King’s Speech

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, we now know from the gracious Speech that the election is coming because, whenever an election comes, the ruling political party seeks to beat up on criminals and to make crime the centrepiece of its strategy. It feeds into prejudices, so the great weight of the gracious Speech was all about ensuring that the public can feel better and safer. But if it were the case that longer sentences made for less crime, the United States would be a role model for effective community safety, and its poor gun laws, let alone its fraught communities, would prove the point that longer sentences—permanent lock-ups—dealt with the problem. They do not.

The Minister spoke about all the Bills, and there are lots of them. We know the Government are tinkering around, coming up with little hacks here and there, to find a way to make it all look good, but there is one thing they have failed to do consistently since 2019. In their manifesto, they promised a royal commission on the review of the criminal justice system. That is a broken promise: no royal commission. The King yesterday should have referred to his mother’s famous Speech after the election of 2019, with its commitment to a royal commission. No royal commission: promise broken. You cannot keep tinkering with the system, hoping that little hacks here and there will make it better. But it makes the news—hence the attempts by the Government to look better simply by making it nastier.

If only we really had proper, intelligent approaches to crime prevention. I can speak on this subject, having been the founder and chairman of Crime Concern since 1988, the founder and vice-president of Catch22, where I remain vice-president, and, for the last 10 years, the co-founder of My Brother’s Keeper, working in six prisons across the UK on a monthly basis. I see it, I hear it, I experience it and I know it. Because of what I have seen and heard, I can list a few things, other than just tougher sentences, that the Government, if they had a positive, intelligent approach to the issues, could have committed to do.

We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, about 15,000 people on remand, 770 of whom have been on remand for more than two years. I met one man recently who did two years and two months inside on falsified charges: no compensation, the ruin of his employment and his working life, two and a half years waiting to be set free, finally released with no compensation and no apology. Deal with remand. We have to believe, fundamentally, that people are innocent until proven guilty; therefore, locking up endless people in prison blocks up spaces.

There are 2,998 men on IPP lock-ups, when we know that IPP is no longer a legal sentence. It was abandoned by the Conservative Government under David Cameron. It was put in by our dear friend the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, way back, but has now been abandoned. But the lock-up of the 2,998 people who remain in prison means that they are taking up spaces, at £50,000 a year. Why do they remain unsorted? There is an opportunity, if the Minister would care to answer, of an amendment put forward by Sir Bob Neill in another place to the victims Bill. That could begin to deal with the issue of IPP cases, but will the Government actually back it and set these people free from what is effectively an unacceptable life sentence?

There are 2,000 women in prison who do not need to be there, on minor sentences that do not require incarceration. They should be set free. There are endless recalls. I encountered one man recently in a category C prison who had been free for 15 years and made the mistake of not informing his probation officer that he was taking a one-week holiday: he just forgot. He was recalled to prison, at £50,000 a year, for two years. This is madness, absolute madness. If we are really going to deal with the prison population issue, let us apply some intelligence and common sense to the whole issue.

Not only that, but it is important to note, as has already been said, that there are roughly 6 million crimes recorded every year and the police are able to deal with and catch about 6% of those responsible. That means that effectively more than 90% of people who have committed a recorded crime are out there with all of us, but we spend so much energy despising those who are paying the price of their crimes. We should be putting the energy into supporting people who are in the criminal justice system to come out as free men and women.

The need for a different approach is embedded in a chaotic system, and the only way it is going to be turned upside down is by a comprehensive royal commission review that looks at all the areas that we have simply skipped over; not by changing legislation every year but by looking hard at how to improve outcomes. The Children’s Commissioner released an information piece today pointing out that 80% of young people who go on to commit crimes have been involved in permanent truancy. That comes down to a key issue we can actually get to grips with and solve by making educational opportunities much more vivid and not having pupil referral units. If the Government want an intelligent approach to this, please look at practical solutions and do not introduce further laws to make it tougher and more difficult. Those make great headlines, but they do not actually solve the problems.

I finish with one final point. While I have been here in the Chamber, I had a phone call from someone who is inside a prison—I did not take it. He was ringing me to tell me some good news. I know this only because he rang somebody else and they sent me a message. That person is serving a life sentence for a very serious crime, but when you meet him, you realise that he is a human being with an open heart. I urge Ministers and those in No. 10 to stop saying nastiness about those who have committed unacceptable crimes. Treat them as humans, love them and support them to freedom, because, after all, they deserve to be citizens.