Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Justice

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Conference
 
Safer, stronger communities are as close to the heart of Labour’s values today as they have always been. I In the debate we have already heard not just about what we have done to better protect the places we live, work in and represent but about what we want to do to make Scotland safer in the future.  
 
I know just how important this work is from my experiences before I was an MSP, working for Help the Aged who day in day out dealt with older people living in fear of crime, and then in the last Parliament as a Member for the North East when Aberdeen was one of the first areas to benefit from Labour’s groundbreaking antisocial behaviour legislation. I know the difference that made to communities who for too long had suffered from the selfish and destructive activities of a few.  
 
Despite opposition from the SNP we pursued that legislation because people in the communities we represent wanted powers to tackle it, they wanted community wardens, they wanted someone to listen to their sense of powerlessness to do something about it.  
 
We listened to those people and we delivered and while Kenny MacAskill and the SNP talk about tackling crime  - with Cathy Jamieson crime rates were cut, the police solved more crimes than ever, and we delivered 1500 more police officers, a record of which Scottish Labour can be proud and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Cathy.
 
There was so much progress on which the SNP had the opportunity to build but they are squandering that opportunity. 

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill talks about addressing record prison overcrowding but actually delayed the building of new prisons and seeks to close the community prison in Aberdeen.

He talks a lot about more and better community sentences but under the SNP there has been a sharp fall in the number of drug treatment and testing orders, proven to get addicts out of crime and into recovery. He talks about a lot but that’s all it is - talk. When it comes to action - the SNP underfund, undervalue and underachieve.

Colleagues, the latest SNP promise to hit the rocks is on 1,000 more police. At the last election the SNP made a clear promise of 1,000 more police officers. Now this pledge has been replaced by a proposal for a 'projection study'.  If this wasn't such a serious area of policy it would be laughable.

People won't feel better protected by a 'projection study' or does it mean the SNP projecting images of police officers onto the walls of shops and houses to try and fool us into thinking they’ve put these police on the beat?
 
It was Kenny MacAskill himself less than a week ago who when asked if they would reach the 17,265 police numbers target which they need to achieve the thousand extra – he said no and bang went another SNP election pledge.
 
Now SNP spin doctors are trying to brief that they think they can make the target. I hope they do. But I hope it does not mean they will try and shift the goalposts on the statistics so they can pretend they’ve hit their target with a smoke and mirrors exercise.  I hope not conference, because as Norrie Flowers of the Scottish Police Federation said “neither the public nor police themselves will be conned on officer numbers.”
We need to see more police on the beat, as in Strathclyde where they have been put there by funding from Labour councils committed to community policing.
 
Let’s be clear conference with SNP broken promises on schools, on students, on local income tax, another broken promise on crime will mean one more reason that their credibility is in tatters. The SNP pledges made in 2007 are now looking like old confetti – as Iain Gray ably showed yesterday – the SNP need to rip it up and start again.
 
Conference  - on Friday plans were confirmed by the SNP that will effectively abolish all custodial sentences under six months.  This will mean some 4,000 offenders no longer going to prison at all but instead dodging jail entirely.  I am not opposed to tough and effective community payback schemes, Labour has lead the way on that.
But these are dangerous plans from the SNP, and they have not said who they think should go free.
 
Would it be the 25 per cent of criminals convicted of indecent assault,  the 75 per cent of housebreakers, would it be, would it be the 85 per cent of offenders guilty of assault, they need to tell us or scrap these plans now.
 
Last week, it was clearly shown that the changes in the knife laws passed by Labour has meant stiffer sentences are being handed out for knife crimes.
 
This was widely endorsed by the Violence Reduction Unit and others as sending the right message to communities blighted by knife crime. Again, Labour listened to people and delivered for them.
 
However, when Parliament held a crucial summit to discuss knives and violence Kenny MacAskill instead went to Canada to attend some Burns’ suppers..
We were told by his spin doctors that he was in Canada to support the Homecoming. What we didn’t know was the homecoming he planned was for the 4000 criminals he wants out of jail and back at home.
 
Conference, a Homecoming for the 81% of knife criminals. That’s not justice, that’s not sending the right message on knife crime, that’s idiocy and we will oppose it.
 
People don’t want judges to be forced to justify why they are sending someone convicted of a knife crime to jail, that should be self-evident, but if the SNP persist with this policy we will demand that judges should have  to explain why someone convicted of a knife offence should not be going to jail.


People have described our agenda on crime as tough and I make no apology for that, the communities where we live, the people who look to Labour to protect them expect tough action.
 
But colleagues, we are focussed on tackling the root causes of crime too, we don’t just want offenders to go to jail and sit in cells, we want jail to work and prisoners to work. We want to have effective alternatives to custody where offenders payback their debt in a visible way that communities see and understand.
 
Under-funding from the SNP has reduced confidence in community sentences, far from instant justice there is a backlog of offenders waiting months to fulfil their sentence and in some cases that sentence amounts to no more than watching a video.  Conference we have to change that and we are bringing forward new ideas.
 
We know the relationship between alcohol misuse and crime, that is why we have proposed the introduction of Alcohol Treatment and Testing Orders for those who are prepared to address their addiction.
So they can stop offending and we can bring down alcohol related crime.
 
We will tackle the root causes of crime because we will support those agencies working to break the cycles of offending. Because conference it’s not just that the SNP are soft on crime but that they are soft on the causes of crime.  How can they hope to deliver thousands more community sentences when they are cutting the budgets of the voluntary sector organisations who ensure that these sentences work, when they are presiding over huge cuts to social work budgets which means right now community offender programmes are being carved back, how can they really be serious about reducing crime when they are stripping our most vulnerable communities of resources and facilities? Conference it just won’t work.

I’m delighted that Graeme Pearson, the former head of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency is supporting Labour’s policy process.
He was a police officer whose name was synonymous with grit, determination and a desire to ensure that action was taken against the criminals who blight Scotland. His ideas and counsel will help us shape the tough but fair approach to criminal justice that Scotland expects.
 
Conference, we will stand up for the communities afflicted by crime and for the victims of crime.   
In the last Parliament we had a proud record of improving victim’s rights, offering greater protection to vulnerable witnesses and introducing victim impact statements so courts could hear directly the toll taken on the lives of people affected by crime.  We acted to ensure that victims weren’t just statistics.
 
That is why we are proposing the appointment of a Commissioner for Victims’ Rights, someone who will stand up for the interests of victims throughout the justice system.
And so we have victim-centred services across the country.  That’s why we’re backing Dave Stewart’s Bill.
 
Labour is on the side of victims of crime, whether it be standing alongside trade unions for the rights of workers struck down by asbestosis, to fighting for victims rights, to standing up for the rights of the people of Scotland to live in communities free from antisocial behaviour, crime and fear of crime.
 
That is what it is to live in a just society, we have been drawn to the Labour movement because we have a thirst for justice, our struggles for fairness are not about the accidents of geography they are about a more equal society and a more equal world. We know our responsibilities are to each other
 
We will work to ensure that our vision of a stronger Scotland, a safer Scotland, will also be a Labour Scotland.