Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Lord Woolf Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Woolf]

25: Clause 13, page 12, line 9, at end insert—
“(2A) In sections 177(1) and 190(1) (requirements that may be imposed as part of a community order or suspended sentence order) after paragraph (j) insert—
“(ja) a restorative justice requirement (as defined by section 212A),”.”

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, this amendment is grouped with Amendments 27, 27A, 28 and 29. The group is separated by Amendment 26, which is to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others after we have dealt with these amendments. As I have said before, I welcome this Bill’s emphasis on the rehabilitation of offenders. Those who have been involved in the criminal justice system as long as I have are in no doubt that reoffending is one of the most serious problems that it faces. We have been, until now, extremely unsuccessful in tackling it. Here and there, we have made some progress, often because of initiatives not of the big battalions but of the small ones, which concentrate on conduct directed towards the offender which changes his habits. We know, from experience, that employment, the home and the family are all important elements in determining whether reoffending will take place.

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[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I commend again the noble and learned Lord for the tenacity with which he has pursued this important area of penal policy. I am entirely in agreement with the thrust of his amendments and I am sure that they will commend themselves to other Members of your Lordships’ House. However, I have one difficulty with his amendment.

[Lord Woolf]

I hope I will be forgiven if I intervene to say that, with great perception, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, seeks in Amendment 27A to alter the proposal in Amendment 27. I should make it clear that I support Amendment 27A in preference to my original proposal.

[Lord Beecham]

I am obliged for the noble and learned Lord’s intervention but perhaps I should decode what is happening for the benefit of those who do not understand—it took me some time—the effect of the amendment as originally drafted.

As originally drawn, the amendment would have removed from Clause 13(7) reference to,

“activities whose purpose is reparative”,

and substituted “restorative justice activities”.

The two things are not the same. Reparative justice will involve doing work, for example, of the kind that I came across when involved in a justice reinvestment project in the north-east. In fact, there were two significant projects: one led to the effective reconstruction of Albert Park in Middlesbrough and the other at Saltwell Park in Gateshead, both Victorian parks which had become very run down. Offenders were brought in to work on these and benefited from being taught skills, which it is to be hoped will be useful later. They made a visible contribution to the communities which they had damaged by their offences. It was a very good scheme.

Taking that out would exclude work of that kind. As the noble and learned Lord said, Amendment 27A reinstates that in addition to restorative justice so that the complete range of options would remain available. I hope that the Minister will accept the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, as amended by my restoration of the paragraph in the original Bill. It would be extremely disappointing, given that the Government are supportive of the principle of restorative justice, if statutory recognition was not incorporated in the Bill at this time and the opportunity not taken in its passage to lend weight to the growing support up and down the country for the concept in our system.

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While I therefore support the noble and learned Lord’s intention in tabling these two amendments, I do not believe that they are necessary. I hope that in the light of the undertaking I have given to take away the issues raised by Amendments 27, 27A and 28, and my explanation of the other amendments, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will agree to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, I apologise for my failure to refer to Amendment 27A when I spoke to the amendment that was being moved. I should not have made that mistake.

I am very conscious that my successor as the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, is in his place. If my memory is correct, one of the first things that he did on taking office was to get himself clad as though he was an offender and go off with other offenders to do reparative duties. On that occasion he had very favourable mentions in the media, which were fully deserved, although I understand that he did not find the reparative tasks particularly demanding. The noble and learned Lord has strange tastes when it comes to spending what leisure time he has; he continually indulges in activities that I would have thought were really not for Lords Chief Justice or, may I say, budding presidents of the Supreme Court.

That brings me to the only point that I wish to mention specifically in respect of what the Minister has so ably said about the proposed amendments: wherever possible, you always need clarity and certainty. The fact that I would not have the imagination to do some of the things that the noble and learned Lord does perhaps indicates why, even when you have experienced judges, it is a good thing to have clarity and certainty. Therefore, I ask the Minister to reconsider the amendments carefully and, if he sees fit at a later stage, to come back and tell the House that he welcomes them. That would give a very good signal to the world outside about the seriousness of this Government in tackling reoffending. In the circumstances, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 25 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Woolf]

33: After Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“Provision for female offenders
(1) Section 3 of the Offender Management Act 2007 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) Arrangements under subsection (2) shall require providers of probation services to make provision for the delivery of services for female offenders which take account of the particular needs of women.”
(3) After subsection (5) insert—
“(5A) Arrangements under subsection (5) shall make provision for the delivery of services for female offenders which take account of the particular needs of women.””

[Lord Woolf]

I have the advantage of moving this amendment with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. It deals with provision for female offenders, which is another area in which the criminal justice system has slowly—painfully so in this case—moved forward to recognising that female offenders have particular needs. The recognition of those needs, which are very great and cannot be disputed, is of the greatest importance if we are to achieve the purposes of the Bill with regard to avoiding reoffending.

There will always be a greater risk of females committing offences if their particular needs have not been taken into account. Of late, great strides have been made—I pay credit to the Government for this—in trying to give positive attention to this problem. There is now a Minister who has particular responsibilities here. Those in the criminal justice system who know her have great confidence in her, and I apprehend that what the amendment seeks to do is something the spirit of which both the department and the Government as a whole would support.

It is something that was considered very ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, in her well known report dealing with female offenders, which has not been given sufficient attention until now. I hope that one result of the new approach indicated by the Offender Rehabilitation Bill will be to enable the Government to acknowledge the importance of that report and give effect to its provisions, as suggested in these clauses. They require that the Offender Management Act 2007 should be amended to require providers of probation services to make provision for the delivery of services for female offenders that take account of particular needs of women with regard to Section 3(2) and (5) of the 2007 Act.

It would be a huge encouragement to those who have been involved in trying to improve the facilities and arrangements for female offenders if this amendment were to be accepted. I hope the Minister will give it careful consideration in due course. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, drew attention to the importance of this at Second Reading. I mentioned the matter as well. I hope that enough has been said on this subject in recent times to enable the Minister to respond positively to these proposals. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to support the noble and learned Lord Woolf’s amendment, which is an important one. The best thing about this whole Bill is the emphasis on keeping people out of prison if you possibly can, dealing with their problems and the rehabilitation required to get them back into society, where they can play a useful role. It is very much at the heart of what we are trying to achieve.

However, I have to say that we are all puzzled about why women and their special needs are not part of the original Bill. They have been rather brushed to one side. The document, Transforming Rehabilitation: A Strategy for Reform, notes that quite a high proportion of the consultees themselves specifically wanted the special needs of women to be delivered on. The more one thinks about it, the more surprising it is that women have been put to one side, at least for the moment, despite the fact that the strategy makes the point also made by the Prison Reform Trust, with all its expertise, that,

“the review of the women’s custodial estate … will also strengthen services for women released from prison”.

However, it does not go on to explain how that will be done.

I want to emphasise several points before I sit down. Although I accept entirely the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that carers come from both sexes, the vast majority of those caring for the children in a family and the heads of single-parent households are women. We know that many women prisoners themselves come from chaotic backgrounds and are likely to be have been abused in their own childhoods. As regards drug trafficking, quite a number of them—certainly the ones I have met in women’s prisons—have been used as mules for the purpose of transporting drugs at the request of their partners. All this shows that the one thing that must not happen, if it is humanly possible—of course there are exceptions where prison must play its part—is to send women to prison. It should be the last resort because it is the children who suffer. Often in such circumstances, the children have to be taken into care because the family home is broken up or the landlord can no longer accept the household.

I hope that we will be given an explanation of why specific attention has not been paid to women’s needs in this Bill. I know that we have been told that we will be given something later, but not taking these issues into account as the various plans unfold is something that I and others find puzzling and rather worrying. I shall give an example. A women’s prison is to be closed down because it is to be used to provide for the special needs of young offenders. That is fair enough, because those young offenders may well have special needs, but yet again one more place will no longer be available for women. No doubt it means that if they have to be sent to prison, they will be located even further away from their families.

I hope that all this will be taken into account and that we will be given an explanation of why women have been left to one side. I think that we need this more than anything else. I do not believe for a moment that the Government are thinking of women as second-class citizens, and yet that is very much the impression given by the fact that at this point, when we are looking at an important and valuable Bill, their needs are not being taken into account.

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My noble friend Lady Hamwee accused me of teasing her—something I would never dream of doing. I admire the fact that she gets the same pleasure from taking to bed a 200-clause Bill plus schedules as some women get from Fifty Shades of Grey. I would not dream of teasing her. She asked me how you put a marker down here. That is certainly a challenge. As I said, it is a tribute to this House that it keeps concerns about women to the forefront of our agenda. Although I cannot give the House assurances today, I suspect that we will return to this matter on Report. I know the passion and interest in the House about this—which I share. One thing that has struck me most powerfully in the three years that I have been in the department is that it is just wrong to keep 4,000 women in prison. The move to get those numbers down has been painfully slow. I believe that the Bill will open up opportunities for a radical new approach. Certainly, the help, support and wisdom of the House in that direction is wholly welcome. I anticipate returning to this matter on Report.

[Lord Woolf]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I know the sincerity of what he says, but patience has limits. The House has indicated on previous occasions that it feels that something should appear in statute to make these responsibilities absolutely clear to not only Ministers but everybody concerned with female offenders. Although it is pleasing to hear that some things are happening, I fear that the reassurance that we get from Ministers will not continue to satisfy this House. On Report, I hope there can be something positive proposed to deal with a situation that has been left unacknowledged in legislation for far too long ere now. In the circumstances, I will not press the amendment and beg leave to withdraw it, but this is certainly not the end of the matter.

Amendment 33 withdrawn.