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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have to cut the hon. Lady's speech short.
7.38 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): I greatly welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate, particularly because it gives me a chance to speak about one or two aspects of the Bill--in which I have had a long-standing interest, especially its provisions dealing with serious crime committed by juveniles. However, I should like to say first that it is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) and the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears), both of whom made powerful speeches, to which the House will have listened with great care.
Like the hon. Member for Salford, I welcome the success of closed circuit television. I share her concerns about absentee landlords. However, there are grave concerns that Labour Members have been unwilling to recognise what the Home Secretary graciously recognised in his opening speech: many of the successes have been the result of the previous Conservative Government's actions.
Conservative Members have been greatly concerned that, over many years, Labour authorities have been working hand in glove with a number of absentee landlords who have been tied up with local government corruption in many cities. I use those words advisedly. [Interruption.] In many documented cases, those links have been proven. The hon. Lady should look at the record of Labour councils and their links with absentee landlords and those involved in housing benefit fraud.
Mrs. Anne McGuire (Stirling):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hawkins:
I will not, because I have only 10 minutes in which to speak. The hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) refused to take my interventions because of the time limit. I shall not be able to take interventions either.
I agree with the hon. Member for Sunderland, South about the importance of recognising the need to devise alternatives to custody where possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking and I serve on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which the hon. Gentleman chairs. Yesterday morning, when some members of the Select Committee visited Sherborne house, we had the opportunity to see a good example of a project that provides an alternative to custody. I pay tribute to the dedicated and experienced senior probation officers who are running that project with great success. It deals particularly with people who would otherwise have faced custodial sentences for muggings and street crime.
It may come as a surprise to my hon. Friends to hear me, as someone who has always been a tough law and order spokesman, supporting any idea of alternatives to custody, but I recognise that there are occasions when the courts look for a way in which to break somebody's cycle of drugs, imprisonment, more drugs and more imprisonment, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Woking referred. Projects such as the one that members of the Select Committee saw yesterday can provide an opportunity to break that cycle.
I refer to one or two specific aspects of the Bill. I hope that, if I am lucky with the Committee of Selection, I shall be able to serve on the Committee that scrutinises the Bill, so that I can go into greater detail than I can in only 10 minutes. The Bill has been referred to as something of a Christmas tree--anything can be hung on it. I hope that that is not so. I prefer to describe the Bill as a portmanteau. There are many good aspects to it--and that is no surprise.
Recently, as the Home Secretary was generous enough to acknowledge, there has been more of a bipartisan approach to criminal justice. Many of the Bill's proposals were originally planned when the previous Government were in office. Before Labour Members take too much credit and say that this is a wonderful new Labour Bill, they should remember that most of its proposals came forward under the previous Government. If the verdict of the electorate had been different--[Interruption.] Labour Members, some of whom have not been in the House very long, may smile, but if they check the facts with their Front-Bench team, they will realise that many of the Bill's proposals were coming forward anyway. We all know that, and the Minister knows that better than anyone.
One can trace the history of many of the proposals in many of the speeches and policy documents of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and
Hythe (Mr. Howard) when he was Home Secretary. The Minister and I have debated these issues many times, particularly in the 180 hours of debate on the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, when he was in opposition. He knows that many of proposals before us owe their origins to that Bill and subsequent Bills during the previous Parliament.
I particularly welcome the provisions on electronic tagging. To reinforce my earlier point and the fact that we on the Conservative Benches so much welcome the belated conversion of Labour Members to some of the things in which Conservatives have always believed,I shall quote the words of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), the then Labour spokesman, who said in a debate on the Criminal Justice Bill in 1990:
I share the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), about the importance of young people not being out on the streets late at night. Although there was some hilarity when she intervened, she was quite right. All of us as Members of Parliament worry when we see very small children on the streets at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night. We know that the parents of those children are irresponsible. We know that, sometimes very sadly, those children's lives are tragically ended when they fall into the hands of the very paedophiles whom the Government are rightly taking steps to control. The Bill encourages good parents to be sensible and ensures that the courts have powers to impose curfews when parents are not sensible. That is one of the most welcome aspects of the Bill.
From my experience of practising at the Bar in courts, particularly juvenile courts, my years serving on the Bar Council and from three years on its inner cabinet, I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking about drugs in prison. One of the ways in which I would like to toughen the Bill--I hope that we shall succeed in doing so in Committee--is by taking further steps to control the use of drugs by those serving prison sentences. It is absolutely right that we take firm steps to try to ensure that prisons become, as far as possible, drug-free zones. We know that that is not so at the moment.
As my hon. Friend said, defence advocates frequently present cases to him and many others who sit as recorders, assistant recorders and judges, that allowing a defendant to go to prison will worsen his drug problem because of the extent of drug use in prison. We must stop that, and the Bill may give us an opportunity to toughen controls on drugs in prisons, particularly drugs supplied by those visiting convicted prisoners serving sentences.
We sought to address the problem by increasing search powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. The Minister may remember, because he was the Opposition spokesman on that Bill, that we were able to toughen powers for police officers to search for drugs. I remember in particular that the former Member for Milton Keynes,
North-East and I tabled an amendment that gave greater powers to search for drugs under somebody's hat, because drugs were often hidden under the hats of Rastafarian criminals and Rastafarian visitors of those serving sentences. That was well known to everyone. It may sound trivial, but for police officers and prison officers, the point was valid. That is a small example, but one which I hope will point the way to opportunities to toughen provisions in the Bill.
Mr. Kevin McNamara (Hull, North):
I want to make three main points. Colleagues have spoken about the effect that the legislation might have on their constituencies. Before I talk about that, I should say that not all the youth of Britain are throwing bricks through windows. Not all the young ladies of Britain are single, unmarried mothers. Not everybody who lives on an estate in my constituency is a criminal. In fact, the vast majority are not; they are good citizens seeking to earn a living, if they can get a job. They want decency, security in their old age and opportunities for their children. We should bear that in mind. The purpose of the Bill is to protect precisely those people.
I want to read out an extract from the Hull Daily Mail, my local newspaper, of 27 March. Under the headline "Vandals halt estate buses", an article states:
The behaviour of those louts and young kids has not only led to criminal damage--which is important but not as important as the danger inflicted on bus drivers and passengers--but has put an estate almost under siege,
albeit in an entirely different way from that mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Ms Blears). In any event, it prevented old people from going to bingo. People could not get home from work without having to walk on dark nights, as they were then, through narrow lanes along that road. People were in considerable fear.
What is there in the Bill to deal with children in that age range? There are parenting orders, parental control orders, child safety orders and anti-social behaviour orders, all of which could help to deal with the age range involved in the incident that I have outlined and with their parents. Like other hon. Members, I have seen children of six or seven pushing babies in pushchairs. That is frightening, and something has to be done. It is not a question of wanting a nanny or draconian state; it is a question of ensuring young people's safety.
I deal now with absentee landlords, who were also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford. The previous Government poured millions of pounds into the south part of the Bransholme estate, but the council tenants who had bought their homes could not keep up their payments, and some houses were sold to absentee landlords. Legislation enables a landlord to get rid of a tenant, but what if the landlord himself will not act to get rid of a tenant because he is quite happy to receive the tenant's housing benefit, which comes straight to him? That leads to someone in my constituency having what he calls his extended family calling at all hours of the day and night, knocking on the door and asking for drugs. The neighbours are afraid to give evidence, and the police and the local authority are not able to do anything to eject the tenant. Charges could be pressed--the police are quite happy to do so--but the tenant cannot be got rid of because the absentee landlord refuses to act.
I have written to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and to the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) about the matter, but I have been very disappointed with the replies that I have received. Whatever we think of private property in this instance, landlords who are prepared to keep such tenants should be deprived of their property.
I deal now with clause 33, which I regard as extremely important. The House has the opportunity to get rid of capital punishment for all civil criminal offences, if that is not a contradiction in terms. I am especially happy that clause 33 will amend, among others,
Clause 33 is important because it means, or I hope it means, that we are now in a position to sign protocol 6 of the European convention. Paragraph 4.13 of the White Paper relating to the Human Rights Bill states that signing it would
"Electronic monitoring is a dangerous and irrelevant concept. It is wrong in principle . . . It has enormous implications for civil liberties".--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 18 December 1990; c. 274.]
We recognise the Labour party's very belated but none the less welcome conversion to matters in which we have always believed, such as electronic tagging.
"Night-time buses to a Hull estate have been cancelled after a series of vandal attacks.
That is horrendous, but it is made even more so by the fact that there is only one road into the remote north Bransholme estate and one road out. There is only one bus service and, because of the poverty, very few people own cars.
Stagecoach has pulled the plug on services to Bransholme between 6.30pm and 9.30pm until next Wednesday, after bricks were thrown through windows of their vehicles.
The attacks have been carried out by children as young as 10-years-old.
In one incident on Monday, a piece of rock was hurled through a window with such force that it travelled the width of the bus and out through the other side . . .
Two years ago, children believed to be as young as four were blamed for attacking buses on Bransholme, injuring passengers and drivers and causing £6,000 of damage."
"(a) section II of the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 (occasioning disturbance) . . .
I regard those amendments as a bonus to the balanced constitutional accommodation that we are seeking at the talks in Stormont, although if the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) knew about it, he would probably dive into the Thames following the tricolours.
(b) section XII of the Act of Supremacy (Ireland) 1560 (penalties for maintaining or defending foreign authority);
(c) section 3 of the Treason Act 1702 (endeavouring to hinder the succession to the Crown etc. punishable as high treason);
(d) section I of the Treason Act (Ireland) 1703 (which makes corresponding provision)".
"make it impossible for a United Kingdom Parliament to re-introduce the death penalty for murder, short of denouncing the European Convention. The view taken so far is that the issue is not one of basic constitutional principle but is a matter of judgement and conscience to be decided by Members of Parliament as they see fit. For these reasons, we do not propose to ratify Protocol 6 at present."
I stress the words "as they see fit". If both Houses of Parliament agree to the clause, will my hon. Friend the Minister of State say that we can now ratify protocol 6? If we accept clause 33, the House of Commons will have said that it wants an end to capital punishment.
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