House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Nov 1990

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We shall also examine the desirability of early supervisory release being set at a third rather than a half of a sentence and we shall resist proposals that early release prisoners should be at risk of return to prison until the date when their full sentences would have been served.

Mr. Waddington : We are amazed by what we have just heard. Did the right hon. Gentleman say, entirely contrary to the suggestion by the Carlisle committee, that the Opposition propose that people should be released after serving one third of their sentence? The whole theme of the Carlisle proposal is that the sentence served should be more closely related to the sentence passed. Is that to be thrown overboard?

Mr. Hattersley : The right hon. and learned Gentleman has picked and chosen from the Carlisle report himself, so he cannot complain if others do the same. There is much to be commended in the report, and that we commend and support, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman was not listening when I quoted Lord Carlisle's words about the reduction in sentences that has to go with this scheme. We shall examine all these matters in Committee.

My next remarks are directed specifically to the Home Secretary. We all agree, for agreement is easy enough, that parents should take responsibility for their children. But that is not a policy : it is a cliche . The real question is whether legislation will encourage that process of responsibility. Many Conservative Members who deny absolutely that the law can change attitudes to race apparently believe that laws can alter attitudes to parental responsibility. For my part, I doubt whether juvenile offenders' parents who do not come to court voluntarily will be made more responsible by compulsory attendance. We certainly support the maximum age for consideration at youth courts, as they are to be called, being increased to 18. We also welcome clause 49 which ends custodial sentences for 14-year-olds, but we would go far further. We would abolish prison department custody for juveniles.

Finally, I turn to the twin proposals--twin because they are related to ideology, although by nothing more--for private remand centres and private escort agencies. I have already called for emergency action to reduce the number of remand prisoners in our gaols. Obviously and by definition, emergency action should be taken immediately, but a fundamental review of remand should have waited for Lord Justice Woolf to answer the Government's questions about--I quote from the terms of reference--the

"number and conditions of remand prisoners".

Instead of waiting for their own inquiry to report, the Government have leapt in to answer the question with silly dogma.

The private remand centre has no rational justification. Whatever it achieves could be achieved in public centres if the Government willed that objective. Contradictions inherent in this policy can be demonstrated by two questions that I hope the Minister of State will be meticulous in answering. Are these private probation institutions to be subject to minimum standards of accommodation and treatment? Are minimum standards to be laid down for how they house and treat their prisoners? I assume that the answer must be yes, although

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I see that the Minister is busy finding out. I believe that it would not be possible to allow private contractors to operate in this area without some regulation.

Mr. Patten : The right hon. Gentleman has not read the Bill.

Mr. Hattersley : I have a second question to which it seems the Minister will have to send for an answer as well. If minimum standards are to be laid down for private institutions, are they also to be laid down for Her Majesty's prisons? It seems strange that private contractors have to behave decently while prisons run by the Government can be as squalid--

Mr. Patten : It might be helpful if I answered the right hon. Gentleman now rather than later. It is clear that he has not conducted his reading of the Bill with due care and attention. From clause 65 onwards the right hon. Gentleman will find the answers to all his questions set out in the Bill. I urge him to look at it.

Mr. Hattersley : The Minister will not find the answer to my most important question set out there. I am happy to have the answer to my first question confirmed, because that means that he must now answer my second. I agree that the private institutions will have minimum standards. How does he justify their having minimum standards but not Her Majesty's prisons? [Interruption.] I shall ask the right hon. Gentleman another question and if he can tell me that the answer to it is in the Bill I shall be suitably humble and apologise.

Mr. Michael Shersby (Uxbridge) : Humble?

Mr. Hattersley : Not humble--suitably humble. That is quite a different thing.

To pursue a point made by the Home Secretary about the control of these prisons, could we hear more about the controller's status and his position under the law? Under what powers will he operate and how are we to define exactly what his role should be? I should like to hear more, too, about the related matter that is combined with the previous proposal, only because of the silly dogma on which it is based.

Mr. Patten : I know that this is not a Committee stage but a Second Reading debate, but if the right hon. Gentleman looks at the eight subsections of clause 68, he will find a precise reference to the powers of a director, controller or monitor.

Mr. Hattersley : I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will do better than that when he winds up the debate. I hope that he will also do better when he answers the other question that I put to him. In the second inquiry set up by the Government, Lord Justice Woolf examined the best method of fulfilling escort duties and court manning commitments. The Home Secretary answered the question for him in clause 61. There are to be private escorts to and from prison. I understand well enough the burdens that escort duties impose on prison staff and the problems that they create for prison governors as they try to make the best of their overstretched resources. Private escorts are not, however, the answer. They will be badly trained, if trained at all. The record of private security companies taking the place of police officers demonstrates and proves that point.

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I take my example from the ports where the transfer of those duties from police officers to private individuals has resulted in the ports being protected by underpaid and undertrained employees who do a cheap, bad job as compared with the regular police. I have no doubt that that pattern will be repeated with the privatisation of the prison escort system. Prison escorts will be given the status of constable. That is necessary, but it is also intolerable. One of the features of private security systems is that untrained and unprepared men and women are made constables in order to give a vestige of respectability to the privatisation process. I cannot imagine the consequences, with such people supervising prisoners, if there should be a mass break-out between court and prison. With untrained and unqualified private escorts who are unable to deal with prisoners, the potential consequences are horrendous.

The Bill contains much that is objectionable and much that is confused and contradictory. It also contains, in some areas, the seeds of sensible reform. We shall do our best to improve it in Committee. I am sure that the Home Secretary will be the first to understand, however, that it will be a long and arduous process. We must all hope that something better emerges from that process. 5.12 pm

Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : Once again the Government show that they are a radical, reforming Government. Once again they show that they are far from running out of steam. So much steam is contained in the Bill that one could talk for hours about it. The House knows that that is no idle threat by me, but I respect the rules of the House, the fact that so many other hon. Members want to speak in the debate and your presence, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I shall limit my observations to a few substantial issues. First, sentencing. The public want to be protected against the worst offenders. They must spend much time in prison. However, the worst offender does not mean just the most violent and dangerous offender. It also means those who are a perpetual menace because they continue to commit burglaries, to steal cars and other objects or to perpetrate serious City frauds involving large sums of money. By all means judges should be made to state the reasons for custody. By all means probation reports should be required before custodial sentences are passed. However, we must ensure that resources are made available so that reports can be prepared quickly after a defendant has been found guilty. It is no use just saying that the probation service will perform ; it already performs an outstanding service to society. A substantial increase in resources will be necessary if the probation service is to carry out all the work that is involved in the sentencing and after-care of offenders. I am not happy about restricting the right of the courts to consider previous convictions only in very confined circumstances. It would often be impracticable for a sentencer to decide whether the "seriousness of the offence" applies or not in a particular case. It would also be undesirable in principle that a man's general propensity for evil should be ignored simply because it was a different kind of evil when last he offended.

Secondly, young offenders. I welcome the approach that seeks to keep young people as far as possible away from custodial sentences. Since 1983, I believe that the

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number of juvenile offenders given custodial sentences has halved, without any increase in juvenile crime. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will confirm that. It is a substantial achievement of law and order under this Government. I understand of course that prisons can become universities of crime, but I am unhappy that we appear to have given up the concept of the short, sharp shock for youngsters as well as adults which deterred many offenders from committing crimes. Is there any evidence that the short, sharp shock has been a total failure? If so, where is it? I do not believe that judges feel that it has been a failure. The experience of the courts suggests that it served a useful purpose, although perhaps its effects were not quite so extensive as in the days of the short, sharp shock of the glass house. It is a pity that we are letting it slip from our grasp.

Thirdly, custodial release. I am sure that the public want sentences served to bear more resemblance to the sentence that was actually passed by the court. The public would be aghast to know just how soon after a sentence some criminals are now released. I am also sure that the requirement that at least half the sentence should be served is a distinct improvement on the third of the sentence that now is all that has to be served. But instead of abolishing the automatic remission of a third of the sentence, which has the effect of ensuring good behaviour, why do we not consider abolishing the often unjust parole system? It should be replaced by the requirement that the prisoner must work his way out of prison, by earning remission for training, effort, productivity and dedication while in custody. I cannot understand why an arbitrary decision on release is consistently thought to be better than shifting some of the responsibility for early release on to the shoulders of the prisoner.

It is well known that the parole system works unhappily from time to time and causes immense resentment among prisoners. Sometimes they cannot understand, because they are not told, why they cannot have parole. In many cases it relates to their family circumstances for which they are not to blame.

Fourthly, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) believes that a sentencing council would automatically right the wrongs of bias that he claims are proliferating throughout the judicial system. I do not accept that slur upon the judicial system. I do not accept that it ever happened but, if it did, there is no evidence that there is significant bias against black offenders or anybody else in our courts. If there is a predominance of a certain sort of offending resulting in a certain sort of sentence in a certain court area by, for example, black people, it is obvious that the sentences may have to be more substantial than in an area where that type of offending is less. Even if an element of bias existed, as is suggested by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, a sentencing council would have substantial disadvantages. It would delay sentencing and that is immensely undesirable. It would interfere with the need for the courts to respond to offences that are prevalent in a particular area. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) said, it would be a step towards the sort of automatic sentencing which could be achieved much more easily by a machine or a computer placed on the judge's desk and which most of us would find totally undesirable.

The equality sought by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook and the abolition of the racial bias that he perceives, wrongly, exists widely in the system is being

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achieved by the statutory framework now being introduced into the system, by the increase in the number of people who will no longer serve prison sentences, by the activities of the Court of Appeal in giving formal guidance that is strongly indicative to judges and upon which they all rely before they sentence in most cases and by the Attorney-General's power to refer over-lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal. In addition, there is the limitation of the maximum penalty that reflects the seriousness of offences.

Mr. Hattersley : I am not intervening to argue with the hon. and learned Gentleman about the powers of a sentencing council because that will come later. I want to press him on the existence or otherwise of racial bias in the passionate belief that unless we recognise and acknowledge its existence we shall never overcome it. If it does not exist, how does the hon. and learned Gentleman account for the disproportionate number of black and Asian offenders who are remanded in custody rather than granted bail when that is related to the fact that, having been remanded in custody, they are then acquitted? It is not that they are more criminal, but that they are remanded in custody in high proportions and are acquitted thereafter.

Mr. Lawrence : The test whether a man can have bail usually depends on whether he has a fixed residential address, whether he is in work and whether it is likely that he will appear for trial. Unfortunately, in our society there are areas of Britain in which black people are not in work, do not have a fixed address and do not have anybody to put forward as surety. Those are the considerations that a judge or magistrate must take into account when considering whether it is appropriate to allow bail. It has nothing to do with racial prejudice but everything to do with the tests laid down to ensure that the person attends for trial.

Mr. Hattersley : The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the judge has to take into account whether a person is likely to abscond. Is he saying that black and Asian Britons are more likely to abscond than their white neighbours?

Mr. Lawrence : The right hon. Gentleman was not listening. When a judge is deciding whether a person should be given bail, one of the questions asked is whether he has a fixed address. Unfortunately--I hope that the time will come when things change--many of the blacks in our society--

Mr. Hattersley : And whites.

Mr. Lawrence : Yes, and whites. Many of the blacks in our society do not have fixed addresses, do not have jobs or sureties. The preponderance of that in some areas accounts for the high proportion of black people who are remanded in custody. It has nothing to do with the colour of their skin but everything to do with their ability to persuade a court that they will turn up for their trial. If he asked, the right hon. Gentleman would discover that the incidence of those who abscond is also very high in sections of the community where the magistrates say, "All right, we do not want to appear to be racist and we do not

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want to use the lack of address, lack of work or lack of a surety to refuse bail. We shall grant bail on their own recognisance." Then, they are never seen again.

Ms. Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) : I apologise for not having been in the Chamber to hear the beginning of the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, but I have heard the point that he is trying to make. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) mentioned the obvious distortion in the number of black people remanded in custody when related to the number of people who are acquitted. The hon. and learned Gentleman inferred that the black community was more likely to abscond or not to have a fixed address. I regret that more black people are not in the Strangers' Gallery to hear that extraordinary assertion. Can the hon. and learned Gentleman tell me the statistical basis for saying that black defendants are more likely to abscond or not to have a fixed address or a job? Is there any statistical basis, or is the hon. and learned Gentleman airing his prejudices?

Mr. Lawrence : I have no prejudices in the matter and the hon. Lady should do me the credit of knowing that if there is anybody in this place who has no racial prejudice, it is me. I do not put myself above others but I put myself no lower than the hon. Lady. If the hon. Lady would apply her mind, she would see that I was defending the judicial system from the false accusation made by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook that the reason why coloured people are remanded in custody more frequently has something to do with the colour of their skin. Whether people are remanded in custody depends on whether they have a fixed address, work or sureties.

Mr. Archer rose --

Mr. Lawrence : I shall not give way again because I am trying to make a relatively short speech and I do not want to be dragged down a blind alley that has nothing to do with the important matter that we are considering-- [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbott) is totally wrong and if she will keep quiet and listen to the rest of my speech, she will prevent herself from getting apoplexy.

Fifthly, children's evidence. I understand the wish to spare children the ordeal of giving evidence and the good sense of letting all children who can talk give admissible evidence. I understand, for obvious reasons, that the defendant should not be allowed to cross-examine the child witness. That should be done through an advocate. Those are all sensible and desirable improvements. However, I wonder whether we have got right the proposals for video-recording interviews with child witnesses. I understand the need for that in sexual and violent offences as it saves the child from a courtroom ordeal. Those of us who sit or practise in the courts understand that. However, we must not make it too difficult to test the evidence of children properly in examination-in-chief, where the jury is given an opportunity to see whether the child is likely to be telling the truth, or in cross-examination. We are dealing with a subject in which a jury's horror at the mere allegation of offences against children may be so great that the wrongful conviction of the innocent may occur more easily. I am thinking particularly of identification cases. Proper cross-examination is vital to test for the possibility of

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mistakes. Children are no less likely to make mistakes than adults and we know that in a high proportion of criminal cases mistakes have been made about identification. Therefore, we have improved things by changes to our rules.

I am uneasy that the Director of Public Prosecutions should be able to do away with the important filtering stage of committal proceedings in the magistrates courts. The precedent for fraud cases, for which it was considered sensible to do away with committal proceedings, is irrelevant because it is mainly concerned with documentary evidence, which would be very boring, tedious and unlikely to be challenged. However, when considering the correct identification of someone who is alleged to have perpetrated a serious offence, we must treat the proposal that there need be no committal proceeding with more care and perhaps with some unease. I am uneasy that a child witness should not be examined in chief on any matter that is dealt with in recorded testimony. As the Criminal Bar Association observed in its comments on the Bill, the child witness has still to be judged according to his testimony, and if his evidence is limited that testing becomes impossible. The child must be able to establish himself as a witness, and the jury must be able to see whether the accused person may be innocent from hearing sufficient evidence.

Sixthly, I welcome the first gentle steps towards the introduction of an element of privatisation into the prison system. Provided that the same standard of security continues to apply to escort services, there is no reason why the prison service should be burdened and restricted by the immense amount of time and money that is expended taking prisoners to and from court. An enormous amount of time, energy and expense is involved. If some of it can be shifted to the private sector, the prison service will be relieved of a burden that it does not like and can certainly do without.

Provided security is maintained, I see no reason why there should not be an experiment with the private operation of a remand prison, where, after all, a high proportion of prisoners are presumed innocent and do not therefore require the same supervision or state control that most of us feel is necessary where there has been a sentence of imprisonment. If ever a matter were suitable for an experiment, this is it, and I commend it.

Seventhly, as most crime is committed by teenagers, it is wholly reasonable that parents should be made responsible for the wrongdoing of their children. I therefore welcome the measures to enforce some of that parental responsibility.

Eighthly, I welcome the rationalisation of community sentences. Ninthly, I see no reason why those who would otherwise be remanded in custody should not be given the opportunity of being tagged while they are on remand if they so wish. Will my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State confirm that the pilot scheme met with some success and that it represents a reasonable expenditure of resources? Opposition Members are anxious to ensure that as few people as possible are kept in prison. Here is a positive measure that would be voluntary. If a prisoner feels humiliated or degraded by being tagged and would rather be in prison, the choice is his. It is such a sensible measure that I am sure that the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook was wrong to oppose it.

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Finally, in my view and that of many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and the majority of people outside, one positive step that could be taken to reduce the incidence of serious crime, particularly the killing of innocent people, is the restoration of capital punishment. There is no such provision in the Bill because the Government have always taken the view that that is a matter not for Government but for private conscience. I intend to table a new clause to give the House the opportunity of reconsidering the matter, and I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State will ensure that that debate is taken on the Floor of the House so that the wishes of the people, who know as much about deterrence as any expert, can be taken properly into account and so that they may know that hon. Members take the matter seriously indeed.

5.34 pm

Mr. Peter Archer (Warley, West) : The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) made several comments that I found startling. When the Minister replies, we shall listen with care to see how many of them he endorses. I shall refer to some of them a little later, but I was particularly startled when he asked for evidence that recent Government policies, particularly the short, sharp shock, had failed. If he has a few minutes to spare later, he and I can study the criminal statistics since 1983.

I hope that I shall be forgiven if I confess to a feeling of deja vu. I have long lost count of the number of Criminal Justice Bill debates in which I have participated, but they all have two characteristics in common. The first is that they repeal provisions which in an earlier Bill were hailed as the complete answer to crime. I remember when the partly suspended sentence was greeted as a great penological breakthrough and was duly incorporated in the Criminal Law Act 1977. I do not think that it was a mistake. There are circumstances where it may be an appropriate step, but clause 4 despatches it painlessly into history.

The second characteristic is that each Criminal Justice Bill is a dog's breakfast of assorted provisions as Home Office officials clear their desks of the proposals that have accumulated since the last Criminal Justice Bill. Any connecting thread is invented long after the contents of the Bill have been assembled.

Mr. Patten : Withdraw. Monstrous.

Mr. Archer : I make no comment on the right hon. Gentleman, for whom we have much respect and who does his best, but the Home Office does impose constraints on its Ministers. All I was saying is that it does not facilitate Second Reading debates.

I should perhaps add a third characteristic. A Criminal Justice Bill is usually a compromise between popular slogans and flat reality. The hon. and learned Member for Burton said that the Bill is full of steam. I would have said that there is a certain amount of wind in it rather than steam. I suspect that the compromise in this Bill is between the ringing declaration of the war on crime, which earned the Home Secretary a standing ovation at the Conservative party conference, and the need to reduce the prison population, on which everyone who has attempted to think about the subject, including those who drafted the White Paper, is agreed.

That duality of purpose gives rise to provisions which at best sit uneasily with one another and at worst are

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simply inconsistent. We are told in clause 2 that the punishment must be commensurate with the seriousness of the offence--a principle which can be delivered in dramatic terms at a party conference. If it means anything in clause 2, according to the ordinary rules of construction of the English language, it means that every sentence must be a tariff sentence and that there should be no individualised acts of mercy to take account of individual circumstances. In other words, the court cannot take account of mitigation.

I cannot believe that that is the intended meaning of the clause, otherwise the Bill would abolish probation and community service. I think that it was intended to mean that no one should be imprisoned for longer than he deserves, except in the specific circumstances outlined in the clause. But that would sound much less robust from a party platform.

While we are on that subject, we find that, under clause 4, section 28 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 1973 is to be repealed. Our unpopular friend, the extended sentence, is to be laid to rest. Now people are to be sentenced for what they have done, not for what it is feared that they may do. A fundamental principle of retributive justice is re-established : no one should receive a harsher sentence than he or she deserves. But scarcely is it carried out of the back door when, in clause 2(2)(b), as bold as brass and scarcely disguised, it comes swaggering back in through the front door.

Mr. Waddington : With respect, I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree that the extended sentence which followed preventive detention provided machinery whereby someone could be given longer than the maximum sentence laid down by statute for an offence. That is what we are talking about in the case of an extended sentence. In clause 2 we are talking about the circumstances in which someone can get a longer sentence than that which would normally be justified by the offence, but still a sentence within the absolute maximum laid down by statute for that offence. It has nothing to do with extended sentences.

Mr. Archer : In each case, the statute prescribes a maximum and then says that, in certain circumstances, one can exceed the maximum.

Mr. Waddington : No. With respect, we are careful to say in clause 2 that, although one can impose a longer sentence than that justified by the gravity of the offence, in the interests of protecting the community that sentence must still be within the statutory maximum for that offence.

Mr. Archer : In each case, the principle is that, in certain circumstances, someone may receive a sentence that is harsher than he or she would otherwise have deserved, not because of the circumstances of the offence, but because of other considerations. No doubt we shall debate that principle in Committee.

Mr. Patten : I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be on the Standing Committee.

Mr. Archer : What did the right hon. Gentleman say?

Mr. Patten : I was only reminiscing to myself from a sedentary position, but I have been lured to the Dispatch

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Box by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I was reminiscing about his performance in the Standing Committee on the last Criminal Justice Bill. I said sotto voce that I hoped that he would not be on this one, because I remember a few holes below the waterline. It sounds as though the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making threatening noises about serving again.

Mr. Archer : Far be it from me to hole the right hon. Gentleman below the waterline, but I think that in Standing Committee we might cause a certain amount of damage to his gun turrets.

The White Paper, with its promising title "Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public", begins by announcing that it proposes "a coherent legislative framework for sentencing".

That sounds hopeful. Perhaps there is to be a clear, logical set of proposals which the courts can have in mind. Perhaps it will be simpler, without a multiplicity of technicalities, to trip the courts, which have enough to occupy their minds getting through their lists, doing justice in individual cases, taking account of all the things they are told about the offence and the offender, without having to look out for an array of trip- wires.

Perhaps this legislative framework will clarify the relationship between the legislature, which lays down policy ; the Court of Appeal, which offers guidelines from time to time, but understandably on a sparing basis ; and the courts, which have to consider the individuals appearing before them. The Court of Appeal, of course, deals only with sentences which at least to some already appear too long, so it deals with a fairly self-selecting group of sentences. In the event, the Bill does not really improve on the Mikado's rule of thumb that the punishment should fit the crime and, as in every Criminal Justice Bill, the trip-wires are moved about and rearranged, just as we were getting used to where they were left after the last Criminal Justice Bill.

Mr. Waddington : Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman realise that this Criminal Justice Bill differs from other ones because it builds on the success of other Bills which were passed only a short time ago? The central theme in the Bill is that we should extend over the whole age range the disciplines which were imposed on the courts in terms of young offenders in the 1982 and 1988 Criminal Justice Acts. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree that those two Acts have been conspicuously successful--although not agreed by the Labour party--in that the number of young people sent to prison has decreased, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) pointed out.

Mr. Archer : If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is dealing with the restrictions on imposing custodial sentences, he certainly will not face any objection from me, nor has he incurred any objection from Labour Members. If the Bill had confined itself to that provision, that would have been the end of the debate--unhappily, it did not.

The Bill fails to introduce greater consistency in sentencing. There may be reasons for the inconsistencies between Wood Green and Mold, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) referred, but those who have considered it find it puzzling. The Bill offers no solution. Is there not a case for the sentencing council proposed by my right hon.

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Friend? It could offer carefully considered guidelines with a freedom which is not open to the Court of Appeal in individual cases. The hon. and learned Member for Burton, who is in his place but not really with us, was talking complete nonsense when he said that somehow this is to cast aspersions on the courts. To say that the courts cannot do more than a court can be expected to do is not to cast an aspersion.

Would this really be a total breach of the separation of powers, particularly if the sentencing council consisted primarily of judges, as I hope it would, although I hope that it would co-opt probation officers and a few academics, and possibly a Home Office Minister? I believe that many judges would welcome that assistance.

The proposal in clause 48 is that parents of young offenders may be bound over to exercise proper control, as though they were the criminals. That may have some populist appeal, but it raises some fundamental questions in theory and in practice. The Home Secretary is really proposing that parents who may have done their best and who do not understand where they went wrong--which he said was not his intention--are to be branded as a criminal family. There is some authority, at least in the Old Testament, for the proposition that the sins of the father should be visited on the children, but I know of no authority for the converse proposition.

If someone is liable to forfeit a large sum of money, surely it should be crystal clear what that person is required to do in order not to forfeit it. I found the Home Secretary's reply to my intervention unconvincing. How are parents to know what they must do not to be found to have failed to exercise proper control? Are they to watch their sons and daughters every waking moment? Are they to refuse to let them out of the house? Are they to follow them when they go out? If there is any room for misunderstanding, they may--in addition to all the other distress which they will suffer from a further conviction of a son or daughter--suffer what to them will appear as a personal fine. I hope that they will not be required in some way to produce evidence of the control which they have exercised over their children. That will do more harm than good.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett : Often one of the problems is that the two parents have different views on what exactly is the right behaviour for a youngster, and those conflicting views often cause difficulty for the youngster. Surely it is important that both parents know exactly what the courts require so that they can come to an agreement on how they will supervise their son or daughter.

Mr. Archer : I agree with my hon. Friend. All of us who have reared teenage children know that being too inquisitive can sometimes cause more problems than it solves.

Of course, the White Paper is right--we should take account of the needs of victims, actual and potential. I believe that the courts are making good use of compensation orders. There may be a case for considering how we could involve victims further in the disposal of criminal cases. And we need to protect potential victims. Surely the purpose of penal policy is primarily to reduce crime, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook said. If it could be shown that longer sentences had an appreciably deterrent effect, they would

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be a positive contribution to reducing crime, but we seem to be rather stronger on strident slogans than on hard evidence. No one now believes that prisons have a reforming effect, especially when every attempt at education or at training is frustrated by the desperate undermanning of the prison service. But the public will not benefit if those who serve sentences return to liberty coarsened, brutalised and embittered, and having had the benefit of a refresher course on crime from other criminals. If our object were to maximise crime, we might design institutions exactly like the majority of our existing prisons. I do not believe that privatisation is an answer to that problem.

If the Government were serious about reducing crime, they should invest more resources in better public lighting, in replacing subways with pelican crossings, and in subsidising security locks and burglar alarms for elderly people. They could even provide the police authorities with the resources for which they are asking. I shall not weary the House with what I have said many times before, but year after year the West Midlands police authority has calculated carefully the additional manpower it requires to carry out its statutory duties. Year after year, without explanation or argument, the Home Office has authorised only a small fraction of that additional manpower.

Mr. John P. Smith (Vale of Glamorgan) : The Home Secretary implied earlier that there are more, not fewer, policemen on the streets of Britain. I recently had the honour of going out with our police in the seaside town of Barry to see how they deal with a crime rate which has reached epidemic proportions and which is affecting the quality of life of tens of thousands of my constituents. I was horrified to see how many policemen were on duty on a Saturday night. The figure is so bad that I am not at liberty to quote it because if the criminals in our town knew how many police were on duty they would riot.

Mr. Archer : I am sure that my hon. Friend is right and I wish that the Home Office would listen to police authorities when they tell it what manpower they need.

Most importantly of all, the Government should reflect on the fact that the most effective deterrent to crime for the potential offender is the disapproval of his peer group. Teenagers in deprived areas are encouraged to turn to crime because other teenagers in the area regard it as a status symbol. If such teenagers can be won over to the side of law and order, that would be the greatest protection for the victims of crime. The places where the environment is best protected and where vandalism is at a minimum are where local teenagers have been enlisted to clean up the area and will, therefore, ensure that their commitment is not wasted.

If the Government re-read the Scarman report, if they read "Faith in the City" for the first time, if they spared more resources for youth services before the young person is on bail and if they encouraged school teachers to believe that their extra-curricular activities were properly valued, they could achieve a multiplicity of objectives. They could reduce the cost of vandalism, they could reduce the prison budget, they could save the time of the courts, and they could help to safeguard potential victims of crime.

The position would be helped if potential offenders saw the penal system as fair. It is not true, as the hon. and learned Member for Burton asserted, that the colour of

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one's skin makes no difference to how one is treated in the penal system. I will not repeat the statistic to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook referred, but if, as the hon. and learned Member for Burton said, the problem is that the majority of coloured people are unable economically to comply with the conditions required by the Bail Act 1976, would not that in itself be a reason for disquiet and would not it mean that the colour of a person's skin was related to his treatment in the penal system?

Mr. Lawrence : The right hon. and learned Gentleman is taking a pretty tough line with me. When he sits as a recorder, on what basis does he consider whether a person should be granted bail?

Mr. Archer : I apply the conditions in the Bail Act. However, I find that a fair number of black people are unable to comply with the conditions in the Act because they are homeless, jobless or have been discriminated against. If the hon. and learned Member for Burton finds that satisfactory- -

Mr. Lawrence rose --

Mr. Archer : I must end this dialogue as I have gone on for too long.

Mr. Lawrence : Answer the question.

Mr. Archer : I am prepared to debate the matter with the hon. and learned Gentleman on another occasion.

Mr. Lawrence rose --

Mr. Archer : If there is no other solution, I will give way.

Mr. Lawrence : In the circumstances to which he has referred, would the right hon. and learned Gentleman give bail for serious offences, such as mugging?

Mr. Archer : I ask that the Government direct their mind to the fact that for economic reasons, among others, fewer black people than white people obtain bail. If we can agree on that, we may have made some progress and perhaps the hon. and learned Member for Burton will now talk to members of his own Front Bench.

I understand that the Home Secretary cannot achieve all those objectives without the co-operation of his colleagues in the Government. He is not the Prime Minister--although, by the end of this week, who knows? He could try to persuade his colleagues that there are more cost-effective ways of investing money in crime reduction than to keep offenders in prison without parole for longer periods. If he did so, he would not earn a standing ovation at the next Conservative party conference, but he might earn a place in history, and he would certainly earn the thanks of my constituents. 5.55 pm

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