12.45 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope): I have listened with care and interest to the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe). I thank him for setting them out so clearly and sincerely. I am aware that, as well as writing to my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary about Mr. Hood's case, he has raised it with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. As the Minister responsible for dealing with miscarriages of justice, I am always concerned when hon. Members raise matters such as this.

The hon. Gentleman could not have set out more vividly the evident motive and the mitigating aspects of this sorry case. I know that there is also some concern about it in his constituency, and, as he has said, in other constituencies as well.

It seems that, through none of his doing, Wayne Hood was given a poor start in life. Not only was he deprived of the stable support of a caring family which so many of us take for granted; worse still, as we now know, between the ages of eight and 12 he was subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of his foster father, Terence Jarvis. As the hon. Gentleman said, Mr. Jarvis has since been sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, and I therefore do not propose to say any more about his case.

It is not in dispute that it was Mr. Hood who carried out what must be acknowledged as a very serious offence against the Jarvis family. The issue is the stated harshness of his four-year prison sentence.

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I think it only right to say from the outset that, as the hon. Gentleman will know from the representations that he has made so far, real difficulties lie in the way of taking any action in respect of a person's sentence as handed down by the courts, whether through an exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy or under statutory powers vested in my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary--under section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968--to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal. I shall say more in a moment about those avenues, and about the mitigating factors in the case. First, however, let me briefly set out the circumstances in which the offence took place.

The hon. Gentleman himself first drew our attention to the case. I understand that Mr. Hood, who is now in his mid-20s, had only one previous conviction, although I note that that too was for a crime of violence. He had lived with the Jarvis family from the age of eight to the age of 15. I understand that he then moved out to stay with friends, but continued to see something of the family over the next 10 years or so.

On a Sunday night in March last year Mr. Hood went out drinking, getting home some time after 11 pm. It may have been the effects of alcohol or, indeed, the depressed state in which he was said to be, but, for whatever reason, there was clear evidence that he next collected a knife from the kitchen and set out for the Jarvises' home.

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mr. Jarvis had also been out for the evening. They got home at about 11.20 pm. Minutes later, Mr. Jarvis saw Mr. Hood come past his kitchen window towards the door. He let Mr. Hood into the house, thinking that he looked a bit the worse for wear. At that point, there was evidence that Mr. Hood had his right hand behind his back, in order to conceal the kitchen knife that Mr. Jarvis was not to know he was carrying.

Mr. Hood started to accuse Mr. Jarvis of breaking up his marriage. Then, producing the knife from behind his back, he stabbed him in the right side of his chest. Mr. Hood pulled the knife out of Mr. Jarvis's chest. Bleeding heavily, Mr. Jarvis staggered to the telephone to call an ambulance, before collapsing in his hallway.

That was not the end of it. Aware of some commotion, Mrs. Jarvis came down from upstairs, saw the knife and what had happened, and went to tend to her husband, who by then seemed to be unconscious on the floor. Mr. Hood pushed past her and stabbed Mr. Jarvis a second time, in the right side of the abdomen, as he lay wounded.

At about this time, the police arrived. They went to the back door, saw Mr. Hood still clutching the knife, and ordered him to put it down. He closed the door in an officer's face. Police went round to the front door. Mr. Hood had the knife at the throat of Mr. Jarvis's foster son, Paul Marshall. He refused to put down the knife or to back away so that someone could attend to Mr. Jarvis. The evidence was that he said, "I hope he dies. He's ruined my life for 10 years."

Mrs. Jarvis, by then hysterical, raised her hands to stop Mr. Hood getting any nearer to her injured husband, but, approaching from behind, he held her chin with one hand while using the other to hold the knife blade to her throat. He told police, "Come closer, and I'll slit her throat and his as well." Ambulance men had by then reached the scene, but Mr. Hood would still not let them near Mr. Jarvis. He said, "No, let him die slowly."

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Unexpectedly, at that point Mr. Hood took the knife away from Mrs. Jarvis's throat and held it above her head. Seizing the moment, and with a courageous disregard for his own safety, PC Velickovic grabbed hold of Mr. Hood's arm. He knocked him to the floor, managing in the process to release the knife from the grip of Mr. Hood, who was then handcuffed and arrested.

Mr. Hood was charged in November on three counts: attempting to murder Mr. Jarvis; wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm; and threatening to kill Mrs. Jarvis. He pleaded not guilty to the first count of attempted murder, and guilty to the other two charges.

I have had the benefit of seeing the trial judge's sentencing remarks. It is plain that the court accepted that there was very substantial mitigation, for all the reasons to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention. However, he also said:

"I have made the maximum possible allowance which I feel I can make for the reason that you had to attack Jarvis. I have also fully taken into account the most persuasive submissions made by defending Counsel, who if I may say has so ably represented you at this trial. I do not think, however, that it is appropriate that I should pass a suspended sentence of imprisonment in this case. At the end of the day, you took the law into your own hands and tried to kill him.


In all the circumstances, the most lenient sentence I feel able to pass is a sentence of four years on count 1 for attempted murder. Count 2 does not arise, and the sentence on Count 3 is 18 months' imprisonment concurrent with the sentence on Count 1".

There followed an application on 11 December for a review of Mr. Hood's sentence. I have had an opportunity to see the grounds for that application. I note that they contain express reference to the hon. Gentleman's support for Mr. Hood's case. The judge took careful and fresh account of that support, of the case's significant mitigating aspects, of the apparent strength of local feeling that Mr. Hood should have received only a suspended sentence, and of various petitions and newspaper articles.

On the evidence available, however, the trial judge said that the jury's verdict, by definition, proved a specific intent to kill. Moreover, the medical evidence was clear: Mr. Jarvis could well have lost his life. It was thanks only to PC Velickovic's bravery that medical attention reached him in time. Upholding the four-year sentence, the judge said:

"I made the maximum possible allowance I felt that I could make for the reasons the defendant had for attempting to kill Jarvis. These reasons were amply established by the evidence, namely the undoubted fact that the defendant had been abused over a lengthy period while the defendant was in Jarvis' care".

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I note from the papers that leave to appeal was refused the following day, as the hon. Gentleman said. The single judge remarked:

"The offence of deliberately attempting to take the life of another is a terrible offence which calls for a substantial sentence. You had strong mitigation which the Judge took fully into account in passing a lenient sentence, although you do not so regard it. Leave to appeal should not be granted on the ground of a public clamour almost certainly based on an imperfect knowledge of the sentencing factors involved".

None of us would seek to condone the repugnant behaviour of Mr. Jarvis. He abused the trust placed in him as a foster father, and brought untold misery to the life of Wayne Hood, whom he sexually abused as a youngster. He is rightly serving a sentence on his own account. However, as the courts found, even that did not entitle Mr. Hood to pick up a kitchen knife and take the law into his own hands. He came close to killing Mr. Jarvis, and subjected Mrs. Jarvis and her foster son to a fearsome attack. He could have received a life sentence for that, but the courts had regard to the powerful mitigation advanced on his behalf.

The court of trial and the Court of Appeal have both adjudged that the four-year sentence imposed reflected the maximum possible allowance in the given circumstances. As I understand it, even Mr. Hood's lawyers, as the hon. Gentleman said, have concluded that there are no grounds for renewing an application for leave to appeal to the full Court of Appeal.

That being so, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that there are no grounds on which it would be right for my right hon. and learned Friend the Home

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The new Criminal Cases Review Commission takes up its powers on 31 March. Under section 13 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, the normal expectation is that the commission will not take action in a case until or unless all statutory appeal rights have been pursued. Sentencing within the limits prescribed by law, and subject to the right of appeal, is, and will remain, entirely a matter for the courts. It would not be right for the Government to seek to substitute their judgment for that of the courts, the more so when the courts have already taken such careful account of what I accept are powerful mitigating factors in Mr. Hood's case.

For similar reasons, I am afraid that Mr. Hood's case is not amenable to an exercise of the royal prerogative. Above all, the sentencing process should be transparent, and performed, as in this case, by the courts. Length of sentence is a matter for judicial discretion within the limits set by Parliament. It would be a wholly improper exercise of the prerogative to remit any part of Mr. Hood's sentence on grounds that are already before the courts, or were available to be brought before the courts.

I have noted with the greatest of care what the hon. Gentleman has had to say. This is a tragic case in every sense, and one which we have tried to approach sympathetically. He will be aware that I have seen his letter of 26 February to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It describes what a tough and sorry time Mr. Hood had from the earliest age.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands that, if there are new or supplementary grounds of the sort to which he has referred, which those acting for Mr. Hood believe may impact on his sentence, the correct approach is to renew an application for leave to appeal to the full Court of Appeal. I do not wish to deter the hon. Gentleman from pursuing the matter further, if that is his wish, in the most appropriate manner.

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