I am very pleased to follow my fellow Select Committee Chairman, whose wise and thoughtful comments have, I think, raised the level of the debate to where the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) wanted it to be. I am not sure that the mental arithmetic of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is quite up to scratch, but I am sure that he can improve on it with a little practice.
The Bill contains many provisions, covering matters ranging from misconduct by jurors to automatic release, and I have no intention of commenting on all of them. However, I will make one passing comment on the issue of trial “on the papers”, which strikes me as a perfectly sensible way of dealing with summary offences of a minor character involving guilty pleas when the defendant was not going to be present anyway. It is important for the public record to be clear and immediately accessible, and I hope that we can find a way of ensuring that that happens. There should be no secret justice; it should be readily apparent what sentences have been handed out by the courts, and to whom.
I want to concentrate on three issues. The first is the issue of the simple police caution, along with the wider issue of out-of-court disposals of which it is part. The Government’s consultation on out-of-court disposals ended in January, and I should be interested to know when they will respond to it. I think that the magistrates were right to be concerned about the dangers of inconsistency around the country, and about the fact that people did not really know what was happening. However, I also think that there is real value in police officers’ ability to exercise discretion in many circumstances, and that out-of-court disposals, as a broad group, open up numerous possibilities, including possibilities for simple restorative justice.
Restorative justice exists in many forms. Obviously it exists in post-sentence form, but there are simple kinds of restorative justice which I have experienced in my constituency. In the past, a police sergeant would say to an offender “The best thing that you can do is go to the person whose property you have damaged, give that person money to pay for the damage that you have caused, apologise, and ask whether there is any way in which you can help to make good what you have done.” Such measures are worth developing as part of neighbourhood justice.
I do not want the necessary codifying of the system of cautions to be seen as in any way discouraging the use of alternatives to traditional court procedures. As
was suggested earlier, magistrates can be involved in the process. The Justice Committee visited Stockport recently, and observed that magistrates had been involved in a number of developments in the Greater Manchester probation area. When I asked why they were not hostile to those developments, the answer was that they had been involved from the start. I do not want us in any way to undermine the scope for out-of-traditional-court disposals in matters of this kind, because they may offer the best opportunity to enable young people, in particular, to move away from crime rather than becoming institutionalised into it.
The Union flag which flies outside my constituency office on the Queen’s birthday and other state occasions was once torn down by some people who then rather unwisely boasted about having done so, and were therefore quickly picked up by the police. The friendly sergeant instructed them to put together the money necessary to replace the flag and to write a letter of apology, which they all did. At least one of them was planning to go into the Army, and the sergeant pointed out that that person would not want to start off with a criminal record. It was a very sensible way of dealing with the matter.
The second issue that I want to raise is that of secure colleges. I do not think that there is any disagreement with the Government’s objective in that regard. A clear indicator of the likelihood of reoffending is a lack of basic education and skills. The evidence for that is overwhelming, and I think that the Government are right to focus attention—and, indeed, resources—on the provision of basic education for young people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system.