Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Clinton-Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment. The points that my noble friend Lord Wigley has made on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, are a fine illustration of why the stalking report that was published this morning is so important and its contents are so relevant to the points that have been discussed here already.

It is crucial that the backgrounds of serious and repeat offenders are seriously considered before decisions are made. Judging by the list that Napo has sent to my noble friend, there are indeed many instances of short sentences where not only has no treatment been given but there has been no effective outcome at all. One can imagine that there will be repeat offenders. On that point, I stress that in the Midlands in particular no fewer than five of these very short sentences were illustrated.

I turn to the second point, which is even more crucial: the effect on dependants. The numbers of children who have been affected in this way over generations must be into the millions. Let us think of the cycle of deprivation and the way in which their behaviour is no doubt going to reflect the less than desirable behaviour of their parents in the past.

Women prisoners tend to believe, I think with some justification, that they are given harsher and longer sentences than male prisoners. I remember visiting a women’s prison and being interviewed as a “victim”, as it were. This prison had been set up with a marvellous two-pronged system whereby you had to learn both the techniques of how an interviewing system worked in a broadcasting station and how to do the interviewing. For many of these women, who had no confidence at all in their own ability, to have to ask those kinds of questions was a big challenge. They said that they reckoned that they had tougher sentences. When you consider that many of them would no doubt have been sent with drugs in them, put there by manipulative people from outside the country as well as inside, we need to take what they were saying very seriously. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to this amendment.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

I rarely disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, but I do on this occasion. I do not think that there is any evidence that women prisoners are dealt with more harshly than men. That is a point which should not have been made because it is irrelevant. In my experience as an advocate, quite the reverse is true.

On the amendments, I largely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has said, but they would not add very much to the present practice. The probation service always gives a social history—whatever that may mean—of the offender, and it goes into great depth. It also considers the effect of sentencing on dependants. Both those points, which are relevant for debate, are irrelevant as far as the law is concerned.

We have heard a great deal about stalking today. Stalking is a very serious offence and we ought to consider the report, but this is not the occasion to do so.

It is essential that whatever the probation officer has to say in a case is taken seriously and in my view, it invariably is. However, that goes to show that offenders must be represented if that provision is to take effect. All too often, the offender is not represented; by and large, it is important that the points which are made in the amendments are taken into account. So I urge that, wherever possible, the defendant is represented.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I have some sympathy with Amendment 175. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, I was taken back into the past. He said that probation reports go into great depth on the effects of sentencing on the offender. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, spoke about reports looking into the background of offenders. That used to be so, but in a serious case in which I was involved within the past 12 months, when a verdict by the jury of murder was reduced to manslaughter, I was shocked to discover that the probation service simply interviewed my client over a video link while he was in Belmarsh prison. He was given no notice; he was spoken to for about half an hour; and the ensuing report was simply a question of assessing the risk for the purposes of an indeterminate prison sentence.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

Was that not put before the court? If not, why not?

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

It was put before the court, and the request was made for an adjournment for a probation report to follow as it used to, with relatives being interviewed and the court being given some idea of the person’s background and some concept of why he could have committed the offence. However, I am very concerned that at the moment the pressure on the probation service is such that it is forced to take these shorthand approaches of video links with a person you have never met before, carried out by someone much younger who makes no attempt to look into the background. In my view, it is a denial of justice in the individual case.