Sentencing Council Guidelines
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that question, and I recognise its complexity. That is why my right honourable friend wants to look at this question in the round, because the point he made is correct. I do not want to anticipate what the answer to his question will be, but nevertheless I acknowledge the complexity that he has pointed out.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I commend the Justice Secretary and, indeed, the Opposition for agreeing on the need for legislation on this matter. Does the Minister agree that, as illustrated perhaps by many of the comments that we have already heard, the guidance on pre-sentencing reports or differential bail et cetera, which is designed by an unelected quango, is not the place to pursue wholly political and often divisive and contentious policies around identity, whether it is race, ethnicity, faith, transgender and so on? It is just not the right place for it to happen. Is not the problem a bit broader in that whenever an unelected quango, such as the Sentencing Council, acts in defiance of Parliament, it undermines public trust in democracy, not just in the courts? That is why I am glad the Justice Secretary acted at last.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her support.
Sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Lord Timpson (Lab)
There are 241 IPP prisoners in secure mental health settings as of the last figures published. It is those who are of real concern to me, because they are so far away from being safe to be released. We need to make sure that we support them—as in the example I gave earlier of the prisoner whom I met recently—in their journey. The work that the Government are doing on the Mental Health Act, with the provisions being put in place, will, hopefully, contribute to a more successful outcome.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, next.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, following on from the request of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for more detailed data, will the Government make public detailed data of the different gradations of risk presented by the various cohorts of the IPP prisoner population, assuming that they are not treated as an undifferentiated blob? Then, could the Government apply the same risk-assessment criteria used for early release decisions to the least risky IPP prisoners and release them now—hardly early—because to exclude IPP prisoners from emergency measures to ease overcrowding seems irrational and even cruel?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that I raised this when we had the Peers round table a few months ago—I am hoping to have another one in May—when we talked about the RAG rating of IPP prisoners. At the time, we just RAG rated those in prison, and I am pleased that everybody in the community is now also RAG rated, which will help. I am hopeful that noble Lords will suggest to me what they would like on the agenda for our round table, which I hope will be in May. Maybe we can discuss the important questions around data then.
Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, we will hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches, which we have not heard from as yet.
Criminal Justice System: Capacity
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I agree with every word the noble Baroness has said. My noble friend Lord Timpson has just whispered in my ear that he has been to Holland, so we are looking at that very closely. The other point he made is that they use a lot of tagging in Holland, so that is another factor when we are looking at reviewing sentencing as a whole, although of course the sentencing review will look at adult sentencing and not at youth matters.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am worried about a public loss of confidence in the contradictions around sentencing. I think there was public disquiet about the high-profile case of a woman given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for a social media post, which the noble Lord has pointed out was possibly somebody being made an example of. Yet letting people out before their sentence is up for more serious crimes seems to contradict that. Also—dare I mention?—many IPP prisoners have served their tariff in prison. Will the Minister comment on whether some of those could be looked at to see whether, having done their time, they could be released earlier than their indefinite sentence? They have done their time for the crime they committed and yet they still languish in prison. It just does not seem to make any sense to the public.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. In a sense, she exemplifies the difficulty of the various matters we are grappling with when trying to address the overall problem of having this large number of people in prison at the same time as the riots were happening over the summer period. I acknowledge that that is a difficult situation. Regarding the IPP sentences, the Government have set up an IPP action plan which they are working at full speed on, and proposals will be coming forward in due course.
Prison Capacities
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in two minutes I will speak about two films.
I recently saw the film “Sing Sing”, based on the wonderful Rehabilitation through the Arts programme at Sing Sing maximum security prison in New York. One key figure, Divine G, a former prisoner who plays his younger self in the film, is an inspiring reminder that, yes, prison is there to punish and prisoners need to acknowledge they have been anti-social and were a threat to their fellow citizens, but that prison can find ways to help prisoners to become the best version of themselves.
However, we also know that prisons can be unsafe hell-holes that breed criminality, cynicism, addiction and despair. This sadly brings me to the second film. I was proud to speak at the premiere of “Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners” at the Sheffield documentary festival in the summer. The director, Martin Read, does an excellent job of following the stories of individuals on IPP sentences, trapped in
“a Kafka-esque world of labyrinthine bureaucracy that has seen them swallowed up by a system”.
I cried at both films, one at the humane hope of rehabilitation and one at the frustration and cruelty of inhumane and unjust prison policy.
For prisoners to stand a chance of rehabilitation, they need to believe that, however firm the system is, it is at least relatively fair. Recent events suggest there is no fairness for IPP prisoners. Never mind two-tier policing; we have a two-tier prison policy. Imagine you have done the crime, you have done your time—years earlier, in fact—yet now, way beyond your release date, you are still locked up indefinitely. The excuse is that IPP prisoners are too risky and could present a threat to public safety, with no evidence ever given. Now fellow prisoners, who have committed far worse crimes and have not done their time, are being released early for pragmatic political reasons. Will the Minister promise to at least look at releasing a batch of IPP prisoners via the early release scheme as a gesture of good faith that could restore much-needed hope to the IPP prison community?
Public Libraries
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, perhaps it is understandable in the face of library closures to plead defensively their case as community assets, but as we listen to the long list of services libraries are said to provide for the elderly, the lonely, victims of domestic abuse and bullying, et cetera, I worry that this moves their focus away from their core and vital role as the repository of books made accessible to the public. Once libraries are rebranded as glorified community hubs, there is a danger that books are sidelined. This can create a confusion of purpose and allows all sorts of faddish political activism to move in on libraries.
There is a lesson from Wales, where I am from. There, libraries have become embroiled in an unsavoury culture wars dispute. Only recently, Welsh libraries hit the headlines as staff were being sent on training courses in critical whiteness studies and told to eradicate racism from the libraries by 2030. Once books are deprioritised, we can even have forms of censorship, with libraries advised to decolonise their collections from the libraries sector and its own professional association targeting “lawful but awful” problematic books. My plea: put books centre stage in any libraries strategy.