Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, so I call him.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his comments. Yesterday, in debating the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Government declined to include child offenders in the definition of “domestic abuse” because, as the Minister said, the Government did not want to criminalise children. In this Bill, however, they seem to be taking a hard line when it comes to child offenders. What is the difference in approach? Is it because the Government think that domestic abuse is not a serious offence where the public need to be protected but terrorism is?

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[Lord Woolf (CB) [V]]

My Lords, in view of the speeches we have had from a number of noble Lords, there is nothing which I would want to detain noble Lords with regarding this amendment. I agree that it serves a useful purpose and particularly associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, with regard to the openness of the Front Bench on behalf of the Government. Like him, I hope that will be something that will happily continue.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, to his first Bill. In my limited contact with him, I think that he is more than a match for the challenge the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, alluded to. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in his assessment of the current dangers of longer prison sentences in the absence of an effective programme of deradicalisation and rehabilitation. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, also mentioned the comments of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall QC. His concerns seem to chime with the concerns of all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I do not share the faith that noble Lords have in polygraph testing, for the reasons explained earlier by Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee rightly expressed concerns that prisons continue to be incubators, hothouses, or academies of crime—use which term you will—for crime generally, as well as places where vulnerable inmates are radicalised, whether by right wing extremists or by others. If ever there was evidence of the need for these amendments, it is what the Government describe as the

“range of tailored interventions available”—[Official Report, 21/9/20; col. 1650]

to the perpetrators of the Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham atrocities, that were designed to deradicalise and rehabilitate them while they were in prison. Unless and until the deradicalisation and rehabilitation of offenders is effectively applied to those sentenced under Part 1 of the Bill, and its impact is assessed, there is a real danger that the longer these terrorist offenders spend in prison, the greater the threat they pose to the safety of the public—whether by radicalising others in prison or directly upon their release. I intend to expand on these statements and the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which I agree with, when we come to the group beginning with Amendment 16.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my Amendment 35 is in this group. I agreed with everything my noble friend Lord Hunt said when he introduced his amendment. My amendment is different in detail, but the overall approach is the same—that is, to have a realistic and timed review of the various approaches to the Prevent programme which the Government is embarking upon.

I got an interesting briefing on this debate from the probation officers’ trade union, Napo. It made a couple of points, which I will repeat. It said that in the offender management and custody model, it indicates that a high-risk offender should get one hour of individual contact per month with a probation officer. A probation office’s staff have a minimum of 70 clients, so it is impossible for them to meet that requirement. The central point that Napo made in the briefing was that, when one reviews approaches and puts down procedures, the reviews need to result in practical change on the ground, otherwise they are destined to be repeated without effective change.

I was very interested to hear the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who was a very effective Minister. He talked about his experience in that role. He also, interestingly, talked about the status of prisoners when they are in prison. I occasionally visit prisons, and I have visited Belmarsh on a couple of occasions. Belmarsh is a prison within a prison and there is undoubtedly status for the people on the inside prison; you can tell it from the tone of voice of the prison officers when they talk about the facility they are involved in managing. There is status to be gained through the way you are treated while in prison. I unfortunately know that to be true through friends of friends whose children have ended up in prison. There is a status to be gained within prison, which sometimes young men cannot have when they are outside prison.

I welcome the review of terrorism legislation by Mr Hall. I also note that it is Mr William Shawcross who has been appointed to review the Prevent programme, and I know he has extensive experience on this matter. The purpose of both these amendments is to tease out the progress and practical changes which the Government hope to make through reviewing the Prevent programme.

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[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the town of Tredegar is noted for its town clock, which was erected, or at least its plinth was, as a result of funds collected at a bazaar. I believe that information to be correct—and from my position in my home I think I can see the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, nodding in agreement with those facts. The Tredegar clock is always regarded as a symbol of the stability of the town—a town that has been through thick and thin, having been a place where coal was mined and steel manufactured.

The Parole Board has become one of the pillars of our prison system, and the board is seen as being as reliable as that town clock as it has developed over the years. I therefore join the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, in being really rather determined to persuade Ministers that they should take another look at the role of the Parole Board in the sentencing and licence provisions provided for by this important Bill, which I support in principle, as someone who believes that the sentences for terrorism should be long but subject to a proper, just and reasonable form of review that gives reasons if it finds against a prisoner.

I am happy to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, not for its content but for the principle that it raises, and I invite the Minister to reflect accordingly.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for any inconvenience caused by my noble friend Lady Hamwee and me not speaking in the last group, where our names were included in the speakers’ list in error.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, addresses the serious question of the impact on prisoners who have no prospect of being released early or of being released at all, something that the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, spoke about in an earlier group, as did my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames.

Some indication of the potential impact comes from a report in the Times, dated 20 January 2021, on inmates at the only remaining isolation unit for extremist prisoners in Her Majesty’s Prison Frankland. These isolation units were designed to keep the most dangerous ideological prisoners away from the general prison population so that they could not radicalise vulnerable inmates, as other noble Lords have mentioned in today’s debate. One of those units was mothballed before it was opened, another is empty, and the one at Frankland houses five prisoners out of a capacity of eight. There are currently about 200 terrorist prisoners in the UK.

According to the Times, a report by the independent monitoring board at the prison says that inmates in the unit have become more entrenched in their views, that they are refusing to co-operate or to engage in activities and programmes—except for the gym—and that they are distinguished from other prisoners by a lack of progression. They display antagonism and hostility to staff, with one of the prisoners responsible for a serious assault on a prison officer in the centre.

Locking people up with no incentive to behave or co-operate is likely to be counterproductive, and the Times report supports that assertion. We support the amendment.

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment would require the Government to report on whether the removal of Parole Board consideration of certain prisoners’ release impacts their behaviour in prison. We return once again to the quite proper desire of the Committee for objective data to allow proper evaluation of the usefulness of measures. The point is an important one, but the Government do not think that a review and a report such as the amendment proposes would be practical or beneficial at this time. I will set out why in brief terms.

To carry out such an exercise would require there to be clearly defined factors influencing prisoner behaviour in custody, against which one could evaluate the distinct impact of the prospect of Parole Board consideration in a sentence. Such an evaluation method is simply not feasible. It would be impossible to measure the behavioural effect of a prisoner sentenced under provisions in this Bill expecting a future Parole Board hearing, compared to a counterfactual in which the Parole Board would consider the case. The amendment goes further, implying that the removal of Parole Board referral for some cases could impact on prisoner behaviour more widely. This would be even more impracticable to assess.

The policy intent across these measures is clear; the sentences available to the courts for terrorism offences should be proportionate to the gravity of these crimes and provide confidence for victims and the public. In some cases, this will mean that terrorist offenders spend longer in custody before release. To provide some reassurance further to what we have given from the Dispatch Box this afternoon about what will be done in that additional time in custody, I will make two remarks.

First, there is the hard work of prison staff with prisoners in their care, whatever their sentence or release arrangements. As your Lordships will have gathered, we deploy specialist counterterrorism staff to work with terrorist offenders, and we are recruiting more of these officers than ever before through the counterterrorism step up programme.

Secondly, the new counterterrorism assessment and rehabilitation centre, which your Lordships have heard about from the Dispatch Box, will drive the development, innovation and evidence-based delivery of our rehabilitative interventions. The centre will transform our capability to intervene effectively with terrorist offenders, including those sentenced under this Bill and those who will be released automatically. The Bill will be scrutinised in the usual way, including a statutory review after three years.

I now turn to contributions from Members in this short, but hopefully valuable, debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb; she succeeded in doing from her Benches what I was unable to do from the Dispatch Box earlier in answer to a direct request, by identifying Mr Shawcross in his new post. I hope the noble Baroness will accept my further assurances as to the seriousness with which the Government take the points she raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, in an elegant allusion to the values of the town clock at Tredegar, drew our attention to the important work of the Parole Board. We on this side share the noble Lord’s high estimation of the Parole Board. I promise, on behalf of myself and my noble friend and colleague, that we will reflect carefully on the observations made by the noble Lord and by others in the course of debate.