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Mr. Walter Sweeney (Vale of Glamorgan): In view of the hon. Gentleman's loud concern about the crime rate, does he still think that he was right to vote against allowing the Attorney-General the power to appeal against soft sentences?
Mr. Straw: Opposition Members will take no lectures from the Conservative party, which has presided over record increases of crime. Nor will we take any lectures on voting records, as the hon. Gentleman voted to prevent
many victims of crime from receiving decent compensation and, in 1988, the Secretary of State voted against a ban proposed by the Opposition to prevent youngsters under 16 from purchasing knives.
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith): The Home Secretary ducked that issue in his speech. Not only did he vote in 1988 against restrictions on the sale of knives to those under 16, but the previous Home Secretary and the Minister under him also objected to an Opposition proposal that would have restricted the sale of arms and imitation firearms by post.
We note that, at Dunblane--I hope that the Home Secretary is listening--the guns were obtained by post. We were pointing out that possibility--following Hungerford--in that proposal. The real question for the Home Secretary is, why did the Government oppose those measures then, and why did they specifically vote against restricting knives for 16-year-olds?
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend is of course right. In the debates during the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, in which my hon. Friend took such an important part, there were many occasions on which Ministers either opposed what we were doing or complimented us on the improvements that we had made to it.
For some of the most serious criminal offences, the way in which the gap has widened between crimes committed and offenders convicted since 1979 has been alarming. In 1980, almost four in 10 recorded rapes resulted in conviction. By 1994, the proportion had dropped to just one in 10. In 1980, 9 per cent. of domestic burglaries resulted in conviction. By 1994, the proportion was down to 3 per cent.
In the space of five years, between 1989 and 1994, the number of violent crimes rose by a quarter, while the number of convictions fell by a third. Even when someone finally gets to court, the sentence they receive may depend as much on the chance of where they are tried as on the severity of the offence. The proportion of indictable offences tried in magistrates courts that lead to a prison sentence varies by a factor of 10. In the Staffordshire, Moorlands court, one in six defendants end up inside; but in the Maidenhead court the proportion is one in 66.
The lack of consistency between courts is matched by a lack of progression in sentencing. The fact--according to parliamentary answers given to me by the Secretary of State--that someone imprisoned for domestic burglary is given the same term of 15 months on the first, second or third conviction is bizarre. Even odder is the fact that, according to the Government's own figures, the prison term for a third conviction for drug dealing, at 30 months, is two months shorter than that for a first offence.
As the public's concern about crime has risen, and public confidence in the Government's ability to do anything about it has fallen, so the Government's response has been a blizzard of legislation on criminal justice. There have been 33 separate measures for England and Wales since 1979--more Bills on criminal justice in the past 17 years than in the previous 50.
It would be one thing if each of those Bills had been carefully prepared and they were consistent one with another. Instead, some have signalled sudden lurches in policy that, far from advancing the fight against crime,
have made it more difficult. As the outgoing Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor, commented in his King's college lecture in March:
This year, the Secretary of State told readers of The Sun that the current sentencing system and criminal justice process
The question is: who has been responsible for that "farce" and that "mockery"? Was it the Lord Chief Justice and his judicial colleagues who devised the system? Was it the Labour party, or the Liberal Democrats? Or was it someone else? Even today, a Conservative candidate writing in The Times says that the people to blame for the mess are "officialdom", as though each one of the Secretary of State's predecessors as Home Secretary, such as the present Chancellor of the Exchequer or the distinguished former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), had been mere putty in the hands of his civil servants.
It is not the officials who are to blame, nor the judges, but this Government, this Prime Minister and this Secretary of State. The current sentencing system is less than five years old. It was laid down by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which was pushed through the House by Conservative Ministers. The very people who now claim that the system is a mockery and a farce were the architects of that system in the first place.
How dare the Secretary of State blame others for the farce and the mockery of the current sentencing system, when it is he and his ministerial colleagues who are principally to blame? It is they who are the guilty men and women, and it is they who should admit that the White Paper represents a rejection of almost everything that the Conservative party has done on sentencing in the past 17 years.
The Secretary of State now calls for honesty in sentencing. What an admission that is about the past 17 years of sentencing policy under the Conservatives.
Mr. Donald Anderson:
Would it be fair to characterise the Home Secretary as the Pol Pot of British politics, always pretending to return to "year zero" at successive party conferences, although to find out the truth we have only to go back as far as the White Paper of 1990 and the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which is now being totally erased? We are not in year zero; the buck stops with the Home Secretary.
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend asks whether it would be fair to characterise the Home Secretary in that way. It may not be fair, but it would certainly be true.
Mr. Peter Butler (Milton Keynes, North-East):
If the hon. Gentleman is right to claim that the present proposals reverse the Criminal Justice Act 1991, and he opposed that, why does he also oppose the reversal of it?
Mr. Straw:
Well--[Laughter.] The hon. Gentleman is, I know, a difficult man, and I did not quite follow the logic of his question. What he should worry about more when he talks to his constituents is the fact that he too voted to cut compensation for victims, and also the fact that recorded crime in his constituency since 1979--not since year zero--has increased by 141 per cent., one of the largest increases anywhere in the country.
Mr. Sweeney:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Straw:
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. I need to turn to the other important White Paper, which the Secretary of State published today.
As I said, it is quite remarkable that, given the slackness of the parliamentary timetable and all the days and weeks that the Secretary of State could have chosen in which to publicise, to great effect for himself, the White Paper "On the Record" about the Government's proposals for access to criminal records, he chooses to do it today and hijack his speech about another White Paper, "Protecting the Public", on which he managed to spend only 10 minutes.
When the House, at the Opposition's instigation, debated the private security industry, there was widespread demand from Members on both sides for arrangements for access to criminal records to be reformed. It is clearly necessary for employers to be aware of the criminal records of those they seek to employ in positions of trust, and crucial that the greatest possible protection is available in respect of children. In the area of child sexual abuse, there is a conflict between the needs of children and the civil liberties of suspected abusers. In our judgment, where there is a serious risk to children, their needs must always prevail.
For those working outside such sensitive areas, we must ensure that any system balances the needs of employers, and through them the public, with the rehabilitation of offenders. As the Government said in their Green Paper on criminal records in 1993:
As I said in an intervention on the Secretary of State, the White Paper is seriously deficient in its proposals for dealing with the private security industry. In its 1995 report, the Select Committee on Home Affairs was clear that the vetting of potential employees was not enough to protect the public from totally unregulated private patrols or other private security companies which
"the proper balance between continuity and change is in dire danger . . . the criminal law should not be subject to arbitrary change by the powers that be, or to the vagaries of fashion".
Overall, not least as a result of that torrent of legislation, the criminal justice processes in this country are now in chronic crisis, with rising costs, increasing delay and plummeting public satisfaction.
"is a farce and makes a mockery of the courts."
The figures that I have produced today show that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was right about that, if about little else.
"common sense suggests that an ex-offender with suitable work is less likely to reoffend than one who is unemployed".
We shall examine the White Paper very carefully to ensure that it achieves the proper balance.
"prey on the fears of vulnerable people."
The Government must accept the arguments of the police, the overwhelming majority of companies in the private security industry--they are desperate for proper regulation because of the way in which their reputations are besmirched by the crooks--the Home Affairs Committee and the Labour party, and legislate to regulate the industry.
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