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The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): I never buy it.
Mr. Straw: The Minister would do better if he did buy it, because he might learn something.
An article in that paper is headed "'Gangster' is Security Man--City crook a security guard on homes site". The article talks about Aaron Giacopazzi, one of the city's best known criminals, who has been taken on by Lowther Construction to guard a building site. The deputy managing director of the company says in the article:
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle):
Does my hon. Friend realise that Mr. Giacopazzi has since been arrested on a drugs charge but that the company, being very generous, now employs his father? [Laughter.] And his godfather!
Mr. Straw:
That makes our point very strongly.
Mr. Howard:
What is the point?
Mr. Straw:
The point is very simple. Members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which is chaired by the Home Secretary's very close friend, the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), unanimously recommended that the private security industry--employers as well as employees--should be properly regulated by statute. Ministers, because of their obsession with deregulation, have persistently refused to do so.
The other White Paper that we are debating today, "Protecting the Public", contains three principal proposals: for so-called "honesty in sentencing"; for indeterminate sentences for repeat rapists and perpetrators of serious violence; and for automatic determinate sentences for persistent burglars and drug dealers. I shall deal with each of those in turn.
As I have already made clear, we support the principle of honesty in sentencing. The public have a right to know what is being done on their behalf. On the question how the proposal should be put into practice, I have already suggested that courts should give details of the minimum and maximum period that could be served under the term they hand down, and the earliest release date. In that way, what is now called a four-year sentence would, in future, be described more correctly as a two to four-year sentence. Transparency would be introduced, without having to turn the rest of the system upside down.
The Home Secretary proposes a more complicated change to arrive at the same result, while asserting that he does not expect his proposals
It already appears--I should be glad if the Minister would deal with this in his reply--that the Secretary of State's preferred arrangement might have one perverse
effect, which is that some prisoners may be subject to supervision after their release for much less time than under the present regime.
We also support in principle the proposal for indeterminate sentences for repeat rapists and others convicted of serious sexual offences. Of all crimes, apart from homicide, serious sexual offences can do the greatest long-term harm to the victim, both psychological as well as physical. Those who offend often have a high propensity to reoffend, and, as I pointed out in a detailed paper on sentencing that I published in March, an official committee--the Butler committee--looked at the issue of serious sexual offenders 21 years ago and concluded that there should be available a system of indeterminate reviewable sentences for such repeat sexual offenders.
The Secretary of State proposes that all repeat rapists and serious sexual offenders should receive an indeterminate life sentence. Since "life" is not intended by the White Paper generally to mean life in those cases, there might be advantage in having a separate sentencing regime for those people, unless the court, for particular reasons, gave out a life sentence. That matter can be examined in Committee in due course.
Mr. Alex Carlile:
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the Butler committee was saying that there should be mandatory reviewable life sentences? Does he not think it sufficient to give judges the power to sentence to life imprisonment and the encouragement of knowing that those sentences would be effective?
Mr. Straw:
We have to disagree about this. The Butler committee recommended that there should be a system of indeterminate, reviewable sentences--
Mr. Straw:
No, I will come to that. The committee said that they should be available for first offences as well as for second or subsequent ones. As I recall--I have read the report--the committee said that there should be a presumption in favour of an automatic indeterminate sentence where there was a second conviction.
What we are proposing and what the Government are proposing for serious sex offenders amount to the same thing: that, because of the danger of reoffending, which must be patently apparent when someone has already offended twice, a decision to release the individual should be made only when it is safe to do so.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Forsyth):
I have been listening to what the hon. Gentleman has been saying, which, as I understand it, is that he accepts the principle of honesty in sentencing and the principle that there should be indeterminate sentences for repeat offenders involved in serious sex offences. If that principle is right for England, why is the Labour party opposing it in Scotland?
Mr. Straw:
Of all the people to ask that question it is the Secretary of State for Scotland. I have with me the Scottish Office White Paper dealing with crime and punishment. I have read this--it was only a cursory glance, and I am open to correction--but I cannot find
Mr. Forsyth:
The question that I put to the hon. Gentleman was about the Labour party's policy--[Interruption.] I will happily deal with the hon. Gentleman's point in exchange for him answering my question. I asked about the Labour party's policy. If its policy is that the principle of honesty in sentencing is right and that the principle of indeterminate sentences for repeat offenders is right, why should that principle be different north of the border?
This is a fundamental issue, and I cannot for the life of me see why it should be different north and south of the border. As far as the Government are concerned, on both these matters, these principles apply throughout the United Kingdom.
Mr. Straw:
I was right in the conclusions that I drew from a cursory reading of the White Paper. The huge inconsistency is not between our hon. Friends who represent Scotland and those of us who represent England and Wales; the inconsistency is between these two Secretaries of State. As far as I can see, the Secretary of State is making no proposals for automatic minimum sentences for drug dealers and for burglars.
Mr. Forsyth:
I was listening to the hon. Gentleman's speech, and I was agreeing with him about the matter of principle. If he is saying that the Labour party accepts the principle of honesty in sentencing and the principle of mandatory sentences for repeat sex offenders, he is in the same position as my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and I. We agree on these matters. It is the Labour party that has split north and south of the border. Why are the principles on these matters different north and south of the border?
Mr. Straw:
This is pretty desperate. I have offered the right hon. Gentleman two chances.
I have had the benefit of reading the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) in Scotland on Monday. He said:
Mr. Straw:
If there is a principle, I have just read it out. The Secretary of State has signally failed to explain why there is a difference of principle--as there obviously is--between him and his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary when it comes to automatic minimum sentences for repeat burglars and drug dealers.
The proposals for indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offenders are acceptable to us, not only because they directly address the paramount need to protect the public but because the term actually served will be determined by reference to the nature of the offence and
of the offender. The judge will still be required to set a tariff proportionate to the seriousness of the offence. Thereafter, the offender will not be released unless and until the parole board is satisfied that it is safe to release them.
So justice, above all for the victim but also for the offender, is built into this system. These considerations mean that this proposal is wholly different in character and effect from the third of the Home Secretary's proposals, for automatic determinate minimum sentences of three years in the case of domestic burglars on their third conviction, and seven years for drug dealers on their third conviction.
In my response to the Home Secretary's statement on 3 April, I said:
The problem with the Secretary of State's proposals is that, the more they are exposed to scrutiny, the more it becomes clear that they will not work as he intends. It is a mark of how ill thought through was his original proposal that he has already made one fundamental change from what he told the Conservative party conference in October 1995. Then, at least what he said had the merit of clarity, however crude and impractical the policy might have turned out.
Then, in right hon. and learned Gentleman's desperation to upstage the Secretary of State for Defence in his appeal to the Tory right, the Home Secretary was emphatic. He told the party faithful:
So, by December, he had to concede, in an interview in The Law Society's Gazette, that the answer to these drug dealers and burglars would not be as simple as that which he had presented to the Tory party conference, and there would be an escape clause. The clarion call about time and crime had by then become, "If you don't want the time, don't do the crime--save where the courts exercise a discretion to waive the minimum sentences in exceptional cases."
Here we see the central element of the Home Secretary's proposals unravelling, because of the belated acknowledgement that they cannot apply in all cases. What is more, the escape clause to the simple answer that he told the Tory party conference he had has changed again twice. The White Paper shifted from the words that the right hon. and learned Gentleman used in the Law Society's Gazette interview, and now speaks of "genuinely exceptional cases"--as if the adverb "genuinely" adds any clarity to what he means.
Only last month, the Home Secretary's very close and noble Friend Lord Mackay, the Lord Chancellor, treating these proposals in the White Paper like a piece of stinking fish, said that the precise terms on which the exception will be framed would be a matter for Parliament to determine.
So where is the simple answer now; indeed, where is the complicated answer? The Secretary of State and his colleagues cannot even make up their minds about that. We await the Bill with interest. Who knows what its terms by then will be?
One of the Secretary of State's most trusted colleagues in the House of Commons is the hon. and learned Member for Burton, Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. I am very sorry that he cannot be present today--perhaps this debate was arranged explicitly with that in mind--but, like other members of the Select Committee, he is in the United States examining American penal policy.
When the issue of minimum sentences was debated at length in the House in February 1991, the hon. and learned Gentleman made this wise observation:
The Government's White Paper of 1990 said that such a system of minimum determinate sentences
"'It isn't our normal policy to use convicted criminals."
The Government's proposals provide huge loopholes for people such as Mr. Aaron Giacopazzi. The security firm might be perfectly legitimate. If that were so, his record would be vetted and he would not be employed by it. But there is nothing to stop that man, who is a great entrepreneur and building a £1.5 million development with who knows whose money, setting up his own security firm. He would certainly not vet himself.
"to result in a general increase in the period of time that offenders serve in prison".
We can examine the details of the alternative proposals in Standing Committee if and when a crime Bill comes before the House during the rest of this Parliament.
"Labour is committed to tough sentencing for those who commit serious crimes. We are committed to progression in sentences and to a licence system for sex offenders."--[Official Report, Scottish Grand Committee, 17 June 1996; c. 36.]
The Secretary of State may not have noticed, but there are two different legal systems--that in Scotland and that in England and Wales.
"We do not argue with"
the Secretary of State's
"purpose . . . for victims and offenders alike--that people who persistently burgle or deal in hard drugs"
should
"receive . . . tough, deterrent . . . sentences."--[Official Report, 3 April 1996; Vol. 275, c. 393.]
The issue is not whether such persistent hardened burglars or drug dealers should receive such tough deterrent sentences, but how that should be achieved.
"I've got a simple answer to burglars and dealers in hard drugs who offend again and again and again. If you don't want the time, don't do the crime."
But where are we now? A mere two months later, the Home Secretary had to admit that such a wholly automatic slot-machine system of justice would produce manifest injustice.
"I do not like minimum sentences. They reduce the discretion of the courts, and all who practice in or know anything about the courts realise that human life spans an enormous width and that there are many degrees of blameworthiness . . . Speeches calling for minimum sentences have always been resisted over the years. The Government have resisted the idea of going down this slippery slope, because if one case is allowed as an exception it becomes difficult to refuse other cases"--[Official Report, 20 February 1991; Vol. 186, c. 311-2.]
What a slippery slope it will be! This proposal from the Secretary of State will undoubtedly result in more guilty professional burglars and drug dealers walking free from court. In the United States, the jurisdictions with automatic determinate sentences are jammed up with not-guilty fights--two and a half times as many of them as where the courts have a discretion. More not guilty pleas mean more acquittals.
"would . . . result in more acquittals by juries with more guilty men and women going free unjustly as a result"--
a point repeated by the former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten), when he was a Minister of State at the Home Office.
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