Criminal Justice: Royal Commission

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the pandemic demonstrated more clearly than ever the importance to prison morale and effective rehabilitation of family and other significant relationships. Benefits to prisoners of access to video-calling technology have also been proven. Building back better requires sharpening the emphasis on the third leg of the rehabilitative stool of relationships. Will this and access to technology, as an obvious requirement in a world that is being transformed daily, be key principles in the royal commission?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, we know that prisoners who maintain contact with their families and communities behave better in prison and have lower reoffending rates when out of prison. During the pandemic, we rolled out video-calling technology to all prisons. We have committed to retaining this long term.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I will focus on the past, the present and two possible futures. In the past, our nation’s hospice movement demonstrated our concern for the elderly and terminally ill. It grew out of shared western Judaeo-Christian foundations that value life in all stages and circumstances and the principle that God creates us and numbers our days. The more recent past saw assisted dying legalised in Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries, all with strict initial safeguards and limited scope.

In the present, we have a system that works for the vast majority of the terminally ill, albeit imperfectly. Supporters of assisted dying always cite hard cases, which inevitably make bad laws. Dying with dignity means dying with family and friends, letting natural life run its course and availing oneself of existing options to refuse unnatural and painful treatment, not the consumption of lethal drugs to end life when convenient. It is not life that is affirmed by letting people decide when it ends, but autonomy.

Is assisted dying the next great liberal reform? If so, liberalism has deified autonomy, implying that dependency is a fate worse than death and has replaced mutual solidarity with individual isolation and burden. The Bill facilitates death without reference to those most impacted by it. It is an atheists’ Bill, denying God and denying eternity.

Also in the present, we clearly see how assisted dying laws have profoundly changed other countries. More likely than not, we will follow the Belgian law’s extension to children and those with unbearable psychological suffering. In the Netherlands euthanasia is being proposed for people simply tired of life. Once established, the principle of autonomy over death inevitably extends beyond terminal illness by implying that without a happy mind and a healthy body life is less worth while, yet the weak and terminally ill most need reminding of their inherent dignity.

Assisted dying puts faith in the goodness and objectivity of human agents throughout the process—the doctors, patients, friends and family involved. Human nature always problematises this, particularly in emotive matters of life and death and particularly when wills and inheritances muddy motives. We are not morally fit to open this Pandora’s box.

Assisted dying endangers the most vulnerable, whom the law should protect. One possible dystopian future for us is the present of every other country that legalised assisted dying: safeguards fail, and assisted dying becomes increasingly common. The second, humane future would guarantee high-quality palliative care and prioritise relationships. Rapid advances in medicine and treatments for end-of-life conditions are harbingers of hope. Spiritual palliative care would reach beyond life. Death is not the end, certainly for the bereaved. It would acknowledge that the terminally ill are on the edge of eternity. Which future do we want, the elevation of autonomy or a renewed affirmation of human worth?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Fullbrook on her fine maiden speech.

I will touch on four areas in her Majesty’s gracious Speech. First, I share others’ reservations about the online safety Bill repealing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act: despite its limitations, this would have prevented children inadvertently seeing online pornography on commercial sites. I understand that the Government wanted to cover user-generated pornography, but much work had already been completed on the planned DEA protections, which could have been in place for the last 18 months.

This new Bill must deliver, as a minimum, all the Digital Economy Act’s child-protection measures—yet it leaves unmentioned pornography or age verification. Can the Minister assure the House, first, that the clear and unambiguous research showing considerable harms to children of easy access to pornography will be given paramount consideration in this legislation; and, secondly, that cyber-libertarian ideology, which holds that internet regulation is impossible, unworkable and unwanted, will not hold sway?

Secondly, will the Government’s legislation to ban conversion therapy extend beyond uncontrovertibly cruel and coercive efforts to change someone’s sexuality or gender, risking criminalising faith leaders, parents and friends approached by those who are ambivalent and confused, say, about same-sex attraction? In Victoria, Australia, it is illegal to engage in prayer that does not affirm same-sex attraction. Yet, ironically, this discriminates against gay Christians who, for deeply held faith-based and other personal reasons, want to remain celibate but are, in a cruel twist of coercive liberalism, denied support to uphold a freely made decision. Ed Shaw, pastor of Bristol’s Emmanuel City Centre church describes how the only people exerting unwelcome pressure on him to change his beliefs and behaviour have been

“gay Christians who have rejected orthodox church teaching—and the wider culture that thinks I am crazy to embrace it.”

Thirdly, as a co-founder of the Family Hubs Network, I welcome the Government’s commitment both to ensure that children have the best start in life, including by rolling out family hubs, and to address lost learning during the pandemic so that every child’s education enables them to fulfil their potential. Speaking as an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for 22q11 Syndrome, the second most common genetic syndrome after Down’s, I ask the Minister how educational catch-up will be achieved where learning difficulties associated with genetic conditions such as 22q make this far more difficult?

Finally, I welcome the integrating imperative of the health and care Bill. However, integration cannot mean overmedicalisation. If hospitals become the default hub for integrated care systems, this could make integrated services less, not more, available to those who struggle most to travel, such as those on low incomes and those with significant childcare responsibilities. Hospitals are not best placed to deliver social provision with significant health implications, such as family support. In Essex, local family hubs enable prevention by integrating paediatric health with all the other support families need to thrive.

Parenting impacts greatly on children’s health and is a recognised public health issue; well-functioning couple relationships are associated with many health gains for adults and help to make families safe, stable and caring for children. In summary, to be effective for people rather than systems, integration needs to include local support for good-quality relationships and nurture these health assets.

Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too begin by acknowledging the hard work of the right honourable Cheryl Gillan, about whose passing away we have all been saddened to hear today, in bringing forward the Bill in the other place. Thanks must go also to Richard Holden MP, who steered the Bill in the Commons when necessary on Ms Gillan’s behalf, and to my noble friend Lady Pidding for taking it through this place and for her excellent introduction today.

My own interest in the Bill lies in the fact that the endemic proliferation and consumption of illicit drugs across the prison estate are hugely detrimental to prison safety and the relationships that are so important to prevent reoffending. Both safety and relationship concerns must be addressed if rehabilitation is to be a realistic aim of our prison system. In 2016-17, when I was conducting the review on strengthening prisoners’ family relationships, the Ministry of Justice’s own data showed that prisoners who received family visits were 39% less likely to reoffend after release than those who did not, at a time when reoffending was running at 43%.

In my first review, Peter Clarke, then Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, described how many prisons are

“unacceptably violent and dangerous places”

and said that much of this is linked to the harms associated with drugs. To avoid these harms, my review indicated, for example, that quality time spent with family is a key motivator for a prisoner and a parent to stay clean. I quoted one father, who said that it was tempting to use drugs to get through a tough day, but:

“If part of your … routine is to do homework with your child or ring home … to hold a quality conversation with her, this is a strong deterrent to taking a substance that would mean you were unable to do that because you were ‘off your head’.”


An individual who has easy access to drugs and less will power risks missing out on their child or children’s lives and entrenching in them the sense of being abandoned by their mother or father. Reducing the prevalence of drug use in prisons is essential for bringing greater stability and structure to prisoners’ and their children’s lives. Data shows that a child of a prisoner has more than a 60% chance of being imprisoned themselves.

This is a good, tightly focused Bill, which I hope we can get on to the statute book before Prorogation so that we can make much-needed progress in this important area of rehabilitation.