House of Lords: Proceedings
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Lord Faulkner of Worcester
The Senior Deputy Speaker(Lord McFall of Alcluith) [V]
I thank the noble Baroness for her question, the kernel of which is: will we instigate a route back to normal? I anticipate deliberation of that at the commission and, thereafter, as appropriate, at the committee dealing with procedural aspects. As she says, we have to be informed by the best advice of Public Health England alongside the representations and views of Members of the House, while taking into consideration staff views and interests. The noble Baroness makes an excellent point about a route back to normal and I am sure that we will take that up at the commission as a first step.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, has withdrawn. I call the noble Lord, Lord Hayward.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I first express disappointment at those Members of the House who continue to move around the building without wearing reasonably requested masks. At this stage, I do not want to change social distancing in the Chamber. However, by 15 February some 50% of all Members of this House will have had their first jab. It is therefore reasonable that the House should give serious consideration to, post-recess, our eating and meeting on a reasonably socially distanced basis at tables alongside each other, and not separated at a distance as now.
The Senior Deputy Speaker(Lord McFall of Alcluith) [V]
That is a very valid question, for which I thank the noble Lord. As I mentioned, the Procedure Committee will be meeting soon and I will bring his and other Members’ comments to its attention.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, and I apologise to the noble Lords it was not possible to call. We now come to the fourth Oral Question.
Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Lord Faulkner of Worcester(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, we have been told that life in Britain will be different once the Covid-19 emergency is over. I hope that one change will be in the approach that we adopt towards Britain’s prisons and the men and women who are held there.
The Prison Service has struggled to contain overcrowding for at least the last 50 years. Measures to reduce the prison population have been discussed continuously during that time. Governments have sometimes expressed themselves as being in favour, but far too little has been done to bring that about. The Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public White Paper in 1990, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, will remember, described prisons as an,
“expensive way of making bad people worse.”
Noble Lords will rightly recoil from the idea of executive release to cancel the effect of a sentence lawfully imposed by the court. However, we now have a situation when a prison sentence carries with it a real risk to the life of a prisoner or of prison staff because of the conditions inside the jails, in half of which the coronavirus is present.
There has always been a time when prisoners have died in prison—for some time now, there have been over 300 prisoner deaths a year, a third of them by their own hand—but we have to go back to the time of the great 18th-century prison reformer John Howard, after whom the Howard League is named and who was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, to find dangers similar to those that we have today because of Covid-19.
In preparing for this debate, I spoke to someone who works at Her Majesty’s Prison Hewell in Worcestershire, described last year by HMIP as “squalid, demeaning and depressing”. As far as spreading the coronavirus is concerned, he said that the prison was as dangerous as a cruise ship—worse in many ways, as the cells are smaller than a typical ship’s cabin.
As so many other countries have decided, and as many of your Lordships have said in this debate, the release of prisoners has now become a matter not just of compassion and humanity but of practical necessity to save lives.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
I call the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who I believe has now unmuted his microphone.
Privileges and Conduct Committee
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Lord Faulkner of Worcester(5 years, 11 months ago)
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The Senior Deputy Speaker
I have no knowledge of any complaints against other Peers in this House. I make that clear.
I mentioned the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, who established a concept of personal honour. That concept is central to this debate. In elaborating on that, he mentioned words such as selflessness, accountability, integrity, openness, objectivity and honesty.
To conclude, we are dealing with two individuals who are both eminent and respected in their fields, as I said previously. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said on 15 November,
“the most severe burden that anyone has to carry is adjudicating upon the conduct of our fellow citizens”.—[Official Report, 15/11/18; col. 2017.]
I know from Members’ comments to me that they have found this painful and distressing on occasion. The Independent Commissioner for Standards, the sub- committee and the Committee for Privileges and Conduct carried out their difficult task dutifully. The commissioner, an experienced lawyer and investigator, as well as a mental health tribunal judge, carried out her task precisely as laid down by the code and the guide that the House designed and agreed to. Each Member signs up to the code and the guide at the start of each Parliament. We must remember that, unlike the House, the commissioner had the unique advantage of seeing, interviewing and assessing the complainant and Lord Lester.
This is the redacted material, which every Member was invited to read before the first meeting. No one took up that invitation. We reiterated the invitation and two individuals have taken it up. I know that one Member has contacted the office to say that they would like to take it up on Wednesday. I invite all other Members to come along after this if they wish to see this material, because it is detailed, comprehensive and fair to both parties. That invitation is open.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
I was one of the two Members who asked to see the material. The point that has not been made today is that the material contains the contemporaneous witness accounts of what happened in Lord Lester’s house. I found that evidence absolutely overwhelming and persuasive. I join the noble Lord in inviting other Members to read it as well.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
The noble Lord said that there were six contemporaneous witnesses. We invite Members to read their accounts.
In her own words,
“on the basis of the strong and cogent evidence of the complainant and her witnesses”,
the commissioner found that Jasvinder Sanghera was a victim of sexual harassment and that Lord Lester was guilty of a grave abuse of power. The Committee for Privileges and Conduct reviewed and endorsed this view. We ask the House to do the same. I hope the House will now agree to this report.
Motion agreed.