Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

1. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on improving training and skills of adult prisoners to improve their employment chances after the end of their sentence and reduce the risk of reoffending.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

18. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on improving training and skills of adult prisoners to improve their employment chances after the end of their sentence and reduce the risk of reoffending.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

I worked closely with the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning during the preparation of the new offender learning strategy published last year, and officials from both Departments have worked closely on implementation. I fully recognise the importance of learning and training in making prisoners more employable, and my officials and I are working with the Department for Work and Pensions to provide enhanced employment support via the Work programme.

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[Paul Maynard]

Many education providers these days use online platforms and tools to provide education in prison and would like to do so more often using both better internet connections and better wi-fi internet connection. Obviously, there are security concerns about making such connections available. Will the Minister explain a little further what he could do to encourage such provision to enhance rehabilitation opportunities?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend because, as he says, it is essential to maintain security while enabling learning and skills to be relevant in prisons. Prisoners’ educational internet access will now be via the virtual campus that is being installed where it is technically possible to do so in all adult prisons in England. It offers very secure access to online tools and resources that have been through thorough quality assurance and rigorous security checks, and has the potential to be developed so that prisoners’ in-cell time as well as their out-of-cell time could be much more productive than it is today.

Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Transparency and consistency in sentencing is both an end in itself, as part of an open justice system, and a means to an end. It is an essential component in dispensing criminal justice that is fair and credible and has the confidence of the public. No one has a monopoly on wisdom in these matters, although this country is fortunate to have a judiciary and judicial system that has intellect and integrity and applies itself to achieving fair and honest outcomes. From the magistracy to the Supreme Court, from first hearings and summary trials to second and third-stage appeals, there is much to take pride in. Anyone who doubts that needs only to read the sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Treacy in the case of Dobson and Norris, the murderers of Stephen Lawrence.

That is not to be complacent, and it does not mean that we do not need to review and change things. In government, Labour improved the quality of training for lay magistrates, which means better and fairer decision making and gives us confidence to rely more on what has been a mainstay of justice for 650 years. We also set up the Supreme Court, a body that within a few years has become central to the administration of justice in the UK.

I give credit to the Lord Chancellor—[Interruption.] Will the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), allow him to have my attention? I give credit to the Lord Chancellor for some of the steps that he has taken to promote open justice. Publishing comparative data is a good way of examining the performance of individual courts and measuring consistency. We can cautiously welcome the televising of proceedings. Provided that it protects witnesses and victims and does not sensationalise crime or allow defendants to grandstand, it will be a welcome extension of the principle that the default position of the English courts is that they operate in public.

Perhaps in return, Government Back Benchers will give some acknowledgment of the record of recent Labour Governments, although I doubt it. We inherited a poor record in criminal justice, as we did in health, education and policing. We had communities in thrall to crimes that all too often went unsolved and unpunished and a sentencing policy that was too inconsistent and unscientific, lacking any coherent vision of how to deal with criminals and the revolving door of recidivism. Vulnerable young people were being recruited into crime at ever younger ages. In Moss Side, Liverpool, Newcastle and London, people knew that the Tories could not be trusted on crime and justice. Poorer communities suffered more from the effects of crime, and were abandoned by a succession of Tory Governments who either would not or could not turn things around. It was not only Liverpool that the Thatcher and Major Governments condemned to managed decline.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

rose—

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

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[Mr Slaughter]

I took only two notes when the Lord Chancellor spoke, one of which was on that point. It was a bare-faced cheek for him to talk about the early release of prisoners by some days at the end of their sentences under the Labour Government and then immediately to decry indeterminate sentences for public protection, which ensure that violent and dangerous sex offenders are kept in prison until they are not a danger to the public. Does the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) want to intervene?

[Paul Maynard]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman can make his point in his own time.

Labour’s legacy was somewhat different from that of the Thatcher and Major Governments. The current Government published statistics that show that over the last Parliament, there was a 43% reduction in first-time youth offenders—down from 107,040 per annum to 61,387. As a result, there was a 34% reduction in offences committed by young people, down from 301,860 per annum to 198,449. As a result of that, there was a 15% reduction in young people in custody, down from 2,830 to 2,418. That trend has continued to date. Those are long-term changes in behaviour, in opportunity and diversion from criminality, not the quick-fix methods of trying to shave numbers off the prison population that the Justice Secretary favours.

Youth offending teams—multi-agency partnerships embedded in local authorities—dealt with young offenders from arrest to court to managing their punishment in the community or the securest date for reintegration. As the teams bedded down in their core statutory functions, the previous Government added prevention work to their remit and resourced them with expertise on gang behaviour and restorative justice. We also gave them considerable latitude for innovation to allow for the development of new ideas and local solutions. At the same time, we created the Youth Justice Board to ensure that places in custody were commissioned efficiently and effectively to co-ordinate best practice among YOTs.

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[Philip Davies]

They must have had to commit an awful lot of crimes to get themselves into prison, because it is very difficult to get sent to prison in this country.

Let me emphasise the point. In 2009, according to the Ministry of Justice, 2,980 burglars and 4,677 violent offenders with 15 or more previous convictions were still not sent to prison. Today, the Secretary of State was saying that if someone commits a burglary they should expect to go to prison. In one year, however, 2,980 burglars with 15 or more previous convictions still were not sent to prison, which seems rather to defy the message that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed is trying to give.

[Paul Maynard]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that there are prisons, secure children’s homes and independent institutions where people, on their release, knock on the door begging to be taken back in? Those settings were the only place in which they received the care and support that they needed to be a meaningful member of the local community on their release. Does he share my concern?

[Philip Davies]

I share many of my hon. Friend’s concerns and I am certainly concerned that many people are anxious to get back into custody. There are an awful lot of reasons for that, one of which he has given. Some might argue that another reason why people are so keen to get back into prison is that their quality of life in prison is far better than their quality of life outside prison. When 4,070 prisoners enjoy the luxury of Sky TV in their cells—not even in a communal area—we know that something is fundamentally wrong with our criminal justice system.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have this wretched organisation, HM inspectorate of prisons, the members of which come down from their nine-bedroom mansions in Oxfordshire, go around the prisons and say, “Oh, it’s jolly awful in here, isn’t it? Absolutely terrible.” If those same people came from the same crime-ridden estates that people in prison tend to come from, they would probably say, “It’s jolly nice in here.” There is rather a big disconnect between the backgrounds of the people in prison and of these do-gooders, the prison inspectors.

[Paul Maynard]

As one of those do-gooders—I realise that that might be a matter of concern to my hon. Friend—may I ask whether he has any proposals on how we could improve local authority accommodation for young people, for example, to ensure that the communities where they live are safer for them than a secure custodial setting? What positive proposals does he have in addition to his House of Commons research?

[Philip Davies]

My positive proposal appears to have escaped my hon. Friend. I think I am right in saying that he is a member of the new 301 group, which I thought referred to the number of seats we had to win at the next election; I did not realise it was the target for the number of people we should have in prison, which seems to be the approach advocated. What about the quality of life of many law-abiding people in this country? We talk about the rights of criminals, but what about speaking up for the law-abiding people who think that their quality of life would be improved if more people were sent to prison in the first place? Not only are all those people not being sent to prison, but we still have a system in which someone who goes to court with 100 previous convictions behind them is still more likely not to be sent to prison than to be sent to prison. How on earth can we have a criminal justice system in which that is the case?

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[Philip Davies]

The figures my right hon. and learned Friend dismissed are the ones supplied by his Department. All I can do is give the figures as they are. They indicate that of the 206 people who have been released having served an IPP sentence, only 11 have reoffended. It is up to hon. Members to draw their own conclusion from those figures. The principle that we should not release people from prison until it is safe to do so strikes me and my constituents as a rather good one to have in the criminal justice system. His suggestion that we should release people from prison regardless of whether it is safe to do so seems rather bizarre.

[Paul Maynard]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will make some progress, because many other Members wish to speak and I want to draw my remarks to a close.

My final point is on the automatic release of offenders halfway through their sentence, which is one of the shameful things the previous Government sneaked through in the last Parliament. Prisoners are now not just eligible for release halfway through their sentence; they are automatically released. I think that that is a terrible situation. When I visited Denmark, whose criminal justice system is always seen as very liberal, I found that they do not have that system. They have the system we used to have, whereby prisoners became eligible for release halfway through their sentence. In fact, 30% of their prisoners were refused parole altogether and served the full sentence handed down by the courts, and they think that that is one of the major reasons why they had such low reoffending rates. I urge the Secretary of State not to have a system where we automatically release prisoners willy-nilly halfway through their sentence and irrespective of their behaviour in prison or their risk of reoffending. We should make proper judgments about people’s fitness for release before we agree to release them. I think that we can learn from Denmark in that regard.

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[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I must apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for not being a lawyer but daring to participate in this debate. I hope he will forgive me. I must also apologise for not living in Oxfordshire or in a nine-bedroom mansion. I live in a two-bedroom ex-council flat; I hope that does not exclude me from this debate.

I represent the fourth most deprived Conservative-held seat in the country, and I hope that allows me to participate in the debate because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) has just pointed out, it is the poor who suffer most as a consequence of crime.

I should like to question some of the comforting nostrums that have been floating around the Chamber. Those who have read their New Statesman this morning might call it “reassurance” politics—saying things to make ourselves, rather than those we seek to represent, feel better. That is my primary concern. Language is crucial in this debate. We have to be judicious and proportionate in everything we say, but I sometimes fear that is rather difficult.

I also believe that victims have to have a crucial role in this process, not because I believe, as I fear some do, that victims will automatically demand the harshest judgment possible—far from it. We can all swap polling and survey evidence, but I want to highlight a survey I saw from 2009, which said that only 11% of the victims questioned felt that sending more offenders to prison would “do most” to reduce crime. That is not to say that people should not go to prison or that prison should not be unpleasant, but it does indicate that the comforting nostrum that all victims are slavering for the chance to see those who have caused them harm swing high simply is not the case.

I commend the Government for publishing more local, transparent data on sentencing. That is vital to improving not just transparency but public confidence in the system. I firmly believe that a transparent and consistent sentencing policy will be possible only if we start to reduce the prison population. Unlike some hon. Members here today, I do not believe we should seek to turn this nation into a gulag with as many people as possible crammed in.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend and I heard the interesting and often entertaining speech of our hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who mentioned the Netherlands. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) agree that if the Netherlands can close eight prisons because they do not have enough prisoners to fill them, and if their apparent crime rate and their apparent imprisonment rate are half of ours, on a population basis, we have a lot to learn from those who agree that we need to cut crime, cut the number of victims and cut the number of people in prison as well?

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[Paul Maynard]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. I have always believed there should be a strong correlation between the amount of crime being committed and the number of people being sent to prison. If one is going in one direction, I fail to understand why the other is not going in the same direction, but it is not. There are now twice as many people in prison as when Michael Howard announced that “prison works”. I therefore believe that for certain categories of prisoner it is essential to look at alternatives to custody that are robust without being harsh and that have lower reoffending rates. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor pointed out that that was one of the crucial indicators he had placed at the heart of the Ministry of Justice’s work. In my view, that means we should start to focus not only on how many people reoffend after longer sentences but at what we mean by a short sentence and what is an appropriate sentence.

I might just about agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that sentences of less than 12 months are almost decorative. People at the young offender institutions I have visited say that the most they can do is fix people’s teeth in that time, if they are lucky. Perhaps the shortest sentence should be 12 months, but that does not absolve us from trying to confront what we do in the community. I do not support the idea that anyone who is found guilty should be sent to prison, no matter what their crime. That simply is not the way to go. Within the youth justice system, there has been a 30% fall in the number of children in custodial settings without any increase in youth crime. That is an important example to which we should hold true. It is possible to reduce incarceration levels while keeping crime levels low. Once again, the two are not connected. Indeed, the Government have been able to cancel plans to build a new young offender institution at Glen Parva, thereby creating savings for the taxpayer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley was rather dismissive of my participation in the 301 project. I hope he is not similarly dismissive of our participation in “No Turning Back”; indeed, perhaps he is a fellow member. I hope he shares my concern for effective financial management and good stewardship of taxpayers’ money. One of my key concerns about the approach to criminal justice that he advocates is that it pays no attention to the cost to the public purse.

I make no apology for that consideration. Only yesterday, we spent time agonising over the Welfare Reform Bill and the deeply difficult cuts that we are having to make that will affect some very vulnerable people. Those are difficult decisions, which we do not take with any great pleasure. If we give that level of scrutiny to our welfare system, I strongly believe that it is incumbent on us to look with equal forensic attention at how much we are spending on our prison and criminal justice systems.

[Philip Davies]

I asked the Ministry of Justice what was the highest number of crimes that somebody had committed while still not being sent to prison—the number of previous convictions. The answer was 578. Somebody with 578 previous convictions was not sent to prison. That was 300 for shoplifting, 131 for drunk and disorderly behaviour, 79 for public disorder, 18 for breach of bail, 14 for criminal damage, nine for assault, eight for robbery, four for possessing an offensive weapon, one for actual bodily harm and 14 others. Does my hon. Friend agree that that person should still not have been sent to prison?

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[Paul Maynard]

When I see my hon. Friend flicking through sheets of paper, I can always guarantee that a demon statistic is on its way to disprove the point being made by a hapless Back Bencher. Such is my lot.

The average cost of a year in prison is £45,000. Effective, intensive community sentences can cost as little as £5,000. I stress the word “effective”, because I accept that much of our community sentencing is not very good at all. It does not do what it is supposed to do and is regarded as a joke, but there are intensive alternatives that have been shown to work. That is where we should focus our attention, not just on banging up everyone who has ever looked at us askance. Indeed, in a world governed by my hon. Friend, I might fear for my own liberty. It would be deeply concerning to end up in the Shipley gulag.

If I understand the complex legal world correctly, a community order can comprise 12 different elements. Some of them are relatively familiar: for example, curfews and unpaid work, which make up slightly over 30% of many community orders. What concerns me is that the more technical, specialist and difficult aspects make up less than 1% of the orders that are issued. The mental health treatment requirement is used in less than 1% of community orders, yet 40% of the offenders we are discussing have been judged as having a mental health need. There are numerous problems with that component. A high threshold is set, which requires a psychiatric report that can often result in a wait of up to 16 weeks. That may deter many magistrates from imposing an order. It also requires the psychiatrist to offer a specific course of treatment, which may not be easy to arrange, thus again deterring a magistrate from employing the order.

What worries me more than anything else is that magistrates might not fully understand the range of disposals they can use. All too often people in the criminal justice system tell me that if only they had known about this or that type of order they could have given the offender a more appropriate sentence. If I have one incy-wincy, teeny-weeny criticism of the Government, it is that cuts in training for magistrates might make it harder for them to be aware of what is available in their local area.

There are particularly good models in existence, such as the North Liverpool community court where judges remain actively involved in the offender’s future post-sentence. They can see whether the sentence they impose actually represents punishment of the offender and solves their many problems.

I must also refer, as many Members have, to restorative justice, or youth conferencing as we have seen it in Northern Ireland. It demonstrates that there is innovation out there that can deliver better reoffending figures than a custodial setting. I want the Government to follow up their work on the intensive alternative to custody pilot that was run in Manchester. They published an excellent analysis of the pilot in July 2011, but it made it clear that it was very difficult to come up with robust reoffending figures for those who had gone through the system. As those of us who participate in these debates know, winning public confidence requires robust data showing that new, innovative methods of disposal actually work. It is difficult to provide robust figures for the intensive alternative to custody.

We need to understand reoffending rates far better, because these models can offer much greater cost-effectiveness. As I said earlier, we cannot look only at the criminal justice and public spending elements as if we are just warehousing criminals for two years or so for public protection, because they will just emerge ready to reoffend, and that will not provide the satisfaction—I use the word in precise terms—that a victim deserves.

Despite the fall in child custody, one in 10 prisoners are still in the 18 to 20 age group. Admittedly, this has spiked because of the riots, quite correctly in my view. However, the independent panel that looked into the riots identified the lack of support for young people moving from the youth justice system to the adult justice system as a contributory factor to the occurrence of the riots, which is worth bearing in mind. The Barrow Cadbury Trust found that almost half of those in the 18 to 20 age group were in local authority residential care and 40% had suffered some sort of domestic violence. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has stated in a Centre for Social Justice report that

“increasing penalties for offenders will do little to stop the next generation of prisoners and unlock the cycle of deprivation which so many young people are trapped in, unless it is accompanied by an attempt to tackle the underlying drivers of crime.”

That is why I am concerned that any model that focuses simply on imprisonment and increasing the number of prisoners will not solve the wider problem we face.

We all age physically at different speeds, but we also age emotionally at different speeds. The human brain is not mature until the mid-20s—I suspect that for certain Members it might be much older, but I do not dare to speculate. It is worth looking at the model used in Germany, where those in the 18 to 21 age group are assessed for maturity. If the individual has a communication delay or learning disabilities, for example, there is the option that they will be disposed of through the youth justice process. That has been shown to work well in solving individual problems.

It is also important that our political rhetoric in the Chamber, on both sides, is mature when we discuss criminal justice. The Prison Reform Trust—I declare an interest as a trustee—recently published a report examining the reasons for the decline in child imprisonment. It found that politicians had played no role in that at all. Indeed, the best it could say about us was that we did not impede the process. I welcome the fact that the Government and others are now rejecting the easy, knee-jerk options. The Mayor’s strategy on youth crime, for example, was notably mature and robust in how it sought to tackle the issue. Similarly, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has made great strides in the right direction, although I am sure that we would want to see some of them move more quickly. I commend the Sentencing Council for the judicious work it has done so far, and I congratulate the Opposition, empty though their Benches are, on having done the right thing in setting it up.

In conclusion, transparency and consistency in sentencing can be achieved only by clarity of purpose, and by an iron will not to use sentencing policy to demonstrate other supposed political virtues. We do not need to be harsh to be tough, and we must never forget that victims are humans and have needs. To be a victim of crime is more than a financial event; it is a deeply upsetting and emotional experience.

Equally, we must never forget that perpetrators of crime are also human beings. Often, they are perpetrators not because they are evil—and I do believe in evil, and that there are evil people who should be in prison—but because the state has failed them at multiple stages of their life, almost from birth, in residential care homes, education and many other settings. Those people are on the conveyor belt to crime because we in this House have failed them time and again. To put such people in prison and merely wash our hands of them is not a solution to the state’s failure to care for the most vulnerable in society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

With reference to alternative to custody projects, Mr Paul Maynard.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Thank you Mr Speaker, and indeed it is. If we are to increase public confidence in more intensive forms of community sentencing, we clearly need to link them, as we have just heard, to evidence showing how they reduce reoffending. In the commendable analysis of the pilot in Manchester published in July 2011 by the Ministry of Justice, the difficulty of calculating reoffending statistics is made clear. Will the Minister reassure me that he will do all he can to square this circle so that we can persuade members of the public that this is the way forward?

[Nick Herbert]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes a good point. There have been difficulties, which is why we are assessing the feasibility of evaluation. We need the data for the reasons he gives: it is important that the public know how effective the disposals are and, in the future, that will be important for proposals on payment by results. Where they are successful and reduce reoffending, which we have had great difficulty delivering through short-term custodial sentences, such measures should be considered.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

That is an option. Of course, as I say, offences provoked by prejudice against disabled people are regarded as hate crimes and this is an aggravating feature in sentences, but we are examining the whole area. We have to make sure that we do not overcomplicate sentencing, because if we keep thinking of things that make the most serious offences even more serious, we threaten the consistency that has been described. However, the right hon. Gentleman makes an important point and we are reviewing this field in the light of the report we have received.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State examine the possibility of extending the concept of disability hate crime to include disability by association, thereby bringing the concept into line with the other measures in the Equality Act 2010? If he does not do that, cases such as that of Fiona Pilkington will not count as disability hate crime as she herself was not disabled.

[Mr Clarke]

I shall consider that point in the course of the work we are doing at the moment, but I do not want to encourage my hon. Friend too far because overcomplicating this does not necessarily help. What is important is that sentences should be allowed to reflect, in the most appropriate and consistent way, the disgust that the ordinary public feel when a crime is motivated by prejudice against a disabled person. It does make a crime even more serious than it would otherwise be.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I apologise for diverting the House to a rather different part of the debate, but my new clause 3, which I am pleased has support from Members across the House, is extremely important to a group of victims and their families—those for whom disability has been the motivation for murder or other violent crimes against disabled people. My new clause would apply the same minimum tariff in cases of murder in which disability has been a motivating factor as currently applies in similar cases with a sexual, racial or religious motivation. It would also shift the application of the aggravating feature of disability from being a matter of the victim being seen as vulnerable to a matter of the victim being at greater risk of harm, thereby firmly placing the obligation on the perpetrator.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I am delighted to support this new clause. Does the hon. Lady agree that although this might seem like an obtuse issue to hon. Members in the Chamber it is attracting great attention outside within the disabled community? Does she also agree that there will be utter incomprehension if we fail to make progress on this issue, which should be a simple matter of human dignity and equality?

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and he has raised this issue in the House and with the Lord Chancellor before. Many disability organisations and the families of victims of such crimes have contacted him and me to express their very deep concerns. I am particularly indebted to the Disability Hate Crime network, to Katherine Quarmby, an independent journalist, and to the Royal Association for Disability Rights. I am also especially indebted to Christine Oliver, the sister of Keith Philpott, who was a learning disabled victim of murder, for taking the time to talk to me about her family’s experience in relation to my bringing the new clause before the House.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will take back to my ministerial colleagues the fact that several respected Members have made that point quite strongly in the course of these exchanges. We are discussing it, and we know that we have to respond to it. On the question of which Department will eventually announce the outcome, I am not quite sure, because several Departments are involved, but we are all seeking to find a solution to it.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

The Howard League for Penal Reform’s recent report on short sentences makes it clear that one reason for the devastatingly high level of reoffending after sentences of under six months is a lack of adequate resettlement support for those leaving prison. In retaining shorter sentences, will the Secretary of State reassure me that more will be done to ensure that such prisoners are helped to have a useful and purposeful life after leaving prison?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s analysis. The reoffending rates are very bad for short-term offenders because they are often let out again without the follow-up that is given to more serious criminals. Of course, the problem is that one cannot simply extend the sentence. Short-term sentences remain suitable for some people. Indeed, some people do not really need help but would benefit from being put in prison—for example, uninsured drivers, about whom I was talking earlier today. People who are otherwise respectable and take no notice of the law by driving while uninsured will soon take notice if they are given a short prison sentence. They do not require rehabilitation when they are released; most will almost certainly not drive without insurance again. As for the others, we are where we are. Some people leave the magistrates no alternative because everything else has been tried and they keep offending. If we could get stronger community sentences and make them more magistrate-friendly, some of the people about whom my hon. Friend is concerned might be put on to a more constructive path that will help them to stop offending.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

The fundamental principle that we are following is that when security or liberty is at risk, legal aid should be provided. That is why we propose to maintain legal aid for asylum cases, but not for asylum support.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

A report last year from the Prison Reform Trust found that children with developmental disorders were being processed through the criminal justice system without their having much understanding of what was happening to them. As a consequence, they were more likely to have a custodial sentence imposed upon them than those who were more articulate and more able to defend themselves. Does the Secretary of State believe that that situation exists, and if so, how does he propose to remedy it?

[Mr Clarke]

I certainly agree that that is a very serious problem, and we intend to address it. I had a meeting yesterday evening with the Prison Reform Trust, the Women’s Institute and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary. Our two Departments, together with the Courts Service, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, hope to set up diversion route services for those who in fact require treatment for mental illness. Often, those people should be diverted out of the prison system and the criminal justice system altogether, both for their good and the good of society.

Prison is often not a suitable place in which to treat mental illness. I am told that no fewer than 3,000 prisoners appear to be in prison largely because that is the most convenient place to hold them while attempts are made to get them care and treatment for their condition.

Young Offenders

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and it is a great honour to speak about this important issue. This debate is informed by my visit during recess week to Barton Moss secure children’s home and Hindley young offenders institution. I pay full tribute to their work and to the obvious dedication and humanity of all the staff whom I met in both institutions. The Prison Reform Trust has also been invaluable in helping me think through what I intend to say.

It is fair to say that in few areas of public policy is the research more voluminous, more detailed or more comprehensive than in youth justice. There is always one more report to be read, one more document to be studied in detail or one more set of figures. I welcome the fact that the coalition Government and the Opposition have stressed their commitment to the principle of early intervention during the foundation years from nought to five, but I am concerned that a cohort of young people out there are already on the conveyor belt to crime, as it has been termed.

In preparing for this debate, I was pleased to reread the pamphlet issued in 2002 by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) that first set out the idea of a conveyor belt to crime. I was working in the Conservative research department when it was published, and it is a useful reminder that those were not the wilderness years we often felt them to be at the time. The pamphlet indicated to me that the conveyor belt does not stop at age five but runs right through to age 17.

Although much good work is being done on early intervention and preventing children from stepping on to the conveyor belt to crime, we must recognise that there is a significant policy challenge in what is almost a lost generation—those aged between four and 17 who may already be on that conveyor belt and who have already missed the benefits of Sure Start, family nurse partnerships and other initiatives. It was stressed to me at Barton Moss secure children’s home that the four to 10 age group is particularly important for policy makers to grapple with. We concentrate on the foundation years and the 15 to 18 age group, but a great deal does not always happen in between. I urge Government and think tanks to address the four to 10 age group.

Whenever we discuss criminal justice, we must ask big questions. What is the criminal justice system for? What is the relative balance between punishment and rehabilitation? Crucially, where is the victim in all this? Although it is tempting to embark on a great philosophical exploration of criminal justice, I will focus on a slightly narrower field of play, starting from shorter sentences.

I was struck when one of the professionals whom I met the week before last said to me, “Well, if they are in for eight weeks, at least we can sort out their teeth.” That might seem a slightly odd thing to say—surely the purpose of incarceration is not to address issues of oral hygiene—but the point is much more fundamental. Many of the people who enter the youth justice system have had chaotic lifestyles; many have never seen a dentist or engaged with health services; and many have dropped out of the education system. Even a short sentence can offer a brief opportunity to address some of those underlying problems.

It might be argued that many in the youth justice system have experienced a perfect storm. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 76% of those in the criminal justice system have an absent father, 51% come from deprived households, 39% have appeared on the child protection register, 28% have witnessed domestic violence, 14% have a parent with a physical, mental health or learning disability, 48% have been excluded from school, 31% engage in substance use, 20% engage in self-harm, 17% have a formal mental health diagnosis and 11% have attempted suicide.

I read out that litany not merely to emphasise the relative disadvantage faced by those in the youth justice system but to make a more fundamental and frightening point. The structure of our youth justice system seems to make it more likely that the most troubled in our society will be given custodial sentences, because their needs are thought to be far too complex to be dealt with in the community.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he share my concern that some young people suffering from Asperger’s syndrome do not necessarily get the treatment and diagnosis that they need, but are simply put down as mischievous, badly behaved troublemakers?

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend anticipates much of my speech. We certainly lack a fundamental ability to assess the needs of young offenders when they enter the youth justice system and determine how best to address those needs. They therefore end up in the secure estate without having been assessed properly, because the tools are not present in the system, which is a great worry that I shall discuss later. The conveyor belt appears to be constructed almost to minimise effective exit points before reaching the secure estate. That should be of great concern, because disadvantaged children face particular problems in both the courts and custody.

It goes without saying that reoffending by juvenile offenders is extremely high. Some 75% of those released from custody and 68% of those given community sentences or other disposals in the community reoffend within a year. Why is that? Undoubtedly, some of them commit crimes and are bad people, but for a significant number, the ineffective screening process and lack of appropriate tools for identifying behavioural and communication difficulties almost set them up to fail.

I welcome, for example, the Minister’s proposed amendments to the Bail Act 1976, which would remove the option of remand for young people who were unlikely to receive a custodial sentence, but I would also welcome an assurance from him that the alternatives will adequately protect vulnerable children. When I visited Barton Moss secure children’s home, I was struck by the fact that many children are remanded there on bail for their own protection and welfare, even though they might not end up receiving a custodial sentence. There must be no presumption against a custodial remand.

Equally, when offenders reach the youth court, they find disadvantage once again. Little is done to screen young offenders for mental illness, learning disability or speech, language and communication difficulties. It is no use imposing a disposal of any sort if the young person cannot comprehend the punishment or interpret what is occurring to them in what can be a very off-putting setting. I admit that I have never visited a youth court, but I can imagine the feelings of a nervous child entering that formal situation, uncertain of the process and of what is occurring.

I welcome the previous Government’s introduction of a witness intermediary scheme to help witnesses with speech and language problems or communication difficulties better to present their case in court, but I must ask why such assistance is not also afforded to defendants suffering from similar problems. Does a child’s impairment increase the possibility of custody, because it makes it more likely that they will fail to comply with a youth rehabilitation order, or because there is a lack of an appropriate youth justice programme that might enable compliance? If so, it is a damning indictment of the system. Is it really the aim of our society that eloquent children should be more able to plead for one last chance?

When children get to custody, they have what is called the Asset form, which is the primary document for interpreting children’s needs. Those forms are critical to the development of appropriate care and sentence plans, but they are structurally flawed, because they fail to identify speech, language and communication difficulties. They impair identification of individual problems and make it harder to address those difficulties during the time in custody, however short or long it may be. The inadequacy of Asset means under-reporting of those problems, and I believe that they are taken insufficiently seriously within public policy circles.

We should recognise that, thanks to Lord Bradley’s report, improvements have been made to the way in which mental health is addressed, but the situation is by no means perfect. Indeed, it is a success only relative to the absolute failure in terms of other needs. The consequences of that failure in screening and appropriate identification are severe. As I have said, we are setting young offenders up to fail, which manifests itself in the rapid increase in the numbers of young offenders who are returned to remand for breach of conditions. For example, someone might be given what is still called an ASBO—an antisocial behaviour order—and told that they cannot enter a particular road. However, their grandmother might live on the other side of that road and, if they cross it to see her and somebody spots them and reports them for it, that is a breach. It might get them sent back to a young offenders institution, but it seems to me to be a technical breach. It might even be that the young person cannot comprehend that to get to their grandmother’s house, they would be breaching an ASBO in the first place. If they do not receive appropriate care and an appropriate sentence plan, and if they have a basic lack of understanding of the process in which they are engaged and are incapable of engaging with the interventions provided for them, we are setting them up to fail.

The story is the same when they get to custody. Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, has said:

“Prisons can offer a short window of opportunity for the majority of young people who end up in custody…That is an opportunity that must not be wasted.”

I am concerned that it is being wasted in some instances. For example, it is critical that children who might have dropped out of the education system and have not acquired the basic skills of literacy and numeracy are re-equipped with them, if they are to fulfil a purposeful life once they are released. However, it is clear from written answers provided to me by the Minister that the number of such young people achieving literacy qualifications dropped from 2,104 in 2006-07 to just 1,350 in 2009-10. Similarly, the number completing numeracy courses dropped from 2,680 in 2006-07 to 1,813 in 2009-10. I doubt that that is simply because of a decrease in the numbers in those institutions. There is clearly something more structural going on, and I would welcome some more information on why it might be occurring.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good contribution. On his last point, does he recognise—I say this as a former Minister with responsibility for skills and training in prisons—that, although many young people are making progress in our prisons, we were not able to introduce schemes such as Building Schools for the Future in prison greatly to improve facilities? Does he also agree that it is important for young people on short sentences that their integration back into, usually, further education in the community happens in a real way?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that contribution, which raises a wider point about who owns the child when they progress through the criminal justice system. One of my concerns is that when someone transfers from their home local authority to the secure estate, their home council effectively washes its hands of them. When they have gone through pupil referral units—or educational diversity, as we call it in Blackpool—and then find themselves in a young offenders institution, it is almost like starting again. They are then released and, yet again, they start again when they are returned to their local authority. Again, there is a lack of cohesion.

I should also like to deal with the issue of the prison escort records of young offenders at young offenders institutions. I have been informed in a letter from the Ministry of Justice that the initial assessment of a prisoner’s language skills is made by the custody manager who completes the escort record, but there has been no national review of the quality or accuracy of those reception language assessments. There is no obvious evidence of the use of a tool that is approved by the professional bodies.

I do not believe that in custodial settings we have enough speech and language therapists. Speech and language intervention at Red Bank secure children’s home reduces the need for physical restraints from two to three times a day to just two times a week, but only 15% of youth offending teams have access to speech and language therapy. I am particularly concerned that the changes to prison health care and the re-assignment to the Department of Health risk worsening prison health care. I am concerned that a primary care trust in which a young offenders institution is located now has to take responsibility for all the young offenders in that institution. It is causing problems in relation to securing funding for the health care within that institution. Will the Minister comment on that and explain why the change has occurred and how he hopes to protect those in young offenders institutions who are in need of specialist health provision that PCTs now appear reluctant to fund?

We need to provide more exits in the community from the so-called conveyor belt. As I have said, I welcome the fact that we are trying to avoid the use of remand. I support the concept of local authorities bearing more of the burden of responsibility for the cost of youth justice in their community—a child from Blackpool does not cease to be a child from Blackpool when he is in Hindley young offenders institution—which was an idea raised by the recent Green Paper. Payment by results is another frequently cited intervention, but I am not sure that it is fully understood yet. I would welcome some reassurance that the schemes on offer are not merely a case of helping the low-hanging fruit first to demonstrate that the process works, but are focusing on those who are hardest to help.

Lord Bradley’s review, which I mentioned earlier, recommended that all youth offending teams have a suitable, qualified mental health worker with responsibility for making appropriate referrals. Child and adolescent mental health services are a particularly malfunctioning part of our health care system. The likelihood of CAMHS taking on a 15 to 17-year-old who presents for the first time with mental health problems is, I am afraid, pretty close to zero. Their view is that they will have to wait to be dealt with by the adult mental health care system. Structurally, that cannot be what is intended by any Government of any political persuasion. A child and adolescent mental health service has the word “adolescent” in it, which surely applies to the 15 to 17 age group.

I should also like to focus on the issue of transitional services for children entering adulthood, a period for which, in my view, there is no real age limit, because young people develop into adults at different ages. The issue will be covered in the forthcoming special educational needs Green Paper, but I hope that, just as early intervention was the public policy fad—if I may call it that—of the past decade, the transition phase will become the fad of the coming decade. It has been sorely neglected, which has had a damaging impact on the quality of public policy in this country.

We also have to consider the impact of arrangements for the release of young offenders. It is not acceptable to just hand them a travel warrant and £46.75 upon their release. I have suggested to the Minister that we increase that sum, because it is not enough. When I market-tested that with the professionals I met, it was not supported as much as I thought it might be. The point was made that, if we give them more money, cash in hand, we cannot control what they spend it on. Those professionals would far rather focus on handing out vouchers to meet the specific needs that those young offenders will face in their first 48 hours or so, rather than a cash payout.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful contribution. Does he agree that one of the most useful things that can be given to young offenders when they leave an institution is somewhere to live, and that ensuring that they have secure accommodation is one of the best ways of ensuring that they do no reoffend?

[Paul Maynard]

That is perhaps an example of our target culture. We measure the number of young offenders on release who have accommodation available to them, but we do not measure the quality or sustainability of that accommodation. There could be an address to go to, but that might be someone’s sofa. For the purposes of ticking the box, that sofa is regarded as a long-term solution, and I do not believe that it always is.

I would like to touch briefly on the issue of doli incapax, which is the pretentious term for considering the age of criminal responsibility. This is something to which I have given a great deal of thought, because most in the criminal justice system focus on the need to raise the age of criminal responsibility to the age of 14. I have thought closely about this. There is clearly a humanitarian instinct lying at the root of that proposal. My concern is that what we are actually discussing is nomenclature, rather than outcomes. I realised at Barton Moss that many of the children it looks after in that setting—that secure setting behind a locked gate—are not there because they have entered the youth justice system. They are there because their councils have put them there for welfare reasons. If the age of criminal responsibility is 12, and we allow councils’ welfare departments to look after those children, the end result might be no different. I have a severe concern that, by leaving that to a council’s social services welfare department, we will lose the many safeguards that are in the criminal justice system to ensure that the law is adhered to. As we all know, in tragic case after tragic case, social services are becoming more risk-averse in how they treat young people. That well-meaning recommendation might well have perverse consequences and I would argue strongly against it.

It is true that we should celebrate every small progress that is made by a child. Merely attending two consecutive appointments can be a triumph for some. We have to stress, however, that the youth justice system is never the place to try to address all of society’s ills, as tempting as that might be. The youth justice system is perhaps a place that can be used to catch up and to address that which has been overlooked, but we have to start, as a nation, to accept that more must be done in the community. I realise that the Minister is shifting the Youth Justice Board back in-house. I would welcome an assurance from him that youth justice will remain the responsibility of a separate unit, within the Ministry of Justice, dedicated solely to the under-18s. The Youth Justice Board has issued many useful reports that have underlined the inadequacies of various stages of the youth justice process, and it would be a great shame to lose that independent voice. It is still important that, whoever we are and whatever our organisation, we still speak truth unto power. I hope that the civil servants responsible for youth justice do not recoil from speaking truth unto the Minister, where that is required.

Equally, if all exit points from the conveyor belt to crime, which I keep referring to, are bottlenecked around the secure estate, that risks still being a dumping ground for all the children whose problems cannot really be accommodated within society at the moment. In my view, they should be accommodated within society. We should be able to cope with those who have complexity of need. It is a damning indictment of this country that, to address those problems, we have to send children to a secure estate, lock them away from society, and say that society does not want to have to deal with those problems.

I have been appalled by some of the populism I have heard in political debate about criminal justice in this House. It deeply disappoints me. The dignity of the individual is compromised by many of the conditions in the youth justice system. The victim, as well, fails to receive satisfaction. Satisfaction is the crucial word, because punishment has two elements: retribution and satisfaction. Retribution comes in the form of incarceration, which is a deprivation of liberty and freedom. That is where the victim receives recompense for the crimes done to them. Satisfaction, however, is just as important, because satisfaction is where there is recompense for the wider community whose laws have been offended. The key part of satisfaction is that we reduce the likelihood of reoffending—when a young person leaves the youth justice system, they are less likely to reoffend, and more likely to have a purposeful life in the community whose laws they offended in the first place.

If our youth justice system makes it more likely that the most vulnerable receive the harshest punishments, we, as a nation, must examine our consciences. Community solutions, at the appropriate moment, are the way forward. Equally, I recognise that to be done properly, those solutions must be intensive, with the costs up front. They are expensive, and I recognise that, but as the Audit Commission report in 2004 made clear, if only one in 10 of those who went into the youth justice system was catered for properly, the savings for the public purse could be as much as £100 million. We are back to the old argument that early intervention saves money, which requires ambition on the part of Ministers and the bravery to take decisions where the costs are up front, but the benefits are long term. I urge the Minister to continue on his well-meaning path towards trying to improve the youth justice system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

We accept that there are issues in terms of funding because a lot of advice is given as general advice and is mainly funded by local councils. We are in discussions across government about how we can approach the matter holistically to make sure that such provision stays in place.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that increasing the number of people in our prisons should not be an end of Government policy in itself, but rather that the prison population should reflect the number of indictable crimes committed?

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, although determining how many prisoners we should have can become a completely false argument, as that is determined in any event by the courts reacting to the level of crime and proposing appropriate sentences. We are determined to use prisons so that not only do they punish the offender, but, where possible, we can increase the number of offenders who are persuaded to give up crime when released and cease to offend thereafter, which will reduce the number of victims. I think that the approach taken by the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), is the common-sense approach and in the public interest.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

With great respect, I am obviously being particularly obscure today, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman; indeed, I was saying precisely the opposite of what he described. We have spent the last 10 years or so believing that sections of statute—some of which read rather like local government circulars—are required in order to tell the judges what to do in individual cases, and that we should prescribe exactly what they do, according to some careful analysis. The judges complain like mad about the incomprehensibility of the legislation they are supposed to be applying. I firmly agree with the hon. Gentleman that, by and large, judges are in the best position to judge the appropriate way of dealing with each case and each offender, just as juries are the right people to decide guilt or innocence in serious cases. Parliament must stop trying to second-guess and introduce rules that we believe, with the best of intentions, cover all cases but which will not cover the absolutely amazing variety of circumstances that tend to accompany any particular category of crime.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on avoiding the siren calls of populism that I have been so disappointed to hear on both sides of the House today. Will he reassure me that when a prisoner is in prison, not only does he have a duty to make reparations but the state also has a duty, to offer him the opportunity of redemption, so that when he leaves that place of incarceration he has a chance to lead a useful and meaningful life—a life that is not reduced to one of stigmatisation or described, as I heard from the Opposition Benches, as that of a prisoner on the streets?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. We should give those who have the backbone to go straight, with help, a chance to do so because that will protect the public. Those who do not, and who commit crime again, will be punished again. It is just hopeless to suggest that giving extra emphasis to reforming criminals who want to be reformed is somehow weakening in the context of law and order; it is not. It would improve the protection of the public if we did it, and, as my hon. Friend says, it is a perfectly sensible way for a civilised state to behave.