Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham]

Thank you very much. I am glad that the noble Baroness raised that point. It reinforces something that many of us have been saying for a long time: the prison system of this country is not organised to help itself. The trouble is that prisoners are scattered all over the country by an incoherent national population management structure, as opposed to—as recommended by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, after the Strangeways riots in 1990—prisons being grouped into what he called community clusters or regional clusters so that nobody ever left their region. Therefore, all the resources of the region could be applied to the rehabilitation of their own offenders. It will be very difficult for the Ministry of Justice to resolve the questions that noble Lords have asked under the present distributed system. If prisons were regionalised and the prison authorities properly hooked into all the authorities in the region, it would be much easier to liaise with the regional authorities responsible for finding out that sort of detail. That should of course be part of the whole rehabilitation process anyway. The questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, posed are absolutely ones that should be referred to the Ministry of Justice. We should ask, “How will you ensure that these are answered, because they must be?”.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, my role in this Grand Committee has been very much in the light of that line from Milton:

“They also serve who only stand and wait”.

The occasions on which I have spoken have been unexpected to the Committee and have surprised even me. I am indebted to my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for having moved his amendment. He will not remember, but in my last month as a Member of Parliament, I had just such a case. It was the first time that I had ever had one. A man had been in prison for drug-related offences and had just come out. At my surgery, he described to me the nature of the problem with which he was then confronted. I cannot remember whether we spoke on the telephone or face-to-face, but I recall saying to the noble Lord—of course I knew his background—that we had known each other a long time and even played cricket together, sometimes on the same side and sometimes against each other. I laid out the case and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said in despair, “You are describing what happens so often, so often, so often”. I am only sorry that by virtue of leaving the House of Commons at that moment, I never heard how the story ended. I speak now because it is quite clear not only from today but from my earlier experience that there is a real problem that we must deal with.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support my noble friend and also to ask whether, if there is some difficulty with achieving this as a one-off from the start, one might start by focusing on women in custody. They are more likely than men to have dependants. I see also the problem raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of incarcerating so many women in this country is that once they are taken into custody, the family breaks down. If the Minister can go only part of the way in this context, I hope that he might think in particular about the issue of women in custody.