Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

It was put before the court, and the request was made for an adjournment for a probation report to follow as it used to, with relatives being interviewed and the court being given some idea of the person’s background and some concept of why he could have committed the offence. However, I am very concerned that at the moment the pressure on the probation service is such that it is forced to take these shorthand approaches of video links with a person you have never met before, carried out by someone much younger who makes no attempt to look into the background. In my view, it is a denial of justice in the individual case.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I seldom disagree with my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis. However, on this occasion I have heard accounts directly from individuals who have been the victims of stalking. One common thread appears throughout these accounts. Individual instances are taken into account but the severity and length of the offences that currently fall under “harassment” are not always fully taken into account. Even looking at the best case, what happens is that incidents may be looked at as a group or a collection.

Some of the victims of stalking have been victims of the same stalker for years. Like many other noble Lords, I have heard the woman who is conducting the campaign that has been set up on this subject. She is a former senior police officer who has said that repeatedly a joke is made when the woman first complains to the police. We need quite a large change in attitude. The joke that was referred to this morning on the radio was, “Don’t you feel flattered that somebody is attracted to you?”, when the victim went to the police.

On Amendment 176, spoken to in my noble friend’s absence by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, it is extremely important that we look at the circumstances of the offence. I cite repeated shoplifting as an example. In my experience, there are two different sorts of repeated shoplifting. There are people who go on shoplifting sprees, sometimes in groups, in order to resell goods for profit. There are other people who shoplift to get tins of baked beans for their children’s tea. The fact that it is a repeat offence should not necessarily mean that those children are deprived of their mother if there are other means of tackling the issue. I hope that the Minister will give a positive response to this set of circumstances in which women might be incarcerated and say that it is an example where, even though we may be dealing with different sums of money, funding projects that help give women self-esteem, and do not separate them from their families, is a more cost-effective and socially effective means of tackling many of the circumstances of these women.

--- Later in debate ---

In both these debates there has been a desire to put instructions into statute and it is a debate that has continued since I have been in this job. It is a question of how much the legislators want to instruct the judges what to do and how much the judges say, “Listen, we’re there. We listen to all the evidence and we get the reports. We are best placed to make the judgments”. There will always be that tension between Parliament and the judiciary, but it is a healthy tension. However, I think that in this case the amendment is not a necessary addition to statutory provisions and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw it.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, looking at public expenditure, sending a woman to prison and putting her children into care is an extremely expensive option, but in many cases the resources are not available for the alternative treatment that I know speakers in this debate and other noble Lords regard as a preferable option. The problem is that those who have to deal with a particular incident or the result of a series of incidents often cannot use that judgment. It demands lateral thinking to transfer resources from one course of action to another.

[Lord McNally]

I could not agree more with the noble Baroness. That was very much the thrust of the Corston report and of what the Government are trying to do in carrying through their justice reforms, particularly in the treatment of women offenders.