Examination of witness (Questions 1 -
19)
TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2000
THE RT
HON MR
JACK STRAW
Chairman
1. Good morning. In many of our questions we
shall try to link the settlements of the spending review to service
delivery agreements; in other words, what we receive for what
we give. In July you told us of major increases in Home Office
spending for the next year. When do you expect to be able to give
us a more detailed breakdown of those spending allocations?
(Mr Straw) The spending allocations for the police,
the major proportion of the figures, for the next financial year
will be announced shortly, along with the announcements in relation
to the revenue support grants for local authorities generally.
That will certainly happen before the end of this parliamentary
session; ie, before Queen's Speech. Much of the other detail has
already been announced—that related to future years. As
you know on asylum seekers, roughly speaking there has been a
£600 million increase in expenditure this year. That has
already been announced.
2. Are there any areas of Home Office spending
that will face reductions or lower inflation increases in spending?
Priorities change so why should they not?
(Mr Straw) I shall double check[1],
but in terms of all the major heads of spending, no. Within individual
heads there may be some reductions but, as you will be aware,
overall expenditure on the police next year is due to rise in
real terms by 7.4 per cent which, as I pointed out yesterday in
the House, is more than double the increase in real terms that
took place in the past four years of settlements for which the
previous government were responsible. They will rise by three
and a half per cent the following year. You are aware that on
asylum and immigration there has been a significant increase in
expenditure. On the constitutional area of the Home Office, the
numbers are much smaller in absolute terms, but there are significant
increases to pay for, for example, what we are doing on race relations,
the implementation of the Representation of the People Act, which
is already law, and the Political Parties and Elections Bill that
we hope will become law quickly and also the Human Rights Act
which goes across government. Active communities have an increase
in funding against relatively small numbers. So overall, all areas
have received an increase although within individual areas there
may be some reductions. We are also requiring all the services
to make efficiency savings. At a time of increasing real budgets,
it is important that the money goes into clear outputs and that
it is not just absorbed by the system. The capacity of any public
system service, after a fairly tight period of spending, to absorb
additional spending is well known and we wish to avoid that. 17
January 2001
3. With the caution which you will understand,
when we saw the National Criminal Intelligence Service last week,
they told us of an aspirational bid that they had made to double
nearly their funding, from £47.5 million to £90 million
to reflect the critical importance of the work that they carry
out, not least in trying to combat organised and international
crime. What kind of priority do you attach to increasing the budget
performance?
(Mr Straw) I attach particular importance to increasing
the budget of NCIS and the National Crime Squad. It increased
for this year by low double digits in percentage terms. I can
supply the detailed figures to the Committee[2].
That was a greater increase than the police service generally
received and was subject to some criticism by the police service
because inevitably it comes out of the same pot. It is important.
If I were in the position of the service authority and the directors
general of NCIS and NCS, I would also make large bids but I think
that they will be satisfied with the money that they are receiving.
Money has been earmarked in the settlement for further investment
to deal with international and organised crime.
Mr Singh
4. Home Secretary, with reference to the joint
criminal justice system reserve, in July you said that, "The
reserve will provide us with much greater flexibility and will
mean that we will be able to respond effectively to new pressures
on the system as they arise". How do you envisage that that
reserve will be used? What new pressures do you envisage will
arise?
(Mr Straw) Aside from providing additional funding,
the purpose of the reserve is to ensure that there is better joined-up
decision making working between the three main justice departments
than there has been in the past. I chair a ministerial committee
which includes the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney-General and the
Chief Secretary of the Treasury. That has been going for about
three years and has carried out a good deal of work in bringing
together the departments. Now we have a joint budget. Therefore,
it provides both an incentive and an imperative on the three justice
departments to work together and to recognise that they share
common problems. Each department has made bids. I had a meeting
at the Home Office to go through the bids with my own officials.
Inevitably, the bids come to more than the money that is available.
As far as I am concerned, that is fine, because we can make priorities.
We are looking at some aspects of assisting victims, which is
extremely important and, for example, there is victim's statement
initiative, that I announced in June I think, by which there would
be a statement of the impact that a crime had had on a victim
made available to the prosecution and then to the court. Obviously,
that has implications in terms of expenditure for the police,
for the Crown Prosecution Service and to some extent for the court.
That is a good example of how we are looking at the costs of that
and its input. We want to see whether that is flagged up in the
Chancellor's statement in July. We want to see an increase in
the number of offenders brought to justice. That is to be achieved
partly by reducing the discontinuance or down-grading rate of
charges brought by the Crown Prosecution Service which are too
high and by seeing more people brought to justice. That has implications
for the police and it plainly has implications for the Crown Prosecution
Service as well as for the courts. On the Crown Prosecution Service,
I am concerned to ensure that some of the money is used to make
good the under-investment in the prosecution system that has been
inherent in the CPS ever since it was established in 1985. If
I am asked to give an explanation as to why in the 1980s the system
of prosecution, and bringing offenders to justice, was degraded,
and in the mid-1980s went into free-fall, so that we ended up
with a situation in which the chance of a burglar being brought
to justice was one in ten in the late 1970s and when we came into
office it was down to one in 25, the single most important factor
is the way in which the Crown Prosecution Service was established
and the fact that the government of the day failed to recognise
that the new service required significant investment.
5. Investment in terms of people?
(Mr Straw) In terms of people, IT facilities and organisation.
I have gone into this matter in great detail. Your Committee,
Mr Chairman, will be aware that before the Prosecution of Offenders
Act came into force, prosecution was a matter for the police and
it was handled in the magistrates' courts, typically by a police
inspector, although sometimes by junior counsel. I certainly cut
my teeth in that way and I believe there are one or two Members
of the Committee who may have done that. For some cases there
were inhouse solicitors' departments, as there were in the Metropolitan
Police Service and in Lancashire, to take two examples, and in
other cases, for example in Surrey, the whole of the prosecution
arrangements were farmed out to a private firm of solicitors.
The Royal Commission at the end of the 1970s, the Phillips Royal
Commission, recommended the establishment of a Crown prosecution
service. It went into how it should be established, for example,
on a police force area basis and that there should be police and
prosecuting authorities set up for each area. It went into whether
there should be a national system and said that they knew of no
common law jurisdiction of the size and complexity of England
and Wales and it did not think that it would work as it would
be too bureaucratic and so on. So what happened? At the time,
Mrs Thatcher gibbed at any idea of giving local authorities additional
responsibilities and the system was nationalised. It got off to
a poor start. There was under-investment by 50 per cent, and they
were running fast to stand still and in some cases went backwards
for many years. When we came into office, we said that, first,
we would establish the CPS on a police force area basis and Crown
prosecutors for each area have been established. We also said
that we would undertake a major study of the needs of the service.
That was carried out by Sir Iain Glidewell, a retired High Court
judge, with two other distinguished people alongside him. That
is being implemented. More resources have gone into the CPS, as
announced in July. We are also looking at whether to put additional
resources into the CPS to upgrade the way in which it operates.
Obviously, it is of critical importance.
6. What you have said sounds marvellous.
(Mr Straw) I would not call it marvellous, but it
is better.
7. It begs the question why these things cannot
be built into normal spending plans? Why do you need a special
reserve?
(Mr Straw) Really it is for the reasons that I have
given. We want to achieve better joined-up working between the
three criminal justice departments. In my judgment it is very
important that decisions about the appointment and supervision
of the judiciary are entirely separate from the prosecution decisions
and certainly from supervision of the police and the area for
which the Home Secretary is responsible. That is not something
that I ever interfere with, and nor should any Home Secretary.
It is equally important that decisions about prosecutions are
handled by the Attorney and the Solicitor in a separate and quasi-judicial
way. What those two imperatives have led to in the past is separation
in terms of any kind of joined-up working of the budget, administration
and so on. We are trying to get away from that. All three of the
key Ministers, along with Andrew Smith, the Chief Secretary, are
enthusiastic for that kind of joined-up working. We believe it
is a far better way of allocating additional funds than the traditional
way. Each of the departments—the Home Office, the LCD and
the Law Office Department—have received increases in their
funds in any event for court services, the CPS and related matters.
This is in addition.
8. Cynics may suggest that this is the Home
Secretary's slush fund?
(Mr Straw) I wish it were, is the answer. There is
every ground for being sceptical with regard to the Home Secretary,
but no ground whatever for being cynical.
9. Who makes the spending decisions?
(Mr Straw) The spending decisions will be made by
the ministerial committee and, of course, will be announced in
Parliament.
10. I understand that an extra million pounds
is being spent on IT equipment.
(Mr Straw) It is a lot more than a million pounds;
it is millions more than a million.
11. Given our experiences with IT equipment
in the Home Office and the Passport Office, what steps have been
taken to ensure that we do not end up in similar situations again?
(Mr Straw) A lot is being done, not least because
of the experience that I have had over the past three and a half
years. On large scale IT projects, problems of them not coming
up to specification, not being delivered on time are common not
just to the public sector but also to the private sector. They
are widespread and inherent in the way that the systems are sold,
with a sort of mystery that still surrounds much IT. That is,
as it were, a unique selling point for many of the people whose
business it is to sell the systems, often on a wing and a prayer.
It is important to make it clear that it is an endemic problem
across the whole of our modern life. Colleagues think of the catastrophe
of the Stock Exchange's Taurus system which cost about £600
million some years ago and that went down the drain. If you talk
to the heads of any large industrial commercial company they will
tell you all sorts of IT horrors. The only difference between
theirs and ours is that ours are very well publicised, and rightly
so, because it is public money. There are some IT systems within
the Home Office beat that work extremely well. The best one is
that run by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. There is an
interesting story to that. The reason that that has gone well
is significantly to do with the fact that Sir Fred Crawford, chairman
of the CCRC, understands IT and because they decided that, instead
of re-inventing the wheel and ordering bespoke software, that
they would use commercial software and put it together. The advantages
of that are obvious. When it is upgraded you can buy it off-the-shelf.
There have been many problems in the IT systems in the criminal
justice world. The inherent problem is that each agency, each
police service, was left to its own devices for many years, so
police services' IT systems did not necessarily talk to each other.
Some of the systems have worked. The police national computer
has been a relative success. The previous administration set up
the Police Information and Technology Organisation, which co-ordinates
matters and we are seeking to strengthen that organisation, not
least by the appointment of a full-time chairman.
12. It is estimated that the Mode of Trial Bill
will achieve savings of £128 million. However, in view of
the problems in relation to the Bill at the moment, and as it
will be delayed while we await the Auld report on the criminal
justice system, will you have to find the savings elsewhere?
(Mr Straw) They will not have to be found elsewhere.
We have made provision. That was factored in at the time of the
SR2000.
13. So there is no £128 million black hole?
(Mr Straw) No, the money is to be spent. There is
no black hole. This is straightforward cash that is a major investment
that we are providing on SR2000 for the criminal justice services.
Mr Russell
14. Home Secretary, on the confiscation of assets
by the national confiscation agency, you will be aware that the
Police Foundation Report on Drugs and the Law has suggested that
insufficient was being done to confiscate the assets of drug dealers.
Do you have any projections of the value of assets likely to be
confiscated in the coming year?
(Mr Straw) We do not have projections. The Police
Foundation is quite right about that. The confiscation system
does not work properly at the moment. For that reason two years
ago we proposed that we should change the way in which the confiscation
system operates and draw on the best experience of other countries.
That best experience happens to be found in the United States,
in the Republic of Ireland and in some other countries. There
was then a PIU report, published and made available to the House
about how that should operate. We are taking that forward in terms
of legislation. I cannot say exactly when that legislation will
come before the House. We have also provided in the settlement—this
comes back to a question asked by the Chairman—£54
million, comprising £15 million, £18 million and £21
million over three years, for the establishment and running of
a dedicated national confiscation agency. We are also hoping to
use additional funds for organised crime. We want to see an agency
established and the agency will pursue serious organised criminals
and their assets through the courts. We want to upgrade the confiscation
orders and their enforcement made following conviction, and as
colleagues will know, we are also providing for there to be civil
proceedings against known criminals where there is every evidence
that their assets have been derived through criminal activities
but they have been able to avoid criminal convictions because
they have detached themselves from the immediate involvement in
the commission of a single crime.
15. You do not have in mind an objective figure?
(Mr Straw) We want to increase the money significantly.
We are not setting an initial target. In due course, that will
be done. At the moment we are collecting less than £17 million
against an estimate of criminal funds circulating in the UK of
approximately £18 billion. It says here: "So clearly
there is scope for improvement", which is certainly the case.
16. Assuming sufficient funds are gathered in
in this way, what will happen to them? Will they be redirected
into the criminal justice system or will they go straight to the
Treasury?
(Mr Straw) No. The idea is that they will be redirected
into the criminal justice system. Already we are finding at a
more prosaic level that where police forces are able to retain
the proceeds of speed camera enforcement, that that greatly improves
enforcement and, as I understand from yesterday's newspapers,
as hoped it is leading to lower speeds and improved road safety.
17. Can you give an assurance that that will
be new money and that the Treasury will not use it as replacement
money to make reductions in the monies available?
(Mr Straw) I cannot speak about forever and a day.
However, the settlement provides for this £54 million, which
is new money, to get a confiscation agency going. Once it is going,
we hope that it will be self-financing. If it raises less than
it costs it would not be doing its job.
Mr Howarth
18. Home Secretary, you will be aware that in
Scotland a court recently came to a rather bizarre judgment, whereby
a convicted criminal was claiming that his human rights were being
infringed by his assets being seized in the manner provided for
by law and enacted by this place. I shall not ask you to comment
on that particular individual's case, because you would not do
so. But if that case were to run its full course and the judgement
were upheld, would you bring forward legislation to ensure that
the will, as expressed by Parliament, was enforced by the courts
at least as concerns England and Wales?
(Mr Straw) My understanding is that that decision
is subject to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
That is my understanding. We are obviously taking note of it in
the drafting of legislation and of other aspects of the Human
Rights Act. So far as decisions of the courts on such issues are
concerned, ultimately it is for Parliament to decide. The Human
Rights Act was phrased so that it took full account of the sovereignty
of Parliament. I would not have been party to it personally if
it had not done so. It does so in two respects. One is that where
there is a declaration of incompatibility made by the highest
courts in the land, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
or the House of Lords' Judicial Committee, which roughly speaking
is the same thing, and where there is a declaration of incompatibility,
Section 4 of the Act provides that notwithstanding the declaration,
the particular legislation continues in force unless and until
Parliament changes it. The second point is that I do not think
that that will happen, but if it were the case that the courts
made decisions about the interpretation of the law which could
not be subject to declarations of incompatibility, it would be
open to Parliament to change the law and, if necessary, to amend
the Human Rights Act. That is entirely a matter for Parliament.
It would remain the case, as long as we were Members of the Council
of Europe, that we would still be subject to decisions in the
Strasbourg court. It has been a matter of practice of successive
governments over the past 50 years that where that court comes
to a judgement adverse to the UK government that the law is then
changed. Again, if Parliament wanted to, it could decide to withdraw
from the convention. Indeed, over the Prevention of Terrorism
Act it did derogate from and put in a reservation relating to
some aspects of it.
19. Would you regard it as bizarre if the European
Court of Human Rights sought to overturn what, quite clearly,
is the expressed will not only of this Government, but also that
of the previous government?
(Mr Straw) Although you say you do not want me to
comment, you are asking me to comment on the details of the case.
1 See Annex A. Back
2
See Annex A. Back
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