Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I want to follow on from the previous debate and the discussion of the method of making legislation. Making new laws, especially ones that can put people in prison for up to a year, is an extremely serious matter, so judgment cannot be undertaken or driven by anecdote, prejudice or media headlines.
There are questions that have to be considered for wise judgment. What is the problem to be addressed? Is it real? What is the scale of the problem? Is there an existing law, and if so, is it defective in a way that renders it ineffective? If we are to make legislation of this sort, what are the consequences of creating a new crime for the people seeking a remedy in this way and for those who will be brought into the criminal justice system? What are the consequences and implications for the resources, operations and standing of the law enforcement agencies and our communities overall? Finally, during my years in the House, I have learned another key question: will it cause more problems than it seeks to cure?
Is there a significant problem with squatting in residential properties? To be frank, the evidence produced by the Government so far has not demonstrated this. There have been some highly publicised cases in the media and statements by MPs and Ministers, but no hard evidence. The Government’s consultation paper acknowledged the lack of statistical evidence. For instance, the equality impact assessment states that
“there is no consensus on the true extent of squatting, or the proportion of squatting that is in residential buildings.”
Based on a number of assumptions—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) that many of them were supplied by squatters themselves or housing campaigning associations—the Government estimate that there might be between 200 and 2,100 criminal squatting cases in residential properties across England and Wales. That is a tenfold range, demonstrating the inexact nature of the Government’s evidence.
In the response to the Government’s consultation, only seven victims of squatting in residential properties came forward. The lack of evidence has led the Law Society to object to changes in the law that are not evidence-based and the Magistrates Association to express its reluctance to see new laws created without proper analysis. This is the first time that I have been in alliance with the bench.
Is the current law defective? Even if only a small number of people are affected, it is right that we sympathise with them and ensure that action is taken to protect them. If the law is defective or lacking, there should be a remedy, but most legal authorities that commented during the consultation felt that the existing law was sufficient. As has been said, under existing law, it is already a criminal offence for a squatter to refuse to leave someone’s home or a home that they are about to move into.
Mike Weatherley
Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that the squatters should not be there to start with?
John McDonnell
I shall move on to that; I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Under section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, it is already an offence for any person on a residential premises not to leave
on being required to do so by or on behalf of…a displaced residential occupier…or…protected intending occupier”.
According to the response to the consultation, the Metropolitan police said that
“the law was broadly in the right place and that the existing array of offences allowed them to tackle the worst cases of squatting (e.g. where squatters cause the rightful homeowner to be displaced).”
The Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association confirmed the same view. The Law Society stated:
“The consultation paper acknowledges that there are no reliable data on the nature and extent of squatting. In the absence of any such evidence, we have no reason to believe that the existing law does not deal adequately with squatting.”
It went on to describe the operation of section 7 and confirmed that no evidence had been produced to demonstrate that it did not work adequately when properly used. Those concerns were confirmed by the Criminal Bar Association.
The Law Society reported that section 7
“is not often used, as squatting happens infrequently, but where it is our members”—
that is, the lawyers concerned—
“report that it is extremely effective.”
These are the responses to the Government’s own consultation.
Everyone in the House has to support evidence-based policy making. From all the evidence and information to hand, including from the Government’s own consultation and impact assessment, we must conclude that there is no evidence of a problem on any significant scale, that there is conjecture that it exists and that in the judgment of practitioners—not just the advocates, but the law enforcers—the existing law is sufficient.
Tracey Crouch
Does the hon. Gentleman not consider that one of the flaws with the current legislation is section 6 of the 1977 Act, which allows squatters to claim rights to a property, thereby making it difficult for owners to get rid of them?
John McDonnell
I cannot accept that when section 7 enables people to request squatters to leave. If they do not, they are committing a criminal offence, and the law should be enforced by the police under existing legislation.
John McDonnell
The point made by most people in the consultation, including the police, is that if elements of section 7 need tidying up, there should be a proper discussion about that. However, to criminalise an entire group in society is to over-react to a problem that is relatively minor, although I do not wish to underestimate the problem that appears to be caused to some home or property owners.
Jeremy Corbyn
Will my hon. Friend inform the House exactly when new clause 26 was published and how long people have had to comment on it, including those from the Law Society and elsewhere?
John McDonnell
I will come to that, because we need to learn lessons across the House about the appropriateness of how we have legislated in recent years. I have sat in this place and seen bad law produced as a result of rushing things—it happened under the last Government and it is happening under this one—and a lack of judgment about how much consideration each piece of legislation needs.
Kelvin Hopkins
Is there not a hint of short-term populism in what the Government are doing? Does my hon. Friend think that even the Government might come to regret it if they press their case?
John McDonnell
I went through 13 years of new Labour, so commenting on short-term populism might not be the most appropriate thing. I would not say: “A plague on all your houses!”, but let us all learn a few lessons.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Just so we are clear about the hon. Gentleman’s position, does he agree that it is unacceptable for anyone to be made homeless as a result of the kind of actions that we are talking about? Does he also agree, as a consequence, that passing new clause 26 in its current form would place an additional burden on the legal aid budget?
John McDonnell
I wholeheartedly agree.
Let me press on, because others want to speak. Clearly there are a small number of cases, which we have already identified, that have caused genuine concern. The problem appears to be not with the existing law, but with its operation, as the consultation has made clear. Annington Holdings plc, a property holder of considerable size, said:
“In Annington’s experience enforcement is the crux of the problem; our past experiences have shown that delays arise in removing squatters from properties due to limitations on police resources.”
If the current problem is with police resources, the question—which has been raised by the High Court enforcement officers, the Criminal Bar Association and the Law Society—is whether the police would have the resources to enforce the law if a new offence is created, when they appear to be unable to enforce it against the existing offences. The Met has acknowledged that and is seeking to address it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and the Minister have said. The Metropolitan Police Service said in its statement that there was a lack of training and practical knowledge on the law on squatting, particularly section 7 of the 1977 Act, which may be a barrier to effective enforcement, and that it was conducting further training to address the issue.
By criminalising squatting, the new clause certainly does not appear to be needed, but it will have consequences if introduced, some of them unintended. The new law will have consequences for those who will be brought into the criminal justice system for the first time, and it is worth repeating who those people are likely to be. The housing charity Crisis commissioned research into squatting from the centre for regional, economic and social research at Sheffield Hallam university, which was published only a month ago, in September. It found that, by and large, squatters were homeless people. The House of Commons Library note sets out for Members that
“squatting is a common response to homelessness”,
and that
“most homeless people who squat try other avenues to resolve their housing problems before squatting”
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I entirely support what my hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree that this will be particularly bad law because it is going to be retrospective? It will apply to people who are squatting at the moment, and who thought that they were doing so legally. The House should not be pushing through this legislation in this ridiculous way, without scrutiny.
John McDonnell
I believe that it will damage a large number people’s lives, some of whom are squatting at the moment for no other reason than that they are homeless. They will be criminalised by this retrospective legislation, which is something that I thought Members of all political parties across the House had rejected.
What will be the effect of the new law on squatters’ lives? We know that many, although not all, vulnerable people live chaotic lives. They will be fined up to £5,000 or face up to a year in prison. Not many will have the resources to pay the fine, so prison will be a reality for a significant number of them. I have heard no estimate from the Government of the extent to which this will swell prison numbers. I fear that people will be drawn into a cycle of squatting and going to prison. One third of people coming out of prison have no home to go to, so they will get back into the squatting cycle.
I hope that the House will not pass the new clause into law, but if it is determined to do so, I have tabled amendments to ameliorate its impact. Amendment (a) would provide that squatting remains a civil matter in all residential buildings that had been left empty long term and were not being brought back into use. This would ensure that residential buildings that had been lived in recently or that were being brought back into use would be covered by the criminal law. That includes the question of refurbishment that was raised earlier.
I have looked at the statistics cycle over the past five years and found that, on average, between 650,000 and 700,000 residential properties stood empty during that time. Most are private properties, and 300,000 have been empty for more than six months. When there are 40,000 homeless families, 4,000 people sleeping rough in the capital, and 1.7 million households on waiting lists, desperate for decent accommodation, it is immoral that private owners should be allowed to let their properties stand empty for so long. My amendment could force those irresponsible owners to bring their properties back into use. More importantly, it would mean that desperate people who need a roof over their heads would not be criminalised for resorting to occupying a property that was being wasted by its owner.
It is not for me to criticise the Speaker, of course, but I regret that my amendment (b) was not selected. I had hoped to try to persuade the House to protect the most vulnerable people in our society from being dragged into the courts, but I am sure that there were good reasons for not selecting it, and perhaps it will be debated in another place.
My amendment (c) would address the fact that the present wording of the new clause criminalises those who are currently squatting in a residential building. It is one of the principles of good government that retrospective legislation is unjust. I should like to quote from article 11, subsection 2, of the universal declaration of human rights:
“No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time it was committed.”
There is a basic injustice about retrospective legislation, and I hope that the House will accept that and address it at some stage in this Bill’s consideration.
Finally, there is a mounting housing crisis. I criticised the last Government as much as this one for their failure to address the supply of decent housing. We have got the return of appalling housing conditions in my constituency—overcrowding, high rents and the return of Rachmanite landlords. People are desperate and will resort at times to any means to put a decent roof over their and their family’s heads. Squatting is sometimes the only way. People should not be criminalised for wanting a decent home.
The new clause is being rushed through Parliament. The Secretary of State launched in July a consultation on a range of proposals to criminalise squatting. The consultation ended in October. More than 2,000 responses were received, 90% of them opposed to the Government’s proposals. Clearly, there has been no serious consideration of the consultation responses because the clause was brought forward only three weeks after the consultation closed. This is rushed legislation, and rushed legislation, as I have said, is generally poor or bad legislation. The consultation, if it had been properly taken into account, made it clear that the current laws were sufficient to deal with any abuse. Professionals, police and others have told us so. My fear is that we now risk putting people on the streets and possibly into prison because our society has failed to provide them with a decent home. If this clause goes through tonight, I believe that many will regret it.
I give notice that I wish to press amendment (a) to a vote.
Oral Answers to Questions
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Blunt
Of course, anyone who is going to deliver payment by results would be crazy not to engage the voluntary and charitable sector as part of their delivery mechanism. Some of those charities will not have the resources to be able to underwrite payment-by-results schemes, but the prime provider would be mad not to engage those services.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Government are currently consulting on the criminalisation of squatting. Has the Secretary of State seen the report “The Hidden Truth about Homelessness”, produced by the housing charity Crisis, which reveals that 39% of vulnerable homeless people have at some stage resorted to squatting to find a roof over their heads, and has he made an assessment of how the proposals he is putting forward will affect homeless people?
Legal Aid
John McDonnell Excerpts(13 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on obtaining the debate and on how he introduced it. It is a valuable subject. I apologise in advance to the Minister as I might miss part of his reply because I have a delegation from Disability Action in Islington to meet just before 4 o’clock. I hope that he understands that I need to be there to see them.
This is not the first or, I suspect, the last debate that we will have on legal aid. I hope that the Minister will give us an idea of when the Government will respond to the consultation. I hope that there will be adequate time for us to digest their response and a full day’s debate on the Floor of the House long before any legislation or changes are put in place.
It must be almost unprecedented to have 5,000 replies to a consultation of this nature—I am sure that the Minister has read all of them. I hope that he read the one from Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, because it was greatly laboured over. It did not involve only my views; I called a consultation meeting of local legal aid practitioners, advice agencies, the local authority and others, so what I put forward is on their behalf as much as my own. They have extremely strong views about the situation, as one can imagine.
The knock-on effects of legal aid and Ministry of Justice budget support to advice agencies are very important indeed. I do not believe—any more than anybody else does—that people should litigate for the sake of litigation. However, effective citizens advice bureaux play a very important part in giving people access to justice ahead of the danger of going to law. Cuts in CAB budgets or advice budgets are simply not very sensible at any time—particularly now, when many people are facing economic difficulties.
I pay enormous tribute to Islington council, which has just managed to reopen the CAB in the borough. It reopened on 1 April and it is already heavily overloaded, as we had predicted, but it is doing its best in the circumstances. Commendably, there is a liaison arrangement between the CAB, Islington Law Centre, Islington People’s Rights and the local authority, to ensure that they share out responsibility and specialist knowledge to offer any particular help that is required. That is very good as it ends the idea of competition between advice agencies, particularly where funding is concerned.
There are many issues to be covered in this debate, but I want to be brief as the Front-Bench spokesmen obviously need to respond. Housing issues are massive and they are faced by people in inner city communities, such as the one that I have the honour to represent, probably more than by anyone else. I will just quote from an e-mail that I received from Anne Baxendale of Shelter about this issue:
“The government is proposing to remove all housing benefits cases and a third of other housing cases from the scope of legal aid. Shelter is alarmed that this is happening at the same time that huge changes are taking place within homelessness legislation, social housing tenure and the housing benefit system.”
People are already coming to my surgery or advice bureau about this issue and the same is true for Islington People’s Rights, Islington Law Centre and the CAB. Those people are being told that their housing benefit, or housing allowance, is insufficient to meet the new rent levels; even with the transitional payments, they are nowhere near meeting them. In some cases, they are £100 a week—or even more—light on the demands being made of them. The only alternative for them is to move to somewhere else that is cheaper—if they can afford to do so, given all the associated uprooting. These people are scared, even terrified, and they desperately need access to good-quality legal representation to protect themselves at a time of emergency. Taking legal aid away from such people is simply grossly unfair—it would be unfair at any time, but it is particularly unfair at this time.
I will be very brief on the issues relating to children, as there is not much time left. The question of children and immigration issues is a very great one indeed. I understand, appreciate and welcome the fact—indeed, I applaud it—that asylum cases have been removed from this picture. Contrary to what the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) said, I do not believe that there is an endless merry-go-round of appeals. What I have found is that there is an incredible degree of inefficiency at the Home Office and the Border and Immigration Agency, such that asylum cases often hang around for years.
I am embarrassed to tell people that they must wait a year for a reply to a letter and that if they phone up the Home Office they will only make things worse. That is not how a Government Department or any public service should ever deal with or respond to anybody. I say to the Minister that he should keep legal aid for asylum cases, but he might ask his colleagues at the Home Office kindly to reply to letters and not lose files. I have said that to every Government I have had dealings with, so it is not a party political point; I said it to my own Government and I will say it to any Government.
The decision to give legal aid only for cases of detention is simply unfair. If legal aid is given, an application is made and the person is then released from detention. However, they then lose legal aid; they might end up back in detention where they might get legal aid again, so that they are on a merry-go-round. It is simply not credible that such an arbitrary distinction can be made between support for detention and support for immigration cases. Immigration cases should either be supported or not; I do not see how a simple distinction can be drawn in that way.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend and I are part of a 10-year campaign to try to get the proper inspection and registration of immigration advisers. These measures could take us back to those back-street advisers again, whereby the most vulnerable people are exploited in dreadful ways and wind up in detention as a result.
Jeremy Corbyn
I was just talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) about the exploitative individuals—and, frankly, the chancers—who have now become involved in immigration law. Basically they are spivs, who charge very vulnerable people very large sums of money for writing letters. They do no more than that. Some of them are not even qualified.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is absolutely right. For many years, we campaigned in this House for proper registration of immigration practitioners and for an end to immigration advisers, who in any case are often unqualified. The late Bernie Grant, the former MP for Tottenham, was extremely active on that issue and we basically got rid of most of those immigration advisers. However, they are all back now, big-time, and they are making a great deal of money out of extremely vulnerable people. I am sure that the Minister is aware of that problem. It has been reflected in many of the submissions made to him and I look forward to a response from him that recognises that.
The final point that I want to make about children is about the removal of legal aid for education cases. I have a distressing number of immigration cases in my constituency involving education. I do not have a vast number of them, but they are often very distressing and the people involved need representation. That is because some children who are suspended or expelled from school then have to go to another school. Unfortunately their representation and their files often follow them around and they end up being almost totally excluded from the whole education system. That is not good for them and it is not good for anybody. Proper representation would often prevent that situation from happening.
The number of cases that are dealt with by legal aid in this country at the moment is 934,000, apparently. Unless the Minister is going to give us some very good news at the end of the month, or whenever the reply to the consultation comes, the cuts being proposed will mean that more than 600,000 people will not have access to legal aid. If we want a fair, decent and just society, everyone must have access to the law. We are seeking not a litigation society, but a justice society and I hope that the Minister will understand the strength of feeling expressed in the representations that he receives on this matter.
The vast majority of solicitors and barristers acting on legal aid cases do not make much money out of that work. They make far more money on commercial cases, libel cases, media cases or “personality”-driven cases. The majority of solicitors I meet who deal with legal aid cases that are hard to sort out are paid very little. They work very hard and they are doing us a lot of good.
Furthermore, the loss of training contracts means that many of the solicitors of tomorrow will not be around to represent people. Many young people are studying law in universities and colleges at present. We want them to use their skills and we want them to represent the hardest-hit and most vulnerable people in society. I ask the Minister to think carefully about the very thoughtful and very carefully prepared representations that I know he has received on this subject.
Prisons Competition
John McDonnell Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Clarke
We are out to consultation at the moment on the Green Paper on sentencing in general and we floated in that the prospect, about which my hon. Friend rightly asks, of having a regular programme of competitive tendering throughout the prison system so that we can revisit quality and cost, in an organised way, gradually over the years. We have not finalised the form, but we will come back in due course once we have finished our consultations and responded, and we will answer his question about exactly what we want to do on that front. Probation trusts are equally involved, I hope, in the development of the payment by results policy. We are as anxious to see public sector bodies involved as private sector bodies. The best of the probation trusts seem to me, in my contact with them, to be quite enthusiastic about becoming involved in such a contracting process.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State may consider that privatisation is no longer controversial within this House across certain parties, but it is deeply controversial among Prison Officers Association members. He should meet the POA as a matter of urgency, and should look well beyond TUPE for the protection of staff who are currently being made vulnerable by privatisation; otherwise I believe that there will be industrial conflict.
Mr Clarke
I have every respect for the hon. Gentleman’s opinions, in which he has always been consistent. He has always been an articulate advocate, and I almost welcome him as a voice from the past. I realise that the POA is rather stuck in its traditional attitudes towards this kind of thing, but I really hope that it will reflect on what is almost a universal view in this House that we are moving on to a proper, fair, competitive basis for deciding how best to run prisons and at what cost, without being so obsessed about whether they are private sector or the public sector. Of course, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) and I will continue our close contact with the POA. We have had to have contingency plans in case anyone is so foolish as to start industrial action—but it is illegal to take industrial action. The sensible thing for people to do is to look at the tendering process and, if they are in the public sector, decide how their prisons can achieve a better score in future. They have won one this time, but it is up to them to put in the best bids as we develop the policy.
Legal Aid Reform
John McDonnell Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) in her very proper analysis of the issue. This is not about lawyers; it is about access to justice. I am glad to see the Minister agreeing with those sentiments in the sense that the Government are not indulging in character assassination as regards practitioners in law.
There have been some excellent speeches. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) for getting this debate the time that it deserves. I was happy to support her in her bid. I wish there were more time, as five minutes can hardly do the subject justice. It was a pleasure for me to take part in the Westminster Hall debate sponsored by the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who took part earlier. I do not propose to reiterate the points that I made in that debate.
I put on record my thanks to the Department for having answered some of the questions that I have been tabling about the breakdown of the costs of civil legal aid for the last year for which figures were available—2008-2009. The figure of £24.7 million in legal help for welfare benefit cases, as alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), is startling, and we should pay close attention to it. There is no doubt, as other Members have said, that there are serious deficiencies in the decision-making processes as regards benefit entitlements. I am utterly convinced that that large amount of money could have been saved if that system were more sound. I urge the Minister to work as closely as he can with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that it starts to take a share of the burden of the cost of representation.
Mr Buckland
I am sorry, but I cannot take interventions on this occasion because I want to ensure that other speakers have their say. As I said, so much to talk about, so little time.
Let me pray in aid Wiltshire law centre in my constituency, which carries out debt, welfare and housing work. To put it bluntly, it is set to lose the vast majority of its income if these proposals are implemented. May I put in a plea to the Minister to work as hard as he can with all agencies of Government to ensure that places like Wiltshire law centre get some form of block funding to ensure that its valuable work continues? It is as fundamental as that. I am worried that if we lose that service, my constituents will have to travel a very long distance to get legal aid, because most private firms in Swindon now do not offer the services offered by the law centre.
I have spoken in the past about special educational needs and education law. I reiterate my plea to the Minister to ensure that when the education Green Paper is published in March the forms of alternative dispute resolution, whether it be mediation or other forms of ADR, are properly explored and set out so that the need for legal representation in those cases becomes a thing of the past.
I have drilled down as far as I can to find out why this country spends more per head on legal aid than other country. The National Audit Office paper on the procurement of legal aid observed that during its control period in the latter part of last decade, England and Wales prosecuted more than a million more people than any comparator country. We have to look at why we spend a lot on legal aid. I do not think that it is a problem. I think it shows that we take prosecution seriously. The only real comparison we can make is with other common law countries, and they do not prosecute as many cases as England and Wales. Comparisons with France are utterly irrelevant. The French spend five times more on the judicial system than us because of their inquisitorial process. We must focus on comparisons with other common law countries. The simple fact is that we litigate more in England and Wales. As I said, I make no apology for the fact that this country brings more prosecutions than any other country. That issue should be dealt with in other debates. It is a causal issue, rather than being about the symptoms that legal aid has to deal with.
On domestic violence, my plea to the Minister is that we work hard on getting the definition right. I suggest that it is not right in the Green Paper. We should be considering courses of conduct rather than individual incidents. I would be happy to work with him on that matter.