Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I think that the reason the last Government introduced IPPs was that they were reducing the time of a sentence automatically served from three quarters to a half. They introduced what sounded like a tough measure, with these new indeterminate sentences. However, it immediately went wrong, and they introduced more legislation after two years to try to reduce the numbers. I regret to say that my first effort was to go in the same direction and reduce them even more. I hope that I have my hon. Friend’s support in saying that the best thing is to get rid of them and return to a sensible system of long, determinate sentencing.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman should be aware that part of the problem with his original proposals was his failure to establish the case for community sentences as an alternative to prison. In his statement he refers to new, tough community sentences. Can he describe what the characteristics of a tough community sentence might be?

[Mr Clarke]

I never advocated—nor did the Government —the replacement, as it were, of short prison sentences with community sentences. I have some very curious opponents in sections of the media, and this was one of the bees they got in their bonnet almost as soon as we started, but we never proposed that. Community sentences need to carry public confidence so that magistrates can consider them properly as an alternative to prison in suitable cases—they do now, but more would. What I have in mind with tougher sentences is better organised sentences, so that, for example, unpaid work—which is one of the best community-based punishments that one can impose—doing genuinely worthwhile things for the community should be better organised and better disciplined. It should not have to be fitted in on the odd day over several years; it should be better organised on the day and based round a pretty normal working pattern of so many hours each week when it is under way. There are plenty of things that we can do—that and making more use of curfews and tagging—to build up public confidence in community sentences, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman and I both agree would be a good thing to do, but which we would also agree is lacking at the moment.