Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my role as a loyal government Back-Bencher is to help my noble friend the Minister, and I think I can do that best by strongly supporting these amendments.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

We on this side of the Committee strongly support these excellent amendments. The Youth Justice Board was set up in 1998. Its first chair—a Member of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Warner—gave it a really good start. The whole point is that it gives real drive, not as part of government but within the state, to make changes, because everybody recognises that children and young people have different needs, both to divert them from the criminal justice system and when they are there. Similarly, in respect of women, this is a real opportunity; give it drive.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)]

My Lords, as the amendments’ explanatory statements make clear, and as the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, identified, the intention is to provide for the establishment of a women’s justice board for England and Wales which mirrors the rather lengthy provisions setting up the Youth Justice Board. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his kind words. I can assure him that I gave his amendment very careful thought, and my approach to it has not been adversely affected by the support given to it by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I also heard what my noble friend Lord Attlee said about his role being to help me: with noble friends being so helpful—well, I will leave that one there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I will not address the detail of the noble Earl’s amendment, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, that there is a great deal of merit in the call for more and better training within the penal system. We have long taken the view that training within prisons in particular is inadequate, poorly arranged and often unavailable. We therefore commend the noble Earl for the thrust of his amendment and certainly commend him for the care and dedication that he has given to setting it out in detail and in the briefing that he circulated.

We are not convinced of the need for a new sentence of detention for training at Her Majesty’s pleasure but we agree with the heart of the amendment, which is the focus on skills to train for future employment, for which there is a great need. The classroom-style of training does not always work. What is needed is training for skills on the job and for soft skills because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out, not everyone is suitable for the basic training that perhaps the noble Earl has in mind. There should be a combination of practical, soft and technological skills. We are all for better training. However, we seek the Government’s work to be directed towards the provision of that sort of training—better training and more of it—within the criminal justice system and overcoming the barriers to prisoners being work-ready by the time they finish their terms of imprisonment because, at the moment, there is a serious deficiency in that area.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in commending the noble Earl for the effort and work that he has put into this and the fact that he has thought it through. I also commend what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said. It was obviously not a detention for training centre that he was passed to, but his experience was successful in diverting him from the criminal justice system. That is an indication that it worked, even if he ended up in the criminal justice system as the Lord President of the Court of Session and a member of the Supreme Court.

I very much agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said. There are parts of this that we would all agree with. However, we on this side would not support this as a separate sentence. If one looks at the detail, it requires the setting up of a number of rural detention centres. The right thing is for the Government to look at the elements aimed at trying to rehabilitate those in the criminal justice system and use them in the existing system, rather than setting up a whole new network. We admire the noble Earl’s work but think that this is not the appropriate way forward.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment from my noble friend Lord Attlee would seek to introduce a new sentence of detention for training at Her Majesty’s pleasure. It is aimed at offenders who are at least 18 and under 27. The key principle is that release would be gradual and dependent on the offender reaching the required performance levels in conduct, education and training. It would be served in training sites in remote rural areas.

I thank my noble friend sincerely for presenting his genuinely interesting idea—I was going to say “novel”, but we have all watched “Yes Minister”. He has done what he said others have not by thinking positively and constructively about what we can do in the future, rather than just criticising what we do now. I think that we all share his desire to reduce the reoffending rate for young adults. Training and education can enable people to turn their lives around and stop reoffending. I reassure my noble friend and the Committee that the Government are already taking action that addresses those issues.

My noble friend is right to be concerned that offenders leave prison illiterate and innumerate and is right to say that that significantly increases the prospects that they will reoffend. We all share those concerns. I can reassure the Committee that many offenders already achieve accredited qualifications in the fundamental basic subjects of English and maths while in prison. We recently published data that shows that, between April 2019 and March 2020, over 30,000 prisoners started English and maths courses and over half of this number completed the courses and received accreditations. Over and above that, many more will also have undertaken vocational training. However, we are not sitting on our laurels. We recognise that there is more to do. We welcome external scrutiny by the Education Select Committee, which has launched an inquiry into prison education, and Ofsted, which recently announced that it will be conducting a review of reading in prisons.

On employment, we want to make sure that the prison education and skills offer for prisoners is aligned with what employers want and need. We know that there is a correlation between getting a job when you come out of prison and not reoffending. We want to prepare prisoners for employment and the Deputy Prime Minister has made that a clear priority. We want to have partnerships with more businesses and build on the work that we already do with companies such as Halfords, Timpson and Willmott Dixon. We are also making sure that the Civil Service plays its part. In the beating crime plan, we have committed to recruiting 1,000 prison leavers into the Civil Service by 2023.

Over and above that, we want to make sure that we have effective community supervision. Not only will that keep the public safer by providing early intervention, it will deflect offenders away from future offending as well. We set out in our sentencing White Paper an agenda of reform for not only punishing but, importantly, rehabilitating low-level offenders. We have set out a number of measures in this Bill as well: problem-solving courts, suspended sentence orders and extending the use of electronic monitoring. I believe that those measures will support offenders to change their lifestyles for good. In that, of course, I share the aims set out by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton.