House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jun 1991

After clause 50

Lords amendment : No. 82, to insert the following new clause-- Custodial sentences under 1933 Act--

(". Section 53(2) of the 1933 Act (punishment of certain grave crimes) shall have effect, in relation to a person who has attained the age of 16, as if the reference to any offence punishable in the case of an adult with imprisonment for 14 years or more, not being an offence the sentence for which is fixed by law, included a reference to an offence under section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (indecent assault on a woman).")

Mr. Patten : I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : With this we shall also discuss Lords amendments Nos. 83 and 155.

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Mr. Patten : The provisions of the Bill bring 17-year-olds within the youth court system for sentencing purposes and treat 16 and 17-year- olds as a distinct group within that system. The amendments make further useful minor provisions in regard to the sentencing of 16 and 17-year-old offenders, and I know that they will be widely welcomed.

Mr. Randall : As we see it, amendment No. 82 empowers the court to pass custodial sentences longer than the normal 12-month maximum on juveniles convicted of indecent assault. At present, section 53 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, under which longer sentences can be passed, is restricted to offences which carry a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment or more in the case of an adult. Indecent assault has a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, so it currently falls outside the scope of section 53. As some of the most extreme indecent assaults can be as bad as rape, it is difficult to quarrel with the amendment, and the Opposition are pleased to support it.

Mr. Patten : I greatly welcome the support that the hon. Gentleman has given. I am grateful to the official Opposition.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords amendment No. 83 agreed to.

Lords amendment : No. 84, after clause 58 insert the following new clause-- Default power where probation committee fails to discharge statutory duty--

".--(1) The Secretary of State may make an order under this section if he is of the opinion that, without reasonable excuse, a probation committee--

(a) is failing properly to discharge any duty imposed on it by or under any enactment ; or

(b) has so failed and is likely to do so again.

(2) An order under this section shall--

(a) state that the Secretary of State is of the said opinion ; and (

(b) make such provision as he considers requisite for the purpose of securing that the duty is properly discharged by the committee. (3) Where an order is made under this section, it shall be the duty of the committee to comply with the provision made by the order."

Mr. John Patten : I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 85, 86, 98 and 99.

Mr. Patten : It is widely recognised that the provisions in the Bill to deal with more offenders in the community make it more important than ever to have a probation service that is efficient, effective and accountable to the Secretary of State. Lords amendment No. 84 and the associated amendments ensure that the line of accountability is clear to my right hon. Friend who is, in the end, responsible for the public expenditure involved. The related amendments also tidy up some areas of concern about the relationship between the probation committees and local authorities on payment and manpower.

Mr. Randall : I want to speak to Lords amendment No. 98 and the way in which we arrive at the manning figures for the probation service. We believe that the wording of the amendment is important. We have already expressed deep concern that the probation committees should be free

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to decide how many probation officers an area needs. If local authorities were involved in the decision that could cause unworkable tension between the parties.

Lords amendment No. 98 makes it clear that it is not necessary for the probation committee and the local authority to reach agreement on the number of probation officers as a matter of routine. Although that does not meet all our concerns we believe that that amendment is a step in the right direction and we therefore support it.

Mr. Hugo Summerson (Walthamstow) : I should just like to say how much I support the amendment. My right hon. Friend will be aware that a constituent of mine, Mr. George Arkless, has had considerable difficulty with the north-east London probation service. It seemed to me that there were difficulties in the channel of communication between the probation service and the Home Office. Anything that strengthens those channels of communication must be welcomed. Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 64

Arrangements for the provision of prisoner escorts

Lords amendment : No. 88, in page 43, line 2, leave out ("as respects any area")

Mrs. Rumbold : I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 89 to 92, 94 to 96, and 122 to 129.

Mrs. Rumbold : Amendment No. 88 and the associated amendments are all concerned with the Bill's provisions on prisoner custody officers. Amendments Nos. 90, 94 to 96 and 122 to 129 make some modest improvements to the provisions of the Bill relating to the certification of prisoner custody officers. They do two things. First, they enable different grades of certificates to be issued depending on whether the person concerned wishes to be authorised to escort prisoners, to work in a contracted-out prison, or both. However, we believe that it is most likely that many prison custody officers will want to do prisoner escorting only or in a contracted-out prison only. Although many of the requirements and much of the training will be common to the two functions, it does not seem necessary for someone who is going to escort prisoners to receive training which is relevant to work inside a prison only, and vice versa. Secondly, the amendments provide for expiry dates to be set for prisoner custody officer certificates. We think that it would be better if provision were made for the certificates to expire after a certain period. Otherwise, they could remain in force for many years after the holder has ceased to be employed as a prisoner custody officer--perhaps for the rest of his lifetime.

Amendment No. 92 was introduced in response to an undertaking that I made when the clause was considered by the House in Committee. The clause places prisoner custody officers under a duty to attend to the well-being of prisoners under escort. We agree that that duty should include matters such as the explicit obligation to protect

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prisoners from public scrutiny and insult and to provide adequate light, ventilation and standards of physical comfort in the vans used to transport them.

We intend to make rules to cover those matters, so as to ensure that prisoner custody officers are under no less an obligation than are prison officers under prison rules with regard to the escort of prisoners.

The amendment is phrased in general terms because matters other than those mentioned may also affect the welfare of prisoners, and they may need to be taken into account, too.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 79

Information for financial and other purposes

Lords amendment : No. 100, in page 53, line 7, leave out ("avoidance by such persons of discrimination")

and insert

("performance by such persons of their duty to avoid

discriminating")

Mr. John Patten : I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

When the House considered the Bill on Report the Government introduced an amendment to clause 79, which placed on my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary a duty regularly to publish information to facilitate the avoidance of discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or any other improper ground by persons engaged in the whole area of the administration of justice. Lords amendment No. 100 builds upon and clarifies that provision, and I commend it to the House.

Mr. Sheerman : This is probably the last time that I shall comment on anything in the Bill--I am sure that some Members will be pleased about that.

The amendment would change the wording of clause 79 to establish the principle that those administering criminal justice have a duty to avoid discriminating on the grounds of race, sex or any other improper ground. We pushed hard for that idea in Committee, and once again we see the fruits of our work coming from another place. It is rather odd making a case in Committee in the House of Commons and then seeing the same arguments-- although they may be a little more eloquently deployed--used in the House of Lords, where they seem to have some magic ingredient that enables them to be accepted. The Minister deserves at least some congratulations, although he will not get all of them, because I have some small reservations about the Government's attitude. As a compromise, following pressure from Baroness Flather and other peers in the parliamentary all- party penal affairs group, the Government accepted that the Bill should include a statement of the principle that decisions of the criminal justice system should not discriminate on the ground of race. It is revealing and important to put it on the record that, on 21 March, during the Committee stage in the House of Lords, Lord Elton--a former Conservative Home Office Minister--said :

"I was a reluctant convert to the view that there appears to be an element of discrimination against ethnic minority offenders in our criminal processes. In his reply, I asked my noble Friend to consider what are the social effects of that. The fabric of our society is only sustainable if the mass of society consents to the criteria on which justice is

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administered. If a particular discrete, identifiable and self-identifiable sector of that society believes that there is a system of justice which is just for other people but not just for them, whether or not that belief is well founded, the effects upon our society as a whole will be very damaging because those people will see the judicial system not as a means of maintaining law and order but as a means of keeping them' down and us' up. That is a recipe for internecine warfare and is very dangerous."--[ Official Report, House of Lords, 26 March 1991 ; Vol. 527, c. 1040-41.] I welcome that important statement by Lord Elton, and the fact that it was made in the debate on this very amendment. We have made that point consistently throughout our long proceedings on the Bill. We must not only ensure that there is no discrimination in the criminal justice system--and, at the moment, there is evidence to suggest that there is ; we must prove to those who feel that there is discrimination that there is not.

9.30 pm

I warmly welcomed the Minister's invitation, following the Report stage of the Bill, to meet him at the Home Office with

representatives of the black community, black probation officers, lawyers and so on. We had a good exchange of views. I thank the Minister for that and acknowledge that some progress was made. Having given my little bit of praise, let me go on to say that, to understand the strength of feeling on the matter among the black community and other members of ethnic minorities, we need first to appreciate the widespread and mounting concern about the disproportionately large number of black people in the prison system. The proportion of the prison population coming from ethnic minorities has risen--from 12.5 per cent. in 1985 to 16 per cent. in 1989. Although ethnic minorities constitute less than 5 per cent. of the general population, the proportion of female prisoners from ethnic minorites is even greater, at 24 per cent. That is a worrying figure.

I see that the Home Secretary is in his place, and I must point out to him that it is not as worrying as the appalling and sad figures that we have received this evening--I believe that they will be published officially in the media tomorrow morning--which show a 17.6 per cent. increase in the crime figures. I say that with great sadness. Those figures must depress all of us in the House who believe that law and order are so important. Perhaps the Government will now accept our invitation to talk jointly about crime prevention measures upon which we can all agree.

There are two reasons why the disproportionately large figures for ethnic minorities cannot simply be attributed to differential crime rates or to the fact that a higher proportion of the black population are in the crime- prone teenage groups. The first is that the Home Office statistics on the ethnic breakdown of the prison population, first compiled in 1985, and published annually since then, show that members of ethnic minorities entering prison have, on average, fewer previous convictions than white prisoners, and that, before conviction, they were less likely to receive bail than comparable white defendants.

That has worrying implications for the way in which the ethnic minority community views the criminal justice system, and there is a measure of justification for its perception, as hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree. The figures suggest that people from ethnic minorities who commit offences are more likely to end up in prison than comparable white offenders. Therefore,

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although we welcome the Government's change of heart and mind, the Opposition will take a little of the credit for adding to the creative process to which any sensible Bill gives rise.

The second reason is that, although the findings of research studies conflict to some extent--I have always been honest about that--a disturbing number of studies contain indications that members of ethnic minorities are treated differently from white people at various stages of the criminal justice process. We have argued throughout our proceedings on the Bill that a statutory duty such as that expressed in the amendment is essential. We believe that, in drawing attention in primary legislation to a duty not to discriminate, Parliament would be making an important statement about the significance that it attaches to the principle of

non-discrimination. The existence of such a provision is psychologically important.

I do not know whether you, Mr. Speaker, would agree with me--given your considerable knowledge of legislation--but in my view it is not always just the words that matter ; sometimes the psychological impact on our citizens is even more important. You probably do agree, Mr. Speaker ; you have often said as much as I have passed the Chair.

During the passage of the Bill, the Opposition have consistently argued that such a non-discriminatory duty is important ; the Government, however, have been slow to accept its importance, and have continually resisted our amendments. They have now introduced the notion of a duty not to discriminate , but have done so in a rather indirect way, incorporating that duty in a clause that deals with the publication of information. Given the importance of the issue, we feel that it should have featured at the front of the Bill, as a key principle, rather than being buried in a rather obscure clause at the end. The Government have moved forward a little way, but they have done so in a grudging manner that will not impress all who are concerned about racism in the criminal justice system. Let me end on a positive note. My visit to the Home Office proved valuable : communication was established, and some creative ideas were developed as a basis for future exchanges. We were also given a cup of tea. I promise that in a short time, when I am a Home Office Minister, I shall reciprocate and extend the same co-operation to the Minister--if he survives the contest in Oxford.

Although we are a bit discontented about the Government's grudging attitude, we accept that that is the way of these things. Let me say--and it may be the last thing that I say on this Bill--that progress on the less controversial areas has been rewarding : some people's lives will certainly be changed, or at least touched, by the slight improvements that our creative approach has secured. Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Clause 86

Short title, commencement and extent

Lords amendment : No. 104 in page 54, line 31, leave out from beginning to ("also") in line 32 and insert

("The following provisions of this Act, namely--

(a) this section ;

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(b) sections ( Reciprocal enforcement of certain orders ), 15(1) and (2), 21 ( Sentence for murder ) ( Courts duty on passing sentence of life imprisonment ) and 23(3) and (4) ; and

(c) Schedule ( Reciprocal enforcement of certain orders ), paragraph 6 of Schedule 5, paragraph 5 of Schedule 7, paragraph 15A of Schedule 10 to this Act and, so far as relating to the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, Schedule 12").

Amendment made to the Lords amendment : (a), in paragraph (6), leave out from 21' to and' in line 6.-- [Mr. John Patten.] Lords amendment No. 104, as amended, agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Mr. Speaker : I am satisfied that Lords amendment No. 115 imposes a charge on the public revenue, such as is required to be authorised by a resolution of the House. Such a charge has not been so authorised ; accordingly, pursuant to paragraph 3 of Standing Order No. 76, the amendment is deemed to be disagreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to.

Lords amendment No. 162 disagreed to.

Ordered,

That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to certain of their amendments.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

Ordered,

That Mr. Matthew Carrington, Mrs. Llin Golding, Mr. Greg Knight, Mr. John Patten and that Mr. Barry Sheerman be Members of the Committee.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

Ordered,

That Three be the quorum of the Committee.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.] Ordered,

That the Committee do withdraw immediately.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.] Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords amendments reported, and agreed to ; to be communicated to the Lords.

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Child Benefit

9.41 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Michael Jack) : I beg to move

That the draft Child Benefit and Social Security (Fixing and Adjustment of Rates) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1991, which were laid before this House on 7th June, be approved.

The draft regulations lay the foundations for the October increases in child benefit--the second this year--announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget statement on 19 March. They provide for child benefit to rise, from 7 October this year, by £1 per week for the eldest eligible child--from £8.25p to £9.25p--with an increase to £7.50p per week for all remaining children. It is the first part of a process which will ensure that every family will gain from the increases, including those on income support and family credit and those in receipt of national insurance benefits with child dependency increases.

The child benefit increases are being made in addition to the extra £1 per week that each family has been receiving since April and, with our undertaking to index link from next April, they confirm our commitment to child benefit, which we see as the cornerstone of our policies for family support. The changes bring our expenditure on child benefit this year to £5.3 billion, or almost a tenth of total social security spending. Yet that is only a part of the total package of benefit expenditure on families, which amounts to more than £11 billion. I am sure that hon. Members would like to know that that is an average of £30 per week for each family with children.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : Is my hon. Friend aware that there can be few hon. Members who are more delighted than I that the Government are taking this proper line on child benefit and giving the benefit to mothers, who so urgently need it? We have fought this battle for many years, and it is delightful that the Government are being so positive.

Mr. Jack : I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellet-Bowman), who represents the neighbouring constituency to mine, for her assiduous support. Her message will have been noted by all mothers.

I am sure that the House would like to know what the increases will mean for individual families. For more than 40 per cent.--those with only one child--it will mean that from October their income from child benefit, which is tax free, will increase by £2 per week, which is a rise of more than 27 per cent. compared with the position before April. For a family with two children, child benefit will be increased by more than 15 per cent.--from £14.50 to £16.75 per week, equivalent to £72.50 per month or £870 per year. To produce the same effect through wages for people paying standard rate tax and national insurance contributions would require them to earn an additional £1, 300 gross per year--about an extra £25 per week. Those increases, paid to mothers, will bring to nearly 7 million families worthwhile extra help with the costs of bringing up their children.

The measures have been warmly welcomed. I believe that I can sum up the mood of those who have campaigned

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for them by quoting Ms. Fran Bennett of the Child Poverty Action Group. In a letter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, she said :

"I am writing on behalf of CPAG to say how delighted we were that this year's Budget included announcements on both immediate increases in child benefit and the government's longer term intentions." The regulations underline the philosophy of all post-war Governments of accepting the need for sharing between parents and the state the financial responsibility for bringing up children. Child benefit goes to all families with children as a recognition of the fact that at all levels of income they face greater expenditure than other families. For those families who need it, this universal provision is supplemented by extra help through the income- related benefits. We will be bringing forward further regulations to ensure that those groups, too, will benefit from the October increases in child benefit.

The Government did not forget those groups in drafting their child benefit proposals, but the Opposition did when they presented their alternative Budget proposals. The House may recall that this matter was spotted only through the astuteness of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the debate on family hardship on 13 March. He highlighted the inconsistency between the costings and stated objectives on child benefit in the so- called shadow Budget--long may it remain so and it was only his kindness in pointing this out which enabled the Labour party to amend its pledge to include families on income-related benefits.

This continuing recognition of the needs of the less well-off families lay at the heart of our 1988 social security reforms. At a time when the majority of families were benefiting from rising earnings, we recognised that some people, through no fault of their own, had not yet fully shared in the nation's increasing prosperity. We decided, therefore, that the least well-off families--those on income-related benefits--should be one of our main priorities for extra help. Instead of just universally increasing child benefit, we made substantial extra help available to those families, over and above the annual increases required to maintain the value of their benefits. Those families are now better off than they would have been simply relying on an increase in child benefit.

When we introduced income support, we provided a system which was flexible and which allowed us to respond swiftly and sensitively to the changing needs of families and individuals. I will give the House an example of the way in which that works. We enhanced the age-related provision for children by introducing a family premium, including a special premium for lone parents. In addition, there is now a premium of £16.65 per week for a disabled child, on top of the basic family premium of £7.95.

With the help of family credit--our other major change--people can move off income support to become better off in work. The success of this benefit is mirrored in the fact that we now have a record caseload of 328,000 people on family credit. We believe that this year we shall spend more than £500 million. Compared with 1978-79, in real terms that represents more than eight times the expenditure on family credit's predecessor, family income supplement. It goes to more than three times the number

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of people receiving FIS, with the average award of more than £30 a week being some three times higher in real terms.

Not content with that, we shall make family credit more accessible by reducing the hours of eligibility from 24 to 16. That is a further commitment to helping families on low incomes.

When we came to office, we deliberately set out to increase people's ability to earn more, to retain more of what they earned and to contribute to the general prosperity. Working families with children have benefited from the Government's policies of reducing the rates of income tax and simplifying the system of national insurance contributions. A family on average male earnings, for example, has seen the real value of its take- home pay increase by a third since 1978-79.

The Opposition continue to concentrate on headline figures when talking about child benefit, but they completely overlook the fact that the money from not uprating child benefit has been spent on extra help for the poorest families with children when better-off families were benefiting from increased earnings and lower rates of taxation. The Opposition have conveniently ignored the fact that, from October, the total support for families with children will in a full year be greater than if we had merely indexed child benefit. From October, the additional real-terms help that we have provided since 1987-88 will be worth a massive £500 million in a full year. The Opposition also fail to appreciate that families mean more than families with children. There are families with, perhaps, an elderly member or someone who is sick or disabled. They, too, have considerable needs. We have considered those families and have made available, for example, an extra £200 million for older and disabled pensioners through the 1989 measures. An extra £80 million was made available in April for those aged between 65 and 74.

I mentioned the need to balance the help that we provide for all families and the help for low-income families. In previous years, with mainstream family incomes arising, our judgment was that it was right to concentrate resources on the less well-off familes through the income-related benefits. This year, after careful consideration, we decided that the time was right to look after families with children generally. The extra £1 per week child benefit which all families have been receiving since April recognises the additional costs faced by all families with children, and it is a clear signal of our continuing commitment to the benefit. The October increases build on the April improvements and, as I said, we shall bring forward regulations to ensure that these increases are carried through the benefits system so that families at all income levels will gain from them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster adverted to the fact that we should be proud of the help that we give to families with children. Not only do United Kingdom families benefit from the most comprehensive income support system in Europe, and from having family credit which is unique in its construction in Europe in giving help to the families of the employed and the self-employed on low wages, but we compare very favourably in our overall provision of basic child benefit. There is a problem in making an accurate European comparison because of the range and complexity of financial support for families in different European countries, but I must draw the House's attention to the fact that several Community countries

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have extra conditions for entitlement to child benefit. For example, Germany, Greece and Italy have means tests, and Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain link eligibility to insurance status, so not all families can qualify.

Therefore, although it is true that all European Community countries have a cash benefit equivalent to child benefit, many have additional qualifying criteria which do not apply in the United Kingdom. However, in cash terms alone, if we consider the 40 per cent. plus families in this country with only one eligible child, in July 1990 we ranked fourth in our child benefit provision for such a child up to the age of five. This year, we are increasing that provision by more than 25 per cent. Perhaps it is worth drawing the House's attention to the fact that in France there is no such provision. If replicated here, that would remove entitlement to child benefit from those 40 per cent. plus United Kingdom families. I hope that I have demonstrated to the House how we have developed a balance between universal and income-related benefits and how we have balanced help to families with children. Nor have families without children been ignored. The draft regulations will increase child benefit from October and, as I said, we shall introduce further regulations to carry those increases through into other benefits so that all families with children will gain. Those regulations are for the benefit of our children and for the families responsible for their upbringing. I commend them to the House.

9.54 pm

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West) : We are told that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over 99 just men. In that context, I welcome the order and the Government's final change of heart on the question of child benefit, although I somewhat suspect their motives.

The Opposition sought to have the regulations debated on the Floor of the House for three main reasons. The first was to condemn the astonishing convolutions and inconsistencies in Government policy which have plagued child benefit over the past four years. The second was to point up the large shortfall in child benefit which still exists after the zig-zags in what is euphemistically called "child benefit policy". The third was to press again the view that child benefit be allowed to play its full and unique role in combating child poverty.

In June 1987, as everyone now knows only too well, the Conservative manifesto stated :

"Child benefit will continue to be paid as now, and direct to the mother."

Four months later, the Government broke the pledge. The former Secretary of State for Social Security, who made a distinctive contribution to social policy by denying that poverty existed, announced that child benefit would be frozen. In October 1988, the then Secretary of State repeated the freeze on the ground that benefits needed to be targeted. It did not seem to occur to him that, in the autumn of 1988, at the height of the boom, it was hardly consistent to reject child benefit because a small fraction of it went to the wealthy while lavishing unlimited public subsidies on some of the richest people in the country in the form of mortgage interest tax relief.

In October 1989, the present Secretary of State again repeated the freeze. He sought to justify it on two main grounds. The first was :

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