King’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I first lay out my interests as set out in the register. I too want to pay tribute to Lord Judge—I got to know him very well in the past three years—and in particular the work that he started in thinking about how we deal with legislation in this House, particularly secondary legislation and statutory instruments. I think it would be wise for this House to think about how we continue that work in the future.

We heard three maiden speeches today, and I noticed that they were all very different indeed. I very particularly point out to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, that we will be needing his skills as some of this legislation that we are talking about today requires setting aside human rights legislation which we are currently party to. We will certainly need all the legal expertise we can get.

This has been a thoughtful and very broad-based debate. In order to sum it up, I invite noble Lords to think of it as an artist painting three pictures: in one, there are sticks being used to punish people; in the second, there are sticks or staffs being used to help people stand upright and move along; and in the third, the artist is describing the shortage of sticks altogether. Translated into this debate, the first picture is about the punitive measures contained within the six Home Office and Ministry of Justice Bills we are construing today, the second is about the supportive measures to assist in creating a better society for people to move on in their lives, and the third, naturally, is about the importance of the right resources to achieve the ambitions set out in the first two. From these Benches, there are some measures we support in the government programme, some that we clearly do not, some which may need changes, and, importantly, many which will work only with the correct resources—money, people and facilities —to make them work.

The third area of focus today is devolution. I do not know whether it was put in today’s agenda deliberately or whether a home had to be found for it somewhere. Anyway, I will say a few words about it later and draw some conclusions from what we have heard in this debate.

Many Members have talked about issues relating to sentencing. My noble friend Lord Beith pointed out that tougher sentences do not work, as we have seen sentence inflation ratcheted up across the whole sentencing spectrum. As my noble friend Lord Marks said right at the outset, locking up people without hope just stokes despair, and there is now a trend moving towards greater punishment.

We had a discussion about the role of the police. My noble friend Lady Hamwee warned us of down- grading the work on missing persons by piling on extra responsibilities for the police.

We looked at the state of our prisons. My noble friend Lord Dholakia pointed out how government actions have filled our prisons to bursting point, a point also emphasised by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford.

On victims, my noble friend Lady Hamwee said that victims are to be valued; that we need them and must care for them. My noble friends Lady Brinton and Lord Marks said that the victims Bill is not tough enough and that there is a need for a statutory agency to uphold the services needed.

Finally, there was a singular speech at a very particular moment by my noble friend Lady Benjamin on a fair deal for children. She said passionately that the problem particularly facing black children in tackling discrimination and marginalisation in the criminal justice system and the care system must be addressed.

Many of the Bills and measures that we are presented with cover detention matters. There are plans for longer sentences for the most dangerous criminals, a presumption against prison sentences of 12 months or less and proposals to send prisoners to other countries for their detention. These plans are set against the backlog in our court system, which was very ably raised by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, who explained in detail what that has meant. Huge delays in cases being heard are resulting in people on remand being mixed with those serving custodial sentences. Huge overcrowding on the prison estate and sentence inflation mean that people are serving longer in prison as sentence lengths grow. My question to the Minister is: how will any of the measures outlined in the gracious Speech make a dent in the unprecedented backlog of court cases that we have?

We on these Benches commend the presumption against short sentences, but the community sentences which will replace them are not a cheap offer. This was pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. Of course, he is absolutely right, because the resources are needed to make them run well. Of those serving sentences of 12 months or less, 55% go on to reoffend. That point was raised by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford—we are very blessed in this Chamber to have two Welsh Lord Thomas’s who can treat these matters in a uniform manner. This is the challenge the Government have to face up to. Again, what increased resources are the Government intending to put into effective community sentencing in order to realise the potential of dramatically reducing reoffending? For those transferred to serve a custodial sentence in another country—at great expense—how are rehabilitative measures to take place, with the intention of turning people’s lives around, when they are not in this country?

I now turn to the Illegal Migration Act measures referred to in the Government’s programme. It was mentioned by several noble Lords, particularly in the strong contribution from my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno, that we need to treat asylum seekers as people and friends. The central tenet of the Illegal Migration Act—detention and removal—has yet to be brought into force. I suspect that we all realise it is perhaps dependent on the court case. We still do not have the detail of how, where and at what cost people will be detained. There is the proposed reopening of Haslar IRC and Campsfield IRC, and additional capacity at Yarl’s Wood IRC, Manston and a new site in Bexhill, east Sussex, but has any work started on those places? Is anything ready for people to come in? I do not know.

The first question I would like the Government to answer on this is: where will they find the capacity to detain those in limbo who are left liable under the Illegal Migration Act? What plans are in place to create the detention spaces? When do they intend for those spaces to be available? What additional capacity is being given to legal aid providers to ensure that those in detention have access to legal advice? These are all questions for which we need answers, and we need answers now.

I turn very briefly to tents. I do not have to give the context, because so many Members of your Lordships’ House have used the word and talked about the actions of the Secretary of State. I want to know, before I ask my question of the Minister, whether this was a Secretary of State who had taken the “com” out of “compassion”. I looked at the definition. Compassion means “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others”. If you take the “com” out, you are left with “passion”, which is described as “strong and barely controllable emotion”. Will the Minister tell the House whether the proposal to ban charities distributing tents to the homeless will be in the crime and justice Bill? A simple yes or no answer will do.

I turn briefly to devolution. Concerns have been expressed, particularly by my noble friend Lord Stunell, about the unconnected zig-zag approach that we have seen—more zigs, or more zags—to dealing with the issues in England of how to make devolution work properly. But, yesterday, I listened to Questions to the Prif Weinidog—I like using that phase because, in Welsh, it means both First Minister and Prime Minister —in the Welsh Parliament yesterday. He was concerned that the word “Wales” appeared nowhere in the gracious Speech. While spend on rail links in the north of England was present, there was no mention of the electrification of the north Wales railway line. Is it still the Government’s intention to proceed with electrification, which would do so much to strengthen the economy of north Wales, improve the linkage with the rest of Great Britain and fulfil the requirement to support the union?

Secondly, the gracious Speech talked about the advanced British standard bringing together vocational and academic qualifications—that is a laudable ambition. However, powers over qualifications lie with the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments. Is the title “Advanced British Standard” in advance of itself? The Welsh baccalaureate has been in place for many years. Is it the Government’s intention to override the powers of the devolved Parliaments and impose a qualification on Wales and Scotland? If so, they had better take note of Michael Gove’s definition of undermining the institutions of Great Britain, because I think such an action would fall into that category.

Much of what the Government are offering is entitled “for the long term”—we can see it in the documentation. That makes me wonder whether the measures before us are simply sticking plasters over jobs that need to be done for the long term. Many noble Lords have talked about how our system is broken—it is, and it needs wholesale repair from one end to the other, looking at the needs that have been expressed by so many noble Lords and considering where the arrow is pointing between punishment and rehabilitation. I would like to move that arrow so that we can get more people back to having meaningful lives in this country.