Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, in this matter and I am grateful to the Minister for the co-operation that he and his office have shown in relation to the amendment.

I declare an interest as the chairman of the Thames Valley Partnership, a criminal justice organisation which, as it says on the tin, is in the Thames Valley. I came across this problem in relation to some of the partnership’s work, as there is at the moment absolutely no statutory requirement for anyone, for instance, to inform a school that a child attending the school has a parent who is now in prison. The failure to do this is also often compounded by the embarrassment of the other parent. She is not going to mention it but the other children in the playground will know who has just had their father sent to prison and the bullying and exclusion start. This relatively short amendment, which imposes the lightest of requirements on the sentencers, fills an obvious lacuna.

I apologise to the House that I was not in attendance for the first 30 seconds of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low, so I do not know whether he mentioned the fact that the numbers are vast—200,000 children, which is three times the number in care. Obviously, that is not every year in terms of sentences but there is a long-term impact. Some of the work done by the Thames Valley Partnership shows that children increasingly, as they grow older into their teenage years, lose contact with the parent in long-term custody.

I hope the Government will accept the amendment. I understand there are a number of routes we can take between now and Report. Whether this is done through statute or practice direction, I hope that we can close the gap which leaves children vulnerable when some parts of the agencies of the state know what has happened but are not talking to one another.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, my name is on the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Low, has made a powerful speech. I do not intend to repeat his arguments and I shall not detain the Committee long.

In this case we must surely be seeking a balance. There is the need to ensure that the position of children or dependents of a person detained in custody is properly protected at a time of considerable trauma and family disturbance. The impact on the children of a parent, particularly a mother, going to jail has been well documented—it has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Low, and in briefings that your Lordships will have received from Barnardo’s and other NGOs—and that is one side of the balance. The other side of the balance is that we have to do this without tying up the courts in extensive bureaucratic form filling, much of which is time consuming and may prove ineffective. It is the balance between those two considerations that Amendment 55A seeks to achieve.

All that remains for me to do is to thank the Minister, his officials and, indeed, the Government for the courtesy they have shown in considering this difficult matter. I hope that this redrafted amendment will commend itself to him.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, and other noble Lords on Amendment 55A. I do so having supported a similar amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill in November 2013, to which an amendment was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, with my support. This is a straightforward request. It simply requires the courts to inquire whether individuals who are refused bail or are sentenced to prison have caring responsibilities for any children or vulnerable adults; and, if they do, to allow them or another—probably social services—to take the appropriate action to provide care and support. With representatives of the Families Left Behind campaign, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and I had a very good meeting with the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who was very helpful and encouraging to us at that time. I was even more encouraged later when I received a reply to a letter I had sent to Lord Justice Gross, the senior presiding judge in England and Wales, who agreed to reissue existing guidelines to the courts on this matter. Although that is certainly most welcome, we need to underpin the whole issue with this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

I have stressed that we consider it is too late if we are identifying dependants after the sentencing decision, but this has to be an issue that we look at in the criminal justice system as a whole. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Blair, will agree that the police have an important role here. It is often the police who have the best information on the existence of children and are likely to be the first authority to detain a person, and therefore to have an impact on any dependants. We need to ensure that information on dependants that is gathered at all stages of the criminal process is recorded and shared where appropriate.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My noble friend talks about the importance of this information being inquired about before sentencing. But is it not better that it should be inquired about at some point rather than not at all?

[Lord Faulks]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. It is important that it should be acquired before sentence rather than after sentence.

The Children Act 2004 already requires inter-agency co-operation to safeguard and promote the well-being of the child. It is important that probation staff—albeit that in the view of the noble Lord, Lord Low, they have become more concerned with offender management —those working in court or those preparing pre-sentence reports have a responsibility to consider the impact of custody on an offender’s children. All those who have read such reports will realise that that is almost always a central feature of them. If there is a likelihood of custody then children’s services will be alerted by probation to ensure that arrangements are in place to safeguard the well-being of any children. We are working to ensure that this system of assessment and referral is as robust as possible for both pre-sentence report assessment and court practice. This is a very important role for the new National Probation Service.

Much reference was made to the existence of troubled families, and quite rightly so. The Government understand the challenges and poor outcomes faced by children dealing with parental imprisonment, including higher risk of mental illness, poor educational outcomes and offending in later life. I agree it is important that these families receive appropriate support, alongside support for offenders’ rehabilitation and for tackling inter- generational offending. We have already had conversations with organisations such as Barnardo’s to discuss the issues raised by its report On the Outside, published in May this year, and intend to expand our discussions wider to other government colleagues, criminal justice system agencies and practitioners such as legal representatives.

The scope of this approach is potentially very wide—childcare is obviously a pressing concern—but there are also other concerns for families of offenders: financial support, continuing accommodation and so on. This is another reason why it is simply not realistic for the criminal courts to step in and manage an offender’s life after they have been convicted. However, there is a role for government here. That is why we are working across government, and in partnership with local authorities under the troubled families programme, to turn around the lives of 120,000 families suffering from the most complex problems by May 2015. We have already announced an expansion of the programme to an additional 400,000 families from 2015-16. The next phase of the programme will focus on families with a broader range of problems.

I should also mention the important role of the charitable voluntary sector. My noble friend Lord McNally has in the past paid tribute to the work that organisations such as Pact have done and continue to do to support the families of those in custody. I add my own appreciation of that important work and my commitment that the Government will look at how we can both publicise and support the services those organisations provide. I am glad to hear that Lord Justice Gross is concerned that some further guidance should be given in relation to the problem identified by the amendment.