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Jane Harrison

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

The English legal system does not require a convicted murderer to admit guilt or to reveal the location of a victim’s remains before they are released on parole, after their determined tariff. It should be common sense that Kevin Doherty, like Ian Simms, the murderer of Helen McCourt, should under no circumstances be eligible to apply for parole. The law must be changed to acknowledge the suffering that Doherty has caused to the Harrison family.

Today, I wish to reaffirm my support for the campaign led in parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North. First, murderers like Doherty must be denied parole for as long as they refuse to disclose the whereabouts of their victim’s remains. Secondly, Doherty, and those like him, must serve a full-life tariff, without the option of parole or release, until the murderer discloses the location, and enables the recovery, of their victim’s remains. This must pertain regardless of their behaviour in prison.

Thirdly, as stipulated in Helen’s law, the following rarely used common-law offences must automatically be applied in murder and manslaughter trials without a body:

“preventing the burial of a body and conspiracy to prevent the burial of a body, disposing of a body, obstructing a coroner”,

as applied in the case of Regina v. Hunter in 1974. Those pieces of legislation would serve to properly enforce laws that are already in place but rarely used.

Currently, decisions are made by the Parole Board on a case-by-case basis, but the law needs to change so that it is, by default, on the side of victims and their families,

not on that of the murderers. Even putting aside the families’ pain and grief, these murderers are dangerous. By refusing to admit their guilt, and by denying families this small act of closure, they demonstrate their culpability and their very real threat to society.

Sadly, hon. Members will know that Jane Harrison’s is one of so many devastating cases in which a body has never been found. I wish to take the opportunity to remind the House of the many other murder cases in which the body has never been recovered, including that of Helen McCourt in 1988, who was just 22; Keith Bennett in 1964, who was just 12 years old; Paul Morson in 2011, who was 32 years old; Danielle Jones from Essex, who was 15; Suzanne Pilley from Scotland, in 2010; and little April Jones in 2012, who was just five years old.

The families of each of those victims have suffered untold grief, without the humanity of a funeral and a peaceful resting place. Indeed, since 2007, there have been 30 murder cases throughout England and Wales in which no body has been recovered. In every single one of those cases, a murderer who continues to torment the families of their victims in such a cold-blooded way should under no circumstances be eligible for freedom. Jane’s killer should not have the option of freedom until Jane’s family are granted the dignity of a final resting place for her.

Without robust laws in place, our justice system can go horribly wrong. Take the example of the notorious Sidney Cooke, convicted child molester and serial killer. In 1989, Cooke was sentenced to 19 years for the manslaughter of 14-year-old Jason Swift, and he was guilty of the murder of seven-year-old Mark Tildesley. But in 1989, his sentence was reduced to 16 years, and he was paroled nine years later, in April 1998, having refused rehabilitation in prison and having never revealed where Mark Tildesley’s body was to his bereaved parents.

Mercifully, Cooke was rearrested in 1999 and received two life sentences. Nevertheless, that demonstrates that our justice system has made terrible mistakes in the past. We must act now to stop that from happening again in future. The policy of “no body, no parole” is already in force in South Australia, and it is being considered in Australia at federal level. Under the law, convicted murderers in prison are given an opportunity to co-operate with the police in exchange for more lenient sentencing or parole options. All states in Australia have considered something like this, with South Australia and Victoria taking the lead in its actual implementation.

The law will only apply to people who have the opportunity for parole anyway, so someone could not get a lesser charge for information on the whereabouts of a body if they had no chance of parole from the outset. At the same time, just describing the location of a victim’s body would not guarantee a murderer early release. The Parole Board would still have the final say and could deny it if the perpetrator still posed a threat to society. As of now, Australia is the only country that has implemented something like this, even at the local level.

Along with my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North and many others, I firmly believe that the UK could lead the way and be the second country to enshrine this law. This would not only give grieving families the chance for some closure but serve as a future example to others. I hope that the Minister will today outline the

Ministry of Justice’s plans to amend the law to reflect this groundbreaking and fair mechanism, to deliver justice to the families who deserve it and to the memories of so many people. Jane Harrison’s family must not be let down by our justice system, and I hope that the Minister will agree that we all have a duty to preserve Jane’s memory. Jane should be remembered in life, more than in death, as a loving mum, sister and daughter.

This was not an easy speech to write and this is a very difficult subject for any of us to talk about, so I would like to end with a few words from Jane’s sister, Claire, who I know has fought for years for justice for her sister:

“We were so close, and we spoke every day. She was a wonderful sister, and a devoted mother. And I know that the last thing that my sister thought of the day she died was of her two boys.

This grief that we have carried for twenty-two years, it doesn’t get easier—it gets harder each day. And not to have some closure, somewhere for us to gather, to lay flowers —it is absolute agony.

I want to ask the Minister, what if this was a member of your family? Can you put yourself in our shoes? Could you stand to see a man who has caused such devastation walk free?

Please help us, for the sake of our whole family, for the memory of our wonderful Jane—and for all those who have had to suffer the same agony before and since.”

Please listen.

2.47 pm