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9.18 pm
Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton): This has been an excellent debate, with contributions from the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace), my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe), for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) and for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson), and the hon. Members for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) and for Southport (Mr. Banks).
Many fine points have been made, but the debate has been characterised by the fact that the Secretary of State has fallen on his face again today, accusing my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) of stating that the clear-up rate had deteriorated, when in fact my hon. Friend said no such thing. The Secretary of State should get his facts right.
A kerfuffle was made about the reasoned amendment. To make it simple for Conservative Members, I shall explain why we tabled that reasoned amendment. There are four or five main points. First, the Bill has been introduced without a proper review or study. The Secretary of State has not consulted anyone about the Bill. I remind him and others of the speeches yesterday evening by the right hon. Members for Witney (Mr. Hurd) and for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), who are distinguished former Home Secretaries, and the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), who was a prisons Minister.
I remind the House of what the right hon. Member for Witney said yesterday:
Mr. Gallie:
The hon. Gentleman said that my right hon. Friend has not consulted on this matter. The Secretary of State published a document in June which clearly laid out his intentions, and from that he produced
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Mr. McFall:
The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie) has led me on to my second point, which relates to the comments made by the recently retired Lord Justice-General and Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Hope, when he addressed the Law Society of Scotland conference on Monday 30 September. The hon. Member for Ayr epitomised the crude political bigotry that still exists on the Back Benches of the Tory party when he said that Lord Hope and others were
The Lord President of the Court of Session said:
Lord Hope continued:
Mr. Michael Forsyth:
If the hon. Gentleman thinks, as I do, that the judiciary should remain independent, does he not agree that it is disgraceful for him to take comments made by the judiciary out of context and to seek to make party political points out of them? Is that not politicising the judicial process?
Mr. McFall:
I hope that the Secretary of State had a good meal tonight, because he looked as if he was cracking up late this afternoon. I have a copy of the speech by the Lord President of the Court of Session on
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My second point concerns the reversing of key reforms. The hon. Member for Ayr said honestly that during consideration of the Bill that became the 1993 Act the procedures for automatic release were wrong, and he voted for them reluctantly. On the one hand, the hon. Gentleman tells us that those procedures were wrong; on the other hand, the Secretary of State says that they were merely an extension of the measures implemented by the right hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang). Both of them cannot be right, and we know who is wrong. The hon. Member for Ayr is honest, but the right hon. Member for Stirling is not telling us exactly the truth. He is not giving us--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the Secretary of State is lying to the House, is he? If he is, I must ask him to withdraw his suggestion.
Mr. McFall:
I will modify my statement and say that the Secretary of State is misrepresenting the position.
The Minister of State is a nice man. Indeed, one of my colleagues--
Mr. Fabricant:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I can manage without the hon. Gentleman.
I was not entirely sure whether the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) was in fact withdrawing his remarks, which could suggest that the Secretary of State was telling lies.
Mr. McFall:
Of course I withdraw them. I am saying that the Secretary of State is misrepresenting the position. I repeat what I said before.
The Minister of State is a very nice man. Indeed, one of my colleagues memorably said that arguing with him is like throwing tomatoes at your granny: you feel guilty about it.
Mr. Fabricant:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I hope that it is a genuine point of order.
Mr. Fabricant:
It is, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I hope so.
Mr. Fabricant:
I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker--and, were I in a position to do so, I would ask the Clerk--whether, if one Member accuses another of deliberately misleading--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I have just dealt with the matter, and that is final.
Mr. McFall:
As I have said, the Minister of State is a very nice man. How can he sit beside the Secretary of
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To date, there has been no consultation and no assessment of the implications of the legislation. It was sheer prejudice on the part of the Secretary of State to turn the 1993 Act upside down just to suit his own ends. The Minister of State should address that in his winding-up speech and explain why he could introduce that measure in 1993 with such comments and then join the Secretary of State in this debate and turn everything on its head.
Reversing key reforms will apply more pressure to the prison system. Similar changes in the 1980s resulted in some accommodation by judges on the length of sentences, but it was not enough to neutralise the impact. The Government seem set on a warehousing policy for prisons and no significant additional resources will be available to facilitate the necessary expansion or even the maintenance of prison programmes which attempt to deal with offending behaviour. Any reduction in the number and quality of such programmes will lessen the chance of lowering the current appalling rate of recidivism.
Catching a criminal and successfully prosecuting him is difficult, uncertain and expensive. Almost 60 per cent. of those who commit serious crimes, and 85 per cent. of young people who commit such crimes, reoffend within two years of leaving prison. It is irresponsible not to take every opportunity to try to change the offending behaviour when people are in custody.
No matter how long people are put away for, unless we throw away the key they will come out some day--and on current form the majority of them will commit further offences. The Secretary of State's proposals and his failure to tackle the appalling problem of recidivism will ensure a threat to public safety, because, when young men leave prison and find themselves back on the streets, they are a greater danger to the public than they were before they went to prison. The Secretary of State's negligence is contributing to that.
We do not advocate the establishment of prison programmes to deal with offending behaviour just because it is the liberal, caring thing to do. Our approach is pragmatic, and evidence suggests that the present system of sentences of imprisonment followed by supervision on release is more likely to reduce reoffending than
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If the Government's proposals are implemented, periods of supervisory release would be reduced for many long-term prisoners. A prisoner serving six years who does not receive parole is supervised for two years after release. Under the Government's proposal, that period would be one year unless the sentencing court had specifically ordered a longer period. Successful resettlement of difficult offenders often requires supervision over a substantial period, and a reduction in the supervision period might place the public at risk from reoffenders. Resources are required, but there is nothing in the Bill to which the Secretary of State intends to turn his intention.
The Opposition seek informed debate on electronic tagging. Similar initiatives elsewhere, particularly in the United States, New Zealand and Singapore, have resulted in a large number of failures and technical difficulties and excessive cost. In 1989, the Home Office initiated a six-months trial for people on bail. However, courts made little use of the facility, and, of the 50 persons made subject to the monitoring, 11 committed further offences and 18 broke the bail conditions. The equipment was subject to a high failure rate and it was estimated that the initiative cost about £10,000 per person.
"The operation of our criminal justice system is not in the hands of. . . the Home Secretary alone or of the Government. . . it is in the hands of a variety of people--chief constables, the Crown Prosecution Service, judges. . . prison governors. . . none of them are creatures of the Government. The House has given them all separate responsibilities and a degree of autonomy. Criminal justice measures will not work unless those people work them. That means that they must be listened to".--[Official Report, 4 November 1996; Vol. 284, c.933-34.]
The Government have not listened: indeed, they have not consulted.
"steeped in the ways of the legal establishment. . . despising the feelings of lesser beings".
I do not sit at the dinner table with the Lord President of the Court of Session, but when we are in government we will listen to such individuals, for the simple reason that they are the practitioners in the criminal justice system. They carry out the legal requirements that Parliament puts on them, so they must be part of the debate. That crude political bigotry should play no part in our system.
"It is no surprise to me, therefore, that during each of the last seven years there has been a major initiative in the criminal justice field, about which we as lawyers have been consulted and to which we have responded to the best of our ability. What is new on this occasion"--
that is, since the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth) came along--
"is that so much of what is in the White Paper, whose title has given its name to this conference, namely 'Crime and Punishment', appears to have been decided already without consultation. I cannot escape the feeling that it is taking place largely in a vacuum. And I do not think that the Minister who has just spoken"--
the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), to whom he directed his attention--
"has been able to enlighten us. What account, if any, has been taken of the points already made in our written response to the White Paper? Nor do we have any indication that any public debate which may take place today will have any real influence on those who are responsible for laying measures before Parliament."
My hon. Friends and I think that it is dangerous not to listen to those who are in the criminal justice system.
"I should like now to add that unless that commitment is demonstrated by the Government, our endeavours will be no more valuable than the act of tossing coins into a wishing well."
The Secretary of State should be ashamed of himself for the way in which he has gone about his business. He has received trenchant criticism from the judiciary.
"Although the Bill promotes greater fairness and consistency, it will also strengthen the deterrent effect of long sentences. Offenders sentenced to four or more years will have to wait until they have served at least half of their sentence before being considered for parole, instead of one third as at present."--[Official Report, 19 October 1992; Vol. 212, c.289.]
That Bill restored meaning to the full duration of a long sentence by ensuring that release, when it came, would be on licence. Yet the Secretary of State, addressing the Police Federation in May, said:
"We must put honesty back into sentencing."
The Secretary of State said, or implied, that the Secretary of State of the day, and the Minister of State, were not being fully honest in presenting their political measures, and that he was the one who would put honesty back into the equation. I say--and the House said at the time--that the Secretary of State was taken at his word, that he was being honest.
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