Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, at last I rise. I will try to be relatively brief.

Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I remain puzzled and more than a little exasperated as to why the Government feel that they need to write the word punishment into everything to do with sentencing. Surely, we all know that a court sentence is indeed a considered punishment for the crime. I share to some extent the view of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham that what has been appearing recently has been playing to the two Galleries.

The other concern that I share with my noble friend is that the whole position of the probation service has not been made clear at this time, so that the two issues could be considered together. Like other Members who have spoken, I have huge regard for the probation service and the work that it has done over many years, going back to my time as chairman of a juvenile court many years ago. Every report on what it is doing, the levels that it has achieved and the prizes that it has been getting indicates what a good job it is doing. The idea that that vital role is to be outsourced to people who are less well trained worries me a lot.

On restorative justice, I must admit that I am a little concerned about the cost which the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, told us will be necessary before it can be introduced. I very much welcome the idea of it being available, especially at that important moment between conviction and sentencing. I hope that there will be improvements there.

As others have said, we know that community sentences are increasingly being used for lesser crimes. Of greater importance is the fact that they are 8.3% more successful than short prison sentences in reducing reoffending. One has only to think of the number of contacts that you make once in prison that will encourage you to get further involved in crime at a later stage to realise the sheer common sense of that.

Equally welcome would be rather more definition of the exceptional circumstances that can be brought into play. I hope that we are going to get more of a response from the Government about that because it will always be relevant when sentencing vulnerable disabled offenders, younger adults and, even more importantly in many ways, not least with regard to cost, women. It is logical that every effort should be made to keep that group out of prison, not least as their offences are usually minor and they themselves have often been the victims of sexual or other kinds of violent crime. We must also remember—hopefully, all courts do—that any imprisonment may well mean that the children have to be taken into care. Think of the cost, both financial and in terms of the upbringing and disruption of that child’s life. Again, if the accommodation is repossessed by the landlord, who knows? The whole family could be broken up. That, again, is a real concern.

I shall touch on another important issue that has been mentioned: the punitive elements could mean that the rehabilitative elements are unable to be proceeded with. We need proper reassurance that there will not be any nonsense about an imposed curfew or unpaid work, meaning that an offender cannot get the mental health treatment that they need or indeed go to the drug rehabilitation centre. That is such an obvious point that I hope it can be dealt with quickly.

On the issue of tagging, I know that a great deal is going on regarding improvements in these techniques. I am particularly concerned about this because of the use that this can be put to when dealing with not just violent offenders but ones who might have been involved in stalking, whose victims have already suffered huge amounts of sexual and other forms of violence. I would like to hear much more about that. I shall leave it at that—speakers at the end should be as brief as possible.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, in my contribution I cannot lay claim to the same expertise that other noble Lords have brought from acting on the Bench as judges and magistrates, but I am familiar with some of these aspects. It may surprise the Minister to know that I am not riding to his rescue this evening; in fact, I find a lot of the contributions that have been made up to this point extremely persuasive.

For my part, I make it plain that I support the appropriate use of community sentencing, and in that sense I support the move by the Government. I may be remembered, along with my colleague Mr Blunkett, for introducing indeterminate sentences, which was for the element of protection, not punishment. In their wisdom, the present Government have taken a different view, which they are entitled to.

The one time when I got into real trouble was when I reminded the judiciary that the introduction of indeterminate sentences for those from whom the public needed protection, in our view, was supposed to be balanced by the ending of custodial sentences for those who should not have been in prison—in other words, for exhorting the appropriate use of community sentencing. I did so at the invitation of the Lord Chief Justice, but I was attacked by every judge in Britain except the Lord Chief Justice for reminding them of the original thinking behind the balance of indeterminate and community sentences. I am for community sentences. I am also very supportive of restorative justice, if for no other reason than that it appears to work from the point of view of the victim and for the rehabilitation of offenders.

On community sentencing, I am puzzled about why it is felt necessary to introduce the requirement that the purpose of punishment be explicitly recorded—I am careful not to use the word “mandated”—as one of a range of requirements upon the judiciary. I am therefore left to work on the basis of formal and informal press briefings. I recognise from my experience that the press do not always reflect accurately the reality of a Minister’s thinking, so I do not want to assume they are 100% accurate, but we are led to believe that it is necessary because this is what the public demand. I am not sure that that is the main concern of the public about community sentences. I think the main concern of the public is that they do not quite know what they involve or that people are being required to do things that they would not normally do.

We put in a lot of effort to highlight the nature of community sentences. Some of the manners in which we did that were not popular or acceptable. We had among a range of practical suggestions one which included the people involved wearing particular coloured vests. At the level of operations, some people may have objected to that, but noble Lords will understand that the reason behind it was that we recognised the appropriateness of community sentencing, but we also recognised that there was unawareness among the public of what good was coming from it and what those who were thus sentenced were actually doing to recompense the community and victims for the effects of their crime.

If the Government wish to reassure the public about the nature of community sentencing, this clause is a pretty blunt and crude way of doing it. The problem is that this will backfire. I have no problem with Governments who take a strong line on law and order. They are always accused of playing to the Gallery, but when the Bill uses this particular expression and requires this particular reaction in community sentencing—which would be taken into account anyway by the judiciary because of the criteria that inform our sentencing policy, as the noble Baroness pointed out earlier, which derive from 2005, I think from memory—it is seen as a gratuitous attempt to play to the Gallery and, however sincere the Government are, they are weakened.

I support community sentencing where it is appropriate. There are many people in prison who should never be there and who will not be mended in their ways, rehabilitated or make recompense to society. In supporting restorative justice, I hope that the Government will look again at this clause and rely on the wisdom of the judiciary. In community sentencing, that has not been the problem; the real problem has been that we need to do more to illustrate to local communities the effect of what is being done for their good as recompense and as part of rehabilitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I shall certainly take that back. Perhaps I may be quite clear about the Government’s intention. The use of “exceptional” is not a three-lane highway out of a request to have a punitive element. In consultation we have said that we see “exceptional” covering about 5% of circumstances. The point I am making is that the punitive concept is widely drawn and is very much in the hands of the sentencer. However, I will take back the noble and learned Baroness’s point about what the lawyers would make of this. We are expanding the definition from the 2003 Act and will see whether more legal advice is needed on the meaning of “exceptional”. However, it cannot mean that the exceptional becomes the general.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

The Minister said something very interesting there and I just want to clarify it as far as we can at this point. He said that some people might regard learning to read and write as punishment, but presumably some others might regard cleaning up a park, building a house or helping old people as punishment—in other words, they would be doing something they would not freely choose to do unless they were compelled to do it as a punishment. Would that fit into this category without having to be an exception?

[Lord McNally]

Yes, and I think that some of the people who have been quoted as pleading exception could well be asked to work in some of those areas. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, shakes his head but, for me, the big danger is there being public contempt for a system where we need public respect. I am talking about somebody whose life is totally dysfunctional, who has never been used to getting up in the morning and who has no idea of time-keeping. We have heard about a number of programmes where half a dozen people are invited to participate but within a week the number is down to two because the others have not bothered to attend. We have to get credibility into the system to make it work. Because we are putting flexibility and trust in the judiciary, I hope that it will see what Parliament is looking for and help us to that end.