Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Lords Chamber

The prison population remains within a few hundred places of criminal justice collapse. I learned recently just how challenging the situation is when we had to temporarily close HMP Dartmoor last week, taking around 200 places out of the prison estate. Although we are able to withstand that loss of capacity, any further challenges, be that a further loss of supply or an unexpected increase in demand, could tip us into crisis. Until this measure takes effect, we will continue to monitor the prison population closely and be ready to introduce further emergency measures if required. We are not out of the woods yet, but I am proud to be part of a Government who will take the necessary action and brave decisions necessary to protect the public. The change that we are debating today is the only safe way forward in the time we have available to act. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his position; this is the first time I have been able to debate with him. I hope he has plenty of time to sort out the mess of the prison system. I support the order; there is obviously no alternative to passing it.

The Minister touched on the reasons why that has occurred. My understanding is that the offender management unit in the Ministry of Justice calculates what the demand will be for prison places, taking into consideration all the changes in legislation. Anything that we do in legislation makes it change its calculation, and I am pretty confident that the unit told Ministers a long time ago that we had problems. One reason why I got involved in looking at the penal system was a debate initiated by Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in 2017 on overcrowding in the prison system. We just let it go on and on until eventually we had to do something, which is exactly what the Minister is doing.

My only question is: is there any scope to do something about unnecessary recalls? Released prisoners can be recalled for fairly trifling bureaucratic reasons, which causes a lot of disruption and an increase in the prison population. Also, is there any scope to reduce the remand population, which the Minister mentioned? I look forward to supporting the Minister in his work.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to hear the categories that will not be up for release, because nobody wants sexual predators and misogynists out on the streets—so I am delighted to hear that. But when the issue of prisons comes up, we always have to ask ourselves: what are they for? They ought to be for keeping dangerous people off the streets, but that is not what we do at the moment; we throw into prison an awful lot of people who should not be there. Through the Minister, this Government could think about changing who we put in prison because, quite honestly, the number of people going to prison is ludicrous when you think about some of the crimes they have committed.

Drug law reform is an obvious area. It seems absolutely ridiculous to put people in prison because of drugs offences when they have access to even more drugs there than they do out on the streets. Prisons are failing in that way, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister had to say about drug use in prison. Unfortunately, our new Prime Minister has indicated that he wants to continue the ideological war on drugs. Can the Minister at least review the evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and publish its advice? The Conservative Government kept it secret because it called for the decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs.

It is good to hear about restorative justice, which is something further that that this Government could talk about. It is a voluntary process whereby people who have been harmed can work with the people who have caused the harm and perhaps identify how both parties can resolve or move on from it. We had amendments on this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, so it would be good to hear the Government’s thoughts on this area.

Of course, if we are going to let people out of prison, we have to remember the scandal of the IPP prisoners. I was sad that the Minister did not mention them today because that category has clearly suffered the most incredible injustice. The legislation was designed to keep serious offenders in prison, but instead we ended up with nearly 3,000 people, most of them non-violent, trapped in prison. IPP prisoners turn to suicide and hunger strike. This is a legacy of the last Labour Government that the new Labour Government need to fix, as I pointed out.

One report says that someone got, in effect, 16 years in prison for stealing a flowerpot at 17. A prison sentence of 18 months should not turn into 18 years, which has also happened. It is no wonder that our prisons are overcrowded if we keep throwing people in there to rot for minor crimes. So do the new Government have a plan to work at pace to safely release IPP prisoners where possible? Is there a proposal for new legislation on this? We need the new Minister to sort out a plan on this. We need a resentencing programme to get the majority of IPP prisoners out of prison. Apart from that, I can say only, “Good luck”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this important debate, and I look forward to answering as many questions as I can. I will of course go back and look at Hansard, and if there is anything I have not answered, I will endeavour to write. As noble Lords have already pointed out, I have had quite a busy few days and I am learning fast, so I ask your Lordships to please bear with me if I am not quite as smooth as other noble Lords have been today.

I will start with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on recall. Recall is used only when necessary to protect the public. I see no reason to believe that it is being used inappropriately. This week, I went to two prisons to meet the offender management units to see how they were getting on with the important work they are doing. While they were very busy, I got the distinct feeling that they were on top of things and very much prepared for the hard work.

The noble Lord, Lord Beith, mentioned remand. We are very aware that the remand population has seen significant growth, and it is a significant issue. It has grown from about 9,000 to 16,000 prisoners. However, making changes to the remand cohort in a way that respects the individual decision by the judiciary will take time to implement. Unfortunately, we do not have much time.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Lords, Lord Deben, Lord Beith and Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, talked about who goes to prison. I thought I would mention the sentencing review that we are planning. That will take place as soon as possible. That will, I hope, be an opportunity for noble Lords to discuss and debate where we are going on sentencing.

One point raised by a number of noble Lords was around IPP prisoners. That is not something that is covered by this instrument. If it is satisfactory, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with the exact detail, because this is so new to me and I do not want to get anything wrong at this early stage of my career in this House. IPP prisoners is an area that troubles me deeply. I have been going to prisons for over 20 years, and every time I go into an establishment, I always try to sit in a cell and talk to a man or a woman who is an IPP prisoner. In fact, I sat next to an IPP prisoner on Thursday. They all have a different story. Most of them suffer from multiple challenges; most of them feel lost; many of them are institutionalised. We have a duty to help them live a law-abiding life outside, but it is challenging. We are making progress, and this is one of the areas I want to make further progress on quickly. I assure noble Lords that it is at the top of my in-tray every day.

On the subject of prison building, which the noble Lord, Lord Beith, talked about, it is important, and we are committed to building new modern and safe prisons. For me, one of the advantages of new prisons is that they have the facilities required to help people gain skills and education, so that when they are released they have the skills and confidence that make them more attractive to an employer.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, asked what I meant by “stabilised”. Even though I have been going round prisons for many years, I have been trying to remember when I last felt that a prison was stable. It was probably the category D prisons, up until the last year, where they often had spare capacity and you felt that they were very much on the right side of panic. However, where a prison is 99% full, it is very difficult for the prison staff and probation staff to adequately educate and train, and to have time for those quiet conversations on the wings between prison officers and prisoners, which are sometimes very important turning points in someone’s life. I have worked alongside many colleagues who have left prison, and very often the story they tell me is that their lives were not turned around by family or friends but by a kind prison officer who gave them their time.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, spoke about mental health. We have a broad failure across many of our public services, including the health service. One of the things that is very important to me as I progress in this role is to support our health professionals to work with our offenders, inside and outside prison. These people have failed society but often society has failed them too, and they often need support to overcome their health problems, especially around addiction.

The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, talked about the impact on communities when people leave prison and how society will cope with that. We are recruiting 1,000 extra probation officers; although they will not be in place completely until March next year, it is an important step. What we want to achieve is a reduction in reoffending. To me, what is important from this job is to help people not to reoffend, because that reduces crime, we have fewer victims, it costs less money and it means fewer wasted lives. The plan at the moment is for the release point to go to 40%, and when we are satisfied that the capacity problem is resolved, it will go back to 50%, We will publish every quarter an update on how this scheme is running. Not all prisoners leaving prison will go on tag; it will depend on whether the professionals deem it to be appropriate. As I said on Wednesday, I will test one of the tags myself to see what it is like, and will report back to noble Lords.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister should make sure that it is not a sobriety tag.