Criminal Records Bill [HL]

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—a “seasoned warrior”, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown—for his commitment to this cause and for pressing this Bill once again. The sensibility that he expressed is still important today and needs to be pressed, and it is good that he will be putting pressure on the Government to try to take it further forward. We will support him on that. We should acknowledge the work of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, which has been mentioned, and the contribution made by the Youth Justice Board, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who manages to be effective and make his case well at the same time as trying to knock down those who might otherwise rally to his standard. He must learn to be a bit more generous in his remarks. I am not very good at categorising where I stand on the political spectrum, but I think he will be satisfied by what I will say today.

I am standing in for my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. I am afraid that I cannot in any sense match her experience and knowledge, or indeed speak for her on this occasion. But I declare an interest in that when I was director of the Smith Institute we worked on two projects which I think are relevant today. One was work done with the then chair of the Youth Justice Board on restorative justice, a programme which is still to be taken up wholeheartedly by the Government but I think should be. We also did a report on a study that was done in conjunction with Centrica at Reading jail on the impact that having a job, good housing and proper support—points made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally—made to the rehabilitation of prisoners coming out from there when Centrica took the big decision, a bit like the one already cited, to recruit its fitters from those who were in Reading jail. That solved its problems of finding appropriately qualified people to take on that work but also had a huge impact on those lives.

The Bill contains a detailed plan for the revision of the current situation affecting spent sentences, and we support it. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord made the point that the Bill is very specific and detailed but actually it conceals a much broader concern, and it would be a pity if we lost that. I hope that when the Minister responds she will engage with that. The Bill seems to be based on a feeling that the present system needs a fundamental overhaul and to map more closely changes in the criminal justice system, and also go wider than that because of the changes that are currently being made in the use of the disclosure system. It probably needs an independent, wide-ranging inquiry, and that inquiry is now long overdue.

It is really about what sort of society we want to live in and the Bill challenges us to live up to the ideals of fairness and proportionality that should be present in our criminal justice system, as they must in many other areas of society. It is also important to pick up what a number of speakers have mentioned, that it seems to be a particularly English and Welsh problem that we cannot sort this out in the way that has been suggested today. We have already made significant changes to the disclosure arrangements in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Why can these not be rolled out into England and Wales as quickly as possible?

As others have, I acknowledge the excellent report produced by the Library to prepare us for this debate, and I am also grateful to Unlock for its briefing; I will draw a little bit on that. In the speeches today and the material that has been circulated, the general view seems to be that the reforms made by the 2012 Act have not met the needs of either prisoners or the general public. We have heard today that rehabilitation periods remain too lengthy and in any case are not evidence based. Some convictions are never spent regardless of the progress made by the individual—an invisible punishment, it has been called—which will for ever shadow the individual and prevent full rehabilitation and re-engagement in society. Surely people must have the opportunity to have positive things they have done since leaving prison recognised in law, allowing them to be legally rehabilitated.

I was struck by the force of the argument made in one paper that the law should recognise a presumption that no one who is released from prison should face a lifetime of disclosure without the prospect of a review at some point. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, we must not have a situation which wrecks lives; there must be some rehabilitation process available. As others have mentioned, something really must be wrong with a system that allows someone who has received an eight-month prison sentence for actual bodily harm to have their conviction spent before somebody who merely received a fine, for example, for speeding.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked whether there was not a need to look critically at the way in which employers can get on to the list of excepted professions and cited the rise in the numbers of applications made for information about individuals under that provision. There are very few criteria in present law for how jobs are granted excepted status and the system seems to be too blunt, too unclear and too broad. We need to have much more detail about the thinking behind what rights prospective employees have in regard to employers asking for information about their offending history, and make sure that these are widely available.

A number of people mentioned the Taylor review, part of which was reproduced in the Library briefing that was circulated. It has some force, since it seems extraordinary to read that,

“a criminal record acquired in childhood can have far-reaching effects that go well beyond the original sentence or disposal. Certain sentences … never become spent … certain convictions or cautions will always be disclosed when an individual seeks employment … A key principle underpinning”,

the approach to the Taylor review was that,

“children who break the law should be dealt with differently from adults”.

That does not seem to happen, and I share the view that the current system needs to have a completely different approach for children, as opposed to adults.

In the previous debate on an earlier version of this Bill, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti indicated support for it, describing the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act as “completely outdated” and the rehabilitation periods it enforces as,

“overlong and not based on any real evidence”.—[Official Report, 27/1/17; col. 939.]

This remains the position of the Labour Party. The Government’s response today, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, hinted, is likely to be that the current disclosure arrangements, including rehabilitation periods, are proportionate and strike the right balance between protecting the public and the individual’s right to privacy. I think that is bonkers, and I hope they have been listening to this debate.