Prisons and Courts Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Madeleine Moon

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome much of the Bill. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), and I particularly endorse his comments about judicial diversity. This is a far-reaching Bill, although we have to infer quite a lot of the detail from the White Paper, particularly in relation to prison reform. As others have said, the Bill is relatively thin on detail.

I welcome the establishment of a new statutory purpose for prisons, but I also hope that there will be opportunities to strengthen and extend it as we take the Bill through this House and the other place. The Prison Reform Trust has suggested that the statutory purpose should make exclusive reference to standards of fairness and decency. Given the problems in our prisons today, including the exceptional amount of time that prisoners are spending in cells and not engaged in purposeful activity, the disturbances that have put prisoner and staff safety at risk, and the appalling mental health of many of those in our prisons, I strongly endorse the need for a purpose that captures those elements of fairness and decency.

Like many hon. Members who have spoken today, I want to talk about the need for good mental healthcare in prisons. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, at least 3% to 4% of prisoners have a psychotic illness; 10% to 14% have a major depressive illness; and up to two thirds have a personality disorder. Many prisoners are so unwell that prison is utterly the wrong place to treat them. This has been starkly brought home to me when handling a constituency case over the past few months. That case has really shown that the system is not working to ensure that prisoners’ mental health is paramount. It involves a young man accused of very serious offences who has been on remand in Manchester prison since before Christmas. He is seriously psychotic, and prison is not the right place for him to have been sent to, yet still, four months on, no secure hospital bed has been found where he can be securely and appropriately cared for. I therefore strongly endorse the call by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for statutory time limits in the Bill for the length of time that someone who is so unwell can be kept in prison. We need to take that important measure to ensure that parity of esteem between mental health and physical health exists in our prisons as it does in the wider healthcare system.

We also know that women in custody have a high incidence of mental health problems. This year, we mark the 10th anniversary of Baroness Corston’s seminal report on women in custody, and this is a real opportunity for us to make a step change in the way in which we deal with women in the penal system. The Justice Secretary has said that she intends to bring forward a strategy in relation to women in the next few weeks, and I very much look forward to debating it with the Government. I hope that Ministers will take this opportunity, and not simply build more new women’s prisons that are far from home and too large to provide the right regime for their particular needs. Baroness Corston identified the need for small, local, secure units—not prisons—that specifically cater for the needs of women. This is a once-in-a-generation chance for Ministers to transform the nature of the women’s prison estate, and I really hope that they will not miss the opportunity.

I am also concerned that the Government seem intent on building new large male prisons, such as Berwyn, which I understand is to have a population of 2,000 prisoners. However, there is a lot of evidence of smaller prisons doing better, according to the Centre for Social Justice, the Prison Reform Trust—which found that prisons with fewer than 400 prisoners were more likely to perform well than those with more than 800—and the National Audit Office, whose 2013 report showed that the smaller prisons achieved better internal performance ratings. We do not know whether there is a difference in reoffending rates for small and larger prisons, and I would be grateful if anyone in the House enlightened me on that. If we do not have the information, however, I strongly urge Ministers to conduct a programme of research to help us to understand that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) went into some detail about the importance of family contact, which incarceration a long way from home naturally makes more difficult. According to a 2008 study for the Ministry of Justice, family contact reduces recidivism by 39%, which is a substantial reduction. A joint report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons and the Youth Justice Board found that boys who suffered from emotional or mental health problems were less likely usually to have a visit at least once a week from family or friends than those without mental health problems, yet half of women and a quarter of men on remand receive no family visits. Concentrating prisoners in larger prisons, further from home and covering large geographical areas, is going to work against the family contact that can make such a difference.

[Mrs Moon]

I totally endorse everything that my hon. Friend says. She sets out the tragedy of the difficulties that women in prison face in maintaining family contact. Their children often end up in care or being farmed out to family members who cannot travel long distances. In particular, for Welsh women, children have to travel to England to see their mum in prison. This damages the family cohesion that is so vital to rehabilitation.

[Kate Green]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Women are usually the main carers of children, and the consequences of their being in custody can be devastating not only for the women but for the children, who ought to be our paramount consideration. I support the calls from the Prison Advice and Care Trust, among others, for a requirement on sentencers specifically to ask about the provision for the children of parents who are about to be given a custodial sentence, and particularly to know where they will spend that first night as their parent faces incarceration.

If we are serious about prison reform, we have to face the fact that our fundamental problem is sentencing policy. We incarcerate too many people who do not need to be there, which costs a great deal of money, and too many of them resume offending on release. I could not agree more with the Lord Chief Justice, who told the Justice Committee last November that the focus needs to be on rigorous, demanding and effective community penalties. However, that requires those penalties to be available and it requires sentencers to have knowledge of and confidence in them. This cuts to magistrates’ training budgets, the lack of full pre-sentence reports because of pressures on the National Probation Service, and problems with community rehabilitation companies.

I want to comment briefly on the Bill’s extensive court reform proposals, and in that regard I declare my interest as a life member of the Magistrates Association. While I recognise the opportunities that modern technology can offer to an efficient court system, I echo the concerns about how vulnerable users will fare in a virtual system. The virtual courts pilot of several years ago offers little reassurance and this Bill’s impact assessment frankly tells us nearly nothing. However, there are concerns, as highlighted by Transform Justice and others, about the lack of access to legal advice, the impact on lawyer-client relationships, the impact on sentencing—the virtual courts pilot suggested that there may be some inflationary impact—the fairness of the process, public perception, and the cost to the public purse, about which the impact assessment is quite vague. I share the concerns of the Magistrates Association and others about the use of online courts in relation to pleas, remand, sentencing and vulnerable young people. Significant numbers of prisoners have low levels of literacy and numeracy or suffer from learning disabilities and may struggle to present their case in the best possible light. They may agree to their case being dealt with in writing or online because it is quicker, it gets things over with, or because it is suggested to them by a police officer in a police station, but that does not necessarily serve the best interests of justice.

I understand the argument made by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) about the loss of the local justice area being an opportunity for a unified magistracy and judiciary, but there are advantages to local justice. As the Justice Committee identified in its report on the magistracy last year, the loss of local justice must not mean losing the leadership and peer support that helps a bench to function collectively more effectively and efficiently. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us on that.

On the other proposed reforms to civil justice, I endorse the concerns expressed about the proposals on whiplash and the small claims route, and I regret that the Government have not taken the opportunity to be more assertive in their tackling of the aggressive marketing practices of some claims management companies. I also endorse the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn about the rise in the small claims limit and the impact that that may have. Workers in relatively low-paid employment with modest claims for accidents at work may find themselves unable to access the legal advice that enables them to make claims successfully. USDAW, a trade union of which I am a member, offers several examples of where relatively minor accidents that are significant to those in minimum wage jobs would not have secured compensation under the Government’s proposed changes due to the lack of access to legal help for workers to pursue their cases.

Finally, I am also concerned about one aspect of the proposal to move responsibility for employment tribunals to the Ministry of Justice. In doing so, I hope that we will not lose the real value that comes from having expert tribunals made up of representatives of both employers and trade unions, employees and the trained judiciary.

Like others, I welcome the Bill, much of which I look forward to seeing develop, but I hope that Ministers will take seriously the concerns that are being expressed and ensure that the justice system, of which this country is so proud, remains the best and most modern in the world as result of the reforms.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Madeleine Moon

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

That is an extremely good example. Those with a terminal illness and less than six months to live are automatically routed through and fast-tracked to eligibility for PIP. We could also talk about those on dialysis and double amputees, who are automatically able to get the higher rate of mobility, as are those with severe sight impairment. It would be simpler if the Scottish Parliament could legislate to route some of those people through to benefits automatically, as is now the case in UK legislation.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Motor Neurone Disease Association has cited cases in which people with six months left to live who have had the DS1500 assessment have actually been challenged by the Department for Work and Pensions, which is so insulting as to be mind-boggling? That is why we need very clear guidelines and definitions, which the Bill does not provide.

[Kate Green]

That is insulting, obviously very distressing and quite unjust. I hope that the Secretary of State will look at amendment 128, which seeks to bring clarity to the legislation in relation to entitlement to disability benefits, and, if he is not able to accept the amendment, that he will give us clear reasons why not.

On carers, I recognise that the definitions encompassed in the Bill mirror the current entitlement to carer’s allowance. As I think the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) was trying to explain, carer’s allowance is both a very useful benefit from the point of view of society as a whole and as an enabling benefit to enable people to provide care for their family and loved ones. We should be very keen to extend those enabling benefits as far as possible and, as she rightly said, in alignment with the landscape of social care and support provided through our public services. If Conservative Members will forgive me, I do not think that it is creating a dependency culture to facilitate carers in their caring role. Indeed, from a UK perspective, I must say that I am rather envious of this opportunity to extend the definitions. I again hope that the Secretary of State, if he feels unable to accept amendment 48, will be able to explain clearly why not.

Finally, I want to pick up on amendment 129, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who is not in the Chamber at the moment. As I understand it, the effect of his amendment would not be to remove the provision from applying to someone who had been sanctioned, but would mean that someone who had fallen out of the ambit of entitlement to housing benefit altogether—including because the operation of the bedroom tax meant that they could no longer receive that payment—could none the less access a benefit that the Scottish Government might wish to introduce to deal with that situation.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said, we intend to address that point in a later amendment that would devolve the whole of housing benefit. However, it is important to understand that amendment 129 is not about trying to subvert the sanctions regime or the conditionality regime, with all its current flaws, but is about trying to reopen access to support with housing costs to those who have fallen foul of a tax, the bedroom tax, which Opposition Members are united across parties in opposing. I hope that the Secretary of State will recognise that fact.