Interview With Ann Widdecombe

It was my great pleasure to speak to Reform Party member and former Conservative Minister for Prisons, Ann Widdecombe, on the subject of the death penalty. Over the years, Ann has been a vocal supporter of a reintroduction of capital punishment, and I asked her what she thought of the Lucy Letby case, and its concomitant reinvigoration of public debate on the matter:

Editor: Hello Ann, thank you so much for taking the time to give our readers the benefit of your experience. As a former Minister for Prisons, and someone who has consistently supported a reintroduction of the death penalty, I wanted to ask you about the Lucy Letby case which has gripped the headlines for much of the past year. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that you’ve always made the moral case for capital punishment rather than a retributive one, on the grounds that it is an effective deterrent, demonstrated by the five-year period after its abolition. Presumably you are still of that view?

Widdecombe: I’m still very firmly of that view. What they did between 1965 and 1970 (because allegedly it was an experimental period), was to collect statistics – as they do not do now. They collected statistics based on murder that would have attracted the death penalty, and murder that would not – so capital and non-capital murder. And the capital murder rate went up 125%.

Editor: Precisely. So a clear case back then, but presumably since that period they’ve stopped collecting figures?

Widdecombe: Yes, they no longer collect those figures. They did that because it was supposed to be an experimental period (no one believed it), and if after five years it was shown that the death penalty was a deterrent then it could, theoretically have been reinstated. That was why they did it then, they haven’t done it since so it is not possible to make comparisons on that basis. And anyway, we are so far away from the law as it was then that such comparisons would be meaningless.

But in that immediate five years after the death penalty was abolished, the capital murder rate went up 125%; taking arms to robberies went up by something huge as well – I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like 40%. So there was an enormous rise in all the things which the death penalty was supposed to deter, and it is on that basis that I’ve always said it should be available to the courts, for all premeditated murder. It shouldn’t be automatically imposed, but it should be there if needed.

Editor: That was pretty much what I understood. I wrote a piece last week, for which I got quite a lot of criticism from conservatives (as you’d assume most of our readers are). I argued a slightly different case, and wanted to ask your opinion on it. Even though the case for a deterrent is pretty strong (and one can talk about cost of prison and the paucity of prison places and all the rest of it), I was trying to come at it from a purely moral position – particularly in the example of the Letby case. Working on the assumption that she is guilty (while of course not disregarding concerns about her innocence), in terms of pure principle I consider that this case is so heinous, and when we’re dealing with infanticide (some of these babies were a day old), they were in an ICU, they don’t have recourse to reasonable force as most of the public would to defend themselves, and they’re in a position where the State is literally in loco parentis. Can we not make the case, especially when we see the relative luxury that Letby is going to be in…

Widdecombe: Oh, she’s not going to be in luxury, that is one that I really do very firmly repudiate. People portray prisons as holiday camps. They are not, they’re ghastly places to be. And even if they weren’t ghastly places to be, how would you like to be under house arrest for the rest of your life? I don’t think you can talk about relative luxury.

Editor: Absolutely not. I’m basing it on The Mail’s reports of her conditions: we’ve seen the cell where she will be staying. We’ve had reports of the shopping facilities, and the animal visits.

Widdecombe: Oh, The Mail! Go physically into that cell, and it will give you a very different picture.

Editor: Do you think the reporting is incorrect, or more that they’re using hyperbole to exaggerate the case?

Widdecombe: They always use hyperbole, The Mail is always going on about how luxurious prisons are you know, and it’s a joke quite honestly.

Editor: Okay. So, taking that out of the equation, if we stick with the point – is there not some merit to the argument that (assuming the jury have reached the right decision), where Letby has taken away not just the lives of the babies themselves, but has destroyed the lives of their families, future generations and so on, can we not echo Margaret Thatcher’s sentiments when she said that ‘if you commit those kind of crimes, you should forfeit your right to life’. Is that not an argument which holds water?

Widdecombe: I cannot support it, as a Christian; I cannot go for pure retribution. There are plenty of people who make the argument on retributive grounds, but I never have, and I am never going to go with that argument because it suggests that redemption is impossible, and I don’t believe that.

Editor: In the case of Letby herself (again, assuming guilt for the sake of argument), I understand the judge has imposed multiple life sentences, so she won’t come out unless an appeal is granted. Do you consider that judgement to be wrong?

Widdecombe: No, I don’t consider that judgement to be wrong at all.

Editor: I’m just referring to your point on rehabilitation?

Widdecombe: You can be redeemed and still be in prison, quite easily.

Editor: Ann, on the question of capital punishment the argument which is put forward the most is the problem of error; biases, and (even if we assume everyone involved is working from the best possible motives), how do we counter the compelling argument that there have been historically and will continue to be inevitable miscarriages of justice. What do you say to that?

Widdecombe: Well, my line about that has always been that with the arrival of DNA, and where DNA evidence is available, it is an extremely small possibility. And indeed if you look back over the last years of the death penalty, other than Timothy Evans which was a clear miscarriage of justice, because it was Christie who had actually committed the murders, you can’t find anybody. I mean, people protest about Ruth Ellis but she still did murder, there was never any doubt about that. They said Hanratty was innocent, and then when DNA came along and they exhumed him, no; he wasn’t innocent at all. And so it goes on. It’s very hard to find in the latter years, as opposed to earlier years, very hard to find a genuine miscarriage of justice other than Timothy Evans. So, in a case where you’ve got any doubt at all the death penalty wouldn’t be imposed.

Editor: In this case, while the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, there’s no direct evidence. There was no CCTV in the ICU.

Widdecombe: I suspect that the death penalty would not have applied, because I suspect the judge would have thought that it is just faintly possible she is innocent but as long as the jury found her guilty, would have had to sentence her accordingly.

There would also have been, I’m pretty certain, a mental health case to answer. When you’ve got the death penalty you can only apply it to people who are proven to be quite sane. Therefore I doubt if the Yorkshire ripper would have got it. You know, he ended up in Broadmoor. Ian Brady ended up in Broadmoor. Sometimes, some of the worst cases have got that borderline insanity, and the law used to say that you can’t hang anybody who’s insane.

So, actually I’ve always faced this – the fact is some of the vilest murderers might have got away with it. You might have had a situation where Ian Brady was not hanged, but Myra Hindley was, because she patently wasn’t insane. So, you get all sorts of conundra, and you’ve also got the big issue now (you didn’t have it then), but the big issue now is that if you have two people on the jury who passionately oppose capital punishment, they may not convict.

Editor: On the question of support for the death penalty, it’s curious to see that while public support has remained fairly consistent over the decades, with a majority in favour for the worst cases, the same cannot be said of Westminster. In terms of Conservatives, support is rumoured to be around a third of MPs, and practically non-existent for the other parties – so clearly there’s zero appetite for this at Westminster. Do you have any idea why MPs are so divergent from public opinion on this?

Widdecombe: No, but they always have been. And they always have been on an awful lot of big, moral issues. If you look at abortion and public opinion polls, they are very, very different from what MPs think. MPs voted very clearly, and still do to keep abortion up to birth, and the vast majority of the population does not agree with that. These things are what are called conscience issues; they are subject to free votes. MPs can do whatever they like, from the Prime Minister downwards. And when that happens, you do tend to get this dichotomy between the public and MPs.

If you ask me why, I don’t know. It may be that issue of personal responsibility, that people think if they vote for the death penalty they are then responsible if you get a miscarriage of justice; I don’t know. Normally I think largely it’s instinctive, it’s reactionary. It’s the difference between the metropolitan elite and the red wall again.

Editor: Ann, does the Reform Party have a position on the death penalty?

Widdecombe: No. No party will ever have a position on the death penalty. The Conservative Party’s position for years was that it would have a debate once a parliament, that was what it said. But no party will ever take a view on the big moral issues of the day, A) because it’s divisive, and B) because it’s unenforceable, and MPs just won’t vote that way. So no, the Reform Party doesn’t, and I would strongly advocate that it doesn’t.

Editor: So, do you envisage there is zero chance of this being debated or on the agenda in the near future?

Widdecombe: I don’t think you’ll get it on, I mean the only place it’s on any agenda is in the newspapers; I just don’t think parliament has any interest in the subject. I speak for Reform on justice, and while I’ve always said that I personally support the death penalty – I said that when I was in the Home Office, and I said that when I was Shadow Home Secretary, but it’s never been a matter of party policy. And I don’t think it should be, because once you have a party position on a moral issue like the death penalty, you’ve got to have it on a whole range of other things, all the way down to hunting. You know, abortion, homosexual law, divorce law, you know all those things have always been free votes.

Editor: Ann Widdecombe, thank you so much for joining me today.

You can catch Ann on GB News every Thursday at 9.20pm on Dan Wootton’s show.

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