Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Rix Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, I will put my weight behind those who oppose removing welfare benefits from the scope of legal aid provision. The point was put most forcefully by the noble Lords, Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Howarth of Newport, and by other noble Lords. The expectation that people with a learning disability will be able to represent themselves at tribunals is thoroughly unrealistic, particularly as advocacy support will also be made more difficult to access. However, I know that many noble Lords have particular and forthright expertise in this area and I am reassured that any points I might make on the issue will be, or have been, more than adequately covered.

I will focus on other sections of the Bill, and in particular on issues around sentencing. It was notable from the exchanges in the Commons that this is a Bill of two halves. The first one concerns legal aid and the second concerns everything else. In this respect, only the first half of the Bill has been subject to any form of scrutiny. That is not to say that there has not been discussion and indeed progress on the issues of the sentencing and punishment of offenders. I wholeheartedly commend the Government on announcing their intention to equalise the sentences given to perpetrators of disability-motivated murders from 15 to 30 years. This is a vital step if, at long last, we are to view disability hate crime as a serious issue. I know that it has significant support on all sides of the House and throughout many organisations, 21 of which have signed an open letter to the Secretary of State for Justice endorsing the proposal.

Mencap’s Stand by Me campaign—I declare an interest as president of the Royal Mencap Society—urges that disability hate crime should be tackled at the earliest opportunity. While I recognise the positive roles that the Government are playing with regard to the issue, it is important that Ministers take the opportunity to recognise the many challenges that remain. Disability hate crime happens on a number of different levels. Murder is one such level, but it applies equally to a spectrum of abuse from name-calling to physical violence. This is why I hope to use the passage of the Bill to put forward the case for disability hate crime to continue to achieve parity across all aspects of sentencing.

For example, issues still exist around the enforcement of Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which makes provision for a sentence uplift for any crimes in which disability is deemed to be a motivating factor. Although the provision exists, the requirement for joined-up work by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to implement the sentence uplift means that it is very rarely used. Additionally, the Attorney-General's power to review sentences that he or she considers “unduly lenient” is an issue that requires great consideration. This discretionary power applies only to particular types of offences, including crimes against the person that are racially or religiously aggravated, but not including many hate crimes against individuals on the basis of their disability. Given that disability is a protected characteristic in Section 146 and, I hope, soon to be in Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act, this seems to be a perplexing anomaly that creates an inconsistent picture about the seriousness with which disability hate crimes, at all levels, are treated.

Unfortunately, limits of time dictate that I cannot raise further points about which I have concerns in any great detail, particularly the treatment of people with a learning disability in prison. According to the Prison Reform Trust report No One Knows, published in 2007, between 20 and 30 per cent of,

“offenders have learning difficulties or learning disabilities that interfere with their ability to cope within the criminal justice system”.

However, the identification of people with a learning disability in the criminal justice system remains a complex area and there are currently no effective tools in place to measure the situation accurately. This means that many learning-disabled offenders are not accessing the appropriate support or services that they need and, equally, that provision is often not made by police and other public bodies to account for the potential reasonable adjustments that this group might require while in the system.

Provisions around employment in prisons, changes to conditional cautions and the need for accessible information to be available to individuals at all stages of the system are particular priorities. Indeed, I believe that it is essential to provide access to justice for people with a learning disability, no matter on which side of the criminal justice system they find themselves. I hope that the Minister will meet me and other noble Lords before Committee to try and move matters along towards a satisfactory outcome. I shall wait patiently until the end of this rather lengthy session in the hope of an affirmative answer, even though, as I am approaching my 88th birthday, it is long past my bedtime.