23 Jan 1997 : Column 1057
House of Commons
Thursday 23 January 1997
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
HOME DEPARTMENT
Electoral Registration
1. Mr. Barnes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimates he has made of under-registration on the electoral registers which will be used in the next general election; and if he will make a statement.[10547]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Tom Sackville): Figures for the number of electors on the registers coming into force on 16 February are not yet available. In 1996, there were 42.8 million names on the electoral register in Great Britain, compared with an estimated resident population of eligible age of 45 million.
Mr. Barnes: Will the new registers operating from 16 February, which will be used in the next general election, be in a better state than previous registers which had millions of people missing from them? I have raised this matter many times before in the House. Can details comparing the registered and eligible populations in each constituency be published as soon as possible so that we can see what state the registers are in? Will every effort be made to put people on supplementary lists so that, even under the current inadequate system, as many people as possible are on electoral registers before the general election?
Mr. Sackville: We continue to spend substantial sums trying to encourage people to register through advertising and in other ways. As the hon. Gentleman knows, however, even after the obvious discrimination was removed from our electoral system, we retained an element of permanency of residence as a condition. That means that those who cannot claim to have been resident in a constituency on a particular date in the preceding October will not be registered there. It does not mean that we are not making the greatest effort to ensure the highest possible level of registration.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: Does my hon. Friend agree that, by law, an electoral registration officer may not have his or her register up to date but that it must be at least five months out of date? Can serious consideration be given--perhaps not for the forthcoming general election, but for
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the one after that--to introducing a system of rolling registration so that people can be registered to vote at the place where they are resident?
Mr. Sackville: A rolling register would be expensive, bureaucratic and unlikely to achieve a higher overall level of registration. The current system of a register which requires people to prove residence in October has served us well.
Mr. Henderson: Does the Minister accept that if democracy is worth having it must be paid for? Is it not embarrassing to our democracy that some 3 million adults will be disfranchised in the election that will take place in a few weeks' time? Should that not be a matter of concern to the whole House? Should not the Government now consider establishing an all-party Committee of the House to see how best we can tackle the problem and enfranchise all our country's citizens?
Mr. Sackville: Obviously ideas can be put forward, but the hon. Gentleman should remember that we cannot force people to register if they cannot be bothered or simply do not wish to register. What we can do, however, is try to encourage all those who are prepared to take an interest to take the trouble to ensure that they are on the register.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My hon. Friend referred to a degree of permanency of residence. In considering that aspect, will he bear in mind the question of constituencies with universities? Students are there for a very ephemeral time and yet they can affect the whole outcome. They need make no effort to get on the register; they are simply put on it by the university authorities. Could they not register in their home towns rather than in those where they are ephemeral students?
Mr. Sackville: Students can register in any place where they can establish a degree of permanency of residence. If any misdemeanours are taking place involving people being registered but not at their own request, my hon. Friend's electoral registration officer should look into the matter.
Reoffending
2. Mr. Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his current estimate of the proportion of the prison population who reoffend after being released. [10548]
The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Ann Widdecombe): The most recent available information indicates that 51 per cent. of all sentenced prisoners discharged in 1992 from Prison Service establishments in England and Wales were reconvicted for a standard list offence within two years.
Mr. Cohen: Does not the fact that more than half of all prisoners reoffend within two years of release make a mockery of the Home Secretary's claim that prison works? Are not the reoffending rates similar after prison and after probation, whereas the cost per prisoner is £1,800 per month and the cost of probation is less than £200 a month? Are there not strong cost and rehabilitation grounds for putting fewer people in prison?
Miss Widdecombe: No, in either case. First, prison reconviction rates at present are better than reconviction
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rates for those being sentenced in the community. Secondly, it is not merely a question of cost. The hon. Gentleman should understand that prison works by protecting the general public from the activities of those who are kept within it.
Sir Ivan Lawrence: Is it not astonishing that the reconviction rate for those sentenced in the community is higher by 4 per cent. than the reconviction rate for those sent to prison? Does my hon. Friend draw from that fact the conclusion either that the probation service is not so effective as it ought to be in rehabilitating offenders in the community, or that prison is more effective than many people think that it is in rehabilitating offenders inside prison?
Miss Widdecombe: I attribute the success of the Prison Service in rehabilitation to the tremendous strides that it has made in its programmes over the past few years. The number of prisoner hours in education has increased from 4.6 million in 1979 to 9.4 million in 1995-96.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: You have doubled the number of prisoners.
Miss Widdecombe: There has been a rise of 21 per cent. in expenditure between 1993 and 1995. The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) called out from a sedentary position that the number of prisoners has doubled. If he works it out, he will see that the rise in the number of hours has far outstripped the rise in the number of prisoners. The types of national vocational qualification offered have increased from 24 only three years ago to 48, and there has been a similar increase in offending behaviour courses. That is where the explanation lies.
Mr. Winnick: Is it not important that those who commit the most serious crimes should be in prison in the first place? Is the Minister aware that many of us are deeply concerned that those responsible for the murder of Stephen Lawrence have not been brought to justice? Is it not important that every effort should continue to be made to put those who murdered that 17-year-old lad in the dock? We hope that speedy progress will be made by the police force.
Miss Widdecombe: Whereas I can extend my sympathy to the relatives concerned, I cannot comment on the case in the terms that the hon. Gentleman invites. Where serious crime has been committed, it is important that the perpetrators are brought to justice. If the hon. Gentleman feels that as strongly as I do, and if he believes that those who commit the most serious crimes should be in prison, why did the Labour party abstain on the Crime (Sentences) Bill last week?
Mr. Booth: As was stated in the lead-up to the Prisoners' Earnings Bill last year, Home Office research shows that prisoners released from prison after having proper work experience in prison had a reoffending rate that is 50 per cent. better. As the Home Office supported the Bill, will it go on monitoring the working of the legislation?
Miss Widdecombe: I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing that Bill. I can confirm that it assists prisoners
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if they have good work opportunities in prison. We shall, of course, monitor that and seek to increase those opportunities.Cannabis
3. Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will seek to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to allow cannabis to be prescribed by medically qualified doctors. [10549]
Mr. Prentice: What on earth is so dreadful about allowing medically qualified doctors to prescribe cannabis when it was quite lawful before 1971? Many people with disabling conditions, such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis, claim that cannabis gives them relief. Is it not curious that only two days ago the Minister said that dronabinol, which is an active derivative of cannabis, may be prescribed lawfully by hospital doctors? Some 24 years after cannabis was banned from use in hospitals, it has been discovered that dronabinol can combat nausea suffered by patients undergoing chemotherapy. Is there not a compelling case for allowing the doctors--and not the politicians--to decide?
Mr. Sackville: If there are medicinal claims about cannabis or its derivatives, they must pass through the same mechanisms as other medicines. Unless clinical trials prove that they are safe and efficacious and that there is a consistent level of product quality, they will not be licensed as medicines.
The World Health Organisation made recommendations about dronabinol. A company must lodge a licence application for the product, which must then pass through clinical trials in order to get a licence in this country. In the event of medicinal claims about products, applications can be made to the relevant authorities at the Medicines Control Agency.
Mr. Harry Greenway:
Does my hon. Friend recall the words of the late Home Office pathologist, the famous Professor Francis Camp, who said that soft drugs such as cannabis inevitably lead to hard drugs and that hard drugs lead to death--often within seven years? Is that not a warning to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), for the Liberal Democrats and for all who advocate the use of soft drugs?
Mr. Sackville:
Although there are some genuine cases, there is no doubt that many of those calling for the medicinal use of cannabis are using it as a stalking horse to promote the campaign for its legalisation. The Liberal Democrat party conference voted for the legalisation of cannabis, and I hope that the Liberal justice and home affairs spokesman, the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), will withdraw from that decision. If there are medicinal uses for cannabis, they must be proved. In the absence of such evidence, we must not send a confused message to young people when we have told them that cannabis and all illegal drugs are dangerous and should be avoided.
Mr. Flynn:
Would not the better message be that all drugs are dangerous, that young people who smoke
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Mr. Sackville:
It is open to any producer to apply for a licence for a cannabis product. As to the hon. Gentleman's comments about other dangers, no one disagrees that pharmaceutical drugs and cigarettes are dangerous. However, he should not use them as a front for implicitly calling for the legalisation of drugs. I hope that Opposition Front Bench Members will distance themselves from his remarks.
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