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Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): Is there not a qualitative and profound difference between releasing people early to save money and home detention curfews that attend to the rehabilitative needs of the prisoner and to the protection of society?
Mr. Malins: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but I do not think that the home detention curfew scheme is rehabilitative. We need to see some pretty firm statistics to show that people do not reoffend, not just in the period while they are under the curfew, but in the period after the curfew. Rehabilitation is meant to be a long-term process.
The Minister will accept that we must be careful about sentencing in general. We must not take a mismatch approach by which we add to, and subtract from, the legislation each year. If the result of such an approach is that sentencers do not understand the sentences that they pass, that defendants need to employ a senior Queen's counsel to explain to them and that the public do not understand what is happening, we have a problem.
The Minister teased my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) about his work on the Home Affairs Committee, and I speak for my right hon. and hon. Friends when I say that my hon. Friend contributed massively to the Committee during the all-too-brief period for which he was a member of it. The Minister knows as well as I do that sometimes on Select Committees one has to cede point A to gain point B and that the fact that the report was unanimous does not mean that everyone agreed with all its conclusions. Otherwise, I would have been thought to have changed my mind at least six times on various issues in the past few months.
5.30 pm
Mr. Boateng: I am afraid that I am less charitable than the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) towards the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), but perhaps that is not a surprise, bearing in mind our respective positions. We have had a good debate, although I did not think we would.
Mr. Stephen Day (Cheadle): It has been brief.
Mr. Boateng: I hear the silent one mutter that it has been brief, but it has also been important in teasing out the issues and where we agree and where we do not. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made a serious and considered contribution to the debate, and I shall reflect on several of the remarks he made. I am bound to say that I come to a different conclusion on the home detention curfew scheme, but I welcome his support for electronic tagging and the new technology as an aid to sentences. We need to ensure, however, that we have greater clarity and transparency in sentencing, and I agree with the hon. Member for Woking in that respect.
I prefer the phrase "clarity and transparency" to the language adopted by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), which rather marred his contribution. He seeks to be all things to all people in this matter and seeks to give the impression that he would, given half the chance, be tougher on crime than me or the Government. That simply is not the case. He must understand that he is being disingenuous in his call for greater honesty in sentencing, thereby suggesting that the existing system is dishonest, bearing in mind the fact that it was successive Conservative Governments who were responsible for the sentencing system that we inherited.
The hon. Member for Woking argued that one has to cede some points in order to gain others, but the difficulty for his party is that it signed up to the sentencing system for 18 years. You cannot now wriggle out of the consequences of your actions in relation to existing sentencing policy and the framework that you established when you were in government. [Interruption.] I mean the Conservatives, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you, of course, had no part in it whatever.
We recognise that the sentencing framework is flawed and we are going to change it. I look forward to a considered and constructive contribution from, among
others, the hon. Members for Hertsmere and for Woking, as well as the shadow Attorney-General, to that process. It has to be done, because we need greater clarity and transparency. I would argue that we also need, in some cases, greater toughness in terms of the length of sentences. It is however disingenuous of the Opposition, in their call for greater honesty in sentencing, to attempt to give the impression that longer sentences will necessarily be served as a result of such a policy being implemented. We believe some categories--certainly in the case of burglary and arguably in cases of violent crime, in which there has been an unacceptable increase--ought to lead to longer terms of imprisonment being served by offenders, hence the action taken by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in introducing the "three strikes and you're out" policy.We have to understand that, although the home detention curfew scheme is designed to ensure a smoother and better-ordered transition between custody and freedom, it is part of the sentence. A home detention curfew and the paraphernalia of a tagged person are signs that society requires limitations on liberty and a certain form of order and conduct as part of a sentence served, not in a custodial setting, but in a home setting, as a precursor to ultimate liberty.
Mr. Garnier: So that our debate is better informed, will the Minister state the relative cost, on a daily, monthly or annual basis, of a home detention order, a tagging order and a prison place; and, in the event of there being no tags or home detention orders, how many additional prison places the Government would need at their disposal?
Mr. Boateng: I shall certainly write to the hon. and learned Gentleman with that detailed information. His intervention enables me to draw the House's attention to the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Woking that the measure is Treasury-driven. That is a simplistic approach. As the figures that I will make available to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) will illustrate, a degree of saving to the public purse is entailed, but that should not cause the House to underestimate or ignore the added benefit and value of creating, after a rigorous process of risk assessment, a framework of law and technology around the offender by which that individual's transition from custody to the community is better managed.
That issue was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) in his intervention. The HDC scheme continues to have a high successful completion rate of about 90 per cent., and only 2 per cent. have been notified as having reoffended while on curfew. That demonstrates that, in the vast majority of cases, the careful risk assessment undertaken is working as it should, and that the care and attention given to the matter by governors is ensuring that public protection is enhanced by these arrangements for the return to the community of offenders who have been carefully selected as eligible and properly placed on the scheme. It also demonstrates that the risk assessment carried out manages and minimises the risk of individuals reoffending during that period.
Mr. Boateng: I am not giving way now. The hon. Gentleman has just returned to the Chamber, and we must make progress.
The effectiveness of the risk assessment management and the minimisation of risk during the period that would otherwise have been served in custody are the proper measure of the success or otherwise of the scheme. That does not mean that one should overlook the ultimate goal of rehabilitation in the medium and longer term. That applies across the board, but we judge the success or otherwise of the scheme by what occurs during that period.
This group of amendments includes Government amendments Nos. 40 to 44, which are technical changes relating to the power to attach conditions to release licensees. The amendments will ensure that all young offenders who are released following a period of detention may have electronic monitoring or, in the case of over-18s, drug-testing requirements imposed as release conditions.
Amendments Nos. 40 to 44 correct a technical flaw in the current draft of the Bill which would prevent young offenders--including those up to 21 years of age--from having electronic monitoring or drug-testing conditions imposed. That, clearly, is undesirable, for the reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Hertsmere. Technology has something to offer sentencers in terms of public protection, and should be used.
The need for amendment arises from the fact that clauses 56 and 58 refer specifically to those released from sentences of imprisonment. However, sentences imposed on young offenders are not legally defined as sentences of imprisonment. Young offenders are sentenced to periods of detention and may serve their detention in accommodation other than a prison. The exclusion of young offenders from the provisions in the Bill was not intended, and the amendments remedy the situation, while retaining the proviso that drug testing conditions will not be available in respect of under-18s.
With that explanation, and following a good debate, I hope that the House will give the Government new clause and amendments the fair wind that they deserve.
Mr. Garnier: I had not intended to contribute to the debate, but some of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks have provoked me, in a gentle way, to do so.
Any savings that will be achieved through the home detention curfew or by the tagging of early-release prisoners will fall to the benefit of the Treasury as a whole. I invite the Government to allow the Prison Service, which is already under huge financial strain--I speak as a Member of Parliament for a constituency that has within it Gartree prison and also part of the estate of the Glen Parva young offenders institution--to keep the savings made, so that it can reinvest that money in additional facilities at prisons and in additional services for prisoners, especially for the rehabilitation of prisoners.
I note that in my constituency prison, Gartree, the probation service is less well represented in terms of numbers--the quality, I am sure, is excellent--and the education services have had to be cut as a consequence of Government restrictions on Prison Service finances. I trust that the Government, who, I have no doubt, believe in honesty in all things, will allow honesty in financing, as well as honesty in sentencing.
Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
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