Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and to have listened to the erudite speech of my noble friend Lady Meacher. Like many in this House, I have personal reasons, family reasons—the painful and dreadful death of my own father—why I may be inclined to bend towards sympathy for the Bill, but I oppose it, with a heavy heart. I do so knowing so many experiences of multitudes of those I can call friends, and connections, who feel fearful of what is now proposed before this House, let alone before the country.

The saving grace of the Bill is the final protection of a judge in the High Court, who will make sure that the medical determinations are fair and accurate. Now, I realise that this is not a debate about justice or our justice system, or about race. However, I speak as an advocate of many black people and black organisations, and evidence earlier this year from the Joint Committee of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, which was looking into equal opportunities in health, revealed the fear that black communities, and especially women, have of unfair decisions made by health practitioners, as well as the massive fear in limited minority communities about judicial decisions—especially those of High Court judges.

For 38 years, as the founding chairman of Crime Concern and Catch22, I have visited prisons on a regular monthly basis, and I still do so. I have piles of correspondence about miscarriages of justice and massive misunderstandings of judicial decisions. There is not confidence that, for those who are probably often written off as the “pass by people”, the elements of this structure will deliver a fair opportunity to be considered or heard.

I wish that this was a Bill requiring the other place to invest massively in palliative care and hospital-based pain relief, and to endorse the hospice movement. After all, that is what we need more. We do not need to go down a road on which we know the slippery slopes are already evident—yes, Canada—and when we know that motives are malicious. People often act ungenerously when there is somebody of nuisance around them. When the system is strained, as it is now, it is not helpful to allow them easy ways through, especially when there are those who fear that the decisions made by courts are not fair at the moment.

Child Trust Funds: People with a Learning Disability

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, we have decided to consult, and that is a very important point. It should not be thought that there is nothing, so to speak, on the other side of the argument. I have received representations from third sector organisations that are very concerned that people with disabilities should retain the protections that the Mental Capacity Act, in which the noble and learned Lord played such an important part, gives them. The consultation will ask for views on how we balance these important, but sometimes opposing, principles.

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, this Question raises the wider challenge of inadequate financial literacy for underage and mature individuals with special learning needs. As a parent of young adults now seduced into lock-in accounts by commercial banks, I ask whether there not a public duty that could fall on the Post Office to provide community adult numeracy and financial literacy skills. Should the Government consider investing in designated accounts with higher incentive rates for those less able to grasp the complexities of mortgages, investments and standard banking and thus less able to use the market to make money grow?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, began this debate by saying that the wheels of justice never stop turning. I remind the House that in the last gracious Speech in December 2019, we had the promise of a royal commission on the criminal justice system. Subsequently, there were five Questions in this House, and every single time there was evasion from the Ministry of Justice, which said that the purposes of the royal commission were still under consideration. Now it has been abandoned, unless the Minister can tell us in his reply that it will be coming back. That is a massive disappointment to all of us who have been concerned about the reality of justice for those who feel that miscarriage rather than fairness is the normal experience.

This gracious Speech rightly and understandably prioritises victims, and everybody will have sympathy and understanding for that. But there is very little understanding of the needs of those who are in prison now or who may face prison and where miscarriages of justice are normative. I identify myself wholeheartedly with the brilliant speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Paddick, who both identified the treatment of prisoners. A junior Minister in the Ministry of Justice—Alex Chalk MP in another place—issued a statement just the other day saying that prison leaders should not refer to people in prison as “inmates” or “residents”; they must be referred to harshly as “prisoners” so that they can experience the reality of their vileness and crimes. This is not a right and responsible attitude to take towards those who must deserve dignity and human rights. The Government should not be playing to the agenda of the Daily Express, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph in seeking to constantly push up sentences and to make prisons harder and harsher.

There are those who would respond by saying, “So you are on the side of prisoners and the vile?” Well, let me cite the example of one young man who came to see me just three weeks ago. A young man by the name of Brandon, 24 years of age, was falsely accused and held on remand for 11 months in 2020, during which he was held in his cell for 23 hours and 45 minutes of every single day. When the charges against him were subsequently proved to be false, there was no apology, no compensation and no support. He was crushed as an individual and released with no recognition of the injustice done to him simply because police officers decided that he was to be a target. He now desperately needs support and help.

We see today in the newspapers the wonderful story of the brilliant law firm Hogan Lovells, which spent eight years fighting for compensation for two black men in North Carolina who have just received $75 million as a consequence of falsified convictions 31 years ago when both men were teenagers sent to prison on an inappropriate, inaccurate and non-just basis. This is the largest-ever payout in American criminal justice and the case was pursued entirely pro bono by the international law firm.

In the UK, we do not have a system whereby the Criminal Cases Review Commission brings forward such cases with any speed or determination. We simply allow those who are in prison to falter and fail. I have in my hand just one week’s worth of letters from prisoners telling me of issues of injustice and miscarriage in their cases. One man in particular, whose mother and aunt died as a result of the coronavirus, as a consequence sought to ask the prison if he could watch his mother’s funeral on YouTube. He was denied the opportunity to see his mother buried. That is not fairness and justice, treating prisoners with dignity or a recognition of their human rights.

We therefore urgently need a royal commission and for it to recognise that, yes, there are victims but there are also people whom injustice has locked away for too long.

EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, these reports and this debate give us an opportunity to look away from some of the more myopic aspects of the referendum discussions so far. So much of the conversation to date has focused on what the UK may get back, how much richer we might become or how much poorer we might become. One of the great institutions of the European Union, one of the great roles it does well, is to focus and co-ordinate international aid and humanitarian work. That is an important dimension of the EU’s work which, ironically, is not mentioned in these reports but deserves our attention. After the United States, being the largest cash provider of aid but one of the worst percentage providers by GDP, the European Union comes next, and then comes the United Kingdom, followed by a series of smaller nations. We are proud of our 0.7% of GNI contribution to international aid assistance, and of everything that DfID and the UK do, but, in contributing some 20% to EU aid budgets, the UK also punches well above its own capacity. We do more for fragile states, we do more to support the development of democracy, and we do more to respond to the challenges of climate change and continuing desperation in our world.

While we have had politically insensitive conversations about what it means to separate from other rich parts of the world, almost nothing has been said about what that separation would mean for the poorest people in the world. The European institutions created to facilitate collective aid had a good purpose in mind: if we could have more effective co-ordination, greater focus, a clearer line of sight, we could achieve those development objectives which raise the collective boat of wealth around the world, empower markets to work better for our exports and, importantly, prevent some of the tragedies of migration and trafficking that we are now witnessing.

We have to remember that, although the effort focused on the problems of migration from Middle Eastern countries, particularly Syria, across to Turkey and Greece has been the subject of media attention, an equivalent number of people are coming across the Mediterranean from poorer African countries where development aid is fundamental to addressing some of the most desperate conditions created by climate change, poor harvests and inadequate agricultural production methods. The European Union has a massive amount of investment to give in not only technology but techniques, and it improves the UK’s position as a supporter of development in the world to have the European Union acting in concert.

An article in the Economist last week reflected on the disparate problems of fractured aid:

“In one big way … the proliferation of donors harms poor countries. Aid now comes from ever more directions”—

it might be welcome that more money is coming from countries which never gave money in the first place, particularly China and, in some cases, India—

“in ever smaller packages: according to AidData, the average project was worth $1.9m in 2013, down from $5.3m in 2000. Mozambique has 27 substantial donors in the field of health alone, not counting most non-Western or private givers. Belgium, France, Italy, Japan and Sweden each supplied less than $1m. Such fragmentation strains poor countries, both because of the endless report-writing and because civil servants are hired away to manage donors’ projects.”

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred to Africa as one of the most important next-level markets for our goods and services, and he is right: the 54 countries of the continent could provide phenomenal opportunities for the United Kingdom, let alone the other countries of the EU. But it will not be so if we undermine and destroy the impact of our collective aid investment, if we reduce our capacity for aid because we wreck our economy by foolishly pulling out of the European Union without foresight to the poor, and if we continue to lose sight of our collective responsibility to stand up for those who are more desperate than even this argument around the referendum has been.

Criminal Justice System

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for initiating this debate. I am in gratitude to him for forcing us to come to a place where we address the issues that are filling the newspapers and troubling us on the airwaves at the moment. I am reminded that nearly four years ago in my maiden speech to this House I talked about that subject. I did so from the position of chairman of Crime Concern, of which I had been a trustee for 21 years and chairman for 15 years. Two years ago we merged Crime Concern with the Rainer Foundation, creating Catch22.

Putting two organisations together of equivalent size, both of which have been involved in crime prevention commitment—in the case of Crime Concern since 1988 and in the case of the Rainer Foundation for more than 100 years—created a very big charitable organisation. Even now—I declare an interest as vice-president of Catch22—we are but a tiny dent on the difficulties of the problem. I also declare an interest as an ambassador for Make Justice Work, a new organisation bringing together the themes of crime prevention and policing, and seeking to address a different route out of the problem.

When I made my maiden speech I spoke in a debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Turner, in response to his report on pension reform. My point then, and I will make the point again—it has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, in his opening remarks—was that the cost of the deficit in the pension problem identified by the noble Lord, Lord Turner, was about £23 billion. The cost of the intervention systems that we have at the moment that fail so miserably, according to the 2007 figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, was £22.7 billion. There is a correlation between issues that need solving in wider society and the costs that we spend on failure, and how we are prepared to address those two things.

I will not add in any way to the spray of statistics that we have had in this debate. It has been illuminating. Anyone reading Hansard will discover every conceivable nuance of the issue. I shall focus on one option as an alternative and then make some suggestions. I was taken by an article in last week’s edition of Time magazine entitled “Sentence to Serving the Good Life in Norway”. For those who have not managed to read it, I am sure that it would be available through the Library. It is a review of Norway’s criminal justice system. We have already had reference from the noble Lord, Lord Low, as well as from others, that we might learn wisely from the ways in which our continental partners, particularly the Germans and the French, manage to keep many people out of prison. The article on Norway’s criminal justice system looked in particular at its open prison system.

It is important for the sake of the House if noble Lords would bear with me while I read a small part of this article because it is extremely illuminating. The principal point is simply that treating inmates humanely causes them to come out better people. The article states:

“In an age when countries from Britain to the U.S. cope with exploding prison populations by building ever larger—and, many would say, ever harsher—prisons, Bastoy”—

the leading Norwegian prison—

“seems like an unorthodox, even bizarre, departure. But Norwegians see the island”,

prison,

“as the embodiment of their country's long-standing penal philosophy: that traditional, repressive prisons do not work, and that treating prisoners humanely boosts their chances of reintegrating into society. ‘People in other countries say that what Norway does is wrong,’ says Lars, who is serving a 16-year sentence for serious drug offenses. ‘But why does Norway have the world's lowest murder rate? Maybe we're doing something that really works.’

Countries track recidivism rates differently, but even an imperfect comparison suggests that Norway's system produces overwhelmingly positive results. Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway's prisoners end up back in jail”.

I shall repeat that—20 per cent.

“In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%. Of course, Norway's low level of criminality gives it a massive advantage. Its prison roll lists a mere 3,300 inmates, a rate of 70 per 100,000 people, compared with 2.3 million in the U.S., or 753 per 100,000—the highest rate in the world”.

We all know the figures for our own here in the UK.

What is the core of the answer? The article illuminates it extremely well. The men and in a very few cases the women who have to become necessary prisoners—we have all discussed the difference between what is necessary detention and what is casual detention for the sake of a failing criminal justice system—with harsher, long-term sentences for more serious crimes, are treated as the citizens whom they will become in wider society after their sentence. The whole point of the Norwegian prison system, exemplified by the new prisons that have been built, is that it humanises the prisoner. It deals specifically with aspects of mental health and drug addiction, absolutely locks in on prevention and care for the offender beyond prison, and deals with skilling to enable the prisoner to succeed outside. That humane approach, which may have its critics upon analysis, is one dimension that I suggest we need to look at.

I just want to put before your Lordships seven additional options for thinking about this problem, many of which have already been addressed in our debate. First, we should agree with and enable the Lord Chancellor to end custodial sentences of under 12 months and we should mandate community sentences, where reasonable. Secondly, we should aim to institute reparations for victims by offenders and institute restorative justice. Enough debate on the issue has taken place. We know it works and we just need to do it. Thirdly, we should get serious about mental health and drug treatment intervention outside as well as within prison, and we should know how to deal with those issues by making the investment necessary in our mental health and care services in advance of an offence.

Fourthly, as has already been pointed out so brilliantly by the right reverend Prelate, we should invest in front-line NGOs like the Catch22s, the Nacros and a long list of many others who have been dealing with these issues from a preventive position for generations—but know their minor place, feel their scrabble for resources, fight for their voices to be heard, and consistently address the issues with Ministers who always say how vital they are and then bypass them to the standard solution. The time has come to stop messing around with the importance of front-line NGOs and charities, to see the dignity of their offer and to get serious about crime prevention activity. It is far better to stop the crimes than worry about the problems of prisoners afterwards, but both must be taken into account.

Fifthly, we must dignify our necessary prison system. I have visited a number of prisons over many years. Some look good and others are places of despair and desperation. We all know that, and we need to reform what “Her Majesty’s pleasure” really means and looks like. We need to be prepared to invest in humanising the way in which we treat criminals. That is an uncomfortable message but, from the experience of other countries which all of us could learn well, I can tell the House that if we treat prisoners as potential and in fact actual future citizens of our society we could have them as effective future citizens of our society. Sixthly, we definitely need to enshrine family-based intervention at the earliest possible point. Building the big society means recognising intelligently who all the social service modelling tells us the problem people and communities are, and gathering together the resources of voluntary agencies and statutory organisations to make the interventions necessary because of the benefits they bring.

Lastly, we must allocate the necessary resources now and invest up front in order to cut costs in the long term, and to give back to society the sense of freedom of knowing that the criminal justice system is there both for the protection of those who are potential victims and for the preparation of those who have been criminals to be normal citizens of the future. That investment is small-scale when compared with the costs of failure.