Serious Crime And Police Bill

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): I do not always entirely agree with the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), but he spoke eloquently and I agreed with every word he said. I am grateful to him for giving us the benefit of his sound advice.

The Bill is like the curate's egg—good in parts. In fact, it is good in most parts. There are 155 clauses and more than 200 pages. I agree with most of them, although there are one or two bits that I want to pick over, if I get the opportunity. There are obviously some easy political points to be scored here, if we wanted to try to do so, but today is not the time for that.

There is one serious and fatal problem with the Bill: the religious hatred provisions, which are ill-conceived, idiotic and an offence against freedom and common sense. They may damage mainstream religions, and they will certainly damage tolerance in our society, and will benefit only the worst type of extremists. They will also benefit the law industry, which stands to trade heavily and expensively on the uncertainties and lack of definition in the Bill.

Like many other pieces of legislation introduced by the Government, the Bill transgresses the law of unintended consequences. I accept that the Government are introducing it with good intentions, but it will deliver unintended consequences. It will reduce tolerance, and that is a major problem. Just as the Hunting Act 2004 will damage the overall welfare of our fox population, and the Gambling Bill will create super-casinos that will increase the damage done to individuals, families and society by excessive gambling, so the religious hatred provisions in this Bill will attack society's freedoms; they will damage tolerance, and may bring extremist right-wing responses that damage religions themselves.

I want to start on a positive note, however, and whistle quickly through one or two of the Bill's main provisions. On balance, the new agency—SOCA—is necessary to respond to greater co-ordination in international organised crime, such as people trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering. I welcome the move to set up the agency, but I want to address two issues. First, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, which, with some help from Customs and Excise, will form part of the new force, have generally served the country well. They have good management and administrative support and their officers are dedicated and professional. We should not forget to thank them and give them recognition for their achievements, dedication and professionalism.

Caroline Flint indicated assent.

Bob Spink: I am glad to see that the Minister agrees.

My second point about SOCA is that the agency will be close to sinister organised crime, and although there must be no crossover, that danger is always present in such organisations. We shall give the agency many new and powerful tools, so we must also have procedures for complaints about and regulation of the agency that command public respect and confidence.

The Home Secretary said today that accountability would be provided by the Home Affairs Committee. I do not quite understand how that will work, and I remain to be convinced about it. Clearly, there must be a strong independent element in the complaints channels, which must be publicly accountable and transparent, and it is not clear to me that the Independent Police Complaints Commission will work well.

The single co-ordinated and integrated agency—SOCA—will take the fight to those involved in serious crime. We should all welcome that, but we need to look carefully at the status of SOCA's officers, who will lose their status as officers of the Crown. The Police Federation has serious concerns about that, and we must listen carefully to those concerns, not least because the vast majority of current National Crime Squad officers are unwilling to submit to transferring to SOCA, which may represent a great loss of skills for tackling serious crime.

I come now to a raft of technical police powers that I broadly welcome. The extension of investigative powers, which will enable the police to collect evidence and compulsorily question those who can help to solve serious crimes, particularly while the crime is hot, is an important measure. Used sensibly, it can help. I broadly welcome the extension of powers of arrest to all offences, but we must define limits to that, of course. I have great concerns about citizens' arrests, as will most hon. Members.

I welcome the super-warrants that will empower the police to act quickly against villains who are now much more organised and cleverer. They will give the police increased power and flexibility while the chase is on and the evidence is still available. I also welcome the police power to test for drugs at the point of arrest. The increased power for the police to take forensic evidence at the earliest possible moment must also be greatly welcomed. At a much lower level, the power to deal with incorrectly registered and uninsured vehicles is long overdue.

The powers to tackle animal rights extremists and to protect people from serious harassment are also long overdue, although I do not know why we did not simply extend the powers in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 to do just that. That would have been a much easier way to deal with the matter, and it could have been done years ago. However, the power to remove protesters or to put onerous conditions on them, particularly as we are taking that power to deal with the problem outside Parliament now, gives me deep cause for concern. As someone said, hard cases make bad law. That is absolutely true, and we must be careful not to over-respond to the situation in front of Parliament. We must do nothing to stop fair and decent protesting in this country.

All those powers will enable us to make society safer and to bring more villains to justice—we all want to do that—but they will also enable us to establish people's innocence earlier. If we are taking evidence and testing earlier, we can establish people's innocence earlier. That must not be forgotten, and it is a very good thing. People who are innocent would not object to those powers being used on them, as that would establish their innocence.

These measures will help us to improve detection rates and therefore to increase convictions. Detection and conviction are the best ways to deter serious and organised crime. These measures will tip the scales of justice back towards the innocent victim and society, and against the serious villain. Some of the measures may offend the legal profession, but hon. Members must act in the best interests of society, not in the best interests of the Law Society—although I thank it for its excellent briefing on the Bill. It is high time we took tough action to catch and convict villains and to support the victims, especially if they have protected themselves, their families and their property against burglars, intruders and other attackers. We must also make the punishment of convicted people much tougher. 
 
The Bill makes changes to the judicial system and increases police powers. I wait to see how Queen's evidence—plea-bargaining—will be designed and work in practice. It offers clear administrative advantages, and I am not necessarily against that. I stress again, however, that when a sentence is given it must be appropriate, even after a plea bargain. We must not give slaps across the wrist to serious criminals. The punishment must be so tough that they and others are seriously deterred, and must also strongly promote and enable the rehabilitation of criminals while they are in prison. Bad people can and do reform to become good people, but not often enough under our politically correct wimpish systems of punishment.

Tough and harsh action at the start of a career in crime can and does deflect many away from crime. A constituent from Hadleigh e-mailed me yesterday to ask me to raise that with the Home Secretary. My constituent knows full well that tough action at the start of a career in crime can save not just society from crime, but the life of someone who gets involved in crime. Sadly, the Bill does not address punishment in any way. We need a Bill to do that.

We can all welcome the witness protection proposals and the improved money-laundering provisions, but we must not forget low-level offences such as credit card crime and cheque fraud. Pound by pound, those crimes can feed through into serious crime and fund terrorism, on the old IRA model. I hope that SOCA will bear that in mind, especially while we suffer from the threat of terrorism, which on the international scale is largely from Muslim sources—and although that is a fact, I might be at risk under the religious hate crime provisions for saying it. That would be wrong.

The religious incitement measures will damage freedom of expression and religious liberty. They will prevent fair comment about religious beliefs and cults and enable them to silence their critics. Some cults are off the wall, some are downright nasty, some are dangerous and some are just silly—we have heard about the Jedi knights twice already, I think. Some cults are corrosive to society, especially Christian society, which is still broadly the society that we enjoy in this country—and I do not want anyone ever to be at risk of being prosecuted for saying that.

The law will be brought into disrepute by this measure. The Attorney-General and the courts will find it impossible to interpret the proposals consistently. How will we select a jury to deliberate on such charges? Will the jurors' religion be taken into account when the jury is formed? What relevance would that have to the decision that they made, depending on whose religious beliefs were being offended?

The Bill could even prevent comedians from poking fun at religions. It is a measure of how civilised we are that we can tolerate and withstand fun, jokes, jibes and criticism. The Bill is a move backwards to a less tolerant society. I can just imagine the thought police dragging Dawn French, under arrest and in handcuffs, off to prison after a particularly challenging episode of "The Vicar of Dibley"—[Interruption.] It might take several police to do that job, but where would the outrageous alternative comic stand in the face of the Bill, and who would like to see Billy Connolly thrown in jail?

Mr. Weir: Yes.

Bob Spink: I see a few nods around the Chamber, but I think that that would be a bad move.

The incitement to religious hatred proposal of 2001 provoked widespread criticism from many groups—not only Christians, but Muslims, atheists, humanists and gay rights activists. After two defeats in the other place, the Government dropped their proposals—yet another example of the other place doing a better job for the country than we are able to do in this House now. No wonder the Prime Minister wants to destroy the other place.

Existing criminal law already protects religious believers from criminal acts or incitement to commit such acts. We already have protection against religiously aggravated offences under legislation of 2001. It provided increased safeguards and much tougher sentences where a religiously provoked crime was committed. At the moment, the Crown Prosecution Service is monitoring 70 or 80 religiously aggravated cases, so it is working well. As I said, the laws to provide protection are already in place.

The new proposal is a step too far. It will prevent good organisations from fighting for human rights freedoms and religious freedoms around the world. I deal weekly, if not daily, with such matters, with the help of the great campaigner, Wilfred Wong. In Westminster Hall tomorrow, if I can catch the eye of whoever is in the Chair, I hope to speak up for Christians in Iraq. The Christian Institute does excellent work, dealing with cases of individuals who are mistreated because of their beliefs, but that clause in the Bill could prevent it from doing its job in the future.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Fiona Mactaggart): Will the hon. Gentleman please explain how a prohibition of religious hatred against people—equivalent to the present prohibition of inciting racial hatred—that protects Jews on the basis of their faith, would stop the quite proper activities that he is describing on the part of Christian organisations? I think that the hon. Gentleman is misled, and he has not explained how the consequences that he fears will be brought about under the Bill.

Bob Spink: The Christian Institute certainly believes that there are dangers in the Bill as drafted. It is worried, for example, about dealing with the actions that Muslims sometimes take against people who convert from Islam to Christianity, in case that is regarded as incitement to religious hatred. That is the point. If the Minister believes that the Bill should go further than the current protection that the law provides against incitement to violence or any criminal acts, perhaps she will explain why she believes that it is necessary.

Fiona Mactaggart: Present law protects people not only against incitement to violence, but against incitement to racial hatred. The courts decided that two religious groups, the Jews and Sikhs, were covered by that protection, though it has to be said that that law has not stopped some of our comedians from making pretty florid racist jokes, so the hon. Gentleman's charge that humour would be silenced seems ill founded. Presently, only Jews and Sikhs are protected against incitement to hatred on the basis of their faith; Christians and Muslims are not protected in that way, and they deserve the same protection.

Bob Spink: It is my belief that the current law provides protection to anyone in this country, whatever their race or religion, from incitement to commit criminal acts. Is that not a fact?

Fiona Mactaggart: For the last time, it is true that the law protects people against incitement to commit a criminal act, and it also provides further protection against incitement to racial hatred. In a secretly filmed documentary, the British National party leader, Nick Griffin, said that he could not say the things that he said about Muslims about black people, because that would contravene the law on incitement to racial hatred, but he could say them about Muslims, because that was not illegal.

Bob Spink: The Minister makes my case for me. She says that people are protected from incitement to criminal acts, so why do we need this law?

Fiona Mactaggart: Hating people on the basis of their race is not a criminal act; inciting someone to hate people on the basis of their race is.

Bob Spink: The Minister makes my point for me.

I shall move on. We must be free to tell the truth to expose human rights abuses, and others must have the right to criticise us for what we do and how we do it. In any event, the religious hatred proposal is technically flawed. Paragraph 3 of schedule 10 does not even define what constitutes a religious belief or a lack of religious belief. Everyone, from atheists to animists and from humanists to Hindus, has cause to worry about the uncertainty within the proposals. Only lawyers are celebrating the Bill, because they will benefit greatly in wealth and in work from its great uncertainties.

As Matthew Parris pointed out in The Times:

"Glenn Hoddle's remark that the disabled may be being punished for sin in a former life was silly, but should it be criminal? It's a point of view. A few hundred million adherents to reincarnationalist faiths hold it. May I not mock the fallacy of reincarnationism? The new law will lead to trouble and confusion. Leave it alone, Mr. Blunkett."

Chris Bryant : Is it not ironic that the same journalist argued that Buttiglione should not remain as a commissioner, because of his views? At one moment Matthew Parris wants tolerance; at another, he does not.

Bob Spink: The hon. Gentleman has made his point—no doubt he will meet Matthew Parris in the newspapers on that issue. Some people think that Matthew Parris should be locked up. I do not happen to think so, but surely he should not be at risk of being locked up for expressing his opinion about somebody's belief. Incidentally, Glenn Hoddle was today appointed the manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, and we all wish him well.

Let us examine the Australian law on religious vilification, dating from 2001. On 9 November, The Times law page revealed that two Christian pastors were being prosecuted for criticising Islam by drawing attention to the teachings of the Koran and questioning Islam's compatibility with western democracy. Those pastors read out quotations from the Koran at a seminar, and were reported to the Islamic Council of Victoria, which took the case to court. The court sat for three days, and the case ran for almost eight months. Indeed, it may still be running—no doubt Matthew Parris will tell us tomorrow. On the back of that case, however, another similar case has been launched. That is, of course, nonsense, which we do not need in this country. We should not corrupt a good Bill with an ill-thought-out measure. The religious hatred provision should be dropped.

Finally, the Law Society's excellent briefing on the Queen's Speech states:

"The Government's aim is to strengthen the link between the police and the community, increase the accountability and responsiveness of the police service and build the confidence and awareness of the community."

I agree with those words, but the trouble is that they are only words. To our cost, we know that the Government are all talk and no action, and it is by their actions that we shall know them. How will they act to improve the 999 call service, which has become a joke in many areas? When will they stop closing our police stations and making them part-time? In Castle Point we now have only two, part-time, police stations—one in Benfleet and one on Canvey Island. I want those to remain open, and open for longer if possible. Canvey Island police station was closed at one stage last year; I fought to get it reopened, with the help of the excellent Councillor Ray Howard, and we succeeded. We want to ensure that both police stations stay open.

In Castle Point we are lucky to have a very good police force with dedicated professional constables and officers and excellent leadership from Chief Superintendent John Mauger. Local detection rates are increasing; our local crime levels, having risen for some time, are falling; and our dedicated and tough antisocial behaviour order team has made a great start, with some 35 arrests in recent weeks. We now have in place six or so ASBOs, which have dramatically reduced street crime. I welcome the measures in the Bill to extend ASBO powers and to give triggers to local councillors, but we need to take much tougher action when ASBOs are breached if they are not to fall into disrepute. The Government must deal with that problem.

I congratulate our local police. They need more help, not less, but the Government gave them a rise of only a 3.75 per cent. this year, although they needed 5.75 per cent.—an additional £2 million—simply to stand still. They must get that if they are to make use of the powers in the Bill.

Mr. McWalter: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that although the current penalties for breaching ASBOs are quite severe, the probability of someone who does so having those penalties visited on them is too low? The problem is not the sentence, but the probability of its being applied.

Bob Spink: The hon. Gentleman speaks wisely; he is absolutely right. The courts are not taking breaches of ASBOs seriously enough. I can cite a specific case. A police team in my constituency did 120 hours' work to bring a case involving a very serious breach of an ASBO, but the person concerned got only 20 hours' community service. That is complete nonsense. ASBOs will be brought into disrepute if the courts do not take appropriate action.

Labour is targeting Castle Point for 4,000 more houses, but reducing our police funding in real terms. It is also targeting Castle Point as a seat that it wants to win in the general election. It will be judged, as I will, on actions, hard work and commitment to local people. I am very happy to submit myself to them, and I think that they will speak for me at the next election.

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