Prisons: Population
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Ministry of Justice will publish a Green Paper later this year setting out plans to reform sentencing and rehabilitate offenders more effectively. We hope and intend that a range of proposals in that document will be discussed which, if implemented, would have an impact on overall prison numbers.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the Justice Secretary’s statement that he intends to reduce the size of the prison population was most welcome. Does the Minister agree, though, that reducing the prison population will not necessarily save money? There are groups in prison, such as the mentally ill and drug addicts, who need treatment to get them to mend their ways rather than to be incarcerated.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, and that is why in part of the sentencing review we intend to look at the treatment of the mentally ill, in co-operation with the Department of Health, in terms of early identification of mental illness and making sure that people are diverted from the prison system into proper mental health treatment. The review will also look at drug rehabilitation. Part of the reassessment will be to see if we can provide systems of treatment which help to end drug dependency which, as the noble Lord will know, has been one of the factors in the revolving door of crime.
Prisons: Young Offenders
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, Physical Control in Care was a system of restraint techniques approved for use in secure training centres in circumstances where the risks arising from young people’s behaviour could not be dealt with by any other means.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for answering the Question. Of course these young offenders can be very difficult people—otherwise they would not be detained—but does he realise that many of us were shocked that this secret manual indicated that it was permissible to inflict pain on young people, some of them as young as 12, in circumstances that led to at least one inquest saying that this represented an unjustified use of force? Would not the right course be to withdraw this document and to produce something publicly that is more humane?
Lord McNally
My Lords, since the document was published in 2005, the Government have had a thorough review of it and are in the process of producing new guidelines on restraint and behaviour management designed to replace the existing document. The new system will be assessed by medical and other experts on the new restraint accreditation board. In the mean time, as I said, a new version of the manual is being drawn up and will take account of the changes that have taken place since 2005.
Prisons
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Dubs
My Lords, I put my name down for this debate on prisons soon after the general election, which was of course before Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, made a speech that in some ways has stolen my thunder. I remind noble Lords of what he said, quoting a little from his speech. He said that,
“we spend vast amounts of public money on a growing prison estate and ever more prisoners”.
He went to say:
“I am sure that prison is the necessary punishment for many serious offenders. But does ever more prison for ever more offenders always produce better results for the public? Can we carry this argument on ad infinitum? I doubt it … I believe in intelligent sentencing, seeking to give better value for money and the effective protection that people want”.
None of us could dissent from that. It depends how far the Government can go to take these policies further.
In preparing for the debate, I soon realised that one hour was far too short and that in any case we should not consider prisons in isolation but as part of a wider look at the criminal justice system. I am not advocating being soft on criminals; some must clearly be jailed. But I remind noble Lords that in 1992 to 1993, the prison population was 44,628. The most recent figures this month were 85,097. That is an enormous increase. When I was in the other place seven years before, the prison population showed signs of reaching 44,000 and we felt that the world was coming to an end—it was that serious. Our prisons are grotesquely overcrowded. The question is why Britain has the highest prison population in relation to population in western Europe. I do not believe that we are more criminal; the crime rate is going down and went down in the period of the last Government very significantly, but I do not believe that that is due to an increase in prison population. Other countries have shown drops in rate of crime but their prison population has not gone up.
Two years ago, I was part of a group that launched the Prison Policy Group with Members from all parties and both Houses. We were glad to have as a member the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, a former Conservative Home Secretary, who followed a very similar policy to that being proposed by Kenneth Clarke. Our report, Building More Prisons? Or is There a Better Way? states:
“The recommendations of the Carter report on the use of custody, that the Government should invest in another 10,500 prison places to give a total of 96,000 places by 2014, was taken without consideration of any alternative policies. The cost implications of this policy are substantial, £2.3 billion capital and commensurate revenue costs for the foreseeable future. No evidence is available to suggest that increasing the number of prison places to accommodate a population of 96,000 will make England and Wales a safer place”.
We subsequently hosted a number of meetings at which distinguished people from other countries came and explained how they managed to run a safe country with a much lower use of imprisonment than ours and support from the public for such a policy. These meetings were very informative and we kept asking ourselves how it was that Germany, France, Canada—countries not so different from our own—managed with lower crime imprisonment rates and did not increase their prison populations year by year.
It is estimated that 10 per cent or more of the prison population has a serious mental illness. Although prisoner health has improved over the years, most of them receive inadequate treatment. Prison is not the right place for mentally ill people. They should be treated outside prison, possibly in a custodial sense in mental illness facilities, but certainly it is not much good having them in prison—they get out and they reoffend.
Clearly, the incidence of drug taking in our prisons is very high, as is the incidence of drug taking among people sentenced to prison. However, the rehabilitation facilities for drug addicts are not very good in our prisons. They are often not very good when they get out either. Those people should not necessarily be in prison but in places where they can get proper rehabilitation for their condition. Some time ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, produced a report on women in prison. Again, it is fairly clear that we do not need to have so many women in prison. Many of them are not dangerous or a threat to society and could be better dealt with by punishment in the community.
The number of young offenders is very disturbing. They learn some of the arts of criminality when they are detained. We need to look again at whether all these young offenders need to be detained at all or whether there are not alternative ways of dealing with them. A disturbing number of members of the Armed Forces get on the wrong side of the criminal law when they leave the forces. We need to look at the help and support that they receive when they leave the forces and enter civilian life. It is not an easy transition for them, particularly if they have served in Afghanistan. They need more support and counselling to help ease their path to civilian life.
We would save money if we could transfer foreign national prisoners to the countries from whence they came. I appreciate that these arrangements are covered by treaties, but I doubt that they are all covered by treaties. We need to look at that matter. Helping people in these groups may not lead directly to cost savings. However, there would be a saving in the longer term if we could reduce reoffending rates. I believe that dealing with these groups in the way I have suggested would result in reoffending rates going down.
Some time ago I was talking to a police officer in London who said that he had arrested a young man who had attacked an elderly woman and rendered her unconscious—something for which he would almost certainly go to Feltham. The police officer told me that he went to the young man’s home. His mother was spaced out on drugs and the flat was in a disgraceful condition with dog faeces all over the place. The police officer said to me, “If that young man goes to Feltham, when he comes out he will go back to the same environment and with no help he will revert to his criminal ways”. Surely we have to tackle this at source.
Therefore, I was delighted to read the report by the House of Commons Justice Committee, which came out last December, Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment. That is the theme of what I have to say now. It was an important report with sensible recommendations. I shall quote briefly from one of the findings in the summary:
“a large proportion of the resources necessary to tackle conditions known to contribute to criminality—such as social exclusion, low educational engagement and attainment, drug, alcohol and mental health problems, unemployment and lack of housing—are outside the criminal justice system. Additionally, in many cases the relevant services are provided at a local level, whether by local authorities or third sector, voluntary or community organisations. Similarly, much of the support available for the rehabilitation and resettlement of former offenders is in the gift of such local agencies. In contrast, the costs of custody are borne at a national level from a centralised budget. The overall system seems to treat prison as a ‘free commodity’—even if not acknowledged as such—while other interventions, for example by local authorities and health trusts with their obligations to deal with problem communities, families and individuals, are subject to budgetary constraints and may not be available as an option for the courts to deploy”.
I could not say it better than that. That surely has to be the way in which the Government should move forward if they are to give effect to what the Justice Secretary said.
The Select Committee report stated that the aim should be,
“committing to a significant reduction of the prison population by 2015—especially concentrating on women and those whose criminality is driven by mental illness and/or addictions to drugs or alcohol”,
I have one or two brief questions about the prison-building programme. What will happen to what is being talked about in Liverpool and London? Do the Government intend to continue with the previous Government’s prison-building programme? Is it true that the Government are considering selling off inner-city prisons near to where people live and are reverting to the ideas they opposed in opposition to build Titan prisons on available land away from towns and cities? Can the Minister deny that?
Finally, I shall say a brief word about public opinion. It is important, in changing our prison and criminal justice system, to make local people feel involved and to promote confidence in community sentences.
House of Lords: Reform
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, because, as the noble Lord said, the debate raised the issue of due process, I was very careful to make inquiries about whether it could be suggested that anything that was taking place was not being done with due process. I am advised that parliamentary counsel will draft the Bill, which the Government plan to publish before the end of the year, based on clear instructions provided by the departmental lawyers, and that this is normal practice.
Lord Dubs
Does the Minister agree that every Minister should be accountable to one House or the other in Parliament and that it is therefore an anomaly that the Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office is apparently not answerable to anybody in either House? Will the Minister ensure, in feeding in to this process, that all Ministers are accountable?
Lord McNally
I cannot believe that that is not the case. Perhaps the noble Lord will write to me on it; otherwise, I will report what he suggests to the Cabinet Office. I think that I have seen most Ministers up for Questions. If the Minister is in another place, it is open to Members of another place—
Lord McNally
Ah, I know where we are now. Why does the noble Lord not try putting down a Question to her?
Prisoners: Voting
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government are considering afresh the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am trying to think what “afresh” means. Will the Minister confirm that the Council of Europe yesterday gave the British Government three months in which to comply with a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and that the previous Labour Government were committed to doing so? Will the Minister give some indication whether “afresh” means “some time” or “not likely”?
Lord McNally
My Lords, “afresh” probably means “with a greater sense of urgency than Ministers in the last Government approached the issue”.
Queen's Speech
Lord Dubs Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Dubs
My Lords, first I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on becoming members of the Government. I have known the noble Lord for a long time; we were in the Commons together. I do not think that I am allowed to call him my noble friend but I can call him my friend. I hope in that spirit that he will accept my little story about something that happened when we were both in the Commons. It was a time when the late Lord Whitelaw was Home Secretary and an occasion when the Government did a 180 degree U-turn—surprising, but it happened. Those of us who had enormous affection for Willie Whitelaw will remember that when he was embarrassed, and he had to make the Statement on that occasion, he would keep his head down and read it as fast as he could in the hope that we could not hear anything—
Lord Dubs
Very quietly. Even Willie Whitelaw had to pause for breath in the middle of the Statement. The brief silence that followed was filled by Enoch Powell who said, “Eat them more slowly, Willie”. I do not need to editorialise on that.
Some of us were fully involved in the heat of the election campaign and were busy canvassing while others—those who are more sunburned—were not so. The reflection of many was dismay that we were not allowed to have a vote. This is not the occasion to debate that fully but surely Members of this House, like other citizens, ought to be allowed the right to vote because we should have some influence on the nature of the Government and who they will be.
I welcome two things that the Government have done, one of which was referred to by the right reverend Prelate, which is the commitment to ending child detention in immigration cases. That is a good thing but I hope that it follows that families with children will also not be detained so that children are not separated from their families. I have been involved with other people in campaigns on this for a long time and I welcome the Government’s Statement. I also welcome the Statement made by the Foreign Secretary that the Government will fully investigate allegations of complicity in torture by members of our security services.
I now wish to raise something entirely different on a specific matter about the Palace of Westminster. I do so with the knowledge of the person involved. I refer to the wife of the Speaker in the Commons, Sally Bercow. Because she was a candidate in the recent Westminster City Council elections she was not permitted to go on living in Speaker’s House and had to move out during the campaign and rent a flat nearby. She has three young children aged six, four and two. The eldest, who is autistic, was particularly disturbed at having to move out of their home in Speaker’s House. There is something unfortunate about that and it reflects badly on the Palace of Westminster as a whole.
I shall now turn to the substance of the gracious Speech and the Government’s policies. I welcome the commitment to have an elected, or mainly elected Lords Chamber. I doubt, though, whether a period of 15 years is the right way in which to deal with it. Surely the point about elections is accountability. If one is elected once, one is then not accountable to anybody for the remainder of the 15 years. It would be better if we had three goes of five rather than be elected just once without accountability. I am dismayed, as many Members of this House are—I know that this is shared across the House—at how many more appointments are to be made. I quote from the coalition programme, which states:
“In the interim”—
before there is a newly elected Chamber—
“Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.
That is a very disappointing policy. My noble friend Lord Richard has already said that the coalition has an adequate majority for all purposes. You do not need more than that. It will simply look ridiculous if the Government appoint another 100 or 150 Peers in order, in the interim—I am careful about the word “interim”, but it is used in the coalition programme—to abolish the House and change it to an elected one. That does not make any sense.
I like the idea of fixed-term Parliaments. I do not know why they should not be for four rather than five years—I simply ask that question. I find the dissolution arrangements for 55 per cent totally confusing. I have read the debate in the Commons the other evening and I was left as confused at the end as I was at the beginning.
I understand that the Government have said that they want to abolish identity cards. Fair enough. I wonder whether the Minister can explain what is said in the coalition programme:
“We will … halt the next generation of biometric passports “.
I had always understood that biometric passports were increasingly becoming an international obligation. If we want to visit other countries, we will have to have biometric passports. Never mind ID cards, what are we going to do about biometric passports, or do the Government now have information that we do not need them any more? I, too, would like occasionally to visit the United States and do not want to be kept out because of government policy.
The coalition programme also states:
“We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation”.
I wonder what that means in relation to the use of intercept evidence—something about which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, knows a great deal. I understand that under the previous Government, officials were looking into the possibility of using intercept evidence in criminal courts. I understand the difficulties about disclosure, and so on, but it was being considered. I wonder whether the Government will consider whether we could have intercept evidence in criminal cases.
Finally, I turn to Northern Ireland and again quote from the coalition programme for government. It states:
“We will work to bring Northern Ireland back into the mainstream of UK politics”.
I do not know what that means. Terminology matters a great deal, especially in Northern Ireland. I hazard a guess that the different communities in Northern Ireland will interpret that statement, quite differently one from the other. It is certainly ambiguous. Some clarification would be welcome. The coalition programme goes on to say that this will include,
“producing a government paper examining potential mechanisms for changing the corporation tax rate in Northern Ireland”.
Frankly, I am in favour of that to bring it in line with taxation in the Republic, but it is slightly odd to say that we will bring Northern Ireland more into the mainstream of UK politics and then immediately bring out a policy that takes it away from us. That is slightly confusing.