Criminal Justice System

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, I found the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, in a strangely combative and defensive mood today. I shall not follow her. I think that it is probably best to let history and the memoirs decide on the record of the Labour Government. We will certainly remain committed to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. Of course, in many of the areas that the noble Baroness raised, we are dealing with a spending review and it is not possible for Ministers to deal with every pre-emptive strike via a leak to the Guardian or wherever to explain what terrible things will happen to this or that service. I was listening to a similar exercise by the police service this morning. We are carrying out an exercise to try to bring public spending under control. Certainly, in all aspects and departments of government, matters are being reviewed.

I was delighted by the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, because in an earlier debate and in her usual very gentle, quiet way she said, “My Lords, if prison worked, wouldn’t we be building fewer of them rather than more?”. It was one of those questions that stick in the mind.

I was also pleased by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, welcoming the launch of this great debate by my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor. I can only say that I feel proud to serve in the Ministry of Justice at this time. This is a “seize the moment” moment. Certainly, the economic situation has caused a rapid revaluation of policies and programmes, but this is driven by other factors, too, which I welcome. I look forward to using this debate for the thinking that will carry forward to the Green Paper that has been promised in the autumn.

The twin responsibilities of this or any Government are defence of the realm and protecting the public. The public rightly expect to feel safe in their homes and on their streets. They expect to live a life free from crime and the threat of crime and they expect criminals to be punished. We want a criminal justice system that is effective in protecting the public and punishing offenders and, as part of that, in preventing crime and cutting reoffending. We also have to be realistic. These are difficult times and any changes that we make have to be set within the context of the public finances. Cuts will have to be made and, in some instances, they will be painful. However, we have no intention of cutting indiscriminately. We want policies that are properly thought out and that make sense in light of the evidence. The test of an effective criminal justice system is not how much money is poured into it but whether it achieves what the public want and expect it to achieve. Having less money is clearly going to mean making some difficult decisions, but it also helps to concentrate the mind and gives us a good opportunity to think from first principles about how we deliver public services most effectively and what it is that the taxpayer should be paying for. It is an opportunity to transform the criminal justice system in this country.

Short sentencing has been a recurring issue. Of course, anyone who read my right honourable friend’s speech will know that he did not rule out short sentencing under all circumstances. When we had a debate on this the other night in the Moses Room, one of the contributors made a point that a number of others have made: the impact of a short sentence can often be extremely useful in breaking the cycle of domestic violence. It is not, as has sometimes been suggested, that the Lord Chancellor is throwing the prison gates open.

Noble Lords have mentioned the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. This issue is an example of how difficult it is to get a proper and rational debate in this country about the criminal justice system, given the media. I presume that what appears in the media is written by well educated men and women, yet editors, journalists and newspaper owners seem to condone an approach to this issue that is crass in the extreme. The knee-jerk reaction to any proposed change to the system is to find a recent victim of crime and to get them to say how terrible it would be to let prisoners out. That becomes depressing. I often wonder whether, when they have done their day shift on the newspaper and gone back into the real world, journalists think sensibly about the kind of emotions that they are stirring up and the rational debate that they are preventing on these issues.

My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford opened this debate with the kind of wide-ranging and authoritative speech that I have come to know and appreciate. He raised a number of issues that were repeated throughout the debate—restorative justice, drug and alcohol programmes and mental health problems. Although I have just been complaining about the media, my approach is that the antidote and counterpoint are the kind of debates that we have in this House, which draw on the vast experience here and can feed back into departmental thinking. I assure noble Lords that that is particularly true of this debate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, reminded us of the important matter of the number of women in prison. We are certainly looking at that as part of the sentencing review and in response to the Corston report. It will be dealt with in the Green Paper, as will the issue that she raises of the 14 to 25 age group, which is when most people come into the criminal justice system for the first time. I noted the noble Baroness’s point that we cannot have a Dutch auction on this. I hope that we can approach this matter in a cross-party way. Anyone who has ever dealt with this system knows that any political party claiming a monopoly of wisdom on it is treading on dangerous ground. We must learn from things that have worked. We must look abroad and see what is working well and what lessons we can learn. We must deal with this in a rational way as far as is possible.

I share many of the concerns that have been expressed about how we deal with young offenders. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, mentioned that in her speech. The idea of getting judges out to look at the alternatives to sentencing should certainly be encouraged. We all tend to get imprisoned by our jobs and I am sure that judges are no exception. The more they can go and look at alternative programmes in relation to drugs, domestic violence and such, the better.

The noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, gave us some frightening statistics. He should not apologise for putting them on the record. The Hansard of this debate will prove to be a valuable input for the department as it moves towards a Green Paper. The noble Lord was one of the first to raise two recurring themes. The first is the debt that we owe to Dame Anne Owers, a sentiment that I certainly endorse. The other, which I have always worried about and which was also mentioned by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and others, is the worrying failure with regard to children who are held in care and who then go out into society and enter into criminality. It is extremely worrying. The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, said in her excellent maiden speech that we are their family. We have ultimate responsibility. We want to look carefully at how we might break that cycle.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool raised a recurring issue that will be a major theme of the Green Paper: how, in a time of public expenditure restraint—but not only because of that—can we involve the voluntary sector in addressing these issues? A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, as well as to the right reverend Prelate, pointed out that we have an amazing range of capacities and experience in the voluntary sector, which we may—force majeure—have to turn to now, but which it is also common sense to turn to anyway.

My noble friend Lord Addington raised the interesting issue of whether dyslexia and similar challenges are being properly addressed. We have followed the review of the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and are trying to ensure that in young offender institutions, and elsewhere, there is a broadening of the assessment when people come into contact with the authorities. Indeed, a new screening tool is being developed by Dyslexia Action to see whether we can identify this problem earlier. Returning to this area, we see that the link between illiteracy and crime is so overwhelmingly clear that we must look at it.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford reminded us how many of the women in prison are not there for any kind of violent crime. Many are drug mules or in prison for debt-related reasons. When we debated drugs a few weeks ago, the link between drugs, prostitution and criminality was sadly clear. We must look again at different ways of addressing the issue.

Restorative justice was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. The Government recognise the value of restorative justice; we want to see more offenders making practical reparation for the harm that they have caused.

The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, raised the issue of indeterminate sentences. There is no question but that we must protect the public from the most dangerous criminals in society. The sentencing review will certainly look at this. There has been widespread criticism of the IPP system. NOMS has implemented a range of measures for the prisoners, including £3 million of support work to improve assessment and access to interventions. The issue raised by the noble Lord is certainly taken to heart.

I want to give the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, a chance to respond. Since I have, as usual, another half-hour’s worth of points raised to answer, I assure those who have spoken that every word of this debate in Hansard will be studied in the department. I have found the contributions that have been made very helpful. We have an agenda. As I have indicated, we carry forward some of the work that was done by the previous Administration, although we deal with it in the context of a constrained financial climate, as any Government would have had to. I hope that the Secretary of State has demonstrated in his two interventions—one to the judges the other night and his earlier lecture—that he wants to initiate and spur on a debate in this area and hear fresh ideas and thinking to enable the Green Paper in the autumn to be a platform for real reform. In this respect, this debate will have fulfilled all his desires and expectations. I thank all noble Lords for taking part.

Finally, I thank the two noble Lords who made their maiden speeches—the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and the noble Lord, Lord German. It makes me, in my other capacity, feel that I have a couple more stars of the future on the team.