House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Nov 1996 (pt 27)

9.12 pm

Mr. Toby Jessel (Twickenham): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) warmly for curtailing an enormously interesting speech.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) referred to public opinion. I have sent out 69,000 survey forms in my constituency--one to each constituent--and have received 13,000 replies. I have managed to put only about half of them on my computer so far. I can confirm that there is certainly more worry about law and order than about any other issue in my constituency.

When we are discussing justice or the courts, I see no reason why we should forget that we live in a democracy. Magistrates are supposed to represent the people. Judges sometimes refer to public policy and they certainly accept that concept. The people see the purpose of criminal law and the courts as not only justice, but the protection of their safety. People are worried by criminal conduct and expect not only the courts but the Government and Parliament to act. I have no hesitation, therefore, in supporting this excellent Bill which will provide honesty in sentencing, which is important, but whose central purpose is to provide mandatory sentences for second violent crimes, such as manslaughter, armed robbery, rape, intercourse with girls under 13 and so forth. I want the Bill to be amended so that the seven years for a second offence of drug trafficking, as currently in the Bill--which is not enough because trafficking in drugs ruins so many lives--becomes instead a life sentence too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds, like many other right hon. and hon. Members, referred to the independence of the judiciary. I have tremendous respect

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for judges--I always have had. I come from a legal family, but I am not a lawyer myself. It is a prime duty of Parliament to uphold the authority of the courts. I regard judges in general as intelligent, wise and public-spirited people. However, when they and others speak of judges' independence in sentencing, they do not always mention that that independence is already inhibited in a way that is seldom publicly mentioned, but which I am convinced is none the less real.

If you talk to judges, Mr. Deputy Speaker--perhaps when you meet them socially--and discuss their work in any depth, it does not take long to discover that they greatly dislike their decisions being reversed by a higher court on appeal, whether that is reversal of a verdict or reversal of a sentence, upwards or downwards. That feeling is general. It never lies far below the surface. It is not in any way discreditable. It is, in fact, completely understandable because a reversal of a judge's decision implies that, in the eyes of the higher court, the judge got it wrong.

That is, in a sense, one facet of British professionalism, which is, on the whole, a good influence--it not only maintains qualifications and technical skills, but standards of performance. However, British professionalism has a downside and that is true of all the learned professions, whether lawyers--including judges--doctors, accountants or any other profession. They seem to care more about the good opinion of their brother or sister professionals than they care about what the general public think of them. Doctors care about what other doctors think of them; vicars care about what other vicars think of them; accountants care about what other accountants think of them; lawyers care about what other lawyers think of them; and judges certainly care a great deal about what other judges think of them. That feeling stems partly from the British guild tradition of the middle ages; it is shared by judges and it is one of the reasons why they dislike their decisions being reversed.

When sentencing, judges have regard to tariffs--if that is the right word. I have seen the books that they use which contain examples of adding three months for this, or subtracting six months for that and I believe that broad compliance by judges with those variables will tend to diminish the chances of a reversal by a higher court on appeal. That must result in a substantial propensity of judges to comply with and rely on that type of guidance when sentencing, which not only constrains their real independence, but gives rise to a body of sentencing conventions and practice that tends to crystallise and from which the courts will not want to depart.

As a result, when Parliament and public want stiffer sentences to deter crime, we cannot look to the courts because the judges themselves have a built-in tendency to maintain the current sentencing fashion. Such an objective can only be brought about by statute. We are in such a situation now and that is why we need the Bill, which I warmly support.

9.19 pm

Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth): We have heard it all now--the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) had to send out a questionnaire to his constituents to discover what the Opposition have known for years: ordinary members of the public are desperately worried about crime after 17 years of Conservative rule.

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The Home Secretary must have realised how deep his problems have become when he listened to several of his right hon. Friends, people who had held office as Home Secretary or Minister of State at the Home Office, damning him with faint praise. The first four expressed serious reservations while supporting parts of the Bill. We, too, wish to support parts of it and, in Committee, to increase its effectiveness. We also support its general direction in terms of tackling the problems of sentencing.

The Secretary of State must have been even more worried when he realised that just two voices were raised in unqualified praise of his approach to law and order. The first was that of the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney)--the man who wants to increase the gun culture instead of tackle it, and introduce to Britain the gun culture of the wild west. The second was that of the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), whose speech was absurd, inaccurate and misleading. He swung wildly between the idiosyncratic and the sycophantic.

Given that the hon. and learned Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House, I can only sympathise with him for suffering acute amnesia. He should know--as he would if he reminded himself by looking at the record--that we have consistently sought to improve law and order, to tackle the real problems of the criminal justice system and to be tough on crime and the causes of crime. The hon. and learned Gentleman's denial of that makes his speech tonight one of the most absurd that I have heard in the House for a long time.

The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan believes everything that the Home Secretary says and everything that his right hon. and learned Friend promises. The hon. Gentleman said that the Government have increased police numbers. They have increased in his constituency and mine since transparency forced the Welsh Office and the Home Office to stop playing silly games. At the general election, however, the Home Office promised an increase of 1,000. On 31 March 1992, the total number in all ranks was 125,570. By 31 March 1996, the figure stood at 124,821. To help with the arithmetic, that means the total number of police has gone down by 749 during that period.

Mr. Spring: The Opposition's great devotion to law and order does not seem to accord with the actions of Labour local authorities, which are familiar to us--for example, the action of local education authorities that have denied the police access to schools to talk about various serious issues.

Mr. Michael: I dare say that the hon. Gentleman wants to enter a competition for the absurd with the hon. and learned Member for Burton. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and I have spent a great deal of time travelling up and down the country, and we see the seriousness with which local authorities are trying to tackle the problems of crime, to prevent crime and to reduce it. They have asked for help from the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. If they gave more help, local authorities that want to tackle such problems would be in a far better position to do so.

The hon. and learned Member for Burton said that the Home Secretary is right to realise when he is wrong. What is extraordinary is the speed with which the Home

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Secretary is now having to perform U-turns. We have seen it happen in the past couple of weeks, but today it reached new heights. The Bill was published a little over a week ago, but this afternoon the right hon. and learned Gentleman announced three major changes to what was supposed to be the flagship of the legislative programme.

The new penalties are to include the disqualification of drivers. It is a privilege to be a driver, and it will be interesting to examine the detail of that amendment. The Home Secretary spoke of a curfew on young offenders. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the practicalities and targeting of that measure. The third change was the removal of the restriction on the naming of young offenders. There are circumstances in which that is appropriate. We await the measure with interest.

If the Home Secretary is honest and sincere, and intends those changes as constructive proposals rather than as part of his pre-election games, I ask him to let us have his wording now so that we have time to study it in detail, instead of having to table amendments at the last minute when we are in Committee, as usually happens. He and his colleagues know that, when we are given a chance to debate such matters seriously, we do our best to be constructive. The Minister of State knows that we worked positively with the Government on amendments to the Security Service Bill earlier this year. That was a good example of how both sides should deal with legislation.

That is how this Bill should be approached. If the Home Secretary is serious he will give us ample notice of the amendments that he proposes. We will respond as helpfully as we can to his suggestions.

No one could accuse the hon. and learned Member for Burton of being reasonable if they heard the petulant way in which he challenged and questioned prison governors when they appeared before the Home Affairs Committee last week. His words and the exchanges were available to those who listen to proceedings on the Committee Corridor. Perhaps it would be salutary for the hon. and learned Gentleman to listen to the arrogant way in which he controlled that debate and approached the evidence given to the Committee.

The hon. and learned Gentleman ridiculed my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn and went on to support my hon. Friend's proposals for minimum guidelines. It is interesting to see where support for constructive suggestions comes from. The hon. and learned Gentleman seems not to know that, for serious offences involving class A drugs, the penalties start at eight years for the first offence.

The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan claims to support victims, yet the Home Secretary whom he supports has slashed the budget for compensating the victims of serious violent crime by £700 million over the next five years.

With the exception of the speeches made by the Home Secretary, the hon. and learned Member for Burton and the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan, this has been a serious and constructive debate on both sides of the House, not least on the part of the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker). I agree that his successors as chairmen of the Conservative party have provided a target-rich area, but his successors as Home Secretary have been even more disastrous. He was right to say that

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both sides of the House want to deter re-offending and to impose long sentences on the most serious and violent offenders.