Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I want to add to some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Beecham on the make-up of the review of the Parole Board. My understanding is that at present Parole Board members can either sit as a single Parole Board member or as two or as three. They can be a mixture of lay people and lawyers. It is of course desirable that the more serious the case, the greater the legal training and the more appropriate the experience of the people sitting on those hearings. I also wonder whether the Minister can comment on the possibility of using lay magistrates to sit on parole hearings. Is this something that the Ministry of Justice is willing to consider? We have a resource in the pool of magistrates throughout England and Wales, so is the ministry considering the use of magistrates in parole hearings? The whole subject of the Parole Board is extremely important, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Beecham, and is something that needs to be managed very carefully, given the reduction in the resources being made available to it.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, perhaps I may add a word to what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has said in amplification of his noble friend Lord Beecham. In addition to saying that £3 million would be made available, the Minister has been quoted as saying that a number of changes are to be introduced to ease the pressure on the Parole Board. In addition to the possibility of lay magistrates being used, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, can the Minister outline exactly what those changes are? I am quite certain that the Supreme Court introduced the Parole Board in oral hearings because it was satisfied that the board gave a fair hearing to people, and that was how it operated. I would hate to think of some of the parole decisions being reduced to bureaucratic decisions taken by officials.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I shall add a word based on my own experience. It is quite difficults to visualise the work of the Parole Board members unless one has seen them at work. One thing that struck me some years ago when I attended Parole Board hearings from time to time was the huge volume of paperwork generated by individual cases. Of course, the longer a prisoner remains in custody, the bigger the volume becomes. The technique which the Parole Board member has to apply to each case is to work his or her way through the file, which takes a great deal of time, then explain whatever views he or she has reached, based on the information in the file. It is immensely time consuming. My experience was that Parole Board members were extremely conscientious; the people who know best what the effect was of the diminution of resources on their ability to do their job are the Parole Board members themselves, which is the strength of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made. I suggest that his amendment deserves a great deal of consideration.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, I support this amendment. In Vinter, the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg court made it plain that a whole life sentence that had no possibility of review, however long the defendant might be detained in prison, constituted inhuman treatment contrary to Article 3 of the convention. In explaining its decision, the Grand Chamber said at paragraph 112 that,
“if such a prisoner is incarcerated without any prospect of release and without the possibility of having his life sentence reviewed, there is the risk that he can never atone for his offence: whatever the prisoner does in prison, however exceptional his progress towards rehabilitation, his punishment remains fixed and unreviewable. If anything, the punishment becomes greater with time: the longer the prisoner lives, the longer his sentence”.
That passage echoes the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, which I endorse.
The Strasbourg court held that the discretionary power of the Secretary of State to release a whole life prisoner under Section 30 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 did not satisfy the requirement of Article 3 because of uncertainty as to when the Minister would be required to exercise that power. In so holding, it differed from a decision of the Court of Appeal in Bieber, over which I had presided, but as the House has heard, the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal presided over by the Lord Chief Justice has recently disagreed with the Strasbourg court on this point in the case of McLoughlin.
The Court of Appeal said this about the duty of the Secretary of State:
“First, the power of review under the section”—
that is, Section 30 of the 1997 Act—
“arises if there are exceptional circumstances. The offender subject to the whole life order is therefore required to demonstrate to the Secretary of State that although the whole life order was just punishment at the time the order was made, exceptional circumstances have since arisen. It is not necessary to specify what such circumstances are or specify criteria; the term ‘exceptional circumstances’ is of itself sufficiently certain”.
The court went on:
“Second, the Secretary of State must then consider whether such exceptional circumstances justify the release on compassionate grounds … Third, the term ‘compassionate grounds’ must be read, as the court made clear in R v Bieber, in a manner compatible with Article 3. They are not restricted to what is set out in the Lifer Manual. It is a term with a wide meaning that can be elucidated, as is the way the common law develops, on a case by case basis … Fourth, the decision of the Secretary of State must be reasoned by reference to the circumstances of each case and is subject to scrutiny by way of judicial review”.
One suspects that the Secretary of State may not relish being required to exercise this discretion; nor is it appropriate that the discretion should be exercised by a member of the Executive, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has explained. This amendment would transfer the relevant decision to the Parole Board and define the circumstances in which it would fall to be exercised, with a precision that should satisfy the Strasbourg court.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I support the amendment and in particular the intervention made by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. In doing so, I remind the Committee of one group of people whom I mentioned during the debate to which my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd referred. I refer to prison staff. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned the word “hope”, because when I inspected prisons in which full life tariff prisoners were held, their governors made the point to me that the fact that those cases could be reviewed, which was not necessarily the same as that they might be released, gave the prisoners hope and therefore enabled them to conform with the prison regime. That was vital for the purposes of the prison staff who had to maintain the regime. It is important in considering this that the role of the staff should not be forgotten.
Lord Hope of Craighead
I want to add a footnote to the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, based on my own experience. I became the Lord Justice General of Scotland about 25 years ago. At that time, one of the sentences that was available to a trial judge was a discretionary sentence that a person would be detained without limit of time. It was not a sentence of life imprisonment, but was in effect, as it was put in the case of young offenders, detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure; that is, at the discretion of the Secretary of State.
While I was holding that office, Strasbourg began to pronounce on the compatibility with Article 3 of that kind of system. It was decided in Scotland that the system was no longer maintainable, and what was required of me as Lord Justice General was to examine the cases of all those who had been given that kind of sentence to provide them with a tariff—or, in the Scottish terminology, a punishment part—which would set the date as from which their cases might be considered by the Parole Board. Until that was done, it had been entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State, and it was thought that that was improper. The system that was devised was to require a judge to review such cases, recognising, as others have suggested today, that it would be incompatible with the convention for the decision to be left with the Secretary of State.
It was a very unpleasant exercise for me as the people who had received those sentences had committed the most appalling crimes. In comparison with life sentences, which sometimes were relatively simple, these people deserved the most condign punishment. Nevertheless, it was decided that they required some kind of certainty, removed from the discretion of the Secretary of State, so that they could plan their time in prison and there could be some method for review. It was not of course for them to be automatically released; that was not the point of it. It was so that their time in prison could be subject to a regime which would give them, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, some reason for hope that, possibly, in the very long term and in exceptional circumstances, they might be released.
The system being put forward in this amendment is therefore very similar in principle to one which was introduced about 20 years ago in Scotland to cure a similar problem about leaving the matter to the discretion of the Secretary of State. For that reason, I, too, support the amendment as being sound in principle.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said. What concerns me most about Clauses 7 and 8 is that there appears to be no relevant impact assessment of what this means, not just in terms of the numbers of people who will be recalled but in terms of the numbers of people who are sentenced to short-term imprisonment followed by 12 months’ supervision in the community. The overall impact assessment tells us that there will be no impact from the provisions following the Offender Rehabilitation Act, but the impact assessment on Clause 7 says that there is a risk that short-term prisoners in their 12 months’ supervision might impose an impact. That means, as we know, that those prisoners are particularly likely to breach. It is assessed that there could be up to 13,000 short-term prisoners breaching, which will impose a considerable strain on the Prison Service. I ask the Minister whether this impact assessment has been worked out. It seems to me to be quite improper for us to pass an amendment without knowing what the impact will be.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, explained, the amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to review the offender’s licence conditions before deciding whether a recalled determinate sentence prisoner should be subject to discretionary re-release, rather than automatic re-release, on the grounds that the offender is highly likely to breach a condition of their licence if so released. I presume that the aim is to ensure that recalled offenders have not been set up to fail through the imposition of inappropriate licence conditions and then suffer the consequences.
The purpose of this clause is to target those offenders who, while not presenting as a high risk of harm, have persistently failed to comply with probation supervision and any reasonable conditions that have been placed on their licence. More often than not, they are offenders who lead chaotic lives and persistently reoffend. They are offenders who are assessed as highly likely to breach their licence conditions on their re-release after 28 days in custody, thereby resulting in almost immediate further recall.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers
My Lords, I had the good fortune a week ago to enjoy a superb production of “Fidelio” at Garsington. “Fidelio” is an unusual opera, as it has a happy ending, when miserable prisoners, unjustly detained, are released on the orders of the minister of state. Many have been waiting for the Secretary of State for Justice to procure the release of a relatively small category of prisoners whose continued detention is a flagrant violation of the demands of justice. They are the IPP prisoners who, despite having received relatively modest tariff sentences, were deemed to be dangerous under a statutory presumption that has since been discredited and abolished. Years ago, they completed the terms of imprisonment that were appropriate for their offences. Their continued detention today is shameful. The amendment should not be necessary, and one hopes that the Lord Chancellor will take the necessary action to demonstrate that it is not.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, in supporting my noble and learned friend Lord Brown and saluting my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd on his determined and tenacious momentum on this issue, I want to say just one thing. I am amazed that the Government are not tabling this amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, mentioned, £40,000 a year for 773 prisoners is £35 million per year. If you have an overstretched and underresourced Prison Service, surely it makes sense to examine where you could make savings to put the money to better effect, rather than spend it on prisoners who should not be there. I fail to understand why, in the face of all the arguments, all the legal statements and all the evidence, plus the legislation passed in 2012, the Government have not taken the common-sense step of approaching this forcefully themselves.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for his campaign to achieve justice for IPP prisoners. I remember well the debate on 27 March secured by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who raised this issue on that occasion.
The continued imprisonment of those who are serving tariff sentences of less than two years for so long after those tariff sentences were completed, and now long after IPP sentences were abolished by the LASPO Act, is nothing short of disgraceful. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, mentioned “Fidelio”. In that opera, it took the courage of Florestan’s wife Leonore, who, dressed as Fidelio, risked her life to save her husband from unjust imprisonment, to secure his release. All that is necessary for this Government now is for the Secretary of State to exercise his power—given to him, as has been pointed out, by the second limb of Section 128 of the LASPO Act—to introduce a simple presumption in favour of release unless the continued imprisonment of any such prisoner on an IPP can be positively and clearly justified. It is a simple presumption. It meets the justice of the case. It answers any need that remains for the protection of the public. I suggest that this unfairness must be ended, and now.
Legal Systems: Rule of Law
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Prashar, I feel that I am gate-crashing a debate for which I am very much not qualified to take part. It reminds me of a defence debate in which it was calculated that 36 stars had taken part, so others felt somehow excluded. Rather than the picnic referred to by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, however, I regard this turnout as a tribute both to the importance of the subject and to the admiration and respect with which my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf is held in this House. I join those who have congratulated him on and thanked him for this debate.
I propose to base my remarks purely on the contribution that the observance of the rule of law has made to the international standing of the United Kingdom. However, I fully agree with those who have expressed their concern about the creeping erosion of judicial independence and discretion.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, I have to declare an interest as I was a member of the Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, which has already been referred to. I am not going to repeat that judgment but merely want to say that one of the most powerful pieces of evidence we heard was from the high commissioner of Mozambique, who described why Mozambique had applied to join the Commonwealth. Top of the list was the rule of law. This supports absolutely what my noble and learned friend Lord Judge said.
I want to talk about just two aspects. I was very interested in what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, said about his experience with Kosovo. Today’s Armed Forces are in a very difficult position. The law of armed conflict and the Geneva Convention were drawn up to apply to combat in a place of war between armed forces representing nations, and not for what is currently happening, which is referred to as “war among the people”. That is confusing because if a soldier breaches the law, he should, quite rightly, be arraigned under the law.
I well remember spending a considerable amount of time while on operations—for example, in Northern Ireland—on making absolutely certain that every single member of my battalion understood the rule of law. Not only was it explained to him but afterwards he carried it—in the form of a little yellow card— in his pocket to make certain that he would always know it. That applied on the streets of Northern Ireland, where we were working with the police; it does not apply so much in some of the situations with which soldiers are currently faced. However, it is absolutely certain that if any member of the Armed Forces does breach the law, they risk undermining the reputation of the United Kingdom. That happened in the disgraceful affair in Iraq, which has been discoloured by the finding that so many of the witnesses were corrupted, as it were, into giving evidence and demanding compensation, and, of course, in the recent sentencing of a Marine sergeant for murder.
It is essential that our Armed Forces should be aware that there is all the difference in the world—as Sir Michael Howard, the distinguished historian, pointed out—between the Roman words bellum, which is the legal use of force between nations, which is one description of war, and guerra, which is the illegal use of force in a nation. To declare war on terror and on drugs, which are neither bellum nor guerra, is confusing to the Armed Forces, which have to exercise the rule of law.
The second area to which I shall refer is the criminal justice system. As we all know, this system consists of the police, the courts, prisons and probation—but it is a system, as a whole. My noble and learned friend Lord Woolf referred to the legal element of the system. I just want to say that I am very concerned that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and my noble and learned friend Lord Brown have said, it is quite wrong if the Government are seen to be breaking the law as regards the criminal justice system. Noble Lords have mentioned the deliberate problem around voting rights for prisoners. I would add to that the disgraceful procrastination over the numbers of prisoners who are held on indefinite sentences for public protection, a subject which has been raised many times.
I am also extremely alarmed that in the current Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is coming towards us, there is a defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on the allowance of the use of force on children to instil good order and discipline. It is worrying because, instead of the Lord Chancellor seeming to resist any failure to observe the rule of law, the breaches of the rule of law seem to be coming from the man who is responsible for the rule of law. Not only does it send the wrong message about the United Kingdom’s observation of the rule of law; it sends exactly the wrong message to those who are imprisoned because they themselves have failed to observe the law.
Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I begin by assuring the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that Peper Harow, in the name of Childhood First, is alive and well. Indeed, my noble and learned friends Lord Woolf and Lady Butler-Sloss and I have the honour and pleasure of being patrons of the organisation.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I apologise to the noble Lord. I remember it being burnt down and have not kept up with developments since.
Lord Ramsbotham
The house itself was burnt down, but the organisation is functioning in smaller houses, which is much more effective than having one large house.
I propose to speak only about Part 2 of what was already a vast Bill before other clauses were added during its passage through the other place. That is not to say that I do not have concerns about Clauses 1 to 5, which will add significantly to the work of the already overstretched Parole Board, about Clause 6, which appears to be a badly rushed measure on which the Minister in the other place was unable to provide information, either about its projected cost or its alleged benefits, or about Clauses 7 and 8, about which there must be doubt because the impact assessment seems to ignore the inevitable number of breaches of supervision by short-term prisoners, discussed many times during the passage of the Offender Rehabilitation Bill. I leave Part 4 to my noble and learned friends with great confidence, enhanced by their contributions to today’s debate.
My concerns about Part 2 began with the Government’s published response to the consultation on Transforming Youth Custody, in which I was disturbed both by the lack of detail about the proposed secure college and the phrase in the final paragraph of the ministerial foreword, signed by the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister,
“we are committed to delivering at pace”.
That suggests that this is a pet project of the Secretary of State, which he is determined to push through as quickly as possible whatever anyone says. My concerns were further fuelled by three things that the Secretary of State said at Third Reading of the Bill in the other place. First, he said:
“We are not a Government who legislate without taking into account the views of Parliament”.
That claims sounds a little hollow when I recall the deliberate denial of parliamentary scrutiny of the reordering of probation. Secondly, he said that,
“the rules that underpin the secure college provisions will be subject to public consultation. They were published during the passage of the Bill to benefit from the wealth of expertise within the youth justice sector”.
Bearing in mind their importance, as mentioned by the Minister, it is essential that this House sees and scrutinises those rules. I therefore ask the Minister why they have not been available to the House before we start work on the Bill. Thirdly, he said:
“I urge the Opposition to think again before they play politics with the future of young people”. [Official Report, Commons, 17/6/14; cols. 1070-71.]
Like many other noble Lords, I welcome the Government’s stated ambition of creating secure educational establishments where core learning skills, vocational training and life skills will be the central pillars of a regime focused on educating and rehabilitating young offenders. I also welcome the acceptance of the measures introduced by the Children and Families Act for the treatment of those with special educational needs. As an independent Cross-Bencher, my opposition to this proposal is nothing to do with party politics, but entirely based on my practical experience as Chief Inspector of Prisons, when I inspected every young offender institution, and many secure training centres and secure children’s homes, in England and Wales. I found good establishments and bad establishments. What united the good ones was that their governors were trying desperately to achieve what the Government state to be their ambition, while regretting that their attempts were hampered by a lack of resources, including time—the average length of sentence being a bare 78 days. My inspection experiences and my subsequent involvement with the youth justice system lead me totally to disbelieve the maths of the Government’s claims and to ask the Minister: first, whether there are any maths; secondly, on what they are based; and thirdly, why they have not been made available for us to scrutinise.
Having seen many wise, dedicated and experienced governors try and fail to squeeze more out of their pint pots, I have to admit that what I dislike most about this proposal is the presumption, based on no evidence, that private sector companies working for profit can come in and do what experienced professionals have failed to achieve, in larger establishments, with larger catchment areas and at less cost. Such a presumption suggests that no one has worked out the cost of essential custodial educational staff/offender ratios, because, if they had, they would have realised that the cost of ensuring there are sufficient skilled custodial staff is bound to have an impact on the provision of purposeful activity and vice versa. The risks that private sector companies take with staff numbers in adult prisons are simply not acceptable when they are responsible for safeguarding this vulnerable age group.
The proposal also confirms that pace has encouraged the rejection of the unanimous advice from experts that small establishments are far better and safer if anything is to be achieved with this particular group, and for the need to preserve the principles of maintaining closeness to home, development of good family contact and links to the local authorities of children in care. If pace means commissioning £85 million of limited funding on an unsubstantiated proposal before it has been scrutinised and approved by Parliament, without knowing whether it is possible to implement what is proposed, it is better described as playing with the future of young people.
The Minister said that the commission to build would not be confirmed unless and until the Bill receives Royal Assent. I submit that it is bordering on contempt of Parliament for the Government to announce the award of the £85 million pathfinder contract to Wates to build what they describe as a purpose-built 320-place secure college on a site at Glen Parva in the East Midlands before the Bill has completed its passage through Parliament and without any idea about the requirements of the educational contract whose delivery the build is meant to facilitate. Far from it being designed to satisfy secure college aspirations, Wates has been commissioned to build what was agreed for a young offender institution on the same site in 2009 but subsequently not built. The Minister’s mention of Titan prisons reminded me that it was Wates that told me of Jack Straw’s infamous direction that they were required “to hold as many people as possible as cheaply as possible”. I hope that the same has not been directed by the Secretary of State in connection with the proposed secure college.
Other noble Lords have mentioned paragraph 10 of Schedule 6, which allows staff to “use reasonable force” to ensure “good order and discipline”. I fail to see why this paragraph is necessary, because an independent review of restraint in juvenile secure settings chaired by an eminent adolescent psychiatrist produced admirably clear minimum rules that were accepted and published by the previous Secretary of State. Presumably they are not tough enough for Mr Grayling. I could go on but I will reserve my fire for Committee.
Before that I would like to make an appeal to the Secretary of State through the Minister. Bearing in mind that, thanks to the welcome reduction in numbers, largely achieved by the efforts of the Youth Justice Board, the nature of the child prisoner population has changed from its far wider representation into being a toxic mix of the most violent, troubled and damaged. That change gives him a perfectly valid reason for dropping his proposal and putting it into the aspirational basket. All would not be lost because he could then task the newly appointed director of young offenders, if paragraph 20 of the Government’s response to the consultation is to be believed, to conduct a deliberate and costed examination of what improvement and change was possible with the available resources, including quantifiable evidence to support his claim that secure colleges will reduce reoffending rates and show how such a reduction will be achieved in practice. Meanwhile, in the absence of proof, it would be irresponsible of the Government to ask this House to rubber stamp this proposal and responsible of them to prove that I am wrong by producing the evidence that justifies the pace with which they are pursuing their proposal with unsubstantiated ambition.
Women: Custodial Sentences
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, on obtaining this debate, not least because it maintains the momentum on an issue that has been raised countless times on the Floor of the House but always seems to be marked by a lack of progress. I was interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, mentioned the difference with men, because one thing that I shall never forget is finding on my initial inspection of Holloway that women’s injuries were recorded on a diagram of a man’s body, as there were no diagrams of female bodies available in the Prison Service.
I am afraid that I am going to sound a hobby-horse that I have been sounding ever since 1995 when I walked out of Holloway because I had found, among other things, that women were in chains while they were in labour. I found that there was absolutely nobody in charge of women’s prisons. I went to the director-general, whom I had never met, and said, “Please may I meet the director of women?”, and he said, “There isn’t one”. So I said, “Well, who is responsible for what happens in prisons in the selection and training of staff, and the organising of programmes and of making good practice somewhere into common practice everywhere?”, so as to make certain that what happens in Durham is the same as what happens down in Gloucestershire. He said, “There is a civil servant in the policy department”, but I said, “That’s no good. Who is responsible for overseeing that it actually happens?”. There was no one and there still is no one today.
In the two reports that I wrote on women in prison in 1997 and 2001, I recommended that there should be someone. The Prison Reform Trust recommended in 1999, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, has just repeated, that there should be a women’s justice board like the Youth Justice Board. The three reports of the Fawcett Society all recommended that there should be a women’s justice board or somebody in charge. All that was before the Corston report. Nothing has happened. After I had walked out of Holloway, the Government produced an action plan for that prison, which I supervised by annual inspections, to see how it was being maintained. That was fine while the action plan lasted but, after it had finished, there was nothing. So Holloway has zigzagged up and down, as have all other women’s prisons ever since.
Why have the Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice consistently refused to put people in charge of different types of prisoners and be responsible and accountable to Ministers for what happens? That is what happens in schools, in hospitals and in businesses, but it does not happen in the Prison Service and it is why nothing has happened. We do not need any more reports or lists of good practice. They are there in spades and have been coming out for years. What we need is action to put it together.
I include the women who are out of custody in all this because I am worried about the future under the new system of community rehabilitation companies. The previous Government’s proposal for custody plus failed because, among other things, people were concerned that magistrates and others would take advantage of the system and award short custody because supervision would follow. I know that this is a worry about men but to me it is much more of a worry about women because of the number of short-sentenced women. I say that because I am concerned about the content of the community service that is then required and what is actually done for the supervision. Many of these women come from a dysfunctional background and have pretty chaotic lives. What therefore ought to be done during the community sentence is management to enable them to live their lives better, to look after their children better and to prepare better food. Masses of things could practically be done in a proper community service that was aimed at preparing the women to live more useful and law-abiding lives in future.
There is therefore an opportunity but, again, I see it all going on as a sort of discussion point rather than an action point unless somebody is made responsible for ensuring that it happens and for driving it through. That somebody is not a Minister. I have lost count of the number of Ministers for Children and Ministers for Women whom I have met and who have all come and gone. They have produced a strategy and disappeared and nothing has happened. What you need is an official who is accountable to Ministers for making it happen. They should be held to account and, until that happens, I am afraid that I can see this debate being repeated over and over again.
Transforming Rehabilitation: Mental Health
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
I cannot comment on the details of the noble Lord’s question, but I assure him that neither of those two organisations are part of the CRC delivery, as he may well be aware. The CRC contracts are being drawn up and will be in operation by 2015. This matter was fully debated before both Houses of Parliament and we believe that any difficulties should be capable of being found in the stress-testing that is currently being undergone.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, to follow on from my noble friend’s question about NHS England, can the Minister comment on a recent freedom of information question and answer that showed that only 5% of clinical commissioning groups were actually funding specific healthcare for probation and that 25% of the CCGs questioned did not even realise that it was their responsibility to fund medical health provision in probation?
Lord Faulks
I cannot comment on the specific freedom of information request to which the noble Lord refers but I can perhaps reassure him that the Government are particularly aware of the danger of individuals escaping the net who are suffering from mental illness—offenders who come to the attention of courts and police services. Much work is done by the liaison and diversion services, which have invested a considerable sum of money to make sure that those who are often reluctant to acknowledge that they have mental illness, when they come into contact with a court or police station, are identified by appropriate health professionals. The information about them is then passed on to the appropriate figure so that, when they go to prison or are in the hands of a CRC, that information is available. A considerable investment has been made and for altogether 22% of the population it is hoped to roll out the arrangement throughout the country so that there is much better liaison in future.
Prisons: Education and Training
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact prison staff cuts have had on the provision of education, job training and substance abuse programmes in Her Majesty’s prisons.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, staff reductions have been made as part of the benchmarking reforms of public sector prisons. Benchmarking is the best means of delivering value for money for the public purse. It either increases purposeful activity or sustains current levels, and refocuses work and job training to enhance prisoners’ employment prospects on release. The Prison Service works closely with commissioners of substance misuse services and education to optimise the provision of these services to meet prisoners’ needs.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
I thank the noble Lord for that rather disappointing reply. Provision of and access to education and training are two key factors in any meaningful attempt to prevent reoffending. I cannot imagine that anyone responsible for the conduct of imprisonment could be happy about an Ofsted report which finds that, despite some prisons having state-of-the-art facilities:
“Training and education in prisons are very poor and are failing to support offenders into employment… In many prisons, training and education comes too far down the list of priorities for prison governors and other senior staff.”
Nor could anyone be happy about a London University Institute of Education survey which found that 62% of prison educators criticised the negative effect of payment by results on prisoners as learners, and on the overall quality of education. When prison educators are complaining and prison staff are speaking openly about the difficulties of getting prisoners to education due to cuts in staffing, I hope that Ministers are suitably concerned. Will the Minister please tell the House what steps are being taken to rectify the situation?
Lord Faulks
Many steps are being taken. Work is progressing on introducing a new mandatory assessment for all newly received prisoners by OLASS, the Offender Learning and Skills Service providers. This will ensure that all offenders receive a learning assessment focused on English and maths, rather than those who simply go on to learning. NOMS and its partners are working towards implementing better data about sharing arrangements. I should say that intensive maths and English courses are being piloted in prisons, based on a model adopted in the Army, particularly to address prisoners serving short sentences.
Prisoners: Indeterminate Sentences
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being in my place when the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, started his speech, but I was unavoidably detained on the telephone. I therefore seek the indulgence of the House to continue with the remarks that I intended to make. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on securing this important debate, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, has done, salute my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd who for years has tirelessly pursued the injustices and other issues connected with this sentence. I absolutely agree with every word of what he suggested and has put forward to the Secretary of State for consideration.
Rather than look at the legal side, which has been so well covered by other noble Lords, I shall focus a little more on some of the practical issues, particularly those that show a tremendous need for improvement within the National Offender Management Service. In doing so, I would like to refer to two reports which were published in 2008—longer than the length of World War II ago. One is by the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and of Probation and one is by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, as it was then called, of which I am currently a vice-president and was formerly an adviser. I do so because one of the things that worries me in the reports of two inquests—one of which I reported to the House in June 2012 and one which took place last month—is that they disclose failures in the National Offender Management Service which ought to be eliminated.
In June 2012 I reported to the House the case of Shaun Beasley, who had been awarded a two-year 145-day tariff IPP in 2007. The Parole Board said that he needed to do a course, so he was sent from Littlehey prison to Parc prison in Wales, where he was told that the course he required was not available and would not be for two to three years. This was in early August and on 24 August he rang his family and said that he could not cope any more. His family immediately rang the prison; nothing was done; and he was found hanging in his cell shortly after midnight.
On 28 February this year, the inquest took place of Kieron Dowdall who, as an 18 year-old, was given a three and a half-year IPP tariff in 2006. In October 2010 he was sent to North Sea Camp open prison as part of his release plan. By early January 2012, when nothing had happened, his mood and mental well-being significantly deteriorated. He absconded and was picked up, having said that he was trying to kill himself. He was moved to Lincoln prison and suddenly from there, without warning, was moved to Stafford. When he got to Stafford he telephoned his family several times, saying that he had a feeling of hopelessness, and his family tried repeatedly to ring the staff at Stafford but were told to put their concerns in writing. He was found hanging in his cell on 27 January, shortly after which it was discovered that there had been an incomplete form on his potential suicide waiting in Lincoln prison which had not been forwarded to Stafford.
I mention those cases because in the report in 2008 put forward by the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and of Probation, they said that one of the main problems with the management of IPP prisoners was that there was no clarity over who had overall responsibility for them, and they recommended the appointment of a senior lead to look after their interests and their programming. I have bored the House many times over this because it has always struck me that one of the failings of our Prison Service is not to have someone, some named person, responsible and accountable for each type of prisoner and for seeing that what happens to them is consistent and is exactly the same all over the country. Any manager or Minister who wants something done sends for the person responsible and tells them to do it. If you do not have someone, nothing gets done. Nothing has been done with IPP prisoners. No one is responsible or accountable. It is no good managing these sort of people, with all their various needs, by committee.
They went on to say that the National Offender Management Service should do two things. First, it should collate and make publicly available up-to-date management information about IPP prisoners, including tariff length, ethnicity, location, assessments completed, needs identified, interventions required and progression. Those are not available. If you ask what these people need, whatever it may be, you cannot get an answer. Secondly, it should carry out an intervention needs analysis of those sentenced to IPP and an assessment of the resources required and available to meet those needs in a sufficient number of prisons at appropriate levels of security across the country.
Other noble Lords have already mentioned that one of the problems of the IPP prisoner is that, as happened with one of the prisoners I have talked about, Mr Beasley, when they arrive at the place they have been sent to for a course, it is not available. That is simply not good enough and will not do. Unless and until the Prison Service and the National Offender Management Service get their act together and put someone in charge who is responsible for evaluating these things, nothing will happen. The nine years to clear the backlog will go on and on because more people will not have completed their journey through the revolving door.
If I have one other wish, it is that the burden of proof, as it is sometimes called, should be re-examined in order to ease the pressure. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, hinted at that in his remarks. I think it would be irresponsible of the Secretary of State not to ease the pressure on the overstretched Prison Service by requiring the state to produce evidence that someone still represents a risk rather than the person having to prove that he does not. Until drastic action is taken, this wretched problem is going to go on and on because the resources will not increase, and without those, we will never correct this dreadful misjudgment.
Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham
As an Amendment to the Motion on Amendment 1, at end insert “, and do propose Amendment 1B in lieu of the words so left out of the Bill”.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I have to admit that I have been seriously concerned about the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda ever since the White Paper and this Bill were published at the same time as its announcement in the Queen’s Speech last May. That may seem perverse when, like, I suspect, every other noble Lord, I also admit that I have no quarrel with the Government’s intention to do something about the group of offenders with the highest reoffending rate—namely, those sentenced to less than a year’s imprisonment without any subsequent community supervision—the previous Government’s announced plan for doing this having proved unaffordable.
My concerns began with the consultation that preceded the White Paper. As in too many other Ministry of Justice consultations, I have come across no one whose contribution has been acknowledged, nor any evidence of any notice being taken of any expressed concerns. Following that sham, neither House has been given an opportunity to debate the White Paper because its agenda is not the subject of this Bill. When I tabled an amendment asking for that to be rectified, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out quite rightly that my wording was faulty because the Offender Management Act 2007, already quoted by the Minister, which the Government claim allows them to alter probation provision in any way they wish without consulting Parliament, did not mention “the probation service” but rather “probation services”. I pressed my amendment to a vote because I thought that my error could easily be corrected and I hoped that the House would understand that I was seeking an opportunity for it to exercise its constitutional duty. Secretly, I hoped that the Justice Secretary, if he was as confident of the viability of his proposals as he made out, might be happy to debate them, first, because he would feel that he need not fear any query and, secondly, because of the legitimacy that such a process would give them. I hoped in vain. Since then, an increasingly long list of subsequent happenings have served to increase my concern that the Ministry of Justice would be unable to deliver what was being announced without prejudicing the ability of probation services to protect the public.
When the previous Government brought before Parliament their proposal to change responsibility for the national structure and provision of probation services from counties to trusts in the 2007 Act, I remember the debates about what would happen should a probation trust fail. Ministers said that the Bill gave the Justice Secretary the power to dismiss a failing trust and make other arrangements for the provision of probation services in its area without having to come back to Parliament. However, that power was limited to “a probation trust”—words used several times in Section 5 of the Act, quoted by the Minister in another place. I submit that for the Government to press ahead asserting that “a” means “all” is a wilful misinterpretation of the Act, not least because, had there been any indication that that was what the previous Government had intended, I am sure that the point would have been vigorously debated in this House.
My concerns are not about the intention behind the Bill but the practicalities of delivery and the denial of any opportunity for either House to scrutinise them. If the proposals go horribly wrong, the public, whose protection will suffer, will rightly blame Parliament, and I can just imagine the ministerial blame-dodging that will follow—not least following the leaked internal Ministry of Justice assessment of the high risk of launching something so far-reaching but as yet unproven, a disclosure resented but still not refuted by the Government. Parliament has every reason to seek discussion of its potential position. As the late Paul Goggins MP, a former Prisons and Probation Minister, said in the other place on 3 December:
“Our electorate expects us to ask questions, not simply to take at face value the kind of proposals that are being offered to us”.—[Official Report, Commons, Offender Rehabilitation Bill Committee, 3/12/13; col. 225.]
To prove that I am not alone in my concerns—some of which are set out in a list of 50 questions that I have given to the Minister and will willingly share with any noble Lord who is interested—I will cite a number of recent happenings. Last November, three chief executives of probation trusts took the bold step of writing open letters to the Justice Secretary asking for delay. Last December, the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation published a damning report on offender management in prisons, doubting whether it could deliver future NOMS expectations. They believed that the current position was no longer sustainable and should be subject to fundamental review as part of the transforming rehabilitation agenda. That was without the addition of offender supervisors employed by community rehabilitation companies responsible for sentence planning both in their contract package areas and in resettlement prisons.
The Justice Select Committee in the other place, having already drawn attention to the inability of the Ministry of Justice to manage contracts—witness high-profile cases involving G4S and Serco—said in its interim report on the proposals, dated 14 January that,
“there is a lack of systematic information about the risks they might encounter during implementation and full operational conditions and the steps that they will take to mitigate those risks. They also do not appear to have devised clear contingency plans in the event that the competition fails to yield a viable new provider for a particular area … We wished to examine the affordability of the reforms … but we have been unable to determine whether sufficient funding is in place on the limited information that the Government has provided. Furthermore, a key question for the Government is how the focus on reducing reoffending will be maintained while the restructuring of the market that is necessary to create the desired efficiencies takes place”.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the care that he has taken to sum up. I am very grateful to all those noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. If I may start at the very end of the Minister’s comments, the last thing that we want is to bring the probation service to an end. Probation is far too important a public service to be risked in that way. The very last thing that any ex-Chief Inspector of Prisons would want is a failure to continue to improve the provision of proper services to offenders that enable their rehabilitation into the community and the prevention of reoffending, whether that involves the Prison Service or the probation service.
I listened with great care to all the points the Minister made. If there is just one point I would like to make—because it comes up over and over again and it is inaccurate—it is that to cite the Peterborough experiment in this situation is false. It is not a probation experiment: it is a prison and it is not funded by the companies that are taking the risk. It is funded by social impact bonds. Therefore, it is entirely false to cite it. I wish that that would stop because it distorts arguments.
I accept that there are all sorts of processes that the Minister has described: meetings, papers, discussions and so on. However, that has not been the same from the start. Those who were concerned about the morale and the worry of members of the probation service should think back. The loss of trust and good will in the Government—those were two of the saddest words I heard used by the probation service as to what had happened—was because, in the early stages, and from June onwards, they were not kept informed. Indeed, there were several complaints, when members of staff were allocated either to the National Probation Service or community rehabilitation companies, that they had not been told why they had been allocated. As a soldier, I find that man management is something that has been drummed into me, and I do not regard that as man management. It is extremely unfortunate if you lose the support of those whom you are seeking to lead.
I agree that it is essential that we do something about the reoffending rate, but I am afraid that what the Minister has outlined to the House is, as I said at the beginning, long on aspiration but short on confirmation that this is achievable. I remember a definition of “affordable” that I was taught a long time ago by a former head of the Army for whom I worked. He said, “There are two definitions of affordable: can you afford it, and can you afford to give up what you’ve got to give up in order to afford it?”. I submit that a whole raft of structures dealing with offenders has enabled the probation service to reduce the reoffending rate among the people for whom it is currently responsible, who are being put at risk by what is happening now. I do not believe that the victims and the others to whom the Minister referred can afford to have the degree of public protection reduced.
As the Minister said, the Bill is not really about the subject that we have been discussing. He mentioned the 20 hours in this House and the 26 hours in the Commons on the subject, but in fact those debates were not about this subject; virtually every one of those hours was filled with amendments and questions put down by Members seeking information. They were not deliberate discussions introduced by the Government to explain what was going on. That is why, as I say, the purpose of my amendment is to try to ensure that this particular measure, which has such important public protection involvement, should be given true scrutiny by all the people who feel so passionately about what could and should be done for both offenders and their victims.
I fear that, despite all that has been said, I do not believe that this House could responsibly allow the Bill to go forward at this stage, because too much is still unknown about its actual delivery possibilities. Therefore I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Prisons: Deaths of Young People
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to hold an independent review into deaths of young people in custody as recommended in the report by Inquest and the Prison Reform Trust Fatally Flawed; and, if so, when.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, we have decided to hold an independent review to learn lessons from self-inflicted deaths of young adults in custody aged between 18 and 24 and to identify actions to prevent further deaths. The review will be led by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who I see is in his place. He is the chair of the Independent Advisory Panel of the Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody. The review will report by spring 2015.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that positive response, but I am sorry that the review’s remit does not include children aged under 18. Since January 2011, 16 young adults aged between 18 and 21 have taken their own lives in custody and, worryingly, eight of those deaths have occurred in the last four months. All of them took place in adult prisons, to which it is currently the policy to send young adults rather than to young offender institutions.
In a thematic review, Suicide is Everyone’s Concern, in 1999, I made specific recommendations regarding the safety of young people, yet year after year the same old failings following young suicides are recorded in inspection and inquest reports, such as the lack of institutional understanding of, or attention paid to, the particular needs of that vulnerable age group. Now the Ministry of Justice plans to create secure colleges—fortified schools—for under-18s and, as I have mentioned already, to put all those aged over 18 into adult prisons, both of which could exacerbate existing flaws and create significant risk to young lives. Does the Minister accept that a degree of urgency exists and will he consider advancing the time by which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is required to complete his review so that necessary improvements to current practice, based on the mass of existing evidence, can be considered in time to be built into the new proposals?
Lord Faulks
My Lords, the review will start as soon as resources are in place, and we are anxious that it should report back by the spring of 2015. That does not mean that lessons are not continuously learnt from all the other sources that provide information. The review will focus on key themes, including vulnerability information sharing and the safety of young people.
The noble Lord referred to the secure colleges which are shortly to be established, the announcement of which is contained in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. The secure colleges will put education at the heart of youth custody and are intended to provide an innovative and holistic approach to the education and rehabilitation of young offenders so that fewer go on to reoffend.
Those aged under 18 are currently held in secure children’s homes, secure training centres and young offender institutions. No under-18s are mixed with over-18s. As to 18 to 20 year-olds, they are currently in young offender institutions, and the Government consultation on whether this age group should be in prisons with older adults closed in December. We are putting on hold the Government response to the consultation pending the result of this particular review.
Criminal Legal Aid (General) (Amendment) Regulations 2013
Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Pannick on bringing his regret Motion before this House. I do not dissent in any way from what he said. He has outlined why this House should regret the restrictions being imposed on legal aid, advice and assistance in prison law cases with his usual clarity and skill. I want to focus instead on the Government’s justification for those restrictions, which I believe to be deeply flawed. I have to admit to serious alarm when I saw that the justification was the internal prisons complaints system, about which, when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, I had frequent cause to complain. I was equally alarmed when I saw that the tough Mr Grayling had said in his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights:
“I struggle personally to believe that it is sensible to have a system where we have prisoners able to access the courts, and access public funds, to argue that they should be detained in a different prison”,
to which the Joint Committee responded:
“What is strikingly strange about the Lord Chancellor’s comments about where legal aid will be allowed is that he has … ignored where common-law standards of fairness apply”.
It also said:
“We have not seen any evidence to suggest that legal aid is being abused to enable prisoners to complain about what prison they are put in”—
in other words, both drawing attention to his ignorance of the facts and suggesting that he was on a collision course with Winston Churchill’s conviction that the way in which it treats its crime and criminals is the true test of the civilisation of any country. Ideology appears to dictate his policy-making, rather than reality.
Mr Justice May, when recommending the reformation of the Inspectorate of Prisons after a break of 102 years, following widespread unease about the efficacy of the self-regulation that had been introduced by the first Prison Commissioner in 1877, recommended that the chief inspector be given statutory responsibility for the inspection of efficiency, propriety and the investigation of grievances. In the event, the investigation of grievances was denied. However, when the first prisons ombudsman was appointed in 1994 following similar unease about the internal prisons complaints system, he was not given statutory responsibility for the investigation of grievances—something for which he and his successors have fought, unsuccessfully, ever since, and a fight which I warmly support.
I was therefore interested to note that in his evidence to the Joint Committee, far from having the confidence in the complaints system held by the Lord Chancellor, my successor as chief inspector, Nick Hardwick, confirmed that,
“prisoner confidence in a complaints system was crucial to the safety of a prison”.
He added that,
“two-thirds of people who have had a complaint dealt with through the existing system do not think it has been dealt with fairly”,
and that,
“about one in 10 say they have been prevented in some way from accessing the complaints system”.
So much for advice and assistance that is equal to that being denied.
Like my noble and learned friends Lord Brown and Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, if there is one group of prisoners about whom I am particularly concerned in all this, it is young offenders. For a whole variety of reasons, including immaturity and lack of trust, they tend not to use the complaints system. When I was inspecting, what worried me was that prison staff tended to interpret this lack of use of the formal complaint system as meaning that all was well when the opposite was true.
My final word to the Minister is that, in reflecting on all that has been said by noble Lords in regretting the proposed restrictions, he and the Secretary of State should reflect that this is not a stand-alone measure. Their restrictions come on top of a whole host of other cuts and deliberately tough sanctions against prisoners, and are resulting in mounting unrest. Prisoners are deprived of their liberty for a period by the courts following conviction for an offence but, in the civilised society about which Winston Churchill spoke, they are not deprived of justice. My noble and learned friend Lord Woolf observed that justice was a crucial ingredient of safety in a prison, which confirms that there is no place for ideologically imposed injustice in a civilised prison system.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, bitterly regret the need for this debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that I feel enormous sympathy for him and bitterly regret that he will have the arduous burden of responding on behalf of the Government. To turn our minds back only a few years, if we had asked any lawyer worth their salt whether it would be likely that any Government, of whatever political complexion, would bring forward regulations such as these, I think that such a suggestion would have been met with incredulity.
I totally endorse what has been said by every Member of the House who has spoken already, particularly the comments made in relation to children, women and the vulnerable. I emphasise the comments made recently by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the need to remember the backcloth against which these additional cuts must now be seen.
I shall take a moment to concentrate on the plight of women. Noble Lords will know that legal aid in family matters has been removed almost in its entirety, except in cases of domestic violence. Even there we are hearing reports from solicitors all over the country that access to legal aid for those women and individuals who are victims has been severely constrained. Some solicitors say that the drop has been 96% in some areas and 94% in others, and that there has been a real diminution right across the board. We know that women in our prisons are overrepresented in terms of vulnerability. Certainly it was my experience when I was Minister of State with responsibility for the criminal justice system. I was told in 2004 by the governor of Holloway prison—I have no reason to believe that this has changed—that 89% of women in prison had a history of domestic violence or sexual abuse prior to having offended. We have a highly vulnerable group whose rights already are constrained outside the prison estate and are having them further constrained within it. Two-thirds of children in youth offending institutions come from those same domestic violence homes. We all know that those who graduated from the youth justice estate are overrepresented in the male estate. We are dealing with the most vulnerable in our community.
I add my voice to those who have expressed a degree of shock that the Secretary of State for Justice feels able to phrase these issues in terms of ideology. I commend the Damascene-like conversion of the erstwhile Treasury devil for his change of mind and invite the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, to ask the Lord Chancellor to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, as an exemplar of what can be done when one really wishes to change, and to say that, from the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice, all of us expect more. I cannot but agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, when he says that these provisions are mischievous and misguided.