Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Baroness Chakrabarti

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords in the Committee. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, not least for giving us an opportunity to thank, once more, the Prison Reform Trust, and I would add the Howard League for Penal Reform and UNGRIPP, in particular, who are the family members of these desperate people in many cases. I thank her for pointing out this issue of the window of opportunity for rehabilitation and seeing another possible way of life.

Hope springs eternal, and therefore we are particularly lucky to have “hope” in the form of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who is so active in this Committee. Every point he made was quite hard, if I may say so, to resist. But my man of the match, I am afraid, was, none the less the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, because I feel that one of the reasons that we have not had a serious penal reform campaign in this country, possibly since the Victorian period, is because we have lost empathy for the prisoner. We have locked them away—out of sight, out of mind. They do not vote, et cetera: all these things that will set the alarm bells ringing at the Daily Mail, if anybody is up there. We have lost empathy for these people. They are not human anymore; they are prisoners; but in this group of amendments at least, we are talking about people who were children when they were given this sentence, and the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, had sufficient empathy to compare “criminals” with his late father’s friend and a war hero is the kind of empathy that I rarely hear about any demonised group in our society, whether it is convicted people, refugees and asylum seekers or anyone else who is, for the moment, in a demonised category. I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he said.

I am grateful, of course, to my noble friend Lady Thornton for the support of the Labour Front Bench. She of course was an Equality Minister in the not-too-distant past, and I hope that she will be one in the not-too-distant future, shortly, or in due course, or whatever these other phrases are that are occasionally—

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

We are not complacent.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

We are never complacent, but always with hope.

Finally, in that regard, I noted that the noble and learned Lord the Minister said, “not quite persuaded”. In that “quite”, in that little space, I will keep hope. I was here to keep my noble friend’s hope alive in his absence, because these amendments were particularly important to him.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Baroness Chakrabarti

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I forgot to declare my interests as a visiting professor of practice at the LSE and in receipt of research services from a PhD student from King’s College London. To support the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, if this is becoming such a difficult area, it will be tempting for regulators that “may” issue guidance not to do so in a particular contentious area. We go down this road or we do not, to some extent. If there are rows between competing minority interests and around particular foreign policy issues, then if I were a regulator, it would be all too tempting to sit back. That has sometimes been the case in the past, whether with the police or regulators. That is in support of the rather tighter duty that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, proposes to put on the regulator.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not going to say very much because this debate has covered most of the ground that we need to cover on how this issue should be decided. However, I always listen to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, very carefully. When he says that simplicity is best, that is probably right. We definitely find Amendments 33 and 54 to 56 the more attractive amendments. As my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said, they are the common-sense amendments. I am more attracted to them than to Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.

This debate has shown, and I agree with those who have said so, that while the words in the noble Lord’s amendment are of course very laudable, actually it is the words that go in the Bill and create the law that are important. That is our job here in this House. It is certainly not our job to put words into legislation that might create more confusion and proclaim values at this stage. The Minister will probably tell us how the Government feel about that. My noble friend Lord Smith outlined in the earlier debate what a hard job the leaders of our universities have in balancing their duties and rights. That was amplified by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, when he spoke to his amendment.

In reflecting on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I do not think that this amendment would have stopped what happened to Kathleen Stock. That was a failure of the leadership of her university to fulfil their duty of care to her and their need to promote free speech in their institution. This amendment would not have stopped that, because it is to do with how that university conducts itself.