Tag: Ellie Reeves

The speech made by Ellie Reeves, the Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 30 November 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) for securing this incredibly important debate, for speaking so powerfully and for all the work she did as a Minister in the Ministry of Justice. This debate is particularly timely as we are six days into the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence—a time when people all over the world take action to try to stop violence against women and girls.

In many cases, domestic murderers get off too lightly after committing some of the most horrific crimes against women. As we have heard, there is clearly a gap in sentencing between those who murder at home and out on the street. That is why, in our May 2021 Green Paper, “Ending Violence Against Women and Girls”, Labour outlined that, in Government, we would commission a review into the effectiveness of the current legislation and sentencing policy. In June 2021, we also tabled an amendment in Committee during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, calling on the then Justice Secretary to commission a review, but the Tories voted it down.

Although I am pleased that the Government have finally commissioned a review, I am dismayed by how long it has taken to progress. It took until September 2021 for Clare Wade KC to be appointed to undertake the review of domestic homicide sentencing. The review was originally due for completion in December 2021, but the report was delivered to the Justice Secretary this June. Nearly six months on, we are still waiting for the review’s findings—in that time, we have been through three Justice Secretaries. I am concerned that the chaos, and the carousel of changing Ministers, has meant that even a matter as important as this has not been seen as significant enough to be acted upon. Once again, women and victims of domestic abuse are being let down.

We have heard that men who kill their partners often receive a lesser sentence than those who kill others, despite the fact that domestic homicide often occurs in the context of years of domestic abuse. For example, the law regards a murder where the knife is taken to the scene of the crime as premeditated. It therefore warrants a longer jail term, with a starting point of 25 years. That is a 10-year disparity with the starting point for a murder in the home where the weapon, such as a kitchen knife, is already present.

Domestic homicides are often fully premeditated, aided by the perpetrator having full knowledge of the property and where to find objects to assist their violence. Indeed, the femicide census findings published in November 2020 showed that over the previous decade 62% of female homicides were at the hands of an intimate partner, 72% of victims died in their homes, 59% of cases involved a history of coercive control or violence, and almost half the perpetrators were known to have a history of abuse against women.

The case of Poppy Devey Waterhouse, which the hon. Member for Redditch powerfully spoke about, highlights that. Poppy was just 24 when she was murdered in December 2018 by her ex-boyfriend. The couple had split in October 2018 but continued to live in the same flat in separate rooms. Three days before Poppy was due to move into a new property, her killer had been out drinking and was said to be intoxicated and fuelled by jealousy and rage. He returned to the flat and stabbed Poppy to death with a knife from their kitchen, inflicting over 100 injuries. Poppy’s killer received a sentence of just 16 years, but had he taken his weapon to the scene of crime, deemed an aggravating factor, he could have received a much longer sentence. As Poppy’s mother Julie Devey has outlined, the sentence ignores the fact that Poppy’s killer had no need to bring a weapon to the scene; he had knowledge that knives were in the flat and could be used in the attack.

Julie has campaigned on this issue, and believes that the sentencing guidelines are simply wrong. She says:

“The savagery and violence of the attacks seem to count for nothing in the eyes of the law and this is infuriating”.

The change that Julie wants is for domestic murder tariffs to reflect the severity of the crime, rather than the location of the killing. If that were the case, the fact that a knife was used would be the aggravating factor, rather than the act of bringing it to the scene. That seems a wholly just change, which I would hope to see covered in the sentencing review.

If the public are to have confidence in the criminal justice system, we need appropriate sentences to deter potential offenders and to deal just punishment for serious crimes. That is why we called for a review into sentencing for domestic homicide and domestic abuse over a year and a half ago. We cannot afford for our laws and their enforcement to send the signal that violence against women and girls will be tolerated; yet record low prosecution and conviction rates under this Government are sending that message. Labour would back specialist rape courts to drive up prosecution rates, set up a domestic violence register and introduce new minimum sentences for rape and stalking.

I am fearful that the delays with the domestic homicide sentencing review are part of an ingrained culture that tackling violence against women and girls is not a matter of urgency for the Government. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the review will be published as a matter of urgency, and the Government will end their inaction.

The speech made by Ellie Reeves, the Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge, in the House of Commons on 30 November 2022.

It was disappointing to have only five minutes’ advance notice of the statement today.

This is yet another crisis created by this shambolic Tory Government, and it is hard to think of a more damning indictment of their failure on law and order than the fact that they have now run out of cells in which to lock up criminals. That is hardly surprising when, under the Tories, 10,000 prison places have been lost. Not only that, but 663 police stations have closed. Who knows how long it will be until this contingency plan needs a contingency plan all of its own?

While we find ourselves with not enough cells, in response to a recent parliamentary question we discovered that over the past five years the Tories have spent more than £1 million on maintaining closed prisons—more evidence that we can no longer afford the cost of the Conservatives. Our prisons are already failing in so many areas—almost every inspectorate report tells us that. Just last week Exeter prison was given an urgent notification, with crumbling estates, dangerous staff shortages, prisoner on prisoner violence, and rehabilitation all but non-existent. Ultimately, the public pay the price and they are being kept less safe.

But that is just part of the story of this Government letting the public down, with burglars and rapists being left to roam our streets, criminals let off, and victims let down. Our communities are now less safe and secure, and people across the country are scared. Women are tired of walking down the street at night with keys between their hands. Pensioners are tired of their homes being broken into. Hard-working people are tired of being hit with fraud.

It did not have to come to this. This prisons crisis is a crisis made in Downing Street, and the result of 12 years of Tory failure. This has not happened because more criminals are being caught, because the opposite is true. Prosecution rates for crimes as serious as rape, burglary and robbery are at historic lows. The justice system stands on the brink of collapse, with 20,000 fewer police, 10,000 prison cells shut and 250 courts closed. Victims are told that there are no police when they dial 999, and then they wait years to get justice, if it comes at all.

This is a Tory Government who are soft on crime,. The Justice Secretary is too focused on fighting for his job, rather than fighting criminals. Once again, the Tories are too busy saving themselves rather than doing what is right for the country. Party first, country second; criminals first, victims second. Our country needs a Government who are serious about protecting victims of crime. A Labour Government will get more police on the streets and allow victims to get their say. A Labour Government will rebuild a justice system that does not see criminals run loose. It is time that the Conservatives moved aside and let the party of law and order take control—the Labour party.

Damian Hinds

The Government make no apologies for all we are doing to keep dangerous criminals off the street, and I make no apologies for the programme to recruit 20,000 more police officers, or for tougher sentences for the most serious crimes. It is good to report that reoffending rates are down, although of course there is further to go. It is good that prosecutions are up by 7% over the last year, and convictions up by 10%, but still, as ever, there is further to go. Our No.1 priority, as the public rightly expect, is to keep our country safe.

At no point in the past five years have fewer than 1,000 cells been available across the entire prison estate, so we have not run out of prison places. This statement does not reflect a failure to plan ahead. We have absolutely been planning ahead, and we have stuck to our expansion programme and brought forward capital works. There has been a highly unusual acute short-term surge, with increases of more than 700, and more than 800 in the last two months. This is the first time ever that we have seen that sort of increase for two consecutive months. We have a number of capacity increase options, but they are not available in that short a timeframe.

Using the established protocol with the police allows us to manage the surge while continuing to deliver that ambitious expansion. I say it is an established protocol, and the hon. Lady will recognise Operation Safeguard because it was used extensively by the previous Government before 2010. It was last used in October to December 2006, and again between January 2007 and October 2008. On this occasion we are enacting a temporary use of Operation Safeguard to manage short-term pressures, precisely to ensure that we do not run out of places. Meanwhile we are investing record amounts in prison maintenance to ensure that prisons remain safe and decent while complying with modern fire safety standards. We continue with our expansion by 20,000 places, which is the biggest growth since Victorian times.

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.

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.