Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I should first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all the London boroughs and the City of London. I wondered whether that interest was relevant to this debate, and then I realised, of course, that local government, its many services and the people who work there, and the councillors who are elected there, are hugely relevant to the Prison Service—more relevant than many of them may realise. I will say a little bit about that later.

Something else I need to say to people present, especially in view of the difficulty nearly everyone has had in trying to deal with such a wide-ranging and important subject as this in only five minutes—I sympathise—is that I did not know that I was going to be replying to this debate until I arrived here and got the speakers’ list this morning. The good news for Members present is that, like everyone else, I prepared for a five-minute debate and, when I checked with the Table here, I have 20 minutes. I will leave noble Lords to think about the consequences of that over the next 18 minutes. I will, of course, keep much closer to the original four minutes and 50 seconds that I had planned.

I expected to hear, and now have heard, very much about the difficulties and shortcomings of the Prison Service. The committee made a lot of recommendations. I am pleased that 19 of them were accepted by the government; 15 more were partially accepted. The only one that was not accepted at all was about the rank of the Prisons Minister. We felt they should always be a Minister of State but, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Prime Minister is not yet ready to agree to that for all times.

The recommendations are good and sound. Reference has been made to them and I think it is fair to say there has been general support, as far as I am aware, for all of them. The Government have accepted nearly all of them. That is the easy bit. What we want to know from the Minister in a few minutes is: what is going to happen now and when will those recommendations be implemented? There has been much praise for the Minister today—so far—and certainly much welcome for his appointment. His interest and that of his family business in this whole issue is well known. I welcome that too.

That brings me to the committee’s first recommendation, which flowed from our consideration of the committee’s purpose. It struck me at the time—this meeting may be exceptional—that generally most people, and certainly most of the public, do not ever think about what the purpose of prison is. They would perhaps be surprised to be asked that. They would say, “Well, it’s to lock people up”, and so on. The committee took the view, as we were urged by a number of former prisoners who gave evidence to us, that that is not the purpose of prison. Locking people up and the deprivation of liberty are the punishment. The purpose of prison—something I think we were unanimous on—is to reduce reoffending. I congratulate the Minister on insisting that that should be added to his job title; both he and we should make more of that.

We should emphasise that the purpose of prison, and of putting people there, is not to punish them—they are punished by their deprivation of liberty—but rather to reduce reoffending. We state in the report, and sadly it is a well-known figure, that 80% of offending is committed by people reoffending. That statistic is shocking, and is becoming better known. I was surprised and, indeed, shocked to learn, through a report made a few years ago by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, that 63% of prisoners’ sons become offenders themselves. That is the continuation.

I was going to say, in my original five minutes, that for most of my life I have lived in the London Borough of Sutton. Around a mile outside of our borough boundary and from where I live is High Down prison, as is Downview prison, one of the relatively few women’s prisons in the country. Both were built in the last 30 years when, as it happens, I was leader of the council. During our committee’s inquiry, I went to visit High Down to refresh my experience and my knowledge of it, and to talk with some of the staff, particularly with the governor. I wanted to talk about one particular experience from that visit—I still want to do this, even though I am supposed to be replying to the debate.

Along with my wife, I was invited to join the dads’ group. This is a group for prisoners and participation is entirely voluntary. Several prisoners told us that they had been reluctant to come to the dads’ group, probably because they feared being lectured, or what their fellow inmates would think about it. They all said, however, that the course had changed the way that they viewed their lives. It had been life-changing to them. There is now a waiting list to come along because they had been recommended to do so, in the best way possible, by their fellow prisoners.

All of those prisoners told us of their individual experiences. I will not repeat them, but one that struck me particularly was a man telling me about his experience with his son, who had autism. He simply did not know how to talk with his son until this course gave him that wherewithal. That was something we heard repeated by several others in various ways. The change that this voluntary course made to those men’s lives was enormous. They were all desperate to get out: not to reoffend, but to start again with their families and their children. I hope that it affects reoffending. It must, surely, bring down that figure of 63% of offenders’ sons who apparently become offenders themselves. The men talked about how much the course had helped them, and how much they could not wait to get out and put it into practice.

They did not entirely have to wait to get out to put that into practice because, as a corollary to that, the visitors’ area in the prison had been completely revamped and restyled to make it much more comfortable for families, so that they could meet as families and talk to each other in a more intimate way. In other words, it was a proper corollary to what the dads’ group had been doing. That was just one example.

If I had had time, I was going to mention that I was shown around High Down Prison by a man with the title “community engagement manager”. I am not familiar as many noble Lords will be with the Prison Service. Is community engagement manager a usual term in a prison? I am not aware that it is, but I think it should be as there is a very important role for engaging with the community—not just the prison community, but the area in which the prison is located.

I referred to the fact that I live within a mile or so of the prison. It is in a greenbelt area, surrounded by trees and bushes. That creates a bit of a problem in respect of drones, but that is the negative side. I suspect that most of the nearly a quarter of a million people who live in the London Borough of Sutton, as I do, have no idea that there are two prisons within a mile or two of them because they are tucked away out of sight. Part of the community engagement manager’s role is to have more engagement with the wider local community. He is able to do that in part because, before he became community engagement manager, he was the manager of a local employment agency. He knows many of the local businesses well and still works with them; he knows what they do and how they do it.

I see the Whip standing up and I am afraid he is about to tell me that I do not really have 20 minutes. I will be brief. It is part of the manager’s role to engage with the local community. That is very much a job that the Prison Service, and the Minister, needs to have in order to demystify prisoners. Most people, thankfully, have no personal experience of prisons. What they know and think of prisons is usually what they see on television or hear in the media. The reality is not always the same, so whatever can be done to connect prisons and the public must be all to the good.

The report states a lot of what could and should be done. We all wish the Minister every success in trying to implement that. I hope that this excellent report is not simply going to gather dust on the shelves, meaning that we come back in 20 years and say, “If only we had done that”.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Tope]

156: Clause 68, page 65, line 9, at end insert—
“(c) a local authority or traffic authority;”

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 156, I will also speak to Amendment 163.

First, I must declare my interest, particularly for these amendments. I am the co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. I am also a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Amendment 163 is the substantive amendment. It seeks to start the legislative process that would enable London borough councils and/or Transport for London to enforce speed limits of 30 mph or below—I have in mind the 20 mph speed limits in particular—on roads for which they have responsibility and, if they so wish, to apply to the Secretary of State and receive consent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, particularly for revealing how close he came to a criminal conviction on this. The fact remains, whether we like it or not, and generally the public do like it, that there are 20 mph speed limits not just all over London but all over the country, which are by and large not enforced, and drivers know it. Their being disregarded in such a way brings the law into ridicule. As I said in my opening comments, I accept that we have an issue here. I have discussed it with my noble friend Lord Paddick, who I first had discussions with when he was borough commander in Lambeth and I was chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority’s finance committee, when he told me Lambeth was not sufficiently resourced.

These issues must be tackled. We cannot go on with a lot of 20 mph speed limits which most motorists take no notice of, and absurd and ludicrous enforcement rates. I said this is the start of a process; I hope the Government will engage in debate and conversation about how to tackle this, and work with London borough councils and others—as this is a nationwide issue—to see how we can better solve this problem. We do not want this to be batted back and forth like the parking debate in London 30 years ago, when the Met believed they would be severely disabled if they were not enforcing parking in London. I bet they would not say that now. If we asked the Met to take back responsibility for parking in London, your Lordships know what the reaction would be.

I will withdraw my amendment, but this debate will not go away. I hope that the Government, local authorities and others engage in positive thinking about how we solve this and make local authorities, which are by and large responsible for getting the 20 mph speed limits introduced, responsible—I stress the word—for their enforcement too. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 156 withdrawn.

Queen's Speech

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. Three weeks ago today, I was elected councillor for the London Borough of Sutton for the 10th time. More importantly, on the same day, the Liberal Democrats were elected for a seventh term to run the London Borough of Sutton with a greatly increased majority. Contrary to what some have said, Liberal Democrats are used to being in Government. Liberal Democrats are used to making difficult decisions and they are used to doing so under much greater public scrutiny and with much greater public accountability to those most directly affected by those decisions than can ever be possible at national level.

Indeed, it can be said that Liberal Democrats probably have more experience than any other party in making coalitions work. At local level, successful coalitions have two things in common. All of them are based on policy agreement and policy compromise, and all of them are for a fixed term with no get-out clause or option to go to the electorate early. So we have much to learn, but also some experience to share.

I very much welcome the appointment of my noble friend Lady Hanham as the CLG Minister in your Lordships’ House. We were London council leaders together throughout the 1990s. Perhaps more important for this Parliament, we were for many years together UK representatives on the Committee of the Regions, which represents local and regional government in the EU’s decision-making process. I say “for this Parliament” because the Lisbon treaty gives greater power and recognition to what I will abbreviate as “sub-state government” in monitoring subsidiarity, as well as to national parliaments and devolved assemblies. I therefore hope that, together, we will be able to bring to your Lordships’ attention both the relevance of the European Union to local government and the relevance of local government to the European Union.

On the gracious Speech and the coalition agreement, I of course welcome very much the commitment in the agreement to,

“the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups”.

Cynics say, with some truth, that devolution of decision-making is always much easier when the decisions are likely to be difficult and unpopular. That is true. However, I strongly believe that it is all the more important that these difficult and unpopular decisions on how to reduce budgets—or, properly, how to work smarter and do more with less—are made at a local level. That is not just because the direct effect of decisions can be seen and felt at local level, but because, if we are to have any hope of restoring faith and confidence in government in its widest sense and in politicians at all levels, it will be essential for local decision-makers to engage effectively with their local communities in the difficult decision-making process that lies ahead. If these decisions are simply imposed by local authorities, the responsibility for them denied and blame put elsewhere, there is no hope of restoring public confidence. I listened with great interest to the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. He points the way. In fairness, local government is already well ahead of central government in working in that new, smarter way. That must be how we tackle difficult times ahead.

Of course, there cannot be the fundamental shift of power sought by the coalition agreement unless and until local authorities have the greater financial autonomy that it promises. It promises a review of local government finance. I understand why it had to be worded that way but, in reality, we do not need yet another review that takes years and ends up being parked for ever on the “too difficult” shelf. There has been no shortage of reviews, from Layfield to Lyons. There is no shortage of academic and political material available on the various policies. There is ample experience of different local government financial systems all over the democratic world.

We now need a commitment to implementation from the coalition Government. This is not the time for me to suggest what that system should be, if indeed I had the temerity to suggest that there was a simple system. There manifestly is not: it is full of complex and difficult decisions. There are many alternatives, including some interesting proposals from the Local Government Association, in the wider context of Total Place, that I hope the Government will look at seriously.

I hope, after nearly a lifetime in local government, that, by the next general election in five years’ time, we will have a system of local government finance that enables local authorities to raise a greater proportion of their funding locally and be less dependent on central government grants; a system that is far more transparent and understandable; and a system with a much fairer relationship between levels of expenditure and taxation. Without that, we will not truly have a radical devolution of power.

Turning to particulars, in common with almost everyone else in local government, I welcome the abolition of the Government Office for London. Indeed, it is remarkable that it is still there 10 years after the creation of the Greater London Authority. I particularly look forward to hearing the new arrangements for liaison and communication between central government and London government in all its forms. Are we to have a Minister for London? What will the communications channels between central government and the various levels of London government be?

In many ways, what happens with the Government Office for London will be the first practical test of the Government’s commitment to radical devolution of power. What new powers will go to the GLA and—perhaps even more important as a test—what powers will go to London boroughs, individually and collectively? How much real power will actually be shifted back into central government? That will be a real test, the outcome of which many of us will watch with great interest.

Finally, I turn to an issue that is not in the gracious Speech or in the coalition agreement, much to my surprise and regret: electoral reform for local government. I always used to believe that local government would be the first sphere of government to be elected by proportional representation. In many ways, it is ideally suited to proportional representation. We already have multi-member constituencies; we call them “wards”. We have a system under which we would get a much fairer representation of voter choice than at present. Now, however, local government in England and Wales may well be the only sphere of government left with the first-past-the-post system. That makes no sense at all, and I hope that this is an accidental omission from the coalition agreement. I feel sure that it must be an omission and that, in the localism Bill later in this Parliament, we will perhaps be able to show that it is and that electoral reform will indeed extend to local government in England and Wales, as it already does in Scotland.

The coalition agreement promises much for the rejuvenation of local democracy. I look forward hugely to contributing to the fulfilment of that great objective.

[Lord McNally]

I knew we should have paid a big transfer fee for the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton. She would have handled this much better than me. The guidance of the Chief Whip was seven minutes—