada got a fair trial, this one issue about whether evidence that was allegedly obtained by torture could be used had to be addressed. That is addressed, among other things, in the general treaty that we have signed. It is because there have been so many opportunities to appeal and because of the decisions that have come as a result of those appeals that the legal bills have built up.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

May I join all those who have offered their congratulations to the Home Secretary, and may I also thank her for the congratulations that she has offered to others—her officials and officials in other Departments? That is a very proper thing to have done. Does she agree that even before the enactment of the Human Rights Act, we probably would not have deported a terrorist suspect to be tortured or to face trial on the basis of evidence extracted by torture or to a country which might have used the death penalty upon that person? Does she also agree that the core to the success that she has had has been the bilateral agreement with Jordan, and that although we may all have our frustrations about the expense and the difficulties caused by the Strasbourg Court, the central thing that we must concentrate on is ensuring that we have with these other jurisdictions rock-solid, cast-iron treaties which permit deportation?

[Mrs May]

Indeed, I agree with my hon. and learned Friend. It is important that we have these assurances and agreements with other countries where there is a possibility, or where the courts have suggested that there is a possibility, that it would not be possible to deport an individual because of the situation they would find themselves in once deported. When the European Court made its judgment last year, I think that it failed to appreciate the changes that have taken place in Jordan and the work the Jordanian Government have done, for example to change their constitution in relation to torture. In a sense the judgment was unfair with regard to the Jordanian situation. Nevertheless, as a result of the judgment, we had to undertake further discussions with the Jordanian Government and put in place exactly the sorts of assurances and agreements that my hon. and learned Friend refers to.

Stop and Search

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s support for the consultation on stop and search going ahead. As she says, there has been a number of reports on the operation of stop and search. The EHRC, whose report was published a matter of weeks ago, looked again at the issue in five forces, including the Met and Thames Valley police. It identified that it had been possible for those forces to reduce the number of stop and searches, perhaps by targeting them better on an intelligence-led basis, and that doing so had also had an impact on the search-to-arrest ratio, but no discernible effect on public safety. The EHRC reinforced the view that we can get stop and search right; that if we get it right, it can be the valuable tool we want it to be; but that we can reduce the number of stops and searches without having an impact on public safety.

I did indeed ask ACPO to look at stop and search and best practice across the country, and it has done so. I also asked HMIC to do a piece of work across forces on how stop and search is used and recorded. I think that that report, which comes out next week, will, by providing information on the practices used on the ground, give the best evidence base on which to look ahead.

The right hon. Lady asked about recording. At a very early stage, we made changes to the amount of information that needs to be recorded on stop-and-search forms, but we retained, for example, ethnicity as one of the matters that should be recorded. We were able to reduce bureaucracy somewhat, but it remains the case that if a stop and search is undertaken when it is not necessary—when there is not reasonable suspicion—it can be a waste of police time.

The right hon. Lady’s main accusation seemed to be that, in my statement, I had not set out any firm proposals on stop and search, but the whole point of the public consultation is to go out and ask members of the public what has been their experience of stop and search, how they feel it should be used and what changes, if any, they think should be made. The consultation will include questions such as whether local communities should be more involved in working out how stop and search should be used in their area. There are some good examples, including in the London borough of Brent, of work being done with the local community. The point of the consultation is to ask people what they think; then, we will look the results alongside the evidence base in the HMIC report and come to the House in due course with firm proposals that I believe will enable us to get stop and search right.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend said that the percentage of stops and searches that led to arrest were far too low for comfort. What figure would make her comfortable?

[Mrs May]

My hon. and learned Friend will know that I am not naturally inclined to set targets in these matters, and I do not think it would be appropriate at this stage if I were to state a figure. The Met Commissioner has done so, having set a 20% target, and, as I said, recent figures have been far closer to that 20%. But let us look at the evidence base and hear what the public have to say about how stop and search should operate.

Home Affairs

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Unsurprisingly, I rather disagree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). I think that the Queen’s Speech contained some very positive and interesting aspects, not least the proposals that the Secretary of State for Justice spoke about earlier. The Queen’s Speech set out that

“Legislation will be introduced to reform the way in which offenders are rehabilitated in England and Wales.”

For me, that is perhaps the most important part of the Queen’s Speech. I hope that the programme that the Government bring forward, and the Bill or Bills relating to rehabilitation, will produce real benefits for the public.

I will just add—this follows a couple of newspaper reports over the past few days—that the money available for spending on rehabilitation is, I suspect, being unfairly reduced by the ordering of costs out of central funds for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When it fails successfully to prosecute offenders, sometimes it has to pay its own costs and sometimes it does not, but invariably the successful defendant’s costs come out of central funds. I hope that the Front-Bench team will look carefully at their resources to ensure that central funds are not used—I presume that “central funds” means Ministry of Justice or Home Office money—to bail out private prosecutors when they fail to bring their prosecutions home.

Let me revert to the wider subject of rehabilitation and place it within the context of the criminal justice system as a whole. It strikes me that the criminal justice system is a process, not an event. Our prisons are part of that process and, for all but the very few prisoners who will live out their lives in custody, they are places of temporary accommodation into which and from which the “community”, “society”, the “outside”—call it what we will—sends and takes them back. For most of those who are sentenced to prison, custody is not the end of the journey but a part of it.

Conversely, for many of us—those of us on the outside—who have no experience of the criminal justice system and who have never been into a prison or met anyone who has been sentenced to a term of custody, prison is society’s final answer. That is wrong: prison is itself a process within the wider process of the criminal justice system. It cannot be isolated in a silo from the other parts of the criminal justice system, such as the police, the courts, the probation service, the drug and alcohol abuse programmes and the education, training and diversionary activities that run alongside them.

The value of prison for society, law-abiding and criminal alike, should be that it takes in offenders and releases them reformed and rehabilitated so that they can return whence they came as different and better people, ready to participate as responsible citizens, looking after their dependants, free from drug use, better qualified, earning a living, paying their way and going straight. That is no doubt the unattainable ideal to be placed beside the hope of the crime-free society, but just because we cannot have total success does not mean that we should not strive to do better than we are doing now. I therefore look forward to seeing the detail of the Government’s proposals in relation to rehabilitation.

Prison, for most of those who end up inside, is evidence of failure: the offender has failed to look after himself, his family and those he cares for; he has failed to get an education, a job and to maintain his physical and mental well-being; and he has failed to understand, or has simply ignored, the needs and rights of others. In failing in so many ways he has caused incalculable damage to those most close to him and to his immediate and more distant victims. But in sending him to prison and doing nothing with him save incarcerating him—statistically most offenders and prison inmates are male—are we not also failing ourselves, our neighbours, our communities and our country? Prisons, properly understood and properly directed, should be prisons with a purpose that serve the public interest.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. and learned Gentleman makes a very reasonable point when he says that we should look at the criminal justice system as a whole, and the interactions between the institutions have a big impact on the effectiveness of the system, but does he not understand that it is precisely for that reason that the proposal to privatise the probation service and extend payment by results without having completed the pilots is so risky, because the institutions will be competing against each other, rather than trying to promote a good criminal justice system for society as a whole?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am glad that the Government are taking a risk, but it is not an irresponsible risk. The outcome that we are looking for is rehabilitation. The probation service should not simply be an employment system; it should be a system more widely looked at that takes prisoners and rehabilitates them so that they can re-engage in society. If the Government’s proposals work—this is not a new idea; the Conservative party has been thinking about it for many years—they should be welcomed. Of course there will be doubt from the trade unions and from the Labour party, which are more state-centric organisations than we are, but for goodness’ sake let us give it a try. The current system is not working. If the Government are to be believed, as they should be in this regard, the Opposition should be a little less wary of this exciting new venture, because the benefits of it working are worth striving for.

At the moment, we have overcrowded prisons that can do no more than lock up for the period of their sentence the violent, the dishonest, the mentally ill, the addicted substance abusers, the illiterate, the innumerate and the socially inept. It can do no more than warehouse human beings for no other purpose than keeping them off the streets and preventing them from reoffending while inside. That is not a wrong or improper purpose—it is a very good reason to send an offender to prison—but on its own it is an insufficient and unimaginative purpose, and without more it is a huge waste of public money. If we do no more than house and release offenders and fail to carry out the essential work of helping them to find somewhere to live, to find a job, to stay off drugs and to return to their families and look after their dependants, we will fail again and again, and reinforce that failure.

We have a choice. We can continue to reinforce that failure or we can think hard about why we are failing the victims of crime and those we send to prison, as well as the wider taxpaying public, and do something about it. We can continue to put large cohorts of people into an overcrowded prison estate and send the same cohorts of people back out again to commit more, and often worse, crimes, or we can try to change things for the better—better for the taxpayer, better for the victims of crime, better for the public at large, and better even for the criminal.

Prisons need walls to deny criminals their liberty, to keep them off our streets and to stop them committing further crimes while serving their sentences, as well as to prevent them from escaping and to keep them safe from those on the outside who would do them harm. But those walls also need windows through which society can see in and know what is being done inside in its name and through which the offenders can see out and realise that a life of hope and purpose awaits them and is worth striving for. This is the era that cannot keep a secret and where no confidence is respected, and yet there remains a secret world of which the public know little or nothing: the world inside our prisons. It is time to put those windows in those walls.

No doubt the Government’s plans for rehabilitation will not entirely cure the problem of reoffending, but this is a Conservative answer that is positive, forward-thinking and practical, and at least worth thinking about. The status quo is not an option. Some years ago, the then chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, wrote:

“There is a link between humanity and effectiveness.”

Public safety, in her view, hinges on having an effective process, “And this isn’t one”. She was right then and she is right now. The prison system in England and Wales is creaking. The Prison Service, in its various guises, is confused, and the public are increasingly concerned. Traditionally, correctional policies have focused less on correcting and more on punishment and temporary prevention. Keeping offenders incarcerated and thus protecting society from their crimes and deterring them from committing them again and others from starting on a life of crime, is the job, or one of the jobs, of the prisons, and it is not an easy one. However, the Government are now attempting to deal with the issue.

Another central purpose of custody, and a more challenging one, must be to reduce, even if we cannot totally prevent, levels of reoffending. All but a tiny minority of prisoners are released at some point, and it is in our interest to prevent them from returning to a life of crime. As the Prison Reform Trust has written,

“Prisons should be places that hold securely, and make every effort to rehabilitate, serious and dangerous offenders. The skills and focus of those who run them should be wholly directed towards that aim, in the interests of public safety.”

If one thing stands out from any sensible examination of the prison system, it is that this second pillar is unstable, leaving not just room for improvement but potential for danger. It is, furthermore, wasting vast sums of public money. The cost of keeping a criminal in jail must now be well over £50,000 a year, and for younger, teenage offenders I would not be surprised if the cost were well over £150,000 a year. That does not take into account the cost of fostering the children of prisoners while their parents are away.

Stereotypically, any focus on rehabilitation is labelled as soft, but an intelligent analysis of the prison system must surely conclude that regardless of the well-being of offenders, their successful rehabilitation benefits the public purse, enhances public safety, and is in the public interest. I recognise that the need to reduce reoffending must be accompanied by the need to foster a public understanding that reform and rehabilitation of offenders is in their interest and a public good—a necessity not entirely obvious at first glance. As a former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, explained,

“Some newspapers appear to have an agenda which is to persuade the public that judges are soft on crime, that no prison sentence is long enough and that a sentence which does not involve imprisonment is no sentence at all. The only purposes of sentencing which they recognise are punishment and deterrence—rehabilitation does not enter the picture…We need to get across the message that rehabilitation of offenders makes life better not just for them but for the rest of us.”

The Government are now pushing that agenda, and I welcome that. It is clear that there are arguments worth making and that now is not too early to do so.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). He made a characteristically thoughtful speech and we have much to learn from it. I agree with a great deal of what he said, particularly in relation to restorative justice. Like him, I have been to a great many prisons in England and Wales. I have been to about 65 of the 142 that we have in this country and in Wales. Where there was restorative justice, there was a great deal of satisfaction for the victims of those crimes, as well as better behaviour from the criminals. It is important that we get the right people involved in restorative justice, but I commend it as a principle.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Home Office’s proclivity for producing Christmas tree Bills. I would rather flippantly say that the Home Office has produced more Christmas trees than Norway over the past 30 years or so, and the Bill is another fine example. I do not want to denigrate this particular Christmas tree, even though we are well beyond 6 January, because one aspect of it is particularly to be commended. That is the bit that I invented. I refer to clause 32. It is the shortest clause in the Bill and it reads:

“Schedule 16 makes provision about deferred prosecution agreements.”

The right hon. Gentleman, when dealing with restorative justice, referred obliquely to the second shortest clause in the Bill, clause 31, but that is 300% longer than the clause that I am talking about.

Neither the Home Secretary nor the shadow Home Secretary thought it appropriate to talk about deferred prosecution agreements, and why should they? They have plenty of other things to talk about in detail—[Interruption.] I am sure the Home Secretary would like me to correct what I said. Yes, she did mention the subject in passing. I shall mention it in the few minutes left to me, but in rather more detail than she had time to do. Before doing so, I declare my interest as a practising member of the Bar.

Corporate economic crime damages the British economy in monetary and reputational terms, and we are not dealing with it effectively. That is not to say that everything in the past has been hopeless or a waste of resources, but it is time for us to do things better.

Since our Government came into office in May 2010, we have made structural changes to improve our strategic capability. We have a new director of the Serious Fraud Office in David Green, a relatively new chief constable of the City of London police, Adrian Leppard, and there is a new focus on economic crime in the Crown Prosecution Service and the Financial Services Authority, which is soon to change its name. During my two or so years in government, it seemed to me that we needed to do something more and that we should think seriously about introducing deferred prosecution agreements, which are an American procedure.

DPAs will be not a substitute for either investigations or prosecutions of companies, but an additional and much-needed weapon in the prosecution’s armoury that provides the flexibility to secure appropriate penalties and better outcomes for victims. They are modelled on a long-established system in the United States, but they will be adapted to suit our criminal justice system with far more judicial oversight. In the United States federal courts, DPAs are concluded and promulgated with little, if any, judicial oversight, but when I spoke to judges in America last spring, it seemed to me that those judges were beginning to chafe at the inadequate role that they play in this aspect of the American criminal justice system. The first thing that I learned when I was in America was that we need to engage our judges in this new means of dealing with economic crime.

We are not talking about non-prosecution agreements or other forms of non-criminal—and therefore civil—action to deal with economic crime; we are simply talking about deferment. The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East talked about the deferment of penalties; this is about the deferment of prosecutions of corporate entities, companies, partnerships and unincorporated associations.

Law enforcement agencies say that they do not have the tools that they need to tackle increasingly complex economic crimes. Serious Fraud Office investigations can last up to three and half years, with a cost to the agency of approaching £1.5 million, but they do not guarantee success and they leave victims waiting far too long for reparation. A suspect company is disadvantaged by a lengthy and expensive investigation that takes the focus of its management, which is often new, away from the company’s core functions and frequently leads nowhere, save to collateral damage to innocent third parties. On this point, I often cite the example of Arthur Andersen, which became involved in the Enron scandal in the early part of this century. The company collapsed as a consequence of its prosecution by the United States Department of Justice. Some 100,000 people lost their jobs, and pensioners and suppliers to the business were affected. It did not really help that the Supreme Court quashed the convictions some time later because the company had gone and irreparable collateral damage had already been caused to innocent people.

DPAs will allow prosecutors to tackle economic crime—the crimes that will be susceptible to DPAs are set out in paragraphs 15 to 27 of schedule 16, but essentially they are fraud, bribery, money laundering, market fixing and so forth—more effectively and efficiently, but without losing sight of the aims and needs of justice. In appropriate cases, companies will be prosecuted regardless of whether the facts come to light following a police investigation, through self-reporting or via a whistleblower.

A prosecution against a company will be initiated, but continued to trial only if tough requirements, such as the payment of financial penalties and compensation for victims, the recovery of ill-gotten gains and compliance with measures to prevent future offending, policed by independent monitors, are not adhered to within a given period of deferral or suspension. The agreement, and then its precise terms, will have to be formally approved by a senior judge before being announced in open court, which is different from what happens in the United States. The process in this country will very much form part of the criminal justice system and will not permit private deals made behind closed doors.

Prosecutors will come to know of a company’s conduct through investigation by the authorities, via a whistleblower from within the company, or following self-reporting by the company’s board. Discussions will then follow between the prosecutors and the lawyers for the company. Those will initially be confidential. They might take days or even weeks, but they will continue until the picture is clear. The prosecutors will then consider the facts. On the basis of the information in front of them, they will decide to do nothing; to hand the case over to a foreign jurisdiction, if appropriate; to prosecute, if that is in the interests of justice; or to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement.

Unlike the position in the United States, it will not be open to the prosecution and the company simply to agree between themselves the penalty, the compensation, the monitoring regime and the length of the deferment. The draft agreement must be put to a senior judge in chambers at a private hearing to which the press and the public are not admitted. The judge will need to be persuaded that it is in the interests of justice for there to be a DPA, and that its terms are fair, reasonable and proportionate.

Although the judge will not be able to order the prosecution to prosecute to trial, he can, in an appropriate case, refuse to sanction a DPA or its terms. The parties would then need to renegotiate the terms in the light of the judge’s criticism, or the prosecution must consider whether it ought to prosecute in the normal way. In reality, it is unlikely that the parties will go before a judge in a case when only a full prosecution is merited, or with terms that suggest either oppressive or feeble conduct by the prosecution, but the judge must approve the DPA before the case goes any further. If the agreement is approved, the judge moves into open court, the company is publicly identified and the terms of the DPA are promulgated to the world at large. Those terms will be reportable by the press. They will appear on the SFO or CPS websites, and they will be known to the world’s stock exchanges.

If a company fails to comply with a DPA after it has been announced, depending on the nature of the breach, the prosecution may either take the matter back to court, and apply to terminate the agreement and bring a prosecution, or it may apply to vary the terms, such as by increasing the extent of monitoring or the length of the deferment period. If the company complies and shows that it can be trusted to conduct its affairs within the law before the end of the deferment period, the parties may apply to vary the terms, such as by bringing the DPA to an early conclusion or removing the monitor.

DPAs will achieve justice through appropriate penalties and the recovery of the proceeds of crime. When sanctioned by a judge, they will provide benefits for victims without the unpredictability, expense, complexity or time associated with a lengthy criminal court process and trial. A DPA will bring certainty and a speedy resolution. It will enable a company, especially if it is being run by a new board, to clear the decks and make a clean start. DPAs will enable commercial organisations to be held to account, but without the collateral damage that I identified earlier.

Most importantly, given that DPAs will be concluded in open court, the public will know about the wrongdoing admitted by the commercial organisation and its consequences. There will be no question of companies burying their wrongdoing in their annual accounts. Experience from the United States shows that even well-known British companies enter into DPAs with a realisation that they are different from plea bargains or civil recovery orders.

The Director of Public Prosecutions and the director of the Serious Fraud Office will issue a code of practice for prosecutors, which will be publicly available, to guide the decision-making process behind DPAs It is also proposed that the Sentencing Council, the statutory body made up of judges, practitioners and academics that publishes sentencing guidelines, will produce guidelines for economic crimes in the near future so that prosecutors, judges and lawyers acting for errant companies will be able to enter into and conclude DPAs with clarity and certainty about the relevant penalties.

DPAs will not be a “get out of jail free” card. The courts cannot send a company to prison but, under a DPA, it would have to admit its wrongdoing and agree to stringent and wide-ranging terms that are tailored to the facts of the case. The agreements are a means of bringing errant companies publicly to justice swiftly, effectively and economically, and it is time that we brought them into our criminal justice system.

In conclusion, I thank all those in the Attorney-General’s Office who worked with me on this proposal, especially my former private secretary, John Peck, as well as all those in the Ministry of Justice who helped me to bring it forward. I also thank the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary for getting the provisions into the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says.

Like the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I have looked at the analysis put forward by the Home Office, and I am afraid that I am sceptical about the evidence, which collides with my experience and, I believe, that of my right hon. and hon. Friends and Government Members who have large immigration case loads. It is rare, in my experience, for constituents and their relatives abroad not to have produced the evidence first time round. Much more frequently, they produce the evidence and it is then overlooked. Time and again, my office and I face the situation where the evidence has been submitted and it has been overlooked by the entry clearance officer or has got lost. It may appear to the tribunal to be new evidence, because for sure it is new evidence to the entry clearance officer, but it is not correct to draw the conclusion that that evidence has never gone before immigration officers. Even if that is the case, the fact that a third of appeals are upheld shows that there is important merit in having such a right of appeal. To argue—I hope that the Minister does not do this—that it would be just as satisfactory to re-submit an application is, frankly, disingenuous in the extreme. I have seen constituents re-submit applications in respect of non-family cases, where there is no right of appeal, and all that happens is that the application is turned down again and they have wasted their money.

My final point relates to judicial appointments. I strongly support the proposed changes in respect of diversity. The apparently prosaic change to allow for the number of judges to be counted by full-time equivalents and not by full-time numbers will make a very important contribution to the employment of the part-time judges, typically female, at every level. Also very important are the tipping-point provisions to allow for the Judicial Appointments Commission to take into account somebody’s gender or colour if two candidates are of equal merit.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Straw]

I am afraid that I am running out of time.

I depart from the Government on their proposals for very senior appointments—to the Supreme Court, for the Lord Chief Justice and for the heads of division. Initially the Bill included a proposal by the former Lord Chancellor by which the Lord Chancellor would sit on the appointments panel for those very senior appointments. That has been withdrawn from the Bill in place of consultation. The current arrangements, which include consultation, do not work. It is entirely legitimate for the Lord Chancellor to have a role—not the decisive role, but a role—in these very senior appointments, because what the Supreme Court is doing has very clear political consequences and what the Lord Chief Justice and heads of division are doing has very clear Executive and administrative consequences. The current Lord Chancellor may not wish to sit on the appointments panel—that is his choice—but it is important for the benefit of future holders of that office that the power should be available, and I ask the Minister to look at that again.

Abu Qatada

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. Justice Mitting made several references to the criminal code and to the operation of the court of cassation. He is also right that the king will be in the UK shortly. We will work with the Jordanian Government across all parts of our representations in Jordan to ensure that we get the outcome that we all want, which is the deportation of Abu Qatada. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will consider every avenue to do that.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I can see that my right hon. Friend is not pleased with the commission’s decision, but she stopped just short of personally abusing the judge, for which I am grateful to her. I assume that tomorrow morning lawyers instructed by her Department will be making an application for an expedited appeal hearing, and that the points she made in her statement are precisely those that will be made in the application.

[Mrs May]

Yes. I thank my hon. and learned Friend. He is right. The judge made his judgment, and we disagreed with it. Of course, we are disappointed; we think it is wrong, and that is why we will appeal. We believe that there is a point of law on which it can be appealed, and will look to expedite it.

Child Abuse Allegations (North Wales)

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I recognise that when the Waterhouse inquiry was set up and when it reported, it was generally welcomed in the House for the work it had done. Given the fresh allegations, however, I think it is important to ask somebody to look again at that work. Alongside it, what is of course important, as the right hon. Gentleman said, are the police investigations, looking into any fresh allegations that have been made and, as I say, looking at the historic allegations and investigations, too, to ensure that those were indeed conducted properly and went as widely as they needed to. As for the First Minister for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has spoken to him. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, policing is not a devolved matter, but there will be further discussions with the First Minister on a number of these matters, including the review of the Waterhouse review.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has just announced a number of inquiries, but I agree with the right hon. Members for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)and for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) and with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in that there is a real imperative and priority for the police to get on with their job now, which is to investigate fresh allegations of criminality—and they must be left unhindered to do that, without being inhibited by other forms of inquiries into inquiries. I urge my right hon. Friend to allow the police to get on with that and, if necessary, to delay any inquiries into the inquiries so that the suspects can be prosecuted and, if necessary, found guilty, and the innocent can be relieved of the suspicion that is current in the media.

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his comments. It is absolutely right that the police should be unhindered in their work of investigating any fresh allegations and, as I say, any historic allegations as well. If any charges are to be brought, the individuals need to be identified and criminal prosecutions pursued. The review into the Waterhouse inquiry will not, I think, get in the way of the police investigations, as it is a review into how that inquiry was conducted. It is right that the police are allowed and able to get on with the job. If people have committed horrendous crimes, we all want to see them brought to justice on the basis of the evidence and we want the criminality to be pursued.