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As he prepares to open second reading of sentencing bill, Clarke says it is ‘a pity’ he was unable to go ahead with jail term discount plan but denied being ordered commit U-turn The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, faces another embarrassing U-turn over his controversial sentencing reforms on Wednesday as the Labour frontbench combines with rightwing Tory MPs to further attack his prison plans. Tory backbenchers and Labour spokesmen served notice on Tuesday night that they would fight Clarke’s plans to limit the use of remand in custody and tackle the explosion in the use of indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPPs). Clarke is determined to abolish indeterminate sentences introduced by the previous Labour administration, which he describes as “an unmitigated disaster”. But his opponents scent fresh blood after last week’s U-turn when Downing Street disowned his plan to introduce a 50% maximum discount for early guilty pleas, although it would have stabilised the growth in the record 85,000 prison population in England and Wales. Clarke told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme that it was “a pity” that he had not been able to go ahead with the 50% discount plan, but denied being ordered by David Cameron to commit a U-turn. “The prime minister never ordered me to do anything,” said Clarke. The move took out 3,400 of the 6,000 prison places Clarke was hoping to save over four years as part of his “rehabilitation revolution” and left him with a funding hole in his spending plans. “You can’t have a system whereby every time you consult, if you alter it people get laughably excited about a U-turn,” said Clarke. “I have made U-turns sometimes when I have made mistakes, but I don’t think this is a U-turn. It was a huge process of consultation with thousands of responses and, if you know anything about the criminal justice system, it is not easy just to put out proposals without having to modify them in the light of what people say.” Clarke said the extra £100m savings he is having to find in his budget as a result was “not a very large amount” as a proportion of overall reductions totalling £2bn. A fresh revolt against his plans to limit the use of remand in custody would lose a further 1,300 saved places and mean he would have to find a further £40m from his justice budget. The IPP reforms would have saved 600 prison places and £10m. Clarke is expected to battle on Wednesday to save what remains of his reforms when he opens the Commons second reading of his legal aid, sentencing and punishment bill. He further infuriated the Tory right on Tuesday when he insisted the only change in the law on self-defence – hailed last week by the tabloids as a “bash-a-burglar charter” when announced by Downing Street – would be a further clarification of the law. It comes as a supreme court justice, Lady Hale, warned that £350m legal aid cuts in the bill would hit the “poorest and most vulnerable in society” and amid predictions that more than one-third of law centres in England and Wales would have to close as result. In a speech to the Law Society on Monday, she said: “There is a well-known ironic saying … that in England, justice is open to all – like the Ritz. Courts are and should be a last resort but they should be a last resort which is accessible to all, rich and poor alike. The big society will be the loser if everyone does not believe that the law is there for them.” The Bar Council chairman, Peter Lodder, said that it was a “much-peddled myth” that Britain’s legal aid system was more expensive than elsewhere in Europe and urged the government to think again, in a similar way that it had done with its sentencing proposals. Lodder told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “There was a consultation process. Thousands of people responded to that process and most of them objected to the way in which the government was proposing to cut legal aid.” But Clarke said Lodder’s claim was misleading, pointing to New Zealand, which has a similar system and spends far less per head on legal aid. The justice secretary told Today: “There are lots of people who think we should have more and more prisons and more and more prisoners and spend more money, and there are lots of lawyers who say we should spend more and more money on lawyers. “Our legal aid bill is the most expensive in the world by far and we are funding litigation which is perfectly unnecessary in less serious matters where really taxpayers shouldn’t pay. We are funding litigation where adversarial lawyers are not the best way of sorting out a serious dispute or a serious family quarrel.” On Tuesday Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, gave Clark a taste of the argument to come when he cited the opposition of victims and witnesses commissioner Louise Casey, circuit judges and magistrates to the plan to take away from courts the option of remanding in custody defendants who are unlikely to receive a prison sentence if convicted. Defendants on domestic violence charges have already been exempted from the move. Khan said that banning the use of remand in this way was simply a cost-cutting measure to reduce prison numbers which undermined a vital tool of the courts. Khan also served notice that Labour would oppose any plans to “water down the protection given to the public” by IPPs, claiming the government’s proposal to review their use showed it was out of touch with public concerns. The rightwing Tory MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, Clarke’s self-appointed bugbear on the Tory backbenches, also weighed in against any reform of IPPs, describing the sentences as “the single best part of the criminal justice system”. Clarke strongly defended his plans, saying there were now 6,000 IPP prisoners without a definite release date. The IPP system, which has been condemned as a national scandal by prison governors, includes more than 3,000 prisoners who had already passed their tariff indicative release date: “They’re only released when they can demonstrate to the Parole Board that they are a minimal risk to society, which is the present test, but in a prison cell they will find it almost impossible to satisfy that test. “We need long, determinate sentences for serious criminals. That is the way the criminal justice system works,” Clarke told MPs. He said Labour’s 10-year IPP experiment had “undoubtedly failed” and one in 10 prisoners would soon be serving indefinite sentences unless a better alternative was found. David Cameron has suggested that a new “two strikes and you’re out” mandatory sentence for repeat serious sexual or violent offenders should be introduced instead. Clarke told Today: “I am carrying out a serious review to work out a proper replacement,” he said. “These are serious offenders. Some of them will be given life sentences by judges if there isn’t an indeterminate sentence available, others will get long determinate sentences. We are reviewing it to come up with a workable replacement which doesn’t fill the prisons with a lot of people who have no idea when or if they will ever get released.” Hale’s comments came as figures provided by Julie Bishop, director of the Law Centres Federation, showed that at least 18 of the 52 centres in England and Wales would have to shut, because three-quarters of their income comes from legal aid that will no longer be available. Last year, law centres helped 120,000 people, Bishop said. Soon, because of the government’s determination to slice £350m out of its annual £2.1bn legal aid budget, the number who can be helped will fall by two-thirds to 40,000. Hale, who is the patron of Hammersmith and Fulham’s law centre, noted in her speech that legal aid was now being removed from “most civil and legal cases”. But providing legal advice at an early stage, she said, could often save greater costs for government agencies at a later stage when problems spiralled out of control. Kenneth Clarke Legal aid UK criminal justice Sentencing Prisons and probation Alan Travis Owen Bowcott Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk