James Wild

“It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), whose incredibly powerful speech gave voice to the victims and the impact that the horrific abuse has had on them. He has led on this issue consistently in this House, and his words should carry incredible weight. Today we are debating what should be an uncontroversial motion: to exclude from the Government’s automatic early release scheme anyone convicted of a serious offence against a child or an adult, including rape, and anyone convicted of attempted conspiracy or incitement to commit such offences. By any definition, those are some of the most serious crimes. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone would oppose the common-sense position that sex offenders should not benefit from the Government’s early release scheme. Sadly, it has been necessary to bring forward this motion, because Labour Members and Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords voted down our amendments to the Sentencing Act that would have done precisely that: prevent the early release of such offenders. Now it seems that there will not be a vote and our motion will simply be accepted. That is very welcome if it reflects a shift in policy, but the Minister who opened the debate was not clear whether he accepted that shift in policy or was simply making a tactical retreat on a vote that the Government knew they would lose. He repeatedly set out the rationale for the changes, as he had done earlier today to the media. The urgency is clear. Thousands of victims have received letters—my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley spoke about the offensive nature of those letters and their dreadful impact on victims—telling them that in September the first wave of criminals will be released. Others will not yet have been informed. The Minister once again failed to give the basic figure for the number of sex offenders who will be released under the provisions. Surely he must know—it is his job to know—and he should be honest and up front with the House. We can already picture the unedifying scenes of bottles of champagne being opened at the prison gates when these offenders are released. Meanwhile, the survivors of their crimes will—as they told every Member of this House in the letter to which the shadow Justice Secretary has referred—be feeling scared, heartbroken and angry that their perpetrators are not facing justice. The Minister once again rolled out the Aunt Sally argument that without these measures the justice system would have fallen over, but it is now two years since the general election; two years in which the Government have chosen to let people out early rather than take action on prison places. There are 16,000 people on remand in our prisons, yet the Government are failing to ensure that our courts are used to the maximum capacity.Today, for example, 14% of the Crown courts are not sitting. Where is the commissioning of emergency prison capacity? Where is the greater use of the rapid deployment cells that the previous Government rolled out, including at HMP Norwich in my county? Where is the urgency? That should be a national priority.”