Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on this I should declare two interests, first as a former Adjutant-General—or personnel director of the Army—and secondly as president of the Veterans in Prison Association. I have been very interested in the attention given to this particular idea; and although I have not been to it, I have had reports of the activities in Buffalo to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred. I entirely endorse all his suggestions about the north-east being used as a pilot area. I have been in contact with organisations working up there and have been very impressed by the supporting network that is available. It is one of the crucial parts of doing this.

Unfortunately the figures on exactly how many ex-service people are involved in the criminal justice system are slightly distorted by the fact that numbers of them who claim to be members of the services failed even to make the training. While they may make the claim, they actually have no right to do so. I think, and always have, that it is very important to establish that fact right at the start. Some excellent work was done by the Kent police to try to work out exactly how many ex-service people came through the police stations in Kent. They found that it was very important to ask them for their service number and then to follow it up to establish whether in fact they were genuine ex-servicemen or—as it were— pseudo ex-servicemen who did not deserve the same treatment.

In presenting his case, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has very rightly focused on the support mechanism that is needed in addition to the courts. There needs to be something equivalent to the diversion scheme which the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, has pioneered for the courts in general. It is very useful to recognise—as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has done—that there is a vast network of supporting service charities which act on behalf of the individual servicemen in their long-term and short-term needs. This is something of which account should be taken.

I also commend some other excellent work that has been going on in this country. The Cheshire probation service have been funded by the Royal British Legion to train probation officers to understand the particular needs of ex-servicemen so that they can apply that when deciding exactly how they should be supervised should they be sentenced. What would be very important in establishing these courts—which I entirely recommend—is to make certain that the courts have got a very wide supporting network behind them which should cover things such as mental health and probation. They should also make use of the service charities in whatever action they take with these unfortunate people. I am also very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned that many of these people come into the sphere of the criminal justice system comparatively late. The average age of 48 was mentioned. Therefore you are not dealing so much with the young adult as the person who has fallen on hard times through trying to come to terms with civilian life and needs particular help to enable them to re-engage.

[Viscount Slim]

My Lords, I support very much the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I like the way that he has gone into the depth of the problem. I declare that I deal with veterans, from 18 year-olds with one leg to 90 year-olds who have been in various campaigns. I find that middle age is a tricky time for veterans, and it is a big problem.

I do not want to rehearse all the arguments. I believe that the Minister should look kindly on this, and a trial period is what we need. A veteran today gets a fair amount of help when he leaves the Army but the Minister will find, particularly as 25,000 service men and women are in the process of being chucked out of the Army, that the problems are going to increase, and something more will be needed than what is being done at the moment.

I merely state that there is a problem and I do not believe that we are doing enough about it. These veterans’ courts are proven elsewhere; we ought to look at them carefully and trial them. I hope that the Minister understands the problem and is able to do something about it.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, I want to add only that just one court with a proper support network would be very much better than nothing.