Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, we have had a veritable panoply of talent on display in maiden speeches today. Although I have yet to have the opportunity to meet the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, it gives me the greatest pleasure to be able to congratulate him on an excellent maiden speech. I see from his published curriculum vitae, which he referred to in his remarks, that the themes that he proposes to follow in your Lordships' House are equality, fairness and justice. It is fair to say that he has made an excellent start in fulfilling that pledge today.

As the noble Lord told us, his major work has concerned the plight of widows. Women are the first and major victims of conflict and violence. Sexual abuse and widowhood are the inevitable consequences, and it is really excellent news that the noble Lord is focusing attention on these unfortunate women and the plight of widows generally.

The other reason why I wanted to congratulate the noble Lord is not just for what he has said but for who he is and what he has achieved. I see from his CV that he was born in the Punjab in India in 1943 and that he has now come here and is a British citizen. At a time when, too often, the media are preoccupied with problems with immigration, it is good to be able to redress the balance with an example of someone who has arrived in this country and made such a significant contribution to our national life. I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say that we look forward to hearing from him again very soon.

I am of course pleased to able to support my noble friend Lord Dholakia. People say that the progress of legislation in this House is made up of equal proportions of perspiration and inspiration. There is plenty of inspiration on display here and, of course, the noble Lord has shown perspiration by the number of times he has pushed and kept this Bill moving forward and reintroduced it.

As some Members of the House will be aware, I am chairing a task force that is looking at the bureaucratic and regulatory burdens inhibiting the establishment and development of small charities and voluntary groups. We have been taking evidence for some four months and hope to publish by Easter, and we have received many submissions giving examples of the bureaucratic burdens, some of which verge on the risible. But there is a read-across to my noble friend’s Bill and purposes, and I shall return to that in a few minutes, after saying some words of endorsement of the Bill itself.

As many noble Lords have pointed out, we have to face the fact that the level of reoffending among prisoners on release from jail is unacceptable, on at least two counts. First, there is the issue in human terms, with a group of people locked in a cycle of deprivation which is affecting not just them but their relatives. Most depressingly, when you visit young offender institutions and learn how many people there are already fathers, what will that mean for those children and what chance will they have to fulfil any chance of a reasonable life with reasonable aspirations? In this, I very much follow the comments made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield. Secondly, there is the issue of financial terms: the cost to the state and therefore to the taxpayer is not inconsiderable.

I am sure that we need to agree steps that can be taken to reduce reoffending rates. I am very pleased, as other noble Lords are, to see the emphasis given to that in the recent Ministry of Justice consultation document, Breaking the Cycle, for all surveys show that the key to stopping reoffending is to have a home—somewhere to live—and the opportunity for a job with a chance of earning a living wage. However, we have to do that against a background of affording a proper degree of protection to the public, because all of us who wish to achieve this happy state have to guard against the very adverse publicity that will occur if people who are released commit some terrible crime and end up on the front page of the newspapers. That sets back the whole cause and case at which my noble friend’s Bill is aimed. This Bill nevertheless represents a significant step towards achieving and reconciling these difficult and often conflicting objectives.

I am afraid that it is not just about changing the law; it is also about changing attitudes. Turning briefly to some of the work that we in the task force have been doing, it is clear that charities can provide a very helpful route back to full-time paid employment. They do so for the following reasons: first, they operate in a more non-judgmental and more supportive way than commercial operations can, so that there is less potential for damage to the newly released prisoner’s often fragile sense of self-esteem. Secondly, they provide a more flexible approach to work. Newly released prisoners can find it hard to live and respond to the demands of a nine-to-five, five-days-a-week existence. They need an environment in which to build up their endurance to that pace of life. It is like someone coming straight out of hospital and trying to run a marathon; like a runner, they need to develop their strength. Finally and most importantly, they provide an opportunity to help others. Often, the disadvantaged of our society and released prisoners have an opportunity to set their own lives in the context of others.

Yet there are a couple of significant impediments to achieving that happy outcome. The first, too often, appears to be our social security system—not in the regulations themselves but in their interpretation in jobcentres up and down the country. From time to time, we have had evidence that working for a charity is seen as a reason to reduce the social security entitlements because the person in question should be required to take any paid work in preference to that. That seems to me an entirely unhelpful approach which robs charities of volunteers, prevents ex-prisoners moving towards full-time employment and, in the longer term, probably costs the state money. As I say, regulations do not require that but the size of the workforce in the social security system and the rapid turnover of staff often mean that regulations are not properly understood.

The other inhibition, both for charities and commercial companies, is the system of the Criminal Records Bureau that was referred to in the Nacro briefing and whose checks have grown exponentially in recent years. Here, I shall respond to the challenge laid down by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, in her excellent speech. Let me be clear to begin with: this is not going to be a rant about the Criminal Records Bureau regime. We need proper protection for children and vulnerable adults but there are some important improvements to be made in administering the regime. The first is in the frequency of checks. It may astonish the House to know that 100,000 people in this country were checked 40 times each last year and that the winner of the table was someone who was checked 53 times. That is because there is no passporting system. We have a passport; it would enable individual health authorities, schools and government departments, which currently all require a separate CRB check, to carry the record of the individual. When a Punch and Judy man operating on Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne beaches has to be checked three times, things have reached a pretty pass.

The second aspect is to give the person being checked control of his or her passport. That is because, in the first instance, you can be certain that the contents are accurate. There is quite a lot of attribution of the wrong data to the wrong person. Secondly, if my noble friend’s Bill comes to fruition, ensuring that the record is struck clean at the appropriate moment will be very important. It also enables the person to set the offence in context, so that they can have a chance to say, “I did something wrong. I was this age. It was this offence. Will you therefore please consider my application?”, on all fours. The present system whereby the potential employer and the individual get the check at the same time means that the individual has no chance to set the scene and is therefore always trying to play catch-up and redress the balance of the impression left with the potential employer.

I hope that the CRB will be prepared to give a sympathetic hearing to these sorts of proposals. However, the really depressing attitude and terrible situation is the frequent absence of any self-confidence and common sense among our fellow citizens on the value of CRB checks. The default option has become to have everybody checked every time, as if this somehow reduced risks. It does not reduce the risk in any way. It merely provides air cover for the company or organisation and shifts responsibility to somebody else. How often does one see, in the evidence about child abuse cases, for example, phrases like, “Oh, but we had him or her CRB checked”, as if that were somehow an excuse.

That default option of asking for CRB checks puts off people and inhibits employment, and the CRB checks are not necessary. If you read the CRB regulations, they refer to “frequent and intensive contact” with children or vulnerable adults. That phrase is not given sufficient weight by employers, be they charities, central or local government, the NHS, schools or commercial companies.

We move in these circumstances from issues which are stupid and silly to other instances where they are absolutely malign. Noble Lords will have seen the story of the ladies in Gloucester Cathedral, arranging flowers. They have had to have CRB checks because, in executing their duties as flower arrangers, they come into contact with the choir, which of course contains young persons. The jobsworth who managed to think up that particular CRB check is hard to imagine.

More malign is the issue represented by a retired doctor, aged 67, wishing to give a couple of hours a week to helping out Alzheimer’s patients, who had done so without trouble for several years. Then the decision was made that she should have a CRB check. As a matter of principle, she said they she was not going to do this. The society for whom she was working said that it would fill in the form for her. She said, “No, that is not the point. The society should trust me and recognise what I have done in the past, that I am a volunteer giving up my free time and that I am not ‘frequent and intensive’ in my association with the people I am helping”. There the matter rested, and she no longer provides the service to the Alzheimer’s patients that she had been helping before. If a doctor, who has an audit trail that probably stretches for 40 years since she first qualified, is unable to proceed without these sorts of intrusive checks, what chance for an ex-prisoner?

To conclude, of course I support my noble friend’s Bill. I hope very much that it will have a speedy passage in one form or another to the statute book. However, there is a lot to do to change public attitudes in society among our fellow citizens on this important topic.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, I shall answer the questions first before going into the main body of my speech. I will attempt an impassioned peroration and I ask my noble friend Lord Dholakia to trust me. The Government intend to take on the main thrust of the Bill. We are in the process of consultation based on the Green Paper. Therefore, we would like to take on board the main parts of the Bill. I offer my noble friend full consultation on the form of government legislation. I do so with a sense of urgency and also in the full knowledge that if I do not deliver, he will be back with the persistence that he has shown already.

I turn to the question of Scotland. I am going there in about a month to talk to Scottish Ministers about their experience. The issue has been raised of bringing the work of the YJB into the MoJ. The matter will be fully debated in the Public Bodies Bill. I will explain to the House our intentions at that point. As I have said before at the Dispatch Box, the Youth Justice Board was one of the great achievements of the previous Government. It did a great deal to push the treatment of young offenders to the top of the agenda. However, we believe that we can justify bringing its work in-house to the MoJ without diminishing its effectiveness. We hope to learn some of the lessons of the youth justice experience over the past 10 years and apply them to the treatment of adult offenders. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will be patient. I shall be back at the Dispatch Box at some stage next week with the Public Bodies Bill, because I assured my noble friend Lord Taylor that when we reached the YJB part of the Bill, I would do my duty and defend the decision.

It is good to end this turbulent week in the House by demonstrating both to ourselves and to the public what we do best, and by showing the side of the House that people most admire, which is our ability to draw on the experience and expertise of Members in a matter of public interest and concern. I fully share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Bach. His stewardship at the Ministry of Justice is still highly regarded, not least by me. I share with him the fact that in piloting a liberal approach to these matters, we have to carry with us people who have a genuine fear of crime and a genuine concern for its victims. There is not a great deal of difference between us. We are talking about getting the balance right between proper protection of the public and a genuine offer of the opportunity for rehabilitation and reform.

Before I go into the body of my speech, I will say that I take real pride in the fact that the three maiden speakers today all came from the Liberal Democrat Benches. They all demonstrated that the new intake maintains the reputation for quality on those Benches—a reputation that is appreciated on all sides of the House. Pause for those on all Benches to say, “Hear, hear”.

As was pointed out, my noble friend Lord Dholakia has vast experience as president of NACRO and in the way that he has associated NACRO, UNLOCK and the Prison Reform Trust in this campaign. He has rightly argued that the rehabilitation periods in the current Act are far too long, and prevent rehabilitated ex-offenders from making a fresh start. The Government have sympathy with that position; we believe that one of the more effective ways to ensure that an ex-offender becomes re-integrated into society is to offer them the chance of stability which, among other things, means employment.

The Government are well aware that the Act has not been reformed since its introduction in 1974. The result is that it does not reflect current, more severe sentencing practice and it can, therefore, fail in its aim to help reformed offenders resettle into society. The long-standing criticisms of the Act include the fact that rehabilitation periods are too long, and they do not reflect the point at which the risk of re-offending reduces. Also, the threshold at which a conviction never becomes spent—that is, all those convictions which attract a sentence of more than 30 months—is seen as too low. At the same time, the exceptions order exempts a growing number of occupations from the Act. The legislation is also criticised for being over-complex and confusing, with the result that some people may not realise that they benefit from its application.

The Government are therefore looking at what can be done to address some of those criticisms and to get a better balance between rehabilitation and public protection. The Government are currently consulting on potential changes to the Act through our Green Paper, which has been referred to several times, on sentencing and rehabilitation. The Green Paper explains that the proposals we are considering include: broadening the scope of the Act so that it covers all offenders who have a determinate sentence; reducing the length of rehabilitation periods; and producing a clearer, simplified classification of rehabilitation periods.

The consultation paper also asks for views on how we do more for young offenders, a point referred to by several speakers, so that minor convictions as a juvenile do not blight their future prospects, and how offenders with minor convictions a long time in their past, but who are subject to full disclosure of their convictions, might be treated.

We share similar aims to my noble friend Lord Dholakia and are committed to bring in reform in this area. It will also be apparent from the overall thrust of the Green Paper that rehabilitation is very much at the heart of our approach. We believe that the right way to improve public safety and reduce the number of victims is to reduce reoffending, and that an important aspect of that is to ensure that rehabilitated ex-offenders are offered a chance to reintegrate fully into society.

I noted a number of points that noble Lords made. I will try to cover most of them in my reply, but I will also say that the consultation period ends on 3 March, so there is still a month and a half for individuals and organisations to respond to the Green Paper. I urge noble Lords with contacts with interested organisations or individually to make a response to the Green Paper. I assure noble Lords that the team within the MoJ working on our next steps in this area will receive the Hansard of this debate, as itself a constructive response to the problems that we are discussing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, together with a number of other noble Lords, pointed out that the whole question of criminal records needs to be looked at. A Home Office working party is considering the matter, including a number of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made about the system being over-prescriptive and over-bureaucratic. We are hoping that the outcome of the working party will enable us to clarify and simplify the matter. Anyone who is faced with these things, as I am, sees the same issues coming up time and time again. Getting to the bottom of some of these problems involves something less than rocket science, although of course there are dilemmas. The noble Baroness mentioned exclusion. There is the dilemma of the impact that exclusion will have on the excluded child, but there is also the dilemma of what not excluding the child does to the rest of the class or the ethos of the school. There is not always a simple solution.

I welcome the contribution of my noble friend Lord Addington, who reminded us how many of these issues are related to educational problems, including the area of his own expertise, dyslexia. This comes up time and again. Along with the Department of Health, we are trying to identify at an early stage the mental problems of one kind or another which are a factor in offending.

The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, asked me a question which I think was partly answered by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. He asked how many adults had a criminal conviction. The best answer that the Box could come up with was that about one-third of all men have a recordable conviction by the age of 30. That sounds like an enormous amount to me, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that research carried out in 2005 indicated that the figure was 25 per cent. I shall check the figure again, although I have heard it mentioned before. However, it is extremely worrying because it means that convictions leading to a criminal record are very widespread, and the blight might be wider than we think.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I understand that the figure includes traffic offences, and therefore you are included if you have a speeding conviction.

[Lord McNally]

That is a great relief. It probably brings the number of adults with a criminal conviction, other than for traffic offences, down to below 5 per cent. I worked for my noble friend Lord Ashdown when he was leader of the Liberal Democrats in the other place, and he would tell me that he was going to get back to Yeovil in a frighteningly short time. As a result, my noble friend is probably among those statistics, which just goes to show that offenders can be rehabilitated. The noble Lord has made an extremely helpful point but I do not think that it takes away from the fact that there is a considerable build-up of these convictions, and finding a way of getting them spent would be extremely helpful. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for his intervention.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield also made an extremely helpful speech, and I welcome his support for the Green Paper. Again, he emphasised that there should be a proportionate, not a vengeful, response in terms of the criminal justice system. Nobody denies that prison works in certain circumstances—for certain crimes for certain individuals. But—and this is an argument that we must win—so do the alternatives to prison. If we can get a proper debate about that—a proportionate response—then we have some success in moving forward.

I have already mentioned my noble friend Lady Kramer’s marvellous maiden speech. I was interested by her endorsement, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, of Latchmere House, although I have not yet worked out how you find the space to make these visits—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Bach, can advise me—other than by going into Opposition. Latchmere House looks an interesting place to go and have a look. On the question of not being re-elected, my noble friend might like to use a formula that I have used over the years. Whenever anybody asked me why I gave up being a Member of Parliament for Stockport South, I said that it was by public demand.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is another titan of this House in terms of this subject area and as president of UNLOCK. I thought that his comment about the chairman of UNLOCK, Mr Cummines, being given an OBE, was the living example of what we are trying to do. I hope that the Green Paper gives a real push to the work built on by the YJB of trying to prevent young offenders from coming into our prison system in the first place. To have fewer than 2,000 young people in custody of one kind or another is a success. That rate is falling. I also accept that the alternatives are intense.

I have been warned that I am running out of time. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I certainly think that Project Daedalus in London is an example that should be followed. We are hoping for other projects of similar local initiatives to be tested.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we have instinctively been on the same side on so many occasions over the past 40 years, and I am really glad that we are once again shoulder to shoulder on this. The only thing that I would say—this goes back to the original point of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, on victims—is that it is true that some of these young people are victims of their circumstances. However, without playing the old soldier, I should also say that I was born into a working-class area and I can think now of two lads in particular who were born into disruptive, dysfunctional families and had all the disadvantages that we find in people in young offender centres today—I had better not say what their chosen careers were, because some clever journalist will go and identify them—but they both succeeded past those backgrounds and made good lives for themselves. A disruptive, dysfunctional family does not mean that criminality is an inevitability; neither does poverty mean that criminality is inevitable—there is a choice. That is why I am very interested in rehabilitation. Some people have gone through this experience and said that it can be life-changing also for the young offender actually to meet their victim.

I say to my noble friend Lord Loomba that it is so valuable to have him, with his experience of work on poverty at home and abroad, as a Member of the House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that I thank him not only for his intervention but for his work. I hope that he can de-bureaucratise the setting up of charities and voluntary organisations. The other thing that has impressed me over the past few months is the fact that it is often the smaller charities and smaller voluntary organisations that are doing the interesting work in this field. So I say to the noble Lord: more power to your elbow.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, who also asked about the YJB, I pay tribute to the National Grid Transco scheme. However, I had better finish before the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, gets overexcited about what I am doing. I always think that it is rather funny that we have to stop when we actually have hours and hours of time, but, given the experience of the past few days, we had better stick to the rules, and I had better set a good example.

We are trying to build on some of the previous work, Green Papers and studies, and we are doing everything that we can to bring the research up to date. People are invited to read the Green Paper and to respond to the questions, and they have until 3 March to do so. As I said at the beginning of these remarks, I would like the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, to leave his Bill in abeyance because we are working urgently on the issue and will be introducing legislation. The Front Bench opposite knows how restricted I am in making commitments, but we are undertaking that work with urgency. I also promise my noble friend that he will be fully involved in our discussions so that when we bring forward proposals they will very much reflect the content and the spirit of the legislation that he has put before the House today. As I said before, this has been one of those debates that show the House of Lords at its best.