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Animals (Experiments)
15. Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West): What assessment he has made of the reduction of the number of experiments on animals since the ban on testing (a) cosmetics and (b) their ingredients on animals. [69121]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): During 1995 to 1997 inclusive, an average of 130 procedures a year were carried out on animals to test finished cosmetic products, and about 1,900 a year to test the ingredients of those products. The figures for 1998 are being collated. They will include some testing of cosmetic ingredients, as we did not end such testing until November.
Dr. Starkey: I thank my hon. Friend very much for that answer, but ask him to consider the area of necessary
animal experimentation, such as the proper testing of genetically modified food. Is the Home Office insisting that experimental design is always optimised, so that the minimum number of animals are used, consistent with proper scientific results?
Mr. Howarth: Most people would agree with my hon. Friend. Although we seek to minimise the use of animals in all such procedures, some animal usage is necessary in some procedures, such as medical research which can often lead to the saving of human lives or research that ensures people's safety. We shall pursue relevant measures across Europe, rather than risk exporting animal experimentation to countries where, often, less rigorous controls apply. Of course we will ensure that measures are sustainable and do not disadvantage United Kingdom research, medicine and industry, while at the same time ensuring that the public's safety is not compromised. My hon. Friend is right: we must strike a balance between the welfare of animals and the necessary requirements of science, especially medical science. It is a difficult balance to strike, but we are working very hard to do so.
Surrey Probation Service
16. Mrs. Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey): If he will visit Surrey probation service in Godalming to discuss its performance in relation to its charter mark award. [69122]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary hopes to be able to visit
the service this year. He wrote to the chief probation officer on 25 January to congratulate the service on achieving a 1998 charter mark award.
Mrs. Bottomley: Surrey probation service was very proud to win a charter mark award, which followed it being highly commended two years ago. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the citizens charter initiative, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), was an inspired contribution to public services.
Surrey probation service has been commended by the chief inspector for being dynamic, flexible, imaginative and well managed, but is in a dilemma because it has received among the lowest funding settlement in the country, and will have serious problems meeting its superannuation fund commitments. People in Surrey want to know whether the Government have a systematic policy of raiding the home counties. Surrey has received the lowest probation and health service settlements, and £6 million has been taken from its social services budget. Is that part of a consistent Government policy?
Mr. Howarth:
We accept entirely that the approach of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) to charter marks, and so on, was useful. Indeed, we have carried on with it. I echo the right hon. Lady's congratulations to Surrey on its excellent work, but rather than putting a sting in the tail of her supplementary question, she over-egged the pudding. If there is a problem in Surrey, my noble Friend the Minister and I would be more than happy to hear about it. I suspect that she is slightly exaggerating the problem, although we are always willing to receive representations.
Severe Personality Disorders
3.30 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on new measures that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I are proposing in order better to protect the public from dangerous people in our society.
Up to now, we have dealt with those who are capable of committing acts of a serious sexual or violent nature in one of two ways--by conviction and imprisonment through the criminal courts, or by detention on the recommendation of doctors under powers in the Mental Health Acts. There is, however, a group of dangerous, severely personality disordered individuals from whom the public at present are not properly protected, and who are restrained effectively neither by the criminal law nor by the provisions of the Mental Health Acts.
The propensity of such people to commit the most serious sexual and violent acts may be well known and well recorded. Such people may, however, have been convicted only of crimes carrying a limited determinate sentence, and will have to be released from prison at the end of their sentence, even though, for example, they may themselves have warned prison staff of their certainty of recommitting serious offences on their release.
Because current mental health legislation prevents the detention even of a person posing the highest possible risk to the public unless doctors also certify that the condition is treatable, those people remain at large and without the benefit of any attempts at clinical intervention, unless and until they can be convicted of a further offence. In a limited number of cases, such people may not have come to the attention of the criminal justice system at all.
As successive Governments have recognised, this situation is plainly unsatisfactory. As long ago as1975 an official committee--the Butler committee--recommended that indeterminate, reviewable sentences should be introduced for some of those individuals.
Much more recently, legislation enacted by this and the previous Administration means that increasingly effective conditions can be imposed on some offenders as they are being released from prison into the community. That includes compulsory post-release supervision for prisoners serving one year or more. In such cases, those who breach their licence conditions can be immediately recalled to prison.
Section 2 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which was passed by the previous Administration and came into force in October 1997, provides for a mandatory life sentence for those convicted of a second serious sexual or violent offence. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced extended supervision of up to an extra 10 years for sex offenders, and gave the police powers to apply for a sex offender order. However, not all these powers can apply to people who were sentenced before 1992. In recent months, dangerous offenders such as Robert Oliver and others have been released, with no conditions imposed on what they did or on where they lived.
I should therefore like to tell the House today what we are proposing for the short term, and also of our legislative proposals for the medium term. For the short term, we are putting in place an early warning system,
so that local agencies and central Government have the maximum possible time to prepare for a dangerous person's re-entry to the community. Prison and probation services are being asked to provide this information to the Home Office's probation unit.
Similar arrangements are being made through the national health service with hospitals that treat patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. A support group in the Home Office probation unit made up of staff from the operational services will be there to assist local agencies to deal with particularly difficult cases. Those arrangements will all build on the work of the multi-agency risk panels that have already been established in many areas.
Those changes will help the system to deal with dangerous people now, but I believe that a new legislative framework for the system is long overdue. As I have explained, under the current provisions of the Mental Health Acts, only some of those severely disordered people can be detained, and then only if the
Subject, therefore, to parliamentary time, the Government propose that there should be new legal powers for the indeterminate but reviewable detention of dangerous personality disordered individuals. These powers would apply whether or not someone was before the courts for an offence. However, the new powers would themselves be exercised by the courts, and not by the Executive, and only where it could be established that the individual had a recognised severe personality disorder and that he or she posed a grave risk to the public.
Depriving individuals of their liberty in such circumstances is a very serious step. The key aim must be to protect the public while meeting the health needs of such individuals; so we will ensure that the process of ordering detention involves a robust system of checks and balances covering both legal and clinical issues. Once in detention, there will be regular, quasi-judicial reviews of the justification for detention continuing. The individuals concerned must have the best possible chance of becoming safe so as to be returned to the community, wherever that is possible. We therefore propose to establish a range of specialist programmes and a new approach to managing the detention of all those detained under the new powers. This approach would involve close operational links with the existing services.
I have outlined for the House what the Government believe is needed, but, because of the complexity of this area, and the seriousness of creating the kind of detention powers that I have described, it will be important for us to consult more widely. This will enable us to ensure both that we have not overlooked any options and that the action we take is effective and measured, commands broad support and is compatible with our obligations
under the European convention. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I therefore propose to publish in the spring a consultative document that will outline in more detail the nature of the problem and the options for the new framework within which these powers will operate. In the light of responses to that document, we will take final decisions later this year.
"treatment is likely to alleviate or prevent a deterioration of their condition".
As the House well knows, there is a continuing debate about what treatments, if any, are effective in dealing with such severe personality disorder. However, the protection of the public cannot wait for the outcome of research, which may take many years to complete. Society cannot rely on a lottery in which, through no fault of the courts, some dangerous, severely personality disordered people are sent for a limited time to prison or to hospital while others remain in the community, or return to it, with no interventions whatever.
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