| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Drug-related Offences
10. Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): If he will make a statement on his policy on non-custodial sentencing options for repeat drug-related offences. [125063]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (
Caroline Flint): Effective treatment is the key to reducing drug-related crime. The courts have access to sentencing options, including drug treatment and testing orders, community rehabilitation orders or community punishment and rehabilitation orders, drug abstinence orders and drug abstinence requirements. I am pleased that the Criminal Justice Bill will provide for all community orders for adults to be combined into one generic order that can be tailored to the individual offender's requirements, including participation in drug treatment.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I belatedly add my congratulations to the Under-Secretary on her new promotion. I am sure that she is well aware of the Government's drugs strategy, which says that investment in drugs treatment is cost-effective, although perhaps not in the way that the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety envisaged. Nevertheless, the strategy claims that every £1 spent saves the criminal justice system an estimated £3. Does she not agree that the Conservative policy of increasing places for hard drugs young offenders from 2,000 to 20,000, so that every young addict can be treated, makes eminent good sense?
Caroline Flint: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. However, with all due respect, you have to put your money where your mouth is. It is all very well Conservative Members talking about numbers, but given that they are also considering 20 per cent. cuts in public spending, the figures do not add up.
The Government spent £438 million on drug treatment in 2002–03. That figure will increase to £503 million in 2003–04. That is real money for genuine need. We believe that our efforts to target the drug problems that cause crime, including non-custodial sentencing through drug treatment orders, is the way forward. Much remains to be done but the Government are taking the matter seriously and are prepared to put the money where it counts.
Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): Let me say to my good and hon. Friend that the war against drugs is simply not working. Indeed, much evidence shows that it is a total failure. Drugs are more freely and cheaply available throughout our country and the police are swimming against a tide that they cannot turn back. To be honest, the Government must now be radical: they must either go for total legalisation or start chopping people's hands off. Since I would prefer the former, is it not time for the Government to admit their failure in the war against drugs, and, as in any war that one is losing, to change the strategy entirely?
Caroline Flint: I am afraid that I disagree with my hon. Friend's assumption that we are losing the war. From travelling around the country last week, and speaking to the Association of Chief Police Officers conference on drugs, it is clear that we are making huge inroads into breaking up drugs trafficking. That has resulted in the figures for the people caught for such offences. However, it is widely appreciated and welcomed that we must focus on the class A drugs that cause the most harm to the individual and communities,
and lead to crime. That position is endorsed by the police and by those involved in the treatment of people suffering from drug addiction. We shall embark on such a course and continue to keep to it; that is how we shall achieve success and results.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): May I, too, belatedly welcome the hon. Lady to her post, in which she arrived just before I arrived in mine? Does she accept the international surveys that suggest—echoing the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks)—that we now have the third highest incidence of hard drug users in the EU after Italy and Luxembourg? Does she also accept that the desperate shortage of in-patient treatment facilities for hard drug users is a large part of the cause of that? Does she really think it right that we have roughly the same number of in-patient beds as Sweden, which has one eighth of the population of the United Kingdom?
Caroline Flint: I welcome the hon. Gentleman back to his Front Bench and thank him for his welcome to me. We now have 3,000 residential places, which is twice as many as five years ago, but it is not enough. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would recognise, however, that residential treatment is not the only answer, and that we also have to provide care for people leaving it. I was in Bristol only a few weeks ago, speaking to people involved in the Bristol drugs project. I spoke to drug users, all of whom had been in residential treatment, and they told me that they had been let down by the aftercare. We have to look at this picture in the round, and ensure that treatment is provided for different needs. I am pleased to say that the provision of services across the board is going up and the waiting times are going down.
Police (North-West)
11. Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton): If he will make a statement on his recent funding for extra police officers in the north-west. [125064]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Caroline Flint): In 2003–04, we are providing £36.8 million from the crime fighting fund for 1,367 officers recruited in the north-west between April 2000 and March 2003. Another £591,000 from the CFF will part-fund a further 101 officers for the region. By 30 September 2002, the north-west forces had reached a strength of 18,035 officers, which is 446 more than in 1997.
Jim Dobbin : I thank my hon. Friend for that response. The Rochdale police division which serves my constituents will benefit from about 60 additional officers through that major investment. There is also the new deal for communities in Heywood, which is investing in some high-profile policing as part of its community development. Is my hon. Friend aware that, although crime levels are definitely being reduced across my constituency, they are being reduced even faster in the area that includes the new deal community? Is this
not a good example of the police working with their local community, and of the community supporting the police?
Caroline Flint: I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. I should like to give credit to him, because I know that he works very hard to maintain good relationships with the police, including the new chief constable, Mike Todd, and Chief Superintendent Ted Hill of the Rochdale division. My hon. Friend is talking about joined-up thinking. Working communities involve the police, but they also involve dealing with housing and benefits and with the quality of our neighbourhoods and streets and, most importantly, the engagement of the local community. I commend my hon. Friend's local police, because I know that they are keen to encourage the autonomy that will enable more input into police strategies from the communities themselves.
Prisons
12. Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): What measures he has taken to expand the capacity of existing prisons to meet the forecast average population of the prison estate for 2004.[125065]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins): We are modernising
and increasing the capacity of the prison estate. Four hundred additional places will be opened at Birmingham later this year, and funding has been secured for a further 2,820 prison places to be built at existing prisons. Two new prisons will be opened at Ashford and Peterborough, and the total usable capacity of the Prison Service estate will be about 78,700 by 2006.
Mr. Gibb : I thank the Minister for that reply, and I am delighted to see him at the Dispatch Box, but, according to Home Office figures, the prison population forecast for 2006 is 91,200, while the prison capacity will be just 77,500. That includes the new prisons to which the Minister has just referred. Does that not mean that the Government are accepting the Lord Woolf approach to sentencing? Does he accept that a policy of shorter sentences has failed over the last 30 years, and that, if it is retained, it will continue to do so?
Paul Goggins: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome, but I must point out that a forecast is a forecast. As of today, the number that we have in prison is 1,000 below the forecast that has been worked up. We clearly have to take action to ensure that we have more custody available to us—4,500 extra places will be available by 2006—but we also have to ensure that credible community alternatives are also available. The Government are ensuring that that balanced approach is followed through.
Constitutional Reform
3.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to repeat a statement made today in another place by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, which is as follows.
We all recognise the importance of our judiciary and our legal system to security and confidence for our communities. They deal with crime, antisocial behaviour, family and civil disputes and, through the tribunal system, a whole range of subjects that affect daily lives.
We currently have judges of complete independence, probity and very high ability. They are admired all over the world. We need to build on that to ensure that our judges and our legal system are able to meet the challenges of the 21st century. They must continue to be independent—of the Executive and the legislature. They must be able to connect with and reflect our society, and they must be able to be of the highest quality. We must recognise that improvements should occur when confidence is high.
Currently, we have a system whereby all the judiciary—I include in that magistrates and tribunal members—are appointed mainly by, or on the recommendation of, one Cabinet Minister, whereby until 12 June that Cabinet Minister also sat as a judge in the highest court in the land, and whereby before someone becomes a judge in our highest court of appeal, they are first made a Member of the legislature—namely, the House of Lords.
The efforts of former Lord Chancellors, in particular Lord Irvine, have ensured that quality and probity have been maintained, but now we need arrangements that embed existing independence in a way that does not depend on one Minister and which ensures that we have not just a quality judiciary and not just an independent judiciary, but a diverse judiciary that reflects our community.
There has never been a woman appointed to sit in our final court of appeal. There has never been a black or minority ethnic judge appointed to the High Court in England and Wales. We must implement change in a way that carries the confidence of the community, including the legal and judicial community. That means we must consult widely and fully before deciding the full detail of our changes.
Today, the Government are publishing three consultation papers: the first on a supreme court for the UK, the second on an independent judicial appointments commission for England and Wales, and the third on the future of the rank of Queen's counsel. I will deal first with the proposal on a new Supreme Court.
We propose that the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords will cease to exist as the United Kingdom's highest court of appeal, and that the present Lords of Appeal in Ordinary instead form a new separate supreme court. While they are members of that court, they will not sit and vote in the House of Lords. The Government propose to transfer the whole of the
present jurisdiction of the Appellate Committee to the new supreme court. The time has come to take the final court of appeal out of the legislature.The Government also propose, subject to consultation, to transfer from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to the new court its present jurisdiction over devolution issues. That will enable us to restore a single apex to the United Kingdom's judicial systems. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will, however, remain in being to continue its work as the final court of appeal for a number of Commonwealth and Crown dependency jurisdictions.
The supreme court will be a new United Kingdom court. It will stand in exactly the same relationship to the courts in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords does now. The independence of those three judicial jurisdictions will be totally respected. Arrangements will be made, as now, to secure appropriate representation for Scottish and Northern Irish judges.
The Government also propose to establish an independent judicial appointments commission for England and Wales to recommend candidates for appointment as judges. At present, judges are effectively selected by the Lord Chancellor. It is unsustainable for a Minister to continue to select judges in this way. The process of selection of judges for appointment in England and Wales must be demonstrably impartial and independent, as it now is in Scotland and will be in Northern Ireland.
Appointments will continue to be made solely on merit but, in addition, a judicial appointments commission will insulate more the appointment of judges from politicians and assist in opening up appointments to some groups of lawyers that are under-represented in the judiciary at the moment, including women, ethnic minorities and, at the higher levels, non-barristers.
The Government propose, subject to consultation, that the new independent judicial appointments commission would make recommendations to the Secretary of State. That model would significantly curtail ministerial involvement by placing the process of selecting candidates in the hands of the commission. The Secretary of State, however, would remain ultimately accountable to Parliament for the actual appointment. The model would therefore preserve the constitutional convention that the Queen acts on the advice of her Ministers.
The Government propose a balance of judicial representatives, legally qualified members and lay members for the commission. We seek views on who should chair it. It is proposed that the members be appointed by a separate appointing body. It would not include Ministers, but would be chaired by a senior civil servant, supported by a senior judge and a senior public figure entirely independent of the judiciary and the Executive. Appointments to the commission would be made under Nolan principles, which would further ensure its independence from Ministers. After the abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs will remain responsible for ensuring the independence of the
judiciary in England and Wales within the Cabinet, and consideration should be given to whether that responsibility should be embedded in legislation.The third of the papers published today is the Government's consultation on the future of the rank of Queen's counsel, which currently designates members of the Bar and a small number of solicitors "senior advocates". The critical issue on QCs is whether the public are best served by the continuation of that rank. If they are, how should the system be changed?
Last year, the Government's wider consultation about the market for legal services aimed to find out how silk, as it is known, was actually used, and whether users were concerned about market distortions. The results, published in May, show that there is indeed some general support for silk, but that there are many concerns about how effective it is as a guide to quality in advocacy. That is why the Government are now publishing a wide-ranging paper that canvasses all the options, from improving the current silk system to abolishing it completely and leaving it to the legal profession to establish how customers are best informed about the quality of services.
Judicial appointments in England and Wales, a Supreme Court and the future of QCs are three vital issues that require detailed consideration. We are determined to ensure, in reaching our conclusions, that we enhance the transparency of our legal system, increase public confidence and bolster the independence of the judiciary from both the Executive and the legislature. In that way we can create a modern legal system that builds on its current independence and quality, ensuring the existence of a better justice system to serve the public.
I commend the papers to the House.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |