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Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East): I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on his excellent statement. His proposals will be warmly welcomed by the electorate, especially on housing estates that suffer greatly from crime--such as the one in Leicester that he visited recently.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important not just to have more effectiveness and consistency in sentencing, but to monitor that effectiveness and consistency? It is no longer good enough merely to have guidelines; we need to ensure that those guidelines are followed properly.
Mr. Straw:
I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for what he has said. As a great deal of evidence from the Home Office and the Prison Reform Trust showed recently, considerable and rather inexplicable data show substantial inconsistency between courts in respect of similar offences and offenders. That is something which the whole system--including the Home Office--needs to address.
Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border):
I assure the Home Secretary that I would not dream of comparing him to Pol Pot. Following his performance this afternoon, it would be infinitely more appropriate to compare him to St. Paul on the way to Damascus.
I warmly welcome the bulk of the policies that the Home Secretary has announced and his apparent conversion to policies that my colleagues and I have espoused in the Home Office during the past three years. He said, however, that he was going to implement the important Narey report. Can he tell us whether there are any significant threads in this seamless robe that he intends to unravel--any proposals that he intends not to implement?
Mr. Straw:
As far as I know, we are implementing nearly all the Narey report, consistent with what I told the House when the report came before us in February. There is already a detailed answer in the Vote Office--I would detain the House for probably half an hour if I read it out--which gives further information about each recommendation, and I think that it will have the right hon. Gentleman's approval.
Ms Christine Russell (City of Chester):
As one who has been a magistrate for the past 17 years, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the measures that he has outlined. I must say that I listened with amazement to what the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Dr. Mawhinney) had to say. From my 17 years personal experience of such service, particularly in youth courts, I
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her remarks. As she knows, the policies that I have announced were partly informed by an important conference that was held in Chester, in her constituency, last August. At that conference, she and many other colleagues brought to my attention many of the serious defects in the current system of youth justice as it operated under the previous Administration.
Our crime and disorder Bill will contain a series of proposals to speed up the way in which the youth justice and adult justice systems operate. It will do that by setting much clearer and enforceable time limits on the various stages, by implementing the proposals in the Narey report and, for example, in respect of persistent young offenders, by including a definition of such offenders and by ensuring that, having been identified, they are fast-tracked through the courts.
One specific change that we shall make will be to reverse the judgment in R. v. Khan, which has the perverse effect of requiring courts to delay proceedings in respect of a case that is ready first in time until all the other cases are ready. That is one of the reasons for the ludicrous situation that the worse the crimes an offender commits and the more often they are committed, the longer it takes to get him or her to court.
Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking):
The Home Secretary has rightly said that he is concerned about delays, which are a big problem in our courts. I should like to make four, I hope helpful, suggestions from the point of view of somebody at the sharp end. The Home Secretary will know that I have more criminal judicial experience as a stipendiary and as a recorder than many others.
There are three problems at magistrates court level. The first is the ability of defendants to get more and more adjournments without good reason. The second is the delay involved as a result of introducing the right to advance information and the Crown Prosecution Service not producing it for weeks. The third is that after the mode of trial is determined, the current requirement by the Crown Prosecution Service is for a gap of six weeks before it serves papers. Those three matters need to be looked at.
Finally, the Home Secretary knows, as we all know, that it is ludicrous that some petty theft and petty assault cases are currently going to the Crown court at defendants' election at a cost of £8,000 a day. That clogs up the Crown court system immensely. In addition to what I have said, there is a powerful argument for restricting the right to a Crown court trial and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) said, for the appointment of many more metropolitan "stipes". There is plenty of research material in the Lord Chancellor's Department, with which
I hope the Home Secretary will liaise carefully, to show that "stipes" get through business very quickly. I hope that those suggestions are slightly helpful.
Mr. Straw:
They are indeed, and I shall deal briefly with each of them. There has been a substantial increase in the number and average length of adjournments. I think that they have been encouraged by perverse incentives in the legal aid system. It is also noteworthy that stipendiaries deal more briskly with requests for adjournments than some lay magistrates, and I am sure that matter will be taken on board by the Lord Chancellor's Department.
The hon. Gentleman is right about advance disclosure. In my judgment, those rules, too, have sometimes been abused by legally aided solicitors who try to milk the system. There are inefficiencies in the mode of trial system, including some by the Crown Prosecution Service. They are being addressed by the review which my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has established and which is being conducted by Sir Iain Glidewell.
The hon. Gentleman invited me to agree to one of the proposals of the Narey report that was not accepted at the time either by the previous Government or by my party--a proposal for a restriction on the right to elect for trial. My own view, which was also the previous Government's view, was that we should wait to see how the implementation of section 49 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, on plea before venue, worked out before revisiting that matter. Two thirds of the transfers of cases from magistrates courts to Crown courts are made not by election but by decision made by magistrates before election.
Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk):
May I assure my right hon. Friend that his statement will receive a warm welcome in my constituency, especially in King's Lynn? The remarks made to me since my election lead me to believe that that applies in particular to the clarity that my right hon. Friend brings to his intention to deliver on our promises to tackle the problems of disorder and anti-social behaviour. Can he reassure the House that in doing that, he will take account of the real difficulty in bringing prosecutions and other actions in that connection, because of the major problems involved in persuading witnesses to give evidence when they can so readily be threatened by those among whom they live?
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. From what he has told me, I know about the serious problems that exist even in a relatively peaceful town such as King's Lynn. I know that his constituents have encountered those problems and are looking forward to the changes that I have announced today.
Witness intimidation is serious and is getting worse. We shall set up a review to consider changes in the law and in practice to protect witnesses better. My hon. Friend has drawn our attention to a major problem, which we all have to tackle carefully.
Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester):
Looking at Government policies as a whole, what would the Home Secretary consider a measure of success in being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime? Would it be fewer people in prison or more people in prison? If more, how many new prisons does the right hon. Gentleman expect to be required for his millennium project?
As for youth sentencing, does the Home Secretary intend to provide more boot camps such as the one in Colchester, bearing in mind the fact that the average cost per inmate per year is £31,500, as opposed to £17,500 in a typical institution? My question is: is it money or is it sentencing that the right hon. Gentleman is after?
Hon. Members:
Guilty or not guilty?
Mr. Straw:
With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have to tell him that I do not see issues of law and order in quite such an eccentric way. My purpose, as I told the House earlier, is to secure better safety for the public. It is on that outcome that we shall be judged. The number of people who end up in prison is a function of how many commit crimes and how many are caught, and of entirely independent decisions made by magistrates and judges. I am not arguing with those decisions. I should like a world in which fewer people appeared before the courts who needed to be sent to prison--and I should like to be judged on that, too.
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