Queen’s Speech

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, in the short time available I intend to focus on the justice section of the gracious Speech, particularly the announcement that there is to be a royal commission

“to review and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice process.”

I note that in yesterday’s Times there was a suggestion that this should include the organisation of the police, last subject of a separate royal commission in 1962. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that this should be repeated.

I am concentrating on prisons and probation for two reasons. First, their evolving problems have been catalogued in detail, over many years, by successive quality assurers—the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and the Chief Inspectors of Probation—so it will not be difficult to draw up a comprehensive list of what needs to be reviewed. Secondly, on 3 October 2019 I tabled a Motion that

“this House takes note of the case for reforming the management and treatment of offenders in prison and the community”—[Official Report, 3/10/19; col. 1808.]

in which I called for an outside inquiry, akin to a royal commission, to be appointed as quickly as possible, not least to determine whether punishment or rehabilitation should be the primary aim of the Prison and Probation Service. I did that because, in the past,

“Whenever an issue of public policy required thorough examination and the Government were not committed to a definite policy, the task used to be entrusted to an invited group of persons from outside the relevant departments, such as a royal commission.”—[Official Report, 3/10/19; col. 1810.]


The last Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice System reported in 1993, since when all reviews have been carried out in-house, despite the known imperfections of that process. Because Ministry of Justice officials have presided over failure for so long, and because some existing practices need to be questioned, I do not believe that they are the right persons to carry out a review.

The Ministry of Justice rejected my request on the grounds that Ministers were not convinced that a review was necessary in view of the reforms already outlined. I therefore welcome this change of heart and, in view of their fundamental importance, ask the Minister whether she can tell the House anything about the commission’s timings, chairman and terms of reference.

The lack of consistent strategic direction of the criminal justice system, amounting to successive Governments not being committed to a definite policy, was made manifestly obvious in 2012, when the coalition Government introduced a legal aid, sentencing and rehabilitation of offenders Bill, which was quickly renamed the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. Of course, any sentence is a punishment, awarded by the courts following a crime, but then what? This lack of a definite policy was highlighted by the tragic event at the Fishmongers’ Hall last month. The Prime Minister immediately focused on punishment, while the father of Jack Merritt, one of the victims, memorably took the opposite view. In my debate I mentioned a suggested joint aim for the prison and probation services:

“It is our duty to help all those committed by the courts to live useful and law-abiding lives, with the qualifications that they must be treated with humanity and not allowed to escape from prison or breach the terms of their supervision order in the community.”—[Official Report, 3/10/19; col. 1810.]


As far as prisons and probation are concerned, I encourage the Government to make the terms of reference of the royal commission as wide as possible, including the outlining of a definite policy for the criminal justice system, the governance of prisons and probation and the processes by which offenders are to be treated and managed. They should also include initial assessment, the provision of healthcare and the treatment of women and children, foreign nationals, the elderly and indeterminate-sentenced prisoners. Above all, I hope that the Government, on behalf of the public, whose protection they are responsible for providing, will listen to the words of a former prisoner:

“We should at least try to rehabilitate, and not just give up on prisoners.”

Prisons: Pregnancy Healthcare

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My noble and learned friend makes a very good point. It is essential that we provide medical care across the board for those in custody. As I mentioned, that is why the National Prison Healthcare Board has produced its principle of equivalence of care for prison healthcare in England. That followed a report by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, published in November 2018, which recommended that the board should work with stakeholders over the next 12 months to agree a definition of equivalent care and indicators to ensure that they can measure that there are no health inequalities for people detained in prison. Of course, that includes mental health, which is a major issue, particularly in respect of women’s custody, with more than half of women in custody recorded as reporting or suffering from mental health issues. I agree that that needs to be addressed.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, when I suspended my first inspection of HMP Holloway after discovering that women were routinely chained while in labour, I was very disturbed to discover that there was nobody in Prison Service headquarters responsible for the overall direction and co-ordination of women’s prisons. Could the Minister tell the House who in Prison Service headquarters is responsible for the co-ordination of the delivery of services to pregnant women in prison?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, that ultimately rests with the director-general, who in turn takes steps to deal with those concerned at a regional level. That remains the position. I am pleased to say that the director- general of the Prison Service is always in communication with prison group directors regarding all these issues. I am also pleased to observe that we have moved on significantly since the days when the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made the discoveries he referred to. Matters have improved. Indeed, my understanding is that Holloway prison is no longer open.

Criminal Justice System: Women

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on obtaining this important debate and on his introduction to it. I salute him for his two reports on families which have raised the profile of this most important ingredient in the successful rehabilitation of offenders. I also thank Sarah Tudor for her excellent Library briefing.

My interest in the issue of the needs of women in the criminal justice system goes back to my first inspection as Chief Inspector of Prisons of HMP Holloway in December 1995, which I suspended because there was so much wrong with the treatment of and conditions for women prisoners. Immediately after leaving the prison, I went to the Prison Service headquarters to introduce myself to the director-general and tell him why I had not felt able to complete my inspection.

Having been in the Army, chaired an NHS hospital, been director of international affairs in a private security company and governor of a school, I expected that the Prison Service would have a similar hierarchical governance structure. I therefore asked to see the director of women’s prisons—and was amazed to be told that there was not one. When I asked who was responsible for overseeing the conditions for and treatment of women in every prison in the country, I was told that there was a civil servant in the policy branch. When I asked to whom a governor of a women’s prison could turn to for advice, I was told, “Their area manager”. I said that I thought that area managers dealt only with budgets and asked how many of them had worked in a women’s prison. The director-general admitted that he did not know. I subsequently learned that only one had—as a junior governor.

No other organisation—business, hospital or school—operates without having named people responsible and accountable for particular function. Why should the Prison Service be any different? In addition to a director of women’s prisons, I recommended the appointment of families contact development officers in every prison, as in Scotland—but neither recommendation was implemented. Since then I have lost count of the bewildering number of Ministers or officials, under different titles, who have been made responsible for meeting the needs of women in the criminal justice system. Ministers may have overall responsibility, but they cannot exercise 24/7 oversight of the treatment of and conditions for women—hence the need for a subordinate official.

The history of women’s prisons is littered with examples of good practice developed by a good governor somewhere but never turned into common practice everywhere because nobody was responsible for doing so. If Ministers for Prisons asked why standards in individual prisons zig-zagged so wildly, they would discover that incoming governors are not told what to do, leaving how they do it up to them, but are told how to do things in minute detail, enmeshed in myriad targets and performance indicators. This is the cult of managerialism gone mad. Over the years I have lost count of the number of recommendations for improvement made by knowledgeable people or organisations—such as the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, the Inspectorate of Prisons, the Prison Reform Trust, the Centre for Social Justice and the Fawcett Society—only to have them ignored by Ministers and officials in the Ministry of Justice.

In June 2018 the Government published their long-awaited Female Offender Strategy, which emphasised the need for specialist gender-informed services to assist in supporting women to lead fulfilling lives. Unfortunately, an inability to meet the needs of women in prisons is matched by the absence of services designed to respond to women’s needs in the community. Transforming Rehabilitation, while disastrous for men, was even more disastrous for women because, as the Chief Inspector pointed out in a thematic review of the supply chain, too many small, specialist organisations were squeezed out, as they have been under the so-called dynamic purchase system—introduced, ironically, by the Ministry of Justice after the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, published his first report. Awarding contracts to large organisation has resulted in women’s and family services in particular being lost. I therefore urge the Minister to instruct officials in the Ministry of Justice to review whether the DPS has contributed to this loss.

Female offenders are rightly suspicious of allegedly gender-free services, too many of which turn out to be male-orientated. In addition to being responsible for children, many women offenders have backgrounds of mental ill health and addiction or experience of domestic and sexual abuse, which are best dealt with by services designed for women. Females turn to alcohol or drug abuse for different reasons to males, often seeking solace following domestic abuse. They then face considerable disadvantage because there is too little provision of specialist women’s services, which have a proven track record of providing effective therapeutic and practical help.

As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, says in his reports, many of the solutions to reducing women’s reoffending lie outside the criminal justice system, which should be adapted to respond to this need. Cross-departmental leadership, stronger co-operation between central and local government and ring-fenced funding of certain gender-specific programmes are essential to the delivery of effective community support for women. The Cabinet Office-led Reducing Reoffending Board might satisfy this requirement, provided that its direction is binding on individual ministries.

To conclude, as I began, with governance, I have long recommended the establishment of a women’s justice board, which is in the gift of the Secretary of State for Justice. Its chairman should sit alongside the recently restored directors-general of the Prison and Probation Services and the chairman of the Youth Justice Board on a Minister-chaired executive board which, at a stroke, would inject responsibility and accountability and consistent oversight of the needs of women in the criminal justice system. A women’s justice board could mirror two of the great successes of the Youth Justice Board: the reduction of the number of offenders in prison, and the establishment of a number of highly effective offending teams around the country.

In paying tribute to David Gauke, the departed Secretary of State, for all that he has done during his tenure, perhaps I may recommend the establishment of a women’s justice board to his successor through the Minister. I also ask the Minister why this introduction has been resisted for so long.

Feltham Young Offender Institution

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, education, training and rehabilitation are all critical elements of youth custody. To succeed, they require motivation. When motivation is lacking, it becomes extremely difficult to implement what is required.

We seek to improve the situation at Feltham A, in particular. The staff to prisoner ratio in Feltham A, and across all the youth capacity, is normally one to 12, based on full occupancy. The decision to reduce the operational capacity at Feltham A has meant that that ratio has been improved to one to eight.

As regards communications, families are able to keep in regular contact with inmates in the youth custody regime, and I do not understand that there have been any particular difficulties reported on that front at present.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, this incident reminds me that when I was chief inspector, I used to have to inspect Feltham every year because it was such a troubled organisation. Can the Minister tell the House how many hours the individuals in Feltham A spent out of their cells and how many of them are occupied by day?

Probation: Voluntary Sector

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the support of family and other social networks is a critical factor in helping to reduce reoffending, and we want to build on that where possible. Over the past couple of years, we have been implementing the recommendation of my noble friend’s first report on male offenders, and we plan to act on his more recent report on female offenders.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, the consultation response that the Minister mentioned is long on thoughts and ideas but particularly short on any implementation plan. Can the Minister please tell the House when the director-general of the probation service will produce an implementation plan to give effect to all these ideas in the consultation response?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, our plans regarding this matter are more developed in respect of Wales, where the model was originally considered. We are looking to transfer offender management functions from the community rehabilitation companies to the National Probation Service before the end of 2019 in Wales. Beyond that, it will go into 2020. That is the sort of timescale we will have in mind when it comes to the position of further probation reports.

Probation Reform

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I without hesitation and qualification commend the professionalism, integrity and ability of the staff within the probation service. That is why we are intent on implementing a statutory professional regulatory framework that will recognise the degree of professionalism that they have exhibited and continue to exhibit in the discharge of their demanding functions. The National Probation Service has extended its staff in recent years by about 500, and is bringing on further training of such staff. Going forward, we have appreciated the need to ensure consistency in the delivery of probation services and are not looking back to the prior form in which probation was delivered. When there were 35 probation trusts operating, with commendable staff, there were 35 ways of doing things. We have found that it is far better to try to identify a single, unified way of doing things for the entire probation service.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for quoting the interim report that I was required to write by the Shadow Minister for Justice. I note that he quoted my paragraph saying that not all had been lost by the community rehabilitation companies and citing the economic rigour that they had to bring to their role. Perhaps I might ask Minister two questions. First, he will have noted that the Justice Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee—plus the National Audit Office and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation—issued very critical reports of the whole transforming rehabilitation process. They said that the procedure had been rushed and unpiloted. Are the new proposals again to be rushed through unpiloted? Secondly, will the 11 areas correspond to the existing 11 government regions within which the police and crime commissioners operate, or will we have yet another division? By adopting Department for Work and Pensions boundaries, Transforming Rehabilitation completely crossed every single common-sense boundary that had been followed by the probation service for years.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Lord and welcome the fact that he has given consideration to these issues and is able to contribute to this matter with his interim report. No doubt he may take that further. On his second point, I had mentioned that the 11 proposed areas will be coterminous with PCC regions. There are more than 11 PCCs, of course, but we will ensure that the regions are coterminous so that we can develop the appropriate relationships between the PCCs and the NPS in that context. It is certainly not our intention for this to be rushed. I would mention two points: first, although the existing CRC contracts, as adjusted, run to the end of 2020, we have the ability to extend them to the spring of 2021 to have time to bring in these reforms; and, secondly, there will be a pilot in some sense because the model we are now adopting is the one we had already decided to adopt for Wales, which will be implemented from 2019. We will be able to see how this actually operates in practice before we proceed further with the rollout across the rest of England.

Prisoners: Acquired Brain Injuries

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the findings of the Disabilities Trust and Royal Holloway University that 65% of women in HM Prison Drake Hall had suffered from an acquired brain injury, what plans they have to make assessment for such injuries compulsory for all prisoners on reception into prison.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and declare an interest as chairman of the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, all children and young people within the secure estate are screened for brain injury through the comprehensive health assessment tool. If an adult prisoner presents with a significant brain injury, a specialist neurological referral is made. We have formed a cross-government group to develop a more strategic picture of ABI within the criminal justice system.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that somewhat disappointing reply. This is not new; indeed, I have been campaigning for assessment of head injuries for 20 years. In addition to the horrifying figures for women prisoners that the Disabilities Trust has just produced, it has proved that 40% of males and 47% of young offenders are suffering from acquired brain injury. The point about an assessment is that, if you know which part of the head has been hit or damaged, you can predict behavioural outcomes. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister dropped the prisons part of the Prisons and Courts Bill, in which we hoped to have made the assessment of head injuries compulsory. I ask the Minister whether he will make it so.

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 26th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly support this Bill, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding. As the Prisons Minister, Rory Stewart, said during the passage of the Bill through the other place:

“Tapping the almost 10,000 mobile phones that were seized in a single year and interfering with their ability to communicate is not a silver bullet, but it should help to make prisons a safer and more orderly place in which we can begin to address some of the underlying drivers of violence and crime”.—[Official Report, Commons, Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill Committee, 9/5/18; col. 6.]


I want to set my support in context of the current crisis in our overcrowded and understaffed prisons and—what I have always regretted—the failure of successive Home and Justice Secretaries to implement any of the 12 ways ahead for the Prison Service set out by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, then Home Secretary, in his White Paper, Custody, Care and Justice, in 1991, following the seminal report on the causes of the riots in Strangeways and 23 other prisons in 1990 by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf.

My noble and learned friend identified the three things most likely to prevent reoffending as being a home, a job and a stable, preferably family, relationship, all of which were put at risk by the way that imprisonment was conducted. He recommended that prisons be grouped into what he called community regional clusters, so that, with the exception of high-security prisoners, of whom there were not enough to justify an expensive high-security prison in each region, prisoners were always held in their home areas. Had the 12 ways ahead been implemented, I do not believe that the present crisis would have arisen, but that is another matter.

The maintenance of stable relationships depends on visits, letters and occasional telephone calls, which is where many people believe that mobile phones have a role to play. Unfortunately, mobile phones are used by too many for nefarious purposes, such as controlling drug deliveries by drone, organising crimes or arranging intimidation of families, with the result that they are, quite rightly, currently banned. Life for prison staff is made no easier by the fact that advancing technology has now produced mobiles no bigger than a finger joint, meaning that a phone can be smuggled in in a Mars bar.

However, in the context of maintaining stable relationships, I deplore the current high charges made by BT for the use of legitimate land lines from prison—which I note have been reduced by 50% for in-cell telephones now being installed in 20 prisons. Of course, prisoners should be expected to pay for any call, but not exorbitantly. I ask the Minister to pursue this matter with BT, stressing the important contribution that maintaining stable relationships makes to the protection of the public by contributing to the prevention of reoffending.

Current arrangements for blocking mobile phones used by prisoners are exceedingly cumbersome and bureaucratic, requiring individual governors to deal with individual providers to have specified SIM cards blocked. Nobody needs to carry a mobile phone in prison: prisoners are banned from doing so; visitors have to hand them in at the gate; and staff do not need to use them. Therefore, rather than interfering with their use, I am in favour of an electronic ban in every prison, on the lines of the electronic fence that the governor of HMP Guernsey has erected to prevent drones from being flown into the prison. Currently, Guernsey is the only prison in Europe to have such a fence. It cost a mere £60,000, which I would have thought was cheap at the price, making prisons safer and more orderly places.

Not least for the sake of the overstretched staff in our prisons, I hope that the Bill will be enacted swiftly.

Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Troubles

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Dannatt, whom I congratulate on obtaining this important debate, I had the privilege of commanding troops in Northern Ireland during the Troubles: first, my battalion in West Belfast for four months in 1974-5, and then the Belfast Brigade from 1978-80.

Internal security operations are the most difficult that an army can be asked to undertake because, rather than operating on a battlefield against other armed forces, individuals are required to make instant life or death decisions involving civilians. All ranks must be carefully trained in the circumstances in which they may open fire, confident that if they act in good faith and within the law, they will be supported by the authorities. In Northern Ireland these were listed on a yellow card and, on every occasion when a member of the security forces opened fire, the circumstances were investigated on the spot by what was called a “flying lawyer” service, with those found to have broken the law being immediately charged.

The Romans had two words for war: bellum, the justifiable use of force between states, and guerra, the unjustifiable use of force within a state. The then Government committed their security forces to guerra in Northern Ireland in 1969, but I well remember the confidence engendered by feeling that it was behind all efforts to restore law and order—a confidence that is so vital to the motivation and morale of members of the Armed Forces. Sadly, I am not confident that the Prime Minister fully understands the importance of this to members of the Armed Forces, whom she may commit to war. Of course, they must act within the law, but I call on her to stand up to those authorities in Northern Ireland who are threatening legal action against some former servicemen, particularly those who, after investigation, have been given to understand that such action would not follow.

Probation: Voluntary Sector

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to increase the contribution made by the voluntary sector to the delivery of probation services, following publication on 17 April of the report by HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Probation Supply Chains.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, the report of 17 April from Dame Glenys Stacey is one for which we are grateful. The voluntary and charitable sector has a viable role to play in helping to reform offenders. We recognise that community rehabilitation companies have faced financial challenges, which means that many of them have not been able to develop their engagement with the voluntary sector to the extent envisaged. We will carefully consider the inspectorate’s recommendations as we work to improve probation services.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. The Chief Inspector of Probation has repeatedly drawn attention to the failure of the transforming rehabilitation reforms—rushed, rather than thought through, by Chris Grayling—to protect the public or satisfy the needs of offenders under probation supervision. In her latest report, she draws attention to the reduction of the contribution contracted from the voluntary sector, an essential partner under the old system, and the failure of community rehabilitation companies to analyse the needs of those under their supervision, a given for all former probation trusts. Can the Minister please tell the House what the Government are doing to rectify this, and whether the chief inspector’s particular recommendations to the Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service will be actioned?