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Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): What was the attitude of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's permanent secretary at that point?
Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I am not at liberty to disclose the advice given to me by senior officials, and I shall respect that convention. If the permanent secretary wishes to respond to the hon. Gentleman's question, it is for him to do so. As the hon. Gentleman, with his long experience, knows full well, it is not for me to disclose to the House the advice that I received from the permanent secretary on that matter.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald made a series of other allegations. Many of them relate to a meeting that took place on 10 January 1995. The House should note that my right hon. Friend was not present at that meeting, as it took place some six months before she became a Minister at the Home Office.
Let me tell the House about the circumstances in which that meeting took place. It occurred on the day on which I had to make an important statement to the House about a series of failings in the Prison Service. On 1 January, Fred West hanged himself at Birmingham prison; on 2 January, there were riots at Everthorpe prison; and on 3 January, three dangerous prisoners escaped from Parkhurst.
Questions were rightly being asked about the future of John Marriott, then governor of Parkhurst. There had been serious shortcomings in the security arrangements at his prison. Indeed, the position at Parkhurst was later described by Derek Lewis as a shambles, yet I had been given specific assurances by Mr. Lewis about the security improvements which he said had been made there.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald spoke at length about the successes of the Prison Service under Mr. Lewis. There were also some spectacular failures. Little wonder that I wanted some answers.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South):
When the former Home Secretary came before the Home Affairs Select Committee in January 1995 to answer questions from me about geophones at Parkhurst, he said that the money was there and available. I understand that he subsequently learned that the money was not there and was not available. Why did he not either write to me or inform the Home Affairs Select Committee that he had made a mistake? Why was it buried? Was it simply because he did not want to come clean?
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. I shall deal with that allegation in detail in a moment or two. The
The decision taken so far as Mr. Marriott was concerned was to move him from his job as governor to other duties, pending the outcome of the disciplinary investigation, rather than to suspend him. As Mr. Lewis has explained on many occasions, that was entirely a decision taken by him and other members of the line management team. That was what he told the Home Affairs Committee of the House. I do not believe that he misled the House.
I was, of course, entitled to be consulted about that decision, and I was. I was entitled to express a view, and I did. I have never made any secret of the fact that the view that I expressed at the time was that the decision to move him was a fudge. That view was recorded in the minutes of the meeting, which I placed in the Library at the time of our debate in October 1995.
What I was not entitled to do was to tell Mr. Lewis that he should suspend Mr. Marriott, and I did not tell Mr. Lewis that he should suspend him. The decision was one for Mr. Lewis, and, indeed, he decided not to suspend the governor. At no time did I cross the line between what I was entitled to do and what I was not, and at no time did I threaten to overrule Mr. Lewis.
My right hon. Friend quoted an answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). This was the question:
Six months later, officials told me that money had been transferred out of the geophones budget, but that equivalent sums, as I have just described to the hon. Gentleman, had been transferred back into it, so the sum earmarked for geophones was spent on geophones in the year in which it was intended that the money should be spent. In the words of Mr. Lewis,
I have always acknowledged that Mr. Lewis was not allowed to serve the remaining term of his contract. That relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend in relation to what was said about the matter of compensation. However, the fact that he was not allowed to serve the remaining term of his contract does not mean that his dismissal was either unjust or unnecessary. I do not believe that it was either.
I have dealt with all my right hon. Friend's allegations. I do not believe that they have any substance. Every decision that I have taken in my career in government was taken because I thought that it was in the public interest.
Miss Widdecombe:
I am most grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. As ever, his replies do not address the precise questions that I raised. I am interested in his response that there was no question of overruling the director general. In the transcripts that the Home Secretary has now made public, my right hon. and learned Friend said:
Mr. Howard:
The fact is that I did not intervene, and that I did not cross the line between what I was and was not entitled to do. As the former director general has said on numerous occasions to the Home Affairs Select Committee and in many other interviews that he has given, the decision taken on that day was his decision.
I say this to my right hon. Friend: she is perfectly entitled to disagree with my judgment, but there is no basis for her attack on my integrity. I came to this House determined to uphold the highest standards of public life, but I was also determined to get things done. I believe that I have done both, not least in my time in the Home Office.
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle):
Can the former Home Secretary tell us when an instruction is not an instruction? At the meeting of 10 October, he said:
Mr. Howard:
I have told the House and the hon. Gentleman that I was entitled to be consulted, and I was.
I turn now to the main subject of this debate. When the Prime Minister was in opposition, he set me a challenge. At the beginning of my term of office as Home Secretary, he asked me to accept one criterion to measure the success of my policies: falling crime. Had the Prime Minister known what would happen over the next four years, I doubt whether he would have set me that challenge. In the next four years, recorded crime in England fell by 10 per cent.--that is more than half a million fewer crimes; the biggest fall in crime since records were first collected in 1857.
The police deserve much of the credit for that success. They have revolutionised the way in which they fight crime, targeting persistent and known offenders, using the latest technology, and taking the fight to the criminal. The Conservatives are proud of the part that we played in helping to make it happen. We challenged the liberal consensus that criminals should not be held responsible for their actions. We evened up the scales of justice by putting the needs of the victim before the interests of the criminal, and we put the protection of the public at the top of our agenda.
In all this, we received little help from the Labour party. It opposed our reforms to the right to silence, it opposed giving the Attorney-General the right of appeal against lenient sentences, and it opposed stiffer sentences for the most serious offences, such as taking a gun to a crime. All those reforms have now been accepted by the Government--they have been adopted as if they were their own.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but we shall soon know whether Labour's change of heart is genuine or whether it is a cheap fake. We have yet to see the details of the Government's crime and disorder legislation, but I support the broad objectives set out by the right hon. Member for Blackburn this afternoon. We want juvenile criminals to be quickly and properly punished. We want irresponsible parents to be held to account for their children's behaviour. We want action to tackle drugs.
Unlike the Labour party, we always have wanted these things. We legislated for secure training centres for persistent juvenile offenders; Labour voted against them. We gave courts the powers to make parents attend court with their children; Labour voted against them. We proposed mandatory minimum sentences for persistent burglars and dealers in hard drugs; Labour voted to wreck those measures. They will not be in the Government's Bill. I pledge today that we shall do everything we can to reinstate them.
In January, the right hon. Member for Blackburn promised that he would repeal the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. He went so far as to boast that this would be a monument to his time as Home Secretary. He had previously denounced that Act as racist. Yet there is no mention of any such repealing legislation in the
Gracious Speech. One assumes that the Home Secretary used the word "racist" deliberately. It is not, after all, language to be used lightly. What can we infer from his reluctance now to repeal that legislation? Is it simply an oversight? Is the legislation no longer racist, perhaps? Or is this just another example of the Home Secretary's moral indignation evaporating into hot air?
One of the few consolations of Opposition--there are not many--is watching Ministers eat their words. It has not taken them very long. Not long ago, the present Home Secretary used to wax indignant about privately managed prisons. Despite the fact that Her Majesty's chief inspector was unstinting in his praise, for example, of privately run Doncaster, the Home Secretary discounts such prisons as morally repugnant. Those are strong words, but are now apparently to become a staple part of the Home Secretary's diet. Last week, he announced that he would, after all, sign any contracts that were in the pipeline for privately run prisons.
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's conversion. Those on the Benches behind him do not look too happy about it, but I welcome it, as I welcome his conversion on so many other things: the right to silence, DNA testing, extra stop and search powers for the police. In fact, in area after area, he has modelled his policies on mine.
It has been suggested that I have something of the night about my character. It is, of course, well known in folklore that creatures of the night have no reflection, so hon. Members will understand my relief as I look across the Dispatch Box and see my reflection smiling back at me.
The Gracious Speech contains a commitment to a firearms amendment Bill. I believe that the Government's decision to ban all pistols is wrong. We passed legislation to ban all handguns from the home and to outlaw high-calibre handguns altogether, but we believe that to go further represents an unacceptable and unnecessary infringement of law-abiding people's liberties. The proposed legislation will do nothing to reduce handgun-related crime. It will force our remaining pistol shooters to give up their sport, and will debar Britain from Olympic pistol shooting for the first time since 1896.
We will oppose that vindictive measure. It does, of course, completely contradict assurances given last year by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), who was in his place until just a few minutes ago. He told one of his constituents that there had, unfortunately, been some misrepresentation of Labour's position on the ownership of handguns. He wrote:
At the centre of the Government's legislative programme is a Bill to incorporate the European convention on human rights into British law. We support the convention, to which Britain was one of the first signatories. The convention helped anchor democracy
across Europe, but we are not persuaded that incorporating the convention into British law is either necessary or desirable.
Incorporation would mean that judges might find themselves having to make what are essentially political decisions. In any event, human rights in Britain are not under threat, even after the election of a Labour Government, but the sovereignty of Parliament is under threat, and incorporation of the convention would be a further blow to that sovereignty. As the Lord Chancellor has on a previous occasion admitted:
Throughout the previous Parliament, we heard a great deal from the Labour party, and especially from the present Prime Minister and Home Secretary, about standards in public life. They never tired of telling us that it was vital that only the highest standards would suffice. They made it known that, if any allegation was made against a Labour Member, his feet would not touch the ground before he was removed. They were particularly dismissive of our contention that a man was innocent until proven guilty.
Yesterday, a Labour Member was accused of committing a criminal offence. What was the reaction of the Government Front Bench? First, there was a television interview with the Home Secretary at his most solemn and sanctimonious. Then the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sarwar) was invited to Downing street for a cosy chat. Now we read in this morning's Times that the Labour leadership issued a clear warning that it would consider the hon. Gentleman's suspension from the party if criminal charges are brought against him. "Consider"--goodness me, what decisive judgment.
The truth is that, while the Labour Government pretend to be able to govern the country, they cannot even govern the Labour party. It seems that they cannot even govern Govan.
"Mr. Lewis says that he was given a deadline by the right hon. and learned Gentleman by which to agree to the removal of Mr. Marriott, after which he would be overruled. Is that true?"
This was my reply:
"There was no question of overruling the director general. He made the decisions that were made on that day."--[Official Report, 19 October 1995; Vol. 264, c. 520.]
I stand by that reply. Indeed, a similar question was directed by the same hon. Gentleman to Mr. Lewis when he appeared before the Select Committee. Mr. Lewis was asked:
"Did the Home Secretary tell you to make sure Mr. Marriott was off the premises by the afternoon?",
and replied,
"No he did not."
My right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) referred to geophones. The truth is simple. I was asked at the Home Affairs Committee whether money had been transferred out of the geophone budget. I replied:
"No, not to my knowledge."
That was an accurate answer, to the best of my knowledge at the time.
"the decision was of no practical significance."
19 May 1997 : Column 464
That was why I decided that it was not necessary to write to the Select Committee.
My right hon. Friend's final allegation is that a piece of Conservative Central Office briefing sent to hon. Members was in substance inaccurate. It is, of course, a deeply shocking allegation that Central Office briefing should ever be inaccurate. In fact, my right hon. Friend concedes that the briefing was technically accurate. That may make the more cynical Members think that it was one of the better documents provided to the House by party headquarters. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Dr. Mawhinney), the chairman of the party, will forgive me.
"It will be seen publicly as a"
fudge.
"I don't want to intervene formally."
My right hon. and learned Friend is now telling us that he always knew that he could not intervene. The fact is that he did contemplate intervening formally, and that is why he said so.
"John Marriott cannot continue as governor . . . I can't conceive of a clearer case for suspension."
Was that advice or was it an instruction?
"We support a ban on the holding of handguns in residential property. People such as yourself will still be able to own handguns, but they must be kept safely under lock and key at properly run centres".
Since then, the policy has changed. To judge from the Government's early days, it is the right hon. Gentleman's outspoken colleagues--if there are any--who are now to be kept safely under lock and key at properly run centres. Incidentally, I can promise the hon. Member for Hartlepool that I have no intention of challenging him for the title of prince of darkness.
"Incorporation will involve a very significant transfer of power to the judges."
Indeed, the first few weeks of the Government's tenure have been characterised by the parcelling out of Parliament's powers to unelected bankers, unelected Brussels bureaucrats and now unelected judges. That diminishes the sovereignty of Parliament and the sovereignty of those who sent us to Parliament, and it is their power which is being whittled away.
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