Queen’s Speech

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Fullbrook, on her excellent maiden speech. With her wide experience, she will clearly be an asset to your Lordships’ House.

For a time I was privileged to be the president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. That and other experience, including my 50 or so years as a criminal lawyer, have left me completely unpersuaded that increasing sentences and the population of prisons in general, and filling an ever more challenged prison estate, achieves any public good whatever.

When I was in another place in the 1980s, many of us were horrified that the prison population had passed 35,000. That horror attracted people in all parties at the time. It has now more than doubled, without any obvious sign of the country facing less crime, whether serious or not. Is the United Kingdom a better place because there are now more than 80,000 people in prison? I confidently say no, and there is no intellectual basis for saying that it is.

I urge Her Majesty’s Government to focus not on building more prison cells but on creating more and constructive opportunities for offenders to achieve a lawful life without serving time. I commend strongly the work already done by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who spoke very eloquently in that regard.

I will add something that I and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, agree on—that young offenders should be able to graduate out of their criminal records. We heard a wonderful speech earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who has been able to reach your Lordships’ House, which I suppose is some height of achievement, despite having had a record as a youngster. But most youngsters do not reach your Lordships’ House. They cannot even get a job because when they apply for a job—for example, in the public sector—their old prison record is available to those who wish to employ them. Should that really happen to a 30 year-old found guilty of possessing cannabis when he or she was 15 or 16? I think not and I am astonished that the Government have ignored this device over a long period.

I turn next to treason, which has not yet been mentioned in this debate, but does arise from the gracious Speech. The Government wish to restore the law of treason in some amended form. It has not been used since the conviction in 1946 of William Joyce—Lord Haw-Haw, as he was known, although he was not a Member of your Lordships’ House. The motive for reintroducing treason is completely oblique and disreputable and the Government must recognise this. It is to avoid—to circumvent—the necessity of proving a specific crime or criminal intent by foreign terrorist fighters, such as the likes of Shamima Begum.

I regard as extremely serious and reprehensible the decisions and actions of British people who become foreign terrorist fighters. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, mentioned a somewhat eccentric jury decision. It will be nothing compared with a jury faced with the option of convicting someone for treason who has been a foreign terrorist fighter. Indeed, I have heard it said—I may even have said it myself to juries over the years—that the most democratic thing most jurors ever do is serving on a jury. They are not going to let it happen in cases like that.

As a coda I will add this: both the noble Lord the Minister who opened this debate and the noble Baroness the Minister who will close it are very good listeners. I think we should listen to them. During the past year we have had the luxury of voting in huge numbers against everything, but we have seen the mandate the Government have. I urge your Lordships that we should now be responsible and go for the art of the possible, not the luck of the improbable.