Oral Answers to Questions

David Hanson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

We believe that making community sentences tougher in delivering punishment—especially looking at the operation of community payback—and more effective in delivering rehabilitation, restoration and the protection of the public, will help to show that people can have increasing confidence in such sentences. Achieving those objectives will be an important element of our assessment of sentencing policy.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

If the Minister is to increase the number of community sentences as the Justice Secretary wishes to do, can he give the House an indication of how much money he intends to transfer to the probation budget, given that it has an in-year cut this year of £20 million? Can he also tell us which sentences of under six-months he thinks are inappropriate, given that at present they are available for offences such as assault on a police officer, domestic violence, child abuse and firearms offences? Indeed, three quarters of people sentenced to under six months have committed seven or more offences.

[Mr Blunt]

On the latter point, the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait until the sentencing review when we will bring forward our detailed proposals, which—I am sure—will hang together in a properly co-ordinated manner. He must also appreciate that the economic inheritance that this Government received—[Interruption.] There is no point hon. Members groaning. It is a fact of life that an increase in budgets in the environment that we inherited is simply not going to happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

The present Government have an extremely important programme of education reform. Anything that can be done to raise standards of education and training in this country will, I believe, have an indirect impact on the number of people who drop out of society in some way and are tempted to start offending.

I agree that we need to look across the broad range of social policy, considering relationships between crime and housing problems, employment problems and education and training problems, if we are to achieve the improvement in our social fabric which, eventually, will continue to reduce criminality. Meanwhile, some young people are serious offenders. We do need a secure estate, and we do need to prosecute those from whom the public must be protected. I think that we would all welcome any measure that will successfully reduce the number of young people who are needlessly criminalised when they could be diverted into a more sensible way of handling their problems.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Is the Justice Secretary aware that the rate of reoffending and entry into the youth justice system by young people fell by 10% during the last years of the Labour Government? That fall was due not least to the fact that we invested heavily in the three-year youth crime action plan, the third year of which ends this year, 2010-11. It involves issues such as prevention, and includes the Peterborough project that the Justice Secretary has just endorsed. Will he give an indication of what plans he has to continue the youth crime action plan after this year?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that there has been a reduction in the number of people entering the criminal justice system. Notwithstanding my usual caveats about all crime statistics, which can be used by Members on either side of the House to prove practically anything over whatever period they choose, I think that one thing on which we agree is the need to divert from needless criminality young people who can properly, in the public interest, be dealt with in some other way.

The youth crime action plan, and a number of other interesting experiments involving diversion out of the court system in which the last Government were engaged, will certainly be investigated and followed up by the new Government. We are not remotely partisan about the issue. We wish to look further for more outside experience of how best to tackle reoffending and the underlying problems of youth delinquency, in order to take more young people out of court and out of criminality.