Kenneth Clarke denies ‘another U-turn’ on sentencing

Justice secretary urged to quit after plan to give 50% sentence discounts to offenders who submit early guilty pleas is ditched Kenneth Clarke has insisted the decision to abandon plans to offer 50% sentence discounts to offenders who submit early guilty pleas is not “another U-turn” by the government. The justice secretary faced calls for his resignation after David Cameron forced him to ditch all his plans for sentence discounts following outcry from the Tory right and the tabloids. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the move was yet another example of the government putting forward a proposal which “hasn’t been thought through”. But Clarke sought to present the changes to the original plans, both on legal aid and on sentencing, as part of a “perfectly balanced” package of radical reforms. He told the BBC: “We’ve changed parts of it, both on legal aid and on sentencing. It’s not another U-turn; it’s a perfectly balanced package of radical reform, which is very necessary, and obviously I have to first of all discuss it in cabinet and then explain it to my parliamentary colleagues.” Cameron will announce the change at a Downing Street press conference on Tuesday, when the Ministry of Justice publishes its justice bill containing proposals for tougher community sentences and the introduction of a payment-by-results system to reduce prisoner reoffending. Cameron was lambasted by Miliband in the Commons earlier this month for overseeing a “total mess” on sentencing after another apparent climbdown on a key policy when it emerged the government had decided to withdraw plans for the discount for rapists following a public backlash. At the time, the prime minister backed Clarke, who personally championed the sentencing reforms, saying he was doing a “superb job”. But he has now forced the justice secretary to drop the plans entirely. Reacting to the news, Miliband said: “The public were rightly appalled in the first place that the government was proposing that people who committed rape should see their sentences cut by 50% and be let out within as little as 15 months. “The prime minister has got to ask how he got himself into this position in the first place of making a proposal which wasn’t thought through. It’s yet another example of this government not being in touch with people and making proposals which they then have to abandon.” The father of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor welcomed the U-turn and called on Clarke to be “removed” as justice secretary. “Ken Clarke is not doing the right thing, his advisers are not giving him the right advice on the issue,” Richard Taylor said. “He does not know what is going on in the streets, he does not know what criminality is about. He is taking decisions about what he does not know about. David Cameron’s decision to abandon the Ken Clarke statement is right.” Victims’ group Families Fighting for Justice also called for Clarke to resign. Jean Taylor, the founder of the group, said that more than 1,000 people had signed an online petition calling for his resignation and urged Clarke to meet victims to hear their experiences first hand: “Ken Clarke lives in la la land. If he can say that a rapist deserves 50% off for an early guilty plea then what world does he live in? He does not live in the real world.” The current discount is a third, and an extension to 50% would have meant a big drop in the prison population. The decision will mean the Ministry of Justice has to find as much as £100m in extra savings over four years from elsewhere in its budget. Most will come from a further squeeze on probation. The Treasury has said it is willing to see the justice ministry change the speed at which it finds savings. No official confirmation was available from Downing Street before a meeting of the cabinet on Tuesday and Cameron’s press conference. No 10 argues that trust in the criminal justice system is so low that it would be unable to sell a cut in sentences in return for early guilty pleas. Cameron’s advisers have told him his party is losing its grip on the law and order agenda. The Liberal Democrat leadership, which had promised to side with Clarke, appeared to have accepted defeat. A Lib Dem source said the 50% discount was not a party policy: “We never said we would want to bring it in. We are not totally wedded to it, and it is not a big loss.” Clarke’s original green paper proposal was expected to produce savings of £210m a year by reducing the demand for prison places by 6,000. Ministry of Justice officials estimated that this would cut the record 85,000 prison population in England and Wales by 3,000 by the time of the next general election. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, warned that the change of plan would lead to higher costs and more people behind bars as well as “a serious hole” in his department’s finances. The prison population in England and Wales stood at 85,345 on Friday, just 150 short of last October’s record high of 85,495. Fletcher said: “Further cuts to legal aid, the courts and probation are inevitable. This is a serious dent in Ken Clarke’s hopes to reduce the prison population. Abandoning the [50%] discount means the prison population will not be drastically reduced, therefore, cuts to courts, legal aid and probation will be worse than expected. “Cuts to all three will mean more people will end up in custody because the probation service will not be able to run programmes or supervise offenders in the community.” Other proposals expected on Tuesday include removing the courts’ option of remanding in custody defendants who are unlikely to receive a prison sentence. This would save 1,300 prison places a year. Other proposals include deporting more foreign prisoners (500 places), a new release test for those serving indeterminate sentences for public protection (300 to 600 places), and diverting mentally ill prisoners into community health treatment services (650 prison places). The justice minister, Crispin Blunt, gave a broad hint last week that any need to find further savings in the Ministry of Justice budget as a result of changes to the sentencing package were likely to come from the courts and probation services. Blunt told MPs that probation had so far been “quite significantly protected” from his department’s 23% budget cuts. The plans have provoked fierce opposition, particularly from the solicitors’ organisation, the Law Society. One initial recommendation was to withdraw legal aid in family cases, except those involving allegations of domestic violence. Critics warned that this would provide a perverse incentive to exaggerate grievances. Des Hudson, the Law Society chief executive, said he feared that cuts to legal aid could be even deeper than the proposed £350m because less money may be saved by keeping people out of prison. He said: “This means they will come to the budget with sharpened pencils. We will not stand by and see the most vulnerable left with no access to justice.” Kenneth Clarke Sentencing UK criminal justice Prisons and probation Patrick Wintour Alan Travis Allegra Stratton Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 21, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.