Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to have this opportunity to support my noble friend. I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee on Human Rights when she was its distinguished chair. I then had the opportunity to see at first hand that this is not a passing interest of hers; it is something deeply rooted in her culture and in her sense of justice and the availability of justice for everyone. If justice, in its fullest sense, is to be delivered, what matters is the appropriateness of what is being done when someone is sentenced. It is not only my noble friend who in her very challenging report has spelt out the issues, but I am repeatedly impressed by the research which seems to come to the same conclusion that the overwhelming majority of women in prison should not be in prison at all.

I vividly recall visiting Holloway prison with the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I am not certain that my noble friend was the chair at the time—in connection with some work that we were doing. While we were there we got into very good conversation with some of the staff. It is easy to be prejudiced, but for me it is always interesting that in a place like Holloway you find a mix of people in the profession, including some very good, caring people who—for any of us who would want to be seen as humanitarians—are living a very challenging life in the front line of their professional services. I remember—and this was dealing specifically with short sentences—one woman turning on us in exasperation and saying: “I don’t think you people know what you are doing. We don’t understand what you are doing. These women’s lives are a story of chaos, and all we do by having the women in here for a short term is to increase the chaos in their life in terms of their relationship with their children, their relationship with the community of which they are a part, their relationship with life as they have got to live it”. Then she looked back a little poignantly and said: “Unless, of course, by having them in here for a few days we relieve them of some of the nightmare of pressures outside”.

It is an indictment of us all that we have such an inappropriate, wrong-headed approach towards how we deal with women who may have been caught up in some offence. From that standpoint, it is clear that there has to be an interdisciplinary approach. The problem—the challenge—goes across all sorts of different aspects of life. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, repeatedly reminds us in debates on such occasions, if you are trying to get a change of culture and drive through a new approach, you have to pin down who is really responsible. You have got to have specific arrangements in place to make sure it happens and that it is pursued. This is what my noble friend’s amendment is about: making sure that we stop talking about what is wrong, stop talking about what we should all be doing, and start to do it. If that is to happen, it needs a cross-section of people with a specific responsibility for which they are accountable to make sure it is happening. From that standpoint, I warmly commend the amendment and am glad to support it.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

In Committee, we had two separate amendments on this issue which was, in a way, a commentary on the fact that the vital issue of women in the criminal justice system was not even discussed in Committee in the other place. I am very glad to have been able to combine the two amendments in one, in the hope that this time we really may get something in the Bill.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has drawn attention to the need to get something done. Over the years there have been directors of women’s policy, women’s policy units, women’s policy groups, Ministers for Women, Ministers of prisons looking after it, but nothing has happened. Why? Because there has never been anyone who has been the agent for those people, responsible and accountable for overseeing that what is laid down actually happens. I have lost count of the number of times I have said that, but I say it again. The key word “implementation” appears in paragraph (4)(a) of the amendment and the word “delivery” in sub-paragraph (5)(a). With all the wisdom that has gone into this subject from many sources over many years, it is all there. Everyone knows what is to happen. What is lacking now is the drive to get it done. I therefore hope that the Minister will go away from this particular stage and reassure us that this time something will be done to action what is so well known.

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[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 151A I shall speak also to Amendment 151B, with which it is grouped.

I am bringing back these amendments following the discussions on them in Committee, both because I believe them to be very important and because the amendment expresses a view shared by noble Lords from all around the Chamber without a single voice of dissent. They were views expressed by people of such knowledge and distinction that there was an obligation to try once more to persuade the Government of the importance of this case.

First, I thank those noble Lords who have added their names to the amendments, in particular my hero the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who was also poised to add his name to the list but was not allowed to do so. The Public Bill Office informed me that my list was already full—four names were all that were allowed—so my list has lost a little of its potential lustre. I regard the noble and learned Lord as being on my list in spirit if not in fact, and for that I am extremely grateful to him.

Although technically these are amendments they are in fact proposed new clauses, which do not amend but rather underpin the central objectives of this part of the Bill: to reduce the prison population and develop the use of alternatives to custody, and so reduce reoffending. I am a wholehearted and paid-up supporter of the Bill in these key respects, and I have worked all my life to promote the same objectives. They were also, of course, the core objectives of the Government’s policy as set out in the Green Paper. I regard these clauses as enabling ones, which ensure that the Government will achieve their objectives—and without which their success is far from being assured. Indeed, I believe that the Government need these clauses if they are to succeed.

In addition, the magistracy and the probation trusts, the organisations about which I speak, need these clauses as well. They are unequivocally in support of them because they know that if they are to be enabled to achieve their objectives, which are in line with the Government’s own, they too need them. I pay tribute to all the work that they do in their different ways. The magistracy is the bedrock of community-based justice—the representatives of our communities across the land, delivering justice locally. They are hard-working and dedicated, sustaining the peace of the realm within the law and all selfless, voluntary and unpaid. I was a magistrate once and I know how much it takes, in terms of not just time but care and effort, to try to get things right for the victims and the offenders, and for justice to be done. Their task becomes ever harder over time, as our society becomes more complex and difficult to navigate for so many.

By the same token, the work of the probation service has become ever harder but ever more necessary and valuable. As patterns of offending change and prison numbers rise, it has to provide the courts with pre-sentence reports, carry the challenging responsibilities of MAPPA and support offenders in the community, while facing more uncertainties about its own future as yet another review of its work and role is under way, causing anxiety all around. I have also been a fellow social worker—a childcare officer in my far-off youth—and my admiration for the work of probation is boundless. I also declare an interest as a patron of the old Probation Association. I know how much we all need those people, as they work at the interface of the courts and the community, protecting us as they work to reduce reoffending and meet the challenges of offenders.

These are the people who actually deliver the programmes that magistrates need, and they too are solid in support of these proposed new clauses. They know that statutory liaison is necessary to bring about the understanding by magistrates of the intricacy of what is provided in the community for the courts. From the distance of politics or non-penal worlds, it can perhaps be difficult to understand the subtleties of the relationship between these two organisations. The world of the courts is and must be at a certain remove from the day-to-day reality of the world of those who transgress and break the law, but that is where probation also operates. Good and valuable relationships can of course be, and often are, developed between individuals in both worlds. Yet you cannot conduct a system of professional interaction based on the arbitrariness of personal relationships. We discussed at Second Reading examples where we know that good liaison between probation and the magistracy frequently occur. However, we cannot deliver the sort of high-quality, highly professional service we need on that basis alone without communication and co-operation becoming uneven and patchy to the extent that we have seen happen since 2000, when the statutory basis for the relationship was abandoned. All high-quality, professional service must have a high-quality, professional structure within which to work. This is what these professionals want and it is what our communities need.

The magistracy has roughly 29,000 members and probation trusts nearly 12,000 probation officers and probation service workers, though these are slightly old figures—about 18 months old. These are dynamic institutions doing difficult, highly skilled, professional work, where change is an essential part of the progress. They must have a basic statutory basis on which to conduct their business and keep up to speed with each other. To leave it to a voluntary local effort is simply not in the nature of these national bodies. It is important that all magistrates—not just some eager ones—know what their local probation service is doing. Such is the pace of change that contact must be regular in order for everyone to be up to speed. Both parties in this area agree with that. For sentencers, this is important to be able to make properly informed disposals. Custody should never be used because a sentencer is not aware of a programme or a service which could have been a better alternative. This is sometimes tragically still the case today. While the pre-sentence report and information leaflets give a flavour, there is absolutely nothing to match or beat seeing and talking to the providers and the offenders. Quite simply, seeing is believing. This is not rocket science.

In Committee, the Minister said,

“unless we have public confidence in non-custodial sentences we will have criticism of them. We have to win that public confidence”.—[Official Report, 7/2/12; col. 170.]

How right he is. Where do we start? We start with the sentencers themselves, whose use of them will justify and develop confidence. As their own confidence grows, the more they learn. My noble friend also said that he was not aware of any obstacles to magistrates making regular visits. He is quite right; there are no obstacles. However, we need more than a mere desirable aspiration; we need a requirement, if all concerned are to understand the importance of visits and keeping abreast of current provision. I referred to the senior presiding judge’s recently revised protocol in Committee, which sets out voluntary arrangements for probation trusts, courts and magistrates. However, I am told by the Magistrates’ Association itself that, even where relations are very good, the involvement of all magistrates is “rarely achieved” and “aspirational”.

Lastly, magistrates’ expenses have in the past been a thorny issue. Expenses stopped in 2000 when liaison ceased to be statutory. I have already referred to the extraordinary and voluntary commitment of time, effort, skill and responsibility—on every level—of magistrates to their role on behalf of us all. These visits represent training over and above their duties and commitment. It seems petty and short sighted in the extreme to begrudge a bus or train fare, or petrol, to go and learn about a programme, which, if understood and then used, will save the community that proportion of the annual £40,000 cost of each prison sentence and will significantly increase the chances of reducing reoffending at a fraction of the cost while making our communities safer. That is an achievement which I think goes beyond price. My noble friend the Minister told us in Committee that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service was “looking at” this issue, which suggests at least a recognition of the right way to proceed and where its duty lies. I hope I am right about that.

I believe that this proposed new clause is what the Bill needs really to succeed in its admirable core adjective. I know that my noble friend is expected to make no concessions beyond those already agreed but I also know that it is possible to keep her heart and mind open to argument—otherwise, what are we all doing here? My case is that this simple new clause is not an amendment to anything already in the Bill but would add something which endorses it and ensures that what it stands for is achieved: namely, a safer, more civilised society with less reoffending as a result of less imprisonment and more community disposals. I commend the new clause to the House.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to support this amendment. The noble Baroness speaks with real experience because she has done a lot of front-line work in precisely this sphere in trying to bring the probation service and others together with magistrates and, indeed, judges. She is to be commended for that. She speaks in this House having done that.

I am glad that she took the opportunity to say a few words about the probation service. In my younger life, the probation service was one of the hallmarks of a decent society. It was a service in which people either had real, relevant experience of life and brought that to the service or had a good, sound, broad education to a high level and were able to bring that perspective to the work which they did. Ideally, it was a combination of both those things.

I am afraid that the probation service has been subjected to pressures and has been propelled towards becoming a sort of alternative to a custodial sentence. The old probation service concentrated on rehabilitation; it was not solely about punishing people. The sentence is the punishment. The people concerned have been told that they are being punished by society and are reported as such in the press. The task the probation service used to take on was that of helping the people concerned to become positive, constructive citizens. However, the service is now so harassed and pressed that it is very difficult to see how that work can properly be done at all, or whether indeed there is cultural leadership on what the task really is—let us be frank about that.

I cannot think of a more practical, sensible arrangement than to ensure that magistrates are not only encouraged but propelled, as it were, into meeting probation service staff, having discussions with them, obtaining information and seeing for themselves the reality of what the probation service does as part of their preparation for the work they will be doing in magistrates’ courts. Two things about magistrates are relevant in this context. I speak as someone whose mother was a magistrate and loved her work. One is that magistrates live in society—that is a strength—and are therefore bombarded by the popular press and everyone else with all kinds of prejudice and superficial judgments. To withstand that kind of psychological pressure, they need to have real exposure to and a real understanding of what is being done.

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I know that some people have suggested that the age group should be 18 to 24, not 18 to 20. I disagree at the moment for practical reasons, because it would be possible to make a halfway step by inviting the chairman of the Youth Justice Board to take on responsibility for the 18 to 20s. That would put them under the same sort of focus as children have been under and leave the over-21s in the adult system. That is not to say that I do not recognise that there is considerable flexibility in this, because people mature at different ages and it may well be sensible to develop a system in future where we can take account of that. However, until and unless something is done this overrepresentation will contribute hugely to problems and expense in the future, and therefore it would seem sensible to put a structure in place now. While I admit that parts of this amendment are prescriptive, I believe what I have tabled to be the very minimum that it might be sensible to do to help resolve this very serious problem.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, in supporting this amendment, briefly, I very much agree with what the noble Lord has just said: that it is a halfway step. Yet better a halfway step than no step at all. I shall make two observations. I had the privilege for nine years of being the president of YMCA in England. I was particularly impressed by the work that it was doing with young people in prisons and detention centres. During that period, I became very concerned about exactly what preoccupies the noble Lord. It is almost as though we were deliberately building the foundations for a wasted and inadequate life, with future social costs and disruption, reoffending and the rest.

We know that society is becoming increasingly competitive and that it has huge pressures for the young. I say not simply on moral grounds, which I feel strongly about, but on the economic grounds that make absolute sense for the future of the country’s economy. To avoid the future expense of things going wrong repeatedly, and if we have any sense at all about rehabilitation and any commitment to it, these years are crucial. It is the very time that people are on the threshold of life, and they need to be equipped to face it. I make a personal plea to your Lordships: just think of our own families and of our own children and grandchildren in this age group. Think of the turmoil that they are faced with and the support that they need to sort out their lives for the future. Why are we ready to abandon these inadequate, neglected people to a system in which they are not getting any kind of support of that sort? I thank the noble Lord for having introduced the amendment, and I am glad to support it.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has outlined as a beginning is a very important thought for the Minister. I hope that he will be able to adopt it. We all know what goes on in prisons with young people. We all know, and now all pretty well agree, that, early intervention, even in a prison situation, but preferably even earlier so that that does not happen, will in the long run save money. The flexible way in which what is proposed has been outlined allows the Minister to organise it in such a way that it can take account of the actual age of the individual. That will be a very good step in the right direction, whether or not it can be written into law. We have plenty of things to try to add to the law in addition to the ones on the agenda. I hope that it will be taken very seriously and that practical steps will be taken.

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[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment so persuasively moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. We are here concerned with the most awful cases of murder but, as your Lordships have heard, prior to 2003 such cases were reviewed after 25 years. There is no suggestion that that gave rise to any difficulty or any problems at all. The argument for the amendment is very simple. It is simply wrong in principle for anyone, however wicked, to be told that they must spend the whole of their life in prison with no possibility of review, however long is going to elapse and whatever progress they may make.

It is unlikely that a murderer who has committed such grave crimes that he has received a whole-life tariff will ever make the progress that would make release appropriate, but the point surely is that basic humanity demands that the offender has a chance, however remote, to prove to others and to himself that he can live a worthwhile life. It is surely also very unfortunate from the point of view of prison administration that a group of highly dangerous persons —that is, dangerous when they are sentenced—should be told that however well they behave they will never be released. Surely that makes our prisons much more dangerous places.

I have no confidence that the Minister will tell the House this evening that he will accept this amendment. I very much hope that he will but I have no confidence that he will in the light of what he said in Committee. However, I urge him to ask himself whether our penal regime should really be based on a principle of locking the prison door and throwing away the key.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, it takes a good deal of cheek for me, as a lay man, to come in after three speeches like that. All I can say is that in the society in which I want to live, no matter how heinous or terrible the crime that has been committed—clearly, these crimes are about terrible things that have happened—that society should be based on the principle of hope of redemption and hope that even the worst offender can become a better and decent person, otherwise it has a very negative culture that undermines a lot more than simply the issue of the prisoner himself. It is about the values and self-confidence of society as a whole. It is high time that this situation was put right. I am very privileged as a lay man to support these well qualified views that we have just heard. I hope that the Minister will take them seriously.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I can be very brief because the speeches that have been made set out the case very well indeed. Proper caution has been taken in the way in which the amendment has been worded. We all know that the people whom we are talking about have committed the most terrible offences and in many cases—in practically every case, I suggest—it may well be, given the caution included in the wording of the proposed new clause, that these people will stay in prison for the rest of their lives. All that the noble and learned Lord is asking, as a matter of principle, is that for anyone after they have served—this is the caution— 30 years of a sentence,

“it shall be the duty of the Secretary of State, after consulting the Lord Chief Justice”—

of the day, presumably—

“and the trial judge if available, to refer the case to the Parole Board”.

Surely we have trust and faith in the Parole Board. The Parole Board has to be satisfied that,

“it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should be confined, and … that in all the circumstances the release of the prisoner on licence would be in the interests of justice”.

My argument is that the Parole Board has to make hard findings in any case, particularly in cases of this kind. Even if the Parole Board is satisfied on these matters, the amendment says only that it “may direct his release under this section”.

The amendment is extremely cautious, but it is humane, in the way that has been described, for people who sometimes may seem not to deserve the protection of a humane state. However, we live in one, and surely the point of the penal policy is for it to be humane when it can be.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said in response to this matter in Committee and it seemed to me then that the Government’s real case is—I put it crudely—that the Daily Mail would not like it. If that is really the level of the argument that the Minister is going to put again today, it is quite unsatisfactory for a matter of principle of this kind. I hope that, if the Minister opposes the amendment, he will find a better argument than that.