Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, this is not the first time that I have spoken on this subject, but our basic problem is the fact that a well intentioned Act has simply become out of date. It needs to be brought up to date for the world in which we live.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has done us all a service by doing some of the hard pounding on the background to this issue. My connection with the world of offenders and ex-offenders is probably a little out of date, but I am assured by everyone that things have not changed much. Those who are involved are predominantly young males, who offend and reoffend repeatedly. As the noble Baroness said, they may not be the most promising candidates for employment, because they tend to have quit school at 14—that is about the average age at which they leave. They do not achieve after the transition to secondary school. When they suddenly find themselves in difficulties, they ask, “Why should I be here?”, if they come from an environment where educational attainment is not regarded as the norm. The situation is accelerated.

I have discovered from my work and various interests in the field of dyslexia that a high percentage of such young people are dyslexic, but they may also have every other type of educational problem. Often, they and the social services sector work in a downward spiral together. This group of young people will be difficult to employ anyway. If someone who has got involved in comparatively petty, low-order crime when they were very young discovers that they have to disclose that and that people can just say no to them, they have virtually no incentive to try to get out.

The proposals in my noble friend’s Bill to change the rate at which disclosure of previous convictions is required are a huge step forward. I hope that the Government will have some positive words to say to my noble friend about why his Bill is unnecessary because real attempts will be made to deal with this issue in the immediate future. We will probably find a huge degree of consensus around this House—although I am sure that at least one person will disagree—that the way forward is, if not this Bill, something very like it. If the Government picked it up—like many Private Members’ Bills, it has been polished by time and effort to get into good shape—the world would be a slightly better place as a result. The Bill is no magic bullet, but it will make it slightly easier for, and give a slightly better incentive to, young people to get out of the cycle of reoffending. The Bill reflects the modern world and the group that it is dealing with in a way that the current legislation does not, although that legislation set a good precedent when it was introduced.

I suggest that, by accepting the Bill or being assured that something like it is on the way, we would be taking a step towards dealing with the problems of offending and reoffending.