Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

Amendments 24 and 25 not moved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

We now come to Amendment 26. Anyone wishing to press this amendment to a Division must make that clear in debate.

Clause 48: Extent

Amendment 26

Moved by

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 2 and the other amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I contributed to the Second Reading debate on the Bill a few weeks ago in the Chamber, where the noble Baroness made a powerful speech. Like other noble Lords, I welcome the Bill and pay tribute to the campaigners who have got us to this point.

The amendments before us allow us to have a debate on the detail of the issue in question. The balance that has to be stuck here is between justice and the denial of a funeral to a victim’s family, which brings further pain and distress to a family denied the ability to grieve properly, a prisoner with mental health issues and respect for human rights. These are extremely difficult issues that have to be approached with thoroughness. Decisions being made clearly and victims being listened to are an important part of the work that we expect the Parole Board to do.

The Parole Board has to take account of several factors in making its decisions. I have never met a member of the Parole Board, unlike my noble friends Lord Blunkett and Lord Ponsonby, but the Parole Board deserves our support in the difficult job that it is asked to do. I do not doubt that it undertakes its responsibilities with the utmost seriousness, making difficult and important judgments independently, and I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in that respect.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has posed a number of points for the Minister to address about the state of mind of the prisoner at a particular time as well as the prisoner’s mental capacity. I very much see the point that the noble Baroness is making: that these issues should be taken into account at the time of the hearing. I look forward to the Minister’s reply on these points and on other points made by noble Lords.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the second group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, particularly in relation to Amendments 2 and 4, which are reiterated in subsequent amendments. I reinforce my full support for the Bill and congratulate the Government on bringing it forward.

I support the concept of removing any discretion to disregard non-disclosure by prisoners when Parole Boards are reviewing their cases. This is because there is a very small minority of people who may have severe mental health problems but who are also well able to give the impression that they have complete amnesia. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said earlier about healthcare professionals believing what they are told by people with mental health problems. I actually worked in Broadmoor and introducing as part of the concept as a trainer that you should not read a patient’s records until you had got to know the patient a bit. That is sometimes quite shocking because you trust people but then find that significant things they have told you are in fact extremely inaccurate. So we must be clear that medics are not on the whole easily fooled by the very small minority of people who are able to display very significant selective amnesia.

Of much more interest to me at the moment in relation to this Act is that the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and its subsequent amendments, as referred to by other noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, indicate that we have a growing population with significant acquired brain injury, severe psychosis and, of course, a range of neurodegenerative progressive disorders, known largely as the dementias, which mean that prisoners who have been in prison for 15 to 30 years may well have developed cognitive difficulty during the period of their imprisonment. When they then apply to the Parole Board, it is right that they have full access to a medical assessment in line with their human rights. I believe there will be a proportion of people who apply in this way who do not have sufficient cognitive ability at the time when they come to the Parole Board that they will be able coherently to remember the kind of issues that we have raised during this debate.

In summary, I support the approach of the charity Rethink Mental Illness that these amendments would provide an explicit reference to mental capacity, meaning that there would be consistency adopted by Parole Boards when reviewing individual cases. I would like to see the amendments supported, but I am also very aware that, in the review of the Mental Capacity Act, we were able to deal with some things by ensuring that they would be put into guidance for practitioners. That may be something to consider in relation to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Bull.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I wish to speak in favour of this group of amendments, particularly those tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford.

Where a Newton hearing has taken place in respect to the relevant facts of an offence, it makes sense that those findings must be taken into account by the Parole Board when making a decision affected by the Bill. In effect, a rigorous “mini-trial” has been carried out, and a judgment given, so this information should quite obviously be used by the Parole Board.

In some circumstances, this might go in favour of the prisoner; in others, it might go against them. Either way, justice will be served by using the proceeds of Newton hearings. Without doing so, the Parole Board is at risk of ignoring or contradicting the findings of the Newton hearing which set the grounds for the prisoner’s sentence in the first place. That would not make sense and would create ripe grounds for judicial review of the Parole Board’s decision. It is almost inevitable, I would have thought, that a judicial review would conclude that it must be taken into account by the Parole Board. In the interests of clear legislation, and for the clarity of prisoners and victims, the Government really have to accept these amendments.

Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as outlined in the register, particularly that I am a nurse. It is clear to me that the Prime Minister and her team have reached an agreement in principle with the EU that may well be the best deal that could be achieved under the circumstances. On Friday 16 November, the New York Times summed up the situation as follows:

“Remainers say that it will damage Britain’s economy compared with staying in the European Union. Brexiteers say it doesn’t fulfill their promise to ‘take back control’ of immigration, regulation and trade”.


Faced with this situation, no one is able to predict whether a majority in the House of Commons will support the proposal. Crashing out or leaving the EU without a deal is now recognised to be at the very least an extremely undesirable option. The people voted to exit the EU formulated on a view of UK independence based not necessarily on lies from Brexiteer politicians but on the notion of “sunny uplands”, which now seems to be at least in part a deluded vision of the future. As any elementary student of psychology would inform us, a delusion is a firm, fixed, false belief.

It is widely reported that many people voted to leave because of the expected NHS budget dividend from savings on the UK EU contribution and an expectation that free trade agreements would increase the UK’s wealth and create new jobs. As a result of underinvestment and uncertainty, the fact is that many EU citizens no longer feel it is a good time to come and work in the UK. A recent Health Foundation, King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust report predicts a staffing shortfall of almost 250,000 in the NHS by 2030. They argue that,

“Critical and lasting shortages in the … workforce mean that the forthcoming NHS long-term plan risks becoming an unachievable ‘wish list’ of initiatives to improve the health service”,


rather than reflecting reality.

In May 2018, the Royal College of Nursing, with a membership of more than 400,000, debated the implications of Brexit, resulting in a vote to campaign for a referendum on the final Brexit deal. The debate made clear the numerous implications of Brexit for the health and social care system. These are risks which, if they are not properly addressed,

“may damage population health, as well as severely impact on our members’ ability to provide safe and effective care for their patients in both the short and the long term”.

To the EU’s credit, in many quarters it has made it clear that it would still welcome the UK remaining within the EU. Recent opinion polls suggest that many people in the UK would welcome the opportunity to stay in the EU. I therefore ask the Minister, if the House of Commons fails to support the EU withdrawal agreement as outlined in the Prime Minister’s Statement, to please assure the House that the Government will not lead the country out of the EU with no deal. Instead, will the Government return to the people in a democratic fashion and give them the right through a referendum or peoples’ vote to decide whether they wish to accept the current deal as offered or, as I believe they would, decide to remain within the EU?

Prison Officers’ Association: Protest Action

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I quite understand the concern that we might be perceived to be twice as wicked as the French. Nevertheless, I would point out that all of these statistics are relative across the world and, if we compare ourselves with other jurisdictions, we find that our prison population is much lower per head of population than it is in many other western societies. At the present time, it is not considered that the resolution of this issue lies in sentencing policy; it lies in reform of the prison estate and those who have to work so hard to maintain it.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell me how any review will look at the need for registered nurses and medics to get more involved in our prisons in order to help prison officers cope with people with long-term mental health problems, many of whom should not be in prison anyway? I stand here in my 60s, having worked in Brixton prison in my 30s from the Maudsley hospital doing just what I said, and then doing the same work in both Dartmoor and Exeter prisons. However, these kinds of in-reach programmes are actually being reduced, due to shortages in the NHS and academia, rather than increased.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Baroness. Of course mental health issues are a major problem within our prison estate. There is no question but that a very large proportion of those in our prisons suffer in one form or another from mental health issues, some of them induced by the use of illegal drugs, in particular psychoactive substances. That breeds difficulty, despair and indeed violence. We are attempting to address this at the present time, and again I would point to the issues raised in the context of the White Paper. We are determined to make progress in this matter.