Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I should first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all the London boroughs and the City of London. I wondered whether that interest was relevant to this debate, and then I realised, of course, that local government, its many services and the people who work there, and the councillors who are elected there, are hugely relevant to the Prison Service—more relevant than many of them may realise. I will say a little bit about that later.

Something else I need to say to people present, especially in view of the difficulty nearly everyone has had in trying to deal with such a wide-ranging and important subject as this in only five minutes—I sympathise—is that I did not know that I was going to be replying to this debate until I arrived here and got the speakers’ list this morning. The good news for Members present is that, like everyone else, I prepared for a five-minute debate and, when I checked with the Table here, I have 20 minutes. I will leave noble Lords to think about the consequences of that over the next 18 minutes. I will, of course, keep much closer to the original four minutes and 50 seconds that I had planned.

I expected to hear, and now have heard, very much about the difficulties and shortcomings of the Prison Service. The committee made a lot of recommendations. I am pleased that 19 of them were accepted by the government; 15 more were partially accepted. The only one that was not accepted at all was about the rank of the Prisons Minister. We felt they should always be a Minister of State but, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Prime Minister is not yet ready to agree to that for all times.

The recommendations are good and sound. Reference has been made to them and I think it is fair to say there has been general support, as far as I am aware, for all of them. The Government have accepted nearly all of them. That is the easy bit. What we want to know from the Minister in a few minutes is: what is going to happen now and when will those recommendations be implemented? There has been much praise for the Minister today—so far—and certainly much welcome for his appointment. His interest and that of his family business in this whole issue is well known. I welcome that too.

That brings me to the committee’s first recommendation, which flowed from our consideration of the committee’s purpose. It struck me at the time—this meeting may be exceptional—that generally most people, and certainly most of the public, do not ever think about what the purpose of prison is. They would perhaps be surprised to be asked that. They would say, “Well, it’s to lock people up”, and so on. The committee took the view, as we were urged by a number of former prisoners who gave evidence to us, that that is not the purpose of prison. Locking people up and the deprivation of liberty are the punishment. The purpose of prison—something I think we were unanimous on—is to reduce reoffending. I congratulate the Minister on insisting that that should be added to his job title; both he and we should make more of that.

We should emphasise that the purpose of prison, and of putting people there, is not to punish them—they are punished by their deprivation of liberty—but rather to reduce reoffending. We state in the report, and sadly it is a well-known figure, that 80% of offending is committed by people reoffending. That statistic is shocking, and is becoming better known. I was surprised and, indeed, shocked to learn, through a report made a few years ago by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, that 63% of prisoners’ sons become offenders themselves. That is the continuation.

I was going to say, in my original five minutes, that for most of my life I have lived in the London Borough of Sutton. Around a mile outside of our borough boundary and from where I live is High Down prison, as is Downview prison, one of the relatively few women’s prisons in the country. Both were built in the last 30 years when, as it happens, I was leader of the council. During our committee’s inquiry, I went to visit High Down to refresh my experience and my knowledge of it, and to talk with some of the staff, particularly with the governor. I wanted to talk about one particular experience from that visit—I still want to do this, even though I am supposed to be replying to the debate.

Along with my wife, I was invited to join the dads’ group. This is a group for prisoners and participation is entirely voluntary. Several prisoners told us that they had been reluctant to come to the dads’ group, probably because they feared being lectured, or what their fellow inmates would think about it. They all said, however, that the course had changed the way that they viewed their lives. It had been life-changing to them. There is now a waiting list to come along because they had been recommended to do so, in the best way possible, by their fellow prisoners.

All of those prisoners told us of their individual experiences. I will not repeat them, but one that struck me particularly was a man telling me about his experience with his son, who had autism. He simply did not know how to talk with his son until this course gave him that wherewithal. That was something we heard repeated by several others in various ways. The change that this voluntary course made to those men’s lives was enormous. They were all desperate to get out: not to reoffend, but to start again with their families and their children. I hope that it affects reoffending. It must, surely, bring down that figure of 63% of offenders’ sons who apparently become offenders themselves. The men talked about how much the course had helped them, and how much they could not wait to get out and put it into practice.

They did not entirely have to wait to get out to put that into practice because, as a corollary to that, the visitors’ area in the prison had been completely revamped and restyled to make it much more comfortable for families, so that they could meet as families and talk to each other in a more intimate way. In other words, it was a proper corollary to what the dads’ group had been doing. That was just one example.

If I had had time, I was going to mention that I was shown around High Down Prison by a man with the title “community engagement manager”. I am not familiar as many noble Lords will be with the Prison Service. Is community engagement manager a usual term in a prison? I am not aware that it is, but I think it should be as there is a very important role for engaging with the community—not just the prison community, but the area in which the prison is located.

I referred to the fact that I live within a mile or so of the prison. It is in a greenbelt area, surrounded by trees and bushes. That creates a bit of a problem in respect of drones, but that is the negative side. I suspect that most of the nearly a quarter of a million people who live in the London Borough of Sutton, as I do, have no idea that there are two prisons within a mile or two of them because they are tucked away out of sight. Part of the community engagement manager’s role is to have more engagement with the wider local community. He is able to do that in part because, before he became community engagement manager, he was the manager of a local employment agency. He knows many of the local businesses well and still works with them; he knows what they do and how they do it.

I see the Whip standing up and I am afraid he is about to tell me that I do not really have 20 minutes. I will be brief. It is part of the manager’s role to engage with the local community. That is very much a job that the Prison Service, and the Minister, needs to have in order to demystify prisoners. Most people, thankfully, have no personal experience of prisons. What they know and think of prisons is usually what they see on television or hear in the media. The reality is not always the same, so whatever can be done to connect prisons and the public must be all to the good.

The report states a lot of what could and should be done. We all wish the Minister every success in trying to implement that. I hope that this excellent report is not simply going to gather dust on the shelves, meaning that we come back in 20 years and say, “If only we had done that”.