Independent Sentencing Review
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(1 week, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Today is about one question: should violent and prolific criminals be on the streets or behind bars? I think they should be behind bars. For all the Justice Secretary’s rhetoric, the substance of her statement could not be clearer: she is okay and her party is okay with criminals terrorising our streets and tormenting our country. The truth is this: any Government—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I thought people had come to listen to the statement and I expect them to listen. I expected the Opposition Front Bench to be quiet; I certainly expect better from the Government Front Bench.
Robert Jenrick
Mr Speaker, the truth is this: any Government serious about keeping violent criminals behind bars, any Government willing to do whatever it took, could obviously find and build the prison cells required to negate the need for these disastrous changes. What do the changes amount to? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Swallow, you are getting very excited. You were telling me how good a schoolteacher you were; this is a very bad example of that.
Robert Jenrick
What do these changes amount to? They are a “get out of jail free” card for dangerous criminals. Has the Justice Secretary even gone through a court listing recently? Pick one from anywhere in our country: those currently going to jail for 12 months or less are not angels. They are Adam Gregory in Calne, who got 12 months for sexually assaulting his partner; Vinnie Nolan, who got 12 months for breaking someone’s jaw; Shaun Yardley, 10 months for beating his partner; or Paul Morris, who got six and a half months for shoplifting 36 times. Her plan is to let precisely these criminals loose. It is a recipe for a crime wave.
What about the Justice Secretary’s plan for most criminals going to jail to serve just one third of their prison sentence there and for her slashing of sentences across the board—discounts so big they would make Aldi and Lidl blush? I would call it a joke if the consequences for the public were not so terrifying. In fact it gets worse, because criminals who plead guilty—and most do—already get a third cut in their sentence, so under her scheme a burglar who pleads guilty to an 18-month headline term would spend just one fifth of that term in jail—barely 11 weeks. Eleven weeks for smashing through a family’s door and storming through a child’s bedroom looking for valuables, leaving them traumatised for life. Is that the Justice Secretary’s idea of justice for victims? The least she could do is here and now guarantee that violent criminals, domestic abusers, stalkers and sexual assaulters will not be eligible for any discount in their sentence. Will she commit to that?
If not prison, what is the plan to punish these criminals and to keep the public safe? Well, the Justice Secretary says it is digital prisons—as she puts it, prison outside of prison, words that lead most people in this country to conclude that the Justice Secretary is out of her mind. I am all for technology but tags are not iron bars—they cannot stop your child being stabbed on their walk home from school, or a shop being ransacked time and again, or a domestic abuser returning to their victim’s front door.
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not think that “out of her mind” is language that should be used. I am sure the shadow Secretary of State would like to reflect on that.
Robert Jenrick
Of course, Mr Speaker.
The Ministry of Justice’s own pilot scheme found that 71% of tagged offenders breached their curfew. When it comes to stopping reoffending, tags are about as useful as smoke alarms are at putting out bonfires. What is the Justice Secretary going to say when she meets the victims of offenders that she let off? How is she going to look them in the eye and say with a straight face, “I’m sorry—we are looking into how this criminal escaped from their digital prison cell.” Her reforms are a recipe for carnage.
I urge the Justice Secretary to change course and to make different choices—yes, choices—from the ones that we knew the Government would make from the day that the Prime Minister hand-picked Lord Timpson as Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, a man who is on record as saying that
“a lot of people in prison…shouldn’t be there”—
two thirds of them in fact, he said—
“and they are there for far too long”.
The Labour party is clearly ideologically opposed to prison and that is why the Government are letting criminals off with a “get out of jail free” card, rather than deporting the 10,800 foreign national offenders in our prisons—one in every eight cells—a figure that is rising under the Justice Secretary’s watch. If she is actually serious about keeping violent criminals off our streets and finding the cells that are needed, will she bring forward legislation, tomorrow, and disapply the Human Rights Act 1998, which is stopping us from swiftly deporting foreign national offenders?
Some 17,800 prisoners are on remand awaiting trial—another figure that has risen under the Justice Secretary. In fact, her own Department’s figures forecast that it could rise to as many as 23,600. If she is serious, will she commit to taking up the Lady Chief Justice’s request for extra court sitting days to hear those cases and free up prison spaces? Will she commit, here and now, to building more than the meagre 250 rapid deployment cells her prison capacity strategy says she is planning to build this year? They have been built in seven months before, and they can be built even faster.
If the Justice Secretary were serious, she would commit to striking deals with the 14 European countries with spare prison capacity, renting their cells from them at an affordable price, as Denmark is doing with Kosovo. Between 1993 and 1996, her beloved Texas, the state on which she modelled these reforms—a state that, by the way, has an incarceration rate five times higher than that of the United Kingdom—built 75,000 extra cells. If the Government were serious, why can they not build 10,000 over a similar time period?
Labour is not serious about keeping hyper-prolific offenders behind bars. In fact, there is nothing in the Justice Secretary’s statement on locking them up or cutting crime, because the Labour party does not believe in punishing criminals and it does not really believe in prison. The radical, terrible changes made today are cloaked in necessity, but their root is Labour’s ideology. It is the public who will be paying the price for her weakness.
Shabana Mahmood
The shadow Secretary of State talks about serious Government—if the Government that he was a part of had ever been serious, they would have built more than 500 prison places in 14 years in office—[Interruption.] He is a new convert to the prison-building cause. He and his party have never stood up in this Chamber and apologised for adding only 500 places—
Mr Speaker
Order. I want the same respect from Members on the Opposition Front Bench. [Interruption.] Do we understand each other?
Shabana Mahmood
Mr Speaker, if I were waiting for respect from Opposition Members, I would be waiting for a long time, so it is a good job that I do not need it.
The shadow Secretary of State talks about “iron bars”, but he was part of a Government that did not build the prison places that this country needs. Unlike him, I take responsibility, and it has fallen to me to clean up the mess that he and his party left behind. In case there is any confusion, let me spell out what happens when he and his party leave our prison system on the brink of collapse, which is exactly what they did, and set out the prospect that faced me on day one, when I walked into the Justice Department. When prisons are on the verge of collapse, we basically have only two choices left at our disposal: either we shut the front door, or we have to open the back door. The right hon. Gentleman’s party knew that that was the situation it was confronted with, but did it make any decisions? No, it just decided to call an election instead and did a runner.
The public put the Conservatives in their current position. If they ever want to get out of that position, I suggest that they start by reckoning with the reality of their own track record in office. In any other reality, they should have started already with an apology. Conservative Members have had many chances to apologise to the country for leaving our prisons on the point of absolute collapse, but they have never taken them. Frankly, that tells us everything that anyone needs to know about the modern Conservative party.
Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Robert Jenrick
“Sorry” seems to be the hardest word today. I see that the Justice Secretary has still not come to Parliament to defend her policy. Yesterday she deliberately avoided scrutiny in this House, because she knows that this decision is wildly unpopular and risks the safety of the public. To govern is to choose. There are 10,500 foreign criminals in our jails and 17,000 people in prison awaiting trial. Combined, those two groups make up roughly a third of the prison population.
The sensible step forward would obviously be to introduce emergency measures to expedite deportations and get the courts sitting around the clock. If the Justice Secretary chose to do that, we would support her, but so far she has not. She has refused to take the judiciary up on its offer of extra court sitting days. It is not uncommon for as many as half the courts at the Old Bailey to sit empty on any given day. Instead, she has decided to let out early criminals who reoffend or breach their licence. There is now no punishment or deterrent for criminals who immediately reoffend or cheat the system. The Justice Secretary says these people will be “in prison outside of prison”—I am sure that hardened criminals will be quaking in their boots at that farcical doublespeak.
There is no two ways about it: this decision has put the public in danger and victims in jeopardy. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, has said that she
“cannot stress enough the lack of consideration for victims’ safety and how many lives are being put in danger”.
Is the Justice Secretary or her Minister really telling domestic abuse victims that their abusers will be back on the streets in just 28 days if they breach their licence, and that nobody will even check with the Parole Board? Can the Minister explain to the House who is exempted from the scheme, because right now confusion reigns? Yesterday the Justice Secretary gave the impression that no domestic abusers or sexual offenders would be eligible for her scheme, but her Department has since said that it will include “many” but not all.
The written ministerial statement laid yesterday deliberately concealed the answer to the question of which criminals will be excluded, so will the Minister take this opportunity to tell the House? If he does not know the answer, will he commit to publishing it by the end of the day? Lastly, can he confirm to the House that anyone in breach of a restraining order will be ineligible for a fixed-term recall, because anything else would be an insult to the victims?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
It has been six days since the Supreme Court handed down its landmark judgment in the case brought by For Women Scotland—a judgment that confirms basic biological reality and protects women and girls. It was a Conservative Government who brought in the policy to stop male offenders, however they identify, being held in the women’s estate, especially those convicted of violence or sexual offences. Will the Lord Chancellor and her Ministers confirm that the Government will implement the Supreme Court judgment in full and that they will take personal responsibility for ensuring that it is in every aspect of our justice system, or do they agree with senior Ministers in their party who now appear to be actively plotting to undermine the Supreme Court’s judgment?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Today, the Justice Secretary is belatedly introducing a Bill to restore fairness in who receives a pre-sentence report, but it will not correct what the pre-sentence report says. Under brand-new guidance that the Justice Secretary’s Department issued in January, pre-sentence reports must consider the “culture” of an offender and take into account whether they have suffered “intergenerational trauma” from “important historical events”. Evidently, the Labour party does not believe in individual responsibility and agency. Instead of treating people equally, it believes in cultural relativism. This time the Justice Secretary has nobody else to blame but herself. Will she change that or is there two-tier justice? Is that the Labour party’s policy now?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
I support the Lord Chancellor’s decision to commission a full statutory inquiry into the terrible attack in Nottingham. I know it will be welcomed by the families and everyone in the city and across my home county of Nottinghamshire. I fully support her welcome decision.
Greg Ó Ceallaigh is a serving immigration judge who decides asylum and deportation appeals. It took nothing more than a basic Google search to uncover his past comments that the Conservative party should be treated the same way as Nazis and cancer. As a sitting judge, he has publicly supported Labour’s plans to scrap the Rwanda scheme and for illegal entry into the United Kingdom to be decriminalised. Does the Lord Chancellor believe this is compatible with judicial impartiality? If not, what does she intend to do about it?
Shabana Mahmood
First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks on the new Nottingham inquiry—I am very grateful for his support. I am sure the whole House will want to see the inquiry come to a conclusion as quickly as possible.
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that when people have a complaint to make about judges, they can do so via the well-placed mechanism of the judicial complaints office. If he wishes to make a complaint, he can do so, but what I will not do is indulge in, effectively, the doxing of judges, especially not when they are simply doing their job of applying the law in the cases that appear before them. If there are complaints to be made about judicial conduct, I am sure the shadow Lord Chancellor knows how to go about it.
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I just say that we must be careful about what we do here? We are not meant to criticise judges, and I know that this House would not do so. I am sure that we will now change the topic.
Robert Jenrick
Mr Speaker, it is important that judges and the manner in which they are appointed are properly scrutinised in this House, and I will not shy away from doing so. Helen Pitcher was forced to resign in disgrace as the chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission after a formal panel found that she had failed in her duties during one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent memory. But she is still in charge of judicial appointments, despite judges appearing in the media every week for their activism. Her commission has failed to conduct the most basic checks on potential judges, either out of sheer incompetence, or out of sympathy with their hard-left views on open borders. The commission is broken and is bringing the independence of the judiciary into disrepute. How much longer will it take for the Justice Secretary to act and remove the chair of this commission from her position and defend the independence and reputation of the judiciary?
Shabana Mahmood
I am afraid that the shadow Chancellor cannot elide the process for the appointment of judges with a wider attack on the independence of the judiciary. I hope that he will take the admonishment from you, Mr Speaker, and the clear disapprobation of this House to reflect on the way that he is approaching his role. If there are complaints to be made about judicial conduct, there is already a robust process in place for doing so. If the shadow Lord Chancellor wishes to avail himself of that, I am sure that, given how active he is, he will be happy to do so. What is completely improper is to take his position in this House to indulge in a wider attack of the judiciary at a time when we know that judicial security has been compromised—
Sentencing Council Guidelines
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Robert Jenrick
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In his response to the urgent question, the Minister has repeatedly told the House that the previous Government approved the guidelines. In particular, he besmirched the name of the former sentencing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon). What the Minister said to the House today was wrong. On page 4, paragraph 4, of the Sentencing Council’s letter of 10 March to the Justice Secretary, it made it perfectly clear that the guidelines published under this Government were materially different from those considered by the prior Government. In fact, the Minister’s official was present at the meeting of the Sentencing Council at which this version of the guidelines was signed off. Will he take the opportunity to correct the record? I am afraid that he has misled the House not once, not twice, but on numerous occasions today, and that is quite wrong.
Mr Speaker
Order. Nobody misleads the House; the right hon. Gentleman means “inadvertently” misled the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Under the Justice Secretary’s leadership, her Department let out dozens of dangerous prisoners by mistake last year. Now we have uncovered that criminals who were let out early by her Department were not monitored for up to eight weeks, as they were not fitted with electronic tags. It is another glaring error. Will the Justice Secretary clear up some confusion? How many criminals did her Department fail to tag? Were any offences committed while these criminals went unmonitored, and who has been held accountable for this gross incompetence?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Yesterday, the Sentencing Council issued a letter correcting the Justice Secretary. It made it clear that the new sentencing guidelines were not the same as the draft guidance under the last Government and explained that her Department supported the new two-tier guidance—her representative was at the meeting—and it was approved on 24 January. Her officials were even given a walkthrough on 3 March—a dummy’s guide to two-tier justice. After I brought that to her attention last Wednesday, her team briefed the papers that she was “incandescent”. Was she incandescent at her officials or at her own failure to read her papers and do her job properly?
Courts and Tribunals: Sitting Days
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(2 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
It is great to see the Justice Secretary back in the country after her holiday in Texas. If she can find time to travel to America, why can she not find time to travel to the two category A prisons—[Interruption.] I will be pleased to hear from the right hon. Lady if that is the case. That was not the answer to our written parliamentary question the other day.
Today, the central criminal court has 13 courtrooms sat empty. In Preston, 40% of courtrooms sit empty, and in Winchester the figure is two thirds. That is a result of the court backlog, which has grown under this Justice Secretary. We need to be maximising court capacity, taking full advantage of all available days and probing the judiciary for options to create more capacity. I know that, and I would like to believe that the right hon. Lady knows that, but how did we get here? We got here because, just like in every other area, this Labour Government came into office with no plan whatsoever, and they have wasted their first eight months in office.
Upon the Justice Secretary entering office, the Lady Chief Justice informed her that there were at least 6,500 sitting days available to address the court backlog. The Justice Secretary responded by adding a measly 500 sitting days, and the court backlog kept growing. So frustrated was the Lady Chief Justice that she came to Parliament in November and took the unusual step of publicly chastising the Justice Secretary, and reiterated her offer of 6,500 sitting days. The Justice Secretary responded a month later by adding 2,000 sitting days, and the court backlog kept growing.
Here we are again, eight months on from the Justice Secretary taking office and on the very day that the Public Accounts Committee has published an excoriating report into her Department, with her promising more sitting days. Is it third time lucky for the Justice Secretary? No. What we have learned again today is that she is still turning down available sitting days, and astonishingly, she has conceded that the court backlog will keep on rising. That is simply not acceptable.
Of course, I welcome the changes made by the Justice Secretary, but they are not enough. She says that victims will get quicker justice—tell that to the victims of rape who are having their court cases listed for 2028. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Please, I need to be able to hear the shadow Lord Chancellor, and when Government Front Benchers shout for so long, I cannot hear. I will decide whether a statement is in order or not—are we understanding each other?
Robert Jenrick
I do not pretend that cutting the court backlog is easy, or that it will be quick, but the Justice Secretary owes the country a plan and a timetable for when that backlog is actually going to fall. This morning, she was repeatedly asked that question, but refused to give an answer. Can she tell the country now when the court backlog will begin to fall, by what date her Department has forecast it falling, and why she will not take up the 2,500 additional sitting days offered time and time again by the Lady Chief Justice?
Lastly, the new sentencing guidelines published alongside this statement will make a custodial sentence less likely for those
“from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”.
Why is the Justice Secretary enshrining this double standard—this two-tier approach to sentencing? It is an inversion of the rule of law. Conservative Members believe in equality under the law; why does she not?
Shabana Mahmood
The shadow Secretary of State asked, “How did we get here?” I will tell him how we got here—his Administration and the 14 years they had in power, and the absolute mess they made of the criminal justice system; a mess that this Government are clearing up. I am sorry to deprive him of what I am sure he thought was a clever attack line on my recent visit to Texas, but I can inform him that I have in fact visited HM Prison Manchester. I did so during the February recess. [Interruption.]
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The courts backlog is growing by 500 cases every month, and the Ministry of Justice has not set a date for when it will come down. Victims are being forced to put their lives on hold while they wait for a trial date, yet today at the Old Bailey half of all the courtrooms sit empty. The Lady Chief Justice has said that there are 4,000 additional sitting days available that could be used now. Who is the obstacle to resolving this? Is it the Justice Secretary, who is content for rape trials to be scheduled for as far off as 2027, or is it the Chancellor, and the Justice Secretary has just had rings run around her by the Treasury?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Contempt of court laws are guardrails that ensure fair trials. Does the Justice Secretary accept that, as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said, by failing to provide basic information to the public that has been disclosed in previous cases—information that would not prejudice a trial—the authorities created a vacuum in which misinformation spread? That misinformation could itself have been prejudicial to the trial. Does she agree that in an age when most people consume their news through social media, saying nothing is not cost-free? Will she commit to reviewing this issue now, rather than waiting for the Law Commission?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Two weeks ago, three grooming gang members were sentenced at Bradford Crown court for the most appalling rapes of children, but they received only six, seven and nine-year sentences respectively—six years, out on licence in four, for the rape of a child. Does the Secretary of State agree that those sentences are disgracefully short, and will she commit to using the sentencing review to mandate full life sentences for these evil people? If she will, she will have our support.
Drones: High-security Prisons
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick
Given that this is a question of national security, I find it astonishing that the Lord Chancellor cannot be bothered to turn up to the House today. Yesterday—[Interruption.]
Robert Jenrick
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Yesterday, the chief inspector of prisons warned that the police and prisons service have “ceded the airspace” above two high-security prisons to organised crime groups. The result is that organised crime gangs can deliver drugs, phones and weapons such as zombie knives to inmates with impunity due to the absence of basic security measures such as functional CCTV, protective netting and window repairs. Across two visits in September and October, he described a damning picture of thriving illicit economies that jeopardise the safety of dedicated prison staff.
In HMP Manchester, almost four in 10 prisoners have tested positive in mandatory drug tests, and in HMP Long Lartin the figure was nearly three in 10. Those two prisons hold some of the most dangerous men in our country, including murderers and terrorists. If organised crime gangs can deliver phones and drugs to inmates’ cells, they could be delivering serious weapons and explosives as well.
The chief inspector said that the potential for escapes or hostage taking is of enormous concern. This could not be more serious. The situation has become, in his words,
“a threat to national security.”
I do not pretend that these problems are entirely new, but they have deteriorated and they need urgent action. Will the Minister provide the timeframes for fixing the most basic security measures? What visits has the Lord Chancellor made to HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin? If she has not visited, when does she intend to go? Little else could be more pressing. What discussions has she held with the prison governors? Will the Minister assure the House that the Government have confidence in the senior management to restore order? Does he agree with the chief inspector that the failure to grip the situation is a serious indictment of the Department?
Sir Nicholas Dakin
Who had 14 years to grip this situation? At least this Government are taking action—[Interruption.]
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The Lady Chief Justice has said that the courts are not operating at full capacity, perpetuating the record numbers in prison on remand, awaiting trial. There could be an extra 6,500 sitting days if the Government allowed them. Cases such as rape and sexual assault are being pushed into 2027. Baroness Carr warned the Justice Secretary that failure to maximise judicial capacity would actually cost the Government more in costly and limited prison places, yet the Justice Secretary failed to agree to her request. Why are the Government letting out criminals rather than hearing more cases?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
In London, there is a phone theft epidemic, and this time it is not the former Transport Secretary on the loose. Last year, more than 64,000 mobile phones were reported to the police as stolen in the capital alone. The small number of individuals responsible should be locked up for a long time, yet last month, a criminal who used a motorbike to steal 24 phones an hour was jailed for just two years. Enough is enough, so will the Justice Secretary commit to dramatically increasing sentences for career criminals, get them off our streets and slash crime?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Robert Jenrick(6 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I belatedly congratulate the Government Front-Bench team on their appointments—I have been a little busy over the summer. The only group the Labour Government’s popularity has increased during that time with is criminals. How many domestic abusers and sex offenders released under their early release scheme have gone on to reoffend? Would the Minister like to apologise to the victims?
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Police firearms officer Sergeant Blake was a hero and we all want to see individuals like him, who put themselves in the line of fire, respected. What work is the Lord Chancellor doing, alongside the Home Secretary, to review the threshold for prosecution for individuals such as Sergeant Blake, so that they never find themselves in the invidious position that he did?