Home Affairs and Justice

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent contribution. As he says, the trade unions were helping a great deal in that respect. May I touch on the coroners and justice Bill, which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has just discussed in great detail? I want to discuss an idea that I have had. I visited Canada with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association about 18 months ago. We met the chief of police for Toronto, who has a great belief in restorative justice, and I believe that, with our prisons bursting, perhaps we ought to consider that idea. I know that there are existing systems of restorative justice in this country, but I wonder whether we could extend them, because of what we heard from the Toronto police chief. He is very keen on the idea. Restorative justice does not come cheap—it is expensive—but he said that reoffending rates for those who had gone through the restorative justice system were down to 30 or 35 per cent., which is wonderful. That example can be compared with the reoffending rates for those who go to prison, which I think are at about 80 per cent., although I stand to be corrected. The policing and crime Bill will protect particularly vulnerable members of our society, including women and children. We must start to look at the provision of madrassahs. Anyone can teach in a madrassah without a criminal records check. I have a personal interest, because about a year ago I was invited to join a trust attached to Keighley Cougars rugby league club. The trust provides out-of-school sporting activities, particularly in rugby league, for children, including girls. It makes money and then spends it on the children. I was invited to be a member of that trust, and because it deals with the provision of facilities for children, I had to have a criminal records vetting—and I had to pay for it—even though I never see those children. The Criminal Records Bureau did a check on me and found that I was perfectly all right, but I had to pay for that. I never come across those children, yet when it comes to the madrassahs in Keighley—some are perfectly satisfactory, some are less so—the people who work in them, who have day-on-day contact with children, because madrassahs usually run six days a week, do not have to undergo a CRB check. We will have to look into that. The madrassahs are growing in number and influence and we must be careful. At the moment, we, as a Government, are discriminating against Muslim children. They do not have the same level of protection as children who go to Brownies, Cubs or Sunday school—in those cases, the people who look after the children must have CRB checks. Finally, may I just mention the Political Parties and Elections Bill? I am rather concerned because canvassing by local authorities to put people on to electoral registers seems to be really patchy. In some areas, canvassers go knocking door-to-door, people are asked to fill in the form and they are put on the register. Then there are the other areas, such as Bradford. I have never come across a canvasser for the electoral register in the Bradford area. The most basic aspect of our democracy is to get people on to the register. Perhaps the Government ought to encourage local authorities to spend a bit more money on employing canvassers at this time of year, when we are compiling new registers, to ensure that everyone is registered. The recently introduced system of making postal votes available to everyone is not doing much service for many women in my constituency. Postal votes are obtained for the household and—certainly in my local Pakistani community—Dad fills in the form without reference to his daughters. I have had complaints from such women that they are being excluded from voting because of that system. They have asked me to make the point that the provision of postal votes has become too widespread, and is discriminating against them. We should consider individual registration, which may address many of those problems. I am sorry that this has been a speech of bits and bobs, but as I said, I had not intended to speak in this debate.