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5.18 pm
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington): The Secretary of State for the Home Department has embarked on a futile task. He has lost all credibility on law and order--no one believes a word. The whole criminal system is collapsing. Hon. Members do not need to take my word for it--they need only visit a housing estate anywhere in the United Kingdom, talk to the people and listen to their expressions of anger. The people on the front line know precisely what is going on.
The whole legal system--legal aid, the arrangements for criminal investigations and the Crown Prosecution Service--is in deep trouble. Our constituency case loads
reflect the reality. A case in my constituency encapsulates the problems with the system. It reveals inadequacies in both police investigations and CPS prosecution decisions and it has implications for sentencing. I shall draw it to the attention of the House today.
The case concerns a woman, Elaine Steele, who lives in my constituency. She was charged with murder--the charge was subsequently amended to manslaughter--over the death of her 23-month-old baby. She was accused of shaking the child violently and causing her death. On the basis of a highly questionable police investigation and a number of medical reports, the CPS decided to prosecute. The case collapsed within hours of arriving in court.
Many medical reports were produced in the Elaine Steele case, all of which I have read. On the basis of those reports, it is hard to see how anyone in his right mind would wish to prosecute Elaine Steele. One professional involved described her as "very competent" at feeding her child, who had been born prematurely, and another said that she was "brilliant" with her child. A third professional said that she
The House must ask how such a woman ended up in the criminal system on a manslaughter charge. Why was the state prepared to use precious resources pursuing an innocent woman through the courts? The answer is that all reasonable lines of inquiry were never pursued. In October 1992, after she and her boyfriend had been interviewed about the circumstances surrounding the death of her child, Elaine Steele was not told that the police were treating her as the prime suspect. During two hours of questioning, she was not afforded the protection offered by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. She was later charged with murder.
Following her remand on bail, information began to surface about the activities of her boy friend. He was interviewed subsequently by the police, and soon afterwards the charge against Elaine Steele was reduced to manslaughter. Repeated questions have been asked about what occurred during the interview with her former boyfriend and during the wider investigation. Cases such as this undermine the credibility of the entire legal system.
The police officers concerned are well respected. Nevertheless, they have been the subject of serious allegations as to the procedures that they adopted. There are allegations that an attempt was made to cover up a lack of police professionalism. It has been alleged that the police sought to change their evidence and that they failed to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry.
Thankfully, a diligent Workington solicitor was not satisfied with the police investigation. He rejected the "shaking" theory as an explanation of the child's death. He sought the advice of pathologists throughout the country and, in the end, he was able to challenge the established medical interpretation of events. A professional who dealt with the case stated:
The local evening newspaper--which is an excellent publication--is deeply concerned about what happened. It reported the collapse of the case and the subsequent clearing of the mother on the following day. The tragedy is that, when Elaine has been out in Workington, she has been verbally abused. That is deeply distressing both for her and for her hard-working and respectable family, who have also been ostracised by the community.
I asked another lawyer, who was unconnected with the case, to review the papers. I shall quote--with the names removed--what he said about the investigation. He stated:
Madam Deputy Speaker:
I am sure that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will explain how his speech relates to the debate, which is fairly broad.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
I know that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney) has not been in the House for very long, but I remind him that this is the highest court in the land. Debates such as this provide the opportunity to raise issues in Parliament. I hope that I have not lost time through that intervention.
The lawyer continued:
I feel very strongly that an injustice has been done. Elaine Steele may not have been sentenced by the court, but she has certainly been sentenced by some in the community. It was not sufficient to find her innocent in a court of law. She is the victim of a poorly conducted police investigation and of a stupid decision to prosecute by the Crown Prosecution Service. As a result, and due to some difficult publicity, she feels rejected in her own community.
Mr. Peter Butler (Milton Keynes, North-East):
There is some agreement on both sides of the House that there are flaws in the Criminal Justice Act 1991. I, together with many of my colleagues, came to the House determined to reverse those injustices. Apart from the unjust and unworkable unit fines system, which quickly brought the criminal justice system into disrepute, the Act contained two other major flaws. The first was the argument in section 1 that people could be sentenced for up to two offences and no more, no matter how many they had committed; and the second was the requirement that previous convictions and failure to respond to previous sentences must be ignored, so that every offender was treated as a first-time offender for sentencing purposes. Both provisions were palpably absurd.
Although the present Parliament has repealed those sections properly and promptly, it sometimes seems as though too many sentencers wish to apply the principles that were embodied in the Act. How else can one explain the statistic that, in the Crown court in 1993-94, those convicted on a first offence of burglary of a dwelling received an average sentence of 16 months' imprisonment, while those who were convicted of their seventh or subsequent offence of burglary of a dwelling received only three months more on average?
Some 28 per cent. of those convicted in a Crown court of a seventh or subsequent burglary of a dwelling received a sentence which did not involve imprisonment. For magistrates courts, the figure was 61 per cent. So someone being tried in a magistrates court for a seventh, 10th or 30th burglary of a dwelling house was 60 per cent. likely not to go to prison and nearly 30 per cent. likely not to go to prison if tried in a Crown court. That is absurd, set against the background of a maximum sentence of 14 years for that offence.
The criminal justice system is there not to serve the voluntary offender but to protect the involuntary victim. I share the objective of the sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 that I mentioned, to the extent that the intention of those sections was to reduce the prison population, but I want to reduce the prison population by having fewer people commit crimes, not by leaving in the community those individuals who want to rob, burgle, attack, steal from and terrorise that community.
I shall give one example of the effect of prior legislation. A constituent suffered an unprovoked attack by a man armed with a knife. The attacker was sent to prison. In the interim period before he was convicted, he
had played every trick in the book--many hon. Members are well aware of them--to delay the day of reckoning and to serve his time on remand. The result was that, on the first weekend after his conviction and sentence, my constituent saw her attacker walking up the street in which she lived. She fled inside, locked the door and rang the police to say that he had escaped. It turned out that he had not escaped but was on weekend leave. That is what I mean by terror, and my constituent felt terror in that instance.
One of the excellent proposals tucked away inside the document that we should be debating this afternoon is a change that means that the judge will have to specify the date on which a sentence starts to run and may disregard for that purpose the time spent on remand that is due to the defendant's manipulation of the system. That reform is long overdue and welcome. It will help to reduce the terror that those people can bring to law-abiding members of the community.
We must try to avoid the trap of mentioning, for example,
The public believe, rightly, that more could be done to prevent crime and that what has been done has not prevented dangerous criminals from being released back on to the streets, even in circumstances in which criminologists, probation officers and prison officers are convinced that those criminals will offend again; they will seek new victims whose lives could and should have been spared such tragic interference.
I agree with the Home Secretary and the White Paper that automatic early release enrages victims. The current system does not provide any method to ensure that criminals known still to be a threat can be detained. I therefore welcome the proposal that earned remission, and earned remission only, can reduce the sentence. Good behaviour will no longer be assumed but will have to be demonstrated.
Conservative Members want to reduce the number of offenders and that view must be shared by all right hon. and hon. Members. That will mean fewer people to punish, but the measure of success is not the number of criminals: it is reductions in the number of victims. That is usually translated to mean a reduction in the number of offences, but that is the only point on which a criminal justice system can claim success or be accused of failure. To reduce the number of victims, it is necessary to deter offenders from choosing to offend. That is to state the obvious, but the obvious is always worth stating in the House, as elsewhere.
I am pleased to see that prevention of crime and effective policing are the largest sections in the document. In some ways, even in most ways perhaps, they are the most important sections. Let us be clear that the main purpose of sentencing is the prevention of further crime. The person most likely to offend is the one who has demonstrated his willingness so to do in the past. He must be persuaded to make a different choice in future, but--this is one of the premises of the proposals--if he will not allow himself to be so persuaded, society is justified in securing its safety by removing his liberty and his opportunity to offend again.
Too often, sentences do not seem to serve the public adequately. It is the public whom sentences should serve, not the criminal justice system or those employed by it. In my judgment, mandatory minimum sentences have been proven to work, and I pray in aid the mandatory minimum disqualification period in offences of driving under the influence of excess alcohol. That has been an effective deterrent to the dangerous practice of driving after drinking too much, although it is, of course, subject to an exceptional circumstances exemption. The fact remains that people do not drink and drive, because they know that, if caught, they will lose their driving licence. The change from the possible loss of one's licence to a mandatory loss by law was marked by a significant reduction in such offences, which has continued. Therefore, the mandatory minimum sentence is not just theory; it has been proven to work in practice.
Opponents claim that the proposals constitute an attempt by the executive to usurp the power of the judiciary, to take power away from judges and to give it to politicians. That is at best a false, simplistic argument and it is also wrong. To expose that, I shall make two brief points. First, we should ask from where the judges' power comes. Apart from some vestigial common law powers, their power comes from the people by way of Acts passed in the House. They have no other powers. Why would it be interference to prescribe a minimum sentence when it is not interference to prescribe a maximum sentence? I would be happier to hear judges complain about being restricted by a 14-year maximum sentence for repeat burglars who enter people's houses than to hear them complain about a proposed three-year minimum sentence. If it is interference to propose a minimum, it must also logically be interference to propose a maximum.
Secondly, let us follow the judges' argument to its logical conclusion. If it would be wrong to fetter a judge's discretion through mandatory minimum sentences, the same argument must apply to anything that fetters that discretion. That is the path that leads to the sentences for all offences being described as "such sentence as the judge considers appropriate in all the circumstances of the case", or words to that effect. That is the inevitable conclusion of that approach. I do not think that that is a reasonable proposition and we should not be persuaded to accept the first step towards it.
"provided for her daughter and endeavoured to give her daughter the more intensive care and attention that a premature baby would require. Mrs Steele appears to have coped with the various difficulties of being a single mother."
Many statements supported her and her ability to look after her child.
"I do not think that anyone with a modicum of knowledge would ever believe that the Prosecution were not acting deliberately in a manner which was not investigative, which did not seek justice, which did not seek the truth, and merely sought a conviction. The
19 Jun 1996 : Column 909Prosecution even applied to amend the Indictment at the beginning of the case in a forlorn attempt to enhance their opportunities for convictions. The case fell at the first hurdle, (on the evidence of her boyfriend) . . . and by 1.30 in the afternoon she was acquitted."
The problem is that a poorly conducted investigation combined with an irresponsible decision to prosecute has had unfortunate repercussions for Elaine Steele. An able young reporter on the local evening newspaper submitted an accurate report of the prosecution's opening case. However, the case collapsed after the paper's lunchtime deadline. Sadly, the damage caused by that report of the prosecution's case affects Elaine Steele to this day.
"There are a number of aspects of the case which cause me concern. The Police sought to entrap a distraught mother by avoiding the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. The Police subsequently tried to brush that particular episode under the carpet by blaming a typist"--
Mr. Sweeney:
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance as to whether the hon. Gentleman's speech bears any relation to the matter that we are supposed to be discussing--sentencing.
"The Police subsequently tried to brush that particular episode under the carpet by blaming a typist for making a typing error and supplying two further statements of the two Detective Constables involved. The Police agreed to that typist being interviewed, on behalf of Elaine's solicitor, although a Detective Chief Inspector sat through the interview. It was he however who refused a further interview with the typist when it became apparent that she had more to say.
Many strong words have been uttered during this affair, but one must read the evidence--particularly the statements--to realise why people have such strong opinions about the case. The truth is that Mrs. Elaine Steele had nothing at all to do with the death of her child: she is totally innocent. The court found her innocent and her friends know that she is innocent. The person who should have been interviewed in depth about what happened was never properly interviewed. Elaine Steele is the victim of a failing system.
It is against all normal custom in criminal investigations for an officer who is involved in the case to be present at such an interview let alone make the decision that there should not be a further interview."
"a second serious violent or sexual offence"
or
"a third or subsequent burglary of a dwelling"
only to forget about such offences thereafter and discuss only policy and criminological theories. We must remember that that is the standard structure of a speech in mitigation, the objective of which is to minimise awareness of the offence, let alone its effect on the victim. It does not bode well for us if we fall into that trap. We owe a duty to our constituents to protect them, and our starting point must be to remember the effect on them of such serious crimes. Our duty is prevent them from becoming victims, not to accept that they might become victims and then to deal with offenders.
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