Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, if the noble Lord was the head of a department of state he would not be advising me to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, with such alacrity. However, I take the point. At the beginning of my remarks I made the point that we are now in close discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions in what we hope will be a genuine exercise in joined-up government. I remember one of the first experiences I had when I took over this office—and I should say that I am not the prisons Minister; my honourable friend Crispin Blunt is the Minister, and he has addressed these problems with great energy and commitment, but because of my responsibilities in this House I take an interest in this area. At any rate, I was reading in what was the strangest of all places, the Daily Telegraph, an article about a young man being released from prison with £46 in his pocket, but with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. The article went through the 48 hours after his release, by which time he was using that money to buy drugs and was back with the gang he had been associated with and which had sent him to prison in the first place. So we are not unaware of the problem.

I have said before that there is a revolving door of crime which sometimes our treatment of prisoners only exacerbates. What we are doing, in what I hope is a non-ideological way—I know about the fierce debates on the welfare Bill, but the noble Baroness was kind enough to comment that there are aspects of the reforms that are genuinely useful—is to see if we can stitch those reforms into our prisons. That will go a long way towards addressing the problems raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. As I have already indicated, I do listen to what he says and I will take back his ideas to see where they can mesh in with what we are trying to do with the DWP and the various initiatives that NOMS has taken.

[Lord Judd]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He has been talking with a great deal of sensitivity and imagination in response to this amendment and I am encouraged and reassured by that. He seems to have a real grasp of the realities. I hope that he will be able to deal with a couple of points. He talked about a young man with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. I have encountered too many conversations of exactly that character. I remember something that I think I may have mentioned in the House before. A former chief constable was doing great work as a volunteer in a young offender institution, but he was bowled over when a youngster who was about to be released started to weep in his presence. He asked him, “Why are you weeping? You are about to be released”. The youngster said, “Because I am absolutely scared of what I am going to encounter outside”.

There are two things that we must bear in mind: first, that for some people—not, of course, the majority, but some—perhaps the very last thing they need is to go straight into a job. They need a great deal of support and counselling to prepare them. Front-line staff in prisons working with these youngsters often make that point. Secondly, agencies, advice and everything else are tremendous—what the Minister has been saying is terrific; the more of it that is available, the better—but it is not just that. What so often is needed in the context of the cold hole in the stomach is stable relationships and friendship. I hope that the Minister can give us reassurance that, in all the work that the Government are doing with the voluntary sector, they will give every encouragement to those voluntary organisations that are moving into this sphere and trying to provide a stable relationship—as it were, walking with the individual back into full rehabilitation into society.

[Lord McNally]

Part of the problem with this debate is that we cover two areas, which we were discussing earlier. First, there are dangerous people from whom society needs protection, and we have to deal with them within our criminal justice system. Secondly, you do not need to be in this job very long, or to visit very many prisons, to realise that there are people in our prisons who have no place there and who, with a proper policy of rehabilitation in its broadest sense, can be stopped from reoffending. We are really fighting on those two fronts.

On whether there should be a glide path into work, perhaps that is where we can get the work-in-prison regimes working properly. That in itself can help in that direction. The other thing that I am also very enthusiastic about and would like to see developed, and where the voluntary sector is superbly equipped to help, is mentoring schemes, and finding people who are willing to act as mentors. That could have a powerful effect. I do not think that there is division in the Committee on that. We are trying the perhaps revolutionary idea of joined-up government in making sure that the move from prison to a proper, productive, law-abiding life is not aborted at those first steps through the prison gates because of lack of basic support.