Prison Capacity

Debate between Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames and Lord Stewart of Dirleton

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Timpson of Manley, to his place on the Front Bench. Repeating a Statement has always struck me as one of the odder things that one has to do from the Front Bench, and I congratulate him on having completed it. I also have a further degree of sympathy with him in his opening outing in your Lordships’ Chamber. When I gave my maiden speech, I had to speak half of it as a maiden speech and half of it on a Bill, prompting my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern to say, “I very much enjoyed half of the Minister’s speech”. However, I look forward to welcoming properly the noble Lord to his place on the occasion of his maiden speech, which he is shortly to deliver.

The strain on prison capacity has been a matter of anxious concern for Parliament for some time, and the matter was brought frequently before your Lordships’ House in the course of the last Parliament. This is an area of great complexity, in which the actions of the Government of the day must take into account considerations over which they have no control, and should never seek to have control—such as decisions taken by the independent judiciary on sentencing, carried out on a case-by-case basis, to arrive at a sentence apt for the individual circumstances of the case and the need at once to protect the public, to punish, to deter and to rehabilitate.

It also has to reflect the physical capacity of the prison estate to accommodate prisoners. There is an inevitable tension between the need to protect the public by imprisoning serious offenders and the need to have sufficient provision of prison accommodation and staff so that the crucial function of rehabilitation might be best accomplished. It is liable to be upset by sudden contingencies, such as the closure of HM Prison Dartmoor and the effect that had on the number of available places on the estate.

At all times, the previous Government sought to manage this difficult problem in a manner which addressed all concerns while reflecting their paramount concern: the safety of the public. That is why, during the pandemic, in circumstances wholly without precedent, the previous Government made the decision not to order a mass release of prisoners from our jails, as happened in other countries and as was pressed on us by public health experts and others. I acknowledge immediately that we were supported in that steadfastly by the then Opposition, who now sit on the Government Front Bench. Events demonstrated that that was the correct decision. During the pandemic, we maintained that vital safeguard of our liberties which we all enjoy: trial by jury.

However, all that added to the pressure on the prison estate: the numbers of those remanded pending trial or sentencing increased from around 9,000 to 16,500. The previous Government acted to allow longer sentences for the most serious crimes, conscious of the possible strain on prison places, and acted at all times to reflect the overriding necessity of protecting the law-abiding public and reflecting their concerns that punishment should properly reflect the gravity of the crime for which it is imposed.

The previous Government also acted responsibly and with foresight to address the capacity of the prison system in England and Wales. The biggest prison-building programme since the 19th century was commenced. During the last Government, more than 13,000 additional prison places were created, two new prisons were opened, a third is under construction at present, planning permission has been granted for two more and a decision is imminent on another. Some £30 million was allocated for the purchase of land on which prison construction could take place.

On probation, a detailed Statement was made to the other place and repeated in your Lordships’ House on 13 March. I repeat some of the details: additional funding for probation of £155 million; more than 4,000 trainee probation officers beginning their training; and probation practice redirected to areas which bring the best results in reducing reoffending, as well as public protection.

When the Lord Chancellor says that she will recruit at least 1,000 new trainee probation officers, is that in addition to those that we announced? Will the Government commit more funds to recruitment and training of probation officers? We do not see any acknowledgement of that in the Lord Chancellor’s Statement. She professes to find herself shocked by what she discovered on taking up office about the pressures on the system, but the figures on the prison population in England and Wales were not only widely publicly available during the last Parliament but matters of urgent debate here and in the other place. They can have come as a surprise to no one.

The previous Government left the new Government with no ticking time bomb, but the Lord Chancellor’s Statement prompts real concern for public safety. These Benches will watch what develops with anxious concern. In the Statement, she made a promise to be transparent in a way that she says the previous Government simply were not. In the spirit of that transparency, I pose certain questions.

Does the Minister agree with the position outlined from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench in the other place by Alistair Carmichael MP that prisons should be used less? It is a perfectly defensible position which is perfectly capable of being argued. We do not agree with it on these Benches, but do the Government? If they do, how do they intend to deal with violent crime, rapists, persistent offenders who have no fear of the system and the epidemic of benefit and financial fraud which the country is experiencing? Does the Minister agree that it is easier to speak about community alternatives to custody than to devise ones which are not expensive to operate and difficult to organise and command the support of the public and the judiciary?

We heard from the Lord Chancellor of the safety measures on which she relies in relation to this new measure of early release. I submit that she does nothing more than rehearse safeguards which already exist. She speaks of strict licensing conditions, electronic tagging and curfews where appropriate. These are familiar measures, deployed to support prisoners released on licence. They are measures of long standing. The Lord Chancellor announces a policy which will understandably create concerns for public safety and then, to allay concerns arising from that new policy, founds a series of safeguards that already exist. That is nothing new.

The Lord Chancellor offered specific reassurance on crimes of domestic violence in the debate that followed her Statement. Before too long, I hope that we will hear from her about the significance of other crimes, such as those relating to public order, the need to maintain our civic spaces and free thoroughfares and the need to protect our retail sector and those working in it from those who try to dictate to us what we should buy and from whom. We look forward to hearing from her on these matters.

I wonder whether the Lord Chancellor would agree with that great man of the left, George Orwell, about the harmful properties of stale, clichéd language and dead metaphor. Her Statement gives us “ticking time bomb”, “silver bullet”, “veil of secrecy”, “the guilty men” and much more tired language besides. Orwell’s point is that such language not only serves to disguise meaning or conceal the absence of content in a statement but has actively harmful effects on the reader by helping to deaden not only the capacity for clarity of expression but the capacity for clarity of thought. It is inevitable that we express ourselves in such a way in politics—and I certainly would not hold up my own contributions to this House as models—but the Lord Chancellor’s Statement was filled with cliché. Can we see clarity from the Government?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we too welcome the Minister to his new role, and we look forward to his official maiden speech later today with enthusiasm, not least because we have for a number of years on these Benches cited his ground- breaking commitment in his business and more generally to the rehabilitation of prisoners through training and employment.

However, to say we welcome this Statement would be inaccurate, because it reflects a complete failure of our prison system, but we recognise the emergency and, with it, the need for the measures announced in the Statement. We also endorse the Statement’s serious criticisms of the last Government’s performance; they allowed, encouraged and created the present prison capacity crisis. I disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, for whom I have the greatest respect, as to the foresight, commitment and care of the last Government on this issue, which was sadly lacking.

On these Benches, and on the Labour Benches, we warned of this crisis during the last Parliament over and over again, but the Government carried on in the same old way, filling our prisons to bursting and failing to address the disastrous conditions within them.

The Government’s stated aim is that the 40% early release point should not stand in perpetuity and is to be reviewed in 18 months’ time. We agree with that and that this process will be a slow one, but progress is thoroughly necessary. A wholesale programme of prison reform is needed. We imprison far too many people in this country for far too long. We have seen significant sentence inflation over recent years, and it is no good just blaming the judges for passing longer sentences; government legislation on sentencing and later release dates has significantly increased prisoner numbers. We need more use of community sentences and that means more probation officers—we welcome the commitment in the Statement to an urgent recruitment programme. However, to echo the question from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, does that include a commitment to fully funding an increased overall number of probation officers?

Our prisons are desperately overcrowded; cells are packed to well over capacity; temporary prefab cells are used; repairs and maintenance are cancelled. Cells that should not be in service are brought back into use. Prisoners are shuffled around the prison estate at the expense of continuity of training and supervision. Understaffing remains acute, with insufficient officers to manage our prisons, even to get prisoners to where they need to be for education and training courses when they are available. Twenty-two hours daily in overcrowded cells has become the new commonplace within our prison system, which has led to mental health issues, serious violence and massive drug abuse. When will we introduce mandatory drugs checks for everyone entering prisons, staff as well as visitors? There is ample evidence that too many drugs enter prisons in the hands of members of staff who give their colleagues a bad name and seriously damage morale.

The prison building programme set out to provide 20,000 new places under the last Government, but, of those, some 4,000 already counted as present capacity. Only Millsike in Yorkshire, with just 1,500 places, is approaching completion next year. Grendon in Buckinghamshire now at least has planning permission for another 1,500 places, but in the other sites not a brick has been laid. Two prisons at Gartree and Chorley are still in the planning process, and two near Braintree have not even been decided on yet. The whole promised programme of the last Government involved double counting and smoke and mirrors. The new Government’s programme is welcome, and so is the caution and moderation with which the Statement stressed it—but it is crucial.

On any view, the last Government’s building programme could not possibly keep up with the projected rise in prison numbers—17,000 more places needed in three years on present trends. The only answer is to reverse those trends; reduce reoffending, emphasise reform and rehabilitation as the function of prisons and do all we can to reduce prison numbers. Does the Minister agree?