Examination of Witness (Questions 45-59)
RT HON JACK STRAW MP
9 OCTOBER 2008
Q45 Chairman: Lord Chancellor, welcome.
We have a number of interesting topics to raise today. Before
we move to some of the main issues perhaps I may raise one question.
Yesterday in the House we had an interesting debate on clause
26 in particular and the provisions relating to the quashing of
convictions. What slightly puzzled us was the time taken to respond
to the consultation which began last year in September and, in
terms of putting in material, was completed by December. There
were only 33 responses, but the response to the consultation did
not emerge until a few days ago.
Mr Straw: There
is a good reason for that. I can find out why there was delay
up until 28 June. Obviously, I do not have the answer because
I was not then in this job. I am entirely responsible for the
delay post-28 June, but the result has been a reasonably happy
one. When I took this post one of the dossiers in which I was
very interested contained the contents of what is now the Criminal
Justice and Immigration Bill. I looked at the range of issues
that that covered and asked for more information on those matters
that seemed to me to be problematic. I was then passed the consultative
document and I asked to see all the main responses to it and some
background papers written by academics. I began some informal
discussions about it and then reached the view that we needed
to change the current drafting of clause 26. There was a further
process to pin that down. It is a bit like turning round a big
ship. When something is in a Bill to turn it another way, even
if there has been a consultative process alongside it, takes a
bit of time and effort, and that was the reason.
Q46 Chairman: Last night you resolved
some temporary difficulty so that consideration of this matter
can take place when the House returns in the new Session in October.
The Committee will be able to return to it for detailed consideration
over, I hope, a reasonably generous timetable.
Mr Straw: Yes. Perhaps I may also
make clear, as David Hanson said yesterday in the House, that
the programme motion appears to have been drafted in error. We
had to pass it last night, but having talked to one of the clerks
we are getting some further advice upon it. As far as I can see,
it means what it says. We do not wish the Bill to come out of
committee on 30 October; that is not what we want, and so we will
change it. My intention is to table amendments to clause 26 at
Report stage here. I cannot be absolutely certain that we shall
be able to stick to that but I am pretty confident that we can
do so.
Q47 Chairman: The trouble with Report
stage is that it does not really give the House the opportunity
to develop the arguments and influence the form before it leaves
the House and it tends to come back from the Lords with very limited
opportunity to do that.
Mr Straw: If we can we shall do
something before that. I should have said that if it is possible
to provide a note to the evidence session on what we think will
take the trick I am happy to do that. It is just about squaring
a number of circles.
Q48 Chairman: The sooner the better
because it is a very important issue, although it affects a very
small number of cases.
Mr Straw: I agree. I think there
was pretty much consensus in the House yesterday. I know that
the consultative document which was published last year raised
a series of cases which were problematical where there might not
be an abuse but an error of process and nonetheless there had
been an acquittal. They are few and far between, and those who
witness the practice of the Court of Appeal will know that in
general judges of the Criminal Division always seek to confirm
a conviction where the guilt of the accused is not in issue except
where there has been a serious failure of process. I chose my
words with care in the House yesterday when I said we should try
to recalibrate the balance a little. That is what we seek to do.
It is wrong to give the impression that a large number of guilty
people walk free from the Court of Appeal because they do not.
Q49 Julie Morgan: Can you tell us
the number of prisoners who are in prison today? Do you know how
many are in police cells?
Mr Straw: As of last Friday from
recollection it was 81,240. I will have a note passed to me about
the number in police cells. I can tell you that court cells have
not been used since 19 June. We have to keep contingency arrangements
in respect of those. The figure for last Friday is the highest
ever.
Q50 Julie Morgan: But prisoners are
still being detained in police cells?
Mr Straw: Yes, they are. The total
number is 81,245, of whom approximately 215 are held in police
cells. I think everybody appreciates that police cells are not
designed for the long-term holding of prisoners. They have beds
and other facilities. Many of the court cells in which I spent
some time as a young barrister had no facilities apart from a
WC available down the corridor.
Q51 Julie Morgan: Why are prisoners
still being detained in police cells given that the end-of-custody
licence scheme has been introduced?
Mr Straw: The whole of the so-called
bounty of the end-of-custody licence scheme has now been used
up by further increases in the overall prison population since
the announcement of ECL in mid-June. Additional accommodation
has come on stream and there will be a further 300 places available
before Christmas, but we have to run very fast to stand still.
Q52 Julie Morgan: Do you think you
have to increase the time from 18 days?
Mr Straw: I cannot rule out other
emergency measures any more than previous administrations have
been able to do. Previous administrations took powers for such
emergency measures. We are working very hard to bring the accommodation
which is being built on stream as quickly as possible and—I
am sure that you will want to consider this at some stage—to
look at what procedural steps can be taken to improve consideration
of tariff-expired IPP prisoners. A judgment must be made about
whether it is safe to release them, but they should not be held
in prison after their tariff has expired unless it is absolutely
necessary simply because the procedures are taking too long. That
is one of the matters that I am also examining. One is looking
at all the factors that bear down on the short-term position:
population, supply and demand.
Q53 Julie Morgan: Under the latest
MoJ prison population projection it seems that only in the best
possible scenario with a decreasing custody rate and average sentence
length will there be enough prison places in 2012 when the Government
will have provided an additional 9,500 prison places. What long-term
plans are you making to address that situation?
Mr Straw: The medium and longer-term
situation is being addressed actively by the review being conducted
by Lord Carter of Coles. That is in a late stage of preparation
and is due to be delivered to Ministers early next month, with
current projections to be published towards the end of the month.
What Lord Carter is looking at is both the likely demand in various
scenarios, including those projections that we published at the
end of August, and the means by which that demand can be met.
He is also looking at whether there should be changes in the overall
sentencing regime which could affect demand, particularly in respect
of prisoners who are sentenced to shorter sentences. There is
no argument about the need to ensure that those who are dangerous,
violent and persistent offenders should be locked up for as long
as the court believes is appropriate, but he is considering the
other end of the scale where you have short-term prisoners and
where the reduction of re-offending rates is most frustrating,
for obvious reasons. It is as true here as in any country in the
world that if prisoners are in prison for a short while the chance
of getting them out of their offending behaviour, and for them
to have been inside long enough to break connections with local
gangs and other criminals, is too short.
Q54 Julie Morgan: Do you have any
more money from the Treasury to deal with this?
Mr Straw: This afternoon sufficient
money is to be announced to meet all the current plans. We will
wait and see what Lord Carter proposes. Had Lord Carter's review
been concluded and decisions made on it in advance of the CSR
then decisions flowing from that could have been taken into account
within the CSR, but that is not the case and so we will have to
do it in reverse direction.
Q55 Chairman: You have to deliver
your priorities within budgets that fall by 1.7% a year in real
terms?
Mr Straw: Yes. In the settlement
letter and the text of the report provision is made for revisions
in the allocations for prison building and other matters in the
light of both projections and Lord Carter's report, and `twas
ever thus. Year by year this is a demand-led service. Colleagues
here will be aware that we are facing a combination of both an
increase in the proportionate number of defendants being sent
to prison and the length of time they serve. Neither of these
is completely predictable.
Q56 David Howarth: When you say it
is a demand-led service, do you mean that the department has no
view of what the overall prison population will be?
Mr Straw: I do not mean that.
Q57 David Howarth: Perhaps you can
tell me what you do mean.
Mr Straw: At the beginning of
my time as Home Secretary, which lasted between 1997 and 2001,
the prison population was going up steeply. In the days before
the internet I used to open my weekend box literally with great
trepidation to find out the population. Accommodation then was
very inadequate and we were at our wits' end to know where we
would find places. It carried on rising and then stopped. I would
like to think that some policy announcements that I made might
have made a difference to it levelling off. Certainly, if it had
carried on going up I would have been blamed for it, but I think
that the reasons why it has stopped are quite complicated. It
then started to rise in 2002 and it has carried on rising. Without
question it is the responsibility of government with Parliament
to set the overall sentencing framework. It is my responsibility
to propose and Parliament's responsibility to dispose. Obviously,
Ministers can affect the overall sentencing climate by what they
say and the expectations that they suggest the public should have,
for example in relation to probation versus prison, but within
that framework it is really difficult to predict exactly how sentencers
will behave. For example, it was anticipated that in August there
would be a natural drop-off in the demand for prison places because
it is the time that people go on holiday, but if you look at the
prison population figures that effect is scarcely noticeable.
The bounty from ECL was assumed to have lasted longer than it
actually did. These are very small variations, but a 1% variation
in the prediction can make a big difference to whether or not
we have to use police cells for example.
Q58 David Howarth: I appreciate the
difficulty of predicting, especially month to month, but I was
really asking whether the Government took a view about what the
imprisonment rate in society should be.
Mr Straw: If you mean to ask whether
the whole of our sentencing policy is led by fixing on a proportion
of prisoners to the total population—
Q59 David Howarth: Are you taking
a view about whether a particular level of imprisonment is too
high or too low?
Mr Straw: We all take a broad
view. I spoke about it in the House yesterday, and I have spoken
about outside the House at least twice since I got the job. None
of us wishes to get anywhere near, say, the rates prevailing in
the United States which are five times ours. It is worth bearing
in mind that when people use rhetoric to show that the United
States has half the crime, which is a highly questionable assertion,
whatever they have done the US murder and gun crime rate is still
significantly higher than it is in this country.
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