Queen’s Speech

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay on his excellent maiden speech.

The Prime Minister has promised a vast interlocking programme to unite and level up the whole of the UK and unleash its potential, so the royal commission on the criminal justice system should mesh with the Government’s promised review of the children’s social care system. A quarter of imprisoned men and a third of women were in care. Care-experienced children are five times more likely to offend. Such crimes imply victims, increased costs and other considerable negative impacts on society. This care review needs a relentless focus on prevention. Preventing children coming into care where possible prevents care being a conveyor belt into crime and other highly detrimental outcomes. It must focus particularly on the relationships children in care need to thrive. They are an underexploited resource, yet for a child to surface, someone has to be irrationally committed to them. The Government have developed the Lifelong Links programme through their innovation fund, but the DNA of this programme has to be replicated throughout the care system and in the lives of care leavers in prison.

Returning to the royal commission, efficiency and effectiveness need to be measured against purpose. That includes public protection, safety and order, the reform of offenders and preparing prisoners for release. My two reviews have shown incontrovertibly that relationships, the golden thread that must run through the prison rehabilitation system and the criminal justice agencies that surround it, are fundamentally important if offenders are to change.

Family and other relational ties provide meaning and the all-important motivation to other strands of rehabilitation activity. They are the third leg of the stool, alongside employment and education, which bring stability and structure to prisoners’ lives. They are particularly important for women as relationships are their greatest criminogenic need. Women are frequently in prison because of a coercive partner or family member, and preparation for release must enable disentanglement from toxic relationships. The royal commission should pay specific attention to the needs of female offenders and build on the Government’s strategy, the implementation of which appears to have lost momentum. It must also address the intergenerational transmission of crime, given that almost two-thirds of male prisoners’ sons become offenders, with an even higher prevalence among the children of imprisoned mothers. They are more likely to end up in local authority care, further necessitating the royal commission’s co-ordination with the care review.

Disappointingly, the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill survives. Its stated purpose, to remove issues that create conflict within the divorce process to strengthen family support, is naive and oxymoronic. Removing fault from divorce is unlikely to lead to a more harmonious post-separation world. Solicitors say that enduring conflict is focused on who gets the children and for how long, as well as on finances. The Government disagree that removing any notion of responsibility from divorce alters the character of marriage or affects longer-term divorce rates. However, contradictory evidence and manifold contrary responses to the consultation process were ignored. With the full approval of the state, emotional and financial harm is inflicted on the partner who is unilaterally divorced, as well as on the children, who typically prefer parents to mend it, not end it. Such inconvenient truths belie Government claims that no-fault divorce will “strengthen family support”. I will strongly resist this at Second Reading and it was not in the Conservative manifesto.

However, I fully endorse the commitment to champion family hubs, which give families the intensive and integrated support they need. Focusing attention here is the best way for the Government to strengthen family support. These would be an accessible, stigma-free place parents can go before, during and after any potential separation to get help with relational problems and prevent them impacting their children. As in Australian family relationship centres, mediation and other family law interventions could be delivered in these hubs. This would require the Ministry of Justice to work with the Department for Education and the troubled families unit.

Every department of government has a role in strengthening family relationships, so we need a Cabinet-level Minister to co-ordinate and lead this cross-cutting work, served by an equivalent apparatus to the Government Equalities Office. The Conservative Manifesto says:

“A strong society needs strong families.”


Strong families ensure that children experience the safe, stable and nurturing relationships they need to thrive. They cherish grandparents and great-grandparents so that they can face the challenges of older age flanked by love and support. They bolster working adults so that they are match fit for an ever-changing workplace. Families and relationships are not tangential at best and irrelevant at worst to policy-making or politics. They are central to human flourishing, but they will not be strengthened by words. Concrete and co-ordinated actions are required. I and others will continue to hold the Government’s feet to the fire until they deliver.

I am now very pleased to welcome my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower to make his maiden speech.