Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Baroness Sanderson of Welton

Committee stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, because I could not possibly better her introduction to this amendment. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and I were very pleased to put our names to it. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that you cannot create robust policy if you do not have the data. She has helpfully illustrated to the House that it can be done and that, therefore, it should be done.

When I first saw these amendments—I have said this several times in the course of this Bill—I could not quite believe that it was not already happening, but it is not happening. I ask the Minister to seriously consider that this needs to be done for those children.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I do not pretend to be an expert on prisons, as some noble Lords are who have put forward this amendment. However, I also wanted to speak briefly to it, and for the very same reason, which is that I just could not believe that we did not collect the numbers on children who have a parent or a primary carer in custody. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, put down a Written Question and that the Government said that they do use a figure, which is 200,000. But that is from a survey from 2009—a pretty long time ago—and that is very different from the 312,000 figure that Crest Advisory has claimed.

We should say that the Government recognise that this is a problem. In that same Written Answer, the Government said they had made changes to the basic custody screening tool. In other words, this means that, when people go into prison, they are asked how many children they have back home. We know that they will not always say, not least because they will be worried about children being taken into care, and again, the Government recognise this. So in that Written Answer they talked about using a linked data programme called BOLD. They said the results should be published this spring and that that should be able to give us a better estimate. So can my noble friend the Minister explain, not necessarily today but perhaps in writing, how this programme works in practice and whether it will provide a permanent solution to the problem, as this amendment would do? If it will not, I ask the Government to consider making this change. Otherwise, as others have said, we will be letting down a group of very vulnerable children.

Finally, the Government’s own statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education, says that children and young people will be impacted by having a parent or relative in prison. I am a little confused as to how, on the one hand, in guidance we can state that we know this is a problem and that children will be affected, but on the other we can say that we do not know how many children are affected because we do not gather the numbers. How can we provide the support if we do not know how many children there are or where they are?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Farmer for tabling this amendment and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester for moving it. It would require the Secretary of State to collect data centrally about prisoners who are primary carers of children and the numbers of dependent children who have a primary carer in prison, and to publish the data annually, including the ages of the children. My noble friend, who is not in his place today, knows that the Government fully support the intention behind this amendment. The Government echo the right reverend Prelate in paying tribute to his work and ongoing contribution towards this issue.

Understanding the personal circumstances of those in custody, including responsibilities for dependent children, is essential if we are to provide effective support for those prisoners to help them maintain contact with those children. Strengthening family ties is an integral aspect of the work of HM Prison and Probation Service. We recognise the importance of maintaining a prisoner’s relationship with family, friends and their wider community, particularly where the best interest of the child is served through maintaining a strong relationship with their parent. Prisons across England and Wales offer a range of services to maintain family relationships, including social visits, family days, secure video calling and Storybook Mums and Dads, an award-winning, charity-led initiative that enables parents in prison to record bedtime stories for their children.

In answer to the right reverend Prelate’s comments on supporting children impacted by parental imprisonment, ministerial responsibility for supporting children who might be vulnerable due to parental incarceration sits with the Department for Education in England and the Welsh Government, and the Ministry of Justice is actively committed to joined-up working across government to better understand the nature of this issue. The Female Offender Strategy, published in 2018, encouraged a partnership-focused approach to addressing the needs of both imprisoned mothers and children affected by maternal imprisonment. We published the female offender strategy delivery plan in January 2023, with a progress report, the Farmer Review for Women, in 2019. Outstanding commitments from the Farmer review are being taken forward under the delivery plan.

Understanding how many children are impacted by parental imprisonment is just as important, because having a parent in prison is a recognised adverse childhood experience that can impact a child’s mental health and lead some to feel they are being judged for the actions of their parents. From the perspective of the criminal justice system and echoing the number that has been mentioned a couple of times in this debate, evidence has shown that over 60% of boys who had a father in prison went on to offend themselves. Therefore, identifying and supporting those individuals at an early stage has the potential to divert them away from the criminal justice system, preventing future victims of crime.

While we are fully supportive of the amendment’s intention, we do not believe that legislation as proposed here is necessary. Our prison strategy White Paper. published in 2021, outlined our intention to address this issue through engagement with other government departments, and to commission updated research to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental imprisonment.

As my noble friend mentioned, we are delivering this commitment through our Better Outcomes through Linked Data project, known as BOLD. It is an almost £20 million cross-government shared outcomes fund that will link data to enable better evidence and more joined-up cross-government services. Through BOLD, we will be publishing a report that will estimate the number of children with parents in prison. We expect findings from the project to be published by spring 2024. This should provide some of the critical data that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, called for. We are working to collect and improve data. We have previously made changes to the internal management—