Egypt: Human Rights

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Judd

Thursday 26th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I was fortunate to be added to the second visit of the all-party group to Egypt two weeks’ ago on the grounds that on the previous visit it was suggested that it would be helpful if someone with a military background joined the delegation.

I was particularly interested to have, first, a two-hour meeting with Mr Sisi—he was very much Mr, not Field Marshal, Sisi. We all came away impressed with the grasp that he had of the issues that were facing the country and some of the ways in which he said he was approaching them. He said that Egypt was embarked on a road map which had three main ingredients—two of which had been completed and the third was to come. The first was the writing of the constitution by the committee of 50. Like my noble friend Lord Hylton, I was extremely interested in the exposition of this by Mr Amr Moussa, a wise man. It was interesting that the scope of the people included in the 50- person committee was very wide. I definitely share the impression he got that the Muslim Brotherhood was not to be excluded from future discussions because it was very much part of Egypt.

The second part of the road map, of course, was the election of the president. Although people think that he had a vast majority in the votes cast, we were left under no illusion that the general feeling was that it was of votes cast and did not represent that percentage of the population of Egypt. I was gratified to hear that, knowing of the number of people who deliberately abstained, particularly from the Muslim Brotherhood, because that meant that he would not claim it.

The third part, of course, is the election of Parliament. Quite a lot of time was spent on that. Not least, we were interested to learn that guaranteed numbers of women and Christians would be appointed to that Parliament. Although it sounded extremely complicated, there was a kind of first past the post representation all over Egypt. There was then the production of party lists, which had to contain a number of people of different kinds. Then there was a presidential addition of 20. It all seems complicated but at least it is based on a constitution. Certainly I came away feeling that the jury was out and we would be unwise to be too critical of everything that is in train until it has actually happened and we can see what part it can play in the development of Egypt.

The second point that President Sisi made to us very clearly—as has already been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Williams of Baglan—was that Egypt comes first. As far as he was concerned, gender and religion did not matter. Provided that you put Egypt first, then Egypt welcomed you, but if you put something above Egypt, that was where you parted company. That is where—he did not say as much but others mentioned it—the Muslim Brotherhood had appeared to go wrong, because they had put something above being Egyptian. He went on to criticise the British for our involvement in Iraq and in Libya, and for leaving Libya so soon. Others added a little dagger with the two names of Sykes and Picot, who had successfully mucked up that part of the world. Our status was not as high as we would like .

However, President Sisi said several times that task number one was to put food on everyone’s table, so there was a feeling of reality in all these discussions. The person who most concerned me was the Minister of Defence, not least when he suggested that the internal security situation in Sinai was 85% under control. I did not get the chance to ask him about the other 15%. As a soldier, I have never been able to measure internal security situations in that way. I was interested in the co-operation with Israel over this because, not surprisingly, Israel has as much interest in any terrorism based in Sinai as Egypt has.

The other group which interested me enormously were groups of students, in a meeting arranged by the British Council. I was grouped with a wonderful team of about 15 male and female students from the old Egyptian university in Cairo. Had any of them voted in the presidential election? The answer was no. Were any of them going to vote in the parliamentary election? Again, the answer was no, because they were disillusioned with politics. This was rather sad, because they are the coming generation. They were bright and one just hoped that there was more from that.

So what did I conclude from all this? I declare an interest as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. When I look at the world and consider the national security interests, I look at the geopolitical position of Egypt, the junction between Arabia and Africa and that immensely important waterway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. We have a very long connection with Egypt. Despite all the human rights problems, I think that the attitude of critical friend is the one that we should adopt.

Finally, the most interesting person we met quite apart from the political scene was the Grand Mufti. I had not realised until he spoke to us that when all these death penalties are passed in the courts, that does not mean that they have been passed. Every death penalty that is imposed then comes to the Grand Mufti and he looks at it from the Islamic point of view. It then goes to the appeal court, then back to the Grand Mufti, then to the president. So I suspect that there is quite a long way to go. That is not to say that I support any of this, but I am interested that there are checks and balances in the system. These ought to be allowed to work through before we damage our position in the eyes of a country which is one with which we ought to maintain friendship—albeit a critical one.

[Lord Judd]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I just ask him one question? It would be interesting to hear his research. In this House he is renowned for his stand on the implementation of justice and the penal system. Did he make any inquiries about what was happening within the penal system?

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I did not. I would dearly liked to have done so. However, the 62,000 my noble friend Lord Hylton mentioned are out of a population of 90 million, while we have 84,000 in prison with a far lower population.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Judd

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I do not think that support for this amendment should be limited to beyond my own Benches. I feel very strongly in favour of it and I congratulate those involved in drawing it up. I care passionately about the issues and values behind it but I want to make one other point, which I made in Committee. We are involved across the world in a struggle for values, and we like to hold to the principle that we offer values that present a better prospect for humanity. We try to contain extremism.

During my life I have come to recognise that those who advocate extremism do best in a climate of ambivalence—when there is doubt and cynicism on a significant scale. People who individually might never embrace extreme action nevertheless have a shadow of doubt: however distasteful they find the methods that the extremists use, perhaps these people are on their side. This may be a very dangerous thing to say but I sometimes wonder whether it is a bit too easy to refer to people as extremists. People who take that kind of position point to hypocrisy and inconsistencies and to examples where those whom they want to undermine do not, through their practice, begin to uphold what they advocate.

Therefore, I am totally concerned not only with the humanity and the principle behind the amendment but with its relationship to the struggle for security and stability in the world. We simply cannot afford to let areas of our administration and our justice system be a living example of contradiction of all that we have traditionally held dearest in our society. From that standpoint, as well as the one of values, I believe that it is a timely amendment and that it deserves support.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment because I absolutely agree with everything that has been said about unlimited detention, which is hinted at. First, I salute the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, for the powerful and eloquent way in which she moved the amendment, and I salute the power with which my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick and the noble Lords, Lord Roberts and Lord Judd, have supported it.

I have three things to add. Recently, I have been privileged to be a member of a Select Committee of the House on soft power, chaired most admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. One of the most powerful witness statements I remember listening to was by the high commissioner for Mozambique, who described the qualities that encouraged Mozambique to apply to join the Commonwealth. In particular, it was the qualities of Britishness, headed by the rule of law. The fact that that made so much of an impression on him and is why Mozambique made such a change suggests that we go against our reputation for the rule of law at our peril when we are trying desperately to think about how we project our image in the emerging world of the 21st century.

I used to inspect detention centres and they always worried me. They were bleak places, not designed for holding people for long periods. They were originally designed for only very short periods while documentation was checked. They are neither one thing nor the other. There is nothing to occupy people, and of course that is not good over time. Nor are they good at short-term holding, which is why we wait to hear what will happen about the short-term holding facilities so urgently required. The other thing about them is their staff. The trouble with the staff in such places is that they tend to turn over extremely quickly. They cannot communicate with the people there, and they cannot provide anything other than the normal meals and so on. They can provide none of the succour. Remember that the people there have come under some form of mental turmoil. The other thing that always worried me about detention centres is the absence of the proper medical treatment—in particular, mental health treatment—that so many of the people in them require, especially under the strain and stress of being held for an uncertain period while their circumstances are investigated.

Thirdly, at Second Reading a number of noble Lords drew attention to the millstone of the 500,000 unresolved cases with which the Home Office is currently faced. They said that until and unless that backlog is removed, you will never have a system where it is possible to process things and people quickly. That requires urgent remedial action. I should like to make certain that, in future, the stimulus of having to complete cases within a period of time is applied to the system so that we are never able to build up such a backlog again. That is bad not only for the system and the people concerned but also for the staff, who in no way can help people by giving them some indication of when and how they might be released from what they are doing.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Judd

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to have this opportunity to support my noble friend. I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee on Human Rights when she was its distinguished chair. I then had the opportunity to see at first hand that this is not a passing interest of hers; it is something deeply rooted in her culture and in her sense of justice and the availability of justice for everyone. If justice, in its fullest sense, is to be delivered, what matters is the appropriateness of what is being done when someone is sentenced. It is not only my noble friend who in her very challenging report has spelt out the issues, but I am repeatedly impressed by the research which seems to come to the same conclusion that the overwhelming majority of women in prison should not be in prison at all.

I vividly recall visiting Holloway prison with the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I am not certain that my noble friend was the chair at the time—in connection with some work that we were doing. While we were there we got into very good conversation with some of the staff. It is easy to be prejudiced, but for me it is always interesting that in a place like Holloway you find a mix of people in the profession, including some very good, caring people who—for any of us who would want to be seen as humanitarians—are living a very challenging life in the front line of their professional services. I remember—and this was dealing specifically with short sentences—one woman turning on us in exasperation and saying: “I don’t think you people know what you are doing. We don’t understand what you are doing. These women’s lives are a story of chaos, and all we do by having the women in here for a short term is to increase the chaos in their life in terms of their relationship with their children, their relationship with the community of which they are a part, their relationship with life as they have got to live it”. Then she looked back a little poignantly and said: “Unless, of course, by having them in here for a few days we relieve them of some of the nightmare of pressures outside”.

It is an indictment of us all that we have such an inappropriate, wrong-headed approach towards how we deal with women who may have been caught up in some offence. From that standpoint, it is clear that there has to be an interdisciplinary approach. The problem—the challenge—goes across all sorts of different aspects of life. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, repeatedly reminds us in debates on such occasions, if you are trying to get a change of culture and drive through a new approach, you have to pin down who is really responsible. You have got to have specific arrangements in place to make sure it happens and that it is pursued. This is what my noble friend’s amendment is about: making sure that we stop talking about what is wrong, stop talking about what we should all be doing, and start to do it. If that is to happen, it needs a cross-section of people with a specific responsibility for which they are accountable to make sure it is happening. From that standpoint, I warmly commend the amendment and am glad to support it.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

In Committee, we had two separate amendments on this issue which was, in a way, a commentary on the fact that the vital issue of women in the criminal justice system was not even discussed in Committee in the other place. I am very glad to have been able to combine the two amendments in one, in the hope that this time we really may get something in the Bill.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has drawn attention to the need to get something done. Over the years there have been directors of women’s policy, women’s policy units, women’s policy groups, Ministers for Women, Ministers of prisons looking after it, but nothing has happened. Why? Because there has never been anyone who has been the agent for those people, responsible and accountable for overseeing that what is laid down actually happens. I have lost count of the number of times I have said that, but I say it again. The key word “implementation” appears in paragraph (4)(a) of the amendment and the word “delivery” in sub-paragraph (5)(a). With all the wisdom that has gone into this subject from many sources over many years, it is all there. Everyone knows what is to happen. What is lacking now is the drive to get it done. I therefore hope that the Minister will go away from this particular stage and reassure us that this time something will be done to action what is so well known.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Judd

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, further to that very important point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, perhaps I may make one observation on which I hope the Minister will be able to give a convincing reply when he responds to this debate. Government have frequently been caught up in discussions about the legal implications of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Invariably Ministers have, without any equivocation, said that central to the Government’s position is the principle that the rights of the child must come first. Can the Minister please explain to the House how the provisions of this proposed legislation further that objective?

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Slim, I have one question to ask the Minister. I know that we discussed impact assessments in our debate on Amendment 6, which was moved and withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, but when the Minister responds can he confirm or deny whether those responsible for drafting the Bill and drawing up its impact assessment discussed the impact of this clause with those who were responsible for drawing up the impact assessments on the Welfare Reform Bill and the Health and Social Care Bill?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Judd

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to have been able to add my name to these amendments, and would like to say how much I admire the work of the noble Baroness. It is not simply the utterly sensible amendments that she brings to our deliberations, but all the work she does to follow up what she is arguing for in this House. Of course, that is a two-way process, because it also means that when we listen to her, we listen not just to the voice of theory but to the voice of experience and practical engagement. That is a special asset to have in our deliberations.

Punishment is the easy bit. Of course crime must be punished—there is no argument about that—but in a sane society in which reason prevails, the greater challenge is how lives are rebuilt and how, as I said in argument on a previous amendment, we can enable people to become positive citizens contributing to the well-being of society, as distinct from indulging in delinquent behaviour. That is the real challenge. If that is to be done well, it means that those individuals have to be looked at as individuals.

I remember talking to a chief superintendent of police who was just about to retire when I was president of the YMCA and he was a prominent and active member of the YMCA in Britain. It was a private conversation, so I hope that he will not mind my relaying what he said. He said: “You know, it is a very lonely moment when you are sentenced. Some people respond with more bravado, but the overwhelming majority at that moment feel very lonely. I have always felt that where we get it wrong in our penal policy is that that is the very moment when someone should be there at the elbow of the person concerned saying, ‘Isn’t this a terrible mess? How are we going to sort it out and try to make some sense of this situation?’”.

What the noble Baroness said was not only emotionally powerful—there is no harm in emotion of the kind she was displaying in her remarks today; it is very healthy, and the passion which she feels for these issues is a great challenge to us all—but so important. So many of the people with whom the penal system is dealing have not had proper relationships, have not had people who cared, have not had families able to cope with or relate to them in their situation. There is a desperate need, as I have said in other debates in this House, for someone to take the hand of the person concerned and walk with them through the experience back into full rehabilitation in society, back into the job to which the noble Baroness referred, which is so central.

If that is the case, if we are asking magistrates and others to function on our behalf to tackle those issues, it is imperative that we do everything we can to ensure that magistrates know of all the possibilities which can be considered for the individual in front of them. To have a limited range of possibilities, or not to be very much aware of the range of possibilities, is disastrous because it means that we are not taking seriously the issue of rehabilitation.

On the issue of short sentences, I remember on a visit to a prison—in fact, it has happened more than once in conversation with prison officers—the prison officers themselves saying what nonsense it was and asking: “What on earth are we expected to achieve with these young people? How on earth is this helping them? They are going through a more disruptive experience. They are being taken further away from society and the chance to start rebuilding their lives in detention. What are we doing? What are we expected to be administering on behalf of society?”. If it is a matter to be dealt with by some by awarding a short sentence, there must be other means available which are more constructive and intelligent.

I conclude what I want to say in support of the noble Baroness by repeating something which has been said in debates before but which it is not possible to repeat too often. On the door of every cell should be “Rehabilitation?”—with a question mark after it—because, if we are not achieving rehabilitation, what are we doing? We are losing an individual, and we are almost inevitably ensuring future costs for society not only in terms of reoffending but in terms of the cost of dealing with the consequences of that reoffending, with further spells in prison or whatever. I believe that in the whole culture of our penal system and in the culture of the professions that administer our penal system there should be a passionate commitment to achieving at all costs, wherever possible, the rehabilitation of offenders. That is why these amendments tabled by the noble Baroness are so right. They make economic and social sense, and I hope that they also make sense when we think about what the values of a decent and civilised society should be. I hope that we care about the individual.

This morning in my old constituency of Portsmouth, where Dickens was born, I attended a ceremony to mark his 200th birthday. During the service in the great St Mary’s Church in Portsmouth, which was part of the ceremony, I was startled to hear a piece by Dickens himself on the application of Christian values. I had not read it before, to my shame, but I commend it to Members of this House. With his social commitment and understanding, and his brilliance in setting out the issues with which society is confronted, as well as its responsibilities to put them right, Dickens speaks directly about the whole principle that, if we call ourselves Christians, we must commit ourselves to caring not simply for the victim—although of course the victim matters—but for the offender, with a commitment to enabling the offender to sort out his or her life.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I, too, have added my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. At the outset, I echo the tributes paid to her by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and at the same time I pay tribute to the noble Lord for the passion and compassion that he always brings to debates on these subjects.

On Amendment 176ZAA, I have long thought that the provision of sentences with prospectuses of what the prison and probation services can and cannot do for offenders would serve a very useful purpose for the whole of the management system, and therefore I should like to widen the amendment slightly to include the Prison Service. While the noble Baroness was speaking, I could not help reflecting that for the first 100 years of its existence the probation service worked very closely with the courts and the police. It is only in recent years that it has been made subordinate to prisons, and that, to my mind, has given the wrong emphasis.

Everything that the noble Baroness said about Rethinking Crime and Punishment I share, because I had the great privilege of being a member of the initiative’s steering group. I entirely endorse everything that she said about the place of the community sentence. However, perhaps I may refer to the prospectuses. First and most obviously, they tell sentencers what is or is not possible and how long that might take to be achieved, because there is no point in somebody embarking on a course which cannot be completed during the sentence.

Of course, there is a danger that, as a result, some sentencers might award sentences that are longer than normal in order to complete a behaviour programme. I believe that that is a fault in the right direction, not least because the present practice of awarding sentences that are too short for the completion of any meaningful remedial action is wasteful of both time and money. As a side-effect, the provision of such a practice might also encourage the adoption of what happens in some Scandinavian countries where, at the time of sentence, the sentencer lays down what course of programmes a prisoner has to complete during that sentence. If these are satisfactorily completed before the end of the period of the sentence, the governor of the prison can take the prisoner back to the sentencer and ask for earlier release on the grounds that the conditions laid down have been met. Prisoners can then be released on licence, which saves prison time, space and money.

The second side-effect would be to force the prison and probation services to cost and plan all their offending behaviour and other courses. Knowing how many courses and programmes are required to meet the need of sentencers would for the first time give some indication of the actual shortfall in the current provision. What is more, it would allow individual prisons to be made responsible for conducting certain courses in particular geographical areas rather than the current inefficient system in which individual governors are not bound to carry on from where their predecessors left off—remarkably, and expensively, they are left to decide how they will satisfy particular targets and performance indicators, which may have no relation to overall need and involve the cancellation of programmes initiated by their predecessors. In other words, knowing what has to be done and by when would at last allow some certainty and stability to be applied to the role of each and every prison. I do not want to say more, or to say more about short sentences, except to echo everything that the noble Baroness said. The figures prove how much cheaper community sentences are.

Actually, there is another side-effect because if it was accepted that community sentences were to be the norm—the default position—and the short sentence the opposite, improvements on the provision of the community sentence would be forced, in order to give the public confidence that that is worth while. That links with Amendment 176A because I believe that the prospectus of what can be done in those community sentences is just as important as what is done in custody.