Keynote speech by Alex Chalk KC MP – Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice.
Followed by Q&A, chaired by Angus Parsad-Wyatt, Chief Executive, ConservativeHome.
All right ladies and gentlemen uh thank you very much and ask you to to take your your seats again please um thank you uh again to all of you for for joining us here this morning um we now move to our our final session of the conference which will be the the keynote
Speech uh from uh the man that I decided in my head just now to call AC kcmp uh which is obviously Alex chalk the Secretary of State for justice and Lord Chancellor um so without further Ado please do welcome [Applause] Alex brilliant well look thank you very
Much thank you Angus and it’s very good to see you all I’m conscious that um I’ve spoken to some of the people who’ve been doing the panel a few moments ago and I know we’ve got some real legal expertise in the room so it’s a delight
Uh to have you here thank you very much for for doing so um look I just want I was going to start by saying a little bit of background about uh me and my uh legal background because that informs the context for what I want to say so um
Before I came into politics I was a barrassed I was a barrassed for about uh 14 15 years I started off doing uh commercial law shipping and so on I then went into clinical negligence law of costs and then went into crime as a criminal Barrister I did everything from
Starting the magistrates Court through to doing a serious flaw did a lot of work for the SFO the financial conduct Authority homicide so murder manslaughter death by dangerous driving um a lot of terrorism cases I prosecuted a number of people who were Associates of someone called anjim chowri who we
Remember an alajar run prosecuted people who were out in east of London the so-called Muslim Patrol cases prosecuted bomb plots but I also defended as well so I defended people accused of serious crimes ranging from uh well assault through to ones that are even more serious than that and so that’s helped
To provide some element of perspective that when I hear certain suggestions in the house of common so for example Labor’s current obsession with wanting to water down or even remove uh accessory liability so-call joint Enterprise I’ve lived and breathed these principles as a practitioner and I
Understand in terms of the impact on the front line of what that would actually mean for crime and Justice in our country and so when I was appointed to this role uh what happens incidentally if any of you become a secretary of state in the fullness of time you’ll sit
Down with your civil servants and they will say what are your priorities and I said that my priorities are to ensure that we convict the guilty acquit the innocent and ensure the public are protected and it was considered I think a little quaint to say well why do you
Talk about acquit the innocent and I said I tell you what the British people are fairm minded people and you can start by thinking that it’s all about hanging and flogging and making sure the bad guys go to prison and by the way that’s an incredibly important part of
It but it’s also important that we have a fair system that ensures that if people are wrongly accused that they have the opportunity uh to secure their quitt and to leave a courtroom with no stain on their character and if we were in any doubt about that then the
Experience of the Horizon Scandal shows that that fundamental belief in Justice runs like a stick of rock through the British people and the other thing I just want to say by way of context we don’t talk about it much there is a sort of cultural diffidence in our country
But I think it’s reasonable to observe that no other country has contributed as much as we have to the international rules based order and another part of context which will inform some of the points that I make in a moment is which is the country which has not just the
Largest legal sector in Western Europe in fact not just the largest legal sector in the whole of Europe the one which has the second largest legal sector in the whole world is the United Kingdom more specifically uh England and Wales and this is something which is poorly understood but it’s a matter of
Pride in its own right but even more importantly than that it’s a matter that is fundamental to our success and prosperity as a nation it brings us over 30 billion pounds a year in Revenue but also this if any of you have come across people as you will have done in your
Life people of talent of ability but you might not necessarily have had the easiest start in life well one of the great engines of social Mobility one of the great opportunities that our country can provide is through the legal sector I just give you one very very small
Anecdote before I came into politics I used to go with my wig and gown to Inner uh London schools I brought up in chelton but I spent time here as a barrister in in London schools and I’d go with my wig gown into deprived schools and I’d say well look why don’t
We set up a mock trial why don’t we give this a go and we’re going to come up with a set of circumstances a a theft of a mobile phone and I would give people an opportunity to examine in Chief and to cross-examine and I came across some
People of extraordinary ability and the I think in some ways the proudest moment of my life was again long before I came into politics uh I went along did one of these things and I said to this kid who’d shown particular promise come with me to the Old Bailey come and watch a
Murder trial take place and he came and thought nothing more of it and then a few years later I heard that he’d want a place at Cambridge to read law and I don’t know what’s happening to him now but I suspect he’s a plutocrat and but
So long as he’s paying his taxes I don’t care that’s absolutely fantastic anyway listen so those are just some opening remarks which give a sense hopefully of the the perspective to which I come to this incredibly important role I’m also going to be very candid with you about things when we look at
The long perspective of the last 14 years there are things that we could have done differently and there are things that um with the benefit of hindsight I think I might have changed but we should never allow the current challenges which do exist and again I’ll
Be frank with you to obscure there have been some enormous changes over the last 14 years some enormous improvements which I think are dramatically for the better and set our country on the right path such that if we stay the course we can recover parts of the system that
Have been badly affected by the pandemic and we can continue to deliver the justice that our country expects and deserves so I think it’s important to look in terms of that context of some of the really important things that have changed first act one scene one since
2010 crime is is down crime is down proven reoffending sorry overall crime has fallen by 55% particularly violent crime burglary neighborhood crime so of course true it is that there have been concerns about online fraud and we can come to that specifically but overall crime is down and that means fewer
People suffering the appalling experience of being a victim having their lives shattered having trust betrayed and having their Futures curtailed second act 1 scene two proven reoffending is down from 31% to 25% that’s important in its own right because proven reoffending in pounds Shillings and Pence means that
The cost to the economy something like 18 billion pounds a year in reoffending drops significantly every single time you bring it down a percentage point it has that impact and of course it means fewer people suffering the misery that I referred to a few moments ago what about
How we’ve approached this issue of sentencing so that’s crime what about uh punishment well to govern is to choose we choose to ensure that as part of protecting the public those who are able to cause the most harm should be kept out of circulation for longer that
Doesn’t mean by the way that we think we should move to a situation where for lower level lower risk offenses it’s a constant ratchet of of banging people up for longer but where they are the most serious crimes we do make no apology for making that decision so that means that for
Example the overall average sentence for rape having gone up by around 50% overall sentences are up as well but it also means compared to the situation that I had to encounter as a practitioner that there is far more probity it seems to me in the sentencing
System let me just give you one example so when I was in practice in say 2008 2009 you’d prosecute a very serious rape which I did on many occas a s stand up please Joe blogs the crime you’ve committed is extremely serious you’ve destroyed This Woman’s life I see to it
As far as discharging Justice in this case you will receive a sentence of 10 years imprisonment now what of course the Press reporting on it might not have been entirely aware of is that guy would get out automatically at the halfway point and if you want to know where that
Came from it came from section 244 of the criminal justice act 200 3 which in turn reversed the law that we had introduced which is that if you got over four years you’d serve 2/3 that got changed by uh the labor government and to my mind that introduced a fundamental
Uh dishonesty into sentencing so we reversed that and we have changed it and that’s important and we will go further still uh in the sentencing Bill uh to ensure that Those who commit the most serious offenses will spend a high proportion of that sentence Behind Bars it’s also reasonable
It seems to us that there should be whole life orders for Those who commit the most appalling crimes namely murder in the context of sexual or sadistic conduct but I’ll come to the Future a bit in a moment so so far I’ve talked about CRI crime down uh and Punishment
Up so let me turn to this issue of Prisons well look the first thing to be aware of is again back in 2008 2009 as a practitioner when there were strains in the in the custodial estate in fact significant strains the response from the then Home Secretary was don’t worry
We’re going to build three three Titan prisons the number actually built zero and so we said this prime minister as Chancellor funded the largest prison expansion since since the Victorian era now of course you might say well that’s easy to say but has it actually been delivered damn right it’s being
Delivered it’s being delivered in hmp 5 Wells hmp fos two big prisons each of them about 1,600 and I tell you this if you go to see those prisons again coming back to the point what are the instincts of the British people British people want to see an AER but decent and
Rehabilitative environment that is what you have got and I want you to picture the scene if you can you go into these prisons safe clean and decent workshops where people have areas where they can learn how to build do joinery or brick laying and I spoke to one of the guys
Providing the training in there and I said you provide this training on the inside and on the outside how do they differ and he said to me you know what the guys in here are more motivated they want to turn their lives around they want to take this
Opportunity or I could talk to you about when I went to five Wells and there there actually was an optometry Workshop where they were creating the spectacles creating the prescription glasses for the entire estate and guess what the number of people employed the proportion of offenders who had done that course were
Employed on the outside something like uh 90% so we’ve already rolled out 5,800 uh prison places and those are safe decent modern rehability places what we’re also doing is looking to invest in other prisons to expand their estate and to expand decency recently I don’t know if
Any of you read the telegraph maybe one or two in here I went to hmp Liverpool at the end of uh last week and I said that prisons as well as prisoners can be redeemed because I sat on the Justice Select Committee in 2017 and we had to gulp our way through
The most dread ful uh report that came out from hmip candidly it was not good it’s not what we would expect in our country there was talk of rats and cockroaches and it was just something that was frankly a a source of Shame and what have we done we haven’t sought to
Sweep it under the carp we’ve dealt with it as British politicians should which is to say that’s not good we are going to address it and that’s exactly what we’ve done so we’ve invested in the prison I’ve seen it for myself and to cut a long story short by 2022 hmip went
Round and it was a story of redemption I went around should I tell you the thing when I was on these Wings do you know the most significant thing was The Sound of Silence even though this was a full Wing but it was calm it was quiet it was
Orderly and it was decent not just that but we’re also bringing on 300 places as well so of course there’s a narrative about some difficulties we have in certain prisons but by the way which is the party that actually introduced the Urgent notification measure that wanted transparency when things things go wrong
It was us so we have over a hundred prisons and there are some which have got problems hmp Bedford and so on but there is a laser-like focus on turning them around and there is a lot of investment in rolling out the largest prison building program since the
Victorian era as I say 5,800 places more to go but what we’ve also done is rolled out 100 million pounds of security so that means that there’s body warn videos that means there’s airport Star Security that means that uh the staff that I spoke to feel safe and supported and
That we have confidence in them and we look to back them and as I say it’s also about Rehabilitation as well one I think of the most U moving meetings that I’ve had in this job is sitting down and speaking to guys who work in Industry as part of these employment advisory boards
Now these are people who could just be saying you know what I’m just going to run my own business and get on do my life pay my taxes and just be done and yet and yet and yet these are people Tak an interest in society and the world
Around them they sit on these employment advisory boards and these boards are affiliated to specific prisons and instead of just leaving it to the state to say well do you mind just doing a bit of kind of I don’t know bit of training and hopefully these guys will get a job
On the outside it’s far more sophisticated than that so they engage with each prison and they say right when folks come out of that Nick what kinds of jobs are going to be available in that Community now let’s see if we can tailor the training to those jobs so it
Might be for example there’s a whole load of hospitality that he’s doing it might be that there’s construction it might be that Network rail need people to go and uh work on the railway or whatever and they help working with something called new Futures Network to
Actually do that so that’s the tsons of this world that’s you know Gregs that’s so many other organizations that are doing that or I could talk about clinks kitchens where people are learning um city and guilds qualification so that they can work in that Hospitality sector
On the outside and again this isn’t just sort of oh well let’s hit and hope let’s give it a go and and the bit luck it’ll be all right on the night let’s look at what has happened in the data and in the year up to March 2023 the proportion of
Offenders in employment 6 months Post Release had doubled had doubled and we know don’t we that key drivers of ensuring people stay on the straight and narrow if people have that sense of hope wanting to turn their lives around is if they get into employment because they hope is about
Saying not I’m an irretrievably bad man they may have done an irretrievably bad thing but that I’m somebody who can see past that and to develop some stake in the society around them that’s not to say we don’t want to punish them yes we do want to punish them but we also want
To rehabilitate them as well and so that’s why we’ve had drug recovery substance-free uh living units there are training opportunities in prisons and I actually was in five worlds and there they were sitting with the guys using AI so they sit in a machine which teaches them how to use everything from a
Forklift to a front loader to all these um all these devices that’s using technology in prison final thing I want to say about that as well is that we’re using technology in prisons to address the other aspect which is critical to Rehabilitation which of course is substance of use you will understand
Fine well that a lot of the folks who end up in jail are people who’ve got addictions as well as neurodiversity you know we’ve got that screening going on the way in I think Robert buckin will probably have talked a bit about that but here’s the important thing what you
Don’t want is when they come out suddenly not to have the substance treatment that they had on the inside so how do you how do you cross that divide answer use technology so a number of Prisons use incel technology to ensure that they can be getting the treatment from the very
People on the outside that will go on to provide that continuity of Care on their release that is critically important so when you combine that with the fact that we’re going to be rolling out prisoner passports with their National Insurance number Etc when you see that we’ve got the employment advisory boards providing
These job opportunities when you see that someone like hmp Berwin when you go to their employment Hub it looks like a job job center you can see that that person can have an interview in a video Suite with their employers from inside when you combine those things that is
Why the statistics have improved on employability it hasn’t happened by accident but by very very hard work so I think one of the things that I see as my job as Lord Chancellor is not to say oh do you know what it’s motherhood and apple pie we’ve got no problems we’ve
Got no pressures we do and I’m going to come on to some of those but a proper balanced context is that there is some exceptional rehabilitative work going on in our country and don’t take that from me I was in the states recently speaking to guys in New York and they look at
Some of what we do in England and Wales as a beacon and as a model of how to do it so that’s that’s an important part I wanted to talk about um uh punishment in the community we’ve got to get real as a country about this it costs
47,000 a year to keep someone in bed and breakfast uh in custody it’s an extremely expensive option and it’s absolutely the right option for those most dangerous people for lower level offenders tech provides opportunities that were not there in 2010 so when I was Prosecuting in 2010 and you came to
Do a community sentence the judge was Sting there thinking right okay what can I do well you can have an unpaid work order which is going to have to be supervised entirely by uh probation and I’m going to put you on a tag but of
Course that tag was large likely to be a radio frequency tag all the radio frequency tag could do is say has this guy kept to his curfew or is he on the run but if he hadn’t kept the curfew that was it he didn’t know where he’s
Gone he who knows he’s gone no idea and of course that means that benches would find it difficult to have confidence in those tags so what’s happened since well we’ve rolled out these GPS tags you know what a GPS does of course you got it all on your phone but that’s incredibly
Significant because it shows a person right this is the area you’re not allowed to go into and I tell you that physical weight on your ankle you may have seen that I I actually had one it’s not just a physical reminder of the fact that you need to repay your debt to
Society take your medicine repay your debt but it’s also here are the barriers here are the boundaries literally don’t cross the B boundaries and because the tech is so good you as that individual who’s being tagged no fine well you’re going to get caught there’s no question
It’s not question well will I or won’t I there’s no Jeopardy to it you will get caught and that means you risk the clang of the prison gate and and behaviorally we know this stuff works so we’ve got alcohol tags these are unbelievably sophisticated tags so even though people
Of course try to gain and it’s disgusting really some of them tried to put chicken skin between the sensor and the tag to try to fool it it doesn’t work it doesn’t work and it’s very sophisticated at establishing whether you’ve been drinking now guess what as a
Result the compliance is very high so for every uh it’s 97% compliance so that’s quite quite a thing and what that means is that in those marginal cases the judge can say with much more confidence right I want you to be punished for what you’ve done so you
Will do an unpay work order you will clean up graffiti you will do this and by the way we will know whether you’re on your way to attend that hearing because we’ve put a tag on you you will have your Liberty restricted on the weekends because I don’t see why you
Should be able to go and enjoy time in the pub which is why we’re going to give you a 16-hour curfew so it’s a pandemic style curfew or maybe even a 20-hour curfew which we’ve extended to do on one of the on one of the nights that’s what
We’re going to do we’re also going to say because alcohol was at the heart of your offending you went out and whacked someone in the in chelham High Street c which you should not have done but actually do you know what when you are sober you are a contributing member of
Society but when you get on the source you’re a menace we’re going to put an alcohol tag on you and so we are going to restrict and we are going to deal with the source of your offending so you will be punished you’ll be rehabilitated
And we have options now that we did not have 15 years ago it would be mad not to use those other countries are we need to be at the Forefront of technology in ensuring that we don’t we don’t inflict a double double whack on the taxpayer
First being a victim of crime in the in the first place but second being forced to pay uh for the cost of uh keeping this person out of the market out of the market out of a law-abiding life so here’s the final thing is there was a very interesting article in the ey
Recently following closely people on these tags and doing these Community work and do you know what they said this guy said he said time and time again the supervisor said offenders will say to me it’s much easier for me to be in prison this is harder what you are asking me to
Do in the community is harder so we need to get away from this mindset of saying oh well it’s it’s a touch you’ve had a touch because you’re on a community order absolutely not and the critical point is technology allows us to make them robust rehabilitative and frankly
Punitive and we should not uh uh showy away from now right let me talk about something which is really really um important violence against women and girls I want this if you remember one thing from this talk I hope you’ll remember this compared to 2010 the landscape in terms of how we address
Violence against women and girls is night and day there has been an extraordinary transformation and I’m just going to illustrate it in what was standard operating procedure when I was a barer right so in the say in the magistrates Court where I started my career allegation of common assault
Allegation is that man hits woman the girlfriend at home now you’d be turning up on a Monday morning listed for trial I’ve got the statement I’ve got the case summary got the police national computer report this guy’s got a bit of form for thuggery bit of public order R defense
There a common assault and abh is on there as well listed for trial at HL Hemstead magistrates court and uh you listed for 10:00 it’s quarter to 10 do you know the police officers here where is she she hasn’t turned up hasn’t turned up um it’s getting really close now you get to
10:00 your Cas is listed on the bench say where you ready to try ready to proceed I’m I’m not ready to proceed sir uh Madam um can I have 10 minutes the officer in the case is going to make some inquiries okay you have 10 minutes
But I want to start I want to start at 10 10 10 minutes you speak in the officer in the case call her got to get her here what’s going on it’s just ringing out sir just can’t get through to her go into court I’m so sorry so I’m
Going to have to offer no evidence in this case she hasn’t turned up she not cooperating with prosecution and that was and that’s effectively what would happen we Now understand that that’s not the way to deal with it because the very she may well have not wanted to felt
Scared been got at so what do we do now first of all in terms of the proposal it’s massively different we offer a package of support that says stuff like in our victims code which we’ve rebooted and revamp you can have a court familiarization visits you get supported
By the CPS if they’re thinking about changing charges you can make a victim personal statement to tell the court about how things have been affected if someone doesn’t want to attend the officer will inquire well why is that maybe we could get special measures so you give your evidence behind the screen
Or over a live link maybe even we’ll have to do the tough love thing of a witness summons to come to court so you have to to say look it wasn’t me Mr abusive ex partner the prosecution required me to come to court to give this evidence they’re the bad guys not
You that’s massively important that is a night and day change but we’ve also created offenses that did not exist it wasn’t a crime to stalk someone in 2010 it was not a crime to have coercive and controlling Behavior the kind of non-physical abuse which shatters women’s lives which makes them feel that
They are living in this endless nightmare of persecution we’re the ones who’ve changed that we create an offense of non-fatal strangulation now you could prosecute under another heading but it was never possible to specifically identify this kind of uh Behavior created a new uh aggravating factor for domestic abusers who kill their Partners
Through uh degrading sexual behavior upskirting as I said the new victims Court campaign in family courts we ended the ordeal of of domestic abusers being able to uh cross-examine their victims we quadrupled victims funding we ensure that people can give their evidence via section 28 to pre-record it so they can
Move on with their lives as opposed to having to wait for qu case to come to trial all this we do and more because we recognize that to protect women and girls is a core Mission and we’re not done yet so that is that’s the context I said
I’d come to the challenges and challenges there are you will have read in the papers that there are issues about prisons and courts of course there are but I want to just put some perspective which I think has not been uh properly referred to in some of the
Narrative on all this during the pandemic I was a I was a junior Minister Robert Buckland who I think you heard from before was was a secretary of state and we were faced in the white heat of that pandemic with two very very big judgment calls and the first judgment
Call was whether to let out some prisoners and by the way not just a few Prisoners the strong recommendation was to to let out a bare minimum of 16,000 prisoners and actually if you work through the logic of what the recommendation was considerably more than that probably closer to 25,000 now
Before you think that that was some weird Rogue suggestion just have a look at other nations of the world well I went to the United States as I indicated and there whether it’s from the Supreme Court all the way to a Frontline judge they said well yeah we let out tens of
Thousands and if you want a specific statistic Look at California which is a state which has a smaller population than ours but not wildly uh different they let out 11,000 go to France where again I raised it with them they let out closer to 13,000 so that was principal
Issue number one we didn’t do that and by the way the Judgment was right because it was predicated upon assumption that the virus would run Riot through prisons and that you would have thousands and thousands of deaths and so in fact the proposal was to prioritize prisoner safety over wider Public Safety
That was the devil’s own dilemma and we resolved it by saying actually there should be 200 uh released of the most funel but not 11 uh not 16,000 certainly not 25,000 now so what is not being talked about is the fact that if those guys had come out there
Would be people who have not been victims of crime who were walking around living their lives going back to their families for whom it might have been different if that decision had been made and that’s a really important point that doesn’t get written about point one
Point two we had to make a decision about jury trials jury trials and pandemics go together like a fish and a bicycle there’s literally no system on God’s green earth that is less well suited to a pandemic than jury trials and that’s because you have retirement rooms you
Have to have uh you know when the jury need to step out where you’re having a legal argument you need all the space it’s a nightmare but were we going to be the country were we going to be the government that after a thousand years of British history we should be ripping
It up because a pandemic had come along that would have been to Snuff out the lamp of our Liberty and take away a key and core fundamental building block of what it means to be free born in this country it would have been a terrible
Mistake to do that but there is a price you pay for principle so our job is to heal the system and to build back from it and that we are doing that’s why we’ve kept the night Andale Courts open that’s why we’ve invested up to 141
Million pound more into legal aid to try to recruit more lawyers that’s why we got we’re recruiting a thousand judges section 28 I talked about the rape support helpline to support people through the process it doesn’t mean that there aren’t pressures there are pressures but those who say particularly if they launch
Political attacks look at these problems they have to ask themselves the question well what would you have done and interestingly if you would have done something different why did you not mention it during the pandemic not a single thing the only suggestion that came out of the opposition throughout
The entire criminal justice system is oh well you should go from having 12 man jury trials to seven man without with everyone every educated commentator saying that makes no difference at all that solves literally nothing and indeed the I have not heard a single coherent suggestion um so it’s simply carping
Without suggestions is is there’s a word for that and it’s just called moaning so that’s what I see from the labor party is I’m afraid no coherent or credible solution so I said listen I’ll bring I’ll bring this to an ember because the fun bit is when we we talk and and
Discuss but we are not done we have four bills in this parliamentary session we’re delivering for women and girls in the criminal justice bill so we’re criminalizing taking eight intimate images you might have seen the Georgia Harrison stuff expanding the offense of encouraging or assisting self harm we’re compelling defendants to attend
Sentencing hearings that’s the Lucy let be stuff it’s perfectly reasonable to be robust on that we can do it within the four corners of the law the victims and prisoners Bill sending a clear signal about what victims should expect the sentencing bill which I’ve talked about which strikes the right balance between
Ensuring that those we’re most scared of get locked up for longer those were most cross with we reab debilitating as well as punishing the arbitration Bill bolstering the UK striving legal sector and um so on and I know incidentally that if we are fortunate enough to win a
Further term I’m absolutely clear about where we need to go there are things that we need to do we need to ensure that this system is streamline with more drugs offenses in the magistrates Court we need to change the planning system for prisons which is something which
Drives me completely mad uh we need to um ramp up ERS 18 to get for more foreign National offenders out we’ve taken some tough decisions we need to make sure that the result resources there to get them out and we need to support our legal sector to continue to
Thrive and grow but we will do this friends and colleagues from a position of principle a position which says that we are a nation that has given more to the international rules-based order than any other a nation that has the fundamentals to prosper and I think if
We Ally energy with our principles I’m absolutely convinced that the future for justice in our country and the future for our country overall can be very bright indeed thank [Applause] you thank you the through Min Justice are to detail way say long no it’s it’s it’s a
Polite way of saying thank you for for saving me a lot of questions so I can keep my bit short which uh which I think is beneficial for everybody um and then we can can take some questions from the audience as well so do get those creative juices flowing as you as you
Think through them um you you gave us a really kind of good uh scene Setter on on the work that you’re doing uh in terms of crime and in terms of punishment and some of the challenges within the justice system um I of course wouldn’t expect you to come here today
And point to uh those challenges in in a in a greater way than than what you you have um but do you understand that some people across the country might look at the justice system right now you got courts backlogged I think it’s almost 30% of Crown Court cases uh waiting more
Than a year for a hearing you’ve got legal aid spending Fallen by almost over 40% I think since since 2011 um two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales are class as overcrowded um you’ve then got potentially and I know this is under review so I wouldn’t expect you to
To comment on it but um the case of the the natic killer valdo calone uh being reviewed for potentially being lenient sentenced you’ve got um injustices popping up in the form of obviously the post office Horizon Scandal there’s lots of examples of people watching the news
To think is this system working for the people of this country what what do you say to them right I think you’ve raised so many issues there and I think that the trouble is if we if we’re not going to be speaking in slogans but speaking
In not just you are but speaking in details there are specific answers for specific things so look I’ll just take a couple of points um on on the issue of uh crowding in fact the level of crowding in prisons which does exist very candid about that is at or around
The same level it was in 2010 so the idea that it’s got worse that’s just not that’s not materially true second the business about backlog don’t forget that over 90% of all criminal cases are heard in the magistrates court and that is operating well yes it has its pressures
But it is operating well that is dealing with common assaults non-domestic burglaries that’s dealing with everything from abh to to uh as I say inquisitive offending shoplifting some youth robberies and so on so there’s lots of work that is taking place in the magistrat court and is happening
Extremely well the third point is you talk about some cases taking a year to come on in the Crown Court those most serious cases I know from having prosecuted and defended there are plenty that will need that time because you have to have disclosure take place experts have got to be instructed that
Evidence has to be served you then need to make further inquiries disclosure requests and so on so there’s a huge amount which needs to take place and when you look at the average between prosecution and sentence for a rape case if you read all the media you would
Assume it’s like 5 years the average is one year and 54 days now of course I’d like to bring that down but it’s important not to lose sight of that important fact now you referred to Horizon The Horizon The Horizon thing is I mean horrendous and the first thing
That you’re taught as a prosecutor and I would say this when I kids would come around with to to not kids but you know people pupil bars coming around with me and I tell them about what it means to be a prosecutor in England and Wales i’ say listen you
Are here as a Minister of Justice what that means is you’re not there to get a conviction at all costs but you have to be fair and what that means in very simple terms in our jurisdiction is that if material comes into your possession which to site the test might reasonably
Be considered capable of undermining the case of the prosecution or assisting the case of the defense you got to disclose it so in plain English what that means is this if you are accused of a crime of a robbery a street robbery your defense is it wasn’t me yes I was arrested I
Didn’t do it you are a um white male with a blue tie if our five witness who say it was a white male with a blue tie that did it fine Ser but then someone comes along contacts the police and say no no no no it wasn’t a white it was
Actually a black female with a green jumper now I could sit on there say that’s not very convenient H that’s not really going to help my case well perhaps I’ll just hide that way no what I do is I provide it to you provide it to the defense and what was so
Catastrophic in the Horizon case is when they saw that there was material which suggested that the system wasn’t working they sat on it and that is not good that is not good I had stronger words but now’s not the moment I should say it wasn’t me uh on
It wasn’t you yeah the observant amongst you notic that Ed Al gu was also wearing a blue tie withing I’m not I’m not pointing fingers um your recent proposal to support foreign offenders rather than Prosecuting them in the UK to alleviate overcrowded jails how do you plan to
Balance that with ensuring that victims are are getting the right justice so that it’s a balance you know and so much of life is about about balance so look again something that people if you if you listen to everything you you read you might say well we don’t we don’t
Deport any foreign National offend it’s all bit of a nightmare not true we prosecute over sorry we Deport over 3,000 a year it’s really important these are people you’re sticking on planes taking out of our country and they can never come back so there is a proper public interest in appropriate low-level
Cases to say the option is we take this guy and we run him through the criminal justice system at huge cost of the taxpayer potentially getting a community order at the end or kind of load up or we can just get him out now plainly if
It’s a case of domestic abuse or it’s rape or it’s a really serious matter he is going to have to be prosecuted here convicted punished and disgraced and that’s exactly the way it should be but what do we we do about someone who is a Serial nuisance this is a guy public
Order matter so he’s swearing at police uh all the time that he is somebody who when he drinks becomes um a pain and even if people aren’t threatened by him that there is a sort of public order dispute that’s going on he’s a he’s been
A petty Thief at the local co-op now we could charge him again put him through the system he hasn’t got any money he has he’s living a pretty hopeless life he’s got a drug problem and so on we can just get him out and I and I do think
It’s perfectly proper in certain cases to say I just don’t want you on the streets of Britain anymore get him out and and I’m very clear about that so we have set out if you look online you can see the sorts of factors that militate in favor of one solution or the other
But to be absolutely clear it will not be appropriate for domestic abuse cases it will not be appropriate for serious uh violence but there are lower level cases where the balance of the public interests favors a um a more summary solution which is fair on the taxpayer
As well as uh Fair on the police and all the prosecuting authorities thank you one of one of the areas that you covered uh you touched on a few times in in your uh keyot there is around um International rule of law and kind of the leading role that the UK plays
Around the world um given the current Global geopolitical uh climate we’ve got conflicts left R Center um what specific steps do you think the UK should take to to strengthen our International alliances and to ensure that we’re upholding the rule of law throughout great well so the first thing again I
Reckon that there is a poor understanding of there not a criticism amongst all parts of society is the extent to which we have influence in the world in this you know people look to our country very much in this field I one small example I was in Strasburg
Recently which as you know ECR is there and I went into the chief executive’s office and and there was a bust of Churchill there you know it was Churchill who um perhaps more than other was talking about it was aware of Britain’s role in all this and of course
When I went to uh the United States and I was talking about William blackon you speak about William blackton in England and Welles most people go completely black they they hold him up as a a giant you know and it was William blackon who incidentally I invoked when we were
Talking about Horizon he said in the 18th century better that 10 guilty men walk free than one innocent man is made to suffer I wanted to put as decals on the front of uh the ministry of Justice instead of some tedious corporate speak about you know supporting Justice blah
Blah blah I wanted to talk about some of the sayings that great English and Welsh jurists have come up with be you never so high the law is above above you said Thomas uh Thomas Fuller you know what about know section 39 probably wasn’t called section of Magna cataa you know
No free man should be seized or imprisoned or stripped of his rights of possessions and so on and so on these are principles that we have given to the world and we should take great pride in those and people look to us and make no mistake we are in a global contest of
Ideas we’re in a contest of ideas between those Nations who cleave to a rules-based system which basically says International borders should be observed and that might is not always right and that other tradition if that’s the right word in global politics which says all that matters is what you can
Get away with and international uh borders don’t matter we have to strengthen that because if you get to a global anarchic position this is not you know holding on holding on to the rules based system is not some sort of quaint Magna carter esque sort of vision it’s simply because the alternative means
Chaos poverty and distress and so we have to work uh to focus on that and we as the second largest eal sector in the world have an extraordinary role to play and so when we talk about some of the debates in this country what I think perhaps is less well understood is the
Extent to which it resonates around the world world and when I was sitting there in Europe the things that flash up on Europeans phones are very often what’s flashing up on all your phones they follow what happens in Britain very very closely be under no Illusions we have
Enormous influence in this sphere and it’s something that’s very precious but it’s also something that we have a responsibility for as well thank you and turn turning from kind of international cooperation to uh cooperation and collaboration within government um how do you in in your department uh
Collaborate with others such as the home office obviously opposite us here uh on some of those issues you raised was thinking about substance be thinking about some of the reasons why people might uh turn to crime or kind of compounding issues within uh the criminal system um things like drug
Abuse mental health uh domestic violence how do you work together to to try and tackle the underlying causes what so so the truth is the ministry of justice is the least important justice department what what I mean by that is if you want to look at driving down crime in some
Ways the things that are most important are yes Families how people people are brought up is a critically important thing but it’s also issues about what takes place in schools because the truth is there are teachers who every day will look at that five or six-year-old hang
On a second I a problem with this one and we we’ve got to really address what is going on in that child’s life and my constant refrain is going to be you know I if I if I had a my dream bill that I’d
Like to bring I’d call it the go hard go early bill in other words you know if kids are showing problems go hard go early about trying to address what’s going on because by the time it gets to me by the time it gets to my department
Down the line things have gone very badly wrong and we are trying of course to put away the bad guys who can cause terrible crime and rehabilitate people I tell you this you know I speak of somebody who’s defended and stood up and said you know please your honor can you
Give this guy some drug rehabilitation requirement of course we want to do all that but I always knew that it’s much much harder if you’re trying to rehabilitate someone over the age of 30 it’s extremely difficult of course we try we do what Churchill said you know
There’s treasure in the heart of every man of course you want to find it it’s much easier to find it in a 15y old than it is in a 35y old so that’s point one to your specific issue that’s why we we also have to work with other departments
My ability to help those guys who are going to have a substance abuse issue which we’d love to cure but the truth is very often is about managing I can only do that by the help of an NHS so they have put in half a million pounds so
We’ve got these uh Health and Justice Partners we’ve got over 55 recruited and they come as it were into prison and help people migrate from prison into the commun Comm or what about working with the home office where for example our ability to create a new offense of
Spiking which You’ have seen in in the press That’s from working very closely with James cleverly my my counterpart so it is absolutely essential that partnership working we have a really good grownup sensible collaborative uh agreement and it’s just a joy working with James uh cleverly but I I just want
To end where I began if we are serious about driving things down and continuing the I think genuinely except exeptional progress we’ve made other government departments must recognize that in some ways they’re more important than mine when it comes to tackling crime sure um conscious of time
We’ll turn to some questions from the audience now as please wait for microphone to come to you again because of the timing if you can keep questions short and concise that’ be really appreciated we’ll start with the the lady in the Turk top of the back thank
You U my name is j Abbott I’m the legal director at the Howard league for penal reform so very interested in all you had to say about prisons in particular um and obviously delighted to hear about the focus on Rehabilitation um as one of the purposes
Of sentencing but I do think there’s a sort of elephant in the room here we’ve touched on overcrowding a bit but when you have men in particular locked in their cells for 23 hours a day the idea that they’re going to be rehabilitated in those Environ in that environment is
Just it’s it’s for the birds and you talked about the turnaround at hmp Liverpool which I think is such an important example but there to do that you know the governor then was on record you took out 500 men and invested 25 million pounds but we don’t see that at
Bedford where you’re 150% overcrowded at the moment and there’s no sense of men being left there because there’s nowhere else to put them so I just wonder how you can marry up this drive for being tougher on crime which only leads to further overcrowding at the same time as
The focus on Rehabilitation which is so important and I really value thank you great thank you really important point so um the first thing is as I said about crowding levels and by the way what crowding means in simple terms is is two people in the cell right so that’s
That’s Broly what that means it’s about the same level now than it was in 2010 it’s a little bit more but it’s it’s in the same sort of bll but you make one really important Point okay I look you can be tough on crime and we say we are
Tough on crime but you have to stop and think and pause if you’re going into a cell and speaking to someone as I did at wwor to find out they being locked up for 23 hours a day I agree with you about that right that’s not right it’s
Not right and and so I mean I remember speaking to some guy who was on remand he’s not even convicted of anything and he’d been 23 now that was particularly during the end of covid where hang on I’ll come back let me come back to in
A moment where regimes were um uh were unlocking but they’ve been very tight now the first thing it’s really important to note just about the pandemic experience and I’ll come to what’s happened subsequently is the predictions during uh covid was that thousands and thousands and thousands of
People would died prison would die now in the event the figure was less than 200 every single one is a tragedy and of course my heart goes out to their to them their friends and their families I totally get all that but the prison system broadly kept those folks safe now
That’s an important point and part of it was there was a cost to that because keeping people locked up had particular harm particularly in the women’s estate by the way and so I totally get that but to your point about Liverpool what I think you respectfully the other part of
Context that it’s worth putting in is that when I went there the specific question I asked the governor as we’re on the landing I said well tell me about the regime and he said as a result of the investment that’s gone in not only are we bringing back on those 300 places
It was actually 300 not 500 but you know split the difference doesn’t matter whatever anyway bring on those 300 places and I said what is the average amount of time that people are out and it’s 7 hours and I was speaking to guys I was speaking to guys working in the
Laundry and they were talking about how the the regime gives them a sense of preparing for the working day I was speaking to the guys who were repairing bicycles to get uh a learning some skills to get on the outside now there are parts of the estate where I
Completely accept the regimes are not where I’d want them to be I can tell you I am passionately determined to try to improve it how are we actually getting that better more Staffing so the most fabulous statistic I think up to uh no hang on if I’m going to get this right
September the end of September last year we recruited an additional 1,400 prison officers the attrition rate so the resignation rate is right down is coming down significantly that is what’s going to allow us to uh to increase the the size of the regime so we’ve got we’re investing money in prisons big biggest
Roll out since the Victorian ER investing money in prison officers and we are determined to have a positive regime because that’s how you uh that’s how you rehabilitate pris thanks take our second question from the Gentleman Just in front of the pillar there thank you um sorry my voice got
George Grant from Tempest noo from from where Tempest noo right um my question to you is a lot of what you’ve brought in has been objectively I think very positive um the reforms that you’re making you were relatively relatively robust in your critique of your uh labor opposition if I may put to
You as a conservative Chancellor the unthinkable prospect that you don’t win um another term in office those reforms that you genuinely believe you know these need to carry forward what work are you doing with your opposition uh numbers to actually say look take the politics out
Of this these things need to carry on beyond the next election maybe you can’t even say but you know or do is is that work going on somewhere behind the scenes um to make sure that those things that you really you know that they’re carried through and that they’re not
Dropped or left by the wayside because people don’t actually realize you know what I um I came into politics because I wanted to do stuff because I care passionate about this country and I wanted to make things better and frankly I’ll work with anyone who’s going to
Help me to do that I don’t approach you saying well you know there’s sort of people I can’t have a conversation with and I do have a sensible conversation but I I’m not saying this for political effect I genuinely don’t know what they want to do there’s there’s no it’s one
Thing not having a plan and we hear a lot about that but there’s no principle either so so give you an example so we’re talking about this stuff on short sentences because I think the world has changed since 2010 we can do stuff now with technology which means you can get
Much better compliance you can get much whatever whatever so there’s a very good argument for it they on the one hand will say oh yeah we think this is quite sensible and then in the chamber they’ll try to attack it for political reasons so I just don’t know which side they’re
On I don’t know whether they’re tough on crime and yet they pop up and say we want to get rid of joint Enterprise liability so which is it they say that actually we believe in rehabil you know we believe in getting rid of foreign National offenders and then literally
Wrote To Me campaigning to stop a plain load of rapists and gbhs taking off from the TAC and they literally wrote to try to stop those that plane taking off so I I’ve had sensible discussions with me my opposite number and I will continue to
Do so and I of course hope that if I’m able to bring forward reforms that they will continue but without wanting to say this for political effect I literally have no idea what their plan is to address some of these fundamental problems and my job
I think is a sector state is to be as candid as I properly can about the issues that we face and I accept that as a result of those two decisions of princip which I would take Again by the way this does mean that there are challenges we’ve got a proposal for how
We should grind that through how we should heal the system but I’m afraid there’s just a lot of politics and accept an election you’re going to get a bit of that but I would hope for a bit of substance but substance has come there none take question from side of the room
As well uh gentleman in the glasses in the second row for the that then thanks John Collins from the prison’s education trust um talked about the importance of employment for people leaving prison but we know people coming into prison have poor levels of literacy numeracy and functional skills yet hmip
And ostad have been very critical of access to and quality of education so I guess my question is how do you make education more of a priority and how do you improve the quality of what’s available spot on right so I I’ve mean um there’s lots of ideas I have about
This but bluntly what I would where I would like to get to uh is you have kind of Education screening on the way in and then education screening on the way out but how do you motivate people to do that but just assume for a second you can do
It and then you’ve got to find a way of measuring and holding people to account whether it’s Governors and others for how they’ve got on during that time in other words that the so long as you don’t want the Education Service to be performative well you know we’ve done
Our bit we’ve given these guys some materials whether he looks at them or not you know it’s one of those things but at least we at least we’ve done it that there’s got to be more rigor I think now this is my point about us being a Down Department the truth is
It’s really really hard to improve uh literacy levels that’s why it’s much better to get these kids early and so on but that having been said we’ve got to try you’ve got to try hard to do it so I I I think ultimately people respond well to incentives and account and
Accountability and I think we need to improve the the accountability because apart from anything else you know that that then if a governor knows that he or she is going to be held to account for the fact that the the exit scores are really not where we need them uh to be
Then that I think cus cuses them to focus on the provider be it you know temp no whoever it is say do you know what these materials are a bit shunky I think we could do better on this and holds them to account the amounts of
Money by the way we’re putting into this are vast I’ll be corrected by my visor but I think it’s over 150 million pounds a year it’s a lot of money goes into this stuff and um I think that uh you know we want to roll that a new whole
Prison education system but core to it has got to be measurement and accountability thank you and final question I’ll take from the uh Penelope there in the third R Penelope Gibbs from transform Justice if you speak to people who’ve been in the criminal justice system whether
Prison or not and all those who work with them they say one of the biggest game changers would be to reform our criminal records checks not to abolish them all together but to make less very old and minor crimes appear on those records what do you think about that
Well this is something the rehabilitation of Ven at 1974 has been considered at length Justice select committee which I sat on looked at precisely this issue we took a lot of powerful evidence from people who said you know age 15 I did something stupid and now this is having a long-term uh
Impact and a number of changes have been made to ensure that there’s a proper balance so what we don’t have is a system in this country of sealing people’s criminal records effectively wiping them all together and indeed I don’t think you’re proposing that but what we did do was ensure that there
Were reforms to the spent conviction period I I think we need to keep this constantly under review I don’t have I don’t sit there and say I think the balance is better is the balance perfect I wouldn’t necessarily say that what I can say is we’ve moved quite a long way
Personally I would not be comfortable about a situation where records were wiped completely and that’s because there will be occasions where you need to do uh develop vetting or you need to really go much further in particularly sens jobs whether it’s working with children or working in National Security environment where someone’s conviction
For gbh even if it was when they were an idiot age 16 is something that you need to know about but I’m always open for a conversation about whether we’ve got the balance uh uh balance right I do think however that we’re in a much better
Position than we used to be and that’s because of the reforms uh uh that we’ve taken okay thanks Alex before we conclude just a a few quick thanks from me first to all of you who joined us uh here today thank you for coming along I
Do hope we’ll see you again at another conservative home event in the future to everyone watching along on the live stream uh to our partners austral L skills and Carla Support Services um to the conservative event team for making this all possible so SAR and Abigail who
You will have all seen to all of our panelists uh and finally Alex thank you so much for giving of your of your time um you remain a feature in the top five of the concered home cabinet League table and hopefully your appearance today will Propel you Propel Propel you
Further up so thank you very much thank you 7