Crime, Reoffending and Rehabilitation

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an honour to take part in this debate. My main reason for signing up to it was to listen and learn. Much of the discussion has focused on whether prison works and I want to highlight this issue in relation to older prisoners. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, rightly stressed the importance to prisoners of having a job when they come out of prison but, of course, a small proportion of prisoners are pensioners. Their specific needs must be given greater attention; I ask the Minister to say at least something in his reply about the specific needs of older prisoners, including in terms of their rehabilitation and their re-entry into society.

I have just two specific points to add to that general call. First, the punishment is what is levied by the court, but prisoners lose out in other ways. Prisoners of working age lose their national insurance contributions. There is a whole debate there but inflicting poverty on prisoners when they get to retirement age should not be part of the punishment. I suggest that one reform would be for prisoners who work or are in full-time training to be entitled to national insurance credits so that they can look forward to an adequate pension. That must be part of a policy for rehabilitation and re-entry.

My second, main point relates to the removal of the state pension from those prisoners who are of pensionable age. It is always difficult to engender sympathy for prisoners—it is perhaps even harder to do so for older prisoners given the typical nature of their crimes—but this is an issue not of sympathy but of rights. We have a state pension system based on contributions. In my view, if prisoners have paid their contributions, they should receive their benefits. Often, broadly, the argument is reduced to, “Well, we need to recoup part of the cost”, but we do not do that for prisoners under pension age. Why should we take a pension away from those who are over pension age?

It is notable that prisoners do not lose their occupational pensions. There is a technical point here, to a certain extent. Currently, for many older pensioners, part of their occupational pension is a replacement for the state pension. There is a lottery element: if you get a pension from the state, you lose it in prison, but, if you get an identical pension from an occupational scheme, you do not lose it. Given the national insurance position of a large number of older pensioners, their wives—it typically is wives—lose their pensions as well. That cannot be right.

This is not a new point. In the past, the Prison Reform Trust and Age UK have expressed dismay at this policy, and my main point is that it is directly relevant to prospects for rehabilitation and return to society that we should not inflict additional penalties which move people into greater poverty, with the consequent knock-on effects on their future.