Prisons: Suicides

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with both points raised by the noble Viscount. The range of opportunities for activity outwith the prison estate, and within the estate by way of leisure and recreation, is an important matter that the Government are looking at.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been nearly a decade since the Minister for Prisons asked me to undertake a review of the self-inflicted deaths of young people in the prison estate. Since then, things have got worse. The reality is that prisons are more overcrowded. The very positive suggestions that the Minister made in answer to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, about how people will be trained to provide support, will work only if there are sufficient numbers of staff who stay sufficiently long in the job for it to work.

The Minister has also just said that efforts are made for rehabilitation, training and education. Again, if prisons are so overcrowded and there are such staff shortages that people cannot be escorted to the extracurricular activities he described, how on earth is this going to work? Is not the reality that this Government have lost control of prisons and of the fundamental responsibility to rehabilitate people into society?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as of 30 September 2023, there were 23,058 prison officers in bands 3 to 5. That is an important cohort, because those are the bands who have access to prisoners in the areas and respects of which the noble Lord has spoken. That is an increase of 1,441 officers on the previous year, which amounts to an increase of 6.7% in the number of officers in that cohort in full employment.

Covid-19: Prisoners

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards the implementation of the recommendations in the report by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody “Keep Talking, Stay Safe”: A Rapid Review of Prisoners’ Experience under COVID-19, published on 31 May.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, we welcome this report from the IAP on the experience of prisoners during Covid-19. The Government are committed to making safety a priority for all those in custody as well as staff. We have reviewed the recommendations in the report and are making good progress against a number of the areas identified, with many discussed further at a Covid-19 sub-meeting of the Ministerial Board on Deaths in Custody on 7 July 2020.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. The IAP report said that early release was important to protect life. We were told that 4,000 prisoners would be released; indeed, the MoJ bought 2,000 tagging kits for those released. But, so far, only 209 prisoners have been released early. What went wrong? So far, 23 prisoners have died from Covid-19 in a prison population of 80,000. Each death is a tragedy; those prisoners were under the care of the state, and the state had a duty to keep them safe. However, to keep the numbers to such levels, many prisoners are confined, essentially in solitary confinement, in their cells for 23 hours a day, with limited access to exercise or basic rehabilitative activities, exacerbating mental health problems. There have been 36 self-inflicted deaths so far this year. Can the Minister tell us what proportion of prisoners are currently restricted in this way and when he expects that figure to improve?

Sentencing Bill [HL]

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, five years ago, the review I conducted for the then Minister for Prisons into the self-inflicted deaths of 87 young prisoners was published. I want to use—perhaps some will say abuse or certainly misuse—the opportunity of this debate to raise some general issues about the role of prison. A core conclusion of my review was that prisons are grim environments, bleak and demoralising to the spirit.

So what are the purposes of prison? The first is clearly public protection. A criminal cannot, it is argued, pursue their criminal activities from a prison cell and they cannot endanger other people. Another is to punish, and that punishment is the deprivation of liberty. It is assumed that such punishment will have a deterrent effect. The third is to enable a prisoner to be rehabilitated, given an education or training previously missed, so enabling them to become a useful citizen on release. There is probably also a final purpose in assuaging public opinion that something must be done. This last has led, over the years, to a growing prison population facing longer sentences.

Does it work? Public protection is not achieved if gang leaders can still control and run their criminal activities from inside their prison cell. Public protection is not delivered if prisoners, once released, emerge so embittered by their experience that they are even more dangerous than when they went in; if they have been radicalised by their exposure to violent extremist ideology; or, indeed, if they have used their time inside to make a whole series of new criminal contacts and acquire or hone their criminal skills to make them more effective criminals on their release.

What is the evidence that deterrence works, particularly for young men? Brain development studies show that many young men are not able to evaluate the consequences of their actions and to limit their impulsivity until their mid-20s.

Finally, what about rehabilitation? The prison experience is hardly conducive to it and it is exacerbated by staff shortages, meaning that many courses and classes cannot take place, even before the lockdown imposed by Covid-19. Most prisoners are not sufficiently engaged in purposeful activity and even medical and mental health appointments are being missed because there are insufficient escort staff. Prisons have to be substantially better resourced if they are to deliver any meaningful form of rehabilitation or even protect public safety.

Why do so many prisoners come into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place? Many of the prisoners whose cases I reviewed had problems that were evident from an early age. Many had mental health issues and a troubled adolescence. Why were they not successfully diverted away from criminal activity at a much earlier stage? Proper investment in the health and welfare system is needed to resolve the issues that create these problems of a troubled child or adolescent long before they ever enter the criminal justice system, and we need effective alternatives to custody if they get into trouble. That would be money well spent and would reduce the numbers in prison so that those there can have better rehabilitative support.

There will always be a need for prisons and a coherent, fair sentencing framework is a necessity, but for too long we have neglected what we should do to avoid people getting into trouble in the first place; and we have certainly failed to invest in the prison system sufficiently to ensure that prisons keep the public safe and rehabilitate prisoners so that when they are released they can play a proper part in society. My question to the Minister is: when and how will we address those issues?

Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2020

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his usually thorough and precise introduction. I will confine my remarks to the order that relates to Crown Courts, and I say at the outset that I welcome it as an initial step. However, I share, almost word for word, the views and reservations just expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.

I chair National Trading Standards, which is responsible, on behalf of BEIS, for delivering national and regional consumer protection enforcement activities in England and Wales. Scotland has similar but distinct arrangements. The teams we fund are located within local authorities and use local authority trading standards powers to investigate and bring prosecutions against organised crime groups, which perpetrate consumer scams targeting often vulnerable consumers, and which, as a side-effect, thereby undermine legitimate businesses and traders. Clearly, the objective is to bring the perpetrators to court. A typical example would be Allan John Coutts, a rogue trader who ran a tarmac repair business across England and Wales, operating under several trading names to avoid detection. He used a lorry specifically designed to resemble an official vehicle to cold-call customers to obtain driveway repair work. The work itself was often of very poor quality; sometimes he simply dumped loose chippings on existing driveways with no solution to hold them in place. He demanded cash for this work, often accompanying people to their banks to “help” them withdraw the cash. Very rapidly, the customers would then discover that the five-year guarantee that he offered was worthless, and Coutts and their money had vanished. When it came to court, Anthony Rees from the NTS investigation team received a judge’s commendation for his work on bringing Coutts to justice, and Coutts himself received a prison sentence of five and a half years. That was a good outcome, but justice needs to be seen to be done.

It used to be the case that the staple content of local news media was the court reporter, who would take down a shorthand note of the remarks of a judge in passing sentence. However, local news media are in decline, and, even if they have reporters, often can no longer send them to the Crown Court to cover the end of anything but the most high-profile trials. However, it is important that not only such cases as the one I described but all of them are reported. First, the outcome of a case may provide some sense of relief and closure to those who have been exploited and victimised by the criminals. Secondly, the sentences handed down may be a deterrent to other potential scammers. Thirdly, the cases act as a warning to those who may be taken in by scammers such as Coutts, and they serve as a reminder that an offer which sounds too good to be true is almost certainly too good to be true. That is why I welcome the order introduced by the noble and learned Lord. However, I would like confirmation of three points from him.

First, will all such sentencing remarks in Crown Courts be recorded and broadcast in this way? Obviously, there will be an exception for those where the judge feels that it would not be in the public interest to report it. However, I am concerned that part-time recorders may not have their sentencing remarks broadcast in this way. If that is the case, can the noble and learned Lord tell us why, and when will it be extended to all criminal sentencing in Crown Courts? I hope that the presumption will be that this will soon apply to virtually all cases. Secondly, will the remarks be broadcast on the internet in a timely fashion on the day that they are made? Timeliness is important if the sentencing remarks are to be picked up by the news media. Finally, will judges be encouraged to provide enough of a summary of the case and the impact on the victims for the public who are listening to have a clear understanding of the offence committed, its seriousness and the reasons for the sentence passed? I look forward to the noble and learned Lord’s reply.

Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak, albeit very briefly, in this debate. I expect that some will be surprised that time is being devoted to this topic, yet what happens in our prisons must not be swept under the carpet and ignored. People in detention are totally dependent on the state for their treatment and care. Article 2 of the ECHR places a special duty on the state to protect those in custody.

Winston Churchill, then the Home Secretary, speaking in the other place 110 years ago said:

“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.”—[Official Report, Commons, 20/7/1910; col. 1354.]


Those words set a context for today’s debate.

Six years ago, I conducted a review for the MoJ. Our prisons were grotesquely overcrowded and staffing levels were inadequate. I concluded that prisoners were being kept in grim environments that were bleak and demoralising to the spirit. One can only imagine what it is like now, with permanent lockdown and disease stalking the corridors.

Given the stretched staffing, can the Minister tell us what proportion of prison officers are ill or in quarantine? I understand that, as of Sunday, 278 prisoners had tested positive for Covid-19 across 64 prisons. What are today’s figures? If the Minister does not have them, why not? There is a duty of care there.

How many deaths have there been? What are the numbers of prisoners who have died from respiratory or other illness but were not tested for Covid-19 in the last two months? Are prisoners’ families being informed that their relative has the virus or has symptoms? What steps are being taken to keep worried families informed?

Given the Article 2 obligations and notwithstanding the provisions in the recent Coronavirus Act that Covid-related deaths are not notifiable, will all deaths of prisoners be subject to proper, effective external investigation and scrutiny? I look forward to the noble and learned Lord’s response.

Prisons: Radicalisation

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, there are essentially three interventions: the theological and ideological interventions programme, the healthy identities programme, and the desistance and disengagement programme. To assist with the delivery of these, we have recruited 22 specially trained imams to engage with such prisoners during their period of custody. In addition, we have recently announced a major investment in counterterrorism resources, including doubling the number of counterterrorism specialist probation staff, to address these issues after release from custody.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister put some flesh on the bones of this? How many prisoners who are subject to these special programmes have in fact been able to attend them? On how many days in the last year have those programmes not taken place because the prisoner has not had an escort in the prison to take them to those services? If he does not have those statistics, can he tell us how on earth any Minister can come to this House or the other place and give us assurances about that without knowing how often those programmes are disrupted because of staff shortages in the prisons?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, it will not surprise the noble Lord that I do not have the precise statistics he has asked for, in particular the number of days when escorts were not available, but I will take steps to secure the relevant statistics—in so far as they are available—and will write to the noble Lord and place a copy of the letter in the Library.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my police and security interests in the register.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his introduction to the Bill. He has assured the House that this measure does not breach Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights and does not impose retrospective punishment on the prisoners affected. I am a non-lawyer, so I have listened with great interest to the points made by a number of noble and learned Lords, noble Lords who are QCs and, in particular, to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. To my simplistic, non-legal mind, it seems fairly clear: if a prisoner has been sentenced to a particular term of imprisonment, with the clear expectation, backed by statute, that he or she will be released automatically after half that time, under the Bill it will seem to the prisoner as though, retrospectively, that position has been changed. However, the Minister is a law officer, and I was always taught that we should accept the advice of law officers. It will no doubt be tested in the courts and we will then see how valid it is.

The Minister has told us why the passage of the Bill is urgent: that there are prisoners who, if it does not pass, will be released in a matter of days and present a real and present danger to the public. The urgency has led to the Bill being considered in the House of Commons in a single day and the expectation that your Lordships’ House will do the same. Such procedures are rare and exceptional, and I do not doubt that there is an urgency to today’s proceedings, but that urgency, and indeed the need for these emergency procedures, is entirely the fault of the Government. We are in this position today as a consequence of irresponsible recklessness over the last few years.

Automatic release has been in place throughout the lifetime of this Government. It was known that terrorist offenders were covered by such automatic release, yet nothing was done. The Government have known the numbers of those involved, and when they were due to be released, but despite that knowledge they waited until now to do something about it. The first duty of any Government is to seek to protect their citizens from harm, so why have they waited until this month to do so? Had they acted even a few weeks earlier, the events in Streatham would not have occurred. This was a foreseeable issue, yet nothing was done.

What is more, the Government have presided over an increasingly failing prison service, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, referred to. The prison service actually fosters alienation and radicalisation; the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, referred to an instance of that. It is so overcrowded and understaffed that effective rehabilitation programmes are, in most cases, no more than a fantasy. Prisons and the probation service are in crisis. A RUSI commentary earlier this month found self-harm was at a record level, that the service struggles

“to provide adequate rehabilitation and community supervision services to offenders post-release”,

and that staff shortages mean weekly case-load targets cannot be met.

The Prison Reform Trust reminds us how overcrowded our prisons are. The prison population already exceeds the number of available decent cell spaces by around 8,000. In practice, the Government do not have a prison policy. The numbers do not add up, and our jails are in chaos. In the final days of the last Parliament, the House of Commons Justice Committee noted that since 2016, just three years ago, the Government had made 378 separate and largely unmet promises on prisons. As the committee put it, the Government’s approach is “policy by press release.”

In 2014, the then Prisons Minister—I think there have been five since then, but I may have missed one or two along the way—asked me to review the self-inflicted deaths of young people in prison custody. My report was published the following year and concluded that, because of staff shortages and the physical condition of the estate, the prison environment was grim, bleak and demoralising to the spirit. Operational staffing levels were so inadequate that prisoners could not be sufficiently engaged in purposeful activity and that time was not spent in a constructive and valuable way. Planned core day activities that might help rehabilitation were cancelled. Even medical and mental health appointments were being missed because there were insufficient staff to escort prisoners to those appointments within the prison.

This has not got significantly better in the last four years. In fact, the situation is worse. The Bill is urgent only because nothing was done to address the underlying situation much earlier. The Government have known that some terrorist prisoners were subject to automatic release. This is not something the Minister and his colleagues have suddenly discovered, yet nothing was done until now. The Government have presided over a rapid deterioration in our Prison Service, which has faced budget cuts substantially above those in other departments.

My report in 2015 and successive reports from the Chief Inspector of Prisons have highlighted the appalling conditions in our jails. Peter Clarke in his most recent report says that

“far too many of our jails have been plagued by drugs, violence, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to meaningful rehabilitative activity.”

The Government’s response has been too little and too slow. Ian Acheson, whose report has been referred to several times, in his review for the Government on Islamist extremism in prisons highlighted issues affecting precisely the prisoners whom this Bill is concerned with. The Government’s response to his recommendations has at best been patchy.

The Government have no excuse. They knew what was happening: prisoners were coming up to the time of automatic release and would present a danger to the public. All this Bill does is postpone the problem: prisoners will still come up for release, maybe a few months later or maybe a year or so later, but it will still happen. The key question is whether the Prison and Probation Service and the Parole Board will have sufficient experienced and suitable expert staff available to ensure that individual prisoners of concern are receiving a proper level of supervision, proper assessment and appropriate support and that deradicalisation and rehabilitation are delivered. As an aside, could the Government assure us that they actually know what works in deradicalisation?

We on this side of the House do not question the need for the right measures to be put in place to protect the public. Automatic release is not appropriate and it is right that there be a proper assessment of the risk that individuals may pose before they are released. However, the Government have been silent on the resources needed and, without proper assurances on that, the Bill is no more than a sticking plaster that will do no more than provide a late temporary fix to a problem that is of the Government’s own making.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, clearly these are grave matters worthy of serious debate, and I am obliged to all Members of the House for contributing to that debate.

Let us be clear at the outset. This Bill is not a complete answer to the challenges we face with regard to terrorism, the ability to counter terrorism, radicalisation and the ability to deradicalise individuals. There will be a great deal more to do, and the Government have made it clear that they intend to follow through and do a great deal more in this area, including the proposal for a counterterrorism Bill that has already been referred to. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, suggested that such a Bill may or may not emerge, but at present we are not anticipating a dissolution of Parliament. Therefore, I believe with a degree of confidence that we will be bringing that forward.

Over and above that, noble Lords will recollect that last month, following the terrorist attack at Fishmongers’ Hall, the Government announced a major overhaul of counterterrorism, prison and probation, a proposal to double the number of specialist probation officers working with terrorists, the introduction of further legislation, such as the counterterrorism Bill, and the creation of a new counterterrorism programme and intervention centre. I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, observed: we also have to delve into the efficacy and effectiveness of many of these programmes in order to determine our direction of travel. We anticipate that the new centre will represent a major shift in our capability to intervene with terrorist offenders to try to identify the risk they pose, and to bring to bear the correct specialists to work with them to reduce such risks while they are in custody.

Of course, turning a terrorist away from the mindset they have is no easy task. It requires not only expertise and application but eventually a willingness on the part of the offender to engage with such programmes, and to do so genuinely. Noble Lords have pointed out that there have been instances when it is apparent that some individuals have embraced these programmes, but in a wholly superficial, indeed false, way. That is a further challenge that we face.

There is clearly more that can be done. Indeed, the proposed centre will prioritise three things. The first is the need to build the evidence base for what works for terrorist offenders, using the best evaluation approaches we can identify, not just in the UK but in other jurisdictions. Secondly, the centre will have capacity to respond to new threats and challenges with regard to terrorist offending, because those will almost certainly emerge. Thirdly, it will try to bring to bear highly trained staff to deliver intervention programmes, which will include bolstering the cohort of counterterrorism specialists, psychologists and trained chaplains who deliver theological and ideological interventions.

This is not entirely novel. Since 2010, significant work has taken place to try to develop and improve counterterrorism interventions. The primary intervention, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has been the Healthy Identity intervention, which is a one-to-one programme that supports desistance and disengagement from extremism by targeting the social and psychological drivers of such offending. Again, I do not seek to minimise the challenges that will be faced in developing and applying these programmes, and, indeed, learning from these programmes, because that will be part of the process.

I shall turn for a moment to one issue that has driven the regret Motion and some of the amendments: whether, or to what extent, the Bill’s proposals have retrospective effect, and whether they are consistent and lawful pursuant to Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. On the Article 7 point, let me say clearly that I concur entirely with the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the provisions of this Bill are entirely consistent and allowable under Article 7 of the convention. Any doubts raised by reference to the Del Río Prada v Spain case, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, have, in my view, been dispelled by the recent decision in Abedin v the United Kingdom. It is for that reason that a certificate has been signed, pursuant to Section 19 of the Human Rights Act, to confirm that the provisions of the Bill are consistent with convention obligations.

There is the further issue of common law. As was observed, there is no common-law prohibition on retrospective legislation. There is a presumption against it, and it is a presumption that has to be addressed. But before we address it, we have to understand what is meant in this context by the retrospective element in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, complained that the common-law principle, as he put it, against retrospection was being intruded upon because of the Bill’s intention to increase the length of prison sentences. With respect, that is not what the Bill does—but, of course, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, also referred to increasing the length of sentences retrospectively. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested that this was Executive interference with judicial sentencing.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

If any prisoner had understood that his sentence was four years but that automatically, because the Secretary of State had a duty to do so, it was reduced to two years, he would feel that retrospectively his situation had changed. I said nothing in that context about the Executive. What I did say is that the Executive have been wilfully failing in not bringing forward proposals much earlier to address some of these problems.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I misheard the noble Lord, and I apologise to him for that. I had understood him to refer to the issue of the sentence being retrospectively changed, as reflected in the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks.

The point I wish to make has already been touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The position is simply this. There is an established line of case law up to the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal that a court should pass a sentence that is commensurate to the offending behaviour in relation to the offence committed, without any consideration of any possible early release. In other words, early release under licence and the various ramifications of that are an irrelevant consideration to the courts on sentencing. That is reflected by the Court of Appeal decisions in Round in 2009 and Bright in 2008. So it is not a case of retrospective change to sentence. Somebody is sentenced to a period of, say, four years. There is then a statutory provision whereby the Secretary of State comes under a duty to release at a certain point in the sentence. The current position with regard to the type of sentence we are dealing with is release at the halfway stage. In response to an observation by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, I say that the Secretary of State has a duty to obtemper that statutory obligation and, I suspect, would be faced with a writ of habeas corpus if he did not. There is a clear duty there, and there is no way around that.

The true retrospective nature of this legislation, insofar as it is at all retrospective, comes from the application of the provisions with regard to the Parole Board, with which everyone appears to be in agreement. Under the present statute, a prisoner is entitled to automatic release at the halfway stage. We now propose—and everyone appears to agree—that this should not be the case and that they should have to satisfy the requirements of the Parole Board before they are released. So a prisoner who anticipated automatic release will no longer be able to do so, because the provision with regard to the Parole Board is that it must be satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should be confined. That is the retrospective element in all this.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, then asked: why apply that at the two-thirds point in the sentence rather than at the halfway point? There are a number of reasons behind the provision in the Bill extending the period of imprisonment from half to two-thirds of the sentence. The most immediate was reflected in an observation from noble Lords that this Bill gave a breathing space. That is certainly required at present, because we face a situation in which we are placing a quite considerable obligation on the Parole Board to bring forward expertise and examination of individual prisoners, in circumstances in which a number of these offenders are due for release at the halfway point in a matter of days. In the interim period, therefore, it is necessary that we are able to accommodate that very real risk.

In addition, it brings the sentence into a position that is consistent with other sentences, where the period is two-thirds. We suggest that it allows for a further period of incapacitation of terrorist offenders—it may seem limited in some instances, but not in all—and confers a degree of public confidence on those concerned about recent behaviour and recent events.

Streatham Incident

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, with regard to surveillance it respectfully appears to me that it was effective in the circumstances. I am not going to go into the detail of the circumstances but it was a sudden action by the individual in question, which was swiftly responded to by the police in an effective manner. As regards control orders, I remind the noble Lord that the licence conditions that now apply upon release to a prisoner, such as in the case in point, may include particular conditions about where they may reside. For example, the conditions may say that they must reside in a particularised hostel; they may also provide that they have to report in at certain times of the day or on a certain number of occasions during its course. They therefore effect a degree of control on the conduct of an individual. There has to be a careful balance between ensuring adequate supervision of such persons and not impeding unnecessarily, or in a disproportionate manner, their civil liberties.

I come on to the question of retrospective sentencing. We consider that we have taken a proportionate approach to that. The noble Lord suggests that there is a significant risk of legal challenge; with respect, I do not agree. It respectfully appears to me that the jurisprudence of the European Convention, and that in our common law, indicate that we are entitled to address the custodial element of a fixed sentence and vary it without impinging upon any fundamental rights of the prisoner in question. I am not going to say that there is no prospect of challenge; of course, there is always such a prospect in these circumstances, but we take that prospect into account when deciding the appropriate response to the present case.

With regard to the review to be carried out of MAPPA, I cannot give the precise details of the remit that is to be given. However, I will write to the noble Lord setting out that remit and place a copy of the letter in the House Library for noble Lords.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. However, it gives a rather rosy picture of conditions in our prisons and the extent to which there can be, and is, effective supervision of people of this nature. I would be interested to know what progress has been made on the recommendations made to the former Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove, by Ian Acheson, a former prison governor, on what needed to be done about extremism in prisons. He made the specific recommendation that any prisoner in this category should have end-to-end case management from the point at which they are admitted to prison, right the way through to their discharge into the community. That is akin to the recommendation I made when I looked at the problems of young people in prison and at risk of self-harm—that direct, personal oversight by somebody who knows the individual is essential. Has that been implemented?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we have accepted the recommendations of the Acheson review. They were essentially brought down to about 11 key points, which we have sought to implement. For example, I again notice the introduction of the desistence and disengagement policy, which is intended to ensure that there is mentoring on a one-to-one basis with prisoners who have been convicted of these serious terrorist offences.

Serco

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, what lessons have the Ministry of Justice and other government departments learned from this instance? In particular, are the Government satisfied with the adequacy of the contract management arrangements that they have in place, and have they enhanced them as a result of the various incidents that have been discussed in your Lordships’ House today?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Lord for his question. In December 2018, the Chief Executive of the Civil Service wrote to central government departments asking each to include contract audit activity as part of the implementation of their outsourcing review. As part of this programme of audits, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence have invoked contractual audit rights on five contracts with Serco, and those audits are under way.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has said many things with regard to Article 50, but the Court of Justice of the European Union has given its ruling on its interpretation of Article 50, and it speaks for itself.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord told the House that the Government will act within the spirit of the legislation and propose a vote in the House of Commons by 21 January, although that is rather late. How much credence can be placed in the Government acting in the spirit of something when yesterday morning, Ministers were fanning out around the country promising that the House of Commons would be voting today? Is this not a Government who break their promises and break the undertakings they have given?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

No, my Lords, this is a Government who act, and will continue to act, in the public interest.