Disabled People: Medical Records
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord for raising a series of questions unrelated to the original Question from the noble Baroness. The question of fees for reports is not a matter that is under immediate review but it is, of course, borne in mind in the context of legal aid provision as a whole. Not every general practitioner makes a charge for such a report.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend’s Question raises a difficult point about the use of medical records in litigation generally. The courts, of course, routinely order disclosure of medical records relevant to issues in litigation on the grounds that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the individual’s Article 8 right to privacy. Has the noble and learned Lord’s department considered issuing guidelines as to how courts might protect the confidentiality of medical records which are disclosed?
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord. The position is that in determining the child’s welfare needs the court will apply the factors set out in the welfare checklist in Section 1(3) of the Children Act 1989. Only where it is considered that the issue of medical condition would be relevant to the ability of a parent to care for a child would any order be made with respect to the disclosure of medical records. Those medical records may be disclosed in court but not beyond that.
Courts and Tribunals: Administration Charges
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, on securing this debate and, I would add, on the eloquent and sympathetic way in which she opened it. The central problem highlighted by this debate, through the rather different approaches of the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Low, whom I and the whole House commend for the impressive work that he and his commission have carried out in this area, is that less legal aid has meant more litigants in person, while dramatic increases in court fees have restricted access to justice by another route.
Cuts in legal aid, particularly cuts in scope, were bound to lead to more litigants in person but their impact in so doing has been dramatic. This has been particularly severe in family cases, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Low, because most are out of scope. The National Audit Office reports an increase since the LASPO Act in cases with neither party represented of 30% in child contact cases and 22% in family cases overall. Approximately 80% of all family cases have at least one litigant in person, and of course in such cases this is serious, because most litigants come to court when their lives are turbulent and feelings between the parties are highly emotional and often deeply hostile. This does not achieve calm and cool dispute resolution and is certainly not in the best interests of any children involved.
However, in other civil litigation too, judges are daily frustrated at trying to get through their lists efficiently and justly while battling to explain to angry litigants how and where they have gone wrong in the process, as well as trying to understand how parties are trying to put their cases in a way that makes sense in law. So the speed and efficiency of the judicial process have suffered, and inevitably and sadly, so has the quality of justice. At the same time, the cost of cases to the public purse has significantly increased, as the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have pointed out, diminishing the savings made by cutting legal aid.
To add to the problem, the Government have thrown into the mix increased court fees, increasing the burden on litigants struggling without representation. These are not just fees to cover administering litigants’ own cases, but so-called enhanced fees to pay for running the whole system, allowing the MoJ to make profits in some areas to pay costs incurred in others. Many of us believe that the state has a fundamental responsibility to provide courts to resolve citizens’ disputes in accordance with the law, and to do so free of charge. Even many who do not take that purist view in difficult times believe there is something deeply offensive about enhanced court fees, charged at levels that exceed the cost of administering the cases concerned so as to make the whole court system self-financing.
Furthermore, it was always obvious that introducing very high court fees would reduce the number of cases brought. In 2015, a number of professional bodies assembled evidence which showed that,
“the total value of cases brought by individuals would likely fall by around one-third … under higher court fees. For small- and medium-sized companies it would halve”.
This evidence was in sharp contrast to the complacent and misguided assumptions underlying the Government’s impact assessment of enhanced court fees, which said first that the,
“changes will not affect case volumes”,
that there would be,
“no … detrimental impact on outcomes for … court cases or access to justice”,
and thirdly that,
“there would be no impact on legal services used to pursue and to defend a claim”.
I accept that we were in coalition at the time, but I spoke out against those fees then and make no apology for doing so again now. The Lord Chief Justice and senior judiciary described the assumptions as,
“very sweeping and, in our view, unduly complacent”.
Last year, Lord Dyson, the then Master of the Rolls, gave evidence to the Justice Select Committee, that they were based on a “very limited evidential base” and that he was “extremely sceptical” about them. He described enhanced fees as wrong in principle, and the Government’s preparatory research as “lamentable”.
In practice, the dire predictions of a reduction in case numbers are proving justified. We need more evidence on civil cases generally, but as the noble Lord, Lord Low, pointed out, the immediate 70% reduction overall in employment tribunal claims was severe. Furthermore, there was no increase in the success rate of claims, so one can deduce that fees have not discouraged spurious claims but have only prevented claims, meritorious or not, from being brought.
When Michael Gove was Justice Secretary—before his career took a different direction—he said in the House of Commons that,
“one of the biggest barriers to justice … is costs. Action needs to be taken to reduce costs in civil justice. It is not enough simply to say that the taxpayer must shoulder the burden. We need reform of our legal system to make access to justice easier for all”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/1/16; col. 145.]
On that issue I agree with Michael Gove. I also agree with the Conservative chair of the Justice Committee, Bob Neill MP, who said in June:
“Where there is conflict between the objectives of achieving full cost recovery and preserving access to justice, the latter must prevail”.
Access to justice has been subjected to a pincer movement of restricted legal aid and increased court fees, which has had the dual effect of deterring litigants and reducing the effectiveness of the court system.
On legal aid, we need an urgent review of the areas in scope to see where the hardship is biting deepest and to relieve it. Social welfare and family cases are two of the prime areas for alleviation. We must make it easier to apply for and to secure exceptional case funding, and we must review the system for applying for legal aid in domestic violence cases to make it more humane and easier to navigate.
On court fees, I suggest there are three things to be done. First, we should be reducing court fees to a reasonable level—never more than the cost of administering claims—to ensure that litigants are not deterred by fees from bringing genuine claims. Secondly, we should be introducing a far fairer fee remission scheme. The present capital and disposable income thresholds are far too low and stop poor litigants bringing genuine claims. Thirdly, we should be looking at spreading fees in civil litigation more evenly over the life of cases—which is done in part already in employment cases—rather than front-loading them, as is done now in civil cases, with huge issue fees and only modest fees later on. The present arrangements deter claims to collect difficult-to-recover undisputed debts and encourage unscrupulous debtors to avoid payment in the hope that the fees will put off their creditors.
These are practical steps, intended to go some way to reverse a steady decline in access to justice under successive Governments in recent decades. The measures I have suggested have cost implications, but they are targeted to address the most urgent crisis points. In the longer term, only a more wide-ranging review will enable us to restore and sustain access to civil justice to the standard we would all wish to see, and to which we all claim to aspire, but which I fear we have painfully failed to attain in recent years.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, for securing today’s debate on this important subject and to noble Lords for the valuable contributions they have made to the debate.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the justice system continues to be accessible to all, that it deals with disputes fairly and justly, and that it continues to work for all its users. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, referred to the matter of employment tribunals and employment tribunal fees. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, noted in his observations, that has been the subject of a review at the instance of the Government. That review, which was essentially to address the issue of applications in light of the fee matters, the impact of the reduction of fees on the employment tribunals, and indeed on the employment appeal tribunal, has made very good progress. We expect to publish the results of that review in the very near future. I regret that I cannot be more specific at this stage, but I hope the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will accept that it is our intention to publish as soon as we reasonably can. That is anticipated to be in the near future.
It is appreciated that the number of employment tribunals has reduced since the introduction of fees, but I note that the introduction of fees was coincidental with the development of the mediation services in the context of employment applications. Therefore, one cannot simply attribute any reduction to fees being introduced in that respect. It would not be appropriate for me to anticipate the outcome of the review that has been carried out and which is to be published in the near future.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
Has any work been done to assess how far there is a match between the increase in mediation services and the drop in claims?
Lord Keen of Elie
As I said, I would not want to anticipate the outcome of the review, and we will look at the matter in light of that review once it is published.
I turn for a moment away from employment tribunals to the matter of the property law issues raised by the noble Baroness in her opening speech. It is necessary to remember that when we look at the matter of cost, it is not just fees or legal costs that may be incurred in the litigation. There is also the matter of recovery of costs in that context. In that area considerable progress has been made, particularly with regard to applications to the property chamber.
As noble Lords will be aware, provision had already been made with regard to preventing landlords, in some instances at least, from recovering costs from the tribunal by way of service charges against leaseholders. That will be extended by virtue of Section 131 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which will also endeavour to prevent landlords recovering such costs by way of administrative charges, so steps are being taken to try to limit the cost liability of those who have regard to these tribunals and courts. The noble Baroness also expressed some concern regarding the operation of cost awards in the property chamber. Of course, in general, parties meet their own costs of litigating in the tribunal system even when they are successful in a claim, although there are some exceptions to that in the procedural rules.
As the noble Baroness noted, there was a cap of £500 in respect of the cost rules of the property chamber, although I understand that that was rarely used. The Tribunal Procedure Committee has noted that there is concern about the removal of that cap, and it intends to run a consultation to seek views on whether to reintroduce a cap for costs for unreasonable conduct in the residential property and leasehold cases and, if such a cap is to be reintroduced, to address the question of the level at which it should be set. Again, in that regard some progress has been made, and I hope to report further in due course.
The noble Baroness referred to those appellants who do not have legal representation when they come to the tribunals and courts. Appellants using the tribunal system are not required to be legally represented and tribunals are characterised by an approach that is deliberately less formal than is generally found in the courts. The tribunal panel members themselves, as the noble Baroness noted, are trained to assist unrepresented parties by helping them to frame the way in which they present their case to the tribunal.
Of course, this issue is dealt with differently in the courts, but in November 2014 the support strategy for litigants in person was launched. This involves work by a range of partners across the sector to improve the experience of vulnerable litigants in person in three fundamental ways. The first is providing online and self-help resources, and making sure that those who need them know where they are and how to access them, a point raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. The second is providing practical and emotional support. The third is providing access to free or affordable legal advice and representation wherever possible. Any legal proceedings are likely to be stressful, which is particularly the case in matters concerning families and children—one could not doubt that—but there is support for those who become involved in these proceedings.
I shall move on to the more general issue of costs. We have to address the fact that the cost of our courts and tribunals has to be met in some form or other. The Ministry of Justice is not a protected department and it has a very challenging financial settlement. We must reduce annual spending by 15% in real terms—about £1 billion—by 2019-20.
Achieving that scale of financial saving inevitably requires difficult and tough decisions. We need to look at every area of the department’s spending and there can be no exceptions for tribunals. I hope that noble Lords will recognise that, to ensure that they are properly funded and that access to justice is protected, increases to some court fees are required. The cost of our court and tribunal system to the taxpayer is unsustainably high and it must be right that those who use the system pay more to relieve that burden. However, Parliament has granted, through the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, a power that allows the Government to set court and tribunal fees at a level above the cost of the service. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, made reference to that and I acknowledge it.
The income from those fees must be used to fund an efficient and effective system of courts and tribunals. When setting fees, the Lord Chancellor must have regard to a number of factors including the need to preserve access to justice. In respect of tribunal fees, the Government firmly believe it is right to ask users of the service to make a contribution to the cost of providing it. Reference has been made to the property tribunal: I note that the fees there are set at a level below the actual cost incurred, not above it nor even equal to it. The help with fees scheme exists to help those who cannot afford to pay, and the Lord Chancellor has the power to remit fees in exceptional circumstances. Specifically, for example, in the property chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, a new fee structure was introduced on 25 July 2016 to simplify matters: a single-issue fee of £100—hardly an insurmountable burden for a leaseholder—with a further fee of £200 for a review of an application.
We have to see all that against the background of proposals to modernise our whole court and tribunal system. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to the Briggs report and to the Government having decided to address that and review how they can take forward digitisation of the whole court process. The removal of paper and the streamlining of case management, wherever they can be achieved, are immediate goals of the present Government. Proposals are coming forward quite imminently to address the digitisation process. It will take time—years—to fully implement that sort of proposal, but we have begun that task, which will immeasurably improve the whole matter of access to justice. It will demystify the court process and, we hope, allow those who do not have legal representation to understand how to apply to and proceed through the courts in order to vindicate rights and to seek and secure justice. That extends to all those who may be vulnerable or in difficulty and who feel they have a just claim.
Ultimately, these changes will deliver swifter justice. Our wider reforms underline a guiding principle that our justice system must be proportionate and accessible to everyone. That means members of the public, legal professionals, witnesses, litigants, the vulnerable, victims of crime, and the judiciary itself.
Family Court
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
We are, of course, aware that this has been a matter of concern. That is why we are determined to address it as urgently as we can. On the matter of legal aid, clearly there are many circumstances in which individuals will seek to represent themselves in family proceedings. Even where that is done, there has to be some degree of control over their conduct. I believe that everyone in this House would agree with that. I point out that we spend in excess of £1.5 billion a year on legal aid. That was the figure for last year. We have increased the availability of legal aid in domestic violence cases—for example, by increasing the period during which evidence of abuse can be produced from two years to five years. As regards the other recommendations under consideration, I invite the noble Lord to await the outcome of the urgent work being done by the department and the conclusion of that work.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, we too welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Direct personal cross-examination of alleged victims of domestic abuse by their alleged abusers is unacceptable and must stop. It causes distress and damage to victims and their children and deters victims from seeking protection and redress from the courts. It has become more common with the reductions in legal aid.
Can we be assured that the department’s work will be both swift and thorough and will address a range of possibilities: questioning through a court-appointed lawyer or other third party; strict limits on the ambit of cross-examination to restrict it to what is necessary and relevant; comprehensive witness support; and the use of video links so that parties are in separate rooms? Will the department also establish a procedure to ensure that in future, when a judge in a position such as that of the President of the Family Division presses for a change, as Sir James Munby has pressed for a change in this area since 2014, they are listened to? We should not have to wait for a newspaper campaign, however creditable, to ensure that change happens.
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord. Of course we are concerned about the distress that can be caused to victims as a result of cross-examination in cases of this kind. The investigation, inquiry and work that the department is undertaking in this regard will be swift and thorough. It would not be appropriate for me to anticipate the outcome of that work at this time, but clearly a number of options will be available. For example, one can take some guidance from what happens in the criminal courts, where the judge may determine what questions are to be put to a witness, may decide to put those questions to a witness himself, and the circumstances where the judge may determine that a third-party advocate should instead be employed to put such questions. However, as I say, I do not seek to pre-empt the urgent and swift investigation and determination that is being undertaken at present.
Criminal Justice System: Diversity
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
There is no doubt that a series of complex reasons lie behind the figures that the noble Lord referred to and that custody rates among black, Asian and minority-ethnic males are materially higher than they are in respect of white males. At present and so far in his review, David Lammy has provided research findings rather than final conclusions. He has of course said that he is concerned by those findings but that the issue needs to be explored further before firm conclusions can be drawn.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the Lammy review raises a number of questions. Will the Government continue after the review to monitor disproportionate outcomes in the criminal justice system using the relative rate index method of analysis pioneered in the UK in the Lammy review? Secondly, does not the finding that black offenders are disproportionately likely to receive custodial sentences highlight the urgent need for greater ethnic diversity among the judiciary, which the Lammy review is now also to consider?
Lord Keen of Elie
We are of course committed to greater diversity within the judiciary, and are endeavouring to take that forward. With regard to the particular statistics that the noble Lord referred to, there are a variety of complex reasons why these figures have emerged. For example, the rate at which black, Asian and minority-ethnic men plead not guilty at Crown Court and go to trial is distinct from those who plead at an earlier stage and perhaps receive a lesser sentence. The Government are not committed to any particular means of analysing the relevant statistics at this time.
Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
The Government are taking action to ensure that this centre and other centres are managed effectively and safely. In quoting from the report, it might be appropriate to look at some of the more positive observations made by Ofsted with regard to MTCnovo. As the report points out, and as the noble Lord is aware, the company took over this establishment from G4S in May of this year, but as Ofsted observed, the,
“transfer arrangements were poor and problematic … the inherited staffing arrangements led to too few staff transferring to the new provider”.
However, the new provider has,
“responded with speed and purpose to recruit more staff as a priority … Many staff and managers are demonstrating commitment and fortitude during this period of complex change”.
On the matter of safety, Ofsted observed that,
“the vast majority of young people report that they feel safe. In the survey completed for the inspection … 93% reported that they felt safe”,
in the institution.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, it has been stated that Rainsbrook had a new provider as recently as May this year. However, the transfer appears to have been bedevilled by poor arrangements for continuity of staffing and low staff levels, as was identified in the recent inspection. As has been said, high levels of violence and indeed bad behaviour are going unchecked because there are too few staff. Can the noble and learned Lord tell us what lessons the Government have learned from this inspection report about future arrangements for changes of provider?
Lord Keen of Elie
It is apparent that perhaps we have to apply more care to the transfer arrangements for institutions of this kind. Indeed, it has been proposed that the original transfer plan for Rainsbrook, which was to complete in November 2016, will probably extend to March 2017 in order to address these issues.
Judiciary: Independence
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
The Lord Chancellor is well aware of her rights and obligations in respect of this matter. Many people were shocked by some of the headlines that we saw last week. I have yet to speak to anyone who actually believed them.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, refers to the duty to uphold the independence of the judiciary, but the Lord Chancellor also has a duty, under the Constitutional Reform Act, to have regard to the need to defend that independence. I am afraid that many believe that she singularly failed in both those duties following the decision of the High Court on 3 November. Will the noble and learned Lord convey to the Lord Chancellor how seriously this House takes both those duties and ensure that she is fully briefed on what is required of her should the Supreme Court come under an attack similar to that levelled at the judges of the High Court after the decision earlier this month?
Lord Keen of Elie
The Lord Chancellor takes her duties towards the judiciary every bit as seriously as this House.
Prison Officers’ Association: Protest Action
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
Of course we do not support the prison officers’ unlawful industrial action, but that does not mean that we do not sympathise with them over what has got us here: too many people sent to prison, particularly for short sentences, overcrowding, too few staff, too much time for prisoners in their cells and inadequate education and purposeful activity. Consequently we have what we have spoken of many times in this House: a crisis of increasing violence and deaths among staff and prisoners. It is no wonder that prison officers often feel extremely unsafe. Frankly, 2,100 extra officers by 2018 is too little, too late. We need twice that number and we need them much more quickly. When talks with the Prison Officers’ Association resume, will the Government reconsider the number of new officers to be recruited, the timing of their recruitment and those other issues that, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the noble and learned Lord just mentioned —issues about training, about retention and about conditions for prison officers in relation to violence?
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord. I would point out that these issues have now been addressed by the White Paper announcement and will be taken forward in the context of that White Paper in order that they can be debated and, hopefully, resolved.
Prisons: Self-inflicted Deaths
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, some 70% of prisoners who commit suicide have serious mental health conditions. Many should have been in secure hospitals. The ombudsman’s recent report on prisoner mental health highlighted the shortage of secure hospital places, lengthy waiting times and the incidence of avoidable suicides while prisoners awaited transfer. Will the Government increase the number of secure hospital places and improve the arrangements for the speedy transfer of prisoners who need them?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, a key aspect of our prison reform programme will be to address offender mental health and improve outcomes for prisoners. That is why we are investing £1.3 billion to modernise the prison estate.
Offender Rehabilitation: Entrepreneurship Training
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, in winding up this debate for the Liberal Democrats I am aware that there has been a fair degree of unanimity in the speakers before me, since only Liberal Democrats have so far spoken. I join my noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville in congratulating my noble friend Lord German on securing this debate and bringing this issue before the House, and I look forward to hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the Minister have to say.
This debate takes place against a background of a well-documented and well-recognised crisis in our prison system. I have frequently spoken, along with many other noble Lords, about the need for fundamental reforms in our prisons, sometimes to the apparent irritation of the Minister. Yet we are all agreed on the fundamentals. We all agree about the need to cut prisoner numbers by making more use of rehabilitative community sentences; to improve, indeed transform, the squalid conditions in our prisons; to eliminate overcrowding, so that custodial facilities hold only the numbers of inmates for which they were designed; and radically to increase staffing levels, not just to exercise adequate control, but to provide far more purposeful activity for inmates and drastically reduce the hours they spend locked away in their cells to levels that are humane and sustainable. If these improvements could be made, they would cut dramatically the disgraceful levels of violence in our prisons and would have a marked effect on decreasing reoffending levels, which are far too high. The prison reforms proposed by Mr Gove promised to start addressing these issues, and I join my noble friend Lord German in asking the Minister what is to happen to them with the new Secretary of State in place. I make no apology for spending a little time on this depressing background because it is, frankly, inimical to improvement in offender training of all sorts that prisons should be in this state and I invite the Minister to say how far he agrees that conditions in our prisons, in particular the lack of staffing and the lack of purposeful activity, frustrate the provision of adequate education and training.
For most prisoners, purposeful activity fundamentally means education and training. This debate takes place against the background of Dame Sally Coates’s excellent review. That review started from the limited educational attainment of most prisoners. My noble friend Lady Bakewell has given the figures. Dame Sally’s starting point was to put education at the heart of the prison system. She rightly pointed out that:
“If education is the engine of social mobility, it is also the engine of prisoner rehabilitation”.
She emphasised the need for high-quality vocational training and employability skills to prepare individuals for jobs on release from prison, but she also stressed the importance of enterprise and self-employment support and training.
At a purely practical level, if offenders on release are equipped with the necessary skills it may, as my noble friend Lord German pointed out, often be easier to take up self-employment as a way of securing gainful occupation than to find employment with employers elsewhere, given the difficulty of persuading employers to give jobs to ex-offenders on release from prison.
There are, of course, many employers who as a matter of policy provide work to ex-offenders on release. Among them are Timpson, the shoe repairers, which has a prison recruitment scheme and has had considerable success in attracting and retaining ex-offenders who have settled with them to long-term and successful employment, and many have gone on to success in self-employment as well. There is also Gleeds, the construction company, which has made a special point of finding jobs for ex-offenders on release and which has campaigned to “ban the box”, meaning the criminal records tick-box on employment application forms, which prevents many finding new jobs. I will be interested to know the Minister’s attitude to job application forms.
Employment with helpful and energetic employers may be the best way of equipping former offenders with the skills and confidence to start up in self-employment. However, many will try starting up in self-employment after prison, but it is clear that it takes particular confidence for a prisoner, even a skilled one, to start a business. An ex-offender leaving prison faces many challenges in any case in finding his place in his community and re-establishing relationships with family and friends, so it is a real challenge to set up in any form of a business at the same time.
In this context, Dame Sally’s recommendations on developing mentors in prison may point a way to enabling prisoners to benefit from the experience of other prisoners. I hope that the community rehabilitation companies providing supervision to ex-offenders on release will play a part in building up networks of possible mentors following release who might help newly released prisoners through the first, very difficult, stages of setting up in business. In this context I add to the points made by both my noble friends about the need for a rehabilitation loan fund to provide the vital initial finance and for the co-ordination of training and funding within prisons, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Bakewell. Training in business skills and financial management is also necessary.
A lot can be done in prison too with imagination and encouragement from the prison authorities. An example is the Clink Charity’s restaurants, which have been a startling success. The Clink Charity started at HMP High Down in Surrey and now runs restaurants in Brixton, Cardiff and HMP Styal in Cheshire, which is a woman’s prison. The restaurants are very successful and are run by prisoners for the public. The men and women working there are training for their City & Guilds qualifications in food service and preparation. A mentoring service operates following release which is designed to help them find employment in the field. It has also opened a horticultural garden in HMP High Down and another in another woman’s prison, HMP Send in Surrey, where the prisoners train in horticulture and grow the produce for the four Clink Charity restaurants. At HMP Send, they also rear chickens and provide the restaurants with eggs. The Clink Charity boasts an 87.5% success rate in reducing reoffending. The point of all this is that there is a link between training, recruiting, learning the skills to run a business, mentoring and, finally, either finding employment or opening a business in the community on release. But it all depends on people with the imagination, drive and desire to help encouraging prisoners on their way.
So far I have concentrated on education in prisons. However, it is very important, if we are to achieve our aim of reducing the number of offenders sent to prison, that we also develop the potential of community sentences for providing education, including training in entrepreneurship. The provision for rehabilitation activity requirements, which may be imposed as part of a community order as a result of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, provides a useful and effective vehicle for training offenders in the community. Some CRCs already offer activities over a wide range. Warwickshire and Mercia CRC provides a care farm skills programme at Willowdene Farm. The programme is set over 25 seven-hour days in a 14-week period. It offers courses specialising in mechanics, woodwork, IT, plumbing, forestry, animal welfare and agriculture—all areas in which self-employment is possible. It aims to prepare offenders to be work-ready and achieve two nationally recognised qualifications by the end of the programme. It works with offenders at high risk of reoffending and deals with those with a history of substance abuse. The London CRC helps offenders to develop basic skills in literacy and numeracy, and gives them training which might lead NVQ awards. It also helps ex-offenders to find employment, assisting with such things as CV writing and interview techniques. However, I suspect that more imaginative schemes, such as the West Mercia farm scheme or the Clink restaurants, are more likely to produce long-term benefits, not just for those involved at the time but also for those who might mentor later. What steps do the Minister and his department propose to encourage development by the CRCs and within prisons of the sort of schemes that I have mentioned? We are a long way off. The central point that I make is that we have to improve the system to give training a chance to flourish. Achieve that we must.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012
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Lord Keen of Elie
A number of parties have raised the question of review of the impact of LASPO. The government position remains, as I outlined earlier, that we will carry out the appropriate review by April 2018.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the provisions for legal aid for domestic violence victims and exceptional case funding were intended to ensure protection for such victims and a safety net for deserving cases outside the scope of legal aid. Does the noble and learned Lord share my regret that difficulties in access to legal aid in these areas have led to disappointingly low take-up, and does he agree that this highlights the urgency of the need for the promised review?
Lord Keen of Elie
The Government acted quickly to change the evidence arrangements in respect of domestic violence cases following a decision in February of this year, and the take-up on these cases has increased by about 30% since that time. With regard to exceptional case funding, again the number of applications and grants has increased markedly in the past year and indeed, according to the data available for the last quarter of 2015-16, the number of grants in respect of exceptional case funding has increased by 32%.