Criminal Justice: Royal Commission

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the pandemic demonstrated more clearly than ever the importance to prison morale and effective rehabilitation of family and other significant relationships. Benefits to prisoners of access to video-calling technology have also been proven. Building back better requires sharpening the emphasis on the third leg of the rehabilitative stool of relationships. Will this and access to technology, as an obvious requirement in a world that is being transformed daily, be key principles in the royal commission?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, we know that prisoners who maintain contact with their families and communities behave better in prison and have lower reoffending rates when out of prison. During the pandemic, we rolled out video-calling technology to all prisons. We have committed to retaining this long term.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I will focus on the past, the present and two possible futures. In the past, our nation’s hospice movement demonstrated our concern for the elderly and terminally ill. It grew out of shared western Judaeo-Christian foundations that value life in all stages and circumstances and the principle that God creates us and numbers our days. The more recent past saw assisted dying legalised in Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries, all with strict initial safeguards and limited scope.

In the present, we have a system that works for the vast majority of the terminally ill, albeit imperfectly. Supporters of assisted dying always cite hard cases, which inevitably make bad laws. Dying with dignity means dying with family and friends, letting natural life run its course and availing oneself of existing options to refuse unnatural and painful treatment, not the consumption of lethal drugs to end life when convenient. It is not life that is affirmed by letting people decide when it ends, but autonomy.

Is assisted dying the next great liberal reform? If so, liberalism has deified autonomy, implying that dependency is a fate worse than death and has replaced mutual solidarity with individual isolation and burden. The Bill facilitates death without reference to those most impacted by it. It is an atheists’ Bill, denying God and denying eternity.

Also in the present, we clearly see how assisted dying laws have profoundly changed other countries. More likely than not, we will follow the Belgian law’s extension to children and those with unbearable psychological suffering. In the Netherlands euthanasia is being proposed for people simply tired of life. Once established, the principle of autonomy over death inevitably extends beyond terminal illness by implying that without a happy mind and a healthy body life is less worth while, yet the weak and terminally ill most need reminding of their inherent dignity.

Assisted dying puts faith in the goodness and objectivity of human agents throughout the process—the doctors, patients, friends and family involved. Human nature always problematises this, particularly in emotive matters of life and death and particularly when wills and inheritances muddy motives. We are not morally fit to open this Pandora’s box.

Assisted dying endangers the most vulnerable, whom the law should protect. One possible dystopian future for us is the present of every other country that legalised assisted dying: safeguards fail, and assisted dying becomes increasingly common. The second, humane future would guarantee high-quality palliative care and prioritise relationships. Rapid advances in medicine and treatments for end-of-life conditions are harbingers of hope. Spiritual palliative care would reach beyond life. Death is not the end, certainly for the bereaved. It would acknowledge that the terminally ill are on the edge of eternity. Which future do we want, the elevation of autonomy or a renewed affirmation of human worth?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Fullbrook on her fine maiden speech.

I will touch on four areas in her Majesty’s gracious Speech. First, I share others’ reservations about the online safety Bill repealing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act: despite its limitations, this would have prevented children inadvertently seeing online pornography on commercial sites. I understand that the Government wanted to cover user-generated pornography, but much work had already been completed on the planned DEA protections, which could have been in place for the last 18 months.

This new Bill must deliver, as a minimum, all the Digital Economy Act’s child-protection measures—yet it leaves unmentioned pornography or age verification. Can the Minister assure the House, first, that the clear and unambiguous research showing considerable harms to children of easy access to pornography will be given paramount consideration in this legislation; and, secondly, that cyber-libertarian ideology, which holds that internet regulation is impossible, unworkable and unwanted, will not hold sway?

Secondly, will the Government’s legislation to ban conversion therapy extend beyond uncontrovertibly cruel and coercive efforts to change someone’s sexuality or gender, risking criminalising faith leaders, parents and friends approached by those who are ambivalent and confused, say, about same-sex attraction? In Victoria, Australia, it is illegal to engage in prayer that does not affirm same-sex attraction. Yet, ironically, this discriminates against gay Christians who, for deeply held faith-based and other personal reasons, want to remain celibate but are, in a cruel twist of coercive liberalism, denied support to uphold a freely made decision. Ed Shaw, pastor of Bristol’s Emmanuel City Centre church describes how the only people exerting unwelcome pressure on him to change his beliefs and behaviour have been

“gay Christians who have rejected orthodox church teaching—and the wider culture that thinks I am crazy to embrace it.”

Thirdly, as a co-founder of the Family Hubs Network, I welcome the Government’s commitment both to ensure that children have the best start in life, including by rolling out family hubs, and to address lost learning during the pandemic so that every child’s education enables them to fulfil their potential. Speaking as an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for 22q11 Syndrome, the second most common genetic syndrome after Down’s, I ask the Minister how educational catch-up will be achieved where learning difficulties associated with genetic conditions such as 22q make this far more difficult?

Finally, I welcome the integrating imperative of the health and care Bill. However, integration cannot mean overmedicalisation. If hospitals become the default hub for integrated care systems, this could make integrated services less, not more, available to those who struggle most to travel, such as those on low incomes and those with significant childcare responsibilities. Hospitals are not best placed to deliver social provision with significant health implications, such as family support. In Essex, local family hubs enable prevention by integrating paediatric health with all the other support families need to thrive.

Parenting impacts greatly on children’s health and is a recognised public health issue; well-functioning couple relationships are associated with many health gains for adults and help to make families safe, stable and caring for children. In summary, to be effective for people rather than systems, integration needs to include local support for good-quality relationships and nurture these health assets.

Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too begin by acknowledging the hard work of the right honourable Cheryl Gillan, about whose passing away we have all been saddened to hear today, in bringing forward the Bill in the other place. Thanks must go also to Richard Holden MP, who steered the Bill in the Commons when necessary on Ms Gillan’s behalf, and to my noble friend Lady Pidding for taking it through this place and for her excellent introduction today.

My own interest in the Bill lies in the fact that the endemic proliferation and consumption of illicit drugs across the prison estate are hugely detrimental to prison safety and the relationships that are so important to prevent reoffending. Both safety and relationship concerns must be addressed if rehabilitation is to be a realistic aim of our prison system. In 2016-17, when I was conducting the review on strengthening prisoners’ family relationships, the Ministry of Justice’s own data showed that prisoners who received family visits were 39% less likely to reoffend after release than those who did not, at a time when reoffending was running at 43%.

In my first review, Peter Clarke, then Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, described how many prisons are

“unacceptably violent and dangerous places”

and said that much of this is linked to the harms associated with drugs. To avoid these harms, my review indicated, for example, that quality time spent with family is a key motivator for a prisoner and a parent to stay clean. I quoted one father, who said that it was tempting to use drugs to get through a tough day, but:

“If part of your … routine is to do homework with your child or ring home … to hold a quality conversation with her, this is a strong deterrent to taking a substance that would mean you were unable to do that because you were ‘off your head’.”


An individual who has easy access to drugs and less will power risks missing out on their child or children’s lives and entrenching in them the sense of being abandoned by their mother or father. Reducing the prevalence of drug use in prisons is essential for bringing greater stability and structure to prisoners’ and their children’s lives. Data shows that a child of a prisoner has more than a 60% chance of being imprisoned themselves.

This is a good, tightly focused Bill, which I hope we can get on to the statute book before Prorogation so that we can make much-needed progress in this important area of rehabilitation.

Prison Reform

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

In the last year we have recruited 2,250 new prison officers—a net increase of 440—and we are continuing to recruit at that rate. We have given prison officers all that they have asked for in terms of the recommended rate of pay. We very much applaud prison officers in the very difficult task that they have to perform, and I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in offering their condolences to the family and friends of Adrian Ismay, a prison officer from Belfast, who unfortunately died today.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I read in the Times recently that the Secretary of State is going to put family at the heart of prison reforms. Can the Minister expand on those plans and the progress that has been made there?

[Lord Faulks]

My noble friend is quite right to focus on the importance of family. According to research by my department, families are the single most important factor in helping prisoners to resettle on release. A number of prisons have developed visitor centres and are doing their best to make the contact between families and prisoners as pleasant as possible. This is important because, first, the families are, after all, not doing a prison sentence and, secondly, it encourages prisoners to remember that their roots in the community and in their family are the key to not reoffending.

Prison Reform

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, join noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Fowler on securing this timely debate and on his excellent opening speech. Momentous developments are taking place right now in the area of prison reform, which have the potential to make major inroads into social problems that have dogged our nation for decades. As part of the Secretary of State’s commitment to tackle reoffending by working with the whole person to find the “treasure in the heart of the man”, as he puts it, recent announcements have been made that the Ministry of Justice intends to put family at the heart of prison reforms.

Award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein observed:

“The dissolution of families, the harm to children—and the resultant perpetuation of the cycle of crime and incarceration from one generation to the next—may be the most profound and damaging effect of our current penal structure”.

Families can feel as if they, too, have been the victims of crime. For partners and children who have not themselves offended, it can seem as if they are also serving the sentence. An article last month in the Times told Sandra’s story—how her son’s life sentence for manslaughter at the age of 16 made her want to die too. She hated going into prison to see him—it was so heartbreaking. That is why all new prisons should have family-friendly visitor centres. They should be cheerful facilities where it is made clear to family members that they are welcome and valued. Staff should be trained to do all they can to prevent visitors feeling humiliated. One study found that reoffending rates are 39% lower if prisoners receive family visits, but they can be major undertakings that require travelling a long way with children. When I recently visited someone in Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, it took a whole day to get there and back, and I was coming only from Chichester.

One of the longest-running longitudinal studies in the history of social science found that getting married can be a key turning point away from crime, even for the most prolific offenders. Research has also found that partnering relationships which bring structure, informal monitoring and emotional support decrease the likelihood of reoffending. It can make an enormous difference to a prisoner if they know their wife or husband is willing to stick with them. The perceived strength, stability and quality of ex-prisoners’ relationships are particularly important in rehabilitation, so the opportunities presented by their being inside must be taken to help prisoners develop better relationship skills, and prisoners should, wherever appropriate, be helped by staff to maintain family ties. Yet this happens for only one-third of offenders. Will the Minister include the need to improve the stability and quality of family relationships in the outcomes governors are required to deliver as they are given more autonomy? Programmes with a solid evidence base, such as Family Man, can pay for themselves in the money they save by preventing reoffending. This course uses drama, group discussions and written work to improve family relationships as a way of developing skills essential to education, training and employment.

These synergies are important. If prisoners’ family-based needs go unmet, it can greatly undermine wider efforts to improve their employability and educational attainment. However, the National Offender Management Service’s review of parenting and relationship support found that currently there is significant variation in the quality and scale of family provision. There is also too little structured assessment of family need in sentence planning, yet, as my earlier quote suggested, it makes no sense to ignore the needs of the next generation. Two-thirds of young males separated from imprisoned fathers in childhood go on to commit crime themselves.

Will the Minister discuss with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government how family support could also be joined up with work that goes on outside in the community, such as the troubled families programme? Similarly, schools should be able to use pupil premium money for children of prisoners on programmes such as Family Literacy in Prisons if this is the most effective means of improving their educational outcomes. Involving the imprisoned parents in their children’s education gives them a reason to go straight, and gives the children a better chance of avoiding criminality themselves. Given the Prime Minister’s inspiring mission to improve life chances for everyone in this country, can we assume that improving prisoners’ family stability will be at the heart of this Government’s rehabilitation strategy?