Oral Answers to Questions

David Amess Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

First of all, I have now met Mr and Mrs McGinty twice, including with the chief executive of the Parole Board, who apologised to them for the lack of information provided to them, and rightly so. This is about good practice and people behaving in the right way, and I am afraid that this kind of issue will not be solved by changes to the law; it will be solved by changing the culture in the system.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to reduce youth reoffending.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

The Government are committed to reducing offending and reoffending by young people. We are placing education at the heart of detention and improving resettlement processes, which will provide young offenders with the skills and support they need to build a life free from crime. We are also working to ensure that community youth services are as effective as possible in helping young people to adopt law-abiding lives, including through their role in delivering key cross-Government programmes such as the troubled families initiative.

[Sir David Amess]

Can my hon. Friend reassure me that changes to the probation service will reduce youth reoffending through a new culture and direction of travel? I, for one, would not wish to see senior managers reinventing themselves in these new community rehabilitation company positions.

[Andrew Selous]

I know that my hon. Friend takes a serious interest in these matters—indeed, I have met with him to discuss them. The number of first-time entrants into the criminal justice system who are young people fell by 59% in the four years to September 2014. We are also focusing on resettlement consortia in four high custody areas. We have a Turn Around to Work initiative in London and Greater Manchester, which is supported by a number of employers. We are also doubling the number of hours in education.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Amess Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We are hearing the divisions in the House about an important strategic issue. I fear that I shall stick with my position that it would not be appropriate for me to comment further until the court case has reported.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

4. What steps he has taken to protect legal aid for vulnerable people.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

One of the key objectives of the reform of legal aid is to improve its sustainability to make sure it remains available to protect vulnerable people. Legal aid continues to be available in cases where people’s life or liberty are at stake; where they are at risk of serious physical harm, or immediate loss of home; or where their children may be removed.

[Mr Amess]

The pursuit of justice can be an extremely expensive matter. Everyone understands that the economic times we live in mean that there have to be constraints on legal aid, but will my right hon. Friend assure me that he is engaging with the legal profession on the implementation of the reforms?

[Chris Grayling]

I give my hon. Friend that assurance. We shall continue to look at the impact of the changes we have put in place. It is not our intention to disadvantage the most vulnerable in our society. We have taken a number of steps in the reforms to protect them and we will continue to review the changes we have made to understand their impact.

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[Chris Grayling]

These are matters for the courts. I have no idea how many cases are subject to a request for a stay because those requests do not come to me personally. Two years ago Labour attacked our changes to civil legal aid. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) attacked our changes to civil legal aid, saying that we should be looking for reductions in criminal legal aid instead. Two years later the Opposition have conveniently forgotten that and have changed their position totally. That is a party that says one thing and does another.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

T5. Further to the answer that my right hon. Friend gave to the first topical question, I know that he is committed to ensuring the end of modern-day slavery, but will he update the House on the progress of his Department in ensuring that victims get access to the justice system and to legal aid?

[Chris Grayling]

Victims funding is enormously important. Through the various changes that we have made to the levy on those who are convicted of offences, we have provided far more funding for the support of victims than we ever had before. A couple of weeks ago we announced an additional £13 million worth of funding to ensure what my hon. Friend talked about a moment ago—that we could provide support to those families who are victims of pre-2010 homicides. I have made it clear to the Home Secretary that from the victims funding that I have available, I am also prepared to make additional support available if it is necessary to support victims of modern slavery and human trafficking.

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

David Amess Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I appreciate that the shadow Minister has probably got a wasp in his trousers and is itching to get on with things, but if he bears with me, in a second I will come on to say why I do not necessarily accept his premise that women should be treated differently from men. As it happens—I have made this clear already—if people want to make the point that women should be treated more favourably by the courts than men, that is perfectly legitimate. I do not have a problem with that, so long as we are having an honest argument about what the facts and figures are.

If people are saying that the 2,789 women who are sentenced to prison each year for theft and handling should not be sent to prison—I suspect, given that they have been sent to prison, that they must be serious and persistent offenders—I presume that they think, though they never say so, that the 16,501 men who are sent to prison for that offence each year should not go to prison either. Perhaps that is what people secretly think, but they do not want to be seen to say, “We want to cut the prison population by the thick end of 20,000 each year.” No one ever seems to say that.

I want to move on to another myth, which I hope will deal with the point the shadow Minister raised. The myth is about how prison separates mothers from their children, which unduly punishes them. That goes to the point made by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on why he believes it is right that men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. I want to instil some seldom-offered facts into this side of the debate. It is said that 17,000 children are separated from their mothers, and that 60,000 women in custody have children under the age of 18. Those are the figures, as far as I am aware, and I am not sure that anyone would dispute them. As I have said before in a Westminster Hall debate, a senior Ministry of Justice civil servant helpfully confirmed that two thirds of the mothers sent to prison

“didn’t have their kids living with them when they went into prison.”

People use the figures to say, “X per cent. of mothers are sent to prison.” Well, yes, they are mothers—no one can deny that—but in two thirds of cases, they are not looking after their children when they are sent to prison. Why should they become a special case at that point, when the children have already been taken away from them because the mother is presumably considered not fit to look after them? Why do we still consider them to be a special case, simply because they are mothers?

When it comes to the minority of mothers sent to prison who are still looking after their children, it is wrong to assume that they are all fantastic mothers. Many will be persistent offenders with incredibly chaotic lifestyles. Some, no doubt, will end up dragging their children into their criminal lifestyles, and some will scar their children for life along the way. Others will have committed serious offences. Sarah Salmon from Action for Prisoners Families said:

“For some families the mother going into prison is a relief because she has been causing merry hell.”

To most people, that would be a statement of the obvious. Why should those women be treated as a special case, when they are clearly not providing a great role model to their children or having a great influence on their upbringing? If anything, they are having a negative influence on their upbringing. Let us not forget those mothers who are in prison for abusing their children and being cruel to them. I am not entirely sure that anyone would think they should be a special case either.

If we are so concerned about the children of women offenders, what about the estimated 180,000 children who are separated from their fathers, because their father is in prison? In the age of equality, should we not be at least equally outraged about that? If we are not, why not? I thought there was a growing acceptance that a father was just as important to a child’s upbringing as a mother. Why are we treating mothers as a special case in all these cases? I do not see any justification for that when we know for a fact, thanks to the Ministry of Justice and the figures it produces, that two thirds of mothers are not even looking after their children when they are sent to prison. I hope we can nail the myth that that is a reason for treating women differently when they are sentenced in the courts.

Another myth is that women are generally treated more harshly in the justice system than men. Yes, we have now accepted that men are more likely to be sent to prison, but if we go underneath the prison regime, the myth is that women are treated more harshly by the courts before being sent to prison, but that, again, is not true. Even when they are not sent to prison, men are more likely to receive a community order than women. You would think it was the other way round, Mr Amess. So few women are sent to prison, one would think that most of them would get a community order, but no. We do not have any of that. Some 10% of women sentenced are given a community order, compared with 16% of men. The Ministry of Justice confirmed that the

“patterns were broadly consistent in each of the last five years.”

That is not all. The Ministry also points out that the average length of a community sentence is longer for men than it is for women. It said:

“For women receiving a community order, the largest proportion had one requirement (46%), whereas the largest proportion of men had two requirements (41%).”

So the pattern is complete: men are more likely to be sent to prison than women, they are more likely to be sent to prison for longer than women for the same offences, and they are more likely to serve more of their sentence in prison than women. Men are more likely than women to get a community sentence, and to have a community sentence that lasts for longer, and they are likely to have more requirements added to it. It is a full house; that is the picture of how men and women are treated in the courts and the criminal justice system.

I return to where I sort of began. Many of those who take part in these debates are the self-confessed equality issues addicts. They want equality in this, that and the other. It is a perfectly laudable aim; I believe in equality, too. People should be treated the same, irrespective of their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, so why should that not be the case when it comes to sentencing people for committing the same crime? We are dealing with the “equality when it suits” agenda. The argument is that women and men should be treated the same, unless we can get better treatment for women, which we are all in favour of. That is not equality. It is very selective, and in my view sexist. Courts should sentence people on the basis of the crime, not whether they are a man or a woman.

The Select Committee would do well to consider the prison population as a whole and why the male prison population is so large. If it wants to strike a blow for the rights of women, it should argue for men and women to be treated the same by the courts, and that it is the crime committed, not gender, that should count. If we were considering the same phenomenon in relation to race, religion or sexual orientation, it would be considered an outrage. I consider it an outrage that women are treated so much more favourably in the criminal justice system than men. People may think it a good thing for them to be treated differently—some clearly do—but at least let us be honest about the facts and acknowledge them. I am pleased that some right hon. and hon. Members have begun to do that today, so we can draw our own conclusions. If we do nothing else today but set out the inconvenient—to many—facts, the debate will have been useful after all.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. I am minded to start the winding-up speeches at 4 o’clock, which will leave half an hour for the two Front-Bench spokesmen and the Chairman of the Select Committee to make some closing remarks. I think there are three or four hon. Members who want to catch my eye, so perhaps they can share the 40 minutes between themselves.

[Sir Alan Beith]

On a point of order, Mr Amess. I offer to surrender the opportunity to make closing remarks, to give the Minister a little more time to answer the full range of issues raised in the debate.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

That is most helpful.

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[Philip Davies]

Garbage.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On a point of order, Mr Amess, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just described what I said as garbage. Whether that is parliamentary or not, I am not particularly bothered, but if he wants to make an intervention to challenge my assertion, why does he not do so, rather than make such remarks?

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. It is not in order to use the word “garbage”. Someone may wish to make a further intervention, but for now I call Mr David Nuttall.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Amess Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

19. If he will make it his policy that courts will continue to have the power to impose whole-life tariffs for the most serious offences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

There is settled policy in England and Wales that some offences are so grave that they are deserving of imprisonment for the rest of the offender’s life for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. The Secretary of State and I take the view that whole-life tariffs should remain an option for sentences in appropriate cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

The good news for my hon. Friend is that on this issue at least we are in agreement with the European Court of Human Rights, because it has upheld our view that whole-life tariffs are an appropriate disposal in the right cases. Let me make it clear to him—I think that I also speak for the Secretary of State—that for as long as we are Ministers in the Department, its policy will remain that whole-life tariffs should be available.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

In the light of what my hon. Friend has said, will he reassure me and the British public that under this Government the criminal justice system will treat convicted criminals in a firm but fair way?

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are doing two important things in that regard: first, toughening up the sentencing regime so that the right people go to prison for the right length of time; and secondly, ensuring that there is more emphasis on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. That is the way to avoid the misery that communities incur as a result of reoffending, to avoid making more victims and to avoid extra cost to the taxpayer.