Queen’s Speech

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, began this debate by saying that the wheels of justice never stop turning. I remind the House that in the last gracious Speech in December 2019, we had the promise of a royal commission on the criminal justice system. Subsequently, there were five Questions in this House, and every single time there was evasion from the Ministry of Justice, which said that the purposes of the royal commission were still under consideration. Now it has been abandoned, unless the Minister can tell us in his reply that it will be coming back. That is a massive disappointment to all of us who have been concerned about the reality of justice for those who feel that miscarriage rather than fairness is the normal experience.

This gracious Speech rightly and understandably prioritises victims, and everybody will have sympathy and understanding for that. But there is very little understanding of the needs of those who are in prison now or who may face prison and where miscarriages of justice are normative. I identify myself wholeheartedly with the brilliant speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Paddick, who both identified the treatment of prisoners. A junior Minister in the Ministry of Justice—Alex Chalk MP in another place—issued a statement just the other day saying that prison leaders should not refer to people in prison as “inmates” or “residents”; they must be referred to harshly as “prisoners” so that they can experience the reality of their vileness and crimes. This is not a right and responsible attitude to take towards those who must deserve dignity and human rights. The Government should not be playing to the agenda of the Daily Express, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph in seeking to constantly push up sentences and to make prisons harder and harsher.

There are those who would respond by saying, “So you are on the side of prisoners and the vile?” Well, let me cite the example of one young man who came to see me just three weeks ago. A young man by the name of Brandon, 24 years of age, was falsely accused and held on remand for 11 months in 2020, during which he was held in his cell for 23 hours and 45 minutes of every single day. When the charges against him were subsequently proved to be false, there was no apology, no compensation and no support. He was crushed as an individual and released with no recognition of the injustice done to him simply because police officers decided that he was to be a target. He now desperately needs support and help.

We see today in the newspapers the wonderful story of the brilliant law firm Hogan Lovells, which spent eight years fighting for compensation for two black men in North Carolina who have just received $75 million as a consequence of falsified convictions 31 years ago when both men were teenagers sent to prison on an inappropriate, inaccurate and non-just basis. This is the largest-ever payout in American criminal justice and the case was pursued entirely pro bono by the international law firm.

In the UK, we do not have a system whereby the Criminal Cases Review Commission brings forward such cases with any speed or determination. We simply allow those who are in prison to falter and fail. I have in my hand just one week’s worth of letters from prisoners telling me of issues of injustice and miscarriage in their cases. One man in particular, whose mother and aunt died as a result of the coronavirus, as a consequence sought to ask the prison if he could watch his mother’s funeral on YouTube. He was denied the opportunity to see his mother buried. That is not fairness and justice, treating prisoners with dignity or a recognition of their human rights.

We therefore urgently need a royal commission and for it to recognise that, yes, there are victims but there are also people whom injustice has locked away for too long.