End of Custody Supervised Licence Scheme: Extension

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, it is a priority of this Government to improve employment opportunities for persons in prison. I would like to pay particular tribute to the Clink Charity, which has done excellent work over the years. The rate of prisoners in employment six months after their release has significantly increased under this Government, and various steps, which I think I have outlined on previous occasions, have been taken to improve the qualifications of prisoners leaving prison.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, is it not incumbent on this and future Governments to focus on prolific offenders, those who have committed more than 16 offences, and hyper-prolific offenders, who have committed more than 45? In so doing, we could cumulatively redirect funding for less serious prisoners to rehabilitation and reducing recidivism to make sure that that group has a better chance of making good when they leave prison.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very serious point, which has considerable force. The Government are well aware of it and will take it forward.

Prisons: Foreign National Offenders

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the proportion of foreign national offenders incarcerated across the prison estate.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to raise this important and timely matter—one that has been debated at some length both here and in the other place over recent months. My aim in this debate is to seek clarity and an understanding of not merely the policy direction of His Majesty’s Government, which is commendably clear, but whether they have the determination, political will, focus and resources to achieve their publicly stated objectives. This will of necessity involve me asking a number of questions of the Minister, for which I beg your Lordships’ indulgence.

At the outset, I would make the point and concede that issues relating to foreign national offenders are clearly linked to bigger economic, social and geopolitical issues in respect of immigration and displaced persons, which affect almost every country in Europe and will be a big problem for whichever party is elected to government at the general election later this year.

The most recent figures indicate that we have a foreign national offenders population of 10,423 in our prison estate—approximately 12% of the total population of more than 87,000. That is an increase of 13.6% since 2019. Each FNO costs an average of approximately £40,000 per annum to keep incarcerated and, of course, takes up valuable prison places, which, as we know, are at capacity or near capacity—notwithstanding the Government’s ambition to deliver 10,000 additional prison places by the end of next year.

However, the Government are removing significantly fewer foreign national offenders than they did even five years ago. In 2023, only 3,936 removals took place, compared to 6,437 in 2016, 6,292 in 2017 and 5,518 in 2018. In 2012, we removed more than 15,000 foreign prisoners. The Government are to be congratulated on their initiatives to address this situation—such as the May 2023 prisoner transfer agreement with Albania, which accounted for 37% of removals last year—but it prompts a wider question as to why so many Albanian criminals, who are easily the biggest cohort of FNOs in the prison estate, were admitted to the United Kingdom in the first place, especially as they were never able to exercise their rights as members of the European Union. The National Crime Agency has warned that Albanians have driven organised crime in Greater London and other parts of the UK.

On the subject of Albanians, is my noble friend the Minister aware that the German Government are quite content to derogate parts of the European Convention on Human Rights to prevent multiple vexatious and spurious claims by Albanian criminals? Why have we not done the same and saved the British taxpayer millions of pounds? In addition, the Germans are seeking to legislate with tough proposals to deport gang members with proven criminal links, even if they have no criminal convictions. The German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, has visited a number of countries, such as Morocco, Kenya, Colombia, Moldova and Uzbekistan, in order to secure potential deals to receive migrants. She stated that the package

“is necessary so that we can continue to meet our humanitarian responsibility to people we have to protect from war and terrorism”—

such as the 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine—and said:

“In order to protect the fundamental right to asylum, we have to clearly limit irregular migration”.


Why have our Government not considered similar measures, as a close neighbour and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights?

Close to a third of FNOs are citizens of an EU country, most of whom exercised their rights under the free movement directives of 2004 and 2008 and committed offences for which they were given a custodial sentence, prior to the United Kingdom formally leaving the EU in 2020. May I press the Minister to tell the Committee how many of them have been removed using the public policy, public health and public security provisions of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016, which still obtain?

While much is made of bilateral prisoner transfer agreements with over 100 countries, the actual results are disappointing. Why, for instance, have we not deported any Jamaican prisoners, as I understand it, under the prisoner transfer agreement concluded nine years ago with that country, and with a sweetener of £25 million to build a new jail on the island? Why do we routinely not deport prisoners to the Republic of Ireland, our closest neighbour? Between them, the two countries represent an FNO cohort of over 1,000 prisoners. Why are Irish criminals treated as special cases?

Can the Minister confirm that any new prisoner transfer agreements will be centred on compulsory repatriation, rather than voluntary or those with the prisoners’ consent? The latter has resulted in not much more than a pitiful one prisoner a week being sent home to their own country to complete their sentence. More generally, will my noble friend update the Committee on progress in respect of existing prisoner arrangements, including the new one with the Philippines?

These are, broadly speaking, bipartisan issues. I trust that we are beyond the spectacle of Labour Members of Parliament, Peers and others who should have known better attaching their names to letters imploring the Government, as in December 2020, not to deport prolific and violent offenders, murderers, rapists and drug dealers to their own country.

I note the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Removal of Prisoners for Deportation) Order, debated last year in your Lordships’ House, which increased the early removal window in the early removals scheme from 12 to 18 months. It appears sensible and reasonable, but it has naturally prompted a number of important questions six months on. What are the costs of the policy against the benefits? What legal challenges have materialised and how many prisoners have been removed as a result of the new scope of the policy? Furthermore, what steps are being taken to advise and communicate with the victims of these crimes, who might reasonably expect criminals to be incarcerated for as long as possible, as per the decision of a court and due process?

I find it odd that we are quite content to incarcerate foreign criminals for a custodial sentence of less than 12 months and then, upon their release, allow them to claim asylum as if they are good citizens, rather than individuals who have grievously abused the hospitality of British taxpayers. How can this outdated policy, the 12 months’ cut-off for deportation, be allowed to continue without review? After all, between 2007 and 2017, 13,000 individuals were convicted of rape or sexual assault and were not sentenced to immediate custody—not 12 months, 12 weeks or 12 days. In the case of EEA citizens, the Home Office could remove them immediately on grounds of public safety. Why does it not? In the case of others, we have measures contained in the Immigration Act 2014 which can be exercised to remove foreign nationals who are “persistent offenders” or have committed offences which resulted in “serious harm”.

I raised the issue of asylum-seeker criminal convictions in the House on 8 February in the wake of the notorious Abdul Ezedi case and was told rather indignantly by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans that reports of religious conversions by the Church of England to assist bogus applicants were untrue and unsubstantiated. Imagine my surprise a few weeks later to learn that an announcement had been made in the General Synod that an urgent inquiry by the Church hierarchy had been commissioned to look at these same allegations. Perhaps my noble and learned friend the Minister will discuss this issue with his colleagues in the Home Office, as I understand that they have undertaken to thoroughly investigate these well-sourced claims.

There is a fundamental reason we are not deporting more foreign national offenders: it is as a result of chronic and endemic mismanagement in the criminal justice system. It is why we have, according to the CPS, nearly 12,000 such individuals living in the community who should have been removed—an increase of 192% in the past 12 years.

I also ask my noble and learned friend the Minister to look favourably on the amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill tabled by my right honourable friend Robert Jenrick in the other place, which would compel Ministers to report regularly on the nationality, visa status and asylum status of every offender convicted in England and Wales, and therefore allow the Home Office to amend its policies to respond to operational needs, as has happened in countries such as Denmark.

I will finish with some comments about the report published in June last year by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. As we know, it highlighted the endemic problem of poor data collection, information systems and management to the extent that the inspectorate could not ascertain key data on either the early removal scheme or the facilitated return scheme. The report’s most egregious example was:

“To facilitate the case sampling exercise, FNORC provided inspectors with a spreadsheet containing 558 lines of data. Following initial analysis of the information, inspectors removed 242 duplicate records”.


Half the data in this audited sample was incorrect. The report noted that:

“It is unacceptable that the department cannot produce clear and reliable data on the FNOs for whom it is responsible”.


Time is short, so I finish by saying to my noble and learned friend that I welcome the key recommendations in the report on data management, performance reporting, casework review and case ownership and management. I hope that he can update us on efforts to address these serious failings and the actions taken thus far by both his own department and the Home Office in response to the report published last year. The public expect their elected Government to fulfil the most basic function: to protect their citizens and subjects and safeguard their borders in so doing. At present, we are negligent in discharging those duties, and taxpayers rightly expect us to do all we can to face up to these problems and fix a broken and dysfunctional system.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough for raising this most important issue. I am not sure that I shall be able to answer in detail all the questions that I have rightly been asked in this debate, but my officials will go through the transcript and I will write to everybody to make sure that the questions are properly answered.

Briefly, by way of background, noble Lords will see from the House of Lords report that there is a dip in the numbers and that they have started to climb again since the Covid crisis. I am told that, in effect, the dip is accounted for by various difficulties encountered by the Home Office at the time. They include quite a number of legal challenges. One that went to the Supreme Court was on something then called Section 94B, which operated the principle of “deport first, appeal later”; it was lost and, as a result, 700 cases had to be redone. Then, in 2019, there were legal proceedings that, as noble Lords may remember, challenged a lot of charter flights. In the meantime, the modern slavery law came into effect, which increased the number of modern slavery claims being made by prisoners. So a combination of factors led to that decline even before we had Covid, but Covid then had a further adverse effect.

Since then, we have climbed up again, to nearly 4,000 last year—a 27% increase on the year before. I just say that by way of background. I do not accept the stricture that the Government have been in a position of chaos and incompetence; I think those were the words used. The Government have been doing their best with a very difficult situation.

Against that background, briefly, there are, roughly speaking, about 10,000 or so prisoners who are foreign national offenders. About one-third of those are on remand. We cannot do anything about that, so we are talking about 6,500 people or something of that kind. Of course, there are also foreign nationals in the community —that is the number in prison—but we are doing our level best to improve performance in that respect. As I said, we returned nearly 4,000 FNOs from prison last year.

The Lord Chancellor has talked about the new measures that we are introducing; they include the early removal scheme, with which noble Lords are familiar. Between January and March this year, almost 400 foreign national offenders were removed—a 61% increase over the same period last year. Part of this is also due to the increasing use of prisoner transfer agreements. I shall say a word about that because it has, rightly, cropped up in the debate.

The Albanian agreement came into effect, or was improved, in May 2023 in order to speed up prison transfers, with greater numbers of the most serious offenders to be sent back to Albania. That is continuing but, even in the case of Albanian prisoners, there are still procedural difficulties that cause delays in the process. For example, each transfer has to be approved by the Albanian courts, which must sanction the Albanian authorities’ power to hold the prisoners, as it were, when they arrive back in Albania. It is a lengthy process; indeed, quite apart from prisoner transfer agreements, one is wrestling with some difficult issues in physically deporting a foreign national offender. Often, there will be very late appeals and all kinds of claims raised. In many cases, there will be absolutely no documentation, so you do not even know what country they come from; you then cannot prove where to send them or prove to the receiving state that they are indeed nationals of that state. These kinds of difficulties arise, quite apart from the physical problems of having an aircraft, escorting people and all those kinds of difficulties.

One should not underestimate the operational problems here but the Government are determinedly working on them. A better process has been introduced for dealing with foreign national offenders. There is a new task force across the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, and we have recruited 400 additional case workers to prioritise these cases; they have been in place since last month and will streamline the end-to-end process. So the Government are tackling the problem in general terms.

With that broad background, I will see whether I can deal with at least some of the questions I was asked. I will write to noble Lords on the problem of derogations from the convention, which was one of the points raised on the ECHR.

I think the problem with Jamaica has been the difficulty of reaching a political agreement with the Jamaican Government—I think that that is the case, but I will confirm it in writing. The Albanian example is working quite well. We have agreements with many other countries, but they are not always effective, because prison conditions in other countries are not very satisfactory. Sometimes, the agreement is to enable British prisoners in the foreign prison to come back—a recent example was from the Philippines—rather than for us to send people there, so it is a complicated area.

I do not think I can comment on the specific case of Abdul Ezedi in a debate such as this.

We will work very hard to implement the recommendations of the chief inspector’s report. Points about that were well made. It is another aspect where there can be improvement, but, as I said, we are well up—I gave the figure of 61%—on the equivalent period last year in our success in deporting foreign nationals.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Incidentally, going back to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I once visited the San Miguel prison in Santiago, Chile, with the fabulous penal reform campaign of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. The month before, 81 inmates died in a fire. It was the grimmest prison I have ever been to, but talking about prisons we have known is by the by.

I will press the Minister on the issue of the chief inspector’s report. He know that one of the key issues raised was the routine and repetitive use of manually accessed spreadsheets. There was no IT system that was trustworthy, to the extent that virtually any management data could be easily accessed. Is that a key imperative for the department to work on, as it prepares its formal response to the chief inspector’s report?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. Yes, that is extremely important. I will write with a further update on what can be done about it. It will be no secret to noble Lords that the problem of data across the criminal justice system and the prison system is ongoing, and we are working with various systems of various ages, including those of elderly status. A great deal needs to be improved.

I will press on, having one eye on the time. One of the various points raised by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was about the deportation of people who came here as a child. As far as they are protected, those people have to rely on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on family life, which is often a successful defence, because they will have no connections with the country to which they are being sent.

On other countries, the one with which we are the furthest forward at the moment, as far as I know, is Italy. The Lord Chancellor hopes to reach an agreement with Italy in the next few weeks. I do not think that I can go further than that, but there have been encouraging negotiations with Italy, and I hope that that and the Albanian situation will help significantly.

I understand that consultation with victims is conducted through victim liaison units. In the case of an FNO facing deportation, I am told that, where victims have signed up to the victim contact scheme, that consultation takes place.

I fully agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Farmer about rehabilitation and the importance of social visits. As noble Lords know, he conducted two important reviews not long ago, and I believe the ministry has accepted all his recommendations. An important part of that work was the social aspect of prisoners. I am not aware of any reduction in emphasis being placed on that, but I will investigate and write accordingly. Almost all prisons in England and Wales now have facilities for secure video calls, or in-cell telephony. I do not know whether that is the case in Minsk or Sarajevo, but it is a considerable improvement on what used to be the case. It certainly does not exist in the United States or, I would have thought, San Miguel prison.

There are important efforts to encourage peer-to-peer support. Pilots are in progress at the moment with a particular focus on FNOs, although there are facilities for long-range contact. FNOs with no visitors can get free phone credits for overseas calls and free video calls, which is considerably better than nothing. As I said, all prisons across England and Wales offer secure video calls.

Noble Lords have raised some important issues. I hope we are grappling with them; their importance is in no way neglected. The overall situation is that the Government are making progress in this area. Noble Lords have made very good points which, if I have not already answered, I will answer in more detail in writing. I close by thanking noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord Jackson, for raising these important issues.

King’s Speech

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in the debate on the gracious Speech. I congratulate my noble friends Lord Houchen of High Leven and Lord Bailey of Paddington on their excellent and entertaining maiden speeches, as well as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon.

Today I want to focus specifically on the criminal justice Bill. I strongly agree with much of it, but it is a missed opportunity because it omits reform of one integral part of the criminal justice system: the Crown Prosecution Service, which is palpably failing the British people. I urge your Lordships to read the recent Policy Exchange report, The ‘Wicked and the Redeemable’: A Long-Term Plan to Fix a Criminal Justice System in Crisis, authored by the former Met Police Detective Chief Inspector David Spencer.

The CPS is taking far longer to charge suspects than ever before, an average of 44 days, compared to 14 days seven years ago. The number of cases that have been outstanding for more than six months has quadrupled to 30,384 in the past four years. Despite having already more than 45 previous convictions, hyper-prolific offenders are sent to prison on less than half of all occasions—47.3% on conviction for indictable and either-way offences.

I want to talk about another Policy Exchange report that was published last week by the law lecturer, Maureen O’Hara, entitled The Crown Prosecution Service’s approach to transgenderism. This goes to the heart of the debate about fairness, credibility and impartiality. The CPS, an institution that should be completely impartial, is under the influence of a gender identity ideology. In the introduction to the report, the former Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Patrick Elias, says:

“This paper raises very serious concerns about the impartiality and independence of the Crown Prosecution Service when dealing with the highly sensitive issue of the treatment of transgender persons. It appears to have adopted uncritically the controversial views of Stonewall”.


In the foreword, Charles Wilde says:

“It is hard to overstate the importance of the Crown Prosecution Service doing its job properly. Its decisions change the lives of members of the public caught up in the criminal law … and have real impact on society more generally. If the CPS’s view of the law is mistaken or confused, or if its judgement of the public interest is inappropriately influenced by contentious political or cultural issues, the harm goes wider than that to the participants in a particular case … The CPS issues a Code for Crown Prosecutors, supplemented by ‘legal guidance’ – the latter extends beyond strictly legal issues into strategies of investigation and prosecution and includes societal, cultural, and psychological commentary. Particular care needs to be taken in drafting such documents”.


What we have seen across many areas is well-funded lobby groups, funded sometimes by our own Government, that have embedded their views of what they would like the law to be, rather than what it is. I make reference in particular to annexe D of the CPS’s legal guidance on domestic abuse, where the language used is that of gender identity theory. That is a highly contested theory, yet it is here in the supposedly impartial guidance—terms such as “cisgender”, “assigned sex”, et cetera. There is no scientific proof of such a thing as “gender identity”. Sex is observed and recorded, before or at birth, it is not “assigned”. There is no place for this language in CPS guidance and it should be rejected by Ministers.

One of the consequences of this is that the CPS records suspects and convicted offenders, for instance, on the basis of their self-declared “gender identity”, and is therefore recording male sex offenders as female. This applies even to the most serious offences, such as rape, which is covered by Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, even though it is currently impossible for anyone other than a biological male to commit that offence. This is leading to inaccurate data being recorded. Also, the use of preferred pronouns in court is giving great distress and offence to complainants. The adoption of unevidenced theory by the CPS would appear to be a clear example of policy capture, which the OECD has defined as

“the process of consistently or repeatedly directing public policy decisions away from the public interest towards the interest of a specific interest group or person”.

And this has all happened after 13 years of a Conservative Government.

Given that the CPS has refused or rebutted many reasonable requests under the Freedom of Information Act, and that I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, the sun needs to shine brightly on all aspects of this ideology. The CPS needs to explain itself to the public, the vast majority of whom know that sex is binary and immutable, that sex matters in many circumstances and that there must be accountability and transparency about those who influence the work of our institutions—and that includes the Crown Prosecution Service.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by joining the House in saying how sorry I was to hear the news about the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I always found him very patient with me, very erudite, very helpful and welcoming, and, most importantly, very witty; I will miss him. I compliment the maiden speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, and my noble friends Lord Houchen of High Leven and Lord Bailey of Paddington. My noble friend Lord Houchen is a walking embodiment of devolution, and my noble friend Lord Bailey’s speech was inspirational and a reminder of the virtues of community. Many congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Beith, on his 50 years in Parliament. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, for his generous personal remarks about me and my Front-Bench colleague; and I agree with every word that my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said.

It is a very great honour to represent the Government in closing this debate on His Majesty’s most gracious Speech. I will endeavour to respond to all the various contributions, while noting that it has, as ever, been a fulsome and insightful discussion spanning various policies, Bills and departments. First, I will make the general point that the legislative agenda we are debating is at its core about delivering a safe, strong and prosperous United Kingdom. This is not shadow boxing, as alleged by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. Much has already been achieved, but we have to build on that and progress.

I note that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in his opening remarks, berated the Government for the things he claims we are not doing. I would argue that we are doing them all, and I will go into some detail on that. Obviously, the criminal justice Bill delivers on a number of measures, and it is perhaps worth starting with shoplifting, which came up several times. It was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Blunkett and Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friends Lord Borwick and Lady Bray, and it is a very important subject that deserves a mention. I wonder if noble Lords perhaps missed that on 23 October, the National Police Chiefs’ Council published the Retail Crime Action Plan. That sets out a much greater police focus on retail crime, which includes shoplifting and violence towards retail workers. The action plan makes a police commitment to prioritise attendance at the scene where violence has been used or an offender has been detained by store security, and where evidence needs to be secured promptly and can only be done by police personnel.

On the same day, we also launched Pegasus, a unique partnership between police and retailers to tackle serious organised retail crime. It has been set up by the Sussex police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne, with funding from 13 national retailers, National Business Crime Solution and the Home Office. The retailers will provide data, intelligence and evidence to Opal, the national police intelligence unit on organised and acquisitive crime. That is intended to develop a better strategic picture and help forces to crack down on serious offenders.

The Government are very clear that violent and abusive behaviour towards any worker, particularly those who provide a valuable service to the public, is never acceptable. We took a significant step by introducing a statutory aggravating factor for assault against those who are serving the public, via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, so at this point the Government do not intend to introduce further legislation such as the specific offence of assaulting a retail worker. We are clear that reducing violence and abuse cannot be achieved through legislation alone, so we intend to continue to work with members of the National Retail Crime Steering Group to reduce violence and abuse through our wider work.

Obviously, none of this works unless, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, pointed out, we also concentrate on reasonable lines of inquiry, which have been much in the news of late. The principle of pursuing all reasonable lines of inquiry is enshrined in the code of practice to the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. In reality, it has not happened as much as it should. On crime and investigation, 42 of 43 forces received at least one area for improvement. On responding to the public, no force is rated “outstanding” and only 19% are assessed as “good”. The College of Policing has published new investigations guidelines and authorised professional practice to underpin a commitment to sorting this out. His Majesty’s Inspectorate will use its existing inspections framework to assess whether forces are following the college’s updated guidance. We should acknowledge that there are already forces that are making significant commitments and delivering improvements, for example in Greater Manchester. They have made significant changes to the service they provide to the public, including an impressive 44% year-on-year increase in the number of charges recorded by the force, from nearly 19,000 to nearly 27,000.

Another subject that aroused a great deal of commentary, including from the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Dubs and Lord Dholakia, the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, Lady Miller and Lady Jones, my noble friends Lord Patten, Lord Hunt and Lord Bourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—I did listen carefully to the points that she was making—was to do with rough sleeping and begging. I will be clear: the Government want to ensure that vulnerable individuals on the street are directed to the appropriate support, while ensuring that police and local authorities can respond effectively to begging and rough sleeping and keeping communities safe. That is why we have introduced new tools to help direct individuals to engage with positive pathways, including accommodation, mental health support and substance misuse support, so that individuals who may have turned away help before can access the appropriate support they need.

That is backed by over £2 billion over three years, because the Government have also made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament, and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act. We have already embarked on a strategy to shift the focus to prevention and move vulnerable individuals into multiagency support. Any further details on future legislation will be set out in due course and, if a person is genuinely destitute and not causing any harm, we should be very clear: they will not be committing any offence.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, raised the subject of fraud, and he was quite right to do so, but he neglected of course to mention that we published a fraud strategy earlier this year. There is considerable work going into the tackling of fraud, and it needs considerable work. The criminal justice Bill, for example, contains a ban on SIM farms, which, as noble Lords will be aware, are one of the facilitating factors in much of the fraud that is perpetrated in this country. The fraud strategy goes a long way and sets out an ambitious and radical plan for how government, law enforcement, regulators, industry and charities have to work together to tackle fraud. It just does not work unless it is a multiagency approach. I could go on, but we have talked about fraud a great deal from this Dispatch Box and I appreciate that time is limited, so I shall move on.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked me about a firearms review. It was a very good question, because it is vital that the public and officers have clarity and confidence in the investigatory systems in relation to police use of force, police driving and so on. That obviously includes the efficacy of investigations. That is why we announced the review, to which he referred, of the current framework and processes that are in place. The review, announced by the Home Secretary, will ensure that the legal and operational frameworks within which officers operate when using force and driving in the line of duty are robust and command the confidence of both officers and the public. That is due to report to Ministers by the end of this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend Lord Borwick both raised the subject of facial recognition. We believe that facial recognition technology is an increasingly important capability for law enforcement and it is already being used in a number of ways within UK policing and security settings to prevent and detect crime, enhance security, find wanted criminals, safeguard the vulnerable and protect people from harm. The use of facial recognition technologies is at varying stages across UK policing and it is a priority for the Home Office to ensure that technology is being used in an ethical and effective way. That is all I will say about that subject at the moment, but I have absolutely no doubt that is a subject to which we will return in very short order.

A number of speakers, including the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Beith, mentioned small boat arrivals and the effectiveness of the Illegal Migration Act. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will appreciate that I cannot speculate on the ongoing court case, but I can note—which I think no one else noted—that there have been a number of newspaper stories recently about how many of our European friends and allies are looking at similar schemes. It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

What I can give are some interesting statistics. In terms of arrivals, there were just over 26,500 in 2023, up to 31 October; that compares to 45,755 in total in 2022. In terms of crossing attempts, 22,000 were prevented in 2023. In terms of the mix of the sorts of people who were attempting to make a crossing, I note that, interestingly enough, because of the returns agreement with Albania, the Albanians have dropped off the list entirely. In terms of our partnership with the French, the joint intel centre activity since July 2020 has dismantled 82 organised crime groups linked to small boats; in 2022 alone, they arrested approximately 400 people smugglers. So the fact is that there is a good deal going on, and it is proving effective, but, obviously, there is a lot still to resolve, particularly after the courts have given their decision. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beith, that of course we need legal and controlled migration, but I remind noble Lords that these people have arrived illegally and, in doing so, are being facilitated in arriving here by serious and organised criminal gangs.

I would like to thank those people who want to come and contribute to our great country, but, obviously, only if they do so legally. This is a generous, open and welcoming country, and I can give the statistics on why I think that. Over the last year—the year ending June 2023—of the 538,887 visas granted for work, 69,421 were for skilled work and 121,290 were for health and care. In addition, there were 498,626 study visas. As of 24 October 2023, 243,700 Ukrainian visas had been granted. I am particularly delighted that 123,800 people have arrived in the UK since the Hong Kong BN(O) visa scheme route was initiated. If I may take a personal moment, I commend the Hong Kong Military Service Corps, whom we have talked about before, who were in the Gallery earlier watching some of this debate. As noble Lords will know, they will also be able to arrive.

However, we should also acknowledge, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, that this is not simply a debate about numbers; there are a large number of other factors that go into migration, and it behoves us all to be extraordinarily careful about how we use language. My noble friend Lord Bourne made some very good points about the international dimension and the changing nature of the drivers of illegal immigration, and I am quite sure that he is right that it needs to be raised in multinational organisations.

On the asylum backlog, provisional data now shows that we have doubled the number of backlog decision-makers in post, so we are on track to clear the legacy asylum backlog by the end of this year. Of course, the history of this has been unfortunate, and it has perhaps not been done as quickly as we would all have liked, but the fact is that we are getting to grips with it and it will be dealt with very soon.

I turn now to the sentencing Bill, which seemed to attract a vast number of very differing opinions, including from the noble Lords, Lord Hastings, Lord Dholakia, Lord Hogan-Howe, Lord German, Lord Beith, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, Lord German, Lord Blunkett and Lord Marks, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Jones—I am sorry if I have missed anybody. The Government are planning to make sure that the prison estate is used to lock up dangerous criminals for longer, without further criminalising redeemable offenders by trapping them in a merry-go-round of reoffending. The most dangerous prisoners are guaranteed to be behind bars for longer, but we need to go further to keep the public safe. For the worst murderers, the only proper penalty is life imprisonment without the possibility of release by the Parole Board. We will ensure that, in these most serious cases, life will really mean life. Further, we will ensure that those who commit rape and other serious sexual offences will spend every day of their sentence behind bars and face the consequences of their actions. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, that it is the crimes that are nasty, not the sentences.

However, delivering public protection and cutting crime is not just about custody, as has been noted by most of the speakers. There is persuasive evidence that suspended and community sentences are, in certain circumstances, much more effective than short custodial sentences in reducing reoffending and aiding rehabilitation. In these cases, short prison sentences may even trap an offender in a revolving door of reoffending, cutting them off from work, housing and family and further criminalising them with each spell inside. So, the Government have decided to grasp the nettle and make a long-term decision that previous Governments have ducked by legislating for a presumption that sentences of less than 12 months in prison should be suspended. Home detention curfew enables eligible suitable offenders to be released early from prison on strict licence conditions, so that they can begin reintegrating into the community sooner. We will also therefore seek to extend eligibility to suitable risk-assessed offenders, so they can get a head start on reintegrating with the community and breaking free from the cycle of reoffending. I certainly hope that the House would back all those proposals.

A number of noble Lords have raised the subject of violence against women and girls, including the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I have talked from the Dispatch Box before about the drive to operate consistently across the nation. Operation Soteria, which I have also mentioned, has developed new nationally operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape, which all forces in CPS areas in England and Wales are implementing to ensure that the investigations of rape are suspect-focused and considerate to the needs of victims. We know that women and girls are more likely to be victims of crimes that fall under the umbrella of VAWG. The most recent statistics show that 26.5% of women have been victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault since the age of 16, compared to 6.1% of men. Domestic abuse alone is high volume: it affects 2.4 million adults every year. It is high harm—one in five homicides is a domestic homicide, and we have referred to the sentencing measures we will be taking there—and very high cost. The social and economic cost of domestic abuse is estimated to be some £81 billion, at 2023-24 prices, over a three-year average period for abuse. We need to do more about prosecuting rape and to do more in this space; the numbers underline the importance of that. To try to make a political point that we have not been doing anything would be very wide of the mark.

I welcome the broad support for the victims Bill and thank noble Lords for it. In particular, I welcome back my noble friend Lady Newlove and thank her very much for her support. I hope my noble friend Lady Bray is right that this will help victims with closure. We believe that supporting victims by restoring trust, punishing offenders who commit very heinous crimes and ensuring that the public always have confidence in the criminal justice system are essential. The Victims and Prisoners Bill will improve victims’ experience of the criminal justice system and restore confidence. As noble Lords are aware, there are a large number of items associated with this, the principle of course being that this is to support victims of crime to address the long-term challenge of victim confidence in the criminal justice system by transforming their experience from the moment a crime happens.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about stalking, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, made a similar point. It is important to mention that stalking is a criminal offence. The definition of a victim in the Victims and Prisoners Bill is

“a victim of criminal conduct”,

so victims of stalking are included in the definition. I appreciate that that is a bit convoluted, but it is taken care of to some extent.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, asked about the Bill placing a duty on both criminal justice bodies and the police and crime commissioners. They have to keep compliance with the code under review. At the local level, police and crime commissioners will be under a duty to review criminal justice bodies’ compliance with the code. At the national level, new oversight will bring together senior voices across the criminal justice system to consider how to drive improvement on the delivery of the code.

The subject of parole was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and my noble friend Lord Bourne. Public confidence has fallen following a number of high-profile parole board decisions to release serious offenders, but the Bill will enshrine public protection as the only factor in release decisions and introduce greater ministerial scrutiny to the release of the most serious offenders. These reforms will help to restore public confidence in the system and ensure that dangerous offenders are not released on to our streets.

My noble friend Lady Bray and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, asked what discussions and engagement His Majesty’s Government have had with the judiciary on the measure to compel offenders to attend their sentence hearings. This was also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Meston; I welcome his reappearance in the House. We engaged with the judiciary on the proposal to compel offenders to attend their sentencing hearing ahead of the announcements in August, but obviously we will continue to engage with the judiciary where appropriate, including on the implementation of the measures. I appreciate the points that noble Lords have made about the potential difficulties of that in certain circumstances.

I turn to the subject of Martyn’s law, which was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Bourne. Martyn’s law seeks to enhance public safety by ensuring better preparedness for and protection from terrorist attacks. The Government carefully considered the scope of the requirements, including the impact on premises captured. It is reasonable that many locations should take appropriate, reasonably practicable measures to protect their staff from the horrific impacts of terrorism. Collaboration has been the cornerstone of the process. Pre-legislative scrutiny raised some important considerations regarding the standard tier requirements, which is why we will launch a consultation on the standard tier to ensure that the Bill’s measures strike the right balance between public protection and avoiding an undue burden on smaller premises; that consultation will be launched in due course. There is no intention to kick this into the long grass. We have heard from all of the various stakeholders in this. It is clearly a Bill that we need to see, but we have to do it in the right way. It is not negligence; it is about making sure that the law will work appropriately.

A variety of other matters were raised. I will start with the thorny subject of conversion therapy, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We are considering this issue carefully. I am afraid that I must disagree with the noble Baroness; I think it is a very complex issue. We will set out further details on it in due course. The priority is to tackle this issue in ways that are effective and avoid unintended consequences, particularly those that might affect young or vulnerable people. It is about taking time to fully consider the consultation responses and how best to reflect parents’ roles and interests in the importance of legitimate clinical work.

Moving on to the criminal justice system, the Government will always make sure that the prison estate is used to lock up dangerous criminals, of course. More offenders are in custody now than ever before, as has been mentioned. However, delivering public protection and cutting crime are not just about custody; as I have said, there is persuasive evidence that suspended and community sentences are more effective in certain circumstances. We remain committed to reducing the case load and speeding up justice, including by extending the use of 24 Nightingale courts. We are also opening two permanent super-courtrooms in Manchester and Loughborough.

My noble friend Lord Bourne asked about the new additions to the prison estate. I can give him the number: 8,000 are due to be delivered by 2025. A number of prisons are opening over the next two or three years, and that will add up to that particular number. I will not go into the details of precisely where.

The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, asked about racism in the police and legal system. I thank her for raising these important issues. On the specific issue of racism in prisons, the Prisons Strategy White Paper sets out our vision for prisons of the future, which includes ambitious plans to make prisons safer for staff and prisoners. As regards a meeting, I cannot commit my noble friends to meeting the noble Baroness but I can pass on her request to the MoJ, DHSC and the Department for Education and encourage them to meet; I will happily do so.

A number of noble Lords raised the subject of devolution. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and my noble friends Lord Wharton and Lord Houchen gave good examples of the subject in action, if you will. It covers a number of different departments in Whitehall and various policy areas. I cannot possibly respond to all the specific questions that were asked but I will defer to the relevant colleagues in other government departments to respond in writing on unaddressed points.

In answer to my noble friend Lord Norton, the Prime Minister is, as he has noted, the Minister for the Union, and the Secretary of State for DLUHC is the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, leading the work with territorial offices and territorial office Secretaries of State, who represent the distinctive voices and interests of people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland across Whitehall and in Cabinet, representing the Government in each of their nations and co-ordinating the Government’s work with the devolved Administrations to support all citizens of the UK. Specifically, in delivering our security, criminal justice and border responsibilities, the Home Office plays an important part in navigating a combination of reserved and devolved matters on a UK-wide footprint. That is why, on devolved matters such as policing in Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is right and proper that the UK Government are an active influencer to ensure a coherent and UK-wide approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York both raised the subject of transport and HS2. I thank them for their comments but will pass those comments on to the Department for Transport, which will be speaking in this Chamber on that matter on Monday.

My noble friend Lord Caine supplied very detailed answers to the noble Lords, Lord Bew and Lord Browne of Belmont, regarding the Northern Ireland devolution settlement. They are rather too long to go into at this precise moment, but I will ask him to commit this to paper and send it to the noble Lords. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan of Partick, that we are confident that the Illegal Migration Act does not impact the devolution settlement and is consistent with our international legal obligations.

I will digress briefly into the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which was raised by the most reverend Primate and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I want to refer to one piece of data that was published by the Climate Change Committee. It shows that the UK will continue to rely on oil and gas to help meet its energy needs, even after the UK reaches net zero in 2050. This will include the use of gas for power generation with carbon usage and storage. I am not a net-zero or climate change sceptic; I would much prefer that we did not burn carbon. But I would also prefer that people did not suffer when it is cold. I would also prefer that we do not lose power or run out of power, and I would have hoped that both noble Lords would have reflected on their comments and also thought a little about our security when it comes to supply, and the sorts of people that we would be handing our money over to in order to keep our oil flowing.

Moving on to more topical matters such as the Israel and Hamas conflict, I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick—whom I congratulate on his new role with the Metropolitan Police—for their acute perspective on the difficulties of policing marches of this type. I restate that the police in this country are operationally independent and obviously should remain so. However, a number of very unfortunate issues have arisen, in particular around anti-Semitism and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent but no less importantly, Islamophobia. Anti-Semitism has absolutely no place in our society. That is why we are committed to tackling it in all its forms. The police should take the toughest possible action against any form of anti-Semitism. It is important that the police and the Jewish community continue to work together to ensure security and promote community cohesion. Saying that does not infringe their operational independence. They must also, as I have said, police Islamophobia as and where they find it.

I have said on a number of occasions from this Dispatch Box that any arrests are very much an operational matter for the police. There have been about 30 arrests in London at protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict, including racially aggravated public order offences. The Metropolitan Police Service has also made arrests not directly linked to protest activity and there have been arrests elsewhere in the country. It would be unwise to say too much more than that, but once again I thank both noble Lords with a policing background for their acute perspective on this.

While we respect the police’s operational independence, as a number of noble Lords pointed out we must also have trust and confidence in the police. The noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Henig, made this point: the police have a lot of power. By the way, there are more of them; there are more police on our streets than ever before. The fact is that a number of changes have been made, and again we have discussed those from this Dispatch Box on a number of occasions. They include those around the police dismissals review, which I will not go into again, and those to do with vetting. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, made some very good points about this, and I agree that the Government must be determined to resolve the situation around vetting or re-vetting procedures.

The duty of candour to which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, referred has not been introduced, but the duty to co-operate already provides clarity on the responsibilities for individual officers. This was introduced in 2020, since the issue was highlighted in Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report into the experiences of the Hillsborough families. We are keen that this duty becomes rooted within the police workforce before considering any further changes to legislation, but an organisational duty of candour aimed at chief officers, requiring them to ensure an ethical culture in the forces they lead, will complement the existing requirements on individual officers.

I will just tie up a few loose ends, if I may. My noble friend Lord Farmer made some extraordinarily good points about the family. I will not respond to them now but will make sure that they are reflected on by the Government.

We have covered a large amount of ground and I have done my best to respond accordingly. I have no doubt that there will be further debates to come and I look forward to those discussions, but I finish by emphasising that the decent, hard-working and law-abiding majority are our chief concern. We have devised a legislative agenda which puts their interests first and will make our country safer and stronger. That is why we will be advancing our programme with confidence and energy in the weeks and months ahead.

Finally, I offer my thanks to all who have contributed to this debate. These are vital issues and the considerable expertise—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I fully understand that my noble friend was not able to answer the specific and niche issues I raised on the Crown Prosecution Service’s legal guidance, but will he endeavour to write to me to address them?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I absolutely will, and that goes for any other noble Lords whose points I have inadvertently missed; I apologise if I have.

These are important issues. The considerable expertise and insight on display in the House today will no doubt be of great benefit going forward.

European Court of Human Rights

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, as long as the Government are party to the convention, of course we respect Article 46. I do not accept that the Bill of Rights Bill, subsequently withdrawn, in any way undermined our commitment to the convention; it merely rebalanced the various rights and duties as set out in the UK Human Rights Act.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, the House will know that the Minister of the Interior in France has speculated on the use of primary legislation to disapply some aspects of the European convention in the case of France, because of the immigration crisis in that country. Is it not incumbent on our own Government to at least investigate whether, in the UK’s national interest, we could do something similar?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have noted the remarks by the Minister of the Interior for the French Government and we emphasise that it is important to pursue dialogue with international partners to ensure that the framework for dealing with these difficult matters is properly up to date. As my right honourable friend the Minister for Immigration said in the other place yesterday, we work closely with friends and allies to ensure that this is the case.

Sentencing Act 2020 (Special Procedures for Community and Suspended Sentence Orders) Regulations 2023

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, these regulations introduce pilots of an intensive oversight system for certain less serious offenders. The Explanatory Memorandum states that,

“this legislation is expected to: improve judicial confidence in the sentencing system, increase offender compliance, reduce reoffending and reduce the use of custody”.

The regulations will come into force on Monday 26 June.

In July 2022 three sites were selected with the approval of the senior presiding judge and the Secretary of State. Substance misuse ISC pilots will be established in Teesside Crown Court and Liverpool Crown Court, and the women’s ISC will be piloted in Birmingham magistrates’ court. It needs to be remembered that, in the sentencing White Paper 2020, the Government committed to pilot a problem-solving approach, which is essentially what this is, in up to five courts in England and Wales. It is regrettable that they are now committing to only three.

The Ministry of Justice describes ISCs as a “problem-solving approach” to offender management, in which those receiving some community and suspended sentences have regular contact with a multidisciplinary team including the judiciary, health professionals, police and probation officers and specialist support in relation to housing, education and skills. Local authorities will reportedly be a key part of the team in ISCs.

ISCs will seek to address an offender’s induvial needs, such as substance misuse, housing and education, with the ultimate aims including reducing reoffending and the use of custody. Judges and magistrates will oversee the process and be able to incentivise good progress, such as by relaxing conditions, while sanctioning behaviour that fails to meet agreed standards by increasing drug testing, court reviews and periods in prison, for example.

It is worth putting this in an international context. According to the Centre for Social Justice, there are more than 3,000 problem-solving courts in the United States of America and Canada, and the model has spread across the world, notably to Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway and Belgium. The US was an early adopter, with examples including the Miami drug court, which was established in 1989, the New York Midtown Community Court, established in 1993, and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, established in 2000.

International evaluations have variously highlighted improvements in offender compliance with court sanctions, greater levels of offender accountability and improved collaboration with external agencies. Despite its international appeal, problem-solving justice has had limited uptake in England and Wales. Although a handful of problem-solving community courts were established as pilots during the mid-2000s, their evaluations, while important, cannot be generalised, and successive Governments have been unwilling to invest further in an approach that is lacking “credible data”.

Although advocates continue to argue that problem solving should be better mainstreamed in the criminal justice system of England and Wales, their arguments are sometimes based on the fact that the model has great potential rather than a proven track record in reducing reoffending rates.

I will list some of the challenges I see with this model, the first of which is administration. To achieve consistency of the Bench, which is a core requirement of the ISC model, the current system for court listings and rotas would need to be amended to enable the same person—or group of people, if they are magistrates—to sit on the same case. The current system allows for drug courts, so there is no reason why this method could not be utilised more widely, but it would require HMCTS to change its systems.

The second challenge is effectiveness. To date, no evaluation has been published of the Manchester women’s problem-solving court, and the evaluation of the Aberdeen court was also limited. This is a big issue, and something the ISC pilots will need to address. Previous evaluations, such as those of the Liverpool community court and the Salford problem-solving court, found that there was no difference in rates of reoffending between those who went through the problem-solving stream and those who did not.

My experience of the drug court at Hammersmith magistrates’ court was that the magistrates—which I was at the time—had to sit on a separate rota. That rota was discontinued after a number of years because the Ministry of Justice, as I understood it, was unable to demonstrate that there was a reduction in reoffending by offenders through this separate rota approach. At the time, this was a disappointment and frustration to me and my colleagues because the data had not been gathered to make an informed assessment of the approach. Since it could not be proven that it worked, it was discontinued. However, that was not assessment of data which had been gathered; the data simply had not been gathered.

The next challenge is the importance of a collaborative approach. As the Minister will know, there is currently a postcode lottery of specialist services, which is an obstacle to the ISC vision. There were hours of oral evidence at the recent Lords’ Select Committee on this very topic, and the Chief Inspector of Probation raised it with the Select Committee a few weeks ago. Without the necessary agencies to create the holistic, multiagency scaffolding required to support people in the community, a specialist order is very difficult to put in place in practice. The backlogs from the pandemic mean that offenders are still unable to access specialist support services in some areas of the country. The lack of specialist services, including proper buy-in from the Probation Service, will have an impact on sentencer confidence.

A further challenge is appropriate training. Any expansion of the problem-solving model would certainly require investment in training opportunities, which is of particular concern to magistrates who have seen their Judicial College and HMCTS training budgets slashed. Budget issues notwithstanding, I am sure that many magistrates and judges would like to sit on these types of courts and use the additional skill of building an appropriate relationship over a period of time to try to discourage reoffending.

Although, as I understand it, this issue was not raised by magistrates or judges, most practitioners—probation officers, as well as keyworkers or other support services—have expressed concern that the model should not be used as a route to up-tariffing in the name of helping people, whereby people would be given a longer sentence than they might have otherwise got because of the help available. Their professional experience was that many people struggle to juggle the many elements of their orders with different appointments and things like that. The concern expressed by these professionals, such as those in the Probation Service, is that, given the chaotic and complex nature of their lives, you could, potentially, set people up to fail. The problem-solving model should not be touted as the universal answer for all people serving community orders, and suitable holistic support should continue to be provided for those who would not respond positively to additional court reviews.

To be clear, I support and welcome this model, but I have raised my concerns to make sure that we go into these pilots with our eyes open about the potential pitfalls. It is disappointing that no new money is being committed to these pilots and that the scope of the pilot schemes has been reduced. Nevertheless, intuitively, it sounds like a good model. I support it, but it needs to be underscored and supported with sufficiently robust data collection so that a realistic assessment can be made for its potential future extension. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on this statutory instrument. I have always taken an interest in the criminal justice system and have taken the view that, if you are to impose relatively draconian sentences on some prisoners, you should at least also give them an opportunity for redemption and to improve and turn around their lives for the benefit of their families, not least, and the wider community. In the other place, I strongly supported the coalition Government’s rehabilitation of offenders Act 2012, which I thought was a brilliant piece of legislation, in that, hitherto, “low-level” prisoners were discharged from prison and forgotten, and they very quickly got into the clutches of drug dealers and others. It goes without saying and is axiomatic that drugs have a huge negative impact on our communities.

I shall elucidate some of the points that the noble Lord made. I was slightly disappointed that the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies this instrument is not more detailed. I find it quite odd that the analysis of the work of the Liverpool community court should come up with the statistics referenced by the noble Lord. It is very important to interrogate why that was and why there was no demonstrable difference between recidivism in that court’s area, compared with more traditional courts.

Obviously, another issue is money. If you are going to establish a pathfinder scheme in order to keep people out of the prison estate and give them a chance to turn their lives around, and have a multidisciplinary approach with adult social care, children’s services, the police, et cetera, you need to spend the money. I am not someone who always calls for tax rises but, for the long run, you need to spend the money on this bespoke project, and you probably need more than three projects. It is disappointing that only three projects were allocated under the auspices of these regulations, because the excellent White Paper published in 2020 alluded to the possibility of five or more projects.

The Government may have missed a trick in not allowing a wider degree of public consultation in the design and review of these pilot schemes. I understand that they have to be expedited and that the Government have to move rapidly in order to put processes in place, but there is an awful lot of experience, knowledge and skills in the third sector and civil society, which could have been brought to bear in assisting the Government in developing these schemes. The Opposition spokesman mentioned Manchester and Salford. Lots of people have been involved and will have real-world experience.

My final point is on analysis and evaluation. It is frankly scandalous if we are really looking at a comprehensive evaluation taking another four years. I understand that you have to look at reoffending rates at the end of a period, but we already have a small cohort in this study; to wait another four years, which would be half way through the next Parliament and Government, for us to make a value judgment on its success or otherwise would let down taxpayers. On that basis, Ministers would perhaps be wise to look again at the efficacy of such a long-running period.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate in such a constructive and thoughtful way. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, whose Motion gave rise to it.

First, I will briefly address the concerns raised, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, about the Explanatory Memorandum. I am happy to acknowledge that, in this case, the Explanatory Memorandum was somewhat thin and did not meet the required standard. My officials have, I think, been able to provide answers to the committee’s satisfaction. We are working to ensure that future memoranda do not encounter a similar problem. Internal training is being undertaken and we will shortly have a meeting with the clerk of the relevant committee to understand what its requirements are. I hope that these various measures will deal with the problem, but I apologise for the fact that the committee felt it necessary to draw the House’s attention to this statutory instrument.

Let me explain briefly some of the background to this instrument; I hope also to deal with the points that have been raised. We are piloting three ISCs: two are focused on offenders with substance misuse and one is focused on female offenders. I place particular importance on the female offender court, which is at magistrates’ level in Birmingham. To take one particular point, in the earlier sentencing White Paper of 2020, the Government committed to piloting up to five schemes; we did not commit to five or more, I think. It is partly a question of resource, but the view has been taken that we should try to do three properly now rather than risk spreading resource too thinly; of course, that leaves open the possibility of the programme being expanded later if it is successful, but I hope that this is a solid and important start. I am glad to hear that, in general, noble Lords welcome this step forward.

I mention, I hope relevantly, four particular features of the programme. The first is close judicial monitoring by the same judge. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, my noble friend Lord Jackson and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Beith, raised the importance of continuity from a judicial point of view; it is crucial. I am sure that the MoJ will take away that point—it was made very forcefully by your Lordships, who collectively represent a wealth of experience in this area—and ensure that it happens. That is indeed a mainstay of the proposal.

The second feature is a particular emphasis on continuity and personal probation supervision so that there is always that particular continuity. As has been explained to me—to my personal satisfaction, I must say—it is in this respect something of a return to the old system of probation, whereby you had one probation officer who looked after you, took you all the way through the court process and was in direct touch with the judge, rather than there being, as I understand has happened to some extent in recent times, a sort of split within the Probation Service between the court team that prepares the reports and the supervisors who are out in the community, with a certain lack of communication in that process. It is very important that there should be the continuity of a single probation officer. Of course, at the same time—this is one of the reasons why the experiment is perhaps not as expansive as it might be—you do need to fully involve local authorities, other support services and so forth. We need to be sure that agencies have, as it were, signed up to and bought into the whole process for it to work.

For the substance misuse course, we have a requirement for regular drug testing so that, if there is a risk of someone falling back into such misuse, it will be picked up early.

Fourthly, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, there is not exactly a mixture of carrot and stick but the possibility of imposing sanctions on offenders if they are clearly not observing the rules in a way that merits a sanction.

Your Lordships know the sequence of events. There was a sentencing White Paper in 2020, then there was the 2022 Act and now there are the pilots. The ministry did not exactly invite bids but sought to explore which areas of the country would be interested in undertaking this work. I have to say, the response was not exactly overwhelming because, at the time, the courts were preoccupied with the backlog and after-effects of Covid and all those issues. So we do not, from that point of view, start from a particularly propitious situation. None the less, on each site, a local level, multiagency team has worked together, including the judiciary, probation, the police, the police and crime commissioner, the local authority, third-sector organisations and, of course, MoJ officials.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Will my noble and learned friend the Minister put on record the continuing support and importance of chaplaincy—both potentially in these schemes and in the wider prison estate—which, to my mind, is an integral part of supporting prisoners as they move away from crime and take their place in society?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am very happy to give my noble friend Lord Jackson that assurance. The Ministry of Justice and the Government share his view that effective chaplaincy is very important and part of the wider holistic approach to dealing with offenders.

Prisons and Courts Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I begin by declaring an interest not only in the subject that we are discussing, and not only in the fact that I am a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust and a patron of Unlock—those two charities are concerned with criminal justice and prisons in particular—but in the fact that I am on the advisory board of Samaritans, and much of what has been discussed this evening touches upon on its work. Literally tens of millions of calls are made to the offices of Samaritans every year. The fact that it is difficult for prisoners to get access to telephones and that the suicide rate in prisons is high—I understand that 119 prisoners took their own lives last year—suggests that we cannot push this subject aside lightly as one of the consequences of someone going to prison. We all need to concentrate on what we say and do about reducing self-harm and suicide in prison. I hope that the Minister for Courts and Justice will be able to respond positively on that point at the end of the debate.

It is uncontroversial to say that prisons are violent, overcrowded and understaffed, but the question of what we do about that is difficult to answer, because the politics relating to the criminal justice system is about sentencing, not prisons. We take a reasonably consensual view—with one or two exceptions—about what we think ought to be done in prisons, for prisoners and to protect the public, but sentencing is acutely politically controversial. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) asked Ministers why, if we can do it for education, we cannot create a regime to regulate prisons, but the answer is that while most of the British public—not all, but a great proportion—either have children of their own or know children, and therefore take a personal, direct interest in schools, few of us know people who go to prison or know what goes on in prison. It is a secret world. I have often said that the more prisons that are opened up to the public’s gaze—not in a ridiculous way, but sensibly—the better the debate about prisons and that aspect of the criminal justice system would be.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Notwithstanding what my right hon. and learned Friend has just said, does he agree that it is perfectly possible to resile from an over-liberal approach to sentencing while supporting an innovative approach to tackling recidivism, such as through the social investment bonds that we have seen at prisons in Doncaster and Peterborough?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I do not have an argument with that at all. The argument for making our prisons work for the public as a whole, for the victims of crime and for prisoners is not just moral and political, but economic. We push hundreds of millions of pounds into the criminal justice and prison systems, and what do we do with that investment? We produce failure. If the prison system was a business or a factory, and if I, as the managing director of that business or factory, pushed millions and millions of pounds into the process, but the things that I produced broke or failed 65% of the time, I would get the sack or my investors would go elsewhere. That is the economic argument. It happens to be bolstered by a moral argument and a political argument that we need to do better on prisons, but I do not resile from the fact that the money that we spend on prisons is not well spent, because it does not produce a lower rate of reoffending, or teach people to read and write so that they can get jobs.

Some 95% or 98% of the 85,000 people currently in prison will come out. I have sat as a judge for 20-odd years. I have put plenty of people into prison for perfectly good reasons, but if they come out of prison still addicted to drugs, still mentally ill, still unable to read or write and still incapable of getting a job, and if they then reoffend because they have no other ambition but to do what they have always done, which is to commit crime, what I am sensibly doing with the public’s money? Not much. It seems to me that there should be a perfectly straightforward economic consensus. Forget whether I am a lily-livered liberal—[Interruption.] Of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I belong to the same political party and, although he is rather more expert than me, we both take an interest in racing.

Prisons

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern, which she raised in Justice questions yesterday. I will deal with the tragic death of Dean Saunders later.

As I said, the Government are imprisoning more people than they have decided they can afford. There were 345 deaths in custody last year. In the same period, serious assaults on staff increased by 146%, and incidents of self-harm increased by more than 10,000. Within the space of just a few weeks, there were prison riots in Lincoln, Lewes, Bedford, and Moorland—not “Moorlands”, as it says in the motion. In December, HMP Birmingham saw what many described as the worst riots at a category B prison since Strangeways a quarter of a century ago.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

A lot of the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is predicated on the concept of austerity under this Government, but surely he will concede that the previous Labour Government, in much more benign economic circumstances, released 82,000 prisoners under the end of custody licence scheme, of whom 2,657 were recalled for licence breaches and over 1,200 for reoffending. In better financial times, there was still mismanagement of the prison estate.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been clear that we need extra staff on the frontline. A number of issues have resulted in the situation that we now face, including the rise in the numbers of psychoactive substances, drones and phones. I have been clear that we need to address the issue of staffing, and we are determined to do so. We monitor the level of sickness in our prisons specifically to address that issue.

[Mr Jackson]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the only concrete analysis given by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman in his 30-minute speech was that there is a demonstrable link between staffing and violence. That has been controverted by evidence given to the Justice Committee by Dr David Scott of the Open University, who rejected such a link. There are other much more complex societal factors in the prison population and across the estate.

[Elizabeth Truss]

There are a number of factors, and psychoactive drugs are one. We need the proper level of staffing, which we are putting into prisons, to ensure that prison officers can supervise and challenge offenders properly. That is important not just for safety, but for reforming offenders.

The “Prison Safety and Reform” White Paper, which was published last November, detailed the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation to deal with the issues we are discussing. It is right that prisons punish people who commit serious crime by depriving them of their most fundamental right, liberty, but they need to be places of discipline, hard work and self-improvement. That is the only way we will cut reoffending and reduce crime in our communities.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I shall not be referring to the mental health provisions in the Bill, but I commend colleagues who have already spoken about that and who have been personally responsible for taking this issue so far and for encouraging the Government to listen to the arguments that they have been putting forward for years. I also commend the Government for their response to the debates that took place in Committee and, more generally, for their attitude towards mental health. I also want to commend the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), for the way in which he spoke to his new clauses almost as part of the campaign on Hillsborough. He spoke passionately and powerfully and I hope that the Government will respond positively to his requests for the new clauses to be accepted, if only in principle. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the debate.

I want to speak briefly to new clause 48 and new schedule 1, which propose the re-creation of a national fire service inspectorate in England. My friend the Minister is, like me, a former firefighter. When I ask him to do things in our exchanges on fire brigade matters, he sometimes throws back at me the fact that I did not do them when I was Fire Minister and asks why should he do them now. I want to ask him why he is recreating the fire service inspectorate when we did away with it and put other arrangements in place. I will be interested to hear his explanation. I welcome the fact, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and others have done, that the Government recognise there is a vacuum and that something has to be created to fill the gap. Whether that is an inspectorate as set out in the new clause or whether that wording changes when the Bill goes to the House of Lords, the fact that the Government are moving in this direction is welcome.

In Westminster Hall last week, we discussed with the Minister the increasing number of calls related to flooding that the fire service now deals with, the transition towards dealing with more medical emergency calls and the arrangements with the national health service for the fire service to do more social care visits alongside fire safety visits. These changes all demonstrate the fact that the fire service is moving into different territory, and that different skills are being developed which require different resources as well as the staff to carry them out.

As I mentioned in Westminster Hall, criticisms are being levelled at the fire service, parts of which are being blamed for the reductions in the service. The fire and rescue service has been a victim of its own success in recent decades, having cut the number of calls and fires and reduced the number of deaths and serious injuries. That has resulted in the loss of fire stations, fire appliances and firefighters. The Minister will remember that I stated in that debate that there are nearly 7,000 fewer firefighters in the UK now than there were in 2010. That fact has raised a number of eyebrows, and questions are being asked about attendance times being met and resources being available. People are now asking whether the service is still equipped to do the job that it needs to do.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has great experience in the fire and rescue service in a number of capacities. The operational issues that he is rightly raising are important, but will he acknowledge the Public Accounts Committee’s finding that in the wake of the abolition of the Audit Commission, the governance, scrutiny and oversight of many fire and rescue services and the cosy relationship between the authorities and those services were unsatisfactory in terms of providing value for the taxpayer’s pound?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That point was also raised by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, and I am sure that the Minister will also put forward an argument for putting in place a means of making those measurements.

Having said all that, I am curious about the lateness of the arrival of the new clauses. The Minister referred positively to the consensus in Committee and to the ability of both sides to help each other out to make progress on the Bill. I commend the shadow Fire Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), for arguing for a provision to assess the ability of the fire service to carry out its functions. To the Minister’s credit, he has now tabled the new clause and the new schedule to address that issue.

I mentioned in an intervention my curiosity about whether the Government had considered the United Kingdom Accreditation Service as a potential vehicle to carry out the function that is being proposed here. The Minister knows that I had 23 years in the fire service, 13 of which were spent as an operational firefighter, and I participated in drills in the fire station as set out by Her Majesty’s inspectorate. I have to question the value of those drills, because we would train for weeks to get them right but they still did not always go entirely right. I question the value of putting in that amount of rehearsal. I wonder whether all that practice actually made the whole exercise worthless.

We decided to abolish Her Majesty’s inspectorate because of the scepticism and cynicism surrounding it—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to an old boys’ network earlier—and I would have hoped that the Government would now be proposing something new. However, they seem to be proposing a re creation of what went before. Having moved it to the Department for Communities and Local Government and then back to the Home Office, there seems to be replication so that, along with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, we will now have Her Majesty’s inspectorate of fire services.

I look forward to hearing more from the Minister and to listening to the debates in the other place, where I suspect the Bill will get more scrutiny than it has in this place. Public confidence in the fire service is high and has always been high, but the fire service needs professional underpinning and validation not only for public confidence and value for money, but for the safety of firefighters who put themselves on the frontline to protect the public. I look forward to a more extensive debate when the Bill goes to the other place, and to some comments from the Minister when he sums up. This is a positive step forward, but we need to make sure that the fire service can demonstrate to its own satisfaction, to our satisfaction and to that of the public that it is equipped, resourced and able to do the job we all admire it for doing and want it to carry on doing in the future.

Police Grant Report (England and Wales)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The fact that it is a priority is exactly why the Chancellor stood at this Dispatch Box and said that he would make a very generous settlement. No one dreamed we would get that settlement, but that money will come through. There are no cuts going forward, even though that is exactly what you would have had if a Labour Minister had been standing here.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Minister is making a strong case. Is it not important to trust the professionals in the police service? We do not rely on the Labour party’s mooted 10% cut; we trust the professionals. He will know that the terrible Joanna Dennehy murders around Peterborough could not have been solved by the Cambridgeshire constabulary alone, and that it had to work with other constabularies such as Norfolk in order to attain the critical mass in forensics and other back-up services necessary to solve the crimes. We trust our local professional police officers.

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has just touched on a point that I was going to make about collaboration. None of the 43 police forces around the country—not even London’s, with all its size and capabilities—can police alone. They need help across the board. The East Midlands regional organised crime unit is doing fantastic work, for example. And in my own region—the Eastern region—capabilities that were always exercised, with difficulty, in separate local forces are now being spread across the region. [Interruption.]

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[Mike Penning]

That type of collaboration is so important. For too many years forces have sat in silos, as have individual emergency services. They are coming together and one reason for that is that the austerity measures we had to bring in have made them think outside the box.

[Mr Jackson]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I will give way one last time and then I will sum up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jackson]

I am anxious to ensure that the Minister does not peak too soon. First, I pay tribute to Cambridgeshire constabulary for the excellent work it has done on issues relating to domestic violence and sexual offences. Does he agree that one reason for the slight spike in the reporting of those crimes is that many more victims feel comfortable about approaching the police now and feel that they will be treated fairly in the pursuit of their complaints?

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has touched on a really important point. I had the honour the other week of continuing the funding for the victims’ groups around the country for the next three years. One really important thing is that our constituents, no matter what has happened to them, have the confidence to come forward, and that they will be listened to with compassion. For too many years that was not the case.

I know that a lot of colleagues want to get in and I have been generous in taking interventions, but may I say that we need to make sure that our constituents are made aware of how generous this settlement is for the next four years to 2020? We are still in very difficult financial times, when we are continuing to pay for the maladministration of this country’s finances by the previous Labour Administration and previous Ministers who are now sitting on the Labour Front Bench. I am looking forward to listening to positive comments about our police force. I am enormously proud to be the Minister for Policing, Fire and Criminal Justice and Victims. It is a long title, it is a big job and I am very proud to have it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. If we look at the statistics overall, we see that areas of volume crime have gone down—I will come on to explain in more detail why Government claims about crime falling are simply not true. Car crime has gone down, and houses by and large are now more difficult to break into. Having said that, there are spates of burglaries all around the country. What is essential is good neighbourhood policing. Let me give an example from my own constituency. The admirable Sergeant Simon Hensley set up a canoe club on Brookvale lake. I literally launched it in a canoe—[Interruption.] It was one of my most terrifying moments as a Member of Parliament. Hundreds of young people joined the club, and very good relationships were formed. One benefit was that when there was an outbreak of burglary in Stockland Green, they came forward and said they knew who the bad lads were. Again, it is that neighbourhood policing that is so important. There is no substitute for it. It is the bedrock of policing in our country.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fair point. It would be churlish not to accept that there was progress around community policing, but that is not the whole story. Does he agree that one legacy of the previous Labour Government was an inordinate amount of bureaucracy and paperwork, which kept many front-line police officers in the station, processing data, rather than out catching criminals? This Government have tackled that, which is why we have seen a reduction in numbers and a significant reduction in recorded crime.

[Jack Dromey]

Let me give a straight answer. I think that we did prescribe too much and too often. It was right therefore that, by consensus across political parties, the previous Government became less prescriptive. Certain things will always need to be prescribed, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Since when was it the practice of foreign legal and other entities to decide the views of this Parliament, and to traduce its sovereignty and the electoral mandate we have to introduce a British Bill of Rights? It is a tragedy that the European convention on human rights, which was founded by British jurists, has been distorted by perverse decisions such as trying to give an axe murderer the vote, which we have rejected. Is it not time that we got on with our manifesto commitment to a British Bill of Rights?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and makes his point in his characteristically powerful way. I would point out that the Labour Government had problems with how the Strasbourg Court operated. They did not implement prisoner voting—I do not remember the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) calling for it to be implemented when he was a Minister—and nor did they implement the Abu Qatada judgment.