Charitable Sector

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to be the first to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, on her excellent maiden speech. I well remember the apprehension with which I approached mine, but I had not been an MP for 27 years and a Chief Whip, a Minister and held several other political posts. She and I share three things personally: first, a close connection with north-west County Durham, which she and her father represented in Parliament for 46 years, because my elder son lives there. Secondly, we share rusty Swahili from our time in Kenya in the 1960s, so I say, “Asante sana” for her speech. Thirdly, we are both associated with a wonderful organisation called the Tyneside Cyrenians, which does such remarkable work with the homeless and dispossessed in that part of the country. I am sure, having heard her speech, that all of us in the House look forward to the considerable contribution that we know that she will make to the life and work of this House.

Something is said to be only as strong as the sum of its parts. I was therefore rather struck that one of the first actions of the coalition Government was to change the name of the Office of the Third Sector to the Office for Civil Society. It seemed to be a move in the right direction because the third sector is part of, rather than apart from, civil society. I base that on the definition given by the NCVO:

“Civil society is where people come together to make a positive difference to their lives and the lives of others - for mutual support, to pursue shared interests, to further a cause they care about”.

In that connection, I was very struck by the analogy to a coral reef that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, made in his speech in the House on 16 June. He said that the charitable sector was adding variety and humanity to the bedrock of public services to protect the vulnerable.

Taking that line as a cue, I shall focus on the criminal justice system, where the hopes, fears and aspirations expressed in these various statements come together and where, sadly, the potential of the charitable sector to strengthen has been dissipated by intransigence and inconsistency. Lest it be thought that I am just going to apply strictures to government, let me say that I do not think that in the criminal justice system area the charitable sector does itself any favours by being too uncompromising about its sovereignty and about co-ordinating with others.

There are said to be between 80,000 and 100,000 organisations supporting individuals who have had some connection with the criminal justice system. Of those, 4,000 work directly with offenders but only one, the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, qualifies for the definition of large in the excellent Library brief by having an income of more than £10,000. I congratulate and thank the Library staff for that excellent brief and I am sure other noble Lords will also wish to do so. As more than 50 per cent of all rehabilitation work done with and for offenders is done by the charitable sector, it can be seen that it is a key part of that revolution with its aim of strengthening civil society by helping offenders to live useful and law-abiding lives on release.

The criminal justice system currently presents three disadvantages to the charitable sector in pursuit of its aim to help in that process. First, there is no clear overall strategy for the involvement of the charitable sector; secondly, there is no structure for co-ordinating its consistent involvement; and, thirdly, there is no agreed mechanism for assessing the value of its involvement. In stark contrast with that, I shall mention one unique advantage that the charitable sector, working in the criminal justice system, has; it is the remarkable organisation Clinks, which not only enjoys the respect of Ministers and officials and has their ear but supports individual members within the sector as a whole. It shares good practice and, particularly, it disseminates information to the small local groups that are the backbone of all the work that is done. In order to achieve maximum advantage, all that Clinks does must be actioned throughout the criminal justice system.

The system is not helped by several things that I have referred to in the past. There is no clear regional structure within which there can be consistency in charitable sector involvement. There are no directors of individual types of prison or prisoner to make certain that the charitable sector is properly employed to continue consistent development. There are no voluntary sector co-ordinating and development officers in every prison and every probation area, and in the layers of management between them and Ministers. There is no aim for every prison, so an incoming governor is not required to carry on from where his or her predecessor left off, including the employment of charitable sector organisations. There is no agreed assessment tool, despite the fact that the previous Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Communities and Local Government developed a tool that was assessed as being better than that of the Prison Service. Yet it was ignored even though it is used by many of the agencies that work with offenders. All that seemed rather odd when the aim of the Department for Communities and Local Government is to help to create a fair and responsible bigger society by putting power in the hands of citizens, neighbourhoods and councils.

Of course, all is not doom and gloom, and I should like to talk for a short while about an organisation in which I must declare an interest as its president. Among the groups of organisations that do most for offenders are the arts. The arts have a remarkable, indeed unique, role to play. They do not prevent reoffending, but, by building esteem, they encourage people to become engaged in work and education that ultimately could lead to offenders leading a useful and law-abiding life. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to cross the river to the South Bank and see the 49th exhibition of offender art mounted by the Koestler Trust, which has been curated this year by victims. One can see the artists’ writing about what the art means to them and what the victims say about what is on display.

In order to co-ordinate all the activities of the arts organisations, we have formed the Arts Alliance, which is nothing other than a loose coalition. Fortunately, it has Clinks as its secretariat. It represents the aggregation of all those organisations to government in order to make certain that the arts are included in policy-making. The Government responded by appointing an arts forum of representatives of the Ministries involved, the Arts Council, funders and practitioners. That two-day dialogue is helping things to happen.

The Arts Alliance has two aims. The first is to ensure that the arts are embedded in every syllabus everywhere and, secondly, to ensure that no contract for an organisation is for less than three years, and preferably for five years, to ensure that there is investment. I mention that because I believe that something like that is essential in a whole lot of other action areas within the criminal justice system where organisations are prepared to sacrifice some of what they call sovereignty in the better interests of strengthening civil society. I think that all this will happen much better if everything is organised locally, including the siting of prisons, because there is a tremendous increase in the strength of local ownership of local problems. To quote that old saying, “God helps those who help themselves”.