Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to both stand part notices. The first question I asked myself way back before Second Reading, and I still need to ask myself, is why on earth the Government put these two clauses in the Bill. They do not seem to do anything to make the prison regime any better or to make the work that goes on in supporting people in prison any easier. In fact, they appear to be cruel in a variety of ways.

The Secretary of State being able to approve a marriage or civil partnership only based on exceptional circumstances, even if you felt there was a rationale or a reason, is surely the wrong way around. Surely, the Secretary of State should be able to deny them only if there are exceptional circumstances. This measure will apply regardless of the way in which anybody in future seeks a partnership or marriage.

It worries me, as I am sure it does many others in this Committee, how much placing people in prison for their lives will add to—or detract from—what happens inside the prison. It is going beyond punishment. Whatever anybody feels about what happens in a prison establishment, providing some hope for the future of their lives, understanding how their lives work and making sure they feel a sense of purpose in remaining alive is part of the job of the state, which must retain that ability.

These clauses, once again, chip away at those fundamental human rights, disapplying human rights to a specific cohort of people. The universality of human rights in this circumstance is doubly important because, of course, the state is totally responsible for whatever rights and purposes prisoners have. It has to manage them. It is precisely in custodial institutions such as prisons that human rights protections are most vital, because the individuals are under the control of the state.

It would appear, as in the Illegal Migration Act and the safety of Rwanda Bill, that we are beginning to see a testing period for making controversial changes to our human rights framework. It seems to me and those on these Benches that this particular measure is offensive to that spirit of how the state should manage the lives of people in this circumstance. If there were to be a case for saying that somebody cannot get married or have a civil partnership, that is surely by exception rather than by practice.

It appears to me that these clauses do not really fit into this Bill, because of that sense of things being done in the wrong direction. More than anything else, I seek to understand from the Government why they have put this in place. If it is because of a single case, as we have just heard, to write law on the basis of a single case is surely not the correct way to go about it.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I wondered why this was in the Bill; it is because this is a victims Bill. My honourable friend Jess Phillips MP is familiar with victims of the crimes of Bellfield, so I looked at what she had to say about this issue. She is a great champion for victims of crime. What she said was quite interesting. She was reflecting on what had been said by Sarah Champion MP, who had put a point reflecting what my noble friend Lord Bach has just said.

Jess Phillips said:

“I truly appreciate my hon. Friend’s fundamental point: everybody hopes for rehabilitation. With this, the only case we have to debate is that of Levi Bellfield, as mentioned. Having worked with some of his direct victims and the families of those victims, while I do not disagree that we sometimes chase headlines and make bad legislation in doing so, with his case I am not sure, from previous behaviour, that I would categorise it as rehabilitation. I would categorise it as behaviour to get headlines. The desire in Levi Bellfield’s case, as has been put to me by many of his victims, is that these schemes keep him constantly in the media, and that is incredibly painful for them. There is a bit from both sides of the argument in this debate: trying to stop the headlines and allowing rehabilitation”.—[Official Report, Commons, Victims and Prisoners Bill Committee, 11/7/23; col. 480.]


My noble friend Lord Bach raises some very important questions about the legality of this proposal. It is important that the Government explain why only one case has led to this being in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that the Government will accept that this data must be collected and published, but I also hope that they will ensure that the benefits of disseminating that information will not just help to reduce reoffending, nor just improve the quality of life between prisoners and their families while they are in prison, but will actually make a substantial difference to these children in their broader lives.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, because I could not possibly better her introduction to this amendment. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and I were very pleased to put our names to it. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that you cannot create robust policy if you do not have the data. She has helpfully illustrated to the House that it can be done and that, therefore, it should be done.

When I first saw these amendments—I have said this several times in the course of this Bill—I could not quite believe that it was not already happening, but it is not happening. I ask the Minister to seriously consider that this needs to be done for those children.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I do not pretend to be an expert on prisons, as some noble Lords are who have put forward this amendment. However, I also wanted to speak briefly to it, and for the very same reason, which is that I just could not believe that we did not collect the numbers on children who have a parent or a primary carer in custody. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, put down a Written Question and that the Government said that they do use a figure, which is 200,000. But that is from a survey from 2009—a pretty long time ago—and that is very different from the 312,000 figure that Crest Advisory has claimed.

We should say that the Government recognise that this is a problem. In that same Written Answer, the Government said they had made changes to the basic custody screening tool. In other words, this means that, when people go into prison, they are asked how many children they have back home. We know that they will not always say, not least because they will be worried about children being taken into care, and again, the Government recognise this. So in that Written Answer they talked about using a linked data programme called BOLD. They said the results should be published this spring and that that should be able to give us a better estimate. So can my noble friend the Minister explain, not necessarily today but perhaps in writing, how this programme works in practice and whether it will provide a permanent solution to the problem, as this amendment would do? If it will not, I ask the Government to consider making this change. Otherwise, as others have said, we will be letting down a group of very vulnerable children.

Finally, the Government’s own statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education, says that children and young people will be impacted by having a parent or relative in prison. I am a little confused as to how, on the one hand, in guidance we can state that we know this is a problem and that children will be affected, but on the other we can say that we do not know how many children are affected because we do not gather the numbers. How can we provide the support if we do not know how many children there are or where they are?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Farmer for tabling this amendment and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester for moving it. It would require the Secretary of State to collect data centrally about prisoners who are primary carers of children and the numbers of dependent children who have a primary carer in prison, and to publish the data annually, including the ages of the children. My noble friend, who is not in his place today, knows that the Government fully support the intention behind this amendment. The Government echo the right reverend Prelate in paying tribute to his work and ongoing contribution towards this issue.

Understanding the personal circumstances of those in custody, including responsibilities for dependent children, is essential if we are to provide effective support for those prisoners to help them maintain contact with those children. Strengthening family ties is an integral aspect of the work of HM Prison and Probation Service. We recognise the importance of maintaining a prisoner’s relationship with family, friends and their wider community, particularly where the best interest of the child is served through maintaining a strong relationship with their parent. Prisons across England and Wales offer a range of services to maintain family relationships, including social visits, family days, secure video calling and Storybook Mums and Dads, an award-winning, charity-led initiative that enables parents in prison to record bedtime stories for their children.

In answer to the right reverend Prelate’s comments on supporting children impacted by parental imprisonment, ministerial responsibility for supporting children who might be vulnerable due to parental incarceration sits with the Department for Education in England and the Welsh Government, and the Ministry of Justice is actively committed to joined-up working across government to better understand the nature of this issue. The Female Offender Strategy, published in 2018, encouraged a partnership-focused approach to addressing the needs of both imprisoned mothers and children affected by maternal imprisonment. We published the female offender strategy delivery plan in January 2023, with a progress report, the Farmer Review for Women, in 2019. Outstanding commitments from the Farmer review are being taken forward under the delivery plan.

Understanding how many children are impacted by parental imprisonment is just as important, because having a parent in prison is a recognised adverse childhood experience that can impact a child’s mental health and lead some to feel they are being judged for the actions of their parents. From the perspective of the criminal justice system and echoing the number that has been mentioned a couple of times in this debate, evidence has shown that over 60% of boys who had a father in prison went on to offend themselves. Therefore, identifying and supporting those individuals at an early stage has the potential to divert them away from the criminal justice system, preventing future victims of crime.

While we are fully supportive of the amendment’s intention, we do not believe that legislation as proposed here is necessary. Our prison strategy White Paper. published in 2021, outlined our intention to address this issue through engagement with other government departments, and to commission updated research to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental imprisonment.

As my noble friend mentioned, we are delivering this commitment through our Better Outcomes through Linked Data project, known as BOLD. It is an almost £20 million cross-government shared outcomes fund that will link data to enable better evidence and more joined-up cross-government services. Through BOLD, we will be publishing a report that will estimate the number of children with parents in prison. We expect findings from the project to be published by spring 2024. This should provide some of the critical data that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, called for. We are working to collect and improve data. We have previously made changes to the internal management—

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Why are the Government aiming to have an estimate? We need to know the actual number of these children.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her intervention and appreciate that this debate has focused very much on the wish of many noble Lords to have very accurate data. I am very aware that BOLD will be an estimate. We expect it to be a reasonably accurate estimate, which will be very good information for forming policy. The extent to which more detailed data could be required in future we will keep under review. If it is helpful, I can offer a further meeting on that outside this Committee.