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Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this timely debate, bearing in mind not only yesterday's announcement but the ongoing nature of the debate on an important area of public policy. The judiciary have had strong views about this area of public policy for a number of months, if not years. It is no secret that for some time prison governors had expressed their concerns about what they regarded as the overuse of short-term prison sentences, namely those of 12 months or less, because they are ineffective in managing offenders in the prison estate and at dealing with the all-important statistic of reoffending within six months of release from sentence. That is where the public interest lies, which is what I was delighted to hear other speakers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), Chair of the Committee on which I now serve, emphasising. The public rightly demand protection, certainty and reassurance that the system is doing everything that it can to manage out reoffending. We are moving away from talking about targets and more towards talking about outcomes, but no matter which word is used, the reoffending figures are where it is at. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) got it almost right with his reference to the Diamond project—he was with me at an interesting session a couple of weeks ago. The preliminary evidence from the Diamond project is dramatic—““preliminary”” was stressed, because the work is ongoing, with the pilot due to end in March next year. Figures of 28% reoffending are extraordinary, bearing in mind the depressing litany of statistics with which we all are familiar. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Lord Chancellor for having brought into the full glare of publicity the concerns of the judiciary, prison governors and everyone—such as me until my election—who is heavily involved in the criminal justice system. The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is absolutely right: there needs to be a consensus, even at the risk of that being dull. I would go further than him and say that the old debates about toughness and softness, which have plagued the issue since about the mid-1990s, have really had their day. Instead we should be talking about whether we are being smart on crime or stupid—dumb, if preferred—on crime. That is where the debate should be, where the battle lines should be drawn and what we need to be focusing on. I was not a member of the previous Committee, which produced the report, but I have read its recommendations and the Government response carefully. The Government response, although I accept that the current Minister is not responsible for those utterances—I am sure he is glad that I remind the Chamber of that—represented a missed opportunity. The report was from a Committee of the House that included senior Members and former Ministers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who could use not only their experience in office but their experience of many years in the House and in their constituencies. However, I am delighted that Cardiff was mentioned, because I practised for many years as a member of the Bar in that city, in the Crown court, and know intimately the problems and challenges facing the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman and others. I was disappointed that, instead of a frank owning up to some of the deficiencies in the system, we had an over-defensive approach in the Government response.