Prison Officers: Occupational Pension

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the final matter that the noble Lord raises, in spite of my Scottish background, I regret to say that I am not at this stage able to answer his question directly. However, with his leave I shall look into the divergence between Scotland and England and Wales and revert to him in writing.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that one of the reasons why prisons have become so dangerous over the years is that we warehouse people? We do not rehabilitate them: people go in bad and often come out worse. Actually, if we want to quieten the damage and the violence, we need to return to rehabilitation. I speak as someone who was blessed by rehabilitation: it was an essential part of the Prison Service, which it is not now.

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to differ. The importance of rehabilitation is known. Indeed, as we are on the topic of retirement of prison officers, one of the things that prison officers can do under legacy schemes is retire from the Prison Service, take their pension and go back in at occupational support grades. In that capacity, they can do a number of functions, including working in approved premises, which is the new name for bail hostels. There, their invaluable experience can assist people released into the community under conditions to meet those conditions and attune themselves to a less regulated environment outwith the prison estate. Their service in that regard is valued immensely by the Government and by prison governors.

Prisons: Rehabilitation

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we absolutely agree that education, training and work are central to prisoners turning their lives around and we believe it is right and sensible for ex-prisoner employment to come from a number of different sources. The corporate social responsibility agenda has an important place here. We have also launched the New Futures Network to engage and persuade employers to take on ex-prisoners and are developing a new policy of release on temporary licence to increase the opportunities available to prisoners to gain experience in the real workplace.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, next week I am going to a wonderful literary festival in Erlestoke prison. It is a brilliant idea and, even though there are problems of money, it shows that, if you have leadership in prison among governors, you can turn things around. It is called Penned Up, it is next week and I would love all noble Lords to come.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I might prefer to be there next week—I might even be available. Be that as it may, the noble Lord makes an extremely good point. That is why, from 1 April, one change we are bringing in is the delegation of responsibility in these areas to individual governors so that they can take this sort of initiative forward for the benefit of all prisoners.

Prisons

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The Government are not content with such a situation and we are addressing more widely the issue of how and when we can develop non-custodial sentences to a greater extent. One of the pressures on the existing prison population has been the development of sentencing with regard to historic sex abuse, where long-term sentences have been imposed on a large number of people. That has put further pressure on the prison population.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is the noble and learned Lord aware that the National Careers Service has been doing sterling work in our prisons to educate and prepare both young and older people leaving prison? The contract for this work is going to be terminated on 1 April and there does not seem to be any remedy in place. I would also like the Minister of State to reply to the letter from the Prisoner Learning Alliance, which has still not been answered, asking what will be done after 1 April for those people who are trying to get something out of prison so that they can leave prison with something.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the NCS is due to expire on 31 March 2018 and will do so on that day. There would have been an option to extend it for a further period of six months, but consideration of the variable delivery of services, and of in-custody services in particular, led to a determination that the contract should not be continued. Alternative means are now being considered.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, I was a bit unhappy on the day after we had our referendum. I was unhappy because when I walked into my little Cambridgeshire village and met an incredibly educated, sophisticated and well-placed member of the community, I found that he was absolutely outraged that “these people”—who were described as “scum”, “rubbish”, “low life”—had taken him and his wife and family and other people out of something which for him was the most precious thing on earth other than the United Kingdom. I then went down the pub that evening and met people who had voted to leave. Many of them were cock-a-hoop, aggressive and rather vicious. Here was a little village in Cambridgeshire which seemed culturally divided. There were the men in the white vans who came to fix our fences and our roofs and all the friends that I have in the building trade, who seemed to be universally for leaving, while those who were at the local university and who were what you might call the “cappuccino class”—I use that in the nicest sense—seemed to be against.

So here we had a class struggle, and hiding behind it all, in my opinion, was our relationship to poverty, because Brexit is about poverty. Whether we stay or we go, it is about poverty; it is about poverty of thinking. It is also about how we come together. I am reminded of the great Jonathan Swift—a swift being a Bird—who described a confederacy of dunces. I worry about highly educated and highly thoughtful people who have lived together dividing over Brexit, dividing over stay, and not finding any conformity or unity. We are in a place which is very much like 1940. We need a kind of national, coalition-type Government. We need to break through the divisions between us. I do not know whether Parliament is the best place to sort this out because I believe—and my nose is close to the ground—that in the future there will be blood on the streets because up at the level we are, we cannot give the benefit of the doubt and go to people who we know are not doing as well as us and say to them, “Let’s work together”. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, that, whether we like it or not, we have left Europe. To the noble Lord, Lord Oates, who said earlier that the poor will pay for Brexit, I say, “Okay, how can the House of Lords and the House of Commons stop the poor paying for Brexit?” It is interesting, is it not, that many millions of people who have not done well voted to leave, not those people who did well?

I have to tell the House that I voted to stay. I got it wrong. I voted to stay for fear. I have five children and three grandchildren, and I was sensibly told that if we left the whole country was going to fall to pieces within a matter of weeks. We may have a bit longer. It may well fall to pieces in 2019, but I think it will fall to pieces if we do not find a way, an amalgam—that wonderful mixture of opposites. Unless we find a political and social amalgam, we are not going anywhere.

I shall make my last point: people talk about Britain getting out of Europe; there would be no Europe if it was not for Britain. Did the people to whom we go with a begging bowl and say, “Please, give us what you can” liberate Europe? They did not. It was the Americans, the Russians and the British. I would like to be reminding them, I would love to be reminding them, “Come on, play the game. We were there for you when you capitulated; do something for us”. Thank you.