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Mr. Carlile: The hon. Lady is known for the sometimes incomplete co-ordination between her eyes and her brain. If she had bothered to read the policy passed by the Liberal Democrats, about which I have just told her--that is why I made her wait before allowing her intervention--she would have realised that it was for a royal commission on the use of drugs.
Lady Olga Maitland indicated dissent.
Mr. Carlile:
The hon. Lady may shake her head if she wishes, but she really should, with her record of tabling amendments that she has not even drafted, take the trouble to read other people's writings rather than make up her own version.
Lady Olga Maitland:
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. and learned Gentleman to make abusive comments about other hon. Members? Do you, Madam Deputy Speaker, agree that the hon. and learned Gentleman should withdraw those remarks?
Madam Deputy Speaker:
There is a certain cut and thrust in debate. Although truly abusive remarks must not be made in the House, I do not think that we have come to that point yet.
Mr. Carlile:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps we can now get on to another point of substance--
Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport):
Before the hon. and learned Gentleman moves on, will he give way?
Mr. Carlile:
I may give way to the hon. Gentleman a little later. I want to get on.
Mr. Banks:
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Banks:
Is the hon. and learned Gentleman too frightened?
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. The rules in this House are clear. If an hon. Member who has the Floor does not give way, other hon. Members must sit down again. As this is a debate about law and order, I hope that the laws of this House will be obeyed.
Mr. Carlile:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I may give way to the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) a little later if he still wishes to intervene.
I turn to another point mentioned by the Minister--the Government's new sentencing proposals. I can understand the instinct that gives rise to sentencing proposals to make sentences tougher for serious offences. I support that view. I also support the view, which many judges have held for many years, that it would be far better for the
judiciary to pass the real sentence than a fictitious sentence. The law is full enough of fictions, but they do not lie well in the criminal law.
The Minister may be bound to recognise in due course, however, that the quantum of sentences may be affected by the decision that the Government have announced.
Mr. Maclean indicated assent.
Mr. Carlile:
I see the Minister nodding. Some of his hon. Friends may be less enthusiastic to accept that inevitability than he is. If the proposals are not accepted, the consequences for the prison system will be dramatic and intolerable.
I have a warning for the Minister, to which I hope he will pay heed. If somebody convicted for the second time of a serious sexual offence will be the subject of a mandatory life sentence, it will be difficult to obtain convictions before juries for second or subsequent serious sexual offences. Without echoing what might be regarded as the extravagant language used by Lord Donaldson in The Guardian a few days ago, I underline the fact that, on the whole, despite what the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield said, judges do pass severe sentences when there is, for example, a second conviction of rape.
Those sentences may not always be life sentences, but they are usually measured in substantial double figures. I personally have never seen a second conviction for rape that did not result in a sentence of 12 to 15 years or more, and I have seen numerous life sentences passed in such circumstances.
There is no difficulty now in obtaining a conviction in such a case, other than the ordinary difficulties always presented by the need to ensure that the evidence is sufficient to justify it. But the moment that a jury realises--and there is no way of avoiding that realisation--that if it convicts there will be a life sentence, and it imagines that the key will be thrown away, it will become difficult to persuade the members of the jury to convict.
I am an opponent of capital punishment, and when I first entered the House I was involved in a case in a Crown court out of London. I asked the judge's permission to be absent for half a day so that I could speak in the debate on capital punishment. He was a tough judge with a reputation for being excellent but uncompromising, and he called me to his room and asked which side I was speaking on. With some trepidation, I told him that I would speak against capital punishment. He replied, "I shall let you have the afternoon off then, because when we had capital punishment it was very difficult to get convictions for murder." And that man was a judge with a reputation for toughness, who had practised at a time when the death sentence was mandatory for murder. Of course a life sentence is not a death sentence, but the point still holds good. If the jury knows that the consequences are fixed by law, it may be reluctant to convict.
In 1979 the Conservative manifesto said that a crucial part of the party's beliefs was respect for the rule of law. The actual words were:
Although the statistics that have been repeated today, and on which the Government frequently rely, show a recent decline in crime--a fall of 5 per cent. nationally over 12 months--if one sets that against the record of previous years it is difficult to say that it really represents a turning point.
I do not seek to make a party political issue out of that, because it is much too serious, but the Government should recognise that in the continuum of the fight against crime, with the changes in society that give rise to increasing crime, we must be ever vigilant, and always prepared to change a policy. Knee-jerk political reactions do not always produce beneficial changes in policy. We are all tempted by the hype available to us through the publicity at party conferences, but what happens as a result does not always work in practice.
In 1982 the then Home Secretary made a strong speech at the Conservative party conference similar to that made by the present Home Secretary this year. I was on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill that was subsequently introduced, which became the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The Minister, too, served on that Committee, and I believe that he would agree that we had a pretty constructive debate. I suspect that we both still have our badges, presented to us by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who was then shadow Home Secretary, to commemorate the fact that that Committee met more often than any other Standing Committee ever.
We had detailed debates, which produced what has turned out to be probably the best piece of criminal legislation this century. The Act has been effective both ways, and has passed almost all tests, subject to a few amendments. It has protected some defendants against injustice and has ensured the conviction of many criminals.
However, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act did not arrest the rise in crime, because that is a social issue bigger than anything that we can do in the House. The Act certainly did not arrest the rise in crimes of violence. Indeed, between 1980 and 1987 crimes of personal violence accelerated by about 4,000 a year, and since then there has been an exponential increase in such crimes.
I am not convinced that current policy is doing anything to reduce crimes of violence. For financial reasons, the Crown Prosecution Service frequently prosecutes defendants for lesser offences when more serious offences could be used. Magistrates all over the country complain that offences of common assault are often prosecuted when there have been fairly serious injuries. Although the Queen's Bench divisional court has recently held that even when the charge is common assault, the sentence that can be passed is the sentence that fits the crime, we are not sending the right message to victims--that message of which the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield spoke. Those procedures do not seem to be tough on crime. I urge the Home Office to review the arrangement whereby the CPS makes those decisions, and also to look at the other end of the spectrum--the way in which decisions are made about the prosecution of more serious offences.
Those who have the conduct of cases in court, especially prosecuting counsel, express an increasing sense of frustration that when plainly obvious and sensible decisions--not about plea bargaining, although that is,
and always has been, a reality in our courts--dictate themselves concerning the conduct of a case, it is sometimes necessary to go back to the Crown Prosecution Service in great detail to obtain instructions. That has the effect of holding up the procedure of the courts, thus increasing whatever antipathy there may be between judges and the Government, about which there has been much recent publicity.
Incidentally, I believe, as I know that many judges do, that that antipathy has been greatly exaggerated by the press. It is right that the Lord Chief Justice, a man of forthright views and great clarity of expression, should go to the other place and express those views when matters of great concern to the judges arise. I suspect that that is one reason why the Lord Chief Justice is a member of the House of Lords.
However, it does not help the dynamic that must exist between judges and Government for the Government and Conservative Back Benchers to use expressions such as "mad judge disease" and to criticise the judges as though they were lefty pariahs. I must tell the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield that most judges went to the same schools and universities to which the Government are criticised for being still too allied. Judges are not, on the whole, namby-pamby social democrats. On the whole, judges are realistic and experienced people, some of whom--I suspect at least half--probably vote Tory by instinct, let alone by judgment. So if the dynamic is not working, we must look for the reasons why and not descend into vulgar abuse.
One specific area that is causing much concern to the organisations concerned with analysing the criminal justice system is the use and utility of the prison system. The Minister made what may go down in the annals of some of the organisations with which I have connections as one of the most remarkably positive interventions that we have heard in years from a Conservative Minister. He stated that prisoners should be able to work and to earn a wage for that work, and that they should do work which is not simply painting and repainting the same wall that has been erected for that purpose. Their work should be productive and useful, and they should have ubiquitous access to education.
Prisons should be just what John Howard--whose name is remembered through the Howard league-- believed more than 100 years ago. He believed that prison serves society only if it achieves two things, one of which--very obviously--is to lock up people whom we need to keep out of the way because they are too dangerous or too much of a menace. That is the basic utility of prison.
The other reason for using imprisonment, as John Howard saw it, is that prisoners should emerge from prison having been helped in a way which makes them less likely to commit crime, rather than more likely. That should not involve them having televisions in their cells or making prisons comfortable. Prison should not be a comfortable place, but it should be a useful place for those who will emerge from it.
"respect for the rule of law is the basis of a free and civilised life. We will restore it . . . giving the right priority to the fight against crime".
However, the truth about what has happened since 1979 is that crime has more than doubled.
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