Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, I hesitate to add to what has already been said. I hope that I do not impose upon my colleagues if I just say a very few words on this subject.

My experience is twofold. It comes first from being a practitioner and a judge, involved daily in the sentencing process for prisoners, and secondly, since I ceased to be a judge, from my involvement with the excellent bodies we have in this country trying to promote issues within the prison and justice system as a whole. In the former, my capacity is well known. I think it is also well known that I am the current chairman of the Prison Reform Trust. I am also the president of the Butler Trust. I know from my experiences that the Prison Service works hard to address problems. I have seen prison officers behaving in the most commendable way to try to alleviate the difficulties that they are faced with.

The fact is that, in all parts of the justice system, women prisoners need a separate voice, in exactly the same way as young offenders need a separate voice. I congratulate the Government on their decision to retain the Youth Justice Board. I am sure our justice system will continue to benefit from this. There is an opportunity now to add to what I will call that small victory with the establishment of the separate body to represent women which is part of this amendment. That, I believe, would be a substantial victory, because it would be creating something new which has been long needed, as we have heard. I hope that the message of this debate can be taken by the Government and acted upon.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I want to add my very brief words in support of these two proposals. Indeed, I hope very much that the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham will get together and work out the best framework. A women’s justice board—I hope that that title will be retained—is without doubt something that has been called for, for a long time. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, I would like to say how pleased I am that the Youth Justice Board has been retained—very wisely, if I may say so.

It is clearly a fact that women need rather different treatment, which is increasingly being recognised. There is a parallel with the kind of treatment and systems for young people, because they are a special group. Women above all have care for their young, and it is crucial that we stop the business of separating children from their parents by the systems that we have within the criminal justice system. We have been told by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, that it costs something like £15,000 to treat a woman within the community compared with £56,000 within the prison system. Far more important, even than that cost, is to keep the family together. One of the really good things that this Government are concentrating on, I am glad to say, is community sentences. It is with an increase of confidence in community sentences that we are likely to see these sorts of programmes for women really develop.

I also want to support my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham’s demand—and it must be a demand—for someone to be in charge. He has made this point again and again. Someone must be responsible for what is happening and reporting back to Parliament on the progress made. Programmes for treatment—not just for youngsters and/or women but for many people, whatever their age, within the criminal justice system—will emerge from this, and we can learn from the report back.

That is more than enough from me, but I support this hugely important initiative and hope that it will get off the ground as soon as possible.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, this has been a short but very important debate, and I commend all those who have spoken so far, showing great expertise. We have heard their voices before on this subject, much to our advantage.

The previous Government commissioned the report from my noble friend Lady Corston after the tragic and avoidable deaths of six women in a short period who were detained in the secure estate. Her report of 2007 was a watershed moment in our understanding of women's experience in the criminal justice system. The recommendations were not limited to the secure estate but extended more widely to the entire criminal justice system, including the aim of preventing offending by women as well as dealing with women who had already offended. I am proud that we as a Government took forward the majority of those recommendations. Within just over two years, several were implemented in full; others were piloted.

We are concerned that some of the recommendations are no longer getting the necessary resources. Everyone knows that we all want the same end, but it is a question of what means are employed to get it. We invested £15.6 million in the provision of additional services for women at risk of offending in the community, creating one-stop-shop support services and developing bail support to meet the needs of women. I understand that that has now been lowered to £3 million and that three of the one-stop-shop support services are no longer being financed. One close to where I come from is in Derby. Can the Minister find out and tell us the position? Is much less money being put in than was planned and are three of the one-stop shops not to receive any funding in the next financial year?

We set up a central ministerial responsibility. Two powerful women Ministers, Maria Eagle and Vera Baird, were put in charge of ensuring that the Corston recommendations were fulfilled. I believe that Mr Crispin Blunt is now in charge, but no longer is there that successful joint ministerial responsibility. Why has the women's justice policy unit, set up in the Ministry of Justice but including civil servants from many departments, being disbanded? I hope that those are fair questions, and if the Minister cannot answer them tonight, of course he can tell us by letter in due course.

I support the two sets of amendments. It is good to hear that both noble Lords will get together so that another amendment can be put at Report, which we very much hope will be accepted by the Government or, if not, by this House. Far too many women go to prison each year. The system is clearly still out of kilter. We should be grateful to my noble friend Lady Corston for starting us on a route to fixing a system that has been described so graphically this evening, not least by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. Of course, the system is not fixed, as my noble friend Lady Gould said in moving her amendment. We want a system that works for the public, victims and offenders.

A powerful statutory voice at the centre of the system, whatever it is called, would be of huge benefit. As has been said around the Committee this evening, it worked very well with the Youth Justice Board. We are delighted that the Youth Justice Board is to survive. That would not have happened had it not been for this House. Its very existence hung in the balance for almost a year. It survived, and we are grateful to the Government, and particularly the Minister, who I am pretty sure played an important part in that decision. However, I hope that that does not indicate a certain state of mind towards the institution or organisation recommended in the amendments. As the Opposition, we certainly support the amendments and very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. As we come to the end of the Bill, I feel I must speak for many of us in saying how much we admire and welcome his consistent and valiant leadership on these issues. The House is all the better for his presence, experience, and what he has to say on the basis of that experience.

If the Bill really has had its Title changed by the intervention of No. 10 from “rehabilitation” to “punishment”, that is a very gloomy story indeed. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive my saying that I would be perfectly happy with a Title which referred to both punishment and rehabilitation because I am one of those who are absolutely convinced that it is part of a civilised society that crime must be punished. However, I also happen to agree very strongly with the noble Lord that the punishment is the deprivation of liberty and the singling out of a person as somebody who must be deprived of liberty. The challenge right from day one is how you enable that person to change their behaviour and become a positive member of society.

I am sorry if I have to repeat what I have said several times in debates in this House; namely, that this issue matters for several reasons. First, it is a wicked waste of taxpayers’ money to have any other policy because if you do not succeed with rehabilitation there will be reoffending, more trials and the costs arising from further punishment and further deprivation of liberty. That is a waste of taxpayers’ money. Secondly, if we are a civilised society, we surely care desperately about the person. We are not being sentimental but saying, “This person should be enabled to become a decent member of society”. That is the real challenge for a civilised society. Just to shut somebody away and put them to one side is a condemnation of the real strength of civilisation and of a society itself because it shows that we are not confident that we can win that person back into a positive position. It is very unfortunate that, aided and abetted by the worst elements in the press, this is somehow seen as a feeble approach; I was going to say a “bleeding heart liberal” approach. However, it is not: it is a muscular, tough approach. It is saying what needs to be done and why it needs to be done.

This issue also matters desperately because successful rehabilitation will ensure that that person will not reoffend. Of course, there will be some sad cases in which, try as you might, rehabilitation will not succeed. It is just being starry eyed to pretend that that is not the case. However, the challenge must always be to try to achieve rehabilitation. The more heinous the crime, the bigger the challenge to try to win that person back into positive citizenship. If we are putting a sane policy before the country, it is terribly wrong to be tentative and apologetic about the concept of rehabilitation. That is misguided, plays to the worst elements of the public gallery and will never win because it is a process of appeasing prejudice, and the appeasing of prejudice will never win the battle.

I am one of those who believes that a healthy democracy depends upon accountability and leadership —there should be a creative tension between the two—and that, all the time, enlightened leadership should be enabling society itself to move forward in its attitudes by arguing the case and trying to win the arguments. I am afraid that we are always defensive and apologetic when it comes to the attitude towards rehabilitation. We should be rigorous, and say that the people who are against rehabilitation are the very people who are exacerbating the problem of crime and the cost of crime in our society, and it is they who should be in the dock for aiding and abetting crime. It is as blunt as that. We have to come off our defensive, apologetic approach and come to an approach in which we determinedly argue the positive case for rehabilitation.

For all these reasons, I cannot say how glad I am to be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Having known the Minister for as long as I have, and although I said a slightly barbed thing on an amendment a moment or two ago, I cannot believe that, in his heart of hearts or in his very good mind, he does not know the absolute logic of what the noble Lord is proposing and that he would not really prefer to be four-square behind it.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I certainly always wish to join my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham in his belief that rehabilitation is a crucial part of the criminal justice system. I was amazed that we could not attack the Title right at the beginning and talk about this as a rehabilitation Bill. I was sad about that because it seemed to me that many of the proposals within the Bill were, in fact, working towards a much more rehabilitative approach.

I was also sad about the fact that we have been waiting for this for so long. It is over 40 years since Keith Joseph made his great speech about the cycle of deprivation. That speech was made because he listened to the people who were actually doing the work on the ground. I am very sad that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London has left because we have relied for years and years on the Church of England to be around to try to help people coming out of prison and do a little to move them in the right direction. There is the whole business of lining up a programme of things that people can be doing as they leave prison that will see them back into a normal life. That requires somewhere to live, some sort of job or training to undertake and, above all, a friend or mentor. Again, these are some of the ideas that have been flowing round, and some of the voluntary and other organisations really want this whole approach to work.

I know that the Minister has made some very interesting updates to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. However, I cannot say that there were very many indications of really progressive activities that are going to take place, so if, when the Minister replies, he could tell us a little more about what is going to be happening, that would be helpful too.

I know that it is a late hour, but I must say that I think that the Government have been pushing us. To start such a debate at this hour of the night does not command a great co-operative spirit. It would have been much better if we had been given a reasonable hour at which to debate these important issues.