Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I am going to speak against much of this Bill, but probably not as vehemently as the previous speaker. The Bill serves two purposes: it attempts to advance and also to set back our legal system. I am reminded of the section in Lewis Carroll's ““Through the Looking Glass”” in which the heroine, Alice, takes one step forward only to find herself taking two paces back. Some of the proposed sentencing reforms in part 3 of the Bill will tidy up the current sentencing framework by correcting some anomalies to do with release on licence, yet the concurrent cuts to legal aid we are being asked to push forward would hijack any claim our legal system has to being just. In my contribution, I will briefly set out my thoughts on both aspects of the Bill. Although I have mentioned Lewis Carroll, I hope it will not seem too topsy-turvy for me to start by considering the end of the Bill. As I have mentioned, part 3 introduces some positive reforms, and I am particularly interested in clauses 93 to 96. In February, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill with the aim of correcting various anomalies in sentencing, and I am pleased that some of them have been included in the Bill. My Bill's aim was to ensure that prisoners serving determinate sentences of four years or more, as well as those on indeterminate sentences for public protection, are released back into the community only when a parole board has determined that they are of low risk to the public. Harry Fletcher of the National Association of Probation Officers assisted me in making those arguments. Incidentally, my Bill also argued for the ability to have regard to mental health problems when sentencing convicted persons. I am pleased that clause 62 goes some way towards realising that. Under section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, when a fixed-term prisoner has served the requisite custodial period, the Secretary of State should release them on licence. Since 2005, however, those serving four years or more have come out after serving only 50% of their sentences, regardless of what progress they make in prison. My Bill proposed to add a subsection that would have ensured that before the release of a person sentenced to four years or more in prison, the Parole Board must be satisfied that the individual is at low risk of harm to the public and of reoffending. Clause 94 goes one step forward in that regard, in that those released will not automatically be eligible for home detention curfew. My Bill also suggested a reform of the indeterminate public protection sentence. I understand from the Lord Chancellor that there is to be a review of that. That is welcome, but the devil will be in the detail. The review is long overdue, and something must be done. As the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) has said, one of the main problems is that there are no courses for those people. That is the backlog—where the wall is. I am glad that those sentences will be looked at. I continue to press the argument that participation in offender management programmes should be taken into account when deciding whether to release a prisoner on early release. All things considered, I am glad about that provision. I come now the disappointing aspects of the Bill. As I have indicated, any attempt by the Ministry of Justice to suggest that the reforms in the Bill aim to make the criminal justice system fairer are undermined at the outset by the provisions in part 1, which will result in cuts of roughly £450 million a year to the legal aid budget. The consultation document boasts that legal aid will be retained in cases in which people's life or liberty is at stake, in which they face the threat of serious harm or immediate loss of their home, or in which their children will be taken into care. It is almost as if we are meant to applaud that magnanimous decision, but the self-same document proposes to slash legal aid for almost all private family law, clinical negligence, employment and immigration cases, and all but the most severe debt, housing and welfare benefits cases.