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Mr. Howard: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the proportion of those reoffending within two years of leaving prison is almost identical to the proportion of those who reoffend within two years of being sentenced in the community or having a probation order imposed on them? Whatever that statistic demonstrates, it certainly has no relevance whatever to the effect of prison on people inside prisons.
Mr. Hughes: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to argue that alternatives to prison do not suddenly prevent reoffending and that, in some areas, the figures are similar. However, if prison is to serve any purpose, it is meant to do two things. First, it should punish and deter and, secondly, like other sentences, it should have some benefit for offenders so that they are less likely to reoffend. However, we do badly in preventing people from reoffending.
I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point. We do badly in all our responses and, unless we cut the huge percentage of crimes committed by those who, in theory, are dealt with but for whom, clearly, the punishment does not work, we are not providing an adequate remedy.
The background to that includes the fact that, under the previous Government, convictions fell significantly, as objective figures show clearly. There were just under 2 million convictions in 1979 and just under 1.5 million convictions in 1997. There was one conviction for every eight crimes committed in 1985 and one conviction for every 14 in 1996. We must therefore ask ourselves how get to more convictions for those cases brought into system.
In this area, I disagree profoundly with the Home Secretary, whose solutions include reducing the right to choose jury trial. I do not think that that will have a significant effect on such matters, and is marginal to them. Clearly, the Home Secretary and his colleagues did not think that the matter was sufficiently important to be anything other than marginal at the last election when, as he conceded, he did not believe that reducing the right to jury trial played any role in dealing with crime. It was not part of the Labour party's programme or its manifesto.
Mr. Hughes: I shall give way to the Home Secretary.
Mr. Straw: I have followed the hon. Gentleman's speech carefully. He may like to know that the number of those convicted rose by 7 per cent. in 1998, although it fell a little last year. However, it remains significantly higher than it was. Part of our strategy for the criminal
justice system as a whole is to ensure that the police catch more people and that those people can be processed more effectively through the system.The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the attrition rate and the big gap between the number of offences committed and the number of people who end up before the courts. However, whatever side one is on, if we are to close that gap, one must accept that the prison population must rise to cope with the fact that more offenders will be sent to prison, at least until we get on top of the problem.
Mr. Hughes: That may be the case and I accept that such matters are not simple. However, in this country and elsewhere, the pattern of rising prison populations does not necessarily mean that crime goes down. It does not work like that, which is why the Home Secretary came up with a recent initiative that I shall deal with now, although it is a bit out of context. We welcome the initiative if it means that we can punish, deter and begin rehabilitation by having shorter prison sentences, such as at weekends, or during the evening or day, which allow people to go on working and paying into the system--having them in prison costs the state a fortune--and if it works better than the present system. Other countries do that.
To take one simple example, people who are guilty of some type of football hooliganism offence are in some countries locked up at the very time that they would otherwise be going to a football match. That is a specific punishment, which relates to where they committed the crime and does not use up prison establishment resources, cost the state a huge amount or stop the person concerned earning and contributing to society.
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings): The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about recidivism. The point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the former Home Secretary, which I think the hon. Gentleman missed, was that there is little evidence that less punitive means of dealing with offenders produces results in terms of recidivism. Indeed, what might be loosely described, for the sake of reference, as the liberal establishment's rehabilitative instincts have not borne fruit in dealing with repeat offenders.
Mr. Hughes: I understood the former Home Secretary's point clearly. He was saying that both types of response produce similar results on reoffending; I accept that.
Incidentally, in the great attack by the leader of the Conservative party on the liberal establishment he used a slightly ill-judged phrase. Would that the Liberals had been the establishment for the past 40 years. The two parties that have been the establishment have been the Conservative party and the Labour party. If people are to be blamed for this great failure of law and order and the increase in crime--I say with the greatest humility that many people can be blamed for many things and we can be blamed for some things--it cannot be us. The answer to the questions that we have consistently asked is not to be found in the liberal establishment. It lies in Conservative policy for most of the time and Labour policy for some of the time--neither of which has been in any way noticeably successful.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire): May I reassure the hon. Gentleman that, in the text of the speech
of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, "liberal" has a small "l"? Does he agree that targeting people who are committing offences ensures that they are charged with offences, convicted, sent to prison and therefore unable to commit further offences? Was not that the insight of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), and did it not work?
Mr. Hughes: It is not terribly insightful; one hopes at least that when people are locked up they are not committing offences. In case the hon. Gentleman does not realise, having come to his job quite recently, most people who are locked up are let out after a--varying--length of time. If most who are let out offend as often as most who were not punished in the first place, one must ask whether the system is particularly useful and effective. The reality is that both offending and reoffending rates are way too high, to which we have not yet produced a response.
When I took over the job of Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, our senior researcher commended a few bits of reading to me. None of them keeps me wide awake for great periods. However, I commend a Home Office research study--I am sure that the Home Secretary and his colleagues read little else these days, apart from reviews in the Financial Times of books written by their opposite numbers--entitled, "Reducing Offending: An assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing with offending behaviour".
Mr. Bercow: Is it a racy read?
Mr. Hughes: No, not at all. The one message that I am trying to put to the House is that we must try to reach a conclusion on what works and implement those policies. We do not want simplistic, knee-jerk and ill-thought-out policies that respond more to a demand for political rescue than any desire for success in criminal justice and rehabilitation.
Mr. Heald: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
One criticism that lies rightly at the door of the Conservative party, which initiated this debate, is that, in the past few months, there has been a more and more speedy procession of initiatives, most of which appear to ignore the evidence, or to be inconsistent, or to have not been thought out. When the Conservative party in one month appears to be arguing for mandatory sentencing but, as soon as somebody in Norfolk is convicted and receives a mandatory sentence, appears to be arguing against such sentencing, people in the country are entitled to ask whether it has thought through what it is saying--because it does not sound like it.
Mr. Bercow: If a man who is sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sex with a minor is released from prison after only six weeks, how does that deter him from reoffending, how does it deter others from imitating his offence and how does it reassure the public?
Mr. Hughes: Most people's initial reaction would be that it does not. I concede the proposition that the hon. Gentleman makes by inference and which was made from
the Front Bench. We on the Liberal Benches are carefully considering the policy of releasing people earlier than they might otherwise be released, although we have not yet reached a conclusion, because such policies send out messages and risks are involved. Of course it is appropriate to release people if they are assessed to be no risk, although risks have to be taken sometimes. However, the criminal justice system should not send out messages that suggest that serious offences--an adult having sex with a minor, which is clearly serious and unacceptable behaviour, for example--are fine and that those who commit them will be treated leniently.Before the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) told me that she attended a recent seminar on the American experience. In some cases, if the court that passed the sentence is satisfied that a drugs habit has been adequately dealt with and that there is a prospect of the individual staying off drugs, it can reassess and perhaps reduce the sentence on the basis of that person's development in prison. I have learned not only in the House, but before being elected, that sentences must be tailored to a combination of factors, including not only the crime, but the individual. Therefore, the balance in the case to which the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) refers seems to be wrong, but I clearly cannot comment further on the specifics.
We have rightly spent a lot of time talking about the police, so I shall not concentrate on that today. I have criticised the Government because police numbers at the end of the Parliament are projected to be lower than at the beginning. We believe that having fewer police is highly unlikely to prevent or detect and reassure the public. I have not visited a single county in England and Wales--the policing of which is the Home Secretary's responsibility--where people have told me that they are more comfortable because there are fewer police.
We all agree that adequate police numbers are needed in every community, whether rural or suburban; there is no selective option. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) and others have the same interests for their village and rural communities as I have for my inner-city community. There is no difference between the demands. However, we have still not adequately recognised those who become the victims, despite the fact that the Government, the Conservative party and ourselves want to do so. I agree with the general proposition that the criminal justice system still does not look after victims adequately.
I want the Government to consider three propositions in that context, the first of which is general. We must better inform those who become victims of the sequence of events involved in the crime. Often, people are not given the information that would satisfy them that the crime of which they or their relatives were the victim has been dealt with adequately. Secondly, there must be a serious review of the criminal injuries compensation scheme because it has lost touch with reality. I cite a painful example involving a couple who live about a mile from the House.
Wendy and Chris Radford, my constituents, had a son and daughter. Last year, their 17-year-old son was attacked on his way to work early in the morning by a male, who was found guilty, convicted and sentenced for manslaughter. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board offered compensation for the loss of their only son. They received the maximum--£10,000--although they were
not after the money as they are both in work. They see other people in other life circumstances receiving compensation. For example, someone who had been under stress at work received £175,000. I do not mean to be vulgar, but they see someone who was caused mental stress after being plagued by someone who followed her around at school holding what is described in a newspaper as a "chocolate willy" receive £101,000. They produced examples of people who received tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme, although it is said that a value cannot be put on a life lost. We should consider how victims are dealt with under the civil damages and criminal justice systems.Let me make a third request, which I realise is controversial. I should be grateful if the Home Secretary and his colleagues, along with us and others who are interested, would consider ways in which victims and their relatives could be integrated appropriately in the criminal justice system before the passing of sentence.
Let me give a simple example. Soon after I was elected, the son of near neighbours of mine was attacked, and subsequently died as a result. They went to the trial, which took place at the Old Bailey. There were convictions, although of relatively less serious charges. From the beginning to the end of that case, no one formally asked those people anything, and they were never able to, as it were, put a statement into the criminal justice process. They were never able to describe the effect of that death on them.
I have seen families destroyed, mentally as well as emotionally, by the injuries and deaths of relatives, and I have seen those directly involved destroyed. I do not think we can pretend to victims that the criminal justice system works well if we have independent prosecutions on behalf of the state and society involving--I have done this, so I know about it--such long mitigations by the defence on behalf of persons who are convicted, but giving the victim no opportunity to say anything formally. I do not think it inconsistent with justice for the defendant to give victims or their representatives opportunity to speak, although that must clearly happen after conviction. I ask the Government, and the Home Secretary specifically, to think about the issue.
Let me make two more brief points. The first is topical: it relates to an announcement made this week. We must move quickly on the involuntary manslaughter corporate liability agenda, to which the Government very properly responded in their paper. Throughout my time here, people have complained that practices on building sites that have led to deaths have attracted derisory fines for the construction companies which, directly or indirectly, have been responsible for those deaths. Corporate liability is required: someone must carry the can.
It was in my constituency, or on one of its boundaries, that the Marchioness sank 10 years ago. At the end of the day, none of the corporate entities that owned the vessel that collided with the Marchioness were liable: no one carried the can. Another example mentioned in the paper to which I referred earlier relates to those who are found guilty of driving under the influence of drink or drugs. I believe that the penalties imposed on those convicted of killing, maiming or injuring while driving, generally, a vehicle--although this could apply to vessels
or to aeroplanes, for instance--are often far too lenient. We must make people take responsibility for their actions, if the link between a sense of duty and personal responsibility and actions and reactions is not to be completely lost.My last point is this. I have become convinced--our amendment mentions this specifically--that we should devote as much urgency as the Government devoted to nursing recruitment after a couple of years and are, I hope, now devoting to police recruitment, to the recruitment of people who are qualified and able to deal with drug addicts and drug offenders, so that we can prevent them from reoffending and returning to their addiction.
Of course, the dealers who make money from drugs at others' expense need to be dealt with as soon as possible, because they are real villains in society. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and I, and others, are regularly told by people including experts that even when it is believed that someone should be referred to drug treatment, that person will have to wait for weeks, or months, by which time it is often too late.
There are good initiatives in terms of work in prison and after prison, but, in far too many cases, people go out of that door and their chance of having work, a decent home environment and the help that they need to stay off drugs--from which they have been released while in prison--is not there. I hope that Ministers will respond positively, and find the funds, the recruitment mechanisms and the commitment to ensure that we prioritise the drugs menace highly. Because of that menace, many people commit crime, but many can be released from it and kept free of it.
Liberal Democrats have said from these Benches that the priorities are preventing and detecting crime and dealing with it effectively. If the Government concentrated even more on that agenda and somewhat less on taking away the liberties of the citizen--as they are doing in a Bill upstairs in Committee to reduce people's ability to choose a jury trial--they would better serve the public and, indeed, their supporters, who elected them to do the first, but not the second.
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