Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords, I welcome every word that has been said to justify this amendment. It is altogether impossible that 41 prisoners serving whole life sentences should be imprisoned in this way. What the noble and learned Lord has said is absolutely essential as far as having a civilised attitude where the criminal law is concerned. People serving whole life sentences will be able to look forward with some hope if the conditions in the amendment are satisfied and the Parole Board accepts the submissions that are made. I thank the noble Lord for raising this vital point.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I was very glad to add my name to this amendment. I have the utmost respect for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. He always brings to our deliberations his very high standards of legal expertise, but what I like about him, if I am allowed to say so, is that that legal expertise is always tempered with the values of the civilised society and a strong sense of humanitarian concern. Long may he remain with us to bring those to bear.

We do not indulge in vengeance in our penal system. We are about an appropriate punishment for a serious offence, and that must happen because it is absolutely right. But we are also about the challenge of rehabilitation. However dreadful the crime that has been committed and however much we may feel a sense of solidarity and empathy with the victims of crime, the challenge in a civilised society is to try to enable the perpetrator of the crime to see the significance of what they have done, to recognise and accept responsibility for it, and to move on to a positive and creative life. If we do not always strive to try to enable someone who has done a dreadful thing to become a better person and to rejoin society as a better person, I think that we demonstrate a lack of self-confidence in our own civilised values. Of course it is no good sentimentalising this issue. There will be some people where these endeavours make no progress in the end, and there are others where it may just simply be impossible to consider release. But the aspiration should be that the person will be released as a positive, reformed and different member of society, contributing constructively.

I know about this from indirect personal experience, if that is possible. For 10 years, my wife served on the board of a prison exclusively for lifers. In some ways it was an avant-garde prison at that time, but I was always encouraged by the stories she brought back about the exciting and imaginative work being done there. One of her fellow governors was the late Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, who at that time was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth. He served with great commitment on that board and we were all great friends. We used to discuss the prison and its works. We would take heart from the encouraging things that were happening and laugh about some of the warm and positive stories that came out of the situation, but I remember that he would always say, “Basically, it is a very sad place”. What my wife talked about is something that I find very difficult to cope with: the prisoner who sees absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. How does this help the process of rehabilitation? How does this help the process of reconstructing a life? From this standpoint, I believe that the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, not for the first time, can claim to stand for civilisation and humanitarian values in society. We should warmly applaud it.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, it will not surprise you that I wholeheartedly support the amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for warning against sentiment. There is a robustness about offering human beings hope that contributes specifically to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of which he spoke. However, this is about much more than simply giving hope to individuals, because a society that does not give hope to individuals is unlikely to have hope for itself in areas in which it feels as a society hopeless. In terms of a civilised society, this is a very humane amendment which is necessary for our societal good as well as for the individuals for whom it is designed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Some future Government may well bring forward a proposal along those lines. The judgment of the Government at the moment is that on a law that is safely in judges’ hands for determination, and that applies to a specific number of the most serious crimes, the position as it is now is best in retaining public confidence. It is a matter of political judgment, and the political judgment is that to move on this point, at this point, would not retain public confidence in a package in which we are trying to make moves in certain directions and carry colleagues who are not as enthusiastic as this House on some of these matters.

[Lord Judd]

In the last few minutes the Minister has encouraged me, because he has said that at some point it may be appropriate to introduce legislation that meets the arguments that are being put. It is not the first time that I have heard the noble Lord refer to the importance of holding public confidence, and we all understand that point, but it is not a matter of accepting as inevitable the existing state of public opinion. We have to be very careful that we are not, in effect, running scared of the sensationalist media. We really should be not only respecting public opinion and public confidence but helping to shape public confidence by putting forward the positive argument for change. That is essential to successful democracy. If we have become convinced that this is the right thing to do, we have to speak up for it.

[Lord McNally]

I entirely agree. That is why I said in my opening remarks that I am proud that this House has been the platform for penal reformers to argue their case over centuries, but I also say to this House that we have to carry another place and public opinion with us in these matters. One of the things I am most proud of is that this Government, and the Ministry of Justice under this Lord Chancellor, have been willing to try to educate public opinion. Some of the measures in this Bill will, I hope, move that forward, but no matter how much courage is used in expounding these views, if the result is for the public to lose confidence in the criminal justice system, those are Pyrrhic victories indeed.