King’s Speech

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow three such powerful speeches from noble Baronesses. I am duly put in the shade.

I have very happy memories of facing the Labour Front Bench on these issues in its last incarnation. I mention in particular Lord Williams of Mostyn, for whom I had the highest possible regard, and the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, in their roles as Prisons Ministers. I perceive that the current Front Bench is up to their standard and I am absolutely delighted by that. Not only that, but we have the prospect of a Prisons Minister who will stay in role for a decent length of time. That will make such a difference. I really think that a Government being prepared to use this House to put specialist Ministers in place and allow them to really command their subjects—because these roles are never good for MPs; they are always something they are trying to escape from—is a good thing. So, please, let us enjoy the company of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, for a good long time.

I declare an interest as a patron of Safe Ground, a charity working in prisons that my wife founded about 30 years ago and which is now part of the Social Interest Group. I am also a patron of the Better Hiring Institute, which the Minister will have come across. It is an offshoot of Reed, which is a very Timpson-esque company in its attitude and a real pleasure to deal with; it is very much dedicated to getting prisoners into jobs and persuading companies that this is a good idea.

I remember, in my early days with Safe Ground, trying to persuade the noble Lord’s ministry to take on one of our graduates as an employee. It refused to take on a prisoner, so perhaps things have changed—but, if not, I very much hope that the noble Lord will quiz his ministry and bring it up to Timpson standards. The prisoner got a job with me later, so he turned out all right; he was a great man.

The many underlying causes of offending cannot be solved through punishment alone. Prisons are there to house the most dangerous, obviously, but they also provide opportunities to initiate reform. You take advantage of the fact that people are abstracted from the surroundings that have fed their criminality. You have them in front of you. You have their time. Going back to the early days of the last Labour Government, time out of cell was really quite extensive. Prisons would facilitate the education and the bringing out of prisoners who showed promise for redemption. The current state of affairs is not that way at all.

Safe Ground specialised in building up family ties. It is my observation, looking at its work, that by the time men are 25, but not much before, they begin to develop a sense of responsibility and interest in the world. At that point, you can really activate their interest in being part of their families, whichever bits of their families are still prepared to work with them—their children, often their wives, mothers, cousins or whatever—and you can build that into a structure that will nourish the prisoner once they get out of jail. A job, family and housing: get those three right and you have a real chance of getting someone on the right road. That was the experience with Safe Ground. Not only did it reduce reoffending, but what was really noticeable was that it improved the behaviour of prisoners in prison, so it was very much supported by officers because having Safe Ground in your prison made it a much nicer place to be.

If I were to give a few other suggestions to the noble Lord, they would be: focus on making life good for prison staff. Focus on the programmes in prison being of good quality. Get prison governors to stay in post for seven years like a good headmaster, not two or three years like a professional civil servant. Have a look to see whether all that money that is being spent on the central bureaucracy might not better be spent in prisons.