Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I start by saying how strongly I support the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who has built up an enormous wealth of knowledge about the penal system since he first became involved in it as Chief Inspector of Prisons, and we listen to him with great respect.

Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear me say, after the speech that we have just heard, that it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord McNally, albeit from this distance, rather than sitting next to him these days. Both from the Government Front Bench during the coalition and in his very distinguished period as chair of the Youth Justice Board, he has made an immense contribution. The Youth Justice Board has done a remarkable job in recent years, particularly in helping to reduce the number of young people held in custody.

If I have a slightly adverse comment about the Bill it is that, for my taste, it goes nothing like far enough. I do not believe that there is any really convincing evidence that using criminal records to prevent people obtaining perfectly ordinary jobs after a conviction that comes somewhere in the middle of the criminal calendar does anything other than send them back to prison. My view is that we should be very radical about these matters. There is, of course, cross-party support for being very radical about these matters, and I respectfully remind the noble and learned Lord who will reply to this debate of the contribution made by Michael Gove on these matters. It may be dangerous to cite Michael Gove these days as an argument ad majorem on almost any issue, but it has to be said in a debate like this that Michael Gove showed remarkable commitment to reforming the youth justice system. I believe that Michael Gove and Charlie Taylor, who has already been mentioned, and who produced his excellent report, were committed at the very least to the kinds of proposals that we are hearing now. I hope that the new Lord Chancellor will, within a short time, see that she, too, should support this agenda.

I want to say a few words about youth justice. As has already been mentioned, I had the privilege of chairing an unofficial, all-party parliamentarians group that reported on the youth courts system in June 2014. The group had as one of its members a then Back-Bencher who is now the Solicitor-General, Robert Buckland. As a committed Conservative of long standing, he was as enthusiastic as anybody about the changes that we were suggesting. “Treating children as children” should be a mantra that we keep repeating; it means a great deal more than some similar mantras that we have been hearing in recent times in the political agenda.

I recall in particular one instance, when I was a Member of the other place between 1983 and 1997, a woman who was a teacher came to see me one day at a constituency surgery. She was having a successful career as a teacher, and it was really time for her to move on and look at becoming a head of department in another school. She had a conviction for possession of cannabis while at university for which she had been fined £25. I should say that I do not, but I would not mind betting that quite a few Members of your Lordships’ House of a certain age were fined £20 or £30 for possession of cannabis. I see a few nods around the House, but I shall not name the nodders. She was prevented from obtaining that new job because, when the choice came between her and another person of equal merit, it was that conviction that prevented her obtaining her promotion—she told me so because she had been told so. It seems to me ludicrous that that should still obtain today. She was a person who was not going to get into trouble again; the fact that she did not obtain the job as head of department meant that she would carry on working in her present job—but there are people who are prevented from obtaining employment who, because of a criminal record obtained when they were very young, do not obtain a new job and go on to commit crime and walk round and round and round in that terrible revolving door that is the entrance to a prison.

As we have, alarmingly, been hearing this week, we see in prisons all the worst aspects of a criminal justice system that is built on punishment. Of course there are people who should be locked up, but when I was a young barrister, nearly half a century ago, I was told never to use the word “punishment” in a court room. Now it is used all the time. We are losing integrity by that approach to the criminal justice system. The Bill makes proportionate provisions that would make a significant, if not complete, contribution to people whose lives have started badly but whose potential can be unlocked.