John Hayes
Main Page: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)Department Debates - View all John Hayes's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Alex Chalk
Hang on, I haven’t given way yet. [Laughter.] I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.
Sir John Hayes
My right hon. and learned Friend is such a tease.
As my right hon. and learned Friend will know, 6% of the offences that attract a 12-month sentence are indeed for the possession of an article with a blade or point, in other words a knife, and a further 9% are for common assault and battery. Those are the kind of sentences that we are speaking about here, and if you are a victim of assault, you do not really worry about whether your attacker is literate or illiterate; you just worry about having been attacked.
Alex Chalk
There are some important points to make about this. As my right hon. Friend will know, there is a whole suite and hierarchy of offences of assault. There is common assault, but if there is even a reddening of a skin, that becomes assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which carries a five-year maximum sentence—although, of course, this applies only to those who are given sentences of under 12 months. However, if the skin is pierced in any way or there is any serious harm, that is charged as grievous bodily harm, either simpliciter or with intent, and carries a maximum of life imprisonment. We must therefore be very clear on what we are talking about and what we are not talking about, and we are not talking about grievous bodily harm. Let me also stress that the two highest categories of offence that fall within the 12-month sentencing period are driving offences and offences relating to class B drugs. However, I take on board the important points made by my right hon. Friend, and I refer him to the remarks I made to our hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
It is a product, I suppose, of living in an age infected with contagious liberalism that people in this place and elsewhere spend a lot of time speaking about freedom. I care about freedom too. I care about freedom from disorder and about freedom from the fear and actuality of crime. I think it was Burke who said:
“The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected to order”.
Disordered society is most terrible for those who live on the frontline of crime: those who have to cope with disorder; those who do not live the gated lives of the bourgeois liberal elite.
I approach the Bill with that in mind. Are the repercussions of the Bill likely to lead to a more ordered society, likely to protect people who might otherwise become victims of crime? There is much to welcome. The first part of the Bill deals with serious crime and the sentences it attracts. I am pleased by the further development of longer sentences for people who do terrible, wicked things. There is a caveat, because as you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Home Secretary has always had the power to intervene personally and become involved where he or she believes that a sentence needs to be reviewed or extended, and has done so on a number of occasions to make sure that someone who might otherwise be released stays in prison. Will the Minister say whether that power will be curtailed or affected by the measures in the Bill? Will the Home Secretary still be able to intervene on those rare occasions on which they feel it is right to do so?
That is the best bit of the Bill—the part that deals with those serious crimes in the way I have described. Much of the rest of the Bill is lamentable. I am not going to vote against Second Reading because I think it provides an opportunity for further scrutiny and consideration. However, I am disturbed by the idea of turning all sentences of 12 months or less into suspended sentences. That is not quite what the Bill does, but it is its essence.
Let me explain why. Criminal justice has three primary purposes. The first is retributive. Let us be clear about that—the first principle of criminal justice is to punish people for a harm that they have done. That might be a terribly unfashionable thing to say, but it is what the majority of people in South Holland and The Deepings think, as well as the majority of people in Witham, Grimsby and even Bromley and Chislehurst. I will return to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—for I know Bromley and Chislehurst rather well, as I suspect he knows.
If that is the first purpose of criminal justice, does the Bill aid that purpose? To answer that question we have to consider this: is it more of a punishment to lose your liberty—to be incarcerated—or more of a punishment not to? Is it more of a punishment to be deprived of the opportunity to do all the things that you choose to do, or is it more of a punishment not to be? I have to say that in my view—and it is not just my view; it has been the view of almost every society in every civilisation over all of time—the principal way of punishing people is to incarcerate them, to deprive them of their ability to behave in the way they want, freely and openly.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful point with which I substantially agree, but does he accept that with the rise of technology, there are many different ways of depriving people of their liberty? If we can come up with ways of depriving them of their liberty that also make it less likely that they will reoffend at the end of their sentences, does that not serve a dual purpose, being both the absolutely right moral judgment as a punishment and a way of reducing the number of future victims who will subsequently need to be served by the criminal justice system?
Sir John Hayes
That is a plausible argument, except that having a tag on your ankle is not a deprivation of liberty in quite the same way as being in prison. Being able to go on eating fast food, watching telly and doing all the other things that you might do at home is not quite as much of a deprivation, is it?
Moreover, we have heard this so often before. It is true that technology has moved on and the tags are of a rather different kind, thanks to the work that was referred to earlier, but when tags were first introduced we were told that the technology was such—these things were so secure—that no one would be able to evade their application or use, only to find that all that was wanting. My hon. Friend will therefore forgive me for a certain degree of scepticism—not cynicism. I am cynical about nothing. However, I am sceptical about this.
The second principle of criminal justice is to provide respite for those who have been victims of crime, and others who might be, by taking people off the streets. That is to put the victims and others out of harm’s way by removing the harm—literally taking the harm beyond their purview—which is what prison does. It may be that if these tags work perfectly—if these people are constrained in the way suggested by the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend—I suppose the victims may be protected anyway; but I suspect that people in my constituency and elsewhere who have been victims of some of the crimes concerned would say, “I want these people to be as far away from me as possible, and as far away as possible from my children, my home and my community. I do not want to know these people or see them daily, because they have done harm witnessed by those who live in my locality.”
The third principle of criminal justice is that once you have caught someone, convicted them and sentenced them, you might take steps to prevent them from committing crime again. Of course I understand that. There has been a long-standing debate between those on the retributionist side of the argument, like me, and those on the rehabilitationist side of the argument, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, who believe that crime is essentially an ill to be treated, and that the circumstances of the criminal—those were my hon. Friend’s words—are more important than the event of the crime.
Sir Robert Neill
I hope that my right hon. Friend will gently withdraw the incorrect attribution. What I said was that, as part of the balancing exercise, the sentencer must take into account both the nature of the offence and the circumstances of the offender, which is wholly different.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend did indeed say that, and it is the argument that I have heard repeatedly over decades—that if only we could understand more about the circumstances of the offender, we could dig down to why they ended up like this, and perhaps we could make the world a better place. It is a lovely idea and we can see the sentiments that drive it, which are probably quite noble in many ways.
Frankly, however, these are the arguments that have permeated the debate since the Children and Young Persons Act 1969—my hon. Friend will remember that, but it was before my time—when intermediate treatment orders were introduced. Remember those? The Government then said that, because the circumstances of the offender were of such concern—because these people had had such shabby and difficult lives—they would impose an intermediate treatment order, which is a community sentence in the modern idiom. So young thugs, vandals and villains were sent off on holiday in the Brecon Beacons and such places, while their contemporaries who were law-abiding and just as poorly off—working-class fellows who had done nothing wrong—were lucky if they got a weekend at Margate. That is the kind of thinking that, unfortunately, has punctuated the debate on criminal justice for far too long.
Crime is not an illness to be treated; it is a malevolent choice to be punished, and that is what the public expect. In the paper on this subject by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, to which he drew the House’s attention a few moments ago, he makes this very clear on page 33:
“Lord Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice between 2017 and 2023, speaking in December 2020, said:
‘To my mind, there has been a perceptible hardening of the public and political attitude to crime, particularly sexual and violent offending, which has resulted in a general shift in the balance between culpability and harm when determining sentence.’”
In other words, to put it in a nutshell, people want those who do harm, damage lives and spoil others’ chances to be treated more severely, not less severely. Frankly, I do not think the Bill meets that test. I do not think that the emphasis on recidivism at the heart of this Bill—as I have said, it is understandable and perhaps even noble—will be welcomed by the vast majority of people, whose position has hardened in precisely the way my hon. Friend’s Committee’s report suggests.
My perspective on the people who commit these crimes is as follows. Let us look at what crimes most commonly attract sentences of 12 months or less. The most common is theft from shops. We have an explosion in shoplifting, as has been highlighted by Members on both sides of the House. It is something we should take seriously and act upon. That is about 13% of short sentences. Then there is common assault and battery. Yes, I agree that it is not grievous bodily harm, as the Secretary of State rightly said, but I suspect most people would feel that common assault and battery should result in a custodial sentence. That is 9% of sentences of 12 months or less. Then there is assault of an emergency worker. Can we think of anything more appalling than that—a fireman or ambulance crew turns up at an emergency and is assaulted by someone? My goodness! That is about 3%. Breaching a restraining order is 7% and possession of an article with a blade or point—in other words, a knife—is 6%. That is the list of sentences that most commonly attract 12 months or less in prison, which is the kind that are now to be suspended.
This proposal neither passes the test necessary to fulfil the key functions of the criminal justice system, nor passes the still more fundamental test of being likely to restore—I say “restore” rather than “maintain”, because I think it is a matter of restoration—public confidence in law and order. If we want once again, as we should in this place, to reflect and give life to public sentiment, frankly, this Bill will have to be amended very significantly indeed.
Disraeli said that
“justice is truth in action.”—[Official Report, 11 February 1851; Vol. 114, c. 412.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is a deductive thinker: he likes to look at the evidence and deduce an outcome. I am more of an inductive thinker: I believe in arguing from first principles, so the truth really matters to me. On that basis, I say to Ministers, “Let us amend this Bill. Let us take the best parts of it, and change those things that will not pass either of the tests I have set out.” I therefore reserve my right to oppose it on Third Reading, but knowing this new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), and knowing our excellent Secretary of State, I rather suspect that they have heard those arguments and taken careful note of them—for I know too that they are the kind of politicians who want to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
There are parts of this Bill that I am sure my constituents will welcome, including the stronger sentences for serious criminals and the inability of people to be released early on parole, but there are areas that my constituents and I have serious concerns about, particularly with regard to the presumption of suspended sentences for crimes that attract a sentence of 12 months or less. I am particularly concerned about home detention. The word “home” is not about detention. Home is about home comforts; it is about people being able to do what they want to do, whether they have a tag on or not.
We know that repeat criminals, which most people who have home detention and home curfew are, have clever ways of working the system. In Grimsby and places like Grimsby, somebody who has a tag will find a way, through coercive control, of getting their partner to commit crimes, or get criminal associates to come to their home so that they can carry on their criminal behaviour. I also have constituents whose children and grandchildren have been coerced into committing criminal behaviour, because they are the ones who do not have a criminal conviction—yet. Quite often, those who are seen as minors will not have anything serious done to them with regard to sentencing, and they are being encouraged, either through payment or perhaps a lack of violence, to continue the criminal activity.
I am particularly concerned about some of the examples that have been given, and I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for speaking to me about this yesterday. Yes, if somebody works hard for a living and they have made some mistakes and need help, we do not want to prevent them from being able to live in their house or apartment. We do not want them to lose their job or to be unable to carry on positive, healthy relationships with people, but my concern is that people who are on benefits and who are not working in legal jobs will be able to be at home doing pretty much whatever they want and working the system. My constituents would like to see those people doing visible community service to pay back to their victims and repair what is going on in the community. We need it to be long-term: community service orders of 200 hours are, frankly, derisory; community payback sentences should be 1,200 hours. It should be a year long so that it is inconvenient and involves things that people do not want to do.
We also need to stop the merry-go-round, operationally, that follows legislation. People in Grimsby know that offenders such as these often end up on a merry-go-round involving every state-funded service, but they do not take them seriously or do not take an active part in them, because they know that they do not have to. That costs the taxpayer huge amounts of money, but this is about not just the monetary cost but the cost to the community.
We have just passed the Victims and Prisoners Bill. What about the victims here? My constituents want to see that somebody is being inconvenienced and having to work hard to pay back. We have heard that people’s circumstances can result in their becoming a criminal, but lots of people come from those same circumstances and do not make the choice to become criminals and it is about time we started thinking about them. We need to make it clear to people that criminal behaviour is unacceptable, and ensure that they go out and visibly do good activities, with people watching them and keeping control of them. The reality is that if somebody is at home, they are on the internet, watching television, meeting their criminal friends and laughing at the rest of us.
Sir John Hayes
What my hon. Friend is talking about is stigma. There must be some stigma. Stigma is very unfashionable in the modern age—even to mention it is probably regarded as politically incorrect—but we have to stigmatise people who do really bad things among their contemporaries. If we do not do that, they will carry on with impunity.
Lia Nici
My right hon. Friend is, as always, absolutely spot on.
We need to start having these kinds of discussions. In my constituency of Great Grimsby, we have people who are repeat offenders in aggressive retail crime who are getting away without having to do anything positive to pay back society. Colleagues talked earlier about people who have a reading age equivalent of nine or 10 and who must improve their literacy. I have worked in further education for over two decades, and what happens with state-funded organisations is that people will be told, “Go and see a person who will help you with mental health issues. Go to a person who will help you with learning to read and write. Go to the probation office to register where you are.” These people do not go there. They cannot be controlled in any way, so it becomes extremely expensive and is a derisory way of using taxpayers’ money.
I and my constituents want there to be no home detention so that people have to get up in the morning to go and do their community service. They should be seen to be doing it, and they have to be doing it for the amount of time that they would have been inconvenienced by being incarcerated through any other sentence. Otherwise, it will not work. We will end up with an extremely expensive system where nothing works properly. Instead of sending people to go and improve their literacy, we should get them to work off their crime and learn how to read and how to interact with other professional people and what it means to be socially positive in those situations. They should not be sitting in pretend classrooms for hours and hours not doing anything.
We know that positive work and having positive role models in society is what will turn people round, but the proposed approach to sentencing will end up being an extremely expensive way for people to play the system and continue the merry-go-round. I would like the Lord Chancellor and the Front-Bench team to think seriously about what the majority of people in our communities would like to see.
James Daly
I agree. We cannot have a debate about criminal justice simply on the basis that everyone should be sent to prison; there has to be some form of alternative sentence. My experience over 17 years, however, is that none of it works—little or none of it—because this is about the individual.
I have not met an individual—unless they are suffering from severe mental health problems—who does not know what they need to do with their life to be a better person or to not commit crime, whether that is to stop taking drugs or drinking alcohol, or whatever it is. The vast majority of people who appear in court are not demented fools; they are intelligent, articulate people who are choosing not to make the correct decisions that could put their life on a more even footing. The range of sentencing options, such as a curfew, or all the types of modern technology we talked about, are nonsense. They will not make a blind bit of difference to anyone’s behaviour.
The point I am making is that the criminal justice system is, by its very nature, fallible. It will never be efficient or give us the outcomes that we want. The idea that any MP in this place could set up a structure that will deal fairly with every offender that appears before the courts is absolutely for the birds. My view is that the Bill does not make much difference to the position we are in. It is not something that colleagues should get overly concerned about, because having spent 17 years in front of magistrates, I can tell the House that they will still send people to prison on the basis of this Bill. A few people might well get a chance, with a curfew or something like that, but they will breach it in five minutes and will be sent to prison.
Under the Bill, someone is forgiven for the first breach, but they go to prison for the second breach. Whatever happens, they will go to prison at some point, because most of them breach the order that is imposed in the first place. I support the Bill because I support—
Sir John Hayes
Is my hon. Friend saying that the Bill is inconsequential? If it is inconsequential, why do we need it? The Bill is either as bad as I think it is, or it is as harmless as he thinks it is. Either way, we do not want it.
James Daly
Frankly, it allows our independent judiciary and magistrates, sitting throughout the country, to make decisions based on the individual circumstances of the case. I think it still allows them to impose an immediate custodial sentence in the vast majority of circumstances. I have read out the legal test, which can be applied any which way we want.