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Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My hon. Friend will be aware that the convention was never put to the House of Commons. It was signed by the Labour Prime Minister, but no discussion took place in the House--if it had, the document would have been a jolly sight more workmanlike.

Mr. Townend: My hon. Friend is right. If the founders had stuck to their original intentions, there would have been no problem, but, just like the European Union and every bureaucratic body, the court is always trying to extend its competence.

We face appalling problems of crime and juvenile crime. It cannot be right that, if elected Members of the House decide to bring back the cane and judicial corporal punishment, we should be prevented from doing so by a foreign court with foreign judges--except for one British judge--with a completely different history and from a completely different culture. It may be acceptable to the Italian people never to have corporal punishment, but I do not see why there must be conformity on this matter.

In my constituency, people are pig-sick of vandalism, thuggery, old people not daring to go out at night and cars being stolen and vandalised. If we do not do something about the problem in the next 10 years--I say this seriously--we will have what none of us want: an increase in vigilantes. I support the amendment.

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The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): This has been a short but interesting debate. I listened carefully to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman), for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Hawksley) and for Bridlington (Mr. Townend). My hon. Friends know from which direction I come on these matters, although I confess that my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) thinks that I am going slightly soft in my old age. He has accused me of being an unreconstructed wet, and has threatened to put me through the wringer to dry me out a bit. However, most of my hon. Friends do not take that view of my attitude to these matters.

I am not satisfied that corporal punishment would, in practice, be a useful punishment today, or that we should seek to provide for it in the Bill. It is now almost 40 years since corporal punishment was abolished as a sentence of the court. My hon. Friends argue that corporal punishment would be a deterrent. If it were to act as a deterrent, it would have to be used regularly, predictably and immediately. Frankly, I do not believe that that would be the case.

Mr. Townend: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Maclean: I shall give way in a moment.

Corporal punishment has a role to play for parents who administer sensible discipline to their children owing to the immediacy of the infliction of the punishment on the youngster who is doing wrong. Judicial flogging in the cool light of day after many months or, I suspect, years later after dozens of appeals--as in some of the cases in the United States--would not be an effective deterrent.

Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if we were able to use corporal punishment in schools--as we always did--it would not be necessary to have judicial corporal punishment, which he condemns?

Mr. Maclean: That is an entirely different area, into which I will not stray, because we have a lot of other business to conduct. No doubt, a philosophical debate on the merits of corporal punishment at all levels of society--in schools, by parents on their children or judicial flogging--would be an interesting occasion at some point, but I do not want to get into that at the moment.

Mr. Townend: My right hon. Friend said that if we reintroduced corporal punishment it would have to be used regularly to be a deterrent. Does he accept that it is a deterrent in the Isle of Man, although it is used only once or twice a year on average? It was also an effective deterrent in schools, although the headmaster to whom I referred used the cane only once a term.

Mr. Maclean: The climate was different when we last had corporal punishment. Many people would assert--although I may not be one of them--that judges in those days were more robust than some are these days and that they had harder attitudes to the punishment of criminals in the 1930s and 1940s. If, in that climate and with that sort of judge, corporal punishment was not used then, do my hon. Friends seriously think that if it was back on

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the statute book today judges would rush to use judicial flogging? I cannot imagine it happening. If judges in the 1940s did not use it, I am fairly certain, without impugning the integrity of any of today's great judges, that few would use it now.

There is another dimension, and this is not an excuse that I am hiding behind but a practical legal fact, as the infliction of judicial flogging would almost certainly be contrary to the UK's obligations under the European convention on human rights. If my hon. Friends want to debate the convention, they can table a suitable subject that may be selected by Madam Speaker for debate on the Adjournment or on some other occasion.

I will not now debate the merits or demerits of Britain's signing the convention. We are party to it and the British Government have no proposals to withdraw from it at the present moment. That means that we are bound by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 1978 in the Tyrer case, which involved a birching on the Isle of Man, that such punishment was incompatible with article 3 of the convention. It found that the birching imposed on Tyrer constituted degrading punishment within the meaning of article 3 and emphasised that it considered corporal punishment to be "institutionalised violence", with the individual being

"treated as an object in the power of the authorities".

6.30 pm

Mrs. Peacock: I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend, but what about the almost institutionalised violence that many elderly people suffer in their own homes? Rightly, they and their relatives believe that some pain should be inflicted on the young people who cause that damage.

Mr. Maclean: Such violence is deplorable, which is why we have increased the penalties for those who commit it. Clauses 1, 2 and 3 propose some of the most dramatic action taken since the war to deal with habitual, persistent and violent criminals. Clause 1 introduces automatic life sentences for the most violent criminals. Clause 2 proposes seven-year sentences for the evil people who peddle drugs. Clause 3 deals with persistent burglars who terrorise people by their activities. My hon. Friend supported those measures. The Opposition could not make up their mind, but one day I hope that they may vote for them. That is the action that we are taking. Such penalties, the increasing numbers in prison and our success in getting crime down over the past three years mean that the policies of imprisonment have worked. We will continue those policies.

Mr. Walter Sweeney (Vale of Glamorgan): I am sure that Conservative Members warmly welcome tougher penalties for persistent offenders, whether they are violent offenders, burglars or sex offenders, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the short, sharp shock of corporal punishment might deter less-experienced offenders from carrying on with a life of crime, so that they would not reach the stage envisaged in the Bill's first three clauses?

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Mr. Maclean: I have listened to what my hon. Friends have said on that matter. We could have an interesting, and long, philosophical debate on the deterrent value of corporal punishment, but that is irrelevant to today's debate. It is crystal clear that the reintroduction of corporal punishment would be contrary to article 3 of the European convention on human rights. There is no point in speculating on the merits of something that the House could not introduce while Britain is party to the convention. That is why we have concentrated on making the present range of punishments as effective as we can by strengthening the powers of the courts, increasing the sentences of imprisonment that can be imposed on the most violent offenders, increasing financial penalties and toughening community sentences with the rigorous new standards that we have introduced.

New clause 14 would reintroduce judicial punishment. I have given good, practical reasons why we cannot accept that, without entering into philosophical arguments about deterrence. That and the Isle of Man case are separate from the use of corporal punishment in schools or in the home. I do not want to be drawn into discussing those contentious issues because they are outside the scope of the debate. I emphasise that a parent correcting a child with a smack as an immediate response to misbehaviour is wholly different from a court, perhaps many months after the event, ordering a flogging.

As there is no prospect of corporal punishment being restored--even if it was, I see no prospect of judges ordering judicial flogging instead of any of the available penalties--we should not whistle in the wind for something that will not happen. We must make our range of penalties tough and punitive. The prospect of a long spell in prison is likely to be a highly effective deterrent. We can already see the success of our "Prison Works" policy, which will take out of circulation many of the persistent and dangerous criminals whom my hon. Friends abhor. I commend that course of action to them and, with the greatest respect, I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North that I cannot accept his new clause.

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