Crime, Reoffending and Rehabilitation

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for getting the debate today, and for his very thoughtful—and for some, I suppose, somewhat controversial—contribution. He has been very brave and has said some things that need saying and that these days we are not prepared to say. I look forward with interest to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester’s contribution.

The causes of crime are the old fundamentals—the seven sins—such as greed, pride, lust and anger. Anger is one which causes a great deal of problems for families and society, and many people who have uncontrollable anger end up in prison. It is interesting that the Government’s 2018 strategy on anger and violence in society and in prison took it back to looking at what happens with alcohol and drugs, which is an area in which the House knows I have spoken fairly frequently. I will not labour on that today; I anticipate that my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who was chair of the Commission on Alcohol Harm—of which I was a member, so I declare an interest—will speak at some length on this topic. Alcohol and harm, and the Government’s responsibility in the way they handle alcohol and harm, is a big factor.

I welcome the Minister to his role and, like others, look forward with great interest to his contribution. I hope we will have not just words but that he will be able to pull some levers and we will have some action.

I come at this from a long experience of personal problems with drink and drugs, many years ago. I have also spent much of my time working with people in recovery. I work also with people in recovery from prison, and later I will give noble Lords a message I have had from a friend who I spend a couple of hours every week with, who has been in Brixton prison three times. He comes from a difficult background but is now in recovery, training as a therapist and making very good progress. He has some useful insights into what we might be doing.

I agree basically that the family as a unit is the best one available to us, but let us not deceive ourselves and think that simply because we are in a family and we have that relationship that everything will work fine there—it does not. My experience is that many people come from backgrounds where, prima facie, the family is perfect, yet they end up drinking too much and taking drugs. Why does that happen? We should spend time looking at that. My experience is that it is often a combination of the DNA, the past history of the family, and then of course the environment in which the child is in—and it is mainly at the childhood level that this develops. We have got to be careful about making assumptions that there are simple solutions; there are not. This is a complex topic.

I pay tribute to the Cameron Government here. When David Cameron was in power, he came up with a number of quite notable and distinctive polices in this area, which regrettably were not followed through. For example, they produced a very good alcohol strategy, but it was never implemented; it had fallen by the wayside by 2015. Why have the Government still not got a strategy on alcohol when, at the present time, we have more problems with alcohol then we have had for the past 15 years?

Cameron also encouraged the development of a more participative society; it is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, cited the Queen and service. When this country is in difficulty, we have found that an extraordinary response comes from the people. When Covid began, 750,000 people volunteered to help the NHS. They were not used properly—what a waste of talent and opportunity. Everywhere we look, when we have a real problem, we get a great response. For example, we have had an outstanding response on Ukraine from people willing to accommodate refugees. When it comes to asking what we can do in prisons, not enough work is done in trying to tap into the good will of the British people and get them involved in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, is involved, and the way that many of the people I know working in AA go into prisons and try to get people into recovery.

I hope the new Minister might start thinking about how we can marshal that great British spirit. To a degree, this is a debate about spirit. We have spent so much time talking about material deficiency when, in fact, we have a great poverty of spirit in this country. However, if we can provide leadership, we can give a lift to people, and they will come forward and work with us. We need to do more because our record in prisons is very poor indeed in comparison with many other countries.

I am running out of time, and I regret that I cannot give your Lordships a quote from my friend who is an ex-prisoner, but I will write to the Minister with it. He gives some very good suggestions on what needs to be done.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, I note the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. What he has done—