Moved by Lord Farmer That this House takes note of (1) the causes
of crime and reoffending, and (2) the effectiveness of
rehabilitation, including the contribution made by the voluntary
sector. Lord Farmer (Con) My Lords, I am very pleased that the
House has an opportunity to debate the causes of crime and
reoffending and the effectiveness of rehabilitation, including the
contribution made by the voluntary sector. I am also delighted to
welcome the noble and...Request free
trial
Moved by
That this House takes note of (1) the causes of crime and
reoffending, and (2) the effectiveness of rehabilitation,
including the contribution made by the voluntary sector.
(Con)
My Lords, I am very pleased that the House has an opportunity to
debate the causes of crime and reoffending and the effectiveness
of rehabilitation, including the contribution made by the
voluntary sector. I am also delighted to welcome the noble and
learned Lord, , to the Front Bench—I believe
that he was here yesterday, but this is his first debate. He is
very welcome. The whole House will benefit from his expertise and
experience, including as a judge for the General Court of the
European Union and president of the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
Most recently, he gave forthright advice to the Government
following his criminal legal aid review. It is a nice touch that
his central recommendation of a 15% funding uplift for fee
schemes, increasing investment by £135 million a year, was
announced by the Ministry of Justice the week he makes his maiden
speech. I am sure the whole House is anticipating what he will
say as keenly as I am.
I am thankful to all noble Lords who put their names down to
speak and look forward to hearing all contributions, particularly
that of the noble and learned Lord, . His report on the contributors
to the riots that began in HMP Strangeways in 1990 and spread to
20 other jails was an indispensable foundation for my own two
reviews. These built on one of his 12 recommendations, linking
prison safety with family contact. I emphasised the importance of
strengthening prisoners’ family ties to prevent
reoffending—including, of course, while inside prison, the focus
of the Woolf report—and intergenerational crime.
Before I turn to the importance of healthy and supportive
relationships in rehabilitation, I want to start with the causes
of crime and reoffending. There is not time to do justice to the
many criminological theories that try to explain these causes,
each of which has its own strengths, weaknesses and gaps and
applies only to some types of crime and not others. Simply, some
see individuals as rational actors capable of making their own
choices, including whether to commit crime, by weighing up likely
benefits and disadvantages. Others focus on relative deprivation
and suggest crime happens when individuals or groups see
themselves as being unfairly disadvantaged compared to others who
appear similar. Front-line practitioners describe the high
prevalence among criminals of family breakdown, father absence
and other adverse childhood experiences, as well as
neurodiversities such as dyslexia.
The Prison Service refers to criminogenic needs: the
characteristics, traits, problems or issues in an individual’s
life that directly relate to their likelihood of reoffending. The
“big eight” are accommodation, employability, relationships,
lifestyle, drug misuse, alcohol misuse, thinking and behaviour,
and attitudes, as well as three others which affect how offenders
respond to support—learning disability and challenges, mental
health conditions and low maturity levels. However, the idea that
there are causes of crime is a relative newcomer. The late
Professor Christie Davies pointed out that it was not until the
1890s that the thought processes of the educated and prosperous
elite became “causalist”. They looked down, as he put it, at
“a mass of weak people divided into the virtuous and the
offending only by chance opportunities and adversities that
caused them to act as they did. They were not truly free
agents”.
In today’s parlance they would be termed “victims”, in the sense
of those who have come to feel helpless and passive in the face
of misfortune or ill-treatment.
The half century up to 1900 saw a decline in deviance: a drop in
crime and social disorder that was directly linked to the
influence on popular morality of religious institutions, notably
the Sunday schools. These turned out such relatively law-abiding
young people that the average age of prisoners rose. The turning
point of this decline was the First World War, which started a
flattening out, and the late 1950s ended it, just before the dawn
of the sexual and social revolutions of the 1960s. That is when
we begin to see Davies’s “U-curve of deviance”, based on data,
not theory. This U-curve reflects a fall and subsequent rise in
crime, drug and alcohol abuse and births outside of marriage. He
associated this rise with a decline in “moralism”—knowing the
difference between right and wrong—which implies that individuals
have autonomy to choose whether they behave with, as he put
it,
“virtuous innocence or deliberate guilt”.
This was gradually replaced by an ever-expanding legal corpus. To
give an example, when I started in the City in 1963, its famous
motto was still, “My word is my bond”. The complete trust in a
word and a handshake slowly disintegrated to a recognition that
one was bound only by what the law allowed or forbade.
Religiously reinforced moralism, with its totemic notion of free
will, was replaced by the causalism I described earlier. The loss
of commitment to and identification with religion, and country,
led in turn to a loss of the idea of service, sacrifice and the
moral driver of duty. Perhaps one reason we admire the Queen so
is because she embodies these values, which are self-evidently
right and needed.
Not for a minute am I saying that the century when deviance fell
and flattened was a perfect golden age. However, no one can say
the changes that have taken place since the 1960s have produced
one either. The House of Commons Library describes the history of
crime in the 20th century as being dominated by the sharp rise in
offences since the late 1950s. The 1960s were the only decade in
the last century when crime doubled. Family breakdown has also
soared. Half of all children are born outside an explicitly
committed relationship. Hence, one-third of children live in
separated families, a million rarely or never see their fathers
and 80,000 are in local authority care. So, as we talk about the
causes of crime today, we need to hold that concept in tension
with Davies’s sense of de-moralisation. Ultimately, the cause is
always the freely exercised decision of someone’s will to commit
a crime—which may, of course, involve coercing others, against
their wills, to be involved. But there is in everyone a
contributor, without which they would not have ended up in
criminal behaviour.
Turning to what is effective in curbing reoffending, the Ministry
of Justice’s own statistics highlight how good relationships with
families and significant others can aid rehabilitation. When I
wrote my first review in 2017, reoffending rates were running at
43% and over 60% of children of prisoners went on to offend
themselves and end up in prison. However, prisoners who receive
family visits are 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do
not. Intergenerational transmission of crime is, if anything,
higher when mothers have been incarcerated, presumably because
they are more often primary carers whose absence typically makes
life more chaotic. Possibly as few as 5% of children stay in the
family home, for example.
Yet the stark truth is that, pre pandemic, around half of
prisoners were never visited. Given that around 25% were in local
authority care, this is perhaps unsurprising. Looking at very
recent reports from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, the
level of visits in some prisons has not yet picked back up to its
rate in early 2020. The Ministry of Justice and the Prison
Service must be congratulated on the swiftness of the
implementation of my reviews’ recommendations to make video calls
available when prisons locked down at the beginning of the
pandemic. However, these should complement and supplement but not
replace physical visits.
In some jurisdictions only video “visits” are available, and this
is very far from my policy goal. I met prisoners who longed to
see their children in the normality of their home environment.
One man, who had been in care, and in prison for almost three
decades, yearned to see his only remaining relative, his
grandmother, who was too old and infirm to visit. I heard about
teenagers undertaking exams which precluded a long, possibly
overnight journey to prison. A video call can make a huge
difference when physical visits are not possible, but a woman I
met recently highlighted the value to her daughter of seeing her
father in the flesh, saying “When my daughter visited the prison,
the school said it was a breath of fresh air for her, they could
see how the face-to-face contact brought a massive
improvement.”
The quality of physical visits is also another very live issue
following the pandemic. I visited eight prisons in late April and
late May this year to see how they were faring with their
strategies to improve prisoners’ relationships with families and
significant others. While so much of the outside world really has
returned to normal, many prisons feel far from that, even if it
is a long time since an outbreak. High Perspex screens shot up
during the pandemic for public health protection, and social
distancing was still in force. Gradual changes may have been made
since my visits, but normality must be re-imposed everywhere on
the estate as quickly as the restrictions were brought into
force. It will be very important to clear away all artefacts of
the pandemic, so that in 10 years’ time they have not become so
entrenched in visits that, for example, no one knows why officers
are still behind Perspex screens. Prisons should not be among the
large sections of the public sector which seem to have a case of
long Covid.
There are many vacancies in the Prison Service, and officers are
being lost to Border Force among other places. Can my noble
friend the Minister outline what the Government are doing to
recruit and retain them? Without adequate staff, rehabilitation
is almost impossible.
Other important rehabilitation activity addresses prisoners’ lack
of education, employment skills and accommodation, and helps them
to get off drugs. I know other noble Lords today will do justice
to these issues, but relationships provide essential motivation.
One deputy governor I met recently impresses on his staff that,
“Without a supportive family to return to he’ll return to crime
regardless of the education he takes part in and the
accommodation he gets upon release.” We need to ensure that
relationships are truly embedded in the reducing reoffending
culture. That means that in all national and local strategies,
and in every speech from politicians, families and relationships
are firmly screwed in as the third leg of the rehabilitation
stool, without which it falls over. I see part of my role as
ensuring that this happens.
I turn briefly to the voluntary sector, which includes prison
chaplaincy. The sector has a vital role to play in weaving that
golden thread of relationships through all the processes of
prisons. Although prison chaplains can be the overlooked service,
they stayed on the front line during covid, as did many family
service organisations. They are statutorily required to meet all
prisoners upon arrival at a jail. On my recent visit to HMP
Durham, a reception prison, I realised that these early days are
possibly the most stressful time of a sentence. Indeed, Professor
Alison Liebling found that one-third of all prisoner suicides
take place in the first week of custody.
The organisation Nepacs runs a dedicated early days in custody
programme in HMP Durham, and all the men on the wings know Tracy,
who runs it. Her work is rooted in awareness that the huge stress
that comes from being in prison, after being on the outside, is
compounded by not having your glasses, not having your own
underwear, or not having your own false teeth. She sources these,
and the messages she passes between prisoners and their family
members dampen some of the shock and crises all are experiencing
straight after arrest or sentencing.
The voluntary sector often excels at spotting important unmet
needs such as these and filling them, but organisations have to
go to charitable trusts and dig into their own reserves to do
pioneering work. The commissioning process needs to incorporate
and act on proven effectiveness of new ways of working. Can the
Minister tell me if the Government are convinced that their
commissioning process drives continuous improvement and
innovation, rather than just preserving the status quo?
I will finish here because I am very keen to hear all noble
Lords’ contributions, particularly my noble and learned friend
Lord Bellamy’s maiden speech. I thank noble Lords for
contributing to this vital debate.
12.05pm
(Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, , for getting the debate today,
and for his very thoughtful—and for some, I suppose, somewhat
controversial—contribution. He has been very brave and has said
some things that need saying and that these days we are not
prepared to say. I look forward with interest to the right
reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester’s contribution.
The causes of crime are the old fundamentals—the seven sins—such
as greed, pride, lust and anger. Anger is one which causes a
great deal of problems for families and society, and many people
who have uncontrollable anger end up in prison. It is interesting
that the Government’s 2018 strategy on anger and violence in
society and in prison took it back to looking at what happens
with alcohol and drugs, which is an area in which the House knows
I have spoken fairly frequently. I will not labour on that today;
I anticipate that my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay,
who was chair of the Commission on Alcohol Harm—of which I was a
member, so I declare an interest—will speak at some length on
this topic. Alcohol and harm, and the Government’s responsibility
in the way they handle alcohol and harm, is a big factor.
I welcome the Minister to his role and, like others, look forward
with great interest to his contribution. I hope we will have not
just words but that he will be able to pull some levers and we
will have some action.
I come at this from a long experience of personal problems with
drink and drugs, many years ago. I have also spent much of my
time working with people in recovery. I work also with people in
recovery from prison, and later I will give noble Lords a message
I have had from a friend who I spend a couple of hours every week
with, who has been in Brixton prison three times. He comes from a
difficult background but is now in recovery, training as a
therapist and making very good progress. He has some useful
insights into what we might be doing.
I agree basically that the family as a unit is the best one
available to us, but let us not deceive ourselves and think that
simply because we are in a family and we have that relationship
that everything will work fine there—it does not. My experience
is that many people come from backgrounds where, prima facie, the
family is perfect, yet they end up drinking too much and taking
drugs. Why does that happen? We should spend time looking at
that. My experience is that it is often a combination of the DNA,
the past history of the family, and then of course the
environment in which the child is in—and it is mainly at the
childhood level that this develops. We have got to be careful
about making assumptions that there are simple solutions; there
are not. This is a complex topic.
I pay tribute to the Cameron Government here. When was in power, he came up with
a number of quite notable and distinctive polices in this area,
which regrettably were not followed through. For example, they
produced a very good alcohol strategy, but it was never
implemented; it had fallen by the wayside by 2015. Why have the
Government still not got a strategy on alcohol when, at the
present time, we have more problems with alcohol then we have had
for the past 15 years?
Cameron also encouraged the development of a more participative
society; it is interesting that the noble Lord, , cited the Queen and service.
When this country is in difficulty, we have found that an
extraordinary response comes from the people. When Covid began,
750,000 people volunteered to help the NHS. They were not used
properly—what a waste of talent and opportunity. Everywhere we
look, when we have a real problem, we get a great response. For
example, we have had an outstanding response on Ukraine from
people willing to accommodate refugees. When it comes to asking
what we can do in prisons, not enough work is done in trying to
tap into the good will of the British people and get them
involved in the way that the noble Lord, , is involved, and the way that
many of the people I know working in AA go into prisons and try
to get people into recovery.
I hope the new Minister might start thinking about how we can
marshal that great British spirit. To a degree, this is a debate
about spirit. We have spent so much time talking about material
deficiency when, in fact, we have a great poverty of spirit in
this country. However, if we can provide leadership, we can give
a lift to people, and they will come forward and work with us. We
need to do more because our record in prisons is very poor indeed
in comparison with many other countries.
I am running out of time, and I regret that I cannot give your
Lordships a quote from my friend who is an ex-prisoner, but I
will write to the Minister with it. He gives some very good
suggestions on what needs to be done.
(Con)
My Lords, I note the contribution of the noble Lord, . What he has done—
(Con)
My Lords, I am very sorry, but this debate has a speakers’ list.
The noble Lord cannot just stand up and speak.
12.12pm
(LD)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, , on securing this debate. I
welcome the Minister to his new position and look forward to
working with him. I worked with his predecessor, who conducted
himself with great integrity and conscientiousness, and I very
much hope that the positive and constructive relationship we
developed will continue.
In six minutes I can cover only a small number of points. The
first part of this debate—the causes of crime and reoffending—is
a herculean task in itself, but the noble Lord, , treated us to a fascinating
insight into that this morning. So I will focus on two areas of
sentencing which frustrate the rehabilitation of offenders.
First, we put people, especially women, into prison for short
periods of time. I know that steps have been taken regarding
sentencing in this area, but if the better development of women’s
centres recommended over 14 years ago by the noble Baroness, Lady
Corston, had been properly implemented, it would have obviated
many of the problems we see today.
If you tried to design a system to ensure that people had the
worst possible chance of rehabilitation, you would take them out
of their home, rob them of their identity, put them in a
threatening environment rife with drugs, lock them away for long
periods of the day, ensure they got little or no help with
addictions, mental illness and re-education, and give them no
home and no job on release. Release them on a Friday, when they
are unable to get anything organised—money, accommodation, et
cetera—and you have a perfect recipe for perpetuating the system.
Short-term sentencing shows how amazingly successful you can be
at robbing an individual of their self-respect and their former
lives in a really short time—and when they reoffend, just give
them more of the same: spend more money on what does not
work.
At the other end of the sentence spectrum, we have those who do
not know how long they are going to be incarcerated for. The
duration of life sentences has doubled over the last 40 years
from an average of nine years to 18 years, according to the
Independent Commission into the Experience of Victims and
Long-term Prisoners. Even worse, in my view, is the situation of
indeterminate sentence prisoners, who are kept in prison for
inordinate periods of time, long after the sentence has been
abolished because of its unfairness. I will leave it to the other
members of our small and select cross-party group to elucidate
further on that.
I am sorry to say that the Minister is inheriting is a broken
system, with any rehabilitation services trying to operate on a
shoestring. We who have the temerity to point these
contradictions out are branded lily-livered liberals. Well, I am
a Liberal, for sure, but like many across this House I believe in
evidence-based policy. The report of the Independent Commission
into the Experience of Victims and Long-term Prisoners concluded
that
“sentencing for serious offences has lost its way and is not
working for victims, prisoners, or society as a whole.”
The report discusses the five purposes of sentencing, which are
supposed to be the punishment of offenders, reduction of crime,
reform and rehabilitation of offenders, protection of the public,
and making of reparation. We have got the punishment side down
really well—but the rest of it, not so much.
If all five purposes of sentencing are to be met—not simply
locking people up and throwing away the key—we need more public
awareness of what prison is actually for. We need a complete
root-and-branch review of sentencing policy, incorporating all
the resources at our disposal. We need the voluntary, private and
public sectors all working together, throwing away the dog
whistle and using evidence-based policy, doing what works, and
thus serving the interests of all.
12.17pm
(CB)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, , for securing this debate, and
I welcome the Minister and his maiden speech. Others have spoken
of his great attainments, but what must now be half a century
ago, he gained first-hand experience of the real problems that
people needing legal advice face in day-to-day life when we
worked together at a legal advice centre. I shall return to this
in a moment.
I do not want to speak about the causes of crime—that is
impossible to get into in a few minutes, although the noble Lord,
, did so eloquently—but will
deal instead with what needs doing now, what works and what does
not work. First, I want to say a word about IPPs. I could not
equal the eloquence of the noble and learned Lord, , or the
noble Lord, , in dealing with the
sentence, but I think we ought now to appreciate that although
there are just over 1,500 people who have not been released,
there are nearly 1,400 people who have been recalled. We overlook
the importance of rehabilitation. One appellant described to me
once that she felt like a puppet on a string when released. We
need to address the problems caused by indefinite detention and
the possibility of recall. We have to await the report of the
Justice Select Committee on other matters, but I very much hope
that we can address proper support to those released so we do not
find so many coming back.
Secondly, I turn to women offenders because here, again, there is
something that works. Obviously, there are some crimes for which
we must send women to prison for a significant period of time,
but sending a woman to prison for short-term offending is, in my
view, almost invariably wrong. When I chaired the Commission on
Justice in Wales, we recommended in our report that:
“A commitment should be made, in our view, to establish a number
of women’s centres and the supporting interventions. This would
overcome the well-documented problems of women’s imprisonment and
would enable women to serve their sentences in their home areas.
These centres take a holistic approach to reducing offending by
women, offering court-ordered support and supervision, access to
mental healthcare and treatment for addictions, skills for
employment, financial management and debt advice, parenting
support and the opportunity to gain and maintain safe
housing.”
The Minister has first-hand experience of knowing how vital those
issues of safe housing and employment are to dealing with
people.
I wish to say how grateful I am to see that the Ministry of
Justice, in conjunction with the Welsh Government, will open next
year a residential women’s centre in Swansea that will be an
alternative to short custodial sentences. This is a very
important development, but key to it—I am not sure how well
understood this is—is the holistic support that is to be given.
The probation service does an excellent job, but in dealing with
offenders you need to bring in the whole community, including the
voluntary sector. Certainly, it is quite clear from pathfinder
projects being undertaken in Wales—there is not time for me to
set out the details—that there is success not in criminalising
people, to which I shall return in a moment, but in providing
holistic support for them in the community, with debt advice,
safe housing, employment and dealing with the consequences of
abuse: a one-stop shop for rehabilitation.
It has shown in Wales that it works; it is one way of trying to
stop reoffending and rehabilitate effectively. I commend the work
being done by the Ministry of Justice and the very significant
sums being spent by the Welsh Government on subsidising the third
sector on a more permanent basis and funding the work being
done.
Thirdly, I turn to the other aspect that needs urgent attention.
In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act passed earlier
this year, Sections 98 to 121 dealt with cautions. I very much
hope that urgent steps are being taken to get the legislation
under way, because another cause of reoffending is criminalising
at too early a stage. The success of the projects in Wales,
particularly those in Dyfed-Powys and north Wales, has shown that
if you give people community rehabilitation and do not
criminalise them, you can stop them going on to offend. I very
much hope that urgent work is being undertaken by the Government
to get the statutory instruments that are needed, and the
necessary guidance, so that we can properly stop criminalising
people and look for an alternative, rehabilitative approach.
12.23pm
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, , for introducing this debate.
His work is inspiring; I want to say “yes” to all that he has
said and am sorry that I have only six minutes. I too welcome the
noble and learned Lord, , and look forward to his
maiden speech. I refer to my interests stated in the register as
Anglican Bishop to Prisons and president of the Nelson Trust.
Last week, I visited HMP Wakefield. In reflecting with the
governor on long sentences, he said that he had asked a group of
prisoners whether, if they had known the tariff for their crime,
it would have been a deterrent. For all but one, the answer was
no. Most crimes are rarely planned in a calculated way.
Earlier this month, the Independent Commission into the
Experience of Victims and Long-Term Prisoners published a report
with a comprehensive set of recommendations, holding together for
the first time the perspectives of the offender and the victim.
The report highlighted that the number of people in England and
Wales given a prison sentence of more than 10 years has more than
doubled in a decade, at an ever greater cost. Where is the
evidence that greater severity equates to greater deterrence, or
a safer society? We need to curb the unhelpful and inaccurate
rhetoric about keeping the public safer through longer, tougher
sentencing. What matters more than longer and longer sentences is
how people are spending their time while in prison, in terms of
not only education and purposeful work but meaningful
interventions which prevent reoffending and someone else becoming
another victim. Holding together justice and restoration is
central to Christian theology; I believe it is vital for us to
rediscover how those two dwell side by side.
As has been said, at the opposite end to long sentences are short
sentences. These too are often not the answer. From my work with
the Nelson Trust and women’s centres, as have been mentioned, I
know the value of community sentences, police diversion schemes
and other non-custodial interventions. Holistic intervention in
the community for women, men and children can often address the
root causes of offending, including drug and substance abuse. We
know that offenders are often people of multiple disadvantage,
and tackling those drivers to offending is key.
We also know that if men and women are to cease from reoffending,
they need purposeful work, strong relationships, addiction
intervention and a home. A project I have advocated for in the
diocese of Gloucester is the prisoners building homes programme.
These prisoners are working with a modular housing provider to
build low-carbon, modular homes for local communities and
vulnerable people across the south-west, hopefully including for
prison leavers. The prisoners are acquiring skills for future
employment. I would love to see more projects like this, but it
will take significant cross-departmental and interdepartmental
working and the will to think outside the box when commissioning
or securing funding.
A recent IMB report on HMP Bronzefield found that 65% of women
face homelessness on release. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to
continue to engage on this issue in a meaningful,
interdepartmental way and with a gendered approach.
Turning to the voluntary sector, the noble Lord, , has highlighted the
importance of relationship. As a Lord spiritual, this is not a
surprise. Restored relationship sits at the heart of Christian
belief, and I am glad that the noble Lord has highlighted the
importance of chaplaincy, paid and voluntary, in prison and
beyond the gate. Relationship sits at the heart of so much of the
work of the voluntary sector, supporting the charity sector in a
commitment to the flourishing of individuals and communities, not
least with prison leavers.
We have many examples in the faith-based sector, such as the
Welcome Directory, which signposts prison leavers to worshipping
communities of all faiths to find a place of welcome and
community. There is also the Prison Advice and Care Trust, PACT,
which has volunteers and staff in courts, prisons, probation
services and the wider community. There are so many local and
national initiatives with stories to tell of transformed lives.
People in the charitable and voluntary sector stand ready to be
part of the solution, but it needs the Government to
intentionally work with them and tap into their considerable
experience, wisdom and insights.
Returning to the overall focus of today’s debate, I would argue
that sustainably funded community intervention and purposeful
rehabilitation in prison and beyond the gate need not carry a
high financial increase if we realign the funding, stop a focus
on more prison places and address the pervasive issue of more and
longer sentences which are failing both victims and
prisoners.
I urge noble Lords to join me in pushing for a national debate
informed not by the occasional sensational Daily Mail headline
but by evidence, so that we can turn the tide for the sake of our
overcrowded prisons and for real justice for victims of crime, so
that reoffending is tackled effectively once and for all. I
invite the Minister to meet with me and those behind the
independent commission to reflect further. It is of course easier
to file all this in the “too difficult” drawer and continue to
focus on lengthening sentences and building more prisons. But I
hope for a better way, and I look forward to the rest of today’s
debate.
12.29pm
(Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate.
I tip my hat to the work of the Church of England—indeed, of all
faith leaders—to do with prisons. I too draw particular attention
to the report chaired by the former Bishop to Prisons, James
Jones, who has been a great influence on me and the way in which
I try to think about prisons.
I start by declaring an interest. I am a patron of Unlock, a
prisoners’ charity, and a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. I
see that my first chairman, the noble and learned Lord, , is in his place; I look forward
to hearing what he has to say.
It is interesting—and no surprise—that two former Lord Justices
are listed to speak in this debate; one, the noble and learned
Lord, Lord Thomas, has already spoken, while the noble and
learned Lord, , has yet to speak. Once again, I
welcome my noble and learned friend to the Front Bench. I look
forward to him gripping this vexed question of what to do with
prisons and prisoners with some degree of enthusiasm—even
evangelism—because, unless a policymaker in the Government takes
charge of this issue and owns it, it will just dribble on
uselessly.
My noble friend is to be congratulated on
obtaining this debate. If I could bottle his speech and have it
delivered by the crateload to every Whitehall department, I
would. I have a suspicion that not every Cabinet Minister will
condescend to read the Hansard of today’s debate but they jolly
well should because everything that my noble friend said goes
straight to the heart of the issues that my noble and learned
friend on the Front Bench now faces.
Everything that has been said in this debate has been said time
after time, ever since I became interested in this question. I
was appointed shadow Prisons Minister by in 2006, I think it was, when
he became leader of the Opposition. I set about visiting as many
prisons, YOIs and secure training centres as I could to see what
was going on, in order to produce for my party evidence-based
policy. In the end, after two or three years, I produced a paper
called Prisons with a Purpose. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke,
mentioned, a number of the ideas in that paper were taken up by
the coalition Government when they came into office in 2010 but,
sadly, so many of them have fallen by the wayside. So we are
still here. I am like a cracked record, repeating what I have
been saying for the past 15 or 20 years. I dare say that I will
go to my grave and wave from the hole in the ground, saying, “Do
you remember? Why have you done nothing about this?”
If I may say so, there is not only a moral and justice case for
dealing with prisoners in a productive and sensible way but a
hard-headed economic case. The cost of housing a male adult
prisoner in a long-term secure prison is enormous. If, when that
prisoner is in there and is literally a captive audience, we do
nothing to prevent him—it usually is a “him”—reoffending, are we
not letting ourselves down? Are we not letting our fellow
citizens down by fooling them into thinking that a Government
with a policy of sending more and more people to prison for
longer and longer while doing nothing constructive with them when
they are in there are achieving something positive?
When I became the shadow Minister, the first person I rang up was
the noble Lord, ; he is no longer in his
place. I have learned a great deal from him and many others who
know an awful lot about this subject. He asked me to think about
three things; noble Lords have mentioned them already. The first
is what we do with prisoners when they are released. He said that
they need a job, a stable place of accommodation and a stable
relationship. Those things come through their families and the
system, be it the Prison Service, the Parole Board or the
voluntary sector, enabling people to leave prison in a condition
in which they can get a job.
If you leave prison and you cannot read or write—bear in mind
that the average reading age of an adult prisoner in our system
is 11—you cannot get even the most basic manual job. So why do we
send people to prison for all those years and not teach them to
read and write or to add up? Why do we send drug addicts to
prison and not effectively treat their addictions? Why do we send
mentally ill people to prison and not effectively treat their
mental health problems? I guess it is because it is easy just to
keep on doing the same thing over and again.
I have been saying the same thing over and again. My six minutes
are now up but I urge my noble and learned friend on the Front
Bench to launch out on a new path—one of real reform and real
positive advance.
12.35pm
(Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour to take part in this debate. My main
reason for signing up to it was to listen and learn. Much of the
discussion has focused on whether prison works and I want to
highlight this issue in relation to older prisoners. The noble
and learned Lord, , rightly stressed the
importance to prisoners of having a job when they come out of
prison but, of course, a small proportion of prisoners are
pensioners. Their specific needs must be given greater attention;
I ask the Minister to say at least something in his reply about
the specific needs of older prisoners, including in terms of
their rehabilitation and their re-entry into society.
I have just two specific points to add to that general call.
First, the punishment is what is levied by the court, but
prisoners lose out in other ways. Prisoners of working age lose
their national insurance contributions. There is a whole debate
there but inflicting poverty on prisoners when they get to
retirement age should not be part of the punishment. I suggest
that one reform would be for prisoners who work or are in
full-time training to be entitled to national insurance credits
so that they can look forward to an adequate pension. That must
be part of a policy for rehabilitation and re-entry.
My second, main point relates to the removal of the state pension
from those prisoners who are of pensionable age. It is always
difficult to engender sympathy for prisoners—it is perhaps even
harder to do so for older prisoners given the typical nature of
their crimes—but this is an issue not of sympathy but of rights.
We have a state pension system based on contributions. In my
view, if prisoners have paid their contributions, they should
receive their benefits. Often, broadly, the argument is reduced
to, “Well, we need to recoup part of the cost”, but we do not do
that for prisoners under pension age. Why should we take a
pension away from those who are over pension age?
It is notable that prisoners do not lose their occupational
pensions. There is a technical point here, to a certain extent.
Currently, for many older pensioners, part of their occupational
pension is a replacement for the state pension. There is a
lottery element: if you get a pension from the state, you lose it
in prison, but, if you get an identical pension from an
occupational scheme, you do not lose it. Given the national
insurance position of a large number of older pensioners, their
wives—it typically is wives—lose their pensions as well. That
cannot be right.
This is not a new point. In the past, the Prison Reform Trust and
Age UK have expressed dismay at this policy, and my main point is
that it is directly relevant to prospects for rehabilitation and
return to society that we should not inflict additional penalties
which move people into greater poverty, with the consequent
knock-on effects on their future.
12.40pm
(Con)
My Lords, I welcome my noble and learned friend and look forward to his
maiden speech. I also thank my noble friend for this very important
debate. It is full of so many key and important issues that
matter to me and many of your Lordships here today, and I am
grateful to be focusing on the contribution made by the voluntary
sector in reducing reoffending and helping to deliver successful
rehabilitation outcomes.
Many of us will be aware of the contributions made by the
voluntary sector and of its work in delivering early intervention
and helping to divert people away from the criminal justice
system. Much of this work is increasingly dependent on the work
of the voluntary sector and passionate volunteers. However, sadly
there are those who end up in custody. The youth and adult secure
estate is without doubt a deterrent and a form of punishment.
However, it is equally important for us to address and
rehabilitate those who want to be helped, while inside and when
they leave custody.
We know that people in contact with the criminal justice system
face significant health inequalities compared to the general
population. The Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly added an extra
burden to these complexities. The HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
Annual Report: 2020 to 2021 highlighted that prisoners spent
“long periods of isolation, in … cells”
sometimes with “no company” and “without purposeful activity”.
This “had a profound effect” on their well-being. Purposeful
activity is defined as an activity that is likely to benefit the
prisoner, such as work, vocational training, education, and
programmes to address their offending.
An underutilised and under-resourced intervention is physical
activity and sport. This can be one of the best ways to engage
prisoners, children and young people, acting as the hook to draw
them into the wider valuable support that they need to help their
rehabilitation and to tackle health inequalities such as
addiction. A Sporting Chance: An Independent Review of Sport in
Youth and Adult Prisons, carried out by Professor Rosie Meek in
2018, included some statistics which showed that reoffending data
for sports-based initiatives can be as low as 6%. The
contribution of the voluntary sector and its focus on the use of
physical activity is highly beneficial, and I would like to draw
attention to some of its work.
In declaring my interests, I am involved in trying to improve and
develop the ability for sport and physical activity to enhance
the health and well-being of those involved in, or at risk of
entering, the criminal justice system, as co-chair of the APPG on
Sport and Physical Activity in the Criminal Justice System, and
as chair of the Alliance of Sport’s taskforce on physical
activity and sport in the criminal justice system. To be
complete, I am also vice-chair of the APPGs on Sport and the APPG
on Charities and Volunteering.
We must work to improve and prioritise the health and well-being
of children, young people and adults in the secure estate. This
can be done through introducing more activities with qualified
and appropriate mentors who can support and deliver successful
outcomes. Working in partnership with a very busy and specialist
prison service in this way can be a huge asset, not a hindrance.
A broad range of sport and physical activity-based voluntary
organisations are already doing great work across our prisons, an
example being the Twinning Project—a football-based programme
that connects local clubs with prisons to support prisoners
through professional coaching qualifications, refereeing and
employability skills. Aston Villa Football Club collaborated with
HMP Birmingham to support a cohort of men who were approaching
release back into the community. One recipient in 2020 gave it
the ultimate testimonial:
“Aston Villa Foundation has saved my life and my mental
health.”
A further example is parkrun, which now has 31 events taking
place in custody each week. In addition to running or walking 5k,
the event allows participants to volunteer as marshals or
timekeepers. Participants can also take part in a community
parkrun on their release from custody. Therefore, from football
to rugby and rowing to running, along with activities including
trauma-informed yoga, many organisations are already addressing
prisoners’ health and well-being, while supporting them to learn
new skills and improve their employment prospects.
However, this provision remains patchy across the secure estate,
and how it impacts supporting the continuity of care remains
unclear. Without proper funding and co-ordination, potential
opportunities for tackling reoffending are being missed. Can the
Minister say how he can improve the access to prisons for our
voluntary organisations and at the same time support the Prison
Service, which in partnership is making greater contributions to
delivering better outcomes for those in the secure estate and
beyond?
We should not underestimate the impact of voluntary organisations
and volunteers who make a difference day-to-day in dealing with
the range of pressures across our prisons at present. It is a
win-win to look at how these organisations can work better
together with prisons. More work should be done to evaluate and
deliver greater investment into these partnerships, and to help
make an even greater difference to the future of those prisoners
who want to turn their lives around and go on to live crime-free
lives.
12.46pm
(CB)
I welcome the noble and learned Lord, , to his new job. I hope that
he does better than all the others ever did. Look at it this way:
one thing that we are not embracing is that whatever we are doing
is not working. Until you recognise that something is not
working, it is like carrying an illness around with you and keep
saying, “I’ll go and see the doctor”, but you do not—and then one
day you do go and see the doctor, which means you move nearer to
the solution than by doing nothing about it. We have a problem
over prisons. We have problems with all sorts of things that the
Government are expected to respond to but, with prisons, we spend
£4 billion largely on warehousing people for a particular period.
Then we let them out on the streets and they return to crime.
When I made my maiden speech here six years ago, I was being
serious when I said that I got into the House of Lords by lying,
cheating and stealing. I did not mean that I had to brown-nose a
lot of people and leave a lot of envelopes around. I meant that
the class of person I came from—we always like to avoid “class”
now, post Thatcher—did not get an education. You got a form of
babysitting from the ages of five to 15. I was blessed by the
fact that every time I got nicked, I was taught something. In a
boys’ prison at the age of 16, I learned to read and write, and
even though it took me another 15 years to get out of being a
naughty boy and a naughty young man, I had laid the foundation
stones of a complete and utter transformation in my life. Why is
the illiteracy rate in prisons so high? Why is it that 35% of
children who pass through our schools are failed? They join the
working poor and the long-term unemployed, and they become 90% of
the prison population. I repeat: 35% of our children are failed
at school.
I like the idea that the noble Lord, , can find a magic bullet. I am
not being rude but we are always looking for a magic bullet. My
magic bullet is for us to address that we fail 35% of our
schoolchildren and condemn people to poverty. Behind all of this
is poverty. That is what it is. How did you do in the poverty
argument? When you come into life, you could say, “Where am I in
the poverty argument?”. When you leave life at the other end,
maybe you should also ask “How did I do in the poverty
argument?”. Most of the people who end up in prison did badly in
the poverty argument.
It is a class issue, not just one of families. God above, I would
not want my family anywhere near children —my mum and dad could
not organise a urination in a whatever. They were absolutely
useless, because they did not see the importance of education or
ballet lessons—which they never paid for. They did not see that,
to bring me out of poverty, they had to address the fact that
they knew nothing about education or the social opportunities
that it can bring.
I am glad that the noble Lord, , has raised the issue of
families because I agree with him. Is it not terrible that, if a
child does not see their parent in prison, the reoffending rate
of the prisoner goes through the roof—some 60% of them are likely
to reoffend?
We need to address issues that are nothing to do with prisons.
Prison is an emergency response to a social crisis. If you have
been a bad boy or girl, we are going to lock you up. We then say
we are going to do all sorts of things for you but do not do
them. Why is it that, when I talked to 150 prison governors in
the north of England a couple of years ago and asked them to tell
me how much time and money they spent on rehabilitation, it was
next to nothing? They put rehabilitation as maybe a fifth or
sixth consideration. The first thing was the safety of staff and
the second was the safety of prisoners—no one running away and
those sorts of things.
The problem is that rehabilitation and education—which can get
people out of the sticky stuff and move them on—are not there. We
must address the problem that 35% of our children are lost in the
education system and become the working poor. They are the ones
who cannot handle inflation; they will become long-term
unemployed and then become our prison population.
12.52pm
(Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and
making a speech that I thought was one of the most important,
courageous, thoughtful and worth re-reading of any speech that I
have heard since I have been in this place. Indeed, all the
speeches so far have been important contributions and well worth
reconsidering. The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, with whom I do not
always agree, said, as she focused on rehabilitation, that those
of us who do so are often accused of being lily-livered liberals.
She is a Liberal and my liver is undoubtably “Lilley’s”.
I get most of my original interest in this subject from a great
Christian Tory, Samuel Johnson, who, back in the 18th century—and
little has changed since, as the noble Lord, , indicated—said that prisons are
academies of crime. People go in because they have not been good
at their crime, and they are more likely to learn from fellow
prisoners than they are to be taught or helped by anybody else to
be rehabilitated and leave crime behind them when they leave
prison.
My experience of the prison system is far more limited than that
of most people contributing to this debate. It is limited to
visiting and talking to friends and constituents who have had the
misfortune to go there. They confirm the impression that the
noble Lord, , brought home forcefully: that
though we pay lip service to the importance of rehabilitation and
there have been initiatives—my noble and learned friend endeavoured to emphasise the
importance of rehabilitation—it has not had much impact. My
impression is that it is incredibly hard, physically and
culturally, to change the culture of prisons, which are basically
about incarceration.
I suspect that we need to set up an entirely new prison, as a
pilot project, focused primarily on rehabilitation. It should be
staffed, equipped and designed with architecture to make
rehabilitation possible. Such a prison would put great emphasis
on literacy. As one of the speakers has pointed out, illiteracy
is a major problem in the population of our prisons—and certainly
in the experience of my constituents who have found themselves
there. The day would be designed around work, to give people work
and reinforce the habit of work, so that when they return to the
working world they have not lost touch with it. There should be
links with employers who are willing to take on former prisons,
so that jobs will be available to them. There should be training
in skills suited to the individual, so that they can take up work
when they leave prison.
Such a prison would tackle drugs more seriously than we do.
Something that I learned when visiting a friend in prison on an
open day was that most of his fellow inmates were on marijuana.
He said that in the drugs wing—where prisoners are not allowed
out on visiting day—they were all on heroin. I asked if you only
go in there if you are on heroin. He said, “No, you go in there
if you are caught taking marijuana, but once inside, you learn
that you cannot wash marijuana out of your system for the
fortnightly test. If you take 16 litres of water, you can wash
heroin out, so they all switch to heroin once they are in the
drugs wing.” If that is going on in prisons, and we are
encouraging people to move from soft to hard drugs, it shows what
little thought is being given to one of the most prevalent and
damaging problems that causes and prolongs lives of crime.
We should also build into the system at this pilot model prison
aftercare services, so that people have planned accommodation and
planned work, and links, I would hope, with the charitable and
voluntary sectors so that they have people to call upon for
support and help. Hopefully, that would work. We would then have
some experience that would then be possible to spread throughout
the prison system. If not, the chances of converting existing
prisons and changing the priority from incarceration to
rehabilitation are, I fear, limited.
12.57pm
(CB)
My Lords, it is with some hesitation that I rise to my feet to
talk. There was a time—the noble Lord, , has identified that time—when
I knew a lot about prisons. However, that time has long passed
and I have now got to a stage where, I am afraid, I would have
difficulty in identifying the large number of prisons I visited,
both in this country and abroad.
However, I am sure that having this debate is of great value,
because it gives people who are aware of the current situation an
opportunity of explaining the problems that we have. As the
people who visit prisons constantly find, the experience is
shockingly sad, given the fact that it has resulted in the
situation today. Bearing in mind the vast sums of money that are
spent on our prisons and the criminal justice system in general,
it is extraordinarily sad that we cannot make a bigger
impression. I believe that we can, and that the money could be
deployed.
I also believe there is a very simple answer: we have to find the
resistance to the siren song that comes out from the media asking
for longer and longer sentences. The message we need is that we
must reduce the need for the length of sentences we already have.
What can be achieved by our Prison Service at present could be
achieved without extending the length of sentences, if only the
culture would change. I hope our new Minister, who I hope will
have continuing responsibility for this, realises that we have to
change the culture. Nothing less than that will achieve the
result we all want.
Of course, there will be opposition. When I retired from being a
judge, the department of the courts that looks after public
relations sent me a little present. It was one of those shields
that you get if you play rugby or some other team sport, and it
said in the middle “Hated by the Daily Mail”. I regard that as a
considerable honour, and it is the one thing I got that I have
treasured ever since, because it told me that I did at least some
things right in the office I was privileged to hold.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, , for his kind remarks on my
now ancient report into the prison situation that existed after
the prison riots in 1990, in particular in Strangeways prison. At
that time, it was remarkable how many worthy people were working
hard to try to make the system work, but they unfortunately found
that they could not fight against it. If we could get across the
message that it is possible to make a change, we could produce
improvements. Every now and then, we have marvellous examples of
the best possible practice. The noble Lord, , was talking about another
example: they come into existence, prosper for a time and then, I
am afraid, disappear from sight—despite everyone’s efforts.
To conclude, every word I have heard in this debate was
absolutely right. Noble Lords have identified the nature of the
problem and what can be done about it. Somehow or another, we
have to change public attitudes, so that politicians feel that
this is what they must bring about. I thank the noble Lord for
giving us this opportunity. I wish that every word your Lordships
have said is heard by the widest possible audience.
1.03pm
(Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is humbling to follow the noble and learned Lord,
. I welcome this important
debate, so I have a special thank you for the noble Lord, , and for his thought-provoking
speech. There is so much to say on the topic. I am glad that many
have referred to IPPs and that the noble Lord, , will continue to try to do
something about this ongoing blight on the criminal justice
system. I hope that imprisonment for public protection sentences
will, one day, for ever be gone.
Showing such regard for these or any prisoners can grate with the
public. Too often, attempts to raise issues of prison reform can
be met with an angry rolling of the eyes. “What about the victims
of crime?”, people say. At present, I note that this goes far
wider than the hard-line trope to lock them up and throw away the
key or a repetition of the myth that prisons are cushy holiday
camps. It reflects a larger problem of public despair at the
state of criminal justice and the crisis of trust in the UK, in
particular with policing.
On the one hand, many citizens feel that the criminal justice
system is becoming oppressive and inconsistent in the application
of laws over policing and penalising what were erstwhile
non-criminal activities—whether that is a protest from the
one-man foghorn Steve Bray or those at the Sarah Everard vigil,
or the seeming obsession of some police forces with trawling
through social media and threatening those who tweet offensive or
hateful comments, in their opinion, with criminal sanction.
I also look at the squandering of resources spent on
investigating tens of thousands of non-crime hate incidents,
despite the fact that these NCHIs have never been voted for by
Parliament and have even been declared unlawful by the courts in
the Harry Miller case. In 2018, Sara Thornton, the chair of the
National Police Chiefs’ Council, stated that the police
should
“solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make
more records of incidents that are not crimes.”
Yet the investigation of these NCHIs continues, while burglaries
and violent crime are neglected, and the public feel that they
are being ignored. So many feel underprotected by agencies
charged with their safety.
As an example, you need look only at the story in the news this
week about the release of the report on the Oldham grooming
gangs. It is shocking reading and many still feel it is too
evasive and a whitewash. Vulnerable young girls, who no one in
authority would listen to, were drugged, raped and sexually
abused with seeming impunity, as the police and local authorities
looked the other way, refusing to investigate for fear of
providing
“an opportunity for far-right racist elements to capitalise
politically”.
This politicisation of policing adds to a sense of grievance,
especially as similar stories have emerged from Rotherham,
Rochdale, Telford and so on. This set of failures of the criminal
justice agencies to live up to the public’s expectations can
breed a wider cynicism about the importance of focusing on the
plight of criminals and rehabilitation initiatives. We must not
be deterred, but we cannot ignore that either.
I have some points on how we can improve prison life—a vital tool
in deterring reoffending, as many have said. I recently visited
the new early days centre at HMP Bronzefield, a Sodexo-managed
women’s prison for the MoJ. It made a real impact on me: it is a
hugely impressive initiative, enthusiastically backed by
management and staff, which allows a smooth settlement into
custody. This has been shown to have a positive reduction on
self-harm, violence and suicide, as the noble Lord, , explained that these
initiatives do. These early days centres really work to cut down
the volatility that new prisoners feel when entering the prison
estate, allowing them to reach out for help without fear of
repercussion, providing access to practical rules and being
taught all the ropes of the prison regime by peer mentors.
I met three peer mentors—or young women residents as they were
known then, or prisoners now; I cannot keep up—whose dedication
to their role was meticulous. Their attention to detail was so
impressive and they were organisationally competent. That not
only contributed to their accumulation of skills for their own
rehabilitation—I hope they might get a job at the MoJ when they
are released—but helped to take some of the time burden from
hard-pressed officers.
I make special mention here of Michael Campbell-Brown, who
arranged over 160 of these specifically trained peer mentors.
There are 15 of these early days centres; a new one opened
earlier this week at HMP Addiewell, and HMP Peterborough is
launching one in its female prison this week. I hope the Minister
will back rolling out these programmes far more widely and look
at these kinds of innovative new initiatives.
We now understand that setting the right tone at the start of the
prison sentence is important, creating a positive contract
between prison and prisoner, ensuring that incarceration is not
just an extension of a turbulent, fearful and violent life
outside. But this can all be undone by the circumstances of
release, which so often set people up to fail. All that good work
is ruined when prisoners are just dumped into the outside world.
Often, those released are given unachievable tasks by probation
officers; many are not given travel warrants or means to attend
probation meetings and they end up being recalled to prison.
Often the focus of post-prison rehabilitation is on helping
prisoners to gain employment, which is a good thing, but there is
less focus on leaving jail without accommodation. Tens of
thousands leave prison without anywhere to live. Not everyone has
a family home to go to. This is crucial, and we know that there
is a clear link—
(Con)
I remind the noble Baroness of the six-minute limit.
(Non-Afl)
I apologise. There is a link between homelessness and
reoffending. I hope the new Minister, whom I welcome heartily,
will look at it too.
1.10pm
(Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble
Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I thank my noble friend for bringing this matter to
the Chamber today and for his impressive speech. I echo the
welcome to the Front Bench for my noble and learned friend .
In a former life, I spent most of my time detecting and arresting
criminals and putting them before the courts. While I appreciate
that there may be those who disagree with me, the reality is that
we put the more serious offenders in prison because they need to
be punished for their wrongdoing and, more importantly, because
victims and the public at large must be protected from further
harm. However, that does not mean that we should not make every
attempt to engage, and we have a responsibility as a society to
rehabilitate the wrongdoer.
I have long been mystified about why the reoffending rate remains
so high. The Ministry of Justice estimates that it costs the
country somewhere in the region of £18.1 billion—a staggering
figure, I am sure your Lordships will agree. We know that people
commit crime for a number of reasons. Some do it for drugs and
profit. Personal circumstances while growing up can give some
individuals a higher propensity for violence. We know that
alcohol plays a substantial part in many offences against the
person, such as domestic violence. However, for many offences
there is also an undeniable link with deprivation and lack of
opportunities, a factor I have seen first hand in my policing
career here in London over many years. This lack of opportunities
captures my interest more than anything else in respect of the
rehabilitation process.
Last year Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons reported that
those who engage in prison and probation education, training or
employment activities are more likely to be employed and less
likely to reoffend than those who do not. Around 70,000 prisoners
are released from prison each year, and recent figures from the
Prison Reform Trust in the Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile:
Winter 2021 tell us that some 28% of prisoners had been in
employment the year after custody. The same source tells us that
39% of people are less likely to be reconvicted if they secure a
job after their release.
It is not all bad news. There is some good news, which brings me
neatly on to a fantastic initiative called the New Futures
Network, a specialist part of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation
Service. It brokers partnerships between prisons and employers in
England and Wales. These partnerships help businesses fill skills
gaps and prison leavers find employment. More than 400 businesses
already work in partnership with prisons to provide work and
employment opportunities. Of the employers surveyed, more than
80% positively rated those they employed as reliable and
hard-working. As part of this structure, each prison has an
employment advisory board, which is a platform to connect
employers with prisons. Two weeks ago, I attended the inaugural
meeting of one such board at Swansea prison. The enthusiasm and
passion to make this work was impressive.
I cannot let the opportunity pass without a mention for the
Timpson Foundation, which specialises in the recruitment of
marginalised groups within society. It is worth noting that
Timpson is one of the largest employers of ex-offenders in the
UK.
Among other things, the purpose of these employment advisory
boards is to help develop a positive culture of employment within
the prison for the long term, to help prisoners get
job-ready—with focus on CV building, interview practice, skills
training and a knowledge of what opportunities there are for them
to apply for—and to encourage local businesses to engage with the
prison and offer their resources, connections and knowledge to
help those living and working in the prison to prepare for and
find work on release.
Opportunities in the building industry, hospitality and road
transport are all catered for, and Swansea prison has secured
funding for a heavy goods vehicle simulator, which allows
prisoners on the scheme to gain driving qualifications. It was
interesting, speaking to the governor, to learn that one of the
hold-ups in the system was that they had to get £35 to apply for
a licence. That seems rather crazy. I am sure that the Ministry
of Justice could speak to the DVLA or the Department for
Transport on that.
The New Futures Network can help by working with prisons to field
appropriate candidates to join a business on day release, which
enables serving prisoners who are within two years of release to
leave prison to work in the community. It allows individuals to
gain valuable experience of the way organisations work and to
receive essential training before being permanently released and
possibly joining a business. Timpson has a long history of
working with the Prison Service to employ ex-offenders. James
Timpson, its chief executive, has said that far more people go
into its shops because of what it does with ex-offenders and see
it as a really positive thing.
A scheme such as this has to be a very positive step forward, and
I am bound to say that I was so impressed with it that I very
much hope it will expand throughout the UK. As politicians, we
should take note of the good and very positive work that is being
carried out to assist ex-offenders and do everything that we can
to support it.
1.16pm
(CB)
My Lords, like others, I welcome the noble and learned Lord,
, to his position on the Front
Bench. I must declare that I chair the Commission on Alcohol
Harm. As the noble Lord, , predicted, I
will talk about alcohol as one of the things that leads into the
funnel that eventually ends up in prison, an area that so many
noble Lords have spoken about today.
Like my noble friend , I think it is particularly
important that we focus on some of those antecedents. Last year,
more than one-quarter—28%—of homicide suspects were under the
influence: 13% with alcohol, 5% with illicit drugs and 10% with
both at the time of the homicide. The cost to the country of
alcohol-fuelled crime is £11.4 billion a year, and 20% of
offenders supervised by the probation service have a known
alcohol problem. Last year, Dorset neighbourhood police received
more than 8,000 crime reports that were linked to alcohol in the
12 months to September 2021.
As has been said, alcohol is consistently found to be linked to
domestic abuse, and 37% of domestic violence is alcohol related.
To bring this to life, I shall quote Alexandra, who features in
the Commission on Alcohol Harm’s report:
“I stayed in my bedroom, it was like a cage but the safest place
possible. I was too scared to leave or to talk to anyone. The
solution was to be invisible and quiet, hoping she would not come
after me. But she did. She abused me, and my dad, mentally,
emotionally, sometimes physically. For years, on a regular
basis.”
How does somebody like Alexandra stand much of a chance when she
grows up and goes into the world outside having been hidden away
for years with that problem?
Knife crime has increased in our society, but for every such
offence there are 15 violent crimes in which the victim judges
that the perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol. The
crime survey indicated that 39% of victims of serious offences
believed that alcohol played a factor in the incident. Overall,
alcohol-fuelled incidents account for 40% to 60% of violent
crime, year in, year out.
The problem is far worse in areas of deprivation. Alcohol-related
mortality is 20% higher in the north-east than the English
average and alcohol-related violence is 5.5 times more prevalent
in low socioeconomic groups. There is an important figure here
for the levelling-up agenda, and this debate should feed into
it.
The noble Lord, , when introducing this debate,
made an astoundingly important speech and I hope it resonates. It
is not only his speech; it reflects his commitment to trying to
solve some of these problems over the years.
I will focus on one solution relating to alcohol and driving.
Recently I spoke to a magistrate. She said that drink-driving
used to be the main offence, but now it is either both drink and
drugs or drug-fuelled driving offences. Driving rehabilitation
schemes provide a way forward. I will focus in particular on the
alcohol abstinence monitoring requirement, which the amendment to
the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012
allowed to be piloted.
This idea came from South Dakota, where Larry Long, a judge, had
recognised that alcohol was the root problem of people repeatedly
coming through his courtroom, and that the antecedents to alcohol
abuse needed to be addressed. The catalogue of rotating cases,
suspended licences, ignition locks, impounding vehicles and
prison sentences were all known to fail. But with the abstinence
scheme, and what are called sobriety tags, people are required to
be sober for up to 120 days. In the pilot, 3,121 offenders were
monitored and over 3,000 remained sober during the period. For
97% of the days monitored, they remained sober. Interestingly,
afterwards they continued to remain sober, and that becomes
really important because it shows the effectiveness of this
scheme. As one offender said:
“I was pulled over on a Saturday morning and was devastated to
blow over the limit. Like many others, during lockdown a drink at
the weekend had turned into maybe a glass of wine … and it made
me reflect. I’ve not found wearing the tag hard, but it has given
me extra motivation to reduce my intake.”
There are other schemes as well: Checkpoint in Durham is trying
to address this.
In relation to drugs, I hope we can learn from Hawaii, where the
Hawaii Opportunity Probation with Enforcement—HOPE—scheme is
trying to do the same with substance abuse probationers, who are
addicted to drugs.
I would love to continue, in this debate, and talk about other
factors, but time does not allow. I will mention simply that in
Cardiff, John Shepherd has done a great deal of work with the
police to try to decrease crime on the streets, particularly when
there are celebrations going on in those city streets. We need to
address these antecedents head on, and not be seduced into
thinking that somehow a little bit of education will cut down the
alcohol abuse that we see.
1.22pm
(Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for initiating this debate. If
noble Lords will indulge me, I propose to spend all of my few
minutes talking about the continuing scandal of IPP
prisoners.
The noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, and the noble and
learned Lord, , have already given
some background facts on that, but to summarise very briefly:
between 2005 and 2012, when this form of sentence was no longer
given, nearly 9,000 people were sentenced to it. Of those, over
1,500 are still in jail, never having been released. As an
instance of the egregiousness of that, nearly 200 of those had a
tariff of two years when they were sentenced and are still in
jail having served 10 years over that tariff.
The figure of 1,500 still in jail does not represent the full
tally because in addition, as of March this year, there were
1,400 who were back in jail, having been recalled. Nor is the
problem going to get any better: in a Written Answer given by my
right honourable friend to the Member of Parliament for West Ham in another
place in December last year, the Ministry of Justice said that it
estimated that the number of people to be released over the next
four years, from the IPP prison sentence, was of the order—it is
a round number; it is an estimate, I accept that—of 600
prisoners. Asked, at the same time, to estimate how many it
expected to be recalled over the same four years, it amounted to
2,600 people currently out on licence. So, to the 3,000 currently
in jail, we may confidently look forward to a further 2,000 being
added over the next four years.
The situation is moving more quickly, in policy terms, than noble
Lords might be aware. The Deputy Prime Minister and Lord
Chancellor announced in a press statement a few weeks ago that he
was arrogating to himself the decision of when prisoners were to
be moved from closed to open prisons—not to be released into the
community, but when they might be moved from closed to open
prisons. The move, of course, is an indispensable step for them
ever to be released. The decision is no longer to be taken by the
Prison Service, but by the Secretary of State or his delegate.
The test for whether they are to be transferred from closed to
open prisons has moved from being a balanced assessment of the
risks and benefits to being three separate tests, all of them
harder and all of them set out for me, very kindly, in a letter
in response to a question I asked, by my noble friend Lady Scott
of Bybrook, a copy of which is in the Library of the House.
So, things are not moving forward, they are moving backwards,
when it comes to addressing this injustice. I would like to take
just a few seconds to remind noble Lords—I know they are aware of
it—that nearly all these people have families. The families
suffer as well from simply not knowing when, if ever, these
sentences will be discharged and when they will be able to have
their family member back as a normal member of society. Other
members of those families suffer from the simple fact that they
have seen their relatives successfully commit suicide—not merely
attempt it—while serving these sentences, in simple despair at
the very thought that they might be able to escape the
system.
If it is hard for Ministers, especially in the other place, to do
anything for prisoners who are clearly there because they have
committed crimes of violence—that was a condition of why they
were there in the first place, I fully accept that—let me at
least make two propositions that they might take on board to
support those who are out on licence and living in the
community.
First, as we discussed in debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing
and Courts Bill, they have to be out for 10 years—that is the
qualifying period set in statute—before they can discharge the
sentence finally. That 10-year period could be cut to five years
with no risk to public safety, because they are out already and
because if they have been out for five years, the likelihood that
they will offend and be recalled in the second five years is
minimal.
The second thing that Ministers could do relates to the current
IPP action plan that they have said they will revise in the light
of the report of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee,
which we are all avidly looking forward to. That plan says a
great deal, properly, about the Prison Service and the Parole
Board, but very little about the probation service. The plan
needs greatly strengthening in terms of the probation service and
the support that is offered to these poor people as they try to
rebuild their lives in the community. If my noble and learned
friend the Minister could give assurances to the House that
action will be taken on those two things at least, he would allow
me not only to welcome him to his place but to give him hearty
congratulations in advance on his maiden speech.
1.29pm
(LD)
My Lords, I apologise to the House for speaking in the gap; I was
not quite properly organised enough to get on the list, but I
will not make a habit of this.
When it comes to the prison system, most of us here have long
memories. I remember working over 30 years ago for the Apex
Trust, which tried to deal with the offending cycle by getting
people into work. Most of the problems that I bumped into on my
first day are still there. The noble Lord, , put his finger squarely on the
primary one: that the group you are recruiting from is chaotic
and educationally underachieving. Most of them—the scholars among
them—have made it to year 9; the rest were out of the education
system before that. Secondary education has been patchy at best,
and primary education may not have been much better.
The incredibly high percentage with what I would call the hidden
disabilities—I remind the House of my interest in dyslexia and
related fields—is so overrepresented as to make it ridiculous.
These are people of, shall we say, a working-class background—the
non-exam-passing classes—where you do not find this. Dyslexics
like me who had a tiger parent who expected them to get through
identify the problem, but the rest do not. A good reaction to the
system is then, “Well, I don’t like school, so I won’t go”. If
you are an 11 year-old who is at the bottom of the class, failing
everything and unable to handle the situation, that is a
perfectly logical thing to do. No one is telling you otherwise;
no one is getting into it. The prison system has to deal with
these people who have failed.
The special educational needs review will do a better job of
giving some more information here, I hope, but it is a big ask.
The prison system will have to back up that work by identifying
such a person and telling them, “You’re not terminally stupid.
You have a problem with learning that is called X”. Just think
how much easier that person is to deal with after that. Think of
the psychological effect of saying, “You haven’t been written
off”.
What can you do to address this lack of confidence? One thing—to
which the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, referred—is sport, which is
a good thing for this predominantly young and male population.
Remember that these people have been out of school, and the
normal links to sport and organised activity have been removed
from them. Their families probably do not provide this or back it
up in other ways. These young people are stuffed in an
institution; why not give them some exercise and structure?
Professor Meek’s 2018 report—the pandemic means that it is still
very current—says that, if you get in there and give a positive
role model to people, they will respond well. If you teach a
sport, you teach discipline, organisation, control and regard for
rules—you cannot succeed without these—and you give a positive
role model. This is not surprising. I am sure that the arts can
do a similar job for other groups.
When he sums up, could the Minister, whose maiden speech I look
forward to—I wish he had a few more friends here—give us an idea
about how these types of interventions will be structured in the
ongoing situation? One thing that we are agreed on is that what
is happening now is not working.
1.33pm
(LD)
My Lords, this has been a thoughtful debate, and we have been
treated to a glitterati of expertise. I thank the noble Lord,
, for addressing the major
issues before us. In welcoming the noble and learned Lord, , to his seat, I say that we
have had to welcome too many Ministers of Justice in recent
years. I wish that his response to this debate will give us some
hope for the future.
I was drawn to two remarks. The noble and learned Lord, , said that this has all been
said before in this House. I am afraid I will be paraphrasing
what he said until the end of my life, although I sincerely hope
that that is not the case. But it is certainly true that all the
points have repeated what we have heard in the past in this
Chamber, and it is important to remember that.
The right reverend Prelate the invited us to have a
national debate. The source of the issues that it might cover
have been laid out today. When the noble Lord, , opened this debate, he
focused on the causes of crime, and it is not often that we would
have such a debate right at the heart of these matters. The House
has today focused on those causes, whether they be alcohol,
drugs, poverty, poor education and background, and so forth. We
have also heard about the injustice of IPP sentences. That is
something which I think this House will not allow any Minister to
forget.
One thing on which the House has been united is its ambition.
There is a sense that we all know what problem we are trying to
solve. Though there might be a difference in emphasis, the House
has shown that it wants to shift the dial back from the punitive
to the rehabilitative elements of our justice system. It has
recognised the importance of reducing the rate of reoffending,
which, in the Government’s own words, is “stubbornly high”. So we
give good marks for ambition, but it is in the delivery against
those principles or ambitions where nearly all the work remains
to be done and where we need to hold the Government to account
for their actions.
The noble Lord, , talked in his report and
earlier reports about that “golden thread”, and he has talked
today about the link through the prison gate, both before and
after, of family life. One thread from this debate has been the
need to build a seamless line of support for offenders through
the prison gate. That should start from sentencing. Judges and
those sentencing can be encouraged to outline the nature of any
support required having sat through the case on which a custodial
sentence is determined, but of course prison should be not the
automatic choice anyway. There is now widespread evidence, as
evidenced by my noble friend Lady Burt, the right reverend
Prelate the and the noble and
learned Lord, , that short prison sentences
do not lead to better outcomes in rehabilitation, and
particularly for women they can be irreparably damaging to family
links and bonds. The number of women in custody has fallen since
2010, but the statistics predict an increase in the coming few
years, especially as the courts backlog is cleared. Custodial
sentences for women should be the very last option, as my noble
friend Lady Burt and the noble and learned Lord, , said.
The challenge for government is to reduce reoffending through
routes to employment. Only 8% of people leaving prison are in
paid employment six weeks later, and after a year that figure
rises to just 17%. England and Wales has one of the highest rates
of imprisonment in western Europe, with approximately 80,000
people incarcerated, rising to 100,000 by 2026. Yet prison is not
working. Reoffending rates remain stubbornly high; 45% of adults
released from prison go on to reoffend within a year. For those
who have served a sentence of less than 12 months, this increases
to 61%.
Research by Nacro shows that around 1,000 people leave prison
homeless every month, leading to an increased risk of
reoffending. Even with the extra funding and support available
during the pandemic, that was still as high as 650 people a
month.
Ambition 1 in the Government’s prisons strategy White Paper
is:
“Clarity over who is accountable for improving rehabilitation and
resettlement outcomes to reduce reoffending.”
That is their ambition, but, as we have heard today, a plethora
of bodies fall into this statement of principle. A few have been
mentioned today: prison officers, prison trainers, the probation
service, local authorities, the NHS, housing associations,
benefit provision offices, employment advisory boards, and a
plethora of skilled third-sector organisations.
As the noble and learned Lord, , said, we need to
have a holistic approach to bring together all these bodies in a
way that makes it work for everyone. The great problem for the
excellent third sector bodies—we all know of the Clink example—is
that scaling up is a very difficult thing to do across the whole
of the country. There is no hope for running all this out of the
Ministry of Justice in London. Devolution is welcome, but it has
not gone far enough. The Ministry of Justice should be able to
set a framework of actions; it must then have the mechanism for
it to be delivered locally.
If through-the-gate support is to be meaningful and workable, a
consistent and deliverable structure is required. Prison
governors will need the ability to influence those providing
services not only within the custodial setting but immediately on
release as well. Local authorities with housing, social care and
a multitude of other required services will need to be adequately
funded for the work they undertake. Too often, there has been an
expectation that they will carry out the work without additional
resource to ensure adequate delivery.
Some people are entitled to the discharge grant, for example, to
help them on release. Last year it was raised from £46 to £76—the
first increase in 26 years. Inflation has now bitten well into
that increase. Thousands of prisoners remain ineligible,
including those released on remand, fine defaulters and people
serving less than 15 days. So perhaps the Minister could explain
how the extra £200 million the Government plan to spend in two
years’ time on supporting prison leavers will enable them to
access the services they need for help. How will that money be
committed? Will it be given to the released prisoners directly,
or to training providers, housing associations or the NHS? Who
will administer these funds; will it be the probation service
acting as a commissioner? These are all critical questions to
understand whether the delivery mechanism the Government are
proposing will actually work.
Fundamentally, of course, is £200 million enough to meet the
need? After all, the savings to the public purse of reducing
reoffending is a massive financial bonus to the country—£18.1
billion, as we have been told in today’s debate. So this is a
perfect example of how the Government can spend to save money for
the people of this country. As my noble friend Lady Burt said, an
easy way to get cracking on all this is to end Friday releases.
That is an easy first step to improving the co-ordination of all
these services, which find that they are not in place on that day
of release.
The White Paper refers to several pilot schemes. I would be
grateful for further information from the Minister on the Grand
Avenue scheme in and around Cardiff. There is a Grand Avenue in
Cardiff; I can tell him more about it should he wish to know when
it was built and so on. This 10-year project may provide guidance
on the way forward in respect of commissioning support services.
I hope that we will not have to wait 10 years to learn the
lessons, because we need to be getting on with this holistic
approach and commissioning now.
In conclusion, there is much to encourage us in the Government’s
White Paper, but many questions remain about resourcing,
devolving and co-ordinating the vital services to reduce
reoffending. The goal is obvious but the solutions have escaped
government over these last decades. I hope that this does not
become another false dawn whereby ambition is failed by inability
to deliver. I look forward to the Minister’s maiden speech and,
hopefully, his answers to this fundamental question.
1.44pm
(Lab)
My Lords, I too look forward to the noble and learned Lord the
Minister’s maiden speech. He joins us as an expert on legal aid,
an illustrious report on which he put his name to last year. I
gently point out to him that his three predecessors resigned on
principle, and I hope that he does not find himself in a similar
position in the months to come.
I would like to open by thanking the noble Lord, , for tabling this debate. It
has been extremely wide-ranging and a lot of expertise has been
demonstrated. I also acknowledge the two reports the noble Lord
has written—his 2017 review of reoffending by male prisoners, and
his 2019 report on the importance of strengthening offenders’
family relationships and its impact on intergenerational crime.
The two reports have been debated a number of times in several
debates, and they will have an enduring legacy. For me, the
statistic that summarises the conclusion, in a sense, is that 39%
of prisoners who receive visits from family members are less
likely to reoffend. The noble Lord quoted that statistic in his
speech.
I first took an interest in criminal justice matters about 20
years ago, through the voluntary sector. I became a trustee of
the Wandsworth Prison visitors’ association, which led to my
becoming a magistrate and having a long-standing interest in
these matters. Over the last 20 years we have seen a lot of
changes to the wider criminal justice system. Some have been
driven by funding cuts, others by ideological commitments to
particular organisational models—for example, in the probation
service. But of course, on top of that there has been a huge
increase in the prevalence of drugs in the prison estate and in
the mental health issues of people who are sent to prison. All
this has added up to a feeling that the wider criminal justice
system just is not working. It is not keeping victims safe,
rehabilitating offenders or providing staff with long-term
rewarding careers during which they can use their expertise to
reduce reoffending.
Since this such a wide-ranging debate, I want to concentrate on
particular themes and ask the Minister a couple of questions.
First, offenders are more likely to come out of prison addicted
to drugs than when they went in, making our communities less
safe. Drug crimes in prison have leapt by 500% since 2010, while
the number of inmates accessing NHS alcohol and drug treatment
programmes has fallen by 12%. One-third of adults released from
custody go on to reoffend within a year and, as we have heard
from other noble Lords, this costs the UK taxpayer £18 billion a
year. Part of the problem is that the average prison officer in
England and Wales now has only four years’ experience in the job.
In 2017, the median time served by a front-line prison officer
was 12 years. Surely, this has an impact on the availability of
rehabilitation within prison.
In today’s Times newspaper, Charlie Taylor, the current Chief
Inspector of Prisons, wrote about the uneven performance of and
lack of purposeful activity in the prison system, particularly in
category C prisons where offenders are supposed to be prepared to
be released into the community; this is simply not happening in a
number of those prisons. Current prison conditions mean that
inmates are not given the opportunity to engage with meaningful
education, substance misuse reduction or rehabilitation
programmes. Does the Minister accept that this is a failure of
the Government and needs the primary concentration of Ministers
to reverse the situation?
Turning to youth justice, the Government have slashed £1 billion
from youth services in our communities since 2010, leaving a
gaping hole in respect of the clubs and support that used to
exist for young people in the community. In 2020-21, 73% of
youths in custody were in YOIs, 17% were in STCs and 10% were in
secure children’s homes. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons
has issued urgent notifications for one YOI and two STCs where
there is a significant concern about the treatment of young
people in custody.
When I first became a youth magistrate some 13 years ago, about
3,000 young people were in custody; now, there are about 800.
That is significant progress, but its inevitable consequence is
that those young people who are in custody are more entrenched in
their criminal behaviour and need more support to try to stop
them reoffending when they come out of prison. Does the Minister
agree that this is the situation, and extra support is needed for
young people as they come out of custody?
Next, I refer to public confidence in the criminal justice system
regarding rape. Some 41% of rape cases now end with the victim
withdrawing their support. Does the Minister accept that this is
a result of a lack of confidence in the justice system? What does
he believe can be done to reduce the 1,081 days between a rape
taking place and a verdict being reached by a court?
I return to community sentences. A number of noble Lords spoke
about the importance of community sentences. I need to declare an
interest here, as a sitting magistrate, in that I occasionally
sentence women to short terms of imprisonment—although I think I
can say that, in the 15 years that I have been sitting as a
magistrate, I have only ever done that when the woman concerned
has served multiple community sentences and, for one reason or
another, those have failed.
However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the
right reverend Prelate the about the importance
of women’s centres. They are a very important element in trying
to stop women reoffending. It is worth quoting the Chief
Inspector of Probation, who has described the probation service
as being “in survival mode” due to staff shortages. Can the
Minister say anything about the recruitment activities of the
probation service? To make community sentences work as they
surely must, we need to reinvigorate community sentences and the
probation service.
As I have said, this has been a wide-ranging debate and all the
contributions have been extremely worth while. I understand that
we are talking about intractable problems that are difficult to
deal with. A number of noble Lords have a decades-long interest
in these matters, but I just want to reflect on the speech of the
noble and learned Lord, . He opened by saying that when
one walks into a prison, one walks into a shockingly sad
situation. That is true in my experience of going into prisons
over the years as well. The noble and learned Lord’s call was for
shorter sentences and a reinvigoration of community sentences.
Those two elements will do more to improve our situation in the
wider criminal justice system than anything else. I urge the
noble and learned Lord the Minister to listen to the words of the
noble and learned Lord, .
1.53pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice
() (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour—and, I must say, something of a
challenge—to make my maiden speech in response to this
particularly powerful debate. First, I thank all those who have
made me so welcome in this House and assisted with my
introduction, not least my supporters: my noble friend Lady Scott
of Bybrook and the noble Lord, . I also thank
noble Lords for their personal kindness and for the courtesy with
which they rightly raise the most direct and challenging
questions.
To give, briefly, a little personal background, I take my title
in respectful tribute to my birthplace, the ancient settlement of
Waddesdon in the Vale of Aylesbury, which was rebuilt in the late
19th century as a so-called model village to house the estate
workers of the newly constructed and amazing edifice known as
Waddesdon Manor, now in the care of the National Trust. My late
father, then recently returned from the war, was the local GP in
a sprawling, single-handed rural practice. In those days, the
1950s, a family doctor, as well as holding morning and evening
surgeries, spent his day largely on the road, in home visits,
visiting his patient in the local hospital—it was your duty as a
GP to go to see your patient in hospital in those days—and, as
often as not, the call would come in the middle of the night, in
the mud and the snow, to deliver the baby on some distant
farm.
I mention those things because this occasion enables me to salute
not only that generation, the founding generation of the NHS, but
all those, then and now, who dedicate themselves to front-line
public service, often under the most appalling pressures. In the
present context, I make special mention of the staff of HMPPS,
who are working in most difficult circumstances, as has been
pointed out, picking up the pieces of what has already gone
seriously wrong at a much earlier stage. As the noble Lord,
, pointed out, it is the social
crisis that has led to people being in prison in the first place.
Many prisoners have already fallen through the cracks: that,
essentially, is our challenge. I disclose, as I should, that I
have a niece who works for HMPPS in the probation sector and that
my sister, also “of Waddesdon”, has spent a lifetime in this
sector.
One point I would make, relevant to our debate today, which
perhaps resonates with one of the points made by the noble Lord,
, is that the rural society of
the 1950s I have just been describing was not, in any sense, a
prosperous society. Few possessed a car, a telephone, a fridge, a
washing machine, a television or, indeed, a bathroom; but as I
recall it, there was in the village and the surrounding area a
sense of community, of social cohesion, of family stability. I
would argue that there was a social strength despite material
poverty. That kind of stability has, I fear, frayed in the
meantime under the pressures of modern life; this has perhaps
contributed to the causes of crime and the problem of reoffending
which preoccupies us in the debate today.
So, to delay the debate and the Government’s response to it no
longer, I hope noble Lords will allow me the briefest,
telegraphic description of my own career. I spent 22 years at the
Bar, from timid beginnings in the London magistrates’ courts—a
salutary education in the school of real life—and at the legal
advice centre in north London mentioned by my friend, the noble
and learned Lord, , all those years
ago. Then I became a little more specialised and found myself at
one stage as one of the UK judges in Luxembourg. There was the
setting up of the Competition Appeal Tribunal, followed, some
years later, by a long period on the other side of the
profession, working with one of London’s major international law
firms, chairing one of the firm’s global practice groups, working
all over Europe and in the US, Asia, the Far East and elsewhere—a
striking reminder in this last period of the global reach of the
common law and the strength of the UK in that sector. However,
that is all for another day. Personally speaking, it has been
something of a zig-zag career, and whether my present role turns
out to be a zig or a zag will be for your Lordships to
decide.
On to today’s debate, I first particularly thank the noble Lord,
, and his advisor Dr Callan,
not only for his speech today but for his extremely valuable
reports of 2017 and 2019, for his ongoing work with the ministry,
and his tireless and constructive interest in the matters under
discussion. I cannot in the time available deal with all the
points made; we have ranged extremely widely. I will do my best
on other occasions to follow up those points or deal with them
outside the context of the present debate. One of the matters I
do not think I can really deal with today, in terms of
rehabilitation of prisoners, is sentencing policy. With the
House’s permission, I will not deal with the problem of IPP
sentences but I have assured the noble Lord, , that I will come back to him
and the cross-party group on this subject, and that we will come
to grips once again with that intractable problem.
Many other issues have been raised: I think of older pensioners
and alcohol abuse; I think of rape and youth justice. All those
things are extremely important but I would like to concentrate
today on the main themes of the rehabilitation of prisoners, what
the ministry and the Government are trying to do about it, and
where we are going. I readily recognise that this is a difficult
and intractable subject that many of us have been thinking about
and discussing for years and years, but perhaps your Lordships
will arrive at the conclusion that, at long last, we are really
beginning to come to grips with the detail of the problem. Your
Lordships have already heard mention during the debate of some
encouraging matters: the new centre in Swansea, the New Futures
Network mentioned earlier, the work initiatives mentioned by the
right reverend Prelate the , and other matters.
The Government’s, and my own approach, is as follows.
The noble Lord, , is entirely right to regard
the importance of family life, family connections and the
maintenance of family relationships as the golden thread that
runs through the whole problem. But a thread by itself needs to
be woven into a stronger fabric to form, if you will, the warp
and weft of a fabric that can sustain, develop and last into the
future in a robust way. I would select today, respectfully, five
other threads in the fabric that the Government will seek to
strengthen and develop in the coming period.
The first thread, which I would regard as the most important, is
the question of education. That has been raised several times
before, and rightly. The Government have established—perhaps I
should say re-established—a prisoner education service with the
specific role of improving literacy, numeracy and technical
skills in prison. It is entirely right that a very substantial
proportion of the male prison population is dyslexic; it is as
simple as that. For that reason, as eloquently explained earlier
by noble Lords, many of the prisoners the system is dealing with
have simply dropped out of school and fallen through the crack.
Those difficulties have not been addressed earlier. This
underlines another aspect that has come across so forcefully in
this debate: the fact that we are dealing with widespread social
problems that just happen to finish up in the prison sector.
The words that cropped up most frequently today included
“holistic”, “interdepartmental” and “cross-government”. All those
aspects need to have a co-ordinated response from government as a
whole. To give one very small example from a Ministry of Justice
point of view, I intend to make it one of my personal priorities
to focus on the special educational needs tribunals which are
responsible, as the House knows, for dealing with the provision
of special needs in the school system, working with local
authorities and the Department for Education to help address that
problem at an earlier stage. But we have to think laterally the
whole time when dealing with these types of problems. Better
education of the prison population is the first thread, weave or
strand in the overall approach to the situation.
The second strand, also mentioned today, is accommodation. Some
12,000 people a year are discharged from prison with no home to
go to. The Government are setting up a community accommodation
service with the objective that no one should leave prison with
nowhere to go. That has been rolled out so far across five
regions of the government: that accommodation should be provided
for a minimum of 12 weeks, and homelessness protection teams and
strategic homing specialists should be fully involved in the
accommodation needs of discharged prisoners. That is, at least,
another first step. One of the questions I have asked of my
department in recent days—I am still quite new to all this—is how
you plan in advance a prisoner’s release so that he knows he has
accommodation to go to, the family knows what is happening and
everything is already set up, as it were, across all the relevant
services and departments. I gather that one of the initiatives in
train is that a proper discharge packet should be prepared so
that the prisoner has an ID, a CV, a certificate that he is fit
to work and a home to go to. These are detailed, small steps but
they are vital. Accommodation, therefore, is the second
thread.
The third is employment. As your Lordships will know, it has
always been difficult, to an extent, to overcome employers’
reluctance to employ offenders. I submit that this is perhaps
beginning to change. An employment innovation fund of £21 million
has been set up to improve work on how to get prisoners back into
employment. The intention is to have an employment advisory board
in every prison, so that prisons themselves can start equipping
their prisoners with the skills they need to enhance their
chances of employment.
Those boards will be chaired by a local business executive who
knows what the employers are looking for. That will, over time,
improve the situation. About half our prisons now have such an
advisory board, and it is hoped that the rest will be installed
by April of next year. The prisons themselves will have prison
employment leads in them to match candidates to jobs. It is hoped
that by April of next year, all 91 resettlement prisons will have
such a mechanism to again encourage prisoners into
employment.
I make particular mention of the New Futures Network, already
mentioned by the noble Lord, which is an online resource broking
and matching prisoners to available vacancies and jobs. We shall
later on introduce legislation to facilitate prisoner
apprenticeships, which is being welcomed by employer
organisations. In this context I again salute a particular
employer that has been mentioned: the Timpson Group, which is
particularly active in this area. The proportion of prison
leavers employed at six months post-release rose by two thirds
between April 2021 and March 2022 and now stands at around 23%.
Not high enough, I know, but slow progress upwards.
In continuing the threads, the next one, which I will mention
briefly because it is a large topic, is control and improvement
of substance misuse. It is no use releasing prisoners if they are
still in the grip of substance misuse. As noble Lords know, the
Government have appropriated more than £900 million to deal with
drug problems generally. A substantial proportion of that goes to
the prison community. Important measures have been taken in
prisons to reduce drug availability and drug usage, and that is a
key element of the programme.
Finally, there is the integrated probation service, which has
been reorganised entirely over the last few years. It has had a
considerable uplift in resources and is a vital part of the
ongoing need to support and encourage prisoners when they are
released.
So, those five threads are woven together with the family
considerations, which I venture to suggest are now pretty firmly
embedded in the culture of the Prison Service. The governors are
very alert to and supportive of this. Every prison has to publish
its policy on family matters. There are various initiatives,
particularly virtual family video calls to maintain family
contact; there is the “stories with Dad” or “stories with Mum”
type of call. There is always more to be done, of course, but
with the encouragement and leadership of the noble Lord, , I think that that is now, as
a matter of culture, growing in the Prison Service. Also, there
is the Grand Avenue project in Cardiff—it too has been
mentioned—which is part of the programme. So, there is a lot
being done.
According to my figures, over the past 10 years, the number of
reoffenders—that is, the number of people who are released and
then reoffend—has halved, roughly speaking, from nearly 800,000
to just under 400,000. However, that is not the end of the story,
because those who do reoffend are reoffending more often. Just
over 25% of offenders who received a caution or a non-custodial
conviction or were released from prison in 2019-20 reoffended
within a year. That has fallen by about 5% over the past 10
years. It is not enough but it is at least a decline in the
trend. Those are the matters on which we are working.
In conclusion—and I must finish, I am afraid, although I could go
on for a long time—we are very conscious of the issue of staffing
in prisons, which my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord
Ponsonby, raised, and the need to increase the number of prison
officers. The intention is to increase the number by another
5,000 over the next few years. At the moment it is not easy to
recruit people of the necessary calibre, but the Government are
conscious of the problem and we are doing our best to resolve it
as soon as possible.
I have not got the solutions to the problems raised but I can, I
hope, assure noble Lords to some extent that we are on the case
and doing our best to improve the situation.
2.16pm
(Con)
My Lords, on behalf of the whole House, I thank my noble and
learned friend the Minister and congratulate him on his excellent
maiden speech. It is not easy on entering this House to combine
your maiden speech with a ministerial response to a debate, but I
can say on behalf of us all that he did an excellent job.
The Minister is roughly the same age as me, I think. When one
gets to this age, serving in this House is an optional decision,
really. I suggest that it is a service for the common good rather
than for one’s personal ambitions. From the Minister’s speech,
one can derive that his heart is connected to his head in the
role he has taken on here; I am also pleased that we now have a
specific Minister for family justice in your Lordships’ House. He
has internalised those ideals of service, sacrifice and duty,
which we talked about before. When we look at his CV, which he
presented to us today, we can see the wisdom and experience that
he has garnered over decades, the benefit of which we will now
receive. Again, I congratulate him and welcome him to our House.
I am sure that I can say on behalf of us all that we wish him the
very best. We will give him the best support we can; it may
sometimes be quite critical, but we very much welcome him to our
House.
I want to keep things short as I am sure everyone is looking
forward to lunch. I thank all noble Lords for a rich debate. As
the noble and learned Lord, , said, this debate can be of
great value. We have had two and a half hours of discussion on a
difficult subject, from many different angles. I hope that it
will be taken away by those in government and in the whole of the
sector and studied. I also hope that recommendations can be drawn
from it.
I thank noble Lords for their rich contributions. I had better
close.
Motion agreed.
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