I am not sure I agree. To be perfectly frank, I get rather tired of people passing legislation on Fridays just to send a signal. We could send a signal just by saying something, but we are in the business here of passing law. It would be a rather wasted opportunity if all we achieve today is sending a signal from this House that assaulting police officers and other emergency workers is a terrible thing. I do not want us just to send a signal; I want to see people who are guilty of these offences spend longer in prison. That is what I want to see: not a signal but a real, tangible difference. I am not sure that sending a signal will do the job. We will have achieved something when some of these terrible people end up with longer prison sentences, and that is what my amendments are designed to do.
In the case of the woman who caused a police officer to lose her finger, the maximum sentence on a guilty plea, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham intimated, is actually four months, even given the number of offences of assaulting other police officers. Of course, a maximum of only half the sentence would be served. So, actually, two months in prison is the maximum that person could face for assaulting numerous police officers, leading one of them to lose their finger. In this country we should be ashamed that that is the maximum sentence a court can impose on that person. In my opinion, and for many people in this country, that is a sick joke.
Again, as my hon. Friend said, two years is probably too little, but two years is certainly better than six months. Should the Crown Prosecution Service do what
it does day in, day out and undercharge people, surely we must all agree that giving the courts the opportunity to sentence a person to two years in prison is better than the current situation. The purpose of my new clauses is to make sure we can guarantee that, by whichever route a person ends up in court for this offence, a more appropriate sentence can be handed out.
Another more recent example of why the amendments could be helpful is the case of Leroy Parry, who was convicted this week of biting a police officer. He was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison, despite having six previous convictions for assaulting police officers among his 42 previous offences. The police officer, who apparently needed blood tests and antibiotics after being bitten, said that the level of violence exhibited by Parry was the worst he had seen in more than 14 years in the police force.
Increasing the sentencing options for this offence would ensure that magistrates and judges can take the offence more seriously, and much bigger sentences could then quite rightly be handed down by the courts. We would no longer be tying the hands of magistrates and judges, who I am sure also feel frustrated when they cannot pass the sentence they would want to pass. It would mean the seriousness of Parliament to ensure higher sentences for those who assault the police would be recognised, and hopefully sentences, overall, would be higher as a consequence.
This is necessary because the figures are incredible. I asked several years ago how many previous convictions for assaulting a police officer someone had managed to rack up without being sent to prison for doing it again, and the answer showed that, in one year, a person with 36 previous convictions for assaulting a police officer had assaulted at least one more officer and still avoided being sent to prison altogether. By anyone’s standards, surely that is completely unbelievable and completely unacceptable. That is what we should aim to tackle with this Bill.
Such sentences do nothing to help the police, do nothing to deter criminals and do nothing to make our streets safer. If one of my amendments were to be accepted, it would at least assist in increasing the likely consequences of assaulting a police officer, which would hopefully deter some people or, at the very least, keep the culprits off our streets for longer.
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Amendment 9 would increase the sentence available to Crown courts for the new offence from 12 months to 24 months to ensure they have greater sentencing powers than the magistrates courts. A magistrates court could then refer a particularly serious offence up to a Crown court for it to be taken more seriously.
Amendment 9 would therefore do two things: it would increase the maximum sentence for an offence against an emergency worker to two years; and it would create a clear differential between the sentence available to a magistrates court and the sentence available to a Crown court. As I have said, assaulting a police officer, a prison officer or someone working in the NHS—these people are protecting and saving the public—should be treated very seriously. Having the power to give an additional year’s sentence would reflect that seriousness.
We are apparently going to have higher sentences for assaulting animals, maybe up to five years’ imprisonment, and I am all for that. I am completely in favour of that
legislation—people who are cruel to animals are beneath contempt—but surely assaulting a police officer should come with a much more serious consequence, too. Surely we cannot say that assaulting a police officer is not serious. I am all for increasing sentences for all these things, and amendment 9 is necessary even if it only increases the sentence to two years.
In addition, the six-month sentence that will be available to magistrates for this new offence as things stand—of course, the maximum sentence magistrates can impose is six months until the Government pull their finger out and change it—is clearly only three months, because that is the maximum time a person can serve for a six-month sentence, even if they plead not guilty. It would be one thing if a six-month sentence were actually a six-month sentence but, because of our perverse system, a 12-month sentence is actually a six-month sentence.
If we had some honesty in sentencing, we might even be in agreement, because a 24-month sentence is really only a 12-month sentence, which is what the Bill currently allows a Crown court to pass. If we think people should serve 12 months in prison for this offence, they need to be sentenced to 24 months in prison because of our ludicrous system in which people are released halfway through their sentence, irrespective of how badly they behave in prison and irrespective of whether they are still a danger to the public. When we say we are passing a Bill to allow for a 12-month sentence, I am pretty sure any layman—most people—would think and hope that that means people will actually serve 12 months in prison.
My second reason for tabling amendment 9 is that a Crown court normally has higher sentencing powers than a magistrates court, otherwise what would be the point of sending a case to the Crown court for sentencing? Is any hon. Member aware of another offence that, on the face of it, carries the same penalty in both courts? With the array of expertise in the Chamber today, I am sure someone will be.