Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Avebury Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Carlile of Berriew
My noble friend clearly did not understand what I was suggesting: that it is, to put it plainly, senseless to have something on the statute book nine years after it was enacted, with absolutely no intention of bringing it into force.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
No, this provision is from 2003 and it has not been brought into force for nine years. Is the right answer to this not to repeal the 2003 provision in question? If the Government then have some constructive suggestions for imposing imprisonment, if it be merited, on people who have been given a community sentence, why do we not start again with those provisions? In reality, my noble friend is not going to suggest for one moment that the Government will bring this redundant provision into force.
Baroness Northover
I assure my noble friend that in fact I understood him very clearly the first time. I asked, as this was introduced in 2003, changed in 2008 but not complete, why we would not seek to repeal it. However, I was told that the Government wish to retain this, in the possibility that it might be implemented—although with no intention of doing that at the moment. I fully support what he says about trying to rationalise legislation in all areas, and I worked very hard on the companies legislation, the first elements of which were finally rationalised relatively recently, after 100 years. I realise that these things can take a long time, but I take very much the point that legislation needs clarity. However, I hope that in this instance the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will understand what I am arguing here and be willing to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Avebury
May I ask my noble friend what may be a naive question? If the provision to which this is attached has not been brought into force but the Government require it to remain on the statute book in case it is necessary at some future date, why is the provision that we are discussing not also subject to a statutory instrument to bring it into force at the same time?
Lord Avebury
My Lords, anyone who has spent time in an accident and emergency department on a weekend evening will recognise the truth of what the noble Baroness has just said—that we face an epidemic of alcohol-related crime that is clogging up the A&E departments every weekend, with people being brought in with serious injuries sustained as a result of alcohol-related violence. I declare a personal interest, having been taken into St Thomas’s after suffering a burst colon as a result of being knocked off my bicycle in Millbank. It was on a Saturday night after a delayed reaction to the accident. I was taken in at 4.30 am and had to wait six hours before I received attention, and the whole of St Thomas’s A&E department was filled with people who had suffered alcohol-related injuries on the streets.
I echo the noble Baroness in saying that we have signally failed in attempting to find an effective way of dealing particularly with persistent offenders who commit their crimes under the influence of alcohol. London Councils has drawn our attention, as the noble Baroness said, to the fact that almost half all violent crime is fuelled by alcohol, and that each year more than a million alcohol-related hospital admissions occur—and that figure is increasing by 8 per cent per annum. The Home Office estimates that the cost of alcohol-related crime is somewhere around £10.5 billion a year, which does not even count the costs imposed on other departments such as health or justice.
These amendments therefore provide a new approach that has been tested and found to be highly effective in reducing serial alcohol-related offences of all kinds, including street violence, driving under the influence, domestic violence, burglary and theft.
In South Dakota, where the scheme was pioneered, alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities were reduced by 60 per cent after the scheme had been in operation for five years. The system has now been extended to neighbouring states and will, I believe, be imminently tested in Strathclyde.
I was very impressed by the presentation given to some of your Lordships in a Committee Room upstairs by Professor Humphreys on the behavioural science associated with the Dakota system and why it works. The statistics certainly show that it is highly effective. The essence of the system is that the offender must sign up to total abstinence from alcohol and undergo regular testing to ensure that he adheres to the undertaking.
If the test is positive, that leads to a further confirmation test, and if that too is positive the breach leads to an immediate court appearance, which could mean a night spent in custody—it mandatorily leads to a night in custody in the case of South Dakota, whereas in the case of the London experiment, which is supported by all the London councils and the GLA, it means an extension of the alcohol monitoring requirement. In the South Dakota pilot, I understand that immediate 24-hour imprisonment was mandatory but, in the review of the proposal, the sentencing power of the courts in the proposed Greater London scheme is far more flexible. The case is overwhelming that we should try this experiment, and I very much hope that the Minister will accept the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to the amendments and to support the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. To me, the points made by the two previous speakers are unanswerable. We know that we have a very serious problem with alcohol, and the current solutions are not working. Those problems are leading to enormous costs not just for stretched hospital and police services but for the health and well-being of those concerned. We heard about some of the London statistics, but I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for repeating them because they are so shocking.
In 2010-11, there were more than 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions, and the figure is rising by about 78,000 each year. Alcohol accounts for an estimated 40 per cent of A&E attendances. London has the highest rate of alcohol-related crime in England. In 2010-11, there were 11.7 alcohol-related crimes recorded per 1,000 population, compared with 7.6 countrywide. Last year, the police alcohol-flagged offences for London showed 18,403 violence against the person offences, 3,612 criminal damage offences, and 2,136 theft and handling offences. London also had the highest rate of alcohol-related violent crimes and sexual offences, which is why the impact on violence against women has been incorporated within the proposal, initially for domestic violence.
It is not surprising that, as we have already heard, the proposals have the enthusiastic support of the Metropolitan Police and the mayor, who wish to trial the scheme. But what do the general public think about the proposals? ICM research conducted a survey on behalf of the GLA in November last year which showed that 69 per cent support the idea of the courts having the option of banning an offender from consuming alcohol if they have been found guilty of committing an alcohol-related offence. There is also support of nearly two-thirds for the courts having the option of banning someone who has been given bail from consuming alcohol.
Let us remember that these are not just statistics; they are real people.
I wish to make a few further comments as a family member, as a mother, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of anxious parents who spend sleepless nights waiting for a call from A&E or the police station, waiting for the door to slam, for the sound of stumbling up the stairs, for the retching in the bathroom, hoping not to see, the following morning, another black eye or more bruised knuckles.
The current measures fail. These proposals ensure three months of enforced sobriety and would provide a window of opportunity for reflection, for peace for the whole family unit to work together to help a young person to take responsibility for his or her—and we all know the shocking statistics now of how many “hers” are getting into trouble—own behaviour. These proposals would provide families with a lifeline to cling to at a time of enormous stress and strain in their lives.
I say to my noble friend that 69 per cent of the public support the proposals. The mayor is prepared to fund a pilot scheme and every London borough wishes to run that pilot. Members of your Lordships' House with tremendous expertise and experience support the proposals. I so hope that the Government are prepared to do so too.
International Development Policy
Lord Avebury Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
My Lords, I am particularly delighted to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Singh, on his thoughtful and practical maiden speech, graced as it was with touches of humour. The noble Lord and I are old friends from years back, so it gives me particular pleasure to welcome him to this House today. He has had a very distinguished career, not only as a chartered engineer and management consultant—backgrounds that I share with him—but as an effective promoter of interfaith understanding, for which he received the Templeton Prize in 1989. The noble Lord was also awarded the interfaith medallion for services to religious broadcasting in 1991.
The field of work in which I have known him best is in his services to the prisons. He was the Sikh representative on the Chaplain-General’s consultation with other faiths back in the mid-1990s. When that was developed into the present Chaplaincy Council he continued to serve on it as the Sikh adviser to NOMS, in which capacity I know he has made a significant contribution—not always on the side of the establishment. The noble Lord has been the editor of the Sikh Messenger since 1984 and director of the Network of Sikh Organisations since 1995. He brings wisdom and the insights of the Sikh faith to our deliberations based, among other principles, on sharing with others whose needs are greatest and the equality of all human beings, as he mentioned. We look forward with eager anticipation to hearing from the noble Lord often in the future.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, has given us a welcome opportunity of looking at DfID’s policy on aid to India and what we are doing to help the Government of India in promoting equality, particularly for the most severely disadvantaged communities. Even though untouchability was formally prohibited by the Constitution of India in 1950, it is so firmly embedded in the culture that 60 years on, the 170 million Dalits still endure extreme forms of social and economic exclusion and discrimination, as we heard from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. We need to consider whether, and if so how, DflD's policies could be geared towards helping India to eliminate the severe handicaps that Dalits have to endure, perhaps bearing in mind the saying of the Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion that, in his mother's womb no man knows his caste.
We would agree that DfID's work should be refocused on the poorest, and that concentrating aid on state partnerships in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, but with some elements stretching to five other states, is a simple if rather crude way of achieving that objective. The Dalit Solidarity Network-UK and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights in Delhi urge that we review our policies from a human rights perspective, in light of the fact that Dalits are not benefiting proportionally in the remarkable economic advance being made by India as a whole. We should therefore address caste-based exclusion and deprivation across the whole of the civil society programmes that we fund, developing clear benchmarks and indicators to monitor progress and ensure that we are getting value for money, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has also said.
I doubt that there can be, as the Government response to the Select Committee report implies, an abrupt transition from a level £280 million yearly aid programme from now until 2015 to a partnership based on critical global issues. I would be grateful for an assurance that projects specifically geared towards alleviating caste discrimination will continue to be supported. UNICEF, for instance, has a knowledge partnership with the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies to unpack policy concerns of relevance to children. It is looking at the barriers that limit access by Dalit children to healthcare, which were also mentioned by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, leading to high levels of morbidity and mortality in these communities.
The Select Committee says that DfID's new Indian programme should have a strong focus on reducing child and neonatal deaths, and the Government agree with them—although they also agree that resources should be switched from health, which now absorbs 40 per cent of the budget, to sanitation, to which only 1 per cent is allocated.
Although India has reduced the under-five mortality rate from 118 to 66 per thousand births between 1990 and 2009, it is not on track to achieving the reduction by two thirds of this rate by 2015, called for in the millennium development goals. In the UN’s 2010 report on the MDGs, it says that revitalising efforts against pneumonia and diarrhoea, while bolstering nutrition, could save millions of children’s lives. The Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation, GAVI, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and to which the UK is the largest contributor in the world, is funding the adoption of vaccines against these diseases in an increasing number of countries. We promised $485 million out of the total of $1.5 billion subscribed at the pledging conference in London last June, believing, as we do, on solid evidence that this is one of the most cost-effective ways of spending aid money to help attain MDG4.
Paradoxically India still has the largest number of unimmunised children globally—7.2 million in 2010—even though it is the world's largest manufacturer of vaccines. It has introduced measles vaccine in about half the states and is making some good progress with Pentavalent, but only in two states as compared with the original plan for 10; while as yet it has no plans for rolling out vaccination against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus, which are the two biggest killers of children worldwide.
A delegation from the APPG Against Childhood Pneumonia, of which I have the honour to be co-chair, visited Bangladesh in November and was told it was on course to roll out all three of these vaccines nationally over the next few years. Penta is already being delivered, as the delegation saw on a visit to a village 50 kilometres from Dhaka. GAVI estimates that the second measles vaccine will start in 2012, followed by pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in 2013 and rotavirus in 2014.
It is not therefore altogether clear to me why India lags behind on saving children's lives when the potential is so clearly there. Will my noble friend say whether the plan for Pentavalent has been scaled back because GAVI had yet to be satisfied that vaccines could be effectively delivered and administered in India? Will she also say whether DfID can help India to solve any of the logistical problems that are delaying these programmes? I gather that more than 25,000 cold chain points have been established, but that active management of their proper functioning and timely repair is critical. If this is blocking approval by GAVI of the programmes, is it something on which DfID could offer technical assistance, bearing in mind our very substantial investment in GAVI itself?
I would be grateful if my noble friend could also say what monitoring there is of the existing immunisation programmes in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh where less than 50 per cent of children were covered in a 2009 survey, and in Orissa where the coverage was under 60 per cent, to ensure that Dalit children were being protected, at least in proportion to their numbers. If, as one might suspect from the UNICEF study already referred to, discrimination and the fear of discrimination inhibits access to healthcare generally for Dalits, the probability is that the existing programmes are not reaching these deprived people. In Bihar, for instance, the reason given for the partial information of a third of those missed was an awareness and information gap, which was far more likely to affect Dalits than the rest of the population. Would DfID be able to help to design local awareness-raising campaigns in our three target states, possibly with the help of experts in communication from the Dalit diaspora?
The Select Committee recommended that DfID should fund the collection of data on caste, tribal and religious affiliation of those who access maternal services or have institutional deliveries, but the Government's response was that adequate disaggregated data were available without further studies. Are they equally confident that disaggregated data exist for access to vaccination and immunisation programmes and if not, will they consider funding a pilot study in the three target states?
On education, the Select Committee had nothing to say about Dalits except indirectly, where it particularly welcomed DfID's new focus on girls' education. In their reply, the Government said they would use the opportunity of India's request to support their flagship secondary education initiative to look at,
“ways to help get more Dalit girls into secondary school and ensure they can afford to stay there".
According to a UNICEF study from 2006, the dropout rate of Indian Dalit children from primary education was 44 per cent, and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes says that for girls this rises to an astonishing 75 per cent. There is no doubt that Dalit girls suffer even more extreme discrimination, prejudice and persecution than boys. Stories about the rape, violent assault and murder of Dalit girls appear regularly in the media. To mention one: when five boys were frustrated in their attempt to rape a 17 year-old Dalit girl in Lucknow last August, they poured kerosene over her and set her on fire. AsiaNews reported the comment of Anulraj Anthony of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference. He said that two aspects revealed the vulnerability of the victim: "She is a girl and a Dalit". So it hardly surprising that vulnerable girls from these communities have an uphill struggle to get anywhere in the educational system.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education has made special reference in his 2006 report to the needs of girls from communities that experience discrimination, and says that literacy is as low as 9 per cent for the Mushahar women of Bihar state. Surely one way of improving Dalit girls' access to secondary education is to reduce their dropout rates from primary education and to promote MDG2A, to ensure that girls as well as boys complete a full course of primary education. The empowerment of women everywhere starts with literacy, and this is an absolute imperative in a society where there are ancient cultural barriers to the equality of particular communities.
We have our own problems here with deprivation of children from Gypsy and Traveller communities, and I am often struck by the parallels with the caste system. So it is not in a spirit of criticism that I want DfID to do more to help India to address the acute disadvantage suffered by the Dalits in health, education and, indeed, access to public services in general. It would be presumptuous to say that we can make more than a minor contribution to helping them to eliminate dysfunctional cultural norms that have persisted for millennia, but I hope that our aid to India can be concentrated on helping it to meet its own objectives.
Equality: World Bank
Lord Avebury Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Northover
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that this report is extremely welcome, and it is groundbreaking that it has been produced at all. It is notable that the World Bank does not necessarily match rhetoric with reality, and we hope that this will be a step on the way to making those two things dovetail. The noble Baroness is right that we have to make sure that we support the World Bank in making sure that this is carried through much more effectively than may have been the case in the past.
Lord Avebury
The report highlights the problem of domestic violence in one short paragraph, but fails to mention the United Nations Secretary-General’s campaign “UNiTE to End Violence against Women”. What are we doing through our embassies and otherwise to promote the goals of that campaign? Will the UK Border Agency review its country of origin information service to ensure that, in considering women’s asylum claims, officials have full and up-to-date information about this appallingly common phenomenon?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Lord for flagging this question up to me. In fact, domestic violence runs as something of a theme throughout the main report. It is clearly an issue that needs to be taken extremely seriously. When you look at some of the evidence it contains—for example, that in Cusco there are reports that 50 per cent of women suffer domestic violence—it is an astonishing situation. The UK Border Agency publishes country of origin information reports on the 20 countries that generate the most asylum claims, and all those reports have a section dedicated to covering matters relating to women, including violence against women. The independent advisory group on country information last month commissioned a review focusing on women and girls. I hope that the noble Lord will find that encouraging.
Overseas Aid: Famine Relief
Lord Avebury Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
The noble Baroness is right: this was forecast. However, we in the UK are playing our part and pressing other donor countries to play theirs. We know that there is a shortfall and we are pressing other Governments to ensure that they respond. We are working very hard with agencies across the globe. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that we are putting long-term resilience plans into place, which take time to build up. At the same time, we will press for short-term responses from other Governments.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, my noble friend talked about the encouragement of other donor agencies. I am sure that she is aware that the Disasters Emergency Committee is still in discussion with the member agencies on whether the catastrophe meets its appeal criteria, although some of its member agencies such as Oxfam and Save the Children have already issued separate appeals. What can my noble friend and the Government do to encourage wider and more effective co-ordination of the voluntary agencies in responding to this and future disasters? In particular, will they encourage wider co-operation between our agencies and those of the Irish Government?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend is right: we need to have better co-ordination. We are working closely with the noble Baroness, Lady Amos. Ultimately, this is about us showing our leadership and pressing other donor countries and organisations to join in the response to this urgent crisis.
Abyei
Lord Avebury Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the people of those regions have to feel that they are part and parcel of the negotiations and that currently they feel marginalised. We urge, through President Mbeki’s AU High-Level Implementation Panel and the United Nations and UNMIS, that these issues are resolved peacefully, but we realise that it is a difficult area. We are going back to the international community time and again to ensure that the concerns that the noble Baroness and others raise are always at the table.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, will the Government take the opportunity of President Obama’s visit to discuss with him how we can best reinforce the demand made by the Security Council that the troops of north and south Sudan withdraw immediately from the town of Abyei? What has been the response of the northern Sudan Government to the Secretary-General’s call for an investigation into the attack on UN troops in Goli, the raid on a UN-escorted convoy a week ago today and the shelling of the UN compound in Abyei?
Baroness Verma
I am sure that my noble friend will urge both the President of the United States and our Prime Minister to ensure that Sudan is part of the talks that they will have. I am aware that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is also concerned. He made a strong statement yesterday urging leaders from both sides to demonstrate the political will not just to resolve the situation in Abyei but also to talk about the communities that feel marginalised and out of the discussions at the moment.
Equality Act 2010
Lord Avebury Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in view of the research study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which suggests that caste discrimination and harassment within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010 exists in the United Kingdom, they will bring caste within the list of protected characteristics in that Act.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, we published the National Institute for Economic and Social Research’s report on caste discrimination and harassment in Great Britain on 16 December. This is an important report that we will consider carefully before responding. We will of course consider our response in the broader context of the equality strategy, Fairness for All. This sets out a new role for government, moving beyond simply introducing more legislation to promoting equality through transparency and behaviour change.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the research shows that discrimination based on caste does occur within the areas covered by the Act, and that it would be reduced if Section 9(5) of the Act was activated? Will she invite members of the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance for a discussion on how best to proceed in eradicating this kind of discrimination?