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Mr. Bercow: Will my right hon. Friend confirm for my benefit and that of the House that a disqualification order could not have applied, for example, to the Bay City Rollers' drummer, who last week received a sentence of only 300 hours' community service for child pornography offences?
Miss Widdecombe: Yes, that is true. As in the Gary Glitter case, the sentence is substantially less than
12 months, so the disqualification order would not have applied, and indeed it would not have done so even if the sentence had been only fractionally less than 12 months.
Mr. Straw: I accept that this matter is complicated and that it needs to be examined carefully in Committee, but I may be able to reassure the right hon. Lady. Clause 48 says that testing can be done where
- the person concerned has been charged with a trigger offence
and those offences are as she has described them. Testing can be done also where
the person concerned has been charged with an offence--
- and a police officer of at least the rank of inspector, who has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the misuse by that person of any specified Class A drug caused or contributed to the offence, has authorised the sample to be taken.
Miss Widdecombe: I was dealing with disqualification orders. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has taken me a point back, but I shall now come on to discuss the clause from which he quoted.
The tests will be limited to class A drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Does that not, whether intentionally or unintentionally, send out yet another message that the Government have given up the war against class B drugs, in particular cannabis? What will happen to those who test positive for heroin or cocaine, but against whom the main charges are subsequently dropped? What action, if any, will be taken against them to address their habit or to charge them in relation to their drugs offences? Is that not another potential loophole?
Jackie Ballard:
Will the right hon. Lady explain to the House what offence would have been committed in those circumstances? As I understand the current law, it is not an offence to use heroin or cocaine.
Miss Widdecombe:
That is quite true, but the presumption must be that if people are found to have consumed heroin or cocaine, investigations could be carried out to test for possession.
My point should be clear to the Secretary of State. If the charges relating to the actions in connection with which the person was arrested are dropped, what happens if he is then found to have heroin or cocaine in his system? The question arises with regard to the penalty, if possession is established--
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. Part of the purpose of the measure is to ensure that drug abusers are identified at an early stage and put into drug arrest referral schemes. It happens that quite a number of people who are arrested are not subsequently charged. We are concerned that intervention should take place at an early stage. As we know, not least from experiments such as those that have been taking place in Lancaster and elsewhere, drug arrest referral schemes are working well and ensuring that people reduce their drug abuse, and they often get off drugs entirely, over time.
What would happen is that those people would go into treatment. They could not be forced into treatment, as they have not committed a criminal offence. On the right hon. Lady's other point, the consumption of any kind of drug is not an offence, and her Government never proposed to make it an offence. We do not have time to go into that, but there are substantial objections to making it an offence. The criminal law impacts on possession or dealing.
Miss Widdecombe:
My point was that if a person was found to have consumed such material, it is possible that he would be in possession of it, and that a search of his lodgings or home would reveal that. I am trying to ascertain how far the matter will be taken seriously, particularly in cases--
Miss Widdecombe:
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is right. I am trying to point out that there are loopholes in the current provisions. We shall try to tighten them up in Committee. As the right hon. Gentleman says that the matter will be taken very seriously, I hope that he will consider equally seriously any amendments tabled in Committee.
Does the Minister agree that yet another clear and undesirable message would be sent out if the fact that a suspect tested positive for heroin or cocaine was not addressed, even by way of a caution or a fine to acknowledge the criminal offence of possessing those class A drugs? That is subject to the qualifications that I mentioned earlier.
How does that fit with the comments of the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), two days ago in a BBC interview, when he said that the Government had no plans to decriminalise drugs or to de-penalise drug possession?
Mr. Boateng:
We have no such plans.
Miss Widdecombe:
I am pleased to hear that there are no such plans, but why then limit the measure to class A drugs?
The Bill enables the Home Secretary to tag prisoners released on licence. The Opposition would not oppose such a move, which could provide an additional safeguard for the public, were it not for the fact that the Home Secretary intends to add it to the provisions of what can only be described as a revolving door prisons policy. That policy has already resulted in 18,000 convicted criminals being let out of jail early on tags, before the minimum point of their sentence. Indeed, under the Home Secretary's arrangements those sent down for six months could be out in as little as six weeks.
In November last year, in response to concerns raised by Opposition Front Benchers--in this case, my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington)--the Home Secretary told the House:
Earlier today, in response to interventions, the Home Secretary said that he would direct the parole board not to take into account the availability of electronic tagging when reaching decisions. That contradicts the answer given by the Minister of State. I am not making a political point; I am trying to introduce some order to the Bill. There is a contradiction between what was said by the Home Secretary and what was said by his right hon. Friend. I am therefore not willing to assume that the Home Secretary's good intentions will be honoured in a direction to the parole board, and I will seek to make it explicit in the Bill that these provisions will not apply to sexual or serious offenders. We shall pursue that aim, so that there is no reliance on a direction from this or any other Home Secretary.
Mr. Corbett:
I, too, do not want to make party political points. However, the right hon. Lady may recall that, in its third report--on alternatives to prison sentences--the Home Affairs Committee noted, on the basis of the evidence, that there was little or no difference in the reoffending rate between those serving custodial sentences and those serving sentences in the community. The exceptions were cases in which special effort was put into rehabilitation before prisoners were released--as happens at Blantyre House in Kent--and targeted community sentences, in which offenders addressed offences such as aggression or arson. In those cases, the rates were lower.
Miss Widdecombe:
What I conclude from that is that rehabilitation is imperative in our prisons. As the hon. Gentleman will know, that has been a consistent theme of the policy that I have recommended since taking my current role. I agree that that factor is crucial and needs to be expanded vastly. I am fully committed to expanding it when the happy day comes for me to swap places with the Home Secretary.
In his written answer, the right hon. Member for Brent, South referred to sentences of more than four years. To serve more than four years in jail, a person must have committed pretty serious offences, such as repeat burglary, rape, grievous bodily harm with intent, armed robbery or drug trafficking. Perhaps the Home Secretary can tell us what kind of offences that were not serious would attract four-year sentences, and what non-serious crimes will have been committed by the criminals who will be let out of jail earlier as a result of the Bill.
I shall not use a word like "misleading", Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you would not let me; but it seems to me that either the Home Secretary was not being entirely accurate when he told the House last November in categorical terms that he had no plans or intentions to facilitate the early release of serious or sexual offenders, or he has changed his policy between November and last week. I would like to know which is the case.
I also note with surprise the words of a Home Office spokesman, who, on Saturday night, was quoted as saying:
Perhaps the same Home Office spokesman reassured the Sunday Telegraph in October, in the face of incontrovertible evidence from the Treasury letter, that there would be a net increase of 5,000 police numbers as a result of the Home Secretary's massaged conference pledge.
I want to consider the current scheme for early release on tagging. The right hon. Gentleman claimed that we were making mischief; I would say that we were expressing genuine anxiety. There is potential for mischief: six people who have been released early on tags were in prison for escaping lawful custody. The reward for escaping lawful custody is apparently to be let out early on tags. As I pointed out earlier, two people charged with a crime as serious as rape have been let out early. Among those who were let out early are five who have attempted murder. It must be reassuring for the public to know that such people are selected for early release.
Although the Home Secretary makes much of rolling out mandatory sentences for burglary, many burglars and several thousand drug dealers have also been let out under the scheme. Fifty people have disappeared--we do not know where they are or what they are doing; 852 people have been recalled for breaches of their licence; and 185 have been charged with offences, which, even if we leave rape aside, include serious matters, such as threats to kill, assault, wounding and burglary. In 20 cases, people originally imprisoned for burglary have been charged with committing burglary while out on tags.
The Home Secretary should take those figures seriously because every crime means the creation of a victim. Some are victims of serious crimes. They will undergo life sentences as a result of those crimes long after even the ordinary release date of those criminals. That level of reoffending is wrong. However successful the scheme is in other ways, the Home Secretary does it a disservice by belittling the serious nature of some of the crimes that have been committed. He must take responsibility, because if those prisoners had been in prison for the minimum length of time to which the judges had sentenced them, the victims would not have been created.
We have no plans or intention whatever to provide for electronic tagging to facilitate the early release of serious or sexual offenders. Let me make that clear, with a full stop--none whatever.--[Official Report, 29 November 1999; Vol. 340, c.27.]
However, when I asked in a written question whether any prisoners would be let out earlier because of the
electronic-tagging provisions in the Bill, the Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Brent, South replied:
the wider availability of electronic monitoring may influence release decisions in a small number of cases involving prisoners serving determinate sentences of four years or more who are eligible for parole, and where the risk assessment is finely balanced. We currently estimate that the parole rate may rise by up to 4 per cent., which would represent approximately 230 prisoners granted parole per annum.--[Official Report, 22 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 559-60W.]
The words
are crucial.
the wider availability of electronic monitoring may influence release decisions
There is absolutely no question of electronic monitoring for sex offenders and high-risk offenders.
Yet the Bill clearly provides for that. Perhaps the spin doctors do not realise that sex offenders, child abusers, convicted killers and more than 2,000 drug dealers have already been released early under the home detention curfew scheme. I have the written answers from the Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Brent, South here. It will therefore do the Home Secretary no good to protest his ignorance.
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