Global Partnership for Aid Effectiveness

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

As my noble friend will know, parliamentarians are represented in the global partnership steering committee meetings, and DfID certainly believes that democratic government helps to promote sustainable development in the way which he has indicated. That is why we are supporting democratic elections through various programmes and other work, which we will be supporting in 13 countries by 2015. As for his point about the drain in staff, between 2011 and 2012 DfID invested £181 million in public sector reform, which includes improvement of staff performance and retention. We very much understand my noble friend’s point.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, is it not very important to realise that if development is to be sustained, it is necessary to have stability and security? Can the Minister give us an assurance that, whatever happens, we will continue to give priority to the security sector reform programme, which tries to ensure that there are effective security arrangements that are also based on transparency and human rights?

[Baroness Northover]

I can give the noble Lord that assurance. He will note that it is a crucial part of the arrangements in the new deal for fragile states, and it also underlies and is an extremely important part of our principles regarding where we are willing to give budget support.

International Development: Budget

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, it is always good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bates, because he brings judgment, wisdom and a strong humanitarian commitment in so much that he contributes to debates on issues of this kind. He argues his case particularly convincingly. I hope that my words will underline the significance of what he has said.

I want to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Empey, on having introduced this debate. It is incredibly important and not something to be swept to one side after the remarks by the Prime Minister, so I hope we can have clarification of what exactly he meant.

It is quite a long time since I was in government. My first job was in defence and, after two years there, which I enjoyed greatly and found very challenging, the Prime Minister asked me to move to overseas development where I became the Minister for a short while, until Tony Crosland died and I moved to the Foreign Office. When I made the change, quite a lot of my friends asked me, wasn’t this an incredible change to make from defence to overseas development? I looked at them straight in the eye, because I believed it, and said, “Not at all. Both are about human security and well-being”. During my years in defence, I was always impressed by the number of senior officers, civil servants and others, who used to say in discussion, “Of course, we’ve lost if war breaks out. Our job is to prevent war and to ensure that peace can prevail”. Of course, development is ensuring that peace is not just the absence of war, but it is the ability of people to live full lives and to develop their potential.

I strongly believe that this is a time of so many challenges, including hunger and malnutrition—which is particularly sinister with its long-term effects, not least on future productivity—of climate change and of infant mortality still, although we must all take heart from the great progress to which the noble Lord, Lord Bates, referred. However, this is not a time to start raiding the aid budget. There may be very real arguments about how we do it better, get better value for money and prioritise better. Some of that has begun with the examination of programmes in India and South Africa, for example. These are big, important arguments but it certainly cannot be said that there are still not demands which far outstrip what we are even now able to make available.

The British people should take great pride that we are setting examples to the world in our commitment to overseas aid and development. At a time of low morale in Britain about so many things, this is something about which we can get excited—the positive battle for humanity, and the well-being of people and the children who are being born, or who should be born today but still die before they have a chance to enjoy life. It is very significant that we can say to the world, “Don’t do as we say but follow our example because this is a challenge that we are determined to meet”. I make no bones about it: I congratulate the Government unreservedly on having honoured the pledge of allocating 0.7% of GNP to aid. There will be arguments about priorities and techniques, but having kept that promise and that determination is something in which the British people should take pride. That is not to say that the example should not be followed in the battle for social justice and against poverty, deprivation and inadequacy in our health service in our own country, but at least in our relationships with the world we can hold our head high. It is an example of what we should be doing in our own society, if I may put it that way.

There will always be an overlap between overseas development and defence—that is clear. Certainly, humanitarian assistance, let alone long-term development, cannot take place if there is insecurity and instability. Therefore, in some situations it is necessary for defence forces and aid operations to work hand in glove. However, there are tensions—for example, in Afghanistan. The Army liberates an area and wants to put things in quickly which give the people a stake in the liberation of their territory before the Taliban moves back. Overseas development workers say, “Hang on a moment. It’s not just a quick fix. If we are to put a school or a hospital in, it has to be sustainable because if we have a quick fix the whole thing will collapse and we are likely to lose everything”. Therefore, there are real tensions between the disciplines of long-term, sustainable development and the immediate needs of the Armed Forces. The challenge is how we bring those two aims together in a useful and sensible way. I always think it is very exciting when the military can feel that on occasions it is contributing positively to human well-being by ensuring that supplies get through and that goods are delivered. That is something which many people in all three services of the military enjoy and value. However, these two aims are not the same tasks and how you marry them together will always pose a very difficult challenge, but one with which I think we should grapple.

In conclusion, we still need to give far more attention to the issues of conflict resolution and conflict prevention, although we are giving them much more attention than we used to. The resources to do that should come from the aid budget although the military has a contribution to make. I hope that in all the Government’s considerations those issues remain priorities.

Syria: Refugees

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Blackstone for giving us the opportunity to consider this dreadful situation. First, I make a plea that we take this opportunity to express our solidarity with the front-line humanitarian workers who are doing so much on behalf of the international community. They are often very courageous people who deserve our full-hearted support.

I underline what has been said. If one is looking for an example of collective international cynicism, one has to look no further than at what has happened with the promises of assistance in this grim situation. To have had offered what amounted to some $1.5 billion of assistance at the recent conference in Kuwait and to now find the UNHCR telling us that only $200 million has been made available is a dreadful comment on us all. We need clear reassurance from the Government about what they are doing to make people live up to their reputations. It is little wonder that the cause of cynicism—if it is a cause—spreads so widely in the international community.

Dealing with refugees on this scale is, of course, highly complex. Specific elements arise within the general problem such as the acute needs of the elderly and those with physical and mental disabilities. Specialist support is crucial for people in those categories. There is also the whole issue of psychological trauma, particularly of children. I frequently think that in refugee situations around the world we give far too little attention to the assistance and support that can be provided for the psychiatric and psychological dimensions of the problem.

My noble friend rightly referred to the difference between the refugees in camps outside the country and those in more difficult, sometimes very distressing, situations who are not in camps. We have to ensure that whatever is being done in mobilising assistance is reaching and supporting both communities. In the middle of all this, we also have to remember that we must not engender a culture of dependency. We want to ensure that we are preparing people to return home. However, that is a big issue because how long will it take for any realistic expectations of return to be fulfilled? This issue is particularly acute in the spheres of education for the young and health. Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq have played an immensely important part in keeping their borders open. However, they may well be tempted to close them at some point. We all have to think what that would mean. That, again, puts a responsibility on us all to make sure that we give them every possible support.

Perhaps the last point to be made in the time available is that all this is putting a burden on the people of those countries which do not have social provision of the highest order. Are we considering the weight that is falling on them? How can we support the programmes of the Governments in those countries to meet the needs of their own people in the context of this situation? That is important not only in humanitarian terms but to the long-term prospects of having a settled solution in the area, as antagonisms could very quickly become aggravated and escalate unless we look to the needs of the local populations.

Global Hunger

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Again, the noble Earl is right to concentrate on this area. It has been a diminishing problem, but it is still there on a massive scale. That is what we have to tackle. We have to welcome the fact that in many parts of the world now undernutrition has now reduced, but he is quite right: it is still a major problem, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. We are very supportive of smallholders. We are helping in 13 countries. Some 500 million farmers are smallholders, with less than two hectares of land, and they are at the margin in their ability to feed their families.

[Lord Judd]

Does not the noble Baroness agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bates, put it so well the last time this was before us, it is obscene that almost half the food available to us in the West and the north is thrown away, while desperate people utterly dependent on food production are seeing their land bought up by multinational companies to service that greed? Must that not be a priority at the G8, and is it not intimately related to the whole question of security, not only in food security sense but in building stable societies less prone to abuse by extremists?

[Baroness Northover]

I think we see how we are all interlinked when we look at the situation in Mali right now. The Foreign Secretary is quite right to emphasise that it is important that we are supporting those in Mali through aid programmes. The noble Lord is right to emphasise the problem of waste of food, but there is also a lot of wastage among those smallholders simply because they do not have the right storage for their crops, and so on. It has to be a very high priority to ensure that, wherever it is in the world, food, which is so important to relieve this problem, is not wasted.

World Food Supplies

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Judd]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what importance they attach to the consequences of large-scale commercial land acquisitions in the developing world in their policies relating to the developing world and the prevention of a world food crisis.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, the UK Government are committed to improving food security and nutrition in the developing world. We believe that private sector investment in agriculture is important in achieving that. We are clear that those investments, particularly any that involve commercial land acquisition, must be socially and environmentally responsible.

[Lord Judd]

Does the Minister agree with the estimate that, on average, every six days, investors buy an area of land the size of London in the poorest countries, which are often already facing acute food shortages? Do not those investors too frequently intend to export what is produced, although those countries are facing acute food shortages; and are not those exports often for biofuel, with all its questionable environmental dimensions? Do not such purchases tend to be made without proper community consent and, furthermore, without proper consideration of the economic and social consequences? What does the Prime Minister intend to propose to the G8 summit on land transparency and such purchases at the forthcoming meeting?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord, who has worked in this area for a very long time, is right to highlight this as a potential problem. However, I cannot agree with his first statement about its scale because there is insufficient evidence. One thing that is extremely important and that we are pursuing is supporting the evidence-gathering in this area to see what the scale of the problem might be so that we can better address it. Nevertheless, the noble Lord is right to say that transparency is the key here. If we can promote that, we can see whether the acquisitions that people may have made reference to are simply anecdotal or whether there is evidence of the nature that he is talking about. I assure the noble Lord that we are emphasising transparency and that at the G8 summit the Prime Minister will indeed focus on food security as one of the issues.

Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

I join noble Lords who have paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, not only for having introduced this debate so well but for the terrific contribution he has made on international relations throughout his political life. Forty years ago, I was working with him and with young politicians from the United States on facing up to the issues that then faced us in the global context, particularly the fears about Africa and the Middle East. I formed a very high regard for the noble Lord, Lord Howell, which has stayed throughout my political career. There have been big differences between us, irreconcilable differences sometimes, but there has always been respect for his wisdom and his approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, was right to start by challenging us to face up to the realities of change over recent years and the situation that we now face. He is right that one of the biggest challenges is that the centre of economic and political power is increasingly moving to Asia, in particular to south-east Asia and China. That is a terrific challenge which we must meet. He was also right to emphasise, as he always does, interdependence. I always put it that the first reality of life is that we are born into a situation in which we are totally interdependent with people right across the world. As I have said before and will say again, I am convinced that we as a generation of politicians will be judged by history by the success we make of belonging to that international community, contributing to its strength and understanding the challenges of being part of an international community. Neurotic insularity will do us no service whatever. We must engage and we must belong, and by being seen to engage and to belong, we will bring our influence to bear. Of course we want efficiency and cost-effectiveness in all the institutions, not just in Europe, but in the UN and elsewhere, but we bring greatest influence in achieving that if we cannot be questioned in our commitment to international co-operation and in our belonging to those institutions. The trouble is that we too often play to a short-term populist gallery in trying to suggest that somehow we are battling for little England—little “England”, too, very often—against the real awful world out there instead of realising that it is by making a success of international work that we will look to the long-term interests of the British people. I thank the noble Lord for having introduced this theme and I apologise if I have expanded it a little emotionally in a way that he might not have done.

I know the Commonwealth is dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and it has a part to play. It is a family in the best sense. It has evolved. When it meets, it is usually a meeting of friends, but in this context my noble friend Lord Anderson is right that we have to face up to the fact that the Commonwealth has been overtaken in a lot of the real cut and thrust of making a success of international relations and global security.

I always listen with fascination to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. He is right to have reminded us of the value of the underlying psychological dimensions of our part in the world. They are crucial. We have to face the fact that when you have been an imperial power, it is difficult to adjust. We have to play the game of influence. It is no good playing a power game. Our game is a game of influence, and that relates to my point about being seen to belong and to engage.

This affects the work of the Foreign Office. I am getting a bit worried that when I go anywhere, one of the first things in an introductory talk from the ambassador or the high commissioner is a long, rather defensive speech about all they are doing on trade. In the economic realities we face, trade is, of course, vital and our missions have a part to play on trade, but in this highly complex world, we should not throw away the baby with the bath water. We need expertise, insight and analysis to understand the situation in which we are operating and advice to inform the quality of our decision-making. Sometimes it may get a bit marginalised in the constant pressure to put trade first. It is not either/or. We must treasure that traditional role of the Foreign Office and make sure that it is nurtured.

I feel strongly that soft diplomacy, as it is sometimes called, is crucial. That is where we cannot emphasise often enough the role of the BBC and its Overseas Service. We must not let that become diluted. When changes take place, I sometime worry. The quality of news in this country is improving because we are getting more international input into ordinary news broadcasts. That is good for British people to understand the issues, but it must not be at the expense of the expertise, depth of knowledge and analysis that used to be in the old Overseas Services. Sometimes what we are beaming to a country with a very small audience may have disproportionate significance because that small audience will be crucial in the future building of that country and its stability and well-being. We have to keep that role of the BBC in mind.

I have time for two more observations. First, in our debates about universities and overseas students, I get exasperated at the way we talk about them in terms of what they mean to the British economy now and in the future. What matters is the quality they bring to the higher education experience. I do not understand how you can have a relevant, world-class university if it is not a thriving, vibrating international community. You need that international mix in the quality of the education that is taking place. That matters in every discipline. We have not been taking that point seriously enough. The other issues are, of course, very important—I declare an interest as someone involved in education—but that essence is the crucial quality.

Finally, as we go into the year ahead, we should all make a resolution that we are going to lead the country in understanding interdependence and in determining that this country is to be second to none in constructive internationalism instead of insularity.

Ingram National Park Visitor Centre

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that the authority will be looking very closely at what noble Lords are saying today and seeing what can be done to take this forward. This was a small centre, as I understand it, with two members of staff. The much bigger one is on Hadrian’s Wall. As I say, that is going to be added to and will become a centre of national significance. I am extremely pleased that that has been possible at this time.

[Lord Judd]

Amid the plethora of new planning regulations and the rest, will the Minister assure the House that right across Government in all departments there is a commitment to the national parks because of their vital contribution to the spiritual and physical well-being of our nation, particularly our young people?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is quite right and I invite him to have a look at the website for this park and see exactly what it offers. With regard to the commitment, I point out that the park was given just over £3 million last year and this year it has been given £2.9 million, so that is not a huge reduction in what is going to the park. We are fully committed to supporting the national parks. We know how important they are.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply because this is a point to which he should give particularly serious consideration. Let me make two observations. First, if we are not doing this job thoroughly and well—the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has suggested that we are not—we are wasting all the money because considerable public expenditure is going into a task which is not doing what is needed. Therefore, if we want to get a proper return for the taxpayer, we should be certain that what we are doing is appropriate and effective.

Secondly, this age extension covers a crucial part of the young person’s life. It is the threshold from being young to joining the adult community. We should think of the amount of discussion and debate that we have in this House about higher education, further education, universities and all that. We are certain that we want to prepare our young people for the most productive and effective future possible. As things stand, we may be denying that possibility to people on this threshold and, through an inadequate response to what they really need, may be setting them off on a course which will result in one failure after another and, all too likely, reoffending and the rest.

From that standpoint, this makes eminent good sense. It will be a challenge to the probation service but it relates to issues that we have been discussing on other amendments when we have alluded to the probation service. I am really worried that its culture is changing so that, in effect, it has a kind of custodial role without the person actually being institutionalised, as distinct from playing a sensitive, imaginative and engaged role in dealing with young individuals, doing what is necessary to get them on a positive and constructive course and working out how that should be done. In asking the probation service to do this—and I think the amendment is correct in that sense—we must realise that there is an issue to be tackled in terms of the prevailing culture in the service itself.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I have added my name to one of these amendments and I have great sympathy for what is proposed in the other one as well, so I strongly support what has been said. I would like to believe that not only will this work in terms of this being set out in referral orders and the probation trusts taking on their new role, but also that we could somehow link this to the previous discussion introduced by my noble friends Lord Adebowale and Lord Ramsbotham about provision for 18 to 25 year-olds. The more we think about this age group, we can see how important it is to ensure the possibility of young people growing up with enough of the right support, education and training to have a real opportunity of leading more ordinary lives and not reoffending.

I wish we had more figures on what the actual costs are, because I should have thought it would be worth working out the budgets and spending enough to make this work. I am quite certain that it would be much cheaper than the cost of someone continually going to prison. I hope that the Minister will give this serious consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

I suggest that it would be a mistake to take forward the experiments in compartments so that one looked purely at the compartment marked “Young offenders”, then at the compartment marked “Young adults” and finally at the compartment marked “Adults”. It is something that should be used and adapted for the appropriate case. If the amendment in my name is adopted, one advantage is that the courts will be able to develop the expertise and learn the skills that are needed so that they can readily identify the cases that this process is suited for. It is not suited for all cases—you have to learn from experience how it should be applied—but if it is appropriate to apply it, it will help the process of justice. I hope that Ministers will welcome the amendments that we hope have been drafted in a way that makes them attractive to the Government, and will feel that they should give serious consideration to them.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has just made is very important: that we should bring the concept of restorative justice into the mainstream of our approach to penal policy and do not leave it, as it were, as an interesting experiment only by particularly enlightened administrators within the penal system. To endorse it officially as part of penal policy is a very good principle.

This is an immensely revolutionary concept for the whole of penal policy. It takes us away from the impersonal application of the law to the sphere of direct human relationships in which people can begin to understand the implications of what they do for the lives of other identifiable people, and that is a very important learning experience. It would also be very strengthening for society; if it took off in a big way, it could have big implications for building a strong and responsible society—what we do has consequences for other people and we have to face up to those consequences, not in terms of theory but in terms of real people with whom we are dealing in reality.

Restorative justice has some other interesting spin-offs, which I have read about and been encouraged by. For example, it enables victims not only to have the satisfaction of recompense, which is crucial, but to become more understanding about the whole situation. I have read more than one account of how victims have begun to see that the person who perpetrated the crime against them was actually a victim themselves. That is in certain circumstances; I am not letting this argument run away with me. I am not saying that that is true in every situation, but it applies in quite a number. If we are going to have a decent society and minimise crime, it is important to see the origins of that crime and the reality of the shaping experiences in the lives of those who commit it.

This is a significant development. I take my hat off completely to those who have pioneered it; we should give them all possible support. Endorsement in legislation would be significant assistance in what they are trying to achieve.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I am delighted to lend my support to this amendment. I am in good and powerful company: the amendment is promoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, and has the blessing of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. Let me not exclude my noble friend Lord McNally; he and I have had numerous discussions on this matter and he has left me in no doubt that restorative justice is an essential element of the criminal justice system. The question is what procedure we adopt.

The case for restorative justice is on the Government’s agenda and its success cannot be disputed. We now need to provide the machinery which will enable retrospective justice to be set up on a clear statutory footing and give criminal justice agencies the impetus to refer cases. This is the clearest finding of the evaluation project undertaken by the University of Sheffield for the Government. We also know that victim participation rates were extremely high, with up to 77 per cent of victim participation cases involving adult offenders and up to 89 per cent of cases involving young offenders. The Government have often proclaimed that victims must be at the centre of the restorative justice process, and that is precisely what happens.

My noble friend Lord McNally has been very sympathetic in various meetings with groups operating in the criminal justice field. We now have a former Lord Chief Justice and a former Home Secretary, with their vast experience in such matters, getting together to amend the Bill by introducing a provision to enable criminal justice agencies to offer restorative justice to victims pre-sentence when the offender pleads guilty at the first appearance. The process allows victims to participate in face-to-face meetings with offenders, thus bringing closure to their fears and trauma. Victims show satisfaction but, most importantly, the frequency of reoffending is reduced.

Let me declare an interest: I said earlier that I chaired the Magistrates’ Association commission on the future of summary justice, and our report will be out soon. We took evidence from across many parts of the country, and participants included offenders and victims. In almost all cases, victim satisfaction was highlighted. The chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, John Fassenfelt, said that he has seen impressive evidence of victim satisfaction with restorative justice when it is organised to a high-quality standard and the insights it gives to offenders into the consequences of their offending. He said that if Parliament approves the amendment, the magistrates will be able to rely on probation to propose the most suitable cases, but the courts will only make the final decision to proceed if they are satisfied that it is in the interests of justice and in accordance with the wishes of the victim.

Research studies point to the international dimension, and cases in Australia and the United States, like those in Britain, delivered very high victim satisfaction accompanied by a reduction in reoffending.

Using the Ministry of Justice’s own data, there are potential cost savings, based on 70,000 cases, of £185 million over two years. In the present economic climate, this is something that we cannot ignore. It is value for money, as it saves £9 for every £1 spent. I fully support the amendment.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to have been able to add my name to these amendments, and would like to say how much I admire the work of the noble Baroness. It is not simply the utterly sensible amendments that she brings to our deliberations, but all the work she does to follow up what she is arguing for in this House. Of course, that is a two-way process, because it also means that when we listen to her, we listen not just to the voice of theory but to the voice of experience and practical engagement. That is a special asset to have in our deliberations.

Punishment is the easy bit. Of course crime must be punished—there is no argument about that—but in a sane society in which reason prevails, the greater challenge is how lives are rebuilt and how, as I said in argument on a previous amendment, we can enable people to become positive citizens contributing to the well-being of society, as distinct from indulging in delinquent behaviour. That is the real challenge. If that is to be done well, it means that those individuals have to be looked at as individuals.

I remember talking to a chief superintendent of police who was just about to retire when I was president of the YMCA and he was a prominent and active member of the YMCA in Britain. It was a private conversation, so I hope that he will not mind my relaying what he said. He said: “You know, it is a very lonely moment when you are sentenced. Some people respond with more bravado, but the overwhelming majority at that moment feel very lonely. I have always felt that where we get it wrong in our penal policy is that that is the very moment when someone should be there at the elbow of the person concerned saying, ‘Isn’t this a terrible mess? How are we going to sort it out and try to make some sense of this situation?’”.

What the noble Baroness said was not only emotionally powerful—there is no harm in emotion of the kind she was displaying in her remarks today; it is very healthy, and the passion which she feels for these issues is a great challenge to us all—but so important. So many of the people with whom the penal system is dealing have not had proper relationships, have not had people who cared, have not had families able to cope with or relate to them in their situation. There is a desperate need, as I have said in other debates in this House, for someone to take the hand of the person concerned and walk with them through the experience back into full rehabilitation in society, back into the job to which the noble Baroness referred, which is so central.

If that is the case, if we are asking magistrates and others to function on our behalf to tackle those issues, it is imperative that we do everything we can to ensure that magistrates know of all the possibilities which can be considered for the individual in front of them. To have a limited range of possibilities, or not to be very much aware of the range of possibilities, is disastrous because it means that we are not taking seriously the issue of rehabilitation.

On the issue of short sentences, I remember on a visit to a prison—in fact, it has happened more than once in conversation with prison officers—the prison officers themselves saying what nonsense it was and asking: “What on earth are we expected to achieve with these young people? How on earth is this helping them? They are going through a more disruptive experience. They are being taken further away from society and the chance to start rebuilding their lives in detention. What are we doing? What are we expected to be administering on behalf of society?”. If it is a matter to be dealt with by some by awarding a short sentence, there must be other means available which are more constructive and intelligent.

I conclude what I want to say in support of the noble Baroness by repeating something which has been said in debates before but which it is not possible to repeat too often. On the door of every cell should be “Rehabilitation?”—with a question mark after it—because, if we are not achieving rehabilitation, what are we doing? We are losing an individual, and we are almost inevitably ensuring future costs for society not only in terms of reoffending but in terms of the cost of dealing with the consequences of that reoffending, with further spells in prison or whatever. I believe that in the whole culture of our penal system and in the culture of the professions that administer our penal system there should be a passionate commitment to achieving at all costs, wherever possible, the rehabilitation of offenders. That is why these amendments tabled by the noble Baroness are so right. They make economic and social sense, and I hope that they also make sense when we think about what the values of a decent and civilised society should be. I hope that we care about the individual.

This morning in my old constituency of Portsmouth, where Dickens was born, I attended a ceremony to mark his 200th birthday. During the service in the great St Mary’s Church in Portsmouth, which was part of the ceremony, I was startled to hear a piece by Dickens himself on the application of Christian values. I had not read it before, to my shame, but I commend it to Members of this House. With his social commitment and understanding, and his brilliance in setting out the issues with which society is confronted, as well as its responsibilities to put them right, Dickens speaks directly about the whole principle that, if we call ourselves Christians, we must commit ourselves to caring not simply for the victim—although of course the victim matters—but for the offender, with a commitment to enabling the offender to sort out his or her life.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I, too, have added my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. At the outset, I echo the tributes paid to her by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and at the same time I pay tribute to the noble Lord for the passion and compassion that he always brings to debates on these subjects.

On Amendment 176ZAA, I have long thought that the provision of sentences with prospectuses of what the prison and probation services can and cannot do for offenders would serve a very useful purpose for the whole of the management system, and therefore I should like to widen the amendment slightly to include the Prison Service. While the noble Baroness was speaking, I could not help reflecting that for the first 100 years of its existence the probation service worked very closely with the courts and the police. It is only in recent years that it has been made subordinate to prisons, and that, to my mind, has given the wrong emphasis.

Everything that the noble Baroness said about Rethinking Crime and Punishment I share, because I had the great privilege of being a member of the initiative’s steering group. I entirely endorse everything that she said about the place of the community sentence. However, perhaps I may refer to the prospectuses. First and most obviously, they tell sentencers what is or is not possible and how long that might take to be achieved, because there is no point in somebody embarking on a course which cannot be completed during the sentence.

Of course, there is a danger that, as a result, some sentencers might award sentences that are longer than normal in order to complete a behaviour programme. I believe that that is a fault in the right direction, not least because the present practice of awarding sentences that are too short for the completion of any meaningful remedial action is wasteful of both time and money. As a side-effect, the provision of such a practice might also encourage the adoption of what happens in some Scandinavian countries where, at the time of sentence, the sentencer lays down what course of programmes a prisoner has to complete during that sentence. If these are satisfactorily completed before the end of the period of the sentence, the governor of the prison can take the prisoner back to the sentencer and ask for earlier release on the grounds that the conditions laid down have been met. Prisoners can then be released on licence, which saves prison time, space and money.

The second side-effect would be to force the prison and probation services to cost and plan all their offending behaviour and other courses. Knowing how many courses and programmes are required to meet the need of sentencers would for the first time give some indication of the actual shortfall in the current provision. What is more, it would allow individual prisons to be made responsible for conducting certain courses in particular geographical areas rather than the current inefficient system in which individual governors are not bound to carry on from where their predecessors left off—remarkably, and expensively, they are left to decide how they will satisfy particular targets and performance indicators, which may have no relation to overall need and involve the cancellation of programmes initiated by their predecessors. In other words, knowing what has to be done and by when would at last allow some certainty and stability to be applied to the role of each and every prison. I do not want to say more, or to say more about short sentences, except to echo everything that the noble Baroness said. The figures prove how much cheaper community sentences are.

Actually, there is another side-effect because if it was accepted that community sentences were to be the norm—the default position—and the short sentence the opposite, improvements on the provision of the community sentence would be forced, in order to give the public confidence that that is worth while. That links with Amendment 176A because I believe that the prospectus of what can be done in those community sentences is just as important as what is done in custody.

[Lord Woolf]

It is with great diffidence that I seek to say a few words as almost everything that can be said on this subject has been said by the three very distinguished noble Lords who preceded me. This is ground that has been well trodden. I fear that the importance of the two amendments may not be appreciated for that reason and that it will be said, “Oh yes, we all know everything contained in the amendments and therefore we can do without them”. Perhaps I can rely on my experience in a different capacity to enable me to say that such an approach would be wrong.

For five years, at least, it was my responsibility to try and oversee the sentencing in the courts of England and Wales. We all knew that our sentencing was not working as well as it should. We were distracted from time to time by arguments about whether prison worked but that really was not the issue. The issue was: were we imposing sentences that would most likely result in the offender who was before the court not reoffending but instead, as a result of his previous offending and being brought before the court, setting himself or herself on a new road to live as a law-abiding member of the community? Every time that could be achieved—it was not easy to achieve—the community would receive protection that it would not otherwise receive. Every time that that was done, the public would be less in danger than if the course that was adopted was achieved.

That is particularly true in that difficult ground which lies between sentences that can properly take place in the community and those that cannot. There is a very simple way of approaching this. What every court that has to impose sentences involving deprivation of liberty should do is to impose a sentence that is no longer than it has to be. If it has to be a sentence of custody, then it should be as short as is appropriate. In the case of short sentences, any sentencer should have well in mind the real restrictions on what can be done by the Prison Service for those who are sentenced to a short sentence. In the great majority of cases, the position is clear: nothing positive can be achieved by a short sentence, other than to mark the nature of the offence. Magistrates and judges are faced again and again with a situation where they have tried to avoid sending an offender to custody, but his or her conduct has shown that the alternatives are just ignored. Then, with reluctance, the sentencer can, and should, in my judgment, impose, as a final resort, a sentence of imprisonment, as long as the sentencer bears in mind the need to keep that sentence as short as possible. Those are a minority of cases. They are not the cases that make up the statistics to which the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, referred. They cannot account for that number of people being given sentences that cannot achieve anything positive as the final deterrent.

I tried, and other senior judges tried, to inculcate within the magistrates and the judiciary the importance of keeping the number of prisoners serving short sentences to the minimum. I am bound to say that I never succeeded. Having listened to the speeches made in the course of this short debate, I think it would be marvellous if copies of Hansard containing them could be placed before each judge and magistrate. I am not going to suggest a further amendment to achieve that, but I want to underline that even though it is so well known that the effectiveness of short sentences is so limited, and even though it is so well known that the resources that are spent on short sentences are needed for community sentences, it does not happen. That means that these amendments could just make a difference. For that reason alone, I hope the Government will consider the amendments most seriously. I think it is appropriate to adopt them.

[Lord Judd]

Perhaps I might ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, a question. Does he agree that the villain of the piece is the sensationalist writing—if you can actually call it writing—in some of the populist press about penal matters? Does he also agree that we ignore at our cost the reality that even judges—if I may say so, with respect—are human beings, that magistrates living in the community are very much human beings, and that unfortunately there is a degree of intimidation to the effect that if they do what they believe is right in the circumstances they may be pilloried in a way that is going to be unpleasant for them and their families? Is it not time that we all got together and started confronting that element of the media and saying, “You are the very people who are exacerbating the issue of crime and misconduct in society by playing for short-term gains and completely misrepresenting the reality”?

[Lord Woolf]

I would be bold beyond my own abilities to be bold if I were to try to attribute responsibility between the various players in our society as a whole. I think that we all contribute to the present situation. Judges cannot hide behind the media; magistrates cannot hide behind the media; and I certainly would not have sought to shirk the responsibilities I had by hiding behind the media. Nothing would please me more than if the media could learn the wise lesson that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was suggesting that they should learn.

The noble Lord is absolutely correct. Sentencing is a lonely business. When you are put under considerable pressure in trying to determine the right sentence, you try to put out of your mind what you read daily in the media, but sometimes it is a very difficult thing to do. But it can just make the difference that I have said is so important between taking the decision of imposing a short sentence and taking the much more sensible course of imposing a positive sentence—one of the sentences that the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, wants the courts to be aware of—which can so much better be imposed of service in the community.

International Development Policy

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will applaud the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for having secured the debate and for having opened it so effectively. His commitment on these issues is steadfast. Like him, I greatly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, with all his background and experience.

I am, naturally, glad that the Government remain firm in their objective of securing 0.7 per cent of gross national income for the aid programme by 2013. However, apart from its diminishing value in real terms in the context of global financial realities, it is important to know what exactly is the Government’s definition of aid. It seems it is being repeatedly stretched to make up for cuts at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and elsewhere.

It is interesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, is to reply to the debate. She has a long-standing reputation, established in opposition, not only for advocating 0.7 per cent but of constantly underlining the importance of the quality of the aid and development provided within that objective and, very significantly, of supporting the central related policies in the sphere of international rights, finance and trade.

I pay tribute to the many NGOs, whose work on international aid and development has been a bedrock of increased political commitment by all the principal political parties. Their advocacy is of a high standard, based as it is on real front-line experience. In preparing for this debate, I have, yet again, found invaluable the insight, analyses and challenges provided by Oxfam, of which I am glad to have been a previous director, Saferworld, of which I am a trustee, and the World Development Movement.

The debate is well timed. The High-Level Forum on Aid, effectively, is reaching its conclusions in Busan, South Korea, as we deliberate here today. Can we be assured that the commitments of the 2005 Paris declaration will not be sidelined in Busan and that those commitments will be strongly reaffirmed? It is surely disappointing that, as the OECD has confirmed, while the developing countries have made significant progress on delivering the commitments of the Paris declaration, particularly in improving their planning and financial management, donor countries have made significant progress on only one of their 13 targets—that of improving co-ordination between themselves.

DfID has announced its intention to reduce the amount of UK aid spent on budget support around the world by 43 per cent. Can the noble Baroness tell us more of the real rationale for this? While aid given directly to the budgets of developing countries may, of course, sometimes cause difficulties in measuring instant results, it can surely be an excellent means of achieving sustained positive outcomes. It allows developing countries to make long-term investment in the core services, such as the health and education systems. Is there not a danger that, in overstressing aid for specific targeted projects compared with demands for measurable short-term outcomes, the sustainable development process will be distorted and undermined? Is DfID, in its plans, and with its preoccupation—some might say obsession—with targets, getting that balance right? How will the indispensable long-term funding to establish essential supporting systems be ensured? Frequently the real sustained effect of aid can be measured only in the long term. That is certainly my experience of years of involvement.

Seven million people are already facing acute food shortages in Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. This indicates that next year there will be a massive problem of food availability and the danger of widespread famine will become acute. The danger is all the greater because people have not yet had the opportunity to rebuild their assets and increase their resilience after the severe crisis of 2009-10. If in a so-called normal year 300,000 children die in the region from malnutrition-related causes, any small addition, whatever form it may take, can push these catastrophic figures disastrously higher still.

Greatly to their credit, the Governments of Niger and Burkina Faso have already signalled they will need assistance. In the light of these indications and clear warnings, and taking into account DfID’s commitments made in response to the challenging Humanitarian Emergency Response Review of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, to strengthen anticipation and early action in disasters and to build resilience to disasters, what exactly are the Government doing convincingly to apply these commitments in the grim realities once more accumulating in the Sahel?

Meanwhile, climate change poses a grave threat to food production and to the livelihoods of the poorest communities around the world, most especially of women, who rely on being able to grow their own food to survive. Changing rainfall patterns, longer and more severe droughts, floods and rising temperatures all present acute challenges to farmers and make it difficult for them to know when best to sow, cultivate and harvest their crops. This will inevitably eventually lead to vast movements of people, aggravating the pressures of migration and provoking instability.

This makes the events at Durban all the more relevant and urgently demanding. An effective global agreement to tackle climate change can no longer be delayed. Obviously this must include provision to assist the poorest countries and the most vulnerable people within those countries. The green climate fund is an imperative. What exactly are the Government doing to pursue innovative sources of finance to fund it—for example, a levy on global shipping or a tax on international financial transactions? As we listen to the Chancellor it seems very little, if anything. Indeed, there seems to be an entrenched ideological opposition to some of these proposals. This is inexcusable. How does the noble Baroness, with her past advocacy of precisely such measures, feel about that as the position of the Government? Do not all negative arguments about taxes on financial transactions, for example, fall into insignificance against the developing human nightmare? A minute rate of tax on financial transactions could produce very large resources for the battle for humanity.

One of the greatest obstacles to the implementation of the millennium goals on schedule is certainly the 1.5 billion people who live in states affected by conflict and fragility. I understand that, in response to this, a new deal has been proposed at the High Level Forum this week. Can the noble Baroness confirm that this is indeed the case and that the UK is meaningfully and not just rhetorically behind it? I gather it has five objectives: fostering inclusive and legitimate politics; establishing and strengthening people’s security and justice; promoting employment and livelihoods; ensuring fairer social services delivery; and better financial management. I, for one, would be cheered if all this can be confirmed. If it is agreed that aid in more fragile states should focus on achieving peace, it will mean that ensuring that conflict, security and justice issues, which have been absent from the current MDG agenda, are brought fully into the discussions also about what follows MDG in 2015.

Success in moving forward will depend upon the new deal becoming not only a deal between national governments and international donors but a deal between them and the people living in conflict-affected communities, ensuring that these people themselves have genuine ownership of development and peace-building processes. If countries are to make a successful transition to peace, it will be essential that dialogue processes are genuinely inclusive and sufficiently independent to bring in a meaningful range of differing perspectives and to keep the most sensitive issues on the table. The new deal must on no account limit itself to legitimising the use of aid for “train and equip”-style security and justice programmes. If it is to support sustainable peace, it must focus on not only the capacity of state institutions but on their culture and professionalism and how they behave. It is vital that they also focus on what matters to the people living in conflict-affected countries—less exposure to violence, greater confidence in their safety, access to justice, services and livelihoods, and political freedom and inclusiveness.

If I have become convinced of anything in a lifetime of work in these spheres, both in Parliament and outside it, it is that sustainable peace cannot be imposed or manipulated. It has to be built from the community upwards; building in widespread inclusiveness in the process and a real sense of ownership of that process and its outcomes by the parties to the conflict is absolutely essential. After all, the process began to move in Northern Ireland when the political wing of the IRA became part of it.