Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friends and colleagues are far too kind in giving me this opportunity to respond to a debate in which I think I have agreed with every word that has been spoken from across the House. The debate has been particularly pointed for both the humanity and logic in the contributions from all sides. It is always a particular privilege to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on any issue relating to prison reform and rehabilitation more generally. I must confess that when I was a child, the name Rambo conjured a rather different figure—a bloodthirsty cinema character played by Sylvester Stallone. Years later, when I entered the law, then the Home Office and finally a human rights NGO, the name Rambo was often whispered. I came to realise that it was the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to whom everyone referred. He has an incredible record of holding successive Governments to account on urgent issues—becoming increasingly urgent, I might add—in our penal system. It is in this knowledge that I completely support from this side his call for a Second Reading of this important Bill and everything he is trying to achieve by bringing it forward.

As we have heard, the Bill seeks to reduce rehabilitation periods and is one aspect of vital reform that is necessary to the now completely outdated 1974 Act. Despite commitments from successive Governments to push through reform in this area—we heard about the excellent Breaking the Circle report, produced by the Labour Government in 2002, to which the noble Lord referred in his introduction—we have seen only incremental changes over the years. That Act is now completely inconsistent with contemporary sentencing practice. The result is that, far from allowing reformed individuals the second chance that is promised in the Act, its shortcomings leave many excluded from any prospect of rehabilitation and meaningful employment after they have completed their sentences.

Under the current legislation, as we have heard, the rehabilitation periods—in truth the disclosure periods—are overlong and not based on any real evidence. For those serving sentences of over four years, convictions can never be spent. Individuals are therefore forced to live with the shadow of their convictions, through a lifetime of disclosure and without the prospect of review. In addition, the legal regime relating to criminal record exposure, as laid out in the 1974 Act, is inclusive of children. Children, who find themselves exempt under this Act from the presumption that their spent sentence will not be disclosed, face a very uncertain future of indefinite disclosure, alienated from opportunities in education, employment and housing. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, sentencing inflation over the years has changed and weakened the efficacy of the original 1974 Act regime.

In terms of non-disclosure of convictions, rehabilitation is just one part of a system that is supposed to serve those individuals and the general public. It is an essential tool in reducing crime and ensuring public safety. For our criminal justice system to be effective, it must be reformed in the round. We face a crisis in our prisons. Cuts to public spending under this Government, I am sorry to say, have been at the expense of prison security and public safety. Currently, over 84,000 prisoners are held in just 118 prisons, 75 of which are overcrowded. These 118 prisons are underresourced, understaffed and increasingly, dangerous places of violence. The Secretary of State herself has admitted that rates of violence and self-harm have increased significantly over the past five years, with 6,000 assaults on staff and 105 self-inflicted deaths in the 12 months leading up to June 2016. Since then, we have seen riots in six prisons across the country. It is not surprising in this context that our prisons are failing to deliver rehabilitation and, alongside a privatised probation service, are failing to reduce reoffending.

Against that backdrop, I share the noble Lord’s frustration with the much-anticipated White Paper, Prison Safety and Reform, published in November. Far from being,

“a blueprint for the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation”,

as promised, it lays down only sketchy policy objectives, very little guidance on implementation and even less on cost. The debate today takes place in this wider context and I urge the Government to respond to this Bill. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, intends to initiate a more substantial, cross-departmental review, beginning with criminal records disclosure and ending with the criminal justice system as a whole.

Finally, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his perseverance and courage in bringing this issue back again and again. Yes, ultimately, this is an issue of human rights, but it is also one of sound public policy. He has dedicated so much of his working life to this and I hope to continue to dedicate mine in the same way. I look forward to making contributions to this House and to his campaign.