Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I will deal with my hon. Friend’s second point first. The answer is yes; that will not happen again. We have looked very carefully at that incident to ensure that there are no so-called health and safety policies that encourage such behaviour. As he knows, I made my views about it quite clear last week. On his first point, every incident of absconding is troubling and we need to crack down on it. That is why we are increasing the penalties for those who abscond and ensuring that only the right people find themselves in open conditions in the first place. He might be reassured to know that the level of absconding is 80% lower than it was under the previous Labour Government.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The Minister is a nice bloke, but he is giving the impression of being both complacent and out of touch. He will be aware that governors of overcrowded public prisons are being told to squeeze in more offenders without any additional resources or help. Can he confirm whether privately run prisons are taking on additional prisoners and, if so, how many, and what premium will they be charging the Government to get them out of their hole?

[Jeremy Wright]

Let me try to help the right hon. Gentleman with some facts. First, we certainly are asking private sector prisons to take some additional places. That is part of a contractual arrangement that is very similar to the one that was in place under his Government, which is perfectly standard business. Secondly, we are asking some prisons to take additional prisoners and asking some prisoners to share cells, which we do not think is unreasonable, in order to deal with the short-term spike that nobody anticipated. I suggest that the wrong thing would be to do as his Government did, which was to run out of prison places, then run out of police cell places, let thousands of people out early and then deal with the consequences. That is not a path we intend to take.

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[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker; I was about to make that point. I would also make the general point that there is clearly a large number of important criminal investigations going on at the moment, so it would be sensible to let them take their course before we decide what it is best to do next in this important and sensitive area.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

We have been saying for a while that Government policies would lead to a prison crisis, and they have. The wrong sort of offenders are being sent to the wrong sort of prison. That is not just our view but that of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb). When Michael Wheatley absconded last month and allegedly committed further offences, the Justice Secretary said that he would bring in new rules to prevent such occurrences from happening again. Today, the media are reporting that two men—one a killer, the other serving an indeterminate sentence—have absconded from Spring Hill prison. The police have warned the public not to approach the pair. Why is the Justice Secretary finding it so difficult to keep the public safe?

[Mr Speaker]

This is a matter of particular interest to me as that prison is in my own constituency, as the Secretary of State might know.

[Chris Grayling]

Mr Speaker, I can reassure you that the proportion of offenders who are sent to open prisons and who subsequently abscond is 20% of what it was when Labour was in power a decade ago. My question to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan)is—[Interruption.] Over the past few weeks, as this has become a more high-profile issue—[Interruption.] I do not believe that it is sensible for this country to scrap open prisons. I believe it is sensible to have tougher risk assessment procedures and not to transfer people to open conditions if they have previously absconded, and we have put those changes in place in the past couple of weeks. To listen to the right hon. Gentleman, anyone would think that he believed in scrapping open prisons altogether. Actually, they are helping to rehabilitate offenders. They need to be there; they are there for prisoners who are in the last few months of their sentence. Almost everyone who goes to an open prison behaves well and is able to be released safely at the end of their sentence. Is he actually saying that that should change?

[Sadiq Khan]

Nice soundbite, but people are absconding after the Secretary of State has made his changes. So much for keeping the public safe. Let me move on to the subject of temporary licence. Not only are the wrong sort of offenders being sent to open prisons, but the wrong sort are also being released on temporary licence. The use of these ROTL procedures has increased by 24% since 2010, with breaches of licence arrangements up by a staggering 57% in that period. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, in 2012, this Government relaxed the rules on temporary licence, and that PSI 21/2012 accepted that

“there will be an increase in the number of ROTL applications”?

[Chris Grayling]

The number of prisoners absconding from open prisons and while on temporary licence is a fraction of what it was a decade ago. I keep going back to that point. It is all well and good for Labour Members to rail against things when they are in opposition, but they now purport to be a potential party of government and yet they have nothing positive to say on how they would manage the system differently. I have tightened the regime and introduced tougher penalties for those who abscond. If the Opposition think that we should close down open prisons altogether, they should say so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

It is worth putting on the record the fact that the most recent figures show that the level of overcrowding in our prisons has fallen, not risen. Of course, there are challenges in parts of the prison estate—

[Sadiq Khan]

What?

[Chris Grayling]

Go and look at the figures. I can assure the shadow Secretary of State that the most recent figures show a reduction in the level of overcrowding in prisons. We are not in the position, as the previous Government were, of having to let prisoners out early because we have run out of space in our prisons.

Bronzefield Prison

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Ministerial Corrections

[Sadiq Khan]

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether (a) the prison governor or (b) another official gave permission for the performance of Sister Act in HMP Bronzefield in February and March 2014.

[Official Report, 23 June 2014, Vol. 583, c. 1W.]

Letter of correction from Simon Hughes:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on 23 June 2014.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Simon Hughes]

Former employees of the Trusts have transferred to the new organisations, namely the National Probation Service (NPS) and the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. A small number of chief executives have taken early retirement or are due to do so over the next few weeks. There have also been a number of departures at Assistant Chief Officer (ACO) level. These were part of the normal turnover of staff; details of these are not held centrally.

The correct answer should have been:

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, because the Deputy Prime Minister’s lack of knowledge is frankly shocking. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that a police officer would still have the discretion to decide not to charge little Johnny for carrying a penknife and that, even if he was arrested and taken to a police station, the custody officer and others would still be able to make the appropriate decision? It is completely wrong to say that the police’s hands will be tied if they stop a young person carrying an offensive weapon or a knife.

[Nick de Bois]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valid and pertinent point. I will put it much cruder: the scaremongering on penknives is absolute nonsense and defies common sense. I confirm exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has said. He and other Members may be interested to know that a scout leader—I seem to recall that scout leaders use penknives quite a lot—fully supported the proposals. He had no fear, so I hope the Deputy Prime Minister is reassured.

Let us accept that when an offender comes before a court for carrying a knife, current sentencing guidelines point to the expectation of prison. However, only one in four end up in prison. Our new clauses will make it clear to the court, the criminals, the public and the victims that the minimum expectation is a six-month sentence for over-18s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

I also begin by thanking Members from both sides of the House who have worked extremely hard during the passage of the Bill. The respective Front-Bench spokesmen have given a lot of time to the Bill and the various officials, Clerks and Members’ advisers have also worked hard.

There is no point beating about the bush—this is a poor Bill. We know that the Justice Secretary was sucking up to the Prime Minister when he begged his Cabinet colleagues earlier this year for Bills—any Bills—to fill the gaping hole in the parliamentary schedule. What he brought forward was a mish-mash of leftovers. Ministers have thrown into the Bill their scrag ends and afterthoughts, making for an incoherent mess. It is a Christmas tree Bill on which many baubles have been hung.

The Bill includes proposals for toughening up sentences. No one disagrees with the need to keep the public safe, but part 1 is about repairing the damage done by the Lord Chancellor’s predecessor, the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who abolished indeterminate sentences for public protection—IPPs—in 2012. The Justice Secretary is clearly embarrassed now by the actions of his predecessor, but he was not embarrassed when he marched through the Aye Lobby in support of the abolition of IPPs in 2012. Were it not for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, there would be little need for part 1 at all. Madam Deputy Speaker, you know, from your long experience, that a Government are in a mess when they reverse legislation that they themselves passed only two years ago.

The Justice Secretary’s secure college plans in part 2 are supported by no one. He calls them borstals when speaking to his Back Benchers, but uses softer language when he is talking to others. He is fooling no one. There is no evidence base to support the model. He has no justification for spending £85 million on a 400-place youth prison when the numbers of young people behind bars are down 65%. Nothing has been said on whether girls and the very youngest offenders will be thrown into the same prison, putting them in danger. The plans are so rushed and half-baked that the use of restraint being proposed is illegal. Yet Ministers have pushed ahead, with contracts being agreed on the construction before Parliament has even approved the measure—a discourtesy to colleagues in the Commons and the other place. This teenage Titan prison is a monument to the Justice Secretary’s ideologically fuelled hobby horses. The money would deliver so much more if spent on education, training and skills in existing establishments rather than on an unsafe vanity project.

On judicial review in part 4, the Lord Chancellor continues with his assault on our citizens’ rights. Not content with trying to dismantle legal aid and railing against human rights, he is now trying to limit judicial review as a means by which communities and citizens challenge the illegality of actions taken by public authorities, citing one or two bad cases to justify changes that affect many other potential good ones. I will not rehearse the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and I have already expressed on these judicial review changes during the Bill’s passage, but it is ironic that on the eve of the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary, when the Prime Minister is claiming to want to teach our children of its significance, the Government are depriving citizens and communities of their rights to challenge power.

We should not forget the 18 new clauses and schedules that the Justice Secretary tabled on Report—14 for today’s debate alone, some of which we have not even discussed. Those have received no decent scrutiny form the House. That indicates the disdain that the Justice Secretary shows towards this place.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I was unfortunate enough to practise at the Bar when the previous Government had 13 years and dozens of criminal justice Acts, most of which were highly inefficient and a great bar to proper justice. In relation to judicial review, what was the situation compared with Magna Carta 800 years ago and prior to 1971? We still have a judicial review system, however imperfect the right hon. Gentleman may think it is, and to criticise it as something that Magna Carta would lose by is laughable.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has read the Prime Minister’s article that was published on Sunday in which he talked about the importance of citizens’ rights and of empowering citizens, reminding us of a 13th-century king who gave citizens power to challenge power. The Justice Secretary clearly does not understand that it is ironic that, at a time when Ministers are reminding citizens of Magna Carta, they are taking away and diluting some of those citizens’ rights to challenge power. If he thinks that is acceptable, that is for him to explain. In the context of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, the changes to legal aid, and the attacks on human rights, the hon. Gentleman will accept when he is outside the Chamber—

[Guy Opperman]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I appreciate that a reshuffle is due and the hon. Gentleman needs to impress the Whips, but he will recognise during a quieter moment—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) knows that in all professional practice one stands when one is speaking; otherwise one does not speak.

[Sadiq Khan]

I was reminding the House of the 18 new clauses that the Justice Secretary brought before the House today, 14 of which we have seen for the first time and many of which have not been debated. His lack of respect for due process has led to him crow-barring many new proposals into the Bill. Some of them have merit, but we should at least have been able to debate them in detail. We have been deprived of that opportunity.

The clauses on wilful neglect by social care workers are a welcome move, as is the new offence regarding police corruption. However, without further scrutiny we do not know whether they, or the changes to planning decisions and personal injury claims, will do as the Government claim or whether there will be any unintended negative consequences. What is more, there are no impact assessments, so there is no sense of how much they will cost and who will benefit.

Efforts to tackle repeat knife crime are to be welcomed, even though the Government could not come to an agreed position. I am disappointed that during the course of his speech the Secretary of State made no mention of knife crime—that is one of the downsides of other people writing your speech for you. Ministers should give up any pretence that this Government are any longer a coalition. They are not; they are disintegrating by the day.

Unlike this Government, we have focused on the issue at hand, as it is only right that the seriousness of a second knife offence is recognised. It is crucial to send a strong signal that carrying a knife is unacceptable, even more so for those who repeatedly do so. The new clauses still give judges the power to apply important discretion as there may be circumstances when a prison sentence might not be appropriate. More importantly, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service will still have complete discretion to decide whether somebody should be charged with the relevant offence, despite what some would have us believe.

However, Labour Members know that it is a huge disservice to victims of knife crime to pretend that this change in the law is a panacea; it is not. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who is now in his place, recognises, as he said, that we need to do much more to educate people that carrying a knife is unnecessary and unacceptable, working in schools, colleges and youth clubs, and with families, to tackle the problem. Those approaches are not mutually exclusive. Only then will we divert people away from a destructive lifestyle.

Given the long list of unanswered concerns and late additions to the Bill that have passed without scrutiny, Labour Members cannot give it our support. Once more, we will be looking to the other place to refine and improve on these proposals and rescue the Government’s Bill from mediocrity.

Prison Overcrowding

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the Government’s response to the prison overcrowding crisis.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Let me start by challenging the premise of the question posed by the right hon. Gentleman. We do not have a prison overcrowding crisis. Today’s prison population is 85,359, against a total useable operational capacity of 86,421, which means we have more than 1,000 spare places across the prison estate.

By next April, we will also have opened an additional 2,000 places. That includes four new house blocks, which will start to open from the autumn. We also have a number of additional reserve capabilities to cope with unexpected pressures. At the time of the election next year, we will have more adult male prison places than we inherited in May 2010, despite having to deal with the financial challenges that the last Government left behind.

Since last September the prison population has started rising again. This has happened for a number of reasons, including the significant increase in the number of convictions for historic sex abuse. These are people who committed appalling crimes and probably thought they had got away with it. I am delighted to find the space for them behind bars.

As that increase has been greater than expected, I have agreed to make some reserve capacity available to ensure that we retain a sufficient margin between the number of places occupied and the total capacity of the system until the new prison buildings come on stream later this year. That means in reality that in a number of public and private prisons a few more prisoners will have to share a cell for a few weeks. We might not need those places, but I would rather they were available in case we did need them.

I am also taking steps to address what I believe is a weakness in our prison system: the fact that we have no access to the kind of temporary or agency staff routinely found in our health and education systems. I am establishing a reserve capability among former staff to give us the flexibility to adapt to short-term changes of population by bringing reserve capacity into operation. We currently have some staff shortages in London, particularly because of the rapid improvement in the labour market, and this step will help us to cover any gaps.

Let me also set out for the House how we are managing the prison estate. My objective is to bring down the cost of running the prison estate while maintaining capacity levels. An important part of that is replacing older, more expensive prisons with new or refurbished capacity that is less expensive to run. For example, in the past two years we have opened 2,500 new places, with a further 2,000 places due to open in the next nine months. That has enabled us in that period to close a little over 4,500 places in older prisons, saving us a total of £170 million during the current spending review period.

In addition, we have launched a benchmarking programme across the prison estate to bring down costs. I introduced this programme in the autumn of 2012 as an alternative to privatisation, at the request of the Prison Governors Association and the Prison Officers Association. Indeed, the leaders of the Prison Officers Association sat in my office and described my decision to do so as a “victory” for them. I am grateful to our staff for their hard work in taking these difficult changes forward.

The programme of change has been praised by the National Audit Office and by the Public Accounts Committee and its chairman. The National Audit Office said recently:

“The strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past.”

We will end this Parliament with more adult male prison places than we inherited, more hours of work being done in prisons than we inherited, more education for young detainees than we inherited, and a more modern, cost-effective prison estate than we inherited. That is anything but a crisis.

[Sadiq Khan]

The complacency of the Justice Secretary and the extent to which he is out of touch are breathtaking. He appears to think there are no problems in our prisons and that MPs can be kept in the dark about the fact that Ministers are demanding that already overcrowded prisons squeeze in another 400 inmates over the next few weeks. For example, Wandsworth prison in my constituency, which should have 943 inmates, currently has 1,597 and is operating at 169% capacity. But that is not the worst of it. This Justice Secretary has asked it to provide even more spaces.

MPs are kept in the dark about the fact that over the past five months 600 emergency places have been bought from G4S, Serco and Sodexo—at what cost we do not know. We are kept in the dark about the fact that prison staff who were made redundant and paid off are now being paid to return to work owing to the chronic shortage of staff—at what cost we do not know.

The Justice Secretary seems to think that there are no problems in our prisons. The NAO and the PAC do not agree with him. The chief inspector of prisons disagrees, as we heard this Saturday, and as he has said in every report he has written over the past two years. We disagree, prison governors disagree, prison staff disagree, experts disagree, and bereaved families disagree. Last month alone there were 11 self-inflicted deaths in our prisons. The Education Secretary may laugh; those families do not laugh. Can the Justice Secretary confirm that that was the case last month? Can he also confirm that last year self-harming, suicides and assaults on staff in adult male prisons went up?

Since May 2010, this Government have closed 18 prisons and cut 6,000 staff, yet the prison population remains broadly the same. This crisis is of the Government’s own making. Does the Justice Secretary think that there is any link between that and the 60% rise in the use of the riot squad to deal with serious disturbances in our prisons last year? Does he accept responsibility for the fact that it is his policies that have led to the wrong sorts of prisoners being sent to open prisons and released on temporary licence? Does he agree with the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in whose constituency Ford prison is located and from which 90 offenders are currently on the run? He said on Saturday:

“It’s becoming a pattern…the wrong people are being sent to Ford.”

When did the Justice Secretary’s officials first warn him about the need to take emergency measures to deal with the most recent shortage of prison places? How many prisons are currently operating on half regime because of staffing shortages, meaning that prisoners are not working or going on courses, as they should be? What additional contingencies does he intend to put in place to deal with the possibility of disturbances in prisons?

On this Government’s watch our prisons have become unsafe warehouses, rather than places where offenders can be rehabilitated. It is important that we get answers to these crucial questions if the public are to have confidence that prisons will continue to punish and reform while keeping prisoners, prison staff and the public safe.

[Chris Grayling]

Having listened to those comments, Members might never know the truth. Prison overcrowding is lower under this Government than it was in the last four years of the previous Labour Government. Let me walk the right hon. Gentleman through the operational capacity for adult males in our prisons: in May 2010 it was 80,269; today it is 82,395; and in 2015 it is predicted to be 85,133. That means the capacity for men in our prisons is increasing. The tornado squads, which deal with serious incidents, have dealt with half the level of activity seen in 2007.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman needs a little bit of a lesson in what a prison capacity crisis really is. It is having to introduce a special scheme to let prisoners go home after serving a quarter of their sentence because there are not enough places to keep them in. That is what Labour did. It is deciding to shorten everyone’s sentence by a few weeks because they did not plan for the places needed. That is what Labour did. They let out more than 80,000 people early, and 1,500 of them committed suspected crimes when they should have been in prison. That is my definition of a prison overcrowding crisis, and it happened under Labour. Now they have the nerve to call sensible contingency planning a crisis, even though they were the ones who were forced to rent out thousands of police cells across the country because they ran out of space.

I make no apology for the fact that under this Government more people are going to prison, and they are going to prison for longer. I have a strategy in place to ensure that we will always have the space for them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

That issue applies particularly to judicial review. The proposals set out in the Bill currently before the House would set an appropriately high bar that will do precisely what my hon. Friend says. There must be a bona fide strong case that goes forward to the courts before the taxpayer will pay the bill.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I welcome the Justice Secretary’s reassurance, in answer to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), that families like those of Jean Charles de Menezes and Jimmy Mubenga would get legal aid at inquests even though they are not British citizens. But can he explain to the House how it is in the public interest, and somehow good, for the women at Yarl’s Wood detention centre who were sexually assaulted by guards, for the Gurkhas refused entry to the UK or for care home residents like those at Winterbourne View to be denied legal aid?

[Chris Grayling]

What divides us is the fact that the Government must take hard decisions. The Labour party has argued for reductions in legal aid; it had plans for reductions in legal aid in its manifesto but now, in opposition, it is trying to prevent reductions in legal aid. That is, I am afraid, another example of the Labour party saying one thing and doing another.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I expressed a willingness to work with the criminal Bar to try to create a more streamlined, more efficient, less expensive system. It is a matter of regret to me that the criminal Bar continues to decline to take important cases, and that is a matter that we are addressing hard at the moment.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), whom I have notified of this question, had private means so he could afford the best defence, and justice, in his case, was done; but he finds himself more than £100,000 out of pocket. That has caused him publicly to question his support for the Government’s legal aid plans, which have led to a two-tier justice system. What advice does the Lord Chancellor give to anyone charged with a serious criminal offence who is not fortunate enough to have their own private means, to help them get a fair trial?

[Chris Grayling]

My advice to such people is simple: to apply for criminal legal aid. In a serious case such as the one to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, they will have access to a QC, who will represent them.

[Sadiq Khan]

That is not the experience. The CPS has a QC and two barristers, but all people get on legal aid is a junior barrister. That leads to a two-tier criminal justice system. In answer to a previous question the Justice Secretary said that he could not answer questions about Operation Cotton because it is sub judice. I understand what sub judice is. My question is simple. How many other cases are similarly affected by applications to stay the trial because a fair trial cannot take place? The answer is not sub judice.

[Chris Grayling]

These are matters for the courts. I have no idea how many cases are subject to a request for a stay because those requests do not come to me personally. Two years ago Labour attacked our changes to civil legal aid. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) attacked our changes to civil legal aid, saying that we should be looking for reductions in criminal legal aid instead. Two years later the Opposition have conveniently forgotten that and have changed their position totally. That is a party that says one thing and does another.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

As my hon. Friend will appreciate, there will be a variety of different futures for those leaving Northallerton. She knows already that the decision to close that establishment is no reflection whatever on the efforts of the staff who were based there. I can tell her that 34 staff have taken up the option of voluntary early departure.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Prison numbers have been going up and prison staff going down. The Department’s own figures show that the national tactical response squad, the prison riot squad, was called out 72% more times last year than in 2010, more prisoners and prison staff are being assaulted and deaths in custody were the highest for a decade. To state the obvious, none of that is conducive to rehabilitation. Is any of this the responsibility of this Government, and what does the Minister intend to do about it?

[Jeremy Wright]

Of course management of the prison estate is the responsibility of this Government, as indeed when the last Government were in power it was theirs. There is a variety of reasons why the tornado teams attend, and the serious incidents that they attend are at roughly half the level they were under the last Government, so the right hon. Gentleman needs to be clear about the statistics he uses. Frankly, if he spent a bit more time doing the job he has and a bit less time chasing the Mayor of London’s job, he might get those things right. But let us get something else very clear. It is important that we maintain a safe, secure and decent estate, and that is exactly what we will do. Where there are increased levels of assault, which I agree are a matter of concern, we need to address that in a number of ways, and that is exactly what we are doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

I think that we have an excellent Victims Commissioner, who does the job extremely well.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Part-time.

[Damian Green]

One of the most ironic heckles I have ever heard is the shadow Justice Secretary shouting “Part-time”, when that is the method that he adopts to his job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am looking forward to visiting Northumberland shortly and seeing some of the work that is being done. This is enormously important. It is particularly important that we have really close links between the efforts provided to help people into employment and the efforts put into helping them to sort their lives out once they have left prison. Those two areas are integrally linked, and that work is immensely important.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Does the Justice Secretary think there is a problem with young men in particular being radicalised in our prisons? If so, what is he doing about it?

[Chris Grayling]

There is certainly a real issue. We have seen over the years the radicalisation of young men in prisons. We now have a first-rate team of imams in our prisons who are carefully selected and I have met a number of them. They are putting together carefully constructed programmes to help steer people away from radicalisation. I pay tribute to the work they do in often difficult circumstances and I believe they can really make a difference.

[Sadiq Khan]

The sorts of things that the Prime Minister’s extremism taskforce, experts, governors and staff are saying are required are enhanced monitoring, better intelligence gathering, staff trained to recognise and deal with the issue, a dedicated expert unit within the Prison Service, a specialist programme to target prisoners and spare capacity for governors. What resources and how much personal attention is the Justice Secretary giving to that?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me assure the right hon. Gentleman that all of those things are, in fact, currently happening. The last meeting I had to discuss those issues took place in the past two weeks. It is a matter of great concern to my colleagues on the Front Bench and to me, and we will continue to work at it. I again pay the greatest of tributes to the staff involved in this work on the front line and the imams who are doing such good work in shaping the education programmes that can make a real difference. I think that there is agreement across the House that we need to ensure that the work is effective and delivers real results for us. I am very confident in the team who are doing it.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Let us be frank: this Bill has come from nowhere. If the Government really wanted a new justice Bill, the obvious place to trail it would be in the imminent Queen’s Speech, not today with a Second Reading towards the dreg ends of this parliamentary Session. So what is going on? With 15 months to go until the general election, experienced heads around Parliament say that it has never been so quiet.

We know the old saying that the devil makes work for idle hands. Recent weeks have certainly shown that to be the case, with the Government suffering a number of troubling episodes with their own Back Benchers, perhaps in no small part because the thin legislative programme leaves their own sides twiddling their thumbs. Nature abhors a vacuum; so too does Parliament. Disquiet, plotting and rebellions tie the Government in knots, leading to the absurd situation in which the Opposition had to step in and vote down a Tory Back-Bench amendment on the Government’s own Immigration Bill—an amendment that broke the rule of law—while the Conservative majority in the coalition sat on their hands. Has anyone heard of anything so pathetic? We have a governing party that could not even vote in favour of its own Bill, and a Lord Chancellor who swears an oath to uphold the law but who could not even bring himself to vote for that rule of law.

We can guess what happened. The Prime Minister had probably sent out a desperate memo, pleading with Cabinet colleagues to bring forward legislation—any legislation—to fill the pitiful gap in parliamentary schedules and to keep Tory Back Benchers happy and busy. Who was the only willing and eager star pupil to respond? Who was as keen as mustard to be top of the class? Yes, it was the Justice Secretary. I can see his response to the Prime Minister. It would start, “Dear Dave”. I appreciate that that is not parliamentary etiquette, but he is known as the “Call me Dave” Prime Minister.

The letter would go on, “I read your memo, begging for legislation to make it look like this Government are doing something, and also to keep those pesky, ungrateful Back Benchers happy. I know they hold you responsible for not winning the last general election. I am only too willing, Dave, to rush forward some legislation. It is a bit of a Christmas tree Bill, but it does mean that we can shove on as many baubles as we want. After all, the more tabloid friendly stuff might keep UKIP off our backs, along with those ungrateful Back Benchers of yours. Yours sincerely, Chris.”

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I give way to the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Does the right hon. Gentleman see real benefit in returning to the days of a Labour Government when there was a criminal justice Bill every year—sometimes there were two—that often repealed a previous Bill and was often not brought into force?

[Sadiq Khan]

I am really pleased that the right hon. Gentleman asked that question. This is the third justice Bill of this Session. Two of the Bills have not yet received Royal Assent, and the Government are having a third bite of the cherry. Furthermore, the Justice Secretary tried to rewrite history. During our 13 years in government, crime did not go down by 5%, 10% or even by 20%; it went down by 43%, and that was according to independent statistics and not to dodgy figures that the Justice Secretary likes to rely on.

This latest criminal justice Bill is having its Second Reading before either of the other criminal justice Bills —the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill and the Offender Rehabilitation Bill—that the Chair of the Select Committee was so keen to support have even received Royal Assent. Talk about desperation! The Select Committee Chairman should listen. We know the Government are in a mess when they bring in new laws to amend laws that they passed only a year ago, as some parts of this Bill seek to do. That is the mess this Government are in, and that is the shambolic way they are running our justice system.

I will not go through every one of the Bill’s 63 clauses, but I want to make myself clear. There are some elements of this Bill we support, some need further work and there are some we downright oppose. In part 1 of the Bill, the Government attempt to make up for the error they made when they abolished indeterminate sentences for public protection. I know that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) feels strongly about that. They cannot admit they got it wrong and do a 180° U-turn, so they are doing a partial U-turn by bringing in a raft of new sentence proposals

Of course we support keeping the public safe from the most serious and violent criminals. That is why we opposed the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the previous Justice Secretary, when he removed from judges the power to make IPPs to protect the public. To be fair to the current Justice Secretary, he would never have countenanced abolishing that power, but he cannot admit that because he voted for its abolition. We therefore have clause 3 and schedule 15 eligibility for life sentences and extended determinant sentences to try to address the mistakes of the Legal Aid, Sentences and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

Giving the Parole Board a say in whether some of the most serious criminals should be released at half time or when they reach two thirds of their sentence is no substitute for judges having the power when sentencing to impose an indeterminate sentence to protect the public. That will give the Parole Board an extra work load, yet I bet that the Justice Secretary cannot tell the House what extra resources he will give it to do its job properly. Silence. The Ministry of Justice’s impact assessment estimates that there will be at least an extra 1,100 parole hearings owing to the Bill. If all the supplementary work involved is added, there will be a huge addition to the Parole Board’s work load. How will that be resourced? Silence.

Surely even this Justice Secretary understands that a poorly resourced Parole Board making the wrong decisions about whether to release someone is as bad as automatic release. Wrong decisions made by the Parole Board because of an overburdened and stretched staff help no one; nor do delays in getting a hearing because of a backlog. There are problems and delays in prisoners getting the courses and treatments that they need as part of their sentencing plans and delays in getting a parole hearing, but let us imagine what the future holds.

Increasing the maximum for a handful of offences still leaves many offences uncovered that would have previously allowed a judge to give a more appropriate sentence to protect the public. By the way, although we do not oppose them, let us be clear that the provisions to increase the maximum life sentences for certain terrorism-related offences look tough, but the Ministry of Justice impact assessment confirms that this is a classic con trick. Do hon. Members know how many offenders were convicted in 2013 for the offences of either weapons training for terrorist purposes or training for terrorism? None. What about 2012? None. This new toughness will affect no one. None of those offences is being brought before the courts, so there is no one to punish and no one to deter. I wonder how the Justice Secretary intends to measure the impact of the change. He does not know. This is all about appearing to look tough.

[Chris Grayling]

If the right hon. Gentleman looks back, he will see that in the latter part of the past decade in the wake of the London bombings, our security services did a fine job of intercepting a number of terror plots. In that time, a number of people received 10-year jail sentences, which is the maximum available to the courts. On at least one occasion, the judge bemoaned his inability to provide a longer jail sentence because of the risk he believed the individual posed to the public. Happily, there are not large numbers of such cases. I think we would all agree that we do not want to see more of them. I hope that the provision will not be used very often, but it needs to be there in case it is necessary.

[Sadiq Khan]

The right hon. Gentleman confirms that he made a huge error in abolishing the indeterminate sentence to protect the public. He is trying to give the impression of being tough and providing the facilities that our security services need, but in fact the evidence suggests that there have been zero prosecutions for such offences.

Labour has led calls for something to be done about the inappropriate use of cautions for serious and violent offences, such as rape, and to stop those who repeatedly receive cautions. Those are not my words but something that the Library paper that accompanies the Bill says. The shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has raised this, as indeed have I, at Justice questions. It has taken the Government some time even to admit that there is a problem with the growth of inappropriately used cautions for serious and violent offences.

I can remember the Justice Secretary getting into a tangle at Justice questions when trying to explain cautions for rape and saying that victims are to blame and that cautions are given because victims withdraw their statements. We must study in detail the proposals to see whether they will indeed address the public’s growing concern that the overuse of cautions is another example of this Government’s doing justice on the cheap.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Library briefing paper. He will have noticed that the highest number of both cautions and fixed penalty notices were issued in 2007, under the last Government. They are down by 45% today, which shows the contrast between the last Government and this Government.

[Sadiq Khan]

If the hon. Gentleman had done some more research and read the Bill as well, he would have seen not only that the number of cautions had started going down considerably but that this Bill does nothing to address the increased use of fixed penalty notices, penalty notices, warnings and conditional cautions. I expect that he will support our amendments in Committee when we try to improve this hopeless Bill.

Taken as a whole, the changes in part 1 of the Bill will see more people in our prisons. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment estimates that an additional 1,050 prison places will be needed. However, as of last Friday there were just 510 places left in the whole prison system, with the secure estate operating at in excess of 99% capacity, which usually sees Operation Safeguard kicking in. The Justice Secretary needs to be straight about where he plans to keep these additional prisoners: with his flagship Titan prison not due on stream until 2017, the public have a right to know that.

[Chris Grayling]

If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the numbers, he will see that we are planning in the next 15 months to open up around 2,000 new adult male prison places.

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[Sadiq Khan]

The problem is that the Justice Secretary is closing down prisons and does not explain where the money for these additional prison places will come from. His own impact assessment is silent on that.

[Chris Grayling]

There is a simple answer—those figures are in the budget.

[Sadiq Khan]

They are not in the budget, because the average cost of a prisoner is £42,000 a year. If we multiply that figure by the increased number of prisoners that the Justice Secretary’s impact assessment says there will be—1,050—it comes to a total of £44 million a year. That is not in the budget.

[Chris Grayling]

The right hon. Gentleman needs to spend a bit of time doing maths. I simply point, for example, to the new house block that will open at Parc prison in south Wales in the next few months, where the average cost per prison place is about £15,000.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am happy to have a ding-dong with the Justice Secretary. That figure applies in prisons such as Oakwood, which are failing—new purpose-built prisons. In a prison such as the one I visited last week in Winchester the average cost is £42,000; in a prison such as Wandsworth, it is £44,000; in Brixton, £46,000; and in Pentonville, £48,000. He is just plucking figures out of thin air and assuming that all 87,000 prisoners have the same £15,000-a-year cost. That is not the case and he has to be honest enough to recognise that there are far too many expensive prison places because of the legacy of his cancelling the new prisons and closing down too many over the last four years.

The concern is that the Justice Secretary talks a good talk, especially when briefing the right-wing media, but he simply does not care about or pay attention to detail, as he is working on the basis that he will be long gone before any of his mess needs to be cleared up. After all, he left a huge mess in the Department for Work and Pensions with his Work programme. He is assuming that somebody else will be left to pick up the pieces of privatising probation, of legal aid and of this prison population crisis.

[Dr Huppert]

While the right hon. Gentleman is in the mood to do mathematics, will he advise us of the extra cost to the public purse of the extra 30,000 people in prison between the beginning of the last Labour Government and the end of the last Labour Government? Will he give us an estimate of how much that cost?

[Sadiq Khan]

If we did a cost-benefit analysis of the number of people who were saved the misery of being the victims of crime as crime went down by 43%, and of the additional cost of having extra police officers, which led to a record decrease in crime, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that there was value for money.

[Keith Vaz]

As my right hon. Friend knows, there is a large number of foreign national prisoners in the prison estate, costing the taxpayer, as he says, an enormous amount of money. What we need is not legislation but a focus on trying to get them removed to their country of origin. Making sure that that is done would be a better use of the Government’s time than building more prisons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

My right hon. Friend will know that the number of foreign prisoners in our prisons is just a bit above 10,000. That has been the figure for the past four years, and the Government have done nothing to get it down. They would do better to pay attention to getting it down, rather than to getting headlines in the Daily Mail or The Daily Telegraph. That would free up places and lead to a huge improvement.

We broadly welcome the direction of travel on electronic monitoring, subject to clarification on costs and technical developments; the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) raised some of the concerns that we have that need to be addressed. We will closely scrutinise the ability of the Ministry of Justice properly to monitor the private companies awarded the contracts, to ensure that the public get value for money and the Ministry is no longer taken for a ride.

We do not oppose the plans relating to automatic release and recall, and we welcome clause 16, which bans the possession of extreme pornographic images depicting rape. A number of victim groups and experts have called for that change, and the Government and the Justice Secretary should be commended for listening to the evidence.

I turn to the second part of the Bill, on youth justice. It is worth pausing to reflect on the dramatic fall over the past 10 years or so in the number of young people held in custody. The most recent figures show a drop of more than 60%. I pay tribute to the hard work of the Youth Justice Board and youth offending teams up and down the country. I am proud of Labour’s record in setting up the YJB, which led to these falls. I wish the outgoing chair well and the new chair the best of luck in his endeavours. The YJB’s innovative ways of working have delivered enormous economic and social benefits to society, and I for one am delighted that we were successful in keeping it doing its important job, rather than it being abolished two weeks ago, as the Government had wanted.

We have reached a hard core of young offenders in our youth justice system, and that brings a different set of challenges. As has been said, reoffending rates for this hard core remain stubbornly high. The Government’s preferred solution is secure colleges, and the Bill paves the way for their introduction. Ministers have announced only one so far, in Leicestershire. Construction will not start until 2015. There is no clear idea of where the £85 million that it will cost will come from, or what will be cut to find the money. It smacks of another commitment made by this Justice Secretary for which the next Government will be left to pick up the tab. In Committee, we will need to get down to the details, but already a number of groups have expressed concerns about the plans. There will be just one secure college; either it will be a huge college for the whole country—a teenage Titan prison, with all the problems that will entail—or only those in the east midlands will benefit.

There are also concerns about how restraint is planned to be used in the new secure college, and how the college will address the problems underlying offending, such as mental health problems, drug and alcohol addiction—mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—and histories of abuse, trauma and violence. It is also unclear, despite the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), what provision is planned for young females. There is a concern, to be frank, that this is a return to the discredited borstal system.

Nor have the Government made clear their intentions for the network of secure children’s homes. Granted, those are expensive, but I have visited them and seen at first hand the range of severe problems that young people there have to deal with. Extreme caution is needed before this group of highly vulnerable people is lumped in with the wider youth justice system.

We will want convincing that forking out £85 million on bricks and mortar is better than spending the money on improving the amount of education and rehabilitative work in the existing secure training centre network. I see that the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice is here; the Justice Committee recently argued for a “fundamental shift” of resources from custody to early intervention with young people at risk of reoffending. It also made the point that most young offenders would not be in custody long enough—the average is 79 days—for the secure college to do any good in improving basic skills and addressing offending behaviour. A number of experts have also raised concerns, which we shall explore in Committee.

The third part of the Bill proposes changes in our courts. On the face of it, efforts to speed up court proceedings and make them more efficient—for example, by ensuring easier and quicker appeals to the Supreme Court, and by having magistrates courts deal with lower-level offenders faster—are to be welcomed, but this should not be to the detriment of proper open justice or due process. The Civil Justice Council, the Magistrates Association and others have expressed concerns that we should explore in Committee. Similarly, no one opposes convicted criminals being made to make amends for their crimes. The Government now wish to tack a charge on to those found guilty towards the cost of their trial. There have been difficulties collecting fines and the victim surcharge from guilty criminals, sometimes as a result of organisational problems, but sometimes because criminals simply do not have enough money. There are between £1.4 billion and £2 billion in uncollected fines, and only this weekend it was reported that £13 million in victim surcharge had failed to be collected by the Government. I am sure that the Justice Secretary did not mean it when he said that that was because they are all dead, or that outsourcing all of this will solve all the problems. We will seek guarantees that this will not be yet another trumpeted announcement that ends in failure down the years as non-payments rack up and are written off.

It is right that the law on jurors and the use of the internet keeps up to date with the march of technology. I, too, am pleased that the Government have listened to the recommendations of the Law Commission in that respect. However, as Members will recall from the high-profile trial of Vicky Pryce, there are problems with juries not understanding their role sufficiently, and we shall explore what steps can be taken to educate and inform the public and jurors about the important civic function of jury service so that it is less of an alien process to them. I welcome proposals to raise the juror age limit to 75.

The fourth part of the Bill deals with changes to judicial review. In a country without a written constitution, we tinker at our peril with important checks and balances such as judicial review without proper thought. We know the Lord Chancellor’s view on judicial review from a piece for the newspaper that he and his SpAds prefer to brief—the Daily Mail. He said that

“judicial review…is not a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners. So that is why we are publishing our proposals for change…Britain cannot afford to allow a culture of Left-wing-dominated, single-issue activism to hold back our country from investing in infrastructure and new sources of energy”—

news, I am sure, to Conservative Back Benchers and local authorities that have been involved in JRs against Heathrow expansion, High Speed 2 and, no doubt in future, wind farms and fracking.

Let me explain the position to the Justice Secretary in plain English without any long legal words or gobbledegook. MPs, individual citizens, community groups, organisations and local authorities are not

“part of a culture of Left-wing dominated”

campaigners when they legitimately ask the judiciary to review decisions made by public authorities, including Ministers.

To be frank, delays in HS2 or Crossrail 2, the lack of houses being built or of big infrastructure are more to do with the incompetence and policies of this Government than with judicial review. It is hardly surprising that people believe that the Justice Secretary’s true intentions are to insulate his Government’s bad decision making from any kind of challenge. The Government have also sought to rein in legal aid and no win, no fee cases; to gag campaign groups with their shoddy Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014; and constantly to attack human rights laws—there is a pattern. These are the tools by which our citizens hold Governments to account, and the Government are weakening them.

[Kate Green]

I am glad that my right hon. Friend makes that point, because the Justice Secretary is quite wrong to suggest that the majority of judicial review cases are about campaigners making campaign points. They are about individuals who have suffered personal injustice at the hands of an over-powerful state, and we ought to maintain that ultimate protection for those individuals, many of whom are disabled, many of whom are vulnerable, and many of whom are poorly educated. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that, whatever the Justice Secretary presents as the effect of these changes, the reality is that it is vulnerable individuals who lose out the most?

[Sadiq Khan]

Absolutely. The concerns are that as a consequence of the changes decisions made by Ministers and other public authorities will be put above the rule of law. Those authorities will almost be free to do as they please, to the ludicrous extent that breaking the law appears to be of no concern to the Justice Secretary.

It is clear the Justice Secretary’s measures are underpinned by a majoritarian view of the world in which democracy is only about elections, and those who win can do as they please in between. I would be more sympathetic if the Conservatives had actually won the last general election. The Justice Secretary’s policies are dangerous. Democracy is more than elections: I am not alone in that view, and neither is my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston. Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls, said that

“there is no principle more basic to our system of law than the maintenance of the rule of law itself and the constitutional protection afforded by judicial review.”

The former Lord Chief Justice, the esteemed Lord Woolf, said:

“In our system, without its written constitution embedded in our law so it can't be changed, judicial review is critical.”

He also said that the Ministry of Justice has shown a

“remarkable lack of concern for the precision of the facts”.

Joe Rukin, co-ordinator of the Stop HS2 campaign—that infamous left-wing dominated campaign group—said:

“The government seem to be making out that they believe any of their infrastructure plans should be above the law and do not realise that it is essential in a democratic society to be able to hold the government to account”.

[Chris Grayling]

It is the case, if I am not mistaken, that HS2 can happen only if the relevant measure is passed in legislative form by both Houses of Parliament. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that the courts and people outside Parliament should be able to override democratic decision making by the elected House and the House of Lords?

[Sadiq Khan]

That question raises so many concerns about the Justice Secretary’s lack of knowledge that it is really worrying. Citizens should be able to challenge the decisions that are made by Ministers, including him and Labour Ministers. That might mean that the courts find that some Government decisions are wrong. For example, they might find against plans to expand Heathrow with a third runway. We have to accept that decisions made by the Executive should be able to be challenged by the judiciary. He should accept the important concept of the separation of powers. We provide checks and balances for the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature. We are not a country in which the Cabinet can do whatever it likes.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am slightly perturbed by what the right hon. Gentleman has said. These are not decisions that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has said the Government would take—he was talking about decisions that Parliament would take. What is essential in a democratic system is that the will of the people exercised through Parliament is sovereign, not judges who have been elected by nobody.

[Sadiq Khan]

I do not subscribe to the view that citizens have a role to play only once every five years. They have a role to play in an active democracy between elections as well. That is the difference between the hon. Gentleman’s majoritarian view and mine. The irony is that the Foreign Secretary gets it. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the Foreign Secretary in the statement on Ukraine and Syria, he would have heard what he had to say. It is a shame that the Justice Secretary and the hon. Gentleman did not listen to what the Foreign Secretary said about the importance of the rule of law.

[Robert Neill]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I shall make some progress, but I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman.

I hold up my hands up as a former Minister and admit that for someone who is part of the Executive the threat of being judicially reviewed can sometimes feel like a nuisance. Judicial review can be a pain for decision makers, but that is the point. It is about making sure that decisions are taken properly, follow due process and are within the laws of the land. If we expect our citizens to abide by the rule of law, the Government should be no different, which means acting lawfully, not scaring off opponents before the game has begun, or imposing huge consequences on the team that loses. To stretch the sporting analogy further, under their proposals, the Government would be playing down a steep slope for the full 90 minutes, defending a much smaller goal than the one into which they would be trying to score. Their opponents would be running uphill for the whole game, and have a much smaller set of goalposts to aim at. That is not fair, and it is not justice.

It is worth noting what is not in the Bill. Despite all the Government’s recent talk about victims, there is nothing about a victims law—what a missed opportunity—which will disappoint not just victims and potential victims but no doubt the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has been vocal in her support for the victims law proposed by Labour. Instead, victims and witnesses will have to wait for a Labour Government to serve that law to stop them being ignored and trampled by the justice system. There is also little in the Bill to address the specific problems faced by women, those with mental health problems and ethnic minority communities in our justice system.

I have to congratulate the Lord Chancellor. He has achieved something in his short time in the job that few of his predecessors could ever have dreamed of: he has managed to alienate every part of the justice system. Prison staff are more under pressure and threatened in their day-to-day work environment than ever. Probation staff feel betrayed. They have done all that has been asked of them, then been sold off to the likes of those serial under-performers, G4S, Serco and A4E. Legal professionals are horrified at the erosion of access to justice and the insulation of the powerful from challenge that has happened under the Lord Chancellor’s watch. Charities and community groups are demoralised at the ignorance shown towards the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act. Things are so bad that there is even the threat that the legal profession might boycott the Justice Secretary’s planned celebrations for the 800th birthday of Magna Carta next year. What is more, he has managed to deliver the first ever industrial action by barristers.

The Bill is all about trying to create some work for rebellious, bored and troublesome Back Benchers, some of whom we will hear from later. The Bill may well succeed in doing that, but the idea that it will do anything substantive to reduce crime, help victims to be at the centre of the justice system, improve our courts system or keep our communities significantly safer is a joke, a bit like the office of Lord Chancellor has become with this incumbent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Unlike the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), I welcome many of the sensible provisions in the Bill. These amendments to the operation of the law seem to me to make common sense.

I am not sure whether I understood the Opposition’s point about judicial review. If we accept that there has been a threefold increase in the number of applications for judicial review since 2000, are the Opposition making the case that there is nothing wrong with judicial review procedures or the way in which they are being used, or are they saying that there has been an increase in the number of poor-quality decisions by the Government and other public bodies? If the latter, the Opposition would be conceding that that happened largely on their watch. If we accept that there has been a very large rise, surely it makes sense to make a number of careful changes that will ensure that the system operates as intended, which is not to provide a vehicle for those who simply object to a decision and wish to test it in an alternative body—in this case, a court—but to ensure that decisions are made properly and subjected to the right and appropriate judicial scrutiny.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am surprised by the right hon. Gentleman’s comments, because he is usually thorough in his research. He should be aware that if we exclude immigration from judicial review, we will see that the situation has been static since the 1990s. A Bill passed 18 months ago by this Government moved immigration from judicial review to the tribunal system, so the problem they are seeking to address was dealt with nearly two years ago.

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Gentleman seems to be confirming that he does not believe that there is a problem, but that view is not shared on the Government Benches. In our view, the increase in the extent of judicial review does not just impose a cost—which is a serious matter in itself—but also means, dangerously, that decisions by the courts are increasingly substituting for decisions that should be made by Ministers, which was not the original purpose or intention of judicial review.

In his closing remarks, the right hon. Gentleman railed similarly against previous measures introduced by this Government to deal with legal aid and said there had been restrictions on access to justice. The Opposition’s problem is that they are very quick to criticise every proposal in the area of justice and criminal justice that is designed to ensure a sensible use of public funds and necessary savings. They are not able to explain how they would deal with the very real budgetary challenges that confront every Government Department, not least the Ministry of Justice, which has been required to make substantial savings. If, along the way, the Opposition oppose every measure and criticise sensible provisions such as that under discussion without saying how they would make the savings required, they simply have a credibility problem.

I welcome the Government’s proposals to deal with the problem of automatic early release and, in particular, the scale of the Justice Secretary’s ambition to go further in doing so. There is no doubt that automatic early release undermines public confidence in sentencing. When victims in particular, but also members of the public more widely, hear a sentence handed down in a court but later learn that offenders are, without question, automatically released much earlier—halfway, or earlier in the case of home detention curfew, which is described as early release—it undermines confidence in the system.

It would be much better to move to a system of honesty in sentencing, in which the sentence handed down bears a proper relation to the one actually served, whether that is a system of minimum and maximum sentences, as proposed by the Conservative party in its last manifesto, or sensible measures to curtail automatic early release of the kind that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has just introduced for more serious offences. We should not accept the principle of automatic early release; it would be much better if release were earned and bore some relation to the prisoner’s conduct, progress in rehabilitation and suitability for release.

Even Members of the House of Commons find it difficult to understand or accept the early release of offenders. Many of us noted with surprise that when the courts handed down to a former Member a determinate sentence of eight months, we had no sooner said the words “Liberal Democrat” than that offender was released early, in that case to serve a period on home detention curfew and, subsequently, to enjoy a new career writing articles for The Guardian. All that undermines confidence in the criminal justice system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), an old colleague on the London Assembly where we attempted, among other things, to scrutinise the Metropolitan Police Authority in its early days. I strongly agree with the sentiments she expressed.

I am delighted to see the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), back in his place. With respect, his was very much a speech of two parts. When I listened to the first part, I thought, “Well, he clearly wants to stand for Mayor of London because he is doing a south London knockabout comic turn.” I was glad that he turned serious in the second part, although I do not agree with all of his analysis. I gently say this to him: keep the day job going because potential Mayors of London are now expected to be various turns, comic or otherwise, from north of the river rather than south. Leaving aside our political disagreement, I say with respect that the one thing that did trouble me—I hope it was perhaps a slip of the tongue—was his saying, as it certainly appeared to a number of Government Members, that judicial review should be capable of challenging primary legislation. I cannot believe that is what he meant to convey.

[Sadiq Khan]

indicated dissent.

[Robert Neill]

Given how the right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, I will take his word on that. I think we all accept that judicial review was not and never should be intended to challenge the will of Parliament. It does, though, have a legitimate role in relation to secondary legislation and the Executive, and I will return to that later. I am grateful that he has clarified his view on that point, which troubled me because it was surprising, if I may put it that way.

I warmly welcome the thrust of the Bill and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on introducing it. I will not touch on all parts of the Bill, but I want to discuss some areas that remind me of my past life—although that may be a dangerous thing to talk about at too much length in this House—and professional experience, namely the 25 years or more that I spent at the criminal Bar. I am delighted with some of the changes to make sentencing more realistic. I do not take the view that sentencing must always be draconian and that all those convicted in the courts are beyond a degree of redemption. That is clearly not the case. It is important, however, that sentencing has the confidence of the public, the victims and the majority law-abiding community. It is also worth remembering that sometimes the families of offenders are themselves victims to a degree. It is very important to have confidence in sentencing, so the greater transparency proposed by the Bill with regard to the amount of time served and the consequences of bad behaviour is a valuable step forward.

The same applies to the use of cautions. I have sympathy with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who is another former practising barrister and to whom I apologise because I was not present to hear his speech. It degrades the value of cautions to use them for serious offences for which any ordinary, right-thinking member of the public—in other words, to use the famous lawyer’s test, any man or woman on the Clapham omnibus—will conclude that they were never intended to be used. Cautions were intended to be used for trivial matters, so using them for more serious offences degrades their value in those areas where they have a legitimate role. I hope there will be no suggestion that there has been any pressure in terms of targets or resources. The Government have taken a step in the right direction.

A logical step on from that is recognising the importance of making best use, at all levels, of the available judicial resources. Just as it is important to use such resources to prosecute really serious crimes before the court, rather than use cautions, it is entirely sensible for the Bill to free up resources to deal with what are not regulatory, but essentially non-contentious—in so far as anything can be in the criminal justice system—matters. Many of us with experience of the criminal Bar will have been instructed as young, junior advocates on behalf of the prosecution—no doubt happily for us and our fortunately moderate bank balances—to read through and prove a whole list of traffic offences, even in instances of non-appearance. The empty courtroom could have been used for other cases, but time and again we would read out section 9 statements and produce various certificates of conviction that the traffic lights were working properly and heaven knows what, just to prove a case that nobody was arguing about. Removing that anomaly is an important, valuable and major step forward. I will not repeat the point that there are sensible safeguards built into the system for those who want to argue their case.

By way of digression, once upon a time there was—I think there still is—an offence of failing to provide a statutory statement of ownership. In those days, my earnings at the Bar were greatly boosted by being standing counsel to Croydon council and invariably turning up to prosecute such matters without anyone turning up to contest them. That is an extreme example, because sometimes cases got appealed and nobody turned up at the Crown court to prosecute the appeal either. Removing that sort of nonsense from the system has to be in everybody’s interest.

Ensuring that there is an open and publicly accessible record of the system is sensible, because it means that we need not clog up a fully equipped courtroom with witness facilities and other valuable resources that could be used for a contested hearing. It could be done in an anteroom and the press could be provided with access to the results. That is an entirely sensible and proportionate response, for which the Government are to be commended.

A number of the other changes are very useful and sensible. I will not go into the details, but I welcome the changes in relation to rape. Pornographic depiction of rape does seem an obvious matter to deal with—Rape Crisis South London in my constituency has done a lot of work on it—and I am glad that that has been recognised. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton would agree with me that there may still be gaps in the adequacy of sentencing for other sexual offences, particularly in relation to videos and DVDs of various kinds—we might be able to look at that in due course—but the change is a valuable step forward that we should all welcome.

I am pleased about the arrangements for costs. I was very often instructed to apply for costs against a convicted defendant. That was fine as far as it went—effectively, only the prosecution costs could be awarded, and whatever legal aid contribution was made—but it is legitimate to go further. After all, we are talking about only those who have been convicted. It is currently regarded as a legitimate and proper means of sentencing to give a discount for a guilty plea to reflect, first, remorse; secondly, the potential avoidance of trauma for witnesses; and thirdly, the saving to court time. Those are all legitimate factors, and if we regard the saving of court time as a legitimate factor in the equation for a penalty in the broadest sense, it is not unreasonable to calculate costs more realistically in terms of the totality of court time, rather than just of prosecution costs or an amount towards legal aid. The very sensible change will add to the transparency of the arrangements being put in place.

The change in relation to jurors is valuable. I am particularly pleased about that because my constituent Mr Graham Pound from Bromley specifically raised that matter with me. I received a very sympathetic response from the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who was of course not able to indicate exactly what he had in mind, but I know that Mr Pound is delighted with the outcome, which reflects reality. Although I accept that there are differences, I have a measure of sympathy with the suggestion that we might go further. My only query with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is that there is a difference between the burden of jury service that we expect someone to undertake, which is generally for a comparatively limited period, and the burden of being a busy member of the bench in a busy magistrates court or of sitting full time as a circuit judge.

In relation to the judiciary—I suspect that such matters could be dealt with by regulation—there might be an advantage in bringing back some recently retired senior circuit judges to sit in the Court of Appeal, as they perhaps did before they retired, while sparing them the burden of presiding over their home courts as resident judges. That might be a very modest first step in maintaining a degree of judicial independence, particularly in the criminal system, because by no means all High Court judges will have the degree of experience of criminal cases at first instance and of regularly sentencing heavy crime that those recently retired circuit judges have. I commend that thought to the Minister as a means of building on the welcome proposals about juries.

I also welcome the changes on the whole question of judicial review. A different part of my experience kicks in on that—as a local councillor and a Minister. I accept the proposition made by the shadow Secretary of State and other Opposition Members that there is a role for judicial review, which can have the salutary effect of concentrating the mind of decision makers and those who advise them. After all, it is not proposed to abolish judicial review, but, equally, it must be approached with a degree of proportion. One difficulty has been a lack of balance and proportion in its use. That is a shame, because there is a risk that a valuable tool, which can be a safeguard for individuals, may become discredited by overuse and exploitation by individuals or groups for what are often seen as partisan, if not party political, means or entirely self-serving ones. The Bill rightly seeks to rectify that.

I am perhaps even older than my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who talked about being a young Bar student in the ’80s and learning about administrative law. When I did my law exams in the 1970s, judicial review was a very recent concept. It was coming back into existence, thanks largely to Lord Denning. Nowadays, we do not consider him to have been a judge with the most liberal of sentiments, but he was seen as rather radical in those days.

Until the late ’60s and early ’70s, there was virtually no administrative law in this country. It is therefore slightly over-egging the case for judicial review to say, as even some distinguished judges do, that it has been an inherent part of our system since Magna Carta. That is not correct. It has grown up from a root that was in the common law. Through the various prerogative orders, such as mandamus and certiorari, it was constructed by judges into a judicial tool as society and government action became more complex in the ’50s and ’60s. It is a fairly recent feature of our system and it fulfils a valuable role.

Judicial review came into existence because the system needed to be flexible. Perhaps Members will remember Lord Denning telling a former Labour Attorney-General,

“Be you never so high, the law is above you.”

That was in reference to a Labour Government behaving in a peremptory fashion. If the system needed to be flexible at that time, it is equally reasonable to say now, when the industry that has grown up around judicial review has become so oppressive that it has overbalanced the system, that we should pull it back into proportion. That puts what the Secretary of State is seeking to do into its proper context.

Some of the proposals are sensible and straightforward. I do not think that anyone disputes that it is sensible to have the same time limit for a judicial review as for a statutory challenge under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Nobody has argued with the reduction in the time limit, because anybody who has dealt with planning matters knows that, particularly now that there has to be so much pre-application disclosure and there can be written representations from objectors and so on, the issues are very well crystallised in people’s minds. I suspect that that is not the most contentious issue.

There are issues with clause 50, although I do not share the criticism of it. I approach it from a slightly different angle. It seems to me that it is not unreasonable to move from the current inevitability test to a test of whether the outcome is likely to have been affected. Ironically, the current inevitability test seems to import something rather like the criminal burden of proof of reasonable doubt—or perhaps an even greater burden of proof—into what is essentially a civil procedure. It is not unreasonable to move to something that is closer to the normal test in civil proceedings of the balance of probabilities.

It is argued that we must act almost punitively to be a constraint on bad decision makers. However, I would have thought that clause 50 contained enough flexibility to provide a more balanced approach, to prevent judicial review from falling into disrepute when somebody wins on a purely technical error by a decision maker that was under no circumstances taken in malice or made negligently, and that would under no circumstances make any difference to the outcome. It is not unreasonable to say that the costs of a judicial review should not be fully provided in those circumstances.

We generally expect much more transparency in decision making in this country. In relation to clause 51, I think that that ought to apply, to a degree, to judicial decision making and to the judicial process generally. Because more and more judicial reviews are, in reality, supported and funded by groups—sometimes lobby groups, sometimes commercial groups that may have an interest—it is legitimate for the taxpayer and law-abiding citizens to have an idea about the source of that funding and, to some degree, the real motive behind the judicial review. Clause 51 is a proportionate means for dealing with that. Similarly, interveners must be aware that a considerably greater cost will occur through a legitimate intervention, especially when—as we have all seen in some cases—the intervener may become the principal driver of the judicial review, and do much more to extend the length of the hearing than the initial parties. Under those circumstances, it is not unreasonable that they should bear the bulk of the risk, since they have driven the bulk of court time as a consequence of the way they pursued their intervention. I would argue that the Bill contains a balanced package on judicial review that should commend itself to the House.

I will not dwell on what might have been in the Bill as I think what it contains is good and valuable. I am, however, a little tempted by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley on the accountability of judges. I do not think the Bill is necessarily the right vehicle for that, but we are talking generally about improving the accountability of decision making, and about accountability and transparency within the system. Given that judicial decisions—in judicial review or otherwise —sometimes affect not only large bodies or the state but can affect individuals, there is perhaps an argument to be had about whether our current arrangements to ensure consistency of professionalism in the judiciary are adequate.

There is a strong case for saying that Parliament must be wary of trespassing on the independence of the judiciary. However, I had in my casework a constituent who was seriously aggrieved in the national press because of an inaccurate judgment. In the obiter dicta of the case, the judge quoted wrongly from the papers before him, but released the judgment to the press, with considerable adverse publicity for the person concerned. There is, therefore, an argument for saying that when the Office for Judicial Complaints says, “Unfortunately that is not within our powers because he turned up and he wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t abusive in these terms. There is nothing we can do about this”, we might think that is not really fair. Would we not expect a professional judge to get the facts right and to have read the papers properly? That is an interesting area to consider.

That brings me to my final point, which is that, ultimately, the court system is about transparency and balance. Sometimes balance shifts one way or another, and it is the job of this House, and Parliament as a legislature, to decide on the appropriate balance in the circumstances in which we find it. I agree with the Secretary of State that the balance has moved too far one way, and the Bill seeks to redress that. I therefore commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is curious that a Government who did not think that they needed a Bill to dismantle criminal legal aid or to privatise the probation service should decide that they do need one to encourage courts to report wasted costs orders to the Bar Standards Board. It is also curious that a Lord Chancellor who is reluctant to debate the restriction of access to justice, or risks to public safety, can find plenty of parliamentary time in which to discuss age limits for jurors.

The Government have a curious sense of priorities; but the clue is in the phrase “find time”. We heard earlier that the Lord Chancellor was the only Cabinet Minister to volunteer to conjure up a Bill to fill the yawning void that is the last 15 months of the current Parliament—a carry-over Bill intended to mark time while the coalition parties manufacture disagreements to keep their own core voters happy. His reward—and I am pleased to see him in his place—was to miss the Cabinet’s day out in Aberdeen. There is no justice for the Justice Secretary.

However, I do not want to denigrate the Bill; I merely wish to set it in context. Although there are parts of it that we strongly oppose, much of it is unobjectionable, and some of it is even laudable. It makes sensible administrative changes, and introduces new offences that clarify or reinforce important parts of the law such as contempt, or address failings in the Government’s own legislation or practice. We are not going to find reasons to oppose such measures and, on balance, we will not oppose the Bill tonight, in the hope that improvements can be made before Third Reading.

I can do nothing but praise the quality of the debate today. We are fortunate to have heard from some of the most experienced and thoughtful Members on both sides, and I hope that the Minister will take on board their observations not only when he responds to the debate tonight but when he reviews the Bill in Committee. We have heard former Justice Ministers, including the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and from Select Committee Chairs including my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). We have also heard from eminent practitioners such as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the hon. Members for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill).

I hope, however, that none of those Members will be offended if I say that the most perceptive comments often came from those who show a lay interest in these matters. The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) talked about exercising caution over the use of cautions and about education on the secure estate, and I agreed with much that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), said in her tour d’horizon of the Bill. I was slightly confused, however, by the contributions of the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). Both seemed to love the Bill, but one of them thought it was about restorative justice and reducing the prison population by 30,000 while the other thought it was about punishment and increasing the prison population by that number.

[Sadiq Khan]

They can’t both be right.

[Mr Slaughter]

Indeed, but the Lord Chancellor has at least managed to make both of them happy, and he should be praised for that, if for nothing else.

I want to make specific mention of the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who made robust defences of judicial review and of open justice. They correctly echoed the view expressed in the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s briefing that judicial review is

“used rarely by community groups in relation to planning decisions because it is costly and a significant and daunting undertaking.”

No one would imagine that, from what the Government have said today.

I shall take my cue from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd in dealing first with the most contentious and objectionable part of the Bill—part 4, which covers judicial review. What is it about this Lord Chancellor and judicial review that the mention of it makes him behave in an irrational and unreasonable way? He has taken to the columns of the Daily Mail to denounce one of our most important constitutional safeguards as

“a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners.”

It is unclear whether those left-wing campaigners include the Countryside Alliance, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, UKIP’s Stuart Wheeler and numerous Conservative councils, all of whom have initiated judicial reviews in recent times. However, the senior judiciary’s response to the Lord Chancellor’s consultation shot that particular fox when it stated that it had seen no

“evidence of inappropriate use of judicial review as a campaigning tool, and it is not the experience of the senior judiciary that this is a common problem.”

The Lord Chancellor has already taken bites out of judicial review by imposing additional fees and limiting the time for bringing a claim, in some cases to six weeks. He is also going to restrict the use of legal aid by statutory instrument, rather than through primary legislation. He would wish to hobble applicants more by restricting the recovery of costs until beyond the permission stage and allowing defendants to intervene at that stage with the prospect of recovering their costs. The Bill contains a variety of additional ways to discourage judicial review by increasing applicants’ costs or putting them at risk of paying defendants’ costs. Protective costs orders will not be abolished, but they will be available only in narrow circumstances and once permission is granted.

The worst aspects are in clauses 50 and 53, attacking both the raison d’être of judicial review to correct Executive error in decision making and the ability of third parties to intervene in the public interest and to assist the court. Already heavily criticised, the new test in clause 50 refuses permission where it is “highly likely” the outcome for the applicant

“would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred”.

This confuses unlawfulness with remedy. It will encourage bad decision making and it is likely to lead to a full trial of the issues at permission stage. Lord Pannick, in an article that has already been quoted today, has said that the clause will give the Government a

“get out of jail free card”,

and allow public bodies to

“avoid a hearing and judgment on the legality of their conduct.”

Under clause 53, third parties—often non-governmental organisations, charities and human rights organisations—that intervene in judicial reviews to clarify issues that often assist the court will now be severely discouraged from doing so by cost penalties. Yet Lady Justice Hale of the Supreme Court has said that

“interventions are enormously helpful…The most frequent are NGOs such as Liberty and Justice, whose commitment is usually to a principle rather than a person. They usually supply arguments and authorities, rather than factual information, which the parties may not have supplied.”

In aggregate, these proposals mean that only applicants of substantial means will be able to bring a claim or risk the costs of losing it. In a country without a written constitution, judicial review is one important way of holding the Executive to account. This Government want to insulate their bad decision making from legal challenge and place themselves outside the rule of law. They are strengthening Executive power and weakening a critical check on the power of the state. This Lord Chancellor, for misguided party political motives and as part of a sustained attack on access to justice, is undermining our civil liberties, and these changes should be against everything the Liberal Democrats stand for. Under this Government, seeking justice is getting harder and these proposals show them on the side of their corporate friends, not of individual citizens and communities. Politicians in power might find judicial review an awkward irritant, but that is precisely what it is intended to be. Combined with the cuts to legal aid, limitations on no win, no fee cases, and threats to the Human Rights Act and European convention, this proposal amounts to a sustained attack on the rights of individual citizens to hold those in power to account. As the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger puts it,

“one must be very careful about any proposals whose aim is to cut down the right to judicial review”.

He has also said:

“The courts have no more important function than that of protecting citizens from the abuses and excesses of the executive.”

We have serious concerns about other parts of the Bill. As they stand, the plans for secure colleges may prove damaging to thousands of young offenders in our criminal justice system. The Bill leaves a question mark over the future of secure children’s homes, which cater for the most vulnerable young people. Such homes typically house small numbers of children, provide intensive support and are staffed by highly qualified specialists in social care. The homes have good educational outcomes and are recognised as the preferred model of youth custody, but they look set to lose out to the Lord Chancellor’s new and untested pet project. It is untested according to the Government’s own impact assessment, but still £85 million is needed to build just one secure college.

The Justice Committee pointed out in its report last March that the average time in youth custody is only 79 days, so most young offenders would not be in a college long enough to improve their basic skills. What levels of training or qualification would the college staff have? Why will college custody officers be empowered to use “reasonable force” for the maintenance of “good order and discipline”? That may well be unlawful under the European convention on human rights, according to a Court of Appeal 2008 ruling and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which stated in 2007:

“Restraint or force can be used only when the child poses an imminent threat of injury to him or herself or others, and only when all other means of control have been exhausted. The use of restraint or force, including physical, mechanical and medical restraints, should be under close and direct control of a medical and/or psychological professional. It must never be used as a means of punishment.”

As regards part 3 of the Bill, we support the use of single justices, given that their jurisdiction will apply only to summary, non-imprisonable offences where an adult defendant pleads guilty. However, we object strongly to taking these cases out of the courtroom and into offices away from public view. Such an approach damages the principle of British justice that cases are heard and the results made known in public. This Government are too fond of secret courts, and even in minor cases the principle of open justice should be rarely departed from. We agree in principle that convicted criminals could contribute to the costs of trial, but the substantial amount of uncollected fines from criminals already totals more than £1 billion and it is likely that this proposal will just add to the total of uncollected moneys from criminals. We have no objection in principle to leapfrog appeals, for example, on issues of national importance, though they are most likely to be used by government trying to hurry the process up. The danger is that this simply overloads the Supreme Court and that the issues it has to deal with are insufficiently refined by earlier hearings.

It is a good idea to update the jury room process and the rules on reporting cases to accommodate the social media age. The Attorney-General is to be commended for taking a personal interest in the limitations on reporting and in discouraging jurors from using social media to research or publicise details of trials. However, the Government fail to provide any support to juries in explaining their roles and remit as part of any new offences, and it is not clear whether they have considered the full implications of the numbers of people using social media and the variety of methods available. We have no objection to raising the age of jury service to 75.

There are two glaring problems with part 1 of the Bill. It does not do what it says on the tin, which is to protect the public adequately from violent and dangerous offenders, but it does incur costs and prison resources that the Government do not have in place. I fear that the hon. Member for Shipley may have been slightly taken in by the rhetoric rather the actuality of what is in part 1. The changes to sentences for the most serious and violent criminals are a poor substitute for indeterminate sentences for public protection, which this Government abolished in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—[Interruption.] I do like to mention that, because it is the one thing that we both agree on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We have looked at a variety of ways of minimising the impact on different parts of our justice system of the difficult decisions that we have had to take. I reassure my right hon. Friend that the decisions that we are taking on legal aid are in proportion to the decisions that we are having to take in the rest of the Department—the legal aid budget is coming down by the same proportion as the overall departmental budget. In relation to the Bar, I have sought, where I can do so, to put in place ameliorating measures, such as the offer to introduce a staged payment system, which at the very least will improve the cash flow of working barristers, even if we have to take tough decisions about the amount that we pay.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) to his position and congratulate him on his promotion.

The Government’s salami-slicing of civil legal aid over the past three years and of criminal legal aid over the next 15 months will, according to independent experts, deny hundreds of thousands of citizens access to decent advice and representation. Law centres and high street firms are closing down, as we have heard, and junior barristers are leaving the profession. That should worry us all. If the Justice Secretary was provided with costed proposals that would make similar savings over the next 15 months but without the devastating consequences, would the Government reconsider their plans?

[Chris Grayling]

I sometimes find the Opposition’s attitude completely breathtaking. It is but two and a half years since they attacked our proposals to reform civil legal aid, saying that the savings should be found from criminal legal aid instead. Now they appear to have done a complete U-turn. Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to commit in the House today that if a Labour Government are elected at the next election, they will reverse the cuts? I suspect that the answer is no.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

First, on matters in the legislation to be announced I caution the hon. Gentleman to be careful of being overly critical.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It is all in the press.

[Simon Hughes]

It is certainly not all in the press, and the Bill might be much more encouraging to people than the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) might wish it to be. On the take-up of mediation, we do not have the figure for a full year but it is unarguable that figures have gone down. We are making sure, and we are hoping, that when we have the full-year figures, we will see that we have reversed that. I will keep the House and the hon. Gentleman updated about those figures over the year ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman’s case is that what happened at Oakwood was because it was privately run or because it was too big.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Both.

[Jeremy Wright]

That is very helpful. Let me help the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend. In relation to the size of the prison, it was the last Labour Government who decided to set it at 1,600 prisoners, and in relation to its running, it was the last Labour Government who decided to put the management of the prison up for competition and not retain it in the public sector. Therefore, on both counts it is not us on the Government Benches whom the right hon. Gentleman should be talking to; it is those on his own Benches.

In relation to Wrexham, we have quite properly said that there is an initial decision to be made, which is whether a large new prison should be built at Wrexham. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we were asked to build it on that site by his own council and a large number of other members of the Labour party in north Wales. The decision to be taken now is who should build it; we will make a decision about who should run it in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I very much enjoyed that visit, and I pay tribute to the work being done in Rugby. In setting out our probation reforms, we have taken steps to ensure that smaller organisations not only have the opportunity to participate in that way but have the simplest possible mechanisms to enable them to do so, with transparency of risk in the supply chain, with common contracts to save on bureaucracy and with measures to prevent anyone being used as what is commonly known as bid candy. We want to guarantee that supply chains will remain intact—without changes—through our consent.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Having seen the way in which the Ministry of Justice has been taken for a ride by G4S at Oakwood prison and by ALS in relation to the court translator services—both of which contracts were awarded by this Government—will the Secretary of State tell us just how bad a private company running a probation contract will need to be in order to be sacked?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me tell the House what being taken for a ride is. It is what happened under the last Government, under the contracts for electronic tagging, and we have been dealing with that and clearing up the mess in the past few months. I will take no lessons from Labour Members, who presided over an appalling system of contract management and exposed the taxpayer to considerable risk, leaving behind the mess that we have had to clear up. They are shocking, they were shocking, and I will take no lessons from them.

[Sadiq Khan]

The Justice Secretary has been in the job long enough to understand that the way it works is that I ask the questions and he answers them. He and the Minister with responsibility for probation claimed that the main reason for privatising probation is that the savings can be used to provide probation services to those who currently do not receive them as their sentence is less than 12 months. The Justice Secretary has refused to publish costings and to pilot his plans, and he is already two months behind schedule. I will ask him a simple question, and I hope to get an answer: by what date will all those on sentences of less than 12 months be receiving through-the-gate supervision?

[Chris Grayling]

We will begin rolling out the part of the reforms set out in the Offender Rehabilitation Bill in the latter part of this year. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that he represents a party that was in government for nearly 15 years, during which time tens of thousands of offences were committed by people on short sentences who had no supervision when they left prison. The Labour Government did nothing about it. We are doing something about it, and it is not before time.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I intend to keep my comments short. The Bill has many worthy objectives that we support, although I will have to mention those things that are missing. First, however, I want to begin by thanking colleagues in both Houses and on both sides who have worked hard to refine and revise the Bill, as the Lord Chancellor has just explained.

I would also like to pay tribute to Paul Goggins and express on behalf of both sides of the House our particular thanks to him. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) and the probation services Minister began their contributions on Report with kind, moving words about this decent, conscientious and kind man, and the Lord Chancellor did the same just now. Paul brought to the House his enormous experience of criminal justice, as a passionate advocate for the excellent work done by our probation service. His contributions to the Bill’s Second Reading, a previous Opposition day debate and the Bill Committee were of the highest quality. He spoke with a depth of knowledge, and the House will be the poorer without him. Many of us will miss him enormously.

I have previously outlined how the Bill is controversial more for what is not in it than for what is. I am pleased about the provisions on drug testing and rehabilitative support for women offenders. We have sought to include provisions to address rehabilitation for former members of the military services, and late in the day, to be fair, the Government have partly come round to the importance of this, although they have not gone as far as we would have liked. In winding up, the Minister was going to give time scales for the review, but he ran out of time. Will he write to me about that?

[Jeremy Wright]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that time was short, but I got the chance to say that it would take six months for my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) to report back to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the six-month time scale.

No one can disagree with the objective of extending supervision and the accompanying help to all those released from prison. In this regard, I want to place on record our admiration for the massively important work that professional probation staff around the country do to rehabilitate some of the most troubled individuals while keeping the public safe. Much of the public do not realise the work of the probation service, and it is a sign of its success that the Government will leave to it the most high-risk offenders. It is welcome that offenders released from sentences of less than two years will be subject to at least 12 months of mandatory supervision in the community, but it is multi-national companies with no track record in this area that will be responsible for this, rather than the probation service, which we know can do the job very well.

It has always been an anomaly that short-sentence prisoners—the group with the highest risk of reoffending —are the ones left to their own devices when released from prison. As has been mentioned and the House knows, the previous Labour Government tried to address this with custody plus, but financial constraints prevented it from being implemented. The House also knows, from Paul Goggins’ Second Reading contribution, that by contrast the Government have no idea how much the extension of supervision to those serving 12 months or less will cost. Their impact assessment skirts around this, saying that

“the cost will be dependent on the outcome of competition”.

The Government have done nothing to update the House on this and so the plans remain uncosted.

The Justice Secretary and the Minister with responsibility for probation say that extending supervision will be paid for by privatising probation. But if that is the case, one would assume that the Justice Secretary and his officials must have figures to support it. It is hardly surprising that experts and others are suspicious about why the Government will not come clean on the numbers. The Justice Secretary has linked the cost of extended supervision to savings delivered by privatising probation, so the Bill is directly related to the wider probation privatisation plans. The two issues simply cannot be separated, which is one of the reasons new clause 1 was inserted by the other place.

The changes that flow from the Bill are untried and untested and will see supervision of serious and violent offenders fragmented. I must give credit to the Justice Secretary, whose plans have created an impressive coalition of those opposed to them: probation officers, chief executives and chairs of probation trusts, The Economist, his own officials and, most recently, the chief inspectors of both probation and of prisons, who questioned the system’s ability to cope with his plans. The chief inspector of probation warned that the plans would lead to

“an increased risk to the public.”

The Economist called the plans “half-baked.” The Ministry of Justice’s own risk register warns that there is an 80 per cent. risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance, which when dealing with offenders can only lead to higher risks to public safety.

But still the Justice Secretary pushes ahead, with the same arrogance and dismissal of expert advice that led to the disaster that is the Work programme—a Work programme so bad that someone has more chance of still being in work after six months if they do not go on it.

[Chris Grayling]

We may be going slightly off track, Mr Speaker, but may I just point out that the Work programme is doing about twice as well as the predecessor programme that we inherited from the last Government?

[Mr Speaker]

That is totally irrelevant to the Third Reading of the Bill.

[Sadiq Khan]

I wish the Justice Secretary was right, but he is not.

Imagine that shambolic record being repeated in a privatised probation service, with someone’s chances of being rehabilitated being better if left to their own devices than if they go through £600 million of supervision by the likes of G4S, Serco, A4E and Capita. By the way, for those who believe that G4S and Serco will have nothing to do with the privatised probation service, that is not necessarily the case. On 19 December, the Justice Secretary said that the Government had left open the possibility of either supplier playing a supporting role, working with smaller business or voluntary sector providers to support their objective of achieving a diverse market. Once more, there is smoke and mirrors from the Ministry of Justice, more hiding the real facts. G4S and Serco could still be involved in the probation service.

The best way to pursue plans that lead to massive changes of this kind and affect public safety are through piloting and testing to see if something works before rolling it out, rather than a big bang. Perhaps the Justice Secretary should also consider asking probation trusts to take on the extra supervision rather than ignoring them and opting for big private company involvement instead. That is precisely the kind of piloting and testing that his predecessor planned and which the Justice Secretary cancelled in his first week in his job in a fit of pique, when he announced that his own gut instinct trumped evidence and statistics. Does the House really think, without any evidence whatever, that a privatised and fragmented probation service will be able to deliver the provisions in this Bill? The Justice Secretary has nothing to point towards to support this—not the Peterborough scheme, as he claims, which is a totally different model. That is comparing apples with pears.

It is a double risk because at the same time as supervision is extended the institutional landscape responsible for supervision will be radically overhauled. This will see the Government abolishing local probation trusts, commissioning services on behalf of local areas direct from Whitehall, splitting responsibility for offenders based on a non-static risk level between public and private organisations and handing over to big multinational companies supervision of serious and violent offenders, and all at breakneck speed without any evidential base: a monumental gamble with public safety.

Of course we support attempts to reduce reoffending; we support extended supervision of those in custody for fewer than 10 months; we support attempts to provide through-the-gate support for those leaving prison; we support attempts to get more charities, voluntary groups and small and large businesses involved—but we do not support reckless, half-baked plans without any evidence that they will not put public safety at risk. We cannot support something that undermines public confidence in the criminal justice system, and we will not support ideologically driven leaps in the dark.

It is simply wrong for the Justice Secretary to argue that those who are concerned about his plans are against reducing reoffending just because we are against his particular half-baked and reckless proposals. We happen to believe that his plans are precisely that, and those concerns are shared by experts, staff, the chief inspector and even his own officials.

The Bill will now return to the other place. I hope colleagues there will insist that their clause—to ensure that probation privatisation should not happen without both Houses having the opportunity properly to scrutinise the Government’s detailed plans to change the structure of the probation service—is reinserted in the Bill. I see no reason why the other place should back down. The concerns reflected in the clause it inserted are as important now—if not even more so—than they were last summer. Scandals involving private companies have increased, and more evidence has come to light about concerns from the chief inspector of probation and from the Ministry’s own internal assessment of the risks. It is thus only right and proper for the Government to submit their full and detailed plans to proper parliamentary scrutiny, and not rush things through. We cannot afford to take reckless gambles where public safety is concerned. The Government’s plans risk doing exactly that, which is why we cannot support them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am happy to assure the hon. Lady and everyone else in London that the amount of money going to Victim Support in London is going up, not down, as it is in every other region of the country. More money will go to victims’ services under this Government than under the previous arrangements.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is usually a thoughtful and intelligent Minister and he will be aware that we already have a variety of codes of practice and charters for victims scattered across different Government agencies. Like him, I meet victims of crime all the time and they complain that the codes are toothless and offer no means of redress if their entitlements are breached. How will the new code differ and how will he measure success?

[Damian Green]

It will differ in a number of ways. First, the new code is written so that victims will be able to understand it—I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the previous code was not written in that way, as it was written by and for professionals. Secondly, there are specific rights in the code that were not in the previous code, such as the very important right for a victim to be able to make their personal statement in court after the sentence. Many victims have said that that is a significant step forward in enabling them to feel that they are being taken more seriously than they have been before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

This is an extremely important area. A change is long overdue, and we will proceed with it in the next few weeks.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

You will be aware, Mr Speaker, that the Justice Secretary is unwilling to publish the MOJ’s assessment of the risks attached to his plans to privatise probation. Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether his plans will see the risk to public safety higher, lower or the same as it is now?

[Chris Grayling]

I owe the right hon. Gentleman an apology from last time, when I implied that his campaign to be Mayor of London had him trailing in third place. I have now discovered that that is not the case, and I wish him well. I have watched his progress carefully.

On the risk registers, I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that he never published them because they are a working tool for the civil service. This Government will not do anything that leads to a greater risk to public safety. Bringing supervision to under-12-month groups will make the public safer, rather than more at risk, through a system that he and his Government admitted was wrong but never did anything about.

[Sadiq Khan]

The Secretary of State’s response is even more surprising, bearing in mind the very damning joint report from the chief inspectors of prisons and of probation, which is published today. They believe that the scale of the problems they have identified means that

“the entire thrust of the Government’s rehabilitation plans”

is undermined. We know that he ignored their last report in 2012, but bearing in mind the seriousness of the issue, will he meet the inspectors as a matter of urgency to hear their concerns that his plans could in fact make matters worse rather than better?

[Chris Grayling]

I hate to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, but I last met the probation inspector about three days ago. I meet both inspectors regularly, and I take their views immensely seriously. That is one reason why we have put in place radical changes that will create a through the gate rehabilitation service to deal with many of the issues that they have highlighted. Unfortunately for the right hon. Gentleman, their report is not about our plans, but about the system we are trying to change, and that is why we are trying to change it.