HMP Liverpool

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for his work in the Committee on this and many other reports. He is absolutely right. We are calling for the partnership agreement to be published, so that we can examine it, because we cannot be satisfied that it is yet fit for purpose. Previous partnership agreements have broken down, so we need to know how this will be different—in terms of both its structure and the way in which it will operate—to be reassured that there will be no repetition of what went wrong in the past.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and the Committee on an excellent, timely and important report. However, while it does move us forward, if we are to change our prisons from being simply places of detention in various outrageous conditions to being places where rehabilitation is central—which is what they ought to be—we still have an awfully long journey to travel. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons should be given the resources that it needs for re-inspection, but we also need to be able to establish whether we are delivering the quality of healthcare, education and all the other things that are necessary in prisons that will allow—mainly—our young men to come out and become acceptable citizens.

[Robert Neill]

I know how closely the hon. Gentleman followed this issue during his time as a police and crime commissioner and as the interim mayor in his part of the world. He is absolutely right. The report is a useful step forward, but I do not pretend it can be more than that. It has to be part of a systemic change, and I hope that it will help to drive that, but we must think about the systems and about a long-term strategy that relates to the real purpose of our prisons.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

First, I wish to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who did this job far better than I will be able to do. One of the things that he introduced, which is going very well at the moment, is working with the Ministry of Defence. We are providing basic supplies for British military troops. It is something that is providing not just employment to prisoners, but the training and vocational skills they require for future employment.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Prisoners move round the prison system and, in the end, they come out of the prison system. One thing that consistently goes wrong is the lack of consistency in education and training between different institutions and in institutions once the prisoner leaves. The Minister has talked about power to the governor, but governors must work within the construct of the wider environment. What will he do to ensure that we have that consistency?

[Rory Stewart]

This is of course a balance between empowering the governor so that they can have a tailored programme that is flexible and works for the prison and having decent national standards. That will mean setting the curriculum at a national level, having the area managers engaged over the governors and also giving the governors the ability to have education that is relevant to their areas—skills that are relevant to the jobs outside the prison gates.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

As always, my hon. Friend has made his case in a forthright manner, and his consistency is very evident. I dare say that today is not the last occasion on which he and I will debate this subject. I think we all agree that the public must have confidence in our criminal justice system and our sentencing policy.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Both the Worboys case and the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) are examples of cases in which the victim is treated as an adjunct to the criminal justice process, and, as we have seen, that can apply throughout the process. Will the Secretary of State think carefully about the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for an end-to-end review? We must get the victim’s journey right when it comes to such harrowing crimes.

[Mr Gauke]

It is very important for victims to be at the heart of our criminal justice system. A great deal of work has been undertaken with, for example, Baroness Newlove in her role as Victims Commissioner. We continue to look into how we can improve our criminal justice system to ensure that victims are given the support that they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

We are aware of the challenges around recall, and some of this is to do with the fact that women go back out into the community and into exactly the same situation they were in before going into prison. This is being considered in depth, and our approach to it will be part of the women’s strategy.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that a disproportionate number of women are sentenced to very short prison terms, and judging by his previous statement he probably shares the view that they are generally ineffective in breaking the cycle of reoffending. Will the Government think seriously about adopting the Scottish system, under which short sentences have to be actively justified by the court before they are passed?

[Dr Lee]

We already have a presumption against custody in our system in England. I acknowledge, however, that Scotland is embarking upon an exciting path in managing its women offenders, which is why I am going there on Thursday.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

I recognise that the recidivism rate of 69% is unacceptable, and that is why I am bringing forward two new secure schools, one in the north-west and one in the south-east of England. We recognise that we have a problem with the environment in the youth custodial estate; I have never hidden this from the House. The mental health issues are deep-seated. We are dealing with approximately 1,000 individuals who are locked up at any one time, and they can often be quite deeply damaged; I assure the hon. Lady that I am cognisant of that.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the idea of the secure school in the north-west. That is the right direction of travel, but will the Minister give a guarantee to the House and to the public that staffing levels will ensure that such schools both are safe and become places where we can break any reoffending cycle?

[Dr Lee]

The hon. Gentleman is fully aware that the part of the world that he used to represent as a Mayor is quite ahead in dealing with individuals more holistically. Staffing is an issue. We have brought forward a youth custody officer role, which will start in 2018, and we are bringing forward another 80 people for a course to improve the type of care that those individuals can offer. We are under no illusions about the challenges. The guidelines on how we are procuring secure schools and their staffing arrangements will be announced in the new year.

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Our high-security estate does not lack the resources that it needs for the purposes of security or maintaining a regime. In fact, such prisons have higher staffing ratios because of the difficult people with whom they deal. Of course, if situations change and they need more staff or any other resources to cope with that, such resources will always be available.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister simply cannot pretend that we will not see further outbreaks of this kind of rioting in our prisons, and he cannot pretend that prisons are not in any case regularly very violent places. As long as we have overcrowded prisons and too few staff, these events will continue to take place. The Minister must look seriously at non-custodial options for the courts when it comes to low-level criminals for whom such options would be more effective, as well as being cheaper. Why is that not already being done?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am not suggesting for a second that such incidents will not be repeated. We try to mitigate and manage risk, but there is always a chance that something like this could happen again. As I have said, what is happening in the high-security estate is a rare occurrence. Of course, as I have also said, the level of violence in our prisons is too high, but dealing with the issues that have led to the current situation—drones, drugs and illegal mobile phones—will take time. We are investing in staff and our intelligence network; we are working on drone detection equipment; and we are working on mobile-phone blockers, but there is no silver bullet to deal with the issue in our prisons, and doing so will take time.

No one here is saying that this will not happen again. We must all be frank with ourselves: prisons are difficult places with some very difficult people to manage, and because of the particular set of circumstances that we face, it will take time to resolve the situation.

Prison and Youth Custody Centre Safety

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. As I said earlier, some of our prisons are Victorian. They are antiquated, and the quality of the cells is substandard, which is why we are building new prisons. Cells in which prisoners find it much harder to commit suicide are what is needed, which is why I am pleased that we are investing £1.3 billion in the system.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Let me declare an interest as an outgoing police and crime commissioner. This report is devastating and the Minister must act on it. One way of acting very quickly would be to invest in things such as non-custodial programmes for women offenders and intensive community orders, which have better returns in terms of reoffending rates. Will the Minister commit this Government to putting money where it will make a real difference?

[Dr Lee]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and I welcome him back to the House. It is good to see him here, having had a good relationship with him before. Yes, the women’s justice system is a classic example of where there is scope to devolve responsibility and indeed funds. North-west England, a part of which he used to represent, has had a whole-system approach to funding over the past year or two, so that we can try to build a system in which women can be treated holistically and in which the team understands each woman’s home, situation, partners and relationships, so that it can bear down on the number of people who are locked up. In the strategy that will be delivered before the end of the year, I hope to outline in more detail what I want to do in north-west England.

Criminal Justice System

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. The subject of the debate is victims and their treatment in the criminal justice system.

There is increasing satisfaction with our police force. My own force in Greater Manchester claims that independent surveys show an 85% satisfaction level with what it is doing. Nevertheless, the fact that there is a 15% gap indicates that things go wrong. Many Members of Parliament are here for this debate. When things go wrong, victims feel abandoned by the system, and most MPs’ caseloads testify to that.

I recently conducted a survey across Greater Manchester. Surveys can be partial, and the people who respond will have a strong motive to respond. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction level was quite high. A quarter of the people who responded felt that they had not been treated well by the police or the criminal justice system. That is a worrying figure.

I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael)—joint signature on the application for this debate—for his work on behalf of victims in his years as a Home Office Minister. He was part of moving the whole agenda forward.

I want to talk about a few cases that have affected constituents. A woman living on her own found a mallet on her garden fence with a threatening and menacing note. When she contacted the police, they said they would send somebody round, as they should in a case such as that. However, the police officer did not turn up on time. When I intervened, the police turned up, but a single woman who is threatened should not require the intervention of a Member of Parliament to get the police to respond.

One of my daughters—I was with her at the time—had a dog that was attacked by another dog. A dog-on-dog attack does not make the national news, but had that dog attacked a child it would have been a much more serious event. The police took the matter seriously, but two months after its having been reported they have not come back to my daughter with an update. Not coming back is probably the single most common complaint that my constituents raise with me.

There are problems elsewhere in the criminal justice system. One of my constituents had to wait for nearly two years before her case, which involved violence from a neighbouring family against her and her family, came to court. The housing association would not move either the complainant family or those who were being complained about until the matter had gone to court. For two years, this family lived with pressure from their neighbours while they waited for the Crown Prosecution Service to take the matter to court.

I had another case of a constituent whose ex-partner was in prison for beating her very badly. While in prison, he threatened to kill her. She was told through other sources that he was due for imminent release, but the probation service would not give me or her any details about the timing of his release, which left her feeling extremely vulnerable in respect of a person who had already made threats to her well-being.

More generally, the courts themselves come in for criticism. We recently heard of Peter Bowers, a High Court judge in Teesside, who described a burglar as needing courage to burgle; many people feel that it might need courage to lie in bed listening to a burglar invading their house. Most of us do not feel that that is an acceptable way of describing a burglar. There is dissatisfaction, therefore, with the way in which the courts deal with cases, from the relatively serious to the most serious.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

The daughter of a family in my constituency, Charlotte Whitby—they have allowed me to name her—was killed getting off a school bus. The family could not understand two things: first, the lack of prosecutions across the United Kingdom; and secondly, much more importantly, the lenient sentencing, which the hon. Gentleman is alluding to. I do not think anyone in this House would disagree that there is a problem, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will dwell on the point that people are getting away with murder—literally.

[Tony Lloyd]

Killing somebody in the workplace or with a vehicle, if I am not in danger of trivialising it, would be an extremely intelligent way to go about despatching another human being. The horrible reality in cases such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituent’s is that there is now a family who will grieve for ever and who feel that there is no justice in the system. I have enormous sympathy for him and particularly for his constituent.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. On the courts and the criminal justice system, does he accept that some good systems are used in the criminal justice system to have the views of victims accounted for? For example, the victim impact statement must be taken before judges prior to sentences being passed.

[Tony Lloyd]

Yes, and that is fine. I totally agree with victim impact statements. The only problem is that they are not compulsory and not always requested. We know that victims sometimes complain that they are under pressure to produce a statement that does not reflect what they really feel to be the impact. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that that is the direction of travel that we have to take, but I think we have to go a lot further. I will certainly make that point later.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, recently made some caustic statements about his own stewardship of policing and of policing more generally. He was highly critical in saying that burglary is often not dealt with as severely as he felt it should be. He asked himself whether he had always dealt with it properly in his policing career.

It is certainly right to point out that many people think burglary is a very serious crime. Sir Paul Stephenson described it as invasive. He is right; it is invasive of people’s privacy and people’s lifestyles. Astonishingly, such an invasion of personal property and lifestyle sees more than half of those convicted receiving non-custodial sentences. Those non-custodial sentences are also relevant to a crime, which, in Greater Manchester, has a clear-up rate of less than 17%. Only one in six crimes is cleared up, and that does not necessarily include coming to court. Of those convicted, fewer than half receive a custodial sentence. We then wonder what signal that sends out to the wider community—to those who do not want to be burgled and those who want to burgle. There is a real issue.

I recently had an interesting conversation with somebody who has long experience of sentencing. He told me that he faces a regular dilemma. He works on the basis that non-custodial sentences are worth while; they can definitely perform a valuable part of the process. Nevertheless, if he feels that non-custodial sentences are not sufficient to offer proper restitution to the victim or do not offer any element of proper and legitimate punishment, he finds himself imposing custodial sentences in cases in which he would sometimes prefer not to. That is something we need to look at. If we are going to have a range of sentencing, we need to make sure that there is sufficient severity in the whole system. We need to look at sentencing as well.

Let me turn to those crimes that, although serious, have not received full-hearted emphasis throughout the criminal justice system. I refer in the most serious areas to sexual violence, rape, the sexual exploitation of children, domestic violence and even bullying and antisocial behaviour. Let me cite, as an example, the recent case of David Askew in Greater Manchester. Although he probably died of natural causes, there is almost no doubt in everyone’s mind that those natural causes were brought on by a consistent campaign of bullying that he had received from local youths, but no one took it seriously. With hindsight, people have said that had the various agencies—the social services, the children’s services and the police—shared the information base about the bullying, it would have triggered some sort of response. At no point, however, did it trigger a response, which left David Askew to spend years of his life in a degree of misery that he should not have had to put up with. It is wrong to say that bullying is not very serious; it is serious, as is antisocial behaviour. We must see antisocial behaviour as being central to the type of society in which we live. We cannot have no-go areas in which antisocial behaviour is accepted as legitimate.

It is also worth reflecting on the comparison between the celebrated cases of sexual exploitation of children in Rochdale and the situation of Jimmy Savile. I want to place it on the record that, although the English Defence League took it on itself to protest enormously about the situation in Rochdale—it is right that there should have been real concern there—it has not protested in the same way about Jimmy Savile. Sexual exploitation is about not the ethnicity or the cultural background of those involved but criminal behaviour, and criminal behaviour, whether by the Jimmy Saviles of this world or by Rochdale taxi drivers, is something that we must prosecute and pursue.

In all those cases, the culture of the criminal justice system is such that it did not take seriously the position of victims. The young women in Rochdale were described as from a council estate. I cannot accept that there is a council estate definition of acceptable crime versus those who live elsewhere. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) will want to speak more on that issue.

We have to change the culture with respect to sexual exploitation, especially of children, domestic violence, sexual violence and even stalking, because they cause real misery, destroy lives and, in the end, can lead to the most serious of crimes, up to and including murder. The culture that says that such crimes do not matter or that allows them to slip through has got to change, whether that happens through the police, the Crown Prosecution Service or the local authorities.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and I fully endorse what he is saying, especially on domestic violence and child sexual exploitation. On sentencing, which he has touched on, constituents of mine, John and Penny Clough, set up the Justice for Jane campaign following the brutal murder of their daughter, Jane Clough, who was a nurse. She was murdered in a hospital car park by her former partner and rapist Jonathan Vass, who was released on bail by a judge. One of the things that they found most hurtful was the fact that he was only sentenced as a murderer; he was never sentenced as a rapist and a murderer. Those cases were left to lie on file. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in praising the efforts of John and Penny in talking to Keir Starmer and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that severe charges such as rape are not simply left on a shelf and that people such as Vass are not able to cover their crimes by murdering the only witness?

[Tony Lloyd]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. John and Penny have persuaded Keir Starmer that no longer should things simply lie on file. What is clear is that there was a case to be tried. It would have gone to trial had the subsequent murder not taken place. It is distressing for the family. I can understand that not only as a father but as a citizen.

On stalking, half the people who are stalked will have been stalked for more than 18 months before anything is done about it, so many events in their lives will cause them both fear and misery. In the worst cases, stalking has led to much more serious offences, such as rape and murder. We also know that the probability of someone being brought to prosecution for stalking is still phenomenally low. Even in the event of prosecution, only about 2.2% of those involved in this serious crime end up with a jail sentence. Again, we must change the culture that allows that to take place.

There are examples of extremely good police performance. I had a meeting recently with women who had been victims of, or involved with, domestic violence. One person, who was the victim of a violent attack by her ex-partner, said that she wanted to place it on the record that her own experience of the police, the refuge that gave her shelter, the Crown Prosecution Service and other services had been good. In the same meeting, another woman told me that when she lay on the floor waiting for an ambulance to be called, she heard police officers joking with her partner, which simply should not happen in this day and age. Our police need specialist training for domestic violence and stalking, but it is not unreasonable to say that it should be there for all. Whoever polices or prosecutes domestic violence must treat that crime as something that matters, and the criminal justice system must help to resolve the problems.

Let me move on because I am conscious of the number of Members who wish to speak. The Minister will recall the debate a few weeks ago on criminal injuries compensation. I am sure that she will tell us that the Government are funding victim services in whatever way. None the less, there is still great anxiety about the criminal injuries compensation scheme and what will happen to it. I hope today that she will take the chance to clarify the Government’s intentions on the matter. There is massive interest outside in what is happening. There is massive interest, too, in Parliament. I do not say this as a warning, but I hope that she has been able to tell her colleagues in Government that her own experience in that debate was a little unfair on her but was not unfair in the spirit of what she inherited from her predecessors. We need some clarification that we will have a robust criminal injuries compensation system that survives any proposed changes.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on calling this enormously important debate. May I underline the importance of the point that he has just made? I have never seen so many people queuing to get in to observe a debate in Westminster Hall as I have today. It shows the level of public anxiety. Following the Government’s wise decision to withdraw the statutory instrument, does he agree that when they bring back some proposals to the House they need to advertise them within both Houses, so that all Members can make their voices heard about how unacceptable the proposed cuts in criminal injuries compensation are?

[Tony Lloyd]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Let me add one extra thing. It would be desirable if any such debate were heard on the Floor of the House and not simply in a Committee Room, so that the full House can be persuaded of the merits of any changes and can vote accordingly. That would be in the interests of people up and down the length and breadth of this land.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and the Minister on taking up her new post. She and I worked on the Justice Committee together. I am sure that she is aware that the Government’s proposals on criminal injuries compensation would mean that more than half of victims would get nothing and almost 90% of others would get very little. If the coalition is really serious about victims, it should scrap the proposals and carry on with the current scheme.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am bound to agree, because I spoke in the debate on the scheme some weeks ago when it struck me as perverse that we talk about things such as permanent scarring or permanent speech impediments being minor. Many people listening to the debate would conclude that their view of what is minor is not consistent with the changes that the Government are proposing. It is important that we establish that point.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. I want to add to his comments about the concern that so many people outside this place feel about the Government’s plans for the criminal injuries compensation scheme. I want to ask him about a particular point in the plans that we saw before and about the fears that people have regarding any new plans. The Government intended to withdraw compensation from anyone attacked by a dog. In my constituency, I meet many constituents who have been attacked by a dog; we suffered the death of a child in my constituency because of a dangerous dog. Last year alone, we saw a 5% increase in the number of people being hospitalised because of dangerous dog attacks: just under 6,500 people were admitted to hospital last year, of whom one in six was a child. Does my hon. Friend share my view that if the Government again bring forward a proposal in this area, after all the concerns that have been raised, people should still continue to receive compensation if they are attacked by a dog?

[Tony Lloyd]

My hon. Friend is right. Dog attacks are clearly a major concern for groups such as people who work for the Royal Mail. Like the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, the Communication Workers Union has campaigned strongly on the issue.

As I said earlier, I was present when my daughter’s dog was attacked recently. In that particular case, I actually had to attack the dog. It struck me at the time that it was a rather unpleasant dog, and if it had attacked me, I might have suffered a little, but if it had attacked a child, the child might have suffered considerably. Compensation is a really serious issue.

I want to make a few other points. As we consider what we can do for victims, I would be grateful to the Minister if she could look at the role of Victim Support. Most of us who have experience of its work know that it provides an enormously valuable service. It deals with more than 1 million victims of crime every year, of whom some 80,000 are victims of violent crime and some 8,000 are victims of sexual assault. It also trains some 7,000 people each year.

There is a genuine concern at the moment among those who work for Victim Support, both nationally and in my own area, about the changes that the Government are making to funding. Perhaps I should declare an interest at this stage, as a candidate for the role of police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester. The Minister may be surprised to know that although the transfer to police commissioners will go ahead, there is concern among people from all parties who are standing to be police and crime commissioners about whether the transfer will be fully funded, with full transfer of Victim Support moneys, so that there is no loss of its services. It is important that we have clarity about that issue, because any loss of funding would not only be unfair to those who become commissioners but—much more importantly—it would be unfair to victims if those services were no longer there. We need some clarification about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd]

I seem to have been speaking for 50 minutes, according to the clock. It may feel to others that it has been at least that long.

In conclusion, I simply say that we need to change the culture around victim support and put victims at the centre of the criminal justice process. There are some specific points I would like to make to the Minister that I hope she will pick up. Victims who come to see me as an MP and those who speak for them, such as Victim Support, say they want to be treated seriously in the process. They want to be kept in touch with what is going on. They want promises made to them kept; for example, people turning up when they say they will and coming back to them when they say they will.

Victims also want to be involved in the process of the management of the offender. Many victims are more inclined than the general public to support restorative justice processes, as long as they are explained properly. However, they want to be properly consulted. Victims understand that restorative justice can work, but they do not like others pressing them to agree to restorative justice when it is not appropriate; rather, it should simply be an available option. Having agreed to the restorative justice process, victims particularly do not like finding out that the criminal has been through the same process on more than one occasion. That says to them that there is no restoration; it is merely a way of avoiding the justice process. Victims do not want the police to use cautions as a way of avoiding the criminal justice process. It is important to register those points. There are sometimes good reasons for police cautions, but they should be used when appropriate and not simply as a way to avoid the bureaucracy of the court and to save police time. That is not why they were designed.

There are some specifics on which the Minister and her Department can help victims. The first is to clarify the funding for Victim Support, as I said. The second is to clarify the position of the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The third would be to make a clear statement about victim and witness statements in court—particularly victim statements—to provide certainty for victims that the statements will be voluntary and properly elucidated on behalf of the victim, and that they will be used by the court to make sense of the damage done to the victim by the criminal and the crime.

I support the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) in her plea through her recent ten-minute rule Bill. A code for victims has to be one with proper backing, not just a form of words. We have had victims’ codes in the past and, frankly, if they are only codes they are ignored. We need certainty that the victim is given the same rights as the offender in the criminal justice system.

I am grateful, in what will be one of my last contributions in this great Parliament of ours, to have the privilege to raise the position of victims, who matter so much because crime is still prevalent. We need to change the culture around victims. We can do it, but we need the different agencies to proceed with a sense of urgency.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

That is complete nonsense. There has been a culture change across the whole of the prison system, and prison governors are stepping up to the plate and driving the agenda forward. At the same time, we have taken an enormous amount of trouble to put in place a code of practice and the necessary policy underpinnings so that we can take work in prisons to the maximum level that we can achieve. There is a profound change under way involving substantial and substantive work and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support us in that endeavour.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Minister will also recognise that issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, as well as mental health, have a huge impact on employability. How far is the Ministry of Justice prepared to work with—perhaps I should declare an interest, or at least a potential interest—the future police and crime commissioners to make sure that there is proper co-ordination of all the services necessary to get people back into work?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the integrated offender management that already happens in the case of prolific offenders, who tend to be drug addicted. Their support or treatment will be related, to a degree, to how they engage with their offender managers and their drug treatment providers in the community, which involves police, probation, health and local authority services all working together. That rather obvious, sensible example of integrated offender management is getting much wider traction across the whole offender management system. The hon. Gentleman is quite right: it is the way forward when all those agencies operate together. That is the purpose of all the work that we are doing with other Government Departments to advance that agenda.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am not arguing that. I am saying there should be hesitation before the very powerful and quite legitimate lobbies that have descended on the House since we proposed the changes just sweep everybody into believing that ever-wider provision of legal aid is necessary. There are downsides. In addition to the cost to the public purse, which we cannot ignore because no other democratically elected Government spends this amount of public money on funding litigation and legal advice, if we have a litigious society it imposes costs on all other branches of our life. That is an essential background that we cannot forget as we consider these amendments.

We have applied other tests, but the whole point of having legal aid—and the reason why we are keeping a legal aid system that will still be the most generous in the world even when we have cut it back a bit—is to deal with the needs of justice and those who are vulnerable in society. The other principle that applies is the need to focus taxpayer funding on the most serious and important cases that genuinely require specialist legal advice. Our principled stance is that legal aid should routinely be available in cases where people’s life and liberty are at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home, or where their children may be taken into care. It should not routinely be available where other funding is available, where litigants can present their own case, or where the taxpayer is at risk of paying for litigation that any person paying from their own pocket would not finance and participate in. That is the basis on which we look at all the amendments that have come from the other place.

I am grateful to the other place for the time and the detailed debate and scrutiny it has dedicated to the Bill, genuinely improving it in places. I went and listened to parts of the debates myself and I have great faith in the power of the other place to revise a Bill without altering it fundamentally. Wherever possible I have sought to incorporate my noble Friends’ amendments or intentions, and as a result of the scrutiny of both Houses the overall package has moved very significantly from our initial position when we introduced the Bill, and it is all the better for it. Before people press me to agree to more than we are proposing to agree to in this important group of amendments perhaps I should remind the House of the changes we have made since we started this whole process quite a long time ago. They include removing the power to means-test suspects receiving advice and assistance at the police station, adopting the Association of Chief Police Officers’ definition of domestic violence and extending the time limit and range of evidence accepted when it comes to accessing the domestic violence gateway. We agreed to that a long time ago. People got very excited about the ACPO amendment so we gave them that, and then a whole list of fresh demands were immediately made by the Law Society and other groups that have lobbied us. I shall address those issues in a few moments.

Other changes include retaining legal aid for cases involving human trafficking and domestic child abduction—another concession; ensuring that funding covers special educational needs for 16 to 24-year-olds; and putting it beyond doubt that we are retaining legal aid for parents to bring clinical negligence cases in the most serious and complex neurological injury negligence cases for small children, which we always intended to do. Beyond the legislation, we announced at the Budget a further £20 million to go to the not-for-profit sector in each of the next two financial years.

How do the further Lords amendments in the group measure up against the principles I have outlined? I regret that the broad thrust of some of them is still to be rather free with taxpayers’ money. In our opinion, they certainly go way beyond ensuring that the Bill is focusing funding on high priorities.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State made great play of the ACPO definition of domestic violence, but if the test is about protecting the vulnerable I must say that the definition is very legalistic. The experience of lots of women—the 230 women who leave home every week because of violence—is not always packaged in the way allowed for in the proposed legislation. Does he accept that many women will fall outside the definition and will not be able to get legal aid?

[Mr Clarke]

Let me begin with the domestic violence gateway. The ACPO definition is what the Labour Front-Bench team was originally concentrating on. We have to have a definition because we are talking about qualifying for the public funding of legal aid in certain cases. We have moved a lot on domestic violence and we are moving again in response to the Lords’ debate, as I shall explain in a moment. First, though, let me make it clear, because I do not think it has always been clear to people in either House, exactly what we are talking about. It was never in doubt that there would be legal aid for the protection of victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence is an issue that this Government, like any Government, including the previous one, take extremely seriously. As now, it was always intended that legal aid would remain available for victims of domestic violence who were trying, for example, to obtain protective injunctions to defend themselves in such cases. In domestic violence cases there is no means test so even the super-rich can obtain legal aid if they are seeking an injunction for reasons of domestic violence, although I hope that not too many of them will.



We are doing quite a lot of other things. The Home Office is for the first time providing more than £28 million of stable funding until 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services, and £900,000 each year to support national domestic violence helplines and a stalking helpline. Our Department is now contributing towards the funding of independent advisers attached to specialist domestic violence courts. We are giving a total of £9 million for that purpose up to the end of 2012-13. We are allocating £3 million a year to 65 rape crisis centres and opening new ones. Domestic violence protection orders are being piloted in three police force areas.  We have announced a one-year pilot which will take place from this summer to test out a domestic violence disclosure scheme, known as Clare’s law.

I mention those things so that we can have a debate which, with great respect to their lordships, is not on the same basis as the part of the Lords debate that I listened to—that people did not realise the seriousness of domestic violence as a social issue in our society. We all do. The Bill never challenged that. It is all part of a pattern of services being provided by this Government, through which we think we are strengthening the support for victims of domestic violence.

What we are discussing here is the special provision that we are also making to provide legal aid to people who have been recent victims of domestic violence, so that when they are dealing with their abuser in court on other issues—ownership of the former matrimonial home, maintenance, access to property—they have access to legal aid. In such cases, particularly the private family law cases and the children’s cases, we are trying to shift away from so much adversarial litigation. Having lawyers on both sides arguing about custody and access to children does not always lighten the tensions or resolve the dispute, as most Members of Parliament are only too well aware from their constituency surgeries, so we are moving towards mediation, which is cheaper. That is why some of the lobbyists do not like it, with the result that in cases where it does not work, they are arguing for legal aid to continue to be available.

We have conceded the case that after a recent episode of domestic violence, the victim on her own may not want to deal, even through mediation, with her abuser. How do we define domestic violence for that purpose? That is an important but secondary purpose, as the case will not be about domestic violence. In such a case, what definition of domestic violence should be used for the person to qualify for legal aid? That is what the argument about the definition in both Houses has been about all the way through.