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Category: Criminal Justice

  • Priti Patel – 2022 Statement on Appointment of Mark Rowley as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

    Priti Patel – 2022 Statement on Appointment of Mark Rowley as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

    The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 8 July 2022.

    Sir Mark Rowley is a distinguished and exceptionally experienced police officer, having served the people of the West Midlands and Surrey before guiding the capital through some of its most challenging moments in the wake of the 2017 terror attacks, as the Met’s then head of counter-terrorism.

    He now takes on one of the most important and demanding jobs in policing, leading the country’s largest force at a time when public trust in the Metropolitan Police has been severely undermined by a number of significant failings. Rebuilding public trust and delivering on crime reduction must be his priority.

    This will be a challenging period, but with a focus on tackling neighbourhood crime and delivering the basics of policing, Sir Mark is committed to tackling the significant challenges confronting the force and to making London’s streets safer by driving down crime and bringing more criminals to justice.

    As the largest police force in the country, we have supported the Met to recruit 2,599 extra police officers and increased their annual policing budget to £3.24 billion in 2022 to 2023. I look forward to working closely with Sir Mark to ensure this investment drives essential change to ensure the force delivers for the people of London.

  • James Cartlidge – 2022 Statement on Criminal Legal Aid

    James Cartlidge – 2022 Statement on Criminal Legal Aid

    The statement made by James Cartlidge, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, in the House of Commons on 30 June 2022.

    In December the Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid made clear the need for fee reform. Among a number of recommendations, the review called for an immediate pay increase of £135 million across the various criminal legal aid fee schemes. In response to these recommendations, in March, we consulted on proposals that would mark the most significant reform to criminal legal aid in more than a decade—and would include an additional investment of £135 million.

    Our reforms are twofold. First, addressing the immediate fee increase as called for by the representative bodies, and second, focusing on longer term systemic change. We took this approach precisely because we recognise the urgent need for fee reform, and so we can act swiftly and decisively in the interests of our criminal legal profession. We have been working hard to analyse the responses of all stakeholders, so all our decisions are rooted in evidence. We will be publishing our formal response in due course, but I can confirm that we will be implementing a fee increase of 15% across the majority of fee schemes.

    As set out in the consultation, there are a small number of schemes we are not uplifting at this stage. This includes the uplift to payment related to pages of prosecution evidence which the review found to encourage “perverse incentives”. We will be looking at how to address this as part of our longer term reforms and have set aside £20 million for those reforms initially. As well as reform to fee schemes we are considering wider issues, such as the potential roll-out of the successful “opt out” pilot for children, currently taking place at Brixton and Wembley police stations.

    We want to make sure practitioners get paid properly for all the work they do. So, in addition to increasing fees, we are extending the scope of payment for pre-charge engagement work to cover work done ahead of an agreement, or where an agreement is not reached, in appropriate cases, in line with the Attorney General’s disclosure guidelines. We also intend to abolish fixed fees where individuals elect to have their case heard at the Crown court, and go on to plead guilty. We will lay a statutory instrument by 21 July, which will bring these changes into effect on 30 September this year. Considering the parliamentary process and operational changes required to do this, this is the quickest we are able to deliver this uplift. Solicitors and barristers will start to receive increased fees this year and our modelling suggests that over two thirds of the additional funding will have entered the system within the first year.

    Our response to the longer term proposals, including details on the longer term funding and structural graduated fees schemes reform, will be published in the autumn, driven by the evidence in our consultation. Of course, we want to continue engaging with key stakeholders, including the Bar Council and Law Society as we develop our final policies. We are also considering the role of an advisory board as recommended by the review and plan to work closely with the Law Society and the Bar Council to design it with the intention of ensuring legal aid keeps pace with a modern justice system. Further details on the board including a terms of reference will be published in the autumn. If implemented, our longer term changes are good news for the criminal legal profession, helping us to build a sustainable sector that is fit for the future. Most importantly, they are good news for victims and everyone relying on the criminal justice system.

  • Sarah Jones – 2022 Speech on the Metropolitan Police Service

    Sarah Jones – 2022 Speech on the Metropolitan Police Service

    The speech made by Sarah Jones, the Labour MP for Croydon Central, in the House of Commons on 29 June 2022.

    May I add my condolences to the family of Zara Aleena after her horrific murder?

    I am deeply disappointed with the Minister, who shared with us a statement that included none of the political attacks on the Mayor of London that we have just heard. The statement that we were sent was much shorter, and it contained not a single political attack on the Mayor of London. That is very bad form, as I am sure you would agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is not how things should be done.

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    Order. I interrupt the hon. Lady to say that this is unusual. I also have a slightly different statement. It is expected that the Opposition have the statement that is actually given. I say this as a reminder for future reference.

    Sarah Jones

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    Many of us will have heard this morning and last night the dignified and gracious interviews with Mina Smallman following the announcement that Her Majesty’s inspectorate is moving the Metropolitan police into what is called an “engage” phase. The way that the disappearance and then the deaths of Mina’s daughters were investigated, and the fact that altered images of their bodies were shared widely by some officers, have come to epitomise the problems within the Met that we, the Mayor of London and London residents have been so concerned about for some time.

    We know that tens of thousands of people work in the Met and, of course, we know that so many have that sense of public duty that reflects the incredibly important job that they do. They have been let down by poor leadership, lack of resources and an acceptance of poor behaviour. It is for them, as well as for victims and the wider public, that we seek to drive forward improvements.

    The announcement yesterday comes after a long list of serious conduct failures from the Metropolitan police: the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, the conduct of officers following the murder of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, the strip-searching of children such as Child Q, the conduct unveiled in the report of the Independent Office for Police Conduct into the Charing Cross police station and the

    “seemingly incomprehensible failures to recognise and treat appropriately a series of suspicious deaths in the Stephen Port case”.

    The list of failings from the inspectorate makes for grim reading and goes way beyond those more high-profile cases: it includes performance falling far short of national standards, a barely adequate standard of crime recording and the quality of basic supervision to officers. All that has undermined public trust, and we all have a role to play in building that trust back up. As the Mayor of London has said, a first and crucial step for the new commissioner will be to start rebuilding trust and credibility in our communities.

    The Minister’s announcement about what needs to be done is incredibly weak. He talks about support for victims, but where is the victims’ law that the Government have been promising for years? We know there is a massive increase across the country in the number of cases collapsing because victims drop out—on his watch. He talks about reform to comprehensively address the strip searches on children, but he has totally failed to bring forward the new guidance on strip searches that we have been calling for for months. He talks about reforming culture, but he only refers to two long-term inquiries that may not provide answers, even though we know that action is needed now.

    The Minister is right that the system for holding forces to account has worked in this case, but we need change to follow. We need a national overhaul of police training and standards. There is much to be done on leadership. We need a new vetting system. We need to overhaul misconduct cases, with time limits on cases. We need new rules on social media use. We need robust structures for internal reporting to be made and taken seriously, and we need new expected standards on support for victims, investigation of crimes, and internal culture and management. That is for the Home Office to lead.

    The Met cut its police constable to sergeant supervision ratio after the Conservatives cut policing, and after the Olympics—when the Minister was deputy mayor—it was cut more than any other force. A police sergeant said this morning:

    “I do not have a single officer that I supervise that has over 3 years’ service, so not a single officer that policed pre Covid.”

    Does the Minister now accept that, no matter how much he promises in terms of new, young and inexperienced officers right now, the Met and forces across the country are still suffering from the loss of 20,000 experienced officers that his Government cut?

    Policing should be an example to the rest of society, and supporting our police means holding officers and forces to the highest possible standards. The concerns today are about the Met, but we know there are problems in other forces, too. Can the Minister confirm how many other forces are in this “engage” phase, and which forces they are? Can he outline what the steps the Home Office is taking now to drive up standards in the police across the country?

    The British style of policing depends on public trust. The public deserve a police service that they not only trust, but can be proud of. Victims need an efficient and effective force to get them justice. Our officers deserve to work in a climate without bullying, toxic cultures. We need to see urgent reforms. The Government can no longer leave our police facing a perfect storm of challenges and fail to lead that change.

  • Kit Malthouse – 2022 Statement on the Metropolitan Police Service

    Kit Malthouse – 2022 Statement on the Metropolitan Police Service

    The statement made by Kit Malthouse, the Minister for Crime and Policing, in the House of Commons on 29 June 2022.

    May I start by expressing my condolences to the family of Zara Aleena? We were all shocked by her horrific killing in the past few days, and our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones.

    With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the Metropolitan Police Service, following the decision yesterday of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services to place the service in the “engage” process, which has been described as a form of special measures.

    The public put their trust in the police and have every right to expect the country’s largest force to protect them effectively and carry out their duties to the very highest professional standards. The public expect the police to get the basics right. Although very many Metropolitan police officers do exactly that, it is clear that the service is falling short of these expectations and that public confidence has been severely undermined.

    The Government support the action that the inspectorate has taken to escalate the force into special measures and address where it is falling short. The public also elected a Mayor to bring governance and accountability in their name, and I now expect the Mayor of London, as the police and crime commissioner, to act swiftly to ensure that he and the force deliver improvements, win back public trust and make London’s streets safer. We expect him to provide an urgent update explaining how he plans to fix this as soon as possible.

    Now is not the time for the Mayor to distance himself from the Met. He must lean in and share responsibility for a failure of governance and the work needed to put it right. Over the past three years, this Government have overseen the largest funding boost for policing in a decade, and we are well on the way to recruiting an extra 20,000 police officers nationally, with 2,599 already recruited by the Metropolitan police, giving them the highest ever number of officers.

    By contrast, as many Londoners will attest, the Mayor has been asleep at the wheel and is letting the city down. Teenage homicides in London were the highest that they have ever been in the past year, and 23% of all knife crime takes place in London, despite its having only 15% of the UK population. The Mayor must acknowledge that he has profound questions to answer. He cannot be passive and continue as he has. He must get a grip.

    There are many areas of remarkable expertise and performance in the Met, and, in many areas, the Met is understandably the best in the world. However, there have been persistent Met failures on child protection, and, earlier this year, following the catalogue of errors found by the independent panel, which looked at the investigations into the murder of Daniel Morgan, the inspectorate issued a damning report on the Met’s approach to tackling corruption. There have been exchanges of extremely offensive messages between officers, and, of course, we had the truly devastating murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer.

    It is reported that the inspectorate has raised a number of further concerns in its recent letter to the Metropolitan police. It makes for sorry reading, I am afraid. The inspectorate reportedly finds that the force is falling short of national standards for the handling of emergency and non-emergency calls, and that there are too many instances of failure to assess vulnerability and repeated victimisation. An estimated 69,000 crimes go unrecorded each year, less than half of crimes are recorded within 24 hours and almost no crimes are recorded when victims report antisocial behaviour against them. The inspectorate has also found that victims are not getting enough information or support.

    Other concerns are thought to include disjointed public protection governance arrangements; insufficient capacity to meet demand in several functions, including high-risk ones such as public protection; and a persistently large backlog of online child abuse referrals. The inspectorate also highlights an insufficient understanding of the force’s training requirements, and the list is not exhaustive. This has all undermined public confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service, and we have not heard enough from the Mayor about what he plans to do about it. Blaming everyone else will just not do this time. [Interruption.] I am glad that hon. Members find this amusing, but I am afraid this is not funny.

    As I have already said, it is vital that policing gets the basics right and that there is proper accountability for those in charge. Every victim of crime deserves to be treated with dignity, and every investigation and prosecution must be conducted thoroughly and professionally, in line with the victims code. Recent reports of strip searches being used on children are deeply concerning and need to be addressed comprehensively. We have a cherished model of policing by consent. The police force is a service—a public service—and the public must have confidence in it. Plainly, things have to change.

    The Government are working closely with the policing system as a whole to rewire police culture, integrity, and performance. Last October, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced an independent inquiry to investigate the issues raised by the conviction of Wayne Couzens for the murder of Sarah Everard. In the same month, the Metropolitan police commissioned Baroness Casey of Blackstock to lead an independent and far-reaching review into its culture and standards. We also welcome the College of Policing’s new national leadership standards, which are aimed at ensuring continuous professional development. Policing is a very difficult job and demands the highest possible training standards.

    The process to recruit a new Metropolitan Police Commissioner is well under way and the Government have made it crystal clear that the successful candidate must deliver major and sustained improvements. The whole country, not just London, needs to know that our biggest police force is getting its act together. The Mayor of London, supported by his deputy mayor for policing and crime—a role that I once had the privilege to hold—is directly responsible for holding the commissioner and the Metropolitan police to account. Notwithstanding what Opposition Members think, the Mayor needs to raise his game. He has an awesome responsibility which he has hitherto neglected, in my view.

    This is not an insurmountable problem, but it is extremely serious. Trust has not been shattered beyond repair, but it is badly broken and needs strong leadership to fix it. Through the police performance and oversight group, the Government look forward to seeing the Metropolitan police engage with the inspectorate and produce a comprehensive action plan to sort this out, and be held to account by City Hall.

    The national system for holding forces to account and monitoring force performance is working well. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and every public service must be held to account. I am grateful to the inspectorate for its work. It now falls to the Metropolitan police and to the Mayor of London to make things right. Given my admiration of so many who work in the Met, it is with some personal sadness that I commend this statement to the House.

  • Lyn Brown – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    Lyn Brown – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    The speech made by Lyn Brown, the Labour MP for West Ham, in the House of Commons on 28 June 2022.

    This debate is about how we provide security for our communities and justice for victims. It is also about getting real about why so many crimes are happening, why so many victims are being harmed and why the wounds are not being helped to heal. We know about how the Tory austerity cuts to our courts helped to create a massive backlog even before the pandemic. We know how victims are waiting years for justice and how so many are dropping out of the system because they cannot have cases hanging over their heads any longer. We also know how suspects waiting month after month in custody or on bail just creates the conditions for further crime.

    We are talking about community sentences and the role that they can play in providing justice, in repairing the damage that crime causes to our communities and in stopping reoffending by dealing with some of its causes. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) laid out the facts: the number and percentage of community sentences in our justice system have declined in the past 10 years—even before the pandemic. The Ministry of Justice’s own research shows that community sentences are associated with lower reoffending than short prison sentences, which are often the alternative, and that community sentences cost 10 times less than a prison place. When our prisons are as underfunded, dangerous, overcrowded and devoid of rehabilitation as so many are today, that is no bad thing. Community sentences are a win-win, as they have lower reoffending rates and they are cheaper.

    Andrew Gwynne

    My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. There is another bonus because, when community sentences are done correctly, they provide payback—the clue is in the name—to communities affected by crime and they provide a form of restorative justice to victims of crime. A price cannot be put on that. It is justice in action, is it not?

    Ms Brown

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Community sentences work because they include punishment while maintaining a link to the community and enabling progress on the problems that drive crime in the first place. The link to the community is perhaps the most important thing, because it helps people to maintain the hope that is necessary to change their life. Community payback orders can give people experience of work that helps their neighbourhood to thrive. The work can and should be hard, but it should also be rewarding, which can, in and of itself, create a motivation for further change.

    What are the barriers to making this kind of sentence work well? A lack of investment in the probation service is part of the problem. When I was a shadow probation Minister, I frequently heard of probation staff taking on huge, extraordinary numbers of cases. Good, valued probation staff are not just an early warning system for when an individual is going off the rails; they are agents of hope, healing and personal change. That can only happen if professionals are given the time and resources to develop the real relationships that are essential if we are to turn lives around. It is about understanding the needs, vulnerabilities and risks of the people they are supervising. We need probation staff who organise unpaid work to have good links with employers, councils, colleges and local charities. They need a range of opportunities to be available so they can tailor the service to a person’s skills and needs. Most of all, they need the necessary time and trust to inform the courts of the most effective, most appropriate and fairest type of sentence.

    Grahame Morris

    My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The Minister suggested that Opposition Members do not appreciate the work of probation officers, so will my hon. Friend please set the record straight? We really do appreciate the work of probation officers, and we acknowledge the hiatus caused by the privatisation of the probation service. I hope the Government will recognise the value of probation officers in the current pay talks.

    Ms Brown

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are to turn around people’s lives, and if we are to make a dent in the crime on our streets, we have to resource those who are working with people who often have immensely disorganised lives, who may have a history of trauma and who might need a proper intervention by social services or the probation service to enable them to put their life straight. All too often, the only contact we have with the probation service is to criticise it for not recognising that somebody is about to go off the rails or has already gone off the rails and for not having a close enough eye.

    The reality is that our probation service needs the resources to work properly with the people in its care, as well as resources for healthcare, drug rehabilitation, alcohol dependency and so on to use as tools in its work.

    Andy Carter

    The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. There are, of course, two elements to unpaid work—the punitive element and rehabilitation—so two levels of sentencing are imposed: rehabilitation activity requirements and unpaid work. It is important not to confuse the two, because unpaid work is usually the punitive element. She talks a lot about needs, which sit in the rehabilitation activity requirement.

    Ms Brown

    I genuinely think it is about seeing it in the whole. If I am doing unpaid work to clean up a graveyard, I can look back and see a graveyard that is in better nick because of my work and somebody could commend me for that work, which begins to build confidence and self-worth. Although there is the punitive element of taking hours away from my life and making me do a job that I do not particularly want to do because it is a bit nasty and a bit scuzzy, there will be appreciation from others and from me for a job well done. The two cannot be separated, so we should acknowledge and accept both bits with open arms and say that this is what we want to do, because it changes lives.

    Good, valued probation staff are not just an early warning system; they are agents of hope and healing. I worry that unpaid work can be seen as a box-ticking exercise, and it is no surprise that courts and victims sometimes do not have confidence that it is a genuine form of justice. I am worried that the probation system, with its regional structures, is too remote from our local communities. There is not necessarily the transparency and accountability to create genuine confidence in what is happening.

    I worked in local government for years before I came to this House, and I saw time and again how money and power can be sucked away from the local when there is a regional structure. Sometimes our regional structures are a bit too far away from the delivery on the ground. There are fabulous local and public organisations working in Newham that I would trust to do the job of putting people to work in a way that pays back the community and creates opportunities for offenders, but those organisations are too often shut out of these contracts because they are a bit too small, a bit too local and a bit too distant from the decision makers, whether in Westminster or Islington. It sometimes means the best are not employed to do the work that we all know could happen.

    To illustrate what I have been trying to say, I will finish by talking about the group that is failed most by the criminal justice system. Women overwhelmingly end up before the courts for non-violent and non-sexual offences. In 2020, 72% of women sentenced to prison had committed a non-violent offence. These offences are usually driven by the legacy of abuse, trauma and exploitation, and we know from the Government’s own research that 60% of women entering prison have suffered domestic abuse, almost half have an alcohol problem and almost a third have a drug problem.

    Let me be clear. Women do commit crimes and we have to respond by creating a justice system that supports them to escape the abuses, traumas and addictions that have put them where they are. Community sentences can be an important tool for women offenders. They can help women to face up to and deal with their addictions. They include unpaid work that builds a woman’s skills, confidence and ambition. We have to face reality: if we do not give a community sentence, the alternative is a short prison sentence, which can make the problems that drive women’s offending so much worse.

    Let me give an example. Many women who commit crimes are in a desperate situation due to homelessness. They then go into prison and, if they had a tenancy, they lose it. When they are out of prison, as many as two thirds do not have a safe home to go to. Most prison sentences for women are very short—70% are for less than a year. In the system in which we are working, that, frankly, does not give professionals enough time to respond to individual needs and provide the necessary treatments that will enable a woman to make a success of her life once she is released. For instance, it is not possible in that time, in the big structures in which we are working, to get a woman on to drug rehabilitation and alcohol dependency courses and provide the facilities and resources that she needs to turn her life around.

    Alexander Stafford

    I am trying to follow the hon. Lady’s logic. Is she saying that every woman—I know this is about women, rather than men—who commits relatively minor crimes such as shoplifting, mugging or assault, which still have victims, should not be sent to jail? I do not think we should screen people out because they are male or female. If someone commits a crime, they should go to jail, if that is appropriate. If the argument is that sentences are too short, let us make them longer so that there is chance to be rehabilitated in jail where the criminals belong.

    Ms Brown

    Let me help the hon. Gentleman. The Government have a female offender strategy, and what I am speaking about is not outwith the philosophy and principles in his Government’s strategy. It is massively understood that there are many and complex reasons why women find themselves in a situation where they can be imprisoned for between three and six months. Many such women will have responsibility for children. Their incarceration destroys the home for that child. It destroys their having a stable place to be. It often means that the child, although there may be no such predisposition previously, has that trauma to carry with them, which can have lifelong consequences.

    If the hon. Gentleman believes that payback is a reasonable way of dealing with this, let us think about non-violent offenders and how we can use payback and community orders to reduce crime. The thing about payback orders is that they work. I want to see fewer victims. Therefore, I want to see less crime, so how do I get less crime? We are saying that payback orders can get us to a situation where there is less crime because reoffending rates are not as high as they otherwise would be.

    There is a constant churn in prisons, with staff desperately trying to establish relationships but then losing them again. Let us imagine that a staff member meets somebody they could finally support in changing their life. Let us imagine that staff member making promises to that person when they know that those promises cannot be kept because the person will be moving on again in a few weeks. It is simply impossible.

    Justice that happens within women’s communities can avoid that terrible, wrenching disruption and provide long-term support, enabling women to stay closer to their support networks. Almost 60% of the women in prison have children. Research shows that they have a greater risk of becoming involved with the criminal justice system if their parent is placed into prison. It is no wonder that the rates of self-harm in women’s prisons have gone up over the past decade. Many offenders, but particularly women offenders, are trapped in terrible cycles of harm, abuse, crime and punishment. It is a revolving door of reoffending, and that reoffending, effectively, creates more victims.

    I believe that community payback is the kind of innovation that we need. Local partnership working between victims, courts, charities, businesses, probation and other public services is exactly the kind of joined-up local working that, sadly, Conservative Governments have eroded over the years through austerity and the decline in community sentencing. It can be absolutely no surprise that we are all paying the price of increased reoffending, increased crime and more victims, and our communities are being denied justice on a catastrophic scale.

  • Kit Malthouse – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    Kit Malthouse – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    The speech made by Kit Malthouse, the Minister for Crime and Policing, in the House of Commons on 28 June 2022.

    I rise both perplexed and pleased to respond. First, I am perplexed because, in seven years in this House, I do not think I have heard quite such a series of distortions of events, or indeed such a naked use of a global pandemic to derive political advantage. I know that when the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) goes to tweet or Facebook the clips of her being outraged in this debate, she will point out—to her, no doubt, small number of viewers in Lewisham West and Penge—that the pandemic had an impact on the whole of the country, not least the criminal justice system.

    I am also perplexed at the sudden reversal in the Labour party’s view of community payback. It was only a year ago that the former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), said that community payback

    “has nothing to do with tackling crime”.

    She accused us, in promoting community payback, of “stigmatising” certain sections of the community. She called our desire to have more community payback teams out in the community, doing exactly the kind of work that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge now seems to celebrate, a “distasteful gimmick”, as did, at the same time, the now shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). So while I welcome the hon. Lady’s conversion, it is the cause of some confusion. Perhaps we are in happier, more Blairite times in the Labour party now, under new leadership, although how long that will last I do not know.

    Having said that, I am pleased to celebrate the work that has been done on community payback, particularly over the last year as it has roared back into life, and to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the outstanding work of our operational staff across England and Wales, who, in spite of a huge number of challenges, have continued to deliver projects day in and day out.

    The community payback requirement is of course delivered in groups, sometimes indoors—painting and decorating schools for example—and covid-19 had a severe impact on our ability to deliver. I am afraid that resulted in a backlog of cases where hours have not been met 12 months after sentencing, which is a stipulation of the requirement. However, we are committed to ensuring that all eligible offenders who did not complete their community payback because of covid-19 will be required to meet their hours.

    The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge, on whom I wanted to intervene, seemed to indicate that hours had been written off from community sentences. She may not be aware of this, but we are not able to write off community sentence hours as that is entirely a judicial decision. We have undertaken to present every single case where somebody goes over their 12-month requirement period back in front of a judge for them to take a decision—to extend the time limit, we hope, but at the very least for those people to complete their hours.

    Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I sat as a magistrate in a breach court in Merseyside last week, hearing from the probation service on cases that it had not been possible to complete in a certain period of time, and the periods for delivery of that community payback were being extended. A point was made from the Opposition Benches that in Greater Manchester some payback cases were not being completed; of course where that is happening, the probation service can and does bring breach cases to court for magistrates to resentence or revoke the order.

    Kit Malthouse

    I salute my hon. Friend for doing his civic duty as a magistrate and he is right that these decisions are effectively for the independent judiciary and we are very limited in what we can do in terms of flexibility. My hon. Friend also rightly highlights that we regularly take those who fail to complete their community service requirement in front of judges for alternative sentencing or for reaffirmation of the sentence. I hope my hon. Friend made the right decision when sitting as a magistrate; I am sure he will have done.

    In stark contrast, our brethren in Scotland decided, other than in certain cases, to write off 35% of the hours accumulated because of the covid-19 backlog. We in this part of the United Kingdom took a completely different decision, recognising the importance of sentencing both to victims and for rehabilitation and punitive purposes, so we are persisting. That does however mean that we have a backlog, but also that we had to develop some necessary solutions to make sure sentences were delivered despite social distancing regulations.

    The independent working projects, which the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned, were introduced as a temporary delivery method in response to covid-19 restrictions and have enabled us to maximise delivery during the pandemic and as the probation service recovers from the impact of the pandemic. All the products created by offenders during these projects were for the benefit of the community or for local charities. They have included a range of robust and practical tasks such as producing hats and scarves for Ukrainian refugees and making face masks and personal protective equipment during the pandemic. I am sure the hon. Lady would not see those jobs as any less valuable than cleaning up a churchyard. Those projects are still being deployed in a limited and targeted way to support our recovery and will be phased out by the autumn.

    We cannot shy away from the fact that the probation service and community payback were, like the rest of the country, deeply impacted by the pandemic. As a result we have built up a backlog of cases and we need to make sure those and future cases are all delivered within 12 months. We are boosting our delivery capacity and maximising our efficiency, and to do that we are investing an additional £93 million in community payback over the next three years.

    Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)

    On probation, I attended the justice unions parliamentary group yesterday and subsequently had discussions with members of Napo, the probation officers’ union. They were at pains to point out the huge caseload many of their members are carrying and the difficulties that presents in terms of assessing cases and identifying those suitable for community service and community payback.

    Kit Malthouse

    The hon. Gentleman is right that the probation service has a heavy caseload, and that is why we are in the process of recruiting significant numbers of new probation officers; there were 1,500, I think, last year with more to come in the year ahead. We have been given significant investment by the Government to expand that capability and I am very aware of the caseload pressures across the country. It is therefore even more important that we should be given the flexibility to enable people to complete their sentences within the 12 months so as not to add to the burden by having to represent those cases in front of magistrates if the deadline is not met.

    This significant investment will enable us to increase the delivery of community payback from the pre-covid benchmark of around 5 million hours a year to an unprecedented 8 million hours a year. These hours will be put to good use, with a particular focus on more outdoor projects that improve local areas, allow the public to see justice being done and build confidence in community sentences. We will be delivering more placements that restore pride in communities and add value to the work of local charities, building on the success of projects like one in south Yorkshire which saw offenders undertake 2,500 hours of work to transform a derelict building into a community centre for disadvantaged young people. The ramp-up will be facilitated by the recruitment of about 500 additional community payback staff who will bolster resources in every probation region. In January, we launched a national recruitment campaign and successful candidates are now commencing in post.

    Alexander Stafford

    I thank my right hon. Friend for mentioning south Yorkshire. He will know that, in March, a group of offenders came to Rother Valley under this scheme to help clear up Maltby. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need more of these schemes across Rother Valley and Yorkshire so that people can see the value of community payback, and that it is often better to have people out working in communities rather than serving shorter sentences in prison?

    Kit Malthouse

    I completely agree and am pleased to hear about the projects in my hon. Friend’s constituency. As he will know, I have urged all Members across the House to nominate schemes in their constituencies to be fulfilled and I need everybody’s help to get us to the target of 8 million hours. If we all pull together I hope we will make sure that not just my hon. Friend’s constituency but every part of the country is looking spick and span.

    This investment is also enabling us to establish new national partnerships with major organisations and charities, which are also joining this coalition to get to 8 million hours, bringing forward high-quality local projects and initiatives to be replicated in communities across England and Wales. This includes our groundbreaking partnership with the Canal & River Trust, which sees offenders clearing litter, tidying towpaths and maintaining beauty spots along 2,000 miles of waterways. The work of offenders on community payback has delivered at Perry Barr in Birmingham, clearing a towpath near the site of this summer’s Commonwealth games, which is testament to the impact such projects can have on local places and people.

    Stephanie Peacock

    The Minister talked about the number of hours completed and has spoken a lot about the impact of the covid pandemic but the fall in the number of hours completed began in 2017; what is his answer to that?

    Kit Malthouse

    There was a decline between ’17-18 and ’18-19, but the hon. Lady will remember that the last three years of decline were covered by a lockdown; the lockdown began in the first quarter. And while there was a decline it is worth pointing out that there was also a very significant decline in the previous year because this is an activity which, as I have said, takes place in groups and we were not allowed to meet in groups. I know it is not often the case that the word fairness is used in our antagonistic form of democratic debate, but it would be unfair of Opposition parties to decry the work of the probation service and community payback supervisors and say that they should have been doing that group work during the pandemic.

    Stephanie Peacock

    Will the Minister give way?

    Kit Malthouse

    No, I want to make some progress. [Interruption.] I will give way in a moment, but I have just given way to the hon. Lady.

    Stephanie Peacock rose—

    Kit Malthouse

    All right, go ahead.

    Stephanie Peacock

    It is disingenuous of the Minister to call me unfair. He clearly misheard my intervention; I was talking about 2017 but he is talking about 2020. Will he answer the question about 2017?

    Kit Malthouse

    As I have said, the baseline was at or around 5 million hours a year for quite a period. It fluctuated from year to year because of a number of factors, not just the delivery but also whether magistrates were giving community sentences in volume, which is not something we can influence. But I am more than happy to write to the hon. Lady with the hours as we see them. [Interruption.] I do not have them to hand, but I am more than happy to write to her about those hours. Look, the number fluctuated at about 5 million-odd, and we want to get it to 8 million. We have been given £93 million and 500 more supervisors have been recruited to get us there. I hope that Opposition Members will acknowledge that community payback was impacted, and had to be, by the pandemic. I know that the Labour party would not seek to make political advantage out of the impact of that awful disease when we had to bear in mind the safety of Ministry of Justice staff.

    The Opposition have submitted their own proposals on improving local engagement and participation, which the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge referred to. However, I am afraid that her quango-tastic response to the issue is both unnecessary and, I am afraid, overcomplicated. In reality, community payback is already delivering for local communities, and the Government are only strengthening our engagement with key stakeholders. We recognise that local engagement is an integral part of the community payback offer, and the probation service already works closely with local authorities, police and crime commissioners and voluntary organisations to identify demanding placements that benefit communities. We also encourage members of the public to take part and nominate community payback projects in their areas via an easy-to-use form on the gov.uk website. I urge you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to make some nominations in your own constituency.

    Furthermore, we have just introduced a new statutory duty via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that requires the probation service to consult with key community stakeholders on the delivery of community payback in local areas. The duty will encourage greater collaboration with key partners such as PCCs and ensure that projects benefit communities and are responsive to local needs. The new statutory duty will cement and formalise existing relationships and create a consistent consultation process across England and Wales. That in turn will guarantee that local people have a say in the types of projects delivered in their areas, ensuring that our placements are responsive to the community’s needs.

    The impact of such collaboration was evident during the community payback spring clean week, which was delivered in support of Keep Britain Tidy’s campaign in March. Between 25 March and 1 April, community payback teams were mobilised across England and Wales to deliver clean-up projects that visibly improved local areas and green spaces. More than 1,500 offenders collected 2,200 bags of litter, removed eyesore graffiti and cleared vegetation from public spaces. They delivered 10,000 hours of hard and productive work at about 300 projects. The initiative was widely supported by many hon. Members and PCCs who visited projects. The spring clean week is a superb example of the impact that meaningful and robust community payback can have on local areas.

    Andrew Gwynne

    I want to take the Minister back to the 8 million hours of community payback that he set out. We all support more hours of community payback, particularly on meaningful projects such as some of those that he has just listed. He skirted over the fundamental problem, though, which is that in June 2011, 185,265 community sentences were handed down—13% of all sentences—but by June 2021 that had fallen to 72,021, which was just 7% of all sentences. He said that there is little that he can do to make the courts award community sentences, but, if he is to make those 8 million hours a reality, he will have to do something to encourage them. What is he doing to ensure that more community sentences, where appropriate, are given out to perpetrators of crime?

    Kit Malthouse

    The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the decision on a sentence is a matter for the magistrate or for the judge at the time. It is for them to decide what is a fitting punishment and, indeed, what is likely to deter the offender from reoffending. The fall that he pointed to will be entirely down to judicial discretion.

    We can do a certain amount of marketing to judges and sentencers. In promoting my own pet project of alcohol abstinence and monitoring orders—the new sobriety tags that have been brought in—I have been attending judicial training courses to explain to sentencers how the sentence works and its effectiveness. In the end, a judge or magistrate wants to know that a sentence is effective, and if we can demonstrate through our work that it is effective, punitive and satisfies the public interest, and the local community sees value in that sentence, I am sure that magistrates and judges will step forward with much greater enthusiasm and help us to fulfil that 8 million hours target. The hon. Gentleman identifies the interesting point—no doubt it will be embarked on with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge)—of explaining to those who give out sentences the growing importance of this work across the whole of the country.

    I hope that all hon. Members in the Chamber will become my Twitter followers. One of the great pleasures of my day is to tweet my “payback of the day”. Pretty much every day, I put out “before” and “after” pictures of a project taking place somewhere across the country showing the fantastic work that offenders have done. We seem to specialise in cemeteries—a lot of work is going into cleaning them and smartening them up. Some of the transformations have been extraordinary. I visited a project in Eastleigh, near my constituency, and what struck me was the value that the offenders themselves saw in the work. Local residents had been over to congratulate them, thank them and understand what they were doing—the offenders all wear high-vis that has “community payback” written the back—and the offenders felt a sense of pride. They had been working in a churchyard, making it look very smart and tidy, and in fact a couple of them said that they were interested in a career in landscape gardening as a result.

    Across the House, we agree on the value of community payback. I hope it is agreed that the service suffered during the pandemic because of the nature of this group-based work, but that the staff at the probation service and the community payback supervisors were innovative in inventing solutions to help us deal with the backlog. Nevertheless, we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to get us from 5 million hours to that target of 8 million hours, by which time I hope there will not be an area of the country that is not clean, scrubbed and free of graffiti and litter.

    While I realise that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge is trying to use the debate to confer some kind of political advantage, I know that she recognises—she is generally a fair-minded individual—that the staff were struggling during the pandemic, as were so many services. Now that her party has happily reversed its position, we share the view that the community payback is an incredibly valuable part of our criminal justice system, and I hope that we will all work together to promote it. I look forward to receiving a nomination from her for a scheme that she would like to see done in her constituency. Perhaps she and I could visit it together and congratulate the offenders on their work.

    As for the hon. Lady’s overall claim that somehow the Conservatives have gone soft on crime and are no longer the party of crime and order, I gently remind her that she voted against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and its measures to put rapists and other serious offenders behind bars and to deal with a variety of other criminals. Until the Labour party becomes more action and less talk, I am afraid that it will not be able to aspire to the crown, which we currently proudly hold, of being the primary defender of law and order in this country.

  • Ellie Reeves – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    Ellie Reeves – 2022 Speech on Community Payback

    The speech made by Ellie Reeves, the Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge, in the House of Commons on 28 June 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House notes that the number of community sentences handed down fell by one quarter in the last three years; further notes that completed hours of unpaid work carried out by offenders has fallen by three quarters in the last three years; notes with concern that despite the end of lockdown restrictions in 2021, the number of offenders permitted to complete unpaid work from home has continued to rise; and calls on the Government to create community and victim payback boards to place communities and victims in control of the type of community projects that offenders complete to restore public faith in community payback.

    Today’s debate will show the public which party is serious about stopping crime and antisocial behaviour, and the reoffending that they breed. After 12 years of Conservative Governments, it is clear to the public that the Conservatives have no answers when it comes to tackling the kind of crime and antisocial behaviour that make voters’ lives a daily misery. The public now know that the Conservatives are soft on crime and cannot fix the problems that fuel it. By contrast, the Labour party still believes passionately in being tough on crime, while being tough on tackling its causes.

    That principle is still as important as it was when the last Labour Government took office, because the problems that the then incoming Labour Government had to contend with are the same problems that we see now. This dying Conservative Government have lost control of crime, just as they did in the 1990s. Despite the Prime Minister’s delusions, crime is up a fifth and rising, and police numbers are still thousands short of what they were before the Conservatives reduced the number, leaving the police less able to stop the antisocial behaviour that is blighting our communities. That might be news to Conservative Members, but the public do not need telling. They see it in their communities day in, day out—and they are sick of it. The graffiti, the vandalism and the drug dealing corrode communities and lead to more serious crime, which hurts those communities and victims even more, later down the line. Community payback has huge potential to stop that at source.

    Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)

    Does my hon. Friend agree that community payback schemes should provide fitting punishment as well as rehabilitation, so that they are meaningful for the offender and the community?

    Ellie Reeves

    My hon. Friend makes an important point. I visited a community payback scheme in my constituency a few weeks ago where offenders were carrying out maintenance on a children’s adventure playground. They all said that they felt that they were giving something back and being rehabilitated. The reality is that there are not enough of those schemes because the Government do not resource them properly.

    Done properly, community payback offers both just punishment and firm rehabilitation. Offenders understand that the unpaid work they do not only is visible retribution for what they have done to their communities and their victims, but offers them a chance to repay their debt to society. At the same time, if unpaid work is done well, it starts to fold offenders back into their community and gives them a sense of pride in putting back what they took away, which makes them less likely to offend again. What is more, communities see that the justice system is using its power to repair what has been broken, and victims see that, in the crimes committed against them, justice is starting to be done.

    Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)

    Of course, the beauty of community payback is that the communities that experienced the crime are the ones who see the crime redressed through the scheme. I am worried, though, that there is a trend in this country for the hours ordered by the courts not to be completed. For example, in my city region of Greater Manchester, there has been an 84% drop in the number of hours completed. That is not acceptable either for the perpetrator of the crime, who has a duty to pay back, or, more importantly, for my constituents and the communities who were affected by the crime.

    Ellie Reeves

    My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about hours not being completed and communities not seeing justice done. He talks about Greater Manchester, but that is a problem up and down the country. I will say more on that later.

    Community payback should act as an alternative to short prison sentences, which, under this Government, create only more hardened criminals. That is because our prisons have become colleges of crime: drug abuse in prisons has gone up by 500% in a decade, while the take-up of drug rehabilitation programmes is down by 12%; last year, assaults on prison staff went up by a fifth, but the recruitment of officers was still down on 2010; and inmates’ discipline is low, which means that taxpayer-funded compensation for prisoner-on-prisoner violence is high—it was £4 million in the last two years alone.

    Instead of properly punishing and rehabilitating offenders, getting them ready to re-enter society, and preparing them for the world of work, short sentences spit offenders out from prison more immersed in crime than when they went in. That is exactly where tough, effective community sentences and tough, effective unpaid work schemes that are accountable to communities and victims could make a difference—but they are not making a difference, because they have been set up to fail.

    The Lord Chancellor knows that community payback does not work because of the mistake that his party made in 2014 in rushing through a privatisation that the probation service did not need. Probation officers work incredibly hard and do an extremely important job, but they are being let down by this Government. The fragmentation that followed privatisation in 2014 dangerously reduced staffing, increased workloads and meant less supervision for offenders. The results have been dire: 4 million fewer hours of community payback were completed in 2021 than in 2017.

    The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)

    It was a pandemic!

    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)

    It was a pandemic!

    Ellie Reeves

    The huge fall started years before the pandemic in 2017, and it has continued since. No one had heard of covid in 2017, so it is disingenuous to suggest that it is all because of covid.

    Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)

    The Government Front Benchers are laughing and using the pandemic as an excuse, but does my hon. Friend not agree that during the pandemic, they should have been focusing on catching criminals, rather than giving them money?

    Ellie Reeves

    I thank my hon. Friend for that point. It is right that this fall started years before the pandemic.

    Some 25% fewer offenders finished community sentences in 2021 than did in 2017. Many community sentences were terminated because offenders went on to commit further offences, but others ended because the lack of supervision meant that they could choose not to turn up with impunity. By the end of November last year, more than 13,000 criminals had not completed their allotted hours of unpaid work within 12 months of being sentenced by a court, but the Government do not even know how many unpaid work hours have been written off because the resources were not in place for them to be completed within 12 months.

    The most embarrassing statistic is that there has been a threefold rise in “independent” unpaid work since the end of lockdown. In case Conservative Members are unclear about what that means, I will spell it out for them. While Ministers have been hounding civil servants back into the office, they have been letting thousands of offenders work from home. The Prime Minister wanted to see streets full of hi-vis chain gangs, but instead his Lord Chancellor decided to let criminals finish their sentences on Zoom. What next—flexitime for burglars? Season ticket loans for bank robbers? Yet again, the Conservatives are letting criminals off and letting victims down.

    Working from home defeats the whole object of community payback, which is supposed to be visible to communities and victims. That is part of the reason why trust in our criminal justice system is at rock bottom. The public cannot see police on the streets because the station has been shut and officers have been sacked.

    Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)

    I am glad the hon. Member has raised the issue of closing police stations. Does she agree with me on the subject, and will she join my calls for the Labour police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire to reopen the police stations on Maltby and Dinnington high streets, which were closed despite the police and crime commissioner underspending his budget by £2 million last year? Perhaps she should speak to her own party, and get the police stations reopened in Rother Valley.

    Ellie Reeves

    Since the Conservatives took office in 2010, there have been cuts to police, stations have been closed, there are fewer police on the streets and there is less confidence among the public that the party has the ideas to tackle crime in our communities.

    Victims cannot see judgments being handed down because their local courts have been sold off and cases are taking years to complete, and communities cannot see justice being done in their area because criminals are instead finishing their sentences on Microsoft Teams. What is more, these failings are killing judicial faith in the effectiveness of community sentences. Judges do not believe that sentences are being completed, so they are not handing them down. Instead, they are giving out more short custodial sentences in the Tories’ colleges of crime, and so the cycle of reoffending worsens.

    Kit Malthouse rose—

    Ellie Reeves

    Community payback can be fixed if the Government follow Labour’s plan. First, Ministers must end the chaos that they have created in the probation service by ruling out any further reductions in staffing.

    Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)

    The hon. Member mentions cuts to probation, which have led to a workload and staffing crisis in the probation service. It is no surprise that there is a direct relationship between that and the huge drop in community sentences in Wales; in 2019, there were nearly half as many community sentences as there were in 2010. Does she agree with me and Napo Cymru that devolving probation will be key to restoring restorative justice for perpetrators of crime and their victims in Wales?

    Ellie Reeves

    I thank the right hon. Member for the points she makes. She illustrates the fall in community sentences because of the issues with them, and the point that she raises about people being able to see justice being done in their community is so important. The role the probation service plays in that is incredibly important, but it cannot do its job properly if its resources have been cut to the bone. There will potentially be cuts of 20% to the civil service; we ask the Minister whether probation officers and prison officers will be affected by that as well, because we have not been able to get a straight answer on that. We want the Government to rule out further reductions in staffing, and we urge them to deliver Labour’s proposal to let communities and victims decide on the unpaid work that criminals do to repay their debts to society. Offenders picking up litter is not enough. They could be taking part in more transformative schemes locally, if there was more community and victim involvement in deciding what unpaid work they do. The Government have a national portal that allows communities to suggest schemes for offenders to work on, but it is little known and used even less.

    Labour has suggested adding community groups and victims’ representatives to community safety partnerships and safer neighbourhood teams to create community and victim payback boards. These boards would decide what unpaid work offenders completed, and would publish local data that assures communities that the work is getting done.

    Andrew Gwynne

    I am really interested in the concept of community and victim payback boards, because the important thing is that the voice of both the community and the victims be heard. Too often they are locked out of decisions made about community payback and community sentences. How does my hon. Friend envisage the voice of the victim, in particular, being part of the proposal that she is setting out?

    Ellie Reeves

    Victims would be at the heart of everything a Labour Government do, whereas the Government have time and again promised a victims Bill that still has not made it on to the statute book. Our party is on the side of victims; theirs lets victims down.

    Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)

    Is the hon. Member aware that the draft Victims Bill is currently undergoing prelegislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee at this very moment in a Committee Room upstairs?

    Ellie Reeves

    I am well aware of that. I am also aware that it was six years ago that the Government first proposed a victims Bill and we have been waiting for it ever since. Where is it?

    Hon. Members

    Upstairs! [Interruption.]

    Ellie Reeves

    Six years—I think that speaks volumes, does it not, about the priority the Conservatives place on victims.

    Being tough on crime and on the causes of crime remains as much a guiding mission of the Labour party in 2022 as it was in 1997. Our plans for tackling crime and antisocial behaviour today show that our party is still committed to those principles nearly a quarter of a century on. This Government have the chance to show voters that they care about crime in their communities by adopting Labour’s plans and making community and victim payback boards a reality. I urge them to take it.

  • Ellie Reeves – 2022 Speech on Rape Cases Without a Prosecution

    Ellie Reeves – 2022 Speech on Rape Cases Without a Prosecution

    The speech made by Ellie Reeves, the Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge, in the House of Commons on 28 June 2022.

    This feels like groundhog day. Yet again, we are debating this Government’s appalling record on tackling rape. As the latest scorecard shows, court delays are still at near-record highs, rape convictions are still at near-record lows, and countless prosecutions are not being taken forward. The Government promised to restore 2016 charging levels, but they are still way off target. When does the Minister think that they will meet that pledge?

    The Conservatives first commissioned the end-to-end review of record low rape prosecutions back in 2019. Two years after that, we got a report that recommended only piecemeal changes. One year later, little has changed and only a fraction of what was promised has been implemented. When does the Minister expect this to be delivered in full?

    The typical delay in the completion of cases in court has reached three years. The number of rape trials postponed with a day’s notice has risen fourfold, and 41% of rape survivors withdraw their cases before they even get to court. Labour pledged to roll out specialist rape courts across the country, but the Government have produced just three pilots. When will they extend this to every Crown court?

    Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 has finally been rolled out, but to just 26 courts. Why has it taken so long, and why only 26 courts, when 77 Crown courts already have the equipment and facilities to support this? Furthermore, the joint inspectorates’ report found that section 28 has not been used consistently by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service. Why is the necessary awareness and training not already in place?

    Labour has a plan to tackle rape because we are serious about ending violence against women and girls. That is why we published, more than a year ago, a survivors’ support package containing detailed measures to drive up prosecutions, secure more convictions, and put rapists where they belong: behind bars. This is a Government who are still tinkering around the edges, three years after recognising the shocking scale of their own failure. This is a Government with no serious plan to bring justice for victims of rape, and no serious plan to tackle violence against women and girls.

  • Victoria Atkins – 2022 Statement on Rape Cases Without a Prosecution

    Victoria Atkins – 2022 Statement on Rape Cases Without a Prosecution

    The statement made by Victoria Atkins, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, in the House of Commons on 28 June 2022.

    I thank my right hon. Friend for posing this important question. Last year, in the end-to-end rape review, the Government committed to more than doubling the number of adult rape cases reaching court by the end of this Parliament. We are under no illusions about the scale of the challenge, but we are starting to see early signs of progress. More victims are reporting cases to the police. The police are referring more cases to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the CPS is charging more cases. Rape convictions are increasing: there has been a 67% increase since 2020. Timeliness is improving; the time between a charge being brought and cases being completed continues to fall—it is down five weeks since the peak in June last year.

    That is encouraging, but it is just the start. That is why we have identified eight levers that are driving the change. First, we are increasing victim support. We have quadrupled the funding for victim support since Labour was in power—it will rise to £192 million by 2024-25—and we are increasing the number of independent sexual and domestic violence advisers to more than 1,000 by 2024-25.

    Secondly, we are rolling out pre-recorded cross-examination for rape victims to all Crown courts nationally. That will help to prevent more victims from being retraumatised by the experience of giving evidence in a live trial. Thirdly, suspect-focused investigations—this is known as Operation Soteria—are being rolled out nationally. That will be completed in the first half of next year, and it will mean that the police focus on the suspect’s behaviour, rather than on the victim’s credibility. Fourthly, we have reformed and clarified disclosure rules, and are working with the police to make sure that victims’ mobile phones are examined only where strictly necessary.

    Fifthly, we are reducing the stress of intrusive requests for third-party information—for example, medical or social services records—and are working with the police and the CPS on ensuring that they are gathered only when relevant. Sixthly, we are boosting capacity and capability by increasing the ranks of our police and the number of specialist rape and sexual offences roles in the CPS. Seventhly, our efforts to expand Crown court capacity will continue with a £477 million investment over the next three years to reduce victims’ waiting time for trials. Eighthly, our criminal justice system delivery data dashboard is increasing transparency and giving Government and local leaders the information that they need in order to do better for victims.

    We are going even further than the commitments that we made in the rape review, because we have listened to victims and those who work with them. We recently announced a pilot of enhanced specialist sexual violence support in three Crown court centres. This Government are on the side of victims. We want no rape victim to feel as though they are the one on trial. We want every rape victim to feel that they can come forward and seek support. We want to lock up the rapists who commit these abhorrent crimes. We want to protect the public. We will make our streets safer.

  • Dominic Raab – 2022 Statement on the Proposed Bill of Rights

    Dominic Raab – 2022 Statement on the Proposed Bill of Rights

    The statement made by Dominic Raab, the Secretary of State for Justice, in the House of Commons on 22 June 2022.

    Today the Government are delivering on our manifesto commitment to overhaul the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights, which I am introducing to Parliament today.

    This country has a long and proud tradition of freedom which our Bill of Rights will enhance, for example, in respect of free speech and recognition of the role of jury trial. Equally, over the years mission creep has resulted in human rights law being used for more and more purposes, with elastic interpretations that go way beyond anything that the architects of the convention had in mind and have not been subject to democratic, legislative oversight. Following the Government’s consultation on the Bill of Rights, our reforms will curtail the abuses of human rights, restore some common sense to our justice system, and ensure that our human rights framework meets the needs of the society it serves.

    I am grateful to the chair and panel of the Independent Human Rights Act Review for their valuable report, which has influenced and informed our thinking in preparing both our consultation and the final Bill.

    The measures in the Bill of Rights will:

    1. Strengthen the right to freedom of speech. We are attaching greater weight to freedom of speech, defined as the exchange of ideas, opinions, information and facts, as a matter of utmost public interest, and widen the responsibility for attaching this greater weight to all public authorities.

    2. Recognise the right to jury trial. The Bill recognises the right to trial by jury under, and subject to, the framework set by Parliament and the Scottish and Northern Ireland legislatures.

    3. Clarify the interpretation of certain rights. Human rights, especially Article 8, have been used to frustrate the deportation of criminals. The Bill provides clearer criteria for the UK courts in interpreting rights and balancing them with the interests of society in particular in the context of deportation of foreign national offenders. This will restore credibility to the system and ensure we can protect the public by deporting those who pose a serious threat.

    4. Reduce burdens on public authorities. We are stopping the imposition of positive obligations on our public services without proper democratic oversight. We will make clear that when public authorities are giving clear effect to primary legislation, they are not acting unlawfully. We will do this by restricting UK courts’ power to interpret legislation, as we propose to do for section 3 above. This will deliver greater certainty for public services to do the jobs entrusted to them, without the constant threat of having to defend against expensive human rights claims.

    5. Ensure that public protection is given due regard in interpretation of rights. The Bill contains a provision that obliges all those who interpret convention rights to consider the need to reduce the risk to the public from convicted criminals serving a custodial sentence. This will support the Government’s proposed reforms to the Parole Board and strengthen the Government’s hand in fighting Article 8 claims from terrorists opposing their placement in separation centres.

    6. Limit the Bill’s territorial jurisdiction. Domestic and Strasbourg case law has extended beyond the intent of the convention’s drafters. The Bill excludes extraterritorial jurisdiction for military operations abroad.

    7. Implement a permission stage to ensure trivial cases do not undermine public confidence in human rights. The introduction of a permission stage will ensure that courts focus on serious human rights claims and places responsibility on the claimant to demonstrate that they have suffered a significant disadvantage before a human rights claim can be heard in court.

    8. Recognise that responsibilities exist alongside rights. We are recognising that responsibilities exist alongside rights and ensuring that the appropriateness of paying damages to those who have infringed the rights of others are considered.

    9. Strengthen domestic institutions and the primacy of UK law. The Bill empowers UK courts to apply human rights in a UK context, affirming the Supreme Court’s independence from the Strasbourg Court. It will make explicit that the UK Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial arbiter.

    10. Increase democratic oversight. The Bill makes sure that the balance between our domestic institutions is right, by repealing section 3 to ensure that UK courts can no longer alter legislation contrary to its ordinary meaning and the overall purpose of the law.

    11. Enhance Parliament’s role in responding to adverse Strasbourg rulings. The Bill enhances the role of Parliament in responding to adverse Strasbourg judgments against the UK. The Bill also affirms Parliament’s supremacy in the making of laws.

    The issues addressed by the Bill of Rights affect the whole of the UK, and any changes must be made on a UK-wide basis. We will ensure that the framework applies equally, whilst also allowing for difference in how the framework is applied and implemented across the UK. During the consultation period I visited Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland to discuss our proposals and we will continue to engage with the devolved Administrations, civil society and relevant stakeholders across the UK.

    The Bill and all of its supporting documentation is available at: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3227 copies of which have been presented to Parliament.