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Mr. Fabricant: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House--I know that he is not speaking of his own volition but merely quoting the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace)--but it was not Dostoevsky but Tolstoy who wrote "War and Punishment".
Mr. Connarty: I know that Hansard sometimes has problems with my accent, but I was referring to "Crime and Punishment", not "War and Peace". I believe that "Crime and Punishment" was the book referred to by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland--who, like most people in Scotland, received a broad education which included literature. Pupils did not have to choose to study English literature in order to read the classics. The Secretary of State for Scotland should have stuck to rewriting "The Brothers Karamazov" rather than trying to rewrite "Crime and Punishment", as he has made a complete mess of it.
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There are fundamental questions that we all ask again and again--in opposition, in government and in society. Does prison sentencing reform criminals? Does prison sentencing, in the long run, protect society from further criminal action? The question has now become, "Will automatic sentencing deter people from criminal behaviour?" If it will not, it will not work with the grain of society's wishes or, I believe, with the grain of the wishes of the House.
When is a life sentence not a life sentence? Is it automatic, or is it mandatory? I note that clause 13 attempts to connect automatic sentencing with the rights given to people, and to deal with sentencing policy in relation to what we know as a designated life sentence for a person aged under 18 in Scotland. There are heart-rending cases of young people sent to prison who, well over 20 years later, are still serving their designated life sentences. I am glad that those arrangements will be tightened up, although I am not sure that automatic sentencing will make the necessary difference.
That is the question that we must ask about the Bill. Will it make a difference? We want it to, which is why we have tabled a reasoned amendment objecting to the way in which the Government have cobbled together a series of ideas without sorting them out or researching them properly, and without working with the commissions, judges or other learned persons who are already trying to give us advice. The Government have merely put together some of what appear to be the Secretary of State's own prejudices and made them into a Bill.
In a reply to me, the Secretary of State said that the Government were not rejecting the principle contained in the 1993 Act--that it was best for 50 per cent. of a sentence to be served in prison, and then, if no trouble occurred in prison, for the remaining 50 per cent. to be served on licence in the community. The offender could then become rehabilitated, under supervision. That was a good principle. The Minister of State argued it well, and we supported it: the deputy shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall), and others helped to put the 1993 legislation on to the statute book. The present Secretary of State did not reject the principle then, but everything in this Bill clearly does so.
We are now faced with a strange situation. A criminal's fitness to be released will be tested solely on the basis of his behaviour in prison--behaviour that will mean only that he is a good prisoner and adapts well to the prison regime. It will not mean that his behaviour is good in the sense of his having become a better citizen; it will mean that he is good at working with the warders and with the other members of the criminal underworld with whom he is imprisoned. For between three months and two years, or one sixth of his sentence, that criminal will then be released into society.
It seems that we are going to screw down the spring more and more, and then release it as though it were a cork emerging from a bottle of something very fizzy. Having been released into society, the criminal will pose a real problem for us in the longer term. Prisons do not currently rehabilitate prisoners, which worries me greatly. The focus of society should enable those who commit
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I believe that the 1993 Act was implemented only five weeks ago. No sentences have been cut in half; we have not tested the legislation. That is what worries me most. The Secretary of State wants a high platform from which to wave a flag--he wants some bylines and soundbites--but we should at least have considered the implementation of the Act and whether the theory proved correct, and if necessary introduced even stronger amendments. At present, we have nothing on which to test it. We have thrown it out before it has even been tested in the market in the way that the Government would normally recommend.
Mr. Bill Walker:
The hon. Member is making, from his standpoint, a very reasoned case. But are not his constituents, like mine, deeply concerned about the fact that criminals appear to be getting off too lightly and that the whole legal structure seems to be designed to assist the criminal? That is what bothers people, and that is what the Bill attempts to address.
Mr. Connarty:
I fully concur with the impression gained by my constituents and, I am sure, those of many other hon. Members, that criminals do seem to get off far too lightly. But many members of society seem to get off too lightly in the courts. I found it just as frightening to read in the press yesterday about the case--it was not in my constituency--of someone who, travelling at 70 mph in a 30 mph zone, knocked down and killed a 70-year-old woman. When he arrived in the High Court, the sentence was 200 hours of community service because of the "stress" in his life--200 hours of community service for killing a 70-year-old woman, and, indeed, driving away from the scene of the accident. It was not possible to prove that he had been drinking, but the sentence was ridiculous none the less.
A constituent of mine was killed by a lorry driver who was clearly out of control and should not have been driving so fast. That young man killed someone. He was sentenced to imprisonment, and appealed. In the meantime, his partner became pregnant. He went back to court, where the sentence was reduced to 200 hours community service. The father of the young woman who was killed--apparently, the lorry ran right over her--has lost his business and the family has fallen apart. She was an only child. That strikes me as an appalling sentence, and there are many more such incidents.
I now write so many letters to local sheriffs and the local procurator fiscal that I may be hauled up for murmuring a judge unless I am protected by this austere place. I see so many people let off on the basis of what I consider to be plea bargaining, which is not supposed to exist in the Scottish courts: people who plead guilty to a lesser crime are let off a more serious crime. In cases of what I would describe as attempted murder, when people end up with plates in their heads after being given serious kickings on a Friday or Saturday night, the perpetrators get away with a simple plea of assault or breach of the peace five or six months later. That frightens me, and it frightens everyone in society.
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The Opposition feel that this Bill is not the way to tackle the problem, which is why we have tabled our reasoned amendment.
Mr. Bill Walker:
The Bill is the way to tackle the problem. The hon. Gentleman can table amendments in Committee.
Mr. Connarty:
If a genuine attempt had been made to construct a useful Bill, we could look forward to that. When I debated with the present Government the provisions which later became the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, we were promised--after evidence had been taken--amendments and fundamental changes. But then the Government dragooned their troops, who included five English Committee members so that they could secure a majority, to vote slavishly for the Government line. They accepted no sensible, reasonable amendments from the Opposition. It was ridiculous. They accepted only amendments that they decided to insert after taking evidence in a Special Standing Committee.
That is what worries me. We shall end up with what we have on paper now, with no serious, fundamental amendments. I do not think that we would even have tabled a reasoned amendment if we had thought that a constructive dialogue would take place; but the Minister and his subordinates will read their briefs, and then Conservative Members will vote slavishly for the Government line.
This is not really about trying to get something done about crime and criminality; it is about giving the Secretary of State some soundbites and platforms. He will play to an aspect of the Scottish people's fear. That is what the Conservatives' election platform will be about--trying to make people so afraid that they are afraid of change. I do not mind that in a Scottish context, because the latest opinion poll, published today, shows that the Conservatives have 11 per cent. support while Labour has 55 per cent. If voting patterns are not changed, I shall not be at all displeased.
We have heard a good deal about recorded crime. Along with my hon. Friend the deputy shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, I work as a co-ordinator of the anti-crime and drugs campaign in Scotland, and I commend the way in which the police forces and community groups have tried to do something about crime, launching initiative after initiative. I am struck by the fact that, when I visit constabularies, I am told, "Do not put credibility in the figures for the other constabularies because they fiddle the figures."
Recorded crime is not the real level of crime. I will give some examples. If five cars are broken into in a street, it is recorded as one crime, one incident. The same applies if half a dozen houses are broken into at the same time. My office was broken into when I left a window open and there were about 10 crimes in the same stretch of street as my office. That was recorded as one incident. Whether we record crimes now as we did in 1979 might explain some of the fall in the figures. As we heard from the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and from my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), the figures are not good. Many of the figures are being fiddled so that it looks as though crime is coming down when it is not. Only recorded crime is coming down.
I do not want to go into detail on too many clauses, but clause 5 and those that go with it frighten me. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, it is wrong to say
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Clause 4, which I would call the "Clockwork Orange" clause, is also frightening. That film was based on the premise that people could be reprocessed by electronics. It was a kind of "Logan's Run", a science fiction film in which everyone was tagged and society knew where he was going. Those who tried to break out of the cycle were followed by the secret police. That is worrying.
I have an eighteen-year-old daughter, but she is not an adult in the sense of not being my responsibility. I do not know what kind of device would be used, but how can we think of anyone in a family wearing some sort of bangle or brooch? Will it be placed around the neck? Miners in Scotland used to wear a leather collar to show which pit they worked in. Will electronic tagging be carried out along similar lines? There are serious problems I want to try to change people's behaviour, but that will not be done by putting some electronic device on their bodies. That is a science fiction nightmare and I wonder what anyone thinks can be gained by a society in which people have to wear electronic tags.
The Bill deals with drinking in public places and taking drink off young people. Why does it not suggest a total ban on drinking in the street? Why do the Government chicken out and say that local authorities and the licensing boards can decide to have a ban? There is a ban in Glasgow in all public places except those that are licensed, and that makes sense. The issue is not about age, about knowing whether a person is 14 or 18: it is about the fact that young people congregate in the streets. Sometimes they are aged 20 to 22 and they are passing round bottles. That is deemed to be all right, but it is not; it is more frightening to have a groups of 20 to 24-year-olds hanging about in the streets. We should look seriously at the places where we do not want people to carry and drink alcohol, and then we can take it from there.
The issue is not age. Why is there this thing about the young? Why do we think that those under the age of 18 are somehow more threatening? Is it because of our own age, or is the Secretary of State older than he looks? I feel more frightened of adults with drink in them or on them than of young people.
We must be concerned about the signals that we are sending. We are here to nurture and look after the young and promote them, not stamp on them, imprison them and treat them as though they are the problem in society. In our society, the problems have been brought about by adults, by the Government of 17 years, not by people who were not even born then. There is a frightening message going out on the whole question of picking on young people and saying that they must give up their drinks.
The Bill is deficient in many ways. That is why we have tabled a reasoned amendment. It contains nothing about anti-social neighbours. In last year's debate on the
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At present, there are no powers available to the police in Scotland to do anything about that. There have to be witnesses willing to go to court, but case after case against the families has collapsed between the time of reporting and the time when the case was due in court. If the Government want to do something about people's lives and peace and security, they should do something about that instead of presenting a measure like this one.
There is nothing in the Bill about bail and reoffending while on bail. That has been stressed again and again. It contains nothing on the social agenda, but there is such an agenda in crime. It is about education in prison and about reskilling prisoners and giving them a chance. Some people say, "Why spend resources on such people? They are out of society, they are criminals. Don't spend money on them; spend it on the other groups in society who need it." Society needs to get rid of the conflict caused by people from a criminal environment who coming out of prison and going straight back to that environment.
I do not mind if I am called a woolly liberal, because I do not think I am. I am not doing this for people in prison: I am doing it for the peace of mind that I want for my kids, my family and my community, which is not just the people I represent but the people I know who do not want to live in that society. There is a young offenders institution in my constituency and I want to see those young people come out as better citizens even if that means spending on the social agenda and providing more education, not cutting it as the Government have been doing.
Neither the Bill nor the White Paper contains much about crime prevention and the Government have to come up to scratch on that agenda. The Minister was at the launch of Operation Shopkeep. I went to a conference on retail crime. There are 5 million incidents of retail crime a year, 1.5 million people are arrested and 50,000 come to court, although I do not know how many of them are given a worthwhile sentence. There are suggestions about how we could allow automatic fines of a multiple of the value of the goods that people steal so that there would be some way to claim them back. There is nothing in the Bill about responding to that agenda.
The Bill is cumbersome. It is only within the past five weeks that we have brought in the 1993 legislation, and it will take three years for this measure to come into effect. There are massive bureaucratic costs. The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) gave figures for some of the measures in the Bill. It will be very wasteful if it is not effective, and such measures have not been effective.
Finally, how are we to deal with the 2,200 new prisoners? I already have a prison in my constituency. It is interesting to note that the Bill states that prisons should not be put in certain areas because they might affect inward investment or economic enterprise zones. Yet it is all right to stick a prison beside a housing scheme with working-class families or, in my case, in a middle-class
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