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Mr. Sheerman: I shall not give way because there is a 15-minute limit.
During the remainder of the Government's period of office, I shall take on the classic Back-Bencher role of reminding them that although they have achieved a great deal, two and a half years into their term of office is the crucial time to go back to their vision and to what they said in their first speeches. We should redouble our efforts to ensure that we are achieving what we set out to do, which was to liberate all the talents of our people.
I should not say anything approving about the Government, because my hon. Friends have awarded me, in my absence, the golden pager award for the most obsequious question to the Prime Minister. I have something of a reputation for that--although my hon. Friends have never actually given me the award. My role as a Back Bencher is to continue to remind the Government that they have done pretty well so far on a range of subjects, but that they must keep our vision in mind. We must give every youngster in school a chance.
I have learned two lessons. First, we must achieve our vision through partnership right across the board. We must involve everyone--teachers, education authorities and parents. Visiting schools in my constituency and elsewhere is a wonderful experience. Time and again, I note the greatest change that has taken place--the ending of the demoralisation of teachers that I observed day in, day out, for 18 years under the Conservatives. I now see a new spirit, a new energy and a new morale among teachers, which is crucial. I also see the importance of good management. How many of us have seen good schools in our constituencies--schools to which everyone wanted to send their kids--become schools to which few want to send their kids, because the wrong head is in charge: someone who is not a good manager and not a good leader? The ability to manage is very important.
Another important consideration is the added value conferred by every penny, and every bit of effort, that we expend on the education of children aged between four and 16, in comparison with what may have to be spent later to repair the damage that has already been done by poor education. We must get the balance right, and we must maintain the pressure in post-16 education. We must keep that vision in mind: until we secure the education that is right for a new society--a more technology-driven, knowledge-driven society--we shall not deliver to the country and our constituents what we were elected to deliver.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe):
The Queen's Speech reveals that although the Government have an enormous parliamentary majority and tremendous potential power halfway through their term of office, they have no clear idea of the purpose for which they wish to use their power. I always suspected that the third way was a fairly vacuous concept: the nearest I came to defining it was suggesting that it was an attempt to reproduce Thatcherism with all the difficult bits taken out. As far as I can see, it has never focused very clearly on anything. The present Administration obviously enjoy the style of government. They like being in office; their instincts are presidential, centralising, paternalist, sometimes authoritarian. But no clear sense of purpose runs through this enormous Queen's Speech, with its 32 ragbag Bills--some worthy, some not, but most of them extremely routine.
When I was a Minister in the Administrations of my right hon. and noble Friend Lady Thatcher and my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), people may not always have agreed with our sense of purpose, but we clearly had one, and we changed society over the period during which we were in power. The present Government, wanting a busy Queen's Speech, turn out 32 measures, most of which represent good housekeeping, some of which have fallen out of departmental cupboards, but none of which show any sense of purpose.
Ms Ward:
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clarke:
No, because I have only 15 minutes in which to speak. I may give way once on a specific point when I have begun to deal with the two subjects that I have chosen.
It is a misfortune that about a third of this huge legislative burden should fall on the Secretary of State whose Department is experiencing the greatest administrative chaos. The Home Secretary at least had the grace to say that he had never promised to achieve perfection on securing his post. As a former Home Secretary myself, I am a member of the same trade union, and I agree that it would be unwise to make such a promise; but, in saying that he had not achieved perfection, the right hon. Gentleman sounded a bit like the designer of the Titanic, who, having claimed that the ship was unsinkable, then said, "Well, none of us is perfect".
The fact is that no area of the Home Secretary's responsibilities has not gone chaotically wrong, and now he must try to steer 11 Bills through the House--some good, some bad, most indifferent. Rightly, the opening speakers were given more time, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald(Miss Widdecombe) was able to deal with some of those wide areas of the Home Secretary's responsibilities. It is arguable where the problems are worst in the Home Office; they are probably worst in the immigration and nationality directorate, where there is a crisis over asylum. On reflection, the biggest pending crisis is in the Prison Service, where a state of total chaos has descended.
The Home Secretary, who is responsible for the Freedom of Information Bill, has been accused of withholding reports by his own prisons inspector into a
state of affairs so dreadful at one of Her Majesty's prisons that the inspector wants it to be closed unless there are improvements within six months. The Home Secretary is oblivious to that and passes measures that increase the number of people in prison. He seems to have no idea how to raise the standards of management or of the regime to respond to the problem. However, that is for a longer speech. In 15 minutes, I have to concentrate on a couple of measures in the Queen's Speech that cause me, as an hon. Member, most concern.
Out of the wide range of targets that the Home Secretary gives us, I am most concerned about the proposals on the right to trial by jury. It is an old subject and it has been raised over and over again for as long as I have been in the House. That is because trial by jury is comparatively expensive and the Treasury is always pressing the Home Office to make some savings in that area to meet a few of the ever-burgeoning demands for more expenditure by other sections of the Home Office.
I have not looked up my track record. If I were still a member of the Front-Bench team, I have no doubt that someone in the Home Office would have researched the number of times that I had at least collective responsibility for some moves on the subject. I see the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), smiling. He may prove me wrong, but I do not think that I did anything when I was Home Secretary. I beat off such proposals then. I do not think that anything remarkable got through which had my hands on it.
In 1996, we made improvements. In that year, with reluctance, we made changes that addressed what was undoubtedly the abuse of the right to elect trial by jury. They have had some worthwhile effect, but the present Government are going far beyond that. They are effectively abolishing the right to jury trial in whole areas of criminal law. That was a step from which the Conservative Government always held back.
If the House wants to single out a measure to become difficult about, if Labour Members are not competing for the golden bleeper, and if another place, now that it is reformed, wishes to single out a measure on which to show that there is a place for a second House when it comes to defending the liberties of the citizen, the Bill on trial by jury will be the measure on which to concentrate. Such a measure has been looked at often in the past three decades and shrunk away from because it would fundamentally change the way in which we implement criminal justice.
I am one of many hon. Members who has practised at the Bar. I am very out of date; For about 16 years many years ago, before I became a Minister in the Thatcher Government, I practised at the Bar. I was essentially a criminal practitioner, both prosecuting and defending. I was a jury advocate when I practised at the Bar. The system is imperfect. It is rather like democracy, which is an imperfect system of government, but I know of no better system than the jury system for finding the truth. I know of none that I would depend on more when it came to deciding the facts of a matter.
Most judges with experience in criminal matters like to have a jury to decide on the facts in the most difficult cases. If I, or anyone close to me, ever faced serious or significant criminal charges, I would be inclined to elect for trial by jury because I would feel more confident--
at least I would be facing trial by my peers. That right is being taken away to a significant and enormous extent by the Government.
There have always been two particular arguments, which the Bill tries to address. They have been discussed before. For some people with a long track record, it does not really matter. There is much abuse. They plead not guilty before the magistrates and guilty later. It is just a way of staying out of custody over Christmas, or of increasing the fees for lawyers and so on. The answer against that is always the same--for some people, even the most trivial offence is a matter almost of life and death. For a bishop to be accused of stealing a milk bottle is the make-or-break moment for that man's career. Dare I say it in a House that has had its fair share of scandal, but for an hon. Member to be accused of a quite minor theft, a low-level burglary, would not be regarded as a minor matter. In the interests of saving money for the Treasury, the Government would like such a case to be handled in a quicker and more summary fashion than jury trial, on which we have usually relied. The Bill tries to address those issues by altering the right to elect for jury trial.
The Bill provides that magistrates should consider whether someone's particular reputation or livelihood would be affected by conviction. Although that is an attempt to deal with the problem, it is not a solution. Although, at first blush, it seems to deal with the point about the bishop and the milk bottle, someone with liberal values and an interest in the law might well ask why a bishop should have a greater right to justice than someone who has a bit of form. Every man is entitled to have each crime judged in the manner most likely to achieve justice.
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