Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill

Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2011.

Clause 53 - Court’s duty to consider compensation order

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 296, in clause 53, page 38, line 34, at end insert—

‘(2AA) A court must consider making an order to participate in a restorative justice course in any case where this section empowers it to do so.

(2AB) Where a court makes an order under (2AA) it shall consider the views of the victim of the crime in determining what form the order will take.’.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, on such a beautiful sunny morning. It is appropriate that clause 53 is the first clause under part 3 of the Bill. It relates to the needs of victims, and I am sure that all members of the Committee are worried about how victims are treated under the criminal justice system and wish to improve that treatment.

The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that restorative justice is considered in each case. Restorative justice is much spoken about across all parties, but I fear not so much acted upon. Unfortunately, the Green Paper “Breaking the Cycle” hardly mentions victims. Considering where the criminal justice system is now, it is unrealistic for us to jump to what we might call “victim-centred justice”, and the purpose of the amendment is to take steps to redress the balance, which is what the amendments on restorative justice and the compensation fund are designed to do.

There are three models for restorative justice. The first is when the offender and the victim meet. The offenders make reparation and offer an apology to the victims of their crime. The second model is when offenders meet victims of similar crimes, not their own crime, to make reparation to someone who was put in similar circumstances. The third is when offenders undertake a course to enable them to see things from the point of view of victims by learning to empathise with other people. When they can do that, they are in a much better position to deal with their own behaviour.

The Prison Fellowship, a voluntary sector organisation, has been running courses on the third model for several years. I attended one such course in Wormwood Scrubs in the spring, and could see how effective it was. Unfortunately, the event—

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I am following what my hon. Friend is saying with interest, but the next time she attends a meeting in Wormwood Scrubs perhaps she would first notify the hon. Member who represents that constituency of her intentions.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am chastened by my hon. Friend.

Unfortunately, the course that I attended was the last occasion when such a meeting was being held in a London prison, because the public spending cuts imposed by the Government mean that prisons are cutting back on anything that they regard as non-essential.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I am familiar with the work of the Prison Fellowship in Styal prison, in my case. I was struck not only by the worries that funding might be lost in the future for what is an admirable project by workers in the Prison Fellowship, but by the view expressed strongly by the women undergoing the programme that it was worth while and they would be concerned if funding were not available in future.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We have an example of the Government saying one thing and doing another.

The Sycamore Tree course, which both my hon. Friend and I are aware of, enables a group of 20 offenders to think about the impact of their crime on their victims. They meet a surrogate victim, and at the end of the six-week course make a contract of restoration. It is the most widely used restorative justice course in prisons in England and Wales, but at the moment it has reached only about 2,000 offenders a year. Its effectiveness is currently being evidenced by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge university, but the evidence report for the Bill from the Ministry of Justice found that restorative justice reduced the frequency of reoffending by about 14%. That is the Minister’s own figure, and he knows that the course is a good way forward. The most substantial reductions are for repeat offending, serious crimes and crimes involving personal victims. The Ministry’s research also demonstrated that restorative justice saves £9 for every £1 spent, through reductions in reoffending. That calculation was done using a cost-benefit analysis and the Home Office’s standard model for the full cost of crime.

It is evident that this is one of the areas of the criminal justice system where we will achieve long-term savings if we make a bit of short-term investment. That is one of themes running through what will, I hope, be short debates on this part of the Bill. All the time, Ministers are saving money in the short term, but I am concerned we will end up with higher rates of offending in the long term, with higher costs to the criminal justice system and the community.

In our evidence sessions, restorative justice was supported by the Magistrates Association, by Victim Support and, with some caveats, by the victims commissioner. The Minister will also be aware of the positive experience of restorative justice in Northern Ireland.

Although experiences of restorative justice are positive, we need to be sensitive to the views of individual victims. Not every victim wants to get involved in a personal restorative justice experience with the person who offended against them. I held a seminar about the Bill in Durham at which Support after Murder and Manslaughter gave me its views. It strongly felt that restorative justice could make things worse if it was badly handled. I therefore inserted the second proposed new subsection so that the court must take account of the individual victim’s views when deciding whether to go ahead with restorative justice and what kind of restorative justice approach to take.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

The hon. Lady is right when she notes that all members of the Committee should, as I am sure they do, share enthusiasm for restorative justice, given the evidence we have seen in all our constituencies, including mine. I do not wish to strike a discordant note, but I can foresee one problem. If the court is required to start considering the victim’s views before sentence is passed, the problem is that the sentence might be delayed. A better approach might be to pass sentence, make a restorative justice programme part of any alternative to custody and allow the victim to be consulted at that point. We should involve them at that stage of the decision-making process, rather than cause a delay between conviction and sentence, which is what the amendment could do.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am not sure whether what the hon. Gentleman suggests is right. In serious crimes, victims have the opportunity to make a victim witness statement, and as the hon. Gentleman will see from what I say later about the evidence from the victims commissioner, there might be an opportunity to do so earlier in the trial.

I am not suggesting that restorative justice approaches should be confined to community sentences. The experience that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston and I are describing and the work that the Prison Fellowship does show that restorative justice can also work for people with custodial sentences.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

My hon. Friend will be interested to know that in Styal prison I met a woman who had been convicted of murder. Restorative justice was deemed appropriate even for cases as serious as that.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend anticipates my point. Usually, people think of restorative justice as something that is appropriate to lower-level crimes, such as breaking into a car or bashing down a fence. However, it has, as my hon. Friend says, also been used for serious crimes. Personally, I cannot imagine that if I or a member of my family had been subject to a violent crime, I would be particularly enthusiastic about taking part in a restorative justice scheme. However, some people are capable of great forgiveness; they are capable of doing that. Obviously, that is admirable, but because these are very sensitive issues, the important thing is to take account of the victim’s views.

My only experience of restorative justice was with a constituent who was obviously an extremely troubled person. He went into the benefits office and threatened the staff with a knife. He went into the council office and threatened the people who administered housing benefit. He poured petrol over himself and threatened to set himself alight. The following week, he came to my surgery, and hon. Members will understand that I was slightly alarmed because he started to threaten me. Obviously, I called the police. He was sentenced and must have gone through an RJ process, because about nine months later I received a very nice letter from him in which he apologised and explained to me that what was driving his offending behaviour was the fact that he drank too much. He now understood that and was tackling it.

I did not exactly feel that the way the man had behaved towards me and towards other people previously was okay, but it was quite reassuring to receive the letter, because I then knew that he was a much less risky person than he had been previously. I offer that as a small example of how the victim can benefit from restorative justice, in addition to the improvements that we hope it will bring about in offending behaviour patterns. With those few remarks, I urge the Minister to accept the amendment.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

I want briefly to support the hon. Lady’s amendment, which is entirely sensible. Restorative justice is not an airy-fairy thing at all. It works in many instances. I remember—this is a true story—a young boy who had committed an arson offence in the constituency that I represent. I was defending the young man. The owner of the property met him and was appalled at what he had done, but they developed a relationship whereby the owner gave him an excellent character reference. The young man went on to take a first-class honours degree at the university college in Aberystwyth. He is now one of the best young poets in Wales. I shudder to think what would have happened to that young man had he gone to prison. Would he have gone completely the other way? Would society have faced another huge bill because another young man had lost his way in life completely? That is one example with which I am familiar.

Not so long ago, the all-party group on policing was told by a person who had suffered a disturbing burglary at his premises and the burglar himself what had happened; they were sitting together presenting their case to us. The burglary took place in central London during the day, which was pretty serious, but it also included violence, with the old man being pushed to the floor as the burglar was making his way to stealing whatever he was after. The elderly gentleman suffered a cut to his forehead and hurt his arm, and the burglar left with his ill-gotten gains.

The burglar was a career burglar; for more than 12 years all he did was burgle and steal, and one would have thought that he was totally beyond the pale and incorrigible. However, when it came to sentencing it was considered appropriate to see whether restorative justice would work. Although he served a sentence for the burglary and the violence that it involved, it was a lesser sentence because the victim was prepared to go through a scheme of restorative justice. The index offence occurred eight years ago, and the burglar has not committed an offence since. Indeed, he has become friendly with the other man, they contact each other from time to time, and he helps out with one thing and another.

The point surely is this: diverting a career burglar by means of restorative justice can work. I hasten to say that it will not work in every case. In some cases, the victim will plainly never want to confront the offender, but in many instances—as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland says, they are not only minor offences but serious offences of the sort to which I have referred—it can and does work. At the end of the day, society wins if we are able to divert career criminals from serious offences, because it costs a lot of money not only to keep those people locked up but in insurance premiums, compensation and so on. It is huge amount of money. That is one example, but there are many others. That case struck me as astonishing, but I have been told by friends in the probation service that it is not unusual for that path to be taken with such offences, and that it works.

I urge the Government to accept the amendment. I say yet again that it will save money. I fear that we are all labouring to save money. Crucially, however, it will save a lot by not having to lock up people who are prepared to follow the path of restorative justice. It is not a panacea for all ills, but I firmly believe that in many cases it can and does work. I therefore fully support the amendment.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Good morning, Mr Sheridan. I am sure that all hon. Members will support the spirit of the amendment. It is generally recognised that restorative justice can make an important contribution to achieving sentencing objectives and reducing further offending. It is an evolving area of law. It is not new, but it is developing and I believe that we should do all that we can to encourage it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd said, it has been shown to be effective in a significant number of cases. My hon. Friend mentioned that it was in early use in Northern Ireland. The Prison Reform Trust examined the practice of restorative justice and produced a report that shows what a positive impact it can have on offenders and victims.

When I visited Styal, I was struck by the impact the programme there was having on women. I am not predicting that none of those women will ever reoffend or that their lives will be easy when they are released, because women in prison typically come from very disadvantaged situations in the first place, and one restorative justice programme will not deal with all the issues we face. However, a couple of things struck me as a result of my visit.

First, my hon. Friend rightly alluded to the fact that victims might be reluctant to meet the perpetrator of the crime against them, but that was not the case at Styal. A woman who had been the victim of a crime—her son had been murdered, and I have huge admiration for a woman who has lost her son in that way and is willing to participate in such a programme—came in to run a session with all the women in Styal. She was not their victim, and she was certainly not a typical victim—she was an extremely remarkable victim—but she was an impressive representation of victimhood. It is not essential and necessary, therefore, that the specific victim of the crime should meet the specific perpetrator, if that is likely to cause them great distress; we can still design restorative justice solutions that work well.

Secondly, there may be a concern, perhaps not in this Committee, where Members are informed and understand the issues, but among members of the public more generally, that such restorative justice is a soft option. As everyone here knows, it is not a soft option, but even if that is a concern, the fact that restorative justice can be combined with a custodial sentence, for example, makes it clear that the punitive element of sentencing need not be removed when we include a restorative element.

I have one final thing to say. In the recall debate at the time of the riots, the hon. Member for South Swindon suggested that restorative justice might, in such circumstances, have a particularly appropriate place, and I was struck by that insightful suggestion. Restorative justice enables us to make a better connection between the crime and the penalty that the perpetrator pays. As I said, this is an evolving area of sentencing, and we can think imaginatively about the sorts of restoration that could be included as part of a restorative justice order. It need not be just a meeting and a talk with the victim; it could involve putting things right physically.

I welcome the amendment, which will be welcomed on both sides of the Committee, at least in spirit. I very much support my hon. Friend in moving it.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for referring to remarks I made in the recall debate. She makes an important point about restorative justice being wider than the defendant and the victim just having a meeting or, indeed, meetings—it can take several meetings to reach a resolution—but being about the need to include actual physical reparation to the community that has been damaged or destroyed.

To my mind, restorative justice takes three forms. First, it can be employed as a direct alternative to prosecution. That is not strictly in the Committee’s remit, but we must remember it, and as we speak it is certainly taking shape in local police areas, including mine. That is a welcome innovation. Secondly, there is restorative justice in the community. That could be part of a programme requirement under a community order, and it could be at the discretion of the probation service to organise that. Thirdly, as Opposition Members have helpfully reminded me, there is restorative justice in a prison environment. Those are the three areas where restorative justice is relevant.

My concern is that the amendment, although well intentioned, prescribes something that, at this stage, is still better left to the discretion of probation officers when they determine the form and content of a programme requirement or a specific requirement under a community order. Similarly, in a prison environment, such things should be left to the discretion of probation officers, who will have daily or weekly contact with prisoners. They will see and know how prisoners develop and will know whether a restorative justice procedure would be best.

Alex Cunningham (Labour, Stockton North)

The hon. Gentleman has referred several times to probation officers. Across the country, we are seeing a tremendous reduction in the number of probation officers. Would it not be better to have something specific in the Bill that directs a court rather than adding to the work load of probation officers, of whom we have far fewer these days?

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

The problem with the point that the hon. Gentleman properly makes is that we will be placing more burden at sentence stage on the authors of pre-sentence reports. That is a problem because it is probation officers who write them. It would be far better to allow probation officers, who are working with the offender after sentence, to assess the offender, particularly if they are a young offender, to see whether they are in the right place to take part in a restorative justice session.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland is absolutely right when she says that the system has to be victim-led, but the offender has to be in the right frame of mind too. It would be regrettable if restorative justice measures were implemented at perhaps a premature stage in either a community sentence or a prison sentence. We all know that most prisoners or defendants on community orders will change their attitudes over time, but I am afraid that some do not. Young offenders often display a change in attitude and in maturity over the course of quite a short community order or prison sentence. That has to be borne in mind when we look at the merits of these well-intentioned amendments.

The amendments give parliamentarians a welcome opportunity to raise issues of restorative justice in the House. It is vital that we keep on doing that. As hon. Members have said, in this debate we allow the Minister to focus his mind and the mind of the Government on practical ways in which restorative justice can be expanded and enhanced.

The Swindon youth offending team have told me many encouraging stories about how young offenders have been brought face to face not only with the victims but with the consequences of their offending. In conclusion, I reiterate the point to which the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston alluded; this is not just some soft option but part of the punishment. By bringing young offenders face to face with the consequences of their actions, we are teaching them a proper hard lesson, which may be something that they have never learned before. Let us not leave this debate thinking that this is a soft option. It is part of the punishment.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I agree with what the hon. Member for South Swindon said about restorative justice being an alternative to prosecution, and that is particularly true for young offenders as it will, where appropriate, keep them out of the criminal justice system. What this debate has shown is that we are underusing restorative justice because it covers a wide range of things. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd mentioned its use in quite serious offences, which is an area that is not so commonly explored. If we think about it in an international context and look at truth and reconciliation commissions in countries around the world, we see that forms of restorative justice have been used for the most serious offences over many years. Therefore, we need to take it more seriously, which is why I support my hon. Friend’s amendments.

We have a new Minister answering in this debate. I hope that he will be less trenchant in refusing all amendments. Perhaps the shadow Minister will be more persuasive than we have been used to over the past few days. I urge the Government to support the amendment because we need to be much clearer about the role of restorative justice. That may involve more resources, which could be the reason why the Minister wants to resist it.

I hope to go to Northern Ireland to see the scheme there. The Minister, I think, has already seen it. Successful schemes involve an investment of time, money and resources. We discussed mediation not being an achievable alternative to litigation, and restorative justice is not a cheap alternative to other forms of sentencing and punishment. Will the Minister tell us what expanded role the Government see for restorative justice, what resources they will provide, and whether it forms part of the proposals for payment by results?

The Minister may have the figures to hand, but I understand that only a small percentage of victims attend restorative justice sessions. That must be a matter of choice for victims, but I suspect that, unlike the Northern Ireland scheme, which has a much higher attendance rate, not enough is done to prepare the ground or to make the circumstances comfortable for the victim. Although that is not the be-all and end-all, it is clearly an important part of the restorative justice programme. We cannot have it on the cheap as a casual alternative to other sentencing methods. Will the Minister explain what the Government intend to do to ensure better facilities and a better environment for victims taking part in a restorative justice programme?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

It is a pleasure to open the batting for the Government on the sentencing part of the Bill. The hon. Member for Hammersmith has spent the last four days in Committee unsuccessfully trying to persuade us of the merits of his arguments. I must tell the Member for Bishop Auckland that all was going well until he decided to come to her assistance. Should she wish to visit Her Majesty’s prisons Downview and High Down in my constituency, she is more than welcome at any time to see the work that is being done there.

I am delighted to reply to this debate, because it is clear that all parties represented in the Committee are in the same place on the desirability of a significant widening of restorative justice in the criminal justice system. My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington is not in his place, but he and I have had several conversations about that, and he has intervened many times on the Floor of the House in support of restorative justice. Every party and every member of the Committee are in the same place, and the Government are sympathetic to the ambition behind the amendment.

One of my personal objectives as Minister was to identify three priorities for real focus and leadership from me. One is to deliver work in prisons; the second is payment by results, and the third is restorative justice. Those are relatively new, and have the capacity to make substantial changes in how we deliver our criminal justice system. Drive and focus will be required to deliver them and to bring them to scale. I want restorative justice to be brought to scale, and the assistance and support from the country’s political leadership representing all the parties here will be immensely helpful in that objective.

Karl Turner (Labour, Kingston upon Hull East)

The Minister is well and truly on top of his brief, so I am sure he knows that the Prison Reform Trust published research today showing that 95% of the public support restorative justice.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am delighted that we are in the same place as 95% of the public. That is an unusual position for me, but I am happy to enjoy that level of support. The great thing is that the desirability of widening restorative justice has been widely accepted by hon. Members who take a keen interest in the matter, and the argument is being won throughout the criminal justice system. As more and more people become aware of it, it is being deployed more and more.

The Government are formally committed to increasing the use and availability of restorative justice right across the criminal justice system. It is an important tool to help repair the damage caused by crime: it offers victims an opportunity to explain the impact that a crime has had on them and it helps ensure that offenders face up to the consequences of their crime. We are taking several steps, such as improving its use in community resolution so as better to tackle low-level crime, including through neighbourhood resolution panels. We are also improving its use as part of, and in addition to, out-of-court disposals.

We are working with criminal justice partners to decide how best pre-sentence restorative justice can be made available, when the offender admits their guilt and all partners are willing to engage—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland made that important point—to inform the court’s decision about the right type of punishment. We are also building capacity for the use of post-sentence restorative justice in the community and in custody.

Crucially, alongside that, we are looking at victims’ access to restorative justice as part of our wider work to review the role of victims and witnesses throughout the criminal justice system. The hon. Lady began by saying how vital it is to focus on victims in the criminal justice system. Of course, I absolutely endorse that. We should look at the criminal justice system through the eyes of victims, and to a degree that is what the criminal justice system is about. The hon. Lady chided the Government for the lack of focus on victims in the “Breaking the Cycle” Green Paper. All I can say is that, in their own right, victims justify having a policy focus, which they will get when we introduce a victims strategy later this year.

On the formal role of restorative justice in our system, which the amendment attempts to reinforce, the courts already have powers to consider its use as one of several criminal disposals.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I welcome everything that the Minister is saying. Will he confirm whether, given that the courts already have powers to use restorative justice orders, resources to build capacity will be put into training, because levels of awareness are still quite low, including among the lay judiciary?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I shall say something that the hon. Lady will welcome—as much as I welcomed discovering this morning that I am in the same place as 95% of the population. She will discover that we have already put resources in, and I shall make that point during my speech.

We are trying to move away from enforcing top-down approaches on the whole criminal justice system, because we have gone through a period during which we eroded professional discretion and disempowered the front line. That particularly applies to restorative justice which, by its nature, is most effective when it is based on how practitioners, victims and communities want to respond to crime in their area.

Increasing the use of restorative justice is not about imposing rigid legal duties; it is about supporting a culture change in the mind of practitioners to develop and deliver effective restorative justice practices that are rooted in local need and responsive to local crime and reoffending, all of which can be achieved through existing legislation. Indeed, restorative justice is not so much a course, which is what the amendment states—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said that the amendment relates to only one element of it—but much more a process and an approach.

I want to reassure the hon. Lady and the Committee again about the needs of victims, and I do not wish us to lose sight of the important benefit to victims if they take part in the restorative justice process. The hon. Lady is quite right to say that the engagement of victims must be a voluntary exercise and will not always be appropriate. However, the evidence from Northern Ireland, where there is a more formal approach to the youth system, is that the levels of victim satisfaction for those taking part are more than 85%.

Helen Goodman rose—

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

There is also a point, which the hon. Lady may be about to make, involving the Ministry of Justice’s own figures, which I acknowledge, on the rehabilitative effect on the offender of taking part in restorative justice. However, the striking figure is the amount of satisfaction reported by victims who take part in it.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

That is not what I wanted to say. I wanted to ask the Minister a question. Were any changes made to the legislation before the new system was introduced in Northern Ireland?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

Back in 2001, I had the pleasure of sitting on the Committee considering the Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill, and of speaking for Her Majesty’s Opposition. The system implemented a formal conferencing process. When considering whether that option was appropriate for England and Wales, we had to wrestle, regrettably, with the issue of resources. A formal conferencing system is expensive, and we do not have growing resources. The huge difficulty with trying to advance things through mandate and legislation is that that would impose costs on the system that it cannot afford at the moment. We want to deliver the changes through a different approach, by winning the argument for a change of culture on restorative justice in the system. As we can see, that has happened in this Committee, and it is happening throughout the criminal justice system as people start to consider whether they can deploy restorative justice in their area.

There are good examples. The Thames Valley probation trust, for example, is doing good work on the issue, and the same is happening in Norfolk. We have heard examples from Committee members of the use of restorative justice in their areas. Courses are being given in prisons, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston told the Committee. It is happening all over the system. We are trying to extend the practice, and I will explain how we want to do so.

Part of the process must focus on the victim. I am interested in how the involvement of victim and offender at the end of a successful restorative justice process could be extended in the criminal justice system. When the process has taken place between offender and victim, that should be included in the pre-sentence report to help inform the court’s decision.

However, we are only beginning to create restorative justice capacity in our system. The first graduates of the Ministry of Justice-supported programme completed the programme on Tuesday. Had I not been here, I would have been there. Unfortunately, as I was detained here, they had to put up with a filmed version of my speech congratulating them. I was told that it went extremely well, and I was happy to write to all the graduates of the scheme to thank them for taking part and acquiring those qualifications.

Alongside that first course, the National Offender Management Service is accelerating plans to build capacity for training staff to deliver more restorative justice interventions in the community and in custody. We must reflect carefully on how to widen the application of restorative justice using a law, and whether it will prove possible to take that approach. I will keep the matter under review as we continue to build capacity and look for and deliver resources to support it. That is what the Ministry of Justice is doing. We are one of the principal funders of the programme.

In the light of that, and of the fact that the Government are determined to deliver restorative justice on as great a scale as is sustainable, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the amendment.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am extremely grateful for the support of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston and for Hammersmith and the hon. Member for South Swindon, but I was disappointed not to hear anything from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West, because when we were taking evidence, he raised the issue of restorative justice.

I am pleased that the Minister supports restorative justice. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I am worried that his approach will not deliver the goods. He argued that he does not want legislation and that he has no money, but that he wants to change the culture. When people talk about culture change, it often means that they want something to happen, but they do not quite know what. It is a catch-all for not taking action. Sometimes, changing the law is an instrument for changing culture; it is not a result of a changed culture.

I have had conversations with magistrates in Sunderland. They were dead keen on restorative justice, but could not understand why victims did not all rush forward and go for it. I know why they do not rush forward and go for it, and I appreciate the Minister’s remarks about the importance of professional judgment. I also share the concern that the criminal justice system, if we do not take a uniform approach, will have pockets of good practice and pockets of bad practice. If we explore the criminal justice system, we will see pockets of good practice in all parts. The trick is how to turn them into common practice throughout the whole system. I hope that that is a major part of how the Minister conceives his job. I am not saying that everyone has to take part; the words “must consider” are used in the amendment. Furthermore, given that the Minister admitted that, in respect of Northern Ireland, legislation was part of the package to make the change, I shall press the amendment to a Division.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I beg to move amendment 243, in clause 53, page 38, line 36, at end insert—

‘(2) In section 175 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 (service compensation orders), after subsection (7) insert—

(7A) The court must consider making a service compensation order in any case where it has power to do so.”’.

The amendment is one of those provisions that replicate, in the Armed Forces Act 2006, what we are doing in the Bill, and are, by their nature, repetitive and technical. I think that the point established when the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, moved his amendments, is relevant, so from now on when Government amendments replicate provisions in the 2006 Act I shall move them formally. If members of the Committee want to question details I shall of course be at their disposal.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

As we had notice of the amendments very late, I want to ask the Minister whether he proposes to make changes that exactly translate provisions of the Bill so that they apply to the armed forces. Are there any differences?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

There should be no differences. The technical amendment inserts in section 175 of the 2006 Act a provision very similar to the one that clause 53 inserts in section 130 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000. The effect of the amended clause is that both civilian criminal courts and service courts will have a duty to consider making a compensation order in any case where they have the power to do so.

As with other Government amendments to part 3 on armed forces legislation, the resulting clause is designed to ensure that sentencing law and the practice of the service courts will, where practicable, be aligned with the law and practice of civilian courts in England and Wales. The hon. Lady will have noticed the minute qualification that I entered. To all intents and purposes the effect will be the same, but such is the nature of the law that there may be some microscopic variation at some point, and of course service courts do not conduct themselves entirely in the same way as civilian courts.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 297, in clause 53, page 38, line 36, at end insert—

‘(2B) A court must make any payments ordered into a compensation fund.’.

Jim Sheridan (Labour, Paisley and Renfrewshire North)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: new clause 7—Establishment of a Compensation Fund —

‘The Secretary of State shall establish a fund for compensation.’.

New clause 8—Functions of the Compensation Fund—

‘The Secretary of State shall make regulations for the functioning of a compensation fund.’.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The amendment and new clauses would establish a compensation fund for victims. We have heard numerous complaints from victims and victims organisations about the way compensation is paid—or rather is not. It is frequently not paid at all, and often it is paid only in part. The money comes, as Victim Support told us in its evidence, in dribs and drabs.

That is not just a financial problem but an emotional one. A cheque for small amounts such as £5 or £10 a week is a constant and regular reminder to the victim of the crime—a reminder that, frequently, they do not want.

The Magistrates’ Association has provided some numbers, which it says are from the Ministry of Justice. At the moment 16% of all offenders are ordered to make compensation payments, and on average they are required to pay £418. In the case of summary offences only, the figure is 24% of offenders, whose average payment is £86. About 40% of the compensation is paid in the year when it is imposed. However, because of the poor payment record, the amounts outstanding are now between £120 million and £150 million. That is money to which victims are entitled and that they are missing.

In our evidence sessions, Victim Support, the national organisation, said quite clearly that it wanted a compensation fund, as did the victims commissioner, the official who is meant to represent the interests of victims. The Magistrates’ Association gave particularly interesting examples of the kind of problems faced at the moment, of which this is one:

“Alan is 38, married with two teenaged children. Alan’s house was burgled one evening when everyone was away from home. There was little damage, but over £10,000 worth of goods were taken from the house.

Fortunately Sean”—

the offender—

—“left a calling card when he and an unnamed friend carried out the burglary. He left his fingerprints and his DNA.

Sean was arrested, brought to court and pleaded guilty. The Magistrates’ Court decided that this was beyond their maximum punishment level and sent the case to Crown Court for sentencing.

The Judge said that because he was not heavily convicted, he would be sentenced to a 3 year community sentence with rehabilitation programmes and 200 hours of unpaid work. A Confiscation Order was asked for by the defence because Sean was still in possession of the goods. This was not given. Instead a Compensation Order was made for the goods that had been stolen and that were not insured.

As Sean was leaving the court he said (sotto voce) that Alan could ‘whistle for his money’, that he’d already packed his job in and any payment would be made at £5 per week now that he was on benefits.”

So far, the victim—Alan—has received £35. He has engaged a private detective to investigate Sean. He discovered that Sean has moved to another part of the country, where he is earning and also receiving benefits. He lives comfortably, drives a nice car, which, in Alan’s view, is a real example of a situation where crime pays. Not surprisingly, he is deeply unhappy with the criminal justice system. Such cases undermine the confidence not only of victims but of the public as a whole in the criminal justice system.

The Magistrates’ Association gave another example:

“Sheila is 74. She was knocked over in the street coming out of her local Marks and Spencer store. The two young men who pushed her over had never intended to hurt her, but their boisterous and low level criminal behaviour which also caused others in the area to fear for their safety, led to Sheila being hurt.

She was awarded £100 compensation by her local magistrates’ court for the injuries and distress caused and the two young men were also given a 12 month community order of 80 hours unpaid work and supervision.

Both young men are on Job Seekers Allowance and can only afford to pay Sheila £5 per week. Sheila has been so alarmed by this event she has not set foot outside her house since this event, instead asking her daughter to do any necessary shopping for her.

Every time Sheila receives the £5 compensation, which is intermittent she is reminded of the unfortunate event which led to her self imposed ‘house arrest’. Sheila is ‘disgusted’ with the way she has been treated by the criminal justice system and has said that she would rather not have the compensation as it reminds her of her unpleasant experience.”

What an indictment that is.

The victims commissioner also collected evidence:

“A neighbour had his windows smashed–that’s £1000 and as a pensioner that’s 18% of his annual income. That should be paid for.”

Further evidence stated:

“It can be an insult to get a paltry payment each month.”

I am sure that the Minister is aware of such problems.

The manager of a workplace violence unit wrote:

“Victims rarely seem to get the compensation they were awarded. One of the courts we deal with….does write to victims to ask if they would mind the money being written off. While at first this may seem like adding insult to injury, in fact because on so many occasions victims fail to receive anything, it is actually a major step forward.”

I am sure that the Minister understands that something needs to be done to speed up the payment of compensation to victims. Treating victims fairly is essential to improving public confidence in the criminal justice system.

A related problem is the inefficient, insensitive and fantastically complex operation of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. SAMM, the organisation I mentioned earlier, has described its operation as “faceless” and “judgmental”. Louise Casey, in her evidence to us in preparation for the Bill, said that when she surveyed victims’ families in murder and manslaughter cases, 50% of them said that complexity adds insult to injury. It is wrong that victims’ families have to pay private lawyers to get compensation because the state cannot run a decent system.

The Minister will say that this is another example of the Labour Opposition throwing money at a problem, and that he has to take account of the pressures he is under from his Treasury colleagues, but the amendments need not imply a cost to the Exchequer. We are talking about a cash flow problem. This is not an additional public spending commitment; it is a re-profiling, which is what victims want. We are not saying that the state should pay; we propose a system in which the state underwrites the payments to speed them up, and then recovers them, which could be done in several ways. The voluntary sector groups that gave evidence to us said that they wanted 100% of the money up front, but we could give people 50% at the outset and 50% five years down the track, thereby at least introducing some certainty into the situation.

The Minister will see that, in new clause 8, I have not set out all the possible detail of how the compensation fund should operate. We need to think about that in more detail, and the Minister needs to consider how he would do it in such a way as to sell the idea to his colleagues in the Treasury. Alternatively, he could follow the proposal made by the Magistrates’ Association, and wrap up the compensation fund with the victim surcharge. The association has also suggested extending the surcharge. All those measures would enable the Minister to do what victims want, while at the same time satisfying his colleagues in the Treasury.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

Is not the only reason for refusing to accept the amendment that the Government believe they have no chance of paying compensation to people who are entitled to it? They are leaving victims without their money because the scheme that has been in operation has failed to deliver.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend puts his finger on it. Insufficient priority is, and has been, given to the matter, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service simply does not give it the management priority it ought to have. By establishing a compensation fund and, as it were, putting the compensation through the Ministry of Justice accounts, we would change the incentives for Ministers and officials—and consequently change their behaviour—to sort the problem out.

The clause, unamended and unadorned, is possibly the emptiest in the Bill. No doubt the Minister’s response would be that under the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 a court may make an order for the offender to provide compensation, and that he is changing that “may” to “must”. The officials might have briefed him, and I do not know whether he has looked in detail at section 130. If he looks at it more carefully, however, he will see that the measure is disingenuous, because the court already

“shall give reasons…if it does not make a compensation order”.

In effect, therefore, it “must” give reasons for not making such an order. The clause is empty; we want to give it some bite and we want an effective compensation system. I hope that the Minister wants to be in line with 95% of the victims who have thought about the matter and that he will, therefore, accept the amendment.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

In the debate so far, we have not mentioned the problem of collecting fines and compensation. I have met the Minister over the past twelve months in my role as Chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, because there was much concern about the huge number of uncollected fines and amount of compensation, which rather makes a mockery of the law. That, at least, needs to be put right to begin with. I hear what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has said. Victims feel badly let down when they see perpetrators continuing to live well-funded lifestyles while making those payments only in dribs and drabs.

Whatever comes of this debate, the collection of compensation and fines must be improved, however the Government do it. We hope that they will not do that by outsourcing, but by ensuring that each magistrates and Crown court district has targets, and that officials apply their minds to bringing in that money. With the purport of the amendment in mind, I repeat what Sally Gimson, the then chief executive of Victim Support told the Committee. Victim Support’s view is that

“the Bill could have done more to make provision for the victims compensation fund. We are happy that there is a duty for the compensation fund, but we are worried that victims will not necessarily get the money and that there is no means to enforce that better than at the moment. The Government have not done that, and it is a missed opportunity, because victims tell us that money comes through from offenders in dribs and drabs. We would like there to be a compensation fund, so that the money is funded up front and so that the fund would get the money from the offenders.”––[Official Report, Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Public Bill Committee, 12 July 2011; c. 28, Q42.]

In effect, that is what the hon. Lady has said.

The reference to an empty clause is not without force, because if current enforcement is so bad, merely providing in the Bill that there must be consideration of compensation does not take us very far down the road. More must be done to underpin the clause, and the amendment would be perfectly good at doing that. Perhaps, as the hon. Lady has said, we must move money from one area to another, but in doing so, we must ensure that people who have been through difficult situations do not have to face the hurtful prospect of knowing that there is a compensation order of £500, but they have received only £5 a year. That happens—it is hurtful and it makes people think that the criminal justice system is falling apart. The Minister will appreciate that this is an important subject. I, too, will be interested to hear his response.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I accept that this is an important subject. Let me begin by discussing the clause. In the previous debate, the hon. Lady adduced arguments about the importance of law in sending a signal, but said that this particular provision is empty. That smacks of contradiction in the presentation of her arguments. We are sending a firm signal that we expect sentencers to hold offenders to account to their victims, and that the first duty of the court in sentencing must be to consider what compensation is due from the offender to the victim. The purpose of the clause is to send the clearest possible signal about the intention of Parliament on the duties owed by offenders to their victims.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

No one could disagree with what the Minister is saying but sentencers, be they in the Crown court or the magistracy, do not now have confidence in the collection process. Therefore, they will not apply their minds to the provision as the Government and all of us would wish them to do.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I have something to say about the collection process later, but the comments of the Opposition, who, as the Government, presided over the situation that we have inherited, about their particular amendments slightly impress me with their chutzpah—their arguments have condemned the system over which they presided.

Let me proceed to the details and the issues that sit around the clause because, plainly, given the number of people who have made the case, it needs to be taken seriously. I assure the Committee that I have carefully considered the arguments.

The amendment and the two new clauses seek to establish a compensation fund from which court order compensation will be paid directly to a victim when an order for compensation has been made by the court. We have considered carefully the proposal to establish a new victim compensation fund, as the idea undoubtedly has merit. Such a fund would allow court order compensation to be paid immediately to the victim by the Ministry of Justice and then recovered from the offender. That has two challenges, one practical and the other a matter of approach or what I call philosophy, but the practical issues are the most important.

First, let us be clear that the clause strengthens the duty to consider compensation. That will have an effect, sending the clearest signal about the intention of Parliament if the clause is passed. Today, we have a situation in which £30 million in compensation is ordered every year. I expect that figure to rise as a result of the Bill, but we cannot predict by how much. Equally, if sentencers knew that the Government would automatically pay compensation, they are highly likely to impose much greater sums, knowing that the victim will receive them, irrespective of the offender’s ability to pay. That approach has superficial attraction, but the practical effect would be to inflate significantly the £30 million in compensation currently ordered each year. There would be a growing shortfall between the amount paid by the state and what could sensibly be recovered from the offender.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

Why does the Minister think that a court would award a compensation level above what the individual could afford? Why would that change? That does not seem correct, because the court is currently duty-bound to look at the individual when awarding compensation.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman to the extent that that is what the courts should do, but sentencers are, after all, human, and we have a substantial number of lay magistrates who are from the community and who are not immune to an extremely deserving victim appearing before them. I suspect that if they knew that the victim would receive the compensation that they had ordered, irrespective of the state’s ability to recover it from the offender, there would be a change in behaviour. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that should not take place and the behaviour should not change. I just posit it to the Committee that because we are all human, that would be a likely effect if we established the fund. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman and the rest of the Committee is that we cannot know now what the effect would be.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

I am even more concerned, because the point now seems to be that magistrates are completely out of control and unaccountable. The Minister seems to be saying that if they act in a way not intended by the legislation, there is no mechanism to ensure that they behave themselves.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The Attorney-General’s ability to appeal sentences that are too tough is limited to a rather small number of cases. Obviously, it would not apply in every case. In law, the hon. Gentleman is completely correct. However, we are dealing with people, who face highly deserving victims, whom everyone feels should have proper compensation. All I am positing is that if they knew that victims would receive that compensation, there would possibly be a change in behaviour. That behavioural change might be quite substantial. We do not know what would happen. That is the point that I want to make to the Committee. We are dealing with what Mr Rumsfeld would call a known unknown.

Whatever the shortfall was, it would have to be covered, and inevitably it would come from funds that would otherwise be available to help victims recover from crime by providing emotional and practical help and support when they need it most. Available funds are best used to provide those services for victims. The Government are concerned that these proposals would guarantee payments to some victims where there was a successful prosecution, at the expense of services to all victims, regardless of whether the criminal justice system could bring the offender to justice to the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

From the presentation that we have heard—the speeches in support of the amendment—one would think that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service was incapable of collecting any money whatever in all circumstances, but that is not the whole picture.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

Can the Minister enlighten the Committee? To how much do unpaid compensation and fines currently amount?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I will get the answer to that question if I am able to do so. I want to give the right hon. Gentleman the precise figure, but let us deal with the canard that no money whatever is recovered by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. The Courts and Tribunals Service is not as unsuccessful in ensuring that victims receive what has been ordered as one might think from the tenor of the debate. For the year to March 2011, the payment rate for all financial penalties by value, excluding administrative cancellations, was 80%, and the Department, led energetically by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, has a clear strategy to improve that further.

Of course, the enforcement of compensation orders is prioritised above all other financial penalties; they come first. The Courts and Tribunals Service has several measures at its disposal to elicit prompt payment. For example, magistrates courts have the power to make deductions from benefits or attachment of earnings orders for all offenders sentenced to pay compensation. We should not consider the amendment outside the wider debate about the duty of offenders to provide compensation. Discussions are going on in the Government, between the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions, to try to improve those arrangements further, which should benefit victims of crime.

Let me describe the general approach or what one might call the philosophical approach to this issue. We, as a coalition, are trying to widen the exercise of personal responsibility. To have the state step in to exercise that function is not consistent with that. While I accept that there is a problem with victims receiving limited payments of compensation, as was adduced in the debate, for the state to take on the delivery of that function is inconsistent with having citizens, including offenders, face up to their individual responsibility.

I know that that argument is a matter of judgment and balance, but it is relevant when we consider what we should do about the problem that some victims face. Combined with the fact that we are not yet in a position to know the extent of liability that the state would be taking on, the current economic circumstances regrettably preclude us from accepting the amendment and its approach today. In the light of the circumstances that we face, I ask the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland to withdraw her amendment.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am afraid that the Minister’s response was not just disappointing but a bit alarming. On the practical issues, his first concern seemed to be that the amendment would mean that victims got more compensation, which seems an odd worry to have. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North has outlined some of the difficulties with that. I hoped that the Minister would explain his strategy for collecting the moneys. I hoped that, because the victims group has been raising the matter consistently over many months, both Ministers would agree that that was important and that they needed to turn their attention to it. The fact that the Minister does not even know how much is outstanding speaks volumes for the priority that the Department gives the problem.

As I said earlier, the Magistrates’ Association had figures from the Ministry of Justice. Since the Minister does not know what they are, I will tell him. There may be some more recent figures, which the Department should have, but the figures that I have are the latest ones in the public domain. Outstanding at 1 April 2008 was £126 million; £74 million was imposed in year; £42 million was collected in year; judicial remissions were £7 million; cancellations were £2 million; and, in March 2009, the figure was £150 million.

Ministers need to pay attention to the matter. As I said, we tabled the amendment because we think that it would change the incentives and hence the behaviour of both Ministers and officials. I hear what the Minister has said—that 80% of compensation is collected—but that is over a long period, and it is only, as I also told him, 40% in the first year. It is disingenuous to suggest that the issue is about personal rather than Government responsibility, as the state is already involved in the matter. I therefore ask my hon. Friends to vote for the amendment.

Clause 54 - Duty to give reasons for and to explain effect of sentence

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 298, page 39, line 6, leave out ‘and (3)’ and insert ‘, (3) and (4).’.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 299, in clause 54, page 39, line 7, leave out subsection (2) and insert—

‘(2) A court shall have a duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the terms and requirements of the sentence are understood by the offender.’.

Amendment 300, in clause 54, page 39, line 14, at end insert—

‘(ca) why it is giving a custodial sentence, if giving such a sentence,’.

Amendment 301, in clause 54, page 39, line 16, at end insert—

‘(e) the effect of the sentence on any child or other dependant in the care of the offender where the sentence is—

(i) a custodial sentence,

(ii) a fine,

(iii) a community order.’.

Amendment 267, in clause 54, page 39, line 17, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘(4) If the offender is not present when sentence is passed, subsection (3) takes effect as if the words “to the offender” were omitted.

(4A) The court must provide written versions of any statement given under subsection (2) and any explanation given under subsection (3).

(4B) Copies of the documents mentioned in subsection (4B) above must be given (if the relevant person is in court when sentence is passed) or sent by post (if the relevant person is not in court when sentence is passed) to—

(a) the offender;

(b) the offender’s legal representative;

(c) the victim(s) of the offence;

(d) family member(s) and/or representative(s) of the victim(s) of the offence;

(e) the Crown Prosecution Service;

(f) any co-defendant convicted in the case, whether or not at the same trial/hearing;

(g) the legal representative of any person in (vi) above;

(h) the probation service or, if the offender is under 18 years of age, the youth offending team;

(i) if the offender is under 18 years of age, the offender’s parent/guardian;

(j) representatives of the media.

(4C) The duty in subsection (4B) is subject to any reporting restrictions in force in the case.

(4D) Where the offender is aged under 18, no details tending to identify him may be included in the written reasons provided under subsection (4B)(j).’.

Amendment 302, in clause 54, page 39, line 17, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘(4) A court must provide written versions of any statement given under subsection (3) to—

(a) the offender;

(b) the victim;

(c) if the offender is under 18 years of age, the offender’s parent/guardian;

(d) any co-defendant convicted in the case, whether or not at the same trial/hearing;

(e) the probation service or, if the offender is under 18 years of age, the youth offending team.’.

Amendment 268, in clause 54, page 39, line 22, leave out ‘(8)’ and insert ‘(9)’.

Amendment 269, in clause 54, page 39, line 42, leave out paragraph (b).

Amendment 270, in clause 54, page 39, line 43, at end insert—

‘( ) Where the court imposes a sentence that may only be imposed in the offender’s case if the court is of the opinion mentioned in—

(a) section 148(1) of this Act (community sentence), or

(b) section 152(2) of this Act (discretionary custodial sentence),

the court must state why it is of that opinion.’.

New clause 9—Duty to consider dependants when sentencing—

‘A court passing sentence on an offender has the duty to consider the impact of the sentence on any child or other dependant in the care of the offender where the sentence is

(a) a custodial sentence,

(b) a fine,

(c) a community order.’.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again, Mr Hollobone. The duty to give reasons for and to explain the effect of a sentence is extremely important. To help the Committee, I point out that I shall speak first to amendments 299, 300 and 302 and secondly to amendment 301 and new clause 9, which relates to dependants and children. Amendment 298 is technical.

The object of amendment 299 is to ensure that the offender understands the sentence. The object of amendment 300 is to explain why a custodial sentence is being given. The object of amendment 302 is to inform other key parties in the case. The clause is a much-weakened version of the pledge given by the Tory party in opposition, before the general election, to have transparent sentencing. I know that it considered maxi-min sentencing. I know that it wanted to make release halfway through a sentence dependent on the offender’s behaviour in prison. That was all in the Conservative party manifesto, but this little clause is what remains.

Of course, in examining these matters, the Government have understood that by and large the public simply do not understand why, if a person is sentenced to four years, they are spending only two years in prison. Until and unless we can make that clear to victims, we will not be able to make it clear to the public. That is why our amendments refer specifically to them.

Another problem is that the clause weakens the current obligations to explain the meaning of the sentence by giving the Lord Chancellor a blanket exceptions provision to exclude by order any crimes that he chooses. That point was made strongly in representations by Liberty and Justice, so I hope that the Minister can explain that weakening.

Amendment 299 is designed to ensure that the offender understands the sentence. Clearly, there is little point in sentencing someone if they do not understand what they have done wrong and what is to happen to them or what they must do as punishment and to rehabilitate themselves with society. What may seem like ordinary language to a judge or magistrate may not be clear to the offender. Our amendment is designed to improve the drafting. I will speak about several classes of offender who are particularly likely to have difficulty in understanding what is being said to them. We could have drafted a more complex amendment that referred to foreign languages, children’s particular needs and intellectual development, and the use of Braille, but I decided not to because the issues come down to one factor: the offender must understand what is going on.

We received strong representations from Mencap on the needs of people with learning disabilities. It said that a quarter of prisoners under 18 have learning disabilities or difficulties, and that their reoffending rate is 78%. That is 10 times the level of learning disabilities in the general population. The Prison Reform Trust has carried out a lot of research with that group, and wrote it up in a report, “No One Knows”, with some interesting examples.

A woman from Scotland said:

“I understand that I have done something wrong, but I’m still not quite sure as to what it is.”

Someone else said:

“I couldn’t understand but I said ‘yes whatever’…because if I say, ‘I don’t know’ they look at me as if I’m thick. Sometimes they tell you two things at once.”

Another said:

“I couldn’t understand them. They talk so fast. They were jumping up and down and saying things. I gave up listening.”

The last two were young people with learning disabilities. Overall, the Prison Reform Trust found that within that group, a fifth did not understand either the process or the language.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

Perhaps the hon. Lady will forgive me if I have got this wrong, but all the people she is describing will have been represented by a solicitor and/or barrister. It is beholden on them and part of their duty when representing anyone to ensure that the client understands. In my experience, the one thing that every solicitor and barrister does is to make sure their client understands absolutely everything that is happening. My experience is also that judges and magistrates bend over backwards not to patronise, but to make sure the defendant is left in no doubt whatever as to the process, sentencing, consequences and so on. To me the amendment seems otiose.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I know that the hon. Lady practised at the Bar, and having seen her perform in the House I am sure she was very effective, and that she gave her clients the quality of care that she is describing. I have no doubt about that, but I am sorry to tell her that research demonstrates that more than half of children who offend have speech, language or communication difficulties. That research was done in 2007. A more recent study in 2010 showed that 65% have language difficulties, and 20% of them were scored as being severely delayed. The Government believe that 23% of people have learning disabilities. The problem is that there is no systematic approach for screening and assessing such people. Sometimes, as the hon. Lady says, if they have a good lawyer it is fine, but sometimes it is not.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

I have no doubt that the solicitor or barrister will explain to their client exactly what is facing them and what the crime is, but the criminal must be able to take in the points made by their solicitor or barrister. Is that not the point?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

That is exactly the point. That is why the voluntary sector surveys into people’s perceptions are significant, and why it is a problem that two thirds of those with learning disabilities say that they experience difficulties in the court. For example, they may have difficulty understanding words such as “breach”, which is not the sort of word that people in normal life think about. Hon. Members on the Government Benches, by and large, have benefited from an extremely good education and should pause to think what the criminal justice system is like for those who commonly go through it.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

The hon. Lady is highlighting a significant problem of speech, language and communication difficulty. I am vice-chair of the all-party group on speech and language difficulties, which recognises the alarming statistics that she has raised and has proposals for early intervention to diagnose those problems. On the court position and sentencing, however, clause 54 is helpful because it places a duty on the court to explain matters “in ordinary language.” For example, instead of referring to “your counsel”, the judge could say “your barrister”; instead of “mitigation”, the judge could use other words to explain proceedings to the defendant in ordinary language that they will understand. At the end of proceedings, the judge could make it clear to the defendant that their barrister will explain again the full effects of the sentence that has been passed, so that they have a full understanding. The problems that the hon. Lady rightly raises will be addressed by clause 54 and the arguments expressed in the debate.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but after the Committee has finished its deliberations, I suggest that he has a conversation with his hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) whom I have heard in the Chamber making precisely the point that I am making about the difficulties faced in the criminal justice system by people who have speech and communication problems. The amendment has been tabled because we know that people have such problems. If people do not understand proceedings, the risk is that they will not comply with the orders that have been imposed. In such cases, the justice system will come down hard on them, meaning that an injustice is done.

That contentious subject obviously arouses passions among Conservative Members, so I shall move on to amendment 300. A custodial sentence is the most serious penalty a court can impose, and it is right that the sentencer explains why it has been given and why, if alternatives such as a fine or community order were available, they were not used.

Amendment 302 extends the list of people who will receive a written copy of the sentence. During the evidence-taking session, we received submissions that suggested a much longer list that would include all lawyers to all parties and the press; the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd included that in one of his amendments. My amendment suggests a slightly shorter list because I wanted to capture the essential parties while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy or imposing high levels of resource cost on the court system. The amendment seeks to pare down the parties involved to those considered essential.

The first other party that needs to receive a copy of the sentence is the victim. In its evidence, the Magistrates’ Association stated:

“Early release mid-way through sentence is probably the single factor which most undermines public confidence”,

and that must be tackled. Victims are not happy when, for example, they hear that the offender is getting two years in prison but they see them six months later. That could happen easily if the offender is released halfway through the sentence or if, on the day they are sentenced, they have already spent six months on remand.

Conservative Members who have practised at the Bar might think that is absolute common sense, but I must confess that until the Leader of the Opposition gave me this job, I had no idea that release halfway through was automatic. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are surprised, but, on this point, I am with 95% of Great Britain’s public; most people do not know that release halfway through is automatic.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I am not criticising the hon. Lady, because I have no doubt that she will have had to deal with a wide range of issues as a Member of Parliament for some years and could perhaps be forgiven for not knowing that detail. However, I have to remind her that the automatic early-release provisions were part of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which the Labour Government introduced, and I would have thought that she would be familiar with such a major plank of their criminal justice legislation, which she must have supported and voted for.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I did not vote for it, as a matter of fact, because I was not in the House until 2005, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will understand.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I hope that my hon. Friend will take the comments of the hon. Member for South Swindon as a compliment, because the Opposition clearly believe that her wisdom and authority go far beyond her years in the House. Although Members will be pleased to hear that I was aware of the provisions, my hon. Friend makes a good point none the less, because the remission on sentences changes for different reasons, and it has changed in legislation over the years. It is not surprising, therefore, that even very well-educated people do not know the exact details. My hon. Friend makes a sound point about the general public’s understanding of what a sentence means.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is exactly the point: the general public do not understand the measures, and it is our responsibility to help people understand them. I do not mean that in the sense of public education; however, but victims of crime will be affected by the issues, and we have tabled the amendment so that they get the information that they need.

Another criticism will be that it would be unduly bureaucratic to write long letters. However, it should be possible to have fairly simple letters with standard explanations of what release on licence means and what the conditions of recall are. In its response to the White Paper, “Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders”, Victim Support said:

“We know from our experience of working with victims that many do not understand sentencing and do not know what sentences mean in practice. This is backed up by our research with victims and witnesses which found that they often leave court without a full understanding of the sentence given to the perpetrator of their crime.”

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

The hon. Lady makes a good point about victims often not understanding the sentence. However, rather than having a prescriptive procedure, which would be extremely costly and a nightmare to administer, we should recognise that the failing and the fault lie with the police officer who fails to liaise with the family, especially in more serious cases, so that they understand the sentence. That face-to-face explanation is the way to approach this; it is by far the more humane and sensible approach. It would explain things tonnes better than writing them down on a piece of paper, which, again, assumes that the recipient can read.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I do not see that there will be any great reduction in bureaucracy depending on who is required to give the information. We had a long discussion earlier about legal aid, which is paid for by the taxpayer, but I cannot see that there would be any great reduction in the resources used if the barrister or the police, rather than the court, have to write the letter. At the moment, there are no such requirements on those people, so it is significant that Victim Support says that the sentencer should cover such matters. It would like what is said in court to be followed up by a letter from the witness care unit. It states:

“Whilst some victims receive a good explanation from the CPS prosecutor…others get minimal or no explanation”.

It is an area where victims often feel that there is a significant imbalance between themselves and the defendant, as the defendant has a legal representative who can provide a full explanation, whereas the victim, of course, does not have a legal representative in court. That is why we have such a long list.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I take the hon. Lady’s point about the need to communicate more consistently and better with victims. It may well be that mechanisms within the Crown Prosecution Service, such as letter writing and proper liaison, can be improved. Let us consider the position of a Crown court judge, perhaps with a busy list on a Friday of six or seven different sentences, some of which involve more than one defendant. How will such a proposal work for the judge who is trying his best to get through the list and deal with every case in turn? Will that judge be expected to write out verbatim each set of sentencing remarks before he or she gives the judgment? That will lead to a bit of a problem due to the bureaucracy involved, and it will affect the swift and proper administration of justice when we are dealing with people waiting in a list.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

We included co-defendants in the amendment because, obviously, they have an interest as well as victims. The hon. Gentleman is perhaps going into slightly too much detail about the point in the process at which such action should happen. We have not said anything about the point at which it should happen.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I accept that, for example, in the Crown court there are no doubt full recording devices and that transcripts can be made—usually at some cost and a little later on. However, in the magistrates court there is no such procedure. The proceedings are not recorded verbatim. What mechanism could be put into place to help magistrates who are passing sentence? How can their remarks be recorded?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am not suggesting that all sentencing remarks should be sent verbatim to the parties involved; I am saying that the judge or the magistrate should say what is to happen in plain language that anyone present can understand, and that subsequently the people listed should receive a letter setting out the position. Often people are stressed out and cannot remember what was said, but the amendment would mean that a week later, when they had gone home, they would have something to remind themselves of what had been done.

We could go further. When I met the people who run Support after Murder and Manslaughter, they said that victims of very serious crimes that cause huge distress in families should get a transcript of the whole case. When a member of a family has been murdered, that is completely understandable. It is almost the bare minimum that we can offer.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

The argument of the hon. Member for South Swindon is double-edged. He said that a Crown court judge on a Friday, when sentencing perhaps 10 or 12 cases, will not have the time to scribble down a few lines of the business end of his sentencing remarks. Frankly, the problem that we have is that judges are so overworked that they are not able to explain their decisions anyway. The situation is not good, whether orally or in writing.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.

Elizabeth Truss (Conservative, South West Norfolk)

Does the hon. Lady agree that plans to improve transparency in courts—for example, through the introduction of television cameras—might help to show what is happening inside the court to victims and others involved in court cases? That might be a more modern way to address the issue at a lower cost than writing letters.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

That remark is slightly misconceived. We could not possibly have coverage of all the cases that are going on in the entire nation. What victims, or those who have some particular relationship to the crime, are interested in is their case. I do not suppose that the BBC, Sky or others would broadcast cases about somebody smashing down Mrs Jones’s back hedge. It would not be fantastically fascinating to the great British public, but it would be of supreme importance to Mrs Jones and it is she who would like to see that. Whatever one’s views about the broadcasting of court cases, the hon. Lady’s remarks are slightly misconceived.

Coming back to the amendment, I want to explain why I included parents on the list. It is, I think, common ground across the House that we want to support, reinforce and, in some cases, increase the responsibility and control that parents exercise over their children, particularly teenage children. If they are to do that, they must have information about what their child is expected to do if they are on a community order. That seems to be pure common sense.

We included co-defendants, which I hoped was a way of avoiding confusion, as well as probation and youth offending teams. We know that co-ordination and co-operation between different parts of the criminal justice system needs to be addressed. It is not as good as it should be, and lack of communication seems to be one of the reasons why things that ought to happen do not always happen.

Let me turn to amendment 301 and the associated new clause 9, which require the court to consider the impact of any sentence on children and dependants, and to explain it to the offenders. The children of offenders are the invisible victims of the criminal justice system, but they should not be. That should be given more attention, particularly when one considers the very large number of children whom we are talking about.

In any year, at any time, 160,000 children will have one parent or another in prison. That is two and a half times the number of children who are in care, and six times the number of children on the child protection register. Each year, more children will have a parent in jail than will experience their parents’ separation. Everybody knows, or can easily imagine, that that is an unhappy and extremely disturbing situation for children. The Department for Education believes that 7% of all children will at some point in their childhood experience having a parent in prison. Some 54% of prisoners have children under the age of 18, and 17,700 children are separated from their mothers each year because their mothers are in prison.

The position of children whose mothers are in prison is of the most extreme concern. I shall describe why that is, and why we need to address the issue in a more strategic way than we have done hitherto. A lot of attention has been focused on women in the criminal justice system, and the Minister is trying, with limited resources, to continue the work begun by my hon. Friend in the other place, Baroness Corston. The children of offenders have not had sufficient attention. One fifth of mothers in prison are lone parents, which is a higher proportion than in the general population, where the figure is 9%, so these children are already contending with issues of poverty and so forth.

The most interesting fact that I discovered when I researched the issue—this is why I became increasingly concerned about it—is that 92% of men in prison who have children say that their partner is looking after their children, but only 9% of women in prison who have children say that their partner is looking after their children. That is extremely alarming—90% of children are not with either parent. Only 5% of children with a parent in prison are able to stay in the home that they were living in before the parent was imprisoned; the other 95% have to move. That is why I come back to the remark—I know that it sounds rhetorical, but I think that there is truth in it—that these children are the hidden victims of the criminal justice system.

I am sure that the issue causes concern to all Members across the House. We are talking about the welfare of the child and the long-term effects on them, their potential and their future in society. Obviously, there is also an effect on their parents—particularly their mothers, as I say—because nobody can be expected to concentrate on some programme requirement if they are anxious about what is happening to their children outside prison. There is also a cost to us all.

However, I am not simply referring to the need to give information and to address the needs of dependants when parents are sent to prison. We have included fines and curfews in the list. We will come back to curfews when we discuss a later clause, but on fines, I remind hon. Members that the Financial Services Authority produced a report for the National Offender Management Service that found that 48% of prisoners have a history of debt. It also found, not surprisingly, that 60% of families become worse off while a member of the family is in prison.

I am not arguing, of course, that people with children should never go to prison; that would be an absurd proposition. I am not arguing that they should never pay a fine or compensation. I am not arguing that no mother should ever go to prison, although there are people who argue that, but that is not my view or the view of the Opposition. Of course there are dangerous and violent women who need to be locked up, just as other people who are dangerous and violent need to be locked up. Sometimes, of course, women need to be kept away from their children for the welfare of the child. However, if we look at what is going on overall, we see that we have the balance wrong at the moment.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Does my hon. Friend agree that this would be a good moment to put on record that when the court is considering means and assessing the appropriate fine to be imposed on an offender who is a parent, any payments to that parent through the benefits system that are specifically made because they have children who are under 18 should not be taken into account? That would mean that payment of child tax credit or child benefit would always routinely be excluded in the calculation of the parent’s means.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that pertinent point; she is absolutely right. She brings huge knowledge of the benefits system to all these discussions, and she makes a very sensible remark. The criminal justice system cannot expect the rest of us to be satisfied if it takes decisions irrespective of the consequences and simply expects social services departments to pick up the pieces. Social services departments will have to do that unless the impact on children is taken into account at the point of decision. I will go so far as to say that the way that the interests of children are ignored is irresponsible.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

The record should make it clear that judges and magistrates certainly take into account what will happen to children when they sentence parents, especially when they sentence a lone parent. I, and I suspect many other people in the room—

Mr Llwyd indicated assent.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

I see a nod on the Opposition side of the Committee. We recognise that one of the first questions that will be asked of a lone parent’s representative is: “What is happening to the children, and what provision has been made for them?” In my experience, all magistrates and judges know precisely the consequences of a lone parent receiving a custodial sentence, because invariably the state has to pick up the pieces, and the bill.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The hon. Lady says that, but I will go on to give her some more information that suggests that things are perhaps not so rosy, or operating so well. In a survey of 1,400 women in Holloway with children, 42 of them—4%—did not even know where their children were and who was looking after them.

Furthermore, I am sure that the hon. Lady has read the Corston report, and I suggest that she re-read it. It contains alarming data collected by a voluntary sector organisation called Hibiscus. The children of foreign national prisoners are those most at risk, as they are sometimes left to fend for themselves. No account is taken of that, even though the children might be abroad. The hon. Lady needs to pause, therefore, and consider whether things are quite as well organised as she suggests.

The first problem is the shock for the child of a parent suddenly disappearing. The judge might know what will happen, but not the child. In 85% of cases this is the first significant separation between the child and the parent. Only 5% of the children can live at home and the other 95% have to move. Of the children of women prisoners, 9% are looked after by their fathers, and 25% by grandmothers. Some of the children go into care, fostering or adoption, but the Ministry of Justice’s statistics do not add up to 100%. We do not know what is happening to all the children, and I hope that if the Minister cannot tell us today, he will initiate an investigation and collect the numbers, because a policy cannot be reasonable if it is not based properly on the facts.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

It is dangerous to record figures without taking into consideration the fact that they do not show how many of the women were in that position when they committed the offence. We do not know how many of them did not know where their children were because they had had no contact with them for many years, because of the situations they had got themselves into or had had forced upon them. I have represented women who were working as prostitutes and whose children had been removed from their care many years previously. With great respect to the hon. Lady, it is dangerous to put those figures in as true statistics without giving a full and accurate picture.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

As I say, if the Ministry of Justice is not collecting the statistics, it is difficult to have a full and accurate picture. I got the numbers from Barnardo’s and the Prison Reform Trust, which, as the hon. Lady knows, both work with children whose parents are in prison. If the hon. Lady was right, that would be fantastic, but I honestly do not believe her, and in any case I do not think that what she says relates to my point about needing an explicit duty to take into account the impact on the dependants of the person being sentenced, at the time of sentencing. If the hon. Lady is saying that everything in the garden is lovely, I hope that she will have no objection to the amendment. If she is right, it would not add any extra burden. The issue has not been taken into account, but I believe that it should be. That is why we have tabled the amendment.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

The matter really is important. We know that people receive pre-sentence reports. When a probation officer speaks to a defendant, they will ask about his or her family circumstances. That whole duty then kicks in. The judge will notice from the pre-sentence report whether there are children and what arrangements are in place. There is no evidence to suggest that judges and magistrates do not take into account family circumstances. Where is the evidence that they do not? In my experience and—I suspect—that of everyone else, we know that it is taken into account.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The hon. Lady is barking up the wrong tree. I do not believe that people have the information. Even if she has the information, with the law as it stands, it would not be proper for people, when they are sentencing, to take into account what happens to dependants. That is why we need to make some changes—[ Interruption. ] The hon. Lady looks despairing, but she should not be as despairing as we all should be about the children.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Perhaps what speaks most powerfully to me—I understand where Government Members are coming from—is the fact that the outcomes are so poor for children whose parents are in prison. The hon. Member for Broxtowe suggests that in some cases—I am sure that she is correct—the outcomes would be poor irrespective of whether those children’s parents are incarcerated. However, I suspect that that is quite a small number, and that the incarceration of the mother, in most cases, will make the situation worse. In particular, the fact that so many children seem to be forced to move house when the mother is incarcerated suggests that their well-being is seriously compromised.

I am sorry that the intervention is turning into a little bit of a speech. Speaking briefly, from my experience sitting as a lay magistrate for 16 years, both the attention that pre-sentencing reports paid to the position of dependants and the attitude of magistrates regarding whether they were legitimately taking account of the well-being of children were patchy. I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland not to create more bureaucracy, but to ensure that we are consistent and systematic in placing the well-being of children at the forefront of sentencing decisions.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I said that there are several reasons why we need to take the matter into account. Another is the implications for the taxpayer. On average, a prison place costs about £40,000 a year for a man and £56,000 a year for a woman. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation believes that, where there are children, the average cost is about £5,000 per family, which will be higher in cases where children are being taken into care, fostered or adopted.

We also need to take account, as I said at the beginning, of whether the separations are conducive to prisoners rehabilitating themselves. As I said before, there are particular problems for women. Only half the women maintain contact with their children while in prison. That is made considerably more difficult for them because, inevitably, the women’s estate is more sparsely distributed around the country. A high proportion of women are more than 100 miles from their homes. People have to travel long distances to visit, and there is no financial support for families to make those visits.

Another aspect is the long-term costs for the child. Unsurprisingly, the prognosis for such children is poor. They have a higher chance of being not in education, employment or training. I think the Ministry of Justice knows that there is a trebled risk of antisocial behaviour. The experience of having a parent in prison is traumatic and stigmatising. It is bad for children’s health and education, and it means that they are more likely to live in poverty.

By not addressing the needs of such children at the outset, we are setting them on a path to being far more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system for the rest of their life. Some 37% of prisoners come from families in which someone has been found guilty of something more serious than a motoring offence, and 32% of prisoners come from families in which someone has been in prison. The “Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development” published in 2005 found that having another member of the family in prison was the biggest risk factor for people’s future options, being bigger than any of the other social and economic problems that they face.

Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat, Carshalton and Wallington)

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady, and I assume that her official party position is now in favour of community sentences as an alternative to custodial sentences for low-level offenders.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

That is exactly where I was about to go with my speech. We need more community sentences, which is why we have pioneered the women’s centres. I am extremely disappointed that the Minister has cut resources for women’s centres by some 25%, because decisions to give non-custodial sentences can be made only if such an alternative is available.

As I said, the language that I have used is not gendered and deliberately so, because we do not take the view that women’s sentencing should be different from men’s or subject to different rules; we are asking for their dependants to be taken into account. Many people say that women are treated more harshly in the criminal justice system—

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

They are.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend says that they are, but I have checked what is going on and I have to tell her that women have received the same length of sentence for similar crimes. The problem is that they are more likely to be given a custodial sentence early on: for a first offence, 28% of women receive a custodial sentence compared with 13% of men. To pick up precisely the point made by the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, 70% of the men in prison but 82% of the women in prison are there for non-violent offences, which is why we need to reconsider the balance.

I hope that the Minister will see that I am arguing for a system that is more humane but also more economic in the long run. The New Economics Foundation believes that for every £1 in community provision there would be a £14 return to women, children and society over 10 years. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendments.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

It is a great pleasure to see you back in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Hollobone.

I am in broad agreement with most of what the hon. Lady has said, but I will confine myself to the amendments that I have tabled. In effect, amendment 267 would place a duty on courts to notify in writing the offender, the offender’s legal representative, victims of the offence, family members or representatives of the victims, the Crown Prosecution Service, co-defendants, other legal representatives, the probation service, the offender’s guardian or parent if the offender is under 18, and representatives of the media. I will explain why I refer to representatives of the media.

The amendment would effectively remove the Lord Chancellor’s power to prescribe by regulation cases in which the duty to give reasons for the sentence imposed and explain its effect in court should not apply. I believe that the duty should apply in all cases. It is also highly desirable for a written version to be provided of the reasons for and explanation of the sentence. The amendment provides for cases in which offenders are not present in court for sentence, for example because they have chosen to absent themselves. Under the amendment, the judge or bench would still have a duty to explain to those in court the reasons for imposing the sentence, as well as its effect, but a written version would be given to the offender. The amendment would also provide for written versions to be distributed to representatives of the victim’s family, as I explained.

I am not speaking to my amendment just for the sake of it; perhaps I could not say so of anybody else either. The hon. Member for South Swindon is an experienced barrister dealing with criminal matters. He knows that on Fridays, judges sentence many people, and some people only get a few succinct remarks. Often, Fridays are frantic. I have no doubt that he, as an experienced and well-regarded barrister, would explain things to the client, as would the hon. Members for Broxtowe and for Kingston upon Hull East and I. However, I will give an example. It is true, which is why I will not name the person. I was representing a young man whose parents were elderly. He had somehow succeeded in burrowing a hole through the back yard fence and had set up a huge tent in the adjacent field, which was not being used, to grow 120 or 130 cannabis plants. He came up for sentencing in Caernarfon Crown court. Up until that point, he had had an educational record that many of us in this room would envy. He had a hatful of A-pluses and was destined to have at least four As at A-level. He was a high flyer who would undoubtedly go to university.

I went down to the cells to see him, and I said, as one would, “I’m sorry, nobody can avoid a custodial sentence. My job will be to keep it as short as I possibly can in the circumstances. What are you going to do when you’re released?” He turned to me and said, “I’ve thought about that.” I said, “Good,” and made some notes. He said, “For the last nine or 10 months, every apple I eat, I’ve kept the apple core, and I’ve planted it. When I come out, I shall sell the apples.” That showed that he was not very lucid, and that I was not getting through to him. I am not making fun of the young gentleman. He had been smoking cannabis, the strong stuff, since he was 13 years of age, and that was what happened. I could not get through to him, and I have no doubt that the judge did not get through to him.

I went down to see him after the sentence, which was mercifully short, but a custodial sentence none the less. I explained to him once again and said, “Do you understand?” He said, “Yes, I do.” The following day, his father rang my chambers, because the young man could not explain what had happened or what sentence he had received. I am afraid that that is not uncommon, given the huge amount of strong cannabis that is now being taken and the number of people suffering from delusions, drug problems and so on. Others, of course, might have hearing problems. That is a snapshot that illustrates why the amendment might be useful.

Some time ago, Lord Justice Leveson came before the Justice Committee. I put it to him that it would be a useful addition to our practice if sentencing judges or magistrates included a brief résumé—say four sentences—of what the sentence was, why it was imposed and how long it would be in effect. He said that, unfortunately, courts would be very busy. I have no doubt that the clerks in the magistrates courts and the associates in the Crown court are very busy. However, if we are serious about transparency and making the public aware of what a sentence means, why it was imposed and how it works, it is not too much to ask for a brief résumé of four or five sentences to be taken and for a copy of that to be sent to a list of—[Interruption.]

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

Who would do that? Sometimes one cannot reduce a complex sentencing exercise to four or five sentences. Would that not be a problem? If I were the judge or magistrate, I would be concerned to ensure that what I said was faithfully reproduced.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

That is true, but on the other hand, stenographers will often be in court. They can take down what is said verbatim, and they are reliable and professional people.

We should also consider the amendment in relation to reporting. Not so long ago, a circuit judge in south Wales sentenced a paedophile. As a result of the operation of two or three different Acts, he could not give that wretch a longer sentence than the one that he imposed—he could not possibly do it. He was vilified in the press. I went on local radio to defend that judge, who is highly regarded and fair minded. The remarks that he had made in sentencing were ignored. He had clearly said that he was constrained by particular Acts and therefore could not sentence that man to a day longer, but the press came out and said that he was treating a paedophile very softly indeed and had not imposed a proper sentence on him.

That is not the first and will not be the last example of the press, by design or otherwise, misconstruing what judges have said. Such cases could be cleared up if we followed the simple procedure in the proposals. It just so happens that the judge in question, who was completely exonerated from day one, is now a member of the High Court bench, and rightly so. The point is that time and time again, some parts of the press think that misconstruing judges creates a good story, which it does, because people like to read about other people getting things wrong and making an appalling mess of it.

The amendment’s purport is to ask for a succinct note of the business end of the sentencing remarks to be made available. That is not too much to ask—it would be transparency at work. The hon. Member for South West Norfolk referred to televising court proceedings, which is not a good idea. People might play to the gallery, witnesses’ words might be constrained or people might say things that they would not dream of saying were they not in the public gaze.

However, televising sentencing remarks might be useful. I am not against what the hon. Lady said. I am against televising routine cases throughout their proceedings, but televising sentencing—yes. However, that will not be an answer to the problem, because although there might be a growth in local television, there will not be a television camera in every Crown court in England and Wales.

Karl Turner (Labour, Kingston upon Hull East)

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about advocates playing to the gallery. Does he accept that the judiciary might also do that?

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

Yes. All the Inns of Court have strong drama companies—I shall say no more. My amendment would deal with that ill—and it is an ill. Very often, people have their opinions created for them by the media. If the media decide not to report fairly on sentencing, whether by design or otherwise, we might see the criminal justice system fall into disrepute. Nobody in this Room or elsewhere would like to see that happening. The proposal would be a useful step forward and will not amount to a lot of work.

Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat, Carshalton and Wallington)

The right hon. Gentleman says that such a move would not amount to much work, but has he costed this proposal? If he insists on pursuing this, has he considered basing it on the web as an alternative to sending out a minimum of 10 documents to 10 different people or organisations?

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

I am grateful for the intervention. Six months ago, the right hon. Gentleman would have been the first to support this amendment, but life goes on. [Interruption.] I have not costed the proposal, for obvious reasons. I am not a Minister, so it is not up to me to cost it. I am suggesting a policy that might usefully be followed and the right hon. Gentleman would undoubtedly have supported me a few months ago.

In conclusion, I have given an example of a case in which a defendant completely misunderstood what was going on.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

It has to be said that if a defendant has such a lack of understanding of their sentence, one would have to doubt their fitness to plead in the first instance. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, a question of fitness to plead is the first hurdle to jump when getting to that level of sentence.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but that is why I mentioned that case. People who suffer from that particular complaint and who have been overdoing strong cannabis can be as lucid as she or I one minute and the next minute they are not. He might have presented himself before the probation officer for the purposes of the report as perfectly lucid. If he was not perfectly lucid, how would he have been able to secure so many A*s and so on and how would his school have thought that he was heading for university armed with four A-levels? None the less, the day I saw him, he was nothing like that.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

The mechanics are important. The Crown courts automatically tape proceedings. The court associates have access to a national computer system and they are busy typing in the orders that are made, so they have a lot of work on their hands already, and that is vital because the judge can look at a living file on every occasion. Finally, the judges themselves are doing a tick-box exercise because they are taking part in a national survey on sentencing. Already, there is a lot of paperwork. I am sorry if I am repeating my point. I am concerned that this is yet another burden and that it may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

That may be so, but we could argue about that. The hon. Gentleman knows that judges often do not fill in the boxes anyway because they feel overworked. Perhaps the answer is to list five of six fewer pleas on a Friday. I have made the point as best I can. I should like also to refer to the victims in all of this. Sally Gimson told the Committee that it was very important that matters should be explained in “ordinary language”. She said:

“Very often, as you say, victims are not in court, and they might not understand—if they are told at all, and they might not be.”––[Official Report, Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Public Bill Committee, 13 July 2011; c. 31, Q48.]

She then goes on to support the idea of notification. Louise Casey said that she thought it useful to use language that was clear and easily understood, and nobody could disagree with that. She also thinks that it would be helpful for something to be written down.

The Committee will be pleased to hear that I am losing my voice rapidly, so I shall conclude my remarks by saying that the amendment would be useful. It would deal with several current ills in the system, but I take on board what the hon. Member for South Swindon said. Judges are very busy, but I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of someone to come up with a system whereby such a real problem can be dealt with.

Ben Gummer (Conservative, Ipswich)

I rise to speak partly because the hon. Member for Hammersmith is not in the room, so I know that I shall not be barracked. I shall make my comments on the amendments short, because we need to make progress. I hope to be wrapping up my remarks at about 3 o’clock.

It is a real measure of where the Government are that we are having such a discussion. It is exciting because, for the first time in a long time, we are having substantive discussions about deep, penal reform. It is also encouraging to have heard the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland making such constructive suggestions and engaging in what, I hope, is a momentous point in our prison history. It is also interesting to see how her attitude is diverging from that of other members of the Opposition Front Bench, especially her boss, who has been giving a rather different impression of what he thinks about non-custodial sentences.

The amendments have one thing in common, which would be to add complication and detail to what is already a large Bill. There are many things that we need to correct, particularly in sentencing. We are dealing with a massively over-extended Courts Service, one which almost approaches chaos at points. We are attending to what is, at times, a dysfunctional CPS, which is unable to proceed in the normal sense of administrative efficiency. We are also dealing with a broken social service system, which too often does not take the needs and requirements of women offenders and their children into account. We know about that, but to try to make perfect the enemy of the good now would be counter-productive. By adding in so many requirements, the gist of which I think that everyone on the Government Benches would support, we would be making life harder for the Courts Service at the point at which it will see the largest revolution in sentencing for many decades.

I hope that, in time, there is the prison capacity to bring proper min-max sentencing to bear. We know that we cannot do that at the moment because there is not the capacity. When we have the capacity for a more civilised approach to women prisoners, we can repeat what is done in Doncaster prison, for example, by bringing families together on a twice-weekly basis, and bring some of the best practice from Norway about part-time prisoners. With the available resources, we can reconsider such issues. However, given the significant challenges faced by the Minister with responsibility for prisons, such issues would muddy the Bill and be counter-productive.

I suppose that I am one of the few members of the Committee who is not a barrister, but I have sat on the bench with a Crown court judge during his sentencing process. His big worry was having the time to think through sentences and give the right one instead of filling out forms and ticking boxes all the time. For him and his colleagues to have to go through the process of writing statements and much of what is referred to under the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd could also be counter-productive because it could lead to an increase in poor sentencing, which is already a concern for the bench. The right hon. Gentleman tabled a typically generous and kind-hearted amendment, but an increasing requirement on both the Courts Service, which itself is barely able to manage, and on judges could produce an increase in bureaucracy and administrative costs that will take money from the probation service and other parts of Government where it could be better spent.

We will end up in a difficult situation if judges are required to distinguish custodial and non-custodial sentences; I have discussed that with the Prison Reform Trust, which raised the issue with me. Government Members, with support from some Opposition Members, are seeking tough non-custodial sentences that the public understand to be as onerous for the offender as a custodial sentence. If we write into the Bill a requirement that sets a bar, almost suggesting that a custodial sentence is more serious and onerous than a non-custodial sentence, it could have a counter-productive impact on public opinion. Amendment 300 is, therefore, misconceived. I understand its purpose but think that it could have a perverse impact on the media relations that we know we must somehow correct.

The amendments speak to many of our concerns about language, women and explaining sentencing to the public. However, I have considered each of them carefully and feel that each could end up having a perversely bad effect on what we are trying to achieve across the House. I hope that we can revisit them at a later point in proceedings, but I cannot support them.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Although we might not see it from casual observation, there is much consensus in the Committee about the issues under discussion, and I was struck by the comments made by the hon. Member for Ipswich, which were sensible and realistic in many respects. I want to add a couple of points about sentencing and the consideration of dependents. This has been a useful discussion and I think it would be helpful to put them on the record.

We have spoken a lot about what already goes on in court, but we must make a distinction between magistrates courts, where the vast majority of cases are heard and where most of the judiciary are not professional judges but lay magistrates, and the Crown court where more serious cases are heard, and where judges have a high degree of professional expertise and deal with considerable pressures given the importance and busyness of their courts. There has been some blurring over what mechanisms are in place to record sentences and what goes on in court, and how that information is fed back to defendants, their victims and anyone else who is interested. We need careful and detailed plans so that the right mechanisms are in place for each judicial forum. It is important to understand that what works in the Crown Court might not work in the magistrates court.

When I sat as a magistrate between 1993 and 2009, the process of sentencing decisions improved considerably. The structured approach that magistrates began to take, and the way they approached decision making and used the sentencing form to record the basis for their decision as they went along, was a significant improvement on what happened when I was first on the bench. We have, therefore, the bones of a structure that can be used to improve communication, and I hope the Minister will tell the Committee how he thinks we might build on that improvement in sentencing procedure and improve the communication of sentencing.

Unfortunately, one downside to the improvement in sentencing structures is that they become very complex; the hon. Member for South Swindon referred to that. For example, a community penalty can have a number of different elements. I have bitter memories of flicking backwards and forwards through sentencing guidelines on pronouncements because I was trying to describe a community penalty that had three or four different components, none of which was on the same page. There were different options for which parts to read out, depending on how far the process had gone, who the defendant was, how many times they had previously appeared in court and whether they had pleaded guilty. Discounts are an important part of our sentencing framework but, as is accepted across the Committee, they add further complexity to making and communicating a sentencing decision. I am in favour of anything that helps simplify the process of explaining how different components come together, because we have not yet achieved perfection.

I was interested in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Ipswich about not wanting to downplay the seriousness of a community penalty by putting in extra explanations about when a custodial sentence is imposed that would not otherwise be applied. I understand his point and will reflect on it, but the converse argument is that custody is a very serious penalty and we should ensure that when magistrates and judges are reaching for it they can absolutely verify and validate the process by which they arrive at the conclusion that no other sentencing option is possible. A pronouncement explaining that might help to ensure that the decision is absolutely rock solid and secure.

Finally, I made most of my comments on dependents in my earlier intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, but I would say that there are still judges and magistrates who are unsure and ambivalent about the weight they ought to give to the existence of children in the family of a defendant, particularly a mother, who is facing a custodial sentence. It would help to be explicit that not only is it legitimate, but it is required of courts to take that factor into account. It would not predispose the judge in their ultimate sentencing decision, but it would be useful explicitly to say to the courts: “This factor falls within the purview of your sentencing decision.” Whatever the hon. Member for Broxtowe and others might believe is the practice in most cases, the extent of poor outcomes for children whose parents are incarcerated suggests that we are not giving the weight that we should to the well-being of children.

Karl Turner (Labour, Kingston upon Hull East)

I want to speak in support of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland. I think that I have found myself sometimes agreeing with Government Members in the debate, and sometimes with Opposition Members, because some valid points have been made. In fact, I almost became Lib Demified at some point; I could not really decide who I was supporting. I was almost completely ashamed of myself, and would have needed to be dealt with by a judge.

On a serious note, it is important that defendants, parties to proceedings and victims understand properly the detail of the sentence. I do not agree with the argument that it is too much trouble for a judge to spend a couple of minutes filling out a simple form. I have not been a judge, but the hon. Member for South Swindon sat as a Crown court recorder and would have had a busy list on a Friday, so I am sure that he has much more experience than I have of the pressures on the judiciary in a Crown court situation. In my experience, however, the judiciary go to great lengths to try to explain sentences, and I do not think that it would take them more than a couple of minutes to explain what the sentence outcome was. That would provide more transparency and act as a safeguard for the judge, to an extent.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe said, I think, from a sedentary position: “But it is unnecessary.” We have had a good debate on the amendments, and I do not think that the measure is unnecessary. The debate has been interesting, and I wish that colleagues on the Committee could have been as excited about other clauses. Clause 12, for example, is a terrible clause and I wish it could have created as much passion among the practitioners sitting on the Committee. The argument that the measure is unnecessary is not worthy. The amendments are important.

Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat, Carshalton and Wallington)

I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman was becoming Lib Demified in the debate this afternoon.

I am ambivalent about cameras in courts but given the pressures that courts and judges face, is not the most effective way of registering what is said to have cameras and a verbatim recording? Anyone who did not understand the court proceedings would at least be able to go back and view what was said.

Karl Turner (Labour, Kingston upon Hull East)

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, but the practicalities of recording every sentencing are difficult. It seems completely impossible, in my view. I am not persuaded by the idea of televising courts; I do not agree with it. There is a tendency for advocates to play to the gallery, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd said, and I think there is a danger that the judiciary might do so as well. In my experience, if the press are in the public gallery in a courtroom, judges’ remarks are sometimes exaggerated for the benefit of the reporters sitting in court.

I have exhausted what I wanted to say. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr Hollobone.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I agree with the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston that we have had a good debate, and I agree with her about the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich, who summed up the position well. Like everyone else, I am anxious to make progress. Every useful intervention made requires us to give more time to the examination of the Bill’s detail, but on reflection, this debate has been well worth the Committee’s time. I will reply to the debate and put on record the Government’s view of the detail of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd.

Before I turn to specific amendments, I think it will be useful if I explain clause 54. It might also help us to avoid a stand part debate. Clause 54 replaces section 174 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 with a new section simplifying the existing duties to explain a sentence. The proposal was widely supported by the vast majority of those who responded to the consultation paper “Breaking the Cycle”. Many people, not least in the judiciary, have said clearly that the current statutory requirements are overly prescriptive and have become increasingly complex as additional requirements have been added.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

Hear, hear.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I hear encouragement from my hon. Friend. It was contributions made by Committee members who have served that reinforced the responses to the consultation received by the Department.

Current legislation is difficult to locate and understand, and can become simply impracticable in the day-to-day operation of the courts. The Government want to address those problems, which is why we created replacement section 174 to simplify, shorten and consolidate the various changes made to the section since 2003. In doing so, however, we have retained the important statutory requirements placed on courts to explain the effects of a sentence and, crucially, the duty to state in open court, in ordinary language, the court’s reasons for the sentence. That means that not only the offender but victims, witnesses and the public can see justice being done. It is a balancing act between the need to ensure that courts make it clear why a sentence is being imposed and the need to avoid burdening courts with unnecessary and prescriptive provisions that confuse rather than clarify.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for tabling the amendments and giving me an opportunity to explain the clause. I know that the first set of amendments was inspired by the briefing produced by Liberty, and they are none the worse for that; we all rely on advice. I turn to why the Government believe that amendments 267 to 270 are unnecessary and impractical, and why they are unlikely to achieve what the right hon. Gentleman and Liberty say they want to achieve.

The first part of amendment 267 would delete a power that allows the Lord Chancellor to prescribe cases where the duty to explain does not apply, or where the explanation of a sentence may be made in the absence of the offender or provided in written form. The next part of the amendment would change the nature of the duty to explain the effect of a sentence when the offender is not in present in court.

I should explain that the power given to the Lord Chancellor in new section 174(4) already exists in the current law. On this narrow point, however, I must say that the power has never been used. When we looked for an example of when it might be used, I confess that we were left scratching our heads. We have taken a safety-first attitude that it might be used, so we would tend to leave it in place. One of the arguments made to me was that the power was put in place in 2003, so we might as well leave it there. I have to say that preserving anything that was put in place in 2003, given the quality of that particular piece of legislation, was not an argument that I found terribly convincing.

Consequently I am happy to say to the right hon. Gentleman on the specific point about section 174(4) that I will go away and look at the power, and I will see if anyone cleverer than me can come up with examples of where it might be used. If they do come up with an example, we may want to preserve it, but if they do not I see no reason not to get rid of it, which would be consistent with the aim of simplifying the position.

Amendment 267 would also change the nature of the duty to explain the effect of a sentence when the offender is not present in court, so that it became a general duty to explain rather than a duty to ensure that the effect of a sentence was explained to the offender. The Government consider that the duty to explain is rightly directed at the offender, whether or not they are present in court, because it is primarily the offender who must be made aware of the implications of their non-compliance with their sentence.

Practical issues arise with the next part of the amendment, which would place a requirement on a court to provide written reasons for sentencing and a written explanation of the sentence in every case. The amendment would go on to require, again in every case, that these written remarks are given or posted to the offender and no fewer than nine other groups. That is simply not a practical proposition. More than 1 million sentencing decisions are made each year and providing written reasons in 10 million letters would lead to a large increase in the work load of courts at very significant expense. In addition, such a proposition would not help to build understanding of sentencing among the public. Sending sentencing remarks to representatives of the media in every case, as the amendment also requires, would simply swamp the media organisations. Swamping the media organisations may have its own appeal, but perhaps it should not be done at the expense of the taxpayer.

The right hon. Gentleman adduced the evidence that Lord Justice Leveson gave to the Justice Committee in support of his proposal—

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

No, the learned Lord Justice Leveson did not support the idea. His only objection was that he thought that associates in the Crown court and clerks in the magistrates courts were already too busy. He did not actually support the proposal, but he did not vehemently say, “Well, as a matter of principle, it is nonsense.”

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

Let me put on the record Lord Justice Leveson’s precise remarks to the Justice Committee:

“But to incur the expense of transcribing remarks in every case would be a very real expense. I have no problem with it but it would be a very substantial cost.”

As we are representing the interests of the taxpayer here, I have a problem with “a very substantial cost” being added to the system, and it would also complicate the life of court administrators. We must make a cost-benefit analysis and, in these circumstances, I fear that I must invite the Committee to resist the proposal.

That is not to say that there is no written record of the sentence; just because judges do not always issue written sentencing remarks does not mean that there is no written record. For offenders receiving a custodial sentence, the sentence is first recorded by the court clerk; normally, the offender’s counsel or legal representative will then explain the sentence to the offender before they leave the building, as members of the Committee have made clear. The witness care unit has an obligation to explain the sentence to both victims and witnesses in writing in due course, and when the offender is taken to prison, a warrant issued by the court is given to the prison detailing the sentence that has been handed down. The prison then calculates the release date for the defendant and informs him or her of that as soon as possible. For community orders, the probation service receives a record of the court’s order and explains the implications to the offender at the first meeting. With fines, the offender is issued with a collection order that sets out the terms and methods of payment.

For those reasons, we oppose any further prescriptive additions to legislative duties, although I do not want to suggest that we have dismissed the thoughts behind the amendment. We want to increase the public’s understanding of sentencing, on which both sides of the Committee are in agreement. That is why the court service has agreed, in response to the victims commissioner’s recent report, to make transcripts of sentencing remarks in cases involving deaths available to the family of the victim. We are also making sentencing information more available and transparent. As has been recently reported, and as referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk, we are considering televising sentencing remarks. They are practical measures that will help victims, witnesses and the public understand sentencing, and I hope that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd will agree that they form a more achievable approach than his amendment, particularly in the current economic circumstances. Our approach is consistent with both his objective and our aim of generally reducing prescription and the burden of administration.

Amendments 268 to 270 would reinstate in section 174 the requirement for a court to set out where an offender has received a custodial sentence because they have met the custodial threshold, or where they have met the threshold for a community order. Such thresholds are contained in sections 148 and 152 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. In revising section 174, we have removed the unnecessary provisions, such as those that the amendments seek to reinstate. There is already a general duty to give reasons for a sentence in ordinary language under subsection (2). Where an offender receives a custodial sentence or a community order, the court will invariably say why it has imposed that sentence, that the offence is so serious that a custodial sentence is necessary, or that a community order is warranted. The general duty already covers the need to explain if a custodial or community order threshold is met. I am alive to the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich about making community orders more robust and punitive. He made a sound point about the overlap between the punitive effects of sentences in the community and in prison.

Listing specific custodial and community sentence threshold requirements in section 174 is an example of how the 2003 Act has become overly complex, and that is what we are trying to address in the Bill, and I hope that the explanation will reassure the right hon. Gentleman that amendments 267 to 270 can be withdrawn.

Amendments 298 to 302, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, cover similar ground, although in a different way. I have already set out why we think that the general duties to give reasons and the effect of a sentence are important. Amendment 299 would, however, delete the duty to explain in open court and in plain language the reasons for imposing a sentence. That general duty in subsection (2) is crucial to ensure transparency and public confidence in sentencing. It is also a long-standing legal requirement set out in statute and, for many years before that, in case law, that a court must give reasons for its sentence, rather than simply stating what the sentence is. It is also crucial for the appellate court, so that it knows the court’s reasons for a particular sentence.

Amendment 299 would also replace the duty to give reasons for a sentence with a duty on the court to take reasonable steps to ensure that the offender understands the terms of the sentence. That, however, is exactly what subsection (3) of revised section 174 will do. In short, amendment 299 would delete a crucial duty and replace it with a requirement that already exists.

Amendment 300, as I understand it, seeks to add to the duties of the court. It would add a requirement to explain why a custodial sentence has been imposed; in other words, to explain that the offender has met the custodial threshold, as set out in section 152 of the 2003 Act. As I have already said in relation to amendment 270, we have removed the specific requirement to outline when an offender has met that and the community order threshold, because that requirement is met by the general duty to give reasons for a sentence in subsection (2). That reduces the detail of section 174 without losing the important duty to give reasons. However, amendment 299 would delete the duty to give reasons for a sentence, so the specific requirement would, rather oddly, create a duty to give just the one reason for a sentence. To compound the confusion, the duty to give a reason for a custodial sentence is inserted into section 174(3), which is the duty to explain the effects of a sentence. That would confuse the reasons for and the effects of a sentence.

Amendment 302 is similar to amendment 267 in that it would place a requirement on the court to provide written sentencing remarks. As I have said, written sentencing remarks can be valuable, especially in very serious or controversial cases, but to require them in every case, even for five rather than 10 groups, is simply impracticable.

Finally, I understand the thinking behind amendment 300 and new clause 9, which are both designed to ensure that the court considers the existence of children and dependants in sentencing. They are both well intentioned. Amendment 300 would add to the duty on the court to explain the effect of a sentence a new duty to explain the effect on the children and dependants of the offender. I do not believe that such a change is required, is in keeping with the clause or is a practical proposition. The duty in subsection (3) of revised section 174 is to explain to offenders the effect of the sentence imposed on them—for example, what will happen if they breach a requirement of the community order or when they will be released from a custodial sentence. The effect of a sentence on children is a wholly different subject that will be considered when deciding what sentence to impose, not when explaining the effect of the sentence for the offender.

New clause 9 would place a specific requirement on a court to consider children and dependants in sentencing. I do not believe that such a specific addition to the law is necessary. In considering a sentence, courts must take into account the offence’s seriousness, which relates to the harm caused and the culpability of the offender. In deciding on the seriousness of an offence, courts will have regard to any mitigating circumstances of the offender, including consideration of the offender’s responsibility for the care of children or dependants. That is a long-established practice, and guidance is provided by judgments of the Court of Appeal on the weight to be given to care responsibilities as a mitigating factor. Although I understand the reasons behind new clause 9, I do not think that it is necessary to place yet more prescriptive provisions into law when the judiciary can and already do consider such matters as mitigating factors in sentencing.

I hope that my explanation will enable the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I shall not delay the Committee with a long series of remarks, but I shall make two points. I accept that it is conceivable that our amendment 299 is technically flawed, and I shall not press it or amendment 300 to a vote. However, notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, insufficient weight is being given to the needs of dependants and to the interests of victims, so I shall press amendments 301 and 302 to Divisions. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 56 - Breach of community order

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 303, in clause 56, page 42, line 7, leave out paragraph (b).

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendment 246.

Amendment 304, in clause 56, page 42, line 16, leave out paragraph (b).

Government amendments 247 and 249.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

To be clear, the Opposition are content to agree the increases in sentencers’ discretion in the clause to allow for cases where a breach of conditions under a community order is trivial. In amendments 303 and 304, however, we oppose the use of fines in the event of such a breach. Essentially, we have three objections to that measure. First, it undermines the community order regime; secondly, it will privilege the very wealthy who might come into contact with the criminal justice system; and thirdly, we have doubts about the efficacy of the fining regime.

First I will look at some of the community orders. The community orders include offending behaviour programmes, which might include programmes to address patterns of domestic violence or sexual offence, curfews and community orders intended to address people’s drug or alcohol problems. If attitudes and behaviours are driving people’s criminal behaviour and the offender refuses to comply with an order to go on a programme to address the underlying drivers of the offending behaviour or to acknowledge and address their problems, we do not accept, and the public will not accept, that fining will be adequate recompense or a way of making people change their behaviour in the appropriate manner.

I want to remind members of the Committee of what is going on at the moment. I am grateful to the National Association of Probation Officers for this information. Of all community orders imposed in 2009, some 52% ran their course successfully, 12% were terminated early for good progress, 16% were terminated for failure to comply and 10% were convicted of further offences. The pattern will not be significantly different in other years. Perhaps one quarter of people will be fined instead of being sent to custody or required to complete their community orders.

As an example, take someone who is beating his wife. It cannot be acceptable that he should avoid dealing with that problem through paying a fine. That is not a fanciful example. When I went to visit the probation office in Middlesbrough, which covers both my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, I met one of the probation officers, who told me that she was dealing with an offender who had repeatedly been up on domestic violence charges. He begged her not to be recommended for a domestic violence programme and to have an alternative. She was obviously highly resistant to that, which was right.

We need to make it absolutely clear to people that a fine is not acceptable and that we will not flex the system to that extent. That view is also held by the Magistrates’ Association, given the example that it gave. If a person is on a curfew, and the curfew is that they have to be at home on a Saturday afternoon instead of being at a football match having a fight, as they do on a regular basis, it is no use to give them a fine if they breach that. That is not an acceptable alternative.

Alex Cunningham (Labour, Stockton North)

Does my hon. Friend agree that this clause plays into the hands of rich celebrities, such as footballers and models and people of that ilk? We have seen examples of that in recent months. They easily stump up the cash and pay the fine, instead of receiving a punishment that punishes them.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend makes precisely a point that I was going to come to. To the kind of people that my hon. Friend is talking about, £2,500 is a trivial sum of money. They will take legal advice and they will avoid the 100 hours unpaid community work, which to them, on their stupendous salaries, would be worth thousands and thousands of pounds. They will simply write the cheque. That is not fanciful. I have here a report from The Times about Ms Naomi Campbell. It states:

“Yesterday Campbell, 38, pleaded guilty to kicking and spitting at police officers after flying into an uncontrollable rage on board a flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles in April. Campbell had ordered the Captain Miles Sutherland to get off the aircraft and look for her suitcase personally, holding up the flight for almost an hour. When the cabin crew eventually called the police to remove her she refused to disembark and claimed she was targeted because she is black.

The model pleaded guilty at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court…to two counts of assaulting a police officer, one of disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress and using threatening abusive words or behaviour to cabin crew.

She was ordered to carry out 200 hours’ community service, pay compensation…to the two police officers”,

and to the captain of the aeroplane. Subsequently, British Airways fined the super-model. It is clear that, if she had had the option down the track of not performing 200 hours’ community service, she would have written an even larger cheque.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The hon. Lady misunderstands the effect of the proposal, so we might be able to curtail the debate. The fine is an additional punishment. The community order continues so, in such circumstances, Mrs Campbell would not be buying herself out of her community work that she had been ordered to do, but would have to continue to do it.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. Before we go any further, will he explain whether the fine is instead of a custodial sentence in the event of breaching a community sentence?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The fine is not instead of anything. The additional changes to the sum of £2,500 is to give sentencers, when they are presented with such a situation, greater flexibility to deal appropriately with the cases in front of them.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to the Minister.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I hear what the Minister is saying and he will correct me if I am wrong, but in the event of a breach and if the transgression were minor, and explicable, the order would continue or it would be revoked and there would be fresh sentencing. That fresh sentencing is either likely to be a further community order, perhaps of a more onerous or appropriate kind, or a custodial sentence. That still seems to be a nod towards leniency in the sense that, for what may be a breach more serious than something minor that is dealt with by allowing matters to continue, in the example cited by my hon. Friend, the person will be allowed to get away with paying a fine.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am indebted to my hon. Friend for his remarks. If he is right, and I am sure that he is, it seems that the Minister was trying to get off on a technicality and that the substantive point in our amendment is, in fact, correct.

Our third worry about the clause is the unsatisfactory record of collecting fines. It is obviously highly likely that people who are unreliable in performing community orders or in paying compensation are also likely to be unreliable in paying their fines. If the fines are not paid, they will be seen to be getting away with it. That is how the public will see the position. The Magistrates’ Association has told us that it is particularly worried about the matter with respect to serial offenders. Although there are penalties for non-payment, they are not used frequently. How realistic is it to use the provision as either an effective penalty or deterrent?

Another reason why there might not be a deterrent effect is that high fines are imposed infrequently. For example, in 2010, the last year for which the numbers are available, only 220 people were fined more than £1,000. The Minister has drafted the Bill to provide for fines of £2,500, which sounds fierce—I know that it is part of the existing scale—but if only 220 people are being fined, how realistic is it for him to say that the £2,500 fine will be used? As I pointed out earlier, the Magistrates’ Association has told us, based on information from the Ministry of Justice, that about a quarter of the people on community orders are not completing them satisfactorily or are breaching them. The provision therefore looks rather empty.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I could not agree more, because part of the discussion about unpaid fines this morning, in which I did not intervene, did not ring true. During the adjournment, I looked at the Law Society Gazette, which reported in July that unpaid court fines have jumped £600 million in aggregate, while the number of court collectors has been reduced by 12% by this Government. The change therefore seems to be a bit of an empty gesture.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his up-to-date remark. I looked at the 16th report of the Public Accounts Committee for the 2010-11 Session. Last week, hon. Members objected to our referring to briefings from pressure groups, but I hope that they will not object to our referring to House of Commons papers. The report explicitly stated that the Ministry of Justice’s defence of its rate of payment, which was 86% in 2009-10, was not satisfactory. It stated:

“There was little evidence of the sustained improvement in fine collection rates that we were promised in 2006. As at 31 March 2010, outstanding fines and confiscation orders in arrears and over six months totalled just under £1.5 billion, of which just 30% was considered recoverable.”

That figure of about £500 million for what is recoverable is perhaps the same as the number that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith mentioned as having risen to £600,000. The report continued:

“Unpaid court fines and penalties have increased year-on-year and the Ministry’s primary measure of how effectively court fines are being collected is inadequate. The Ministry still relies on payment rate, despite our conclusion after our 2006 Hearing that the payment rate fails to capture the amounts of outstanding arrears. We look to the Ministry to introduce the promised improvements to performance measurement by September 2011.”

I hope that the Minister will give us a glimpse of the Government’s strategy on improving fine collection, which is supposed to be coming out this month. The Public Accounts Committee also stated:

“Without combined financial and operational performance data and a full understanding of its costs, there remains a risk that, in implementing its Spending Review settlement, the Ministry will not achieve best value for money and will not understand properly the impact of cost reductions on frontline services.”

My hon. Friend has just mentioned those cost reductions, which he discovered by looking at the Law Society Gazette.

I offer the Minister a frank remark that is intended to be helpful. If, when he next negotiates with the Treasury, rather than accepting all its endless requests for short-term public spending cuts, he could pay a little more attention to the scope for bringing money in under the fines—the same issue arises on fee collection—some of the public expenditure cuts, which I am sure that he is not particularly happy about implementing, would not be necessary. If £1.5 billion of fines—a large sum of money—are outstanding and £500 million is recoverable, he should look at doing something to get that money in quickly.

I shall give the Minister a further piece of advice: he should talk to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, because the child maintenance executive, which has a similar problem of large amounts of outstanding money, has looked into securitising the loans so that the Government get their money now and someone else takes on the liability and responsibility for collecting them. With that significant improvement in the Department’s finances—£500 million is a lot of money—perhaps some other things that the Minister has to do would not be necessary.

We cannot see a rationale in justice terms for the proposal. The only rationale that we can see is that fines are cheaper in the short term for the Government to administer. They want to save on probation and prison resources by using fines as a penalty. We believe that it is wrong to do that and wrong to make those cuts. We also believe that they can recover that money and should have a proper strategy for it. That is why we have tabled the amendments.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The amendments seek to amend clause 56 to remove the power from the magistrates and Crown courts to impose a fine of £2,500 for the breach of a community order. The Government, along with the Magistrates’ Association, believe that the addition of a fine to the current options for dealing with a breach would be valuable in ensuring that offenders face the appropriate response for failing to comply with a community order. The only area in which the Magistrates’ Association is at odds with us is the sum of the fine. However, it supports the proposal in principle.

At the moment, an offender who is fined by a court but fails to comply with any of the requirements of their community order must be dealt with in one of two ways set out in statute. The court must either vary the existing order by making its requirements more onerous or revoke the order and resentence the offender as if they had just been convicted of the original offence. The hon. Member for Hammersmith made that point.

Clause 56 will extend that limited menu by adding the option of a fine of up to a maximum of £2,500. That is a straightforward punishment for failing to comply with a community order. It is important to remember that the community order will run on unchanged. The clause is self-evident good sense. The offender does not get out of the community order by breaching and paying a fine. That will bring home to offenders the importance of adhering to the terms of their sentences and improve compliance. It will also make a clear statement to the public that failing to comply with the orders of the court will be dealt with severely, if that is the right response.

The clause will also allow the courts to let the offender complete the original order as imposed. I understand that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland supports that part of the clause, which will give the courts more freedom than is currently the case to turn the offender away from the crime, if that is more likely in a particular case. That course of action used to be available, as was the fine, but both were removed by that outstanding piece of legislation, the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We now propose to reinstate them. Both options already exist for juveniles.

The rest of the hon. Lady’s remarks were about the apparent inability to recover fines. The evidence produced in support of her arguments and the helpful quote by the Law Society were as good a condemnation of the wretched inheritance that we received from the previous Administration as one could hope to hear in Committee. I am grateful for her helpful advice about how we can address the mess with which we were left.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

Will the Minister give way?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

No, I will not. As a Member who supported the previous Administration, and as a lawyer, the hon. Member for Hammersmith should have known better. We are absolutely in the business of improving recovery of fines. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon is considering all ways of doing that and we will be receptive to all useful suggestions to address the shambles of our inheritance, from whichever quarter.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

I have a suggestion.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman—he may write to me.

I trust that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland will accept the arguments in favour of fines for breaches of community orders, which will restore the situation to what it was before 2003. It will also have the quantum of making clear that the measure is a serious, punitive option for magistrates to use when people will not complete their community orders.

Finally, the technical Government amendments 246, 247 and 249 correct a drafting oversight in clauses 56 and 58.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

We entered into the debate in Committee with a constructive spirit, intending to be helpful to the Minister. We can argue about who is responsible for what has happened in the past, but it is not productive to do so. I am simply trying to offer the Minister a piece of helpful and friendly advice about his discussions with Her Majesty’s Treasury.

Having heard the Minister’s explanation about the practical operation of introducing fines, I still believe that there is a small loophole, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith. I am pleased to hear the Minister’s assurances, however, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

Before we move on to the stand part debate, I advise the Minister to hang on to Government amendment 249, which we shall consider when we discuss clause 58.

Clause 57 - Changes to powers to make suspended sentence order

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 305, in clause 57, page 43, line 3, leave out ‘2 years’ and insert ‘12 months’.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 306, in clause 57, page 43, line 12, leave out ‘may’ and insert ‘must’.

Amendment 307, in clause 57, page 43, leave out lines 24 to 31.

Amendment 308, in clause 57, page 43, line 37, leave out ‘before or’.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Amendments 305 and 307 are designed to keep the length of a suspended custodial sentence at 12 months. Amendment 306 would keep the requirement for a community order alongside a suspended sentence. I add, however, that we received evidence on that matter from Louise Casey, the victims commissioner, and from the former Solicitor-General, who is sadly no longer in the House. Amendment 308 would challenge the clause’s retrospective nature.

The proposal to extend the length of a suspended sentence order to two years brings within the scope of such orders some serious crimes for which, the Opposition believe, people who are found guilty should be punished. It will again look to the public as if people are being let off, especially given the proposal to drop the requirement for a parallel community order alongside the suspended sentence order.

I shall give some examples from the sentencing guidelines of crimes for which an SSO would be available under the proposals: actual bodily harm; premeditated assault resulting in relatively serious injury; robbery; a weapon produced and used to threaten force, and/or force used which results in injury, for which current sentences can be as low as two years; theft from a vulnerable person involving intimidation or threat of force or deception, for which the starting point for sentencing is 18 months; public order section 4 offences that are racially aggravated, for which two years is the maximum; benefit fraud by professional fraudsters organising large-scale fraud in which millions of pounds can be at stake, for which the sentences can be two years; making a false statement to obtain a passport, for which the starting point is 18 months; involuntary manslaughter; and sexual assault by penetration with a body part where no physical harm is sustained and the victim is over the age of 16.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

Those are examples of sentences that are imposed by guidelines recommended by either the Sentencing Guidelines Council or the Court of Appeal. This morning the hon. Lady talked eloquently about the plight of women and their position in the criminal justice system. What would happen if a single mother, who was the sole carer of her children, came before the court on a benefit fraud involving a guideline with a sentence of two years? Will not the proposal to extend the suspended sentence provisions help the courts’ discretion in dealing with difficult positions involving single parents caring for children? Can she respond to that fundamental dichotomy at the heart of her argument, and indeed of what she seems to be advancing as her party’s policy?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that example. There will always be difficult decisions. I think I made it clear in my remarks about children that there would always be people who had committed extremely violent offences, and were perhaps a danger to their children, who needed to be in custody. My point, however, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman understood, was that at the moment 85% of women in prison are there for non-violent offences. Many of the offences that I was listing for the hon. Gentleman are violent ones, and this matter will cause extreme concern.

Furthermore, as I also made clear in my opening remarks, the other problem with the clause is that it will no longer be required to have a community order to address the sort of issues that the hon. Gentleman was talking about, in the waiting time—I cannot think of the technical word—for the suspended sentence order. The approach in the clause is, I am afraid, risky and weak.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

The hon. Gentleman’s point might be more valid if suspended sentences were now given, as they used to be, in exceptional circumstances. He has picked on an exceptional case. Suspended sentences are becoming more common; they seem to be given more regularly as a more usual part of sentencing procedure. My hon. Friend may or may not agree with my cynicism, but I am afraid that the provision, like many in the Bill, is more about getting people out of prison and bringing the bill for custody down than about anything else. That is what lies at the heart of this amendment, not the sincere compassion of Government Members.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend gets to the core of the matter. Many measures in this part of the Bill are designed to reduce the financial burden on the Ministry of Justice, irrespective of the long-term implications for people’s offending behaviour, of whether or not justice is done and of how they will be seen by the general public.

Let me make it clear to Members on the Government Benches that when I refer to the sentencing guidelines, I am not taking up some kind of theoretical position. I have also had a look at what is going on in sentencing, by which I mean the length of sentence that people are getting for different crimes and the possibility that some of those crimes will now move into the scope for being suspended.

Unfortunately, because of the way in which the Ministry collects the figures, we cannot see them between 12 and 24 months. Figures are collected between 12 and 18 months and 18 and 36 months, but the 12 to 18 months period is a good proxy for the zone that we are looking at. The crimes include threat or conspiracy to murder, manslaughter and causing death by reckless driving. I was interested to see that they included reckless driving because my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East has a proposal to beef up the sentencing for that crime, which I thought that Government Members were minded to support. It seems that there is some inconsistency about the matter.

The list goes on to cover wounding or endangering life, cruelty to children, child abduction, rape, sexual activity with a child under 13, abuse of children through prostitution, and burglary in a dwelling. Then we move on to the white collar crimes. They include fraud, false accounting, forgery, production and supply of class A drugs, kidnapping and firearms offences—firearms offences are in the wrong category and should be under violent offences. The point that I am trying to make is that hundreds if not thousands of perpetrators of serious crimes could get away with neither a community order nor any time in prison.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I am sorry. I am not rising in anger, but with a mounting sense of concern. The hon. Lady is positing examples, including serious offences of rape, to try to draw the Committee to the conclusion that, because there is an increase in a discretion to allow suspended sentences, serious crimes will be subject to suspended sentence orders by Crown court judges. I caution her to take very great care in allowing us to jump to that conclusion. It would be wholly wrong and a complete caricature of the Government’s proposal.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am not trying to caricature the Government’s proposal because, to be honest, we have not had much data from the Government. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us which categories of crimes he believes will now fall within the suspended sentence order rules. All I can do, and I am sorry if this does not satisfy the hon. Member for South Swindon, is look at what is going on at the moment, look at the current guidelines and draw attention to the risks that may follow. There seems to be something rather incoherent in saying that a crime is so serious that the sentence, if the person went into custody, is two years and that this can be suspended without any community order alongside, rather than the person being sentenced for a shorter time. I am sorry to say that it does not stack up. It signals a lack of seriousness in the Government’s attitude to crime. This is not coherent or likely to build confidence.

Jessica Lee (Conservative, Erewash)

On the point about coherence, it is useful in these debates to stick to more evidence-based proposals or suggestions. The concern is that with this list of offences we are moving into the realms of speculation by mentioning serious offences where the prospect of them being part of a suspended sentence is completely removed from what will happen.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

It is ludicrous.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am concerned about these risks. All I am doing is reflecting to Government Members offences where people are currently getting sentences of between 12 and 18 months and pointing out to them that if the rules are changed on suspended sentence orders, this is what may happen.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

Will the hon. Lady make it absolutely clear, and could Hansard record, that people who are convicted of rape do not get sentences of 12 to 18 months? Neither are those sentences given for serious violence or offences such as kidnapping, and rarely for manslaughter. I could go on. It is a spurious argument that does not advance the debate, and it is extremely misleading to any member of the public who is here or who reads Hansard. It does the hon. Lady no credit, with respect.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am sorry. The hon. Lady is wrong about that. I have the numbers here, and I will tell the Committee, because I was amazed when I read them. Ten people got between 12 and 18 months for child abduction. For sexual assault on a male,15 people got between 12 and 18 months and 31 people got between 18 and 36 months. For rape of a female, one person got between 12 and 18 months and 50 people got between 18 and 36 months. For sexual assault on a female, 131 people got between 12 and 18 months and 257 people got between 18 and 36 months. For sexual activity with a child under 13, 20 people got between 12 and 18 months and 32 people got between 18 and 36 months.

Several hon. Members rose—

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

Order. To whom is the hon. Lady giving way?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I will first give way to the hon. Member for Ipswich.

Ben Gummer (Conservative, Ipswich)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. As someone who does not practise at the Bar and does not sit on a bench, I have considerable concern about the way that this debate is going. We are dealing with a difficult Bill. I do not want it ending up in territory where we might be misleading the public. A whole series of offences have been cited. We have no idea of the context or the judgments. We may end up in a difficult situation if the debate gets out of hand, causing undue fear among the public about the current situation and the Government’s proposals, which are entirely reasonable.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

It is perfectly open to the Minister to explain to us which crimes he thinks will be covered that are not covered at the moment. I look forward to hearing about it. I wish that more had been published in the impact assessment, because there was almost nothing about this. Nor was there anything in the impact assessment about the financial savings and the reduction in prison places that the Government are expecting from the measure. If the Minister has better data than mine, which are simply the Ministry of Justice’s own published information, I look forward to hearing them.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. The word “rape” came into the debate. It now appears that it is based on one case.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Two cases.

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

All right, two cases. We have to be very careful, because we do not know the full facts of those particular cases. My main point, however, which may reassure the hon. Lady, is that all sexual offences are covered by the Sentencing Council’s guidelines. The starting point for a serious sexual offence is always a term of custody. There are ranges of terms of imprisonment between high and low. The guidelines, to which sentencers must have regard, are to start at terms of imprisonment and then apply mitigating factors that would draw the court back below the custodial threshold. I say again that we should be careful before jumping to the conclusion that increasing discretion in such matters will somehow lead to unduly lenient sentences being passed in serious cases.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The hon. Gentleman obviously has not looked at the statistics. I remind him what I told him in the first place. The second category was people sentenced to between 18 and 36 months. As we have understood it, some of those people, although not all of them, will fall within the new rules. To take the example of rape of a female, the number is 51. I am raising questions and pointing out risks. That is the job of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

My hon. Friend made an important point about serious crimes, or crimes that appear serious, and lenient sentences. The Bill could have an impact on sentences. She should not be put off by the excitement on the Government Benches. It is for the Minister to set out clearly which crimes will bring which sentences, so we should not back away from it. So far, the Bill is unclear, but we hope that the Minister will clarify exactly which crimes will bring which penalties.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I remind Government Members that one of the most liberal pressure groups in British civil society, the Prison Reform Trust, also opposes the clause. It is not some eccentric frolic of mine. I also remind the Minister that as well as asking him which crimes he thinks will be covered, I asked him what savings and reductions in prison numbers the measures will bring and why he is making the change retrospective. It sounds as though the interest is more in saving money than in justice. Finally, will he say something about the meaning and interpretation of breach when there is no parallel community order?

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I shall be brief. Will the Minister respond to three questions? First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, suspended sentences have gone in and out of fashion over the years, and if one looks at Government proposals in recent years, it seems that they are more in fashion now. Will the Minister explain the purpose of the change to the legislation and what he seeks to achieve through longer periods of suspension in relation to sentencing objectives? Does he see it as an opportunity for more rehabilitation, or are there other sentencing objectives that he seeks to achieve? I am confused about the purpose of the proposition.

Secondly, what is the Minister’s view on the likely level of compliance with longer periods of suspension? I am sure that none of us wants to set up people to fail. That is a completely pointless approach to criminal justice. I would be grateful if he would tell us what assessment he has made of likely compliance levels with longer periods of suspension. Thirdly, what assessment has the Minister made of the impact on reoffending rates?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am grateful to my hon. Friends for their interventions while the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland presented her case. They illustrated clearly and with my full support the fact that she has uncharacteristically taken this debate in the wrong direction regarding the Government’s underlying intentions. I will be happy therefore to address her questions and those of the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston.

The clause is consistent with widening the discretion of courts to impose suspended sentences, and the amendments would remove the effect of clause 57 and the proposed changes. Currently, the courts can only suspend a custodial sentence of less than 12 months. They are required to impose at least one community requirement. We are proposing to allow the courts to suspend a sentence of up to two years and to give them discretion as to whether any community requirement needs to be imposed.

Suspended sentences can be a useful tool for the courts and we want to ensure that they make the best use of them. Offenders on suspended sentences have a lower reoffending rate than those sentenced to immediate custody of less than 12 months. Any offence meriting up to two years’ custody could potentially attract a suspended sentence, but it is entirely at the discretion of the court, taking account of all the circumstances of the case as to whether a suspended sentence is appropriate. This is of course the same position as now for offences receiving 12 months or less.

It is the judiciary who have said that they consider it unlikely that they would impose many long suspended sentences, but the option to suspend a sentence of up to two years is useful to deal with the full range of cases before them. I want to make it clear that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe indicated, the average sentence for rape is eight years. There is no way that the provision is intended to address the list of offences that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland produced. Of course it is not. We do not expect there to be many cases in which a long suspended sentence would be justified, but we think it would be a useful extension of the court’s powers. Before the current provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the courts could suspend a sentence for up to two years, so the provision is hardly a radical new departure in criminal justice.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the rules for giving suspended sentences were completely different before the 2003 legislation. This is now being done in a different context where different considerations apply and different rules govern the giving of suspended sentences. Today, there are some 46,000 people getting suspended sentences. At the point when the periods were long, the numbers were under 10,000—I think they were about 6,000; it is a totally different situation.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I have already made it clear that we would consider it relatively exceptional to use suspended sentences of such length, but we think it right to return to the position before the 2003 Act to give sentencers discretion. We also think it right that we should actually trust our sentencers and give them appropriate discretion instead of saying that they must impose a requirement whether or not it is appropriate in their judgment. As I have made clear, we do not expect this provision to be used very often.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

Will the Minister give way?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I was asked for examples. If the court considers that the offender has an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment, but is unlikely to reoffend and has an unblemished record, the threat of custody is likely to be sufficient incentive to make sure that that offender does not stray on to the wrong side of the law in future.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

If the Minister is saying that suspended sentences in excess of 12 to 24 months will be given in exceptional circumstances, that is not what the clause says. If he is saying that it is expected—or even if he is trying to give guidance to the judiciary—that these sentences will be used very rarely indeed, I am afraid that that is not good enough either. I have entire confidence in the judiciary to exercise their powers, but that is not what we are talking about. Offences that can attract two-year custodial sentences are likely to be serious offences. It is the Government’s job to decide whether they are appropriate in respect of the broader range of sentences and whether it is right in such circumstances to allow those sentences to be suspended. The Minister cannot wriggle out of that.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

It is not a question of wriggling out of anything. The hon. Gentleman is implying that anyone who gets a two-year custodial sentence will have it suspended. Of course, that will not be the case. We are moving to a position whereby judges, in circumstances when someone with an unblemished record could be faced with a sentence of up two years on their record, will be given the option of suspending the sentence if they consider it appropriate. We should trust our judiciary to get it right, which is why, in addition to the community requirements, we believe it right to return a level of discretion to the courts.

Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe)

It is effectively a sword of Damocles. The defendants know that should they breach that period of suspension, the full two years will come down upon them and that they will go away—[ Interruption. ]

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I shall leave that sedentary intervention on the floor, but I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

Will the Minister give way?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention may not be wholly constructive.

Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

I do not like to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. Is it not the case that if someone has a 12-month sentence suspended or someone has a 24-month sentence suspended, by its very nature the sentence of 24 months must be for a more serious crime? By giving that flexibility, there will be more suspended sentences for more serious crimes. Is that likely to improve people’s view of the justice system?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The purpose of the provision is to improve the delivery of justice. It is appropriate for Parliament to give wider discretion to sentencers and to restore them to the position they were in before the 2003 Act. There is a difference in approach between the Government and the previous Administration, whose sentencing reforms took things in an extremely prescriptive direction. We believe that we can expect our judges to uphold the law and give appropriate sentences. The general direction of travel is then to give them more discretion, and the provision is part of that process. It will give them greater ability to do justice.

I return to the community requirements. At present, the court has no choice but to impose a requirement even when there is no obvious rehabilitative need to be addressed. Again, such cases are unlikely to arise often, but it makes no sense to waste scarce resources when the court determines that they are unnecessary and that the sword of Damocles held over the person, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe suggested, is sufficient.

We have to remember that a suspended sentence without requirements does not mean that the offender has got off. The sentence is recorded as a custodial sentence, as are the consequences that flow from it, and the threat of custody hangs over the offender for up to two years. I assure members of the Committee that having a two-year custodial sentence on someone’s record is an extremely serious matter. Giving the courts additional discretion will allow them to target suspended sentences to best effect. I trust that the Committee will accept my reassurances, particularly with regard to the context in which we expect sentencers to use the powers, and that the hon. Lady will withdraw amendments 305 to 308.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I said that we would not the criticise the increase in discretion under the clause. I am disappointed that the Minister has not answered the basic question about which we had most debate: which further crimes can now be punished with a suspended sentence order? It is no good Government Back Benchers saying that is a side issue or a non-issue, when the Minister has been completely incapable of giving us any further information about what will actually go on. I am sorry to say that I do not think that is an adequate basis for legislation.

Nor am I satisfied with what the Minister says about community orders. The truth is that a person who commits a crime and gets a suspended sentence order might not have a community order as well. Although there is a stigma attached to having a criminal record, a person who commits a crime serious enough to carry a two-year custodial sentence might receive no serious or adequate punishment. Furthermore, if someone does not have a community order running alongside the suspended sentence order, the only breach that will send them to prison is another offence.

The Minister made much of the group of people who have unblemished records and who, in a moment of amnesia, commit a crime that carries a custodial sentence of two years. I hope he will remember that the list that I read out of crimes covered by the measures included false accounting and fraud. That is the Guinness defence; it is precisely what was argued in the Guinness case. People had expensive lawyers who could put up good defences and say, “It was a moment of amnesia.” It is precisely such white-collar criminals for whom that will be the biggest loophole.

Nor has the Minister answered my questions about what the cost savings will be, how many prison places will be saved—in other words, how frequently he expects the powers to be used—or why the measures are retrospective.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I have made it clear that infrequently is the context. On the issue of retrospection, where a person has committed an offence but not been convicted and sentenced before the commencement of the provisions, modifications to the suspended sentence will be available to the court.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Why?

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

It is perfectly permissible, because the effect is not detrimental to the offender.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I rest my case. It is quite clear that this is about saving money.

Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat, Carshalton and Wallington)

I intervene because I am having difficulty reconciling the hon. Lady’s remarks with her earlier approach to community sentences, which I thought was constructive. She accepted the evidence base for them and accepted that they were about flexibility, yet in relation to suspended sentences, she seems to have gone off in a completely different direction.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that opportunity to explain my underlying approach. The criminal justice system has numerous different objectives, and one difficulty is that it must balance them. The criminal justice system must always punish people appropriately for what they have done. It must also seek to rehabilitate people with serious problem behaviour patterns who are serial reoffenders. It must also protect the public. Frequently, in debates on the criminal justice system, one group of people says that it is all about punishment—the key priority; what everything is driving at—while another group says that what works is all about reducing reoffending, and that is the only thing that matters. That is not my view or that of Her Majesty’s Opposition. We believe that one of the difficulties in running the criminal justice system is that we are doing a number of different things, sometimes with different people and sometimes with the same people. The point of our amendments is that if the offence is serious enough to warrant a two-year custodial sentence, we do not think that suspending it is appropriate.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The reason why the hon. Lady has not been able to identify savings in the impact assessment is that we do not expect the provision to be used frequently enough to register any savings to the criminal justice system. We expect use to be rare and certainly not sufficient enough to see a reduction in the general level of the requirements on custodial sentences.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says, but if one looks at the statistics of what happened between 2003 and now, one can see that—I do not know what the word is—the number of people receiving suspended sentence orders when the rules changed increased sevenfold. Labour Members think that that is a risk too far, so I will press amendments 305 and 306 to a vote.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

To clarify, I am advised that we cannot vote on amendment 306, because it is covered by amendment 305. However, I am happy to take amendment 305.

Schedule 8 - Changes to powers to make suspended sentence orders: consequential and transitory provision

Clause 58 - Fine for Breach of Suspended Sentence Order

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I shall explain to the Committee why I will ask my colleagues to vote against clause stand part. Many of the arguments that we had on the amendments to clauses 56 and 57 are compounded in this clause. In essence, by including serious assaults, robberies, frauds and violent crimes against children in extended sentence orders, the Minister is proposing to allow breaches of these suspended sentence orders to be penalised with a fine. As the Magistrates Association said:

“There is no point in increasing these fines or compensation when so much remains unpaid.”

It is not an appropriate way in which to deal with the breaches if people have committed offences for which they have received a two-year sentence. It demonstrates that the Government are not taking a serious view of the impact of serious crime on communities.

Will the Minister tell us how frequently he expects this provision to be used; what the reduction in the prison population will be; and what the cost benefits will be to the Ministry of Justice? The figures in the public domain from his own Department show that under the current, more limited regime, the proportion of suspended sentence orders breached is around 12% and the proportion of cases in which the person is convicted of another offence is around 15%. It appears as though more than a quarter of those receiving the suspended sentence orders would be liable for a fine in the event of these breaches.

Currently, there are some 50,000 suspended sentence orders. The Minister’s proposals will increase that number. He hopes—we all hope—that there will not be a significant increase. He says that he is confident that that will be the case, but Opposition Members are not quite so confident. In any event, what we might expect is 12,000 breaches each year, a large number of which will undoubtedly be dealt with by a fine. We do not believe that victims will find that satisfactory or that it will be acceptable to the public. I do not wish to repeat what I said previously, but I am sure that the Minister will understand that the Opposition will vote against this clause.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

Clause 58 is intended to increase the court’s discretion in dealing with the breach of a suspended sentence order. At present, there is a presumption that where there is a breach of the order, the court will give effect to the custodial sentence unless it would be unjust to do so in all the circumstances. We have no plans to change that position. However, where the court does not give effect to the custodial sentence it must at present make the order more onerous either by amending the community requirements or by extending the supervision or operational period of the order. By introducing the further alternative of imposing a fine for a breach, we are giving the courts a wider discretion in dealing with offenders. A fine will be available only when the court has decided that it would be unjust to send the offender to custody. So we do not expect any significant impact on the prison population as a result of the measure. As I have said, consideration of a fine or other penalty will take place only where the court would find a custodial sentence unjust.

The measure sits alongside our general trend of introducing greater discretion, including in the use of suspended sentence orders, by providing such orders without the imposition of community requirements. In such circumstances, if a court decided not to give effect to the custodial sentence for a breach, the only other penalty available would be to extend the operation of the order. The availability of a fine for a breach will therefore be a useful alternative penalty for the courts.

We do not expect fines to be routinely used as a penalty for breach, because in the majority of cases a breach of a suspended sentence order should and does result in a custodial sentence being given effect. However, the availability of fines provides the courts with more discretion in deciding on the appropriate penalty for a breach in each case.

Clause 59 - Programme requirement

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I beg to move amendment 250, in clause 59, page 44, line 24, at end insert—

‘( ) In section 177(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (community orders: restrictions relating to particular requirements) omit paragraph (c) (which refers to section 202(4) and (5) of that Act).

( ) In section 190(2) of that Act (suspended sentence orders: restrictions relating to particular requirements) omit paragraph (c) (which refers to section 202(4) and (5) of that Act).’.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment 251.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

Amendments 250 and 251 are technical amendments to clause 59, which will amend section 202 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 in relation to programme requirement orders. They will repeal provisions in sections 177(2) and 190(2) of the 2003 Act in consequence of the changes made within clause 59. These consequential changes were drafting oversights that should have been included in the Bill.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 310, in clause 59, page 44, line 31, leave out ‘subsections (4) and’ and insert ‘subsection’.

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 311, in clause 59, page 44, line 34, leave out paragraph (a).

Amendment 312, in clause 59, page 44, line 40, at end insert—

‘(5A) After subsection (7) insert—

(8) The probation trust for each area must—

(a) make provision for the availability of programmes appropriate for offenders of varying levels of intellectual ability and understanding, and

(b) ensure that the content and style of the programme in which an offender participates is appropriate to the intellectual ability and understanding of the individual offender.

(9) A public body imposing an order as laid out in this section shall have a duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the terms and requirements of the order are understood by the recipient of that order.”.’.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

Amendments 310 and 311 would delete the leaving out of accredited programmes and would make a consequential change. Amendment 312, which relates to making provision for people with learning disabilities, is rather different.

The purpose of amendments 310 and 311 is to retain the use of accredited programmes. We accept the proposal in the clause that there can be flexibility where a person attends or undertakes a community programme. However, I have a question for the Minister: will there be any rules or limits on travel time? It would not be acceptable if a person was expected to travel long distances, as people could be dependent on public transport, and would incur significant costs. I am sure that he has thought of that and will have worked out the limits on travel time, and I hope that he will be able to tell the Committee.

It is important to retain accredited programmes, because the evidence shows that they are effective in reducing reoffending. Further to the point made by the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington a moment ago, in our consideration of the amendments to the clause, we are looking primarily at what can best be done to reduce reoffending and improve rehabilitation. Currently, the reconviction rate for people on short-term sentences is about 66%. For people who are supervised by the probation service, it is about 50%, and if the person is on an accredited programme as well as going for normal probation supervision, the reconviction rate is 35%. I can see that the Minister is puzzled by that, and I hope to be able to give him a little more detail on those figures later, which were given to me by the National Association of Probation Officers.

Given that accredited programmes and custody are considerably more effective than other ways of dealing with people, one is bound to ask for the reason behind the Government’s actions. I am sorry to say that the only rationale that we could come up with was to facilitate the Government’s programme of privatisation and contracting probation services out to the private sector. As I understand it, they want to follow a black box approach, which means that there will be no rules about what is done with people and everything will be measured on payment by results. The Minister talks about payment by results, and I will respond to him on that, except that I will not do it at this juncture, because I am not convinced that that is strictly necessary.

The risk of not having accredited programme and of contracting out the running of community programmes, which is currently done by a professional probation service, to the private sector is that such programmes will instead be run on a large-scale and cheap basis that is not attuned to the different needs, characteristics and learning styles of offenders. If that happens, the programmes will not work and we will see crime go up again. That is another example of the short-termist approach that the Government have taken to the criminal justice system—low costs now, risking higher costs to the community later. The abandonment of accreditation, which most private sector organisations will not be able to offer, will mean that such organisations can put in cheaper bids than the probation trusts, which have higher professional standards.

I am not saying that the accreditation system run by the Ministry of Justice panel cannot be simplified; I think it can be. However, abandoning standards in the area is risky and inappropriate. In 2009, 22,400 people were on community orders with accredited programmes; 12,500 were on suspended sentence orders with such programmes; 18,500 were on drug and alcohol programmes with community orders; and almost 7,000 were on drug and alcohol programmes with suspended sentence orders. That makes a total of 60,000 people. I described levels of effectiveness on reconviction rates: the difference between running and not running accredited programmes might be as much as an additional 20,000 crimes a year. The proposal is therefore a worthwhile approach.

I briefly remind the Committee of the principal accredited programmes. Thinking Skills aims to reduce impulsive behaviour and improve problem solving. I cannot help thinking that some such programmes would be useful for Members of this House. The drink-impaired driving programme addresses the causes of drink-driving and aims to avoid its repetition. A low-intensity alcohol programme tackles moderate problem drinking. A community drink-violence programme is different in that it addresses the relationship between alcohol and violence, relating particularly to binge drinking. The latter three are interesting because they demonstrate that thought has been given to the different sorts of crime and patterns of behaviour, and care has been taken over the need to address those in different ways.

An offender substance abuse programme—[Interruption.]

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The clause does not remove accredited programmes. Its object is to make it easier for offender managers to exercise professional judgment in deciding what is the most appropriate accredited programme for an offender, while maintaining judicial control over the broad content and length of the requirement. Does the hon. Lady accept that assurance and will it persuade her to conclude her arguments?

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I need a little more than a two-sentence explanation, because that is not our understanding of the Bill. We want a better explanation of the clause from the Minister. We have received strong representations on the matter from the Prison Reform Trust and the National Association of Probation Officers, which share our reading of the clause.

Ben Gummer (Conservative, Ipswich)

On the point about probation officers, this is the clause that excites many people in my constituency, who are pleased with their additional power to manage offenders as they see fit. The measure is part of the broader purpose of the Bill, which is to give greater discretion to professionals. I am beginning to see a divergence between Her Majesty’s Opposition and Her Majesty’s Government.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful for that intervention. The Government could make a case about bureaucratic burdens on the probation service. The hon. Gentleman serves on the Justice Committee, which has considered the probation service’s role and has found that probation officers are too tied up in bureaucracy. That is a valid criticism. It is true that officers do not have enough face-to-face time with clients. Too much report-writing and, as Government Members would call it, box-ticking is a problem that must be addressed. I also agree that we must broaden the scope for professional judgment in the probation service.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Does my hon. Friend agree that our aim is not to fetter professional judgment and discretion, but, from our reading of the clause, we are concerned that accredited programmes should be accredited because they have a demonstrable and evidenced effect on reoffending? Surely that is the crucial point.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right because nothing that we are saying prevents probation officers from exercising their professional judgment in their normal supervision of offenders, regarding which programmes they recommend for people or what they put in pre-sentencing reports.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The intervention by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston is extremely helpful because it makes it clear that people should be on programmes that are properly evidenced. If someone happens to be on the wrong programme or, in the opinion of their offender manager, could be on a better one, we offer precisely that flexibility to the offender manager, without having to return to court. I agree with the hon. Lady that things need to be done on the basis of evidence, and it is common sense that we give offender managers the opportunity to make such a change.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am not sure whether all the interventions are speeding us up or slowing us down.

What is not clear from what the Minister says is why if a programme is backed up evidentially as being effective it does not become accredited, so I will wait to hear what he says about that, and consider his response. We need to be careful that the Minister’s well-intentioned plan to improve flexibility is not at a later stage used simply as a cost-cutting measure. The Opposition are conscious of the fact that the probation service in some areas faces 10% cuts this year. We agree with the Minister that community orders and rehabilitation need to be effective, but I am not yet convinced that what he says is what is in the Bill, nor am I convinced of what its effect would be.

Amendment 312 relates to programmes for people with learning difficulties. Significant numbers of people entering the criminal justice system have learning disabilities, and the amendment is designed to ensure that they understand what is required of them and that there are programmes they can do. Both of those things are necessary because it is pointless for people to do things that do not work—it is a waste of their time and our money—and if they do things, or do not do things, that they do not understand, they will spiral downwards.

In its evidence to the Committee, Mencap stated that it was particularly keen to see the change outlined in the amendment. Young people accessing its “raising your game” project said that they had difficulty, at the moment, in understanding where they had to be and when they had to be there. It would be wrong if because of a lack of appropriate provision people with learning disabilities were excluded from community orders and unnecessarily sent into custody. Unless reasonable adjustments are made, this group of people will be unfairly sanctioned and more of them will end up in custody.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The amendments to clause 59 fall into two groups. I shall therefore take amendments 310 and 311 together, and then address 312.

It might help if I first explained what the clause seeks to achieve. I want to make it clear that it does not remove accredited programmes. It amends section 202 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which is the provision governing the programme requirement of community orders and suspended sentence orders.

The clause reduces the amount of detail that a court must specify when imposing a programme requirement as part of a community order or a suspended sentence order. The aim is to make it easier for offender managers to exercise their professional judgment about what is the most appropriate accredited programme for an offender while maintaining judicial control over the broad content and length of the requirement.

Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I want to be absolutely clear that the Minister is saying that all programmes will be accredited and the discretion for the probation officer is to choose which accredited programme, and that that is the thrust of the clause.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

That is the thrust of the clause because, at present, when a court believes that an offender should participate in a programme requirement, it must by law specify the particular programme, the place where the offender must go to participate in the programme and the number of days that they must attend the programme. However, it sometimes becomes clear soon after the offender has started a programme that a different course or programme would be more likely to deal with their problems and turn them away from crime. For example, the offender could have been sent on an anger management course but it soon becomes evident that the problem is with domestic violence. Currently, the only way to change programmes is to take the case back to court with an application for the programme to be changed. That is bureaucratic and takes time. The clause will allow the offender manager to make the change without the necessity of going back to court, but that does not mean that the offender manager is effectively sentencing the offender. The court will still require the offender to take part in a properly accredited programme and it must still specify the number of days that the offender must participate in the programme. I hope that that gives the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston the assurance that she was seeking.

Because the court will not know the exact programme that the offender will follow, it cannot specify the location and the clause reflects that, which takes us on to the question that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland asked about travel. The clause makes no changes to how offenders travel to attend programmes. It is up to the offender manager and the offender to agree what is reasonable in the circumstances of the case and that is plainly appropriate. The law will still require any place where the offender is sent to be properly approved and it will still require the offender to comply with instructions from his responsible officer and anyone running the course that they are on.

Amendments 310 and 311 would reinstate into section 202 provisions that only make sense where a court is specifying a particular programme, which courts will no longer do. For example, a court cannot be required to check that the course is available since it will not specify a course; indeed, the court will not even know which course the offender will be following. So these amendments would create duties that cannot possibly be complied with under the new arrangements and that therefore would be totally unreasonable.

At this point, I must say that I wonder who here is actually trying to support the probation officers in exercising their responsibilities to rehabilitate offenders most effectively? In that sense, I have been slightly surprised by the tone of the remarks by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, because anything that moves towards effectively enfranchising probation officers and giving them the necessary discretion to deliver the most effective programmes and the most effective outcomes for the people in their charge is an appropriate direction to take. The court will have made the appropriate disposition about the number of days that the offender is required to attend a programme and about the fact that the offender must attend a programme, but the clause is an absolutely sensible way of entrusting probation officers within the limits set down by the sentence of the court.

Amendment 312 would place statutory duties on both probation trusts and other bodies in relation to programme requirements. Those duties would require trusts to provide programmes for every level of intellectual ability and understanding, and they would require bodies imposing orders to explain their effect to offenders. These changes would either replicate existing law or prescribe a level of detail in the content and delivery of community orders and suspended sentence orders that is not appropriate to primary legislation.

In any case, every care is already being taken to ensure that programmes are tailored to the needs of offenders, including their intellectual capacity. I wonder what on earth everyone is trying to achieve regarding all these professionals who we entrust to deliver these programmes? The road to hell, in legislative terms, has been paved with good intentions over the last decade or 15 years, whereby we have over-prescribed the outcomes in Parliament. It has all been part of a direction of travel that has not helped the professionals on the front line who are trying to deliver. That is why we are making the changes, to get proper exercise of discretion at the appropriate level.

Courts are already under a statutory duty to explain to offenders in ordinary language and general terms the effect of the sentence imposed on them. In addition, responsible officers have a statutory duty to make any necessary arrangements in connection with offenders’ requirements and to promote compliance. In the case of a programme requirement, his duty must surely involve discussing with the offender what he must do and how he can best participate in the programme chosen for him in the light of his circumstances.

I hope that those reasons and my absolute reassurance on the programme requirement will enable the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendments.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I am happy to withdraw the amendments, but I remark in passing that he might want to look at the explanatory memorandum and the impact assessment, because they were not clear—it was easy to misunderstand what was going on in the clause. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 60 - Curfew requirement

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I beg to move amendment 313, in clause 60, page 45, line 4, leave out subsection (2).

Philip Hollobone (Conservative, Kettering)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 314, in clause 60, page 45, line 7, at end insert—

‘(4) After subsection (6) insert—

(7) Before making a relevant order imposing a curfew requirement, the court must obtain and consider information about any risk of physical or mental injury by or to the offender or an associated person which may be caused or increased by the imposition of a curfew requirement.

(8) In subsection (7) “associated person” means a person who is associated with the defendant within the meaning of section 62 of the Family Law Act 1996.”.’.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I do not think that there is much scope for misreading this clause, it is a lot simpler to understand. The amendment is about an extension of the amount of time in any 24 hours for which a person can be curfewed. The Government are proposing to increase the time from 12 to 16 hours. Our amendment seeks to hold it at 12 hours. Amendment 314 aims to strengthen the law on the impact that any curfew might have on other members of the household.

My main reason for moving the amendment is that, on this occasion, the Government have not been consistent on their rehabilitation objective. If people are curfewed for 12 hours, such as from 7 o’clock at night until 7 in the morning, it is still perfectly feasible to go to work, to attend a training course or even go to school—although young people’s things are different, so I will not confuse the argument. However, if we move to a curfew of 16 hours, it would be impossible for anyone to have a full-time job. I simply cannot see how that fits with what the Secretary of State has repeatedly said he wants people to do.

The Home Secretary in the previous Government, when speaking about home detention curfews, said:

“Tagging also provides opportunities for offenders to take proper responsibility for working”—[Official Report, 20 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 454.]

We believe that the extension to 16 hours will make that extremely difficult. People can of course look for work while curfewed for 16 hours—

Robert Buckland (Conservative, South Swindon)

I remind the hon. Lady that the proposal is to increase the maximum period to 16 hours. Let us not confuse the concept of a maximum term with a constant imposition of the full term. It will not happen in every case, it is a matter of discretion.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

For the whole afternoon, repeatedly, we have had Government Members saying, “We’ll legislate like this but, don’t worry, the judiciary won’t really use it.” That is not a proper basis for us to undertake legislation.

Andrew Slaughter (Labour, Hammersmith)

The position is slightly better than in clause 12, when the Government said that they had no intention to use it whatever. At least they are only saying that they will hardly ever use it.

Helen Goodman (Labour, Bishop Auckland)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The argument that the provision will not be used much is not a sensible way for us to progress. We want people to rehabilitate and to have jobs. The Secretary of State has even said that he wants offenders in prison to do a full week of work and that he wants people on community orders who are unemployed to do a full week of unpaid work. The provision under discussion is not consistent with that. Although the hon. Member for South Swindon has assured me that the 16 hours will be used infrequently, it is highly likely that, if people are given curfews of 16 hours, it will be seen as an alternative to prison. In other words, it is another cheap option from a Department looking to save money.

In its review of curfews and tagging, the Magistrates’ Association said that, from the point of view of the offender, curfews have the disadvantage of loss of liberty, but no advantages in terms of security, bed, food and structure to the day. The Magistrates’ Association made it absolutely clear that it would view the longer curfews as an alternative to custody for what are called not-so-serious crimes. It also said that it has been using curfews in that way, in those instances, when the probation service is overstretched and as an alternative to unpaid work, and it is cheaper than unpaid work, too. It is not acceptable to give people curfews because Ministers want to stop building prisons and embark on a prison closure programme.

Furthermore, as I am sure the Minister is aware, the Department is sailing close to the wind on civil liberties. When Justice gave evidence to the Committee during the summer, it described curfews as “house arrest.” The Court of Appeal found that, in the case of control orders, an 18-hour curfew would be a breach of people’s human rights. I hope that the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington will tell us what he thinks about the implications for civil liberties.

Once again, I refer the Minister to a Public Accounts Committee report, namely its 62nd report of the 2005-06 Session. It found that the curfews were great in financial terms, because they are approximately £70 a day cheaper than having somebody in prison. That is an annual saving of £25,000 a year per person put on a 12-month curfew, as opposed to sending them to prison. However, it also said—and this is undoubtedly true—

“The rehabilitative effect of living on curfew needs to be further researched.”

It also said that, at the moment—I do not think that things have changed since the report—no specific help is given to people with respect to training and work that would help their rehabilitation. The report also pointed out that families are not given the help and support they need to live with a curfewee. That relates to amendment 314, which aims to strengthen the consideration given by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to the effect on relations with the rest of the family.

The risks in families fall into two categories. The first risk of an inappropriately used curfew is that to the offender of domestic violence. The Prison Reform Trust has said that

“courts should be specifically required to consider any potentially harmful impact on the offender and in particular any increased risk of domestic violence as a result of a curfew requirement. This would be particularly relevant where there is a history of domestic violence or abuse to dependents within the family.”

It also believes:

“Women offenders in particular could be placed at increased risk of domestic violence and abuse by the imposition of a curfew.”

I do not think I need to say more about the relationship between women in prison and those who have suffered domestic violence and abuse. I am sure that all members of the Committee are aware of it.

The second risk is the risk from the offender to the rest of the family. I do not know about the constituency of the hon. Member for South Swindon, but I can think of several cases in which mothers have had to throw out their 18 or 19-year-old children because of the bad influence and disruptive effect that they were having on younger siblings. Those curfews are clearly also not suitable for violent offenders.

In considering extending the hours from 12 to 16 they should remember that curfews are highly likely to be used for people who do not live in large four-bedroom houses with nice gardens, and who are not like the WikiLeaks chap, who lived in a positive mansion when he was under a curfew. Most people under a curfew will be living in small flats, in overcrowded conditions. That is a major concern.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd)

I rise briefly to support amendment 313 and endorse everything that the hon. Lady has said about the extension of curfew hours from 12 to 16. It is of great concern to many organisations that that would amount to house arrest. The hon. Member for South Swindon says that 16 hours would be a maximum, and that is true, as 12 hours was previously the maximum, but there is grave concern that the power will be used more often than many Committee members imagine.

Poor educational achievement and unemployment are catalysts for offending, as we know. I wonder how a young person—or someone of any age—who is under a 16-hour curfew while looking for work, will come to terms with trying to get gainful employment or do something useful, without sliding back into crime.

We are reminded by Liberty that it is important for offenders to be given the opportunity to address their offending, and the provision seems to stand in the way of that. In the Green paper issued in March the Government envisaged the implementation of tough new measures in place of custodial sentences. I tend to think that that suggests things will veer towards the making of more 16-hour curfews, not fewer. That is not to say that the hon. Member for South Swindon is not sincere in what he says; but I think the underlying trend will not be towards minimal use, but the other way.

It is true that the deprivation of liberty involved in that imposition is less than in a custodial sentence, but several organisations, including Liberty, are concerned that, once legislation is passed to introduce new and excessive tagging and curfew powers, there will be few measures to ensure that they are used as a maximum, as intended. In the past, tougher community penalties have not always been used as an alternative to custody. Rather, they have been additional and possibly harsh punishments, available to courts in circumstances where a custodial sentence might not be appropriate.

Curfews of the proposed duration will make it difficult for individuals to hold down regular work or perform other useful functions. That will not do anything to rehabilitate anyone. This level of punishment in the community, which is tantamount to house arrest, is likely to have a further stigmatising effect thus preventing successful reintegration. Such requirements will disrupt family life, affecting not simply the individual concerned, but his or her family or those residing with the person, including siblings, children and so on. Despite accepting the sincerity of the indication that 16 hours would be a maximum, I am afraid that it would become almost the norm in many cases.

We are going into a completely unacceptable area of punishment, but whether it borders breaching human rights is another matter. Cases may well be taken on that basis—I know not. We know that 18 hours has been shown to be in breach, and 16 hours is perilously close to that. I fully support the hon. Lady’s comments. If she is minded to divide the Committee, I will support the amendment.

Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat, Carshalton and Wallington)

I have some reservations about the proposed extension of the potential curfew, but I underline the fact that there is discretion. I am sure that the Minister will have strong expectations, as I am sure all other Members have, that when the powers are applied, the impact of the curfew and the ability of the person to whom it is being applied, who may often be a very chaotic individual, to understand its implications and the implications of breaching it will be examined carefully. Therefore, a lengthy curfew will apply only when there is an appreciation that the person to whom it applies can respond to it appropriately.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.