Even by the Government’s standards, making 140 amendments in the other place, ranging from new offences and procedures to a plethora of corrections to drafting and operational errors, is remarkable. In the end, most of the matters are uncontentious or the Government have had notice of our objections in terms, so I can be succinct. We do not intend to press any of the Lords amendments in this group to the vote.
However, some issues require considerably more explanation and reassurance, not least the new role of the recall adjudicator. We welcome the fact that Ministers have recognised the additional burdens placed on the Parole Board. Labour has made that point repeatedly during the Bill’s passage. The Government’s impact assessment accepts that the Bill will create at least 1,100 extra Parole Board hearings at a time when its work load is rising and its staff numbers are falling. Nearly one in five staff has been cut since the last election, many of whom were vital supports to the 232 Parole Board members, who are paid per hearing. The staff left in place have to clear a substantial backlog of outstanding cases, while recent Supreme Court judgments have also impacted on its case load. With that in mind, we do not oppose the Government’s efforts to redress the burdens on the Parole Board in principle, but we need assurances on several points.
Introducing the provisions in the other place, the Minister accepted that
“the Bill is silent on the precise workings of the recall adjudicator”,
and that there is
“a great deal of further work to be done on the detail.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 November 2014; Vol. 757, c. 14-15.]
Yet Ministers seem determined to rush through the changes with many questions left unanswered.
The Bill currently does not make it clear who the recall adjudicator would be, what the nature and scope of their role would be limited to, how the appointment process would work, what the costs of the new system would be, or how adjudicators would co-operate with other criminal justice agencies to ensure a fair, robust and effective system of recall. It is not clear what experience, training or expertise would be required of recall adjudicators.
So far, the Government have gone only as far as saying that they intend the positions to be filled by people with “significant criminal justice experience”. The point is best summarised by their impact assessment:
“Recall adjudicators will need to be carefully selected and trained and provided with a clear process and guidance to mitigate the risk of their release decisions either being too risk averse, which would add to the pressure on prison places, or failing to take full account of relevant risk factors, which could lead to the release of prisoners who breach their licence conditions and/or re-offend. This would have adverse consequences on the system as well as incur reputational damage to the MOJ.”
Such “reputational damage” to the Ministry of Justice means a risk to the public that decisions are wrongly taken. Can the Minister give the House any further detail on that point? The Government confirmed in the other place that they had
“certainly not ruled out the possibility of using magistrates.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 November 2014; Vol. 757, c. 15.]
That has raised particular concerns, because magistrates have varying levels of experience and, as adjudicators, would be dealing with prisoners on sentences over and above their usual sentencing powers.
Furthermore, there has been no formal process of consultation on the adjudicator proposals, despite the significant changes that they would mean to the scope and function of the Parole Board. The Government committed themselves in the other place to present further reports to Parliament before this policy is taken any further. Will the Minister confirm what these reports will contain, when he expects them to be laid before Parliament and whether any further consultation will be carried out in the meantime?
The Government have failed to carry out an equality impact assessment on the introduction of adjudicators. Will the Minister explain why? This is perhaps the most crucial point. Until we know what proportion of those who are subject to recall have protected characteristics—I include in that young people, elderly people, people with a physical disability, those who suffer from a mental illness and those with other protected characteristics—and until we know whether those who will undertake the job are qualified to deal with those characteristics, we will not know whether the new system is fit for purpose.
Ministers have cited the Supreme Court judgment in the case of Whiston to show that the creation of a recall adjudicator will not be incompatible with human rights obligations. However, Justice has suggested that
“the case does not provide a full proof justification for the new position, as compared with the independent and suitably qualified Parole Board.”
Can the Minister offer the House any specific assurances on that point?
Finally on this matter, what assurance can the Minister give that the new system will be as robust as the current process? Risk assessing whether prisoners can be released back into the community is a complex judgment and the Parole Board has more than 40 years’ experience in it. Reducing administrative burdens is all well and good, but the cost of it must not be to cut corners and jeopardise public safety.
I welcome the Lords amendments that clarify the sentencing for driving and knife offences, as well as the new offences of police corruption and ill treatment or wilful neglect by care providers. The last of those was recommended by the Francis report. Although the Opposition are disappointed that the Government are not implementing Robert Francis’s recommendations in full, we are pleased that they are implementing his recommendations in this instance.
Those changes highlight the fact that this is a rather different Bill from the one that was first presented to the House earlier this year. The Government’s initial impact assessment confirmed that the measures in the Bill would create nearly 1,000 additional prison places. Since then, the Government have added several new offences to the Bill, many of them tabled just days before a
debate in Parliament, with no specific impact assessment, and rushed through with limited opportunity for proper scrutiny. That is not a proper way to legislate. At the same time, our prisons have lurched further into crisis, with overcrowding and violence spiralling. Now that the Bill is back in the Commons, will the Minister give us the updated number of prison places it will require and where they will be provided?
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on her proposals that became Lords amendments 73 and 143, which tackle child exploitation. She has championed those changes since the Bill’s Committee stage in the Commons. It is testimony to the campaign that she has run and to the parliamentary inquiry she led alongside Barnardo’s that the Government have accepted her amendments and included them in the Bill. I also welcome Lords amendments 70 and 71, which relate to the creation of a new offence to tackle the increasing problem of so-called revenge porn.
The Lords amendments that relate to personal injury and fundamental dishonesty are very flawed. They will require a court to dismiss in its entirety any personal injury claim when it is satisfied that the claimant has been fundamentally dishonest, unless it would cause substantial injustice to the claimant so to do. Last Wednesday, I spoke at the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers’ autumn conference, where I heard the concern that, once again, the Government are stacking the deck in favour of defendant insurers. On these proposals, APIL commented that
“there is no provision in this clause for the defence to be dismissed. The rule of law demands a level playing field”.
It stated that the clause
“tilts that playing field firmly in favour of defendants and their insurers who pay compensation to injured people.”
It might be more appropriate to have a criminal standard of proof when questions of fundamental dishonesty are at issue.
There are minor changes on the new sentencing scheme for serious offences and to allow the President of the Supreme Court to report to Parliament on matters that concern that Court and its jurisdictions—those, we approve. There is also a large number of technical amendments. As I said, those are uncontentious.
The Bill has been going through the two Houses for almost a year and there are some things that we welcome either for technical or policy reasons, but there are a number of issues, which we debated earlier this evening, on which we are fundamentally at odds with the Government, principally in relation to secure colleges and judicial review. Any impartial observer would say that whatever the merits or demerits of the Bill, the way it has been presented has been somewhat chaotic. It is not good practice to begin with a moderately sized Bill and have to pack it with additional amendments throughout Committee, Report and Third Reading in both Houses, and on that basis it is perhaps not surprising that the other place has found so much to criticise.
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